Part 4

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.)

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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 slopes 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.