Daily Encouragementنموونە

This is a book about human love, about the love between a man and a woman. It is a book of love poetry, and such poetry is beautiful, lovely in thought and expression. It is essentially passionate, and its words burn with an unquenchable fire. It is extravagant, particularly in its description of the beloved:

All beautiful you are, my darling;
there is no flaw in you . . .
he is altogether lovely.
This is my lover, this my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.
(S of S. 4:7, 5:16)

This is a book for lovers. Says Campbell Morgan, “The cool, calculating, mechanical man who dislikes this book has never been in love, and probably never will be.”

This book is in the Book of God. For “love comes from God” (1 John 4:7), and that includes this sort of love. Such love began with God when he brought the first woman to the first man - “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:22-24) - and his richest blessing rests upon it still. “Do you ever think” says Catherine Booth, wife of the great General himself, “how kind it was of God to make such a relationship a holy one, so that His own children may realize more bliss in it than any other?”