(Steps Towards Spiritual Perfection) - My Soul — A.W. Tozer

The Soul’s Thirst for God

Now, I wish that it was possible to create a positive sermon and never introduce anything else at the positive level, but everything that you do knows there are two poles to an electrical system, a positive and a negative.

I want to begin by saying that there is a vast difference in tone. In the text which I have read, and the great bible giants, and the shining souls that have lived since bible time, and present-day gospels, you think, for instance, about the man David, how David sought after the Lord back there in the book of Psalms.

As I had a chance to pass through the water of the book of Psalms, I told that to the old God. I told those persons, so God said to me this, Lord, when shall I come and appear before God? And, oh God, thou art my God, ever will I seek thee.

My strength, my soul is precious to thee, my strength is limitless to thee. When the ground takes the land, who knoweth it? Through thy power and thy glory shows I have seen thee in this sanctuary. And then he continues and says, my soul follows hard after thee, thy right hand doth uphold me.

Now, that's the language of the man David. He will try lifting the old testament, he will try to begin back with Abraham, and chasing all the way down through, they were a search for a rock. And the difference between them and us, and between the story of their lives and the story of our lives, is that they sought him, and he found him, and he sought him still, and then he found him and sought him again, and he found him and sought him more.

But he believed on him, accepting and seeking no more. Now, there is a difference, and there is a difference in my heart, and I can't say, but I can, I can think about some great stories, some great stories, and I would think this tonight about them, and how they're very amusing to us, because they are associated.

They're dead and gone, and we're going to pray to them, and they have no verses for us. They get their verses before we get ours, from Jesus Christ our Lord. Their marriage comes in the same thousand hours, but an hour is the same as theirs.

So, we're not deifying, and we're not canonizing them, but they mean they're because they're associated with this church that Paul expressed here, where he said, I count all things that lost me, doubtless I follow after, if I may at the end, and I forget the things which are behind, and I pause under those things, it was this.

The good music, in the name of Augustine, and Tower, and Jacob Bain, and John of the Tempest, and Richard Rowe, and Bernard of Clairvaux, and Bernard of Cluny, and John of the Cross, and Madden Giles.

Why do those names sound to us? Why do they bring us up like tuning an instrument when we hear them? Not that they're nice names, and not that these had anything to do, and I don't have pretension in my nature, but that they were associated with the longing, thirsting child and Nicholas of Keats, and Dan Rashidbus, and Lorenzo Cipolli, and Sunderland, and Henry Cecil, and Samuel Rutherford, introduced with Henry Cecil, brothers, that said there is a difference between hearing a weak, cheaply played, and only hearing that one had been played.

But he said some musicians, I guess the words to this effect, they only hear that there has been a weak played, but they've never heard it played. Now, that was Henry Cecil, and then there was Samuel Rutherford, and Kilkenny, and Weaver, and Samuel Clayton, and William Law, and John Newton, and Samuel Headley, and Chase Segal, and Paul Gerhardt, and Sennett, and Dobridge, and you can name them, and their names are musical names, and why?

The musical names, because they associate them with a thirst, it's told. We see them as the deer that's been chased by the hounds, thirsting, longing for the water, and saying, Let me alone for my soul is seeking God.

And they pound him, and they cuff him again. And what a tragedy it has been in our time that we are taught to believe on an acceptance and cease it no more. And that's where we are today, and what I'm trying to do, my brethren, is to spur you to want to seek God.

I don't care so much exactly what you receive at a given time. That's not the point. So, you aim the arrow toward the target and look it away. So, it is the target of the arrow to its path. It is direction and motion that matters.

It's God is the direction, and it will move you toward God. I'm not so concerned that we have a great emotional upsurge. Not at all. What I want to see is, as the old book that I've been quoting from, ever more crying after him, thou lovest.

If that is the testimony of your soul, ever more crying after him, thou lovest. When you say that, Mr. Closer, I've heard the people who got blessings like this, and that's what I'm looking for. I hope you receive, but in the meantime I'm not too deeply concerned, because what you want, sir, is a heart that ever more cries after him, thou lovest.

The Song of Solomon and Spiritual Longing

And a heart that's crying after the one he loves is better indeed than the heart that has settled down to what he has. So, there's a book of the Old Testament, and very few people read it. The thing is, I don't like to read it because it's a little raw.

It's the Song of Solomon, and most people don't read it because they don't know what it means. But it was the very joy of the great souls that I've been telling you about. Bernard started to write a series of sermons on the Song of Solomon, and he had only preached the sermons on the first chapter when he died.

He finished it over there in Dori, but only the first chapter. I have this book on the Song of Solomon, the Song that the Psalmist sings that he loves so much, O vow in whose presence my soul takes delight, was taken directly from the Song of Solomon.

And it is a story of a girl who is very deeply in love with a young shepherd, and yet she is so beautiful that a king demands her favor, and he pays royalty to her shepherd, her simple shepherd who gathers her in the day of the night and comes to seek her and calls her to the latter.

It's quite a wonderful love story, indeed, and it has been understood so by the Church as being the deviousest shepherd, the rejected shepherd, and the world, with all it offers, is being the king, commanding, or coaxing and wounding, trying to wound in our love while he waits, gathering ladies in the night.

And the word told me, and that's the story, will admit a great many songs about it. Listen to this one. Sweet is the odor of thy grape, thy name poured forth through all the place with heavenly fragrances.

Thy taste is made in the virgin's love. Drawn by thy unction from above, they run, they plead to thee. Thou shepherded Israel in my in the joy and desire of my heart, for closer to me than I kind, I long to reside to her thou art.

Ah, show me that happiest place, that place of thy people's abode, for safe in an exodus you gaze and hang on a crucified God. If I could even find a company of people that could go that far, I'd be a happier man than I am tonight.

For there with the lamb you build thy flock, there only I covet to rest, to lie at the foot of the rock, or rise to be hid in thy breast. To there I would always abide, and never a moment depart. Concealed in the clenched of thy pride, eternally held in my heart.

The Church Must Seek God Rather Than Settle for Belief

These great souls that I've mentioned, that day they talked about God, but our faith is, I believe, on Christ. Let's go have a soda. Christ is Christianity. Brethren, if you don't have, I said this morning, I repeat it now, if you don't have a return to this kind of thing that I'm teaching about to you now, present-day evangelicalism will be liberalism in 30 years, 25 or 30 years, because we'll always remember that the Church never runs on its head.

The Church runs on its heart. Always remember that. And always remember that the Holy Ghost never fills a man's head, but the Holy Ghost fills a man's heart. And the effort today is to take Christianity, in all learning and all philosophy and all science, which is being made by some evangelicals, is going to get a cold thumb from Almighty God, and it will let them go their blind way to liberalism at last.

You'll see it little by little by little, protesting they're not while they are. But somewhere, God will have himself a people. I don't know where they are, but God will have himself a people, and they will be those who evermore cry after him they love.

Beyond Intellectual Knowledge of God

Now, I want to point out to you that this is no place for human effort. In the end, as God says, be wary in this work. Travail not in thy wits nor in thy imagination. He says, now remember, in your longing after God, don't try to think your way through, because you see in all this there is an element of unknowing, a deep divine abyss of the Godhead.

I won't settle for anything less. Now, I'm not, I'm going to try not to be critical, but I won't settle for anything less. Then the deep divine abyss, the soundless, unrelenting sea of being that we call God, it is there, and it's beyond the power of partial visualization, and it's utterly and completely futile in trying to think your way through.

And that's been our difficulty in the day in which we live. A young man gets hungry in his heart, and he goes to see a teacher, and the teacher shuts him down, and begins to think of him, and pretty soon he's all fixed up.

And he goes away, says thank you, thank you, doctor, he's all fixed up, but he hasn't received a thing. He has been caught in his head, but his heart still goes away hungry. This is the old man. Of all the creatures and their works, and even of the works of God himself, a man made too great to have fullness of knowledge.

Now, let's get that. Don't throw the hat away, you're going to lose it. And so, of all the creatures' honors and their works, and even the works of God, can a man have in his head? He says, that's all right, they're too great.

A man can have fullness of knowledge, but of God himself can no man think that means. Not that you can't think about him, but that you can't think around him, and think equal to him, and think up to him.

He may well be loved, but not taught. By love may he be gotten, and by love may he behave himself, but by thought never. How then can the knowing, with a devout and pleasing stirring of love, to pierce that cloud of darkness and smite upon it with a sharp dart of longing love?

For it's decisive enough and make it in faith direct from the God without any other cause than himself. There's that word himself again, and I have been noted lately how often that word himself occurs.

Did you know that this society always began when the word came to us? Christ came to us, and it was himself that gave us the message. But we're awakened today and we're satisfied with the works of God and the theology of God.

But you'll never get there that way, my brother. You'll bump your head and you'll never get there because thought engages the intellectual element in the gospel, and there is an intellectual element in the gospel.

Remember that. Remember that one of the attributes of God is intellect, and there is an intellectual element in the gospel, and that's what we call theology or doctrine. Thought engages theology. Thought engages doctrine and is necessary and right.

However, it is that beyond the intellect which is need and seek. It is that which can't get through to your head. Now, one song says, The spirit breathes upon the word and brings the truth to sight. When the spirit breathes on the truth, see how much more wonderful the scriptures are than when they are merely taught, when we merely hear the mixed sounding of the word of God.

Without the spirit breathing upon it, to me it's not a harmful, at least a useless thing. And this thing sometimes is beyond the sacred page. What? Beyond the sacred page. Not apart from the sacred page, not away from the sacred page, not contrary to the sacred page, but beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord.

The sacred page is not to be a barrier to block our way to God. The sacred page is not to be a substitute for God, though it is made that by millions of people. The sacred page is not to be the end, but only the means toward the end, and God is the end.

It is God that we seek, my brethren, with a naked intent unto God. There we have it. It is sufficient enough, a naked intent direct from the God, and without any other cause than himself. Now, the parent area is, should we have the text, we have the experience.

And most evangelicals settle for that. Should we have the text, we have the experience. And therein it's all wrong. Should we have the text, we have the text. But the experience ought to result from the text.

But you can have the text and not have the experience. I remind, people remind me of an error. A rich man, a very, very rich man dies, and he leaves the world. And in that world, he passes on to his only son all of his riches, running into the millions of dollars.

And so, the heir gets the will, borrows it from the lawyer, and carries it around. And here he is, ragged and hungry, ragged and hungry, begging a crust on the street and walking around in ragged jeans.

And they say to him, I foretold, you're in bad shape, you're ragged, your skin's torn and swollen, your teeth must be like this, and you look hungry and pale. Oh, don't talk that way to me. Listen to this.

And then he opens the will. And unto my dear son, Charles, I betrothed him, and he named bonds and stocks and poverty and yachts. But poor Charles is satisfied with the will. He's never had to probate it, he's never had to take it, he's never gotten anything.

He simply has the will. So, you and I go around to different locations, and we're lean and we're hungry and we're pale and we're dry, and they can see the rags that we wear. And some evangelist comes along and tackles everybody by saying, you're ragged and you're hungry-looking and you're weak.

And we whistle up and say, why, how, what a way to talk, what a way to talk. Am I not accepted in the beloved? Do not I have everything I need in Jesus? Is not God my father, and am I not an heir of God?

And we leap a ragged, lonely way down the street, forgetting that it's one thing to have the will, it's another thing to have what you will. And the will of God is one thing, but to have the will of God is another thing.

Faith, the Holy of Holies, and Spiritual Aloneness

But I want to tell you, as the old man said, be thouware and don't try to think your way through. Some of you have come up to a point where you've propped your way up as far as you can get, and you'll never get any further with your head now.

You might just as well put it to rest. I want to give an old testimony illustration and show how this was. I've used this before, but I illustrate with it here. The progress of the high priest into the Holy of Holies.

Do you remember there were three places? There was the outer court which had no roof over it, and the sun shone down. And when the priest was there, he had the light of nature. Then he passed through a veil, and when the veil fell back in place, that was called the Holy Place.

And in there, there was no light of nature, there was an artificial light, a light that the priest himself made and lighted and kept lighted. But that wasn't enough. There was the Holy of Holies. That Holy spot where the can of glory burned and burned and burned.

And there, there was no light of nature, no angel that couldn't get in there, and there was no artificial light, no ecclesiastical light, no long-tailed coated preacher employing in a ministerial room.

None of that stuff could help him there. It was the supernatural light of God, he thought. It was the shining from the mercy seat. And so when the priest got in there, he had nothing, absolutely nothing.

Would he like to have been a high priest in those days and know that the God that made heaven and earth was running in fire between the wings of the cherubim, that that great God would be solace and that would do, and his sea of endless and boundless beings, this terrible God that made heaven and earth and the sea and all the things that are there, this God was there.

And the priest was moving toward that God. He thought it was right above the hell thing. That's very good. Sure, that's the denomination. That's that natural thing. Then he went a little further and got an artificial light.

That's your theology. But he had to go on until there was no natural light, no artificial light, but a supernatural shining. And there in the presence of the supernatural shining, he had nothing but protection but the blood, and he had nothing to assure him but the character of God, and he was all alone.

Nobody could go in with the priest. They could help him, his helpers could help him to get the veils apart, but they had the back of their eyes averted. They could not enter into that holy of holies. That was alone for the priest, with blood.

And the blood protected him from the burning, for he would have burned as a knee burned in a fire, except the blood was there to protect him. And he had no assurance, nobody there to pat his back, nobody there to show him his chest, nobody there to reach him, nobody there to tell him a story, nobody there to help him.

He had nothing but the character of God to assure him, and he was all alone. My brethren, when you meet God finally, it has to be alone in your heart. It would take the crowd to get you converted if you haven't been converted.

It would take the crowd to get you through to the fullness of the Holy Ghost if you haven't had, and don't know anything about what I'm preaching about, for there's aloneness there. There's aloneness.

I heard a grand old Christian preach it. It was one of the greatest, two greatest sermons I ever heard in my life. One was preached here by a priest of killing, called, as we find our delusions of God, Old Stanley Glamour.

The other was preached by Max Wright, when he preached on spiritual aloneness. And there we are, alone. People don't want to be alone. They don't want to be. You young people, you don't want to be alone with God some of you.

You want the crowd around you. You want people there that can laugh. You want people there that can take the heat off. You want friends around you that can support you and comfort you. But if you ever get through the way you should, and if ever your longing heart finds the water, it's going to be alone.

I don't mean you won't be able to be with you, but I mean you will be alone even though you're surrounded by a crowd. You know what I mean? To be all alone even though surrounded by a crowd. God has to cut every maverick out of the herd and band him all alone.

All alone. He doesn't do it by mask, but it's all alone. And though those three thousand that were converted that day were all converted, each alone as if there'd been no other. And when the Holy Ghost came upon them at the end of the 20 o 'clock and sat upon each of them, said the scripture, each of them, he didn't say he'd sat upon all of them unmasked.

He sat upon each of them, and each one went through this experience as if he had been all by himself. Oh, Ann, that remarkable Irish woman that proved to be able to get God to do anything she asked him to do, this little woman up in Canada who died some years ago, they said about her, that Ann prayed as if God were her father and he had no other children.

As if she was God's only child. There's what I mean, my friends. We want to help each other, and let's go as far as we can. But God wants us to cut through where there is no natural light to help us. We can't lean on anything natural.

And where our denominations, those optional members, denominations have their place and I'm not against them, but they can be a great curse if you don't watch it. We will lean upon our denomination. I read a letter in one of the current evangelical magazines of a man who said, I have accepted the doctrines of such and such a denomination, and I expect it's praying, and don't bother me.

He had allowed somebody else to make up his mind for him. That's why millions of people are considered Catholics, because somebody does their thinking for them. Somebody assures them. Somebody says a word of assurance and consolation, and all of their thinking has been done, and all of their responsibility is taken by somebody higher up, and all they have to do is obey.

Now, is that unkind? I hope it isn't. I don't mean it to be so. I only say this is why certain great religious denominations convey their people. They never say, it's you and God for it. You have to find God as it is from the water books.

You have to seek God alone, and I'll help you and quote scripture and sing to you and do my best, but when it's to meet you, it'll be by yourself. You can't take an authority of somebody. Nobody can come and say, all right, it's done.

I'm hereby now, as of today, this hour, declare you all right. I almost got there myself in earlier days. Some happy woman said to me, I think you've got it. Well, I thank God I found out that, because that should have been the end of me.

Somebody pointed me in the face and said, you've got it. But that isn't what we want is, I repeat, ever more crying after him and all of it, and looking for, looking in his direction with nothing, nothing but a naked intent unto himself, a naked intent unto God.

Justification, Redemption, and Believing God

I want God and want nothing more. Now, what shall we do? When Christ has removed all the legal hindrances, for that I am glad. I heard a sermon today by some fellow with a very young voice. I didn't wait to hear him out, so I don't know who he was, and I don't know from where he preached.

But he was very carefully pulling all of the nerve out of the passage from Justified to Redemption, which is in Christ's Jesus, and so on, telling how that was figures of speech that were being used, figures of speech, and figurines had been hung somewhere else.

And when he was through, all I had was an illustration. Brethren, they can't rob me. I'm too tough an old bird. I won't be robbed. And let them try to rob me, but I won't be robbed. I believe that when Jesus Christ said he would redeem me, he meant he would redeem me.

And I'm not going to be chewed away by some fellow who tells me that was a figure drawn from a slave market. And when he said, I'm justified, I'm not going to be chewed away by some fellow who said it was an oriental illustration drawn from a court of law.

Maybe the illustration or the figure was drawn from there, but back of that figure is the hard core of reality. And my life and future and hope depends upon that being more than an illustration. It's a glorious, solid, hard core of fact, harder than the rocks of Eden.

So, Jesus Christ, you lose all limited hindrances. The word legal starts me off to say that, which is a defense. I believe that there's legal reasons why I ought not to go to heaven. I believe that there are governmental reasons why I ought not to go to heaven.

I believe that a holy God must run his universe according to holy laws. And if he runs his kingdom according to holy laws, I don't care where, because I've broken every one of them, either in intent or in purpose.

So there's got to be a justification somewhere. There's got to be a redemption somewhere. Something has to be done to legally permit me to have God, and God to have me, and it's been done. Thank God it's been done.

We've grown these trees. So remember that every illegal hindrance has been taken away, and there isn't a thing that can stop me except yourself. Not a thing in the right world. And all that gets to the point is that God is yours, and there's not a reason why we can't enter him.

If we still evermore try after him and look unto him with a naked intent of love. Well, then I point out to you that the only way to get him is to believe our way in. I have tried to deal with people who try to sink their way in.

A man used to come to me and talk about the word grace. He was a very deep student, and a very deep thinker. I think he was. He read widely, and quite a few wrote him. And he was trying to equate St. Paul with Charles B. Kennedy, and arrived at a definition of grace that would satisfy him.

Well, the last I heard of him, he had become a paranoiac, and believed that the United States government, I think it was, was pursuing him or something. He was a downright typical maniac, and he'd gone off, you know.

He'd gone off because he was trying to sink his way in. Oh, brother, you know there's a time when all you can do is believe. Believe God, believe what he says, believe and love. Believe and love, the old brother says.

And so God himself came and said he may well be loved, but not taught. By love may he be gotten, and by love may he be honed, but by thought never. The great God Almighty that serves the universe and overflows into immensity can never be surrounded by that little thing you call your self, your intellect.

Never, never, never. He knows that all you can do is you can stand at the lowest point of the two-fold of God. And you think down there, you never can rise to the first God. But love and faith rise. Love and faith.

We, we, by these we can know God, by love and faith. Now, I want to tell you a very happy knowledge that there are no vacuums in the Kingdom of God. You know what a vacuum is? It's an empty place where there isn't anything, not even air.

And nature abhors a vacuum, so they say, and that wherever there's a vacuum, unless it's protected by a hard shell, air represents earth, or water, whatever it be. And the Kingdom of God also abhors a vacuum.

When you empty yourself, God Almighty resides in you. And the reason that we're where we are is that we are satisfied with what we have. But if you have been empty yourself, you'll find that God will rise into the vacuum.

Somebody will say, drawn by my redeeming love, after him I follow fast, drawn from earth to seas above, drawn out of myself at last. See, nothing's held this man away. Drawn out of myself at last. You know that's the trouble?

And that's the trouble with so many of you, and so many of us. We've never been drawn from earth to seas above, drawn out of myself at last. What a happy hour when we've been drawn out of ourselves, and there's a vacuum.

And into that vacuum rushes the blessed presence. Listen to this, you must know that it does not consist in anything else than in the knowledge of the goodness and greatness of God, and of our own nothingness, and each and everything to every human.

In subduing not only unto him, but for love of him, unto every people. In the renunciation of all will of our own, and a complete resignation of ourselves to his good face. And all this should be willed and done by us simply for the glory of God, and for his pleasure alone, and because he does will, and merits to be thus loved and served.

And this is the love God infects by the hand of the Lord himself in the heart of his faithful servants. This is his easy yoke, and this is his burden-free life. So wrote Sepulchre, one of the great saints of our days.

Emptying Self and Receiving God

And here is the wonderful thing, friends. Whenever the Holy Ghost talks, he always says the same thing to everybody. I have mentioned names from Augustine, or from David on down, to later times, and you can read their hymns and read their devotional books, and you'll find that they all add up to the same thing.

A faither and a heathen, a Calvinist and an Arminian, an Episcopalian and a Catholic, as he lived in the day when it was power and life. And they added up to the same thing, so that the Holy Ghost doesn't say two things, he says one thing, and he says the same thing to everybody that's listening to him.

And so, I can quote from almost anywhere, and not be contradicted, because the same Holy Spirit says the same thing to all his saints. He says, pour yourself out, give yourself up to me, empty yourself, bring your empty earthen vessels, not a few, bring them, and empty yourself.

Same thing. For the glory of God alone, they all say. For God himself, says Paul, says 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. Not mentality, not intellect, but the Holy Ghost. Who knows the things of a man but the spirit of the man that's in him?

Who knows the things in God but the Holy Spirit? So, if you can't find your way up Jacob's ladder, hand over heel into the kingdom, and you can't think your way through, you can only love your way in and believe your way in, and come and meet me just like a child, and drawn by your Redeemer's love, come and pour yourself out until at last you're delivered from yourself.

Spiritual Independence and the Danger of Parasites

Do you know that's your only problem yourself? You say, if you had a better pastor, I'd be a better Christian. I wish that could be so, but you know it wouldn't be. The better the pastor that you've got, and the better Christian he'd be, the more peril he'd be in, because you would tend to become a spiritual parasite and lean on him.

And often the most spiritual people are in churches where the pastor can't preach his way out of a wet paper sack. And the reason is that they have no help from the Pope, so they seek God alone. But if you get too much help from the Pope, you tend to be a parasite, and lean on your pastor.

I don't want you to lean on me. I believe in the priesthood of Jesus, and I believe there's men here that hear the voice of God as truly as I do, and have as much right to speak as I have. And more than anything to me, as the Virgin said, no man ever laid his empty hands on mine, people.

And more than anything to me, it's just right. If the God Almighty hasn't called a man, you cannot gain until the child comes home. He will still be a baby. So, my brethren, it's just you that's in trouble.

It's just you, and it's you that delivered from yourself. Drawn out of myself at last. What a noise it'll be when you're drawn out of yourself. When you're stuck so far down in the mud of your own ego, and God pulls you out, and there'll be a sound that can be heard obnoxiously when you're pulled out of yourself.

And you'll stop thinking you're somebody, and you'll stop thinking you're some lady, and you'll stop thinking you're somebody else. And you'll stop thinking you're somebody else. You just know so much.

Brethren, God can be loved, and by love he may be gotten, and by love he may be whole, but by thought never. So, he said, be careful. Don't try to enter into yourself a deeper life by your wisdom or your imagination.

Don't try it. But look unto God thyself. Keep God in your own heart. I don't mean it's not all right to go to all things, and paradise, and pray. That's another matter. I'm talking about the loneliness of the soul that may be cut out of the crowd, cut out all fine sense.

The Woman Who Touched Christ

Even as a little woman pushed herself toward Jesus, and she was so Christ-in-the-cloud that they were pressing on every side. But one lonely little woman, surrounded in piercing jostles, touched him in the face.

He turned and said, who touched me? And they said, well, that's a query. You say, who touched me? And you're in a mouth, crowded on every side in piercing jostling. You said, who touched me? Oh, I didn't mean that.

He said, I mean, who touched me in the face? Who touched me? Oh, he touched me. And the rest of them were merely jostling. And so we have crowds, we have meetings where people just jostle. That's all.

Just jostle. He's there, but they're just jostling. Somewhere, somebody's soul pushed to love and escape from the heart and spirit. You know what a lot of us need? We need to have our hearts healed, you know.

We need to have the ointment put on our heart. Is there an old song? Yes, yes, yes, there's a ballroom. My friends, I don't know what else I can say tonight. And I want to leave you and tell you that your beloved is gathering lilies.

The Beloved’s Call in the Song of Solomon

And if you watch, you'll see him putting his hands to the left. He says, come, my beloved, rise up, for the rain is over and gone, and the singing of the birds is heard in the land. And if you're not like the poor bride, you know what's the matter with her?

She said, oh, I've got ointment on my hand. And he's been eating back there. He says, I've got ointment on my hand, and I have my night diamond song. I'm all on my top. I can't possibly get up. And so sadly he went away.

And then her heart began to condemn her. And she jumped up to her old arm and started acting, but she said, I couldn't find it. Oh, you've got his exam, she said, declared. As you see, it's right on his real shoulder.

That's what's the matter with her. She was telling him, tap on the ladder. She said, I can't come now. I'm sorry, honey. I'm all covered with ointment. And he went sadly away to his work among the hills.

But she followed him. And the watchman saw her and banged her around. And she went to the pigeons and said, have you found him? And they said to her, what is he? What is he above others that you're looking for?