Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1561
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, October 10, 1880
“I sleep, but my heart is awake: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocks.” Song of Solomon 5:2.
WE are glad to perceive in this Song the varied experience of the bride. She was the well-beloved of the heavenly Bridegroom, but she was not without her faults. Though the “fairest among women,” she was human and, therefore, she had not reached angelical perfection. She was not perfect, to begin with, for at the outset she confessed, “I am black, because the sun has looked upon me: they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept.” She was not perfect even in the exhibition of her love to Him who had chosen her, for she has to acknowledge, as upon the occasion before us, that she treated Him in an unworthy manner. She kept Him waiting at her door in the chilly night and grieved Him so that He withdrew. She was not perfect, even, to the end of the chapter, for she could not hear her Lord’s voice so clearly as certain of her companions and she cried in the last chapter of her Song, “Cause me to hear it.”
Brothers and Sisters, we shall not be able to claim entire perfection so long as we are this side the hills of division. Till the day breaks and the shadows flee away, our Lord will have to sanctify and cleanse His spouse “with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” We are glad, I say, to have the experience of the spouse—that is, of the Church as a whole—because we know that as is the Church, such are the members and the rule that holds good for the whole will be found in its measure and proportion to be fulfilled in all its parts. We, too, have to say, “I am black, because the sun has looked upon me.”
And at times we have to ask, “Why should I be as one that turns aside by the flocks of your companions?” We have had mournfully to cry, “I sought Him, but I could not find Him; I called Him, but He gave me no answer,” while the watchmen have justly smitten us and wounded us for our neglect of our Lord. Let us bless God that in the Book of revealed Truth He has not merely given us the ideal standard after which we are to seek, but He has also preserved for us the humbler patterns of those who have strived to reach to the utmost height and who have climbed a good way towards it, but who, nevertheless, have proved that, though they were the best of men, they were men at the best. Thus our Lord has saved us from despair by making us to know that we may be sincere and true and accepted, though we, too, fall short as yet of the holiness which we pant after with our whole hearts.
Nor are we only favored with the poetic story of the bride—we have, also, in the Word of God, the biographies of the saints, the memoirs of the godly and these are exceedingly useful to us. I fear we would not, Brothers and Sisters, at certain times, know whether we were God’s people at all if we were not able to compare ourselves with others of the family. We may lose our way, sometimes, as poor sheep have often done and then, though the greatest comfort is derived from seeing the footprints of the Shepherd, yet no small measure of consolation is to be gained through marking the footsteps of the flock. The sight of human footsteps on the sandy waste has caused us to take heart again.
We have exclaimed, “Here one has been who was surely a child of God and since I am here, I may be a child of God, too. I have similar failings and weaknesses and I chide myself for them, but I will not utterly condemn myself and say I cannot be a Believer, for I perceive that these spots were on others of God’s children, too.” The perception of our likeness to others who were truly saints has often afforded us a spark of hope when we were in a maze and dared scarcely hope that we were right towards God. Frequently the experience of others will help us to thread our way when it winds and twists and we cannot see an inch before us.
The young man thinks that he understands himself, but no old man does. Ask the man who is best acquainted with himself and he will tell you that he is increasingly a riddle and that his experience becomes an enigma more profound every day. The Believer feels that he needs the help of the Divine Teacher to enable him to trace the thread of his spiritual life throughout all the tangle of the skein. It needs a Grace-taught man to make himself out and to comprehend what he is and where he
is and what is the very truth of his life’s paradox. At times I ask myself, “Am I all sin, or is there yet a spark of Grace?” Soon Grace shines like the sun and then I almost dream that sin is extinct! We are driven to read ourselves in others. We look at the saints of Holy Scripture and, as we mark their lives, we say, “I can understand this man better than I can myself, for lookers-on see more than players. And now, by understanding him, I begin, also, to comprehend my own position. I calculate my latitude and longitude by observing a star. I estimate the contending influences that rage within me by seeing how others drifted, or stemmed the torrent. I see the strange convolutions of my intertwisted soul in others and, as in a glass, I discern myself.”