Sermons on the Song of Songs

I have also to speak of seven other “gapings.” I mean seven experimental tests, which are absolutely necessary, if we desire to be assured that our souls have recovered true life and health. Four of these tests regard the sense of compunction; the rest are concerned with the voice of confession. If you have life, and voice, and feeling, you have also in yourselves an experience of the seven. You may be certain that your sensibility has been perfectly restored, if you notice that your conscience is pained with a fourfold compunction, comprising a twofold shame and a two-fold fear. Added to these four, the three modes of confession, of which I intend to speak later on, make up the mystical sevenfold and give us an assurance of our restoration to life. Does not holy Jeremias, in his Lamentations, observe this number four which, as I have said, belongs to compunction? Do you, then, in your own lamentations, follow the example set by the Prophet. Think of God as your Creator, think of Him as your Benefactor, think of Him as your Father, think of Him as your Lord. In all these relations, you stand guilty before Him. Lament your offences against Him in regard to each. Let fear be awakened at the thought of the Creator and the Lord; shame when you call to mind the offended Benefactor and Father. A father surely, for the reason that he is a father, cannot inspire fear. It is peculiar to a father “to compassionate always and to spare.” And if he strikes, it is not with the staff of punishment but with the rod of correction. Moreover, he soothes the pain his stroke has produced. Listen to a father’s voice, “I will strike and I will heal.” In a father, therefore, there is nothing to be afraid of, who, although sometimes administering chastisement as a remedy, can never inflict pain in vengeance. Yet, if the thought of having sinned against my Father in heaven does not inspire me with terror, it ought certainly to fill me with confusion. Freely did He beget me by the word of truth, and not under necessitating impulse, very differently from the father of my flesh. And for one so begotten He spared not even His only Necessarily-Begotten. Thus has He indeed shown Himself a Father to me, but, alas! I, in my turn, have not behaved as a son towards Him. A son so evil of a Father so good, how shall I dare to lift up my eyes to His Face? I am ashamed of having by my deeds dishonoured my ancestry. The thought that I have proved myself a degenerate son of a Father so noble overwhelms me with confusion. Let my eyes become as fountains of water! Let confusion cover my countenance! Let the blush of shame mantle my face and as a cloud overcast it! Let “my life be wasted with grief, and my years with sighs!” Alas! alas! what have I gained by those actions of which I am now so much ashamed? If I have “sown in the flesh of the flesh also shall I reap,” but only “corruption.” If I have sown in the world “the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof.” What! Have I been so lost to shame, so unhappy, so insane, as to prefer things transient, vain, and next to nothing, “the end whereof is death,” to the love and honour of my Eternal Father? I am confounded, I am overwhelmed at hearing the reproach, “If I be a Father where is My honour?”

But quite apart from the claims He has on me as my Father, He has also loaded me with His benefits. He multiplies His witnesses against me in the food He provides for my body, in the prolongation of my days, and, above all, in the Blood of His Beloved Son, Which “crieth from the earth” in my behalf, to say nothing of innumerable other favours. I blush for my ingratitude. And lest anything should be wanting to my confusion, I stand convicted of rendering evil for good, and hatred for love. Yet I have as little to fear from my Benefactor as from my Father. He is the true Benefactor, “Who giveth to all men abundantly, and upbraideth not.” He does not upbraid me on account of His gifts, for the reason that they are really gifts. The benefits of God are given gratis, not sold at a price, and, as the Apostle tells us, His “gifts are without repentance.” But in proportion to my admiration for the divine generosity is the shame I am forced to feel for my own unworthiness. Be confounded, O my soul, be confounded and saddened! For, although it belongs not to a Benefactor to reproach or upbraid, it ill beseems us to be unmindful or ungrateful. Yet, woe is me! even now, “what shall I render to the Lord for all the things that He hath rendered to me?”

But should shame be slothful and perform its work imperfectly, let fear be called to its assistance. Let fear be aroused in order to arouse the conscience. Turn away your attention a little, my brethren, from the tender names of Father and Benefactor, and direct it to other titles more severe. For of the Same Who is called “the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation,” we also read, “The Lord is the God to Whom revenge belongeth,” “God is a just Judge,” “Who is terrible in His counsels over the sons of men,” and “I am the Lord thy God, mighty and jealous.” For you He is a Father and a Benefactor; He is Lord and Creator for Himself. Hence the Scripture says, “He hath made all things for Himself.” Do you, then, imagine that He Who defends and preserves to us what is ours, will not, sooner or later, show a like zeal for His own? Do you suppose He will not require the honour of His principality? And it is for this reason that “the wicked hath provoked God. For he hath said in his heart, He will not require it.” And what is it to say in one’s heart, “He will not require,” except not to fear His requisition? But He will require, even to the “last farthing.” He will require, “and repay them abundantly that act proudly.” He will require service from those whom He has redeemed, honour and glory from the creatures of His Hand.