Hearken with what triumph the Psalmist breaks out: 'Great is the Lord,
and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His
holiness. Beautiful for situation (or rather elevation), the joy of the
whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the
great King.' Now these words are something more than mere patriotic
feeling. The Jew's glory in Jerusalem was a different thing altogether
from the Roman's pride in Rome. To the devout men amongst them, of whom
the writer of this psalm was one, there was one thing, and one only,
that made Zion glorious. It was beautiful indeed in its elevation,
lifted high upon its rocky mountain. It was safe indeed, isolated from
the invader by the precipitous ravines which enclosed and guarded the
angle of the mountain plateau on which it stood; but _the one_ thing
that gave it glory was that in _it_ God abode. The name even of that
earthly Zion was 'Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord is there.' And the emphasis
of these words is entirely pointed in that direction. What they
celebrate concerning _Him_ is not merely the general thought that the
Lord is great, but that the Lord is _great in Zion_. What they celebrate
concerning _it_ is that it is His city, the mountain of His holiness,
where He dwells, where He manifests Himself. Because there is His
self-manifestation, therefore He is there greatly to be praised. And
because the clear voice of His praise rings out from Zion, therefore is
she 'the joy of the whole earth.' The glory of Zion, then, is that it is
the dwelling-place of God.
Now, remember, that when the Old Testament Scripture speaks about God
abiding in Jerusalem, it means no heathenish or material localising of
the Deity, nor does it imply any depriving of the rest of the earth of
the sanctity of His presence. The very psalm which most distinctly
embodies the thought of God's abode protests against that narrowness,
for it begins, 'The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof: the
world and they that dwell therein.' The very ark which was the symbol of
His presence, protests by its name against all such localising, for the
name of it was 'the ark of the covenant of the God of the whole earth.'
When the Bible speaks of Zion as the dwelling-place of God, it is but
the expression of the fact that there, between the cherubim, was the
visible sign of His presence--that there, in the Temple, as from the
centre of the whole land, He ruled, and 'out of Zion, the perfection of
beauty, God shone.'
We are, then, not 'spiritualising,' or forcing a New Testament meaning
into these words, when we see in them an Eternal Truth. We are but
following in the steps of history and prophecy, and of Christ and His
Apostles, and of that last vision of the Apocalypse. We are but
distinguishing between an idea and the fact which more or less perfectly
embodies it. An idea may have many garments, may transmigrate into many
different material forms. The idea of the dwelling of God with men had
its less perfect embodiment, has its more perfect embodiment, will have
its absolutely perfect embodiment. It had its less perfect in that
ancient time. It has its real but partial embodiment in this present
time, when, in the midst of the whole community of believing and loving
souls, which stretches wider than any society that calls itself a
Church, the living God abides and energises by His Spirit and by His Son
in the souls of them that believe upon Him. 'Ye are come unto Mount Zion
and unto the city of the living God.' And we wait for the time when,
filling all the air with its light, there shall come down from God a
perfect and permanent form of that dwelling; and that great city, the
New Jerusalem, 'having the glory of God,' shall appear, and He will
dwell with men and be their God.
But in all these stages of the embodiment of that great truth the glory
of Zion rests in this, that in it God abides, that from it He flames in
the greatness of His manifestations, which are 'His praise in all the
earth.' It is that presence which makes her fair, as it is that presence
which keeps her safe. It is that light shining within her palaces--not
their own opaque darkness, which streams out far into the waste night
with ruddy glow of hospitable invitation. It is God in her, not anything
of her own, that constitutes her 'the joy of the whole earth.' 'Thy
beauty was perfect, through My comeliness, which I had put upon thee,
saith the Lord.' Zion is where hearts love and trust and follow Christ.
The 'city of the great King' is a permanent reality in a partial form
upon earth--and that partial form is itself a prophecy of the perfection
of the heavens.
II. Still further, there is a second portion of this psalm which,
passing beyond these introductory thoughts of the glory of Zion,
recounts with wonderful power and vigour the process of the deliverance
of Zion.
It extends from the fourth to the eighth verses. Mark the dramatic
vigour of the description of the deliverance. There is, first, the
mustering of the armies--'The kings were assembled.' Some light is
thrown upon that phrase by the proud boast which the prophet Isaiah puts
into the lips of the Assyrian invader, 'Are not my princes altogether
kings?' The subject-monarchs of the subdued nationalities that were
gathered round the tyrant's standard were used, with the wicked craft of
conquerors in all ages, to bring still other lands under the same iron
dominion. 'The kings were assembled'--we see them gathering their
far-reaching and motley army, mustered from all corners of that gigantic
empire. They advance together against the rocky fortress that towers
above its girdling valleys. 'They saw it, they marvelled'--in wonder,
perhaps, at its beauty, as they first catch sight of its glittering
whiteness from some hill crest on their march; or, perhaps, stricken by
some strange amazement, as if, basilisk-like, its beauty were deadly,
and a beam from the Shechinah had shot a nameless awe into their
souls--'they were troubled, they hasted away.'
I need not dilate on the power of this description, nor do more than
notice how the abruptness of the language, huddled together, as it were,
without connecting particles, conveys the impression of hurry and
confusion, culminating in the rush of fugitives fleeing under the
influence of panic-terror. They are like the well-known words, 'I came,
I saw, I conquered,' only that here we have to do with swift
defeat--they came, they saw, they were conquered. They are, in regard to
vivid picturesqueness, arising from the broken construction, singularly
like other words which refer to the same event in the forty-sixth psalm,
'The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved; He uttered His voice, the
earth melted.' In their scornful emphasis of triumph they remind us of
Isaiah's description of the end of the same invasion--'So Sennacherib,
king of Assyria, departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.'
Mark, still further, the eloquent silence as to the cause of the panic
and the flight. There is no appearance of armed resistance. This is no
'battle of the warrior with garments rolled in blood,' and the shock of
contending hosts. But an unseen Hand smites once--'and when the morning
dawned they were all dead corpses.' The impression of terror produced by
such a blow is increased by the veiled allusion to it here. The silence
magnifies the deliverance. If we might apply the grand words of Milton
to that night of fear--
'The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
But kings sat still, with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.'
The process of the deliverance is not told here, as there was no need it
should be in a hymn which is not history, but the lyrical echo of what
is told in history; one image explains it all--'Thou breakest the ships
of Tarshish with an east wind.' The metaphor--one that does not need
expansion here--is that of a ship like a great unwieldy galleon, caught
in a tempest. However strong for fight, it is not fit for sailing. It is
like some of those turret ships of ours, if they venture out from the
coast and get into a storm, their very strength is their destruction,
their armour wherein they trusted ensures that they shall sink. And so,
this huge assailant of Israel, this great 'galley with oars,' washing
about there in the trough of the sea, as it were--God broke it in two
with the tempest, which is His breath. You remember how on the medal
that commemorated the destruction of the Spanish Armada--our English
deliverance--there were written the words of Scripture: 'God blew upon
them and they were scattered.' What was there true, literally, is here
true in figure. The Psalmist is not thinking of any actual scattering of
hostile fleets--from which Jerusalem was never in danger; but is using
the shipwreck of 'the ship of Tarshish' as a picture of the utter,
swift, God-inflicted destruction which ground that invading army to
pieces, as the savage rocks and wild seas will do the strongest craft
that is mangled between them.
And then, mark how from this dramatic description there rises a loftier
thought still. The deliverance thus described links the present with the
past. 'As we have heard so have we seen in the city of the Lord of
hosts, in the city of our God.' Yes, brethren! God's merciful
manifestation for ourselves, as for those Israelitish people of old, has
this blessed effect, that it changes hearsay and tradition into living
experience;--this blessed effect, that it teaches us, or ought to teach
us, the inexhaustibleness of the divine power, the constant repetition
in every age of the same works of love. Taught by it, we learn that all
these old narratives of His grace and help are ever new, not past and
gone, but ready to be reproduced in their essential characteristics in
our lives too. 'We have heard with our ears, O Lord, our fathers have
told us what work Thou didst in their days.' But is the record only a
melancholy contrast with our own experience? Nay, truly. 'As we have
heard so have we seen.' We are ever tempted to think of the present as
commonplace. The sky right above our heads is always farthest from
earth. It is at the horizon behind and the horizon in front, where earth
and heaven seem to blend. We think of miracles in the past, we think of
a manifest presence of God in the future, but the present ever seems to
our sense-bound understandings as beggared and empty of Him, devoid of
His light. But this verse suggests to us how, if we mark the daily
dealings of that loving Hand with us, we have every occasion to say, Thy
loving-kindness of old lives still. Still, as of old, the hosts of the
Lord encamp round about them that fear Him to deliver them. Still, as of
old, the voice of guidance comes from between the cherubim. Still, as of
old, the pillar of cloud and fire moves before us. Still, as of old,
angels walk with men. Still, as of old, His hand is stretched forth, to
bless, to feed, to guard. Nothing in the past of God's dealings with men
has passed away. The eternal present embraces what we call the past,
present, and future. They that went before do not prevent us on whom the
ends of the ages are come. The table that was spread for them is as
fully furnished for the latest guests. The light, which was so magical
and lustrous in the morning beauty, for us has not faded away into the
light of common day. The river which flowed in these past ages has not
been drunk up by the thirsty sands. The fire that once blazed so clear
has not died down into grey ashes. 'The God of _Jacob_ is _our_ refuge.'
'As we have heard so have we seen.'
And then, still further, the deliverance here is suggested as not only
linking most blessedly the present with the past, but also linking it
for our confidence with all the _future_. 'God will establish it for
ever.'
'Old experience doth attain
To something of prophetic strain.'
In the strength of what that moment had taught of God and His power, the
singer looks onward, and whatever may be the future he knows that the
divine arm will be outstretched. God will establish Zion; or, as the
word might be translated, God will hold it erect, as if with a strong
hand grasping some pole or banner-staff that else would totter and
fall--He will keep it up, standing there firm and steadfast.
It would lead us too far to discuss the bearing of such a prophecy upon
the future history and restoration of Israel, but the bearing of it upon
the security and perpetuity of the Church is unquestionable. The city is
immortal because God dwells in it. For the individual and for the
community, for the great society and for each of the single souls that
make it up, the history of the past may seal the pledge which He gives
for the future. If it had been possible to destroy the Church of the
living God, it had been gone long, long ago. Its own weakness and sin,
the ever-new corruptions of its belief and paring of its creed, the
imperfections of its life and the worldliness of its heart, the
abounding evils that lie around it and the actual hostility of many that
look upon it and say, Raze it, even to the ground, would have smitten it
to the dust long since. It lives, it has lived in spite of all, and
therefore it shall live. 'God will establish it for ever.'
In almost every land there is some fortress or other, which the pride of
the inhabitants calls 'the maiden fortress,' and whereof the legend is,
that it has never been taken, and is inexpugnable by any foe. It is true
about the tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion.
The grand words of Isaiah about this very Assyrian invader are our
answer to all fears within and foes without: 'Say unto him, the virgin,
the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the
daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.... I will defend
this city to save it for My own sake, and for My servant David's sake.'
'God will establish it for ever,' and the pledges of that eternal
stability are the deliverances of the past and of the present.
III. Then, finally, there is still another section of this psalm to be
looked at for a moment, which deals with the consequent grateful praise
and glad trust of Zion.
I must condense what few things I have to say about these closing
verses. The deliverance, first of all, deepens the glad meditation on
God's favour and defence. 'We have thought,' say the ransomed people, as
with a sigh of rejoicing, 'we have thought of Thy loving-kindness in the
midst of Thy temple.' The scene of the manifestation of His power is the
scene of their thankfulness, and the first issue of His mercy is His
servants' praise.
Then, the deliverance spreads His fame throughout the world. 'According
to Thy name, O God! so is Thy praise unto the ends of the earth. Thy
right hand is full of righteousness.' The name of God is God's own
making known of His character, and the thought of these words is double.
They most beautifully express the profoundest trust in that blessed name
that it only needs to be known in order to be loved. There is nothing
wanted but His manifestation of Himself for His praise and glory to
spread. Why is the Psalmist so sure that according to the revelation of
His character will be the revenue of His praise? Because the Psalmist is
so sure that that character is purely, perfectly, simply good--nothing
else but good and blessing--and that He cannot act but in such a way as
to magnify Himself. That great sea will cast up nothing on the shores of
the world but pearls and precious things. He is all 'light, and in Him
is no darkness at all.' There needs but the shining forth in order that
the light of His character shall bring gladness and joy, and the song of
birds, and opening flowers wheresoever it falls.
Still further, there is the other truth in the words, that we
misapprehend the purpose of our own deliverances, and the purpose of
God's mercy to Zion, if we confine these to any personal objects or lose
sight of the loftier end of them all--that men may learn to know and
love Him. Brethren! we neither rightly thank Him for His gifts to us nor
rightly apprehend the meaning of His dealings, unless the sweetest
thought to us, even in the midst of our own personal joy for
deliverance, is not 'we are saved,' but 'God is exalted.'
And then, beyond that, the deliverance produces in Zion, the mother city
and her daughter villages, a triumph of rapture and gladness. 'Let mount
Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad because of Thy
judgments.' Yes, even though an hundred and four score and five thousand
dead men lay there, they were to be glad. Solemn and awful as is the
baring of His righteous sword, it is an occasion for praise. It is right
to be glad when men and systems that hinder and fight against God are
swept away as with the besom of destruction. 'When the wicked perish
there is shouting,' and the fitting epitaph for the oppressors to whom
the surges of the Red Sea are shroud and gravestone is, 'Sing ye to the
Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously.'
The last verses set forth, more fully than even the preceding ones, the
height and perfectness of the confidence which the manifold mercies of
God ought to produce in men's hearts. The citizens who have been cooped
up during the invasion, and who, in the temple, as we have seen, have
been rendering the tribute of their meditation and thankful gratitude to
God for His loving-kindness, are now called upon to come forth from the
enclosure of the besieged city, and free from all fear of the invading
army, to 'walk about Zion, and go round about her and tell the towers,'
and 'mark her bulwarks and palaces.'
They look first at the defences, on which no trace of assault appears,
and then at the palaces guarded by them, that stand shining and
unharmed. The deliverance has been so complete that there is not a sign
of the peril or the danger left. It is not like a city besieged, and the
siege raised when the thing over which contending hosts have been
quarrelling has become a ruin, but not one stone has been smitten from
the walls, nor one agate chipped in the windows of the palaces. It is
unharmed as well as uncaptured.
Thus, we may say, no matter what tempests assail us, the wind will but
sweep the rotten branches out of the tree. Though war should arise,
nothing will be touched that belongs to Thee. We have a city which
cannot be moved; and the removal of the things which can be shaken but
makes more manifest its impregnable security, its inexpugnable peace. As
in war they will clear away the houses and the flower gardens that have
been allowed to come and cluster about the walls and fill up the moat,
yet the walls will stand; so in all the conflicts that befall God's
church and God's truth, the calming thought ought to be ours that if
anything perishes it is a sign that it is not His, but man's excrescence
on His building. Whatever is His will stand for ever.
And then, with wonderful tenderness and beauty, the psalm in its last
words drops, as one might say, in one aspect, and in another, _rises_
from its contemplations of the immortal city and the community to the
thought of the individuals that make it up: 'For this God is our God for
ever and ever; He will be our guide _even_ unto death.' Prosaic
commentators have often said that these last two words are an
interpolation, that they do not fit into the strain of the psalm, and
have troubled themselves to find out what meaning to attach to them,
because it seemed to them so unlikely that, in a hymn that had only to
do with the community, we should find this expression of individual
confidence in anticipation of that most purely personal of all evils.
That seems to me the very reason for holding fast by the words as being
a genuine part of the psalm, because they express a truth, without which
the confident hope of the psalm, grand as it is, is but poor consolation
for each heart. It is not enough for passing, perishing men to say,
'Never mind your own individual fate: the society, the community, will
stand fast and firm.'
I want something more than to know that God will establish Zion for
ever. What about _me_, my own individual self? And these last words
answer that question. Not merely the city abides, but 'He will be our
guide even unto death.' And surely, if so--if His loving hand will lead
the citizens of His eternal kingdom even to the edge of that great
darkness--He will not lose them even in its gloom. Surely there is here
the veiled hope that if the city be eternal and the gates of the grave
cannot prevail against _it_, the community cannot be eternal unless the
individuals be immortal.
Such a hope is vindicated by the blessed words of a newer revelation:
'God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for
them a city.'
Dear brethren! remember the last words, or all but the last words of
Scripture which, in their true text and reading, tell us how, instead of
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, we may become fellow-citizens
with the saints. 'Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may
have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gate into
the city!'