'I am a stranger in the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me....
64. The earth, O Lord, is full of Thy mercy: teach me Thy statutes.'
--PSALM cxix. 19, 64.
There is something very remarkable in the variety-in-monotony of this,
the longest of the psalms. Though it be the longest it is in one sense
the simplest, inasmuch as there is but one thought in it, beaten out
into all manner of forms and based upon all various considerations. It
reminds one of the great violinist who out of one string managed to
bring such music and melody.
The one thought is the infinite preciousness of God's law, by which, of
course, is not meant the written record of that law which lies in
Scripture, but the utterances of God's law in any form, by which men may
receive it. You will find that that wider signification of the word
'law,' 'commandment,' 'statute,' is essential to the understanding of
every portion of this psalm.
And now these two petitions which I have put together base the prayer,
which they both offer, in slightly varied form ('Teach me Thy statutes,'
or 'Hide not Thy commandments from me,') upon two diverse
considerations, which, taken in conjunction, are extremely interesting.
The two facts on which the one petition rests, are like two great piers
on two opposite sides of a river, each of which holds one end of the
arch. 'The earth is full of Thy mercy'; ay! but 'I am a stranger upon
the earth.' These two things are both true, and from each of them, and
still more from both of them taken together, rises up this petition. Let
us look then at the facts, and then at the prayer that is built upon
them.
Take first that thought of the rejoicing earth, full of God's mercy as
some cup is full of rich wine, or as the flowers in the morning are
filled with dew. The Bible does not look at the external world, the
material universe, from a scientific point of view, nor does it look at
it from a poetical point of view, but from a simply religious one.
Nothing that modern science has taught us to say about the world in the
least affects this principle which the Psalmist lays down, that it is
all full of God's mercy. The thought is intended to exclude man and
man's ways and all connected with him, as we shall see presently, but
the Psalmist looks out upon the earth and all the rest of its
inhabitants, and he is sure of two things: one, that God's direct act is
at work in it all, so as that every creature that lives, and everything
that is, lives and is because God is there, and working there; and next,
that everything about us is the object of loving thoughts of God's; and
has, as it were, some reflection of God's smile cast across it like the
light of flowers upon the grass. Spring days with life 're-orient out of
dust,' and the annual miracle beginning again all round, with the birds
in the trees, that even dwellers in towns can hear singing as if their
hearts would burst for very mirth and hopefulness, the blossoms
beginning to push above the frosty ground, and the life breaking out of
the branches that were stiff and dry all through the winter, proclaim
the same truth as the Psalmist was contemplating when he spoke thus. He
looks all round, and everywhere sees the signature of a loving divine
Hand.
The earth is full to brimming of Thy mercy. It takes faith to see that;
it takes a deeper and a firmer hold of the thought of a present God than
most men have, to feel that. For the most of us, the world has got to be
very empty of God now. We hear rather the creaking of the wheels of a
great machine, or see the workings of a blind, impersonal force. But I
believe that all that is precious and good in the growth of knowledge
since the old days when this Psalmist wrote may be joyfully accepted by
us, and deep down below all we may see the deeper, larger truth of the
living purpose and will of God Himself. And I know no reason why
twentieth-century men, full to the fingertips of modern scientific
thought, may not say as heartily as the old Psalmist said, 'The earth, O
Lord! is full of Thy mercy.'
But then there is another side to all this. Amidst all this sunny play
of gladness, and apocalypse of blessing, there stands one exception.
Hearken to the other word of my texts, 'I am a stranger upon the earth.'
Man is out of joint with the great whole, out of harmony with the music,
the only hungry one at the feast. All other creatures are admirably
adapted for the place they fill, and the place they fill is sufficient
for them. But I stand here, knowing that I do not belong to this goodly
fellowship, feeling that I am an exception to the rule. As Colonel
Gardiner said, 'I looked at the dog, and I wished that _I_ was a dog.'
Ah! many another man has felt, Why is it that whilst every creature, the
motes that dance in the sunbeam, and the minutest living things, however
insignificant, are all filled to the very brim of their capacity--why is
it that I, the roof and crown of things, stand here, a sad and solitary
stranger, having made acquaintance with grief; having learned what they
know not, the burden of toil and care, cursed with forecast and
anticipation, saddened by memory, torn by desires? 'We look before and
after, and pine for what is not.' All other beings fit their place, and
their place fits them like a glove upon a fair hand, but I stand here 'a
stranger upon the earth.' And the more I feel, or at least the more I am
convinced that it is full of God's mercy, the more I feel that there is
something else which I need to make me, in my fashion, as really and as
completely blessed as the lowest of His creatures.
The Psalmist tells us what that something more is: 'I am a stranger upon
the earth; hide not Thy commandments from me.' That is my food, that is
what I need; that is the one thing that will make our souls feel at
rest, that we shall have not merely a Bible in our hands, but the will
of God, the knowledge and the love of the will of God, in our hearts.
When we can say 'I delight to do Thy will, and my whole being seeks to
lay itself beneath the mould of Thine impressing purpose, and to be
shaped accordingly'; Oh! then, then the care and the toil and the sorrow
and the restlessness and the sense of transiency, all change. Some of
them pass away altogether; those of them that survive are transfigured
from darkness to glory. Just as some gloomy cliff, impending over the
plain, when the rising sun smites upon it, is changed into a rosy and
golden glory, so the frowning peaks that look down upon us, are all
transmuted and glorified, when once the light of God's recognised will
falls upon them.
'All is right that seems most wrong,
If it be His sweet will.'
And when He has not hidden His commandments from us, but we have them in
our hearts, for the joy and the strength of our lives, then, then it
does not matter, though we have to say, 'foxes have holes, and birds of
the air have their roosting-places,' and I only, in creation, have 'not
where to lay my head.' If we have His will in our hearts, and are humbly
and yet lovingly trying to do it, then toil becomes easy, and work
becomes blessedness. If we have His will in our hearts, and are seeking
to cleave to it, then and only then, do we cease to feel that it is sad
that we should be strangers upon the earth, because then and then only
can we say 'we seek for a better country, that is, a heavenly.'
Oh, dear friends! we shall be cursed with restlessness and 'weighed upon
with sore distress'; and a fleeting world will, by its very
fleetingness, be a misery to us, until we have learned to yield our
wills to God, and to drink in His law as the joy and the rejoicing of
our hearts. A stranger upon the earth needs the statutes of the Lord, he
needs no more, and then they will be as the Psalmist says in another
place, 'his song in the house of his pilgrimage.'
But the first of our two texts suggests further to us the certainty that
this petition shall not be in vain. If the thought, 'I am a stranger in
the earth,' teaches us our need of God's commandments, the thought, 'the
earth is full of Thy mercies,' assures us that we shall get what we
need.
Surely it is not going to be the case that we only are to be left hungry
when all other creatures sit at His table and feast there. Surely He who
knows what each living thing requires, and opens His hand, and satisfies
their desires, is not going to leave the nobler famishing of an immortal
soul uncared for.
Surely if all through the universe besides, we see that the measure of a
creature's capacity is the measure of God's gift to it, there is not
going to be, there need not be, any disproportion between what we
require and what we possess. Surely if His ear can hear and translate,
and His loving hand can open to satisfy, the croaking of the young raven
when it cries, He will neither mistake nor neglect the voice of a man's
heart, when it is asking what is so in accordance with His will as that
He should let him know and love His statutes.
It is not meant to be the case that we lie in the middle of His
creation, the one exception to the universal law, like Gideon's fleece,
dry and dusty, while every poor bit of bush and grass round about is
soaked with His dew. If 'the earth is full of Thy mercy,' Thou thereby
hast pledged Thyself that my heart shall be full of Thy law and Thy
grace, if I desire it.
And so, dear brethren! whilst the one of these twin considerations
should send us to our knees, the other should hearten and wing our
prayers. And if, on the one hand, we feel that to bring us up to the
level of the poorest of His creatures, we need a firm grasp and a hearty
love of His law deep in our spirits, on the other hand, the fact that
the feeblest and the poorest of His creatures is saturated and soaked
with as much of God's goodness as it can suck in, may make us quite sure
that our souls will not vainly pant after Him in a 'dry and thirsty land
where no water is.' 'The earth, O Lord! is full of Thy mercy.' Am I to
be empty of the highest mercy, the knowledge of Thy will? Never! never!
And so, 'Say not, Who shall ascend up into the heavens? say not, Who
shall pass over the sea to bring Thy law near, that we may hear and do
it? Behold! the word is very nigh thee.' The law, the will of God, and
the power to perform it are braided together, in inextricable union, in
Jesus Christ Himself; and the prayer of my psalm most deeply understood,
turns itself all into this:--Give me Christ, more of the knowledge of
Him who is my law and Thine uttered will; more of the love of Him whom
to love is to be at home everywhere, and to be filled with Thy mercy;
more of the likeness to Him whom to imitate is holiness; whom to
resemble is perfection. 'The earth is full of Thy mercy.' 'The Word was
made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, full of grace
and truth.' And of that fulness can all we receive. Then will we be
strangers here no longer; and our hearts will be replenished with a
better mercy than all the universe beside is capable of containing.
'TIME FOR THEE TO WORK'
'It is time for Thee, Lord, to work; for they have made void Thy
Law. 127. Therefore I love Thy commandments above gold, yea, above
fine gold. 128. Therefore I esteem all Thy precepts concerning all
things to be right; and I hate every false way.'
--PSALM cxix. 126-128.
If much that we hear be true, a society to circulate Bibles is a most
irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy and money. We cannot
ignore the extent and severity of the opposition to the very idea of
revelation, even if we would; we should not if we could. We are told
with some exaggeration--the wish being father to the thought--that the
educated mind of the country has broken with Christianity, a statement
which is equally remarkable for its accuracy and for its modesty. But it
has a basis of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the
literary and so-called cultivated classes. There is no need to spend
time in referring at length to facts which are only too familiar to most
of us. Every sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted
in the crusade. Periodicals that lie on all our tables, works of
imagination that your daughters read, newspapers that go everywhere, are
full of it. Poetry, forgetting her lineage and her sweetness, strains
_her_ voice in rhapsodies of hostility. Science, leaping the hedge
beyond which _she_ at all events is a trespasser,--or in finer language,
'prolonging its gaze backwards beyond the boundary of experimental
evidence,' or in still plainer terms, _guessing_, affirms that she
discerns in matter the promise and potency of every form of life; or
presently, in a devouter mood, looking on the budding glories of the
spring, declines to _profess_ the creed of Atheism. Learned criticism
demonstrates the impossibility of supernatural religion. The leader of
an influential school leaves behind him a voice hollow and sad, as from
the great darkness, in which we seem to hear the echoes of a life
baffled in the attempt to harmonise the logical and the spiritual
elements of a large soul: 'There may be a God. The evidence is
insufficient for proof. It only amounts to one of the lower degrees of
probability. He may have given a revelation of His will. There are
grounds sufficient to remove all antecedent improbability. The question
is wholly one of evidence; but the evidence required has not been, and
cannot be, forthcoming. There is room to hope for a future life, but
there is no assurance whatever. Therefore cultivate in the region of the
imagination merely those hopes which can never become certainties, for
they are infinitely precious to mankind.'
Ah, brethren! do we not hear in these dreary words the cry of the
immortal hunger of the soul for God, for the living God? The concessions
they make to Christian apologists are noteworthy, but that unconscious
confession of need is the most noteworthy. Surely, as the eye prophesies
light, so the longing of the soul and the capacity for forming such
ideals are the token that He is for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn.
And how blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that call
themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to find refuge in the
green fields of the imagination from the choking dust of the logical
arena, the old faithful words: 'This is the record, that God hath given
to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son'!
But my object in referring to these forms of opinion was merely to
prepare the way for my subsequent observations; I have no intention of
dealing with any of them by way of criticism or refutation. This is not
the place nor the audience, nor am I the person, for that task. But I
have thought that it might not be inappropriate to this occasion if I
were to ask you to consider with me, from these words, the attitude of
mind and heart to God's word which becomes the Christian in times of
opposition.
The Psalmist was surrounded, as would appear, by widespread defection
from God's law. But instead of trembling as if the sun were about to
expire, he turns himself to God, and in fellowship with Him sees in all
the antagonism but the premonition that He is about to act for the
vindication of His own work. That confidence finds expression in the
sublime invocation of our text. Then with another movement of thought,
the contemplation of the departures makes him tighten his own hold on
the law of the Lord, and the contempt of the gainsayers quickens his
love: '_Therefore_ I love,' etc. And as must needs be the case, that
love is the measure of his abhorrence of the opposite; and because God's
commandments are so dear to him, therefore he recoils with healthy
hatred from false ways. So, I think, we have a fourfold representation
here of our true attitude in the face of existing antagonism--calm
confidence in God's work for His law; earnest prayer, which secures the
forthputting of the divine energy; an increased intensity of cleaving to
the word; and a decisive opposition to the ways which make it void.
I ask your attention to some remarks on each of these in their order.
So, then, we have--
I. Calm confidence that times of antagonism evoke God's work for His
word.
Now I dare say that some of you feel that is not the first thought that
should be excited by the opposition around us. 'We have no sort of
doubt,' you may say, 'that God will take care of His own word, if there
be such a thing; but the question that presses is, Have we it in this
book? Answer that for us, and we will thank you; but platitudes about
God watching over His truth are naught. The first thing to do is to meet
these arguments and establish the origin of Scripture. Then it will
follow of itself that it will not perish.'
But I take leave to think we, as Christians, arc not bound to revise the
foundation belief of our lives at the call of every new antagonist. Life
is too short for that. There is too much work waiting, to suspend our
activity till we have answered each denier. We do not hold our faith in
the word of God, as the winners at a match do their cups and belts, on
condition of wrestling for them with any challenger. It is a perfectly
legitimate position to say, We hold a ground of certitude, from which
none of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. 'We have heard
Him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ.' The Scriptures which
we have received, not without knowledge of the grounds on which
controversialists defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own
witness. The light is its own proof. We have the experience of Christ
and His law. He has saved our souls, He has changed our lives. We know
in whom we have believed, and we are neither irrational nor obstinate
when we avow that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on
the issue of any debate. We decline to dig up the piles of the bridge
that carries us over the abyss because voices tell us that it is rotten.
It is shorter and perfectly reasonable to answer, 'Rotten, did you say?
Well, we have tried it, and it bears'; which, being translated into less
simple language, is just the assertion of certitude built on facts and
experience which leaves no place for doubt. All the opposition will be
broken into spray against that rock bulwark: 'Thy words were found, and
I did eat them, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart.'
So I venture to think that, speaking to Christian men and women, I have
a right to speak on the basis of our common belief, and to encourage
them to cherish it notwithstanding gainsayers. I am not counselling
stolid indifference to the course of modern thought, nor desertion of
the duty of defence. We are not to say, 'God will interfere; I need do
nothing.' But the task of controversy is not for all Christians, nor the
duty of following the flow of opinion. There is plenty of more
profitable work than that for most of us. The temper which our text
enjoins _is_ for us all; and this calm confidence, that at the right
time God will work for His word, is its first element.
This confidence rests upon our belief in a divine providence that
governs the world, and on the observed laws of its working. It is ever
His method to send His succour _after_ the evil has been developed, and
_before_ it has triumphed. Had it come sooner, the priceless benefits of
struggle, the new perceptions won in controversy of the many-sided
meaning and value of His truth, the vigour from conflict, the wholesome
sense of our weakness, had all been lost. Had it come later, it had come
too late. So He times His help, in order that we may derive the greatest
possible benefit from both the trial and the aid. We have all been dealt
with so in our personal histories, whereof the very motto might be,
'When I said my foot slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord! held me up.' The same
law works on the wider platform. The enemy shall be allowed to pass
through the breadth of the land, to spread dread and sorrow through
village and hamlet, to draw his ranks round Jerusalem, as a man closes
his hand on some insect he would crush. _To-morrow_, and the assault
will be made; but _to-night_ 'the angel of the Lord went forth and smote
the camp; and when they arose in the morning,' expecting to hear the
wild war-cry of the conquerors as they stormed across the undefended
walls, 'they were all dead corpses.' Then, as it would appear, a
psalmist, moved by that mighty victory, cast it into words, which remain
for all generations the law of the divine aid, and imply all that I am
urging now: 'The Lord is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;
the Lord shall help her at the dawning of the morning.' True, we are no
judges of the time. Our impatience is ever outrunning His calm
deliberation. An illusion besets us all that _our_ conflicts with
unbelief are the severest the world has ever seen; and there is a great
deal of exaggeration on both sides at present as to the real extent and
importance of existing antagonism to God's revelation. A widespread
literature provides so many--I would not say empty--spaces for any voice
to reverberate in, that both the shouters and the listeners are apt to
fancy the assailants are an army, when they are only a handful, armed
mainly with trumpets and pitchers. There have been darker days of
antagonism than these. 'He that believeth shall not make haste.' This
confidence in the punctual wisdom of His working involves the other
belief, that if He does not 'work,' it is because the time is not yet
ripe; the negations and contradictions have still an office to fulfil,
and no hurt that cannot be repaired has been done to the faith of the
Church or the power of the word.
Nor can we forecast the manner of His working. He can call forth from
the solitary sheepfolds the defenders of His word, as has ever been His
wont, raising the man when the hour had come, even as He sent His son in
the fulness of time. He can lead science on to deeper truth; He can
quicken His Church into new life; He can guide the spirit of the age. We
believe that the history of the world is the unfolding of His will, and
the course of opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the
depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for His working,
expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, hurried by no impatience,
avoiding no task of defence or confession; but knowing that, unhasting
and unresting He will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow will
say, 'Peace! be still.' Then they who had not cast away their confidence
for any fashion of unbelief that passeth away will rejoice as they sing,
'Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.'
This confidence is confirmed by the history of all the past assaults on
Scripture.
The whole history of the origin, collection, preservation, transmission,
diffusion, and present influence of the Bible involves so much that is
surprising and unique, as to amount to at least a strong presumption of
a divine care. Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing
is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has happened.
When we think of the gaps and losses in ancient literature, and the long
stormy centuries that lie between us and its earlier pages, we can
faintly estimate the chances against their preservation. It is strange
that the Jewish race should have so jealously preserved books which
certainly did not flatter national pride, which put a mortifying
explanation on national disasters, which painted them and their fathers
in dark colours, which proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed
a spirit they never caught. It is stranger still, that in the long years
of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the people subserved the
same end, and that stiff pedantry and laborious trifling--the poorest
form of intellectual activity--should have guarded the letter of the
word, as the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some
fair island of the Southern Sea. When one thinks of the great gulf of
language between the Old and New Testaments, of the variety of authors,
periods, subjects, literary form, the animosities of Christian and Jew,
it _is_ strange that we have the Book here _one_, and that all these
parts should blend into unity, unless the source and theme were one, and
one Hand had shaped each, and cared for the gathering together of all.
It has been demonstrated over and over again to have no pretensions to
be a divine revelation; and yet here it is, believed by millions, and
rooted so firmly in European language and thought, that no revolution
short of a return to barbarism can abolish it. It has been proved to be
a careless, unauthenticated collection of works of different periods,
styles, and schools of thought, having no unity but what is given by the
bookbinder: and lo! here it is still, not disintegrated, much less
dissolved. Each age brings its own destructive criticism to play on it,
confessing thereby that its predecessors have effected nothing; for as
the Bible says about sacrifices, so we may say about assaults on
Scripture, 'If they had done their work, would they not have ceased to
be offered?' And the effect of the heaviest artillery that can be
brought into position is as transient as the boom of their report and
the puff of their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the world's
wonders of books that a hundred years ago made good men's hearts tremble
for the ark of God? You may find them in dusty rows on the top shelves
of great libraries. But if their names had not occurred in the pages of
Christian apologists, flies in amber, nobody in this generation would
ever have heard of them. And still more conspicuously is it so with
earlier examples of the same kind. Their work is as hopelessly dead as
they. And the Book seems none the worse for all the shot--like the rock
that a ship fired at all night, taking it for an enemy, and could not
provoke to answer nor succeed in sinking. Surely some dim suspicion of
the hopelessness of the attempt might creep into the hearts of men who
know what _has_ been. Surely the signal failure and swift fading away of
all former efforts to dethrone the Bible might lead to the question,
'Does it not lay its deep foundations in the heart of man and the
purpose of God, too deep to be reached by the short tools of mere
criticism, too massive to be overthrown by all the weight of
materialistic science?' It is with the Bible as it was with the Apostle,
on whose hand, as he crouched over the newly-lit flame, the viper
fastened, 'and he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.'
The barbarous people, who changed their minds after they had looked a
great while and saw no harm come to him, were not altogether wrong, and
might teach a lesson to some modern wise men, that, among the other
facts which they deal with, they should try to estimate this fact of the
continued existence and influence of Scripture, and the failure thus far
of all attempts to shake its throne or break the sweet influences of its
bands.
Brethren! we, at all events, should learn the lesson of historical
experience. The Gospel and the Book which is its record, have met with
eager, eloquent, learned antagonists before to-day, and they have
passed. Little more than a generation has sufficed to sweep them to
oblivion. So it will be again. The forms of opinion, the tendencies of
thought, which now seem to some of its enemies so certain to conquer,
will follow these forgotten precursors into the dim land. May we not see
them--these ancient discrowned kings that ruled over men and rebelled
against Christ, these beliefs that no man now believes--rising from
their shadowy thrones in the underworld to meet the now living and
ruling unbelief, when it, too, shall have gone down to them; 'All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou
become like unto us?' Yes, each in its turn 'becomes but a noise' when
he 'passes the time appointed'--the time when God arises to do His act
and vindicate His word.
II. We have here, secondly, earnest prayer which brings that divine
energy.
The confidence that God _will_ work underlies and gives energy to the
prayer that God _would_ work. The belief that a given thing is in the
line of the divine purpose is not a reason for saying, 'We need not
pray; God means to do it,' but is a reason for saying on the contrary,
'God means to do it; let us pray for it.' And this prayer, based upon
the confidence that it is His will, is the best service that any of us
can render to the Gospel in troublous times.
I shall have a word to say presently on the _sort_ of outflow of the
divine energy which we should principally expect and desire; but let me
first remind you, very briefly, how the prayers of Christian men do
condition--I had almost said regulate--that outflow.
I need not put this matter on its abstract and metaphysical side. Two
facts are enough for my present purpose--one, a truth of faith, that the
actual power wherewith God works for His word remains ever the same;
one, a truth of observation and experience, that there are variations in
the intensity of its operations and effects in the world. Wherefore?
Surely because of the variations in the human recipients and organs of
the power. Here at one end is the great fountain, ever brimming. Draw
from it ever so much, it sinks not one hair's-breadth in its pure basin.
Here, on the other side, is an intermittent flow, sometimes in scanty
driblets, sometimes in painful drops, sometimes more full and free on
the pastures of the wilderness. Wherefore these jerks and spasms? It
must be something stopping the pipe. Yes, of course. God's might is ever
the same, but our capacity of receiving and transmitting that might
varies, and with it varies the energy with which that unchanging power
is exerted in the world. Our faith, our earnestness of desire, our
ardour and confidence of prayer, our faithfulness of stewardship and
strenuousness of use, measure the amount of the unmeasured grace which
we can receive. So long as our vessels are brought, the golden oil does
not cease to flow. When they are full, it stays. The principle of the
variation in actual manifestation of the unvarying might of God is found
in the Lord's words: 'According to your faith be it unto you.' So, then,
we may expect periods of quickened energy in the forth-putting of the
divine power. And these will correspond to, and be consequent on, the
faithful prayers of Christian men. See to it, brethren! that you keep
the channels clear, that the flow may continue full and increase. Let no
mud and ooze of the world, no big blocks of sin nor subtler
accumulations of small negligences, choke them again. Above all, by
simple, earnest prayer keep your hearts, as it were, wide open to the
Sun, and His light will shine on you, and His grace fructify through
you, and His Spirit will work in you mightily.
The tenor of these remarks presupposes a point on which I wish to make
one or two observations now, viz. that the manner of the divine working
which we should most earnestly desire in a time of diffused unbelief is
the elevation of Christian souls to a higher spiritual life.
I do not wish to exclude other things, but I believe that the true
antidote to a widespread scepticism is a quickened Church. We may indeed
desire that in other ways the enemy should be met. We ought to pray that
God would work by sending forth defenders of the truth, by establishing
His Church in the firm faith of disputed verities, and by all the
multitude of ways in which He can sway the thoughts and tendencies of
men. But I honestly confess that I, for my part, attach but secondary
importance to controversial defences of the faith. No doubt they have
their office; they may confirm a waverer, they may establish a believer,
they may show onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they
may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent a heresy from
spreading and from descending to another generation. But oftenest they
are barren of result, and where they do their work, it is not to be
forgotten that there may remain as true a making void of God's law by an
evil heart of unbelief as by an understanding cased in the mail of
denial. You may hammer ice on an anvil, or bray it in a mortar. What
then? It is pounded ice still, except for the little portion melted by
heat of percussion, and it will soon all congeal again. Melt it in the
sun, and it flows down in sweet water, which mirrors that light which
loosed its bonds of cold. So hammer away at unbelief with your logical
sledge-hammers, and you will change its shape, perhaps; but it is none
the less unbelief because you have ground it to powder. It is a mightier
agent that must melt it--the fire of God's affection, of all lower,
howsoever tender, loves that once filled the whole heart. Such surrender
is not pain but gladness, inasmuch as the deeper well that has been sunk
dries the surface springs, and gathers all their waters into itself. The
new treasure that has filled the heart compels, by glad compulsion, the
surrender or, at least, the subordination, of all former affections to
the constraint of all-mastering love.
The same thing is true in regard to the union of the soul with Christ.
The description of the bride's abandonment of former duties and ties may
be transferred, without the change of a word, to our relations to Him.
If love to Him has really come into our hearts, it will master all our
yearnings and tendencies and affections, and we shall feel that we
cannot but yield up everything besides, by reason of the sovereign power
of this new affection. Christ demands from us (if I may use the word
'demand' for the beseeching of love), for His sake, and for our sakes,
the entire surrender of ourselves to Him. And that new affection will
deal with the old loves, just as the new buds upon the beech-trees in
the spring deal with the old leaves that still hang withered on some of
the branches. It will push them from their hold, and they will drop. If
a river should be turned into some dark cave where unclean beasts have
herded and littered for years, the bright waters would sweep out on
their bosom all the filth and rottenness. So, when the love of Christ
comes surging and flashing into a heart, it will bear out on its broad
surface all conflicting and subordinate inclinations, with the passions
and lusts that used to rule and befoul the spirit. Christ demands
complete surrender, and, if we are Christians, that absolute abandonment
will not be a pain nor unwelcome. We epidemic. That is a doctrine which
one influential school of modern disbelievers, at all events, cannot but
admit.
What then? Why this--that to change the opinions you must change the
atmosphere; or, in other words, the true antagonist of a diffused
scepticism is a quickened Christian life. Brethren! if we had been what
we ought, would such an environment have ever been possible as that
which produces this modern unbelief? Even now, depend upon it, we shall
do more for Christ by catching and exhibiting more of His Spirit than by
many arguments--more by words of prayer to God than by words of
reasoning to men. A higher tone of spiritual life would prove that the
Gospel was mighty to mould and ennoble character. If our own souls were
gleaming with the glory of God, men would believe that we had met more
than the shadow of our own personality in the secret place. If the fire
of faith were bright in us, it would communicate itself to others, for
nothing is so contagious as earnestness. If we believed, and therefore
spoke, the accent of conviction in our tones would carry them deep into
some hearts. If we would trust Christ's Cross to stand firm without our
stays, and arguing less about it, would seldomer try to _prop_ it, and
oftener to _point_ to it, it would draw men to itself. When the power
and reality of Scripture as the revelation of God are questioned, the
best answer in the long-run will be a Church which can adduce itself as
the witness, and can say to the gainsayers, 'Why, herein is a marvellous
thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine
eyes!' Brethren! do you see to it that your life be thus a witness that
you have heard His voice; and make it your contribution to the warfare
of this day, if you do not bear a weapon, that you lift your hands and
heart to God. Moses on the mount helped the struggling ranks below in
their hand-to-hand combat with Amalek. Hezekiah's prayer, when he spread
the letter of the invader before the Lord, was more to the purpose than
all his munitions of war. Let your voice rise to heaven like a fountain,
and blessings will fall on earth. 'Arise, O Lord! plead Thine own cause.
The tumult of those that rise up against Thee increaseth continually.'
III. We have here, thirdly, as the fitting attitude in times of
widespread unbelief, a love to God's word made more fervid by
antagonism.
There may be a question what reason for the Psalmist's love is pointed
at in this 'therefore.' We shall hardly be satisfied with the slovenly
and not very reverent explanation, that the word is introduced, without
any particular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter proper
to this section; nor does it seem enough to suppose a mere general
reference to the excellences of the law of the Lord, which are the theme
of the whole psalm. Such an interpretation blunts the sharp edge of the
thought, and has nothing in its favour but the general want of
connection between the separate verses. There are, however, one or two
other instances where a thought is pursued through more than one verse,
and the usual mere juxtaposition gives place to an interlocking, so that
the construction is not unexampled. It is most natural to take the plain
meaning of the words, and to suppose that when the Psalmist said, 'They
have made void Thy law, therefore I love Thy commandments,' he meant,
'The prevailing opposition is the reason why I, for my part, grasp Thy
law more strongly.' The hostility of others evokes my warmer love. The
thought, so understood, is definite, true, and important, and so I
venture to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson for the
day.
And here I would first observe that I desire not to be understood as
urging the substitution of feeling for reason, nor as trying to enlist
passion in a crusade against the opponent's logic. Still less do I
desire to counsel the exaggeration of opinions because they are
denied--that besetting danger of all controversy.
But surely the emotions have a place and an office, if not indeed in the
search for, and the submission to, the truth of God, yet in the defence
and adherence to that truth when found. The heart may not be the organ
for the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has a part to
play even there; but the tenacity with which I cleave to truth, when
apprehended, is far more an affair of the will than of the
understanding--it is the heart's love steadying the mind, and holding it
fixed to the rock. And love has also a place in the defence of the
truth. It gives weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. It makes
arguments to be wrought in fire rather than in frost. It lights the
enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence that will not weary, the
fervour that often goes farther to sway other minds than the sharpest
dialectics of a passionless understanding. There _are_ causes in which
an unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence; and this is one of
them. The word of the living God which has saved our souls and brought
to us all that makes our natures rich and strong, and all that peoples
the great darkness with fair hopes solid as certainties, demands and
deserves fervour in its soldiers, and loyal love in its subjects.
And while it is weakness to over-emphasise our beliefs _merely_ because
they are denied, and one of the saddest issues of controversy, that both
sides are apt to be hurried into exaggerated statements which calmer
thoughts would repudiate; on the other hand, there _is_ a legitimate
prominence which ought to be given to a truth _precisely_ because it is
denied. The time to underline and accentuate strongly our convictions
is, when society is slipping away from them, provided it be done without
petulance, passion, or the falsehood of extremes.
If ever there was a period when such general considerations as these had
a practical application, this is the time. Would that all such as my
voice now reaches would take these grand words for theirs: 'They make
void Thy law, therefore I love Thy commandments above gold; yea, above
fine gold!'
Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the natural instinct
of loyal and chivalrous love. If your mother's name were defiled, would
not your heart bound to her defence? When a prince is a dethroned exile,
his throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents 'though his
back be at the wall' and common souls become heroes because their
devotion has been heightened to sublimity of self-sacrifice by a
nation's rebellion. And when so many voices are proclaiming that God has
never spoken to men, that our thoughts of His Book are dreams, and its
long empire over men's spirits a waning tyranny, does cool indifference
become us? Will not fervour be sobriety, and the glowing emotion of our
whole nature our reasonable service?
Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the fitting end and
main blessing of the controversy which is being waged. We never fully
hold our treasures till we have grasped them hard, lest they should be
plucked from us. No truth is established till it has been denied and has
survived. Antagonism to the word of God should have, and will have, to
those who use it rightly, a blessing in its train, in bringing out yet
more of the preciousness and manifoldness, the all-sufficiency and the
universality of the Book. 'The more 'tis shook, the more it shines.' The
fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence in the inexpugnable
solidity of that tower of strength that stands four square to every wind
that blows. 'The word of the Lord is tried, therefore Thy servant loveth
it.'
Such increase of attachment to the word of God because of gainsayers, is
the instinct of self-preservation. The sight of so many making void the
law makes a man bethink himself of what his own standing is. We, as
they, are the children of the age. The tendencies to which they have
yielded operate on us too, and our only strength is, 'Hold Thou me up,
and I shall be safe!' The present condition of opinion remands us all to
our foundations, and should teach us that nothing but firm adherence to
God revealed in His word, and to the word which reveals God, will
prevent us, too, from drifting away to shoreless, solitary seas of
doubt, barren as the foam, and changeful as the crumbling, restless
wave.
Such strength of affection in the presence of diffused doubt is not to
be won without an effort. All our churches afford us but too many
examples of men and women who have lost the warmth of their first love,
if not their love itself, for no better reason than because so many
others have lost it. The effect of popular unbelief stretches far beyond
those who are directly affected by its arguments, or avowedly adopt its
conclusions. It is hard to hold by a creed which so many influential
voices tell you it is a sign of folly and of being behind the age to
believe. The consciousness that Christian truth is denied, makes some of
you falter in its profession, and fancy that it is less certain simply
because it is gainsaid. The mist wraps you in its folds, and it is
difficult to keep warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are
above it all the same. 'Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many
shall wax cold.'
Therefore, brethren! do you consciously endeavour that the tempest shall
make you tighten your hold on Christ and His word. He appeals to us,
too, with that most pathetic question, in which yearning for our love
and sorrow over the departed disciples blend so wondrously, as if He
cast Himself on our loyalty: 'Will ye also go away?' Let us answer, not
with the self-confidence that was so signally put to shame, 'Though all
should forsake Thee, yet will not I'; but with the resolve that draws
its firmness from His fulness and from our knowledge of the power of His
truth, 'Lord! to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'
IV. And lastly, we have here, as the final trait in the temper which
becomes such times, healthy opposition to the ways which make void the
word of the Lord.
That is the Psalmist's last movement of feeling, and you see that it
comes second, not first, in the order of his emotions. It is the
consequence of his love, the recoil of his heart from the practices and
theories which contradicted God's law.
Now, far be it from me to say a word which should fan the embers of the
_odium theologicum_ into a blaze against either men or opinions. But
there is a truth involved which seems to be in danger of being forgotten
at present, and that to the detriment of large interests as well as of
the forgetters. The correlative of a hearty love for any principle or
belief is--we may as well use the obnoxious word--a healthy hatred for
its denial and contradiction. They are but two aspects of one thing,
like that pillar of old which, in its single substance, was a cloud and
darkness to the foes, and gave light by night to the friends of Him who
dwelt in it. Nay, they are but two names for the very same thing viewed
in the very same motion, which is love as it yearns towards and cleaves
to its treasure; and hatred, as by the identical same act it recoils and
withdraws from the opposite: 'He will hold to the one, and therefore and
therein despise the other.'
Much popular teaching as to Christian truth seems to me to ignore this
plain principle, and to be working harm, especially among our younger
cultivated men and women, whom it charms by an appearance of liberality,
which in their view, contrasts very favourably with the narrowness of us
sectarians. I am free to admit that in our zeal about small matters (and
in a certain 'provincialism,' so to speak, which characterised the type
of English Christianity till within a recent period) we needed, and
still need, the lesson, and I will thankfully accept the rebuke that
reminds me of what I ever tend to forget, that the golden rod, wherewith
the divine Builder measures from jewel to jewel in the walls of the New
Jerusalem, takes in wider spaces than we have meted with our lines. But
that is a very different matter from the tone which vitiates and weakens
so much modern adherence to Christ's Gospel and Christ's Church. The old
principle, 'in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty,' made no
attempt to determine what belonged to these two classes, and in practice
their bounds may often have been wrongly set, so as to include many of
the latter among the former; but it at all events recognised the
distinction as the basis of its next clause, 'in all things, charity.'
But nowadays, to listen to some liberal teachers, one would think that
nothing was necessary, except the great sacred principle, that nothing
is necessary; and that charity could not exist, unless that distinction
were effaced.
I pray you, and if I may venture so far, I would especially pray my
younger hearers, to take note, that however fair this way of looking at
varying forms of Christian opinion may be, it really reposes on a basis
which they will surely think twice before accepting, the denial that
there is such a thing as intellectual certitude in religion which can be
cast into definite propositions. If there be any truth at all, to
confess _it_ is to deny its opposite, to cleave to _this_ is to reject
that, to love the one is to hate the other. I fear--I know--that there
are many minds among us who began with simply catching this tone of
tolerance, and who have been insensibly borne along to an enfeebled
belief that there is such a thing as religious truth at all, and that
the truth lies in the word of God. Dear friends! let me beseech you to
take heed lest, while you are only conscious of your hearts expanding
with the genial glow of liberality, by little and little you lose your
power of discerning between things that differ, your sense of the worth
of the Scripture as the depository of divine truth, and from your slack
hand the hem of the vesture in which its healing should fall away.
As broad a liberality as you please within the limits that are laid down
by the very nature of the case. 'These things are written that ye might
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye
might have life through His name.' Wheresoever that record is accepted,
that divine Name confessed, that faith exercised, and that life
possessed, there, with all diversities, own a brother. Wheresover these
things are not, loyalty to your Lord demands that the strength of your
love for His word should be manifested in the strength of your recoil
from that which makes it void. 'I love Thy commandments, and I hate
every false way.'
I am much mistaken if times are not rapidly coming on us when a decisive
election of his side will be forced on every man. The old antagonists
will be face to face once more. Compromises and hesitations will not
serve. The country between the opposing forces will be stripped of every
spot that might serve as cover for neutrals. On the one side a mighty
host, its right the Pharisees of ecclesiasticism and ritual, with their
banner of authority, making void the law of God by their tradition; its
left, and never far away from their opposites on the right with whom
they are strangely leagued, working into each other's hands, the
Sadducees denying angel and spirit, with their war-cry of unfettered
freedom and scientific evidence; and in the centre, far rolling,
innumerable, the dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and
self, making void the law by their sheer godlessness. And on the other
side, 'He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is
called the Word of God, and they that were with Him were called, and
chosen, and faithful.' The issue is certain from of old. Do you see to
it that you are of those who were valiant for the truth upon the earth.
Let not the contradiction of many move you from your faith; let it lift
your eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help. Let it open your
desires in prayer to Him who keeps His own word, that it may keep His
Church and bless the world. Let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm, which
is calm sobriety, your love for that word. Let it make decisive your
rejection of all that opposes. Driftwood may float with the stream; the
ship that holds to her anchor swings the other way. Send that word far
and wide. It is its own best evidence. It will correct all the
misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement the inadequate defences of
its friends. Amid all the changes of attacks that have their day and
cease to be, amid all the changes of our representations of its endless
fulness, it will live. Schools of thought that assail and defend it
pass, but it abides. Of both enemy and friend it is true, 'The grass
withereth, and the flower thereof passeth away.' How antique and
ineffectual the pages of the past generations of either are, compared
with the ever-fresh youth of the Bible, which, like the angels, is the
youngest and is the oldest of books. The world can never lose it; and
notwithstanding all assaults, we may rest upon _His_ assurance, whose
command is prophecy, when He says, 'Write it before them in a table, and
note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and
ever.'