We do great injustice to this psalm--so exuberant in its praises of 'the
law of the Lord'--if we suppose that that expression means nothing more
than the Mosaic or Jewish revelation. It does mean that, of course, but
the psalm itself shows that the writer uses the expression and its
various synonyms as including a great deal more than any one method by
which God's will is made known to man. For he speaks, for instance, in
one part of the psalm of God's 'word,' as being settled for ever in the
heavens, and of the heavens and earth as continuing to this day,
'according to Thine ordinances.'
So we are warranted in giving to the thought of our text the wider
extension of taking the divine 'law' to include not only that directory
of conduct contained in Scripture, but the expressed will of God,
involving duties for us, in whatever way it is made known. The love of
that uttered will, the Psalmist declares, will always bring peace. Such
an understanding of the text does not exclude the narrower reference,
which is often taken to be the only thought in the Psalmist's mind, nor
does it obliterate the distinction between the written law of God and
the disclosures of His will which we collect by the exercise of our
faculties on events around and facts within us. But it widens the
horizon of our contemplations, and bases the promised peace on its true
foundation, the submission of the human to the divine will.
Let us then consider how true love to the will of God, however it is
made known to us, either in the Book or in our consciousness, or in
daily providences, or by other people's hints, is the talisman that
brings to us, in all circumstances, and in every part of our nature, a
tranquillity which nothing can disturb.
Of course, by 'love' here is meant, not only delight in the
expression of, but the submission of the whole being to, God's will;
and we love the law only when, and because, we love the Lawgiver.
I. Thus loving the law of God, not only with delight in the vehicle of
its expression, but with inward submission to its behests, we shall
have, first of all, the peacefulness of a restful heart.
Such a heart has found an adequate and worthy object for the outgoings
of its affections. Base things loved always disturb. Noble things loved
always tranquillise. And he to whom his judgment declares that the best
of all things is God's manifested will, and whose affections and
emotions and actions follow the dictate of his judgment, has a love
which grasps whatsoever things are noble and fair and of good report,
and is lifted to a level corresponding with the loftiness of its
objects. For our hearts are like the creatures in some river, of which
they tell us that they change their colour according to the hue of the
bed of the stream in which they float and of the food of which they
partake. The heart that lives on the will of God will be calm and
steadfast, and ennobled into reposeful tranquillity like that which it
grasps and grapples.
Little boats which are made fast to the sides of a ship rise and fall
with the tide, as does that to which they are attached. And our hearts,
if they be roped to the fleeting, the visible, the creatural, the
finite, partake of the fluctuations, and finally are involved in the
destruction, of that which they have made their supreme good. And
contrariwise, they who love that which is eternal shine with a light
thrown by reflection from the object of their love, and 'he that doeth
the will of God abideth for ever,' like the will which he doeth. 'Great
peace'--the peace of a restful heart--'have they that love Thy law.'