Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 55:6

Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. King David, though for innocency not only a dove, but the phoenix of doves, and so a notable type of Christ, upon whom the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove, yet was his whole life nothing else but bellum sine induciis, a perpetual persecution without intermission. Such was also the portion of Christ the Lord of David; and such to the world's end will ever be the lot of those that are the heritage of Christ. My text imports no less; which, taken historically, is the voice of David pursued by his enemies; prophetically, the voice of Christ at his passion; mystically, the voice of that mystical dove, the innocent soul, surrounded and environed with the snares of death; even generalis quoendam querela (saith Pellican), a general complaint of the malice of the wicked persecuting the righteous. For (alas that it should be! yet so it is) —

"Non rete accipitri tenditur, neque milvio, Qui male facinunt nobis; illis qui nil faciunt tenditur." Terence.

"The net is not pitched for ravenous birds, as are the hawk and the kite; but for poor harmless birds, that never meditate mischief." And

"Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas."

"The dove shall surely be shot at, when the carrion crow shall go shot free." Juvenal.

It will then be no news unto you, that here the faithful soul, the spouse, the dove of Christ, when trouble and heaviness take hold upon her, and the floods of Belial compass her about, Tanquam avis e cave liberari cupit as St. Austin speaks of the cloistered monks in his time), "Desireth like a bird to be loosed out of her cage." Or, that as Jonas (by interpretation a dove, after three days' and three nights' imprisonment in the whale's belly, could not but long after his enlargement. So the dove like soul of man, when not three, but many days, and months, and years, she hath been imprisoned in the body, hath a longing desire to be enlarged, and to fly unto God that made her; and so mourning like a dove in devout supplication, and mounting like a dove in divine speculation, breaks forth into these sad elegies: "Oh that I had wings!" and "Alas, that I have not wings! Woe is me that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have mine habitation among the tents of Kedar. Like as the hart desires the water brook, so longeth my soul to be with thee, O God. I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Who will give me wings?" etc. Which is as if the poor distressed soul, pathetically bemoaning her forlorn estate of pilgrimage, should thus more plentifully enlarge herself. "My spouse is already ascended higher than the winds, than the clouds, than the highest heavens, and I, poor soul, as a husbandless widow, as a tutorless orphan, as a comfortless exile, am left desolate and disconsolate in this valley of tears; none to care for me, none to comfort me, till I have regained him whom I love, and in whom I live. Nay (which worse is), this mine own familiar friend, this nearest and dearest companion of mine, my body, is even a burden unto me. The weight of it, and oft the sins that hang so fast on it, doth so clog and shackle me, so glue and nail me to the earth, that I cannot raise or rear up myself towards heaven. Or let him therefore descend to relieve me, being fila, sponsa, soror, his daughter, and spouse, and sister; or let him give me wings wherewith I may ascend to him, under the shadow of whose wings I shall surely rest in safety." Ps 16:4. "I must confess it was the very bitterness of extremity that first compelled me to love him, though of himself no less lovely than love itself. It was the sharp sauce of affliction that gave edge to mine affections, and sharpened mine appetite to that `sweet meat that endureth to everlasting life.' But now, having had some little foretaste of him, I am even in an holy ecstasy, so ravished, so transported with a fervent desire of him and of his presence, that ubi sum, ibi non sum; ubi non sum, ibi animus est:" "where I am, there I am not; and where I am not, there am I." For, anima est ubi amat, non ubi animat: (Erasmus). "The soul is where it loveth, not where it liveth." Now sigh I not so much for the present dangers, I would decline, as because of my absent love, whom I most desire. Who will give me wings? etc. In the scanning of which verse, ye will observe with me,

1. The efficient or author of these wings —God. Who will give me? Who? that it, who but God?

2. The matter of the wish —wings. "Who will give me wings?"

3. The form of those wings —dove like. Who will give me wings like unto a dove?

4. The end mediate —flying. Then would I fly away.

5. The end ultimate —resting. And be at rest.

(a) "Who will give me?" There's Christian humility.

(b) "Who will give me wings?" There's prudent celerity.

(c) "Wings like unto a dove." There's innocent simplicity.

(d) "Then would I fly away." There's devout sublimity.

(e) "And be at rest." There's permanent security.

John Rawlinson, in "The Dove like Soule. A Sermon preached before the Prince's Highness at Whitehall, "Feb. 19, 1618.