This morning we suggest reading chapters seven and eight of Song of Songs to accompany Hudson’s commentary. 

It is comparatively easy to lay the sacrifice on the altar that sanctifies the gift, but it requires divine compulsion – the cords of love – to retain it there. So here the bride would be set and fixed on the heart and on the arm of him who is henceforth to be her all in all, that she may evermore trust only in that love, be sustained only by that power.

The love which grace has begotten in the heart of the bride is itself divine and persistent; many waters cannot quench it, nor the floods drown it.

To the soul really rescued by grace, no bribe to forsake God’s love will be finally successful. ‘If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, he would utterly be condemned.’

– J. Hudson Taylor, “Union and Communion” – A commentary of the Song of Songs