What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
We have in this verse a question put to the Church by the daughters of Jerusalem. They call her the fairest among women, and by twice asking what there is in her beloved more than in another, they express both their surprize and their earnestness to know who this is. It is a blessed consideration that the Church is a perfection of beauty. The human soul as it first came out of the hands of the Almighty Creator pure and undefiled, and as it is when again washed in the blood of Christ after its defilements, is such an object of beauty as may well be called fair. Now the question seems to be put with much earnestness, what is there in Christ so superior to every other object of love, that it carries everything before it? Various are the objects of desire among men. Some to the world, - the pride, rank, opulence, grandeur of the world. Others to human learning. Some to pleasure; some to money; some to title; some to natural alliances. But Christ is so fair, so lovely, so supremely the chief, the only good, that the Church hath set her affection upon him, to the total exclusion of them all.