_QUIET WAITING_
iii. 25-36
Having struck a rich vein, our author proceeds to work it with energy.
Pursuing the ideas that flow out of the great truth of the endless
goodness of God, and the immediate inference that He of whom so
wonderful a character can be affirmed is Himself the soul's best
possession, the poet enlarges upon their wider relations. He must
adjust his views of the whole world to the new situation that is thus
opening out before him. All things are new in the light of the
splendid vision before which his gloomy meditations have vanished like
a dream. He sees that he is not alone in enjoying the supreme
blessedness of the Divine love. The revelation that has come to him is
applicable to other men if they will but fulfil the conditions to
which it is attached.
In the first place, it is necessary to perceive clearly what those
conditions are on which the happy experience of God's unfailing
mercies may be enjoyed by any man. The primary requisite is
affirmed to be _quiet waiting_.[188] The passivity of this attitude
is accentuated in a variety of expressions. It is difficult for
us of the modern western world to appreciate such teaching.
No doubt if it stood by itself it would be so one-sided as to be
positively misleading. But this is no more than must be said of any of
the best lessons of life. We require the balancing of separate truths
in order to obtain truth, as we want the concurrence of different
impulses to produce the resultant of a right direction of life. But in
the present case the opposite end of the scale has been so much
overweighted that we sorely need a very considerable addition on the
side to which the elegist here leans. Carlyle's gospel of work--a most
wholesome message as far as it went--fell on congenial Anglo-Saxon
soil; and this and the like teaching of kindred minds has brought
forth a rich harvest in the social activity of modern English life.
The Church has learnt the duty of working--which is well. She does not
appear so capable of attaining the blessedness of waiting. Our age is
in no danger of the dreaminess of quietism. But we find it hard to
cultivate what Wordsworth calls "wise passiveness." And yet in the
heart of us we feel the lack of this spirit of quiet. Charles Lamb's
essay on the "Quakers' Meeting" charms us, not only on account of its
exquisite literary style, but also because it reflects a phase of life
which we own to be most beautiful.
[188] iii. 26.
The waiting here recommended is more than simple passiveness, however,
more than a bare negation of action. It is the very opposite of
lethargy and torpor. Although it is quiet, it is not asleep. It is
open-eyed, watchful, expectant. It has a definite object of
anticipation, for it is a waiting for God and His salvation; and
therefore it is hopeful. Nay, it has a certain activity of its own,
for it seeks God. Still, this activity is inward and quiet; its
immediate aim is not to get at some visible earthly end, however much
this may be desired, nor to attain some inward personal experience,
some stage in the soul's culture, such as peace, or purity, or power,
although this may be the ultimate object of the present anxiety;
primarily it seeks God--all else it leaves in His hands. Thus it is
rather a change in the tone and direction of the soul's energies than
a state of repose. It is the attitude of the watchman on his lonely
tower--calm and still, but keen-eyed and alert, while down below in
the crowded city some fret themselves with futile toil and others
slumber in stupid indifference.
To this waiting for Him and definite seeking of Him God responds in
some special manifestation of mercy. Although, as Jesus Christ tells
us, our Father in heaven "maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,"[189] the fact here
distinctly implied, that the goodness of God is exceptionally enjoyed
on the conditions now laid down, is also supported by our Lord's
teaching in the exhortations, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek,
and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you; for every one
that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that
knocketh it shall be opened."[190] St. James adds, "Ye have not
because ye ask not."[191] This, then, is the method of the Divine
procedure. God expects His children to wait on Him as well as to wait
for Him. We cannot consider such an expectation unreasonable. Of
course it would be foolish to imagine God piquing Himself on His own
dignity, so as to decline aid until He had been gratified by a due
observance of homage. There is a deeper motive for the requirement.
God's relations with men and women are personal and individual; and
when they are most happy and helpful they always involve a certain
reciprocity. It may not be necessary or even wise to demand definite
things from God whenever we seek His assistance; for He knows what is
good, while we often blunder and ask amiss. But the seeking here
described is of a different character. It is not seeking things; it is
seeking God. This is always good. The attitude of trust and expectancy
that it necessitates is just that in which we are brought into a
receptive state. It is not a question of God's willingness to help; He
is always willing. But it cannot be fitting that He should act towards
us when we are distrustful, indifferent, or rebellious, exactly as He
would act if He were approached in submission and trustful
expectation.
[189] Matt. v. 45.
[190] vii. 7, 8.
[191] James iv. 2.
Quiet waiting, then, is the right and fitting condition for the
reception of blessing from God. But the elegist holds more than this.
In his estimation the state of mind he here commends is itself good
for a man. It is certainly good in contrast with the unhappy
alternatives--feeble fussiness, wearing anxiety, indolent negligence,
or blank despair. It is good also as a positive condition of mind. He
has reached a happy inward attainment who has cultivated the faculty
of possessing his soul in patience. His eye is clear for visions of
the unseen. To him the deep fountains of life are open. Truth is his,
and peace and strength also. When we add to this calmness the distinct
aim of seeking God we may see how the blessedness of the condition
recommended is vastly enhanced. We are all insensibly moulded by our
desires and aims. The expectant soul is transformed into the image of
the hope it pursues. When its treasure is in heaven its heart is
there also, and therefore its very nature becomes heavenly.
To his reflections on the blessedness of quiet waiting the elegist
adds a very definite word about another experience, declaring that "it
is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth."[192] This
interesting assertion seems to sound an autobiographical note,
especially as the whole poem treats of the writer's personal
experience. Some have inferred that the author must have been a young
man at the time of writing. But if, as seems probable, he is calling
to mind what he has himself passed through, this may be a recollection
of a much earlier period of his life. Thus he would seem to be
recognising, in the calm of subsequent reflection, what perhaps he may
have been far from admitting while bearing the burdens, that the
labours and hardships of his youth prove to have been for his own
advantage. This truth is often perceived in the meditations of mature
life, although it is not so easily acknowledged in the hours of strain
and stress.
[192] iii. 27.
It is impossible to say what particular yoke the writer is thinking
about. The persecutions inflicted on Jeremiah have been cited in
illustration of this passage; and although we may not be able to
ascribe the poem to the great prophet, his toils and troubles will
serve as instances of the truth of the words of the anonymous writer,
for undoubtedly his sympathies were quickened while his strength was
ripened by what he endured. If we will have a definite meaning the
yoke may stand for one of three things--for instruction, for labour,
or for trouble. The sentence is true of either of these forms of yoke.
We are not likely to dispute the advantages of youthful education
over that which is delayed till adult age; but even if the acquisition
of knowledge is here suggested, we cannot suppose it to be book
knowledge, it must be that got in the school of life. Thus we are
brought to the other two meanings. Then the connection excludes the
notion of pleasant, attractive work, so that the yoke of labour comes
near to the burden of trouble. This seems to be the essential idea of
the verse. Irksome work, painful toil, forced labour partaking of the
nature of servitude--these ideas are most vividly suggested by the
image of a yoke. And they are what we most shrink from in youth.
Inactivity is then by no means sought or desired. The very exercise of
one's energies is a delight at the time of their fresh vigour. But
this exercise must be in congenial directions, in harmony with one's
tastes and inclinations, or it will be regarded as an intolerable
burden. Liberty is sweet in youth; it is not work that is dreaded, but
compulsion. Youth emulates the bounding energies of the war horse, but
it has a great aversion to the patient toil of the ox. Hence the yoke
is resented as a grievous burden; for the yoke signifies compulsion
and servitude. Now, as a matter of fact, this yoke generally has to be
borne in youth. People might be more patient with the young if they
would but consider how vexatious it must be to the shoulders that are
not yet fitted to wear it, and in the most liberty-loving age. As time
passes custom makes the yoke easier to be borne; and yet then it is
usually lightened. In our earlier days we must submit and obey, must
yield and serve. This is the rule in business, the drudgery and
restraint of which naturally attach themselves to the first stages. If
older persons reflected on what this must mean at the very time when
the appetite for delight is most keen, and the love of freedom most
intense, they would not press the yoke with needless harshness.
But now the poet has been brought to see that it was for his own
advantage that he was made to bear the yoke in his youth. How so?
Surely not because it prevented him from taking too rosy views of
life, and so saved him from subsequent disappointment. Nothing is more
fatal to youth than cynicism. The young man who professes to have
discovered the hollowness of life generally is in danger of making his
own life a hollow and wasted thing. The elegist could never have
fallen to this miserable condition, or he would not have written as he
has done here. With faith and manly courage the yoke has the very
opposite effect. The faculty of cherishing hope in spite of present
hardships, which is the peculiar privilege of youth, may stand a man
in stead at a later time, when it is not so easy to triumph over
circumstances, because the old buoyancy of animal spirits, which means
so much in early days, has vanished; and then if he can look back and
see how he has been cultivating habits of endurance through years of
discipline without his soul having been soured by the process, he may
well feel profoundly thankful for those early experiences which were
undoubtedly very hard in their rawness.
The poet's reflections on the blessedness of quiet waiting are
followed by direct exhortations to the behaviour which is its
necessary accompaniment--for such seems to be the meaning of the next
triplet, verses 28 to 30. The Revisers have corrected this from the
indicative mood, as it stands in the Authorised Version, to the
imperative--"Let him sit alone," etc., "Let him put his mouth in the
dust," etc., "Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him," etc.
The exhortations flow naturally out of the preceding statements, but
the form they assume may strike us as somewhat singular. Who is the
person thus indirectly addressed? The grammar of the sentences would
invite our attention to the "man" of the twenty-seventh verse. If it
is good for everybody to bear the yoke in his youth, it might be
suggested further that it would be well for everybody to act in the
manner now indicated--that is to say, the advice would be of universal
application. We must suppose, however, that the poet is thinking of a
sufferer similar to himself.
Now the point of the exhortation is to be found in the fact that it
goes beyond the placid state just described. It points to solitude,
silence, submission, humiliation, non-resistance. The principle of
calm, trustful expectancy is most beautiful; and if it were regarded
by itself it could not but fascinate us, so that we should wonder how
it would be possible for anybody to resist its attractions. But
immediately we try to put it in practice we come across some harsh and
positively repellent features. When it is brought down from the
ethereal regions of poetry and set to work among the gritty facts of
real life, how soon it seems to lose its glamour! It can never become
mean or sordid; and yet its surroundings may be so. Most humiliating
things are to be done, most insulting things endured. It is hard to
sit in solitude and silence--a Ugolino in his tower of famine, a
Bonnivard in his dungeon; there seems to be nothing heroic in this
dreary inactivity. It would be much easier to attempt some deed of
daring, especially if that were in the heat of battle. Nothing is so
depressing as loneliness--the torture of a prisoner in solitary
confinement. And yet now there must be no word of complaint because
the trouble comes from the very Being who is to be trusted for
deliverance. There is a call for action, however, but only to make the
submission more complete and the humiliation more abject. The sufferer
is to lay his mouth in the dust like a beaten slave.[193] Even this he
might brace himself to do, stifling the last remnant of his pride
because he is before the Lord of heaven and earth. But it is not
enough. A yet more bitter cup must be drunk to the dregs. He must
actually turn his cheek to the smiter, and quietly submit to
reproach.[194] God's wrath may be accepted as a righteous retribution
from above. But it is hard indeed to manifest the same spirit of
submission in face of the fierce malignity or the petty spite of men.
Yet silent waiting involves even this. Let us count the cost before we
venture on the path which looks so beautiful in idea, but which turns
out to be so very trying in fact.
[193] iii. 29.
[194] iii. 30.
We cannot consider this subject without being reminded of the teaching
and--a more helpful memory--the example also of our Lord. It is hard
to receive even from His lips the command to turn the other cheek to
one who has smitten us on the right cheek. But when we see Jesus doing
this very thing the whole aspect of it is changed. What before looked
weak and cowardly is now seen to be the perfection of true courage and
the height of moral sublimity. By His own endurance of insult and
ignominy our Lord has completely revolutionised our ideas of
humiliation. His humiliation was His glorification. What a Roman
would despise as shameful weakness He has proved to be the triumph of
strength. Thus, though we may not be able to take the words of the
Lamentations as a direct prophecy of Jesus Christ, they so perfectly
realise themselves in the story of His Passion, that to Christendom
they must always be viewed in the light of that supreme wonder of a
victory won through submission; and while they are so viewed they
cannot fail to set before us an ideal of conduct for the sufferer
under the most trying circumstances.
This advice is not so paradoxical as it appears. We are not called
upon to accept it merely on the authority of the speaker. He follows
it up by assigning good reasons for it. These are all based on the
assumption which runs through the elegies, that the sufferings therein
described come from the hand of God. They are most of them the
immediate effects of man's enmity. But a Divine purpose is always to
be recognised behind the human instrumentality. This fact at once
lifts the whole question out of the region of miserable, earthly
passions and mutual recriminations. In apparently yielding to a tyrant
from among his fellow-men the sufferer is really submitting to his
God.
Then the elegist gives us three reasons why the submission should be
complete and the waiting quiet. The _first_ is that the suffering is
but temporary. God seems to have cast off His afflicted servant. If so
it is but for a season.[195] This is not a case of absolute desertion.
The sufferer is not treated as a reprobate. How could we expect
patient submission from a soul that had passed the portals of a hell
over which Dante's awful motto of despair was inscribed? If they who
entered were to "forsake all hope" it would be a mockery to bid them
"be still." It would be more natural for these lost souls to shriek
with the fury of madness. The first ground of quiet waiting is hope.
The _second_ is to be found in God's unwillingness to afflict.[196] He
never takes up the rod, as we might say, _con amore_. Therefore the
trial will not be unduly prolonged. Since God Himself grieves to
inflict it, the distress can be no more than is absolutely necessary.
The _third_ and last reason for this patience of submission is the
certainty that God cannot commit an injustice. So important is this
consideration in the eyes of the elegist that he devotes a complete
triplet to it, illustrating it from three different points of
view.[197] We have the conqueror with his victims, the magistrate in a
case at law, and the private citizen in business. Each of these
instances affords an opportunity for injustice. God does not look with
approval on the despot who crushes all his prisoners--for
Nebuchadnezzar's outrages are by no means condoned, although they are
utilised as chastisements; nor on the judge who perverts the solemn
process of law, when deciding, according to the Jewish theocratic
idea, in place of God, the supreme Arbitrator, and, as the oath
testifies, in His presence; nor on the man who in a private capacity
circumvents his neighbour. But how can we ascribe to God what He will
not sanction in man? "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?"[198] exclaims the perplexed patriarch; and we feel that his
plea is unanswerable. But if God is just we can afford to be patient.
And yet we feel that while there is something to calm us and allay
the agonising terrors of despair in this thought of the unswerving
justice of God, we must fall back for our most satisfying assurance on
that glorious truth which the poet finds confirmed by his daily
experience, and which he expresses with such a glow of hope in the
rich phrase, "Yet will He have compassion according to the multitude
of His mercies."[199]
[195] iii. 31, 32
[196] iii. 33.
[197] iii. 34-6.
[198] Gen. xviii. 25.
[199] iii. 32.