"SET me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which bath a most-vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the foods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”
"Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave." What a, word we have here! What an affecting-appeal to our hearts! which, if it be so, let us ask what it means, and the answer I believe will be this, that as death with irresistible strength lays its hands on its victim, so love arrested us in the midst of our wanderings and drew us home to itself, and having thus made us its own, with all the fond "jealousy" that infinite love only feels, resists every rival that would put in its claim to our hearts; just like the grave, which coldly and cruelly deaf to the cry of the mourner, holds its prisoner fast locked in its keeping, and will not resign him. "The coals thereof," we read further, "are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned." Such is the love of Christ to His church, so fervent, so strong, so enduring, that not all the waves and the billows, that went over Him in that dark hour, when He suffered, could quell or destroy it. Love out-lived all, and was more than conqueror. Then, too, it was free; without money or price. Love, we are each-one of us conscious, corrupt and base as by nature we are, is too noble, too generous, to be purchased. A slave or a flatterer we know may be bought, but who ever purchased a friend? Assuredly, no one. And if it be so as to us, what shall we say as to Christ's love? is that, we ask, less unmercenary, less noble, than ours? Ah! the heart shrinks from the thought, well knowing that no obedience, no beauty, no attraction on our part drew Him forth from the bosom of the Father, to become a man of sorrows on earth, and then in the end for the love that He bore us, to die the death of the accursed. Such is the love that first found, and still keeps us, which no suffering could quell, which no money could purchase!!