Chapter II: Part 2

You may have seen in our mountain glens, in the solemn twilight, birds winging their way to their nests. There may be lovely bowers, gardens of fragrance and beauty, close by,--groves inviting to sweetest melody, Nature's consecrated haunts of song. But they tempt them not. Their nests--their _homes_--are in yonder distant rock, and thither they speed their way! So with the soul. The painted glories of this world will not satisfy it. There is no rest in these for its weary wing and wailing cry. It goes singing up and home to God. It has its nest in the crevices of the Rock of Ages. When detained in the nether valley, often is the warbling note heard, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest." And when the flight has been made from the finite to the infinite--from the lower valleys of sense to the hills of faith--from the creature to the Creator--from man to God,--as we see it folding its buoyant pinion and sinking into the eternal clefts, we listen to the song, "_Return unto thy rest, O my soul_!"

Reader! may this flight be yours. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found!" The creature may change, He cannot. The creature must die, He is eternal. "_O God, thou art my God; early will I seek_ THEE: _my soul thirsteth for_ THEE, _my flesh longeth for_ THEE _in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.... Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee._" (Ps. lxiii.)

II.

The Hart Wounded.

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since. With many an arrow deep infix'd
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew,
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by One who had Himself
Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.
With gentle force soliciting the darts,
He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"

--_Cowper._

"It was in this extremity it occurred to her that, in the deficiency of all hope in creatures, there might be _hope and help in God_. Borne down by the burdens of a hidden providence (a providence which she did not then love, because she did not then understand it) she yielded to the pressure that was upon her, and began to look to Him in whom alone there is true assistance."--_Madame Guyon's Life_, p. 38.

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."--_Verse 1._

II.

The Hart Wounded.

Are we not warranted to infer that it was the _wounded_ stag which David now saw, or pictured he saw, seeking the brooks?--the hart hit by the archers, with blood-drops standing on its flanks, and its eye glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death? But for these wounds it would never have come to the Valley. It would have been nestling still up in its native heath--the thick furze and cover of the mountain heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring aim; and, with distended nostril and quivering limb, it hastens to allay the rage of its death-thirst.

Picture of David, ay, and of many who have been driven to drink of that "river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." They are _wounded_ spirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing their life-blood. Faint, trembling, forlorn, weary, they have left the world's high ground--the heights of vanity, and indifference, and self-righteousness, and sin--and have sought the lowly Valley of humiliation.

What are some of these arrows? There are arrows from the quiver of MAN, and arrows from the quiver of GOD.

The _arrows of man_ are often the cruellest of all. "_Lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart._" (Ps. xi. 2.) ENVY is an archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood. JEALOUSY is a bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival. REVENGE has his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to retaliate the real or imagined injury. MALICE is an archer that seeks his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton mischief--irreparable injury--on the absent or innocent. CONTEMPT is a bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn on others. The teeth of such "are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." (Ps. lvii. 4.) DECEIT.--He is, in these our days, a huntsman of repute--a modern Nimrod--with gilded arrows in his quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren look, within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless, on "the mountains of prey!" "_Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper._" (Ps. cxx. 2-4.)

But there are arrows also from the _quiver of_ GOD. "_The arrows of the Almighty_," says Job, "_are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit._" (Job vi. 4.) "_He hath bent His bow,_" says Jeremiah, "_and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins._" (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?--"_Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are_ HIS _mercies!_" "_Faithful are the wounds of_ THIS _friend._" (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.)

We need not stop to enumerate particularly these _arrows_. There is the blanched arrow of _sickness_, the rusted arrow of _poverty_, the lacerating arrow of _bereavement_, stained and saturated with tears, and feathered from our own bosoms! There is the arrow, too, (though of a different kind,) of God's own blessed _Word_, "quick and powerful." "_Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies._" (Ps. xlv. 5.)

Yet, blessed be God, these are often arrows which wound only to heal; or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding, panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself. Suffering one! be thankful for thy wounds. But for these shafts thou mightest have been, at this moment, sleeping on the mountain heights of self-righteousness, or worldliness, or sin, with no thought of thy soul; the streams of salvation disowned; forsaking, and continuing to forsake, the "Fountain of Living Waters."

Let me ask, Has this been the result of thy woundings? Have they led thee from the "broken (leaky) cistern" to say, "All my springs are in THEE?" Remember affliction, worldly calamity, bereavement, have a twofold effect. It is a solemn alternative! They may drive thee nearer, they may drive thee farther from, thy God. They may drive thee down to the gushing stream, or farther up the cold, freezing mountain-side. The wounded hart of this Psalm, on receiving the sting of the arrow, might have plunged only deeper and deeper into the toils of the huntsmen, or the solitudes of the forest. It might have gone with its pining eye, and broken heart, and bleeding wound, to bury itself amid the withered leaves.

How many there are whose afflictions seem to lead to this sad consequence; who, when mercies and blessings are removed, abandon themselves to sullen and morbid fretfulness; who, instead of bowing submissive to the hand that wounds and is able to heal, seem to feel as if they were denuded of their rights! Their language is the bitter reproach of Jonah--"_I do well to be angry, even unto death_." Muffling themselves in hardened unbelief, their wretched solace is that of despair--"_It is better for me to die than to live_."

"_Blessed is the man that_ ENDURETH _temptation_," not who rushes away to pine, and bleed, and die;--or to feed still on husks and the garbage of the wilderness, but who makes the nobler resolve, "_I will arise and go to my Father_." Blessed is the man whose cry, like that of the child, is answered by his heavenly Parent bending over the cradle of his sorrow;--who feels, as the Psalmist did, that his gracious Father and God is never so near him as in a time of trial. "_When my spirit was overwhelmed,_ THEN THOU _knewest my path._" The bird of the desert is said to bury its head in the sand on the approach of its foes, and to abandon itself to destruction; but blessed is the man who rather is like the bird of the grove, the first twigs of whose nest have been ruthlessly pulled to pieces by the hand of violence. Hovering for a while over her pillaged home, she fills the wood with her plaintive lament, then soars away from the haunt of the destroyer to begin a fresh one, in a place of safety, on the top branch of some cedar of God!

Such was the case with David on the occasion of this Psalm. He had read to him the most touching homily the world _could_ read on the precarious tenure of earthly blessings. His sceptre, his crown, his family, were like the bubbles on that foaming stream on which he gazed, dancing their little moment on its surface, then gone, and gone for ever. Is he to abandon himself to an ignoble despair? Is he to conclude that the Lord has made him a target on which to exhaust His quiver--that He has "forgotten to be gracious?" Is he to join marauding chiefs beyond the Jordan, savage freebooters--become a mountain adventurer on these Gentile borders, and forget Zion and Zion's God? No! the earthly crown may fade, but the homeless, uncrowned, unsceptred monarch has a better home and a better King above; invisible walls and battlements, better than all the trenches and moats of an earthly fortress, encompass the wanderer. With his eye on these, thus he weaves his warrior song--"_I will say of the Lord, He is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower_." (Ps. xviii. 2.)

Reader! let me ask you, in closing this chapter, are _you_ panting for God?

This is not the way--this is not the history of _most_. They are panting, but _not_ for God! They are panting up the hill, like Sisyphus, with their huge stone. _Ambition_ is panting up the hill--no time to take a breath. _Pleasure_ is panting up the hill--pursuing her butterfly existence--a phantom-chase--rushing from flower to flower, extracting all the luscious sweets she can. _Fame_ is panting up the hill, blowing her trumpet before her, eager to erect her own monument on the coveted apex. _Mammon_ is pushing up the hill with his panting team, to erect the temple of riches. Multitudes of hapless wayfarers in the same reckless scramble have tumbled into crevices, and are crying for help. Mammon's wheels are locked,--his treasure-chests have fallen into the mire;--and yet, _on_ he goes, driving his jaded steeds over the poor, and weak, and helpless--ay, those that assisted him to load before he started at the mountain base. He must gain the top at all hazards as best he may; and he will be crowned a hero, too, and lauded for his feat!

Ah! strange that men should still be pursuing that phantom-chase. Or, rather, strange that they should live so immeasurably beneath the grandeur of their own destiny; rasping the shallows when they should be out in the deep sea; furling and warping the sails of immortality, instead of having every available yard of canvas spread to the breeze of heaven.

These objects of earthly, perishable pursuit, _may_ do when the world is bright, the heart unwounded, the eye undimmed. These may do when the sun shines unclouded in our firmament, when our fields are waving, when fortune is weaving her golden web, and the bark of existence with its white sails is holding its way through summer seas. These may do when the home circle is unbroken; when we miss no loved face, when we mark no silent voice, no vacant chair. _But_ when the muffled drum takes the place of life's joyous music;--when our skies are robed in sackcloth, when Nature takes on its hue of ashen paleness; when every flower, seared and frost-bitten, seems to droop its head in sadness and sorrow, and hide its tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay!--what _then_? The prophet's voice takes up the lesson--"_The voice said, Cry; and he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass!_" Poor trifler that thou art! to be so long mocked and deceived by a dead and dying world; desolate, friendless, hopeless, portionless; a vessel driven from its moorings, out unpiloted on a tempestuous sea! BUT there is a haven for the tempest-tossed. The Saviour thou hast long despised and rejected, is a provided harbour for such as _thee_. "_A_ MAN _shall be an hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land._" (Isaiah xxxii. 2.)

Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee--LET HIM THAT IS ATHIRST, COME.

ATHIRST! who is not athirst? It is the attribute of universal humanity! Who does not feel that this world is presenting us with muddy streams and broken, leaky cisterns? Who does not feel, in their moments of deep and calm reflection, when we are brought face to face with the great enigma of existence, that the world is serving up faded flowers instead of those redolent with imperishable fragrance, and glowing with unfading bloom? _Friendless one!_--thou who art standing alone like a solitary tree in the forest whom the woodman's axe has spared--thy compeers cut down at thy side--COME! _Child of calamity!_--the chill hand of penury laid on thine earthly comforts--the widow's cruise fast failing, her staff of bread diminishing--COME! _Child of bereavement!_--the pillars in thy heart-shrine crumbling to decay, thy head bowed like a bulrush--thou who knowest that fortune may again replace and replenish her dismantled walls, but that nothing can reanimate thy still marble, or refill the vacant niche in thy heart of hearts--COME! _Prodigal!_--wanderer from God, exile from peace, roaming the forest-haunts of sin, plunging deeper and deeper into their midnight of ruin and despair--has an arrow, either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded thy heart? Art thou, in thy agony, seeking rest and finding none,--having the gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction with all created things, and an undefined longing for a solace they cannot give? Yes! for _thee_, too, for thy gaping, bleeding wound there is "balm in Gilead, and a Physician there." I repeat, Jesus this day stands by the glorious streams of His own purchased salvation, and cries, saying--"_If any man_ THIRST, _let him come unto me and drink_!"

"Yea, Lord!" be it yours to reply--"Lord, I _come!_ thirsty, faint, forlorn, wounded, weary! I come, 'just as I am, without one plea.' Thou art all I need, all I require, in sickness and health, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death, in time and through eternity. The snow-clad hills may cease to feed the brooks;--that sun may cease to shine, or nature grow weary of his loving beams;--that moon may cease on her silver lyre, night by night, to discourse to the listening earth;--the birds may become mute at the voice of the morning;--flowers may droop, instead of ringing their thousand bells at the jubilant step of summer;--the gasping pilgrim may rush from the stream, and prefer the fiery furnace-glow of the desert sands,--but 'this God shall be my God for ever and ever;' and, even when death is sealing my eyes, and the rush of darkness is coming over my spirit, even then will I take up the old exile strain--the great sigh of weary humanity--and blend its notes with the song of heaven--'AS THE HART PANTETH AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS, SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, O GOD.'"

III.

The Living God.

"Hear me! To Thee my soul in suppliance turneth;
Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.
For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearneth:
Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."

"Oh, it is His own self I pant after. Fellowship--living, constant, intimate fellowship with Him, is the cry He often hears from the desolate void of my unloving heart. How do I loathe the sin which makes the atmosphere so misty--the clouds so thick and dark!"--_Life of Adelaide Newton_, p. 246.

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"--_Verse 2._

III.

THE LIVING GOD.

In the two former chapters, we listened to the first sigh of the exile--the first strain of his plaintive song. It was the groping and yearning of his soul after God, as the alone object of happiness.

You may have watched the efforts of the plant, tossed amid rack and weed in some dark cellar, to climb to the light. Like the captive in the dungeon longing to cool his fevered brow in the air of heaven, its sickly leaves seem to struggle and gasp for breath. They grope, with their blanched colours, towards any chink or crevice or grated window, through which a broken beam is admitted. Or garden flowers choked amid rank luxuriance, or under the shade of tree or wall, how ambitious to assert their freedom, and pay homage to the parent sun, lifting their pendant leaves or petals as a target for his golden arrows!

The soul, away from the great Sun of its being, frets and pines and mourns! Every affection droops in languor and sadness when that light is away. Its abortive efforts to obtain happiness in other and meaner joys, and its dissatisfaction with them, is itself a testimony to the strength and loftiness of its aspiration--a manifesto of its real grandeur! The human affections must be fastened on _something_! They are like the clinging ivy which creeps along the ground, and grasps stones, rocks, weeds, and unsightly ruins, if it can find nothing else on which to fix its tendrils; but when it reaches the root of the tree, or base of the castle wall, it spurns its grovelling existence, and climbs its upward way till it hangs in graceful festoons from the topmost branch or turret.

We are to contemplate, now, a second breathing of this exiled supplicant--a new element in his God-ward aspiration.

"_My soul thirsteth for God,_ FOR THE LIVING GOD: _when shall I come and appear before God?_"

This is no mere repetition of the former verse. It invests the believer's relationship to the object of his faith and hope with a new and more solemn interest.

For David's present condition and experience in the land of his exile--the feeling of utter isolation throbbing through the pulses of his soul,--there were required some extraordinary and peculiar sources of comfort. The old conventional dogmas of theology, at such seasons, are insufficient. Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is blighted and withered like grass;--who has not been conscious of a longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us to the quick? What of His character, His attributes, His ways! There is a feeling, such as we never had before, to draw aside the veil which screens the Invisible. It may be faith in its feeblest form, awaking as from a dream; lisping the very alphabet of Divine truth, and asking, in broken and stammering accents, "Does God _really live?_--Is it, after all, Deity, or is it Chance, that is ruling the world? Is this great Being near, or is He distant? Does He take cognizance of all events in this world; or are minute, trivial occurrences, contingent on the accidents of nature or the caprice of man? _Is He_ THE LIVING ONE?" God, a distant abstraction shrouded in the awful mystery of His own attributes, will not do;--we must realise His presence; our cry, at such a time, is that of the old patriarch at the brook Jabbok, or of his descendant at the brooks of Gilead--"_Tell me thy_ NAME."[20] Is it merely _love_, or is it the loving ONE? Is it _omnipotence_, or is it the almighty ONE? Is it some mysterious, impalpable principle, some property of matter or attribute of mind--or is it a _personal_ Jehovah, one capable of loving and of being loved? Have the lips of incarnate truth and wisdom deceived us by a mere figure of speech, when, in the great Liturgy of the Church universal, in the prayer which is emphatically "His own," He hath taught us, in its opening words, to say, "Our FATHER which art in heaven, hallowed be thy NAME!"

[20] Gen. xxxii. 28.

How earnestly do the saints in former times, and especially in their seasons of trial, cleave to the thought of this _personal_ presence; in other words, a thirst for "the _living God_!"

What was the solace of the patriarch Job, as he was stretched on his bed of sackcloth and ashes, when other friends had turned against him in bitter derision, and were loading him with their reproaches? It was the realisation of a _living defender_ who would vindicate his integrity,--"_I know that my Redeemer liveth_." (Job xix. 25.)

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The symbol taught him encouraging truths;--that the Hebrew race, after all their experience of fiery trial, would come forth unscathed and unconsumed. But the shepherd-leader desired more than this: he craved the assurance of a LIVING GOD--an ever-present guardian, a pillar to guide by day, and a column of defence by night. It was the truth that was borne to his ear from the desert's fiery oracle. There could be no grander watchword for himself, or for the enslaved people,--"_God said unto Moses,_ I AM THAT I AM!" No comment is subjoined;--nothing to diminish the glory of that majestic utterance. The Almighty Speaker does not qualify it by adding, "I am light, power, wisdom, glory;" but He simply declares His _being and existence_--He unfolds Himself as "_the living God_!" It is enough!

Elijah is in his cave at Horeb. All nature is convulsed around him. The rocks are rent with an earthquake. The sky is lurid with lightnings. Fragments of these awful precipices are torn and dislocated by the fury of the tempest, and go thundering down the Valley. Nature testifies to the presence, and majesty, and power of her God: but He is not in any of these! "The Lord is not there!" The Prophet waits for a further disclosure. He is not satisfied with seeing the skirts of God's garment. He must see the hand, and hear (though it be in gentle whispers) the voice of Him who sits behind the elements He has awoke from their sleep. Hence this formed the closing scene in that wild drama of the desert. "_After the fire there came a still small voice._" _The Lord is there!_ He is proclaiming Himself the prophet's God! with him in the depths of that howling wilderness, as He had been with him on the heights of Carmel. "_And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave._" (1 Kings xix. 12, 13.)

Shall we go for illustration of the same truth to New Testament and gospel times?

The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice of a _living_ Saviour proclaims His _name_. "_It is I_ (lit. I AM); _be not afraid!_" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest, lulls their trembling spirits to rest.

John, in Patmos, beheld, in a vision of surpassing brightness, his Lord arrayed in the lustres of exalted humanity. Overpowered by the glory which unexpectedly burst upon him, "he fell at His feet as one dead." His misgivings are stilled; his confidence and hope restored, by the proclamation of a _living_ Saviour-God. "_I am He that_ LIVETH" (lit. THE LIVING ONE)--and a similar comforting symbol was given him in a subsequent vision, when he saw that same covenant angel "ascending from the east, having the seal of the _Living_ God." (Rev. i. 18, and vii. 2.)

This was "the _living_ Jehovah" whom David now sought in the forest-depths of Gilead. He goes out to that solitude to meditate and pray. But it is no dream of earthly conquest that occupies him. Deeper thoughts have taken possession of his soul than the loss of a kingdom and the forfeiture of a crown! A fiercer battle engrosses his spirit than any mortal conflict. "Let me have God," he seems to say, "as the strength of my heart and my portion for ever, and I heed not other portions besides." At another time that lover of nature would have caught inspiration from the glories of the impressive sanctuary around. He would have sung of the water-brooks at his side, the trees bending in adoration, the rocky gorges through which Jordan fretted his tortuous way, the everlasting hills of Hermon and Lebanon,--the silent guardians of the scene,--"the wild beasts of the forest creeping forth" and "seeking their meat from God." But now he has but one thought--one longing--"THOU _art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey_." (Ps. lxxvi. 4.) None was more dependent on the realised consciousness of the Divine favour than he. His Psalms seem to utter the language of one who lived in God's presence, and to whom the withdrawal of that endearing intercourse and communion would be death indeed. His expressions, in these holy breathings of his soul to the Father of spirits, seem like those of one loving friend to another. God, the abstraction of the Philosopher, has no place in his creed. He speaks of "the Lord thinking upon him," "putting his tears into His bottle," "guiding him with His eye," "His right hand upholding him," he himself "rejoicing under the shadow of His wings;" and as if he almost beheld some visible, tangible form, such as Peter gazed upon when the question was put to him on the shore of Gennesaret, "Lovest thou me?" we hear this warm, impulsive Peter of Old Testament times thus avowing his personal attachment--"_I will love thee, O Lord my strength;_" "_I love the Lord, because He hath heard my voice and my supplications;_" "_The Lord_ LIVETH_; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted_."

Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as a _living God_? Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes. But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever nigh, compassing your path and your lying down? Do you know of ONE, brighter than the brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from temptation--the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"

And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and who chastises you _because_ He loves you. The world, in their cold vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak of _Providence_, "the wil of _Providence_," "the strokes of _Providence_." PROVIDENCE! What is that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world? Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of bereavement to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God--to see that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning, and the wings of the whirlwind--and to say like David, on the occasion of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "_I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because_ THOU _didst it_." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)

The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The redeemed multitude, while on earth, "_thirsted_" for the living God, but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the earthly valley is answered--"When shall we come and _appear before God_?"

And what this living God is to the Church above, He is also to the Church below. In one sense we need Him more! The drooping, pining plant, battered down by rain, and hail, and tempest, stands more in need of the fostering hand and genial sunbeam than the sturdy tree whose roots are firmly moored in the soil, or sheltered from the sweep of the storm. Pilgrims in the Valley of Tears! seek to live more under the habitual thought of God's presence. In dark passages of our earthly history we know how supporting it is to enjoy the sympathy of kindred _human_ friends. What must it be to have the consciousness of the presence, and support, and nearness of the Being of all beings; when some cherished "light of the dwelling" is put out, to have a better light remaining, which sorrow cannot quench! All know the story of the little child who, in simple accents, quieted its own fears and that of others in the midst of a storm. When the planks were creaking beneath them--the hoarse voice of the thunder above mingling with that of the raging sea;--his tiny finger pointed to the calm visage of the pilot, who was steering with brawny arm through the surge, "_My father_," said he, "_is at the helm_!" Would you weather the tempests of life, and sit calm and unmoved amid "the noise of its many waters," let your eye rest on a _living God_--a loving Father--a heavenly Pilot. See Him guiding the Vessel of your temporal and eternal destinies! Let Faith be heard raising her triumphant accents amid the pauses of the storm--"_O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, Thou stillest them._" (Psalm lxxxix. 9.)

Above all, be it yours to enjoy what David knew imperfectly, the conscious nearness of a living SAVIOUR,--a Brother on the throne of Heaven--"_Christ our life_"--God in our nature--"the man Christ Jesus,"--susceptible of every human sympathy--capable of entering, with infinite tenderness, into every human want and woe--bending over us with His pitying eye--marking out for us our path--ordering our sorrows--filling or emptying our cup--providing our pastures, and "making all things work together for our good!" The words at this moment are as true as when, eighteen hundred years ago, they came fresh from His lips in Patmos--"I am _the living_ One!--Behold, I am _alive_ for evermore!" (Rev. i. 18.)

* * * * *

What is the great lesson from this meditation? Is it not to strive to _be like God_? What does "thirsting" for God mean, but a longing of the soul after likeness and conformity to the Divine image? Let us not lose the deep truth of the text under the material emblem. To thirst for God is to desire His fellowship; and we can only hold fellowship with a congenial mind. No man is ever found to covet the companionship of those whose tastes, likings, pursuits, are opposed to his own. Place one whose character is scarred with dishonour and his life with impurity, introduce him into the company of high-souled men--spirits of sterling integrity and unblemished virtue, who would recoil from the contaminating touch of vice, who would scorn a lie as they would a poisoned dart--he _could_ not be happy; he would long to break away from associates and associations so utterly distasteful and uncongenial. No man can thirst after God who is not aiming after assimilation to His character. God is HOLY. He who thirsts for God must be athirst for _holiness_--he must scorn impurity in all its forms, in thought, word, and deed. He who longs for the pure cistern must turn with loathing from the muddy pools of earth and sin. Again, God is LOVE. Love is pencilled by Him on every flower, and murmured in every breeze. The world is resonant with chimes of love, and Calvary is love's crowning triumph and consummation. He who "thirsts for God" "in him verily is the _love_ of God perfected." He must have the lineaments in outline, at least, of a loving nature. He must hate all that is selfish, delight in all that is beneficent, and seek an elevating satisfaction in being the minister of love to others. "_He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him._"

* * * * *

And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for God,--to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him--no longing for His presence--no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to you, as to the believer, a LIVING God. Yes--scorner of His mercy! ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible,--the God with whom you will yet have "to do," _that_ God LIVES! His eye is upon you--His book is open--His pen is writing--the indelible page is filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones of His voice. His very mercy and forbearance may be misconstrued by you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the dead hieroglyphics of the past--the obsolete tool-marks of the God of primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the control of universal laws!

Nay--GOD LIVES! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! this _living_ God _against_ you! _You_ living, and content to live His enemy! rushing against the bosses of His buckler! and if you were to die, it would be in the attitude of one _fighting against God_!

No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but, blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness. Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the unfailing stream.

See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. He who unlocked that fountain is even now standing by it, and saying, as He contrasts it with all earth's polluted cisterns, "_Whosoever drinketh of_ THIS _water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life_."

IV.

The Taunt.

"'Wilt thou leave me thus,' I cried,
'Whelm'd beneath the rolling tide?'
Ah! return and love me still;
See me subject to Thy will;
Frown with wrath, or smile with grace,
Only let me see Thy face!
Evil I have none to fear,
All is good, if THOU art near.
King, and Lord, whom I adore,
Shall I see Thy face no more?"

--_Madame Guyon._

"There is a persecution sharper than that of the axe. There is an iron that goes into the heart deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers, and sarcasms, and pitiless judgments, and cold-hearted calumnies--these are persecution."

"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._

IV.

THE TAUNT.

We are called, in this chapter, to contemplate a new experience--David in tears! These, his tears, brought sin to his remembrance. As, in looking through the powerful lens of a microscope, the apparently pellucid drop of water is found to be the swarming haunt of noxious things,--fierce animalculæ devouring one another; so the tears of the Exile formed a spiritual lens, enabling him to see into the depths of his own soul, and disclosing, with microscopic power, transgressions that had long been consigned to oblivion.

Ten years of regal prosperity had elapsed since the prophet Nathan, the minister of retribution, stood before him, in his Cedar Palace, with heavy tidings regarding himself and his house. Time may have dimmed the impressions of that meeting. He may have vainly imagined, too, that it had modified the Divine displeasure. Now that his head was white with sixty winters, he may have thought that God would exempt him from further merited chastisement, and suffer him to go down to his grave in peace. But the day of reckoning, which the Divine patience had long deferred, had now come. He was called to see the first gleamings of that sword which the anointed prophet had told him would "never depart from his house." (2 Sam. xii. 10.) The voice of long averted judgment is at last heard amid the thickets and caves of Gilead,--"_These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes_." (Ps. l. 21.) Nature, in her august solitudes, echoed the verdict! The waters murmured it--the winds chanted it--the forest wailed it--the thunders rolled it--and the tears of the lonely Exile himself wept it,--"_Be sure your sin will find you out_!" As he sat by the willows of Jordan, with his crownless head and aching heart, he could say, in the words of an older Psalmist, "_We are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy wrath are we troubled. Thou has set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance._" (Ps. xc. 7, 8.)

How apt are we to entertain the thought that God will wink at sin; that He will not be rigidly faithful to His denunciations--unswervingly true to His word. Time's oblivion-power succeeds in erasing much from the tablets of _our_ memories. We measure the Infinite by the standard of the finite, and imagine something of the same kind regarding the Great Heart-Searcher. Sin, moreover, seldom is, in this world, _instantaneously_ followed with punishment; "sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily;" and the long-suffering patience and forbearance of the Almighty is presumptuously construed by perverse natures into alteration or fickleness in the Divine purpose. But "_God is not a man that He should lie_!" Even in this our present probation state, (oftener than we suppose,) the time arrives for solemn retribution; when He makes bare His arm to demonstrate by what an inseparable law in His moral government He has connected _sin_ with _suffering_.

A new missile pierces this panting, wounded Hart on the mountains of Israel. _One_ of those who hurled the Javelin is specially mentioned in the sacred narrative. His poisoned dart must have been rankling in David's soul when he penned this Psalm.

When the King was descending the eastern slopes of _Olivet_, on his way to the Valley of Jordan, Shimei a Benjamite of Bahurim, of the house of Saul, came out against him, "_and_," we read, "_cursed still as he came. And he cast stones at David, and at all the servants of King David: and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left. And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial: the Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast reigned; and the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou art taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man. And as David and his men went by the way, Shimei went along on the hill's side over against him, and cursed him as he went, and threw stones at him, and cast dust._" (2 Sam. xvi 5-8, 13.) Besides this son of Gera, there were many obsequious flatterers and sycophants at Jerusalem--men once his cringing adherents, loud with their hosannahs in the time of his prosperity--who had now turned against him in his adversity, and become the partisans of the usurper. They exulted over his downfall, and followed him to the place of exile with the taunting cry, "Where is now thy God?" "_Mine enemies_," said he, "_speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, saying,_ GOD _hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him_." (Ps. lxxi. 10, 11.)

There is no trial keener, no anguish of soul intenser than this. Let not any talk of taunt and ridicule being a trivial and insignificant thing--unworthy of thought. Let not any say that the believer, entrenched in a lordly castle--the very fortress of God--should be above the shafts hurled from the bow of envy, or the venomous arrows from the tongue of the scoffer. It is often _because_ the taunt is contemptible that it is hardest to bear. The sting of the adder rouses into fury the lordly lion. The tiniest insect blanches the colour of the loveliest flower, and causes it to hang its pining head. Sorrow is in itself difficult of endurance, but bitter is the aggravation when others are ready to make a jest of our sorrows. _No water_ is bad enough to the fainting pilgrim, but worse is it when he is mocked by the mirage or bitter pool.

All the more poignant, too, were these taunts in the case of David, because too well did he know that such reproaches were merited,--that he himself had furnished his enemies with the gall and the wormwood that had been mingled in his cup. The dark, foul blots of his past life, he had too good reason to fear, were now emboldening them to blaspheme. He had for years been "the Sweet Singer of Israel;"--his future destiny was the Psalmist of the universal Church. His sublime appeals, and fervent prayers, and holy musings, were to support, and console, and sustain till the end of time. Millions on millions, on beds of pain, and in hours of solitude and times of bereavement, were to have their faith elevated, their hopes revived, their love warmed and strengthened by listening to the harp of the Minstrel King. And now, as his faith begins to languish, now as a temporary wave of temptation sweeps him from his footing on the Rock, and the "Beloved of God" wanders an exile and outcast,--a shout is raised by those who were strangers to all his sublime sources of consolation--"_Where is now thy God?_ Where is He whom thou hast sung of as the help of the godly, the refuge of the distressed? Where, uncrowned one! is the answer to thy prayers? Where is He of whom thou didst boast as being known in all thy Zion palaces as a refuge? Thou hast taught others and taught thyself to believe a lie. O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou fallen!"

For the moment, this crushing sarcasm can be answered by nothing but a flood of anguished tears. He was below the wave; and though he was soon to know that below that wave there was an Arm lower still, yet for the present he was dumb under the averment. There was no light in the cloud. He was unable to lay hold of a former comforting experience--"THOU _hast known my soul in adversities_." (Ps. xxxi. 7.)

Oh, how jealous we should be of anything that would reduce us so low as this, and give a handle to the adversary! Beware of religious inconsistency. _One_ fatal step, one unguarded _word_ may undo a lifetime of hallowed influence. One scar on the character, one blot on the page of the living epistle is indelible. It may be washed away, indeed, by the blood of sprinkling, so that nothing of it will remain against you in the book of God; but the eye and memory of the world, keen to watch and treasure the inconsistencies of God's people, will not so easily forgive or forget! The Hart laid itself open to the toils of the huntsman. It was hit by the archers. One fierce dart of temptation sped with unerring aim. It has left the track of blood behind it in the glades of the forest--the unbelieving world hounds in remorseless pursuit, and the taunting cry will follow to the grave!

Are there any who feel that the experience of David is their own,--who either by reason of religious inconsistency or religious declension have laid themselves open to the upbraiding question, "_Where is thy God?_"--Perhaps _religious declension_ is the more common of the two. You are not, as we have surmised in a previous chapter, what once you were. You have not the same love of the Saviour as once you had--the same confidence in His dealings--the same trust in His faithfulness--the same zeal for His glory. Affliction, when it comes, does not lead you, as once it did, to cheerful acquiescence--to the cherishing of a meek, unmurmuring submissive spirit under God's sovereign will and discipline, but rather to a hasty, misgiving frame--fretting and repining when you should be prostrate at the mercy-seat, saying, "_The will of the Lord be done_!"

Not in scorn, but in sober seriousness, in Christian affection and fidelity, we ask, "_Where is now thy God?_" "Ye _did_ run well; who hath hindered you?" What is the guilty cause, the lurking evil, that has dragged you imperceptibly down from weakness to weakness, and has left you a poor, baffled thing, with the finger of irreligious scorn pointed at you, and whose truthfulness is echoed back from the lonely voids of your desolate heart? Return, O backsliding children! Remain no longer as you are, at this guilty distance from that God who, amid all the fitfulness of your love to _Him_, remains unaltered and unalterable in His love to _you_. Be not absorbed in tears, ringing your hands in moping melancholy--abandoning yourself to unavailing remorse and despair. The past may be bad enough! You may have done foul dishonour to your God. By some sad and fatal inconsistency, you may have given occasion to the ungodly to point at you the finger of scorn. The fair alabaster pillar may be stained with some crimson transgression. Or if there be no special blot to which they can point, there may be a lamentable spiritual deterioration in your daily walk. They may have observed your love to God waxing cold--your love of the world waxing strong. They may have heard you murmur at your Lord's dealings, question His faithfulness, and refuse to hear and to bear the rod--manifesting tempers, or indulging in pursuits sadly and strangely unlike what would be sanctioned by the example of your Divine Redeemer. Up! and with determined energy resolve henceforth to repair the breach,--henceforth to make a new start in the heavenly life. The shrill trumpet sounds--"_Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life_!" We cannot say, like the King of Nineveh, "_Who can tell if God will turn and repent?_" _He_ has never turned! _You_ have turned from Him, not He from _you_. "_Where is now thy God?_" He is the same as ever He was;--boundless in His compassion--true to His covenant--faithful to His promises; "_the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever_!"

Reader! if He be afflicting you as He did David;--if with an exile spirit you be roaming some moral wilderness, the flowers of earth faded on your path, and the bleak winds of desolation and calamity sweeping and sighing around, let these times of affliction lead to deep searchings of heart. Let your tears be as the dewdrops of the morning on the tender leaves, causing you to bend in lowly sorrow and self-abasement, only to be raised again, refreshed, to inhale new fragrance in the summer sun. If, like the weeping woman of Galilee, you are saying, through blinding tears, "_They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him_," --if, like the Spouse in the Canticles, you are going about the city in search of your Beloved;--seeking Him, He will be found of you. The watchmen may smite you--repel you--tear off your veil--and load you with reproaches;--but "_fear not! ye seek Jesus who was crucified!_" He will meet you as He did the desponding Magdalene, and, listening like her to His own tones of ineffable love, you will cast yourself at His feet, and exclaim, "RABBONI--MASTER!"

V.

THE TAUNT.

"He wounds, and hides the hand that gave the blow;
He flies, He reappears, and wounds again;
Was ever heart that loved thee treated so?
Yet I adore Thee, though it seem in vain."

--_Cowper._

"Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none."--_Ps._ lxix. 7, 8, 20.

"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._

V.

THE TAUNT.

The Great Accuser of the brethren in a variety of ways attempts to insinuate the same dark doubts in the minds of believers, which we have spoken of in the preceding pages. He tries to shake their confidence in God,--in the veracity of His word, and the faithfulness of His dealings. He would lead them to discover in His providential dispensations what is inconsistent with His revealed character and will. In seasons particularly of outward calamity and trouble, when the body is racked with pain, its nerves unstrung, or its affections blighted and wounded--when the mind is oppressed and harassed, the soul in darkness--the Prince of this world, who times his assaults with such consummate skill, not unfrequently gains in such seasons a temporary triumph. The shadow of a cold scepticism passes over the soul. It is silent under the cry, "_Where is thy God?_"