This was a golden name which the ancient Church gave to the Anointed of the Lord. She sang, "My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies" (Song of Solomon 2: 16). Ever in her song of songs does she call Him by that delightful name, "My beloved!" Even in the long winter, when idolatry had withered the garden of the Lord, her prophets found space to lay aside the burden of the Lord for a little season and to say, as Isaiah did, "Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching His vineyard" (Isaiah 5: 1). Though the saints never saw His face, though as yet He was not made flesh or had dwelt among us or had man beheld his glory, yet He was the consolation of Israel, the hope and joy of all the chose, the "beloved" of all those who were upright before the Most High. We, in the summer days of the Church, desire to speak of Christ as the Beloved of our soul and to feel that He is very precious, the chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogethre lovely. So true is it that the Church loves Jesus and claims Him as her Beloved, that the apostle dares to defy the whole universe to separate her from the love of Christ and declares that neither persecution, distress, affliction, perils, or the sword have been able to do it. He joyously boasts, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us" (Romans 8: 37). Oh, that we knew more of the ever precious One!