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.