Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 18

And if this relation to time be recognised and accepted and held fast by our hearts and minds, then what calm blessedness will flow into our souls!

'A stranger with Thee,'--then we are the guests of the King. The Lord of the land charges Himself with our protection and provision; we journey under His safe conduct. It is for His honour and faithfulness that no harm shall come to us travelling in His territory, and relying on His word. Like Abraham with the sons of Heth, we may claim the protection and help which a stranger needs. He recognises the bond and will fulfil it. We have eaten of His salt, and He will answer for our safety.--'He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye.'

'A stranger with Thee,'--then we have a constant Companion and an abiding Presence. We may be solitary and necessarily remote from the polity of the land. We may feel amid all the visible things of earth as if foreigners. We may not have a foot of soil, not even a grave for our dead. Companionships may dissolve and warm hands grow cold and their close clasp relax--what then? He is with us still. He will join us as we journey, even when our hearts are sore with loss. He will walk with us by the way, and make our chill hearts glow. He will sit with us at the table--however humble the meal, and He will not leave us when we discern Him. Strangers we are indeed here--but not solitary, for we are 'strangers with Thee.' As in some ancestral home in which a family has lived for centuries--son after father has rested in its great chambers, and been safe behind its strong walls--so, age after age, they who love Him abide in G.o.d.--'Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.'

'Strangers with Thee,'--then we may carry our thoughts forward to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in a land that is not ours. If even here we come into such blessed relationships with G.o.d, that fact is in itself a prophecy of a more perfect communion and a heavenly house. They who are strangers with Him will one day be 'at home with the Lord,' and in the light of that blessed hope the transiency of this life changes its whole aspect, loses the last trace of sadness, and becomes a solemn joy. Why should we be pensive and wistful when we think how near our end is? Is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far-off lands sad when he turns his face homewards? And why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? I do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he watches the hungry sea eating away this 'bank and shoal of time' upon which he stands--even though the tide has all but reached his feet--if he knows that G.o.d's strong hand will be stretched forth to him at the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him out of many waters, and place him high above the floods in that stable land where there is 'no more sea.'

Lives rooted in G.o.d through faith in Jesus Christ are not vanity. Let us lay hold of Him with a loving grasp--and 'we shall live also' _because_ He lives, _as_ He lives, _so long_ as He lives. The brief days of earth will be blessed while they last, and fruitful of what shall never pa.s.s.

We shall have Him with us while we journey, and all our journeyings will lead to rest in Him. True, men walk in a vain show; true, 'the world pa.s.seth away and the l.u.s.t thereof,' but, blessed be G.o.d! true, also, 'He that doeth the will of G.o.d abideth for ever.'

TWO INNUMERABLE SERIES

'Many, O Lord my G.o.d, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered ... 12. Innumerable evils have compa.s.sed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me.'--PSALMS xl. 5, 12.

So then, there are two series of things which cannot be numbered, G.o.d's mercies, man's sins. This psalm has for its burden a cry for deliverance; but the Psalmist begins where it is very hard for a struggling man to begin, but where we always should begin, with grateful remembrance of G.o.d's mercy. His wondrous dealings seem to the Psalmist's thankful heart as numberless as the blades of gra.s.s which carpet the fields, or as the wavelets which glance in the moonlight and break in silver upon the sand. They come pouring out continuously, like the innumerable undulations of the ether which make upon the eyeb.a.l.l.s the single sensation of light. He thinks not only of G.o.d's wonderful works, His realised purposes of mercy, but of 'His thoughts which are to us-ward,' the purposes, still more wonderful, of a yet greater mercy which wait to be realised. He thinks not only of G.o.d's lovingkindness to Him, but his contemplations embrace G.o.d's goodness to his brethren--'Thy thoughts which are to us-ward.' And as he thinks of all this 'mult.i.tude of His tender mercies,' his lips break into this rapturous exclamation of my text.

But there is a wonderful change in tone, in the two halves of the psalm.

The deliverance that seems so complete in the earlier part is but partial. The triumph and the trust seem both to be clouded over. A frowning ma.s.s lifts itself up against the immense ma.s.s of G.o.d's mercies.

The Psalmist sees himself ringed about by numberless evils, as a man tied to a stake might be by a circle of fire. 'Innumerable evils have compa.s.sed me about.' His conscience tells him that the evils are deserved; they are his iniquities transformed which have come back to him in another shape, and have laid their hands upon him as a constable does upon a thief. 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me'--they hem him in so that his vision is interrupted, the smoke from the circle of flame blinds his eyes--'I cannot see.' His roused conscience and his quivering heart conceive of them as 'more than the hairs of his head,'

and so courage and confidence have ebbed away from him. 'My heart faileth me----,' and there is nothing left for him but to fling himself in his misery out of himself and on to G.o.d.

Now what I wish to do in this sermon is not so much to deal with these two verses separately as to draw some of the lessons from the very remarkable juxtaposition of these two innumerable things--G.o.d's tender mercies, and man's iniquity and evil.

I. To begin with, let me remind you how, if we keep these two things both together in our contemplations, they suggest for us very forcibly the greatest mystery in the universe, and throw a little light upon it.

The difficulty of difficulties, the one insoluble problem is----, given a good and perfect G.o.d, where does sorrow come from, and why is there any pain? Men have fumbled at that knot for all the years that there have been men in the world, and they have not untied it yet. They have tried to cut it and it has resisted all their knives and all their ingenuity. And there the question stands before us, grim, insoluble, the despair of all thinkers and often the torture of our own hearts, in the hours of our personal experience. Is it true that 'G.o.d's mercies are innumerable'? If it be, what is the meaning of all this that makes me writhe and weep? n.o.body has answered that question, and n.o.body ever will.

Only let us beware of the temptation of blinking half of the facts by reason of the clearness of our confidence or the depth of our feeling of the other half. That is always our temptation. You must have had a singularly unruffled life if there has never come to you some moment when, in the depth of your agony, you have ground your teeth together, as you said to yourself, 'Is there a G.o.d then at all? And does He care for me at all? And can He help me at all? And if there is, why in the name of pity does He not?'

Well, my brother! when such moments come to us, and they come to us all sooner or later--and I was going to add a parenthesis, which you will think strange, and say that they come to us all sooner or later, blessed be G.o.d!--when such moments come to us, do not let the black ma.s.s hide the light one from you, but copy this Psalmist, and in the energy of your faith, even though it be the extremity of your pain, grasp and grip them both; and though you have to say and to wail: 'Innumerable evils have compa.s.sed me about,' be sure that you do not let that prevent you from saying, 'Many, O Lord my G.o.d! are Thy wonderful works which are to us-ward. They are more than can be numbered.'

I do not enter upon this as a mere matter of philosophical speculation.

It is far too serious and important a matter to be so dealt with, in a pulpit at any rate, but I would also add in one sentence that the mere thinker, who looks at the question solely from an intellectual point of view, has need to take the lesson of my two texts, and to be sure that he keeps clear before him both halves of the facts--though they seem to be as unlike each other as the eclipsed and the uneclipsed silver half of the moon--with which he has to deal.

Remember, the one does not contradict the other; but let us ask ourselves if the one does not _explain_ the other. If it be that these mercies are so innumerable as my first text says, may it not be that they go deep down beneath, and include in their number, the experience that seems most opposite to them, even the sorrow that afflicts our lives? Must it not be, that the innumerable sum of G.o.d's mercies has not to have subtracted from it, but has to have added to it, the sum which also at intervals appears to us innumerable, of our sorrows and our burdens? Perhaps the explanation does not go to the bottom of the bottomless, but it goes a long way down towards it. 'Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth' makes a bridge across the gulf which seems to part the opposing cliffs, these two sets effect, and turn the darker into a form in which the brighter reveals itself. 'All things work together for good.' And G.o.d's innumerable mercies include the whole sum total of my sorrows.

II. So, again, notice how the blending of these two thoughts together heightens the impression of each.

All artists, and all other people know the power of contrast. White never looks so white as when it is relieved against black; black never so intense as when it is relieved against white. A white flower in the twilight gleams out in spectral distinctness, paler and fairer than it looked in the blazing sunshine. So, if we take and put these two things together--the dark ma.s.s of man's miseries and the radiant brightness of G.o.d's mercies, each heightens the colour of the other.

Only, let me observe, as I have already suggested that, in the second of my two texts, whilst the Psalmist starts from the 'innumerable evils'

that have compa.s.sed him about, he pa.s.ses from these to the earlier evils which he had done. It is pain that says, 'Innumerable evils have compa.s.sed me about.' It is conscience that says, 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me.' His wrong-doing has come back to him like the boomerang that the Australian savage throws, which may strike its aim but returns to the hand that flung it. It has come back in the shape of a sorrow. And so 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me' is the deepening of the earliest word of my text. Therefore, I am not reading a double meaning into it, but the double meaning is in it when I see here a reference both to a man's manifold sorrows and to a man's multiplied transgressions. Taking the latter into consideration, the contrast between these two heightens both of them.

G.o.d's mercies never seem so fair, so wonderful, as when they are looked at in conjunction with man's sin. Man's sin never seems so foul and hideous as when it is looked at close against G.o.d's mercies. You cannot estimate the conduct of one of two parties to a transaction unless you have the conduct of the other before you. You cannot understand a father's love unless you take into account the prodigal son's sullen unthankfulness, or his unthankfulness without remembering his father's love. You cannot estimate the clemency of a patient monarch unless you know the blackness and persistency of the treason of his rebellious subjects, nor their treason, except when seen in connection with his clemency. You cannot estimate the long-suffering of a friend unless you know the crimes against friendship of which his friend has been guilty, nor the blackness of his treachery without the knowledge of the other's loyalty to him. So we do not see the radiant brightness of G.o.d's loving-kindness to us until we look at it from the depth of the darkness of our own sin. The stars are seen from the bottom of the well. The loving-kindness of G.o.d becomes wonderful when we think of the sort of people on whom it has been lavished. And my evil is never apprehended in its true hideousness until I have set it black and ugly, but searched through and through, and revealed in every deformed outline, and in every hideous lineament, by the light against which I see it. You must take both in order to understand either.

And not only so, but actually these two opposites, which are ever warring with one another in a duel, most merciful, patient, and long-suffering on His part--these two elements do intensify one another, not only in our estimation but in reality. For it is man's sin that has drawn out the deepest and most wonderful tenderness of the divine heart; and it is G.o.d's love partly recognised and rejected, which leads men to the darkest evil. Man's sin has heightened G.o.d's love to this climax and consummation of all tenderness, that He has sent us His Son. And G.o.d's love thus heightened has darkened and deepened man's sin. G.o.d's chiefest gift is His Son. Man's darkest sin is the rejection of Christ. The clearest light makes the blackest shadow, the tenderer the love, the more criminal the apathy and selfishness which oppose it.

My brother! let us put these two great things together, and learn how the sin heightens the love, and how the love aggravates the sin.

III. That leads me to another point, that the keeping of these two thoughts together should lead us all to conscious penitence.

The Psalmist's words are not the mere complaint of a soul in affliction, they are also the acknowledgment of a conscience repenting. The contemplation of these two numberless series should affect us all in a like manner.

Now there is a superficial kind of popular religion which has a great deal to say about the first of these texts; and very little or next to nothing about the second. It is a very defective kind of religion that says:--'Many, O Lord my G.o.d! are Thy thoughts which are to us-ward,' but has never been down on its knees with the confession 'Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me.' But defective as it is, it is all the religion which many people have, and I doubt not, some of my hearers have no more. I would press on you all this truth, that there is no deep personal religion without a deep consciousness of personal transgression. Have you got that, my brother? Have you ever had it? Have you ever known what it is so to look at G.o.d's love that it smites you into tears of repentance when you think of the way you have requited Him? If you have not, I do not think the sense of G.o.d's love has gone very deeply into you, notwithstanding all that you say; and sure I am that you have never got to the point where you can understand it most clearly and most deeply. The sense of sin, the consciousness of personal demerit, the feeling that I have gone against Him and His loving law,--that is as important and as essential an element in all deep personal religion as the clear and thankful apprehension of the love of G.o.d. Nay, more; there never has been and there never will be in a man's heart, a worthy adequate apprehension of, and response to, the wonderful love of G.o.d, except it be accompanied with a sense of sin. I, therefore, urge this upon you that, for the vigour of your own personal religion, you must keep these two things well together. Beware of such a shallow, easy-going, matter-of-course, taking for granted G.o.d's infinite love, that it makes you think very little of your own sins against that love.

And remember, on the other hand, that the only way, or at least by far the surest way, to learn the depth and the darkness of my own transgression is by bringing my heart under the influence of that great love of G.o.d in Jesus Christ. It is not preaching h.e.l.l that will break a man's heart down into true repentance. It is not thundering over him with the terrors of law and trying to p.r.i.c.k his conscience that will bring him to a deep real knowledge of his sin. These may be subordinate and auxiliary, but the real power that convinces of sin is the love of G.o.d. The one light which illuminates the dark recesses of one's own heart, and makes us feel how dark they are, and how full of creeping unclean things, is the light of the love of G.o.d that shines in Jesus Christ, the light that shines from the Cross of Calvary. Oh, dear friends! if we are ever to know the greatness of G.o.d's love we must feel our personal sin which that great love has forgiven and purged away, and if we are ever to know the depth of our own evil, we must measure it by His wonderful tenderness. We must set our 'sins in the light of His countenance,' and contrast that supreme sacrifice with our own selfish loveless lives, that the contrast may subdue us to penitence and melt us to tears.

IV. Lastly, looking at these two numberless series together will bring into the deepest penitence a joyful confidence.

There are regions of experience the very opposite of that error of which I have just been speaking. There are some of us, perhaps, who have so profound a sense of their own shortcomings and sins that the mists rising from these have blurred the sky to us and shut out the sun. Some of you, perhaps, may be saying to yourselves that you cannot get hold of G.o.d's love because your sin seems to you to be so great, or may be saying to yourselves that it is impossible that you should ever get the victory over this evil of yours, because it has laid hold upon you with so tight a grasp. If there be in any heart listening to me now any inclination to doubt the infinite love of G.o.d, or the infinite possibility of cleansing from all sin, let me come with the simple word, Bind these two texts together, and never so look at your own evil as to lose sight of the infinite mercy of G.o.d. It is safe to say--ay! it is blessed to say--'Mine iniquities are more than the hairs of mine head,'

when we can also say, 'Thy thoughts to me are more than can be numbered.'

There are not two innumerable series, there is only one. There is a limit and a number to my sins and to yours, but G.o.d's mercies are properly numberless. They overlap all our sins, they stretch beyond our sins in all dimensions. They go beneath them, they encompa.s.s them, and they will thin them away and cause them to disappear. My sins may be many, G.o.d's mercies are more. My sins may be inveterate, G.o.d's mercy is from everlasting. My sins may be strong, G.o.d's mercy is omnipotent. My sins may seem to 'have laid upon me,' G.o.d can rescue me from their grip.

They are a film on the surface of the deep ocean of His love. My sins may be as the sand which is by the seash.o.r.e, innumerable, the love of G.o.d in Jesus Christ is like the great sea which rolls over the sands and buries them. My sins may rise mountains high, but His mercies are a great deep which will cover the mountains to their very summit. Ah! my sin is enormous, G.o.d's mercy is inexhaustible. 'With Thee is plenteous redemption, and He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.'

THIRSTING FOR G.o.d

'My soul thirsteth for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d.'--PSALM xiii. 2.

This whole psalm reads like the sob of a wounded heart. The writer of it is shut out from the Temple of his G.o.d, from the holy soil of his native land. One can see him sitting solitary yonder in the lonely wilderness (for the geographical details that occur in one part of the psalm point to his situation as being on the other side of the Jordan, in the mountains of Moab)--can see him sitting there with long wistful gaze yearning across the narrow valley and the rushing stream that lay between him and the land of G.o.d's chosen people, and his eye resting perhaps on the mountaintop that looked down upon Jerusalem. He felt shut out from the presence of G.o.d. We need not suppose that he believed all the rest of the world to be profane and G.o.d-forsaken, except only the Temple. Nor need we wonder, on the other hand, that his faith did cling to form, and that he thought the sparrows beneath the eaves of the Temple blessed birds! He was depressed, because he was shut out from the tokens of G.o.d's presence; and because he _was_ depressed, he shut himself out from the reality of the presence. And so he cried with a cry which never is in vain, 'My soul thirsteth for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d!'

Taken, then, in its original sense, the words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call religious depression. But I have ventured to take them in a wider sense than that. It is not only Christian men who are cast down, whose souls 'thirst for G.o.d.' It is not only men upon earth whose souls thirst for G.o.d. All men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs. Every human heart may breathe it out, if it understands itself. The longing for 'the living G.o.d' belongs to all men.

Thwarted, stifled, it still survives. Unconscious, it is our deepest misery. Recognised, yielded to, accepted, it is the foundation of our highest blessings. Filled to the full, it still survives unsatiated and expectant. For all men upon earth, Christian or not Christian, for Christians here below, whether in times of depression or in times of gladness, and for the blessed and calm spirits that in ecstasy of longing, full of fruition, stand around G.o.d's throne--it is equally true that their souls 'thirst for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d.' Only with this difference, that to some the desire is misery and death, and to some the desire is life and perfect blessedness. So that the first thought I would suggest to you now is, that there is an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after G.o.d, which is what we call the state of nature; secondly, that there is an imperfect longing after G.o.d, fully satisfied, which is what we call the state of grace; and lastly, that there is a perfect longing, perfectly satisfied, which is what we call the state of glory. Nature; religion upon earth; blessedness in heaven--my text is the expression, in divers senses, of them all.

I. In the first place, then, there is in every man an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after G.o.d, and that is the state of nature.

Experience is the test of that a.s.sertion. And the most superficial examination of the facts of daily life, as well as the questioning of our own souls, will tell us that _this_ is the leading feature of them--a state of unrest. What is it that one of those deistic poets of our own land says, about 'Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest'?

What is the meaning of the fact that all round about us, and we partaking of it, there is ceaseless, gigantic activity going on? The very fact that men work, the very fact of activity in the mind and life, n.o.ble as it is, and root of all that is good, and beautiful as it is, is still the testimony of nature to this fact that I by myself am full of pa.s.sionate longings, of earnest desires, of unsupplied wants. 'I thirst,' is the voice of the whole world.

No man is made to be satisfied from himself. For the stilling of our own hearts, for the satisfying of our own nature, for the strengthening and joy of our being, we need to go beyond ourselves, and to fix upon something external to ourselves. We are not independent. None of us can stand by himself. No man carries within him the fountain from which he can draw. If a heart is to be blessed, it must go out of the narrow circle of its own individuality; and if a man's life is to be strong and happy, he must get the foundation of his strength somewhere else than in his own soul. And, my friends! especially you young men, all that modern doctrine of self-reliance, though it has a true side to it, has also a frightfully false side. Though it may he quite true that a man ought to be, in one sense, sufficient for himself, and that there is no real blessedness of which the root does not lie within the nature and heart of the man; though all that be quite true, yet, if the doctrine means (as on the lips of many a modern eloquent and powerful teacher of it, it does mean) that we can do without G.o.d, that we may be self-reliant and self-sufficient, and proudly neglectful of all the divine forces that come down into life to brighten and gladden it, it is a lie, false and fatal; and of all the falsehoods that are going about this world at present, I know not one that is varnished over with more apparent truth, that is smeared over with more of the honey that catches young, ardent, ingenuous hearts, than that half-truth, and therefore most deceptive error, which preaches independence, and self-reliance, and which _means_--a man's soul does not 'thirst for the living G.o.d.' Take care of it! We are made _not_ to be independent.

We are made, next, to need, not _things_, but _living beings_. 'My soul thirsteth'--for what? An abstraction, a possession, riches, a thing? No!

'my soul thirsteth for G.o.d, for _the living G.o.d_.' Yes, hearts want hearts. The converse of Christ's saying is equally true; He said, 'G.o.d is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit'; man has a spirit, and man must have Spirit to worship, to lean upon, to live by, or all will be inefficient and unsatisfactory. Oh, lay this to heart, my brother!--no _things_ can satisfy a living soul. No acc.u.mulation of dead matter can become the life of an immortal being.

The two cla.s.ses are separated by the whole diameter of the universe--matter and spirit, thing and person; and _you_ cannot feed yourself upon the dead husks that lie there round about you--wealth, position, honour. Books, thoughts, though they are n.o.bler than these other, are still inefficient. Principles, 'causes,' emotions springing from truth, these are not enough. I want more than that, I want something to love, something to lay a hand upon, that shall return the grasp of the hand. A living man must have a living G.o.d, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to need _persons_, not _things_.

Then again, we need _one_ Being who shall be all-sufficient. There is no greater misery than that which may ensue from the attempt to satisfy our souls by the acc.u.mulation of objects, each of them imperfect and finite, which yet we fancy, woven together, will make an adequate whole. When a heart is diverted from its one central purpose, when a life is split up in a hundred different directions and into a hundred different emotions, it is like a beam of light pa.s.sed through some broken surface where it is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision, there is no perfect light. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source to which he can go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls, may find the many; but until he has bartered them all for the one, there is something lacking. Not only does the understanding require to pa.s.s through the manifold, up and up in ever higher generalisations, till it reaches the One from whom all things come; but the heart requires to soar, if it would be at rest, through all the diverse regions where its love may legitimately tarry for a while, until it reaches the sole and central throne of the universe, and there it may cease its flight, and fold its weary wings, and sleep like a bird within its nest. We want a _Being_, and we want _one Being_ in whom shall be sphered all perfection, in whom shall abide all power and blessedness; beyond whom thought cannot pa.s.s, out of whose infinite circ.u.mference love does not need to wander; besides whose boundless treasures no other riches can be required; who is light for the understanding, power for the will, authority for the practical life, purpose for the efforts, motive for the doings, end and object for the feelings, home of the affections, light of our seeing, life of our life, the love of our heart, the one living G.o.d, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth; who is all in all, and without whom everything else is misery. 'My soul thirsteth for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d.'

Brother! let me ask you the question, before I pa.s.s on--the question for the sake of which I am preaching this sermon: Do _you_ know that Father?

I know this much, that every heart here now answers an 'Amen' (if it will be honest) to what I have been saying. Unrest; panting, desperate thirst, deceiving itself as to where it should go; slaking itself 'at the gilded puddles that the beasts would cough at,' instead of coming to the water of life!--that is the state of man without G.o.d. That is nature. That is irreligion. The condition in which every man is that is not trusting in Jesus Christ, is this--thirsting for G.o.d, and not knowing _whom_ he is thirsting for, and so not getting the supply that he wants.

II. There is a conscious longing, imperfect, but answered; and that is the state of grace--the beginning of religion in a man's soul.