The Psalmist draws the picture of himself as a thirsty man in a
waterless land. That may be a literally true reproduction of his
condition, if indeed the old idea is correct, that this is a work of
David's; for there is no more appalling desert than that in which he
wandered as an exile. It is a land of arid mountains without a blade of
verdure, blazing in their ghastly whiteness under the fierce sunshine,
and with gaunt ravines in which there are no pools or streams, and
therefore no sweet sound of running waters, no shadow, no songs of
birds, but all is hot, dusty, glaring, pitiless; and men and beasts
faint, and loll out their tongues, and die for want of water. And, says
the Psalmist, such is life, if due regard be had to the deepest wants of
a soul, notwithstanding all the abundant supplies which are spread in
such rich and loving luxuriance around us--we are thirsty men in a
waterless land. I need not remind you how true it is that a man is but a
bundle of appetites, desires, often tyrannous, often painful, always
active. But the misery of it is--the reason why man's misery is great
upon him is--mainly, I suppose, that he does not know what it is that he
wants; that he thirsts, but does not understand what the thirst means,
nor what it is that will slake it. His animal appetites make no
mistakes; he and the beasts know that when they are thirsty they have to
drink, and when they are hungry they have to eat, and when they are
drowsy they have to sleep. But the poor instinct of the animal that
teaches it what to choose and what to avoid fails us in the higher
reaches; and we are conscious of a craving, and do not find that the
craving reveals to us the source from whence its satisfaction can be
derived. Therefore 'broken cisterns that can hold no water' are at a
premium, and 'the fountain of living waters' is turned away from, though
it could slake so many thirsts. Like ignorant explorers in an enemy's
country, we see a stream, and we do not stop to ask whether there is
poison in it or not before we glue our thirsty lips to it. There is a
great old promise in one of the prophets which puts this notion of the
misinterpretation of our thirsts, and the mistakes as to the sources
from which they can be slaked, into one beautiful metaphor which is
obscured in our English version. The prophet Isaiah says, according to
our reading, 'the parched land shall become a pool.' The word which he
uses is that almost technical one which describes the phenomenon known
only in Eastern lands, or at least known in them only in its superlative
degree; the mirage, where the dancing currents of ascending air simulate
the likeness of a cool lake, with palm-trees around it. And, says he,
'the mirage shall become a pool,' the romance shall turn into a reality,
the mistakes shall be rectified, and men shall know what it is that they
want, and shall get it when they know. Brethren! unless we have listened
to the teaching from above, unless we have consulted far more wisely and
far more profoundly than many of us have ever done the meaning of our
own hearts when they cry out, we too shall only be able to take for ours
the plaintive cry of the half of this first utterance of the Psalmist,
and say despairingly, 'My soul thirsteth.' Blessed are they who know
where the fountain is, who know the meaning of the highest unrests in
their own souls, and can go on to say with clear and true
self-revelation, 'My soul thirsteth for God!'
That is religion. There is a great deal more in Christianity than
longing, but there is no Christianity worth the name without it. There
is moral stimulus to activity, a pattern for conduct, and so on, in our
religion, and if our religion is only this longing--well then, it is
worth very little; and I fancy it is worth a good deal less if there is
none of this felt need for God, and for more of God, in us.
And so I come to two classes of my hearers; and to the first of them I
say, Dear friends! do not mistake what it is that you 'need,' and see to
it that you turn the current of your longings from earth to God; and to
the second of them I say, Dear friends! if you have found out that God
is your supreme good, see to it that you live in the good, see to it
that you live in the constant attitude of longing for more of that good
which alone will slake your appetite.
'The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine,'
and unless we know what it is to be drawn outwards and upwards, in
strong aspirations after something--'afar from the sphere of our
sorrow,' I know not why we should call ourselves Christians at all.
But, dear friends! let us not forget that these higher aspirations after
the uncreated and personal good which is God have to be cultivated very
sedulously and with great persistence, throughout all our changing
lives, or they will soon die out, and leave us. There has to be the
clear recognition, habitual to us, of what is our good. There has to be
a continual meditation, if I may so say, upon the all-sufficiency of
that divine Lord and Lover of our souls, and there has to be a vigilant
and a continual suppression, and often excision and ejection, of other
desires after transient and partial satisfactions. A man who lets all
his longings go unchecked and untamed after earthly good has none left
towards heaven. If you break up a river into a multitude of channels,
and lead off much of it to irrigate many little gardens, there will be
no force in its current, its bed will become dry, and it will never
reach the great ocean where it loses its individuality and becomes part
of a mightier whole. So, if we fritter away and divide up our desires
among all the clamant and partial blessings of earth, then we shall but
feebly long, and feebly longing, shall but faintly enjoy, the cool,
clear, exhaustless gush from the fountain of life--'My soul thirsteth
for God!'--in the measure in which that is true of us, and not one
hairsbreadth beyond it, in spite of orthodoxy, and professions, and
activities, are we Christian people.