Part 2

"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.