Spurgeon: August AM
* 08/07/AM
"The upright love Thee"
--Song of Solomon 1:4
Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection then they dare
to give to any other being. They would sooner lose father and
mother then part with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts
with a loose hand, but they carry Him fast locked in their
bosoms. They voluntarily deny themselves for His sake, but they
are not to be driven to deny Him. It is scant love which the
fire of persecution can dry up; the true believer's love is a
deeper stream than this. Men have laboured to divide the
faithful from their Master, but their attempts have been
fruitless in every age. Neither crowns of honour, now frowns of
anger, have untied this more than Gordian knot. This is no
every-day attachment which the world's power may at length
dissolve. Neither man nor devil have found a key which opens
this lock. Never has the craft of Satan been more at fault than
when he has exercised it in seeking to rend in sunder this union
of two divinely welded hearts. It is written, and nothing can
blot out the sentence, " The upright love Thee ." The intensity
of the love of the upright, however, is not so much to be judged
by what it appears as by what the upright long for. It is our
daily lament that we cannot love enough. Would that our hearts
were capable of holding more, and reaching further. Like Samuel
Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as much love as would go
round about the earth, and over heaven--yea, the heaven of
heavens, and ten thousand worlds--that I might let all out upon
fair, fair, only fair Christ." Alas! our longest reach is but a
span of love, and our affection is but as a drop of a bucket
compared with His deserts. Measure our love by our intentions,
and it is high indeed; 'tis thus, we trust, our Lord doth judge
of it. Oh, that we could give all the love in all hearts in one
great mass, a gathering together of all loves to Him who is
altogether lovely!