_THE EVERLASTING THRONE_
v. 19-22
We have lingered long in the valley of humiliation.
At the eleventh hour we are directed to look up from this scene of
weary gloom to heavenly heights, radiant in sunlight. It is not by
accident that the new attitude is suggested only at the very end of
the last elegy. The course of the thought and the course of experience
that underlies it have been preparing for the change. On entering the
valley the traveller must look well to his feet; it is not till he has
been a denizen of it for some time that he is able to lift up his eyes
to other and brighter realms.
Thus at last our attention is turned from earth to heaven, from man to
God. In this change of vision the mood which gave rise to the
Lamentations disappears. Since earthly things lose their value in view
of the treasures in heaven, the ruin of them also becomes of less
account. Thus we read in the _Imitatio_:
"The life of man is always looking on the things of time,
Pleased with the pelf of earth,
Gloomy at loss,
Pricked by the least injurious word;
Life touched by God looks on the eternal,--
With it no cleaving unto time,
No frown when property is lost,
No sneer when words are harsh,--
Because it puts its treasure and its joy in heaven,
Where nothing fades."
The explanation of this sudden turn is to be found in the fact that
for the moment the poet forgets himself and his surroundings in a rapt
contemplation of God. This is the glory of adoration, the very highest
form of prayer, that prayer in which a man comes nearest to the
condition ascribed to angels and the spirits of the blessed who
surround the throne and gaze on the eternal light. It is not to be
thought of as an idle dreaming like the dreary abstraction of the
Indian fanatic who has drilled himself to forget the outside world by
reducing his mind to a state of vacancy while he repeats the
meaningless syllable Om, or the senseless ecstasy of the monk of Mount
Athos, who has attained the highest object of his ambition when he
thinks he has beheld the sacred light within his own body. It is
self-forgetful, not self-centred; and it is occupied with the
contemplation of those great truths of the being of God, absorption in
which is an inspiration. Here the worshipper is at the river of the
water of life, from which if he drinks he will go away refreshed for
the battle like the Red-cross knight restored at the healing fountain.
It is the misfortune of our own age that it is impractical in the
excess of its practicalness when it has not patience for those quiet,
calm experiences of pure worship which are the very food of the soul.
The continuance of the throne of God is the idea that now lays hold of
the elegist as he turns his thoughts from the miserable scenes of the
ruined city to the glory above. This is brought home to his
consciousness by the fleeting nature of all things earthly. He has
experienced what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes as
"the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have
been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain."[295]
The throne of David has been swept away; but above the earthly wreck
the throne of God stands firm, all the more clearly visible now that
the distracting influence of the lower object has vanished, all the
more valuable now that no other refuge can be found. Men fall like
leaves in autumn; one generation follows another in the swift march to
death; dynasties which outlive many generations have their day, to be
succeeded by others of an equally temporary character; kingdoms reach
their zenith, decline and fall. God only remains, eternal,
unchangeable. His is the only throne that stands secure above every
revolution.
[295] Heb. xii. 27.
The unwavering faith of our poet is apparent at this point after it
has been tried by the most severe tests. Jerusalem has been destroyed,
her king has fallen into the hands of the enemy, her people have been
scattered; and yet the elegist has not the faintest doubt that her God
remains and that His throne is steadfast, immovable, everlasting. This
faith reveals a conviction far in advance of that of the surrounding
heathen. The common idea was that the defeat of a people was also the
defeat of their gods. If the national divinities were not exterminated
they were flung down from their thrones, and reduced to the condition
of _jins_--demons who avenged themselves on their conquerors by
annoying them whenever an opportunity for doing so arose, but with
greatly crippled resources. No such notion is ever entertained by the
author of these poems nor by any of the Hebrew prophets. The fall of
Israel in no way affects the throne of God; it is even brought about
by His will; it could not have occurred if He had been pleased to
hinder it.
Thus the poet was led to find his hope and refuge in the throne of
God, the circumstances of his time concurring to turn his thoughts in
this direction, since the disappearance of the national throne, the
chaos of the sacked city, and the establishment of a new government
under the galling yoke of slaves from Babylon, invited the man of
faith to look above the shifting powers of earth to the everlasting
supremacy of heaven.
This idea of the elegist is in line with a familiar stream of Hebrew
thought, and his very words have many an echo in the language of
prophet and psalmist, as, for example, in the forty-fifth psalm, where
we read, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever."
The grand Messianic hope is founded on the conviction that the
ultimate establishment of God's reign throughout the world will be the
best blessing imaginable for all mankind. Sometimes this is associated
with the advent of a Divinely anointed earthly monarch of the line of
David. At other times God's direct sovereignty is expected to be
manifested in the "Day of the Lord." The failure of the feeble
Zedekiah seems to have discredited the national hopes centred in the
royal family. For two generations they slumbered, to be awakened in
connection with another disappointing descendant of David, Zerubbabel,
the leader of the return. No king was ever equal to the satisfaction
of these hopes until the Promised One appeared in the fulness of the
times, until Jesus was born into the world to come forth as the Lord's
Christ. Meanwhile, since the royal house is under a cloud, the
essential Messianic hope turns to God alone. He can deliver His
people, and He only. Even apart from personal hopes of rescue, the
very idea of the eternal, just reign of God above the transitory
thrones of men is a calming, reassuring thought.
It is strange that this idea should ever have lost its fascination
among Christian people, who have so much more gracious a revelation of
God than was given to the Jews under the old covenant; and yet our
Lord's teachings concerning the Fatherhood of God have been set forth
as the direct antithesis of the Divine sovereignty, while the latter
has been treated as a stern and dreadful function from which it was
natural to shrink with fear and trembling. But the truth is the two
attributes are mutually illustrative; for he is a very imperfect
father who does not rule his own house, and he is a very inadequate
sovereign who does not seek to exercise parental functions towards his
people. Accordingly, the gospel of Christ is the gospel of the
kingdom. Thus the good news declared by the first evangelists was to
the effect that the kingdom of God was at hand, and our Lord taught us
to pray, "Thy kingdom come." For Christians, at least as much as for
Jews, the eternal sovereignty of God should be a source of profound
confidence, inspiring hope and joy.
Now the elegist ventures to expostulate with God on the ground of the
eternity of His throne. God had not abdicated, though the earthly
monarch had been driven from his kingdom. The overthrow of Zedekiah
had left the throne of God untouched. Then it was not owing to
inability to come to the aid of the suffering people that the eternal
King did not intervene to put an end to their miseries. A long time
had passed since the siege, and still the Jews were in distress. It
was as though God had forgotten them or voluntarily forsaken them.
This is a dilemma to which we are often driven. If God is almighty can
He be also all-merciful? If what we knew furnished all the possible
data of the problem this would be indeed a serious position. But our
ignorance silences us.
Some hint of an explanation is given in the next phrase of the poet's
prayer. God is besought to turn the people to Himself. Then they had
been moving away from him. It is like the old popular ideas of sunset.
People thought the sun had forsaken the earth, when, in fact, their
part of the earth had forsaken the sun. But if the wrong is on man's
side on man's side must be the amendment. Under these circumstances it
is needless and unjust to speculate as to the cause of God's supposed
neglect or forgetfulness.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the language of the elegy here
points to a personal and spiritual change. We cannot water it down to
the expression of a desire to be restored to Palestine. Nor is it
enough to take it as a prayer to be restored to God's favour. The
double expression,
"Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, _and we shall be turned_,"
points to a deeper longing, a longing for real conversion, the turning
round of the heart and life to God, the return of the prodigal to his
Father. We think of the education of the race, the development of
mankind, the culture of the soul; and in so thinking we direct our
attention to important truths which were not so well within the reach
of our forefathers. On the other hand, are we not in danger of
overlooking another series of reflections on which they dwelt more
persistently? It is not the fact that the world is marching straight
on to perfection in an unbroken line of evolution. There are breaks in
the progress and long halts, deviations from the course and retrograde
movements. We err and go astray, and then continuance in an evil way
does not bring us out to any position of advance; it only plunges us
down deeper falls of ruin. Under such circumstances, a more radical
change than anything progress or education can produce is called for
if ever we are even to recover our lost ground, not to speak of
advancing to higher attainments. In the case of Israel it was clear
that there could be no hope until the nation made a complete moral and
religious revolution. The same necessity lies before every soul that
has drifted into the wrong way. This subject has been discredited by
being treated too much in the abstract, with too little regard for the
actual condition of men and women. The first question is, What is the
tendency of the life? If that is away from God, it is needless to
discuss theories of conversion; the fact is plain that in the present
instance some conversion is needed. There is no reason to retain a
technical term, and perhaps it would be as well to abandon it if it
were found to be degenerating into a mere cant phrase. This is not a
question of words. The urgent necessity is concerned with the actual
turning round of the leading pursuits of life.
In the next place, it is to be observed that the turning here
contemplated is positive in its aims, not merely a flight from the
wrong way. It is not enough to cast out the evil spirit, and leave the
house swept and garnished, but without a tenant to take care of it.
Evil can only be overcome by good. To turn from sin to blank vacancy
and nothingness is an impossibility. The great motive must be the
attraction of a better course rather than revulsion from the old life.
This is the reason why the preaching of the gospel of Christ succeeds
where pure appeals to conscience fail.
By his _Serious Call to the Unconverted_ William Law started a few
earnest men thinking; but he could not anticipate the Methodist
revival although he prepared the way for it. The reason seems to be
that appeals to conscience are depressing, necessarily and rightly so;
but some cheering encouragement is called for if energy is to be found
for the tremendous effort of turning the whole life upon its axle.
Therefore it is not the threat of wrath but the gospel of mercy that
leads to what may be truly called conversion.
Then we may notice, further, that the particular aim of the change
here indicated is to turn back to God. As sin is forsaking God, so the
commencement of a better life must consist in a return to Him. But
this is not to be regarded as a means towards some other end. We must
not have the home-coming made use of as a mere convenience. It must be
an end in itself, and the chief end of the prayer and effort of the
soul, or it can be nothing at all. It appears as such in the passage
now under consideration. The elegist writes as though he and the
people whom he represents had arrived at the conviction that their
supreme need was to be brought back into near and happy relations with
God. The hunger for God breathes through these words. This is the
truest, deepest, most Divine longing of the soul. When once it is
awakened we may be sure that it will be satisfied. The hopelessness of
the condition of so many people is not only that they are estranged
from God, but that they have no desire to be reconciled to Him. Then
the kindling of this desire is itself a great step towards the
reconciliation.
And yet the good wish is not enough by itself to attain its object.
The prayer is for God to turn the people back to Himself. We see here
the mutual relations of the human and the Divine in the process of the
recovery of souls. So long as there is no willingness to return to God
nothing can be done to force that action on the wanderer. The first
necessity, therefore, is to awaken the prayer which seeks restoration.
But this prayer must be for the action of God. The poet knows that it
is useless simply to resolve to turn. Such a resolution may be
repeated a thousand times without any result following, because the
fatal poison of sin is like a snake bite that paralyses its victims.
Thus we read in the _Theologia Germanica_, "And in this bringing back
and healing, I can, or may, or shall do nothing of myself, but simply
yield to God, so that He alone may do all things in me and work, and I
may suffer Him and all His work and His Divine will." The real
difficulty is not to change our own hearts and lives; that is
impossible. And it is not expected of us. The real difficulty is
rather to reach a consciousness of our own disability. It takes the
form of unwillingness to trust ourselves entirely to God for Him to do
for us and in us just whatever He will.
The poet is perfectly confident that when God takes His people in hand
to lead them round to Himself He will surely do so. If He turns them
they will be turned. The words suggest that previous efforts had been
made from other quarters, and had failed. The prophets, speaking from
God, had urged repentance, but their words had been ineffectual. It is
only when God undertakes the work that there is any chance of
success. But then success is certain. This truth was illustrated in
the preaching of the cross by St. Paul at Corinth, where it was found
to be the _power_ of God. It is seen repeatedly in the fact that the
worst, the oldest, the most hardened are brought round to a new life
by the miracle of redeeming power. Herein we have the root principle
of Calvinism, the secret of the marvellous vigour of a system which,
at the first blush of it, would seem to be depressing rather than
encouraging. Calvinism directed the thoughts of its disciples away
from self, and man, and the world, for the inspiration of all life and
energy. It bade them confess their own impotence and God's
almightiness. All who could trust themselves to such a faith would
find the secret of victory.
Next, we see that the return is to be a renewal of a previous
condition. The poet prays, "Renew our days as of old"--a phrase which
suggests the recovery of apostates. Possibly here we have some
reference to more external conditions. There is a hope that the
prosperity of the former times may be brought back. And yet the
previous line, which is concerned with the spiritual return to God,
should lead us to take this one also in a spiritual sense. We think of
Cowper's melancholy regret--
"Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?"
The memory of a lost blessing makes the prayer for restoration the
more intense. It is of God's exceeding lovingkindness that His
compassions fail not, so that He does not refuse another opportunity
to those who have proved faithless in the past. In some respects
restoration is more difficult than a new beginning. The past will not
come back. The innocence of childhood, when once it is lost, can never
be restored. That first, fresh bloom of youth is irrecoverable. On the
other hand, what the restoration lacks in one respect may be more than
made up in other directions. Though the old paradise will not be
regained, though it has withered long since, and the site of it has
become a desert, God will create new heavens and a new earth which
shall be better than the lost past. And this new state will be a real
redemption, a genuine recovery of what was essential to the old
condition. The vision of God had been enjoyed in the old, simple days,
and though to weary watchers sobered by a sad experience, the vision
of God will be restored in the more blessed future.
In our English Bible the last verse of the chapter reads like a final
outburst of the language of despair. It seems to say that the prayer
is all in vain, for God has utterly forsaken His people. So it was
understood by the Jewish critics who arranged to repeat the previous
verse at the end of the chapter to save the omen, that the Book should
not conclude with so gloomy a thought. But another rendering is now
generally accepted, though our Revisers have only placed it in the
margin. According to this we read, "_Unless_ Thou hast utterly
rejected us," etc. There is still a melancholy tone in the sentence,
as there is throughout the Book that it concludes; but this is
softened, and now it by no means breathes the spirit of despair. Turn
it round, and the phrase will even contain an encouragement. If God
has not utterly rejected His people assuredly He will attend to their
prayer to be restored to Him. But it cannot be that He has quite cast
them off. Then it must be that He will respond and turn them back to
Himself. If our hope is only conditioned by the question whether God
has utterly forsaken us it is perfectly safe, because the one
imaginable cause of shipwreck can never arise. There is but one thing
that might make our trust in God vain and fruitless; and that one
thing is impossible, nay, inconceivable. So wide and deep is our
Father's love, so firm is the adamantine strength of His eternal
fidelity, we may be absolutely confident that, though the mountains be
removed and cast into the sea, and though the solid earth melt away
beneath our feet, He will still abide as the internal Refuge of His
children, and therefore that He will never fail to welcome all who
seek His grace to help them return to Him in true penitence and filial
trust. Thus we are led even by this most melancholy book in the Bible
to see, as with eyes purged by tears, that the love of God is greater
than the sorrow of man, and His redeeming power more mighty than the
sin which lies at the root of the worst of that sorrow, the eternity
of His throne, in spite of the present havoc of evil in the universe,
assuring us that the end of all will be not a mournful elegy, but a
pæan of victory.
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THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE
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THE EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF
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LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Page 45: A missing footnote anchor has been inserted after "union of
Christ and his Church".
Page 267: Footnote 224 refers to Psalm xx. 6. This appears to be a
printer error which has been changed to read Psalm xxxiv. 6.
Page 324: "... Old Testament times of to the passion excited by cruelty".
"of" has been changed to "or".
Minor typographical errors and inconsistencies have been silently
normalized. Archaic and variable spellings and hyphenation have been
retained.
One advertising page has been moved from the beginning to the end
of the book.