Song of Solomon 1:4

We will be glad and rejoice in You; we will remember Your love more than wine; the upright love You.

Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection than they dare to give to any other being. They would rather lose father and mother than part with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts with a loose hand, but they carry him locked fast in their hearts. They voluntarily deny themselves for his sake, but they can not be driven to deny him. It is a weak love which the fire of persecution can dry up. The true believer's love is a deeper stream than this. Evil men have laboured to divide the faithful from their Master, but their attempts have been fruitless in every age. Neither crowns of honour, nor frowns of anger, have untied this Gordian knot. This is no every-day attachment which the world's power may at length dissolve. Neither man nor devil have found a key which opens this lock. Never has the craft of Satan been more at fault than when he has exercised it in seeking to split assunder this union of two divinely welded hearts. It is written, and nothing can blot out the sentence, "The upright love you." The intensity of the love of the upright, however, is not so much to be judged by what it appears, as by what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough. Would that our hearts were capable of holding more, and reaching further. Like Samuel Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as much love as would go round about the earth, and over heaven--yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds--that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair Christ." Alas! our longest reach is but a span of love, and our affection is as a drop of a bucket compared with vast oceans of His love. Measure our love by our intentions, and it is high indeed, and so, we trust, our Lord judges it. Oh, that we could give all the love in all hearts in one great mass, a gathering together of all loves to him who is altogether lovely!