Chapter III: Part 3

Have any of you ever known this acutest anguish of the human spirit,--those appalling moments of doubt, when for a moment the whole citadel of truth seems to rock to its foundations,--when the soul becomes a dungeon with grated bars, or in which the light of heaven is transmitted through distorted glass, and the finger of unbelief is pointed inwards, with the old sneer, "Where is the God you were wont to boast of in your day of prosperity? Where is there evidence that one prayer you ever offered has been heard--one blessing you ever supplicated been granted--one evil you ever deprecated been averted or removed? Where one evidence of His hand in your allotments in life? These heavens have never broken silence! Hundreds of years have elapsed since His voice was last heard. Moreover, you have only some old parchment leaves written by converted Pharisees and Galilean fishermen to tell that Deity ever gave audible utterances out of the thick darkness. May not His very _being_ be after all a fiction, a delusion--His Bible a worn-out figment which superstition and priestcraft have successfully palmed upon the world? Or if you do believe in a God and in a written revelation, have you not good reason, at all events, to infer from His adverse dealings that He cares nothing for _you_. He has proved Himself deaf to your cries. Where is the mercy in such an affliction as yours? He has crossed your every scheme, blasted your fairest gourds. His appointments are surely arbitrary. He takes useful lives, and leaves useless ones. He takes the wheat, and leaves the chaff. The chairs he empties are those of the kind and good, the loving and beloved. He leaves the wicked, and proud, and selfish, and profligate. Can there be a God on the earth? Where is the justice and judgment which are 'the habitation of His throne'--where the 'mercy and the truth' that are said to 'go before His face?'"

Such, you may say, are awful imaginations--too awful to speak of. But such there are! It is the horror of great darkness--spirits from the abyss sent to trouble the pools of ungodly thought, and stir them from their depths.

Ye who are thus assaulted, do you ever think, in the midst of these horrible insinuations, of ONE who had to bear the same? Think of that challenge which wrung a spotless human soul in the hour of its deepest anguish--"_He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him: let Him deliver him, seeing he delighted in Him_." (Ps. xxii. 8.) It was the same taunt in _His_ case as in yours! It was the cruel, poignant sneer, that He had, during all his lifetime of confiding filial love, been trusting to a falsehood,--that if God had really been His Father and He His Son, ten thousands of legions of angels would have been down now by the side of His cross to unbind His cords and set the Victim free!

Let the merciful, the wondrous forbearance of Christ be a lesson to ourselves in the endurance of the taunts of a scornful world and of the Father of lies. How easily might He have resented and answered the challenge by a descent from the cross, by having the pierced feet and hands set free,--the crown of thorns replaced by a diadem of glory, scattering the scoffing crew like chaff before the whirlwind! But in meek, majestic silence the Lamb of God suffers Himself to be bound, the Victim gives no struggle. Let them scoff on! He will save others, Himself he will not save! Nor did all their scoffing, their taunts and ridicule, tend for a solitary moment to shake His confidence in His heavenly Father. These fell like spent spray on the Rock of Ages. When the cup of trembling was in His hands, sinking humanity for the moment seemed to stagger. He breathed the prayer, "_Let it pass from me_." But immediately He added the condition of unswerving _filial trust, "Nevertheless, O my Father, not as_ I _will, but as_ THOU WILT." Even in the crisis of all, when He was mourning the eclipse of that Father's countenance--in that last gasp of superhuman agony, He proclaims, in answer to the taunts of earth and hell, His unshaken trust, "MY GOD, MY GOD!"

Comforting surely to the reviled, the ridiculed, and persecuted, that, severe and poignant as their sorrow is, they are undergoing only what their Lord and Master, in an inconceivably more awful form, experienced before them! Yes! think how He had to encounter the ingratitude of faithless, the treachery of trusted friends. The limbs He healed brought no succour--the tongues He unloosed lisped no accents of compassion--the eyes He unsealed gave no looks of love. Those lips that spake as never man spake, dropping wherever they went balm-words of mercy, now in vain make the appeal to the scoffing crowd, "_Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me_!" Oh, when in deeper than the water-floods of Gilead, this wounded HART of Heaven lay panting and bleeding under the curse,--when arrow after arrow was poured upon Him from the shafts of men, and the bitter cry resounded in His dying ears, _Where is thy God?_--how did He answer? what was His response? Listen to the apostle's sublime comment on that scene of blended love and suffering--"_Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He_ THREATENED NOT; BUT COMMITTED HIMSELF TO HIM THAT JUDGETH RIGHTEOUSLY."

As the face, the hidden face of God, beamed upon the Son of His love in the midst of that apparent desolation, so will it be, children of affliction and sorrow! with you. Others may see in your tears nothing but an indication of the desertion of God,--the visitations of His wrath and judgment. But believe it, these very experiences of trouble and calamity, of bereavement or death, are all meted out and apportioned for you in love--drop by drop, tear by tear. Seek to see God's hand in all that befalls you. Try, even in the most adverse providences, to rise above second causes. Be it with you as with David in his conduct towards Shimei. When the insulting Benjamite was hurling these cruel taunts against the exiled King and the sorrowing Father,--when his incensed soldiers, burning with indignation, were on the point of drawing their swords and inflicting summary vengeance on the scoffer--"_Why should this dead dog_," said Abishai, "_curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head_"--David's reply is, "Nay! I hear not that man's voice--I see not that man's face--my eye is above the human instrument, on the God who sent him--'_Let him curse on, for the Lord hath bidden him_.'" (2 Sam xvi. 11.)

Trust God in the dark. Ah! it is easy for us to follow Him and to trust Him in sunshine. It is easy to follow our Leader as Israel did the pillar-cloud, when a glorious pathway was opened up for them through the tongue of the Red Sea--when they pitched under shady palms and gushing fountains, and heaven rained down bread on the hungry camp. But it is not so easy to follow when fountains fail and the pillar ceases to guide, and all outward and visible supports are withdrawn. But _then_ is the time for faith to rise to the ascendant;--when the world is loud with its atheist sneer, THEN is the time to manifest a simple, child-like trust; and, amid baffling dispensations and frowning providences, to exclaim, "_Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him_!"

Yes--"_troubled_, we are NOT distressed; _perplexed_, we are NOT in _despair_; _persecuted_, we are NOT _forsaken_; _cast down_, we are NOT _destroyed_." We ARE ready, scoffing world! to answer the question, _Where is thy God?_

CHILD OF SICKNESS! bound down for years on that lonely pillow!--the night-lamp thy companion--disease wasting thy cheeks and furrowing thy brow--weary days and nights appointed thee--tell me, _Where is thy God?_ He is here, is the reply; His presence takes loneliness from my chamber and sadness from my countenance. His promises are a pillow for my aching head,--they point me onwards to that better land where "the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick!"

CHILD OF POVERTY! _Where is thy God?_ Can He visit this rude dwelling? Can God's promises be hung on these broken rafters? Can the light of His word illumine that cheerless hearth and sustain that bent figure shivering over its mouldering ashes? Yes! He is here. The lips of Truth that uttered the beatitude, "_Blessed be ye poor_," have not spoken in vain. Bound down by chill penury--forsaken and forgotten in old age--no footstep of mercy heard on my gloomy threshold--no lip of man to drop the kindly word--no hand of succour to replenish the empty cupboard--that God above has not deserted me. He has led me to seek and lay up my treasure in a home where want cannot enter, and where the beggar's hovel is transformed into the kingly mansion!

BEREAVED ONE! _Where is thy God?_ Where is the arm of Omnipotence thou wast wont to lean upon? Has _He_ forgotten to be gracious? Has He mocked thy prayers, by trampling in the dust thy dearest and best, and left thee to pine and agonise in the bitterness of thy swept heart and home? Nay, He is _here_! He has swept down my fondest idol, but it was in order that He himself might occupy the vacant seat. I know Him too well to question the faithfulness of His word, and the fidelity of His dealings. I have never known what a God He was, till this hour of bitter trial overtook me! There was a "need be" in every tear--every death-bed--every grave!

DYING MAN! the billows are around thee--the world is receding--the herald symptoms of approaching dissolution are gathering fast around thy pillow--the soul is pluming its wings for the immortal flight; ere memory begins to fade, and the mind becomes a waste,--ere the names of friends, when mentioned, will only be answered by a dull, vacant look, and then the hush of awful silence,--tell me, ere the last lingering ray of consciousness and thought has vanished, _Where is thy God?_

He is here! I feel the everlasting arms underneath and round about me. Heart and flesh are failing. The mists of death are dimming my eyes to the things below, but they are opening on the magnificent vistas of eternity. YONDER He is! seated amid armies of angels. "_My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!_" "THIS GOD SHALL BE MY GOD FOR EVER AND EVER!"

VI.

Sabbath Memories.

"Dear is the Sabbath morn to me,
When village bells awake the day,
And with their holy minstrelsy
Call me from earthly cares away.

"And dear to me the winged hour,
Spent in thy hallow'd courts, O Lord,
To feel devotion's soothing power,
And catch the manna of Thy Word.

"And dear to me the loud 'Amen,'
That echoes through the blest abode--
That swells, and sinks, and swells again,
Dies on the ear--but lives to God.

"Oft when the world, with iron hand,
Has bound me in its six days' chain,
This bursts them, like a strong man's band,
And bade my spirit live again."

"And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and shew me both it, and his habitation."--_2 Sam._ xv. 25.

"When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day."--_Verse 4._

VI.

SABBATH MEMORIES.

We always commiserate those who have seen better days. Poverty, indeed, under any form, appeals with irresistible power to the sympathies of our better nature. The most heartless and indifferent cannot refuse the tribute of pity to the ragged beggar shivering on the street, or seated in his hovel by the ashes of a spent fire, brooding over a wretched past, with the grim spectral forms of want hovering over a miserable future.

Sad, however, as the condition of such may be, habit, in one sense, may have become to that squalid pauper a second nature. He may never have known a more prosperous state. He may have been inured from his earliest years to buffet life's wintry storm. Chill penury may have rocked his cradle, and ever since sung her rude lullaby over his pallet of straw. Far more is to be pitied the case of those who have sunk from comfort into indigence, around whose early home no bleak winds of adversity ever blew, who were once pillowed in the lap of plenty if not of luxury, but who, by some sudden wave of calamity, have become wrecks on life's desert shore. If there be one being on God's earth more to be pitied than another, it is the mother of a once joyous home, turned adrift, in the hour of her widowhood, with her ragged children;--forced to sing, from door to door, to escape the jaws of hungry famine,--ill disguising, under her heap of squalid rags or her trembling notes of sorrow and despair, the story of brighter days.

Similar is the commiseration we extend (let the shores of this Refuge Island of ours bear testimony) to the hapless patriot or the fallen monarch. These may have been hurled from positions of influence or pinnacles of glory more by their crimes than by their misfortunes. The revolutionary wave that swept them from their country or their thrones may have been a just retribution for misrule; but it is their hour of adversity! They have seen better and more auspicious times. Pity for the fallen knocks, and never knocks in vain, at the heart of a great nation's sympathies.

Such was David's position at this time: Denied the sympathy of others, his own soul is filled with recollections of a far different past. The monarch of Israel, the beloved of God, the idol of his people; now a fugitive from his capital--his palace sacked--his crown dishonoured--wandering in ignoble exile--a wreck of vanished glory!

But it is not these features of his humiliating fall on which his mind mainly dwells. It is not the thought of his sceptre wrested from his grasp--his army in mutiny--his royal residence a den of traitors--that fills his soul with most poignant sorrow. He is an exile from the House of God! The joy of his old Sabbaths is for the time suspended and forfeited. No more is the sound of silver trumpets heard summoning the tribes to the new moons and solemn feast-days! No more does he behold, in thought, the slopes of Olivet studded with pilgrim tents or made vocal with "songs in the night!" No more does he see the triumphant procession wending up the hill of Zion--timbrel and pipe and lute and voice celebrating in glad accord the high praises of God;--"the singers in front, and the players on instruments behind,"--he himself, harp in hand, (the true father of his people,) leading the jubilant chorus, and Jehovah commanding upon all "the blessing, even life for evermore!"

How changed! To this Sabbath-loving and Sabbath-keeping King nothing but the memory of these remained. "_When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day._"

Jerusalem was the pride and glory of the Jew. Wherever he went, he turned to it as to his best and fondest home. The windows of Daniel's chamber were "open _towards Jerusalem_." With his eye in the direction of the holy city, "_he kneeled upon his knees three times a-day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime_." (Dan. vi. 10.) Jonah was in the strangest of prisons. "The depths closed round about him, the weeds were wrapped about his head, and the earth with its iron bars." From "the belly of hell" he sent up his cry to God. "I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again _toward thy_ HOLY TEMPLE." (Jonah ii. 2.) Captive Israel are seated, in mute despondency, by the willowed banks of the streams of Babylon. The Euphrates (an ocean river compared with the tiny streams of Palestine) rolled past them. The city of the hundred gates rose, like a dream of giant glory, before their view, with its colossal walls, and towers, and hanging gardens. Yet what were they in the eyes of these exile spectators? _Shadows_ of greatness in comparison with the city and temple of their fathers amid the hills of Judah! When their oppressors demanded of them a Hebrew melody, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion," they answered, through hot tears of sorrowful remembrance, "_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?_" (Ps. cxxxvii. 4.) So it was with David now. As a bird taken from its home in the forest and placed in a cage, refuses to warble a joyous note--beats its plumage against the enclosing bars, and struggles to get free,--so he seems to long for wings that he may flee away to the hallowed eaves of the sanctuary, and be at rest!

He himself, indeed, uses a similar figure. He tells us, in another Psalm, written on this same occasion, that so blessed did he feel those to be who enjoyed the privilege of "dwelling in God's house," and so ardent was his longing to participate in their joy, that he half-envied the swallows who constructed their nests upon its roof. (Ps. lxxxiv.) He was not without his solaces in this season of reverse and calamity. He had many faithful adherents still clinging to him in his adversity. The best and bravest chieftains from the tribes on the other side of the Jordan supplied his drooping followers with the produce of their rich pasture lands. "_Shobi of Ammon, and Machir of Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite_"--these brought, besides camp utensils, "_wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentiles, and parched pulse, and honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness._" (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29.) Glorious, too, was Nature's temple around him. Its pillars the mountains--the rocks its altar--the balmy air its incense--the range of Lebanon, rising like a holy of holies, with its reverend curtain of mist and cloud, and snowy Hermon towering in solemn grandeur above all, as the very throne of God! Yet what were these compared with JERUSALEM, the place of sacrifice, the resting-place of the Shekinah-glory, the city of solemnities, "_whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord_?" (Ps. cxxii. 4.) This wounded Hart pants for the water-brooks of Zion; Nature's outer sanctuary had no glory to him, "by reason of the glory that excelleth." The God who dwelleth between the cherubim had "_chosen Zion, and desired it for His habitation_," saying, "_This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it_." (Ps. cxxxii. 13, 14.) With the windows of his soul, like Daniel, thrown "open _towards Jerusalem_," and his inner eye wistfully straining to its sunny heights, his ear catching the cadence of its festive throng, he seems to say, "_If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy._" (Ps. cxxxvii. 5, 6.)

Do we prize the blessing of our Sabbaths and our sanctuaries? can we say, with somewhat of the emphasis of this expatriated King--"ONE _thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple?_" Alas! when we are living in the enjoyment of blessings, too true it is that we have seldom a vivid sense of their value. He who is born in a free country, to whom slavery and oppression are strange words, seldom realises the priceless boon of liberty. But let him suddenly be made the victim of tyrant thraldom; let him feel the irons loading his body, or the worse than material shackles fettering liberty of thought and action, and how will the strains of freedom fall like heavenly music on his ear! When we are in the enjoyment of health and strength, how little do we prize the boon. But let us be laid on a bed of languishing; let the sick lamp flicker for weeks by the sleepless pillow; let the frame be so shattered that even the light tread of loving footsteps across the room quickens the beat of the throbbing brow. In waking visions of these lonely night-watches, how does the day of elastic vigour and unbroken health rise before us! how do we reproach ourselves that the boon was so long ungratefully forgotten and unworthily requited! A parent little knows the strength of the tie which binds him to his child during the brief loan of a loved existence. He gets habituated to the winning ways, and loving words, and constant companionship. He comes to regard that little life as part of himself. He does not fully realise the blessing, because he has never dreamt of the possibility of its removal. But when the startling blow comes,--when death, in an unexpected moment, has severed the tie,--when his eye lights on the empty chair or the unused toy,--when the joyous footfall and artless prattling are heard no more,--then comes he to gauge all the depth and intensity of his affection, and to feel how tenderly (too tenderly!) that idol was enshrined in his heart of hearts!

So it is with religious privileges. In such a land as our own, in which, from our earliest infancy, we have been accustomed to a hallowed Sabbath, an open sanctuary, an unclasped and unforbidden Bible, we do not fully estimate the priceless value of the spiritual blessings bequeathed to us, because never have we felt the loss or the want of them. But go to some land of heathenism, where the exiled child of a British Christian home finds neither minister nor House of God. Go to the thousands who have betaken themselves to a voluntary exile amid American forests or Australian pastures. Or go to the lands of apostate Christendom, where the Bible is a sealed book, and religious liberty is an empty name; where souls thirsting for the living stream are compelled to drink from some adulterated cistern. Alas! many in such circumstances are content to sink into a listless indifference; cold and lukewarm at home, they are too ready to lapse into the chill of spiritual death abroad. But there are others who have not so readily obliterated the holiest records of the past. Ask many tired and jaded emigrants, conscious of nobler aspirations than this world can meet, what recollections, more hallowed than others, linger on their spirits? They will tell you it is the memory of the Sabbath rest and the Sabbath sanctuary; when, at the summons of the village bell, mountain and glen and hamlet poured forth their multitudes to the house of God; seated wherein, the burdens and anxieties, the cares and disquietudes of the work-day world were hushed and set aside, and in listening to the words of everlasting life, sorrows were soothed, faith was revived, and hope brightened. "_O God_," their cry is, "_our flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as we have seen Thee in the sanctuary_."[21]

[21] Psalm lxiii. 1, 2.

Let us seek to prize our means of grace while we have them. In a country which is the reputed palladium of liberty;--where the greatest of all liberty, the liberty of the truth, has been purchased by the blood of our fathers,--the time, we trust, with God's help, may never come when these bulwarks will be overthrown--when our sanctuaries will be closed--our Bibles proscribed--our Sabbaths blotted from the statute-book--and bigotry, in league with rampant infidelity, again forge the chain and rear the dungeon. But remember, that protracted sickness or disease may at any time overtake us, and debar us from the precious blessings of the _public_ sanctuary. Yes! I say the _public_ sanctuary. God's appointed ordinances can never be superseded or rendered obsolete by human substitutes. Some may urge that books now-a-days are better than any preaching;--that the press is more potent and eloquent than any living voice. But church or pulpit is not a thing of man's device. It is a divine institute. The speaker is an _ambassador_ in his Master's name, charged with a vast mission from the court of high heaven, and the House of God is the appointed audience-chamber. God does not, indeed, (nay, far from it,) forsake "the dwellings of Jacob." The lowliest cottage-home may become a _Bethel_, with a ladder of love set between earth and heaven, traversed by ministering angels! The secluded sick-chamber may become a _Patmos_, bright with manifestations of the Redeemer's presence and grace! But, nevertheless, "_Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary_." The promise remains, "I will make my people joyful in my _house of prayer_." It is the solemn "trysting-place"--the pledged ground of covenant intercommunion. "THERE _I will meet with thee, and commune with thee from off my mercy-seat!" "The Lord loveth the gates of Zion!" "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!_"[22]

[22] Ex. xxv. 22; Psalm lxxxvii. 2; Numb. xxiv. 5.

Reader, let me ask, How stands it with you? Are you conscious of a reverential regard and attachment to God's holy place? Does the return of the Sabbath awake in your heart the old melody of this sweet singer of Israel,--"_This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it_?"[23] Do you go to the solemn assembly, not to hear the _messenger_ but the _message_;--not to pay homage to a piece of dust, (the vilest and most degraded form of idolatry,) but feeling yourself a beggar in the sight of God, with a soul to save, and an eternity to provide for? Do you approach it as the _place of prayer_, over which the cloud hovers laden with spiritual blessings? Do you go to it as "_the house of God_," seeking fellowship and communion with the Father of spirits; desiring that all its services--its devotions, and praises, and exhortations--may become hallowed magnets, drawing you nearer and binding you closer to the mercy-seat? Oh, let not the boon of Sabbath privileges degenerate into an empty form, the mere pageant of custom. Let the Sabbath hours be sacredly kept. Let their lessons be sacredly treasured. Let their close find you a Sabbath-day's journey nearer heaven. Let their hallowed fragrance follow you through the week. Let them be landmarks in the pilgrimage; towering behind you the further you go--like Alp piled on Alp, flushed with roseate light, guiding and cheering you when low down in the valleys of trial and sorrow, and when called to descend the last and gloomiest Valley of all.

[23] Psalm cxviii. 24.

David is mourning, in the words which have given rise to these thoughts, over his altered Sabbath joys. It may be there are some reading these pages, who, though they know nothing like him of literal exile and banishment from the sanctuary, may yet be able painfully to participate in his feelings! They are seated, Sabbath after Sabbath, in their pews; their Bibles are in their hands--the living words of the preacher are sounding in their ears; but their experience may be best interpreted by the language of the Christian poet:--

"Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?

"How blest the hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill."

Memory can travel back on Sabbaths and communion seasons when a sunshine of holy joy irradiated their spirits; when their Sabbath was one hallowed Emmaus-journey;--they, during its sanctuary-hours, travelling side by side with Jesus, and He causing their hearts, as He did those of the disciples of old, to "burn within them." They were wont to come and depart, saying, "_This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven_." Now they feel that all is sorrowfully altered. They have comparatively no joy, as once they had, when the Sabbath morning dawns. When they seat themselves in church, there is no fervour in their praises--no earnestness in their prayers--no childlike teachableness in hearing. There is more criticising of the preacher than worshipping God. There is no living flame on the heart-altar; their befitting exclamation is that of the prophet, "_My leanness! my leanness!_" They are ready, in the bitterness of their spirits, to say, "_When I remember these things, my soul is poured out within me_."

Sad it is to have _no_ meat; but sad, too, when we _have_ food and cannot enjoy it! Sad it is, as exiles in a strange land, to have no Sabbath-gates flung open to us, and no Sabbath-bells to welcome the day of God; but sadder still to have these solemn chimes within hearing;--to have our sanctuaries open, and faithful ministers proclaiming the words of eternal life, and yet to listen with the adder's ear;--to listen as the dead in our churchyards listen to the tears and laments of the living!

What should be done in such a case as this? Trace the muddy and turgid stream to its source. Discover what earthly clouds are dimming the spiritual firmament, and hiding the shinings of the Divine countenance. Sin, in some shape or other, must be the fruitful cause. It may be some positive and persevered-in transgression; indulgence in which, shuts up the avenues of prayer, and denies all access to the mercy-seat. Or it may be some no less culpable sin of _omission_. That mercy-seat may have become unfrequented; the rank grass may be waving over its once beaten foot-road; the altar-fire languishing in the closet, must necessarily languish in the sanctuary too. How can the House of God be now fragrant with blessing, if the life is spent in guilty estrangement from _Him_? Religion cannot be worn as a Sabbath garment, if garments soiled with sin be worn throughout the week.

Self-exile from the joys of the sanctuary! return henceforth to God. If it be positive sin which is marring former blessedness, cast out the troubler in Israel. If it be duties omitted, or perfunctorily discharged, return to former earnest-mindedness. Cultivate more filial nearness to the Hearer of prayer. Seek, on your bended knees, to obtain more tenderness of conscience regarding sin;--to have more longing aspirations after the beauties of holiness.

And _delay_ not the return. By doing so, the growing languor and listlessness which is creeping over you, may settle into positive disrelish of God's house. Imitate the example of the Spouse in the Canticles, who, in mourning over similar spiritual declension, resolves on an _instantaneous_ seeking of the forfeited presence of her Lord. "_Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?_"[24] Go with the words which this exile of Gilead employs in the sequel to this Psalm, written on the same occasion--"_O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy._"[25]

[24] Sol. Song i. 7.

[25] Psalm xliii. 3, 4.

Yes! go, and prove what the God of the sanctuary can do in the fulfilment of His own promise. He seems now to be saying, "Put me to the test." "_Prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it._"[26] Every church is a _Peniel_, where God meets His people, as He met the patriarch of old at the brook Jabbok. Go and see what may be effected by _one_ lowly, humble, seeking soul--some wrestling Jacob, who, like "a Prince," has "power with God, and prevails!" The lowliest tabernacle on earth is glorified as being the _House of God_--the dwelling-place of Omnipotence and Love--the hallowed "_home_," where a loving Father waits to dispense to His children the garnered riches of His grace! The time may come when the holy and beautiful sanctuary where we worship may become a heap of ruins. The fire may lay it in ashes--the hand of man may raze it--the slower but surer hand of time may corrode its walls and crumble its solid masonry stone by stone; but as sure as it is God's own appointed treasure-house of spiritual mercies, may we not believe that there will be deathless spirits who will be able to point to it in connexion with imperishable memories,--"buildings of God," "eternal in the heavens," beyond the reach of human violence, and wasting elements, and corroding years? Does not the promise stand unrepealed in this Bible;--let it ever be the inscription on our temples of worship,--"_Of_ ZION _it shall be said, This and that man was born in her; and the Highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count, when He writeth up the people, that this man was born there?_"[27]

[26] Mal. iii. 10.

[27] Psalm lxxxvii. 5, 6.

Oh that ours may at last be the blessedness of that better Church above, which knows no banishment, no exile, no languor, no weariness;--where "the holy-day" is an eternal Sabbath;--the festive throng, "a multitude which no man can number"--the voice of joy and praise, "everlasting songs;"--where God's absence can never be deplored;--where He who now tendeth His temple-lamps on earth, feeding them day by day with the oil of His grace, removing the rust perpetually gathering over them by reason of their contact with sin, will, with the plenitude of His own presence, supersede all earthly luminaries, and ordinances, and sanctuaries;--for "_they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for ever and ever_!"

VII.

Hope.

"When the water-floods of grief
Round thy helpless head shall rise,
When there seemeth no relief,
Lift thy gaze to yonder skies;
There behold how radiantly
Beams the star of Hope divine!
Yesterday it shone for thee,
And to-day it still shall shine.
Ask no aid the world can give,
LOOKING UNTO JESUS, _live!_"

"When I ask the question, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' I am ashamed of the answer that must be returned. What if property, credit, health, friends and relatives were all lost; thou hast a Father, a friend, an advocate, a comforter, a mansion, a treasure in heaven."--_Bishop Hall._

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance."--_Verse 5._

VII.

HOPE.

Take the wings from a bird, and it is the most helpless of animals. Bring the eagle from his eyrie, and rob him of his plumage, and he who an hour before was soaring monarch of the sky, is more powerless than the worm crawling at his side, or than the bleating lamb that trembled and cowered under his shadow.

Such was David now. The wounded bird of Paradise flutters in the dust. The taunting cry everywhere assails him, "_Where is thy God?_" The future is a mournful blank, and the past is crowded with joyous and happy memories, which only aggravate and intensify the sorrows of the present.

But though soiled and mutilated, the wings of faith are not broken. He struggles to rise from his fall. In the verse we are now to consider, he plumes his pinions for a new flight. We found him a short time before, making his tears a microscopic lens, looking through them into the depths of his own sorrowing and sinning heart. So long as he does so, there is ground for nothing but misgiving and despair. But he reverses the lens. He converts the microscope into a telescope. In self-oblivion, he turns the prospect-glass away from his own troubles and sorrows, his fitful frames and feelings, his days alike of sunshine and shade, to Him who is above all mutation and vicissitude. In this position, with his eye God-wards, he begins to interrogate his own spirit as to the unreasonableness of its depression. He addresses a bold remonstrance to guilty unbelief. In the preceding verse, he alluded to the dense multitude--the many thousands of Israel--he was wont to lead in person to the feasts of Zion. Now he is alone with one auditor--that auditor is HIMSELF. "_Why art thou cast down_, O MY SOUL?"

And what is his antidote? What is the balm and balsam he applies to his wounded spirit? "_Hope thou in God!_"

HOPE! Who is insensible to the music of that word? What bosom has not kindled under its utterance? Poetry has sung of it; music has warbled it; oratory has lavished on it its bewitching strains. Pagan mythology, in her vain but beautiful dreams, said that when all other divinities fled from the world, _Hope_, with her elastic step and radiant countenance and lustrous attire, lingered behind. HOPE! well may we personify thee, lighting up thy altar-fires in this dark world, and dropping a live coal into many desolate hearts; gladdening the sick-chamber with visions of returning health; illuminating with rays, brighter than the sunbeam, the captive's cell; crowding the broken slumbers of the soldier by his bivouac-fire, with pictures of his sunny home, and his own joyous return. HOPE! drying the tear on the cheek of woe! As the black clouds of sorrow break and fall to the earth, arching the descending drops with thine own beauteous rainbow! Ay, more, standing with thy lamp in thy hand by the gloomy realms of Hades, kindling thy torch at Nature's funeral pile, and opening vistas through the gates of glory!

If Hope, even with reference to present and finite things, be an emotion so joyous,--if uninspired poetry can sing so sweetly of its delights, what must be the _believer's_ hope, the hope which has God for its object, and heaven its consummation? How sweet that strain must have sounded from the lips of the exile Psalmist amid these glens of Gilead! A moment before, his sky is dark and troubled, but blue openings begin once more to tremble through the clouds. The mists have been hanging dense and thick, hiding out the water-brooks. But now the sun shines. They rise and circle in wreaths of fantastic vapour, disclosing to the wounded Hart "the springs in the valleys which run among the hills; which give drink to every beast in the field, and where the wild asses quench their thirst." The wilderness has become once more "a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water." Rebuking his unworthy tears, Faith once more takes down her harp, and thus wakes its melodies,--"_I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I_ HOPE." "_Let Israel_ HOPE _in the Lord._"[28]

[28] Psalm cxxx. 5, 7.

And is it not well for us from time to time to open the gates of our own souls, and hold a similar consistory?--to make solemn inquisition with our hearts in their seasons of trouble and disquietude?

"_Why art thou cast down?_" Is it outward trial that assails thee? Has calamity abridged thy earthly comforts? Have the golden heaps thou mayest have been a lifetime in amassing, dissolved like a snow-wreath;--the waxen wings of capricious fortune, when thou wast soaring highest, melting like those of fabled Icarus of old, and bringing thee helpless to the ground? Or is it sickness that has dulled thine eye, paralysed thy limb, and ploughed its furrows on thy cheek; shutting out from thee the din of a busy world, and chaining thee down to a couch of languishing? Or is it the treachery of thy trusted friend that has wounded thee; blighting thine affections, crushing thy hopes, dashing thy cup of earthly bliss to the ground? Or is it bereavement that has made gaps in thy loved circle; torn away the fixtures which gave thy dwelling and life itself all its gladness and joy?

"HOPE _thou in_ GOD." The creature has perished. God is imperishable! Thou mayest be saying in the bitterness of thy spirit, "_All these things are against me_;" there may be no gleam of light in the tempest, no apparent reason for the dark dispensation; you feel it is with stammering lips and a misgiving heart you give utterance to the reluctant word, "Thy will be done." But, "_My soul, wait thou only upon God_;" (or, as Calvin translates this, "_Be silent_ before God;") "_for my expectation is from Him_."[29] "_Commit also thy way unto the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass._"[30] Here is the province of faith,--_implicit trust_ in dark dealings. God brings His people into straits; sends often what is baffling and unaccountable, to lead them devoutly to say, "_Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him_." Oh, beautiful is it thus to see HOPE sitting, like the sea-bird, calmly on the crested wave! While others (strangers to the peace of the gospel) are beating their breasts in tumultuous grief, indulging in wild paroxysms of rebellious sorrow,--beautiful is it to see the smitten one prostrate at the feet of the great CHASTENER, saying through tear-drops of resignation, "_Even so, Father; for so it seems good in Thy sight!_" Believe it, in the apparently rough voice of thy God, there is, as in the case of Joseph to his brethren, tones of dissembled love, disguised utterances of affection--"_Although thou sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before Him; therefore trust thou in Him._"[31]

[29] Psalm lxii. 5.

[30] Psalm xxxvii. 5.

[31] Job xxxv. 14.

Besides, this lofty grace of Hope requires stern discipline to bring it into exercise, and to develop its noble proportions. It is the child of tribulation. The apostle thus traces its pedigree--"_Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience,_ HOPE."[32] As there can be no rainbow in the natural heavens without the cloud, so Hope cannot span the moral firmament, with its triumphal arch, without the clouds of tribulation. As the mother eagle is said, when other expedients fail, to put a thorn in the side of her nest to urge her young brood to fly, so tribulation is the thorn which drives Hope to the wing.

[32] Rom. v. 3, 4.

"_And thou shalt yet praise Him._" "YET!" We cannot venture to scan or measure that word. It may be after many bitter tears of sorrow;--it may be after many struggles with a murmuring heart;--many storms may still sweep--many hours of pining sickness may be endured--many a rough and thorny path may have to be trodden--the harp may be muffled in sadness to the last; but, "_at evening-time it shall be light_." There is a season infallibly coming when the fettered tongue shall be loosed--the lingering cloud dispelled--and faith's triumph complete; when, with regard to the very dispensation on earth which caused you so much perplexity, you will be able triumphantly to say, "_I know_" (yea, I SEE) "_that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me_."[33]

[33] Psalm cxix. 75.

But your depression may proceed from a different cause. It may not be outer trial, but inward sources of disquietude which are causing despondency and doubt. It may be thoughts regarding your _spiritual_ condition. Latent corruption in a partially renewed and sanctified heart,--the power of remaining sin robbing you of your peace; at times leading you to question whether you have any real interest in Gospel blessings and Gospel hopes--whether you have not long ago quenched the strivings of the Holy Spirit by your impenitence and unbelief--whether your hopes of heaven may not after all be a shadowy delusive dream. "_Why art thou cast down, O my soul?_" Who, I ask, is teaching you to breathe out these penitential sighings after a happiness to which at present you feel you are a stranger? Who is it that is teaching you thus to interrogate yourself about the erring past? It is not _Nature's_ work. If there be within you one true breathing after repentance and return, that secret aspiration is the work of that Spirit who, although He will not always strive, is hereby shewing you that He _is_ striving still with _you_! Think of all that God hath done for you in the past, and is still willing to do. After the gift of His Son,--after such an expenditure of wrath and suffering on the head of a guiltless Surety, and all this that a way of reconciliation might be opened up,--think how dishonouring it would be to distrust either His ability or His willingness to save you. Having bestowed this greatest boon, He will "with Him also _freely_ give you _all things_." Turn away from self,--sinful self, righteous self, condemned self,--and direct your believing regards to Him who is "_the_ HOPE _of Israel and the Saviour thereof_." Keep your eye steadily fixed on the infinite grandeur of His finished work and righteousness. Look to Jesus and believe! Look to Jesus and live! Nay, more; as you look to Him, hoist your sails, and buffet manfully the sea of life. Do not remain in the haven of distrust, or sleeping on your shadows in inactive repose, or suffering your frames and feelings to pitch and toss on one another like vessels idly moored in a harbour. The religious life is not a brooding over emotions, grazing the keel of faith in the shallows, or dragging the anchor of hope through the oozy tide-mud, as if afraid of encountering the healthy breeze. Away! with your canvas spread to the gale, trusting in Him who rules the raging of the waters. The safety of the timid bird is to be on the wing, if its haunt be near the ground,--if it fly low, it exposes itself to the fowler's net or snare. If we remain grovelling on the low ground of feeling and emotion, we shall find ourselves entangled in a thousand meshes of doubt and despondency, temptation and unbelief. "_But surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of_ THAT WHICH HATH A WING"[34]--(marginal reading.) "_They that wait (or hope) in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles._"[35]

[34] Prov. i. 17.

[35] Isaiah xl. 31.

HOPE strengthens and invigorates her pinions the higher she soars. She gathers courage from the past, and looks with eagle eye to the future. "_I know_," says Paul, "_in whom I have believed_," (hoped, or trusted,) "_and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him_." "_I will hope continually_," says David, "_and will yet praise Thee more and more_."[36] Again, using a kindred emblem--the bird in the tempest rushing for shelter under the mother's wing--"_Thou hast_ BEEN _my help,_ THEREFORE _in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice_."[37]

[36] Psalm lxxi. 14.

[37] Psalm lxiii. 7.

Can such be said of the world's hopes? Does experience lead to repose in _them_ with similar implicit confidence? _Hope_--the hope of earthly good, and earthly joy, and earthly happiness--is often (too often) the mirage of life; the bubble on the stream, tinted with evanescent glory, a flash of prismatic beauty, and then _gone_! Multitudes flock to this enchantress in her cave, and though mocked and duped, and mocked and duped again, still they haunt her oracle, and kiss her magic wand. She has built for them again and again air castles--turret on turret, buttress on buttress, gilded dome and glittering minaret, and these have melted like frost-work. But yet these Babel builders, with the same avidity as ever, return to the work, and again the fantastic battlements are piled high in mid air!

We do not condemn these noble aspirations and struggles of this noble emotion;--far from it. What would the world be without Hope? It is the oil which keeps its vast machinery in play; it is the secret of all success--the incentive to all enterprise. Annihilate hope, and you blot out a sun from the firmament. Annihilate hope, and the husbandman would forsake his furrow, the physician his patient, the merchant his traffic; the student would quench his midnight lamp; science would at this hour have been lisping its alphabet, and art and philosophy would have been in their infancy.

But this we say, that if so much is perilled on a peradventure;--if _hope_--the _ignis fatuus_ of earth--be so greedily pursued,--why the cold and careless indifference regarding "the hope which maketh not ashamed"--the hope which is beyond the possibility of disappointment; promises which never fail; words which rest on a firmer and surer basis than the foundations of earth and the pillars of heaven? Shall the disappointed hewer still go on patching the shivered and broken _earthly_ cistern? Shall the man of science, undeterred by successive failures, pursue his unwearied analysis? Shall the merchant remain unbaffled by adverse markets that have drained his coffers, or successive storms that have stranded his vessels and wrecked his cargo? Shall the fragments of a brave army re-muster at the bugle call, and, amid dying comrades around and a shower of iron hail in front, return with undaunted hearts to the charge? Shall pining captives in a beleaguered garrison, pressed by famine, decimated by disease, outnumbered by force--shall these light their beacon-fires of _hope_, and sit to the last by their smouldering ashes, struggling on, either till calm endurance win its recompence, or until hope and life expire together? And shall the spiritual builder, or merchant, or soldier, be left alone coward and faint-hearted, and give way to unworthy distrust, or pusillanimous despair; and that, too, when the guarantees of _their_ hope are so amazing? Listen to them! What words could be stronger? what pledges more inviolable? "IN HOPE _of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began._"[38] "_Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil._"[39]

[38] Titus i. 2.

[39] Heb. vi. 17-20.

Oh, beautiful figure! Hope casts its anchor into the Rock of Ages within the veil. The ship may be tossing in the surging sea below, but a chain of everlasting love and grace links it to the throne of God.

I love to walk through the Bible, and gaze on its many delineations of _Hope_. It is a picture-gallery of this noble grace! As the great painters of the middle ages clung to favourite subjects, so HOPE seems ever to meet us in some form or other, as we tread this long corridor of inspired portraits.

Here is the earliest. A picture hung in a framework of sorrow. Its subject is two drooping exiles going with tears out of Eden. But, lo! a tinge of light gleams in the dark sky, and the angel of _Hope_ drops in their ears healing words of comfort.

Here is another. An ark is tossed in a raging deluge. The heavens are black above. Neither sun nor stars appear. All around is a waste wilderness of waters. But, lo! by the window of the ark a weary bird is seen fluttering, and bearing in its mouth an olive branch of _Hope_!

Here, again, is a picture called "_The Father of the Faithful_." Its subject is a solitary pilgrim, one of the world's gray patriarchs. He is treading along amid some wild pastoral hills, all ignorant of his destiny; but he has a staff in his hand--it is the staff of _Hope_!

Here is another. It is an Arabian Emir, once a Prince of the East, sitting amid ashes, the victim of a loathsome disease; and worse than all, of Satanic power. But _Hope_ tunes his lips to sing, "_I know that my Redeemer liveth_."

Here is a vast exodus of six hundred thousand slaves from a land of bondage, separated by an inhospitable desert from the land of their fathers; but _Hope_ silvers the edges of their pillar of cloud, and gleams by night in their pillar of fire.