Part 3

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.