Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 2
Morning
"Thou
art all fair, my love."—Song of Solomon 4:7.
The Lord's admiration of
His Church is very a wonderful, and His description of her beauty is very
glowing. She is not merely fair, but "all fair." He
views her in Himself, washed in His sin-atoning blood and clothed in His
meritorious righteousness, and He considers her to be full of comeliness and
beauty. No wonder that such is the case, since it is but His own perfect
excellency that He admires; for the holiness, glory, and perfection of His
Church are His own glorious garments on the back of His own well-beloved
spouse. She is not simply pure, or well-proportioned;
she is positively lovely and fair! She has actual merit! Her deformities of sin
are removed; but more, she has through her Lord obtained a meritorious
righteousness by which an actual beauty is conferred upon her. Believers have a
positive righteousness given to them when they become "accepted in the
beloved" (Eph. 1:6). Nor is the Church barely lovely, she is superlatively
so. Her Lord styles her "Thou fairest among women." She has a real
worth and excellence which cannot be rivalled by all the nobility and royalty of the world. If
Jesus could exchange His elect bride for all the queens and empresses of earth,
or even for the angels in heaven, He would not, for He puts her first and
foremost—"fairest among women." Like the moon she far outshines
the stars. Nor is this an opinion which He is ashamed
of, for He invites all men to hear it. He sets a "behold" before it,
a special note of exclamation, inviting and arresting attention. "Behold,
thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair" (Song of Sol. 4:1).
His opinion He publishes abroad even now, and one day from the throne of His
glory He will avow the truth of it before the assembled universe. "Come,
ye blessed of my Father" (Matt. 25:34), will be His solemn affirmation of
the loveliness of His elect.
Evening
"Behold,
all is vanity."—Ecclesiastes 1:14.
Nothing can satisfy the
entire man but the Lord's love and the Lord's own self. Saints have tried to
anchor in other roadsteads, but they have been driven out of such fatal
refuges. Solomon, the wisest of men, was permitted to make experiments for us
all, and to do for us what we must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his
testimony in his own words: "So I was great, and increased more than all
that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And
whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from
any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and
this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked
on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour
that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." What! the
whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there
nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion
reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in
Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of
the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and
luxury, is there nothing? "Nothing," he says, "but weariness of
spirit." This was his verdict when he had trodden the whole round of
pleasure. To embrace our Lord Jesus, to dwell in His love, and be fully assured
of union with Him—this is all in all. Dear reader, you need not try other
forms of life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian's: if
you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face; if you could have all the comforts of life,
if you lost your Saviour, you would be wretched; but
if you win Christ, then should you rot in a dungeon, you would find it a
paradise; should you live in obscurity, or die with famine, you will yet be
satisfied with favour and full of the goodness of the
Lord. "Behold, all is vanity."—Ecclesiastes 1:14.