Songs 3:6-11 Who is this that comes out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense… The architecture of the smoke is wondrous, whether God with His finger curls it into a cloud or rounds it into a dome, or points it in a spire, or spreads it in a wing, or, as in the text, hoists it in a pillar. In the first place, these pillars of smoke indicate the suffering the Church of God has endured. The smoke of martyrs' homes and martyrs' bodies if rolling up all at once would have eclipsed the noonday sun, and turned the brightest day the world ever saw into a midnight. Has persecution ceased? Ask that young man who is trying to be a Christian in a store or factory, where from morning to night he is the butt of all the mean witticisms of unbelieving employees. Ask that wife whose husband makes her fondness for the house of God, and even her kneeling prayer by the bed-side, a derision, and is no more fit for her holy companionship than a filthy crow would be fit companion for a robin or a golden oriole. For the body, thanks to God, there are now no swords or fiery stakes, but for the souls of thousands of the good, in a figurative sense, rack and gibbet and Torquemada. The symbol of the domestic and social and private and public suffering of a great multitude of God's clear children, pillars of smoke. But nothing can be more beautiful than the figures of smoke on a clear sky. You can see what you will in the contour of this volatile vapour, now enchanted castles, now troops of horsemen, now bannered procession, now winged couriers, now a black angel of wrath under a spear of the sunshine turned to an angel of light, and now from horizon to horizon the air is a picture-gallery filled with masterpieces of which God is the artist, morning clouds of smoke born in the sunrise, and evening clouds of smoke laid in the burnished sepulchres of the sunset. The beauty of the transfigured smoke is a Divine symbol of the beauty of the Church. The fairest of all the fair is she. Her mission is to cover the earth with a supernatural gladness, to open all the prison-doors, to balsam all the wounds, to moss all the graves, to burn up the night in the fireplace of a great morning, to change handcuffs into diamonded wristlets, to turn the whole race around, and whereas it faced death, commanding it, "Right about face for heaven!" According to the number of the spires of the churches in all our cities, towns and neighbour-hoods, are the good homes, the worldly prosperities, and the pure morals, and the happy souls. According as the churches are numerous are the crimes few. According as the churches are few the crimes are numerous. The most beautiful organization the world ever saw or ever will see is the much-maligned Church, the friend of all good, the foe of all evil, "fair as the moon and clear as the sun." Beautiful in her Author, beautiful in her mission, the heroine of the centuries, the bride of Christ, the queen of the nations! Through her gates will march all the influences for good that shall ever reach our world. Take its membership as a mass, not speaking of the acknowledged exceptions, they are the noblest, grandest, kindest, best men and women of the ages. But for them the earth would long ago have been a burned-out volcano. They have been the salt that has kept the human race from putrefaction insufferable either to human or angelic olfactories. (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant? |
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