rogance. I have washed my feet.-We know by whom this was performed with great solemnity', and where we are told, If the Beloved wash us 'not, we have no part with him.' Yet here the spouse boasts of it as her own personal act, properly enough in a natural sense, but far otherwise in things spiritual, where a dependance on our own cleanness, as the effect of our own moral industry, too often prevents our attendance to the call of the. great, the divine Cleanser, and to the means which he has sanctified to that purpose. Nor is this all that is blameable in what is here pretended. I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?-Would opening to her Beloved necessarily have defiled her feet? Even in this low light, the supposition of such a thing is uncivil; but in the higher application, it is beyond all measure insufferable. Can any christian, consistently with character, allow himself to think obedience to the divine call, in any instance, either inconsistent with the purity, or derogatory from the dignity of human nature? What a severe reproof is here couched in emblematical language? Let us all examine how far we are liable to it.

VER. 4.-My Beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

Still intent and ardent in his love, waiting to

VOL. II.

2 I

be

St John xiii. 4—II.

'be gracious,' notwithstanding the repulse he had met with. Some of our paraphrasts are very acute in describing the door here, with a latch and a latch-hole, like the doors of our country cottages, and are copious in admiring the simplicity of these old times. But unluckily for this grand discovery, there is no door in the text, being inserted by our translators. Jerom had seen this particular in another light, when in his second preface to his translation of St Matthew's gospel, he says, Ecclesia autem, quæ Domini voce supra petram fundata est, quam introduxit Rex in cubi'culum suum, et ad quam per foramen descensionis occultæ misit manum suum,' &c. i. e. The church, which by the voice of the Lord was foun'ded upon a rock, whom the king brought into his chaniber, and to whom he put his hand through the whole of his hidden descent,' &c. Which may in so far justify my allusion to the humanity : And from this repeated act of condescension, we cannot but see how earnest he is, that our acceptance of him should be our own voluntary act, and the effect of our free choice. I stand at the

door,' says he, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and will open the door, I will come in to him.' The hearing the voice is in a manner forced upon us but the hearkening to it, and complying with it, is from ourselves; 'take heed therefore how 'you hear'. He could make open doors to him

self

1 St Luke viii. 18.

self if he pleased; but the way of power is not his ordinary way; he chooses to knock and call, and touch and this last touch of his hand did the business-My bowels were moved for him.

VER. 5.-I rósé up to open to my Beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.

She is now sensible of her mistake, and seeks to atone for it, by the costliness of the ingredients for his reception. What a deal of adventitious trouble is usually occasioned by one false step? This holds in common life, and is attested by universal experience: Much more so in the concerns of religion, where the work of repentance, when the heart is duly impressed, and the bowels properly moved, is more laborious, more burdensome, and more grievous, than all the rigours of watchfulness and care in the constant and uniform exercise of a religious course. A step or two from her bed to her chamber door, would have saved our fair one all that hurry of running, all that fatigue of body and vexation of soul, which to her sad cost she now found vastly beyond the momentary trouble of putting on her robe again, or the foolish fear of defiling her feet. But 'jacta fuit alea-the dye was cast.' If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid (in the present case, hid only for a while) 'from thine eyes'."

212

I St John xix. 42.

Ver.

VER. 6.-I opened to my Beloved, but my Beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone; I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he answered not.

6

'As many as I love,' says the Beloved, I rebuke and chasten',' aduw, train up and discipline as a child, by such various ways as the wisdom of the parent sees fit. So here, his presence had been neglected, his absence is the chastisement of that neglect. My Beloved had withdrawn-por, hhamq, in the verbal form, only here and in Jere-miah, How long wilt thou (P, ethamqin), go about-the Lord hath created a new thing in the ́ earth, a woman shall compass a man.' It might be thought too fanciful to hint any analogy between these two places, from their being the only two where the word is found; though it is the opinion of sundry commentators, and not an illfounded one, that the Beloved is concerned in the passage in Jeremiah, as well as in that before us. I sought him, but I found him not; I called him, but he gave me no answer.-Lamented here as a melancholy fact, and threatened in the same words by this writer, in another of his works, I called, ⚫ and ye refused-therefore shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me, but they shall not find me.' The scenery in the beginning

I Rev. iii. 19.

2 Chap. xxxi. 22.

3 Prov. i. 24-28.

beginning of the 3d chapter was a trial of his spouse's faith; this is a punishment of her folly. These things are written for our admonition; and 'let him, that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest 'he fall'.'

VER. 7.-The watchmen that went about the city found me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.

What the watchmen here, and in the 3d chapter, are, is not hard to find out. In the former chapter they are barely mentioned, but here they are spoken of as behaving in a way not easy to be accounted for, either in the natural or spiritual sense. They smote me, they wounded me.-What to make of this, or how to apply it, is the difficulty. The watchmen, who should guard and protect the church, forgetting their duty, and acting so much out of character, is indeed a heavy charge: but it has often been realised. Old Eli's sons, to their father's great grief, were watchmen of this stamp.

They made the Lord's people to transgress, (marg. to cry

out), and abhor the offering of the Lord. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh ' but in vain "—keep the city as from the assaults of declared enemies, so likewise from the smitings and woundings of treacherous and insulting watchmen. The watchmen, in the days of the Beloved's

II Cor. x. 12.

21 Sam. chap. ii.

3 Psalm cxxvii. 1.