The Well-beloved

The Well-beloved

A Communion Address at Mentone.

"Yes, He is altogether lovely." Solomon's Song 5:16.

The soul that is familiar with the Lord
worships Him in the outer court of nature,
wherein it admires His works, and is charmed by
every thought of what He must be who made them
all. When that soul enters the nearer circle of
inspiration, and reads the wonderful words of God,
it is still more enraptured, and his admiration is
heightened. In revelation, we see the same
all-glorious Lord as in creation, but the vision
is more clear, and the consequent love is more
intense.
The Word is an inner court to the
Creation; but there is yet an innermost sanctuary,
and blessed are they who enter it, and have
fellowship with the Lord Himself. We come to
Christ, and in coming to Him we come to God; for
Jesus says, "He that has seen Me has seen the
Father." When we know the Lord Jesus, we stand
before the mercy-seat, where the glory of Jehovah
shines forth. I like to think of the text as
belonging to those who are as priests unto God,
and stand in the Holy of holies, while they say,
"Yes, He is altogether lovely." His works are
marvellous, His words are full of majesty, but He
Himself is altogether lovely.
Can we come into this inner circle? All do
not enter here. Alas! many are far off from Him,
and are blind to His beauties. "He was despised
and rejected of men," and He is so still. They do
not see God in His works, but dream that these
wonders were evolved, and not created by the Great
Primal Cause. As for His words, they seem to them
as idle tales, or, at best, as inspired only in
the same sense as the language of Shakespeare or
Spenser. They see not the Lord in the stately
aisles of Holy Scripture; and have no vision of
Himself. May He, who opens the eyes of the
blind, have pity on them!
Certain others are in a somewhat happier
position, for they are enquirers after Christ.
They are like the people who, in the ninth verse
of the chapter, asked, "What is your Beloved more
than another beloved, O you fairest among women?
What is your Beloved more than another beloved,
that you so charge us?" They want to know
who this Jesus is. But they have not seen Him yet,
and cannot join with the spouse in saying, "He is
altogether lovely."
If we enter this sacred inner circle, we
must become witnesses, as she does who speaks of
Christ, "Yes, He is altogether lovely." She knows
what He is, for she has seen Him. The verses which
precede the text are a description of every
feature of the heavenly Bridegroom; all His
members are there set forth with richness of
Oriental imagery. The spouse speaks what she
knows. Have we, also, seen the Lord? Are we His
familiar acquaintances? If so, may the Lord help
us to understand our text!
If we are to know the full joy of the
text, we must come to our Lord as His intimates.
He permits us this high honor, since, in this
ordinance, He makes us His table-companions. He
says, "Henceforth I call you not servants; but I
have called you friends." He calls upon us to eat
bread with Him; yes, to partake of Himself, by
eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Oh, that
we may pass beyond the outward signs into the
closest intimacy with Himself! Perhaps, when you
are at home, you will examine the spouse's
description of her Lord. It is a wonderful piece
of tapestry. She has wrought into its warp and
woof all things charming, sweet, and precious. In
Him she sees all lovely colors,�"My Beloved is
white and ruddy." In comparison with Him all
others fail, for He is "chief among ten thousand"
chieftains. She cannot think of Him as comparable
to anything less valuable than "fine gold." She
sees, soaring in the air, birds of diverse wing;
and these must aid her, whether it be the raven or
the dove. The rivers of waters, and the beds of
spices and myrrh-dropping lilies, must come into
the picture, with sweet flowers and goodly cedars.
All kinds of treasured things are in Him; for He
is like to gold rings set with the beryl, and
bright ivory overlaid with sapphires, and pillars
of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. She
labors to describe His beauty and His excellency,
and strains all comparisons to their utmost use,
and somewhat more; and yet she is conscious of
failure, and therefore sums up all with the pithy
sentence, "Yes, He is altogether lovely."
If the Holy Spirit will help me, I should
like to lift the veil, that we may, in sacred
contemplation, look on our Beloved.

I. We would do so, first, WITH REVERENT
EMOTIONS. In the words before us, "Yes, He is
altogether lovely," two emotions are displayed,
namely, admiration and affection.
It is admiration which speaks of Him as
"altogether lovely" or beautiful. This admiration
rises to the highest degree. The spouse would sincerely
show that her Beloved is more than any other
beloved; therefore she cries, "He is altogether
lovely." Surely no one else has reached that
point. Many are lovely, but no one except Jesus is
"altogether lovely." We see something that is
lovely in one, and another point is lovely in
another; but all loveliness meets in Him. Our soul
knows nothing which can rival Him: He is the
gathering up of all sorts of loveliness to make up
one perfect loveliness. He is the climax of
beauty; the crown of glory; the uttermost of
excellence.
Our admiration of Him, also, is
unrestrained. The spouse dared to say, even in the
presence of the daughters of Jerusalem, who were
somewhat envious, "Yes, He is altogether lovely."
They knew not, as yet, His perfections; they even
asked, "What is your Beloved more than another
beloved?" But she was not to be blinded by their
lack of sympathy, neither did she withhold her
testimony from fear of their criticism. To her, He
was "altogether lovely", and she could say no
less. Our admiration of Christ is such that we
would tell the kings of the earth that they have
no majesty in His presence; and tell the wise men
that He alone is wisdom; and tell the great and
mighty that He is the blessed and only Potentate,
King of kings, and Lord of lords.
Our admiration of our Lord is
inexpressible. We can never tell all we know of
our Lord; yet all our knowledge is little. All
that we know is, that His love passes knowledge,
that His excellence baffles understanding, that
His glory is unutterable. We can embrace Him by
our love, but we can scarcely touch Him with our
intellect, He is so high, so glorious. As to
describing Him, we cry, with Mr. Berridge,

"Then my tongue would sincerely express
All His love and loveliness;
But I lisp, and falter forth
Broken words, not half His worth.
"Vexed, I try and try again,
Still my efforts all are vain:
Living tongues are dumb at best,
We must die to speak of Christ."

"He is altogether lovely." Do we not feel an
inexpressible admiration for Him? There is none
like You, O Son of God!
Still, our paramount emotion is not
admiration, but affection. "He is altogether" -not
beautiful, nor admirable, -but "lovely." All His
beauties are loving beauties towards us, and
beauties which draw our hearts towards Him in
humble love. He charms us, not by a cold
loveliness, but by a living loveliness, which wins
our hearts. His is an approachable beauty, which
not only overpowers us with its glory, but holds
us captive by its charms. We love Him: we cannot
do otherwise, for "He is altogether lovely." He
has within Himself and unquenchable flame of love,
which sets our soul on fire. He is all love, and
all the love in the world is less than His. Put
together all the loves of husband wives, parents,
children, brothers, sisters, and they only make a
drop compared with His great depths of love,
-unexplored and unexplorable. This love of His has
a wonderful power to beget love in unlovely
hearts, and to nourish it into a mighty force. It
is a torrent which sweeps all before it when its
founts break forth within the soul. It is a Gulf
Stream in which all icebergs melt. When our heart
is full of love to Jesus, His loveliness becomes
the passion of the soul, and sin and self are
swept away. May we feel it now!
There He stands: we know Him by the
thorn-crown, and the wounds, and the visage more
marred than that of any man! He suffered all this
for us. O Son of man! O Son of God! With the
spouse, we feel, in the inmost depths of our soul,
that You are "altogether lovely."

II. Now would I lift the veil a second
time, with deep solemnity, not so much to suggest
emotions as to secure your intelligent assurance
of the fact that "He is altogether lovely." We say
this WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. The spouse places a
"Yes" before her enthusiastic declaration, because
she is sure of it. She sees her Beloved, and sees
Him to be altogether lovely. This is no fiction,
no dream, no freak of imagination, no outburst of
partiality. The highest love to Christ does not
make us speak more than the truth; we are as
reasonable when we are filled with love to Him as
ever we were in our lives; no, never are we more
reasonable than when we are carried clean away by
a clear perception of His superlative excellence.
Let us meditate upon the proof of our
assertion. "He is altogether lovely" in His
PERSON. He is God. The glory of Godhead I must
leave in lowly silence. Yet our Jesus is also man,
more emphatically man than any one here present
this afternoon, for we are English, American,
French, German, Dutch, Russian; but Christ is man,
the second Adam, the Head of the race: as truly as
He is very God of very God, so is He man, of the
substance of His mother. What a marvellous union!
The miracle of miracles! In his incomparable
personality He is altogether lovely; for in Him we
see how God comes down to man in condescension,
and how man goes up to God in close relationship.
There is no other such as He, in all respects,
even in heaven itself: in His personality He must
ever stand alone, in the eyes of both God and man,
"altogether lovely."
As for His CHARACTER, time would fail us
to enter upon that vast subject; but the more we
know of the character of our Lord, and the more we
grow like Him, the more lovely will it appear to
us. In all aspects, it is lovely; in all its
minutiae and details, it is perfect; and as a
whole, it is perfection's model. Take any one
action of His, look into its mode, its spirit, its
motive, and all else that can be revealed by a
microscopic examination, and it is "altogether
lovely." Consider his LIFE, as a whole, in
reference to God, to man, to His friends, to His
foes, to those around Him, and to the ages yet to
be, and you shall find it absolutely perfect. More
than that: there is such a thing as a cold
perfection, with which one can find no fault, and
yet it commands no love; but in Christ, our
Well-beloved, every part of His character
attracts. To a true heart, the life of Christ is
as much an object of love as of reverence: "He is
altogether lovely." We must love that which we see
in Him: admiration is not the word. When cold
critics commend Him, their praise is half an
insult: what do these frozen hearts know of our
Beloved? As for a word against Him, it wounds us
to the soul. Even an omission of His praise is a
torture to us. If we hear a sermon which has no
Christ in it, we weary of it. If we read a book
that contains a slighting syllable of Him, we
abhor it. He, Himself, has become everything to us
now, and only in the atmosphere of fervent love to
Him can we feel at home.
Passing from His character to His
SACRIFICE; there especially "He is altogether
lovely." You may have read "Rutherford's Letters";
I hope you have. How wondrously he writes, when
he describes his Lord in garments red from His
sweat of blood, and with hands bejewelled with His
wounds! When we view His body taken down from the
cross, all pale and deathly, and wrapped in the
garments of the grave, we see a strange beauty in
Him. He is to us never more lovely than when we
read in our Beloved's white and red that His
Sacrifice is accomplished, and He has been
obedient unto death for us. In Him, as the
sacrifice once offered, we see our pardon, our
life, our heaven, our all. So lovely is Christ in
His sacrifice, that He is forever most pleasing
to the great Judge of all, yes, so lovely to His
Father, that He makes us also lovely to God the
Father, and we are "accepted in the Beloved." His
sacrifice has such merit and beauty in the sight
of heaven, that in Him God is well pleased, and
guilty men become in Him pleasant unto the Lord.
Is not His sacrifice most sweet to us? Here our
guilty conscience finds peace; here we see
ourselves made lovely in His loveliness. We cannot
stand at Calvary, and see the Savior die, and
hear Him cry, "It is finished," without feeling
that "He is altogether lovely." Forgive me that I
speak so coolly! I dare not enter fully into a
theme which would pull up the sluices of my heart.
Remember what He was when He rose from the
grave on the third day. Oh, to have seen Him in
the freshness of His resurrection beauty! And what
will He be in His glory, when He comes again the
second time, and all His holy angels with Him,
when He shall sit upon the throne of His glory,
and heaven and earth shall flee away before His
face? To His people He will then be "altogether
lovely." Angels will adore Him, saints made
perfect will fall on their faces before Him; and
we ourselves shall feel that, at last, our heaven
is complete. We shall see Him, and being like Him,
we shall be satisfied.
Every feature of our Lord is lovely. You
cannot think of anything that has to do with Him
which is unworthy of our praise. All over glorious
is our Lord. The spouse speaks of His head, His
locks, His eyes, His cheeks, His lips, His hands,
His legs, His countenance, His mouth; and when she
has mentioned them all, she sums up with reference
to all by saying, "Yes, He is altogether lovely."
There is nothing unlovely about Him.
Certain people would be beautiful were it not for
a wound or a bruise, but our Beloved is all the
more lovely for His wounds; the marring of His
countenance has enhanced its charms. His scars
are, for glory and for beauty, the jewels of our
King. To us He is lovely even from that side which
others dread: His very frown has comfort in it to
His saints, since He only frowns on evil. Even His
feet, which are "like unto fine brass, as if they
burned in a furnace," are lovely to us for His
sake; these are His poor saints, who are sorely
tried, but are able to endure the fire. Everything
of Christ, everything that partakes of Christ,
everything that has a flavor or savor of
Christ, is lovely to us.
There is nothing lacking about His
loveliness. Some would be very lovely were there a
brightness in their eyes, or a color in their
countenances: but something is missing. The absence
of a tooth or of an eyebrow may spoil a
countenance, but in Christ Jesus there is no
omission of excellence. Everything that should be
in Him is in Him; everything that is conceivable
in perfection is present to perfection in Him.
In Him is nothing excessive. Many a face
has one feature in it which is overdone; but in
our Lord's character everything is balanced and
proportionate. You never find His kindness
lessening His holiness, nor His holiness eclipsing
His wisdom, nor His wisdom abating His courage,
nor His courage injuring His meekness. Everything
is in our Lord that should be there, and
everything in is there in proper measure. Like rare spices, mixed
after the manner of the apothecary, our Lord's
whole person, and character, and sacrifice, are as
sweet incense unto the Lord.
Neither is there anything in our Lord
which is incongruous with the rest. In each one
of us there is, at least, a little that is out of
place. We could not be fully described without the
use of a "but." If we could all look within, and
see ourselves as God sees us, we should note a
thousand matters, which we now permit, which we
should never allow again. But in the Well-beloved
all is of a piece, all is lovely; and when the sum
of the whole is added up, it comes to an absolute
perfection of loveliness: "Yes, He is altogether
lovely."
We are sure that the Lord Jesus must be
Himself exceedingly lovely, since He gives
loveliness to His people. Many saints are lovely
in their lives; one reads biographies of good men
and women which make us wish to grow like them;
yet all the loveliness of all the most holy among
men has come from Jesus their Lord, and is a copy
of His perfect beauty. Those who write well do so
because He sets the copy.
What is stranger and more wonderful still--
our Lord Jesus makes sinners lovely! In their
natural state, men are deformed and hideous to the
eye of God; and as they have no love to God, so He
has no delight in them. He is weary of them, and
is grieved that He made men upon the earth. The
Lord is angry with the wicked every day. Yet, when
our Lord Jesus comes in, and covers these sinful
ones with His righteousness, and, at the same
time, infuses into them His life, the Lord is well
pleased with them for His Son's sake. Even in
heaven, the infinite Jehovah sees nothing which
pleases Him like His Son. The Father from eternity
loved His Only-begotten, and again and again He
has said of Him, "This is My beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased." What higher commendation can be
placed upon Him?
If we had time to think over this subject,
we should say of our Lord that He is lovely in
every office. He is the most admirable Priest, and
King, and Prophet that ever yet exercised the
office. He is a lovely Shepherd of a chosen flock,
a lovely Friend, lovely Husband, a lovely Brother:
He is admirable in every position that He occupies
for our sakes.
Our Lord's loveliness appears in every
condition: in the manger, or in the temple; by the
well, or on the sea; in the garden, or on the
cross; in the tomb, or in the resurrection; in His
first, or in His second coming. He is not as the
herb, which flowers only at one season; or as the
tree, which loses its leaves in winter; or as the
moon, which waxes and wanes; or as the sea, which
ebbs and flows. In every condition, and at every
time, "He is altogether lovely."
He is lovely, whichever way we look at
Him. If we view Him as in the past, entering into
a covenant of peace on our behalf; or, in the
present, yielding Himself to us as Intercessor,
Representative, and Forerunner; or, in the future,
coming, reigning, and glorifying His people; "He
is altogether lovely." Behold Him from heaven,
view Him from the gates of hell, regard Him as he
goes before, look up to Him as He sits above; He
is as beautiful from one point of view as from
another; "Yes, He is altogether lovely." Wherever
we may be, He is the same in His perfection. How
lovely He was to my eyes when I was sinking in
despair! To see Him suffering for my sin upon the
tree, was as the opening of the gates of the
morning to my darkened soul. How lovely He is to
us when we are sick, and the hours of night seem
lengthened into days! "He gives songs in the
night." How lovely has He been to us when the
world has frowned, and friends have forsaken, and
worldly goods have been scant! To see "the King in
His beauty" is a sight sufficient, even if we
never saw another ray of comfort. How blessed,
when we lie dying, to hear Him say, "I am the
resurrection and the life"! Mark that word; He
does not say, "I will give you resurrection and life,"
but, "I am the resurrection and the life." Blessed
are the eyes which can see that in Jesus which is
really in Him. When we think of seeing Him as He
is, and being like Him, how heaven approaches us!
We shall soon behold the beatific vision, of which
He will be the center and the sun. At the thought
of this our soul takes wing, and our imagination
soars aloft, while our faith, with eagle eye,
beholds the glory. As we think of that glad
period, when we shall be with our Beloved for
ever, we are ready to swoon away with delight. It
is near, far nearer than we think.

III. The little time which we can give to
this meditation has run out, and therefore I
hasten to a close. I have bidden you look at our
Lord as "altogether lovely" with reverent
emotions, and with absolute certainty. Now, to
conclude, think of Him WITH PRACTICAL RESULTS.
"He is altogether lovely." What shall we do for this
chief among ten thousand?
First, we will tell others of Him. For
that cause was our text spoken. The daughters of
Jerusalem asked the spouse, "What is your Beloved
more than another beloved?" Her answer is here:
"He is altogether lovely." It is a great joy to
praise our Lord to enquiring minds. We, who are
preachers, have a glorious time of it when we
extol our Lord. If we had nothing to do but to
preach Christ, and had no discipline to
administer, no sin to battle with, no doubts to
drive away, we should have a heavenly service. For
my part, I wish I could be bound over to play only
upon this one string. Paul did well when he turned
ignoramus, and determined to know nothing among
the Corinthians except Jesus Christ, and Him
crucified. As the harp of Anacreon would resound
love alone, so would I have but one sole subject
for my ministry- the love and loveliness of my
Lord. Then to speak would be its own reward; and
to study and prepare discourses would be only a
phase of rest. Sincerely would I make my whole ministry
to speak of Christ and His surpassing loveliness.
You who are not preachers cannot do better
than speak much of Jesus, as opportunity offers.
Make Him the theme of conversation. People talk
about ministers; but we beg you to talk of our
Master. Our undecided neighbors are always
talking of hypocrites and inconsistent professors;
but we would say to them, "Never mind about His
followers: talk about the Master Himself." His
followers, by themselves considered, never were
worth your words; but what a theme is this- "He is
altogether lovely "! Our Lord's people are far
worthier than the world thinks them to be; for my
part, I rejoice in the many gracious and beautiful
characters with which I meet, but even if all the
ill reports we hear were true, this would not
detract from the loveliness of our Lord, who is
infinitely lovely beyond all praise.
The next practical result of viewing the
loveliness of our blessed Lord is, that we
appropriate Him to ourselves, grasping Him with
our two hands of faith and love, and making the
rest of the verse to be our own: "This is my
Beloved, and this is my Friend, O daughters of
Jerusalem!" Since He is so amiable, He must be "my
Beloved"; my heart clings to Him. Since He is
admirable, I rejoice that He is "my Friend"; my
soul trusts in Him. The heart that most
appreciates Jesus is the most eager to appropriate
Him. He who beholds Jesus as "altogether lovely
"will never rest until he is altogether sure that
Jesus is altogether his own. I think I may also
add that appreciation is in great measure the seal
of appropriation, for the soul that values Christ
most, is the soul that has most surely taken
possession of Christ. Sometimes a heart prizes the
Lord very highly, and tremblingly longs for Him;
but it is my conviction that the very fact of
prizing Him argues a measure of possession of Him.
Jesus never wins a heart to which He refuses His
love. If you love Him, He loves you: be sure
of that. No soul ever cries, "Yes, He is
altogether lovely," without sooner or later
adding, "This is my Beloved, and this is my
Friend."
Rest not, any one of you, until you know of
a surety that Jesus is yours. Do not be content
with a hope, struggle after the full assurance of
faith. This is to be had, and you ought not to be
content without it. It may be your lifelong song,
"My Beloved is mine, and I am His." You need not
pine in the shade: the sun is shining, "walk in
the light." Away with the idea that we cannot know
whether we are condemned or forgiven- in Christ or
out of Him! We may know, we must know; and, as we
appreciate our Lord, we shall know. Either Jesus
is ours, or He is not. If He is, let us rejoice in
the priceless possession. If He is not ours, let
us at once lay hold upon Him by faith; for, the
moment we trust Him, He is ours. The enjoyment of
religion lies in assurance: a mere hope is scant
diet.
Once more, it is a fair fruit of our
delight in our Lord that our valuation of Him
becomes a bond of union between us and others. The
spouse cries, "This is my Beloved, and this is my
Friend, O daughters of Jerusalem!" and they reply,
"Where is your Beloved gone, O you fairest among
women? Where is your Beloved turned aside, that
we may seek Him with you?" Thus, you see, they
institute a companionship through the
Well-beloved. Few of us, in this room, would ever
have known each other, had it not been for our
common admiration of the Lord Jesus. We should
have gone on walking past each other by the sea to
this day, and we should have missed much cheering
fellowship. Our Lord has become our center; we
meet in Him, and feel that in Him we are partakers
of one life. We seek our Well-beloved together,
and around His table we find Him together; and
finding Him, we have found one another, and the
lost jewel of Christian love glitters on every
bosom. We have differing views on certain parts of
divine truth; and I do not know that it is wrong
for us to differ where the Holy Spirit has left
truth without rigidly defining it. We are bound
each one devoutly to use his judgment in the
interpretation of the Sacred Word; but we all
agree in this one clear judgment: "Yes, He is
altogether lovely. "This is the point of union.
Those who enthusiastically love the same person
are on the way to loving each other. This is
increasingly our case; and it is the same with all
spiritual people. Professors quarrel, but
possessors are at unity. We hear much discourse upon
"the Unity of the Church" as a thing to be
desired, and we may heartily agree with it; but it
would be well also to remember that in the true
Church of Christ real union already exists. Our
Lord prayed for those whom the Father had given
Him, that they might be one, and the Father
granted the prayer: the Lord's own people are one.
In this room we have an example of how closely we
are united in Christ. Some of you are more at home
in this assembly, taken out of all churches, than
you are in the churches to which you nominally
belong. Our union in one body as Episcopalians,
Baptists, Presbyterians, or Independents, is not
the thing which our Lord prayed for; but our union
in Himself. That union we do at this moment enjoy;
and therefore do we eat of one bread, and drink of
one cup, and are baptized into one Spirit, at His
feet who is to each one of us, and so to all of
us, ALTOGETHER LOVELY.

"White and ruddy is my Beloved
All His heavenly beauties shine;
Nature can't produce an object,
Nor so glorious, so divine;
He has wholly
Won my soul to realms above.

"Farewell, all you meaner creatures,
For in Him is every store;
Wealth, or friends, or darling beauty,
Shall not draw me any more;
In my Savior
I have found a glorious whole."