Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3516
“Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.” Song of Solomon 8:6.
TAKEN in its most natural sense, this is certainly true of creature love. It is a mighty, all-constraining, irresistible passion. Even the love of friendship occasionally has proved itself to be “strong as death.” “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” There have been those who were willing to sacrifice their lives for their friends. Filial affection has sometimes proven to be more than a match for the terrors of the grave. Some pleasing instances are on record worthy to be written among the golden deeds of manhood in which brothers and sisters have seemed to contend with each other who should die first, if perchance a brother’s precious life might, by such a sacrifice, be preserved. What a mighty instinct of love glows in the mother’s heart! You recollect that famous story of the mother whose child was taken from her by a Jesuit missionary to be trained separate and apart from its parents—how she swam through rivers and passed through what seemed to be impenetrable forests, guided only by the midnight star—till she arrived at the place where her offspring was—braving death in a thousand shapes from wild beasts and venomous serpents, from floods and jungles, from fierce men and relentless persecutors, might she but reach her child! Have there not been instances where, in the stormy blasts of winter, a mother has wrapped her garments about her infant and, exposing herself to the fury of the elements, has sacrificed her own life that the little one might live? Love has, indeed, often proved itself to be strong as death! When merely the common passion which burns in the breast of ordinary men and women towards each other, it has asserted its strength in a fond devotion which reckoned no consequences, spared itself no pain and fixed no limit to endurance, not counting life, itself, too dear to be parted with on so high a service.
Nor do we lack painful proofs of the converse proposition as it is stated in the second clause of our text. Jealousy has often proved itself “cruel as the grave.” You have only to recall the most appalling murders that have been committed within your memory, or, if you please, those you have read of in the history of nations, and you will find that jealousy has instigated those that were most vindictive and relentless. When jealousy begins to turn its sharp tooth upon a man’s heart, his reason fails him. Madness takes possession of his faculties. A determined purpose, which he would not have dared to contemplate under the influence of a well-balanced judgment, prompts, plans and performs almost without premeditation, an atrocious crime, when jealousy rules the cruel hour! We believe it and we deplore it! No revenge has ever been found too bitter, too malicious, too lawless for jealousy to inflict. Relentless as the grave, it spares not youth nor beauty, respects not fame nor fortune, but accounts all comers for its prey!
Not that these things, a phenomena of Nature, much concern the Christian minister. He has to handle these themes because they concern you as men. It is to men he speaks. He has to tell them of the salvation of Jesus Christ! It is rather the business of the mental philosopher than the faithful Evangelist to take up these phenomena of the human mind. Our business is to understand these things spiritually This Song of Songs is spiritual, or else it has no claim on our attention—its very Inspiration were incredible. We cannot imagine the Holy Spirit giving us this song merely for the purpose of entertaining us with the figures and metaphors of Eastern allegory! There must be a deep and hidden meaning in it.
Now we believe it will be fair to say that there are two high spiritual forms of love and jealousy and that our text is lucid in its description of both—first, the love and jealousy of the saints with regard to Christ And secondly, the love and jealousy of Christ with regard to His saints. We will begin with—
I. The Love and Jealousy of the Saints with Regard to Christ
The saints love their Lord and Master, or else they could not be saints. Love is the fountain of their saintship. They are sanctified by love. It is the love of Jesus Christ which compels them to hate sin and which leads them forward in the path of holiness. The Holy Spirit uses the same passion of love to work in us the purging of ourselves from every unhallowed thing and to inflame our desire after everything that is agreeable to the mind of Christ. The saints have received, by the Holy Spirit, a love to Christ which is “strong as death.” And how strong is death? Think for a moment how strong Death is! He is so strong that the armies which lay encamped upon the field just now, and could tread an empire beneath their feet, yield to his imperial sway, and are, themselves, trod beneath the feet of Death. Xerxes, as he sat on his golden throne, wept at the thought that death should so soon mow down the myriads of his Persian hosts. Over all the multitudes which have been born into the world, with but two exceptions, Death has swayed his scepter. So strong is he, that he has up to now reigned as an Universal Monarch. Nor will he ever resign his scepter until He shall come whose Kingdom shall have no end—He who is, “death of death, and Hell’s destruction.” The monarchy of death is not only universal, but its behests are imperious and instantaneously obeyed! When, at God’s command, death seizes the body, it has no power to resist. The vital energy at once ceases, the tongue of music is dumb and the hand of skill is motionless forever! Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God, who gave it. In vain the physician’s skill—it cannot avert the stroke of death. No long siege is necessary—it requires not years, nor months, nor weeks to scale the ramparts of man’s citadel of bodily strength! As Death knocks at the door, it flies open. The arrest must be made. Willing or unwilling, the prisoner must go with the officer. The demand is peremptory and the obedience passive. Seems it not as if Nature had no parallel for this strong irresistible force of Death?