Sermons on the Song of Songs

“As the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”

“As the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.” Here, my brethren, I have to begin to-day, where yesterday’s sermon ended. And you expect me now to explain these words of the Spouse, as well as the manner of their connexion with the text of my last discourse, “I am black but beautiful,” with which they express a double comparison. As for the connexion, it may be considered in either of two ways. Both comparisons may be referred to the first clause of the foregoing, viz., “I am black.” Or we may take the first and second comparisons, namely, that of the tents of Cedar, and that of the curtains of Solomon, as relating, respectively, to the first and second parts of the sentence, “I am black, but beautiful.” The former interpretation possesses the advantage of greater simplicity and clearness. However, I mean to try both. And I will begin with the latter, which appears to be the more difficult. As a matter of fact, the only difficulty is to see what the “pavilions of Solomon” have in common with beauty; for the connexion between Cedars and blackness will be sufficiently patent to all, when it is remembered that the word “Cedar,” in the Hebrew, signifies darkness. It is also evident that “tent” or “tabernacle” can here be taken in a consonant sense. For what are these tents but the bodies in which we sojourn? “For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek for one that is to come.” We also carry on war in them, as in tents, using “violence” in order “to bear away the kingdom.” Hence Job tells us that “the life of man upon earth is a warfare.” And “whilst we” fight “in this body, we are absent from the Lord,” that is, from the Light. For “the Lord is the Light.” Therefore, the more we are absent from Him, waging war in the tents of our bodies, the more are we in darkness, that is to say, in Cedar. Consequently, every such exile ought to make his own that tearful cry, “Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar; my soul hath been long a sojourner.” Hence, this dwelling of our body is not to be regarded as the residence of a citizen, nor as the home of a native, but either as the tent of a soldier, or the inn of a traveller. Yes, I repeat it: this body is but a tent, which by its opaqueness, so to speak, shuts out from the soul, during her sojourn on earth, the gladdening influence of the circumambient Light, permitting it to see that Light only “through a glass” and “in a dark manner,” but not yet “face to face.”

Would you like to know, my brethren, the cause of the Church’s blackness and the reason why a certain amount of rust still adheres even to the most beautiful souls? I will tell you. It is all due, beyond question, to these tents of Cedar, to the prosecution of a laborious war, to the prolongation of their miserable sojourning, to the bitterness of their painful exile, to the weakness and yet oppressiveness of the body; “for the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that museth upon many things.” Wherefore, they even “desire to be dissolved,” that, being delivered from the body, they may fly to the embraces of Christ. Hence the cry of one such afflicted soul, “Unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Souls like this know very well that so long as they abide in the tents of Cedar, their purity cannot be altogether free from every spot and stain, from every shade of blackness. And so they long for dissolution, in order to be delivered perfectly from such defilements. This is the reason why the Spouse declared herself to be as black as the “tents of Cedar.”

But in what sense is she “beautiful as the curtains of Solomon”? It seems to me, my brethren, that there is wrapt up in these curtains something I know not what, of such sublimity and sanctity that most certainly I would not presume to expose it at all, except at the bidding of Him Who hid it there and sealed it. For I have read that “he that is a searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory.” I will wait, therefore, and procrastinate. Do you, meantime, as usual, impetrate by your prayers the light and grace of the Holy Spirit, that with desires intensified in proportion to our confidence, we may return to this subject, which demands more than ordinary attention. And perhaps the devout suppliant will discover what would be missed by the rash inquirer. In any case, grief at the calamity which has befallen us will not allow me to continue.

How long shall I dissemble? How long shall I endeavour to conceal within myself the fire which consumes my broken heart and devours my very vitals? A secret flame creeps forward more freely, and more cruelly rages. What have I to do with this Canticle of love, submerged as I am in an ocean of bitterness? The vehemence of my grief draws away my attention, and the anger of the Lord has drunk up my soul. For “my heart hath forsaken me,” since he is gone who used to leave me, in some sense, free for divine contemplation. But I have done violence to my feelings. I have striven to conceal my sorrow until now, afraid lest perhaps it should seem that faith had succumbed to natural affection. Therefore, whilst all others wept, I alone, with tearless eyes, followed the cruel bier, as you can yourselves bear witness. With tearless eyes I stood at the graveside until the last sad rites were all accomplished. Vested in my priestly robes, I pronounced with my own lips the usual prayers over the remains. With my own hands I sprinkled clay, according to custom, over my beloved Gerard’s body, soon to be changed itself to clay. They that watched me were weeping, and they wondered why I did not weep myself, although he was less the object of universal compassion than was I, who had been bereaved of him. For surely harder than iron must the heart have been that would not melt to see me surviving Gerard. His death was a common calamity, but this was reckoned as nothing in comparison with the personal loss to me. I tried to resist my sorrow with all the force I could gather from faith, striving to suppress even those vain involuntary emotions, occasioned by what is, after all, but our natural destiny, the debt of our mortality, the necessity of our condition, the ordinance of the Mighty One, the judgment of the Just One, the scourge of the Terrible One. Such reflections led me to restrain myself constantly, then and to the present, from overmuch weeping, whilst all the time I felt exceedingly sad and afflicted. For although I could control my tears, I had not the same power over my sorrow; but as it is written, “I was troubled and I spoke not.” But pent-up grief strikes its roots the more deeply within, becoming the more bitter, as I believe, from the fact that it is refused an outlet. My brethren, I have to acknowledge myself vanquished. I must now give vent to my interior anguish. I must exhibit my distress to the eyes of my children, that, realising its magnitude, they may think more kindly thoughts of my affliction and more sweetly console me.