backbiting and the love of swallowing men's reputations whole. _Thou lovest
all words of voracity, thou tongue of deceit_. We are, too, apt to think
that sins of speech most fiercely beset weak and puny characters: men that
have no weapon but a sharp and nasty tongue. Yet none use their words more
recklessly than the strong, who have not been sobered by the rebuffs and
uncertainties of life. Power and position often make a man trifle with the
truth. A big man's word carries far, and he knows it; till the temptation
to be dogmatic or satirical, to snub and crush with a word, is as near to
him as to a slave-driver is the fourteen-feet thong in his hand, with a
line of bare black backs before him.
These things are written of ourselves. In his great book on 'Democracy in
America,' De Tocqueville pointed out, more than fifty years ago, the
dangers into which the religious middle classes fall by the spread of
wealth and comfort. That danger has increased, till for the _rich_ on whom
Christ called woe, we might well substitute the _comfortable._ At a time
when a very moderate income brings within our reach nearly all the
resources of civilisation, which of us does not find day by day a dozen
distractions that drown for him the voice of conscience: a crowd of men to
lose himself in from God and his best friends: half a dozen base comforts,
in the lap of which he forgets duty and dreams only of self? Comfort makes
us all thoughtless, and thoughtlessness is the parent of every cruelty.
The Psalm makes no attempt to turn this tyrant whom it challenges; it
invokes the mercy of God, not to change him, but to show how vain his
boasts are, and to give heart to those whom he oppresses. God's mercy
endureth for ever; but he must pass away. The righteous shall see his end,
and fear and laugh: their satire will have religion in it. But though the
Psalm does not design this sinner's conversion, its very challenge contains
an indication of the means by which he and all selfish people who are like
him may be changed to nobler lives. In this respect it has a gospel for us
all, which may be thus stated.
There are poor invalids who ought to get their health again by seeking the
open air and sunshine, but who keep between their bed and their hearthrug,
cowering over their fire with the blinds pulled down;--to whom comes the
wise doctor, pulls up the blinds, shows them that it is day outside, with
the sun shining and the trees growing, and men walking about, and tells
them that the health they are trying to get inside, and thereby only
making themselves worse invalids, they will get out there. This big man
was such a moral invalid, seeking strength within his own riches and
qualities. And so doing he had developed the nasty indoor tempers, till it
seemed pleasant and satisfactory to him to be spiteful, slanderous and
false. Meantime, outside the darkened windows of his selfishness, the mercy
of God, in which other men gloried and grew strong, rose every day. With
one sweep the Psalmist tears the curtains down and lets in the sunshine.
_The leal love of God is every day_. There, in that commonplace daily
light: in that love which is as near you as the open air and as free as
the sunshine, are the life and exultation which you seek so vainly within
yourself.
It was in the sunshine that the Psalmist felt himself growing:
_But I am like an olive-tree, green in God's house.
I trust in the leal love of God for ever and aye_.
This open-air figure suggests (though we have no confirmation of the fact)
a tree growing in the high temple precincts, as trees to this day grow upon
the Haram around the great mosque in Jerusalem, open to the sunshine and
washed by the great rush of wind from the west. The Old Testament as much
as the New haunts the open air for its figures of religion--a tree in full
foliage, a tree planted by a river, a river brimming to its banks, the
waves of a summer sea. Now this is not only because there is nothing else
that will reflect the freedom of God's grace and the lavish joy it brings
upon the world, but still more because the Bible feels the eternal truth,
that to win this joy and freedom a man has got to go outside himself,
outside his selfishness and other close tempers, outside his feelings and
thoughts about himself, and receive the truths of religion as objective to
him, taking the knowledge of God's pardon and peace as freely as he takes
the sunshine of heaven, the calm of earth in summer, and the cool, strong
winds from off the hills. To those old founders of our faith, religion was
never man's feelings about religion: it was the love of God. God was not
man's thoughts about God, but God Himself in His wonderful grace and truth,
objective to our hearts. Therefore those ancient saints moved to the Spirit
as the tree rustles to the wind, and as in summer she is green and glad in
the sunshine that bathes her, so they rejoiced in the Lord, and in His
goodness. _I will give thanks, for_ THOU _hast done it_.
But this getting out of self does not only bring a man into the open air,
and to gladness in a God who worketh for him. It gives him the company of
all good and noble men. I _will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the
presence of Thy saints_. What a fellowship faith and unselfishness make a
man aware of!
* * * * *
Let us turn back for a moment to the man, to whose close character this
open air is offered as a contrast. Is it really difficult for us to
imagine him? There is not one of us who has not tried this kind of thing
again and again,--and has succeeded in it with far less substance than the
great man had to come and go upon. He trusted in the abundance of his
riches: he lost God for the multitude of his temptations. But for us there
is no such excuse. There has been no pleasure too sordid, no comfort too
selfish, no profit too mean, no honour too cheap and vulgar, but we have
sometimes preferred it, in seeking for happiness, to the infinite and
everlasting mercy of our God. We may not be big men, and deserve to have
psalms written about us; but in our own little ways we exult in our
selfishness and the tempers it breeds in us just as guiltily as he did,
and just as foolishly, for God's great love is as near to us, and could as
easily chase these vapours from our souls, if we would but open the windows
to its air.
Take one or two commonplace cases that do not require the great capital
which this fellow put into his business of sinning, but are quite within
reach of your and my very ordinary means of selfishness.
You have been overreached in some business competition, or disappointed in
getting a post, or foiled along some path of public service. You come home
with a natural vexation in your heart: sore at being beaten and anxious
about your legitimate interests. It is all right enough. But sit down at
the fire for a little and brood over it. Shut God out as care and anger
can. Forget that your Bible is at your elbow. Think only of your wrong, and
it is wonderful how soon you will find spite rising, and envy and the
cruellest hate. It is wonderful how quickly plans of revenge will form
themselves in your usually slow mind, and how happy they will make you.
Malice is like brandy to a man's brain, and will send him back with a
beaming face to the work he left with scowls. Ah, _why boast thyself in
mischief, O man? God's leal love is all day long!_ The Bible is within
reach of you. The lustre is as fresh on the promises as the rain-drops were
under the glints of sun this morning. Walk there with God in His own
garden: all God's steps are comfort and promise to the meek who will walk
with Him. God is full of gentleness, and His gentleness shall make you
great. _I will be as the dew unto Israel_. Or seek with the Master the
crowds of men. Keep near Him in the dust and the crush: watch how He
endures the contradiction of sinners, how patient He is with men, how
forgiving. Watch most of all how He prays. Bow the knee like Him, and He
shall lift thee up a sane and a happy man. To think of it--all that Divine
fellowship and solace may be ours by opening the pages of a Book which lies
on every table. _God's love is all the day_.
Let the other case be for young men and young women. For you the fresh air
and sunshine are not yet shut out by the high walls of success or the thick
ones of material prosperity. The dust of strife for you has not yet hidden
heaven. But we all know that passion can build as solidly as wealth, and
that a young heart may be as closely prisoned in a sudden temptation as an
old one among the substantial accumulations of a lifetime. What is
Temptation?
I turned to her: she built a house
And Thought was her swift architect,
And Falsehood let the curtains fall,
And Fancy all the tables deck'd.
And so we shut the world out,
Soul and Temptation face to face,
And perfumed air and music sweet,
And soft desire fill'd all the place.
O brothers, in such an hour, and it comes to every one of us, think upon
the vast world outside, and the walls so magically built will as magically
fall. God's sunshine is there, and God's fresh air, to think upon which,
with the companies of men and women who walk up and down in it and are
fair, is the most sovereign charm against temptation that I know. _Why
glory in this evil_? Put that challenge to your heart in the crisis of
every evil passion. _God's mercy is all day long_. Think of the love of
the Father: of His patience with thee, of His trust of thee; think of the
Love of the Redeemer, Who gave Himself for thy life; think of the great
objective truths of religion--righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy
Ghost. Or if these seem unsubstantial thoughts, that flash and fade
again like clouds on the western sky at evening, come out among the
flesh-and-blood proofs of them which walk our own day. Frequent the
pure, strong men and women who are in sight of us all, fair on every
countryside, radiant in every city crowd. Hearken to the greater spirits
who by their songs and books come down and speak with the lowliest and
most fallen. And do not forget the holy dead, nor doubt that though unseen
they are with us still.
_I will wait on Thy name,
for 'tis good, in face of Thy
Saints._
PSALM CXXI
THE MINISTRY OF THE HILLS AND ALL GREAT THINGS
We catch the key-note of this Psalm if we read the words _whence cometh my
help_ not as a statement but as a question. Our older version takes them
as a statement; it makes the Psalmist look to the hills, as if his help
broke and shouted from them all like waterfalls. But with the Revised
Version we ought to read: _I will lift mine eyes unto the mountains--from
whence cometh my help?_ The Psalmist looks up, not because his help is
stored there, but because the sight of the hills stirs within him an
intense hope. His heart is immediately full of the prayer, _Whence cometh
my help_? and of the answer, _My help is from the Lord, that made heaven
and earth_.
We need not wish to fix a locality or a date to this Psalm. It is enough
that the singer had a mountain skyline in view, and that below in the
shadows, so dark that we cannot make out their features, lay God's church
and people. They were threatened, and there was neither help nor hope of
help among themselves.
Perhaps it was one of those frequent periods in the life of Israel, in
which the religious institutions of the people were so abased that the
Psalmist could see in them no pledge nor provocation of hope. Indeed, these
institutions may have been altogether overthrown. There was no leader on
whom God had set His seal, and the national life had nothing to raise the
heart, but was full of base thoughts and paltry issues that dissipate
faith, and render the interference of God an improbable thing. So the
Psalmist lifted his thoughts to the sacraments which God has fixed in the
framework of His world. He did not identify his help with the hills--no
true Israelite could have done that,--but the sight of them started his
hope and filled his heart with the desire to pray. This may have happened
at sunrise, when, even more than at other hours, mountains fulfil the
ministry of hope. Below them all was in darkness; it was still night, but
the peaks saw the morning, and the signal of its coming fell swiftly down
their flanks. In this case the Psalm is a matin-song, a character which
the rest of the verses carry out. Or at any other hour of the day, it may
simply have been the high, clear outline of the hills which inspired the
Psalm--that firm step between heaven and earth, that margin of a world of
possibility beyond. A prophet has said, _How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of them that bring good tidings!_ But to our Psalmist the
mountains spread a threshold for a Divine arrival. Up there God Himself
may be felt to be afoot.
Now to a pure heart and a hungry heart this is always what a mountain view
effects. 'A hill-top,' says a recent writer, 'is a moral as well as a
physical elevation.' He is right, or men would not have worshipped on
hill-tops, nor high places have become synonymous with sacred ones. Whether
we climb them or gaze at them, the mountains produce in us that mingling of
moral and physical emotion in which the temper of true worship consists.
They seclude us from trifles, and give the mind the fellowship of
greatness. They inspire patience and peace; they speak of faithfulness and
guardianship. But chiefly the mountains are sacraments of hope. That high,
steadfast line--how it raises the spirits, and lifts the heart from care;
how early it signals the day, how near it brings heaven! To men of old its
margin excited thoughts of an enchanted world beyond; its clear step
between heaven and earth made easy the imagination of God descending among
men.
So it is here. At the sight of the hills our Psalmist's hope--instead of
lying asleep in confidence of a help too far away to be vivid, or dying of
starvation because that help is so long of coming--leaps to her feet, all
watch and welcome for an instant arrival. _Whence cometh my help? My help
cometh from the Lord, that made heaven and earth_. This is not fancy; it is
an attitude of real life. This is not a poet with a happy phrase for his
idea: it is a sentry at his difficult post, challenging the signal, and
welcoming the arrival, of that help which makes all the difference to life.
But we may widen the application of the Psalmist's words far beyond the
hills. This is a big thing to which he lifts his eyes to feed his hope. God
is unseen; so he betakes himself to the biggest thing he can see. And
therein is a lesson which we need all across our life. For it is just
because, instead of lifting our eyes to the big things around us, we busy
and engross ourselves with trifles, that the practical enthusiasm which
beats through this Psalm is failing among us, and that we have so little
faith in God's readiness to act, and to act speedily, within the circle of
our own experience. Trifles, however innocent or dutiful they may be, do
not move within us the fundamental pieties. They reveal no stage worthy for
God to act upon. They give no help to the imagination to realise Him as
near. A church which never lifts her eyes above her own denominational
details, petty differences in doctrine or government, petty matters of
ritual and posture, cannot continue to believe in the nearness of the
living God. The strain on faith is too great to last. The reason recoils
from admitting that God can help on such battle-fields as those on which
the churches are often so busy, that He can come to help such causes as
the sects, neglectful of the real interests of the world, too often stoop
to champion. And so the churches insensibly get settled in far-off,
abstract views of God, and are sapped of the primal and practical energies
of religion. Whereas it is evident that in the religious communities which
lift their eyes above their low hedges to the high hills of God--to the
great simple outlines of His kingdom, to the ideals and destiny which God
has set before mankind--in such churches faith in His nearness to the world
and in His readiness to help must always abound. To men who have an eye for
the big things of earth, God will always seem to be afoot upon it. They
are conscious of an arena worthy for Him to descend upon, and of causes
worthy for Him to interfere in. It is no shock to their reason, no undue
strain upon their imagination, to feel the Almighty and the All-loving come
down to earth, when earth has such horizons and such issues.
Turning to ourselves as individuals, we may ask why we have such distant
notions of God, so shy a faith of His coming within the circle of our own
life and work? Why are our prayers so formal, so empty of the expectation
of an immediate and divine answer? Why is our attitude at our work so
destitute of practical enthusiasm? Because we, too, are not lifting our
eyes to the hills. We are looking for nothing but little things, and
therefore we see nowhere any threshold or field worthy of God. How can the
sense that the living God is near to our life, that He is interested in it
and willing to help it, survive in us, if our life be full of petty things?
Absorption in trifles, attention only to the meaner aspects of life, is
killing more faith than is killed by aggressive unbelief. For if all a man
sees of life be his own interests, if all he sees of home be its comforts,
if all he sees of religion be the outlines of his own denomination, the
complexion of his preacher's doctrine, the agreeableness and taste of his
fellow-worshippers--to such a man God must always seem far away, for in
those things there is no call upon either mind or heart to feel God near.
But if, instead of limiting ourselves to trifles, we resolutely and 'with
pious obstinacy' lift our eyes to the hills--whether to those great
mountain-tops of history which the dawn of the new heavens has already
touched, periods of faith and action that signal to our more forward but
lower ages the promise of His coming; or to the great essentials of human
experience that at sunrise, noon and evening remain the same through all
ages; or to the ideals of truth and justice; to the possibilities of human
nature about us; to the stature of the highest characters within our sight;
to the bulk and sweep of the people's life; to the destinies of our own
nation that still rise high above all party dust and strife--then we shall
see thresholds prepared for a divine arrival, conditions upon which we can
realise God acting. Our hope will spring, an eager sentinel, as if she
already heard upon them all the footfalls of His coming.
These lines may meet the eyes of some who have lost their faith, and are
sorry and weary to have lost it. Whether the blame be outside yourselves,
in the littleness of many of the prevailing aspects of religious life, and
the crowding of our religious arenas with the pettiest of interests, or
within yourselves, in your own mean and slovenly views of life, your
indolence to extricate details and discriminate the large eternal issues
among them--there is for you but one way back to faith. Lift your eyes to
the hills. Let your attention haunt the spots where life rises most near to
heaven, and your hearts will again become full of hopes and reasons for God
being at work upon earth.
Let those who, still in their youth, have preserved their faith and
fullness of hope, keep looking up. Amid all the cynicism and the
belittling of life, strenuously take the highest views of life. Amid all
the selfishness and impatience, which in our day consider life upon its
lowest levels, and there break it up into short and selfish interests,
strenuously lift your eyes and sweep with them the main outlines, summits
and issues. May no man lose sight of the hills for want of looking up,
till at the last he is laid upon his back,--and then must look up whether
he has done so before or not--and in the evening clearness and evening
quiet those great outlines stand forth before his eyes--stand forth but
for a few moments and are lost for ever in the falling night.
Many men have bravely lifted their eyes to the hills, who have felt nothing
come back upon them save a vague wonder and influence of purity. They have
been struck with an awe to which they could give no name, with a health and
energy which they could only ascribe to physical infection. But to this
Psalmist the hope and worship which the hills excited were satisfied by the
revelation of a Person. Above earth and her hills he saw a Character.
There have been revelations of God more rich and brilliant than this one.
But its simplicity suits the Psalmist's point of view. He is looking to the
hills. It is on that high line he sees his Helper appearing. Now we all
know how a figure looks upon a skyline. We see just the outline of it--a
silhouette, as it were: no details, expression, voice nor colour, but only
an attitude. This is all the Psalmist sees of God on that high threshold
against the light--His attitude. The attitude is that of a sentinel. The
Lord is thy Keeper--thy watchman. The figure is familiar in Palestine,
especially where the tents of the nomads lie. The camp or flock lies low
among the tumbled hills, unable to see far, and subject, in the intricate
land, to sudden surprise. But sentinels are posted on eminences round
about, erect and watchful. This is the figure which the Psalmist sees his
help assume upon the skyline to which he has lifted his eyes.
Compared with other experiences of God, this outline of Him may seem bare.
Yet if we feel the fact of it with freshness of heart and imagination, what
may it not do for us? Life may be hallowed by no thought more powerfully
than by this, that it is watched: nor peace secured by any stronger trust
than that the Almighty assumes responsibility for it; nor has work ever
been inspired by keener sense of honour than when we feel that God gives
us freedom and safety for it. These are the fundamental pieties of the
soul; and no elaborateness of doctrine can compensate for the loss of fresh
convictions of their truth.
_The Lord is thy Keeper_. If men had only not left this article out of
their creeds when they added all the rest, how changed the religious life
of to-day would have been!--how simple, how strenuous, how possibly heroic!
_The Lord is thy Keeper_. What sense of proportion and what tact does the
thought of those sleepless thoughts bring upon our life! How quickly it
restores the instinct to discriminate between what is essential and what is
not essential in faith and morals; that instinct, from the loss of which
the religious world of to-day suffers so much. How hard does it make us
with ourselves that His eyes are on us, yet how hopeful that He counts us
worth protecting! When we realise, that not only many of the primal forces
of character, but its true balance and proportion, are thus due to so
simple a faith in God, we understand the insistence laid upon this by the
prophets and by Christ. There is no truth which the prophets press more
steadily upon Israel than that all their national life lies in the sight
and on the care of God. The burden of many prophetic orations is no more
than this--you are defended, you are understood, you are watched, by God.
And in the Sermon on the Mount, and in that address to the disciples now
given in the tenth of Matthew, there is no message more clear or frequent
than that God cares for us, has to be reckoned with by all our enemies, is
aware of everything that befalls us, and while He relieves us from
responsibility in the things that are too great for us, makes us the more
to feel our responsibility for things within our power--in short, that the
Lord is our Keeper.
Of course we shall be able to realise this, according as we realise life.
If we have a heart for the magnitudes of life, it will not seem vain to
believe that God Himself should guard it.
If we keep looking to the hills, God shall be very clear upon them as our
Keeper.