sang just now, "His left hand is under my head, and His right hand
doth embrace me." Alas, we multiply these mountains of Bether with
a sad rapidity! Our Lord is jealous, and we give Him far too much
reason, for hiding His face. A fault, which seemed so small at the
time we committed it, is seen in the light of its own
consequences, and then it grows and swells till it towers aloft,
and hides the face of the Beloved. Then has our sun gone down, and
fear whispers, "Will His light ever return? Will it ever be
daybreak? Will the shadows ever flee away?" It is easy to grieve
away the heavenly sunlight, but ah, how hard to clear the skies,
and regain the unclouded brightness!
Perhaps the worst thought of all to the spouse was the dread
that _the dividing barrier might be permanent_. It was high, but
it might dissolve; the walls were many, but they might fall; but,
alas, they were mountains, and these stand fast for ages! She felt
like the Psalmist, when he cried, "My sin is ever before me." The
pain of our Lord's absence becomes: intolerable when we fear that
we are hopelessly shut out from Him. A night one can bear, hoping
for the morning; but what if the day should never break? And you
and I, if we have wandered away from Christ, and feel that there
are ranges of immovable mountains between Him and us, will feel
sick at heart. We try to pray, but devotion dies on our lips. We
attempt to approach the Lord at the communion table, but we feel
more like Judas than John. At such times we have felt that we
would give our eyes once more to behold the Bridegroom's face, and
to know that He delights in us as in happier days. Still there
stand the awful mountains, black, threatening, impassable; and in
the far-off land the Life of our life is away, and grieved.
So the spouse seems to have come to the conclusion that _the
difficulties in her way were insurmountable by her own power_. She
does not even think of herself going over the mountains to her
Beloved, but she cries, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee
away, turn, my Beloved, and be Thou like a roe or a young hart
upon the mountains of Bether." She will not try to climb the
mountains, she knows she cannot: if they had been less high, she
might have attempted it; but their summits reach to heaven. If
they had been less craggy or difficult, she might have tried to
scale them; but these mountains are terrible, and no foot may
stand upon their lone crags. Oh, the mercy of utter self-despair!
I love to see a soul driven into that close corner, and forced
therefore to look to God alone. The end of the creature is the
beginning of the Creator. Where the sinner ends the Saviour
begins. If the mountains can be climbed, we shall have to climb
them; but if they are quite impassable, then the soul cries out
with the prophet, "Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that
Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy
presence. As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the
waters to boil, to make Thy name known to Thine adversaries, that
the nations may tremble at Thy presence. When Thou didst terrible
things which we looked not for, Thou camest down, the mountains
flowed down at Thy presence." Our souls are lame, they cannot move
to Christ, and we turn our strong desires to Him, and fix our
hopes alone upon Him; will He not remember us in love, and fly to
us as He did to His servant of old when He rode upon a cherub, and