'Thy word have I hid in my heart.'--PSALM cxix. 11.
'I have not hid Thy righteousness in my heart.'--PSALM xl. 10.
Then there are two kinds of hiding--one right and one wrong: one
essential to the life of the Christian, one inconsistent with it. He is
a shallow Christian who has no secret depths in his religion. He is a
cowardly or a lazy one, at all events an unworthy one, who does not
exhibit, to the utmost of his power, his religion. It is bad to have all
the goods in the shop window; it is just as bad to have them all in the
cellar. There are two aspects of the Christian life--one between God and
myself, with which no stranger intermeddles; one patent to all the
world. My two texts touch these two.
I. 'I have hid Thy word within my heart.' There we have the word hidden,
or the secret religion of the heart.
Now, I have often had occasion to remind you that the Old Testament use
of the word 'heart' is much wider than our modern one, which limits it
to being the seat and organ of love, affection, or emotion; whereas in
the Old Testament the 'heart' is the very vital centre of the personal
self. As the Book of Proverbs has it, 'out of it are the issues of
life,' all the outgoings of activity of every kind, both that which we
ascribe to the head, and that which we ascribe to the heart. These come,
according to the Old Testament idea, from this central self. And so,
when the Psalmist says, 'I have hid Thy word within my heart,' he means
'I have buried it deep in the very midst of my being, and put it down at
the very roots of myself, and there incorporated it with the very
substance of my soul.'
Now, I venture to take that expression, 'Thy word,' in a somewhat wider
sense than the Psalmist employed it. There are three ideas conveyed by
that expression in Scripture; and two of them are distinctly found in
this psalm.
First, there is the plain, obvious one, which means by 'the word,'
written revelation. The Bible of the Psalmist was a very small volume
compared with ours. The Pentateuch, and perhaps some of the historical
books, possibly also one or two of the prophets--and these were about
all. Yet this fragmentary word he 'hid in his heart.' Now, dear
brethren! I wish to say a very practical thing or two, and I begin with
this. If you want to be strong Christian people, hide the Bible in your
heart. When I was a boy the practice of good Christian folk was to read
a daily chapter. I wonder if that is kept up. I gravely suspect it is
not. There are, no doubt, a great many causes contributing to the
comparative decay amongst professing Christians, of Bible reading and
Bible study. There is modern 'higher criticism,' which has a great deal
to say about how and when the books were made, especially the books that
composed this Psalmist's Bible. But I want to insist that no theories,
were they ever so well established--as I take leave to say they are
not--no theories about these secondary questions touch the value of
Scripture as a factor in the development of the Christian life. Whatever
a man may think about these, he will be none the less alive, if he is
wise, to the importance of the daily devotional study of Scripture.
Then there is another set of reasons for the neglect of Scripture, in
the multiplication of other forms of literature. People have so many
other books to read now, that they have not much time for reading their
Bibles, or if they have, they think they have not. No literature will
ever take the place of the old Book. Why, even looked at as a mere
literary product there is nothing in the world like it! And no religious
literature, sermons, treatises, still less magazines and periodicals,
will do for Christian men what the Bible will do for them. You make a
tremendous mistake, for your own souls' sake, if your religious reading
consists in what people have said and thought about Scripture, more than
in the Scripture itself. Why should you dip your pitchers into the
reservoir, when you can take them up to where the spring comes gushing
out of the hillside, pure and limpid and living?
Then there is the drive of our modern life which crowds out the word.
Get up a quarter of an hour earlier and you will have time to read your
Bible. It will be well worth the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice. I do
not mean by reading the Bible what, I am afraid, is far too common,
reading a scrap of Scripture as if it were a kind of charm. But I would
most earnestly press upon you that muscle and fibre will distinctly
atrophy and become enfeebled, if Christian people neglect the first
plain way of hiding the word in their heart, which is to make the
utterances of Scripture as if incorporated with their very being, and
part of their very selves.
But there is another use of the expression, 'Thy word,' which is not
without example in this great psalm of praise of the word. In one place
in it we read, 'For ever, O Lord! Thy word is settled in heaven'; that
is not the Bible. 'Thy faithfulness is unto all generations. They
continue this day according to Thy ordinances'; these are not the
Bible--'for all are Thy servants.' 'Unless Thy law had been my delight,
I should have perished in my afflictions'; I think that is not the Bible
either, but it is the utterance of God's will, as expressed in the
Psalmist's affliction. God's word comes to us in His providences and in
many other ways. It is the declaration of His character and purposes,
however they are declared, and the expression of His will and command,
however expressed. In that wider sense of the phrase, I would say, 'Hide
that manifested will of God in your hearts.' Let us cultivate the habit
of bringing all 'the issues of life'--the streams that bubble up from
that fountain in the centre of our being--into close relation to what we
know to be God's will concerning us. Let the thought of the will of God
sit sovereign arbiter, enthroned in the very centre of our personality,
ruling our will, bending it and making it yielding and conformed to His,
governing our affections, regulating our passions, restraining our
desires, stimulating our slothfulness, quickening our aspirations,
lifting heavenwards our hopes, and bringing the whole of the activities
that well up from our hearts into touch with the will of God. Cast the
healing branch into the very eye of the fountain, and then all the
streams will partake of the cleansing. Let that known will of God be as
the leaven hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. A
fanciful interpretation of that emblem makes the three measures to mean
the triple constituents of humanity, body, soul, and spirit. We may
smile at the fantastic exposition, but let us take heed to obey the
exhortation. When God's will is deeply planted within, it will work
quickening change on the heavy dough of our sluggish natures. It is when
we bring the springs of our actions--namely, our motives, which are our
true selves--into touch with His uttered will, that our deeds become
conformed to it. Look after the motives, and the deeds will look after
themselves. 'I have hid Thy word within my heart.'
And now I venture upon a further application of this phrase, of which
the Psalmist had no notion, but which, in God's great mercy, in the
progress of revelation, we can make. There is a better word of God than
the Bible; there is a better word of God than any will uttered in His
providences and the like. There is the Incarnate Word of God, who 'was
from the beginning with God, and was God,' and is manifested in these
last times unto us. I am keeping well within the analogy of Scripture
teaching when I see the perfecting of revelation by the spoken Word as
reached in the revelation by the personal word; and when, in addition to
the exhortation, to hide the Scripture in your hearts, and to hide the
uttered will of God, however uttered, in your hearts, I add, let us hide
Christ in our hearts. For He will 'dwell in our hearts by faith,' and if
He is shrined within the curtains of the secret place within us, which
is 'the secret place of the Most High,' then, in the courts of the
sanctuary, there will be a pure sacrifice and a priest clad 'in the
beauties of holiness.'