'One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that
I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.'
--PSALM xxvii. 4.
We shall do great injustice to this mystical aspiration of the Psalmist,
if we degrade it to be the mere expression of a desire for unbroken
residence in a material Temple. He was no sickly, sentimental seeker
after cloistered seclusion. He knew the necessities and duties of life
far better than in a cowardly way to wish to shirk them, in order that
he might loiter in the temple, idle under the pretence of worship. Nor
would the saying fit into the facts of the case if we gave it that low
meaning, for no person had his residence in the temple. And what follows
in the next verse would, on that hypothesis, be entirely inappropriate.
'In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me.' No one went into the
secret place of the Most High, in the visible, material structure,
except the high priest once a year. But this singer expects that his
abode will be there always; and that, in the time of trouble, he can
find refuge there.
Apart altogether from any wider considerations as to the relation
between form and spirit under the Old Covenant, I think that such
observations compel us to see in these words a desire a great deal
nobler and deeper than any such wish.
I. Let us, then, note the true meaning of this aspiration of the
Psalmist.
Its fulfilment depends not on where we are, but on what we think and
feel; for every place is God's house, and what the Psalmist desires is
that he should be able to keep up unbroken consciousness of being in
God's presence and should be always in touch with Him.
That seems hard, and people say, 'Impossible! how can I get above my
daily work, and be perpetually thinking of God and His will, and
consciously realising communion with Him?' But there is such a thing as
having an undercurrent of consciousness running all through a man's life
and mind; such a thing as having a melody sounding in our ears
perpetually, 'so sweet we know not we are listening to it' until it
stops, and then, by the poverty of the naked and silent atmosphere, we
know how musical were the sounds that we scarcely knew that we heard,
and yet did hear so well high above all the din of earth's noises.
Every man that has ever cherished such an aspiration as this knows the
difficulties all too well. And yet, without entering upon thorny and
unprofitable questions as to whether the absolute, unbroken continuity
of consciousness of being in God's presence is possible for men here
below, let us look at the question, which has a great deal more bearing
upon our present condition--viz. whether a greater continuity of that
consciousness is not possible than we attain to to-day. It does seem to
me to be a foolish and miserable waste of time and temper and energy for
good people to be quarrelling about whether they can come to the
absolute realisation of this desire in this world, when there is not one
of them who is not leagues below the possible realisation of it, and
knows that he is. At all events, whether or not the line can be drawn
without a break at all, the breaks might be a great deal shorter and a
great deal less frequent than they are. An unbroken line of conscious
communion with God is the ideal; and that is what this singer desired
and worked for. How many of my feelings and thoughts to-day, or of the
things that I have said or done since I woke this morning, would have
been done and said and felt exactly the same, if there were not a God at
all, or if it did not matter in the least whether I ever came into touch
with Him or not? Oh, dear friends! it is no vain effort to bring our
lives a little nearer that unbroken continuity of communion with Him of
which this text speaks. And God knows, and we each for ourselves know,
how much and how sore our need is of such a union. 'One thing have I
desired, that will I seek after; that I, in my study; I, in my shop; I,
in my parlour, kitchen, or nursery; I, in my studio; I, in my
lecture-hall--'may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my
life.' In our 'Father's house are many mansions.' The room that we spend
most of our lives in, each of us, at our tasks or our work-tables may be
in our Father's house, too; and it is only we that can secure that it
shall be.
The inmost meaning of this Psalmist's desire is that the consciousness
of God shall be diffused throughout the whole of a man's days, instead
of being coagulated here and there at points. The Australian rivers in a
drought present a picture of the Christian life of far too many of us--a
stagnant, stinking pool here, a stretch of blinding gravel there;
another little drop of water a mile away, then a long line of
foul-smelling mud, and then another shallow pond. Why! it ought to run
in a clear stream that has a scour in it and that will take all filth
off the surface.
The Psalmist longed to break down the distinction between sacred and
secular; to consecrate work, of whatsoever sort it was. He had learned
what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our
religion does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of
little use; and that if the field in which our religion has power to
control and impel is not that of the trivialities and secularities of
our ordinary life, there is no field for it at all.
'All the days of my life.' Not only on Wednesday nights, while Tuesday
and Thursday are given to the world and self; not only on Sundays; not
for five minutes in the morning, when I am eager to get to my daily
work, and less than five minutes at night, when I am half asleep, but
through the long day, doing this, that, and the other thing for God and
by God and with God, and making Him the motive and the power of my
course, and my Companion to heaven. And if we have, in our lives, things
over which we cannot make the sign of the cross, the sooner we get rid
of them the better; and if there is anything in our daily work, or in
our characters, about which we are doubtful, here is a good test: does
it seem to check our continual communion with God, as a ligature round
the wrist might do the continual flow of the blood, or does it help us
to realise His presence? If the former, let us have no more to do with
it; if the latter, let us seek to increase it.
II. And now let me say a word about the Psalmist's reason for this
aspiration.
The word which he employs carries with it a picture which is even more
vividly given us by a synonymous word employed in the same connection in
some of the other psalms. 'That I may dwell in the house of the
Lord'--now, that is an allusion, not only, as I think, to the Temple,
but also to the Oriental habit of giving a man who took refuge in the
tent of the sheikh, guest-rites of protection and provision and
friendship. The habit exists to this day, and travellers among the
Bedouins tell us lovely stories of how even an enemy with the blood of
the closest relative of the owner of the tent on his hands, if he can
once get in there and partake of the salt of the host, is safe, and the
first obligation of the owner of the tent is to watch over the life of
the fugitive as over his own. So the Psalmist says, 'I desire to have
guest-rites in Thy tent; to lift up its fold, and shelter there from the
heat of the desert. And although I be dark and stained with many evils
and transgressions against Thee, yet I come to claim the hospitality and
provision and protection and friendship which the laws of the house do
bestow upon a guest.' Carrying out substantially the same idea, Paul
tells the Ephesians, as if it were the very highest privilege that the
Gospel brought to the Gentiles: 'Ye are no more strangers, but
fellow-citizens with the saints, and _of the household of God_';
incorporated into His family, and dwelling safely in His pavilion as
their home.
That is to say, the blessedness of keeping up such a continual
consciousness of touch with God is, first and foremost, the certainty of
infallible protection. Oh! how it minimises all trouble and brightens
all joys, and calms amidst all distractions, and steadies and sobers in
all circumstances, to feel ever the hand of God upon us! He who goes
through life, finding that, when he has trouble to meet, it throws him
back on God, and that when bright mornings of joy drive away nights of
weeping, these wake morning songs of praise, and are brightest because
they shine with the light of a Father's love, will never be unduly moved
by any vicissitudes of fortune. Like some inland and sheltered valley,
with great mountains shutting it in, that 'heareth not the loud winds
when they call' beyond the barriers that enclose it, our lives may be
tranquilly free from distraction, and may be full of peace, of
nobleness, and of strength, on condition of our keeping in God's house
all the days of our lives.
There is another blessing that will come to the dweller in God's house,
and that not a small one. It is that, by the power of this one satisfied
longing, driven like an iron rod through all the tortuosities of my
life, there will come into it a unity which otherwise few lives are ever
able to attain, and the want of which is no small cause of the misery
that is great upon men. Most of us seem, to our own consciousness, to
live amidst endless distractions all our days, and our lives to be a
heap of links parted from each other rather than a chain. But if we have
that one constant thought with us, and if we are, through all the
variety of occupations, true to the one purpose of serving and keeping
near God, then we have a charm against the frittering away of our lives
in distractions, and the misery of multiplicity; and we enter into the
blessedness of unity and singleness of purpose; and our lives become,
like the starry heavens in all the variety of their motions, obedient to
one impulse. For unity in a life does not depend upon the monotony of
its tasks, but upon the simplicity of the motive which impels to all
varieties of work. So it is possible for a man harassed by multitudinous
avocations, and drawn hither and thither by sometimes apparently
conflicting and always bewildering, rapidly-following duties, to say,
'This one thing I do,' if all his doings are equally acts of obedience
to God.