To me, this long-drawn-out series of linked clauses without grammatical
connection, this succession of adoring exclamations of rapture, wonder,
and praise, is very striking. It suggests the manner in which we should
vivify all our thoughts of God, by turning them into material for
devout reverence; awe-struck, considering meditation. There is nothing
told us in the Bible about God simply in order that we may know it. It
is all meant to be fuel to the fire of our divine affection; to kindle
in us the sentiments of faith and love and rapturous adoration. It is
easy to know the theology of the Old and the New Testaments, and a man
may rattle over the catalogue of the divine 'attributes,' as they are
called, with perfect accuracy, and never be a hair the better for
knowing all of them. So I urge, on you and on myself, the necessity of
warming our thoughts and kindling our conceptions of what God is until
they melt us into fluidity and adoration and love.
I believe that there are few things which we Christian people more lack
in this generation, and by the lack of which we suffer more, than the
comparative decay of the good old habit of frequent and patient
meditation on the things that we most surely believe. We are so busy in
adding to our stock of knowledge, in following out to their latest
consequence the logical effects of our Christianity, and in defending
it, or seeking to be familiar with the defences, against modern
assaults, or in practical work on its behalf, that the last thing that
a great many of us do is to feed upon the truth which we know already.
We should be like ruminant animals who first crop the grass--which,
being interpreted, means, get Scripture truth into our heads--and then
chew the cud, which being interpreted is, then put these truths through
a second process by meditation on them, so that they may turn into
nourishment and make flesh. 'He that eateth Me,' said Jesus Christ (and
He used there the word which is specially applied to rumination),
'shall live by Me.' It does us no good to know that God is 'the Throne
of Glory, high from the beginning, the place of our sanctuary,' unless
we turn theology into devotion by meditation upon it. 'Suffer the word
of exhortation '--in busy, great communities like ours, where we are
all driven so hard, there is need for some voices sometimes to be
lifted up in pressing upon Christian people the duty of quiet
rumination upon the truths that they have.
III. We may see in our text, further, the meditative soul going out to
grasp God thus revealed, as its portion and hope.
As I have already said, the text is best understood as part of a series
of exclamations which extends into the following verse. If we take
account of the whole series, and regard the subsequent part of it as
led up to, by the part which is our text, we get an important thought
as to what should be the outcome of the truths concerning God, and of
our meditative contemplation of them.
My relation to these truths is not exhausted even when I have meditated
upon them, and they have touched me into a rapture of devotion. I can
conceive that to have been done, and yet the next necessary step not to
have been taken. What is that step? The next verse tells us, when it
goes on to exclaim, 'O Lord! _the hope of Israel_.' I must cast myself
upon Him by faith as my only hope, and turn away from all other
confidences which are vain and impotent. So we are back upon that
familiar Christian ground, that the bond which knits a man to God, and
by which all that God is becomes that man's personal property, and
available for the security and the shaping of his life, is the simple
flinging of himself into God's arms, in sure and certain trust. Then,
every one of these characteristics of which I have been speaking will
contribute its own special part to the serenity, the security, the
godlikeness, the blessedness, the righteousness, the strength of the
man who thus trusts.
But such confidence which makes all these things my own possessions,
which makes Him 'a throne of glory,' to which I have access; which
makes Him a place in which I dwell by this exercise of personal faith;
which makes Him my hope, has for its other side the turning away from
all other grounds of confidence and security. The subsequent context
tells us how wise it is thus to turn away, and what folly it is to make
anything else our hope except that 'throne of glory.' 'They that depart
from Me shall be written in the earth,' because 'they have forsaken the
Lord, the fountain of living waters.' If we say, 'O Lord! Thou art my
hope,' we shall have the 'anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which
entereth within the veil,' and fixes on Him who is within it, the
throned Grace between the cherubim, our Brother and our Hope. So we may
dwell in God, and from the secure height of our house look down
serenely on impotent foes, and never know the bitterness of vain hopes,
nor remove from the safe asylum of our home in God.