Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.14UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.56LIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.52LIKELY
Sadness
0.52LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.49UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.1UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.99LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.65LIKELY
Extraversion
0.61LIKELY
Agreeableness
0.64LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.62LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
By Pastor Glenn Pease
Napoleon and Josephine adored violets.
She often wore the extremely expensive violet scented perfume as her trade mark.
Only the wealthiest people could afford it.
When she died in 1814, Napoleon planted violets at her grave, and just before his exile to St. Helena he made a pilgrimage to it.
He picked some of the violets and put them in a locket which he wore around his neck to the end of his life.
Here were lovers who were linked by their noses, and a special fragrance kept that memory of their love alive even after death.
Solomon would not be surprised by this, for his love song is filled with the fragrance of love.
From the beginning to the end the nose is playing a prominent role in the romance.
Solomon may not have known that we breathe about 23,000 times a day and move 438 cubic feet of air.
He may not have known that man is capable of detecting over 10,000 different odors, but Solomon knew that the sense of smell has more to do with love than most people ever dream of.
His love song is filled with perfume, incense, fragrant spices, flower and spring garden smells of all kinds, and also the smells of trees, plants and fruits.
I doubt if there are so many references to romantic smells, in so short a space, in any literature on earth.
Rather surprising is the fact that the first reference to perfume refers to the male.
In verse 3 the female lover says pleasing is the fragrance of your perfume.
Not only is his wearing of perfume surprising, but it is plural-perfumes.
The male lover has more than one kind, and he is giving her multiple pleasant sensations.
The mystery is easily solved by a study of the role of perfume in the ancient world.
We use deodorants, after shave, and cologne today, but we are conservatives compared to the ancient world where men use more perfume than women do in our day.
John Trevenar in, The Romantic Story of Scent writes, "The men of the ancient world were clean and scented."
Keep in mind, we are talking about the Biblical world where it was hot and dusty, and you could perspire at the drop of a toga.
Smelling good was so much of a part of that world that we have detailed records of how they perfumed themselves, and even washed their clothes in perfume.
Two of the three gifts the wise men brought to Jesus were frankincense and myrrh.
These were two of the oldest and most expensive perfumes in the ancient world.
When Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt they were hot, and Joseph would have used as much of the perfume as Mary, for it was vital to a man to smell good.
We could spend hours just looking at the evidence to confirm the reality of Solomon's song, but let me just share one paragraph from Diane Ackerman's, A Natural History Of The Senses, which was published in 1990.
Ancient he-men were heavily perfumed.
In a way, strong scents
widened their presence, extended their territory.
In the pre-Greek
culture of Crete, athletes anointed themselves with specific aromatic
oils before the games.
Greek writers of around 400BC recommended
mint for the arms, thyme for the knees, cinnamon, rose, or palm oil
for the jaws and chest, almond oil for the hands and feet, and marjoram
for the hair and eyebrows.
Egyptian men, attending a dinner party
would receive garlands of flowers and their choice of perfumes at
the door.
Flower petals would be scattered underfoot, so they could
make a fragrance stir when guests trod on them.
Statues at these
banquets often spurted scented water from their several orifices.
Before retiring, a man would crush solid perfume until it was an
oily powder and scatter it onto his bed so that he could absorb its
scent while he slept.
Homer describes the obligatory courtesy
of offering visitors a bath and aromatic oils.
Alexander the Great
was a lavish user of both perfumes and incense, and was fond
enough of saffron to have his tunics soaked in its essence.
Her elaborate research has led to dozens of pages of this kind of information, yet she says, as a world authority on odors, "The most scent-drenched poem of all times is the Song of Solomon."
This song makes the fragrance of love a major issue, and Christians who do not heed this revelation lose a valuable tip.
For centuries Christians ignored this book and did not take it seriously.
They developed the idea that it was worldly to use perfume and smell good.
They felt it was more holy to be dirty.
The Puritans did not go that far, but they did reject perfume as worldly.
To this day, the nose is not honored in romance, and the result is many a Christian couple damages their love life.
If God says the nose is part of His design for love, who are we to ignore the Designers plan?
In some cultures lovers kiss with their noses, and their word for kiss means smell.
They get great pleasure in breathing in the odor of the one they love.
In Madagascar they believe that every soul has it own unique scent.
And when they kiss they breathe in that unique odor of their loved one, and mingle their souls.
They experience a spiritual and physical intimacy.
In the Philippines some have so refined their sense of smell that by sniffing a pocket handkerchief they can tell if it belongs to their lover.
They send bits of linen to each other when they are separated so they can keep each other in mind by inhaling each others scent.
We laugh at nose kissing, but it is because we have little awareness of the role of the nose in romance.
When Ruth went to meet Boaz and stimulate his interest as taking her as a wife, her mother-in-law Naomi gave her good advice in Ruth 3:3.
She told her to wash and put on perfume.
A bad impression on the nose is a sure way to quench the spark of romance.
William Erb put it in poetry.
The shades of night were falling
Around us thick and fast:
I stood beside Matilda
The first time and the last.
I tried to give her kisses
According to etiquette,
But she had eaten onions,
Me thinks I smell them yet.
If he kissed you once, will he kiss you again, is not a modern question.
That poem was written in 1897, and similar thoughts go back into ancient history.
On the other hand, it has also always been true that, "Aroma is beauty, and beauty is the stimulant to passion."
The question, of course, is what does this obvious truth in the realm of romance have to do with our religious and spiritual love?
The Bible makes it clear that the nose is important
in religious love, just as it is in the realm of romance.
The Jews were proud of their Semitic noses.
Levi Haytha said, "The Supreme Architect created man with a spout over his mouth, and it constitutes his beauty and his pride."
The nose was important in the worship of God, and still is to the Jews today.
Zohr wrote, "What would the world do without fragrance?
We would pine away without it, and so we burn myrtle at the conclusion of the Sabbath."
If we go back to the Old Testament days, we see that the sacrifices of animals was a major part of their worship.
If you enjoy meat cooking on a grill, then you can imagine the delicious odors as cattle and sheep were cooked on the altar by the hundreds and even thousands.
The smell was magnificent.
We know this for Scripture indicates that God enjoyed the smell of the offerings.
When Noah left the ark, and made his sacrifices to God, we read in Gen.8:21, "And Jehovah smelled the delicious odor and said I will never do it again."
He promised never to destroy the world again with a flood.
All through the Old Testament sweet and delicious odors were to fill the temple.
Incense was to mingle with the sweet-smelling offerings.
The reason we enjoy a good roast cooking, and sweet perfume, is because we are made in the image of God who also delights in pleasant fragrance.
He is the author of sense of smell, and all the fragrant aromas in the world of nature.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9