IT is of the last importance to read the Old Testament with the Tight which the New flings on it, and I have no doubt that in the very arrangement of the books we find divine order. Take, for instance, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. We have in these sections of Holy Writ a most wonderful setting together of truth that meets the various component parts of our moral being. In the Psalms you get the exercises of the conscience; in the Proverbs you have the furnishing of the understanding; while in Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon you have the feelings of the heart introduced. Every man has a conscience, and it always tells you when you have done wrong. Your conscience lets you know where you are in relation to God.
Now, in the Book of Proverbs, on the other hand, we see the furnishing of the understanding, and you read therefore a great deal in that book about understanding and wisdom. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding” (ch. 4:7). It is an immense thing to understand. In the Gospels the Lord says, the way of salvation is when one “hears the word of the kingdom, and understands it.” What is understanding? Well, it is the legs of a table. A child can understand that. It is what supports the superincumbent structure. So is it with the soul and the truth. I stand under it. It has impressed me. And what shall I learn? I shall learn first of all my need of salvation, and then how God meets that need, and quiets both the conscience and the heart.
Man has a heart as well as a conscience, and the world can never fill it. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon deal with the heart. Do you know what Ecclesiastes is? It is an empty heart. I can label that book with one word, “Heartache.” It is the most disappointing book. “Oh,” you say, “I never real that book.” Why? “It is all disappointment.” Exactly so. Do you know why? Because the heart (and it speaks about it forty times) is too big for the object―i.e., the world―to fill it. When you come to the Song of Solomon we have the reverse. There the object, Christ, is too big for the heart. We there get into the atmosphere of love. I only find the heart spoken of three times, and it is full. Christ is the Object there, and as a consequence the Object is too big for the heart. Hence the heart is filled to overflowing, and rests in love. I call that book “Heartsease.”
“Thou treasure inexhaustible!
Thou source of true delight!
What tare I for the world’s applause
Or for its diamonds bright?
More prized by far one smile from Thee
Than all earth holds most dear;
I want for nothing man can give,
For I have Jesus here.”
W. T. P. W.