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Often this orchid of the deep wood is private between the Beloved and His lover. It is some secret of the Lord, some “secret converse,” like the “secret ministries which ripen the corn and make the wild flowers perfect in form and hue, where no eye of man shall ever see them.”
Such ministries must be folded up in quietness; we must “learn to love softly.” The friend who knows nothing of reticence finds himself in the outer courts of his friend’s house; he becomes a stranger to him, and in his house also his friend is a stranger. There is not between them now the colloquium familiare, as Gesenius translates “secret” in Psalm 25:14. The courtesies of life may continue, but that is all. They drift apart. They are never at home any more with one another.
It is a sadness that cannot be told when this happens between friends. It is as the shadow of death to the lover of the Lord when, by some careless holding of a treasure given in trust, he loses that which he had before, that intimate “sweet talking, much wonderful familiarity,” which was common and oft with the inward man, and sees his Beloved pass his house, as though He were only a stranger. But let the heart hasten after Him, let it care for nothing but to recall its Lord, its Love, its alone Master, and He will allow Himself to be recalled. For it grieves Him to be as a stranger and as a wayfaring man who turneth aside to tarry for a night. He desires to be constrained. O divine humility of love—He waits to be constrained by our desire.
Dear Lord, we constrain Thee now. Abide with us: for it is toward evening and the day is far spent. Come in and tarry with us. Do not vanish out of our sight. “Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.” Let there be even for me once more the colloquium familiare of love.