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March 20
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This was a golden
name which the ancient Church in her most joyous moments was wont to
give to the Anointed of the Lord. When the time of the singing of birds
was come, and the voice of the turtle was heard in her land, her love-note
was sweeter than either, as she sang, "My beloved is mine and I
am His: He feedeth among the lilies." Ever in her song of songs
doth she call Him by that delightful name, "My beloved!" Even
in the long winter, when idolatry had withered the garden of the Lord,
her prophets found space to lay aside the burden of the Lord for a little
season, and to say, as Esaias did, "Now will I sing to my well-beloved
a song of my beloved touching His vineyard." Though the saints
had never seen His face, though as yet He was not made flesh, nor had
dwelt among us, nor had man beheld His glory, yet He was the consolation
of Israel, the hope and joy of all the chosen, the "beloved"
of all those who were upright before the Most High. We, in the summer
days of the Church, are also wont to speak of Christ as the best beloved
of our soul, and to feel that He is very precious, the "chiefest
among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely." So true is it that
the Church loves Jesus, and claims Him as her beloved, that the apostle
dares to defy the whole universe to separate her from the love of Christ,
and declares that neither persecutions, distress, affliction, peril,
or the sword have been able to do it; nay, he joyously boasts, "In
all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved
us."
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