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       *       *       *       *       *


  THE HART
  AND
  THE WATER-BROOKS;

  A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION OF
  THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

  BY THE
  REV. JOHN R. MACDUFF,
  AUTHOR OF "MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES," "MEMORIES OF GENNESARET,"
  "WORDS Of JESUS," ETC. ETC.

  "The portion of God's Word that is specially precious to me, more so
  than I am able to express, is Psalm forty-second."--HARRINGTON
  EVANS' LIFE, p. 399.

  "What a precious, soul-comforting Psalm is that forty-second!"--LIFE
  OF CAPTAIN HAMMOND, p. 289.

  LONDON:
  JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.
  M.DCCC.LX.




  EDINBURGH:
  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY,
  PAUL'S WORK.




THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

¶ _To the Chief Musician_, MASCHIL, _for the Sons of Korah._


  1  As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,--so panteth my soul
           after thee, O God.

  2  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:--when shall I come
           and appear before God?

  3  My tears have been my meat day and night,
     While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

  4  When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:
     For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house
           of God,
     With the voice of joy and praise,--with a multitude that kept
           holy day.

  5  Why art thou cast down, O my soul?--and why art thou disquieted
           in me?
     Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him
     For the help of his countenance [or, His presence is salvation].

  6  O my God, my soul is cast down within me:
     Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of
           the Hermonites,
     From the hill Mizar.

  7  Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts;
     All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

  8  Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time,
     And in the night his song shall be with me,
     And my prayer unto the God of my life.

  9  I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me?
     Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

  10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
     While they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

  11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul?--and why art thou disquieted
           within me?
     Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him,
     Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.[1]

  [1] The title of the Psalm (משכיל MASCHIL--_instruction_,) is
  the same as that of other twelve. Some have referred the word
  merely to the music--indicating the tune to which the Psalms were
  set,--demanding of the sons of Korah, and "the chief musician,"
  (the conductors of temple-song,) some melody specially adapted to
  the sentiments they contain. Others, with greater probability,
  take it as indicative of their _design_;--that while expressive of
  personal feeling and experience, they were intended for the
  "instruction" and comfort of the Church in all ages. Hence the
  term given to them of _didactic_.

  Though his name is not mentioned, there is little doubt that
  David, and not the sons of Korah, as some have supposed, was the
  author of this Psalm. The reader is referred to _Hengstenberg_ for
  a statement of the internal grounds, in the Psalm itself, to
  favour this conclusion. "To me," says Calvin, "it appears more
  probable that the sons of Korah are here mentioned because this
  Psalm was committed as a precious treasure to be preserved by
  them;--as we know that out of the number of the singers some were
  chosen and appointed to be keepers of the Psalms. That there is no
  mention made of David's name, does not in itself involve any
  difficulty, since we see the same omission in other Psalms, of
  which there is, notwithstanding, the strongest grounds for
  concluding that he was author."

  According to an arbitrary division by the Jews of their Psalter
  into five parts, supposed to have been made by Ezra after the
  return from Babylon, the Forty-second Psalm forms the commencement
  of the second book. Regarding its structure, we may remark, that
  it is divided into two portions or _strophes_, each of these
  closing with a refrain in verses 5 and 11.

The following is an excellent poetical paraphrase of the Psalm, by
Bishop Lowth:--

    "As pants the wearied hart for cooling springs,
      That sinks exhausted in the summer's chase;
    So pants my longing soul, great King of kings!
      So thirsts to reach Thy sacred dwelling-place.

    "On briny tears my famish'd soul hath fed,
      While taunting foes deride my deep despair;
    'Say, where is now thy Great Deliverer fled,
      Thy mighty God, deserted wanderer, where?'

    "Oft dwell my thoughts on those thrice happy days,
      When to Thy fane I led the willing throng;
    Our mirth was worship, all our pleasure praise,
      And festal joys still closed with sacred song.

    "Why throb, my heart? why sink, my saddening soul,
      Why droop to earth, with various foes oppress'd?
    My years shall yet in blissful circles roll,
      And peace be yet an inmate of this breast.

    "By Jordan's banks with devious steps I stray,
      O'er Hermon's rugged rocks and deserts dear:
    E'en there Thy hand shall guide my lonely way,
      There Thy remembrance shall my spirit cheer.

    "In rapid floods the vernal torrents roll,
      Harsh sounding cataracts responsive roar;
    Thine angry billows overwhelm my soul,
      And dash my shatter'd bark from shore to shore.

    "Yet Thy sure mercies ever in my sight,
      My heart shall gladden through the tedious day;
    And 'midst the dark and gloomy shades of night,
      To Thee I'll fondly tune the grateful lay.

    "Rock of my hope! great Solace of my heart!
      Why, why desert the offspring of Thy care,
    While taunting foes thus point th' invidious dart,
      'Where is thy God, abandon'd wanderer, where?'

    "Why faint, my soul? why doubt Jehovah's aid?
      Thy God the God of mercy still shall prove;
    Within His courts thy thanks shall yet be paid,
      Unquestion'd be His pity and His love."




INTRODUCTORY.


                                         PAGE

  I. THE SCENE OF THE PSALM,                2

  II. THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE PSALM,      10

  III. A PECULIAR EXPERIENCE,              24




CONTENTS OF THE PSALM.


  I. THE HART PANTING,                     36

  II. THE HART WOUNDED,                    46

  III. THE LIVING GOD,                     60

  IV. THE TAUNT,                           78

  V. THE TAUNT,                            90

  VI. SABBATH MEMORIES,                   102

  VII. HOPE,                              122

  VIII. THE HILL MIZAR,                   141

  IX. THE CLIMAX,                         166

  X. LESSONS,                             180

  XI. FAITH AND PRAYER,                   192

  XII. THE QUIET HAVEN,                   212




I.

The Scene of the Psalm.


    "Where is thy favour'd haunt, Eternal Voice,
        The region of Thy choice,
    Where, undisturb'd by sin and earth, the soul
        Owns Thine entire control?
    'Tis on the mountain's summit dark and high,
        Where storms are hurrying by:
    'Tis 'mid the strong foundations of the earth,
        Where torrents have their birth.
    No sounds of worldly toil ascending there
        Mar the full burst of prayer;
    Lone nature feels that she may freely breathe,
        And round us and beneath
    Are heard her sacred tones: the fitful sweep
        Of winds across the steep,
    The dashing waters where the air is still,
        From many a torrent rill--.
    Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart
        For thought to do her part."

"The spot was so attractive to me, as well as the view of the
surrounding country so charming, that I had great difficulty in
tearing myself away from it. In the foreground, at my feet, was the
Jordan flowing through its woods of tamarisks. On the other side rose
gently the plain of Beisan surmounted by the high _tell_ of that name.
In the distance were the mountains of Gilboa--the whole stretch of
which is seen, even as far as ancient Jezreel."--_Van de Velde's
Travels in Syria and Palestine_, vol. ii. p. 355.


I.

THE SCENE OF THE PSALM.

All recent explorers of Palestine speak in glowing terms of that
"solemn eastern background," with its mellow tints of blue and purple,
rising conspicuous, as if a wall built by giants, from the deep gorge
or valley of the Jordan. This mountain range, and especially the hills
of Gilead, with their rugged ravines and forests of sycamore and
terebinth, are full of blended memories of joy and sadness. From one
of these <DW72>s, the Father of the Faithful obtained his first view of
his children's heritage. On another, the Angels of God--the two bright
celestial bands--greeted Jacob on his return from his sojourn in
Syria.[2] From another, trains of wailing captives on their way to
Babylon, must oft and again have taken through their tears their last
look of "the mountains round about Jerusalem." Nigh the same spot, the
footsteps of our blessed Redeemer Himself lingered, when death was
hovering over the couch of the friend He loved at Bethany. Martha and
Mary, from their Village-home, must have lifted their eyes to these
same "hills," from whence they knew, in the extremity of their
anguish, their "help" alone could come. While, at a later period, the
same spot was rendered illustrious as the locality of _Pella_, the
mountain fortress and asylum whither their Lord had admonished His
followers to flee, when the Imperial Eagles of Rome were gathered by
Titus around the devoted city.[3]

  [2] Gen. xxxii. 1.

  [3] See Mr Stanley's chapter, in his "Sinai and Palestine," on
  "Peræa and the Trans-Jordanic Tribes," in which these different
  references are graphically grouped together. "The Peræan hills are
  the 'Pisgah' of the earlier history: to the later history they
  occupy the pathetic relation that has been immortalised in the
  name of 'the long ridge,' from which the first and last view of
  Granada is obtained. They are the 'Last Sigh' of the Israelite
  exile."--(P. 328.)

This "land beyond the Jordan" still further derives an imperishable
interest from being the exile-retreat of the sweet Singer of Israel in
the most pathetic period of his chequered life and reign. There is no
more touching episode in all Hebrew history than the recorded flight
of David from his capital on the occasion of the rebellion of Absalom
and the defection of his people. Passing, barefoot and weeping,
across the brook Kedron, and thence by the fords of Jericho, he sped
northwards with his faithful adherents, and found a temporary shelter
amid these remote fastnessess.

Minds of a peculiar temperament have often found it a relief, in
seasons of sadness, to give expression to their pent-up feelings in
poetry or song. Ancient as well as modern verse and music abound with
striking examples of this,--"Songs in the Night," when the mouldering
harp was taken down from the willows by some captive spirit, and made
to pour forth its strains or numbers in touching elegy. David's own
lament for Jonathan is a gush of intensified feeling which will occur
to all, and which could have been penned only in an agony of tears.[4]

  [4] As an example in modern poetry, need we refer to that noblest
  tribute ever penned over departed worth, the "_In Memoriam_" of
  Tennyson; or in modern song, to the exquisite and plaintive
  loveliness of this very Psalm, set to music by Mendelssohn, and so
  well known by the title, "_As the hart panteth_."

It was a spirit crushed and broken with other, but not less poignant
sorrows, which dictated this Psalm of his exile. May we not imagine
that, in addition to the tension of feeling produced by his altered
fortunes, there was in the very scene of his banishment, where the
plaintive descant was composed, much to inspire poetic sentiment? The
alternate calm and discord of outer nature found their response in his
own chequered experiences. Nature's Æolian harp--its invisible strings
composed of rustling leaves and foaming brooks, or the harsher tones
of tempest and thunder, flood and waterfall--awoke the latent
harmonies of his soul. They furnished him with a key-note to discourse
higher melodies, and embody struggling thoughts in inspired numbers.
In reading this Psalm we at once feel that we are with the Minstrel
King, not in the Tabernacle of Zion, but in some glorious "House not
made with hands,"--some Cathedral whose aisles are rocky cliffs and
tangled branches, and its roof the canopy of Heaven!

Let us picture him seated in one of those deep glens listening to the
murmur of the rivulet and the wail of the forest. Suddenly the sky is
overcast Dark clouds roll their masses along the purple peaks. The
lightning flashes; and the old oaks and terebinths of Bashan bend
under the tumult of the storm. The higher rivulets have swelled the
channel of Jordan,--"deep calls to deep"--the waves chafe and riot
along the narrow gorges. Suddenly a struggling ray of sunshine steals
amid the strife, and a stray note from some bird answers joyously to
its gleam. It is, however, _but_ a gleam. The sky again threatens,
fresh bolts wake the mountain echoes. The river rolls on in augmented
volume, and the wind wrestles fiercely as ever with the denizens of
the forest. At last the contest is at an end. The sky is calm--the air
refreshed--the woods are vocal with song--ten thousand dripping boughs
sparkle in the sunlight; the meadows wear a lovelier emerald; and
rock, and branch, and floweret, are reflected in the bosom of the
stream.

As the royal spectator with a poet and painter's eye is gazing on this
shifting diorama, and when Nature is laughing and joyous again amid
her own tear-drops, another simple incident arrests his attention. A
Hart or Deer, hit by the archers or pursued by some wild beast on
these "mountains of the leopards," with hot eyeballs and panting
sides, comes bounding down the forest glade to quench the rage of
thirst. The sight suggests nobler aspirations. With trembling hand and
tearful eye the exiled spectator awakes his harp-strings, and
bequeaths to us one of the most pathetic musings in the whole Psalter.
The 23d has happily been called "the nightingale of the Psalms;" this
may appropriately be termed "the turtle-dove." We hear the lonely bird
as if seated on a solitary branch warbling its "reproachful music," or
rather struggling on the ground with broken wing, uttering a doleful
lament. These strains form an epitome of the Christian life--a diary
of religious experience, which, after three thousand years, find an
echo in every heart. Who can wonder that they have smoothed the
death-pillow of dying saints, and taken a thorn from the crown of the
noble army of martyrs![5]

  [5] I refer the reader to the words quoted on the title-page. They
  form the dying testimony and experience of one of the holiest men
  of any age. We have seen in the possession of a revered friend,
  the Bible which belonged to the great Marquis of Argyle, and which
  formed his constant companion during the period of his
  imprisonment. Almost every verse of the 42d Psalm is specially
  marked. Some of the verses, such as the third, are noted with a
  double stroke. We may well imagine him, after closing such "an
  afflicted man's companion," thus writing to his Marchioness--"They
  may shut me in prison where they please, but they cannot shut out
  God from me."




II.

The General Scope of the Psalm.


    "Like unto ships far off at sea,
    Outward or homeward bound are we:
    Before, behind, and all around
    Floats and swings the horizon's bound;
    Seems at its outer rims to rise,
    And climb the crystal wall of the skies;
    And then again to turn and sink,
    As if we could slide from its outer brink.
    Ah! it is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
    But ourselves
    That rock and rise
    With endless and uneasy motion--
    Now touching the very skies,
    Now sinking into the depths of ocean."

"The Scriptures have laid a flat opposition between faith and sense.
We live by faith and not by sense. They are two buckets--the life of
faith and the life of sense; when one goes up, the other goes
down."--_Bridge_, 1637.

"There are twins striving within me; a Jacob and an Esau. I can,
through Thy grace, imitate Thy choice, and say with Thee, _Jacob have
I loved, and Esau have I hated_. Blessed God! make Thou that word of
Thine good in me, that _the elder shall serve the younger_."--_Bishop
Hall_, 1656.


II.

THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE PSALM.

"If the Book of Psalms be, as some have styled it, a mirror or
looking-glass of pious and devout affections, this Psalm, in
particular, deserves as much as any one Psalm to be so entitled, and
is as proper as any other to kindle and excite such in us. Gracious
desires are here strong and fervent; gracious hopes and fears, joys
and sorrows, are here struggling. Or we may take it for a conflict
between sense and faith; sense objecting, and faith answering."[6]

  [6] Matthew Henry.

In these few words, the Father of commentators, with his wonted
discernment, has given us the key to the true interpretation of this
sacred song. It may be regarded, indeed, as the Old Testament parallel
to the 7th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which another
inspired writer truthfully and powerfully portrays the same great
struggle between corruption and grace, faith and sense, "the old and
the new man."

There are two antagonist principles in the heart of every believer,
corresponding to the great forces which act in the material world. The
tendency of his new nature is to gravitate towards God--the Divine Sun
of his being--the centre of his fondest affections--the object of his
deepest love. But "there is a law in his members warring against the
law of his mind;"[7]--the remains of his _old_ nature, leading him to
wander in wide and eccentric orbit from the grand Source of light, and
happiness, and joy! "_What will ye see in the Shulamite?_" asks the
Spouse in the Canticles, personating the believer (at a time, too,
when conscious of devoted attachment to the Lord she loved). The reply
is, "_As it were the company of two armies_." (Sol. Song vi. 13.)
Sight on the one hand, Faith on the other. The carnal mind, which is
enmity against God, battling with the renewed spiritual mind, which
brings life and peace. Affections heaven-born, counteracted and marred
by affections earth-born. The magnet would be true to its pole but
for disturbing moral influences. The eagle would soar, but it is
chained to the cage of corruption. The believer would tread boldly on
the waves, but unbelief threatens to sink him. He would fight the
battles of the faith, but there is "a body of death" chained to his
heavenly nature, which compels him to mingle denunciations of himself
as "a wretched man" with the shouts of victory.[8]

  [7] Rom. vii. 23.

  [8] Rom. vii. 24, 25.

We may imagine David, when he composed this Psalm, wrapped in silent
contemplation--the past, the present, and the future suggesting
mingled reflections. The shepherd, the king, the fugitive! Sad comment
on the alternations of human life! humbling lesson for God's Anointed!
It furnishes him with a true estimate of the world's greatness. It has
taught him the utter nothingness of all here as a portion for the
soul. Amid outward trial and inward despondency, FAITH looks to its
only true refuge and resting-place. His truant heart softened and
saddened by calamity, turns to its God,--"_As the hart panteth after
the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear
before God?_" (Ver. 1, 2.) But the wave is beaten back again! He
remembers his sins and his sorrows, and (more galling to his sensitive
spirit) the taunts of ungodly scoffers. "_My tears have been my meat
day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?_"
(Ver. 3.) Moreover, he is denied the solace of public ordinances. He
can no longer, as once he could, light the decaying ashes of his faith
at the fires of the altar. Memory dwelt with chastened sadness on the
hours of holy convocation. "_When I remember these things, I pour out
my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude; I went with them to
the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude
that kept holy-day._" (Ver. 4.) But, once more, the new-born principle
regains the mastery. He rebukes his own unbelief, urges renewed
dependence on God, and triumphs in the assurance of His countenance
and love. "_Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou
disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the
help of his countenance._" (Ver. 5.) But again the harp is muffled!
_Unbelief_ musters her ranks; fresh remembrances of sin and sorrow
crowd upon him. "_O my God, my soul is cast down within me._" (Ver.
6.) _Faith_, however, has its antidote at hand, and the momentary
cause of depression is removed. The memory of former succours and
mercies inspires with confidence for the future, and he immediately
adds, "_I will remember_ THEE (in this the place of my Exile) _from
the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar_."

But the storm-clouds are still wreathing his sky;--nay, it seems as if
the tempest were deepening. Fresh assaults of temptation are coming in
upon him;--there seems no light in the cloud, no ray in the darkness.
"_Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts; all thy
waves and thy billows are gone over me._" (Ver. 7.) But again, his own
extremity is God's opportunity; Faith is seen cresting the resurgent
waves. Lifting his voice above the storm, he thus expresses his
assurance in God's faithfulness, "_Yet the Lord will command his
loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be
with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life_." (Ver. 8.) Nay, he
resolves in all time to come to provide against the return of seasons
of guilty distrust and misgiving. He dictates and transcribes the very
words of a prayer to be employed as an antidote in any such recurring
moments of despondency. He resolves to rise above frames and feelings,
and to plant his feet on the Rock of Ages, which these fluctuating
billows can never shake;--"_I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou
forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the
enemy?_" (Ver. 9.) The Old nature makes one last and final effort, ere
abandoning the conflict. Unbelief rallies its strength. A former
assault is renewed. "_As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies
reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?_" (Ver.
10.) But he reverts to his prayer! He adopts his own liturgy for a
time of sorrow. "_Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou
disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him._"
(Ver. 11.) He seems to be "answered while yet speaking;" for he closes
with the joyful declaration, "_Who is the health of my countenance,
and my God_." (Ver. 11.) He had made a similar assertion in a former
verse (Ver. 5), "_I shall yet praise him for the help of his
countenance_;" but now he can add the language of triumphant
assurance, "My God!" The conflict is ended;--sense quits the field,
and faith conquers. He began the Psalm in trouble, he ends it with
joy. Its notes throughout are on the minor key, but these merge at
last into a strain of triumph. He began comparing himself to the
stricken deer--the helpless, breathless, panting fugitive;--he ends it
with angel's words,--with the motto and watchword in which a seraph
might well glory--heaven knows no happier--"MY GOD!"

"He looked," says Matthew Henry, "upon the living God as his chief
good, and had set his heart upon Him accordingly, and was resolved to
live and die by Him; and casting anchor thus at first, he rides out
the storm."

       *       *       *       *       *

O child of God! touchingly expressive picture have we here of the
strange vicissitudes in thy history. The shuttle in the web of thy
spiritual life, darting hither and thither, weaving its chameleon
hues; or, to adopt a more appropriate emblem, thy heart a
battle-field, and "no discharge in that war" till the pilgrim-armour
be exchanged for the pilgrim-rest:--sense and sin doing their utmost
to quench the bivouac-fires of faith, and give the enemy the
advantage: ay, and they _would_ succeed in quenching these, did not
the Lord of pilgrims feed with the oil of His own grace the
languishing flame. "Sometimes," it has been well said, "in the Voyages
of the Soul, we feel that we can only go by anxious soundings,--the
compass itself seeming useless--not knowing our bearings,--nearing
here Christ--then perhaps the dim tolling bell amidst the thick
darkness warning us to keep off."[9] But fear not; He will "bring you
to the haven where ye would be." The voice of triumph will be heard
high above the water-floods. The contest may be long, but it will not
be doubtful. He who rules the raging of the sea will, in His own good
time, say, "Peace, be still, and immediately there will be a great
calm." Have you ever watched the career of the tiny branch or withered
leaf which has been tossed into a little virgin rill on one of our
high-table lands or mountain moors? For a while, in its serpentine
course, it is borne sluggishly along, impeded by protruding moss, or
stone, or lichen. Now it circles and saunters hither and thither on
the lazy streamlet--now floating back towards the point of departure,
as if uncertain which direction to choose. A passing breath of wind
carries it to the centre, and the buoyant rivulet sings its way
joyously onward, bearing its little burden through copse, and birch,
and heather. But again it is obstructed. Some deep inky pool detains
it in the narrow ravine. There it is sucked in, whirled and twisted
about, chafed and tortured with the conflict of waters; or else it
lies a helpless prisoner, immured by the rocks in their fretting
caldrons. But by and by, with a new impulse it breaks away along the
rapid torrent-stream, bounding over cascade and waterfall, home to its
ocean destiny.

  [9] Cheever's "Windings."

So it is with the soul! It is often apparently the sport and captive
of opposing currents. It has its pools of darkness, its eddies of
unbelief, its jagged rocks of despair, but it will eventually clear
them all. "All motion," to use the words of one of the best and
saintliest of the old writers on this very Psalm (Sibbs), and which
carry out our illustration, "All motion tends to rest, and ends in it.
God is the centre and resting-place of the soul; and here David takes
up his rest, and so let us. We see that discussing of objections in
the consistory of the Soul, settles the Soul at last--Faith at length
silencing all risings to the contrary. Then whatsoever times come, we
are sure of a hiding-place and a sanctuary."

Yes! your life, notwithstanding all these fluctuations, will end
triumphantly. It may, as in this Psalm, be now a pæan, then a dirge;
now a _Miserere_, then a _Te Deum_. The _Miserere_ and _Te Deum_ may
be interweaved throughout; but the latter will close the
Life-story--the concluding strain will be the anthem of Victory. You
may arrest the arrow in its flight--you may chain the waterfall, or
stay the lightning, sooner than unsay the words of God, "_He that hath
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ_." (Phil. i. 6.)

Remember, God does not say, that "good work" is never to be impeded.
He has never given promise in Scripture of an unclouded
day--uninterrupted sunshine--a waveless, stormless sea. No, "the
morning without clouds" is a heavenly emblem. The earthly one is "a
day, in which the light shall neither be clear nor dark." (Zech. xiv.
6.) The analogy of the outer world of nature, at least under these
our chequered and ever-varying skies, teaches us this. Spring comes
smiling, and pours her blossoms into the lap of Summer. But the skies
lower, and the rain and battering hail descend, and the virgin
blossoms droop their heads and almost die. Summer again smiles and the
meadows look gay; the flowers ring merry chimes with their leaves and
petals, and Autumn with glowing face is opening her bosom for the
expected treasure. But all at once drought comes with her fiery
footsteps. Every blade and floweret, gasping for breath, lift their
blanched eyelids to the brazen sky; or the night-winds rock the laden
branches and strew the ground. Thus we see it is not one unvarying,
unchecked progression, from the opening bud to the matured fruit. But
every succeeding month is scarred and mutilated by drought and
moisture, wind and rain, storm and sunshine. Yet, never once has
Autumn failed to gather up her golden sheaves; ay, and if you ask her
testimony, she will tell that the very storm, and wind, and rain you
dreaded as foes, were the best auxiliaries in filling her yellow
garners.

If the experience of any one here present be that of "the deep" and
"the water-flood"--"the stormy wind and tempest," think ever of the
closing words of the Psalm, and let them "turn your mourning into
dancing; take off your sackcloth, and gird you with gladness!" _You_
may change towards God, but He is unchanging towards _you_. The stars
may be swept from our view by intervening clouds, but they shine
bright as ever,--undimmed altar-fires in the great temple of the
universe. Our _vision_ may be at fault, but not their radiance and
undying glory. The Being "not confined to temples made with hands,"
who met this wrestler of old in the forest of Gilead, and poured
better than Gilead's balm into his bosom, is the same now as He was
then. And if thou art a wrestler too, He seems through the moaning of
the storm to say, "_Though thou fall, yet shalt thou not be cast down
utterly, for the Lord upholdeth thee with his right hand_."

"_My God!_" Oh, if that be the last entry in the Diary of religious
experience, be not desponding now because of present passing shadows,
but "thank God and take courage." It is written that "at evening-time
it shall be light." (Zech. xiv. 7.) The sun may wade all day through
murky clouds, but he will pillow his head at night on a setting couch
of vermilion and gold. "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall
ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers
with _yellow gold_."[10] It was said by aged Jacob, in his prophetic
death-song, regarding that very tribe on the borders of which the
royal exile now sang, "GAD, _a troop shall overcome him: but he shall
overcome at the last_."[11] Was not this the key-note of his present
elegy? Faith could lift its head triumphant in the clang of battle,
amid these troops of spiritual plunderers, and sing, "_Though an host
should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should
rise against me, in_ THIS _will I be confident._"[12]

  [10] Ps. lxviii. 13.

  [11] Gen. xlix. 19.

  [12] Ps. xxvii. 3.




III.

A Peculiar Experience.


    "I ask'd the Lord that I might grow
      In faith, and love, and every grace;
    Might more of His salvation know,
      And seek more earnestly His face.

    "'Twas He who taught me thus to pray;
      And He, I trust, has answer'd prayer,
    But it has been in such a way
      As almost drove me to despair.

    "I hoped that in some favour'd hour
      At once He'd answer my request;
    And by His love's constraining power,
      Subdue my sins and give me rest.

    "Instead of this, He made me feel
      The hidden evils of my heart;
    And let the angry powers of hell
      Assault my soul in every part."

    --_Cowper._

"If we listen to David's harp, we shall hear as many hearse-like
harmonies as carols."--_Lord Bacon._

"If we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may
accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here. If
not, we must sympathise with those whose case they speak too plainly,
and thank God it is not our own case."--_Matthew Henry._


III.

A PECULIAR EXPERIENCE.

Although this Psalm, in bold and striking figure, presents a faithful
miniature picture of the Believer's life, we must regard it as
depicting an extraordinary experience at a peculiar passage of David's
history, and which has its counterpart still in that of many of God's
children.

The writer of the Psalm was evidently undergoing "spiritual
depression"--what is sometimes spoken of as "spiritual desertion,"--that
sorrow, awful in its reality--too deep for utterance--deeper than the
yawning chasm made by family bereavement--the sorrow of all sorrows,
the loss of God in the soul!

There is much caution needed in speaking of this. There are causes
which lead to spiritual depression which are purely physical, arising
from a diseased body, an overstrung mind--a succession of calamities
weakening and impairing the nervous system. We know how susceptible
are the body and mind together, of being affected by external
influences. "We are," says an able analyser of human emotions,
"fearfully and wonderfully made. Of that constitution which in our
ignorance we call union of soul and body, we know little respecting
what is cause, and what effect. We would fain believe that the mind
has power over the body; but it is just as true that the body rules
the mind. Causes apparently the most trivial--a heated room, want of
exercise--a sunless day, a northern aspect--will make all the
difference between happiness and unhappiness; between faith and doubt;
between courage and indecision. To our fancy there is something
humiliating in being thus at the mercy of our animal organism. We
would fain find nobler causes for our emotions."[13] Yes--many of
those sighs and tears, and morbid, depressed feelings, which
Christians speak of as the result of spiritual darkness and the
desertion of God, are merely the result of physical derangement, the
penalty often for the violation of the laws of health. The atmosphere
we breathe is enough to account for them. They come and go--rise and
fall with the mercury in the tube. These are cases, not for the
spiritual, but for the bodily physician. Their cure is in attendance
to the usual laws and prescriptions which regulate the healthy action
of the bodily functions.

  [13] Rev. Fred. Robertson's "Sermons; Second Series," p. 85.

There is another class of causes which lead to spiritual depression
which are partly physical and partly religious. There must necessarily
be depression where there is undue elation; where the soul-structure
is built on fluctuating frames and feelings, and the religious life is
made more _subjective_ than _objective_.

Many imagine, unless they are at all times in a glow of fervour--an
ecstatic frame of feeling--all must be wrong with them.[14] Now, there
is nothing more dangerous or deceptive than a life of mere feeling;
and its _most_ dangerous phase is a life of religious emotional
excitement. It is in the last degree erroneous to consider all this
glowing ecstasy of frame a necessary condition of healthy spiritual
life. Artificial excitement, in any shape, is perilous. Apart
altogether from the moral and religious aspect of the question, the
tendency of the ball-room and theatre, and a preference in reading for
works of fiction, is to make a man nauseate the plain, commonplace
work, the occurrences and themes of this every-day world. Feed him on
dainties and forced meats, and he despises husks and plain fare.
Equally true is this with regard to the life of the soul. It is not
fed on luscious stimulants and ecstatic experiences. When it is so,
the result is every now and then a collapse; like a child building his
mimic castle too high, the perpendicular and equilibrium are lost. It
totters and falls, and he has just to begin again. The dew distils,
and hangs its spangled jewels on blade and flower, gently and in
silence. The rain comes down in tiny particles and soft showers, not
in drenching water-floods. So the healthy Christian holds on the even
tenor of his way, unaffected by the barometer of feeling. He knows
this is apt to be elevated and depressed by a thousand accidents over
which he has no control. His life is fed, not from the fitful and
uncertain streams issuing from the low ground of his own experience,
but from the snow-clad summits--the Alps of God. Were he thus
suffering himself to depend on the rills of his own feelings, his
brook would often be dry in summer--the season when he most needed it;
whereas the supply from the glacier-beds on which the sun shines, is
fullest in these very times of drought.

  [14] "You will not be asked in the last Great Day whether you had
  great enjoyment and much enlargement of soul here. Speak to that
  vast multitude, which no man can number, now around the throne.
  Ask them whether they came through much _consolation_ and joy in
  the Lord. No! through much _tribulation_. Ask them whether they
  were saved by their warmth of love to their Saviour. No! but they
  had washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the
  Lamb."--_Miss Plumptre's Letters._

Add to this, religion is shorn of its glory when it is dwarfed into a
mere thing of sentiment and feeling. Its true grandeur and greatness
is, when it incorporates itself with active duty, and fulfils its best
definition as not a "_being_" but a "_doing_." Of nothing, therefore,
do we require to be more jealous, than a guilty, unmanly, morbid
dwelling on feelings and experiences. You remember Elijah, when he
fled pusillanimous and panic-stricken from his work, and took to a
hermit-cell amid the solitudes of Sinai. We find him seated in his
lonely cave, his head drooping on his breast, sullen thought mantling
his brow, muttering his querulous soliloquy, "I am left alone." The
voice of God hunts out the fugitive from duty. "What doest thou here,
Elijah? Why in this cave, brooding in a coward spirit, unworthy of
thee? Art thou to cease to work for _Me_, because the high day of
excitements on the heights of Carmel are over? Here is food to
strengthen thy body, and here is 'the still, small voice' of my love
to strengthen thy soul. Go forth to active duty. Leave thy cave and
thy cloak behind thee. Take thy pilgrim-staff and scrip, and with the
consciousness of a great work in hand, and a brief time to do it in,
arise, and onward to Horeb, the mount of God!" (1 Kings xix.)

       *       *       *       *       *

But having thrown out these preliminary cautions, the question occurs:
_Are_ there no cases of spiritual depression or desertion, arising
purely from _spiritual_ causes?

We answer, Yes. The Bible recognises such Spiritual darkness--absence
of all spiritual comfort and joy--is no figment of man's theological
creed. It is a sad and solemn verity--the experience, too, of God's
own children. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth
the voice of his servant, _that walketh in darkness, and hath no
light_?" (Isa. l. 10.) "Oh," says the afflicted patriarch of Uz, "that
I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when
his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through
darkness." (Job xxix. 2, 3.) "In my prosperity," is the testimony of
David, at a later period of his life, "I said, I shall never be moved.
Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: _thou
didst hide thy face, and I was troubled_." (Ps. xxx. 5-7.) "I will
rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways
I will seek him whom my soul loveth: _I sought him, but I found him
not_.... My beloved had _withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul
failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called
him, but he gave me no answer_." (Sol. Song iii. 2, v. 6.) Can we
forget a more awful and impressive example? ONE soaring above the
reach of all grovelling human experiences, but yet who tells us, in
His bitter Eloi cry, that even HE knew what it was to be God-deserted
and forsaken!

Are there any whose eyes trace these pages who have ever undergone
such a season? or it may be are undergoing it now? I stop not to
inquire as to the cause;--indulged sin, omitted or carelessly
performed duty, neglect of prayer, worldly conformity.[15] Are you
feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of
many, has waxed cold;--are you mourning that you have not the nearness
to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,--not the love of your Bibles,
and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,--that a heavy cloud
mantles your spiritual horizon,--God's countenance, not what once it
was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,--nor heaven what once it
seemed, a second home?

  [15] "In the time of need He hides Himself often, and seems to
  have forgotten me. Tears have thus been my meat, because of their
  saying unto my soul, 'Where is now thy God?' But I am bound by all
  the experienced freeness and riches of the Redeemer's grace to
  say, that when He hides Himself from me, it is not because He has
  forgotten _me_, but because I have been forgetting
  Him."--_Hewitson._

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, not comforted!" do not
despond. In these very sighings and moanings of your downcast spirit,
there are elements for hope and comfort, not for despair. They are the
evidences and indications that the spark, though feeble, is not
quenched--that the pulse, though languid, still beats--that faith,
though like a grain of mustard-seed, is still germinating. "O thou of
little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?" It is that very _shadow_
that has now come athwart your soul, and which you so bitterly mourn,
which tells of _sunshine_. As it is the shadow which enables us to
read the hours on the dial, so is it in the spiritual life. It is
because of these shadows on the soul's dial-face that we can infer the
shining of a better Sun. "The wicked have no bands in _their_
(spiritual) death." Their life has been nothing but shadow; they
cannot therefore mourn the loss of a sunshine they never felt or
enjoyed. Well has it been said, "When the refreshing dews of grace
seem to be withheld, and we are ready to say, 'Our hope is lost, God
hath forgotten to be gracious'--this is that furnace in which one that
is not a child of God never was placed. For Satan takes good care not
to disquiet his children. He has no fire for their souls on this side
everlasting burnings; his fatal teaching ever is, Peace, peace!"[16]
But what, desponding one, is, or ought to be, thy resort? Go! exile in
spirit--go, like that royal mourner amid the oak-thickets of Gilead!
Brood no more in unavailing sorrow and with burning tears. Thou
mayest, like him, have much to depress thy spirit. Black and crimson
sins may have left their indelible stain on the page of memory. In
aching heart-throbs, thou mayest be heaving forth the bitter
confession, "_Mine_ iniquities have separated between me and my God."
But go like him! take down thy silent harp. Its strings may be
corroded with rust. They may tell the touching story of a sad
estrangement. Go to the quiet solitude of thy chamber. Seek out the
unfrequented path of prayer;--choked it may be with the weeds of
forgetfulness and sloth. Cast thyself on thy bended knees; and, as the
wounded deer bounds past thee (emblem of thine own bleeding heart),
wake the echoes of thy spirit with the penitential cry, "_As the hart
panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O
God!_"

  [16] Miss Plumtre's Letters.




CONTENTS OF THE PSALM.




I.

The Hart Panting.


    "Oh, would I were as free to rise
      As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,
    The arrowy light of sunset skies,
      Or sound--or rays--or star of morn,
    Which meets in heaven at twilight's close,
      Or aught which soars uncheck'd and free,
    Through earth and heaven, that I might lose
      Myself in finding Thee!"

"O mysterious Jesus, teach us Thy works and Thy plans. Let our hearts
pant after Thee as the hart after the water-brooks. Create a thirst
which nothing shall satisfy but the fountain of eternal love. See the
velocity with which the needle flees to the magnet _when it gets
within distance_; so shall we hasten to our Magnet--our Beloved--as we
approach Him."--_Lady Powerscourt's Letters._

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God."--_Verse 1._


I.

THE HART PANTING.

We have pictured, in a preceding chapter, the uncrowned Monarch
of Israel seated, pensive and sad, amid "the willows by the
water-courses;" or wandering forth, amid the deepening twilight-shadows,
with the roll of Jordan at his side, perhaps, like his great ancestor,
to "wrestle with God until the breaking of the day."

We have already adverted to the simple incident which arrested his
attention. A breathless tenant of the forest bounded past him to
quench its thirst in the neighbouring river. That unconscious child of
nature furnishes the key-note of his song. Let us sit by the banks, as
the Exile takes down his harp, and thus sings--"AS THE HART PANTETH
AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS, SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, O GOD."

God is the only satisfying portion of the soul. Every theory of human
happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the
aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the
infinite, man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its
borrowed light, will compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as
well expect the caged wild beast to be happier within the iron bars of
his den than roaming lord of the forest, as for the human spirit to be
content with the present and the finite as a substitute for the
immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone could slake the
thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have offered
it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades
of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks
of Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have
bounded down the valley in search of the stream.

So with the soul. Nothing but the stream flowing from the Everlasting
Hills will satisfy it. You may tempt a man, as he is hurrying on his
immortal way, with the world's pastures,--you may hold out to him the
golden sheaves of riches,--you may detain him amid the sunny glades of
pleasure, or on the hill-tops of fame (and he is but too willing for
a while to linger)--but satisfy him they cannot! When his nobler
nature acquires its rightful ascendancy he will spurn them all.
Brushing each one in succession away, as the stag does the dewy drops
of the morning, he will say--"All are insufficient! I wish them not. I
have been mocked by their failure. I have found that each has a lie in
its right hand;--it is a poor counterfeit--a shadowy figure of the
true. I want the fountain of living waters--I want the Infinite of
Knowledge, Goodness, Truth, Love!" "In the LORD put I my trust: why
say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"[17]

  [17] Psalm xi. 1.

The fact is, it is the very grandeur of the soul which leads it thus
to pant after God. Small things satisfy a small capacity, but what is
made receptive of the vast and glorious can only be satisfied with
great things. The mind of the child is satisfied with the toy or the
bauble; the mind of the untutored savage with bits of painted glass or
tinsel; but the man, the sage, the philosopher, desiderate higher
possessions, purer knowledge, nobler themes of thought and objects of
ambition. Some insects are born for an hour, and are satisfied with
it. A summer's afternoon is the duration of existence allotted to
myriads of tiny _ephemera_. In _their_ case, youth and age are crowded
into a few passing minutes. The descending sun witnesses their birth
and death;--the lifetime of other animals would be to them an
immortality. The soul, being infinite and unlimited in its capacities,
has correspondingly high aspirations. Vain would be the attempt to
fill up a yawning gulf by throwing into it a few grains of sand. But
not more vain or ineffectual than try to answer the deep yearnings of
the human spirit by the seen and the temporal.

Yes! on all the world's fountains, drink at them as you may, "_thirst
again_" is written. Of the world's mountains, climb them as you may,
you will never say, "I have reached the coveted summit. It is enough."
Men go sighing on, drinking their rivers of pleasure and climbing
their mountains of vanity. They feel all the while some undefined,
inarticulate, nameless longing after a satisfying good; but it is a
miserable travestie to say that it has been found, or can be found, in
anything here. "_Who will shew us any good?_" will still be the cry of
the groping seeker till he has learned to say, "_Lord, lift_ THOU
_upon me the light of thy countenance._"

We know how hard and difficult it is to convince of these sublime
verities. The soul, even in its hours of trouble and deep conviction,
is like a castaway from shipwreck, who sees from his raft-planks
something cresting the waves. He imagines it an island! As he nears
it, he fancies he sees purple flowers drooping over the solid rock,
and the sea-birds nestling in the crevices. But it is only an
aggregate of withered leaves and rotten branches, which the receding
tide has tossed together, the wayward freak of old ocean.

          "All are wanderers gone astray
    Each in his own delusions; they are lost
    In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd
    And never won. Dream after dream ensues;
    And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
    And still are disappointed. Rings the world
    With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
    And add two-thirds of the remaining half,
    And find the total of their hopes and fears
    Dreams, empty dreams."[18]--_Cowper's Task._

  [18] "I was at the very zenith of earthly happiness. On returning
  from the ball, I took a hasty review of the evening I had passed
  as I lay sleepless upon my pillow. The glitter--the music--the
  dance--the excitement--the attention--the pleasure--all passed
  before me. But, oh! I felt a want I could not describe. I sighed,
  and, throwing my arm over my head, whispered to myself these
  expressive words, '_Is this all?_'"--_Mrs Winslow, Life._

Let him who would solve this great problem of Happiness go to that
parable of nature--the hunted Stag seeking the water-brooks, the
thirsty soul seeking its God. God is the _home_ of the soul, and he is
away from home who pitches his tent and weaves his heart-affections
around anything short of Him. Who has not heard of "home-sickness"--the
desolate feelings of the lonely stranger in a strange land? Let
affection, and friendship, and pity do what they may to alleviate the
pang of distance and separation, though beaming faces be around, and
hands of love and sympathy be extended, still will the heart (despite
of all) be roaming the old hallowed haunts, climbing in thought the
hills of childhood, gazing on the old village church with its festoons
of ivy, seated under the aged elm, or listening to the music of the
passing brook and the music of voices sweeter and lovelier than all!
The soul is that stranger, dwelling in the tents of Kedar, and panting
for Heaven and God. Its language is, "I am _not_ at home, I am a
stranger here." Manifold, too, are the voices in this the land of its
exile, whispering, "_Arise ye and depart, for this is_ NOT _your
rest!_"[19]

  [19] Micah ii. 10.

You may have seen in our mountain glens, in the solemn twilight, birds
winging their way to their nests. There may be lovely bowers, gardens
of fragrance and beauty, close by,--groves inviting to sweetest
melody, Nature's consecrated haunts of song. But they tempt them not.
Their nests--their _homes_--are in yonder distant rock, and thither
they speed their way! So with the soul. The painted glories of this
world will not satisfy it. There is no rest in these for its weary
wing and wailing cry. It goes singing up and home to God. It has its
nest in the crevices of the Rock of Ages. When detained in the nether
valley, often is the warbling note heard, "Oh that I had wings like a
dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest." And when the flight
has been made from the finite to the infinite--from the lower valleys
of sense to the hills of faith--from the creature to the Creator--from
man to God,--as we see it folding its buoyant pinion and sinking into
the eternal clefts, we listen to the song, "_Return unto thy rest, O
my soul_!"

Reader! may this flight be yours. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be
found!" The creature may change, He cannot. The creature must die, He
is eternal. "_O God, thou art my God; early will I seek_ THEE: _my
soul thirsteth for_ THEE, _my flesh longeth for_ THEE _in a dry and
thirsty land, where no water is.... Because Thy loving-kindness is
better than life, my lips shall praise Thee._" (Ps. lxiii.)




II.

The Hart Wounded.


    "I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
    Long since. With many an arrow deep infix'd
    My panting side was charged, when I withdrew,
    To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
    There was I found by One who had Himself
    Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,
    And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.
    With gentle force soliciting the darts,
    He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"

    --_Cowper._

"It was in this extremity it occurred to her that, in the deficiency
of all hope in creatures, there might be _hope and help in God_. Borne
down by the burdens of a hidden providence (a providence which she did
not then love, because she did not then understand it) she yielded to
the pressure that was upon her, and began to look to Him in whom alone
there is true assistance."--_Madame Guyon's Life_, p. 38.

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God."--_Verse 1._


II.

The Hart Wounded.

Are we not warranted to infer that it was the _wounded_ stag which
David now saw, or pictured he saw, seeking the brooks?--the hart hit
by the archers, with blood-drops standing on its flanks, and its eye
glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death? But for these wounds it
would never have come to the Valley. It would have been nestling still
up in its native heath--the thick furze and cover of the mountain
heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring
aim; and, with distended nostril and quivering limb, it hastens to
allay the rage of its death-thirst.

Picture of David, ay, and of many who have been driven to drink of
that "river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." They are
_wounded_ spirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing
their life-blood. Faint, trembling, forlorn, weary, they have left
the world's high ground--the heights of vanity, and indifference, and
self-righteousness, and sin--and have sought the lowly Valley of
humiliation.

What are some of these arrows? There are arrows from the quiver of
MAN, and arrows from the quiver of GOD.

The _arrows of man_ are often the cruellest of all. "_Lo, the wicked
bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they
may privily shoot at the upright in heart._" (Ps. xi. 2.) ENVY is an
archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood. JEALOUSY is a
bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival.
REVENGE has his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to
retaliate the real or imagined injury. MALICE is an archer that seeks
his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton
mischief--irreparable injury--on the absent or innocent. CONTEMPT is a
bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn
on others. The teeth of such "are spears and arrows, and their tongue
a sharp sword." (Ps. lvii. 4.) DECEIT.--He is, in these our days, a
huntsman of repute--a modern Nimrod--with gilded arrows in his
quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He
makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren look,
within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless, on "the
mountains of prey!" "_Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and
from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? or what shall
be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with
coals of juniper._" (Ps. cxx. 2-4.)

But there are arrows also from the _quiver of_ GOD. "_The arrows of
the Almighty_," says Job, "_are within me, the poison whereof drinketh
up my spirit._" (Job vi. 4.) "_He hath bent His bow,_" says Jeremiah,
"_and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His
quiver to enter into my reins._" (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not
breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?--"_Let me fall
into the hands of God, for great are_ HIS _mercies!_" "_Faithful are
the wounds of_ THIS _friend._" (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.)

We need not stop to enumerate particularly these _arrows_. There is
the blanched arrow of _sickness_, the rusted arrow of _poverty_, the
lacerating arrow of _bereavement_, stained and saturated with tears,
and feathered from our own bosoms! There is the arrow, too, (though of
a different kind,) of God's own blessed _Word_, "quick and powerful."
"_Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies._" (Ps.
xlv. 5.)

Yet, blessed be God, these are often arrows which wound only to heal;
or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding,
panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself.
Suffering one! be thankful for thy wounds. But for these shafts thou
mightest have been, at this moment, sleeping on the mountain heights
of self-righteousness, or worldliness, or sin, with no thought of thy
soul; the streams of salvation disowned; forsaking, and continuing to
forsake, the "Fountain of Living Waters."

Let me ask, Has this been the result of thy woundings? Have they led
thee from the "broken (leaky) cistern" to say, "All my springs are in
THEE?" Remember affliction, worldly calamity, bereavement, have a
twofold effect. It is a solemn alternative! They may drive thee
nearer, they may drive thee farther from, thy God. They may drive
thee down to the gushing stream, or farther up the cold, freezing
mountain-side. The wounded hart of this Psalm, on receiving the sting
of the arrow, might have plunged only deeper and deeper into the toils
of the huntsmen, or the solitudes of the forest. It might have gone
with its pining eye, and broken heart, and bleeding wound, to bury
itself amid the withered leaves.

How many there are whose afflictions seem to lead to this sad
consequence; who, when mercies and blessings are removed, abandon
themselves to sullen and morbid fretfulness; who, instead of bowing
submissive to the hand that wounds and is able to heal, seem to feel
as if they were denuded of their rights! Their language is the bitter
reproach of Jonah--"_I do well to be angry, even unto death_."
Muffling themselves in hardened unbelief, their wretched solace is
that of despair--"_It is better for me to die than to live_."

"_Blessed is the man that_ ENDURETH _temptation_," not who rushes away
to pine, and bleed, and die;--or to feed still on husks and the
garbage of the wilderness, but who makes the nobler resolve, "_I will
arise and go to my Father_." Blessed is the man whose cry, like that
of the child, is answered by his heavenly Parent bending over the
cradle of his sorrow;--who feels, as the Psalmist did, that his
gracious Father and God is never so near him as in a time of trial.
"_When my spirit was overwhelmed,_ THEN THOU _knewest my path._" The
bird of the desert is said to bury its head in the sand on the
approach of its foes, and to abandon itself to destruction; but
blessed is the man who rather is like the bird of the grove, the first
twigs of whose nest have been ruthlessly pulled to pieces by the hand
of violence. Hovering for a while over her pillaged home, she fills
the wood with her plaintive lament, then soars away from the haunt of
the destroyer to begin a fresh one, in a place of safety, on the top
branch of some cedar of God!

Such was the case with David on the occasion of this Psalm. He had
read to him the most touching homily the world _could_ read on the
precarious tenure of earthly blessings. His sceptre, his crown, his
family, were like the bubbles on that foaming stream on which he
gazed, dancing their little moment on its surface, then gone, and gone
for ever. Is he to abandon himself to an ignoble despair? Is he to
conclude that the Lord has made him a target on which to exhaust His
quiver--that He has "forgotten to be gracious?" Is he to join
marauding chiefs beyond the Jordan, savage freebooters--become a
mountain adventurer on these Gentile borders, and forget Zion and
Zion's God? No! the earthly crown may fade, but the homeless,
uncrowned, unsceptred monarch has a better home and a better King
above; invisible walls and battlements, better than all the trenches
and moats of an earthly fortress, encompass the wanderer. With his eye
on these, thus he weaves his warrior song--"_I will say of the Lord,
He is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength,
in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my
high tower_." (Ps. xviii. 2.)

Reader! let me ask you, in closing this chapter, are _you_ panting for
God?

This is not the way--this is not the history of _most_. They are
panting, but _not_ for God! They are panting up the hill, like
Sisyphus, with their huge stone. _Ambition_ is panting up the hill--no
time to take a breath. _Pleasure_ is panting up the hill--pursuing her
butterfly existence--a phantom-chase--rushing from flower to flower,
extracting all the luscious sweets she can. _Fame_ is panting up the
hill, blowing her trumpet before her, eager to erect her own monument
on the coveted apex. _Mammon_ is pushing up the hill with his panting
team, to erect the temple of riches. Multitudes of hapless wayfarers
in the same reckless scramble have tumbled into crevices, and are
crying for help. Mammon's wheels are locked,--his treasure-chests have
fallen into the mire;--and yet, _on_ he goes, driving his jaded steeds
over the poor, and weak, and helpless--ay, those that assisted him to
load before he started at the mountain base. He must gain the top at
all hazards as best he may; and he will be crowned a hero, too, and
lauded for his feat!

Ah! strange that men should still be pursuing that phantom-chase. Or,
rather, strange that they should live so immeasurably beneath the
grandeur of their own destiny; rasping the shallows when they should
be out in the deep sea; furling and warping the sails of immortality,
instead of having every available yard of canvas spread to the breeze
of heaven.

These objects of earthly, perishable pursuit, _may_ do when the world
is bright, the heart unwounded, the eye undimmed. These may do when
the sun shines unclouded in our firmament, when our fields are waving,
when fortune is weaving her golden web, and the bark of existence with
its white sails is holding its way through summer seas. These may do
when the home circle is unbroken; when we miss no loved face, when we
mark no silent voice, no vacant chair. _But_ when the muffled drum
takes the place of life's joyous music;--when our skies are robed in
sackcloth, when Nature takes on its hue of ashen paleness; when every
flower, seared and frost-bitten, seems to droop its head in sadness
and sorrow, and hide its tears amid withered leaves and blighted
stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay!--what _then_? The
prophet's voice takes up the lesson--"_The voice said, Cry; and he
said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man
as the flower of the grass!_" Poor trifler that thou art! to be so
long mocked and deceived by a dead and dying world; desolate,
friendless, hopeless, portionless; a vessel driven from its moorings,
out unpiloted on a tempestuous sea! BUT there is a haven for the
tempest-tossed. The Saviour thou hast long despised and rejected, is a
provided harbour for such as _thee_. "_A_ MAN _shall be an
hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of
water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land._"
(Isaiah xxxii. 2.)

Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who
feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee--LET HIM
THAT IS ATHIRST, COME.

ATHIRST! who is not athirst? It is the attribute of universal
humanity! Who does not feel that this world is presenting us with
muddy streams and broken, leaky cisterns? Who does not feel, in their
moments of deep and calm reflection, when we are brought face to face
with the great enigma of existence, that the world is serving up faded
flowers instead of those redolent with imperishable fragrance, and
glowing with unfading bloom? _Friendless one!_--thou who art standing
alone like a solitary tree in the forest whom the woodman's axe has
spared--thy compeers cut down at thy side--COME! _Child of
calamity!_--the chill hand of penury laid on thine earthly
comforts--the widow's cruise fast failing, her staff of bread
diminishing--COME! _Child of bereavement!_--the pillars in thy
heart-shrine crumbling to decay, thy head bowed like a bulrush--thou
who knowest that fortune may again replace and replenish her dismantled
walls, but that nothing can reanimate thy still marble, or refill the
vacant niche in thy heart of hearts--COME! _Prodigal!_--wanderer from
God, exile from peace, roaming the forest-haunts of sin, plunging
deeper and deeper into their midnight of ruin and despair--has an
arrow, either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded thy heart?
Art thou, in thy agony, seeking rest and finding none,--having the
gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction with all created things, and an
undefined longing for a solace they cannot give? Yes! for _thee_, too,
for thy gaping, bleeding wound there is "balm in Gilead, and a
Physician there." I repeat, Jesus this day stands by the glorious
streams of His own purchased salvation, and cries, saying--"_If any
man_ THIRST, _let him come unto me and drink_!"

"Yea, Lord!" be it yours to reply--"Lord, I _come!_ thirsty, faint,
forlorn, wounded, weary! I come, 'just as I am, without one plea.'
Thou art all I need, all I require, in sickness and health, in joy
and in sorrow, in life and in death, in time and through eternity. The
snow-clad hills may cease to feed the brooks;--that sun may cease to
shine, or nature grow weary of his loving beams;--that moon may cease
on her silver lyre, night by night, to discourse to the listening
earth;--the birds may become mute at the voice of the morning;--flowers
may droop, instead of ringing their thousand bells at the jubilant
step of summer;--the gasping pilgrim may rush from the stream, and
prefer the fiery furnace-glow of the desert sands,--but 'this God
shall be my God for ever and ever;' and, even when death is sealing my
eyes, and the rush of darkness is coming over my spirit, even then
will I take up the old exile strain--the great sigh of weary
humanity--and blend its notes with the song of heaven--'AS THE HART
PANTETH AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS, SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, O
GOD.'"




III.

The Living God.


    "Hear me! To Thee my soul in suppliance turneth;
      Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.
    For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearneth:
      Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."

"Oh, it is His own self I pant after. Fellowship--living, constant,
intimate fellowship with Him, is the cry He often hears from the
desolate void of my unloving heart. How do I loathe the sin which
makes the atmosphere so misty--the clouds so thick and dark!"--_Life
of Adelaide Newton_, p. 246.

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and
appear before God?"--_Verse 2._


III.

THE LIVING GOD.

In the two former chapters, we listened to the first sigh of the
exile--the first strain of his plaintive song. It was the groping and
yearning of his soul after God, as the alone object of happiness.

You may have watched the efforts of the plant, tossed amid rack and
weed in some dark cellar, to climb to the light. Like the captive in
the dungeon longing to cool his fevered brow in the air of heaven, its
sickly leaves seem to struggle and gasp for breath. They grope, with
their blanched colours, towards any chink or crevice or grated window,
through which a broken beam is admitted. Or garden flowers choked amid
rank luxuriance, or under the shade of tree or wall, how ambitious to
assert their freedom, and pay homage to the parent sun, lifting their
pendant leaves or petals as a target for his golden arrows!

The soul, away from the great Sun of its being, frets and pines and
mourns! Every affection droops in languor and sadness when that light
is away. Its abortive efforts to obtain happiness in other and meaner
joys, and its dissatisfaction with them, is itself a testimony to the
strength and loftiness of its aspiration--a manifesto of its real
grandeur! The human affections must be fastened on _something_! They
are like the clinging ivy which creeps along the ground, and grasps
stones, rocks, weeds, and unsightly ruins, if it can find nothing else
on which to fix its tendrils; but when it reaches the root of the
tree, or base of the castle wall, it spurns its grovelling existence,
and climbs its upward way till it hangs in graceful festoons from the
topmost branch or turret.

We are to contemplate, now, a second breathing of this exiled
supplicant--a new element in his God-ward aspiration.

"_My soul thirsteth for God,_ FOR THE LIVING GOD: _when shall I come
and appear before God?_"

This is no mere repetition of the former verse. It invests the
believer's relationship to the object of his faith and hope with a new
and more solemn interest.

For David's present condition and experience in the land of his
exile--the feeling of utter isolation throbbing through the pulses of
his soul,--there were required some extraordinary and peculiar sources
of comfort. The old conventional dogmas of theology, at such seasons,
are insufficient. Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their
spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of
existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden
reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by
some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is
blighted and withered like grass;--who has not been conscious of a
longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the
balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from
the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us
to the quick? What of His character, His attributes, His ways! There
is a feeling, such as we never had before, to draw aside the veil
which screens the Invisible. It may be faith in its feeblest form,
awaking as from a dream; lisping the very alphabet of Divine truth,
and asking, in broken and stammering accents, "Does God _really
live?_--Is it, after all, Deity, or is it Chance, that is ruling the
world? Is this great Being near, or is He distant? Does He take
cognizance of all events in this world; or are minute, trivial
occurrences, contingent on the accidents of nature or the caprice of
man? _Is He_ THE LIVING ONE?" God, a distant abstraction shrouded in
the awful mystery of His own attributes, will not do;--we must realise
His presence; our cry, at such a time, is that of the old patriarch at
the brook Jabbok, or of his descendant at the brooks of Gilead--"_Tell
me thy_ NAME."[20] Is it merely _love_, or is it the loving ONE? Is it
_omnipotence_, or is it the almighty ONE? Is it some mysterious,
impalpable principle, some property of matter or attribute of mind--or
is it a _personal_ Jehovah, one capable of loving and of being loved?
Have the lips of incarnate truth and wisdom deceived us by a mere
figure of speech, when, in the great Liturgy of the Church universal,
in the prayer which is emphatically "His own," He hath taught us, in
its opening words, to say, "Our FATHER which art in heaven, hallowed
be thy NAME!"

  [20] Gen. xxxii. 28.

How earnestly do the saints in former times, and especially in their
seasons of trial, cleave to the thought of this _personal_ presence;
in other words, a thirst for "the _living God_!"

What was the solace of the patriarch Job, as he was stretched on his
bed of sackcloth and ashes, when other friends had turned against him
in bitter derision, and were loading him with their reproaches? It was
the realisation of a _living defender_ who would vindicate his
integrity,--"_I know that my Redeemer liveth_." (Job xix. 25.)

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The symbol taught him
encouraging truths;--that the Hebrew race, after all their experience
of fiery trial, would come forth unscathed and unconsumed. But the
shepherd-leader desired more than this: he craved the assurance of a
LIVING GOD--an ever-present guardian, a pillar to guide by day, and a
column of defence by night. It was the truth that was borne to his ear
from the desert's fiery oracle. There could be no grander watchword
for himself, or for the enslaved people,--"_God said unto Moses,_ I AM
THAT I AM!" No comment is subjoined;--nothing to diminish the glory of
that majestic utterance. The Almighty Speaker does not qualify it by
adding, "I am light, power, wisdom, glory;" but He simply declares His
_being and existence_--He unfolds Himself as "_the living God_!" It is
enough!

Elijah is in his cave at Horeb. All nature is convulsed around him.
The rocks are rent with an earthquake. The sky is lurid with
lightnings. Fragments of these awful precipices are torn and
dislocated by the fury of the tempest, and go thundering down the
Valley. Nature testifies to the presence, and majesty, and power of
her God: but He is not in any of these! "The Lord is not there!" The
Prophet waits for a further disclosure. He is not satisfied with
seeing the skirts of God's garment. He must see the hand, and hear
(though it be in gentle whispers) the voice of Him who sits behind the
elements He has awoke from their sleep. Hence this formed the closing
scene in that wild drama of the desert. "_After the fire there came a
still small voice._" _The Lord is there!_ He is proclaiming Himself
the prophet's God! with him in the depths of that howling wilderness,
as He had been with him on the heights of Carmel. "_And it was so,
when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and
went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave._" (1 Kings xix.
12, 13.)

Shall we go for illustration of the same truth to New Testament and
gospel times?

The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice
of a _living_ Saviour proclaims His _name_. "_It is I_ (lit. I AM);
_be not afraid!_" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest,
lulls their trembling spirits to rest.

John, in Patmos, beheld, in a vision of surpassing brightness, his
Lord arrayed in the lustres of exalted humanity. Overpowered by the
glory which unexpectedly burst upon him, "he fell at His feet as one
dead." His misgivings are stilled; his confidence and hope restored,
by the proclamation of a _living_ Saviour-God. "_I am He that_ LIVETH"
(lit. THE LIVING ONE)--and a similar comforting symbol was given him
in a subsequent vision, when he saw that same covenant angel
"ascending from the east, having the seal of the _Living_ God." (Rev.
i. 18, and vii. 2.)

This was "the _living_ Jehovah" whom David now sought in the
forest-depths of Gilead. He goes out to that solitude to meditate and
pray. But it is no dream of earthly conquest that occupies him.
Deeper thoughts have taken possession of his soul than the loss of a
kingdom and the forfeiture of a crown! A fiercer battle engrosses his
spirit than any mortal conflict. "Let me have God," he seems to say,
"as the strength of my heart and my portion for ever, and I heed not
other portions besides." At another time that lover of nature would
have caught inspiration from the glories of the impressive sanctuary
around. He would have sung of the water-brooks at his side, the trees
bending in adoration, the rocky gorges through which Jordan fretted
his tortuous way, the everlasting hills of Hermon and Lebanon,--the
silent guardians of the scene,--"the wild beasts of the forest
creeping forth" and "seeking their meat from God." But now he has but
one thought--one longing--"THOU _art more glorious and excellent than
the mountains of prey_." (Ps. lxxvi. 4.) None was more dependent on
the realised consciousness of the Divine favour than he. His Psalms
seem to utter the language of one who lived in God's presence, and to
whom the withdrawal of that endearing intercourse and communion would
be death indeed. His expressions, in these holy breathings of his
soul to the Father of spirits, seem like those of one loving friend to
another. God, the abstraction of the Philosopher, has no place in his
creed. He speaks of "the Lord thinking upon him," "putting his tears
into His bottle," "guiding him with His eye," "His right hand
upholding him," he himself "rejoicing under the shadow of His wings;"
and as if he almost beheld some visible, tangible form, such as Peter
gazed upon when the question was put to him on the shore of
Gennesaret, "Lovest thou me?" we hear this warm, impulsive Peter of
Old Testament times thus avowing his personal attachment--"_I will
love thee, O Lord my strength;_" "_I love the Lord, because He hath
heard my voice and my supplications;_" "_The Lord_ LIVETH_; and
blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted_."

Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as a _living God_?
Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty
fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the
solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes.
But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever nigh, compassing
your path and your lying down? Do you know of ONE, brighter than the
brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the
first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and
compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love
guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from
temptation--the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"

And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this
living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King
of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in
the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and
who chastises you _because_ He loves you. The world, in their cold
vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak of _Providence_, "the wil
of _Providence_," "the strokes of _Providence_." PROVIDENCE! What is
that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world?
Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living
One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a
rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of
bereavement to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father
hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial
thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God--to see that hand
behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning,
and the wings of the whirlwind--and to say like David, on the occasion
of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "_I was dumb, I
opened not my mouth; because_ THOU _didst it_." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)

The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the
joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The
redeemed multitude, while on earth, "_thirsted_" for the living God,
but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They
sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now
they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the
earthly valley is answered--"When shall we come and _appear before
God_?"

And what this living God is to the Church above, He is also to the
Church below. In one sense we need Him more! The drooping, pining
plant, battered down by rain, and hail, and tempest, stands more in
need of the fostering hand and genial sunbeam than the sturdy tree
whose roots are firmly moored in the soil, or sheltered from the sweep
of the storm. Pilgrims in the Valley of Tears! seek to live more under
the habitual thought of God's presence. In dark passages of our
earthly history we know how supporting it is to enjoy the sympathy of
kindred _human_ friends. What must it be to have the consciousness of
the presence, and support, and nearness of the Being of all beings;
when some cherished "light of the dwelling" is put out, to have a
better light remaining, which sorrow cannot quench! All know the story
of the little child who, in simple accents, quieted its own fears and
that of others in the midst of a storm. When the planks were creaking
beneath them--the hoarse voice of the thunder above mingling with that
of the raging sea;--his tiny finger pointed to the calm visage of the
pilot, who was steering with brawny arm through the surge, "_My
father_," said he, "_is at the helm_!" Would you weather the tempests
of life, and sit calm and unmoved amid "the noise of its many waters,"
let your eye rest on a _living God_--a loving Father--a heavenly
Pilot. See Him guiding the Vessel of your temporal and eternal
destinies! Let Faith be heard raising her triumphant accents amid the
pauses of the storm--"_O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto
Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise,
Thou stillest them._" (Psalm lxxxix. 9.)

Above all, be it yours to enjoy what David knew imperfectly, the
conscious nearness of a living SAVIOUR,--a Brother on the throne of
Heaven--"_Christ our life_"--God in our nature--"the man Christ
Jesus,"--susceptible of every human sympathy--capable of entering,
with infinite tenderness, into every human want and woe--bending over
us with His pitying eye--marking out for us our path--ordering our
sorrows--filling or emptying our cup--providing our pastures, and
"making all things work together for our good!" The words at this
moment are as true as when, eighteen hundred years ago, they came
fresh from His lips in Patmos--"I am _the living_ One!--Behold, I am
_alive_ for evermore!" (Rev. i. 18.)

       *       *       *       *       *

What is the great lesson from this meditation? Is it not to strive to
_be like God_? What does "thirsting" for God mean, but a longing of
the soul after likeness and conformity to the Divine image? Let us
not lose the deep truth of the text under the material emblem. To
thirst for God is to desire His fellowship; and we can only hold
fellowship with a congenial mind. No man is ever found to covet the
companionship of those whose tastes, likings, pursuits, are opposed to
his own. Place one whose character is scarred with dishonour and his
life with impurity, introduce him into the company of high-souled
men--spirits of sterling integrity and unblemished virtue, who would
recoil from the contaminating touch of vice, who would scorn a lie as
they would a poisoned dart--he _could_ not be happy; he would long to
break away from associates and associations so utterly distasteful and
uncongenial. No man can thirst after God who is not aiming after
assimilation to His character. God is HOLY. He who thirsts for God
must be athirst for _holiness_--he must scorn impurity in all its
forms, in thought, word, and deed. He who longs for the pure cistern
must turn with loathing from the muddy pools of earth and sin. Again,
God is LOVE. Love is pencilled by Him on every flower, and murmured in
every breeze. The world is resonant with chimes of love, and Calvary
is love's crowning triumph and consummation. He who "thirsts for God"
"in him verily is the _love_ of God perfected." He must have the
lineaments in outline, at least, of a loving nature. He must hate all
that is selfish, delight in all that is beneficent, and seek an
elevating satisfaction in being the minister of love to others. "_He
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him._"

       *       *       *       *       *

And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for
God,--to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may
pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him--no longing
for His presence--no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to
you, as to the believer, a LIVING God. Yes--scorner of His mercy!
ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible,--the
God with whom you will yet have "to do," _that_ God LIVES! His eye is
upon you--His book is open--His pen is writing--the indelible page is
filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones
of His voice. His very mercy and forbearance may be misconstrued by
you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and
forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist
dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His
heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity
and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and
glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the
dead hieroglyphics of the past--the obsolete tool-marks of the God of
primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having
done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has
gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the
control of universal laws!

Nay--GOD LIVES! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal
divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is
laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you
seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! this _living_ God
_against_ you! _You_ living, and content to live His enemy! rushing
against the bosses of His buckler! and if you were to die, it would be
in the attitude of one _fighting against God_!

No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but,
blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may
be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His
ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without
delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness.
Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is
stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch
of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is
a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the
unfailing stream.

See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. He who unlocked that
fountain is even now standing by it, and saying, as He contrasts it
with all earth's polluted cisterns, "_Whosoever drinketh of_ THIS
_water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life_."




IV.

The Taunt.


    "'Wilt thou leave me thus,' I cried,
    'Whelm'd beneath the rolling tide?'
    Ah! return and love me still;
    See me subject to Thy will;
    Frown with wrath, or smile with grace,
    Only let me see Thy face!
    Evil I have none to fear,
    All is good, if THOU art near.
    King, and Lord, whom I adore,
    Shall I see Thy face no more?"

    --_Madame Guyon._

"There is a persecution sharper than that of the axe. There is an iron
that goes into the heart deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers, and
sarcasms, and pitiless judgments, and cold-hearted calumnies--these
are persecution."

"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say
unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._


IV.

THE TAUNT.

We are called, in this chapter, to contemplate a new experience--David
in tears! These, his tears, brought sin to his remembrance. As, in
looking through the powerful lens of a microscope, the apparently
pellucid drop of water is found to be the swarming haunt of noxious
things,--fierce animalculæ devouring one another; so the tears of the
Exile formed a spiritual lens, enabling him to see into the depths of
his own soul, and disclosing, with microscopic power, transgressions
that had long been consigned to oblivion.

Ten years of regal prosperity had elapsed since the prophet Nathan,
the minister of retribution, stood before him, in his Cedar Palace,
with heavy tidings regarding himself and his house. Time may have
dimmed the impressions of that meeting. He may have vainly imagined,
too, that it had modified the Divine displeasure. Now that his head
was white with sixty winters, he may have thought that God would
exempt him from further merited chastisement, and suffer him to go
down to his grave in peace. But the day of reckoning, which the Divine
patience had long deferred, had now come. He was called to see the
first gleamings of that sword which the anointed prophet had told him
would "never depart from his house." (2 Sam. xii. 10.) The voice of
long averted judgment is at last heard amid the thickets and caves of
Gilead,--"_These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will
reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes_." (Ps. l. 21.)
Nature, in her august solitudes, echoed the verdict! The waters
murmured it--the winds chanted it--the forest wailed it--the thunders
rolled it--and the tears of the lonely Exile himself wept it,--"_Be
sure your sin will find you out_!" As he sat by the willows of Jordan,
with his crownless head and aching heart, he could say, in the words
of an older Psalmist, "_We are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy
wrath are we troubled. Thou has set our iniquities before Thee, our
secret sins in the light of Thy countenance._" (Ps. xc. 7, 8.)

How apt are we to entertain the thought that God will wink at sin;
that He will not be rigidly faithful to His denunciations--unswervingly
true to His word. Time's oblivion-power succeeds in erasing much from
the tablets of _our_ memories. We measure the Infinite by the standard
of the finite, and imagine something of the same kind regarding the
Great Heart-Searcher. Sin, moreover, seldom is, in this world,
_instantaneously_ followed with punishment; "sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily;" and the long-suffering patience and
forbearance of the Almighty is presumptuously construed by perverse
natures into alteration or fickleness in the Divine purpose. But "_God
is not a man that He should lie_!" Even in this our present probation
state, (oftener than we suppose,) the time arrives for solemn
retribution; when He makes bare His arm to demonstrate by what an
inseparable law in His moral government He has connected _sin_ with
_suffering_.

A new missile pierces this panting, wounded Hart on the mountains of
Israel. _One_ of those who hurled the Javelin is specially mentioned
in the sacred narrative. His poisoned dart must have been rankling in
David's soul when he penned this Psalm.

When the King was descending the eastern <DW72>s of _Olivet_, on his
way to the Valley of Jordan, Shimei a Benjamite of Bahurim, of the
house of Saul, came out against him, "_and_," we read, "_cursed still
as he came. And he cast stones at David, and at all the servants of
King David: and all the people and all the mighty men were on his
right hand and on his left. And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come
out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial: the Lord hath
returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead
thou hast reigned; and the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the
hand of Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou art taken in thy mischief,
because thou art a bloody man. And as David and his men went by the
way, Shimei went along on the hill's side over against him, and cursed
him as he went, and threw stones at him, and cast dust._" (2 Sam. xvi
5-8, 13.) Besides this son of Gera, there were many obsequious
flatterers and sycophants at Jerusalem--men once his cringing
adherents, loud with their hosannahs in the time of his
prosperity--who had now turned against him in his adversity, and
become the partisans of the usurper. They exulted over his downfall,
and followed him to the place of exile with the taunting cry, "Where
is now thy God?" "_Mine enemies_," said he, "_speak against me; and
they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, saying,_ GOD
_hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to
deliver him_." (Ps. lxxi. 10, 11.)

There is no trial keener, no anguish of soul intenser than this. Let
not any talk of taunt and ridicule being a trivial and insignificant
thing--unworthy of thought. Let not any say that the believer,
entrenched in a lordly castle--the very fortress of God--should be
above the shafts hurled from the bow of envy, or the venomous arrows
from the tongue of the scoffer. It is often _because_ the taunt is
contemptible that it is hardest to bear. The sting of the adder rouses
into fury the lordly lion. The tiniest insect blanches the colour of
the loveliest flower, and causes it to hang its pining head. Sorrow is
in itself difficult of endurance, but bitter is the aggravation when
others are ready to make a jest of our sorrows. _No water_ is bad
enough to the fainting pilgrim, but worse is it when he is mocked by
the mirage or bitter pool.

All the more poignant, too, were these taunts in the case of David,
because too well did he know that such reproaches were merited,--that
he himself had furnished his enemies with the gall and the wormwood
that had been mingled in his cup. The dark, foul blots of his past
life, he had too good reason to fear, were now emboldening them to
blaspheme. He had for years been "the Sweet Singer of Israel;"--his
future destiny was the Psalmist of the universal Church. His sublime
appeals, and fervent prayers, and holy musings, were to support, and
console, and sustain till the end of time. Millions on millions, on
beds of pain, and in hours of solitude and times of bereavement, were
to have their faith elevated, their hopes revived, their love warmed
and strengthened by listening to the harp of the Minstrel King. And
now, as his faith begins to languish, now as a temporary wave of
temptation sweeps him from his footing on the Rock, and the "Beloved
of God" wanders an exile and outcast,--a shout is raised by those who
were strangers to all his sublime sources of consolation--"_Where is
now thy God?_ Where is He whom thou hast sung of as the help of the
godly, the refuge of the distressed? Where, uncrowned one! is the
answer to thy prayers? Where is He of whom thou didst boast as being
known in all thy Zion palaces as a refuge? Thou hast taught others and
taught thyself to believe a lie. O Lucifer, son of the morning! how
art thou fallen!"

For the moment, this crushing sarcasm can be answered by nothing but a
flood of anguished tears. He was below the wave; and though he was
soon to know that below that wave there was an Arm lower still, yet
for the present he was dumb under the averment. There was no light in
the cloud. He was unable to lay hold of a former comforting
experience--"THOU _hast known my soul in adversities_." (Ps. xxxi. 7.)

Oh, how jealous we should be of anything that would reduce us so low
as this, and give a handle to the adversary! Beware of religious
inconsistency. _One_ fatal step, one unguarded _word_ may undo a
lifetime of hallowed influence. One scar on the character, one blot on
the page of the living epistle is indelible. It may be washed away,
indeed, by the blood of sprinkling, so that nothing of it will remain
against you in the book of God; but the eye and memory of the world,
keen to watch and treasure the inconsistencies of God's people, will
not so easily forgive or forget! The Hart laid itself open to the
toils of the huntsman. It was hit by the archers. One fierce dart of
temptation sped with unerring aim. It has left the track of blood
behind it in the glades of the forest--the unbelieving world hounds in
remorseless pursuit, and the taunting cry will follow to the grave!

Are there any who feel that the experience of David is their own,--who
either by reason of religious inconsistency or religious declension
have laid themselves open to the upbraiding question, "_Where is thy
God?_"--Perhaps _religious declension_ is the more common of the two.
You are not, as we have surmised in a previous chapter, what once you
were. You have not the same love of the Saviour as once you had--the
same confidence in His dealings--the same trust in His faithfulness--the
same zeal for His glory. Affliction, when it comes, does not lead you,
as once it did, to cheerful acquiescence--to the cherishing of a
meek, unmurmuring submissive spirit under God's sovereign will and
discipline, but rather to a hasty, misgiving frame--fretting and
repining when you should be prostrate at the mercy-seat, saying, "_The
will of the Lord be done_!"

Not in scorn, but in sober seriousness, in Christian affection and
fidelity, we ask, "_Where is now thy God?_" "Ye _did_ run well; who
hath hindered you?" What is the guilty cause, the lurking evil, that
has dragged you imperceptibly down from weakness to weakness, and has
left you a poor, baffled thing, with the finger of irreligious scorn
pointed at you, and whose truthfulness is echoed back from the lonely
voids of your desolate heart? Return, O backsliding children! Remain
no longer as you are, at this guilty distance from that God who, amid
all the fitfulness of your love to _Him_, remains unaltered and
unalterable in His love to _you_. Be not absorbed in tears, ringing
your hands in moping melancholy--abandoning yourself to unavailing
remorse and despair. The past may be bad enough! You may have done
foul dishonour to your God. By some sad and fatal inconsistency, you
may have given occasion to the ungodly to point at you the finger of
scorn. The fair alabaster pillar may be stained with some crimson
transgression. Or if there be no special blot to which they can point,
there may be a lamentable spiritual deterioration in your daily walk.
They may have observed your love to God waxing cold--your love of the
world waxing strong. They may have heard you murmur at your Lord's
dealings, question His faithfulness, and refuse to hear and to bear
the rod--manifesting tempers, or indulging in pursuits sadly and
strangely unlike what would be sanctioned by the example of your
Divine Redeemer. Up! and with determined energy resolve henceforth to
repair the breach,--henceforth to make a new start in the heavenly
life. The shrill trumpet sounds--"_Awake, thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life_!" We cannot say,
like the King of Nineveh, "_Who can tell if God will turn and
repent?_" _He_ has never turned! _You_ have turned from Him, not He
from _you_. "_Where is now thy God?_" He is the same as ever He
was;--boundless in His compassion--true to His covenant--faithful to
His promises; "_the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever_!"

Reader! if He be afflicting you as He did David;--if with an exile
spirit you be roaming some moral wilderness, the flowers of earth
faded on your path, and the bleak winds of desolation and calamity
sweeping and sighing around, let these times of affliction lead to
deep searchings of heart. Let your tears be as the dewdrops of the
morning on the tender leaves, causing you to bend in lowly sorrow and
self-abasement, only to be raised again, refreshed, to inhale new
fragrance in the summer sun. If, like the weeping woman of Galilee,
you are saying, through blinding tears, "_They have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him_," --if, like the Spouse
in the Canticles, you are going about the city in search of your
Beloved;--seeking Him, He will be found of you. The watchmen may smite
you--repel you--tear off your veil--and load you with reproaches;--but
"_fear not! ye seek Jesus who was crucified!_" He will meet you as He
did the desponding Magdalene, and, listening like her to His own tones
of ineffable love, you will cast yourself at His feet, and exclaim,
"RABBONI--MASTER!"




V.

THE TAUNT.


  "He wounds, and hides the hand that gave the blow;
  He flies, He reappears, and wounds again;
  Was ever heart that loved thee treated so?
  Yet I adore Thee, though it seem in vain."

  --_Cowper._

"Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my
face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my
mother's children. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of
heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and
for comforters, but I found none."--_Ps._ lxix. 7, 8, 20.

"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say
unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._


V.

THE TAUNT.

The Great Accuser of the brethren in a variety of ways attempts to
insinuate the same dark doubts in the minds of believers, which we
have spoken of in the preceding pages. He tries to shake their
confidence in God,--in the veracity of His word, and the faithfulness
of His dealings. He would lead them to discover in His providential
dispensations what is inconsistent with His revealed character and
will. In seasons particularly of outward calamity and trouble, when
the body is racked with pain, its nerves unstrung, or its affections
blighted and wounded--when the mind is oppressed and harassed, the
soul in darkness--the Prince of this world, who times his assaults
with such consummate skill, not unfrequently gains in such seasons a
temporary triumph. The shadow of a cold scepticism passes over the
soul. It is silent under the cry, "_Where is thy God?_"

Have any of you ever known this acutest anguish of the human
spirit,--those appalling moments of doubt, when for a moment the whole
citadel of truth seems to rock to its foundations,--when the soul
becomes a dungeon with grated bars, or in which the light of heaven is
transmitted through distorted glass, and the finger of unbelief is
pointed inwards, with the old sneer, "Where is the God you were wont
to boast of in your day of prosperity? Where is there evidence that
one prayer you ever offered has been heard--one blessing you ever
supplicated been granted--one evil you ever deprecated been averted or
removed? Where one evidence of His hand in your allotments in life?
These heavens have never broken silence! Hundreds of years have
elapsed since His voice was last heard. Moreover, you have only some
old parchment leaves written by converted Pharisees and Galilean
fishermen to tell that Deity ever gave audible utterances out of the
thick darkness. May not His very _being_ be after all a fiction, a
delusion--His Bible a worn-out figment which superstition and
priestcraft have successfully palmed upon the world? Or if you do
believe in a God and in a written revelation, have you not good
reason, at all events, to infer from His adverse dealings that He
cares nothing for _you_. He has proved Himself deaf to your cries.
Where is the mercy in such an affliction as yours? He has crossed your
every scheme, blasted your fairest gourds. His appointments are surely
arbitrary. He takes useful lives, and leaves useless ones. He takes
the wheat, and leaves the chaff. The chairs he empties are those of
the kind and good, the loving and beloved. He leaves the wicked, and
proud, and selfish, and profligate. Can there be a God on the earth?
Where is the justice and judgment which are 'the habitation of His
throne'--where the 'mercy and the truth' that are said to 'go before
His face?'"

Such, you may say, are awful imaginations--too awful to speak of. But
such there are! It is the horror of great darkness--spirits from the
abyss sent to trouble the pools of ungodly thought, and stir them from
their depths.

Ye who are thus assaulted, do you ever think, in the midst of these
horrible insinuations, of ONE who had to bear the same? Think of that
challenge which wrung a spotless human soul in the hour of its deepest
anguish--"_He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him: let Him
deliver him, seeing he delighted in Him_." (Ps. xxii. 8.) It was the
same taunt in _His_ case as in yours! It was the cruel, poignant
sneer, that He had, during all his lifetime of confiding filial love,
been trusting to a falsehood,--that if God had really been His Father
and He His Son, ten thousands of legions of angels would have been
down now by the side of His cross to unbind His cords and set the
Victim free!

Let the merciful, the wondrous forbearance of Christ be a lesson to
ourselves in the endurance of the taunts of a scornful world and of
the Father of lies. How easily might He have resented and answered the
challenge by a descent from the cross, by having the pierced feet and
hands set free,--the crown of thorns replaced by a diadem of glory,
scattering the scoffing crew like chaff before the whirlwind! But in
meek, majestic silence the Lamb of God suffers Himself to be bound,
the Victim gives no struggle. Let them scoff on! He will save others,
Himself he will not save! Nor did all their scoffing, their taunts and
ridicule, tend for a solitary moment to shake His confidence in His
heavenly Father. These fell like spent spray on the Rock of Ages.
When the cup of trembling was in His hands, sinking humanity for the
moment seemed to stagger. He breathed the prayer, "_Let it pass from
me_." But immediately He added the condition of unswerving _filial
trust, "Nevertheless, O my Father, not as_ I _will, but as_ THOU
WILT." Even in the crisis of all, when He was mourning the eclipse of
that Father's countenance--in that last gasp of superhuman agony, He
proclaims, in answer to the taunts of earth and hell, His unshaken
trust, "MY GOD, MY GOD!"

Comforting surely to the reviled, the ridiculed, and persecuted, that,
severe and poignant as their sorrow is, they are undergoing only what
their Lord and Master, in an inconceivably more awful form,
experienced before them! Yes! think how He had to encounter the
ingratitude of faithless, the treachery of trusted friends. The limbs
He healed brought no succour--the tongues He unloosed lisped no
accents of compassion--the eyes He unsealed gave no looks of love.
Those lips that spake as never man spake, dropping wherever they went
balm-words of mercy, now in vain make the appeal to the scoffing
crowd, "_Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for
the hand of God hath touched me_!" Oh, when in deeper than the
water-floods of Gilead, this wounded HART of Heaven lay panting and
bleeding under the curse,--when arrow after arrow was poured upon Him
from the shafts of men, and the bitter cry resounded in His dying
ears, _Where is thy God?_--how did He answer? what was His response?
Listen to the apostle's sublime comment on that scene of blended love
and suffering--"_Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He
suffered, He_ THREATENED NOT; BUT COMMITTED HIMSELF TO HIM THAT
JUDGETH RIGHTEOUSLY."

As the face, the hidden face of God, beamed upon the Son of His love
in the midst of that apparent desolation, so will it be, children of
affliction and sorrow! with you. Others may see in your tears nothing
but an indication of the desertion of God,--the visitations of His
wrath and judgment. But believe it, these very experiences of trouble
and calamity, of bereavement or death, are all meted out and
apportioned for you in love--drop by drop, tear by tear. Seek to see
God's hand in all that befalls you. Try, even in the most adverse
providences, to rise above second causes. Be it with you as with David
in his conduct towards Shimei. When the insulting Benjamite was
hurling these cruel taunts against the exiled King and the sorrowing
Father,--when his incensed soldiers, burning with indignation, were on
the point of drawing their swords and inflicting summary vengeance on
the scoffer--"_Why should this dead dog_," said Abishai, "_curse my
lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his
head_"--David's reply is, "Nay! I hear not that man's voice--I see not
that man's face--my eye is above the human instrument, on the God who
sent him--'_Let him curse on, for the Lord hath bidden him_.'" (2 Sam
xvi. 11.)

Trust God in the dark. Ah! it is easy for us to follow Him and to
trust Him in sunshine. It is easy to follow our Leader as Israel did
the pillar-cloud, when a glorious pathway was opened up for them
through the tongue of the Red Sea--when they pitched under shady palms
and gushing fountains, and heaven rained down bread on the hungry
camp. But it is not so easy to follow when fountains fail and the
pillar ceases to guide, and all outward and visible supports are
withdrawn. But _then_ is the time for faith to rise to the
ascendant;--when the world is loud with its atheist sneer, THEN is
the time to manifest a simple, child-like trust; and, amid baffling
dispensations and frowning providences, to exclaim, "_Though He slay
me, yet will I trust in Him_!"

Yes--"_troubled_, we are NOT distressed; _perplexed_, we are NOT in
_despair_; _persecuted_, we are NOT _forsaken_; _cast down_, we are
NOT _destroyed_." We ARE ready, scoffing world! to answer the
question, _Where is thy God?_

CHILD OF SICKNESS! bound down for years on that lonely pillow!--the
night-lamp thy companion--disease wasting thy cheeks and furrowing thy
brow--weary days and nights appointed thee--tell me, _Where is thy
God?_ He is here, is the reply; His presence takes loneliness from my
chamber and sadness from my countenance. His promises are a pillow for
my aching head,--they point me onwards to that better land where "the
inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick!"

CHILD OF POVERTY! _Where is thy God?_ Can He visit this rude dwelling?
Can God's promises be hung on these broken rafters? Can the light of
His word illumine that cheerless hearth and sustain that bent figure
shivering over its mouldering ashes? Yes! He is here. The lips of
Truth that uttered the beatitude, "_Blessed be ye poor_," have not
spoken in vain. Bound down by chill penury--forsaken and forgotten in
old age--no footstep of mercy heard on my gloomy threshold--no lip of
man to drop the kindly word--no hand of succour to replenish the empty
cupboard--that God above has not deserted me. He has led me to seek
and lay up my treasure in a home where want cannot enter, and where
the beggar's hovel is transformed into the kingly mansion!

BEREAVED ONE! _Where is thy God?_ Where is the arm of Omnipotence thou
wast wont to lean upon? Has _He_ forgotten to be gracious? Has He
mocked thy prayers, by trampling in the dust thy dearest and best, and
left thee to pine and agonise in the bitterness of thy swept heart and
home? Nay, He is _here_! He has swept down my fondest idol, but it was
in order that He himself might occupy the vacant seat. I know Him too
well to question the faithfulness of His word, and the fidelity of His
dealings. I have never known what a God He was, till this hour of
bitter trial overtook me! There was a "need be" in every tear--every
death-bed--every grave!

DYING MAN! the billows are around thee--the world is receding--the
herald symptoms of approaching dissolution are gathering fast around
thy pillow--the soul is pluming its wings for the immortal flight; ere
memory begins to fade, and the mind becomes a waste,--ere the names of
friends, when mentioned, will only be answered by a dull, vacant look,
and then the hush of awful silence,--tell me, ere the last lingering
ray of consciousness and thought has vanished, _Where is thy God?_

He is here! I feel the everlasting arms underneath and round about me.
Heart and flesh are failing. The mists of death are dimming my eyes to
the things below, but they are opening on the magnificent vistas of
eternity. YONDER He is! seated amid armies of angels. "_My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God!_" "THIS GOD SHALL BE MY GOD FOR
EVER AND EVER!"




VI.

Sabbath Memories.


    "Dear is the Sabbath morn to me,
      When village bells awake the day,
    And with their holy minstrelsy
      Call me from earthly cares away.

    "And dear to me the winged hour,
      Spent in thy hallow'd courts, O Lord,
    To feel devotion's soothing power,
      And catch the manna of Thy Word.

    "And dear to me the loud 'Amen,'
      That echoes through the blest abode--
    That swells, and sinks, and swells again,
      Dies on the ear--but lives to God.

    "Oft when the world, with iron hand,
      Has bound me in its six days' chain,
    This bursts them, like a strong man's band,
      And bade my spirit live again."

"And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the
city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me
again, and shew me both it, and his habitation."--_2 Sam._ xv. 25.

"When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had
gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with
the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept
holy-day."--_Verse 4._


VI.

SABBATH MEMORIES.

We always commiserate those who have seen better days. Poverty,
indeed, under any form, appeals with irresistible power to the
sympathies of our better nature. The most heartless and indifferent
cannot refuse the tribute of pity to the ragged beggar shivering on
the street, or seated in his hovel by the ashes of a spent fire,
brooding over a wretched past, with the grim spectral forms of want
hovering over a miserable future.

Sad, however, as the condition of such may be, habit, in one sense,
may have become to that squalid pauper a second nature. He may never
have known a more prosperous state. He may have been inured from his
earliest years to buffet life's wintry storm. Chill penury may have
rocked his cradle, and ever since sung her rude lullaby over his
pallet of straw. Far more is to be pitied the case of those who have
sunk from comfort into indigence, around whose early home no bleak
winds of adversity ever blew, who were once pillowed in the lap of
plenty if not of luxury, but who, by some sudden wave of calamity,
have become wrecks on life's desert shore. If there be one being on
God's earth more to be pitied than another, it is the mother of a once
joyous home, turned adrift, in the hour of her widowhood, with her
ragged children;--forced to sing, from door to door, to escape the
jaws of hungry famine,--ill disguising, under her heap of squalid rags
or her trembling notes of sorrow and despair, the story of brighter
days.

Similar is the commiseration we extend (let the shores of this Refuge
Island of ours bear testimony) to the hapless patriot or the fallen
monarch. These may have been hurled from positions of influence or
pinnacles of glory more by their crimes than by their misfortunes. The
revolutionary wave that swept them from their country or their thrones
may have been a just retribution for misrule; but it is their hour of
adversity! They have seen better and more auspicious times. Pity for
the fallen knocks, and never knocks in vain, at the heart of a great
nation's sympathies.

Such was David's position at this time: Denied the sympathy of others,
his own soul is filled with recollections of a far different past. The
monarch of Israel, the beloved of God, the idol of his people; now a
fugitive from his capital--his palace sacked--his crown
dishonoured--wandering in ignoble exile--a wreck of vanished glory!

But it is not these features of his humiliating fall on which his mind
mainly dwells. It is not the thought of his sceptre wrested from his
grasp--his army in mutiny--his royal residence a den of traitors--that
fills his soul with most poignant sorrow. He is an exile from the
House of God! The joy of his old Sabbaths is for the time suspended
and forfeited. No more is the sound of silver trumpets heard summoning
the tribes to the new moons and solemn feast-days! No more does he
behold, in thought, the <DW72>s of Olivet studded with pilgrim tents or
made vocal with "songs in the night!" No more does he see the
triumphant procession wending up the hill of Zion--timbrel and pipe
and lute and voice celebrating in glad accord the high praises of
God;--"the singers in front, and the players on instruments
behind,"--he himself, harp in hand, (the true father of his people,)
leading the jubilant chorus, and Jehovah commanding upon all "the
blessing, even life for evermore!"

How changed! To this Sabbath-loving and Sabbath-keeping King nothing
but the memory of these remained. "_When I remember these things, I
pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with
them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a
multitude that kept holy-day._"

Jerusalem was the pride and glory of the Jew. Wherever he went, he
turned to it as to his best and fondest home. The windows of Daniel's
chamber were "open _towards Jerusalem_." With his eye in the direction
of the holy city, "_he kneeled upon his knees three times a-day, and
prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime_." (Dan.
vi. 10.) Jonah was in the strangest of prisons. "The depths closed
round about him, the weeds were wrapped about his head, and the earth
with its iron bars." From "the belly of hell" he sent up his cry to
God. "I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again _toward thy_
HOLY TEMPLE." (Jonah ii. 2.) Captive Israel are seated, in mute
despondency, by the willowed banks of the streams of Babylon. The
Euphrates (an ocean river compared with the tiny streams of Palestine)
rolled past them. The city of the hundred gates rose, like a dream of
giant glory, before their view, with its colossal walls, and towers,
and hanging gardens. Yet what were they in the eyes of these exile
spectators? _Shadows_ of greatness in comparison with the city and
temple of their fathers amid the hills of Judah! When their oppressors
demanded of them a Hebrew melody, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of
Zion," they answered, through hot tears of sorrowful remembrance,
"_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?_" (Ps. cxxxvii.
4.) So it was with David now. As a bird taken from its home in the
forest and placed in a cage, refuses to warble a joyous note--beats
its plumage against the enclosing bars, and struggles to get free,--so
he seems to long for wings that he may flee away to the hallowed eaves
of the sanctuary, and be at rest!

He himself, indeed, uses a similar figure. He tells us, in another
Psalm, written on this same occasion, that so blessed did he feel
those to be who enjoyed the privilege of "dwelling in God's house,"
and so ardent was his longing to participate in their joy, that he
half-envied the swallows who constructed their nests upon its roof.
(Ps. lxxxiv.) He was not without his solaces in this season of reverse
and calamity. He had many faithful adherents still clinging to him in
his adversity. The best and bravest chieftains from the tribes on the
other side of the Jordan supplied his drooping followers with the
produce of their rich pasture lands. "_Shobi of Ammon, and Machir of
Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite_"--these brought, besides camp
utensils, "_wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans,
and lentiles, and parched pulse, and honey, and butter, and sheep, and
cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to
eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in
the wilderness._" (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29.) Glorious, too, was Nature's
temple around him. Its pillars the mountains--the rocks its altar--the
balmy air its incense--the range of Lebanon, rising like a holy of
holies, with its reverend curtain of mist and cloud, and snowy Hermon
towering in solemn grandeur above all, as the very throne of God! Yet
what were these compared with JERUSALEM, the place of sacrifice, the
resting-place of the Shekinah-glory, the city of solemnities,
"_whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony
of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord_?" (Ps. cxxii. 4.)
This wounded Hart pants for the water-brooks of Zion; Nature's outer
sanctuary had no glory to him, "by reason of the glory that
excelleth." The God who dwelleth between the cherubim had "_chosen
Zion, and desired it for His habitation_," saying, "_This is my rest
for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it_." (Ps. cxxxii. 13,
14.) With the windows of his soul, like Daniel, thrown "open _towards
Jerusalem_," and his inner eye wistfully straining to its sunny
heights, his ear catching the cadence of its festive throng, he seems
to say, "_If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy._" (Ps.
cxxxvii. 5, 6.)

Do we prize the blessing of our Sabbaths and our sanctuaries? can we
say, with somewhat of the emphasis of this expatriated King--"ONE
_thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may
dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the
beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple?_" Alas! when we are
living in the enjoyment of blessings, too true it is that we have
seldom a vivid sense of their value. He who is born in a free country,
to whom slavery and oppression are strange words, seldom realises the
priceless boon of liberty. But let him suddenly be made the victim of
tyrant thraldom; let him feel the irons loading his body, or the worse
than material shackles fettering liberty of thought and action, and
how will the strains of freedom fall like heavenly music on his ear!
When we are in the enjoyment of health and strength, how little do we
prize the boon. But let us be laid on a bed of languishing; let the
sick lamp flicker for weeks by the sleepless pillow; let the frame be
so shattered that even the light tread of loving footsteps across the
room quickens the beat of the throbbing brow. In waking visions of
these lonely night-watches, how does the day of elastic vigour and
unbroken health rise before us! how do we reproach ourselves that the
boon was so long ungratefully forgotten and unworthily requited! A
parent little knows the strength of the tie which binds him to his
child during the brief loan of a loved existence. He gets habituated
to the winning ways, and loving words, and constant companionship. He
comes to regard that little life as part of himself. He does not fully
realise the blessing, because he has never dreamt of the possibility
of its removal. But when the startling blow comes,--when death, in an
unexpected moment, has severed the tie,--when his eye lights on the
empty chair or the unused toy,--when the joyous footfall and artless
prattling are heard no more,--then comes he to gauge all the depth and
intensity of his affection, and to feel how tenderly (too tenderly!)
that idol was enshrined in his heart of hearts!

So it is with religious privileges. In such a land as our own, in
which, from our earliest infancy, we have been accustomed to a
hallowed Sabbath, an open sanctuary, an unclasped and unforbidden
Bible, we do not fully estimate the priceless value of the spiritual
blessings bequeathed to us, because never have we felt the loss or the
want of them. But go to some land of heathenism, where the exiled
child of a British Christian home finds neither minister nor House of
God. Go to the thousands who have betaken themselves to a voluntary
exile amid American forests or Australian pastures. Or go to the lands
of apostate Christendom, where the Bible is a sealed book, and
religious liberty is an empty name; where souls thirsting for the
living stream are compelled to drink from some adulterated cistern.
Alas! many in such circumstances are content to sink into a listless
indifference; cold and lukewarm at home, they are too ready to lapse
into the chill of spiritual death abroad. But there are others who
have not so readily obliterated the holiest records of the past. Ask
many tired and jaded emigrants, conscious of nobler aspirations than
this world can meet, what recollections, more hallowed than others,
linger on their spirits? They will tell you it is the memory of the
Sabbath rest and the Sabbath sanctuary; when, at the summons of the
village bell, mountain and glen and hamlet poured forth their
multitudes to the house of God; seated wherein, the burdens and
anxieties, the cares and disquietudes of the work-day world were
hushed and set aside, and in listening to the words of everlasting
life, sorrows were soothed, faith was revived, and hope brightened.
"_O God_," their cry is, "_our flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and
thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as
we have seen Thee in the sanctuary_."[21]

  [21] Psalm lxiii. 1, 2.

Let us seek to prize our means of grace while we have them. In a
country which is the reputed palladium of liberty;--where the greatest
of all liberty, the liberty of the truth, has been purchased by the
blood of our fathers,--the time, we trust, with God's help, may never
come when these bulwarks will be overthrown--when our sanctuaries will
be closed--our Bibles proscribed--our Sabbaths blotted from the
statute-book--and bigotry, in league with rampant infidelity, again
forge the chain and rear the dungeon. But remember, that protracted
sickness or disease may at any time overtake us, and debar us from the
precious blessings of the _public_ sanctuary. Yes! I say the _public_
sanctuary. God's appointed ordinances can never be superseded or
rendered obsolete by human substitutes. Some may urge that books
now-a-days are better than any preaching;--that the press is more
potent and eloquent than any living voice. But church or pulpit is not
a thing of man's device. It is a divine institute. The speaker is an
_ambassador_ in his Master's name, charged with a vast mission from
the court of high heaven, and the House of God is the appointed
audience-chamber. God does not, indeed, (nay, far from it,) forsake
"the dwellings of Jacob." The lowliest cottage-home may become a
_Bethel_, with a ladder of love set between earth and heaven,
traversed by ministering angels! The secluded sick-chamber may become
a _Patmos_, bright with manifestations of the Redeemer's presence and
grace! But, nevertheless, "_Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary_." The
promise remains, "I will make my people joyful in my _house of
prayer_." It is the solemn "trysting-place"--the pledged ground of
covenant intercommunion. "THERE _I will meet with thee, and commune
with thee from off my mercy-seat!" "The Lord loveth the gates of
Zion!" "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O
Israel!_"[22]

  [22] Ex. xxv. 22; Psalm lxxxvii. 2; Numb. xxiv. 5.

Reader, let me ask, How stands it with you? Are you conscious of a
reverential regard and attachment to God's holy place? Does the return
of the Sabbath awake in your heart the old melody of this sweet
singer of Israel,--"_This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will
rejoice and be glad in it_?"[23] Do you go to the solemn assembly, not
to hear the _messenger_ but the _message_;--not to pay homage to a
piece of dust, (the vilest and most degraded form of idolatry,) but
feeling yourself a beggar in the sight of God, with a soul to save,
and an eternity to provide for? Do you approach it as the _place of
prayer_, over which the cloud hovers laden with spiritual blessings?
Do you go to it as "_the house of God_," seeking fellowship and
communion with the Father of spirits; desiring that all its
services--its devotions, and praises, and exhortations--may become
hallowed magnets, drawing you nearer and binding you closer to the
mercy-seat? Oh, let not the boon of Sabbath privileges degenerate into
an empty form, the mere pageant of custom. Let the Sabbath hours be
sacredly kept. Let their lessons be sacredly treasured. Let their
close find you a Sabbath-day's journey nearer heaven. Let their
hallowed fragrance follow you through the week. Let them be landmarks
in the pilgrimage; towering behind you the further you go--like Alp
piled on Alp, flushed with roseate light, guiding and cheering you
when low down in the valleys of trial and sorrow, and when called to
descend the last and gloomiest Valley of all.

  [23] Psalm cxviii. 24.

David is mourning, in the words which have given rise to these
thoughts, over his altered Sabbath joys. It may be there are some
reading these pages, who, though they know nothing like him of literal
exile and banishment from the sanctuary, may yet be able painfully to
participate in his feelings! They are seated, Sabbath after Sabbath,
in their pews; their Bibles are in their hands--the living words of
the preacher are sounding in their ears; but their experience may be
best interpreted by the language of the Christian poet:--

    "Where is the blessedness I knew
      When first I saw the Lord?
    Where is the soul-refreshing view
      Of Jesus and His Word?

    "How blest the hours I once enjoy'd!
      How sweet their memory still!
    But they have left an aching void
      The world can never fill."

Memory can travel back on Sabbaths and communion seasons when a
sunshine of holy joy irradiated their spirits; when their Sabbath was
one hallowed Emmaus-journey;--they, during its sanctuary-hours,
travelling side by side with Jesus, and He causing their hearts, as He
did those of the disciples of old, to "burn within them." They were
wont to come and depart, saying, "_This is none other than the house
of God; this is the gate of heaven_." Now they feel that all is
sorrowfully altered. They have comparatively no joy, as once they had,
when the Sabbath morning dawns. When they seat themselves in church,
there is no fervour in their praises--no earnestness in their
prayers--no childlike teachableness in hearing. There is more
criticising of the preacher than worshipping God. There is no living
flame on the heart-altar; their befitting exclamation is that of the
prophet, "_My leanness! my leanness!_" They are ready, in the
bitterness of their spirits, to say, "_When I remember these things,
my soul is poured out within me_."

Sad it is to have _no_ meat; but sad, too, when we _have_ food and
cannot enjoy it! Sad it is, as exiles in a strange land, to have no
Sabbath-gates flung open to us, and no Sabbath-bells to welcome the
day of God; but sadder still to have these solemn chimes within
hearing;--to have our sanctuaries open, and faithful ministers
proclaiming the words of eternal life, and yet to listen with the
adder's ear;--to listen as the dead in our churchyards listen to the
tears and laments of the living!

What should be done in such a case as this? Trace the muddy and turgid
stream to its source. Discover what earthly clouds are dimming the
spiritual firmament, and hiding the shinings of the Divine
countenance. Sin, in some shape or other, must be the fruitful cause.
It may be some positive and persevered-in transgression; indulgence in
which, shuts up the avenues of prayer, and denies all access to the
mercy-seat. Or it may be some no less culpable sin of _omission_. That
mercy-seat may have become unfrequented; the rank grass may be waving
over its once beaten foot-road; the altar-fire languishing in the
closet, must necessarily languish in the sanctuary too. How can the
House of God be now fragrant with blessing, if the life is spent in
guilty estrangement from _Him_? Religion cannot be worn as a Sabbath
garment, if garments soiled with sin be worn throughout the week.

Self-exile from the joys of the sanctuary! return henceforth to God.
If it be positive sin which is marring former blessedness, cast out
the troubler in Israel. If it be duties omitted, or perfunctorily
discharged, return to former earnest-mindedness. Cultivate more filial
nearness to the Hearer of prayer. Seek, on your bended knees, to
obtain more tenderness of conscience regarding sin;--to have more
longing aspirations after the beauties of holiness.

And _delay_ not the return. By doing so, the growing languor and
listlessness which is creeping over you, may settle into positive
disrelish of God's house. Imitate the example of the Spouse in the
Canticles, who, in mourning over similar spiritual declension,
resolves on an _instantaneous_ seeking of the forfeited presence of
her Lord. "_Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest,
where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as
one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?_"[24]
Go with the words which this exile of Gilead employs in the sequel to
this Psalm, written on the same occasion--"_O send out Thy light and
Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and
to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my
exceeding joy._"[25]

  [24] Sol. Song i. 7.

  [25] Psalm xliii. 3, 4.

Yes! go, and prove what the God of the sanctuary can do in the
fulfilment of His own promise. He seems now to be saying, "Put me to
the test." "_Prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows
of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room
enough to receive it._"[26] Every church is a _Peniel_, where God
meets His people, as He met the patriarch of old at the brook Jabbok.
Go and see what may be effected by _one_ lowly, humble, seeking
soul--some wrestling Jacob, who, like "a Prince," has "power with God,
and prevails!" The lowliest tabernacle on earth is glorified as being
the _House of God_--the dwelling-place of Omnipotence and Love--the
hallowed "_home_," where a loving Father waits to dispense to His
children the garnered riches of His grace! The time may come when the
holy and beautiful sanctuary where we worship may become a heap of
ruins. The fire may lay it in ashes--the hand of man may raze it--the
slower but surer hand of time may corrode its walls and crumble its
solid masonry stone by stone; but as sure as it is God's own appointed
treasure-house of spiritual mercies, may we not believe that there
will be deathless spirits who will be able to point to it in connexion
with imperishable memories,--"buildings of God," "eternal in the
heavens," beyond the reach of human violence, and wasting elements,
and corroding years? Does not the promise stand unrepealed in this
Bible;--let it ever be the inscription on our temples of
worship,--"_Of_ ZION _it shall be said, This and that man was born in
her; and the Highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall
count, when He writeth up the people, that this man was born
there?_"[27]

  [26] Mal. iii. 10.

  [27] Psalm lxxxvii. 5, 6.

Oh that ours may at last be the blessedness of that better Church
above, which knows no banishment, no exile, no languor, no
weariness;--where "the holy-day" is an eternal Sabbath;--the festive
throng, "a multitude which no man can number"--the voice of joy and
praise, "everlasting songs;"--where God's absence can never be
deplored;--where He who now tendeth His temple-lamps on earth, feeding
them day by day with the oil of His grace, removing the rust
perpetually gathering over them by reason of their contact with sin,
will, with the plenitude of His own presence, supersede all earthly
luminaries, and ordinances, and sanctuaries;--for "_they need no
candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light,
and they shall reign for ever and ever_!"




VII.

Hope.


    "When the water-floods of grief
      Round thy helpless head shall rise,
    When there seemeth no relief,
      Lift thy gaze to yonder skies;
    There behold how radiantly
      Beams the star of Hope divine!
    Yesterday it shone for thee,
      And to-day it still shall shine.
    Ask no aid the world can give,
      LOOKING UNTO JESUS, _live!_"

"When I ask the question, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' I am
ashamed of the answer that must be returned. What if property, credit,
health, friends and relatives were all lost; thou hast a Father, a
friend, an advocate, a comforter, a mansion, a treasure in
heaven."--_Bishop Hall._

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?
hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his
countenance."--_Verse 5._


VII.

HOPE.

Take the wings from a bird, and it is the most helpless of animals.
Bring the eagle from his eyrie, and rob him of his plumage, and he who
an hour before was soaring monarch of the sky, is more powerless than
the worm crawling at his side, or than the bleating lamb that trembled
and cowered under his shadow.

Such was David now. The wounded bird of Paradise flutters in the dust.
The taunting cry everywhere assails him, "_Where is thy God?_" The
future is a mournful blank, and the past is crowded with joyous and
happy memories, which only aggravate and intensify the sorrows of the
present.

But though soiled and mutilated, the wings of faith are not broken. He
struggles to rise from his fall. In the verse we are now to consider,
he plumes his pinions for a new flight. We found him a short time
before, making his tears a microscopic lens, looking through them into
the depths of his own sorrowing and sinning heart. So long as he does
so, there is ground for nothing but misgiving and despair. But he
reverses the lens. He converts the microscope into a telescope. In
self-oblivion, he turns the prospect-glass away from his own troubles
and sorrows, his fitful frames and feelings, his days alike of
sunshine and shade, to Him who is above all mutation and vicissitude.
In this position, with his eye God-wards, he begins to interrogate his
own spirit as to the unreasonableness of its depression. He addresses
a bold remonstrance to guilty unbelief. In the preceding verse, he
alluded to the dense multitude--the many thousands of Israel--he was
wont to lead in person to the feasts of Zion. Now he is alone with one
auditor--that auditor is HIMSELF. "_Why art thou cast down_, O MY
SOUL?"

And what is his antidote? What is the balm and balsam he applies to
his wounded spirit? "_Hope thou in God!_"

HOPE! Who is insensible to the music of that word? What bosom has not
kindled under its utterance? Poetry has sung of it; music has warbled
it; oratory has lavished on it its bewitching strains. Pagan
mythology, in her vain but beautiful dreams, said that when all other
divinities fled from the world, _Hope_, with her elastic step and
radiant countenance and lustrous attire, lingered behind. HOPE! well
may we personify thee, lighting up thy altar-fires in this dark world,
and dropping a live coal into many desolate hearts; gladdening the
sick-chamber with visions of returning health; illuminating with rays,
brighter than the sunbeam, the captive's cell; crowding the broken
slumbers of the soldier by his bivouac-fire, with pictures of his
sunny home, and his own joyous return. HOPE! drying the tear on the
cheek of woe! As the black clouds of sorrow break and fall to the
earth, arching the descending drops with thine own beauteous rainbow!
Ay, more, standing with thy lamp in thy hand by the gloomy realms of
Hades, kindling thy torch at Nature's funeral pile, and opening vistas
through the gates of glory!

If Hope, even with reference to present and finite things, be an
emotion so joyous,--if uninspired poetry can sing so sweetly of its
delights, what must be the _believer's_ hope, the hope which has God
for its object, and heaven its consummation? How sweet that strain
must have sounded from the lips of the exile Psalmist amid these glens
of Gilead! A moment before, his sky is dark and troubled, but blue
openings begin once more to tremble through the clouds. The mists have
been hanging dense and thick, hiding out the water-brooks. But now the
sun shines. They rise and circle in wreaths of fantastic vapour,
disclosing to the wounded Hart "the springs in the valleys which run
among the hills; which give drink to every beast in the field, and
where the wild asses quench their thirst." The wilderness has become
once more "a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water."
Rebuking his unworthy tears, Faith once more takes down her harp, and
thus wakes its melodies,--"_I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait,
and in His word do I_ HOPE." "_Let Israel_ HOPE _in the Lord._"[28]

  [28] Psalm cxxx. 5, 7.

And is it not well for us from time to time to open the gates of our
own souls, and hold a similar consistory?--to make solemn inquisition
with our hearts in their seasons of trouble and disquietude?

"_Why art thou cast down?_" Is it outward trial that assails thee?
Has calamity abridged thy earthly comforts? Have the golden heaps thou
mayest have been a lifetime in amassing, dissolved like a
snow-wreath;--the waxen wings of capricious fortune, when thou wast
soaring highest, melting like those of fabled Icarus of old, and
bringing thee helpless to the ground? Or is it sickness that has
dulled thine eye, paralysed thy limb, and ploughed its furrows on thy
cheek; shutting out from thee the din of a busy world, and chaining
thee down to a couch of languishing? Or is it the treachery of thy
trusted friend that has wounded thee; blighting thine affections,
crushing thy hopes, dashing thy cup of earthly bliss to the ground? Or
is it bereavement that has made gaps in thy loved circle; torn away
the fixtures which gave thy dwelling and life itself all its gladness
and joy?

"HOPE _thou in_ GOD." The creature has perished. God is imperishable!
Thou mayest be saying in the bitterness of thy spirit, "_All these
things are against me_;" there may be no gleam of light in the
tempest, no apparent reason for the dark dispensation; you feel it is
with stammering lips and a misgiving heart you give utterance to the
reluctant word, "Thy will be done." But, "_My soul, wait thou only
upon God_;" (or, as Calvin translates this, "_Be silent_ before God;")
"_for my expectation is from Him_."[29] "_Commit also thy way unto the
Lord, and He shall bring it to pass._"[30] Here is the province of
faith,--_implicit trust_ in dark dealings. God brings His people into
straits; sends often what is baffling and unaccountable, to lead them
devoutly to say, "_Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him_." Oh,
beautiful is it thus to see HOPE sitting, like the sea-bird, calmly on
the crested wave! While others (strangers to the peace of the gospel)
are beating their breasts in tumultuous grief, indulging in wild
paroxysms of rebellious sorrow,--beautiful is it to see the smitten
one prostrate at the feet of the great CHASTENER, saying through
tear-drops of resignation, "_Even so, Father; for so it seems good in
Thy sight!_" Believe it, in the apparently rough voice of thy God,
there is, as in the case of Joseph to his brethren, tones of
dissembled love, disguised utterances of affection--"_Although thou
sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before Him; therefore
trust thou in Him._"[31]

  [29] Psalm lxii. 5.

  [30] Psalm xxxvii. 5.

  [31] Job xxxv. 14.

Besides, this lofty grace of Hope requires stern discipline to bring
it into exercise, and to develop its noble proportions. It is the
child of tribulation. The apostle thus traces its pedigree--"_Tribulation
worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience,_
HOPE."[32] As there can be no rainbow in the natural heavens without
the cloud, so Hope cannot span the moral firmament, with its triumphal
arch, without the clouds of tribulation. As the mother eagle is said,
when other expedients fail, to put a thorn in the side of her nest to
urge her young brood to fly, so tribulation is the thorn which drives
Hope to the wing.

  [32] Rom. v. 3, 4.

"_And thou shalt yet praise Him._" "YET!" We cannot venture to scan or
measure that word. It may be after many bitter tears of sorrow;--it
may be after many struggles with a murmuring heart;--many storms may
still sweep--many hours of pining sickness may be endured--many a
rough and thorny path may have to be trodden--the harp may be muffled
in sadness to the last; but, "_at evening-time it shall be light_."
There is a season infallibly coming when the fettered tongue shall be
loosed--the lingering cloud dispelled--and faith's triumph complete;
when, with regard to the very dispensation on earth which caused you
so much perplexity, you will be able triumphantly to say, "_I know_"
(yea, I SEE) "_that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in
faithfulness hast afflicted me_."[33]

  [33] Psalm cxix. 75.

But your depression may proceed from a different cause. It may not be
outer trial, but inward sources of disquietude which are causing
despondency and doubt. It may be thoughts regarding your _spiritual_
condition. Latent corruption in a partially renewed and sanctified
heart,--the power of remaining sin robbing you of your peace; at times
leading you to question whether you have any real interest in Gospel
blessings and Gospel hopes--whether you have not long ago quenched the
strivings of the Holy Spirit by your impenitence and unbelief--whether
your hopes of heaven may not after all be a shadowy delusive dream.
"_Why art thou cast down, O my soul?_" Who, I ask, is teaching you to
breathe out these penitential sighings after a happiness to which at
present you feel you are a stranger? Who is it that is teaching you
thus to interrogate yourself about the erring past? It is not
_Nature's_ work. If there be within you one true breathing after
repentance and return, that secret aspiration is the work of that
Spirit who, although He will not always strive, is hereby shewing you
that He _is_ striving still with _you_! Think of all that God hath
done for you in the past, and is still willing to do. After the gift
of His Son,--after such an expenditure of wrath and suffering on the
head of a guiltless Surety, and all this that a way of reconciliation
might be opened up,--think how dishonouring it would be to distrust
either His ability or His willingness to save you. Having bestowed
this greatest boon, He will "with Him also _freely_ give you _all
things_." Turn away from self,--sinful self, righteous self, condemned
self,--and direct your believing regards to Him who is "_the_ HOPE _of
Israel and the Saviour thereof_." Keep your eye steadily fixed on the
infinite grandeur of His finished work and righteousness. Look to
Jesus and believe! Look to Jesus and live! Nay, more; as you look to
Him, hoist your sails, and buffet manfully the sea of life. Do not
remain in the haven of distrust, or sleeping on your shadows in
inactive repose, or suffering your frames and feelings to pitch and
toss on one another like vessels idly moored in a harbour. The
religious life is not a brooding over emotions, grazing the keel of
faith in the shallows, or dragging the anchor of hope through the oozy
tide-mud, as if afraid of encountering the healthy breeze. Away! with
your canvas spread to the gale, trusting in Him who rules the raging
of the waters. The safety of the timid bird is to be on the wing, if
its haunt be near the ground,--if it fly low, it exposes itself to the
fowler's net or snare. If we remain grovelling on the low ground of
feeling and emotion, we shall find ourselves entangled in a thousand
meshes of doubt and despondency, temptation and unbelief. "_But surely
in vain the net is spread in the sight of_ THAT WHICH HATH A
WING"[34]--(marginal reading.) "_They that wait (or hope) in the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as
eagles._"[35]

  [34] Prov. i. 17.

  [35] Isaiah xl. 31.

HOPE strengthens and invigorates her pinions the higher she soars.
She gathers courage from the past, and looks with eagle eye to the
future. "_I know_," says Paul, "_in whom I have believed_," (hoped, or
trusted,) "_and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him_." "_I will hope continually_," says David, "_and
will yet praise Thee more and more_."[36] Again, using a kindred
emblem--the bird in the tempest rushing for shelter under the mother's
wing--"_Thou hast_ BEEN _my help,_ THEREFORE _in the shadow of Thy
wings will I rejoice_."[37]

  [36] Psalm lxxi. 14.

  [37] Psalm lxiii. 7.

Can such be said of the world's hopes? Does experience lead to repose
in _them_ with similar implicit confidence? _Hope_--the hope of
earthly good, and earthly joy, and earthly happiness--is often (too
often) the mirage of life; the bubble on the stream, tinted with
evanescent glory, a flash of prismatic beauty, and then _gone_!
Multitudes flock to this enchantress in her cave, and though mocked
and duped, and mocked and duped again, still they haunt her oracle,
and kiss her magic wand. She has built for them again and again air
castles--turret on turret, buttress on buttress, gilded dome and
glittering minaret, and these have melted like frost-work. But yet
these Babel builders, with the same avidity as ever, return to the
work, and again the fantastic battlements are piled high in mid air!

We do not condemn these noble aspirations and struggles of this noble
emotion;--far from it. What would the world be without Hope? It is the
oil which keeps its vast machinery in play; it is the secret of all
success--the incentive to all enterprise. Annihilate hope, and you
blot out a sun from the firmament. Annihilate hope, and the husbandman
would forsake his furrow, the physician his patient, the merchant his
traffic; the student would quench his midnight lamp; science would at
this hour have been lisping its alphabet, and art and philosophy would
have been in their infancy.

But this we say, that if so much is perilled on a peradventure;--if
_hope_--the _ignis fatuus_ of earth--be so greedily pursued,--why the
cold and careless indifference regarding "the hope which maketh not
ashamed"--the hope which is beyond the possibility of disappointment;
promises which never fail; words which rest on a firmer and surer
basis than the foundations of earth and the pillars of heaven? Shall
the disappointed hewer still go on patching the shivered and broken
_earthly_ cistern? Shall the man of science, undeterred by successive
failures, pursue his unwearied analysis? Shall the merchant remain
unbaffled by adverse markets that have drained his coffers, or
successive storms that have stranded his vessels and wrecked his
cargo? Shall the fragments of a brave army re-muster at the bugle
call, and, amid dying comrades around and a shower of iron hail in
front, return with undaunted hearts to the charge? Shall pining
captives in a beleaguered garrison, pressed by famine, decimated by
disease, outnumbered by force--shall these light their beacon-fires of
_hope_, and sit to the last by their smouldering ashes, struggling on,
either till calm endurance win its recompence, or until hope and life
expire together? And shall the spiritual builder, or merchant, or
soldier, be left alone coward and faint-hearted, and give way to
unworthy distrust, or pusillanimous despair; and that, too, when the
guarantees of _their_ hope are so amazing? Listen to them! What words
could be stronger? what pledges more inviolable? "IN HOPE _of eternal
life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world
began._"[38] "_Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the
heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an
oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God
to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge
to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an
anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into
that within the veil._"[39]

  [38] Titus i. 2.

  [39] Heb. vi. 17-20.

Oh, beautiful figure! Hope casts its anchor into the Rock of Ages
within the veil. The ship may be tossing in the surging sea below, but
a chain of everlasting love and grace links it to the throne of God.

I love to walk through the Bible, and gaze on its many delineations of
_Hope_. It is a picture-gallery of this noble grace! As the great
painters of the middle ages clung to favourite subjects, so HOPE seems
ever to meet us in some form or other, as we tread this long corridor
of inspired portraits.

Here is the earliest. A picture hung in a framework of sorrow. Its
subject is two drooping exiles going with tears out of Eden. But, lo!
a tinge of light gleams in the dark sky, and the angel of _Hope_
drops in their ears healing words of comfort.

Here is another. An ark is tossed in a raging deluge. The heavens are
black above. Neither sun nor stars appear. All around is a waste
wilderness of waters. But, lo! by the window of the ark a weary bird
is seen fluttering, and bearing in its mouth an olive branch of
_Hope_!

Here, again, is a picture called "_The Father of the Faithful_." Its
subject is a solitary pilgrim, one of the world's gray patriarchs. He
is treading along amid some wild pastoral hills, all ignorant of his
destiny; but he has a staff in his hand--it is the staff of _Hope_!

Here is another. It is an Arabian Emir, once a Prince of the East,
sitting amid ashes, the victim of a loathsome disease; and worse than
all, of Satanic power. But _Hope_ tunes his lips to sing, "_I know
that my Redeemer liveth_."

Here is a vast exodus of six hundred thousand slaves from a land of
bondage, separated by an inhospitable desert from the land of their
fathers; but _Hope_ silvers the edges of their pillar of cloud, and
gleams by night in their pillar of fire.

Here is another picture, of exiled patriots seated by the waters of
Babylon. They have hung their harps on the willows. They refuse to
sing the Lord's song in that strange land. But HOPE is represented
restoring the broken strings; and with their eyes suffused with tears,
yet glistening with joyous visions, thus they pour out their plaintive
prayer--"_Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the
south._"[40]

  [40] Psalm cxxvi. 4.

Time would fail to traverse these halls and walls of ancient memory.
HOPE, in every diversified form and attitude, is portrayed in the
history of the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship
of prophets, the noble army of martyrs,--ay, sustaining too, in the
midst of His sufferings and sorrows, the very bosom of the Son of
God--for was it not _hope_ ("the joy that was set before Him") that
made Him "endure the cross, despising the shame?"[41]

  [41] Heb. xii. 2.

And what _Hope_ has proved in the history of the Church collectively,
it is in the life of every individual believer. By nature he is a
"prisoner," but "a prisoner of hope."[42] The gospel is a "gospel of
hope." Its message is called "_the good hope through grace_."[43]
The God of the gospel is called "_the God of Hope_."[44] The "helmet
of salvation" is the helmet of "_hope_."[45] The "anchor of the soul"
is the anchor of "_hope_."[46] The believer "_rejoices in hope_,"[47]
and "_abounds in hope_."[48] _Christ is in him_ "_the hope of
glory_."[49] HOPE peoples to him the battlements of heaven with
sainted ones in the spirit-land. He "sorrows not as others, who have
no HOPE."[50] When death comes, _Hope_ smoothes his dying pillow,
wipes the damps from his brow, and seals his eyes. "_Now, Lord, what
wait I for? my HOPE is in Thee._"[51] _Hope_ stands with her torch
over his grave, and in the prospect of the dust returning to its dust,
he says, "_My flesh shall rest in hope._"[52] _Hope_ is one of three
guardian graces that conduct him to the heavenly gate. Now abideth
these three, "Faith, HOPE, and Love," and if it be added, "_the
greatest of these is Love_," it is because Hope and her companion
finish their mission at the celestial portal! They proceed no further,
they go back to the world, to the wrestlers in the earthly conflict.
Faith returns to her drooping hearts, to undo heavy burdens, and to
let the oppressed go free. _Hope_ goes to her dungeon vaults, her beds
of sickness, her chambers of bereavement and sorrow. To take Faith or
Hope to heaven, would be to take the Physician to the sound man, or to
offer crutches to the strong, or to help to light the meridian sun
with a tiny candle; _Faith_ is then changed to sight, and Hope to full
fruition. LOVE alone holds on her infinite mission. _Faith_ and _Hope_
are her two soaring pinions. She drops them as she enters the gates of
glory. The watcher puts out his beacon when the sun floods the
ocean--the miner puts out his lamp when he ascends to the earth.
_Hope's_ taper light is unneeded in that world where "the sun shall no
more go down, neither for brightness shall the moon withdraw itself,
but where the Lord our God shall be an everlasting light, and the days
of our mourning shall be ended."

  [42] Zech. ix. 12.

  [43] 2 Thess. ii. 16.

  [44] Rom. xv. 13.

  [45] 1 Thess. v. 8.

  [46] Heb. vi. 19.

  [47] Rom xii. 12.

  [48] Rom. xv. 13.

  [49] Col. i. 27.

  [50] 1 Thess. iv. 13.

  [51] Ps. xxxix. 7.

  [52] Ps. xvi. 9.




VIII.

The Hill Mizar.


    "All scenes alike engaging prove
    To souls impress'd with sacred love!
    Where'er they dwell, they dwell in Thee;
    In heaven, in earth, or on the sea.

    "To me remains nor place nor time;
    My country is in every clime;
    I can be calm and free from care
    On any shore, since God is there.

    "While place we seek, or place we shun,
    The soul finds happiness in none;
    But, with a God to guide our way,
    'Tis equal joy to go or stay.

    "Could I be cast where thou art not,
    That were indeed a dreadful lot;
    But regions none remote I call,
    Secure of finding God in all."

    --_Cowper._

"It is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind the
dealings of God with their souls. It was Paul's accustomed manner, and
that when tried for his life, even to open before his judges the
manner of his conversion. He would think of that day and that hour in
the which he did first meet with grace, for he found it support onto
him. There was nothing to David like Goliath's sword. The very sight
and remembrance of that did preach forth God's deliverance to him. Oh,
the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my
great fears for perishing for ever. They bring afresh into my mind the
remembrance of mercy and help--my great support from heaven, and the
great grace that God extendeth to such a wretch as I."--_John Bunyan._

"O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember
thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill
Mizar."--_Verse 6._


VIII.

THE HILL MIZAR.

In the preceding verse, we found the Psalmist chiding his soul for the
unreasonableness of its depression--calling upon it to exercise hope
and trust in God, under the assurance that he would "yet praise Him
for the help of His countenance."

But "_what will ye see in the Shulamite_?" Another experience
testifies afresh, "_As it were the company of two armies._"[53] HOPE
has no sooner risen to the surface than despondency returns. The
struggling believer threatens to sink. The wave is again beat back.
His soul is again "cast down!" But one word--an old monosyllable of
comfort--is borne on the refluent billow, "O MY GOD!" This "strong
swimmer in his agony" seizes hold of that never-failing support, the
faithfulness of a covenant-keeping Jehovah. With this he breasts the
opposing tide, and will assuredly at last reach the shore. The very
tribulations that are casting him down,--threatening to submerge
him,--are only nerving his spirit for bolder feats; leading him to
value more the everlasting arms that are lower and deeper than the
darkest wave.

  [53] Sol. Song vi. 13.

We have heard of a bell, set in a lighthouse, rung by the sweep of the
winds and the dash of the billows. In the calm, stormless sea, it hung
mute and motionless; but when the tempest was let loose and the ocean
fretted, the benighted seaman was warned by its chimes; and beating
hearts ashore, in the fisherman's lonely hut, listened to its ominous
music. We read in the previous verse, of the lighthouse of FAITH,
built on the rock of HOPE. God has placed bells there. But it needs
the storms of adversity to blow ere they are heard. In the calm of
uninterrupted prosperity, they are silent and still. But the hurricane
arises. The sea of life is swept with tempest, and, amid the thick
darkness, they ring the peal of heavenly confidence, "MY GOD, MY GOD!"

_My God!_ What a heritage of comfort do these words contain--in all
time of our tribulation--in all time of our wealth--in the hour of
death, and at the day of judgment! They describe the great Being who
fills heaven with His glory, as the covenant portion and heritage of
believers. His attributes are embarked on their side; His holiness and
righteousness, and justice and truth, are the immutable guarantees and
guardians of their everlasting well-being. Hear His own gracious
promise--"_I will bring the third part through the fire, and will
refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried:
they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my
people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God._"[54] Moreover, He is
the only possession which is theirs _absolutely_. All else they have,
is in the shape of a loan, which they receive as stewards. Their time,
their talents, their possessions, their friends, are only _leased_ by
them from the Great Proprietor of life and being. But they _can_ say
unreservedly, "_The Lord is my portion._" "_God, even our_ OWN _God,
shall bless us._" Ay, and we are told, "_God is not ashamed to be
called_ THEIR GOD."[55] "The _name_ of the Lord" is thus "a strong
tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe."[56] That salvation
purchased by Jesus,--the amazing method by which every attribute of
the Divine nature has been magnified, and every requirement of the
Divine law has been met,--is "for walls and bulwarks." The believer
not only can lay hold on higher blessings--"the good hope through
grace," "glory, honour, immortality, eternal life,"--but even with
regard to the circumstantials of the present, the appointments and
allotments in the house of his pilgrimage, he can feel that they are
so regulated and overruled as best to promote his spiritual interests;
and that "all things" (yes, "ALL things") are "working together for
his good." Take then, desponding one! the opening words of David's
lamentation. They quiet all apprehensions. This all-gracious Being who
gave His own Son for thee, must have some wise reason in such
discipline. Oh, confide all thy perplexities, and _this_ perplexity,
into His hands, saying, "_I am oppressed, undertake_ THOU _for me!_"
Who can forget that it was this same monosyllable of comfort that
cheered a greater Sufferer at a more awful hour? The two most
memorable spots in His midnight of agony,--Gethsemane and Calvary, the
Garden and the Cross,--have this solitary gleam of sunshine breaking
through the darkness, "O MY FATHER!" "MY GOD, MY GOD!"

  [54] Zech. xiii. 9.

  [55] Heb. xi. 16.

  [56] Prov. xviii. 10.

Let us now proceed to the main feature in this verse. We have already
noted how the exiled King had tried to reason his soul out of its
depression by the exercise of HOPE--by looking beyond the shadows of
the present to a brighter _future_. But the torch flickered and
languished in his hand. He adopts a new expedient. Instead of looking
to the _future_, he resolves to take a _retrospective_ survey; he
directs his eye to the _past_. As often at eventide, when the lower
valleys are in shadow, the mountain-tops are gilded with the radiance
of the setting sun; so from the Valley of Humiliation, where he now
was, he looks back on the lofty memorials of God's faithfulness. He
"_lifts his eyes unto the_ HILLS, _from whence cometh his help_." "_O
my God, I will remember_ THEE!" "This is _my_ infirmity," he seems to
say, when he thinks of the weakness of his faith, and the fitfulness
of his frames and feelings: "but I will remember the years of the
right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord;
surely I will remember _Thy_ wonders of old."[57] With this key he
proceeds again to open the door of HOPE. And as he treads the valley
of Achor, he "sings there as in the days of his youth."[58]

  [57] Psalm lxxvii. 10, 11.

  [58] Hosea ii. 15.

In connexion with this remembrance of his God, David alludes to some
well-known places in his Kingdom--"_The land of Jordan, and the
Hermonites, and the hill Mizar._"

What means he by this reference? His language may admit of a twofold
interpretation.

1. He may possibly refer to his present sojourn in the region beyond
Jordan, with the Hermon range in sight; and which had this
peculiarity, that it was beyond the old boundary-line of the Land of
Promise, making him for the time, "an alien from the commonwealth of
Israel."

We know from a passage in Joshua (chap. xxii.) how sacredly the
division between the covenant people and the neighbouring tribes was
preserved. The latter were denominated a "_possession unclean_;" the
former, "_the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord's
tabernacle is_." How bitter must it have been to a patriotic heart
like that of the Psalmist, thus to be cut off (even though for a brief
season) from all participation in national and sanctuary
blessings,--to stand outside the land trodden by the footsteps of
angels, consecrated by the ashes of patriarchs, and over which hovered
the shadowing wings of Jehovah!

But he exults in the persuasion that Israel's God is not confined to
lands or to sanctuaries. "_I will remember Thee_," says the banished
monarch. "Though wandering here beyond the region Thou hast blest with
Thy favour, I will not cease still to call Thee and claim Thee as my
God, and to recount all the manifold tokens of Thy mercy, even though
it be from the 'land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill
Mizar.' My foes may drive me from my home,--they may strip me of my
regal glories,--they may make me the butt of scorn, the mark for their
arrows;--but they cannot banish me from the better portion and
heritage I have in Thy blessed self!"

If we should ever be in circumstances when, like David, we are denuded
of the means of grace--shut out from the public ministrations of the
sanctuary,--or, what is more common, placed in a disadvantageous
position for spiritual advancement;--when our situation as regards the
world, the family, business, pursuits, companions, society, is such
as to prove detrimental to the interests of our souls,--let us still
"_remember God_!" Let the loss of means, and privileges, and
opportunities, and congenial intercourse, draw us nearer the Source of
all knowledge, and peace, and true joy. If the starlight be wanting,
let us prize the sunlight more. If the streams fail, let us go direct
to the fountainhead.

Yes, and God can make His people independent of all outward
circumstances. In the court of an Ethiopian Queen there was a
believing Treasurer. In the household of Nero there were illustrious
saints. Down in the depths of the briny ocean, imprisoned in the
strangest of tombs, a disobedient prophet "remembered God," and his
prayer was heard. Joseph was torn away from the land of his birth, and
the home where his piety had been nurtured, but in Egypt "_the Lord
was with Joseph_." "At my first answer," says the apostle of the
Gentiles, "no _man_ stood with me, but all _men_ forsook me....
Notwithstanding, THE LORD stood by me, and strengthened me."
Comforting thought! that the true Sanctuary, of which all earthly ones
are the shadowy type, is ever near: God himself, the refuge and
dwelling-place of His people to all generations, and who, wherever we
are, can turn the place of forlorn exile--our "land of Jordan, the
Hermonites, the hill Mizar"--into scenes bright with manifestations of
His covenant love.

       *       *       *       *       *

2. But the references to these several localities may admit of a
different interpretation. David may be reverting to some memorable
epochs in his past history--some green spots in the waste of memory,
where he enjoyed peculiar tokens of God's grace and presence.

We spoke in last chapter of _Hope's_ picture-gallery. _Memory_ has
one, stranger still--filled with landscapes of imperishable interest!
Who has not such a gallery in his own soul? Let Memory withdraw her
folding-doors--and what do we see? The old homes of cherished infancy
may be the first to crowd the walls and arrest the eye;--scenes of
life's bright morning, the sun tipping with his rising beam the dim
mountain-heights of the future! In the foreground, there is the
murmuring brook by which we wandered, and the umbrageous tree under
which we sat;--countenances glowing with smiles are haunting every
walk and greeting us at every turn--the ringing laugh of childhood at
some--venerable forms bending at others.

But more hallowed remembrances crowd the canvas. Ebenezers and
Bethel-stones appear conspicuous in the distance--mute and silent
memorials, amid the gray mists of the past, which read a lesson of
encouragement and comfort in a desponding and sorrowful present.

David thus trod the corridors of memory. When the future was dark and
louring, he surveys picture by picture, scene by scene, along the
chequered gallery of his eventful life! With Jordan at his feet, the
Hermon range in the distance, and some _Mizar_--some "_little hill_"
(as the word means)--rising conspicuous in view, he dwells on various
signal instances of God's goodness and mercy in connexion with these
localities--"I will remember Thee" (as it may be rendered) "_regarding
the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar_."[59]

  [59] "It is said by those who have visited those parts, that one
  remarkable effect produced is the changed aspect of the hills of
  Judah and Ephraim. Their monotonous character is lost; and the
  range, when seen as a whole, is in the highest degree diversified
  and impressive. And the wide openings in the western hills, as
  they ascend from the Jordan valley, give such extensive glimpses
  into the heart of the country, that not merely the general range,
  but particular localities can be discovered with ease.... From the
  castle of Rubad, north of the Jabbok, are distinctly visible
  Lebanon, the Sea of Galilee, Esdraelon in its full extent, Carmel,
  the Mediterranean, and the whole range of Judah and Ephraim. 'It
  is the finest view,' to use the words of another traveller, 'that
  I ever saw in any part of the world.'"--_Stanley's Sinai and
  Palestine_, p. 318.

We know the other names to which he here adverts, but what is this
"HILL MIZAR?" The answer can only be conjectural. It may be some small
mountain eminence among the hills of Judah associated with the
experiences of his earlier days. May not memory possibly have
travelled back to the old home and valleys of Bethlehem, and lighted
perchance on the green <DW72> where the youthful champion measured his
prowess with the lion and the bear. As the soldier reverts with lively
interest to his first battle-field, so may not the young Shepherd-Hero
have loved to dwell on this Mizar hill, where the God he served gave
him the earnest of more momentous triumphs?

Or, to make one other surmise, may it more likely refer to "_the
little hill_" he most loved,--the home of his thoughts, the earthly
centre of his affections, the glory of his kingdom, the joy of the
whole earth--"_Mount Zion_, on the sides of the north, the city of the
great King?"[60] We find Zion spoken of by him emphatically as "a
_little hill_." In one of the sublimest of all his Psalms, he
represents the other loftier mountains of Palestine,--Bashan with its
forests of oak, Carmel with its groves of terebinth, Lebanon with its
cedar-clad summits,--as looking with envy at the tiny eminence amid
the wilds of Judah which God had chosen as the place of His sanctuary:
"_Why look ye with envy, ye high hills? this is the hill where God
desireth to dwell in; yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever._"[61]
Is the hypothesis a forced or unlikely one, that, in this his season
of sore depression and sorrow, he loved to linger on manifold
experiences of God's faithfulness associated with _Zion_,--its
tabernacle, its festivals, its joyous multitudes--his own palace, that
crowned its rocky heights, where his harp was oft attuned and his
psalms composed and sung, and in which midnight found him rising and
giving "thanks to God because of His righteous judgments?" In the mind
of the Sweet Singer of Israel, might not "glorious things" have been
thought as well as "spoken of thee, O city of God?"

  [60] Psalm xlviii. 2.

  [61] Psalm lxviii. 16.

But, after all, we need not limit the interpretation to any special
locality. The speaker's past history, from the hour when he was taken
from the sheepfolds till now, was crowded with Mizars--hill-tops
gleaming in the rays of morning. The valley of Elah, the wood of Ziph,
the forest of Hareth, the streets of Ziklag,[62] the caves of Adullam
and Engedi,--all would recall some special memorial of God's
delivering hand. He resolves to take the goodness and mercy vouchsafed
in the past, as pledges that He would still be faithful who had
promised to "David His servant," "My faithfulness and my mercy shall
be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted."[63] "Thou who
_hast_ delivered my soul from death, wilt not thou deliver my feet
from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the
living?"[64]

  [62] 1 Sam. xxx. 6.

  [63] Psalm lxxxix. 24.

  [64] Psalm lvi. 13.

The saints of God, in every age, have delighted to dwell on these
memorable spots and experiences in their past pilgrimage. _Abraham_
had _his_ "hill Mizar" between Bethel and Hai. "_There,_" we read,
"_he builded an altar, and called upon the name of the Lord._"[65] On
his return from Egypt he retraced his steps to the _same_ locality.
Why? Because it was doubly hallowed to him now, with these former
experiences of God's presence and love. It is specially noted that "he
went on his journeys from the south _even to Bethel_, unto the place
where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai;
_unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first_:
and THERE he called on the name of the Lord."[66]

_Jacob's_ "Mizar" would doubtless be his ladder-steps at Bethel, where
the fugitive wanderer was gladdened with a vision of angels, and the
voice of a reconciled God. _Moses_ would think of _his_ "Mizar" either
in connexion with the burning bush or the cleft of the rock, or the
Mount of Prayer at Rephidim. _Isaiah's_ "Mizar" would be the vision of
the Seraphim, when his faithlessness was rebuked, and confidence in
God restored. _Jeremiah_ tells us specially of _his_--some memorable
spot where he had a peculiar manifestation of God's presence and
grace. "_The Lord hath appeared of_ OLD _unto me, saying, Yea, I have
loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness
have I drawn thee._"[67]

  [65] Gen. xii. 8.

  [66] Gen. xiii. 1-4.

  [67] Jer. xxxi. 3.

Or shall we look to the New Testament? The _Roman Centurion_ would
remember as his Mizar-height, the spot at Capernaum where mingled
Omnipotence and Love uttered the healing word. The _Magdalene_ would
remember as hers, the Pharisee's banquet-hall, where she bathed the
feet of her Lord with a flood of penitential tears. The _Maniac of
Gadara_ would recall as his, the heights around Tiberias, where the
demon-throng were expelled, and where he sat calm and peaceful at the
feet of the Great Restorer. The _Woman of Samaria_ would remember as
hers, the well of Sychar, where her Pilgrim Lord led her from the
earthly to the eternal fountain. _Peter_ would remember as his, the
early morn, and the solitary figure on Gennesaret's shore. The
_Sisters of Lazarus_, go where they might, would recall as their
hallowed memorial-spot, the home and the graveyard of _Bethany_. _Paul
of Tarsus_ would ever remember as his, the burning plain near
Damascus, where a light, brighter than the mid-day sun, brought him
helpless to the ground, and a voice of mingled severity and gentleness
changed the persecutor into a believer--the lion into a lamb. _John_,
the beloved disciple, as he trod the solitary isle of his banishment,
or with the trembling footsteps of age lingered in his last home at
Ephesus--John would recall as the most sacred and hallowed "_Mizar_"
of all, the gentle bosom on which he leant at supper!

And who among us have not their "Mizars" still? It has often been said
that, next to the Bible, there is no book so instructive as that
volume which all God's people carry about with them--the volume of
their own experience.

_That_ is my earliest and fondest "Mizar," says one, the mother's knee
where I first lisped my Saviour's name, and heard of His love. Mine,
says another, is that never-to-be-forgotten sermon, when God's
messenger reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to
come; when conviction was first flashed on my torpid mind, and peace
brought to my troubled soul! Mine, is another's testimony, is that bed
of sickness on which I awoke from the long life-dream of
indifference, and gave heed for the first time to the things which
belong to my peace. Mine, says another, is that chamber--that closet
of devotion--(alas! too long and guiltily neglected) hallowed and
associated with a renewed consecration to God, and with manifold
tokens of His grace and goodness. That hour of resisted temptation,
says another, is the "Mizar" on whose summit my stone of gratitude is
raised;--when I was trembling on the edge of some precipice, and God's
hand interposed and plucked me as a brand from the burning. That awful
bereavement is mine, says still another, which tore up my affections
by the root, and led me to seek in God, the heritage and portion which
no creature-blessing could bestow. It seemed at the time to bode
nothing but anger, but I see it now the appointed herald of mercy sent
to open up everlasting consolations. That solemn death-bed is mine,
says another, when I saw for the first time the reality of gospel hope
in the departing Christian, the sweet smile of a foretasted heaven
playing upon the lips, as if the response to the angel-summons, "Come
up hither!"

It is well for all of us, and especially in our seasons of depression
and sorrow, thus to retraverse life, and let our eyes fall on these
Mizar-hills of God's faithfulness. In seasons of spiritual depression,
when apt in our sinful despondency to distrust His mercy, and question
our own personal interest in the covenant;--when tempted to say with
Gideon, "If the Lord be with us, why has all this befallen us?"--how
encouraging to look back, through the present lowering cloud, on
former instances and memorials of Jehovah's favour, when we had the
assured sense of His presence; and with an eye resting on these
Mizar-hills on which He "appeared of old to us," disappointing our
fears, and more than realizing our fondest hopes,--to remember, for
our comfort, that having "loved us at the beginning," He will love us
"even to the end!" If we can rest on one indubitable token of His
mercy in the past, let it be to us a Covenant-keepsake, a sweet and
precious token and pledge, that, "though for a small moment He may
have forsaken us," yet that "with great mercy He will gather us," and
that "with everlasting kindness He will have mercy upon us."[68]

  [68] Isa. liv. 8.

Why not thus seek, in the noblest sense of the word, to rise above
our trials, and perplexities, and sorrows, by taking the bright side
of things. There are two windows in every soul. The one looks out on a
dreary prospect,--lowering clouds, barren wilds, bleak, sullen hills,
pathways overgrown with rank and noxious weeds. The other opens on
what is bright and beauteous,--sunny <DW72>s, verdant meadows, luscious
flowers, the song of birds. Many there are who sit always at the
former--gazing on the dark side of things, nursing their sorrows,
brooding over their trials. They can see nothing but Sinai and
Horeb--the trail of serpents and the lair of wild beasts. Others, with
a truer gospel-spirit, love, with hopeful countenance, to watch the
breaking of the sunbeam in the darkened sky. Like Paul, they seat
themselves at the bright lattice, saying, "_Rejoice in the Lord alway,
and again I say, rejoice._" Both look on identically the same
landscape. But the one descry only dull heaths and moors draped in
sombre hue. The others see these glorified with sunlight. The one gaze
on nothing but inky skies and drenching torrents. The others behold
the bow of heaven arching the sky, and the rain-drops glittering like
jewels on leaf, and grass, and flower. The one can descry only "Hill
Difficulties" and "Doubting Castles." The others love to gaze on
Hermons and Mizars, on "the Palace of the Beautiful,"--the land of
Beulah;--and, bounding the prospect, the towers and streets of the
Celestial City. They are ready to acknowledge that, however many may
have been their tribulations, their mercies are greater and more
manifold still;--that however many the shadowy valleys, the bright
spots outnumber the dreary.

Are any who read these pages cast down by reason of trouble, and
perplexity, and sorrow? Is God's hand lying heavily upon you--are you
in darkness, and in the deeps? Seek to lift the eye of faith to _Him_.
Seasons of trial must either bring us nearer _to_ Him, or drive us
further _from_ Him. It is an old saying, "Affliction never leaves us
as it finds us." It either leads us to "_remember_ God," or to banish
and _forget_ Him. How many there are (and how sad is their case) who,
when Providence seems to frown,--when their hearts are smitten like
grass, their cherished hopes blighted, their gourds withered,--are
led, in the bitterness of their spirits, to say, "My soul is cast down
within me. _therefore_, I will pine away in disconsolate sorrow. I
will rush to ruin and despair. My lot is hard, my punishment is
greater than I can bear;--all that made life happiness to me has
perished;--THEREFORE, I will harden my heart. I do well to be angry,
even unto death. Existence has no charm for me. I long to die--my only
rest will be the quiet of the grave!"

Sorrowing one! be yours a nobler philosophy. Look back from these
valleys of death and tribulation, to the gleaming summits of yonder
distant _Mizar hills_! Mark, in the past, the tokens and memorials of
unmistakeable covenant love. "Call to remembrance your song" in former
nights. Wounded Hart! on the hills of Gilead, forget not thy former
pastures. Go! stricken and smitten, with the tears in thine eyes,
bathe thy panting sides in the cooling "water-brooks." When the
disturbers of thy peace have gone, and when hushed again is thy forest
home, return to "_the mountain of myrrh and the hill of
frankincense_." Go, minstrel monarch of Judah, weeping exile! seat
thyself on some rocky summit on these ridges of Hermon, and, surveying
mountain height on mountain height, in the land of covenant
promise,--each associated with some hallowed memory,--take down thy
harp, and sing one of thine own songs of Zion. "_Thou who hast shewed
me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me
up again from the depths of the earth!_"[69]

  [69] Psalm lxxi. 20.




IX.

The Climax.


    "God of my life, to Thee I call,
    Afflicted at Thy feet I fall;
    When the great water-floods prevail,
    Leave not my trembling heart to fail!"

"There is but a step from the third heavens to the thorn in the
flesh."--_Winslow._

"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy
waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his
loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be
with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life."--_Verses 7, 8._


IX.

THE CLIMAX.

The storm-struggle in the soul of the Psalmist is now at its height.
In the previous verse, he had penetrated through the mists of unbelief
that were surrounding him, and rested his eye on the Mizar hills of
the Divine faithfulness in a brighter past. But the sunshine-glimpse
was momentary. It has again passed away. His sky is anew
darkened--rain-clouds sweep the horizon--"_Deep calleth unto deep at
the noise of thy water-spouts._" Amid the environing floods he
exclaims, "_All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me!_"

The figure is a bold and striking one. Some have thought it has
reference to the sudden rush of water-torrents from the heights of
Lebanon and Hermon;--that it was suggested by the roaring cataracts at
his feet--Jordan with its swollen and winding rapids--the faithful
picture of the deep-worn channels in his own spirit--fretted and
furrowed with the rush of overwhelming sorrow.

But the word rendered "_deep_," is, in the original Hebrew, more
applicable to the floods of the _ocean_ than to the rapids of a river;
and the image, in this sense, is bolder and more expressive still.[70]
Billow calls on billow to sweep over the soul of the sufferer. They
lift their crested heads, and with hoarse voice summon one another to
the assault. "Let us be confederate!" say they. "Let us rouse the
spirit of the storm! Let the windows of heaven be opened! Let the
fountains of the great deep be broken up, that we may shake this man's
confidence in his God, and plunder faith of her expected triumph! Ye
angry tempests, driving sleet and battering hail! come and aid us. Ye
forked lightnings, gleaming swords of the sky! leap from your cloudy
scabbards. Old ocean! be stirred from your lowest depths. Let every
wave be fretted to madness, that with one united effort we may effect
his discomfiture and leave him a wreck on the waters!"

  [70] From the uplands where he now was, in the recesses between
  the mountains of Gilead, David could catch here and there a
  glimpse of the "Great Sea."

They obey the summons. Already chafed and buffeted, they return with
fresh violence to the shock. Affliction on affliction, temptation on
temptation, roll on this lonely, surf-beaten cliff. Outward
calamities--inward troubles; his subjects in revolt--his friends
treacherous; his own son and favourite child heading the insurrection;
he himself an exile, haunted with the thought of past sins that were
now exacting terrible retribution;--and worse than all temporal
calamities, the countenance of his God averted. Affliction seemed as
if it could go no further--"ALL _thy waves and thy billows have gone
over me!_"

We believe there are periods in the history of most of God's people
corresponding to the awful experience recorded in this verse. Few
there are who cannot point to some sad and memorable epochs alike in
their natural and spiritual being,--some solemn and critical
crisis-hours, in which they have been subjected to special and
peculiar trials;--encompassed with the thunders and lightnings of
Sinai--the trumpet sounding long and loud:--or, to revert to the
simile of the Psalm, when the moorings of life have been torn away,
and they have been left to drift, on a starless, tempestuous ocean.
Often, as with David, there may at such times be a combination of
trials,--sickness--bereavement--loss of worldly substance--estrangement
of friends--blighting of fair hopes. Then, following on these, and
worse than all, hard thoughts of God. We see the wicked around
prospering,--vice apparently pampered,--virtue apparently trodden
under foot,--many passing through life without an ache or trial--their
homes unrifled--their hearts unwounded--their every plan
prospering--fortune smiling benignantly at every turn; while _we_ seem
to have been a target for the arrows of misfortune,--tempted with
Jeremiah to say, "_I am_ THE _man who have seen affliction by the rod
of His wrath_."[71] And doubting a God of _providence_, the next step
is to doubt a God of _grace_. We begin to question our interest in the
covenant,--to wonder whether, after all, our hopes of heaven have been
a delusion and a lie. God's mercy we imagine to be "gone for ever." He
seems as if He would be "favourable no more." There is no comfort in
prayer--no brightness in the promises; the Bible is a sealed
book;--the heavens have become as brass and the earth as iron! Oh, so
long as we had merely _external_ trials, we could brave and buffet the
surrounding floods. So long as we had the Divine smile, like the bow
in the cloud, resting upon us, we could gaze in calmness on the
blackest sky;--yea, rejoice in trial, as only unfolding to us more of
the preciousness of the Saviour. But when we have the _cloud_ without
the _bow_,--when outer trials come to a soul in spiritual unrest and
trouble,--when we harbour the suspicion that the only Being who
_could_ befriend in such an hour has Himself hidden His face,--when we
have neither this world nor the next to comfort us--smitten hopes for
time and despairing hopes for eternity!--this is the woe of woes--the
"horror of great darkness,"--"_deep calleth unto deep_." We can say,
with a more terrible emphasis far than the smitten patriarch, "_I_ AM
_bereaved_!"

  [71] Lam. iii. 1.

The Psalmist had now reached this extremity. It is the turning point
of his present experience. He has two alternatives before him:--either
to suffer unbelief to triumph, to distrust God, abandon the conflict,
and sink as lead in the surging waters; or to gather up once more his
spiritual resources, breast the waves, and manfully buffet the storm.

It is with him now, as with a sinking disciple in a future age:--when
the storm is loudest and the midnight is darkest, the voice and
footsteps of his God are heard on the waves: "_And about the fourth
watch of the night, Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the sea._"
"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all
his troubles!"[72]

  [72] Psalm xxxiv. 6.

And what is the first gleam of comfort which crests these topmost
waves? It is _discerning the hand and appointment of God in all his
afflictions_! He speaks of "_Thy_ waves and _Thy_ billows." These
floods do not riot and revel at the bidding of chance. "_The Lord
sitteth upon the water-floods._"[73] While, in one sense, it
aggravated his trials to think of them as Divine chastisements--the
expressions of the Divine displeasure at sin--yet how unspeakable the
consolation that every billow rolled at the summons of Omnipotence.
"_The floods_," he can say, "_have lifted up, the floods have lifted
up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is
mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves
of the sea._"[74] "_O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto
thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise,
thou stillest them._"[75]

  [73] Psalm xxix. 10.

  [74] Psalm xciii. 3, 4.

  [75] Psalm lxxxix. 8, 9.

But he could go further than this. He could triumph in the assurance
of God's returning favour;--that behind these troubled elements there
was seated a Being of unchanging faithfulness and love. Already the
lowering mist was beginning to clear off the mountains, and the eye of
faith to descry sunny patches of golden light gleaming in the hollows.
Soon he knew the whole landscape would be flooded with glory. The
sailor does not discredit the existence of the beacon or lighthouse,
or alter the direction of his vessel, because the fog prevents these
being seen. Nay rather, he strains his eyes more keenly through the
murky curtain, in hopes of hailing their guidance. When a cloud or
clouds are passing over the sun's disc, and hiding it from view, the
sunflower does not, on account of the momentary intervention, hang its
head, or cease to turn in the direction of the great luminary. It
keeps still gazing upwards with wistful eye, as if knowing that the
clouds will soon roll past, and that it will ere long again be bathed
in the grateful beams! So it was with David. He felt that the
countenance of his God, though hidden, was not eclipsed. This pining
flower on the mountains of Gilead does not droop in the anguish of
unbelief, when "the Sun of his soul" is for the moment obscured. He
knew that there would yet arise "light in the darkness." Amid the roll
of the billows--the moaning of the blast--he listens to celestial
music. Its key-note is "_the loving-kindness_" of his _God_. While the
heavens are still black, and the tempest raging, he lifts the voice of
faith above the war of the storm, and thus sings:--"_Yet the Lord will
command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song
shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life!_"

"YET _the Lord_!" The believer, even in his deepest and darkest season
of trouble, has always _this_ alternative word--"YET _the Lord will_!"
I am sunk in sore trial--"_Yet_ the Lord" will be faithful to His
promises! I have been bereaved of those near and dear to me--"_Yet_
the Lord" will be to me a name better than that of son or daughter! I
have been laid for long years on this couch of suffering--"_Yet_ the
Lord" has converted this lonely sick-chamber into the vestibule of
heaven. I have been tossed and harassed with countless spiritual
temptations--"_Yet_ the Lord" will not suffer these temptations to go
further than I am able to bear. I am soon to walk through the dark
valley--"_Yet_" will "I fear no evil, for _Thou_ art with me!"

The Psalmist's assurance of deliverance was indeed the test of no
meagre faith. We know well, how apt we are to be influenced and
affected by present circumstances. When all is bright, and genial, and
prosperous,--amid a happy home and kind friends,--in the midst of
robust health and flourishing worldly schemes, the buoyant heart is
full of elasticity. The joy _without_, imparts an _inner_ sunshine. A
man is happy and hopeful in spite of himself. But if all at once he is
plunged into a vortex of trouble,--if clouds gather and thicken
around,--the mind not only becomes the prey of its own trials, but it
peoples the future with numberless imaginary evils, and its very
remaining joys and blessings become tinged and sicklied over with the
predominating sadness! It could as little be expected, on natural
principles, that the heart could in such circumstances be hopeful and
rejoicing, as to expect that the outer landscape of nature would glow
and sparkle with beauty, if the clouds of heaven obscured the great
fountain of light.

But faith, strong in God's word, can triumph over natural obstacles.
It did so in the case of this afflicted exile. He remembered how his
God had vouchsafed past deliverances, even when he least expected
them;--"_They looked unto_ HIM _and were lightened_"[76] [literally,
"their countenances were made bright."] He feels assured that the same
loving-kindness will be "commanded" still. He sees God's covenant
faithfulness resting calmly and beautifully, like the rainbow-tints in
the spray of the cataract! "_Who is among you that feareth the Lord,
that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and
hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon
his God._"[77]

  [76] Psalm xxxiv. 5.

  [77] Isaiah l. 10.

This experience we have been considering is that of Christ's people
only. But there is an experience sadder still: that of those who are
living "without God," and therefore "without hope;"--the billows
heaving, and yet they knowing not of them;--"deep calling to deep,"
yet they ignorant alike of their guilt and danger! There is nothing
more sad or touching in the midst of a storm,--when the vessel is
reeling on the waves, and little expectation of safety is left,--than
to see, amidst the settled gloom of despair, the little child playing
on the deck, all unaware of what is impending;--or, at a time of
heart-rending bereavement, when every face of the household is muffled
in sadness and suffused with tears, to hear the joyous laugh and
playful prattle of unconscious infancy. Ah! of how many is this the
position with regard to eternity;--living heedless of their
danger--the waves of destruction ready to close over them! Sadder far,
surely, is _their_ case, than all the troubles and trials of God's
most afflicted people. _Their_ waves and billows are crested with
hope--"songs in the night" come floating along the darkened surges;
but the future to the others has _no_ ray of hope, _no_ midnight star,
_no_ divine song! There is a time coming when, in a more awful sense,
the cry will be heard, "Deep calleth unto deep: all Thy waves and Thy
billows have gone over me!" But there will be no after-strain--no
joyous anthem of anticipated deliverance--"Yet the Lord will command
His loving-kindness!" In vain will the cry ascend, "My heart is
overwhelmed: lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."

But, blessed be God, that cry may ascend _now_--that Rock may be fled
to as a shelter _now_. Sinner! these waves swept over the Rock of
Ages, that they might not sweep over you! Sheltered in these crevices,
you will be eternally safe. Not one blast of the storm, not one drop
of the rain-shower of vengeance, can overtake you. When the billows of
wrath--the deluge of fire--shall roll over this earth, safe in these
everlasting clefts, you may utter the challenge, "_Who shall separate
me from the love of Christ?_"




X.

Lessons.


    "When darkness long has veil'd my mind,
      And smiling day once more appears,
    Then, my Redeemer, then I find,
      The folly of my doubts and fears:
    Straight I upbraid my wandering heart,
      And blush that I should ever be
    Thus prone to act so base a part
      Or harbour one hard thought of Thee!"

"Here deep calls to deep. Yet in the midst of those deeps faith is not
drowned. You see it lifts its head above water."--_Bishop Hall._

"We perceive the Psalmist full of perplexed thought, and that betwixt
strong desires and griefs, and yet in the midst of them intermixing
strains of hope with his sad complaints.... What is the whole thread
of our life but a chequered twist, black and white, of delights and
dangers interwoven? And the happiest passing of it is, constantly to
enjoy and to observe the experiences of God's goodness, and to praise
Him for them."--_Archbishop Leighton_, 1649.

"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of the water-spouts: all thy
waves and thy billows are gone over me. Yet the Lord will command his
loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be
with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life."--_Verses 7, 8._


X.

LESSONS.

In the previous chapter we spoke of the two verses which form the
turning-point in the Psalm,--the climax of the conflict therein so
strikingly described between belief and unbelief. We referred to the
boldness and expressiveness of the figure: the troubles of the
believer, like the billows of the ocean calling on one another to
unite their strength that they might effect his overthrow, but faith
rising triumphant above them all. At times, when all human comfort
gives way, God himself appears. "_The voice of the Lord is upon the
waters._"[78] _He_ not only "commands His loving-kindness in the
day-time," but "_in_ THE NIGHT _His song is with us_." Our heavenly
Parent comes in earth's darkest, most tempestuous hours, sits by our
side, sings His night-song--His own lullaby--"PEACE, BE STILL!" "_So
giveth He His beloved sleep!_"[79] God's "songs" sound always
sweetest "_by night_"--the deep, dark night of affliction. The
nightingale's notes are nothing by day--they would be lost in the
chorus of other birds; but when these have retired to their nests, she
prolongs her tuneful descant, and serenades, with her warblings, the
silent earth. The world can only give _its_ song _by day_. It can
speak only in the sunshine of prosperity. But "God our Maker giveth
_songs in the night_!"[80] His promises, like the nightingale, sound
most joyously, and, like the glow-worm, shine most brightly, in _the
dark_!

  [78] Psalm xxix. 3.

  [79] Psalm cxxvii. 2.

  [80] Job xxxv. 10.

Let us pause ere proceeding with the sequel of the Psalm, and ponder
the great lesson to be derived from this experience of David.

It is, _to_ TRUST GOD _in the darkest, gloomiest night of earthly
trial_! To wait His own time, and to say, when the billows are
highest, "_Yet the Lord will_"--

This is one great end and design of trial, to exercise the grace of
_patience_. There is nothing God loves better than _a waiting soul_.
"_The Lord is good to them that wait for Him._"[81] "_I waited_
_patiently_," says David, in another Psalm, (or, as it is literally,
"I waited, waited,") "_for the Lord_, and He inclined unto me, and
heard my cry."[82] "_I know thy works_," says Jesus, speaking of old,
in the language of commendation, to His church at Ephesus: "_how thou
hast_ BORNE, _and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured,
and hast not_ FAINTED."[83] How often has our way _appeared_ to be
hedged up with thorns,--as if there were no possibility of egress! In
sailing among some of our own Highland lakes and inland seas, where
the mountains, in a thousand fantastic forms, rise abrupt from the
shore, we frequently seem to be landlocked, and able to get no
farther. Yet the vessel pursues its serpentine course; and as we
double the first jutting promontory, the lake again expands; the same
waters appear beyond, gleaming like a mirror of molten gold. We find
what we imagined to be an impassable barrier, is only a strait,
opening into new combinations of mountain majesty and beauty. So is it
in the Voyage of life. Often, in its fitful turnings and windings, do
we seem to be arrested in our way;--"Hill Difficulties" rising before
us, and appearing to impede our vessel's course;--but as faith steers
onwards, impediments vanish, new vistas and experiences of
loving-kindness open up. Where we expected to be stopped by walls of
frowning rock and barren mountains, lo! limpid waves are seen laving
the shore, and joyful cascades are heard singing their way to the
silver strand!

  [81] Lam iii. 45.

  [82] Psalm xl. 1.

  [83] Rev. ii. 3.

And not only does God thus "command His loving-kindness" in
disappointing our fears, but "in the night His song shall be with us."
He will turn the very midnights of our sorrow into occasions of
grateful praise! Yes! if not now, we shall come yet to see the "needs
be" of every trial. We have only a partial view here of God's
dealings--His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand
out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of
Eternity!

Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest King, to the heights of the
forest of Lebanon. See that noble Cedar, the pride of its compeers, an
old wrestler with the northern blasts of Palestine! Summer loves to
smile upon it--night spangles its feathery foliage with
dew-drops--the birds nestle on its branches--the wild deer slumber
under its shadow--the weary pilgrim, or wandering shepherd, repose
under its curtaining boughs from the mid-day heat or from the furious
storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall,--the old denizen of
that primeval forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke! As
we see the unsparing axe making its first gash on its gnarled
trunk--then the noble limbs stripped of their branches--and at last
the proud "Tree of God" coming with a crash to the ground; we exclaim
against the wanton destruction--the demolition of this noblest of
pillars in the temple of nature,--and we are tempted to cry with the
prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem--invoking
inanimate things to resent the affront--"_Howl, fir-tree, for the
cedar has fallen!_" But wait a little!--follow that gigantic trunk as
the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side,--thence conveyed
in monster rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean,--and last
of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of
God;--and then, as you see its destination,--gazing down on the very
Holy of Holies, set in the diadem of the Great King;--say, can you
grudge that the crown of Lebanon was despoiled, in order that this
jewel might have so noble a setting? That cedar stood as a stately
beam and pillar in _nature's_ temple, but the glory of the latter
house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls
are like these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and
bared them,--we see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but
He has a noble end and object in view--to set them as everlasting
pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple, to make them "a crown of
glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our
God!"

Or take another illustration. Go to one of our graving-docks, where
the weather-beaten vessel has been weeks or months in the carpenter's
hands. Her started timbers are replaced, her shattered keel renewed,
the temporary props and scaffoldings have been removed, and with her
gay streamers afloat, and her crew on deck, she stands ready and
equipped for sea. What is needed? Nothing but the opening of the
sluices, to reunite her to her old watery element. She lies a
helpless, decrepit thing, till these dock-gates be opened, and the
buoyant waves rush to clasp her anew in their embrace. It is done!
But at first all is noise, and wrath, and tumult. These gurgling
waters, discoloured with mud and sediment, convert the noble granite
basin into an inky, turgid whirlpool. Ere long, however, the strife
ceases; the great wooden wall raises itself like a child that has been
awoke in its cradle by the voice of the storm--the waters gradually
calm and subside;--higher and still higher is the vessel lifted, till,
amid the cheers of the crew, she passes by the opened gates, and, with
every sail spread to the breeze, is off to new voyages in her
ocean-home.

Child of trial! "vessel of mercy!" your God sees meet at times to
bring you into the graving-dock, that He may put His tools upon you,
and refit and prepare you for the great voyage of immortality. When He
opens the sluices of trial, you may see no mercy in His dealings. It
may be "deep calling to deep"--the roar and heaving of antagonist
waters; they may at first, too, stir up nothing but the dregs and
sediment of sin,--expose the muddy pools, the deep corruptions of the
heart. But be still! He will yet vindicate the rectitude and wisdom of
His own procedure. Ere long, these surging waves will settle
peacefully around you, the shadows of heaven reflected in their glassy
surface; and better still, strengthened and renovated by that season
of trial, you will go forth from the Graver's hands more ready to
brave the billows, grapple with the tempest, and reach at last the
haven where you would be!

It is _hard discipline_--the undowny pillow, the trench-work and
midnight vigils--which makes the better soldier. The type of strength
in the kingdom of inanimate nature is not the sickly plant of the
hot-house, or the tree or bush choked in the dark jungle; but the pine
rocked by Alpine or Norwegian tempests, or the oak mooring its roots
in the rifted rock! David would neither have been the King nor the
Saint he was, but for the caves of Adullam and Engedi, the rocks of
the wild goats, the forest exile of Hermon and Gilead. He had to thank
_affliction_ for his best spiritual graces. The redeemed in glory are
ready to tell the same. "We would never have been here but for these
storms of 'great tribulation.' But for the loss of that child--that
worldly calamity--that protracted sickness--that cutting
disappointment--that wounding of my heart's affection--that
annihilation of earthly pride and ambition--that 'deep calling to
deep'--I would not now have been wearing this crown!" Trials have been
well compared to the winds God employs to fill our sails and fetch us
home to the harbour of everlasting peace![84]

  [84] See "Life Thoughts." The author has been more than once
  indebted, in this volume, to this suggestive little book.

       *       *       *       *       *

One word of caution ere we close this chapter. From all we have
said--of "deeps" and "floods," storms and water-spouts, and midnight
darkness--are any to leave these pages with the feeling that Religion
is a gloomy, repulsive thing;--that the believer's life is one of
darkness and despair;--that better far is the world's gaiety and
folly--the merry laugh of its light-hearted votaries--than a life of
sadness like this? Mistake us not! We repeat what we have already
said. The experience we have been now considering is, in many
respects, peculiar; one of those dark passages which stand alone in
the diary of the spiritual life. _Religion gloomy!_ Who says so? Shall
we take St Paul as our oracle? What is his testimony? In all his
letters he tries to crowd as much as he can into little space. In one
of these, he has room for only two injunctions. But instead of giving
two that are different, he prefers to repeat the _one_. It is the
emphatic tautology, "_Rejoice in the Lord alway: and_ AGAIN _I say_,
REJOICE."[85] Or shall we seek a different tribunal? Go gather
together all the philosophers of antiquity--Plato, Socrates,
Aristotle. Bring together the wise men of Greece--the philosophers of
Alexandria--the sages of Rome. Ask if their combined and collected
wisdom ever solved the doubts of one awakened soul, as have done these
leaves of this Holy Book? Which of them ever dried the tear of
widowhood as these? Which of them ever smoothed the cheek of the
fatherless as these? Which of them ever lighted the torch of hope and
peace at the dying bed as these, and flashed upon the departing soul
visions of unearthly joy? O pagan darkness! where was _thy_ song in
the night? In the region and shadow of death, where did _thy_ light
arise?

  [85] Phil. iv. 4.

But WE have a "more sure word of prophecy, to which we do well to take
heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place." The Christian is
_the_ man who alone can wear the sunny countenance. The peace of God,
keeping the heart within, cannot fail to be mirrored in the look and
life without! And if (as often is the case) he has his appointed
seasons of trial--the sea of life swept with storms of great
tribulation--it is with him as with yonder ocean. To the eye of the
young voyager, gazing on its mountain billows, it would seem as if its
lowest caverns were stirred, and the world were rocking to its
foundations; while, after all, it is only a surface-heaving! There are
deeps, unfathomed deeps, of calm rest and peace, down in that ocean's
undisturbed recesses.

Believer in Jesus! with all thy trials, thou art a happy man. Go on
thy way rejoicing. Tribulation may fret and ruffle the calm of thy
outer life, but nothing can touch the deeps of thy nobler being.
Troubles may rise, and "terrors may frown," and "days of darkness" may
fall around thee, but "_Thou wilt keep him, O God_, IN PERFECT PEACE
_whose mind is stayed on_ THEE!"




XI.

Faith and Prayer.


    "Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
    Let me hide myself in Thee!"

"The soul of man serves the purpose, as it were, of a workshop to
Satan, in which to forge a thousand methods of despair. And therefore
it is not without reason that David, after a severe conflict with
himself, has recourse to prayer, and calls upon God as the witness of
his sorrow."--_Calvin on the Psalms._

"I will say unto God my rock, Why has thou forgotten me? why go I
mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a sword in my
bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where
is thy God?"--_Verses 9, 10._


XI.

FAITH AND PRAYER.

Touching was that scene which occurred three thousand years ago on the
borders of Palestine: aged Naomi, in returning to the land of her own
kindred from her sojurn in Moab, pausing to take a last farewell of
her two loving daughters-in-law! One of these refuses to part from
her. Strong may be the inducement to Ruth to return to the home of her
childhood, and, above all, to the spot where hallowed dust reposes
(the buried treasure of her young affections). But ties stronger than
death link her soul to the one who had shared for ten years her joys
and sorrows. With impassioned tears, she announces her determination!
Her resolve may entail upon her manifold sacrifices. She may be going
to an alien people--to a home of penury--to bleak and barren wilds,
compared with her own fertile vales. But she is ready for any toil,
any self-denial, if only permitted to retain the companionship of
that living, loving heart, which had been to her all that earthly
tenderness could be.

Such, if we may compare an earthly with a heavenly affection, were the
feelings of the banished King of Judah, at this time towards his God.
All the temptations that have been assailing him have not repressed
the ardour of his faith, or diminished the fervour of his love.
Unbelief had done its best to sever the holy bond which linked him to
his Heavenly Friend; but, like the tender-hearted Moabitess from whom
he sprung, he will submit to any privation rather than be parted from
Him whose favour is life. "Entreat me not to leave Thee," is the
spirit at least of his fervid aspiration; "nor to return from
following after Thee. Where Thou goest I will go, and where Thou
dwellest I will dwell; and death itself shall not separate between
Thee and me." As Peter, in a future age, rushed to the feet of that
Saviour he had again and again wounded, so these many waters (the
"deep calling to deep") cannot quench the Psalmist's love, nor many
floods drown it. The voice of malignant taunt and scorn, "Where is now
thy God?" might have driven others to despair; but it only rouses him
up, in the midnight of his struggle, to the exercise of new spiritual
graces. "I shall not," he seems to say, "surrender my holy trust; I
know the graciousness of the God with whom I have to deal. Nothing
will tempt me to abandon my interest in the covenant. I shall take a
new weapon from the Divine armoury; with it I shall seek to decide the
conflict. No gibes of the scoffer, no rebellious son, no crafty
Ahithophel, can rob me of the privilege of PRAYER." "_I will say unto
God my Rock, Why hast Thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of
the oppression of the enemy?_"

It is, then, a combined exercise of _faith_, and _prayer_, on the part
of David, we are now called to consider. Out of weakness he is made
strong, waxes valiant in fight, and turns to flight the armies of the
aliens.

Let us advert to each in their order.

FAITH regards God here under a twofold aspect.

1. _It looks to Him as an_ IMMUTABLE GOD.

Amid the fitfulness of his own feelings, this was the Psalmist's
consolation--"_God my_ ROCK!" What a source of comfort is there here
in the _immutability_ of Jehovah. All else around us is unstable.
External nature bears on every page of its volume the traces of
mutation. Earth has the folds already on its vesture--the wrinkles of
age on its brow. The ocean murmurs of change, as its billows chafe on
altered landmarks. Human friendships and human associations are all
fluctuating. So are our habits, and tastes, and employments. The old
man looking back from some hoary pinnacle on the past, almost
questions his personal identity; and these emptied chairs!--these
faces, once glowing at our firesides, now greeting our gaze only in
mute and silent portraits on the wall! "Here we have no continuing
city," is the oracle of all time.

"_But_ THOU _art the same, and Thy years shall have no end._"[86]
"Heaven and earth may pass away," but there is no change, and _can_ be
none, in an all-perfect God! "The wheel turns round, but the axle is
immutable." The clouds which obscure the sun do not descend from
heaven--they are exhaled from earth. It is the soul's own darkening
vapours, generated by unbelief and sin, which at times taint and
obscure the moral atmosphere. Behind every such murky haze He shines
brightly as ever. "_Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary?_"[87] "Young sailors," says
Rutherford, "imagine the shore and land moving, while it is they
themselves all the while. So we often think that God is changing, when
the change is all with ourselves!"

  [86] Psalm cii. 27.

  [87] Isaiah x. 28.

2. _Faith regards this immutable God as a God in covenant._

"MY _Rock_!" Believer! you have the same immovable ground of
confidence! Look to YOUR God in Christ, who has made with you "_an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure_!" He, "_willing
more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of
His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in
which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong
consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set_
_before us_."[88] The torch may flicker in your hand, the flame may be
the sport of every passing gust of temptation and trial, but He who
lighted it will not suffer it to be quenched. "_Simon, Simon, Satan
hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat: but I have
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not._"[89] The Great Adversary
may attempt to rob you of your peace, but that peace is imperishably
secured. He must first destroy THE ROCK, before he can touch one
trembling soul that has fled there for refuge! He must first uncrown
Christ, before he can touch one jewel in the purchased diadems of His
people! Your life is "hid with Christ in God;" because He lives, "ye
shall live also!" God himself must become mutable, and cease _to be
God_, ere your eternal safety can be imperilled or impaired. "If we
perish," says Luther, "Christ perisheth with us."

  [88] Heb. vi. 17, 18.

  [89] Luke xxii. 31.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us turn now to the Psalmist's PRAYER.

If _Faith_ be called the eye, _Prayer_ may be called the wings of the
soul. No sooner does Faith descry God his "ROCK," than forthwith
Prayer spreads out her pinions for flight. In the close of the
preceding verse, (when in the extremity of his agony,) David had
announced his determination to betake himself to supplication--"_In
the night His song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my
life._" He follows up his resolution now with material for petition.
He puts on record a solemn and beautiful liturgy--"_I will say unto
God my Rock, Why hast Thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of
the oppression of the enemy? As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies
reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?_"

How wonderfully does God thus overrule His darkest dispensations for
the exercise and discipline of His people's spiritual graces! In their
overflowing prosperity they are apt to forget Him. He sends them
afflictions. Trial elicits faith--faith drives to prayer--prayer
obtains the spiritual blessing! It was the sense of want and
wretchedness which drove the prodigal to cry, "Father, I have sinned!"
It was the "buffeting" thorn which sent Paul thrice to his knees in
the agony of supplication, and brought down on his soul a rich
heritage of spiritual blessing. It was these surging waves--the "deep
calling to deep"--which elicited the cry from this sinking castaway,
"_My heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the_ ROCK _that is higher than
I!_" "BEHOLD HE PRAYETH!" That announcement seems in a moment to turn
the tide of battle, and change the storm into a calm. Well has a
Christian poet written:--

    "Frail art thou, O man, as a bubble on the breaker;
    Weak, and govern'd by externals, like a poor bird caught in the storm:
    Yet thy momentary breath can still the raging waters;
    Thy hand can touch a lever that may move the world."

The struggle till now may have seemed doubtful; "_but they that_ WAIT
_upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles_."[90] It is said, the beautiful plumage of the Bird
of Paradise not only impedes its flight when flying against the wind,
but often in the ineffectual effort it is brought helpless and
exhausted to the ground--its golden hues soiled and ruffled. When,
however, a gentle breeze springs up, it spreads out its feathers in a
fan-like shape, and is borne joyously along! So with the believer.
When he is called to do battle with unbelief, the wings of faith are
often soiled, and mutilated, and broken; he falls a helpless thing to
the earth. But when God's own south wind blows, he spreads out his
glorious plumage, and, rising on the pinions of prayer, is borne
onwards and upwards to the region of heavenly peace and joy!

  [90] Isaiah xl. 31.

There are one or two characteristics in David's prayer worthy of note,
with which we shall sum up this chapter.

1. Observe his INSTANT _resort to the "God of his life!"_

No sooner does the thought of prayer suggest itself, than he proceeds
to the sacred exercise. Like the prodigal, not only does he say, "_I
will arise and go_," but the next record in his history is, "_And he
arose, and came to his Father_."[91] Oh, how much spiritual benefit we
miss by procrastination! The cloud of blessing floats over our heads,
but we fail to stretch forth the electric rod of prayer to fetch it
down! We determine on embarking, but, by guilty delay, we allow the
vessel to weigh anchor, and we are left behind. Many an afflictive
dispensation thus loses its sanctifying design. When the heart is
crushed and broken, the heavenly voice sounds startling and solemn!
What a season, if timeously improved, for enrichment at the
mercy-seat! When "things present" are disenchanted of their
spell,--when time is brought to hold its relative insignificance to
eternity, what a season for the self-emptied one, to go to the
all-fulness of Jesus, and receive from Him every needful supply! But,
alas! we often know not "the day of our merciful visitation." The
heart, when the hammer might be falling on it, and welding it to the
Divine will, is too often suffered to cool. Solemn impressions are
allowed to wear away,--the blessing is lost by guilty postponement.
David might now have been so absorbed in his trials, as to have lost
the opportunity of prayer. He might have invented some vain excuses
for procrastination, and missed the blessing; just as the disciples,
by their sluggish indifference and guilty slumber, drew down the
thrice-repeated rebuke from injured Goodness, "_Could ye not watch
with me one hour?_" But the golden moment is not suffered by him thus
to pass. No sooner does he get a glimpse of the path of prayer, than
he proceeds to tread it. The very fact of the fire being so low, is
the most powerful reason for stirring it. Her Lord being lost, is the
strongest argument for the Spouse seeking Him without delay;--"_I will
rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways
I will seek Him whom my soul loveth._"[92]

  [91] Luke xv. 20.

  [92] Sol. Song iii. 2.

2. Observe David's _importunity_. He waxes into a holy boldness. He
seeks to know from "the God of his life" the reasons of this apparent
desertion--"'_Why hast Thou forgotten me?_' I cannot see or
understand, as Thy covenant servant, the reason of all this
depression--why, with all those promises of Thine, these hands should
be hanging down, and these knees be so feeble."

The mother does not cast off her sick or feeble child. Its very
weakness and weariness is an additional argument for her care and
love, and draws her heart closer than ever to the bed of the tiny
sufferer! David knew well that God, who had ever dealt with him "as
one whom his mother comforteth," would not (unless for some wise
reason) leave him to despondency. Looking to this immutable
Covenant-Jehovah, and lifting his voice high above the water-floods,
he thus, in impassioned prayer, pleads "the causes of his soul:"--"_In
Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me
in Thy righteousness. Bow down Thine ear to me; deliver me speedily:
be Thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For Thou
art my rock and my fortress; therefore for Thy name's sake lead me,
and guide me. Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for
me: for Thou art my strength. Into Thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth._"[93]

  [93] Psalm xxxi. 1-5.

3. The Psalmist _takes his_ SPECIAL TROUBLE _to God, and makes it the
subject of prayer_. He names in the Divine presence the cause of his
deepest perplexity. "_As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies
reproach me, while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?_"[94]

  [94] Verse 10.

"Generalities," says a good man, "are the death of prayer." The
loftiest privilege the believer can enjoy is the confidential
unburdening of his wants into the ear of a _Father_. Just as a child
can freely unbosom to a parent what he can do to no one else, so are
we permitted to tell into the ear of our Father in heaven whatever may
be the heart-sorrow with which a stranger (often a friend) dare not
intermeddle. See the _speciality_ in the Psalmist's confession of his
sin. It is not the _general_ acknowledgment of a sinner. It is rather
an humbled penitent carrying _one_ deep crimson-stain to the
mercy-seat; bringing _it_, and _it alone_, as if for the moment he had
to deal respecting _it_ only with the great Heart-searcher. "MY _sin_
is ever before me." "I have done _this_ evil in Thy sight." "Wash me
from _mine iniquity_, and cleanse me from _my sin_." "I said, I will
confess _my transgressions_, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of _my
sin_."[95]

  [95] Psalms li. and xxxii.

Let us not think that we can ever have comfort in merging individual
sins in a _general_ confession. This is the great and pre-eminent
advantage of secret closet-prayer. Social prayer and public prayer are
eminently means of securing the Divine blessing; but it is in the
quiet of the chamber, when no eye and ear are on us but that of "our
Father that seeth in secret," that we can bring our secret burdens to
His altar,--crucify our secret sins, acknowledge the peculiar sources
of our weakness and temptation, and get special grace to help us in
our times of need.

But we may here ask, Have we any assurance that the prayers of David,
at this critical emergency, were indeed answered? Or,(as we are often
tempted in seasons of guilty unbelief to argue regarding our prayers
still,) did they ascend unheard and unresponded to?--did the cries of
the supplicant die away in empty echoes amid these glens of Gilead? We
have his own testimony, in a magnificent ode of his old age,[96] one
of the last, and one of the noblest his lips ever sung, that Jehovah
_had_ heard him in the day of his trouble. It is a Psalm, as we are
told in the title, written by him on his return to his capital, when
victory had crowned his arms, and his kingdom was once more in peace.
The aged Minstrel takes in it a retrospective survey of his eventful
pilgrimage. Many a Mizar-hill in the long vista rises conspicuously
into view. He climbs in thought their steeps, and erects his
Ebenezer! As his flight and sojourn beyond Jordan formed the latest
occurrence in that chequered life, we may well believe that in
uttering these inspired numbers, the remembrance of his memorable
soul-struggle there must have been especially present to his mind. Let
us listen to his own words: "_The sorrows of death compassed me, and_
THE FLOODS OF UNGODLY MEN _made me afraid.... In my distress I called
upon the Lord, and cried unto_ MY GOD: HE HEARD _my voice out of His
temple, and_ MY CRY CAME BEFORE HIM, EVEN INTO HIS EARS." In the
sublimest poetical figures of all his Psalms, Jehovah is further
represented in this hymn of thanksgiving as hastening with rapid
flight, in august symbols of majesty, to the relief and succour of His
servant--"bowing the heavens"--"the darkness under His feet"--"riding
upon a cherub"--"flying upon the wings of the wind"--"sending out His
arrows, and scattering His foes"--"shooting out lightnings"--and
"discomfiting them." And with the writer's mind still resting on the
same emblems which he uses in his Exile-Psalm,--the "deep calling to
deep"--the "noise of the water-spouts"--the "waves and billows,"--he
interweaves other references and experiences with this unequivocal
testimony to God his "_Rock_," as the HEARER OF PRAYER,--"_He sent
from above, He took me, He drew me out of many waters.... Who is God
save the Lord? or who is a_ ROCK _save our God?... The Lord liveth;
and blessed be my_ ROCK; _and let the God of my salvation be
exalted!_"[97]

  [96] Psalm xviii.

  [97] Psalm xviii. 16, 31, 46.

       *       *       *       *       *

Reader! let me ask, in conclusion, do _you_ know in your experience
the combined triumphs of _faith and prayer_--these two heavenly spies
that fetch back Eschol-clusters of blessing to the true Israel of God?
Do you know what it is, in the hour of adversity, to repair to "the
_Rock_ of your strength?" Do you believe in His willingness to hear,
and in His power to save? How sad the case of those who, in their
seasons of trial, have no refuge to which they can betake themselves,
but some fluctuating, perishing, earthly one;--who, when they lose the
world, lose their all! The miser plundered of his gold, cleaving to
the empty coffers;--the pleasure-hunter seeking to drain the empty
chalice, or to extract honey out of the empty comb;--the bereaved
grasping with broken hearts their withered gourd, and refusing to be
comforted! The worldling is like the bird building its nest on the
topmost bough of the tree. There it weaves its wicker dwelling, and
feels as if nothing can invade its security and peace. By and by the
woodman comes,--lays down his axe by the root. The chips fly off
apace. The pine rocks and shivers; in a few moments it lies prone on
the forest-sward. The tiny bird hovers over its dismantled home--the
scene of desolation and havoc--and then goes screaming through the
wood with the tale of her woes! The Christian, again, is like the
sea-fowl, building its nest in the niches of the ocean cliff, which
bids defiance at once to the axe and the hand of the plunderer. Far
below, the waves are lifting their crested tops, and eddying pools are
boiling in fury. The tempest may be sighing overhead, and the wild
shriek of danger and death rising from some helpless bark that is
borne like a weed on the maddened waters. But the spent spray can only
touch these rocky heights,--no more; and the curlew, sitting with
folded wings on her young, can look calm and undismayed on the
elemental war. "What is the best grounds of a philosopher's
constancy," says Bishop Hall, "but as moving sands, in comparison of
the Rock that we may build upon!"

Yes! build in the clefts of that immoveable Rock, and you are safe.
Safe in Christ, you can contemplate undismayed all the tossings and
heavings of life's fretful sea! So long as the Psalmist looked to God,
he was all secure. When he looked to _himself_, he was all
despondency. Peter, when his eye was on his Lord, walked boldly on the
limpid waves of Gennesaret; when he diverted _it on himself_, and
thought on the dangers around him, and the unstable element beneath
him, "he began to sink!"

Believer! is your heart overwhelmed? Are you undergoing a similar
experience with the Psalmist? Your friends (perhaps your nearest and
best) misunderstanding your trial, unable to probe the severity of
your wound, mocking your tears with unsympathising reflections and
cruel jests--"a sword in your bones!" Turn your season of sorrow into
a season of prayer. Look up to the God-man Mediator, the tender
Kinsman within the veil! _He knoweth_ your frame. When He sees your
frail bark struggling in the storm, and hears the cry of prayer
rising from your lips, He will say, as He said of old, "I KNOW _their
sorrows_, and I will go down to deliver them! O wounded Hart! panting
after the water-brooks, I was once wounded for _thee_. O smitten soul!
seamed and scarred with the lightning and tempest, see how I myself,
the Rock of Ages, was smitten and afflicted!" Ay, and thou canst say
too, "_God_ MY _Rock_!" Thou canst individually repose in that
sheltering Refuge, as if it were intended for thee alone. The loving
eye of that Saviour is upon thee, as if thou wert alone the object of
His gaze,--as if no other struggling castaway breasted the billows but
thyself!

Blessed security, who would not prize it! Blessed shelter, who would
not repair to it! Oh that the Psalmist's creed and resolution might be
ours--"_I will say of the Lord, He is_ MY ROCK _and_ MY _Fortress,
and_ MY _Deliverer._"--"_O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us make
a joyful noise to the_ ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!"




XII.

The Quiet Haven.


    "Ah, if our souls but poise and swing,
    Like the compass in its brazen ring,
      Ever level and ever true,
    To the toil and the task we have to do;
    We shall sail securely, and safely reach
    The heavenly Isle, on whose shining beach
    The sights we love and the sounds we hear
    Will be those of joy, and not of fear."

"David utters again strains of hope; not that faint and common hope of
possibility or probability, that after stormy days it may be better
with him, but a certain hope that shall never make ashamed; such a
Hope as springs from Faith, yea, in effect, is one with it.... Faith
rests upon the goodness and truth of Him that hath promised; and Hope,
raising itself upon Faith so established, stands up, and looks out to
the future accomplishment of the promise."--_Leighton._

"In that day, the light shall not be clear nor dark: ... but it shall
come to pass that at evening time it shall be light."--_Zech._ xiv. 6,
7.

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within
me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of
my countenance, and my God."--_Verse 11._


XII.

THE QUIET HAVEN.

We have now reached the close of this instructive Psalm--the last
entry in the experience of the Royal Exile. Here is the grand summing
up--"the conclusion of the whole matter." The curtain falls over the
scene of conflict, leaving the believer triumphant. As he began with
prayer, he now ends with praise; as he began with weeping, he now ends
with rejoicing; as he began mourning over the loss of his God, he ends
exulting in Him as "_the health of his countenance_." We are reminded
of the Great Apostle reaching, by successive steps in his high
argument, new altitudes of faith and hope,--beginning with "_no
condemnation_," till he ends with "_no separation_,"--mounting with
loftier sweep and bolder pinion, till, far above the mists and clouds
of the lower valley, he can utter the challenge, "_Who shall separate
me from the love of Christ?_"[98]

  [98] Romans viii.

Joyful is it when a protracted war, which has been draining a
nation's resources and rifling its homes, is drawing to a close,--when
an army, amid hostile tribes, and the more fatal ravages of a hostile
climate, has succeeded in trampling out the ashes of rebellion, and is
returning triumphant from hard-contested fields of valour. Joyful is
it when a noble vessel, that has for long been wrestling with the
storm, enters at last the desired haven,--when the voyagers, who for
hours of anxiety and terror have been hanging with bated breath
between life and death, can now pass the gladdening watchword from
mouth to mouth--"Thank God, we are safe!" Joyful, too, when the tried
believer, as described in this Psalm,--"_persecuted, but not forsaken;
cast down, but not destroyed,_"--has surmounted wave after wave, that
has been threatening to sweep him from his footing on the Rock, and is
made "more than conqueror through Him that loved him!" The wounded
Hart we found in the opening verse bounding through the forest glades,
hit by the archers, with glazed eye and panting sides, has now reached
the coveted Water-brooks;--the fainting soul is now drinking at the
great fountainhead of consolation and joy. We have elsewhere an
appropriate inspired comment on the whole Psalm, with its successive
experiences: "_Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord
delivereth him out of them all._"[99]

  [99] Psalm xxxiv. 19.

This concluding verse is so far a repetition of the fifth; and yet, as
we cursorily noted in the introductory chapter, there is an important
difference between them, to which we may again for a moment advert. In
the former, it is on the part of the speaker the language of faith in
the midst of despondency, expressing assurance that something _will_
be his, which he has not yet attained: "_Hope thou in God; for I
shall_ YET _praise Him for the help of His countenance_." In the
latter, he summons his soul to the exercise of the same hope and
confidence; but he now can exult in the realised possession of God's
favour and love--"WHO IS _the health of my countenance_." Nay, more,
in the fifth verse he stops with the words, "_my countenance_;" but in
the closing verse, he adds the expression of appropriating faith and
triumphant assurance. It is the Key-stone of the arch. Two little
words, which, like the ciphers following the unit, give an augmented
value to all that goes before!--"MY GOD!" The two last divine
expedients to which he had resorted (faith and prayer) have not been
in vain. They have loaded the cloud of mercy, and it bursts upon the
suppliant in a shower of blessing!

The 22d Psalm has been referred by commentators to this same period of
exile among the mountains of Gilead. There is much to confirm this
supposition in the general tone of the Psalm, as well as in its
incidental references. There is the same deep, anguished depression of
spirit,--words, indeed, denoting such an intensity of sorrow, that,
though primarily applicable to David, we must look for their true
exponent in the case of a Greater Sufferer. The challenge, "_Where is
thy God?_" of the 42d, seems echoed back in the 22d by the mournful
appeal, "_My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?_"

But in the latter, as in the former, (ere it closes,) light breaks
through the thick darkness. By a similar exercise of faith and prayer,
the Royal Mourner triumphs. "_Deliver my soul_," says he, "_from the
sword; my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's
mouth._" (Ver. 20, 21.) The prayer is heard while he is yet speaking!
At this point of the Psalm, the language all at once passes from
complaint into exultation--from prayer into praise; and the voice of
victory rises higher and higher, till it reaches the close. God has
taken off his sackcloth, and girded him with gladness. He already
anticipates the happy time when again he shall be the leader of the
festal throng on the heights of Zion. "_Thou hast heard me_," is his
opening burst of triumph, "_from the horns of the unicorns. I will
declare Thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation
will I praise Thee.... My praise shall be of Thee in the great
congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear Him_."[100]

  [100] Psalm xxii. 21, 22, 25.

Nay, further; what Psalm succeeds the 22d? Is it mere accidental
arrangement which has given the beautiful 23d (the best known and
loved of all David's Psalms) the immediate sequence? Is it a mere
devout imagination which leads us to regard it (from the place it
occupies in the Psalter) as the next his hand penned and his lips
sung, after these plaintive elegies? This Song of the chosen flock is
not, as many think, the Psalm of his boyhood, written in the days of
his innocence, with his shepherd's crook and harp, in the Valleys of
Bethlehem. The imagery of the Psalm _may_ indeed have been taken from
this sunny season of his youth. But, as it has been suggested,[101]
the emblem may as likely have been borrowed from seeing a flock of
sheep in these grassy regions reposing by "green pastures" and "still
waters"--or, at other times, wending their way out of some "dark
valley;"--one, perhaps a timid wanderer, clenched in the arms of the
shepherd, on his way with it back to the fold!

  [101] See these references to the 22d and 23d Psalms well stated
  in Blaikie's "David, King of Israel," pp. 322, 323.

We have witnessed, after a day of gloomy fog and rain and thunder, the
dense curtain that overhung the landscape rolling away.--The clouds
break, gleaming vistas appear through their golden linings; and the
rays of the long-imprisoned sun shine down upon ten thousand sparkling
pearls on grass and flower. The choristers of wood and grove had till
then been silent; but now are they seen brushing the rain-drops from
the branches, and filling the air with their music, and all nature is
glad again. So it is with the Great Singer of Israel; so long as God's
face is withdrawn, his wings are folded--his melody hushed--his harp
unstrung. But when the thunder-cloud has passed,--when, as the clear
shining after rain, the longed-for countenance again breaks
forth,--when, in answer to those prayers that were mightier than the
armies of Joab close by, his enemies are dispersed, and the way again
open to a peaceful return to his capital,--may we not imagine the
triumphant conqueror--strong in the Lord, and in the power of His
might--making the Gilead valleys resound with the hymn of
praise?--"_The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to
lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still
waters!_"[102] As he thought of all the trying discipline to which he
had been subjected to test his faith, drive him to prayer, and lead
him to thirst more ardently for "the living God," he could say in the
retrospect, what he was unable to do at the time--"_He restoreth my
soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's
sake._"[103] That path was a rugged one--that trial a severe
one--when he was found setting out barefoot, and dim with tears,
across Mount Olivet, compelled to take refuge beyond Jordan amid the
wilds of Bashan. But he acknowledges now that these were "_paths of
righteousness_." They were well and wisely ordered,--the hand of his
God had appointed them. He can repeat with greater assurance his
forbearing retort to the curses of Shimei--"LET HIM CURSE ON, FOR THE
LORD HATH BIDDEN HIM." Moreover, all this wilderness-experience not
only sustained him in the present--it nerved him for the future. God's
renewed faithfulness in this trying hour was a pledge for all time to
come. He had added another Mizar-hill to former memorials of the
Divine goodness. With the prospect, at his advanced age, of the last
and terminating trial of his pilgrimage, (the descent to the deepest
and gloomiest ravine of all,) he could, with his eye on the guiding
Shepherd, exclaim--"_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod
and Thy staff they comfort me._"[104] Even temporal mercies had been
largely and bountifully supplied him in the place of his exile. The
powerful chiefs of the Transjordanic tribes, as we previously
observed,--"Shobi of Ammon, and Machir, and Barzillai of
Manasseh,"--brought the rich produce of their fields and pastures for
the supply of himself and his army. He could say--"_Thou hast prepared
a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my
head with oil; my cup runneth over._"[105] And now, with the prospect
before him of a joyful return to his throne, and the still more joyous
prospect of being a worshipper in God's house on earth,--the type of
the better Temple in the skies,--he can sing, as the closing strain of
his exile--"_Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever._"[106]

  [102] Psalm xxiii. 1, 2.

  [103] Psalm xxiii. 3.

  [104] Psalm xxiii. 4.

  [105] Psalm xxiii. 5.

  [106] Psalm xxiii. 6.

Reader! is this your experience? Is this the result of your temporal
afflictions, the end of your spiritual conflicts,--to lead you to the
same Shepherd of Israel, and to exult in Him as "the health of your
countenance, and your God?" Elimelech, of old, was compelled by famine
to leave Bethlehem, but his name signified, "_My God is King!_" When
we are pressed with straits, and troubles, and perplexities, let _us_
make that name our strong tower! "MY GOD IS KING" is a glorious motto.
Is it the heavings and convulsions of the world's nations--"kings of
the earth setting themselves, and rulers taking counsel together,"
from motives of personal ambition, or political jealousy, or lust of
conquest? Write upon all their schemes, ELIMELECH--"_My God is King!_"
Is it the apparently mysterious discipline through which some may be
passing--bereavements threatening your dwelling, or the hand of death
already on your loved ones? Write on the darkened threshold,
ELIMELECH--"_My God is King!_" Is it the prospect of your own death
that is filling you with apprehension? Remember in whose hands, under
whose sovereign control, that messenger is. Go to the vacant Sepulchre
at Golgotha, and read that writing and superscription which the
"Abolisher of death" has left for the comfort of all His people:--"_I
have the keys of the grave and of death_." Christian! even here, in
these gloomy regions, "_thy God is King!_"

How blessed thus to be able, both in temporal and spiritual things,
to lie in the arms of His mercy, saying, "Undertake Thou for us!"--to
feel that every thread in the web of life is woven by the Great
Artificer,--that not one movement in these swiftly-darting shuttles is
chance; but all is by _His_ direction, and all is to result in good!
In having Himself as our portion, we are independent of every
other;--we have the pledge of all other blessings. "Let the moveables
go, the inheritance is ours!" Let the streams fail, we have the
inexhaustible fountain! "Drop millions of gold," says good Bishop
Hopkins, "boundless revenues, ample territories, crowns and sceptres,
and a poor contemptible worm lays his _One God_ against them
all."[107] "_Our_ all," says Lady Powerscourt, "is but two mites (soul
and body). _His_ all--Heaven, Earth, Eternity, Himself." We have said
in a previous chapter that the loftiest archangel can tell of no
mightier prerogative than looking up to the Great Being before whom he
casts his crown, and saying, "My God!" WE can utter them in a sense
higher than he. He is OUR God _in Christ_. The words to us are written
(which to the unredeemed angels they are not) in the blood of
atonement! Imagine, for a moment, a conversation between a bright
angel in heaven and a ransomed sinner from earth. The angel can point
to a past eternity; he can tell of a glorious pedigree; he can point
up to his Almighty Maker, and say, "He has been _my God_ for ages and
ages past. I have been kept, supported, gladdened by His amazing
mercy, long before the birth of time or your world!" "True," we may
imagine the redeemed and glorified sinner to reply,--"but I can tell
of something more wondrous still. He is _my God in covenant_! Thou art
His by _creation_, but I am His also by _adoption_, _filiation_,
_sonship_. Though grace has kept thee through these countless ages,
during which thou hast cast thy crown at His feet, what is the grace
manifested to _thee_, in comparison with the grace manifested to _me_?
Grace made thee holy, and kept thee holy; but grace found me on the
brink of despair, plucked me as a brand from the burning, brought me
from the depths of woe and degradation, to a throne and a crown!
_Thy_ God hath loved thee. _My_ God hath 'loved _me_' and GIVEN
HIMSELF _for me_!"

  [107] "Were it not for this word of possession, the devil might
  say the Creed to as good purpose as we. He believes there is a God
  and Christ, but that which torments him is this--he can say '_my_'
  to never an article of faith."--_Sibbs._

       *       *       *       *       *

And now we close our meditations on this beautiful and instructive
Psalm:--a Psalm which, even since we have begun to write on it, we
have seen clung to as a treasured solace in hours of sickness;--its
sublime utterances soothing the departing soul, just as it was pluming
its wings for flight to the spirit-world! Reader! in any future dark
and troubled passages in your life, you may well with comfort turn to
this _diary_ of an old and tried saint, remembering that it records
the experiences of "the man after God's own heart." Tracing _his_
footsteps and tear-drops along "the sands of time," you shall cease to
"think it strange concerning the fiery trials that may be trying you,
as though some strange thing happened." You will find that "the same
afflictions are accomplished in you," which have been "accomplished"
in the case of God's most favoured servants in every age of the
Church. Do not expect now the _un_clouded day. That is not for earth,
but for heaven. God indeed, had He seen meet, might have ordained that
your pathway was to be without cloud or darkness, trial or tear;--no
poisoned darts, no taunts, no contumely, no cross, no "deep calling to
deep,"--nothing but calm seas unfretted by a ripple, sunny <DW72>s and
verdant valleys, and bright Mizar-hills of love and faithfulness! But
to keep you humble,--to teach you your dependence on Himself,--to make
your present existence a state of discipline and probation, He has
ordered it otherwise. Your journey as travellers is through mist and
cloud-land;--your voyage as seamen through alternate calm and
storm.[108] And much of that discipline, too, is mysterious. You
cannot discern its "why" and "wherefore." To employ a former symbol,
you are now like the vessel building in the dock-yard. The unskilled
and uninitiated can _hear_ nothing but clanging hammers;--they can see
nothing but unshapely timbers and glare of torches. It is a scene of
din and noise, dust and confusion. But all will at last be
acknowledged as needed portions in the spiritual workmanship;--when
the soul, released from its earthly fastenings, is launched on the
summer seas of eternity--

    "Give to the winds thy fears,
      Hope and be undismay'd.
    God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,
      God shall lift up thy head:
    Through waves, and clouds, and storms,
      He gently clears the way;
    Wait thou His time--so shall this night
      Soon end in joyous day."[109]

  [108] "Sometimes I can rejoice in the Mount with my Redeemer.
  Sometimes I lie in the Valley, dead, barren, unprofitable.... I am
  frequently wounded in the battle. Blessed be God that the
  Physician, the Castle, and the Fortress, are ever at
  hand."--_Bickersteth's Life._

  [109] "David might have gone a thousand times to the tabernacle
  and never found a thousandth part of the blessing he found in this
  wilderness. It was in the absence of all that was dear to him as
  man, he found his special solace in God."--_Harington Evans._

Above all, let this Psalm teach you that your _spiritual_ interests
are in safe keeping. No wounded Hart seeking the water-brooks ever
sought them in vain. When drooping, downcast, disconsolate yourself,
remember "God is faithful." "He cannot deny Himself." "_He satisfieth
the longing soul with goodness._" None is "able to pluck you out of
His hand." There may be fluctuations--ebbings and flowings--in the
tides of the soul; but "_He that hath begun a good work in you, will
carry it on until the day of the Lord Jesus._" You may reach the
heavenly fold with bleating cries,--with torn fleece and bleeding
feet;--but you _will_ reach it, if you have learned to sing, "_The
Lord is my shepherd!_" You may reach the water-brooks with languid eye
and panting sides;--but you _will_ reach them, if you can truthfully
say, "_My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!_" You may begin
your song in the minor-key, but if "MY GOD" be its key-note, you will
finish it with the angels and among ministering seraphim!

Go then, Christians! and, as you see what FAITH, and HOPE, and PRAYER
did for the Exile of Gilead, try what they can and _will_ do for
_you_. With all your varied trials, with all your manifold sorrowful
experiences, who, after all (this Psalm seems to say) so favoured as
_you_? Who possess your present exalted privileges?--who your
elevating hopes?--the consciousness, even in your trials, that each
billow is wafting you nearer the haven of eternal rest? "_These see
the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. For He commandeth,
and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They
mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul
is melted because of trouble. Then they cry unto the Lord in their
trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the
storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad
because they be quiet_; SO HE BRINGETH THEM UNTO THEIR DESIRED HAVEN!"

    "Soul, then know thy full salvation,
      Rise o'er sin, and fear, and care,
    Joy to find in every station
      Something still to do or bear.
    Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
      Think what Father's smiles are thine,
    Think that Jesus died to save thee--
      Child of heaven! canst thou repine?

    "Haste thee on from grace to glory--
      Arm'd by FAITH and wing'd by PRAYER;
    Heaven's eternal days before thee,
      God's own hand shall guide thee there!
    Soon shall close thy earthly mission,
      Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days;
    HOPE shall change to glad fruition,
      FAITH to sight, and PRAYER to praise!"


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