Over the Mountains

"My Beloved is mine, and I am His: He feeds among the lilies.

Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away;

turn, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart

upon the mountains of Bether." Solomon's Song 2:16-17.

It may be that there are saints who are always at their best, and are happy enough never to lose the light of their Father's countenance. I am not sure that there are such persons, for those believers with whom I have been most intimate, have had a varied experience; and those whom I have known, who have boasted of their constant perfectness, have not been the most reliable of individuals. I hope there is a spiritual region attainable where there are no clouds to hide the Sun of our soul; but I cannot speak with positiveness, for I have not traversed that happy land. Every year of my life has had a winter as well as a summer, and every day has had its night. I have seen both clear shining days, and heavy rains, and felt both warm breezes and fierce winds.

Speaking for the many of my brethren, I confess that though the substance be in us, as in the teil-tree and the oak, yet at times we do lose our leaves, and the sap within us does not flow with equal vigor at all seasons. We have our downs as well as our ups, our valleys as well as our hills. We are not always rejoicing; we are sometimes in heaviness through manifold trials. Alas! we are grieved to confess that our fellowship with the Well-beloved is not always that of rapturous delight; but rather, at times we have to seek Him, and cry, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" This appears to me to have been in a measure the condition of the spouse when she cried, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved."

I. These words teach us, first, that COMMUNION WITH CHRIST MAY BE BROKEN.

The spouse had lost the company of her Bridegroom: conscious communion with Him was gone, though she loved her Lord, and sighed for Him. In her loneliness she was sorrowful; but she had by no means ceased to love Him, for she calls Him her Beloved, and speaks as one who felt no doubt upon that point. Love to the Lord Jesus may be quite as true, and perhaps quite as strong, when we sit in darkness, as well as when we walk in the light. No, she had not lost her assurance of His love to her, and of their mutual interest in one another; for she says, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His;" and yet she adds, "Turn, my Beloved." The condition of our graces does not always coincide with the state of our joys. We may be rich in faith and love, and yet have so low a view of ourselves as to be much depressed.

It is plain, from this Sacred Canticle, that the spouse may love and be loved by Christ, may be confident in her Lord, and be fully assured of her possession of Him, and yet there may for the present time, be mountains between her and Him. Yes, we may even be far advanced in the divine life, and yet be exiled for a while from conscious fellowship with Jesus. There are dark nights for spiritual men as well as for spiritual babes; and the strong know that the sun is hidden quite as well as do the sick and the feeble. Do not, therefore, condemn yourself, my brother, because a cloud is over you; do not cast away your confidence; but the rather let faith burn up in the midst of the gloom, and let your love resolve to come to your Lord again whatever may be the barriers which divide you from Him.

When Jesus is absent from a true heir of heaven, SORROW will ensue. The healthier our condition, the sooner will that absence be perceived, and the more deeply will it be lamented. This sorrow is described in the text as DARKNESS- this is implied in the expression, "Until the day break." Until Christ appears, no day has dawned for us. We dwell in midnight darkness; the stars of the promises, and the moon of our experience yield no light of comfort until our Lord, like the sun, arises and ends the night. We must have Christ with us, or we are in the night: we grope like blind men for the wall, and wander in dismay.

The spouse also speaks of SHADOWS. "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." Shadows are multiplied by the departure of the sun, and these are apt to distress the timid believer. We are not afraid of real enemies when Jesus is with us; but when He is absent from us, we tremble at even a shadow. How sweet is that song, "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff comfort me!" But we change our note when midnight is now come, and Jesus is not with us: then we populate the night with terrors: demons, hobgoblins, and things that never existed except in our imagination, are apt to swarm about us; and we are in fear where no fear really exists.

THE SPOUSE'S WORST TROUBLE WAS THAT THE BACK OF HER BELOVED WAS TURNED TO HER, and so she cried, "Turn, my Beloved." When His face is towards her, she suns herself in His love; but if the light of His countenance is withdrawn, she is sorely troubled. Our Lord turns His face from His people, though He never turns His heart from His people. He may even close His eyes in sleep when the vessel is tossed by the tempest, but His heart is awake all the while. Still, it is pain enough to have grieved Him in any degree: it cuts us to the quick to think that we have wounded His tender heart.

He is jealous, but never without cause. If He turns His back upon us for a while, He has doubtless a more than sufficient reason. He would not walk contrary to us if we had not walked contrary to Him. Ah, this is sad work! The presence of the Lord with us, makes this life the preface to the celestial life; but His absence leaves us pining and fainting, neither does any comfort remain in the land of our banishment. The Scriptures and the ordinances, private devotions and public worship- all are as sun-dials, -all are most excellent when the sun shines, but of small avail in the dark. O Lord Jesus, nothing can compensate us for Your loss! Draw near to Your beloved yet again, for without You our night will never end.

"See! I repent, and vex my soul,

That I should leave You so!

Where will those vile affections roll

That let my Savior go?"

When communion with Christ is broken, in all true hearts there is a strong desire to win it back again. The man who has known the joy of communion with Christ, if he loses that nearness, will never be content until it is restored. Have you ever entertained the Prince Emmanuel? Is He gone elsewhere? Your chamber will be dreary until He comes back again. "Give me Christ or else I die," is the cry of every person that has lost the dear companionship of Jesus. We do not part with such heavenly delights without many a pang. It is not with us a matter of "maybe He will return, and we hope He will;" but it must be, or we faint and die. We cannot live without Him; and this is a cheering sign; for the soul that cannot live without Him, shall not live without Him: He comes speedily where life and death hang on His coming. If you must have Christ, you shall have Him. This is just how the matter stands: we must drink of this well or die of thirst; we must feed upon Jesus, or our spirit will famish.

II. We will now advance a step, and say that WHEN COMMUNION WITH CHRIST IS BROKEN, THERE ARE GREAT DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF ITS RENEWAL.

It is much easier to go down hill than to climb to the same height again. It is far easier to lose joy in God, than to find the lost jewel. The spouse speaks of "MOUNTAINS" dividing her from her Beloved: she means that the DIFFICULTIES were great. They were not little hills, but mountains, that closed up her way. Mountains of remembered sin, Alps of backsliding, dread ranges of forgetfulness, ingratitude, worldliness, coldness in prayer, frivolity, pride and unbelief. Ah me, I cannot teach you all the dark geography of this sad experience! Giant walls rose before the spouse like the towering steeps of Lebanon. How could she come to her Beloved?

The dividing difficulties were MANY as well as great. She does not speak of "a mountain", but of "mountains": Alps rose on Alps, wall after wall. She was distressed to think that in so short a time, so much could come between her and Him of whom she sang just now, "His left hand is under my head, and His right hand does embrace me." Alas, how we multiply these mountains of Bether with a sad rapidity! Our Lord is jealous, and we give Him far too much reason for hiding His face. A fault, which seemed so small at the time we committed it, is seen in the light of its own consequences, and then it grows and swells until it towers aloft, and hides the face of the Beloved. Then has our sun gone down, and fear whispers, "Will His light ever return? Will it ever be daybreak? Will the shadows ever flee away?" It is easy to grieve away the heavenly sunlight, but ah, how hard to clear the skies, and regain the unclouded brightness!

Perhaps the worst thought of all to the spouse was the dread that the dividing barrier might be PERMANENT. It was high, but it might dissolve; the walls were many, but they might fall. But alas, these barriers were 'mountains', and mountains stand fast for ages! She felt like the Psalmist, when he cried, "My sin is ever before me." The pain of our Lord's absence becomes intolerable when we fear that we are hopelessly shut out from Him. A night one can bear, hoping for the morning; but what if the day should never break? And you and I, if we have wandered away from Christ, and feel that there are ranges of immovable mountains between Him and us- we will feel sick at heart. We try to pray, but devotion dies on our lips. We attempt to approach the Lord at the communion table, but we feel more like Judas than John. At such times we have felt that we would give our eyes once more to behold the Bridegroom's face, and to know that He delights in us as in happier days. Still there stand the awful mountains- black, threatening, impassable; and in the far-off land, the Life of our life is away, and grieved.

So the spouse seems to have come to the conclusion that THE DIFFICULTIES IN HER WAY WERE INSURMOUNTABLE IN HER OWN POWER. She does not even think of herself being able to go over the mountains to her Beloved, but she cries, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether." She will not try to climb the mountains, she knows she cannot: if they had been less high, she might have attempted it; but their summits reach to heaven. If they had been less craggy or difficult, she might have tried to scale them; but these mountains are terrible, and no foot may stand upon their treacherous crags.

Oh, the mercy of utter self-despair! I love to see a soul driven into that close corner, and forced therefore to look to God alone. The end of the creature is the beginning of the Creator. Where the sinner ends, the Savior begins. If the mountains can be climbed, we shall have to climb them; but if they are quite impassable, then the soul cries out with the prophet, "Oh, that You would rend the heavens, that You would come down, that the mountains might flow down at Your presence..." Our souls are lame, they cannot move to Christ, and we turn our strong desires to Him, and fix our hopes alone upon Him. Will He not remember us in love, and fly to us as He did to His servant of old when He rode upon a cherub, and did fly, yes, He did fly upon the wings of the wind!

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