'Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are
the highways to Zion. 6. Passing through the valley of Weeping they
make it a place of springs; yea, the early rain covereth it with
blessings. 7. They go from strength to strength, every one of them
appeareth before God in Zion.'--PSALM lxxxiv. 5-7.
Rightly rendered, the first words of these verses are not a calm,
prosaic statement, but an emotional exclamation. The Psalmist's tone
would be more truly represented if we read, 'How blessed is the man,' or
'Oh, the blessednesses!' for that is the literal rendering of the Hebrew
words, 'of the man whose strength is Thee.'
There are three such exclamations in this psalm, the consideration of
which leads us far into the understanding of its deepest meaning. The
first of them is this, 'How blessed are they that dwell in Thy house!'
Of course the direct allusion is to actual presence in the actual Temple
at Jerusalem. But these old psalmists, though they attached more
importance to external forms than we do, were not so bound by them, even
at their stage of development of the religious life, as that they
conceived that no communion with God was possible apart from the form,
or that the form itself was communion with God. We can see gleaming
through all their words, though only gleaming through them, the same
truth which Jesus Christ couched in the immortal phrase--the charter of
the Church's emancipation from all externalisms--'neither in this
mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father.' To 'dwell
in the house of the Lord' is not only to be present in bodily form in
the Temple--the Psalmist did not think that it was _only_ that--but to
possess communion with Him, of which the external presence is but the
symbol, the shadow, and the means.
But there is another blessing. To be there is blessing, to wish to be
there is no less so.--'Blessed are the men in whose heart are the ways.'
The joyous company that went up from every corner of the land to the
feasts in Jerusalem made the paths ring with their songs as they
travelled, and as the prophet says about another matter, 'they went up
to Zion with songs and joy upon their heads,' and so the search after is
only a shade less blessed--if it be even that--than the possession of
communion with God.
But there is a third blessedness in our psalm. 'Oh! the blessedness of
the man that trusteth in Thee.' That includes and explains both the
others. It confirms what I have said, that we do great injustice to the
beauty and the spirituality of the Old Testament religion, if we
conceive of it as slavishly tied to external forms. And it suggests the
thought that in trust there lie both the previous elements, for he that
trusts possesses, and he that trustingly possesses is thereby impelled
as trustingly to seek for, larger gifts.
So, then, I turn to this outline sketch of the happy pilgrims on the
road, and desire to gather from it, as simply as may be, the stimulating
thoughts which it suggests to us.
I. Let me ask you, then, following the words which I have read to you,
to look with me, first at the blessedness of the pilgrims' spirit.
'Blessed are the men in whose heart are the ways.' A singular
expression, and yet a very eloquent and significant one! 'The ways' are,
of course, the various roads which, from every corner of the land, lead
to the Temple, and the thought suggested is that the men whom the
Psalmist pronounces blessed, and in whose blessednesses his longing
heart desires to share, are the men who are restless till they are on
the path, whose eyes are ever travelling to the goal, who have a 'divine
discontent' with distance from God, and who know the impulse and the
sting that sends them ever travelling on the path that leads to Him.
On any lower level it is perfectly true that the very salt of life is
aspiration after an unattained ideal; that there is nothing that so
keeps a man young, strong, buoyant, and fits him for nobilities of
action, as that there shall be gleaming for ever before him in the
beckoning distance a horizon that moves ever as he moves. When we cease
to be the slaves of unattained ideals in any department, it is time for
us to die; indeed, we are dead already. There are men in every civilised
country, with the gipsy strain in their blood, who never can be at rest
until they are in motion, to whom a settled abode is irksome, and to
whom the notion of blessedness is that they shall be out in the free
plains. '_Amplius_,' the dying Xavier's word, '_further afield_,' is the
motto of all noble life--scientist, scholar, artist, man of letters, man
of affairs; all come under the same law, that unless there is something
before them which has dominated their hearts, and draws their whole
being towards it, their lives want salt, want nobility, want freshness,
and a green scum comes over the pool. We all know that. To live is to
aspire; to cease to aspire is to die.
Well then, looking all round our horizon there stands out one path for
aspiration which is clearly blessed to tread--one path, and one path
alone. For, oh brethren! there are needs in all our hearts, deep
longings, terrible wounds, dreary solitudes, which can only be appeased
and healed and companioned when we are pressing nearer and nearer God,
that infinite and divine Source of all blessedness, of all peace and
good. To possess God is life; to feel after God is life, too. For that
aim is sure, as we shall see, to be satisfied. That aim gives, and it is
the only one which does give, adequate occupation for every power of a
man's soul; that aim brings, simultaneously with its being entertained,
its being satisfied; for, as I have already said, in the one act of
faith there lie both these elements of blessedness--the possession of,
and the seeking after, God. The religious life is distinguished from all
others in two respects; one is the contemporaneousness and co-existence
of desire and fruition, and the other is the impossibility that fruition
shall ever be so complete and perfect as that desire shall die. And
because thus all my nature may reach out its yearnings to Him, and in
reaching out may find that after which it feels, and yet, finding it,
must feel after it all the more; therefore, high above all other
delights of search, high above all other blessednesses of pilgrimage,
high above all the buoyancy and concentration of aim and contempt of
hindrances which pour into a soul, before which the unattained ideal
burns beckoning and inviting, there stands the blessedness of the man
'in whose heart are the ways' which lead to God in Zion.