JESUS, my life is Thine! And evermore shall be Hidden in Thee. For nothing can untwine Thy life from mine. SECTION IV COMMUNION AGAIN BROKEN--RESTORATION Cant. v. 2-vi. 10 THE fourth section commences with an address of the bride to the daughters of Jerusalem, in which she narrates her recent sad experience, and entreats their help in her trouble. The presence and comfort of her Bridegroom are again lost to her; not this time by relapse into worldliness, but by slothful self-indulgence. We are not told of the steps that led to her failure; of how self again found place in her heart. Perhaps spiritual pride in the achievements which grace enabled her to accomplish was the cause; or, not improbably, a cherished satisfaction in the _blessing_ she had received, instead of in the BLESSER Himself, may have led to the separation. She seems to have been largely unconscious of her declension; self-occupied and self-contented, she scarcely noticed His absence; she was resting, resting alone,--never asking where He had gone, or how He was employed. And more than this, the door of her chamber was not only closed, but barred; an evidence that His return was neither eagerly desired nor expected. Yet her heart was not far from Him: there was a music in His voice that awakened echoes in her soul such as no other voice could have stirred. She was still "a garden shut up, a fountain sealed," so far as the world was concerned. The snare this time was the more dangerous and insidious because it was quite unsuspected. Let us look at her narrative:-- I was asleep, but my heart waked: It is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh saying, Open to Me, My sister, My love, My dove, My undefiled: For My head is filled with dew, My locks with the drops of the night. How often the position of the Bridegroom is that of a knocking Suitor outside, as in His epistle to the Laodicean[4] Church: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." It is sad that He should be outside a closed door--that He should need to knock; but still more sad that He should knock, and knock in vain at the door of any heart which has become His own. In this case it is not the _position_ of the bride that is wrong; if it were, His word as before would be, "Arise, and come away"; whereas now His word is, "Open to Me, My sister, My love." It was her _condition_ of self-satisfaction and love of ease that closed the door. Very touching are His words: "Open to Me, My sister" (He is the first-born among many brethren), "My love" (the object of My heart's devotion), "My dove" (one who has been endued with many of the gifts and graces of the HOLY SPIRIT), "My undefiled" (washed, renewed, and cleansed for Me); and He urges her to open by reference to His own condition:--