The Church is poetically depicted as an enclosed garden in the Song of Solomon, symbolizing a local assembly that requires protection and purity. The sermon emphasizes the need for a "fence" to guard against destructive influences, a "shut spring" and "sealed fountain" to maintain the purity of spiritual waters, and the cultivation of "pleasant fruits" like the pomegranate, representing the priesthood of all believers, and other spices symbolizing prayer and worship. The "fountain of gardens" and "streams from Lebanon" illustrate the work of the Holy Spirit, while the "fragrance" that arises from the garden, brought forth by the "north wind" (trials) and "south wind" (blessings), signifies the manifestation of Christ's character through believers. Ultimately, the sermon concludes with the "fellowship of the garden," where believers enjoy the fruits of communion with God and each other.
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Shall we read together, please, in the Song of Solomon, Chapter Four. The Song of Solomon, Chapter Four, I will read from verse twelve. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up, a fountain sea. My plants are nurtured upon the granites with pleasant fruits. Chempar with spike-nard, spike-nard and saffron, chalice and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and allows, with all the chief spices.
A fountain of gardens, a well of living orders, and streams from Lebanon. Away go north, wind, and come north-south. Blow upon my garden that the spices around me flew out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. I am coming to my garden, my sister, my spars. I have gathered my mirror with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends. Drink, may drink abundantly, O beloved. Again, may God add his blessing to the reading of his own precious word.
I want to finish up this evening. with a very beautiful picture that we get in the Song of Solomon concerning the church. We have been looking at the Church of God, typically in the Old Testament, looking at some of the great types concerning it. And then we have been looking at the doctrine in the New Testament concerning the church and considering it. And what I want to do tonight is look at it poetically. And as one of the most beautiful pictures anywhere in Holy Scripture, concerning the Church of God in this lovely picture, this lovely type of the Church, the Garden in Clause. Now the Son of Solomon is not an easy book to interpret.
I don't think I need to tell anyone right here tonight. But I think that the key to its interpretation is seven lovely pictures of the Lord Jesus that they get in it in seven different contexts. First of all, we find the shepherd on his flock in chapter one. And then secondly, again in chapter one, we get the king sitting at his table and the spikeness flowing forth. Thirdly, we get the merchant man coming up out of the desert with all the spices of frankincense and the perfume that characterizes the merchant man. And then in chapter four, the passage that we have read together, we get the gardener and his garden.
Lovely, lovely picture of Christ in relation to the garden. In chapter five we find the bridegroom and his bride. And then again in chapter eight we get the lover and the one that he loves, his beloved one. And then at the end of the book we get the Lord of the Vineyard in his vineyard and distributing rewards for those that labor in it. Now anyone that would look at these various pictures in the Song of Solomon, would recognize immediately that practically every picture and symbol and type that we've been looking at in connection with the church we find in this lovely book. And I thought to life, very simply, I would like to apply a few practical simple lessons in connection to the church in this beautiful poetical picture that we find here in chapter four of the Song of Solomon.
Now before we look at our tutorial, just let me say that the poetical books in the central part of the Old Testament gives us a progress of teaching. There are five great poetical books in the Old Testament. Previous to them, there are seventeen books. These books lead up to it. And then after these five poetical books, there are seventeen prophetical books afterwards leading away from it. And right on the center, all that you find... in the prophetical and the historical portion of the Old Testament, we find concentrated here in these lovely five books. Now, there is a progress of Dr.
Nunam. I don't need to tell you that in the book of Job, the first one, we have a mystery of suffering. Well, this is a mystery that many, many people today don't understand. Why do the Christians suffer? Why do those people pass through tribulation and trial down here? We're taken behind the scenes in the Book of Job, and there we find the mystery of suffering expanded for it. We come into the Book of Psalms, and there we're introduced to the sanctuary. There are five books, five sections in the Book of Psalms, and they correspond to the Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And when we look into the sanctuary and the book of Psalm, the great truths that we find prophetically in the Pentateuch are opened up for us in the most beautiful way. Then we come on into the book of Proverbs. And in the book of Proverbs, the subject there is sonship. Many, many times there we get the word, my son, my son, my son. And there the great truth is sonship. and the responsibilities committed with it is opened up for us. We come into the book of Ecclesiastes and the key word in that book is under the sun. There a man, Solomon, possibly in his later days, is looking at things on the earth level.
And the whole program that we find in the book of Ecclesiastes, it's a man looking at things under the sun. But then when we come into this lovely book, the sound of Solomon, I think the title of it could be Under His Shadow. And it's all about Christ. Christ and His Bride. Lovely, lovely picture. And again, let me repeat that these seven great pictures of Christ, they're open up for us. The Church of God in its relation to the Lord Jesus in a sevenfold way. Now, I'm not going to go into detail about the different pictures we get here, but just a word or two about these first four. In chapter one, it is the shepherd of his flock.
And here we find that the bride, she asks certain questions where he feeds his flock at noon, where he rests. And we said, if you want to find her out, you just follow the footsteps of the flock. Now that's what we have been doing during this past week. We've been following the footsteps of the flock. We want to find a whole session in speaking about the fold and the flock and the family in John chapter ten. And we get a beautiful picture poetically in the first chapter of the book of Solomon, the son of Solomon, connected with the shepherd and his flock. Now the second picture is the king and his table. Now very often from some times when we look at this we say, well now this doesn't apply to us at all.
After all when we think of the Lord Jesus he is our Lord. And when we use the term king we say dispensationally that doesn't apply to us at all. I wouldn't agree with that. You know, every one of us here tonight, first of all, we're children in a family. When we were born again, we were brought into the family of God, and we're children in a family. And then secondly, we're brethren in a communion. And we have been brought into that great communion that the fellowship was born of our brothers and sisters in Christ. But then thirdly, we are citizens in the kingdom. And I believe that the kingdom and the church, they run along parallel lines, and we have responsibilities in both.
We are citizens in the kingdom. And I think the term here is used, the king, while the king sits at his table, my spiked net sends forth a smelter off. I don't think we're stretching an imagination at all to say that it does apply to us. The king sits at his table. and my spike made sense for the smell thereof. What a lovely picture we get here of Christ as he sits at the table as the host, and we are his guests. And as we sit there, we allow that worship and praise and thanksgiving to ascend from our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Many years ago in Africa, one of the pioneers, a man called Dan Crawford, Those of you that know the history of the work in Central Africa, you may remember that the man who founded the work out there was Fred Stanley Arnett, a young Scott, went out there when he was twenty-one years of age, in eighteen eighty-one.
I believe that there were a number of other men went out to help him. There were three outstanding men that went in to relieve Mr. Arnett and Gary and Genzee, and they found him there and to relieve him. One was an Englishman, one was an Irishman, and the other was a Scot. Now, the Englishman was Mr. Fred Lane, and the Irishman was a brother called H.B. Thompson, a man that I knew very well. He was at my farewell meeting in nineteen twenty-three when I went out to Africa. He had been the editor of the newspaper, a very distinguished servant of God. But the third man was a man called Dan Crawford.
He was the youngest member of the party, a Scot from Greenwick in Scotland, where Mr. Crocker, when he was saved, he belonged to a well-known denomination over in that area. But he heard about the little company of people that were gathered together, that remembered the Lord every largely morning, and he decided to associate himself with them. On one Sunday morning he was coming away from that little gathering where they had been remembering the Lord in an upper room in Greenwick in Scotland. He met one of his friends coming home from the cathedral, and his friends said to him, Down? He said, Where were you this morning? Oh, he said, I was there in that place, down the alleyway and up a stair, in the upper room.
What were you doing there? Oh, he said, We just had a little communion service. He said, We were there to remember the Lord. And the man he looked at him, and in a sarcastic way, he said, Down, that place is just the cave of Adelham. And Mr. Conquered was very quick in his reply. My brother, he said, don't forget, the king was there. The king was there. While the king set it at his table, my spiked net sent it forth, the smell of a rock. Oh, that's what makes it so precious. They come to see the king. They come to worship him. While the king set it at his table, my spiked net sent it forth, the smell of a rock.
And then, again, we read about the merchant man. coming up out of the desert, perfumed with all the spices and frankincense coming up from the desert, pillars of smoke. I think the picture there is the people of Israel coming up out of the desert and coming up to the man. The pillars of smoke there would be twofold. First of all, that pillar over the tabernacle, that is the shakana glory that overshadowed it. And then the smoke that came from the altar... that is from the brazen altar in the tabernacle court. And there was frank incense, there was praise and worship going up to God. There we get the merchant man.
By the way, that term, the merchant man, is used again in the Gospel according to Matthew. It's used in chapter thirteen to read about a merchant man seeking goodly pearls. So it is a lovely picture of the Lord Jesus. But in the song of Solomon, again, perfumed with spices, a fragrance connected with the merchant man. But now what I want to speak about tonight, just for a little while, is this lovely picture of the garden. The garden representing a local assembly, a local church. And it's one of the most beautiful to be found anywhere in Holy Scripture. Again, let me say that we're not using an imagination in applying it in that way.
If I were to turn over to the doctrinal passage in First Corinthians chapter three, and I think it's around about verse sixteen. I'm trusting to my memory here. But there Paul, in speaking about his labor, he said, I planted Apollos' water, but it was God that gave the increase. He's speaking about the work that he had done in Corinth. It was virgin soil. It was hard soil. I went in there and he flooded up. And after a period of eighteen months when he was engaged in this work, he planted it. a little assembly. And he said, I planted on Apollos water.
But he said it was God to give the increase. And then a little further down he said, ye are God's building. Ye are God's husbandry or God's garden. So what we get here in picture poetically, we get it doctrinally in the first epistle of the Corinthians. So we're not using an imagination at all in applying it in that way. Now looking at the overall picture in the Bible, You would notice immediately in reading through that it commences with a garden. And the Bible it ends with a garden. And then there's another garden right in the center that links the two. It would be interesting to speak for a little while about Eden's garden. That perfect environment in which God placed his feet, placed the first man, the first couple, Adam and Eve.
He put them in a perfect environment. And in the Garden of Eden you remember... There was a river, there was a tree, and there was a garden. And then when we turn over to the book of Revelation, again we find a river, a tree, and an upper garden. So that the Bible commences with the garden and it ends with the garden. But unfortunately that garden and that perfect environment that we find at the beginning where God placed our first parent, unfortunately the serpent was there. And we know what happens. That garden was marred and destroyed by sin being brought in. But when we turn over to the upper garden, in the book of Revelation, Satan is under hatches.
He's chanced down, and he's in the lake of fire, and he will give no more trouble. So what we find in Genesis and in the book of Revelation, we find sin entering, what we find through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the kinsman redeemer, Thank God there's an upper garden of paradise to which every one of God's dear saints are heading today. Now right in the center there's another garden. Did you never ever notice the connection between the Garden of Gethsemane and Genesis chapter two and Revelation twenty one twenty two. Here is a man in the garden and as he bows his head and bows his knee and gets down upon his face in that garden.
Read that a sweat was, as it were, a great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Read to, a little later, to take a crown of thorns and place it upon his head. And a little later he bows his head in death upon Calvary's cross. You know, these are things that were introduced in the first garden, the thorns and vessels that were introduced there. And read, In the sweat of thy brow, thou shalt earn thy bread. But here is that bloody sweat. Speaking reverently here, and my beloved friends, there never would be an upper garden of paradise if it wasn't for this middle garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, where I bow my head and my heart and worship in the presence of my blessed Lord, because he assumed responsibility for sin, and thank God the garden has been purified, and the garden, the upper garden of paradise, has been secured for all those that are linked to him.
So the Bible, it opens with a garden and it closes with a garden and right on the fender, this garden of Gethsemane, the place of the oil press. It links the two together. Now, in the passage that we have read together here, there's a lovely little picture of what we see in the world today, of a little company of God's people gathered together to carry out New Testament principle. And there's some practical things about it, but I just want to just a few little comments about it as we go along. Now the first thing we read here, a garden enclosed is my sister a sparse, my sparse, a spring shut up, a fountain sea.
Notice the two things it said here, a garden enclosed is my sister my sparse, a spring shut up, a fountain sea. When we first went to Africa, I had no experience at all of planting a garden. I was brought up in a city, and I know there are some farmers here tonight, and if I were to step out of my place and start to talk about some things that they knew far more about than I have ever learned, I would be entirely out of my place. But you know, when we landed in the middle of an African forest, my wife and I, in nineteen twenty-seven when we were married, forty-nine years ago now, we landed in a part of the country where there was absolutely no civilization at all.
We built a little tent in the middle of the woods, and we slept on a few logs raised on sticks, and with two, three armfuls of grass on top of that, and we slept on that and that little tent for six months while I knocked the trees down and built a little three-roomed house in the middle of the woods. Now, as soon as we did that, we thought we will plant a garden. Of course, the Africans at that time, they didn't know anything at all about the type of diet that we would be used to. And if you wanted vegetables, tomatoes, or lettuce, or cabbage, or anything of that kind, you had a plant to garden. So we sent down to Johannesburg and South African, we got some seeds.
And the ground was absolutely a hundred percent fertile. Beautiful, beautiful soil. And all you needed to do was to turn it over with a hole. and put a few seeds in and up it comes. You can easily get two crops in the year, especially in the wet season. So we planted our garden. And you know, everything was coming along beautifully. And we thought, well, now it won't be long before we have everything that we need along the line of vegetables. But you know, as soon as it started to bear, one night when I went down, one morning when I went down to the garden, I found the whole place absolutely ripped the pieces. Everything dug up.
In the middle of the night the wild pigs had come in. And as soon as the thing started to bear, they ruined it of everything. And the place was completely wrecked and destroyed. And so the first thing I had to learn, if I wanted to get anything in the garden, I had to put a fence around it. That is the first thing. Put a fence around it. And if you don't have a fence, you'll get absolutely nothing there. But you know, I found that the fence just wasn't the last word. Because we had monkeys and bamboo and that we'd get over the top of everything. And we had all kinds of trouble. in trying to get anything under the garden at all. But to put it in a nutshell, the first great lesson that we learned, if we want to get any fruit in the garden at all, any produce from it, we had our venture on it.
You know, there's a very practical lesson here. And my dear brother and sister here tonight, your heart is a little garden. On every assembly of God is a garden to it, and it needs to be protected. There are all kinds of things that come in and rank and destroy. not only the wolf from the outside, but other things too, and the creepers and the crawlers that would come in in the most unexpected time. It would wreck and destroy everything, and the first thing you need is a fence. A garden in clothes is my sister, my spouse. And you know, we do need practical separation from anything that would wreck and destroy our devotional life.
I don't need to tell you some of the things that are doing that today. just like a dark cloud. It comes in among the people of God. And I'm going to go into detail about this. You can apply it in any way that you please. But the devil is doing everything he possibly can today to infiltrate into the garden and to lack and destroy anything that's of God in it. We must put a fence around the garden if we want to get any produce from it at all. So the second thing here is a spring shut up, a fountain seed. One of the next things that we tried to do was to find water. Before you build in any part of a new country in virgin soil, you must have a good water supply.
We were built on the top of a hill. We wanted to be in a place where mosquitoes couldn't penetrate, and we built on an elevation. But we had difficulty getting water. And many, many times we wandered around the country looking for water. And finally, one day I discovered a place Well, I thought if I would dig, I would get water. And we dug a well. And it was just beside the garden. And when we dug the well, we had just gone down a few feet and up it came bubbling. That precious water, that precious liquid, it come bubbling up out of the soil. And I was so pleased. I remember it was a Saturday afternoon. I went down to the horse and I said to my wife, I have found water.
Would you like to see it? Or she said, I would. On the two of us, we went down to the place where we had dug the well. And just as we come over the side of the hill where the well was, I saw something black bobbing up and down where the well was. And I said to my wife, now you stay right here. I'm going to go over and see what it is. And when I went over there, I found a native woman and she was having a bath in the well. And her head was bobbing up and down in the well. And the next thing we had to learn was this. If you have a fountain, put a seal upon us. It's most important if you want good water, to see that it's not contaminated. So this is the first thing we find right here in connection with the garden.
A garden enclosed is my sister my sparrows, a spring shut out, a fountain sale. Now there are many practical lessons connected with this that I just pass over at the present time. It's just as plain, as plain can be. If you want to get any result from your garden, you have to the fence and you have to seal your water supply and see that it's not contaminated. Now after the fence, notice the flowers and the fruit. There are some lovely things here about these nine flowers and fruits in the garden. My plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits. Can fire with spiknard, spiknard and saffron, chalamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense, nur and allos with all the chief spices.
Did you count the number of spices and fruits that you get here? There are nine of them all together. And as you look at these nine lovely, lovely spices in the garden, don't that remind you of Galatians chapter five, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, and so on. Now looking at the various items here, again, one could occupy a lot of time. There's just three things I want to suggest. In this list of spices and fragrance, flowers in the garden, First of all, there's the pomegranate. What does the pomegranate remind you of? I think it was this morning we were speaking about the priest, and do you remember the priestly robe, a long blue robe, the characteristic of the priest, around about the hem.
There was a pomegranate on a bell, a bell on a pomegranate, a bell on a pomegranate, around the hem of his garment. Now, the first thing that this would remind the office priesthood, the pomegranate. And I'll thank God that every local church, every local assembly, I think there's one thing that we need to be very careful about, and that is the priesthood of all believers. It is a lovely, lovely truth. What does it mean? It means that every believer is a priest. Now this is different from the Old Testament. The priesthood in the Old Testament were a tribe that was chosen specially by God and ordained by God. But the tremendous privilege that you and I have today in a local church is that we are priests, kings and priests, unto God, unto Christ, and to his Father.
We do thank God for the priesthood of all believers. You know, this is something that has only in fairly recent times has been recovered. Dear Martin Luther, after Reformation in when a tremendous revival took place, Martin Luther knew the truth of the priesthood of all believers, but he didn't practice it. I could quote long quotations from Martin Luther's writings, where he and his dear friend Philip Melanchthon, writing backwards and forwards to each other, they knew the priesthood of all believers. They have seen the utter travesty of the priesthood of Rome, and they realize that every believer is a priest, but unfortunately they poured their metal into the wrong mold.
And while they knew the priesthood of all believers that didn't practice it. Dear John Wesley, a man too that was responsible for a tremendous revival, a man that went up and down the country like a flaming torch, preaching the gospel of God's grace, he too, he knew the priesthood of all believers but he didn't practice it. And it's only in comparatively recent times that this tremendous truth has been recovered. I would not want myself to be present at any table where the Lord's Supper is being observed unless the priesthood of all believers is recognized. It's something that I feel very, very strongly about.
One of the great precious truths that has been recovered in recent years is the priesthood of all believers. It's not that I want to get up and talk at the Lord's table. Many, many, many times we just sit there and just enjoy the fellowship of the Lord, one of the Lord's dear people. But I tell you, it's a precious thing to see the priesthood of all believers being observed. Some dear brother, maybe some obscure brother, just getting up and worshiping, someone giving out a hymn, someone getting up and reading a verse or two of Scripture. This is the priesthood of all believers. This should be the liberty. of the Holy Spirit, and the priesthood of all believers recognized as we gather together in church capacity.
So that the pomegranate here would remind me of priesthood. Now there are two other great truths here connected with the spices, and one is the holy anointing oil. As we were to turn over to the relevant passages in the book of Exodus, you'll find that these spices here are mentioned in connection with the oil that was poured upon the priest's head. The holy anointing oil, and as well as that, The holy incense that was placed upon the altar. And when fire from the brazen altar was placed upon it, that incense went up to God. These were the fighters. Some of them are delineated in this beautiful passage. That is, the incense went up to God.
What does incense mean? It means prayer and worship. Going up. Going up to God. We do thank God for these things that we find here. The flowers on the fruits. that we find here, I think, we recognize these great truths of priesthood and the holy anointing are. And then, thirdly, the incense of prayer and worship going up to God. So first of all, we get the fence. Then we get the flowers and the fruit. And then in verse fifteen, we get a fountain. Notice what it says. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Notice this is the way that the garden is irrigated.
First of all, streams from Lebanon, that is the source. Up on the mountains of Lebanon, that was the source of the river. On those streams from Lebanon, they come down to the garden, and there's a whale, a whale of living waters. That is a reservoir. And then from that reservoir in the garden, a fountain of gardens, it is irrigated. I would suggest that the three terms that are used here give us a lovely picture of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It would be easy to turn over to the Gospel according to John and see the lovely, lovely teaching of our Lord himself concerning the Holy Spirit of God. Where does the Holy Ghost, where did he come from?
Well, when our Lord went up to the throne, the Holy Ghost came down. And do you remember in John chapter seven, the Lord said this, On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirsts, Let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me as the scripture has said, out of his inward part shall flow rivers of living water. What does it mean? He's speaking of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost came down from the throne and flowing through the inward parts of the believer, it flows out to a thirsty world. And it's a lovely thing to see the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God being exercised in any local assemblage.
Again, it would be so easy to occupy time tonight to turn over to John, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. The tremendous basic teaching of the Lord Jesus himself, the Holy Spirit of God. So here is the fountain. Here is the Holy Spirit of God operating among his people in this lovely verse. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Now in verse sixteen, we come to something. that touches every one of us here tonight. Here we get the fragrance of the garden on how it can be brought out. Awake, O North Wind, and come, thy son. Blow upon my garden that the spices that are off may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. First of all, there's the fence, and then there's the fars and the fruit, and then there's the fountain, speaking of the Holy Spirit. but here it is the fragrance. The fragrance of the garden. Away go north, wind, and come south, and blow upon my garden. We learned this many years ago. One thing that we tried to do was to get some beautiful flowers from home. Any who have ever been over in the south of England, seeing some of those beautiful rose gardens down there, it's an absolute delight to see it.
In Devonshire, in the south of England, in the summertime, or in the fall of the year, to walk down some of the country lane there and see the roses in the gardens and the fragrance that comes from it. You have to smell it to believe it. Beautiful. And we found, of course, that all that we needed to do was to get some of these beautiful roses, these flowers from this country and take it out to our African plant at there. Well, now we did. And you know, the roses are developed beautifully. As far as the rose itself was concerned, it was absolutely perfect. But you know, there was something missing. You could put your face right down up against the rose, and there was no fragrance at all.
The fragrance was missing. And what do you think the reason was? Well, the cold north wind. You know, in the winter time, the rose at night, the cold blast, the cold north wind. And unless it gets that, there's no fragrance there. It needs the warm south wind and it needs the cold north wind to bring the fragrance out. My beloved friends here tonight, do let me say that if ever you see a fragrant life, if you ever see an assembly where the fragrance of Christ is manifest, you may be pretty sure that the cold north wind has been blowing there. I may be speaking to some here tonight, and God knows you've been going through deep, deep trial and recent days.
You know, God is a purpose in that. And anyone who's had any experience of life at all, I think they know what I'm talking about. Just last week, there was one of my dearest friends here at the park, the park of the palms, a man that I've come to know and love over many, many years. He was one of my fellow workers over in Africa. His name is Charlie Shorten. Every time I think of Charlie, it warms my heart. I have known him for many years, and we've been through many, many experiences together. And he and his wife over there, I think if there's any couple in the country that manifested the grace of Christ and the affection of believers, one to the other, I think it was that dear couple.
Many years ago, they had an experience that drew us very, very close to them. They were married at Boma in Angola. a good many years ago, Charlie and Winifred. I then had a little boy. His name was Ronnie. And my wife and I were going up to the Songo area to have a baptism good many years ago now. I remember the night that we arrived at Chiktau where they were living at that time. It was a little boy's birthday. He was two years of age. We didn't know it, but we happened to drop him on the birthday party and we had a delightful time. We slept there. But the next night we got up and we packed up our loads.
And while I was packing up our loads to go over to the Songo area across the Kwanzaa River and away up into the area where we were pioneering at the time, the little boy came up, dragging a little cart behind him that had been sent by his grandfather in Canada. I looked at the little fella and I couldn't help but think I had never seen a more perfect, a more beautiful child. Two years of age. We had a little conversation weapon, said his parents goodbye. and we started off on that trip. After we'd been there for a little while, and we were going down to the river to have a baptism, we heard the noise of a car, very isolated lake. And as soon as we heard that, we knew that there was something wrong.
A car drove up, and there were two young men jumped out of it, and they were covered with mud from head to foot. They spent the night on the road, and had been stuck in the mud again and again, and had a terrible journey in getting there. One of them was Don Crow, and the other was Walter Gannon. And as soon as I found him, I knew there was something wrong. I ran down and I said to Walter, I said, what's up? He said, you better ask Don. I said, Don, what happened? Oh, he said, is Ronnie. I said, what happened? He said, he's dead. I said, what happened? Well, I said, I'm back to New Left. He said, the child had fever. He had a temperature of a hundred and three with malaria.
And Charlie knew that he would have to get some medicine into him. He took the child and led him across his knee. And he took a tablet of quinine and put it on the little boy's tongue and tried to get him to swallow it. It's vile tasting stuff. And the child, of course, spat it out. Charlie knew he had to get the medicine into him. And again, he took another tablet and put it on the child's tongue and tried to get him to swallow it. But in the struggle... To get the medicine into him, it went down the wrong passage, on at large deep in his chest, at the bifurcation to the two lungs deep in his chest. And when that happened, Charlie knew he was in trouble.
No medical help of any kind, within miles and miles. Charlie, he turned the little boy up, side iron held him by the feet, and slapped him sharply between the shoulder blade to try to release the quinine. He couldn't get it out. and finally he had to sit down and put the child across his knee and watch him slowly die. When a friend was sitting beside him, she couldn't bear to see the death of her child, and she could up and left the room. And Charlie had to sit there for half an hour in that agonizing time and watch his child slowly die. And after he was gone, they sent to the other missionaries in the area, and Don Cole and Walter Gamm, and he came to fetch us.
I'll never forget what I found when I got there. There was that young couple with her face swollen, with crying. They couldn't cry any longer. And I couldn't say a word. If I had tried to say anything, it would have choked me. I just sat down between them, and I put my two arms round them, and we just sat there and wept. And while we were sitting, some Africans came in, and they stood up against the wall, and Winifred, she said to them, Do you know anything about this? These Africans, they said, yes, Donna, we know. We have had children and we have lost them. One man had had five and they had only two left. He said, we know a little bit about how you're feeling. We've been through it ourselves.
And those Africans standing up against the wall, great, big, burly men, with the tears running down their face. I'll never forget the atmosphere in that run. Winifred, she got up from where she was sitting. There was a little organ in the corner. And she went over and sat down at the organ. She had a beautiful voice, and she sat down and she started to sing and play. And she played that hymn, Someday the silver chord will break, and I know more as no shall sing, but all the joy, when I shall wait within the palace of the king. As long as I live, I'll never forget the atmosphere in that room that night. A little while afterwards we brought them home.
They stayed with us for a couple of weeks. And just after that, Charlie and I started off on a trip. We were at a place called Montes-Baron-Saint, and some Africans had been digging a hole. And in that hole they put spears sticking up to trap an animal that had been coming into the garden to devour the vegetables in the garden. They covered it with grass and bamboo. Charlie didn't know it was there. Ran down in the evening to get something for the table. that night, not knowing that the hole was there, and he tramped on it and fell in. And he fell into that pit, about ten feet deep, with spears sticking up on the bottom, and he was impaled on the spears.
I'm not going to go into detail about that. But that dear fellow, it was really a miracle that he wasn't killed. The spears went up into his abdomen, and he was impaled on up. He couldn't put his feet on the ground. but he was able to get a hold of some stumps that were sticking under the side of the hole, and it was gradually able to lift himself off the spears that had impaled him. And then he took off his belt and tied his belt around his spine, and using it as a tourniquet he was able to stop the blood. And it was really a miracle that he didn't bleed to death. A little while afterwards, that dear girl that I've mentioned, she came down to the disease that finally took her.
Those of you that knew Winifred Sharpton would say she was one of the most saintly people that they ever met. And the fragrance of Christ, it's a matter of that dear girl's life. The last six years, she lingered for six years. And then two, three years ago, the Lord took her home to go with himself. You know, these are things that draws very, very close to one another. And let me say, beloved friends, here tonight, it's the cold north wind. And then the warm south wind that brings out the fragrance. And if you ever see a fragrant life, anyone who is a little bit of the character of Christ and the atmosphere of heaven about them, you may be pretty sure that they know something of the cold north wind.
It's the warm south wind and the cold north wind and the two together that bring out the fragrance of the garden. Awake all north wind, come north south. Bow upon my garden that the spices are off may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. Now just a word in closing about the first verse of chapter five. I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my mirror with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, oh, friends, drink. Yay, drink abundantly. Oh, beloved. Here is the fellowship of the garden.
On the fruits of Canaan, we get them all here. The wine, on the milk, on the honey, these are the fruits of Canaan. You know, is it anything that I have learned to appreciate in my little life down here? It's the fellowship of God's dear people. The longer I live, and the more I remain, the longer I live down here, apart from my salvation and knowing the Lord Jesus as my Savior, I think we know a little bit about the love on the affection, on the fellowship of God's dear people. It's the most precious thing on earth. And I think we get a little picture of it here in this lovely verse. He has come into his garden. On these friends of his, on friends of ours in the garden, we have these lovely, lovely fruits of Canaan that we can enjoy until that moment when the bridegroom comes back again.
So let me repeat again the teaching, the progress of teaching that we get in the garden. First of all the fence, secondly the flowers and the fruit, and then the fountain representing the person and work of the Holy Spirit, then the fragrance of the garden. And how it can be brought out? And finally the fellowship, the fellowship of the garden. May God bless His word to each one of our hearts for His name's sake. Little word of prayer. Our God and Father. Again, we thank thee from the bottom of our hearts for this very delightful week spent together with thy dear children. Our Father, the longer we live, the more we appreciate it.
We thank thee for it. And our Father, we do pray that this love and affection that exists among thy people, we pray that it may go on and increase. Lord, we do pray that thou will save us from the assault of the wicked one. We know he would do everything possible to introduce roots of bitterness. and things that could destroy that communion with thyself. And, O Lord, would you pray that he may be thwarted? And we ask of thee that from day to day, as we fellowship one with the other, and with thyself,