ess. All, all of
these are the glad outcome of abiding in CHRIST. To deepen this union,
to make more constant this abiding, is the practical use of this
precious Book.

SECTION I

THE UNSATISFIED LIFE AND ITS REMEDY

Cant. i. 2-ii. 7

THERE is no difficulty in recognizing the bride as the speaker in verses
2-7. The words are not those of one dead in trespasses and sins, to whom
the LORD is as a root out of a dry ground--without form and comeliness.
The speaker has had her eyes opened to behold His beauty, and longs for
a fuller enjoyment of His love.

Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth:
For Thy love[1] is better than wine.

It is well that it should be so; it marks a distinct stage in the
development of the life of grace in the soul. And this recorded
experience gives, as it were, a Divine warrant for the desire for
sensible manifestations of His presence--sensible communications of His
love. It was not always so with her. Once she was contented in His
absence--other society and other occupations sufficed her; but now it
can never be so again. The world can never be to her what it once was;
the betrothed bride has learnt to love her LORD, and no other society
than His can satisfy her. His visits may be occasional and may be brief;
but they are precious times of enjoyment. Their memory is cherished in
the intervals, and their repetition longed for. There is no real
satisfaction in His absence, and yet, alas! He is not always with her:
He comes and goes. Now her joy in Him is a heaven below; but again she
is longing, and longing in vain, for His presence. Like the
ever-changing tide, her experience is an ebbing and flowing one; it may
even be that unrest is the rule, satisfaction the exception. Is there no
help for this? must it always continue so? Has He, can He have created
these unquenchable longings only to tantalize them? Strange indeed it
would be if this were the case. Yet are there not many of the LORD'S
people whose habitual experience corresponds with hers? They know not
the rest, the joy of abiding in CHRIST; and they know not how to attain
to it, nor why it is not theirs. Are there not many who look back to the
delightful times of their first espousals, who, so far from finding
richer inheritance in CHRIST than they then had, are even conscious that
they have lost their first love, and might express their experience in
the sad lament:--

Where is the