AT the close of the first section we left the bride satisfied and at rest in the arms of her Beloved, who had charged the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up nor awaken His love until she please. We might well suppose that a union so complete, a satisfaction so full, would never be interrupted by failure on the part of the happy bride. But, alas, the experience of most of us shows how easily communion with CHRIST may be broken, and how needful are the exhortations of our LORD to those who are indeed branches of the true Vine, and cleansed by the Word which He has spoken, to abide in Him. The failure is never on His side. "Lo, I am with you alway." But, alas, the bride often forgets the exhortation addressed to her in Ps. xlv.:-- Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; So shall the KING greatly desire thy beauty: For He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him. In this section the bride has drifted back from her position of blessing into a state of worldliness. Perhaps the very restfulness of her new-found joy made her feel too secure: perhaps she thought that, so far as she was concerned, there was no need for the exhortation, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Or she may have thought that the love of the world was so thoroughly taken away that she might safely go back, and, by a little compromise on her part, she might win her friends to follow her LORD too. Perhaps she scarcely thought at all: glad that she was saved and free, she forgot that the current--the course of this world--was against her; and insensibly glided, drifted back to that position out of which she was called, unaware all the time of backsliding. It is not necessary, when the current is against us, to turn the boat's head down the stream in order to drift: or for a runner in a race to turn back in order to miss the prize. Ah, how often the enemy succeeds, by one device or another, in tempting the believer away from that position of entire consecration to CHRIST in which alone the fulness of His power and of His love can be experienced. We say the fulness of His power and of His love; for he may not have ceased to love his LORD. In the passage before us the bride still loves Him truly, though not wholly; there is still a power in His Word which is not unfelt, though she no longer renders instant obedience. She little realizes how she is wronging her LORD, and how real is the wall of separation between them. To her, worldliness seems as but a little thing: she has not realized the solemn truth of many passages in the Word of GOD that speak in no measured terms of the folly, the danger, the sin of friendship with the world. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the FATHER is not in him."