Sermons on the Song of Songs

“In my bed by night I sought Him Whom my soul loveth.”

“In my bed by night I sought Him Whom my soul loveth.” It is a great good, my brethren, this will to seek God. In my opinion it deserves to be esteemed second to none of all the goods of the soul. It is the first grace which the soul receives, and it is also the last advance she makes in her progress towards perfection. It follows after no virtue, neither does it yield place to any. What virtue can it be supposed to follow, since it is preceded by none? Or to what virtue can it give place, since it is itself the crown and consummation of all? For how can any virtue be ascribed to the man who has not the will to seek God? And as to him who does seek God, what term shall be appointed for his seeking? “Seek His Face evermore,” says the Psalmist, by which he implies, as it seems to me, that even after God has been found He shall not cease to be sought. For it is not by bodily locomotion that we have to seek God, but by fervent desire. Now this desire, so far from being extinguished by the happy attainment of its Object, is on the contrary greatly intensified. How is it possible that the consummation of joy should be the exclusion of desire? It would be more true to say that the former is to the latter as oil to flame, because desire is in truth a flame. So it is, my brethren. The joy is made perfect, yet there is no end to the desire, and by consequence no end to the seeking. But conceive (if you can) of this eager seeking as implying no absence of what is sought, and of this ardent desire as being accompanied by no solicitude. For absence is incompatible with possession and solicitude with security of tenure.

I will now explain the purpose of these preliminary remarks. It is in order that every individual amongst you who is seeking God may understand that he has been anticipated by Him, and that he was sought before he became a seeker. For unless this truth is borne in mind, what is a great good may be changed into a great evil. Great evils are wont in this way to grow out of great blessings when, namely, having been made rich with the goods of the Lord, we use these gifts as if they were not gifts, and we do not give glory to God. And thus it is that they who appear to us to be the greatest, on account of the favours they have received, are sometimes reputed the least by God, because of their ingratitude. “But I spare you” unduly. The terms I have employed, “greatest” and “least,” are not energetic enough and fail to give adequate expression to my thought. I have confused the distinction I intended to draw. But I will now make it clear by telling you that instead of “greatest” and “least” I ought to have said “most excellent” and “most vile.” For really and without any doubt, the more excellent a man is, the more vile does he become, if he attributes to himself that which makes him excellent; because there can be nothing more vile than such usurpation. But if any one should say in reply, “Far be it from me to be guilty of such ingratitude! I acknowledge that ‘by the grace of God I am what I am’”; and if at the same time he is endeavouring to obtain for himself a little glory on account of the grace he has received, what is he, my brethren, but “a thief and a robber”? Let him that is such a one attend to the words of Christ, “Out of thy own mouth I judge thee, thou wicked servant.” What indeed can be greater wickedness than that of the servant who appropriates the glory of his Lord?

“In my bed by night I sought Him Whom my soul loveth.” Thus, my brethren, the soul seeks the Word, yet only because the Word has been beforehand in seeking her. For after she has once wandered away or been cast forth from the presence of the Bridegroom, “her eye shall not return to see good things,” unless she is sought out and recalled by Him. Verily, this human soul of ours is nothing more than a “spirit that goeth and returneth not,” if ever she is abandoned to herself. Listen to a soul that has fled afar and lost her way, hear how she laments and observe what she petitions for: “I have gone astray,” she says, “like a sheep that is lost; seek Thy servant.” Dost thou desire, O soul, to return to God? But if it is in the power of thine own will to accomplish this conversion, wherefore dost thou ask for assistance? Why wouldst thou seek for strength elsewhere, if what thou hast in thyself sufficed for thy necessities? It is plain that she has the good desire yet is wanting in the power to bring it to consummation. She is a “spirit that goeth and returneth not,” although she would be still farther off if the desire also were wanting to her. But I would not pronounce any soul to be altogether abandoned and left to herself, so long as she sincerely desires to return and prays to be sought after. For whence has this desire come to her? Unless I am mistaken, she owes it to the fact that the Word has already been visiting and seeking her. And His seeking has not been in vain, since it has wrought in her the good will without which no return would be possible. But it is not enough to have been sought once, so great is the languor of the soul and so great the difficulty of the return. For of what avail is it to have the mere desire, which is utterly helpless without the power of accomplishment? This is the teaching of St. Paul, who tells us, “To will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good I find not.” What, then, does that soul seek which I introduced just now as speaking in the psalm? Nothing else, manifestly, except to be sought. Nor would she be seeking this unless she had been sought already. I will add, she would not be seeking this unless she had been already sufficiently sought. Such is the favour she solicits when she says, “Seek thy servant,” praying that He Who gave her the desire to return would also grant her the strength to bring her good desire to consummation.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that our present text cannot be well understood of a soul of this kind, which has not yet received the second grace; I mean the soul which has the desire yet lacks the moral power to return to Him Whom she loveth. For how is it possible to apply to such a soul the words which follow, and to say of her that she rises and goes about the city, and seeks her Beloved in the streets and the broad ways, considering that she is herself in need of being sought by Him? Let them do this who have the capacity. But let them bear in mind that they also were sought by the Word before they began to seek Him, just as they were loved by the Word before they began to love Him. As for ourselves, my dearest brethren, we have only to pray that these mercies of the Lord may “speedily prevent us, for we are become exceeding poor.” But I say not this of all of you. I am well aware that very many of you are walking in the love wherewith Christ hath loved us, and seeking Him with simplicity of heart. Nevertheless there are some amongst us who, I grieve to say, have as yet given no sign of such salutary prevention, and consequently no sign of their being in the way of salvation. They are men who love themselves instead of the Lord, who “seek the things that are their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s.”