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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING
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Sunday, December 2, 2007
MORNING:
"Thou art all fair, my love."
-- Song of Solomon 4:7
The Lord's admiration of his Church is very wonderful, and his
description of her beauty is very glowing. She is not merely fair, but
"all fair." He views her in himself, washed in his sin-atoning blood
and clothed in his meritorious righteousness, and he considers her to
be full of comeliness and beauty. No wonder that such is the case,
since it is but his own perfect excellency that he admires; for the
holiness, glory, and perfection of his Church are his own glorious
garments on the back of his own well-beloved spouse. She is not simply
pure, or well-proportioned; she is positively lovely and fair! She has
actual merit! Her deformities of sin are removed; but more, she has
through her Lord obtained a meritorious righteousness by which an
actual beauty is conferred upon her. Believers have a positive
righteousness given to them when they become "accepted in the beloved"
(Eph. 1:6). Nor is the Church barely lovely, she is superlatively so.
Her Lord styles her "Thou fairest among women." She has a real worth
and excellence which cannot be rivalled by all the nobility and royalty
of the world. If Jesus could exchange his elect bride for all the
queens and empresses of earth, or even for the angels in heaven, he
would not, for he puts her first and foremost-"fairest among women."
Like the moon she far outshines the stars. Nor is this an opinion which
he is ashamed of, for he invites all men to hear it. He sets a "behold"
before it, a special note of exclamation, inviting and arresting
attention. "Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair"
(Song of Sol. 4:1). His opinion he publishes abroad even now, and one
day from the throne of his glory he will avow the truth of it before
the assembled universe. "Come, ye blessed of my Father" (Matt. 25:34),
will be his solemn affirmation of the loveliness of his elect.
EVENING:
"Behold, all is vanity."
-- Ecclesiastes 1:14
Nothing can satisfy the entire man but the Lord's love and the Lord's
own self. Saints have tried to anchor in other roadsteads, but they
have been driven out of such fatal refuges. Solomon, the wisest of men,
was permitted to make experiments for us all, and to do for us what we
must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his testimony in his own
words: "So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me
in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes
desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for
my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my
labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and
on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity
and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." "Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity." What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured
monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide
dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's
glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all
thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing?
"Nothing," he says, "but weariness of spirit." This was his verdict
when he had trodden the whole round of pleasure. To embrace our Lord
Jesus, to dwell in his love, and be fully assured of union with
him-this is all in all. Dear reader, you need not try other forms of
life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian's: if
you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the
Saviour's face; if you could have all the comforts of life, if you lost
your Saviour, you would be wretched; but if you win Christ, then should
you rot in a dungeon, you would find it a paradise; should you live in
obscurity, or die with famine, you will yet be satisfied with favour
and full of the goodness of the Lord.
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Morning & Evening is the classic devotional by 19th-century writer
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