The Chariots of Amminadab

Next Part The Chariots of Amminadab 2

"Before I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab."

Song of Solomon 6:12

We cannot be quite sure at this date what these chariots of Amminadab were to which the inspired poet here refers. Some suppose that he may have alluded to a person of that name, who was renowned, like Jehu of old, for his furious driving. Hence it might have been familiar at the time, and afterwards have become proverbial to speak in metaphor of the chariots of Amminadab. The conjecture seems harmless, still it is only a conjecture, and cannot be verified.

It is quite possible, however, that our translators may have retained as a proper name a conjunction of two words, which, taken separately, are capable of being interpreted. You remember the word "Ammi" as it occurs in the prophet Hosea. "Say unto your brethren, Ammi," which signifies "you are my people," even as before he had said, "Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people." The one word Ammi, thus stands for "people," and the other word, "Nadab," means "willing," so that the two united may be rendered "willing people " -- "like the chariots of a willing people."

Or the words may be read, I think, more correctly, "The chariots of the princely people" -- the princely chariots, the chariots of the prince. Some have understood them to mean the chariots of God, of the people that surround the Great Prince himself; that is to say, the chariots of the angels, according as we read, "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels." In this case, the figure would be a very striking one-- "Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of the attendants upon the Great King. I was like the cherubim themselves, all aglow with consecrated fire." In whatever way the critical point is deciphered, the practical solution appears to be this-- The writer's soul was quickened, because full of life, full of energy, full of might, full of spirit, and full of princely dignity too, and not only stimulated to a high degree, but also elevated, lifted up from dulness, indifference, and apathy -- "Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab."

To whom does this text refer? Probably those of us who would never raise a doubt about the Song being a dialogue between Christ and the spouse-- a matter we have no intention to canvass just now, as we take it for granted-- might find no small difficulty in determining to which of the two sacred personages this speech belongs, whether it was to Solomon or to Shulamite (the masculine or the feminine variety of the same name) -- the prince the husband, or the princess the spouse -- whether, in a word, it was Christ or the church.

There is very much to be said for its being Christ himself that is speaking. You will notice in this chapter that, from the fourth verse, he has been referring to his church. "You are beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me," and so on. He is speaking of his church on to the tenth verse. "Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" Then the eleventh verse proceeds, "I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine nourished, and the pomegranates budded. Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab."

May it not be the Lord himself who is speaking here? We may entertain the question for a moment without absolutely fixing upon this as its proper solution. If it refers to Christ, it means just this, that he had been for a while away from his people. They had grieved him, and he had hid his face from them. Out of very love and faithfulness he felt bound to chasten them, by hiding from them the brightness of his countenance. But he began to think tenderly of his people, his heart turned towards his church; and while he was thinking of her, he saw such beauties in her that his soul was melted with her charms. Oh, what an extraordinary thing that he should see loveliness in his poor imperfect church! But he saw such a loveliness about her, as her image rose up before his face that he said, "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes." "Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me."

And then, musing upon her still, and coming into her garden, and seeing the various graces like plants and flowers in their different stages of development, his heart began to grow warm again towards her and all that concerned her. It had never really been cold; it only seemed so in the deviation of his wonted manner, but, like Joseph before his brethren, he could not refrain any longer. When he saw some of his people budding with desires, others bursting into the realization of those desires, when he saw some like ripe and mellow fruit upon the bough, ready for heaven, others just commencing the divine life, he was charmed to be in the garden of nuts; before ever he was aware, he found he must be with his people; he must return in the fullness of his love to his church.

Not her beauties only, but the kindlings of his own soul began to stir him. His free grace sought free scope; his infinite love became more than a match for the temporary prudence that had made him hide his face, and, swift as the chariots of Amminadab, did he speed back to his people, to let them see him again, to let them enjoy fellowship again.

There are other Scripture passages where the Savior is spoken of as being like a roe or a young deer upon the mountains of Bether, or mountains of division, because he is so willing to come to his people, so willing to make matters up with them, and end the days wherein they mourn because the bridegroom is absent. When he has hidden his face for a while out of love for them, and out of desire to reveal to them their faults, I say again, he is so willing to blot out their faults once more, and to return to them again with mercies, that his return is compared for swiftness and irresistibleness to the motions of the chariots of Amminadab.

It is a delightful thought that if communion between our souls and Jesus is suspended, it is not because he takes pleasure therein. His delights are with the sons of men. He a thousand times invites his chosen to abide in him, to continue in his love, and to remain in his company. In this Song he cries again and again, "Come with me, my spouse." This should encourage us to seek to him for renewed love-tokens however serious may have been our departures from him, and however dark our prospects under the hidings of his face. If he who is the aggrieved party is eager to be reconciled, the matter is easy, and we may at once rise to the blessed condition from which our sin has cast us down.

Jesus longs to embrace us, his arms are opened wide; do not our hearts warm at the sight? Do we not at once rush to his bosom, and find a new heaven, in a fresh sense of his boundless love? Wherefore hesitate? What possible cause can there be for abiding in darkness? Lord, we fall upon your bosom and our joy returns.

Not that I intend to adopt that view as the groundwork of our present reelections. It appears to me that without in the slightest degree wresting the passage, or deviating from an honest interpretation, we may understand that this is the language of the church concerning Christ. If so, Christ's words conclude at the end of the tenth verse, and it is the church that speaks at the eleventh. There is not an instance in the whole Song, so far as I can remember, of the Prince himself speaking in the first person singular; either, therefore, this would be a solitary exception, or else, following the current plan, where the same pronoun is used, the church is speaking to Christ, and telling him of herself. "I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded. Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab."

Taking the text, then, as referring to the church in particular, and more generally to the Lord's people, there will be four observations which we would pointedly make and prayerfully meditate. May God bless us now in fulfilling this purpose!

I. Our first observation shall be this. What is most needed in all religious exercises is THE MOTION, THE EXERCISE OF THE SOUL. "Before ever I was aware, my soul made me" -- or my soul became -- "like the chariots of Amminadab." Soul-worship is the soul of worship, and if you take away the soul from the worship, you have killed the worship; it becomes dead and barren henceforth. Let us turn over that well known thought. It may benefit us if we look at the many sides of it.

There are professors in this world who are perfectly content if they have gone through the mechanical part of public devotion. If they have occupied their seats, joined in the hymns and the prayers, and listened to the preaching, they go away quite content and easy. They would not like to be absent from the solemn assembly, and their conscience would prick them if they neglected the outward ordinances, but having gone through them, and complied with the accustomed form, they are perfectly content with themselves, and think they have done that which is lawful and right, lovely and excellent.

Now, it is never so with the child of God. If his soul is awakened from the torpor of death, and his sensibilities quickened into the vigor of life, he will feel that, unless in the song he has really praised God in strains of gratitude with emotions of thankfulness, he has rather mocked his heavenly Father than acceptably adored him. He knows that prayer, if it is not the soul that speaks with God, is but the carcass of prayer, destitute alike of the sweet savor which can find acceptance with God, and of the sweet satisfaction that can bring refreshment to one's own breast. When he hears the word preached, he longs to feel it penetrate his heart, even as the rain soaks into the soil; and if he cannot so receive the truth of the gospel when it breaks on his ear as the engrafted word that saves his soul, and so feed upon it as the bread of life which nourishes his soul, he goes away sad at heart, deploring that, while others were feasting at the banquet, he was there without appetite, and had not the pleasure or the profit which they derived. Beloved, in our public services we ought to account nothing truly and rightly done which is not done with the heart.

That is one reason why in this Tabernacle we have tried to lay aside everything of outward show or external form, which might distract the thoughts or disturb the simplicity of waiting on the Lord. As far as I can, I try to avoid the use of all symbols, except the two which Scripture has ordained, lest the symbol should tempt you to rest satisfied with itself, as I believe it generally does, and so prevent your reaching the Lord with your heart. We try to lay aside everything that would at all touch your senses in the worship, anything which appeals to the ear in the way of sweet music, anything of the aesthetic that would appeal to the eye.

If you do not worship God with your souls, I hope you will get tired of our fellowship. Yet, be it confessed, I painfully feel that it is almost as easy 'not' to worship God with the bald plainness of Quakerism as it is not to worship God with the studied pomp of Ritualism. In any form, or without any form of worship, the amount of real devotion must be measured by the quantity of soul that is in it, provided the quality be pure, sincere, guileless. If the soul is there, in the full exercise of its powers and passions, knowing what is revealed and feeling what is inspired, I believe God is gracious to pity and forgive a thousand mistakes in outward fashion and skill of execution.

The preacher's modulation may be faulty, and the people's singing may be ill-timed to barbarous tunes, without peril of the unpardonable sin. But if the soul is lacking, though you should have endeavored to worship according to the pattern given in the Mount, and have never had a word uttered or a sound made but such as in itself would be accredited by men and acceptable with God had it been quickened by the Spirit, yet without that divine Spirit which alone can give force and fervor to the human soul, it is all null and void. I think every genuine Christian knows it is so, and feels it is so. He says, "My heart cries out for God, for the living God," nor can he be satisfied unless he does find God, and draws near before him.

As in public worship, it is precisely the same in our own 'private and personal transactions' with the Most High. The religious worldling will say a prayer when he wakes in the morning, and perhaps, unless he is out late, or too sleepy at home, he will have a bit of prayer at night again, in the way of the repetition of some collect, or something which he has learned by rote. And very likely he has family prayer too. It is not so much a custom as it was, but there are some who think they cannot go through the day unless they have what they call "Prayers."

But mark how the Christian prizes private prayers above everything that has to do with the ordering of his daily habits. And see how he esteems family prayer to be a necessity of every Christian household! At the same time he is not content because he prays for a few minutes unless he draws near to the Lord; he is not satisfied because he gathered his children together, and read the Scriptures and prayed with them, if, on adding up the sum total of the day, he is compelled to say, "It was heartless worship. When I awoke it was heartless worship, when I gathered my children and my servants it was the same, and it was sleepy, heartless worship when I knelt by my bed-side and professed to seek the Lord at nightfall."

If it is 'heartless' it is unacceptable; God cannot receive it. If we have not thrown our heart into it, depend upon it God will never take it to his heart and be pleased with it. Only that prayer which comes from our heart can get to God's heart; if we pray only from the lips, or from the throat, and not low down from the very affections of our nature, we shall never reach the affections of our Father who is in heaven. Oh, that we may be more and more scrupulous and watchful in these things! In the diary of Oliver Heywood, one of the ejected ministers, he often says, "God helped me in prayer in my chamber and in the family." And once he writes thus-- "In my chamber this morning I met with more than ordinary incomings of grace and outgoings of heart to God."

I am afraid we may get satisfied with ourselves, especially if we are regular in private Scripture reading, private prayer, family prayer, and public prayer, while instead of being satisfied with these exercises we ought to be weeping over them and deploring the formal and heartless manner in which we are prone to discharge them. Be it always recollected that we do not pray at all, unless the soul is drawn out in pleading and beseeching the Lord. Si nil curarem, nil orarem, said Melanchthon, "Were I without cares, I should be without prayers."

Now, perhaps you may know a friend of yours who thinks himself a poet. He can make poetry at any time, all the year round. Just pull him by the sleeve, and he will make you very soon a verse or two at the spur of the moment to show the readiness of his wit and the versatility of his talent. Yet I dare say you think that he is about as far off from being a poet as a sparrow is from being an eagle. You know if he were a poet he would not be able to command the glow of imagination at one time, and at another time he would hardly be able to control it. He would sometimes have a divine ablates upon him, as some call it, and then noble thoughts in appropriate words would flow from his pen. Otherwise he would be just as dull and insipid as ordinary mortals. He would tell you indignantly that he could not write verses to order like those who scribble rhyme to advertise a tailor's wares. Without the inspiration coming upon me, he would say, I cannot compose a line.

In like manner a man cannot 'always' pray, and the man who pretends he can, does only utter jargon. He never prays at all, as the other never makes poetry at all. Prayer is a divine are. It is a thing which needs the inspiration not of the muses, but of the Spirit of God himself, and it is when the Spirit comes upon us with divine force, and makes our soul like the chariots of Amminadab that we can pray; and at other times when that Spirit is not with us, we cannot pray as we did before. Every living child of God knows this. We must measure our prayers by the state of soul that we were in.

Take another illustration from the painter. One person who thinks himself a painter can paint any day you like, anything you ask him-- a mountain, a river, a horse, an insect, or a flower-- it is all the same to him. He takes a brush and soon produces something, which ordinary people might think to be a picture; but send that daub of his to the Royal Academy, and they will tell you that it may do for a tea-tray, but not for the walls of a gallery.

But the man that really can paint, how does he mix his colors? The great painter will tell you that he mixes his brains with his colors; and when he takes his brush and dips it into the paint, he lays it on with his soul. In a great picture, such as sometimes we have seen by a Titiens, or a Raphael, it is not the color but the man's heart that has got out on to the canvas. Somehow he has managed to drop his brush into his soul. That is real painting.

And so it is with prayer. The humblest man that prays to God with his soul understands the fine are of prayer; but the man who chants a pompous liturgy, or repeats an extemporaneous effusion, has not prayed. He has dashed off what he thinks to be a picture, but it is not a picture, it is not a prayer. Had it been a prayer it would have had a palpable inspiration in its light and shade. A painting may consist of few lines, but you will see the painter's hand in it; and a prayer may consist of only half a dozen words, but you can see the hand of God in it. The formality repels you in the one case; the vitality attracts you in the other.

So we will come back to the proposition with which we started. We can only pray according to the proportion in which our soul puts forth its force and feeling, and it is the same with praise. We have praised God up to the amount of soul that was in the sense as well as in the sound, be it with an organ or without an organ, with good music or with groanings that cannot be uttered. We may have praised God either way, but only if our soul has been in full swell. With every kind of religious exercise, the soul is the standard of the whole compass of worship.

II. We proceed to a second remark. SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS THAT THE HEART IS NOT IN THE BEST STATE FOR DEVOTION. If religion is a matter of soul, it cannot always be attended to with equal pleasure and advantage. You can always grind a barrel-organ; it will invariably give you the same discordant noise, which people call music, but the human voice will not admit of being wound up in the same fashion, nor will it for the most part discharge the same monotonous functions. The great singer finds that his voice changes, and that he cannot always use it with the same freedom.

If the voice is a delicate organ, how much more delicate is the soul! The soul is continually the subject of changes. Ah, how often it changes because of its contact with the body! If we could be disembodied, oh, how we would praise God and pray to him! "The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak."

I sat among some brethren the other day who were devout, and I tried to be, but I had a splitting headache. I do not know whether you could pray under so grievous a disability; let me confess to you that I could not. At another time, not long ago, I was one of a solemn assembly, when various disturbances occurred in the room-- somebody getting up, and others coming in late, as some of you do-- and I could not get into a right frame as I ought to have done. Little things will affect little minds, and our minds, many of them, are little. In that case I could not pray, because my mind was being distracted and my attention was being taken away. Such distractions frequently happen, and bitterly they remind us of our infirmities. The apostles themselves fell to sleeping when they ought to have been praying; and under Paul's preachings Eutychus went to sleep, and Paul never blamed him. He died as the result of it, but he got raised again from the dead, so I suppose there was no fault in him.

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