and of peace, does not satisfy the Psalmist. To him the Lord is not only
Israel's Keeper or Sentinel, but the Lord is also _thy shade on thy right
hand: the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night._ The
origin of these expressions is vague, but their application here is vivid
enough. A sentinel is too far away, and is, physically, too narrow a figure
to fulfil man's imagination of God. The Psalmist requires something near
enough to express both intimacy and shelter. So he calls God the Comrade as
well as the Sentinel of His people; their Champion as well as their
Watchman. The _shade upon thy right hand_ is of course the shade upon the
fighting or working arm, to preserve it from exposure, and in the full
freedom of its power.
Now it is never ideas about God, nor even aspirations after Him, which in
the real battle of life keep us fresh and unexhausted. Ideas, and even
aspirations, strain as much as they lift. They give the mind its direction,
but by themselves they cannot carry it all the way. Nor is the influence of
a Personality sufficient if that Personality remain far off. Reverence
alone never saved any human soul in the storm of life. It is One by our
side Whom we need. It is by the sense of trust, of sympathy, of
comradeship, of fighting together in the ranks, that our strength is
thrilled and our right hand preserved in freshness. Without all this
between us and bare heaven, we must in the end weary and wither.
Twofold is the experience in which we especially need such compassion and
fellowship--in the time of responsibility and in the time of temptation.
These are the two great Lonelinesses of life--the Loneliness of the Height
and the Loneliness of the Deep--in which the heart needs to be sure of more
than being remembered and watched. The Loneliness of the Height, when God
has led us to the duty of a great decision, or given us the charge of other
lives, or sent us on the quest of some truth, or lifted us to a vision and
ideal. The king, the father, the thinker, the artist, all know this
loneliness of the height, which no human fellow can share, no human heart
fully sympathise with. Then it is that, with another Psalmist, the heart,
exposed to the bare heaven, cries out for something higher than itself to
come between the heaven and it: _What time my heart is overwhelmed do Thou
lead me unto the rock that is higher than I_; and God answers us by being
Himself _a shade upon the right hand, and the sun shall not smite by day,
nor the moon by night_. And there is the Loneliness of the Deep, when we
are plunged into the pit of our hearts to fight with terrible
temptations--a conflict no other man knows about or can help us in. Shall
God, Who sees us fighting there, and falling under the sense of our
helplessness, leave us to fight alone? The Lord is thy shade on thy right
hand; thy Comrade, fighting with thee, His presence shall keep thy heart
brave and thine arm fresh. It is a truth enforced through the whole of the
Old Testament. God is not a God far away. He descends, He comes to our
side: He battles for and suffers with His own.
These then are the main thoughts of this Psalm. What new authority and
vividness have Jesus Christ and His Cross put into them? There are few of
the Psalms which the early Christians more frequently employed of Christ.
On the lintel of an ancient house in Hauran I once read the inscription:
'O Jesus Christ, be the shelter and defence of the home and of the whole
family, and bless their incoming and outgoing.' How may we also sing this
Psalm of Christ? By remembering the new pledges He has given us, that God's
thoughts and God's heart are with us. By remembering the infinite degree,
which the Cross has revealed, not only of the interest God takes in our
life, but of the responsibility He Himself assumes for its eternal issues.
The Cross was no new thing. The Cross was the putting of the Love of God,
of the Blood of Christ, into the old fundamental pieties of the human
heart, the realising by Jesus in Himself of the dearest truths about God.
Look up, then, and sing this Psalm of Him. Can we lift our eyes to any of
the hills without seeing His figure upon them? Is there a human ideal, duty
or hope, with which Jesus is not inseparably and for ever identified? Is
there a human experience--the struggle of the individual heart in
temptation, the pity of the multitude, the warfare against the strongholds
of wickedness--from which we can imagine Him absent? No; it is impossible
for any high outline of morality or religion to break upon the eyes of our
race, it is impossible for any field of righteous battle, any floor of
suffering to unroll, without the vision of Christ upon it. He dominates our
highest aspirations, and is felt by our side in our deepest sorrows. There
is no loneliness, whether of height or of depth, which He does not enter by
the side of His own.
Who has warned us like Christ? To this day He stands the great Sentinel of
civilisation. If all within the camp do not acknowledge Him, no new thing
starts up in its midst, no new thing comes upon it from outside, which He
does not challenge. His judgment is still the highest, clearest, safest the
world has ever known; and each new effort of service, each new movement of
knowledge, is determined by its worth to His Kingdom.
Who has assumed responsibility for our life as Christ has? Who has taken
upon himself the safety and the honour, not of the little tribe for whom
this Psalm was first sung, but of the whole of the children of men! He
called about Himself our weariness, He lifted our sorrow, He disposed of
our sin--as only God can call or lift or dispose. Nothing exhausted His
pity, or His confidence to deal with us; nothing ever betrayed a fault in
His character, or belied the trust His people put in Him. _He suffers not
thy foot_ _to be moved; He neither slumbers nor sleeps_.
For all this we sing the Psalm of Christ. We know that so long as we have
our conversation among the lofty things of life, His dominating Presence
grows only the more clear; and so long as we are beset by things adverse
and tempting, His sympathy and His prevailing grace become the more sure.
_The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul_.
_The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time
forth and for evermore._
* * * * *
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