Now, the word which is here rendered 'search' is a very emphatic and
picturesque one. It means to dig deep. God is prayed, as it were, to
make a cutting into the man, and lay bare his inmost nature, as men do
in a railway cutting, layer after layer, going ever deeper down till the
bed-rock is reached. 'Search me'--dig into me, bring the deep-lying
parts to light--'and know my heart'; the centre of my personality, my
inmost self. That is the prayer, not of fancied fitness to stand
investigation, but of lowly acknowledgment. In other words, it is really
a form of confession. 'Search me. I know Thou wilt find evil, but
still--search me!' It seems to me that there are two main ideas in this
petition, on each of which I touch briefly.
One is, that it is a glad recognition of a fact which is very terrible
to many hearts. The conception of God as 'knowing me altogether,' down
to the very roots of my being, is either the most blessed or the most
unwelcome thought, according to my conception of what His heart to me
is. If I think of Him, as so many of us do, as simply the 'austere man'
who 'gathers where he did not straw,' and 'reaps where he did not sow';
if my thought of God is mainly that of an Investigator and a Judge, with
pure eyes and rigid judgment, then I shall be more ignorant of myself,
and more confident in myself, than the most of men are when they bethink
themselves, if I do not feel that I shrink up like a sensitive plant's
leaf when a finger touches it, and would fain curl myself together, and
hide from His eye something that I know lurks and poisons at the centre
of my being.
The gaoler's eye at the slit in the wall of the solitary prisoner's cell
is a constant terror to the man who knows that it may be upon him at
every moment, and does not know where the eyehole is, or when the
merciless eye may be at it, but if we love one another we do not shrink
from opening out our inward baseness to each other. We can venture to
tell those that are dear to us as our own hearts the things that lie in
our own hearts and make them black and ugly in all eyes but love's; or
if we cannot venture to do it wholly, at all events we do it more fully,
and more willingly, and with more of something that is almost pleasure
in the very act of confession, in proportion as we are bound by the
sacred ties of love to the recipient of the confession. There is a joy,
and a blessedness deeper than joy, in discovering ourselves, even our
unworthy selves, when we know that the eye that looks is a loving eye.
If, then, we have rightly conceived of our relation to Him, that
infinite Lover of all our hearts, who looks, 'with other eyes than ours,
and makes allowance for us all,' there will be a certain blessedness,
almost like joy, in turning ourselves inside out before Him; and in
feeling that every corner of our hearts lies naked and opened unto the
eyes of Him with whom we have to do. 'Search me, O God!' is the voice of
confident love, which is sure of the love that contemplates the sinner.
And for us Christian people, to whom all these attributes of Deity are
gathered together and brought very near our hearts and our experiences
in the person of our Brother Christ, the thought of such knowledge of us
becomes still more blessed. Just as the Apostle who was conscious of
many sins, could say to his Master, not in petulance, but in
deeply-moved confidence, 'Thou knowest all things! Why dost Thou ask me
questions? Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest, notwithstanding my
denials, that I love Thee,' so may we turn to Jesus Christ, who knows
what is in men, and who knows each man, and may be sure that the eye
which looks upon our unworthiness pities our sinfulness, and is ready to
bear it all away. There is a deeper gladness in pouring out our hearts
to our loving Lord than in locking them in sullen silence, with the vain
conceit that we thereby hide ourselves from Him. Make a clean breast of
your evil, and you will find that the act has in it a blessedness all
unique and poignant. 'Pour out your hearts before Him, O ye people! God
is a refuge for us.'
This prayer is also an expression of absolute willingness to submit to
the searching process. God is represented in my text as searching the
secrets of a man's heart, not that God may know, but that the man may
know. By His Spirit He will come into the innermost corners of our
nature, if this prayer is a real expression of our desire, and there the
illumination of His presence will flash light into all the dark places
of our experience and of our natures. We cannot afford to be in
ignorance of these. Pestilence breathes in the unventilated, unlighted,
uncleansed recesses of a neglected nature. It is only on condition of
the light of God's convincing Spirit being cast into every part of our
being that we shall be able to overcome and annihilate the creeping
swarms of microscopic sins that are there, minute but mighty in their
myriads to destroy a man's soul. 'Search me' is the expression of a
penitence that knows itself to be full of evil, that does not know all
the evil of which it is full, that needs enlightenment, that desires
deliverance, that is sure of the love that looks, and that so spreads
itself, as a bleacher spreads some piece of stained cloth in the
gracious sunshine and sprinkles it with the pure water of heaven that
all the stains may melt away.
It is useless to ask God to search us if we lock our hearts against His
searching. The mere natural exercise, if I may so say, of the divine
attribute of Omniscience we cannot hinder. He knows us thereby
altogether, whether we like it or not; but the 'searching' of my text is
one which He cannot put in force without our consent. We have to confess
our sins unto the Lord ere this kind of divine scrutiny can be brought
to bear. By His natural Omniscience, He knows them altogether, but the
seeing which is preparatory to destroying them depends on our
willingness to submit ourselves to the often painful process by which He
drags our sins to light. Do you want Him to come and search your hearts,
and tell you in your spirits what He has found there? Do you desire to
know your hidden evil? Then keep close to Him, and tell Him what the sin
is which you know to be sin; and ask Him to show you what the sins are
which, as yet, you have not grown up to the height of understanding and
acknowledging.
II. Next, there follows the longing for the divine testing of our
thoughts.
Now you will have observed, I suppose, that in the second clause of my
text, 'try me, and know my thoughts' the result of the investigation is
somewhat different from that of the previous clause. The 'searching'
issued in a divine knowledge of the heart; the 'trying,' or testing,
issues in a divine knowledge of the thoughts. The distinction between
these two, in the Biblical use of the expressions, is not precisely the
same as in our modern popular speech. We are accustomed to talk of the
heart as being the seat of emotions, affections, feelings, whereas we
relegate thoughts to the head. But Scripture does not quite take that
metaphorical view. In it the heart is the centre of personal being, and
out of it there come, not only emotions and loves, but 'thoughts and
intents.' The difference, then, between these two, 'heart' and
'thoughts' is this, the one is the workshop and the other is the
product. The heart is the place where the thoughts are elaborated. So
you see the process of the Psalmist's prayer is from the centre a little
outwards, first the inmost self, and then the 'thoughts,' meaning
thereby the whole web of activities, both intellectual and emotional, of
which the heart, in his sense of the word, is the seat and source. In
like manner as the field of investigation is somewhat shifted in the
second petition, so the manner of investigation is correspondingly
different. 'Search' is the divine scrutiny of the inner man by the eye;
'test' is the trial as metals are tried and proved by the fiery furnace.
So, then, the innermost man is searched by the divine knowledge, and the
thoughts which the innermost man produces are tested by the divine
providence. And our second petition is for a trial by facts, by external
agencies, of the true nature and character of the purposes, desires,
designs, intentions, as well as of the affections and loves and joys.
That is to say, this second prayer submits absolutely to any discipline,
fiery and fierce and bitter, by which the true character of a man's
activities may be made clear to himself. Oh! it is a prayer easily
offered; hard to stand by. It is a prayer often answered in ways that
drive us almost to despair. It means, 'Do anything with me, put me into
any seven-fold heated furnace of sorrow, do anything that will melt my
hardness, and run off my dross, which Thy great ladle will then skim
away, that the surface may be clear, and the substance without alloy.'
Do you pray that prayer, brother! knowing all that it means, and being
willing to take the answer, in forms that may rack your heart, and
sadden your whole lives? If you are wise, you will. Better to go
crippled into life than, 'having two hands or two feet, to be cast into
hell fire'! Better to be saved though maimed, than to be entire and
lost.
'Try me.' It is an awful prayer. Let us not offer it lightly, or
unadvisedly; but if we are wise let it be our inmost desire. And when
the answer comes, and sorrows fall, do not let us murmur, do not let us
kick, do not let us wonder, but let us say, 'Thou art a God that hearest
prayer,' and 'I will glorify God in the fires.' Then 'the trial of your
faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be
tried with fire, shall be found unto praise and honour and glory.'
III. The next petition of my text is a longing for the casting out of
evil.
'See if there be any wicked way in me.' Now, that _if_ is not the 'if'
of doubt whether any such 'ways' are in the man, but it is the 'if' of
consciousness that there are such, though what they are he may not
clearly discern. And so, it is the 'if' of humility--knowing that he is
not justified because he knows nothing against himself--and not the 'if'
of presumption.
I have only time to observe here, in a word or two, what would well
deserve more expanded treatment, and that is, the very striking and
significant expression here employed for this evil way that the Psalmist
desires to be detected, that it may be cast out. The word rendered
'wicked'--or more properly, wickedness--is literally 'forced labour,'
which was, in old times, and still is in some countries, laid upon the
inhabitants at the command of authority; and then, because forced labour
is grievous labour, it comes to mean sorrow. So the 'way of wickedness'
that the Psalmist feels is in him is the way of compulsory service, and
the way that leads to sorrow. That is to say, all sin is slavery, and
all sin leads to a bitter and a bad end, and its fruit is death. And so,
because the man feels that his better self is in bondage, and
shudderingly apprehends that the courses which he pursues can only end
in bitterness and misery, he turns to God and asks Him that He would
enlighten him as to what these fatal courses are. 'See if there be any
way of wickedness in me,' because he is quite sure that the evil which
God sees, God will help him to overcome.
Ah, friends! we all have such ways deeply lodged within us, and we do
not always know that we have; but if we will turn ourselves to Him, He
will prevent our 'condemning ourselves in things that we allow' and
increasing the sensitiveness of our consciences, He will teach us that
many things that we did not know to be wrong are harmful.
As soon as we learn that they are, He will help us to cast them out. God
has nothing to do with our evil but to fight against it. Be sure of
this, that whatsoever evil in us He thus searches and shows us. He does
so in order to fling it from us. He goes down into the cellars of our
hearts, with the candle of His Spirit in His hand, in order that He may
lay hold of all the explosives there, and having drenched them so that
they shall not catch fire, may cast them clean out so that they may not
blow us to destruction.
IV. The last petition of my text is for guidance in 'the everlasting
way.'
The 'ways of wickedness' are in us; the 'way everlasting' we need to be
led into. That is to say, naturally we incline to evil; it must be the
divine hand and the divine Spirit that lead our feet in the paths of
righteousness. When we ask Him to 'guide us in the way everlasting,' we
ask that we may know what is duty, and that we may incline to do it. And
He answers it by the gift of His divine Spirit, by the quickening of our
consciences, by bringing nearer to our hearts the great Example who has
left us His footsteps as a legacy that we may tread in them.
Whosoever walks in Christ's footsteps is walking in 'the way
everlasting,' for that path is rightly so named which leads to eternal
blessedness. It is everlasting, too, inasmuch as nothing of human effort
or work abides except that which is in conformity with the will of God,
and inasmuch as it, and it alone, is not broken short off by death, but
runs, borne upon one mighty arch that spans the gorge, clean across the
black abyss, and continues straight on in the same course, only with a
swifter upward gradient, through all the ages of eternity. The man who
here has lived for God will live yonder as he has lived here, only more
completely and more joyously for ever. 'A highway shall be there, and a
way, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with
songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads.'