By late REV. JOHN MACDONALD, Minister at Helmsdale, 1837-1854.
KING SOLOMON was a type of Christ. He was so in many ways—and, among others, in his wisdom, in the extent of his kingdom, in his wealth, and in his peaceful reign, but especially as the person who built the temple of Jerusalem, itself a type of the church.
Zion was one of the mountains on which the city of Jerusalem stood, close to which the temple was built, and in which God was worshipped. Hence, in the figurative language of Scripture, “daughters of Zion” signify the church, whether visible or invisible. The text, then, speaks of Christ and the church—the one figured out by King Solomon, and the other by the daughters of Zion—a metaphorical term for the church.
In the following remarks from this subject, we shall, in dependence on divine aid—(1) Show to whom the advice in the text is addressed; and (2) Whence they are desired to go forth and behold King Solomon; and also (3) What is included in beholding him.
1.
As Christ, under the term Wisdom, in the Book of Proverbs (chap. viii. 4) says, “Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men,” therefore all descriptions of men in the visible church are commanded to go forth and behold King Solomon. All descriptions of men baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have this command directed to them, and every one ought to hear it as addressed to himself individually.
(i)
The exhortation in the text is addressed to those who are yet in a state of nature—that is, to those who are still in their sins, lying under the curses of the broken law, and, consequently, exposed to the wrath and fury of that God whose laws they trample under foot. It is addressed to those whose manner of life plainly shows that they are the servants of sin, and the loyal subjects of Satan, the prince of the power of the air, and the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience.
(ii)
The exhortation in the text is directed to all those who indulge in the gratification of their sinful appetites and inclinations, who cherish revengeful desires and malevolent affections or ill will—to those who indulge in the trifles and vanities which the fancy and fashion of the world suggest. It is directed to the drunkard, the glutton, the unclean person, the Sabbath-breaker, the thief, the swearer, the liar, the foolish, and the gay.
(iii)
This advice is given to all such as place their happiness in the fading and transient vanities of the present life—whose whole time is laboriously employed in the pursuit of worldly gain and worldly honour—who give the world, and the things thereof, that room in their hearts which only belongs to God—and who, instead of acknowledging him as the Giver of all good, are too ready to ascribe the praise of all they possess to their own prudence and industry, or, as it may please them to term it, to “their own good sense.”
(iv)
This exhortation is given to the decently moral, who cannot be charged by man with any of the sins above enumerated, and who would be shocked at the thought of participating in them; who discharge the relative duties of life with approbation; but, notwithstanding all this, who are in their natural condition, entire strangers to vital godliness—making, perhaps, no pretensions to a religious life farther than they may consider it conducive to their temporal interests (Matt. xix. 20).
(v)
The advice in the text is addressed to the formalist or the nominal Christian. He, above all descriptions of men, is in the most dangerous condition, because, having been admitted into all the ordinances of the church, he rests in them, and concludes himself to be in a safe enough situation. He thinks the whole of religion consists in the performance of external duties. He may go about these very pointedly, while his character all along is that of the self-righteous Pharisee, that fasted twice in the week and gave tithes of all that he possessed (Luke xviii, 11, 12). But the formalist never mourned over his sinful nature, nor over the desperate wickedness of the human heart. He has some darling idol to which he cleaves, be it what it may. His own righteousness never became filthy rags in his estimation, nor did he ever, without any claim to it on the ground of merit, wish to become a debtor to Christ for his righteousness and free salvation. The heaviest woes in the Bible are pronounced against such characters (Matt. xxiii). Let men, however, take heed lest they call hypocrisy what is not so, and brand the true disciples of Christ with such opprobrious epithets; for, as the prophet Zechariah says to them, “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.”
(vi)
The advice in the text is addressed to the weak believer, and to him in an especial manner—to the person whom the Lord, by his Word and Spirit, is drawing to himself from his natural condition, and whom he is about to betroth to himself in righteousness, in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies, and in faithfulness (Hos. ii. 19, 20).
2.
Christ is here wooing his bride, the Church, to enter into a spiritual marriage relation with himself, and desiring her, by his Word and Spirit, to go forth and behold the excellence of his person. Vile and filthy as she is in her own estimation—cast out in the open field, no eye pitying her—the justice of God charging her with the breaches of the moral law, and the Spirit, in his convincing operation, unfolding to her greater and greater degrees of the awful wickedness, deceit, enmity, and cursed pride of the human heart, corrupted by the flood which that old serpent the devil spewed out of his hellish mouth into our nature, when he deceived our first parents in the garden of Eden—the wrath of an angry God hanging over her, ready to swallow her up—tossed to and fro by the temptations of her malicious and crafty adversary the devil—and it may be that men, for wise ends, are permitted to harass her too—in this condition, while heaven, earth, and hell are formed into awful array against her, Christ commands her to go forth from her present situation, and behold himself by faith and love, and shows her that he has enough to meet all the charges that can be laid to her account—to enter into marriage relation with him, and then that she can, as the spouse of the Eternal Immanuel, bid defiance to every charge that can be brought against her. Then her spouse’s inquiry will be, “What is thy petition, Queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom.”
3. Principal head.
Before referring to what is implied in beholding King Solomon, that is Christ, let us consider how this beholding him can be attained to. It cannot be attained to by the highest efforts of the human mind—nay, though one possessed the wisdom and penetration of an angel; for “unto the angels,” says the apostle Paul, “hath he not put in subjection the world to come.” Away, away with the sufficiency of the human mind for unfolding or attaining to what is implied in beholding the glorious person typified by King Solomon! It is far, far, infinitely far, beyond its grasp! None can do it but Jehovah the Spirit, through the Word of God, for it is he that revealeth all things unto us; “for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” In order to behold Christ, he must be formed spiritually in the soul, by the Spirit and Word of God, as surely as his human nature was formed in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit’s agency. Hence we read, “Christ in you the hope of glory”; and, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”
(i)
Among other things, beholding Christ includes his saying to his church, in the day of his espousals, as Adam said of Eve, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. ii. 23). “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh” (Eph. v. 31). “We are,” says the apostle Paul, “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (verse 30).
(ii)
Beholding Christ also implies that after the union, or spiritual marriage, the spouse follows after him: “My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone.” To which she replies: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song ii. 10, 11, 16).
(iii)
Beholding Christ implies that the spouse now receives larger tokens of his love than she ever did before; not to say that she had not many such, but he was not her own till the day of espousals. Hence we read, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy” (Micah vii. 18).
In the marriage covenant the wife promises to respect the person of her husband, his interest to be hers, and to form no connection with any other. The marriage relation devolves duties on the one party as well as on the other. So it is with regard to Christ and his church. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. ii. 10). “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” And to keep her to her duty, he says to her, “If ye walk contrary to me, I will walk contrary to you, and punish you yet seven times for your sins.” Has not the church then a rich husband; and who is he? None of a lower extraction than the Eternal God-man in the person of the Mediator. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (John i. 14). Can the spouse of such an husband be in want? Surely no. “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing” (Psalm xrxix. 10).
Go forth, then, all ranks and descriptions of men already mentioned. Go forth from your sins, from a state of nature, which is a state of wrath and condemnation, and behold King Jesus typified by Solomon, with the crown wherewith his mother—that is, the church—crowned him; and every individual member of it, in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart, will, in and by his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Saviour, acknowledge him to be crowned with the crown of his divine nature, and with that of his mediatorship.
Go forth and behold him, and you will just say of him as the Queen of Sheba said of King Solomon, that the half of his acts and of his wisdom had not been told you in your own land. The tongues of men and of angels cannot tell the excellencies of Christ. His love, as to its breadth and its length, its depth and its height, passeth knowledge, and all his other attributes are of the same infinite extent.
Let the aged, tottering on the brink of the grave, go forth and behold him. If they would obey his call, they would declare they never saw his equal. Let them who are in full strength go forth and behold him; and they, too, shall give the same account of him. Let the young go forth from their youthful follies, and behold him. Pass not your youth in the service of Satan and in sin; and remember, for God commands you to remember, your Creator in the days of thy youth. If you go not forth in your youth and behold him, you will have an unhappy old age, have what you will, and want Christ; but have him, and want what you may, and you can not but be happy. “For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord” (Prov. viii. 35).