The Spices in God's Garden.
The true believer's heart is the “King's garden.” It is described in the Canticles as a “garden inclosed.” The orientals were accustomed to fence in their gardens with hedges of prickly shrubs; sometimes a stone wall was built, as in the case of the hallowed enclosure around Gethsemane. Outside the garden was often a barren waste. So is the believer's heart, kept apart from a world lying in wickedness. “Come out, and be ye separate, saith the Lord Almighty.” What are the products of this heart garden? The singer of Solomon's Song tells us that they are “pleasant fruits, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, with all the chief spices.” These spices are the graces of a Christian's soul. As spices were not native to the oriental garden, but were planted there, and required careful cultivation, so the fragrant graces of Christian character are not natural to the human heart. They do not spring spontaneously in any man before conversion. They are the blessed and beautiful results of regeneration. What a vast deal of watching and watering do they require! What constant need there is of that remarkable prayer, “Awake! O north wind, and come, thou south wind! Blow upon my garden, that the spices may flow out!” Look at the meaning of this prayer a moment. Its root is found in the fact that as delicious odors may lie latent in a spice-tree, so graces may lie unexercised and undeveloped in a Christian's heart. There is often a plant of profession; but from the cumberer of the ground there breathes forth no fragrance of holy affections or of godly deeds. As long as any member of Christ's church lives a hollow life of mere profession; as long as he labors to please himself, and not his Saviour; as long as he is grasping and self-seeking and self-indulgent and covetous, and a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God; so long there is no practical difference between a cinnamon bush and a Canada thistle. A church full of such professors, whether they swear by the Westminster Confession or by the Thirty-nine Articles, is only a patch of weeds. But even in genuine Christians there are latent graces which require to be drawn forth. And this prayer is for the coming of a “north wind” and of a “south wind,” that the fragrance of the soul's spices may flow out. Anything rather than a scentless, formal, fruitless religion. Let the north wind come, even though it be a cutting wind of conviction! Christians need to be convicted of sin as much as impenitent sinners. Peter was under conviction of sin when he went out into the garden to weep bitterly. Perhaps the Apostle Paul felt a terrible uprising of the “old Adam” when he wrote that tearful seventh chapter to the Romans. Dr. Beecher once told me that one of the most tremendous seasons of awakening he ever knew was in a theological seminary! The “north wind” of the Spirit's power was so keenly felt that students for the ministry gave up their “hopes,” cried for mercy, and dug down deeper for better foundations to rest on! The most powerful revivals in churches are those which bring professing Christians to repentance and tears, and to the cutting off of “right-hand” sins. Awake! O north wind of conviction, and blow upon our dull, odorless hearts, that the spices of penitence may flow out! Sometimes God sends severe blasts of trial upon his children to develop their graces. Just as torches burn most brightly when swung violently to and fro, just as the juniper plant smells the sweetest when flung into the flames, so the richest qualities of a Christian often come out under the north wind of suffering and adversity. Bruised hearts often emit the fragrance that God loveth to smell. Almost every true believer's experience contains the record of trials which were sent for the purpose of shaking the spice-tree. Who bears a cross prays oft and well,
Bruised herbs send forth the sweetest smell;
Were plants ne'er tossed by stormy wind,
The fragrant spices who would find? Trials are of no profit unless improved. We need the Spirit's work at no time more than in our hours of trial. A graceless heart is none the better after affliction. The same wind blows on the thistle-bush and on the spice-tree; but it is only one of them which gives out rich odors. Awake! O north wind, and come thou south! Blow upon my heart, that the perfumes of sweet grace may flow out! There are two winds mentioned in this beautiful prayer. God may send either or both as seemeth him good. He may send the north wind in conviction to bring us to repentance, or he may send the south wind of love to melt us into gratitude and holy joy. If we often require the sharp blast of trial to develop our graces, do we not also need the warm south breezes of his mercy? Do we not need the new sense of Christ's presence in our hearts and the joys of the Holy Ghost? Do we not need to be melted, yea, to be overpowered, by the love of Jesus? When I look into my own scanty little heart-garden, when I go into the prayer-meetings of my flock, and when I think how feeble are the spiritual influences we are shedding out upon the world, I am ready to cry out: “Awake! O north wind of the convicting spirit! Come, O south wind of melting, subduing love, and blow upon these odorless plants!” Every genuine revival of religion has a divine side and a human side. Every such revival is the gift of God; yet it is also the work of free agents—the quickened activity of good men and women. When the winds blow upon the cinnamon-bushes, it is from the bushes themselves that the odors flow out. The softest zephyrs cannot draw fragrance from a pig-weed. Faith is the gift of God; but it is also your act and mine. Love is kindled by contact with Christ; but we must come up close to him. The Holy Spirit may waft odors from a true Christian life; but the Christian must do the living. Dead trees yield no spices. What was the secret of the success and tremendous power of the apostolic church? Every tree was a bearing tree. Paul in his pulpit, Lydia in her cloth store, Dorcas with her needle, John amid his flock at Ephesus—each and all were “always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Brethren, how shall our spiritual gardens attain to such beauty and fragrance? There are three pithy answers. Let each one look well to the tillage of his own or her own heart. The measure of a Christian's power is the measure of that Christian's piety. Grace must be in the soul before it can come out of the soul. Secondly, be the Christian everywhere and always. When Jacob came into his father's presence, the odor of the barley-ground and the vineyard was in his garments; it was the “smell of the field which God had blessed.” So, wherever we go, let us carry the Spirit of Christ within us; then the spices will flow out. Finally, let us cry fervently, and frequently, and importunately, for the breath of the Holy Spirit. With one voice let us cry: “Awake! north wind, and come, thou south. Blow upon our garden!” Then shall there be a shaking-down of fruit from the branches, and the outflow of the sweet spices shall fill and perfume the atmosphere in which we dwell. ALLEGORY.—I observe that of all plants, God hath chosen the vine, a low plant that creeps upon the helpless wall; of all beasts, the soft and patient lamb; of all birds, the mild and guileless dove. Christ is the rose of the field and the lily of the valley. When God appeared to Moses, it was not in the lofty cedar, nor the sturdy oak, nor the spreading palm, but in a bush, a humble, slender, abject bush; as if he would by these elections check the conceited arrogance of man.—Cuyler.