Song of Songs 6
v.2
My lover has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies.
v.3
I am my lover’s and my lover is mine; he browses among the lilies.
v.5
Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me.
It is because He loves us so much that He permits our prayers to conquer Him, it is not so much because we love Him as because He loves us, that He permits the look of our eyes to overcome His heart.
And you, dear child of God, who are teaching in the Sunday school class, or you who are preaching in some small village station, when you get to feel inward grief of heart over those with whom you have to deal, when that grief increases till it comes to be a perfect agony, and you cannot help crying out for anguish of soul, when you feel as if you must have them saved, as if you would give everything you had if they might but be brought to Christ, when you even wake at night to pray for them, and in the midst of your business cares you get distracted with the thought that some whom you love are perishing, at such times as that your powerful eyes in prayer shall move the heart of Christ, and overcome Him, and He shall give you these souls for your hire.
You may perhaps have read in the life of holy Mr. Flavell the extraordinary instance he records of the love of Christ being poured into his soul. He says that he was riding a horse, going to some engagement, and he had such a sense of the love of Christ that he completely lost himself for several hours, and when he came to himself again, he found his horse standing quite still, and discovered that he had been sitting on horseback all those hours, utterly lost to everything but a special revelation of the wonderful love of Jesus. You may also have heard of Mr. Tennant, the mighty American preacher and friend of George Whitefield, who was found, lost and absorbed, in a wood to which he had retired, and his friends had to call him back, as it were, from the sweet fellowship he had been enjoying with Christ. You may remember too, John Welsh, the famous Scotch preacher who had to cry out, “Hold, Lord, hold! I am but an earthen vessel, and if I feel more of Thy glorious love, I must e’en die, so stay Thy hand a while.”
Keep your hearts always longing for that blessed hour. Keep your eyes always looking upward beloved. Set small store by anything here, and be always ready to depart, and so, full often, shall Jesus say to you, as though He could no longer bear that you should gaze upon Him, though indeed He loves it all the while, “Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me.”