Sermons on the Song of Songs

When, therefore, we are told that the Word speaks to the soul, saying to her, “Thou art fair,” and calling her His love, we must take the meaning to be that He gives her the grace to love and the confidence to presume that she is loved in return. And when she, on her side, is represented as addressing Him as her Beloved and pronouncing Him comely, the sense is that without fraud or deceit she ascribes her love of Him and His love of her to His unmerited bounty, admiring His goodness and marvelling at His beauty. This beauty of the Bridegroom is nothing else than His love of the Bride, a love which is all the greater for that it is prevenient. Realising, therefore, that He was her Lover before He was her Beloved, she cries out from the inmost recesses of her soul, with all the tenderest affections of her heart, that her love for Him must be the more ardent and strong because of its having been anticipated. Thus, the speech of the Word is the infusion of His grace; the reply of the soul, admiration and thanksgiving. She loves Him the more, the more she sees herself outdone in loving. And she marvels the more, the more she sees herself prevented by His grace. Therefore, not content with having once pronounced Him “fair” she also proclaims Him “comely,” intending by the addition to signify the perfection of His beauty.

Or perhaps by calling Him “fair and comely” she designs to teach us that the two Natures of Christ are endowed with a loveliness worthy of all admiration. His Divinity being beautiful by essence, His Humanity by grace. How beautiful Thou art to Thy angels, Lord Jesus, “in the Form of God,” “in the day of Thy eternity,” “begotten before the daystar in the splendours of the Saints,” Thyself the “Splendour” and the “Figure” of the Father’s Substance, the everlasting and unspotted “Brightness of Eternal Life”! Yet how beautiful dost Thou appear to us in the very laying aside of Thy immortal glory! For when Thou, Who art the Light Unfailing, didst strip Thyself of Thy natural rays, when Thou didst empty Thyself, “taking the form of a servant,” then Thy loving-kindness became more clearly manifest, then Thy charity shone forth more brightly, then Thy grace was more lavishly poured out.

How brilliant a Star dost Thou arise for me “out of Jacob”! How bright a Flower comest Thou forth “from the root of Jesse”! How gladdening a Light hast Thou shone upon me out of darkness, the “Orient from on high”! How glorious, how stupendously grand dost Thou appear, even to the contemplation of the powers supernal, in Thy conception by the Holy Ghost, in Thy birth of the Virgin Mary, in the innocence of Thy life, in the purity and abundance of Thy doctrine, in the splendour of Thy miracles, in Thy revelation of heavenly secrets! How resplendent after Thy setting didst Thou rise from the heart of the earth, as the Divine Sun of Justice! How beautiful in the robe of Thy glorified Flesh didst Thou, the King of Glory, return to Thy throne on high! And as I ponder on these sacred mysteries, surely “all my bones shall say, Lord, who is like to Thee?”

You may suppose, then, my brethren, that the Spouse had been admiring those and similar glories in her Bridegroom when she exclaimed, “Behold Thou art fair, my Beloved, and comely.” Nor was her contemplation confined to the grandeurs of His Humanity. There can be no doubt that something of the beauty of the higher Nature, which escapes our vision and transcends our experience, was also revealed to her gaze. Hence by the repetition, “fair and comely,” she desires to commend the loveliness of the two Natures. And hear how she exults at the sight and the salutation of her Beloved, and sings to Him a nuptial song, inspired with the sentiments of most ardent affection. “Our bed is flourishing,” she cries, “the beams of our house are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.” But this love-song shall supply matter for the next discourse, so that, when rest has restored our mental vigour, we may be better disposed to “rejoice and be glad in it,” unto the praise and glory of the same Bridegroom, Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.