sheltered from the smiting of the sun by day, and of the moon by night. Ps. cxxi. 6. This protection is set forth as a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; as a shadow from the heat; as a shade; as a shadow of a great rock; as a covering of us with his wings; here, by the figure of a durable, beauteous, costly ceiling.

this heavenly shade.

That protection is nothing less than the divine nature of Jesus Christ. Nothing can harm us beneath Evil, Satan, affliction, death, the chill dews of sin, cannot strike us there. Homer represents the god of the sun coming down gloomy as night, and by his arrows scattering death through the Grecian camp; from which protection was sought in vain: in the cloud lowering with wrath over our guilty world, the angel of death, the minister of divine justice, has his stand; but from his arrows of death, our pardoned spirits are more secure than she, who reposed with the beloved beneath this ceiling, was from the withering rays of the sun. As on the ceiling of ancient temples might sometimes be seen beautiful paintings, and in the roof of this summer-house was curious carving; so, in this overshadowing defence of the divine nature of Jesus, are all the excellences of the Godhead. The arch spread over us at midnight, with its stars, nebulæ, and constellations, does not present to the eye, assisted by the best telescope, any thing comparable with the overshadowing divinity of Christ. While, like the roof, it is our shelter; like the evening sky, it sheds down dews on the thirsting soul, refreshing airs on the fainting heart, guiding

light on the bewildered spirit; and reveals to our enraptured contemplation, transcendent and inexhaustible glories. As God inhabited a pillar of cloud and of fire, that was the protection of the camp of Israel; and did at the same time commune with them through the form of a man supposed to be seen between the cherubim, so that while the divine nature of Christ is our glorious covering, he in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, communes with us through the human nature of Jesus Christ. In the quaint language of Francis Quarles

"Hath thy all-glorious Deity no shade,

Where I may sit and vengeance never eye me?
See, here's a shadow found: the human nature
Is made th' umbrella to the Deity."

This shelter can never decay: He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. We may wander to the verge of creation, without being beyond the limit of this defence. The temples and palaces of earth are crumbling; its fortresses, even the tower of David, and the stronghold of Zion, are in ruins; the temple of Solomon, with its marbles, its cedars, and gold, is in the dust; but this spiritual covert of the soul, reared for us hard by the tree of life in the paradise of God, stands, and shall stand, through ages of ages, pure, fresh, and undecaying: and when the heavens shall have passed away with a great noise, and the earth, with all that is in it, be consumed, this refuge, the place of repose of the Beloved and his redeemed, shall be seen emerging from the ruins, towering on the

Rock of ages in imposing grandeur, and crowned with that cloud of glory which is the light of the upper world.

CHAPTER II.

VER. 1.—I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.*

RECLINING thus on a bed of grass and flowers, and beneath such a shade, with the beauties and odours of an oriental paradise spreading around, the beloved and the bride naturally speak of each other in language drawn from the beautiful objects under their notice. The plain of Sharon was particularly rich in flowers. The orientals have ever been fond of images

* Patrick, Henry, and Scott, take this verse as the language of the beloved, and consequently the rose and lily as the emblems of Christ. We interpret these as the words of the spouse, for several reasons. 1. The scope of the passage requires this view; because the evident design is to put the spouse in contrast with the beloved, by comparison of the rose and lily with the majesty of the citron-tree. 2. The lily is in the next verse expressly applied to the spouse; and these two verses are parts of the same continuous sentence; so that it is unreasonable to apply the lily as the emblem of Jesus in the former clause, and then find it restricted to the saint in the latter. 3. The Jewish interpreters in general are of this opinion. 4. With us also agree the best Christian expositors, such as Rosenmüller, Delitzsch, Dopke, Cocceius, Michaelis, Vatablus, Ainsworth, Harmer, Percy, Fry, Good, &c.

The Septuagint and Vulgate render the Hebrew word “rose,” by "flower;" and Sharon they translate, not as a proper name,

derived from the rose. The Great Mogul, in a letter to James I. of England, compliments him by comparing him to this flower. A modern eastern poet has the same thought, when speaking of Nischabur, the city in which he resided: he says, "I, like Atthar, that famous poet, came out of the garden of Nischabur; but Atthar was the rose of that garden, and I am only a bramble." Pliny reckons the lily the next plant in excellence to the rose. In the East, as with us, it is the emblem of purity and moral excellence. So the Persian poet Sadi compares an amiable youth to "the white lily in a bed of narcissuses;" because he surpassed all the young shepherds in piety, goodness, and vigilance. The spouse is evidently speaking of herself in a modest, humble manner; and the em

but "a plain," making the words together mean “a flower of the field." Hence Bishop Percy reads, "I am a mere rose of the field." Kitto, however, truly remarks, "There can be little doubt that the rose is really intended by the Hebrew word. Even if in the general sense it should mean but a flower, we should still infer that when applied in a particular sense, it means a rose; for this would be according to the usage of the East. Thus the Persian word gul describes a flower in general, and the rose par excellence; and the Arabic term ward is employed in the same acceptations." In the East, still more than with us, the rose is the queen of flowers. In May, the hills towards Rama and Joppa, as going from Jerusalem, were found covered with white and pink roses; the gardens of Rama were filled with roses of a powerful fragrance. Mariti states that in the hamlet of St. John, in the desert of that name, "the rose-plants form small forests in the gardens." Burckhardt was struck with the number of rose-trees he found among the ruins of Bozra, beyond the Jordan.

blems of the rose and lily do, therefore, illustrate the Christian character as possessing a beauty in which delicacy, lowliness, and purity, are leading characteristics.

Nothing could be more delicate than the texture, hues, and fragrance of the rose and lily. When even Sharon's vale was filled with such beauteous flowers, so soon to fade and wither under the wintry frosts of the curse, shall the same creative power form with less delicacy those souls which are to flourish in the freshness of immortality, as the spiritual roses and lilies by the river of life, in the heavenly Paradise? Piety refines our whole nature. It is a cleansing from the coarseness and defilement of sin. It purifies the heart, the motives, the views, the aspirations, the soul; and so completely does it bring the body into subjection to this spiritual purity, that we are at last invested with a corporeal frame so pure that its nature can be expressed only by calling it a spiritual body. This purity sheds through all our powers, and all our actions, an increasing and delightful delicacy of sentiment, thought, and feeling. The import of the word "reverence," in Heb. xii. 28, is the spiritual modesty, the delicate sensibility, diffused through the soul by the pervading influence of the Holy Spirit, which brings spontaneously a blush over the heart, at the very appearance, or mention, or thought of sin, without our taking time to think of the consequences of the act, or its hatefulness in the sight of God. Coarseness of feeling, as well as of language and of action, is the offspring of the impurity of sin, and must