Morning, March 20, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“My beloved.” — Song of Solomon 2:8

This was a golden name which the ancient Church in her most joyous moments was accustomed to give to the Anointed of the Lord. When the time of the singing of birds was come, and the voice of the turtledove was heard in her land, her love-note was sweeter than either, as she sang, “My beloved is mine, and I am his; He pastures his flock among the lilies.” Ever in her song of songs she calls him by that delightful name, “My beloved!” Even in the long winter, when idolatry had withered the garden of the Lord, her prophets found space to lay aside the burden of the Lord for a little season, and to say, as Isaiah did, “Let me sing now for my well-beloved. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.” Though the prophets had never seen his face, though as yet he was not made flesh, nor had dwelt among us, nor had man beheld his glory, yet he was the comfort of Israel, the hope and joy of all the chosen, the “beloved” of all those who were upright before the Most High. We, in the summer days of the Church, are also inclined to speak of Christ as the best beloved of our soul, and to feel that he is very precious, the “chief most among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.” So true is it that the Church loves Jesus, and claims him as her beloved, that the apostle dares to defy the whole universe to separate her from the love of Christ, and declares that neither persecutions, distress, affliction, peril, or the sword have been able to do it; nay, he joyously boasts, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”

O that we knew more of thee, thou ever precious one!

“My sole possession is thy love;

In earth beneath, or heaven above,

I have no other store;

And though with fervent suit I pray,

And importune thee day by day,

I ask thee nothing more.”