And in the Canticles we find the Spirit of Christ inviting His saint into the liberty of this present time, into the atmosphere of a house where the cry of adoption is heard. All the darker and colder age is passed. All that dispensation which kept the soul in bondage and fear is over. The voice of the turtle is heard; the voice of that perfect love which casts out fear. "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth," says St. John, as though he had the Canticles in mind. The saint should now arise, taking his place as the _loved_ and the _fair_ one, being in the full consciousness of personal unspottedness and beauty, through grace, and of his Lord’s perfect favour and delight. He should come away from "the spirit of fear," and pass over into the spirit of love and of power "and of a sound mind." For all in the dispensation is gladdening. The flowers appear on the earth, and the singing of birds is heard. All is promise, all pledge, and earnest, and seal, and unction. And again, if the betrothed one of the Canticles _say_, "While the King sitteth at His table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof," the disciple in the gospel _does_ this. John xii. 3. And, according to all this, we may observe how some of the tenderest utterances of this book are warranted by the simple narratives of the Gospel. If the beloved watch over the restored soul with the fondest jealousy, not allowing the busy foot of others to disturb the silent, hidden rest of the loved one, what does Jesus do in the favoured house at Bethany less than this? How does He check the motions of Martha? Ch. ii. 7; Luke x. 41.³⁴ ³⁴ "Till _she_ please," it ought to be, as the "love" is the female in this book. Ch. ii. 7; iii. 5; vii. 4. The great moral principles of truth are also strictly and fully understood here, though under very delicate and spiritual illustrations. St. James says, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." In this book we read, "By night upon my bed I sought Him whom my soul loveth; I sought Him, but I found Him not." The great moral principle, that _there is a seeking which does not find_, is equally owned in each of these scriptures; but the one has a much more delicate exhibition of it than the other. Jesus is here sought _on the bed_, that is, in some listlessness of mind. The bed may be the place of _meditation_ (Psalm lxiii.; Isa. xxvi.), but not of _seeking_, which demands action. And thus the seeker _on the bed_, the listless, drowsy inquirer after the Lord, will not, till he pass through discipline, as here (iii. 1-5), find Him.