So again and again, in the gospel history, we find Jesus led to forget His sorrows when beholding faith in a sinner. He found there, as I have already stated, the refreshment of His spirit. He found a transient forgetting of His sorrows among the Samaritans, from the Centurion, from Zaccheus, and from the spikenard and fellowship of Mary. He seeks the same here. He comes to His espoused one, that He might find, in fellowship with her, some other and far different thing than that rejection and refusal which He was ever meeting in the world. And is it not also so, that if the saint be sluggish and careless, the faithful kindred in Christ will help the discipline? If Jesus say, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" Paul will say, "Quit you like men, be strong." So in the action of this book. Jesus leaves a memorial of the soul’s drowsiness on "the hole of the door," that the conscience may take alarm; and the watchman of the city smite her, and the keepers of the walls draw the veil from her face. Chap. v. The harmonies of the "one Spirit" are heard in all this. And so, in the course of these little songs, I discern the way of the Lord toward a repentant, recovered soul. See chap. vi. 4-13. She had just refused to open her door to Him, but, through discipline, had been brought to fervent communion with Him again. v. 2-vi. 3. And now His eye and His heart are full of her again. He looks on her as beautiful as ever. She is His "undefiled," and nothing less; no upbraidings pass His lips. Her motion towards Him is comely and graceful in His esteem. And He lets her know that her repentance had given Him pleasant and wondrous refreshment. As soon as she was made willing (Psalm cx. 2), He got into a chariot to bear Him away speedily and joyously to her. vi. 12, margin. She may be a wonder to herself, she may take a place unworthy of any notice (v. 13); but the Lord and angels rejoice over her. As we know in the Gospels, the ninety and nine just ones can be left for the one prodigal; the angels in heaven rejoice; the house makes merry; the friends of the beloved triumph over the returned Shulamite. She is like the returned Jacob: the Mahanaim, the hosts of God, salute them both, wait at the threshold of the land or of the house, to do their Lord’s pleasure toward them, and express His welcome and concern for them. Gen. xxxii. 1; Cant. vi. 13.³⁶ ³⁶ Another once observed to me, that in the Canticles, the Beloved expresses _directly to herself_ the beauties He discerns in her; the betrothed one never does this, but recites His beauties _in the ears of others_; and further observed, that there was great moral propriety in this, something quite according to the dictate of a delicate affection.