That expression, 'in the beauties of holiness,' is usually read as if it
belonged either to the words immediately preceding, or to those
immediately following. But in either case the connection is somewhat
difficult and obscure. It seems better regarded as a distinct and
separate clause, adding a fresh trait to the description of the army,
and what that is we need not find any difficulty in ascertaining. 'The
beauties of holiness' is a frequent phrase for the sacerdotal garments,
the holy festal attire of the priests of the Lord. So considered, how
beautifully it comes in here! The conquering King whom the psalm hymns
is a Priest for ever; and He is followed by an army of priests. The
soldiers are gathered in the day of the muster, with high courage and
willing devotion, ready to fling away their lives; but they are clad not
in mail, but in priestly robes--like those who wait before the altar
rather than like those who plunge into the fight--like those who
compassed Jericho with the ark for their standard, and the trumpets for
all their weapons. We can scarcely fail to remember the words which echo
these and interpret them: 'The armies which were in heaven followed Him
on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean'--a strange
armour against sword-cut and spear-thrust.
The main purpose, then, of this part of our text seems to be to bring
out the priestly character of the Christian soldier--a thought which
carries with it many important considerations, on which I can barely
touch.
Mark, then, how the warfare which we have to wage is the same as the
priestly service which we have to render. The conflict is with our own
sin and evil; the sacrifice we have to offer is ourselves. As soldiers,
we have to fight against our selfish desires and manifold imperfections;
as priests, we have to lay our whole selves on His altar. The task is
the same under either emblem. We have a conflict to wage in the world,
and in the world we have a priestly work to do, and these are the same.
We have to be God's representatives in the world, bringing Him nearer to
men's apprehensions and hearts by word and work. We have to bring men to
God by entreaty, and by showing the path which leads to Him. That
priestly service for men is in effect identical with the merciful
warfare which we have to wage in the world. The Church militant is an
army of priests. Its warfare is its sacerdotal function. It fights for
Christ when it opposes the message of His grace and the power of His
blood to its own and the world's sins--and when it intercedes in the
secret place for the coming of His kingdom.
Does not this metaphor teach us also, what is to be our defence and our
weapon in this warfare? Not with garments rolled in blood, nor with
brazen armour do they go forth, who follow Him that conquered by dying.
Their uniform is the beauties of holiness, 'the fine linen clean and
white, which is the righteousness of saints.' Many great thoughts lie in
such words, which I must pass over. But this one thing is obvious--that
the great power which we Christian men are to wield in our loving
warfare is--_character_. Purity of heart and life, transparent simple
goodness, manifest in men's sight--these will arm us against dangers,
and these will bring our brethren glad captives to our Lord. We serve
Him best, and advance His kingdom most, when the habit of our souls is
that righteousness with which He invests our nakedness. Be like your
Lord, and as His soldiers you will conquer, and as His priests you will
win some to His love and fear. Nothing else will avail without that.
Without that dress no man finds a place in the ranks.
The image suggests, too, the spirit in which our priestly warfare is to
be waged. The one metaphor brings with it thoughts of strenuous effort,
of discipline, of sworn consecration to a cause. The other brings with
it thoughts of gentleness and sympathy and tenderness, of still waiting
at the shrine, of communion with Him who dwells between the Cherubim.
Whilst our work demands all the courage and tension of every power which
the one image presents, it is to be sedulously guarded from any tinge of
wrath or heat of passion, such as mingles with conflict, and is to be
prosecuted with all the pity and patience, the brotherly meekness of a
true priest. 'The wrath of men worketh not the righteousness of God.' If
we forget the one character in the other, we shall bring weakness into
our warfare, and pollution into our sacrifice. 'The servant of the Lord
must not strive.' We must not be animated by mere pugnacious desire to
advance our principles, nor let the heat of human eagerness give a false
fervour to our words and work. We cannot scold nor dragoon men to love
Jesus Christ. We cannot drive them into the fold with dogs and sticks.
We are to be gentle, long-suffering, not doing our work with passion and
self-will, but remembering that gentleness is mightiest, and that we
shall best 'adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour' when we go among men
with the light caught in the inner sanctuary still irradiating our
faces, and our hands full of blessings to bestow on our brethren. We are
to be soldier-priests, strong and gentle, like the ideal of those
knights of old who were both, and bore the cross on shield and helmet
and sword-hilt.
He, our Lord, is our pattern for both; and from Him we derive the
strength for each. He is the Captain of our salvation, and we fight
beneath His banner, and by His strength. He is a merciful and faithful
High Priest, and He consecrates His brethren to the service of the
sanctuary. To Him look for your example of heroism, of fortitude, of
self-forgetfulness. To Him look for your example of gentle patience and
dewy pity. Learn in Christ how possible it is to be strong and mild, to
blend in fullest harmony the perfection of all that is noble, lofty,
generous in the soldier's ardour of heroic devotion; and of all that is
calm, still, compassionate, tender in the priest's waiting before God
and mediation among men. And remember, that by faith only do we gain the
power of copying that blessed example, to be like which is to be
perfect--not to be like which is to fail wholly, and to prove that we
have no part in His sacrifice, nor any share in His victory.
III. The final point in this description must now engage us for a few
moments. The soldier-priests are as dew upon the earth.
'From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth.' These
words are often misunderstood, and taken to be a description of the
fresh, youthful energy attributed by the psalm to the Priest-King of
this nation of soldier-priests. The misunderstanding, I suppose, has led
to the common phrase, 'The dew of one's youth.' But the reference of the
expression is to the army, not to its leader. 'Youth' here is a
collective noun, equivalent to 'young men.' The host of His
soldier-subjects is described as a band of young warriors whom He leads,
in their fresh strength and countless numbers and gleaming beauty, like
the dew of the morning.
There are two points in this last clause which may occupy us for a few
moments--that picture of the army as a band of youthful warriors; and
that lovely emblem of the dew as applied to Christ's servants.
As to the former--there are many other words of Scripture which carry
the same thought, that he who has fellowship with God, and lives in the
constant reception of the supernatural life and grace which come from
Jesus Christ, possesses the secret of perpetual youth. The world ages
us, time and physical changes tell on us all, and the strength which
belongs to the life of nature ebbs away, but the life eternal is subject
to no laws of decay and owes nothing to the external world. So we may be
ever young in heart and spirit. It is possible for a man to carry the
freshness, the buoyancy, the elastic cheerfulness, the joyful hope of
his earliest days, right on through the monotony of middle-aged
maturity, and even into old age, unshadowed by the lonely reflection of
the tombs which the setting sun casts over the path. It is possible for
us to get younger as we get older, because we drink more full draughts
of the fountain of life: and so to have to say at the last, 'Thou hast
kept the good wine until now.' 'Even the youths shall faint and be
weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the
Lord shall renew their strength.' If we live near Christ, and draw our
life from Him, then we may blend the hopes of youth with the experience
and memory of age; be at once calm and joyous, wise and strong,
preserving the blessedness of each stage of life into that which
follows, and thus at last possessing the sweetness and the good of all
at once. We may not only bear fruit in old age, but have blossoms,
fruit, and flowers--the varying product and adornment of every stage of
life, united in our characters.
Then, with regard to the other point in this final clause--that emblem
of the dew leads to many considerations upon which I can but
inadequately touch.
It comes into view here, I suppose, mainly for the sake of its effect
upon the earth. It is as a symbol of the refreshing which a weary world
will receive from the conquests and presence of the King and His host,
that the latter are likened to the glittering morning dew. Another
prophetic Scripture gives us the same emblem when it speaks of Israel
being 'in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord.' Such ought
to be the effect of our presence. We are meant to gladden, to adorn, to
refresh, this parched, prosaic world, with a freshness brought from the
chambers of the sunrise.
It is worth while to notice how we may discern a sequence of thought in
these successive features of description in our text. It began with that
inmost spirit and motive of the Christian life, the submission of will
and consecration of self to Christ. It advanced to the function and
character of His servants in the world. And now it deals finally with
the influence which they are to exert by this their soldier-like
obedience and priestly ministration.
There is progress of thought, too, in another way. We began with a
symbol that had in it something almost harsh and stern. We advanced to
one in which there was a predominance of gentle and gracious thoughts
and images. And now all that was severe, and all that reminded either of
opposition or of effort, has melted away into this sweet emblem. Instead
of the 'confused noise' of the battle of the warrior, we have the
silence of the dawn, and the noiseless falling of the dew amid the
solitudes of the wildernesses, or the recesses of the mountains. So the
highest thought of our Christian influence, is that it comes with silent
footfall and refreshes men's souls, like His, who will come down as
'rain upon the mown grass,' who will not strive nor cry, but in gentle
omnipotence and meek persistence of love, 'will not fail nor be
discouraged till He have set judgment in the earth.'
Remember other symbols by which the same general thought of Christian
influence upon the world is set forth with very remarkable variation.
'Ye are the light of the world.'--'Ye are the salt of the earth.' The
light guides and gladdens; the salt preserves and purifies; the dew
freshens and fertilises; the light, conspicuous; the salt, working
concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and
operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than
salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent
influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in
regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced.
We shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion as we save it
from its rottenness and corruption, and we shall do either only in
proportion as we bear abroad the name of Christ, in whom is 'life; and
the life is the light of men.'
Nor need we omit allusions to other associations connected with this
figure. The dew, formed in the silence of the darkness while men sleep,
falling as willingly on a bit of dead wood as anywhere, hanging its
pearls on every poor spike of grass, and dressing everything on which it
lies with strange beauty, each separate globule tiny and evanescent, but
each flashing back the light, and each a perfect sphere, feeble one by
one, but united, mighty to make the pastures of the wilderness
rejoice--so, created in silence by an unseen influence, weak when taken
singly, but strong in their myriads, glad to occupy the lowliest place,
and each 'bright with something of celestial light,' Christian men and
women are to be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord.
Brethren! that characteristic, like all else which is good, belongs to
us in proportion as we keep near to Christ Jesus, and are filled with
His fulness. All these emblems which have been occupying us now,
originally belonged to Him, and we receive from Him the grace that makes
us as He is in the world. He Himself is the Warrior King, the Captain of
the Lord's host, the true Joshua, whose last word ere His Cross was a
shout of victory, 'I have overcome the world'--whose promises from the
throne seven times crown the conqueror who overcomes as He overcame. He
makes us His soldiers and strengthens us for the war, if we live by
faith in Him. He Himself is the Priest--the only Eternal Priest of the
world--who wears on His head the mitre and the diadem, and bears in His
hand the sceptre and the censer; and He makes us priests, if faith in
His only sacrifice and all-prevalent intercession be in our souls. He is
the dew unto Israel--and only by intercourse with Him shall we be made
gentle and refreshing, silent blessings to all the weary and the parched
souls in the wilderness of the world.
Everything worth being or doing comes from Jesus Christ. Heroic courage;
then hold His hand, and He will strengthen your heart. Glad surrender;
then think of His sacrifice for us until ours to Him be our answering
gift. Priestly power; then let Him bring us nigh by His blood, that we
too may be able to have compassion on the ignorant and to draw them to
God. Dewy purity and freshness; then open your hearts for the reception
of His grace, for all the invigoration that we can impart to the world
is but the communication of that refreshing wherewith we ourselves are
refreshed of Christ. In every aspect of our relations to the world, we
draw all our fitness for all our offices from that Lord, who is and
gives everything that we can be or do. Then let us seek by humble faith
and habitual contact with Him and His truth, to have our emptiness
filled by His fulness, and our unfitness made ready for all service by
His all-sufficiency.
And let me close by reiterating what I have said already. There is a
twofold manner of subjection--the spurious and the real. The involuntary
is nought; the glad and cheerful surrender alone is counted submission.
This psalm shows us Christ surrounded by His friends who are glad to
obey. But it also shows us Christ ruling in the midst of His enemies.
They cannot help obeying; His dominion is established over them, but
they do not wish to have Him to reign over them, and therefore they are
enemies--even though they be subjects. Which is it with you, my brother?
Do you serve because you love--and love because He died for you? or do
you serve because you must? Then, remember, constrained service is no
service; and subjects without loyalty are rebel traitors. Our psalm
shows us Christ gathering His army in array. He is calling each of us to
a place there, in this day of His power, and day of His grace. Take heed
lest the day of His power should for you darken into that other day of
which this psalm speaks--the day of His wrath, when He strikes through
kings, and bruises the head over many countries. Put your trust in that
Saviour, my friend! cleave to that Sacrifice, then you will not be
amongst those whom He treads down in His march to victory, but one of
that happy band of priestly warriors who follow Him as He goes forth
'conquering and to conquer.'