'My soul thirsteth for Thee.... 5. My soul shall be satisfied.... 8.
My soul followeth hard after Thee.'--PSALM lxiii. 1, 5, 8.
It is a wise advice which bids us regard rather what is said than who
says it, and there are few regions in which the counsel is more salutary
than at present in the study of the Old Testament, and especially the
Psalms. This authorship has become a burning question which is only too
apt to shut out far more important things. Whoever poured out this sweet
meditation in the psalm before us, his tender longings for, and his
jubilant possession of, God remain the same. It is either the work of a
king in exile, or is written by some one who tries to cast himself into
the mental attitude of such a person, and to reproduce his longing and
his trust. It may be a question of literary interest, but it is of no
sort of spiritual or religious importance whether the author is David or
a singer of later date endeavouring to reproduce his emotions under
certain circumstances.
The three clauses which I have read, and which are so strikingly
identical in form, constitute the three pivots on which the psalm
revolves, the three bends in the stream of its thought and emotion. 'My
soul thirsts; my soul is satisfied; my soul follows hard after Thee.'
The three phases of emotion follow one another so swiftly that they are
all wrapped up in the brief compass of this little song. Unless they in
some degree express our experiences and emotions, there is little
likelihood that our lives will be blessed or noble, and we have little
right to call ourselves Christians. Let us follow the windings of the
stream, and ask ourselves if we can see our own faces in its shining
surface.