LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIB'T OF" 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 Accessions No.ST" Class No. 
 
GATES INTO THE PSALM-COUNTRY. 
 
GATES 
 
 INTO THE 
 
 PSALM-COUNTRY 
 
 BY 
 
 MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D., 
 
 PASTOR OF "THE CHURCH OF ,THE COVENANT," NEW YOKK. 
 
 " Open to me the gates of righteousness : I will go into them, and I will praise 
 the Lord ; 
 
 " This gate of the Lord into which the righteous shall enter." 
 
 PSALM cxviii. ; 19, 20. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 BROADWAY. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 1878. 
 
 TROW'S 
 
 PRINTING & BOOKBINDING Co., 
 
 205-213 East i-2'k St., 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
MY PEOPLE, 
 
 ~~ 
 
 WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY JOY TO LEAD THROUGH 
 THESE "GATES," 
 
 3E ScMcate tfcte 
 
JTIVBRSITT 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS volume is not intended as a critical treatise. 
 It is for the closet rather than for the study : for the 
 average Bible-reader rather than for the scholar. 
 The several chapters are, as the title imports, 
 merely "gates," opening here and there into this 
 wonderful Psalm-region, and leading to outlooks 
 from which, it is hoped, readers may catch glimpses 
 of the ineffable beauty and richness of this land of 
 sacred song, and be stimulated to longer journeys 
 and to more minute researches. 
 
 Almost all of these chapters were originally given 
 to my own people in the form of lectures or ser- 
 mons ; and while I have in some instances modified, 
 or partially recast them, I have suffered them to 
 retain much of the familiarity and directness of ad- 
 dress which mark the spoken discourse as dis- 
 tinguished from the essay. 
 
 Some of these studies, it will be observed, deal 
 with entire Psalms, others with single verses. Yet 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 it may be found, in some cases, that the single 
 verse lies in the cleavage-line of the whole Psalm. 
 
 I shall be thankful, if, in any degree, I can make 
 others share the feeling which has been constantly 
 present to myself in the preparation of this volume 
 how habitually the Psalms fall into the track of 
 New Testament thought and sentiment. At a time 
 when so many readers are influenced, unconsciously, 
 perhaps, by the patronizing tone of certain modern 
 critics towards these inspired songs, to regard them 
 mainly as interesting relics, and expressions of a 
 crude morality and of an infantile faith, it may be 
 of service to show, even in this unsystematic and 
 fragmentary way, how many of them fit into the 
 best and ripest phases of Christian thought, and 
 adapt themselves to the most advanced ideals of 
 Christian duty. If I may use the words of the elo- 
 quent Bishop of Derry : "The Psalms are inter- 
 woven with the texture of the New Testament. 
 Christianity is responsible for the Psalter with its 
 very life. The golden key of the Psalter lies in a 
 pierced hand. There are many who profess to exr- 
 pel Christ from the Psalms in the interest of the 
 Psalms themselves. But the Psalter as a living 
 thing, and the association with it of our Incarnate 
 'Lord, stand together. Those were memorable 
 words which Mr. Coleridge wrote upon the margin 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 of his Prayer Book : ' As a transparency on some 
 night of public rejoicing, seen by common day, 
 with the lamps from within removed, even such 
 would the Psalms be to me, uninterpreted by the 
 Gospel.'"* 
 
 In the versions of the Psalms, I have mostly 
 followed Canon Perowne, and in the essay on 
 the Pilgrim Psalms, and in the chapter entitled 
 " The Gate to the Harvest-field," I have to express 
 my great obligation to the charming little volume 
 on the Pilgrim Psalms, by the Rev. Samuel Cox, 
 of Corporation Oaks, Nottingham, the editor of 
 the " Expositor." 
 
 COVENANT PARSONAGE, October 21, 1878. 
 
 *" Witness of the Psalms to Christ," by William Alexander, 
 D.D., D.C. L., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Bampton Lectures 
 for 1876. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE ORCHARD GATE 3 
 
 II. THE GATE TO THE THRESHING-FLOOR 21 
 
 III. THE ORATORY GATE 39 
 
 IV. THE PASTURE GATE 53 
 
 V. THE REGISTRY GATE 75 
 
 VI. THE TREASURY GATE 91 
 
 VII. THE GATE TO THE CONFESSIONAL 109 
 
 VIII. THE GATE TO THE WAITING-PLACE 127 
 
 IX. THE GATE TO THE PHYSICIAN'S 145 
 
 X. THE GATE TO THE CAVE 163 
 
 XL THE GATE TO THE SEA 181 
 
 XII. THE GATE TO GOD'S ACRE 199 
 
 XIII. THE GATE TO REST 215 
 
 XIV. THE GATE TO THE HERITAGE 231 
 
 XV. THE GATE TO THE DRILL-GROUND 247 
 
 XVI. THE GATE TO THE HIGHLANDS 265 
 
 XVII. THE GATE TO THE HARVEST-FIELD 283 
 
 XVIII. THE GATE OF THE CARAVAN 299 
 
THE ORCHARD GATE. 
 
PSALM I. 
 
 (1) Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel 
 
 of the wicked, 
 
 Nor stood in the way of sinners, 
 Nor sat in the seat of scor-eis : 
 
 (2) But in the law of Jehovah is his deiigru, 
 
 And in His law doth he meditate day and night. 
 
 (3) So is he like a tree planted by streams of water, 
 That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, 
 
 And whose leaf also doth not wither : 
 
 And all that he doeth he maketh to prosper. 
 
THE ORCHARD GATE. 
 
 As one in entering a city or a public building pauses 
 to read the inscription over the gate, so, on the threshold 
 of this wonderful temple of song, we shall be repaid by 
 stopping to study the first Psalm; which is a real inscrip- 
 tion, foreshadowing what is beyond. It embodies the 
 truth which underlies the whole Book of Psalrns that 
 God has appointed salvation to the righteous and destruc- 
 tion to the wicked. Out of this theme grow the infinite 
 modulations of aspiration, prayer, confession, personal 
 history, denunciation, regret, praise, and admonition, 
 which have made this book, in every age, the interpreter 
 of the Church's deepest emotion and the favorite closet 
 monitor of the individual saint. 
 
 The Psalm, therefore, divides itself very simply into 
 two parts : the first treating of the character and reward 
 of the righteous, and the second of the character and 
 reward of the wicked. I 
 
 A good man is a subject for song. He is a happy man, 
 and happiness is contagious. He is a dispenser of 
 strength, and comfort, and good counsel, and thus stirs 
 up other hearts to sing. He is a struggling, but a victo- 
 rious man ; and victory is a theme of song the world over : 
 and the symmetry and sweetness of the character which 
 
4 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 he develops in his struggle, are things to kindle the poet's 
 heart, and to make men sing thanksgiving hymns for the 
 grace which shapes a noble man in the midst of the world's 
 pettiness and selfishness. 
 
 So it is no wonder that the Psalm breaks abruptly into 
 our meditation with an exclamation of admiring joy : " O, 
 how happy is the man who shuns the path of the sinner, 
 and delights in the law of the Lord ! " It is as if the au- 
 thor had been long watching the panorama of human life 
 unfolding before him in court and camp, and beholding 
 with growing enthusiasm the course of the upright man, 
 until, unable longer to repress his admiration, he bursts 
 forth into words of congratulation. 
 
 The good man is first described negatively : as to what 
 he is not ; and, in this description, some have thought 
 that a progress in evil was indicated. Thus, the good man 
 is not one of those who begin by walking in the counsel of 
 the ungodly ; as a man who, in his walk, lounges care- 
 lessly into the company of the wicked, listening for a little 
 while to their talk, or watching them at their pleasure. 
 This is the " entering into temptation," 1 against which our 
 Lord warns us. So, consequently, the godly man avoids 
 the second step standing in the way of sinners ; linger- 
 ing in their society : and also the third, sitting in the 
 scorner's seat the last development of an evil career; 
 when one has given himself wholly to the society of the 
 wicked, has become one of them, and not only works 
 evil, but scoffs at holiness. 
 
 There is something very suggestive in the fact that this 
 
 1 Mark xiv. 38. 
 
The Orchard Gate. 5 
 
 negative description of virtue is put first. It is true that 
 goodness does not primarily consist in what a man is not ; 
 and the Psalm does not overlook this fact, as we shall see ; 
 but this mode of statement is based upon that assumption 
 of the native weakness and corruption of the human heart, 
 which underlies the whole Bible. If you are compelled 
 to be absent from home for a day, and to leave your house 
 in charge of a servant whom you know to be careless, and 
 easily tempted to neglect duty the most of your instruc- 
 tions are given him in this negative form. You do not so 
 much say " Do this, or do that," as " Be careful that you 
 do not forget to do this or that. Do not leave the house. 
 Do not fail to secure the doors. Do not neglect to deliver 
 such a message.' 1 The uppermost thought in your mind is 
 that the servant is likely to do what he has no business to 
 do ; and against this you try to guard. The Bible assumes 
 the same thing in the case of man. He is naturally dis- 
 posed to stand in the way of sinners and to walk in the 
 counsel of the ungodly. Of the commandments, eight be- 
 gin " Thou shalt not : " and one of the remaining two, 
 the fourth, combines "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt 
 not." 
 
 But, as already observed, the Psalm does not overlook 
 the positive side of godly character ; and in presenting 
 this, it introduces us to a charming range of thought, 
 through a comparison with one of the most beautiful ob- 
 jects in nature. " He shall be like a tree planted by the 
 rivers of water, which bringeth forth his fruit in his season. 
 His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth 
 shall prosper." 
 
 In this figure there are revealed three aspects of godly 
 
6 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 character : its variety, its divine culture, and its fruitful- 
 ness. Let us look at each of these in turn. 
 
 Notice the room which the figure leaves for the devel- 
 opment of varieties of goodness. The comparison is with 
 a fruit tree : not of any particular kind, but any one of that 
 large class of trees ; thus giving us the whole range of 
 the garden or the nursery from which to illustrate the in- 
 finite diversity with which moral beauty and fruitfulness 
 reveal themselves. True godliness does not reduce men 
 to a dead level. The variety which God stamps upon na- 
 ture, He means to have reproduced in character. It is 
 often supposed that, b} 7 becoming a servant of God, a man 
 loses all his distinctiveness, sacrifices many of his peculiar 
 modes of power, and shuts himself up to a comparatively 
 narrow range of activity : whereas the truth is that no man 
 ever finds out the variety of uses to which human talent 
 and power can be put, until he begins to work under God's 
 direction. Neither the variety nor the measure of power 
 are fully developed until then. The power and the op- 
 portunity are never in contact until then. There is no 
 grade of talent, no acquirement, no odd individuality, no 
 natural gift, no trained faculty, for which the kingdom of 
 grace has not fifty places and modes of exercise where the 
 kingdom of nature has one : and one reason why the 
 human race presents so many of what we call oddities of 
 character, is because these are out of the place which God 
 made for them. When a thing is in its place, it ceases to 
 be odd. A man who had never seen a gun, might take 
 up the various parts of it as they lay on the workman's 
 bench, and declare that he could not conceive why such 
 things should ever have been made ; that curiously shaped 
 
The Orchard Gate. 7 
 
 'piece of wood ; that clicking lock, working back and forth 
 so oddly ; that long iron tube what are they all for ? He 
 finds out when -the gunsmith puts lock, stock, and barrel 
 together, and the sportsman charges the piece and brings 
 down with it the bounding deer. Hundreds of men and 
 women are in contact with society like tenons which have 
 no socket. They are protuberances which press against so- 
 ciety, and irritate it, and make, by dint of much rubbing, a 
 kind of ill- fitting place for themselves. Let God once put 
 such people in His places, and all the tenons find their 
 sockets. 
 
 A man once called upon me who had been rescued from 
 the depths of ruffianism, and who was carrying on a mis- 
 sion among the outcasts in the lower wards of the city. 
 He was telling of the prayer-meetings they held there ; 
 and how they were not {infrequently disturbed by drunken 
 rioters, who broke into the room and had to be put out by 
 force. Said he : " When anything of that kind happens, 
 they just strike up a hymn, and I go as quietly as I can and 
 get them out of the room. Sometimes they are very ugly 
 and strike at me. But you know I was a fighting man 
 myself once, and pretty well used to taking care of myself 
 with my hands ; and its astonishing how handy it comes 
 now." The illustration is all the better, because it comes 
 from so low down. God had a place for the mere brute 
 power and training which had made a ruffian a pest of 
 society, and could turn it to use, on occasion, for the pro- 
 tection of His own house and worship. 
 
 The comparison farther illustrates the divine culture of 
 godly character. The godly man is not like a tree which 
 grows wild. He is like a tree planted, and that in a place 
 
8 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 which will best promote its growth. Godly character is de- 
 veloped under God's special supervision, and with God's 
 own appliances. We cannot but notice here how our 
 Savior's words are anticipated : " Ye have not chosen me, 
 but I have chosen you, and planted you, 1 that ye should 
 bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain." And 
 it is no small thing, in a world where so many are out of 
 their place, or without any place at all, to be assured that 
 any man who chooses may do his work and develop his 
 character in a place of God's choosing. We think per- 
 haps it would be a great thing for us to have our place 
 pointed out as clearly as Moses' or Paul's. Well, why 
 not ? Was it only for a dozen men that the promise was 
 made, that any man who lacks wisdom can have it by ask- 
 ing of God in faith ? Has God no other means of re- 
 vealing His will, but through a burning bush or a stunning 
 shock ? On the contrary, His modes of revelation are as 
 many as the characters and circumstances of men, and as 
 varied ; and He does not mean that His lowliest servant 
 shall work under the shadow of a doubt whether he is in 
 his place or not. He may make circumstances, or con- 
 scientious judgment, or special dispensations His messen- 
 gers, but whatever be the messenger, the message shall be 
 clear to the open eye and the obedient spirit " I have 
 planted you." 
 
 And if a man is working and growing where God sets 
 him, he is always within reach of the means necessary for 
 his growth and fruitfulness. He is always planted by riv- 
 ers of water. Men find these channels in the most un- 
 
 1 Such is the true rendering of " ordained," John xv. 16. 
 
The Orchard Gate. 9 
 
 likely places ; in the most unpromising parts of God's 
 garden. In their very work they find something to en- 
 gage their energy, quicken their enthusiasm, and develop 
 their power. It is wonderful what grand trees will often 
 grow up among rocks ; 1 and what majesty of character and 
 variety and reach of power will often be nourished by hard- 
 ship. One would naturally have supposed that Paul's 
 imprisonment was the end of his missionary career; yet it 
 was one of the most fruitful periods of his life to the Chris- 
 tian Church of all time. Not to speak of his work in the 
 imperial household, the fruit of his being planted in that 
 seemingly barren spot, drops rich and ripe into the 
 Church's hand to-day from the Philippian, Colossian, and 
 Ephesian epistles, and from the little letter to Philemon. 
 And this is a mystery to men of the world. They look 
 
 1 " The resources of trees," says Ruskin, " are not developed un- 
 til they have difficulty to contend with ; neither their tenderness of 
 brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways 
 of various life where there is contracted room for them, talking to 
 each other with their restrained branches. The various action of trees 
 rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, 
 hiding from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of 
 rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, 
 climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sudden 
 dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest 
 among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession over the home- 
 ward ridges nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed and 
 unvaried felicities of the lowland forest." 
 
 And Heinrich Heine, in his u Harzreise," has a similar thought. 
 " They " (the mountain trees) *' stand firmer than their comfortable 
 colleagues in the cultivated forest ground of the lowland. Thus in 
 life stand those great men who, through victory over earlier hin- 
 drances and obstacles, have won strength and steadfastness." 
 I* 
 
IO Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 at the places in which some of God's servants are planted, 
 and say it is impossible they should bear fruit there. Cir- 
 cumstances are all against them. There are no capabili- 
 ties in the place. They must go away, or they will starve, 
 mentally and spiritually, aye, and bodily too ; and yet 
 they do not starve, and they are not crushed. Amid sick- 
 ness, bereavement, scant opportunities, hatred, scorn, they 
 not only live, but grow, and have something to spare for 
 other lives, yea, minister to them most richly and effect- 
 ively. What is more, they themselves are cheerful and 
 strong, and grow in sweetness no less than in power. It 
 is a mystery to the world, I say, but no mystery to him 
 who knows this Psalm by heart. " The secret of the Lord 
 is with them that fear Him." ! Even so have I seen a tree 
 standing out in a dreary, stony plain, under the blazing sun, 
 yet fresh and green, and with the stir of life in its leaves 
 and branches ; and that though I could see no gleam of 
 water, and hear the gurgle of no stream through the still- 
 ness of the shimmering noon. Yet none the less was it 
 planted by the waters. Down deep under the soil flowed 
 the rills which bathed its roots and nourished its life. 
 And the waters by which God feeds these planted lives of 
 His in dry places are seldom seen. They flow in deep chan- 
 nels of God's digging, where the eye of man cannot track 
 them, but where they run, charged with strength and glad- 
 ness, to the souls which are weary and heavy laden. Do 
 you know where this truth finds its highest illustration ? 
 Did you ever ponder that wonderful text in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews ? " It became Him for whom are all things, 
 
 1 Ps. xxv. 14. 
 
The Orchard Gate. II 
 
 and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons into 
 glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through 
 suffering." 1 What do those words mean, but that suffering 
 is God's mightiest instrument of perfection ? What is the 
 meaning of the life and agony and death of the Man of 
 sorrows, but to show to an incredulous world a world 
 which believes that suffering can only blight, that the 
 rarest, grandest humanity the world has ever seen or ever 
 will see, could grow up in the hardest and most barren soil 
 in which humanity ever struggled for life ? 
 
 And Christian men, yet of little faith, not unfrequently 
 find this a mystery too. You find one here and there who 
 doubts whether God planted him because he cannot see 
 the rivers of water. He says " I should be more fruitful if 
 I were planted somewhere else ; if I were not confined to 
 this sick-bed ; if I could go to church or to prayer-meet- 
 ing oftener ; if I were in a less worldly atmosphere." 
 
 It is very, very doubtful. If God has planted you, 
 there is a river of water somewhere near you ; and you 
 can do no better thing, nothing half so good as to find the 
 river on your ground. That is the stream adapted to 
 strengthen your peculiar weakness, and to nourish your pe- 
 culiar form of power. You are much on a sick-bed. You 
 wish you might be planted on some healthful height in 
 God's garden. But God has set you among the chill 
 damps, and the fever heats, and in the languid air which 
 swoons with lassitude ; but there is a stream called Pa- 
 tience flowing close by that sick-bed, and it may be that 
 God put you there for nothing else but to find it. You 
 
 1 Heb. ii. 10. 
 
12 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 miss the stimulus and the inspiration of social worship ; it 
 may have been, in olden days, when you were in the 
 whirl of society, something kept you at home for awhile ; 
 and you learned in that interval to know a true friend 
 whose worth you never knew before ; and so it may be 
 that Christ wanted to show you how much He could be to 
 you ; and He drew you aside all to Himself, planted you 
 where He alone could tend you, and if you have found 
 your river, you know now, as you never knew before, the 
 meaning of those words " He that 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." ! And thus it is with all 
 the bare spots where God plants you. If He plants you, 
 it is always by rivers of water. See that you find your 
 river in your place. Though you miss the sweet compan- 
 ionship which has lightened your years of toil, though the 
 sun of sorrow seem to dry up every drop of refreshing, 
 though your iron ring hard against the cruel rock, yet 
 search, for you shall find living water by and by. Not very 
 long ago 1 received a letter from a friend who had been 
 passing through eight long months of weary watching and 
 anxious dread, and toil, robbed of all heart by the lowering 
 shadow of possible bereavement. He said " I believe 
 more than ever in prayer in the closet." Those eight 
 months wrote their mark upon him, but he found his 
 river ; and when a man strikes that water prayer, he goes 
 down to an artesian well, deep as the being of God, and 
 exhaustless as eternity. 
 
 1 John iv. 14. 
 
The Orchard Gate. 13 
 
 Fruitfulness is the natural result of all this. God's tree 
 by God's river must be a fruitful tree. " He that abideth 
 in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." 1 
 " Those that be planted in the courts of the Lord, shall 
 flourish in the courts of our God." 2 Only we must note 
 two little hints in this verse, either of which might easily 
 be expanded into a sermon. The first is "his fruit;" 
 not any other tree's fruit. God gives the tree its nature, 
 and plants it where it can best develop its nature, and 
 looks for fruit according to its nature and place. So, after 
 you have done your best work in the place where God 
 has set you, do not be disturbed and irritated because it 
 is not the rarer, more beautiful work of some other man. 
 No man's vanity ought to be kindled by his work ; but he 
 who casts contempt on his own honest work, when he has 
 done his best as unto God, insults God, no matter if his 
 work be inferior to that of ten thousand other men. You 
 are not to waste time in admiring or envying other 
 men's modes of power, but to give your whole energy 
 to the development of your own mode of power. And 
 if your best is only a single fruit why, many a time I 
 have seen a gardener point with special pride and pleas- 
 ure to a dwarf pear-tree which had gathered up its whole 
 little life into one single pear ; and if your life's best labor 
 brings to pass but a single result, go back to the thought 
 God planted me and be well content, as you will 
 have a right to be, with the inference from that ; He 
 planted me that I might do that one thing. The whole 
 Christian Church to-day is suffering because of the multi- 
 
 1 John xv. 5. 2 Ps. xcii. 13. 
 
14 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 tude of its members who are doing nothing because they 
 cannot do what somebody else does. 
 
 And the other hint is in the words " In his season." 
 The seasons are different for different fruits. Some are 
 early, some are late. And likewise moral growths do 
 not all fructify at the same time or rate. No workman 
 of God need be disheartened because his fruit season 
 comes late, any more than the luscious pear of the late 
 Autumn need fold up its leaves and die, because its fruit 
 was hard and green in the earlier weeks, when the har- 
 vest-apples hung ripe and juicy from their boughs. The 
 latest fruit is usually the best. But, early or late, the 
 fruit of godly character is seasonable. It will be found 
 that God nourishes His men as He does the fruits of the 
 earth, to meet the demands of special seasons ; and that 
 in each individual character divine graces fructify as the 
 occasion demands ; courage for seasons of danger, 
 patience for seasons of suffering, strength for seasons of 
 trial, wisdom for seasons of difficulty, words spoken in 
 season in short, the beautiful fitness of godliness is no 
 less remarkable than its fruitfulness. 
 
 "And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." This is a 
 kind of general summary of the condition which, thus far, 
 has been treated in detail. It is a most astonishing prom- 
 ise to give to men ; yet here, as all through this Psalm, 
 the correspondence with the broader thought of the New 
 Testament is marked. " All things are yours " 1 because 
 you are God's. Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper, be- 
 cause he is planted in God's garden, by God's rivers. 
 
 1 I Cor. iii. 31. 
 
The Orchard Gate. 15 
 
 Only, this suggests a very important thought as to the 
 standard of prosperity. If it is prosperity which comes 
 from God, it must be measured by God's rule and I 
 need not say that that is quite another rule from men's 
 so that, with reference to a large number of godly men, 
 the world is disposed to deny this statement and to say 
 it is rather the other way : whatsoever he doeth does not 
 prosper. He has sickness and financial disaster ; his 
 plans miscarry ; he has tribulation, distress, nakedness 
 and peril. Yet it by no means follows that he does not 
 prosper according to a different and a higher stand- 
 ard. 
 
 I stood last summer in a magnificent hothouse, where 
 the luscious clusters of grapes were all around and above ; 
 and the owner said, " When my new gardener came, he 
 said he would have nothing to do with these vines unless 
 he could cut them clear down to the stock ; and he did, 
 and we had no grapes for two years ; but this is the re- 
 sult." It did not look much like fruit when the stocks 
 stood bare and the floor was heaped with cuttings ; but 
 the gardener looked over the two years, and saw what we 
 were seeing and tasting. And thus we naturally turn to 
 our Savior's words *' Every branch in Me which beareth 
 fruit, He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." ! 
 God prunes the trees in His own garden, and Faith looks 
 away from the stock which seems so cruelly cut down, 
 and sees the riches of coming years. Any one can see, 
 at a glance, how Paul has learned this lesson, when he 
 says of tribulation, and distress, and peril " Nay, in all 
 
 1 John xv. 2. 
 
1 6 Gates into tJie Psalm Country. 
 
 these things we are abundantly the conquerors through 
 Him that loved us." ' 
 
 And now let us look for a moment at the great supply 
 which nourishes these trees of God and these fruits of 
 holiness. Why is the godly life at once so fruitful and 
 so delightsome ? " His delight is in the law of the 
 Lord j and in His law doth he meditate day and night." 
 This is the stream from which all the minor streams 
 flow : that which gives character to all the juices which 
 promote the growth of godliness. From the law of God 
 all the comforts and incentives, all the warnings and in- 
 junctions which go to make man better and more effi- 
 cient, take their rise and acquire their flavor. He de- 
 lights in it because he loves its Author. Men do not 
 naturally love law They rebel at restraint, and court 
 what they call freedom ; and no man can ever love law 
 in itself. A code has no power to inspire love. He will 
 love the law only through the lawgiver. He will delight 
 in a law which restrains and prunes him, only as he takes 
 supreme delight in the Author of the law. He will 
 meditate on it because he delights in it, as we always 
 think on that which we love ; and only through medita- 
 ting on it will he grow and be fruitful. Meditation is to 
 religious growth, what the drawing up of the juices into 
 the fibres is to the growth of the tree. We make a great 
 mistake if we carry the law into our seasons of activity 
 only. We do indeed learn much of its practical power 
 and value in that way, but a large share of its beauty and 
 richness unfolds only in our hours of retirement, when we 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 37. 
 
The Orchard Gate. 17 
 
 commune with our hearts upon our beds and are still. 
 You have been in a greenhouse, and have seen the large 
 petals of the night-blooming cereus closely folded to- 
 gether, as if shrinking from the stir and bustle of the day ; 
 but as the hours of the night passed away, little by little 
 they fell apart, and the great blossom spread out its 
 creamy leaves to the breath of the night, and made the 
 air heavy with its fragrance. And so it is with the law of 
 God. It may be in a man's heart, yet the crowd of the 
 day's duties and cares may press round it so as to hide its 
 beauty and partially to stifle its fragrance ; but in the hours 
 when thought is free to dwell upon its cherished themes, 
 under the power of midnight meditation it expands and 
 discloses new beauties and sweeter perfume, until the 
 delighted servant of God cries " O how love I thy 
 law ! " ' 
 
 The great lesson, then, of this first part of the Psalm is, 
 Holiness is happiness, security, stability, fruitfulness : 
 and holiness is based solely upon the law of God. Within 
 the sphere of that law, as in a sheltered and well-watered 
 garden, are all the fountains which minister to perfect 
 blessedness and to permanent efficiency. Prosperity ! 
 That is what we all are seeking. Are we sure that we 
 know what true prosperity is? We need be in no doubt 
 if we but get by heart the lesson of this Psalm. It is 
 being in God's ground, placed by God's hand, fed by 
 God's supplies. Stability ! Something fixed and settled! 
 It has been the craving of the world in all ages ; its cry 
 through all its restlessness and shifting. Its cry is heard 
 
 1 Ps. cxix. 97. 
 
1 8 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 and answered here. He is fixed indeed whom God plants 
 in His own ground, and makes steadfast and immovable. 
 Security! How much fear and qifaking are there in hu- 
 man hearts. What a yearning for some safe place of rest. 
 Let the Psalmist lead you to the safest of all places the 
 garden of God, beside the rivers of His peace. What 
 poisonous breath shall infect that tree ? What blast over- 
 throw it ? What hand wound it, while it grows within 
 God's enclosure? "He that dwelleth in the secret place 
 of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the 
 Almighty." ! Fruitfulness ! We are ambitious, full of the 
 spirit of active work. God takes us into His garden to 
 use and to develop our enthusiasm, yet also to tone down 
 our ambition, and to teach us the nature of true success. 
 If He teach us to work, we shall be workmen that need 
 not to be ashamed. If He give us success, our success 
 will stand the fiery trial of His judgment seat, and will 
 "be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appear- 
 ing of Jesus Christ." a Let us follow the Psalmist gladly into 
 the garden of God's law ; and as we revel in its beauty 
 and refreshment, may we be prompted to say, " This is 
 my rest forever. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it." * 
 
 1 Ps. xci. i. * i Pet. i. 7. a Ps. cxxxii. 14. 
 
THE GATE TO THE THRESH- 
 ING-FLOOR. 
 
PSALM I. (Continued.) 
 
 (4) Not so are the wicked ; 
 
 But they are like the chaff which the wind driveth 
 away. 
 
 (5) Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment; 
 Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 
 
 (6) For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous, 
 And the way of the wicked shall perish. 
 
II. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE THRESHING-FLOOR. 
 
 THIS is not as pleasant a theme as the last. Yet if we 
 would see the word of God in its unity, we must face the 
 shadows as well as the lights. And as, in nature, you 
 have observed that nothing is more sharply denned than 
 the edge of a shadow, so here, there is no gradual merg- 
 ing of one class of characters into another. There is no 
 intimation here of any middle ground between godliness 
 and ungodliness. Here and elsewhere, the Bible ranges 
 men on either side of a strongly marked line. Either 
 they are planted by God's hand in God's garden, beside 
 God's streams, or they are outside^ the enclosure. Christ 
 deals with this matter in the same way. He throws men 
 into two categories : those who are with Him and those 
 who are against Him ; " and he that is not with Him is 
 against Him ; and he that gathereth not with Him scatter- 
 eth abroad." l Paul, too, when he speaks of the masters to 
 which man may yield himself, recognizes only two. "To 
 whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants 
 ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of 
 obedience unto righteousness." a And since this truth un- 
 derlies the entire Psalm, and the entire Bible for that 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 30. 2 Rom vi. 16. 
 
22 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 matter, it ought to be clearly understood. No one pre- 
 tends that every man who is not an avowed servant of 
 God is a defter of all moral obligation. No one denies 
 that such often exhibit the loveliest moral traits ; but the 
 question is broader than this, and concerns the moral ad- 
 ministration under which each man lives. An American 
 citizen may go and live for years in Paris. He may speak 
 the French language well, dress like those around him, 
 and be, in no outward respect, distinguishable from a na- 
 tive Parisian ; and yet he may acknowledge no allegiance 
 to the French Government. When a decisive issue arises 
 which compels him to declare himself, you find him at 
 the American minister's, under the protection of his own 
 flag. 
 
 And God's tests, in like manner, go straight through 
 these superficial developments of character, down to the 
 roots of character. Where is it planted ? Whence does it 
 get its impulse? What gives it its ultimate law? Under 
 what administration is it ? Where are you a citizen ? The 
 Bible will not stop to discuss with you the advantages of 
 a foreign administration, nor its points of resemblance to 
 God's administration, nor the eligibleness or respectabil- 
 ity of your position elsewhere. The Bible is on God's 
 side, and is concerned only with the question of allegi- 
 ance to God. It puts us to this simple test citizen or 
 foreigner? God's servant or not ? That NOT contains 
 the germs of all moral disaster. 
 
 Thus we are prepared for the sharp contrast with 
 which this lesson is introduced : " The ungodly are NOT 
 SO." The Psalmist does not dwell upon the details of 
 their ungodliness. As in the case of the righteous, he 
 
The Gate to the Threshing- Floor. 23 
 
 confines himself to indicating the sources of their life, and 
 passes over all that intervenes, until the judgment. The 
 great object of this introductory Psalm is to show us the 
 fountain heads of moral character. Its developments of 
 both kinds we find in abundance throughout the Book of 
 Psalms ; but in this the proper truth to be set forth, is 
 the fundamental one, that all true fruitfulness of character 
 is found in God's garden only ; in being planted by God's 
 hand and by God's rivers, and that all barrenness and 
 uselessness result from being NOT SO. j 
 
 Let us then look at some of the aspects of the charac- 
 ter which is not so. This too is set forth by a figure. 
 We have seen the flourishing tree. The garden enclosure 
 shuts it in ; the watercourses bathe its roots ; the leaf is 
 green, and the fruit hangs thick and tempting. We leave 
 now the garden gate, and not far off behold a raised 
 platform of earth beaten hard. It is the threshing floor. 
 Here stand the workmen with their earthen vessels, and 
 scooping up the threshed grain mingled wit-h chaff, throw 
 it up into the air, or let it fall in a stream from the up- 
 lifted jar ; and the wind, with its whirling gusts which arise 
 so suddenly on the plains, catches the chaff and drives it 
 away before it. " The ungodly are like the chaff which 
 the wind driveth away ; " light, shifting, worthless. 
 
 We have then set forth under this figure three aspects 
 of the ungodly character ; its instability, its worthless- 
 ness, its insecurity. 
 
 One of the happiest phases of goodness is its fixedness. 
 Not that stubborn obstinacy which certain really upright 
 men seem to feel it their duty to cultivate, but a stability 
 which consists with a good degree of flexibility, and with 
 
24 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the very largest fruitfulness : such a steadfastness and im- 
 movableness as always abounds in the work of the Lord, 
 and which is therefore well represented by a tree, firmly 
 rooted, moving with the breath of the wind, and shaking 
 down fruit as it moves. A life rooted thus in God, is 
 based on settled conviction, has a single aim, a uniform 
 tendency, and a permanent result. In these particulars 
 the opposite character fails. As to rational conviction, 
 when a man ceases to believe in God and in God's law, 
 what is he not likely to believe ? Theory after theory 
 comes rolling in from the great deep of speculation, and 
 he is borne now upon one billow, now upon another, and 
 again is out of sight in the trough of the sea. Take a 
 life away from God, and you take from it unity of impulse. 
 Passion, pride, selfishness, drive it hither and thither as 
 the winds drive the dismantled ship. Nowhere but in 
 God does man find a consistent law. The laws which 
 he makes for himself have all sorts of accommodating 
 curves round his pet desires. They are cushioned and 
 padded where they bear upon his favorite indulgences. 
 It is only the statutes of the Lord which are right 
 straight, rejoicing the heart. Consequently, such a life 
 has no singleness of aim. Its aims are as varied as its 
 impulses. It moves toward as many points as the driven 
 chaff; now toward sensual, now toward intellectual grati- 
 fication ; now toward fame, now toward wealth. It is an 
 uneasy life, vague alike in its desires and in its hopes, 
 with no well-defined point of rest in view. And O, that 
 men would learn the lesson of this uneasiness ; for it has 
 a lesson for them. Even as the flying chaff, whirled on 
 before the rapid wind, tells that somewhere there is ripe 
 
The Gate to the Threshing- Floor. 25 
 
 grain, and harvest to be garnered, so this unrest, this 
 ever-recurring thirst of the soul, is a reminder of its home 
 in God. In the beautiful words of Augustine, " Thou 
 madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it 
 repose in Thee." 
 
 The second phase of this character is its worthlessness. 
 Chaff! The wind drives it away and the husbandman is 
 glad to have it driven away. Here again we find our- 
 selves in the track of Gospel thought. '* Every tree 
 which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and 
 cast into the fire." * " Every plant which my Heavenly 
 Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up' : " 2 rooted up 
 for no other reason than that He hath not planted it ; and 
 that though it be green and apparently fruitful. So that 
 we cannot evade the plain proposition An ungodly life 
 is a worthless life because, whatever it may be, however 
 bustling and busy, it is NOT SO. It is not used under 
 God's direction and for God's uses. Even in worldly 
 matters, men are often deceived by a busy life. They 
 see a man who is always active,, who talks a great deal 
 about how much he has to do, who does everything with 
 much bustle and stir, and they insensibly come to re- 
 gard him as a most important and useful man, when in 
 fact he may be neither. 
 
 The present age is very susceptible to this fallacy the 
 identification of activity with usefulness. It is counted 
 high praise to say of one "He is industrious; he is 
 never idle ; therefore he is a good member of society." 
 And the Bible outdoes the world in its praises of faithful 
 
 1 Matthew in. 10. 2 Matthew xv. 13. 
 
 2 
 
26 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 labor, and in its stinging words for the drone ; but it has 
 no praise for work in itself considered. It goes below the 
 work and asks " Under whose direction ? For what ? 
 For whom ?" And it calls that man useful who works on 
 God's lines and in God's way, for God's ends; and it 
 gathers into one category as useless all who are NOT 
 SO. Is that unreasonable ? A general pitches his tent 
 near a green meadow, and sends out a sergeant for re- 
 cruits. Day after day the officer comes in with new volun- 
 teers, and they are ordered into line and put under train- 
 ing. But pretty soon comes along a party of men with 
 scythes on their shoulders. " Come ! Don't you want 
 to enlist ? There is special and honorable service before 
 us, and the state wants its ranks filled quickly." " Well, 
 General," replies one, "you may consider us enlisted, 
 if you like. We are willing to serve the state ; and so 
 we have come to mow this meadow." " But I don't care 
 whether the meadow is mowed or not. I want men to 
 handle muskets, not scythes." 4< No, we prefer to mow. 
 You shall see how active we will be ; how the long 
 swaths will go down before us." Will any one blame the 
 General because he says of those fine stalwart fellows, so 
 eager to work, so active " They are useless ? " What 
 else can he say ? He wants men for war ; ready and 
 able to fight, and whatever they may be, they are use- 
 less if they are NOT SO. It is not enough that you 
 are what society calls useful, what your family calls 
 useful, what even the Church calls useful. The main, the 
 only test of your usefulness applies to its moral relations. 
 If you are not working under God's orders, your greatest 
 apparent usefulness may be a power for evil. A great 
 
The Gate to the Threshing- Floor. 27 
 
 
 
 deal of what passes here for honest work, aye, for Chris- 
 tian work, will be summarily thrown out at the day of 
 judgment, leaving the man who has been so busy, with 
 his work for his pains. 
 
 Useless ! Nay, there is a sense in which such a man is 
 useful. God makes use of him, against his will, to serve 
 His own divine purpose. 
 
 " Blindly the wicked work the righteous will of heaven." 
 
 But what a lot for an immortal soul, for a divinely 
 created will : to be used because it cannot help it. To 
 become useful through its destruction, like the ashes of 
 the fruitless vines, which enrich the soil and make other 
 vines heavy with the fruit which they refuse to bear. O, 
 for a soul to have been useless in the thick crowd of such 
 noble uses : useless, in the face of work which might have 
 enlisted the enthusiasm of angels : useless, when there 
 were so many calls for its power : useless, when Heaven 
 was ready to charge it with its own energy, and to set it 
 moving on a track of conquest. To have God look down 
 with contempt on the bustling activity on which it was 
 wont to pride itself, and upon the objects OH which it ex- 
 pended its strength, and say, " To what purpose is this 
 waste ? " and to drive the soul which thought itself so 
 important and so useful, like useless chaff before the 
 breath of His indignation. 
 
 There will come a time when those who have lived for 
 self and have looked upon life only as a means of minis- 
 tering to their pride, and ease, and pleasure, will get a 
 new and startling view of the dignity of ministry, of 
 the surpassing blessedness of a life ministering in Christ's 
 
28 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 name, and therewith a painful sense of the utter useless- 
 ness of the life which comes to be ministered unto ; 
 which receives all, and gives nothing. It is only the 
 grain, which gives itself to be broken and kneaded, the 
 grain, which falls into the ground and dies to multiply 
 itself and to feed the famishing only the grain which is 
 hoarded. The chaff, which only lives by the grain, which 
 feeds no one, which has no power of reproduction, is driv- 
 en away. So it is the law, the unchanging law of God, that 
 the life which gives nothing has no place in His divine 
 order ; that the life which is bound to no other life by 
 God's laws of love and of ministry, but is self centred, is 
 a light, useless life, to be shaken to the four winds when 
 God shall shake heaven and earth. I know not but this 
 picture gave direction to the lurid imagination of the 
 great Italian poet, when he painted the eternal doom of 
 those who subjugate reason to appetite, in that place 
 
 " Mute of all light, 
 Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest," 
 
 and where 
 
 " The infernal hurricane that never rests 
 Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine : 
 Whirling them round and smiting, it molests them : 
 
 . And as the wings of starlings bear them on 
 In the cold season, in large band and full, 
 So doth that blast the spirits maledict : 
 It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them : 
 No hope doth comfort them for evermore, 
 Not of repose but even of lesser pain." J 
 
 1 Dante, " Inferno," Canto V., Longfellow's Trans. 
 
The Gate to the TJireshing-Floor. 29 
 
 And with such a picture before us, I need not dwell 
 upon the insecurity of the ungodly. The contrast is ob- 
 vious between the tree, safe in its enclosure by the water- 
 courses, watched and tended by the gardener, its fruits 
 safe from the plunderer and the chaff, loosely lying on 
 the exposed threshing floor, where the first blast can 
 drive it, no one cares whither. How safe is the man who 
 abides in God ; while he who puts himself outside of the 
 restraints of divine law, forfeits likewise its protection. 
 
 And this thought of the insecurity of the ungodly fur- 
 nishes a transition point to the next section of the Psalm, 
 which turns on the truth that the real weakness and insta- 
 bility of the character which is not founded in God's law 
 shall finally be made manifest. The whole current of the 
 Psalm moves in the direction of a day of final tests which 
 shall lay bare the foundations of character. All the ob- 
 scurity which now beclouds the conditions and mutual 
 relations of the righteous and* of the wicked, shall be 
 done away. As things now are, this obscurity is very op- 
 pressive. The ungodly man often appears the more 
 prosperous and the safer man of the two. He is com- 
 passed about with friends, secure in popularity, well fur- 
 nished with wealth. He seems to be well grounded. The 
 " green bay tree" lifts up its head outside the garden en- 
 closure, and towers higher than the fruit-tree within, and 
 spreads its branches in great power. Again we find our- 
 selves in the track of our Saviour's thought ; and, singu- 
 larly enough, under the same figure. This part of the 
 Psalm is an almost literal anticipation of the parable of 
 the tares. 1 Tares and wheat are in the same field, as 
 
 1 Matthew xii. 24, 30. 
 
30 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 wheat and chaff are on the same threshing-floor. The 
 tares, for the time, enjoy immunity for the wheat's sake : 
 are not summarily rooted up lest the wheat be root- 
 ed up with them. So the chaff, while it keeps close 
 to the wheat, enjoys some privileges for the wheat's 
 sake. In the world, good and evil grow together. 
 They often look so much alike that no human eye can 
 distinguish them. Evil takes advantage of good for its 
 own ends. Scores of the immunities and privileges en- 
 joyed by evil men, which make them tolerable and respect- 
 able, and even influential in the society in which they 
 move, yea, which enable them to concoct their schemes, 
 and to practice their hypocrisies, and to deceive the world 
 with their superficial morality, are the outgrowths of the 
 very good at which they mock, and of the very principles 
 which they defy. Meanwhile both grow together. The 
 blunder of the world which mistakes wheat for tares and 
 tares for wheat is permitted, for God's reasons, to per- 
 petuate itself for the time. The wicked " stands in the 
 congregation of the righteous." The wolf walks unde- 
 tected in sheep's clothing. The malicious persecutor 
 triumphs. The godly man is slandered, and his name 
 blackened, and his power lamed. Worldly prosperity is 
 not apportioned according to desert. " Is it always," as 
 one happily puts it, " the swift who win the race, and the 
 strong who carry off the honors of the battle? Do 
 none of our intelligent lack bread, nor any of the learned 
 favor ? Are there no fools lifted to high places, to show 
 with how little wisdom the world is governed, and no no- 
 ble, heroic breasts dinted by the blows of hostile circum- 
 stance, or wounded by ' the slings and arrows of outra- 
 
The Gate to the Threshing- Floor. 3 1 
 
 geous fortune ? ' Are there none in our midst who have 
 
 to bear 
 
 ' The whips and scorns of time, 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes ' ? " 1 
 
 Alas, it is only in romances that virtue always triumphs, 
 and vice always goes under. In short, it is the old problem 
 which has tasked the minds of sober thinkers from the be- 
 ginning of time, and has driven some of them well-nigh to 
 despair the problem stated by Job : " Wherefore do the 
 wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? 
 Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their 
 offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from 
 fear, neither is the rod of God upon them." 2 Similarly, the 
 old Preacher breathes the note of despair as he looks. " So 
 I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done 
 under the sun, and behold, the tears of such as were op- 
 pressed, and they had no comforter : and on the side of 
 their oppressors there was power ; but they had no com- 
 forter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already 
 dead more than the living which are yet alive." ! 
 
 1 Samuel Cox, " The Quest of the Chief Good." 
 
 2 Job xxi. 7-9. 
 
 3 Eccles. iv. 1-2. Compare Sophocles, (Eclipus at Colonos, 1226. 
 " Happiest beyond compare 
 Never to taste of life ; 
 Happiest in order next, 
 Being born, with quickest speed 
 Thither again to turn 
 
32 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 But our Psalm does not leave us here. It carries us 
 over this time of the growing together of wheat and tares, 
 to the time of separation. It leads our eye through all 
 the confusion and contradiction, to a settled point of rest. 
 There is coining a day of judgment whose searching tests 
 shall resolve the confusion, and make clearly manifest to the 
 world what is weak and what is strong ; what is solid and 
 what is superficial ; what is wheat and what is chaff. The 
 preacher who sounds that despairing note that death is 
 better than life with this problem unsolved, fights his way 
 through the billows and reaches land at last, and leaves 
 us with the words " God shall bring every work into judg- 
 ment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether 
 it be evil." ! And Job does not go on long in the strain 
 of one hopelessly baffled by the spectacle of the wicked 
 man's prosperity. A few verses more and the note changes. 
 " How oft is the candle of the wicked put out, and how 
 oft cometh their destruction upon them. God distributeth 
 sorrows in His anger. They are as stubble before the 
 wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away." a 
 
 And here we find ourselves viewing the judgment in a 
 mood which, I suspect, is not habitual with us. In our ordi- 
 nary thoughts on the judgment we are chiefly occupied 
 with its terrors. We shrink from its fiery trial. Fear of 
 
 From whence we came. 
 When youth hath passed away, 
 With all its follies light, 
 What sorrow is not there ? " 
 
 PLUMPTRE'S TRANS. 
 
 Eccles. xii. 14. 2 Job xxi. 17, 18. 
 
The Gate to the Threshing-Floor. 33 
 
 its searching tests is our uppermost feeling and we sing 
 
 " That Day of wrath, that dreadful Day ! " 
 and 
 
 " That awful Day will surely come." 
 
 I do not dispute the propriety of these expressions ; but 
 with all its terror, it has another side. " There was a time 
 in the first flush of Christian faith, when the second coming 
 was daily, 'hourly expected : when the believers looked lit- 
 tle to the future, and fancied that the ministry of Jesus 
 Christ had been but the beginning of the end ; " and, if I 
 do not misinterpret the sentiment of those early apostolic 
 times concerning the judgment, it was a joyful, hopeful 
 sentiment rather than one of terror. It was the coming of 
 the Lord to redeem and glorify His people, and to vindicate 
 His struggling church ; and we get into much the same 
 mood through the study of the awful problem on which we 
 have touched. That is the dominant feeling of the book of 
 Ecclesiastes, which deals with this problem of human life. 
 If it be true that this book was composed during the later 
 captivity, under the Persian administration, it is easy to im- 
 agine how a Hebrew exile would look forward to a day of 
 judgment. The slave of a luxurious despot's whims, afraid 
 to accumulate property lest it should tempt the rapacity 
 of some powerful courtier, liable to be put to death at any 
 moment to gratify the passing fancy of the monarch, or to 
 have the whole circle of his kindred cut off at the breath 
 of a malicious slander, 1 in daily contact with the arbitrary 
 system or absence of system which rewarded incpmpe- 
 
 1 As in the case of Mordecai. 
 
 , 
 
 OF THB 
 
34 Gates into the Psalm Country. ^ 
 
 tency, raised worthlessness, and degraded merit we can 
 imagine, I say, how the thought of a judgment would be 
 to such a man the most welcome of all thoughts ; and can 
 appreciate thus the undertone of triumph in the conclud- 
 ing words of the book, " God shall bring every work in- 
 to judgment with every secret thing." And this feeling 
 creeps into our Psalm ; intimated rather than pronounced 
 in the words, " the Lord knoweth the way of the right- 
 eous." A dark way it has been sometimes. A way which 
 has made men question the profitableness of godliness. A 
 way under the shadow of a cross, and compassed about 
 by the phantoms of the pit ; yet God has known all its 
 windings, and has known that through darkness it led up 
 to Him, just as He has known that other way which lay so 
 high, and broad, and smooth under the full blaze of pros- 
 perity's sun, and has seen its end in a precipice, over 
 which the prosperous sinner shall be swept like chaff, 
 Therefore, I repeat, we have a right to draw consolation 
 no less than caution and godly fear from the judgment. 
 It will be a comfort to have this fearful problem of the 
 long tolerated commingling of tares and wheat decisively 
 solved ; and that in a way which shall vindicate the wis- 
 dom and the justice of a God to whom His people cling, 
 though He hide Himself in clouds : which shall prove the 
 eternal solidity of those principles of action to which they 
 hold against all dictates of worldly policy : which shall 
 right all wrongs and riddle all shams, and bring to naught 
 all vain boasting, and set each man in his true place as 
 related to God. A comfort this to God's servants, but no 
 less a terror to the wicked. O, what a fearful winnowing 
 shall swell the chaff heaps in that day. What hypocrisies 
 
The Gate to the Threshing- Floor. 35 
 
 shall be disengaged from their goodly wrappings : what self- 
 deceptions blown naked from their shelter into the re- 
 morseless light : what imposing phantoms of greatness 
 and usefulness and goodness driven away like morning 
 mist. " The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment." 
 
 Here then is the contrast between the two portions of 
 this Psalm. Here is the fruitful, cherished tree, and here 
 the driving chaff. On the one side, stability, divine cul- 
 ture, fruitfulness ; on the other, instability, uselessness, 
 ruin. On the one side, a law which nourishes every form 
 of goodly power, and provides every variety of instruction 
 and of comfort ; on the other, license which dissipates 
 power, begets restlessness, and ends in worthlessness. 
 On the one side, a divine vindication, on the other a 
 divine exposure. Which shall be our portion ? Where 
 our place ? In the garden beside the river of God, or on 
 the threshing floor at the mercy of the wind ? 
 
THE ORATORY GATE. 
 
PSALM V. 
 
 (1) Give ear to my words, O Jehovah, 
 Consider my meditation. 
 
 (2) Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my 
 
 God, 
 For unto Thee do I pray. 
 
 (3) Jehovah, in the morning shalt Thou hear my voice, 
 
 In the morning will I set in order for Thee (my prayer) 
 and watch. 
 
 (4) For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wicked- 
 
 ness, 
 Evil cannot sojourn with Thee. 
 
 (5) Fools cannot stand in Thy sight ; 
 Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. 
 
 (6) Thou destroyest them that speak lies ; 
 
 The bloodthirsty and deceitful man doth Jehovah abhor. 
 
 (7) But as for me in the multitude of Thy loving kindness 
 
 will I enter Thy house ; 
 I will bow myself towards Thy holy temple in Thy fear. 
 
 (8) O Jehovah, lead me in Thy righteousness, because of 
 
 them that lie in wait for me, 
 Make Thy way plain before my face ; 
 
 (9) For there is no faithfulness in their mouth ; 
 Their inward part is a yawning gulf ; 
 Their throat is an open sepulchre, 
 (While) they make smooth their tongue. 
 
 (10) Punish Thou them, O God : 
 
 Let them fall through their own counsels : 
 
 In the multitude of their- transgressions thrust them 
 
 away ; 
 For they have rebelled against Thee. 
 
 (11) And all who find refuge in Thee shall rejoice ; 
 Forever shall they shout for joy ; 
 
 And Thou wilt defend them ; 
 
 And they who love Thy name shall exult in Thee. 
 
 (12) For Thou, O Jehovah, dost bless the righteous, 
 With favor dost Thou compass him as with a shield. 
 
III. 
 
 THE ORATORY GATE. 
 
 " IT is certain," says Robert Leighton, " that the 
 greater part of men, as they babble out vain, languid, and 
 inefficacious prayers, most unworthy of the ear of the 
 blessed God, so they seem, in some degree, to set a just 
 estimate upon them, neither hoping for any success from 
 them, nor indeed seeming to be at all solicitous about it, 
 but committing them to the wind as vain words, which in 
 truth they are." 
 
 It is indeed a serious thing when prayer is thus abused ; 
 but the abuse is committed in the face of very plain les- 
 sons in the word of God. No reader of that word need 
 ignorantly degrade this most solemn and sublime act of 
 a human soul. 
 
 Such a lesson is this Psalm. It is a prayer itself; and 
 while the subject-matter of the prayer is of great interest, 
 the Psalm is peculiar in setting forth the characteristics 
 of prayer in general. In this aspect let us study it. 
 
 We have, in the first place, in the first and second 
 verses, a suggestion of the variety of prayer " Give ear 
 to my words : "formal prayer. " Consider my meditation : " 
 unexpressed prayer. " Hearken unto my cry : " ejaculatory 
 prayer. Prayer is a provision for a universal need, and 
 must therefore be capable of a large variety of adaptations. 
 
4O Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 It is for the dumb no less than for him who speaks ; for 
 sudden emergencies no less than for stated occasions ; for 
 the closet, but also for the crowd. If a man is to pray 
 without ceasing, he must pray under an endless variety of 
 circumstances. Thus we have here suggested a season 
 when prayer can be deliberately uttered. When one's de- 
 sires can frame themselves into words ; when he can fol- 
 low the periods of carefully worded liturgies, or pour out 
 a free heart in spontaneous speech. Then we have that 
 which is equally prayer, denoted by the word meditation ; 
 that which lies in the heart as unexpressed desire or aspi- 
 ration ; which indicates a state or habit of mind quite as 
 much as an act. 
 
 "Meditation," says Gurnall, " is prayer in bullion: 
 prayer in the ore soon melted and run into holy desires." 
 The value of prayer does not lie in its demonstrativeness. 
 On the contrary, the soul's unexpressed aspiration is often 
 more truly prayer than the well-rounded formula. We 
 should be especially careful to distinguish between the 
 spirit and the habit of prayer. The habit may exist with- 
 out the spirit ; but the spirit will always beget the habit. 
 The spirit can be the result only of the life of God in the 
 soul ; the habit of prayer may be the result of education 
 merely. 
 
 Then we have a third of the many varieties of prayer 
 suggested by the word " cry ." the passionate outburst 
 of a soul in distress, or dejection, or danger ; throwing 
 out a prayer like a strongly shot dart, 1 which gives to 
 such prayer the name of ejaculatory. " These darts may 
 
 1 Jaculum. 
 
The Oratory Gate. 41 
 
 be shot to heaven without using the tongue's bow. Such 
 a kind of prayer that of Moses was, which rang so loud 
 in God's ear that He asked him ' Wherefore criest thou 
 unto Me ? ' Whereas we do not read of a word that he 
 spake." l Or such may be the mere inarticulate cry of 
 a soul which knows not what it should pray for as it 
 ought : 
 
 li So runs my dream, but what am I ? 
 An infant crying in the night : 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 And it is worth noting that such a prayer as this links it- 
 self closely with meditation. It can proceed only from a 
 true spirit of prayer so far as that is indicated by a genuine 
 sense of need. Such prayer is always genuine. It is 
 wrung from men in times when they are hard pressed : 
 when they cease to care about proprieties, and think only 
 of the sore need of die moment. Such was the prayer of 
 Peter, when he felt the waves yield beneath him " Lord, 
 save me ! I perish ! " And as a mother will run when she 
 hears her child scream, so God makes haste to respond 
 to those cries of His children. To Him there are words 
 in the cry. Its language is as intelligible as that of the 
 priest supplicating at the altar. " Coming from our heart 
 it reaches God's heart." 
 
 Thus much for the variety of prayer. 
 
 The second verse directs our thought to the appropriat- 
 ing power of prayer. God is addressed as my king ; my 
 
 1 Gurnall. 
 
42 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 God. Oar Lord's model of prayer strikes at all selfish- 
 ness in our petitions. It bids us pray " Our Father ; 
 Thy kingdom come to us ; Give us bread ; Forgive us our 
 sins." At the same time, it does not exclude the personal 
 element. No man is above the need of praying for him- 
 self ; and God, in teaching us to pray, directs us to the 
 many-sidedness of His character, and does not suffer us to 
 forget, in our contemplation of His wonderful provision 
 for the whole body of humanity, the equal wonder of His 
 provision for the individual man, which gives him com- 
 mand of the whole ministry of heaven, as though he were 
 alone in the universe. " These little pronouns waking, 
 my God, are," as has been justly observed, " the very pith 
 and marrow of the plea. Here is an argument why God 
 should answer prayer : because He is our king and our 
 God. We are not aliens to Him. He is the king of our 
 country. He is ours by covenant, ours by promise, ours 
 by oath, ours by blood." 1 
 
 By the third verse we are pointed to the stated/less and 
 decency of prayer. It is well that prayer should be spon- 
 taneous ; but also well that it should be properly regulat- 
 ed. A rich soil is a good thing ; but its richness is no rea- 
 son why its fruits and grasses should be allowed to grow 
 up in confusion. There are those who seem to think that 
 anyinsistence on propriety in prayer implies heartless for- 
 malism. Not so our Psalm. In the first place, it sug- 
 gests to us the propriety of stated seasons for prayer. 
 ' : My voice shalt thou hear /;/ the morning" The gospel 
 economy is indeed one of freedom and of spiritual man- 
 
 1 Spurgeon. 
 
The Oratory Gate. 43 
 
 hood ; but, after all, we never get entirely beyond the ne- 
 cessity of rules. We are always the better for the adop- 
 tion of some fixed lines of life ; and as the temptations to 
 negligence are nowhere more subtle and powerful than at 
 our closet doors, it is well to fence these with a habit of 
 prayer at a stated season. David indeed does not limit 
 this to the morning. In the fifty-fifth Psalm he says : 
 " Evening, morning, and at noon, will I pray and cry 
 aloud." These seasons will vary in frequency and in time 
 with the circumstances of individuals. The point to be 
 insisted on is the having some season sacredly set apart 
 for prayer, on which nothing shall be suffered to intrude. 
 And what better season can be found than the morning ? 
 In the days of the old Roman empire, the gateways of 
 rich and powerful citizens were thronged in the mornings 
 with dependents, each bearing his basket, and waiting for 
 the daily gift of food. 1 So it is fitting that our heavenly 
 Father's gate should daily witness our presence, at the 
 opening of the day, awaiting our share of the bread of 
 heaven to nourish us for the day's responsibilities, trials, 
 burdens, and temptations. And what is true of prayer re- 
 garded as petition, is equally true of prayer viewed as com- 
 munion or as worship. It is fitting that the fresh ener- 
 gies of the morning, the clear, unwearied thought, the vig- 
 orous perception, the new enthusiasm, should be first 
 called out towards Him. Then we are quicker to take 
 His meaning, and calmer to face the coming issues of the 
 day, and better disposed for that concentration of mind and 
 heart which is indispensable to the effectiveness of prayer, 
 
 1 Juvenal, Satire iii., 249. 
 
44 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 " When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave 
 
 To do the like ; our bodies but forerun 
 The spirit's duty ; true hearts spread and heave 
 
 Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun ; 
 Give Him thy first thoughts, then, so shalt thou keep 
 Him company all day, and in Him sleep. 
 
 Yet never sleep the sun up ; prayer should 
 
 Dawn with the day. There are set awful hours 
 
 'Twixt Heaven and us ; the manna was not good 
 After sun-rising, for day sullies flowers. 
 
 Rise to prevent the sun ; sleep doth sins glut, 
 
 And heaven's gate opens when the world's is shut. 
 
 Walk with thy fellow creatures ; note the hush 
 And whisperings amongst them. Not a spring 
 
 Or leaf but hath its morning hymn ; each bush 
 And oak doth know I AM canst thou not sing ? 
 
 O leave thy cares and follies ! Go this way, 
 
 And thou art sure to prosper all the day." * 
 
 Note too the suggestion of decency in the act of prayer 
 furnished by the word *' direct'' " In the morning will I 
 direct my prayer to Thee." The original word is used of 
 arranging the wood and the sacrifice upon the altar, which 
 was one of the first duties of the priest as soon as day 
 dawned, 2 and also of setting the loaves of the shew-bread 
 in order upon the table. Thus the meaning is broader 
 than that of our version, which conveys only the idea of 
 aiming the prayer, as an arrow, in the right direction. It 
 is rather " I will pray, setting forth my supplication in 
 order ; " or, as one puts it, " I will marshal my prayers. 
 I will put them in order, and call up all my powers, and 
 
 1 Henry Vaughan. 2 Lev. vi. 12 ; Numb, xxviii. 4. 
 
The Oratory Gate. 45 
 
 bid them stand in their proper places, that I may pray 
 with all my might, and pray acceptably. ' 1 In all this 
 there is no suggestion which goes to make prayer unduly 
 formal ; nothing which tends to repress spontaneity or to 
 fetter liberty. It merely teaches that prayer should be de- 
 corous and well pondered, and marked by an intelligent 
 purpose. It strikes at the senseless bellowings and fren- 
 zied incoherencies, at the blasphemous familiarities with 
 the name of God and with the work of Christ, which now 
 and then appear in certain so-called acts of worship, per- 
 petrated by those who ought to know better. It strikes 
 equally at the hurried, perfunctory prayers of the man who 
 goes into his closet without a previous thought of his needs, 
 depending upon the moment for suggestions of the peti- 
 tions he is to put up to God, and whose prayers, therefore, 
 tend to run into a set of commonplaces and formal phrases, 
 often carrying the most solemn and awful things, yet pass- 
 ing glibly from the tongue, only to be forgotten the mo- 
 ment the closet door lets him back to business or to pleas- 
 ure. We should do well to cover less ground in our 
 prayers, and to ponder their details more carefully. Take 
 the familiar formulas of address, for instance : " Almighty 
 God, our heavenly Father ! " Stop just there. I am 
 about to pray to the omnipotent and omniscient God, 
 my Creator. My destinies and the world's are in His 
 hands. My life hangs upon His will. He is my Father, 
 too. Ah ! you will wait long before you will have 
 grasped all the wealth of goodness and of love conveyed 
 in that single word FATHER. One cannot thus weigh 
 
 1 Trapp, quoted by Spurgeon. 
 
46 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 his words without getting a new sense of the sacredness 
 of prayer, and a growing dread of performing the duty 
 hastily or thoughtlessly. And this, too, is a matter which 
 affects our enjoyment of prayer. If it is your privilege 
 to know a man of rich culture and of varied learning, 
 you cannot enjoy these by running in each morning for a 
 moment and exchanging a few inquiries about health, and 
 a few commonplaces about the weather. Equally it is 
 true that God cannot be enjoyed in hasty, perfunctory 
 prayer. " He that believeth shall not make haste." * 
 
 This leads us . naturally to a fourth characteristic of 
 prayer expectancy, suggested by the third verse " I will 
 watch or look up" As Elijah, when he had arranged the 
 wood and the bullock on Carniel, looked up for the fire 
 from Heaven, so he who has thoughtfully and reverently 
 set forth his prayer before God, should expect the an- 
 swer. He who prays otherwise mocks God ; and yet how 
 many pray as one who shoots an arrow at random, not 
 looking to see what becomes of his shaft. What becomes 
 of our prayers ? Do we look to see whether they strike 
 their mark or any mark ? When a merchant counts his 
 assets, he counts not only what he has in his storehouses, 
 but what he has sent across the sea ; and when we send 
 forth these barques of prayer, laden with the dearest 
 wishes and the deepest yearnings of our souls, is it noth- 
 ing to us whether they arrive at their destined haven ? 
 " Never was faithful prayer lost at sea. No merchant 
 trades with such certainty as the praying saint. Some 
 prayers, indeed, have a longer voyage than others, but 
 
 1 Isaiah xxviii. 16. 
 
The Oratory Gate. 47 
 
 then they come with the richer lading at last. In trading, 
 he gets most by his commodity that can do without his 
 money longest. So the Christian that can with most 
 patience stay for a return of prayer, shall never be 
 ashamed of his waiting." l We are to watch and pray; 
 to watch unto prayer with reference to prayer ; to watch 
 before prayer, that our prayer may be rightly directed or 
 set in order; to watch during prayer, against "unman- 
 nerly distractions ;" to watch after prayer, to see what 
 becomes of our prayers. Some one has very pithily said 
 that the man who does not look after the prayers he has 
 put up, is like the ostrich which lays her eggs and looks 
 not for her young. 
 
 A fifth element of true prayer appears in the seventh 
 verse : confidence ; that to which the apostle invites us 
 when he says " Let us therefore come boldly unto the 
 throne of grace : " 2 The Psalmist speaks as one who has a 
 right to come into God's house. It is his house because 
 it is God's. The late Dr. Arnott, commenting on the 
 words " They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fat- 
 ness of Thy house," says " I once heard a father tell that 
 when he removed his family to a new residence where 
 the accommodation was much more ample, the substance 
 much more rich and varied than that to which they had 
 previously been accustomed, his youngest son, yet a lisp- 
 ing infant, ran round every room and scanned every 
 article with ecstasy, calling out, in childish wonder at 
 every new sight, 'Is this ours, father? And is this 
 ours ? ' The child did not say yours ; and I observed that 
 
 1 Gurnall 2 Hebrews iv. 16. 
 
48 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the father, while he told the story, was not offended with 
 the freedom. You could read in his glistening eye that 
 the infant's confidence in appropriating as his own all 
 that his father had, was an important element in his satis- 
 faction." What a beautiful comment this upon the 
 apostle's words "All things are yours, and ye are 
 Christ's, and Christ is God's." ' The child of God has no 
 need to linger on his Father's threshold, nor to knock 
 timidly. How differently a beggar and your child come 
 to your office or study. The one raps hesitatingly, and 
 awaits coweringly your permission to enter ; while your 
 boy bounds in at will, not always quietly, showing that he 
 feels himself at home where his father is. The Christian 
 has a child's place in God's house, and comes boldly to 
 His mercy seat, and asks large things that his joy may be 
 full. 
 
 Yet this confidence by no means excludes a sixth 
 characteristic of prayer : humble reverence. "As for 
 me, I will come into Thy house, but I will come in the 
 multitude of Thy mercy." It is of free grace, of unde- 
 served compassion, of abounding love, that I am per- 
 mitted to come. " Thou art not a God that hath pleas- 
 ure in wickedness," and I am sinful. " The foolish shall 
 not stand in Thy sight," and I have been the foolish 
 prodigal who would have his portion, and who has wasted 
 it in the far country. But Thou art merciful ; and Thy 
 mercy hath restored me, Thy pardon hath compassed Thy 
 erring child about, Thou hast healed his backslidings and 
 hast loved him freely ; and so I come into Thy house, 
 
 1 1 Corinthians iii. 21, 23. 
 
The Oratory Gate. 49 
 
 not because of my goodness or strength, but " in the 
 multitude of Thy mercy," to pass the time of my sojourn- 
 ing in fear godly, filial fear, as one whom thou hast 
 redeemed at a price. ' 
 
 And such an approach to God must involve the last 
 element of prayer suggested by the Psalm j0y : "And 
 all those who find refuge in Thee shall rejoice ; forever 
 shall they shout for joy." Why should they not ? THOU 
 defendest them. On earth, the intercourse of love is 
 often marred by danger ; but he who talks with God in 
 His own house, always communes in safety. " He that 
 dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide 
 under the shadow of the Almighty.' 1 2 Shall not God pro- 
 tect His own child in His own home ? To talk familiarly 
 with God, to come boldly into His house, to behold His 
 beauty, to question Him freely, inquiring in His temple, to 
 be safe in the shadow of His power, to be sure of His 
 love and mercy, and solidly convinced of His infinite 
 righteousness well may such an one say, u Let them that 
 love Thy name be joyful in Thee." 
 
 Thus this Psalm is a great lesson on prayer ; pointing 
 us to its variety as a weapon adapted for all emergencies, 
 and teaching us how to wield it most effectively. We are 
 taught to carry into it the faith which appropriates God 
 as our own. We are warned against the profanation by 
 carelessness or haste of that most solemn of acts com- 
 munion with our Creator. We are bidden to send forth 
 our prayers considerately, and to look confidently for 
 tidings from them. The Psalm drives all slavish fear 
 
 ] i Peter i. 17, 18. 2 Psalm xci. I. 
 
 3 
 
SO Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 from our prayers even while it bases our confidence 
 wholly upon the undeserved compassion of our Father in 
 Heaven ; and it commends to us intercourse with God as 
 no mere task or duty, but as the dearest employment and 
 the sweetest joy of our lives. 
 
THE PASTURE GATE. 
 
PSALM XXIII. 
 
 (1) Jehovah is my Shepherd, I shall not want. 
 
 (2) In pastures of grass He maketh me to lie down ; 
 Beside waters of rest doth He guide me. 
 
 (3) He restoreth my soul ; 
 
 He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, 
 For His name's sake. 
 
 (4) Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
 
 of death, 
 
 I will fear no evil, for thou art with me : 
 Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 
 
 (5) Thou preparest a table before me, 
 In the presence of mine enemies : 
 Thou hast anointed my head with oil. 
 My cup runneth over. 
 
 (6) Surely goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me 
 
 all the days of my life, 
 
 And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for length 
 of days. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE PASTURE GATE. 
 
 COMMON things do not give up their meaning to human 
 reason, any more than a flint gives out sparks by contact 
 with wood or clay. The word of God acts upon them as 
 steel upon flint, and strikes divine fire out of them at 
 every touch. How common and uninteresting an object 
 is a shepherd, in his coarse garb, surrounded by his 
 sheep ; and yet the Spirit of God has made this figure 
 one of the dearest and most suggestive images in the 
 whole range of religious thought. The incarnate God 
 Himself honored this name shepherd, by adopting it. In- 
 spiration has brought out a vast range of analogies be- 
 tween the shepherd's functions and the attributes and 
 ministries of the eternal Jehovah. How this Psalm has 
 worked itself into the very texture of religious experience 
 and of religious literature in all ages ! To how many and 
 how various phases of spiritual need it has ministered 
 and continues to minister. It has a side for the poet, for 
 the theologian, for the historian, for the antiquary, for the 
 naturalist. Every variety of human sorrow flees to it as 
 naturally as invalids to a healing spring. " The twenty- 
 third Psalm is the nightingale of the Psalms. It is small, 
 of a homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity ; but 
 O, it has filled the air of the whole world with melodious 
 
54 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 joy greater than the heart can conceive. Blessed be the 
 day on which that Psalm was born. What would you say 
 of a pilgrim, commissioned by God to travel up and down 
 the earth, singing a strange melody, which when one heard, 
 caused him to forget whatever sorrow he had ? Behold 
 just such an one. This pilgrim God has sent to speak 
 in every language on the globe. It has charmed more 
 griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world. It has 
 remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more 
 black doubts, more thieving sorrows than there are sands 
 on the sea-shore. It has comforted the noble host of the 
 poor. It has sung courage to the army of the disap- 
 pointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the 
 heart of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in 
 their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness. Nor 
 is its work done. It will go singing to your children and 
 my children through all the generations of time ; nor will it 
 fold its wings till the last pilgrim is safe and time ended ; 
 and then it shall fly back to the bosom of God whence it 
 issued, and sound on, mingled with all those sounds of 
 celestial joy which make heaven musical forever." ' 
 
 No part of human experience is useless. We do in- 
 deed, as we become men, put away childish things, yet 
 many, of our childish experiences go farthest to mould 
 manhood. We are prone to look upon our whole earlier 
 life merely as a step by which we mount to something 
 higher and better ; yet we find, as we know ourselves 
 better, that we have not left our first days entirely behind 
 after all. David is an illustration of this fact. His life 
 
 1 Henry Ward Beecher. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 55 
 
 was a singularly varied one. He was shepherd, fugitive, 
 court-favorite, minstrel, king, warrior yet not one of 
 these elements do we miss in the grand sum total of his 
 character, viewed as a lesson to all ages and as a power 
 of ministry to the Church. Least of all do we find 
 wanting this shepherd experience of his youth. In the 
 Psalms, more perhaps than in any other part of the Bible, 
 the thoughts of God in nature, and of nature pointing up 
 to God are emphasized ; and David's utterances of this 
 kind are largely the fruit of those early wanderings with 
 his sheep, in green pastures, and by still waters, and 
 through gloomy ravines, in the quick flashing bursts of 
 the Eastern dawn, and under the gleam of the midnight 
 stars. And if that shepherd life had furnished nothing 
 else than the materials for this wonderful pastoral ode, 
 we should all be inclined to say that no period of David's 
 history would have compensated the Church for the loss 
 of his shepherd life. Yet the Psalm is not the utterance 
 of the shepherd days, though it perpetuates their memory. 
 Had it been thus, men might have said that it was but the 
 natural outflowing of a confiding boy's heart, unversed in 
 care or struggle. But this peaceful idyl is a voice out of 
 the maturer life of the Psalmist ; out of memories of care 
 and battle and treachery ; a voice that tells that peace 
 and rest of heart depend not upon the absence of life's 
 burdens, nor on the presence of nature's tranquillizing 
 scenes, but solely upon the shepherding of God. 
 
 The Psalm centres in this thought of God as a shepherd. 
 All its ideas and images spring from this, and group them- 
 selves round it. Hence the key-note of the whole song 
 is GOD'S SERVANT FINDS HIS ALL IN GOD. He wants 
 
56 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 nothing. All needs are met for him by that one fact 
 The Lord is my shepherd. All prosperity is represented 
 to him by the fact that he is God's sheep in God's pastures, 
 led by God Himself. The problem of life is thus reduced 
 to its very simplest statement : the statement of Christ in 
 the home at Bethany "But one thing is needful." ] In 
 his prosperity, David might have said " I have wealth, and 
 therefore I shall not want. I have faithful friends and brave 
 soldiers, and therefore I shall not want. I have reputation 
 and influence, and therefore I shall not want." And in say- 
 ing this he would only have said what hundreds of men who 
 claim to be better instructed than David are saying to-day. 
 But David goes to the heart of the matter with the discern- 
 ment of the profoundest Christian philosopher ; and in these 
 two brief sentences, sharply cuts out for us the eternal, vital 
 truth that man lives by God and not by His gifts ; that 
 every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, from 
 the Father ; and that the possession of all gifts is included 
 in possessing the Father. 
 
 This being true, it follows that the true end of every 
 man's life is to become one of God's flock. And here, the 
 figure, while it magnifies the wisdom and tenderness of 
 God, correspondingly depreciates the wisdom of man. To 
 represent man by a sheep, is to say that he is a weak, silly, 
 and defenceless creature, dependent for his well-being up- 
 on the care and protection of the shepherd. For a man 
 to seek to put himself under a shepherd's care, is for him 
 to admit this fact in all its length and breadth. The de- 
 pendence of man upon God must be just as absolute as that 
 
 1 Luke x, 42. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 57 
 
 of the sheep upon the shepherd. The guidance of the life 
 cannot be shared between God and man, any more than be- 
 tween the shepherd and the sheep. Man is not to choose 
 his own pastures, any more than the sheep are to choose 
 theirs. Hence it is well for those who study and admire this 
 Psalm for its poetry and for its sweet sentiments about God, 
 to feel also the blow which it strikes at human pride and con- 
 ceit. It is very charming, even for a worldly man, to con- 
 template this picture of the divine Shepherd by the peace- 
 ful streams ; but such do not find it easy or pleasant to 
 face the thought of taking the position of a sheep, with all 
 that that position involves, even in those green pastures. 
 Whether accidentally or not, this twenty-third Psalm im- 
 mediately follows what has been called the Psalm of the 
 cross a prophetic description of the sufferings of Christ ; 
 and in the Christian application of the truth we have just 
 alluded to, that is significant, as expressing the fact that 
 man comes under the superintendence of the heavenly 
 shepherd only by the way of the cross ; where, with Christ, 
 his pride, and self-will, and self-righteousness are crucified, 
 and he, like the humblest lamb in the flock, is made will- 
 ing to follow the good Shepherd who gave his life for the 
 sheep. 
 
 Yet, still carrying out the Christian application of the 
 figure, there is a comforting assurance in the comparison 
 of man to a sheep. For a sheep is not a wild animal. 
 The lion and the bear are thrown upon their own resour- 
 ces ; they wander far from the haunts of men ; they are 
 not brought to the markets, nor herded in pastures. The 
 sheep, on the other hand, is associated with domestic 
 scenes, the pet lamb is an inmate of the farm-yard, and the 
 3* 
 
58 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 eye looks out from the cottage window, upon the pasture 
 covered with flocks. A sheep is an object of purchase ; 
 and therefore an object of peculiar care, because he is 
 property ; and so, man, in accepting the position of a 
 sheep, comes into a peculiarly close relation with God. 
 He forfeits all power over himself, but he becomes God's 
 own property ; God's valuable property, since God shows 
 the value He sets upon him by the price at which He buys 
 him. Every redeemed soul in God's flock represents the 
 blood of the only begotten Son of God ; and this figure 
 therefore is strictly in the line of the apostle Peter's thought 
 Peter, the apostle whom we should most naturally asso- 
 ciate with this Psalm because of Christ's charge to him to 
 feed His sheep and lambs " Ye were not redeemed 
 bought back with corruptible things, but with the pre- 
 cious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and 
 without spot." J Shall one thus purchased want anything ? 
 "The young lions do lack and suffer hunger ; but they that 
 seek the Lord shall not want any good thing." * Shall the 
 love which proved itself by the payment of such a price 
 stop at any minor gift ? " He that spared not His own 
 Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with 
 Him also freely give us all things ? " 
 
 And now, knowing thus generally that God's sheep shall 
 not want, the Spirit leads us forth into the pastures to 
 take note of some of the supplies. 
 
 And, first, our attention is called to the provision made 
 for two sides of man's life in his new relation to God. A 
 godly life, if it be healthful, must be both an active and a 
 
 1 I Peter i. 18, 19. 2 Psalm xxxiv. 10. 3 Romans viii. 32. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 59 
 
 contemplative life. In this age we are so constantly urged 
 to active life that we are in some danger of losing sight of 
 the claims of the contemplative life. While it is true that 
 no life is more unhealthful and more fruitful in evil of some 
 kinds than the life of the cloister the life of pure contem- 
 plation as it is styled it is equally true that the life of 
 pure activity without contemplation is also unhealthful. 
 If the one tends to paralysis, the other tends to fever. 
 There are times when a man needs to lie still, like the 
 earth under the spring rain, letting the lessons of expe- 
 rience and the memories of the word of God sink down 
 to the very roots of his life, and fill the deep reservoirs of 
 his soul. Those are not always lost days when his hands 
 are not busy, any more than rainy days in summer are 
 lost, because they keep the farmer in-doors. They are 
 growing days ; and for this side of the godly man's life the 
 great Shepherd provides in His green pastures, He makes 
 His servant to lie down there. There are times when men 
 say they are too busy to stop ; when they think they are do- 
 ing God's service by going on. Now and then God makes 
 such an one lie down. He has been driving through the 
 pastures so fast that he has not known their greenness nor 
 apprehended their sweet savor ; and God does not mean 
 that he shall lose all that, and so he makes him lie down : 
 and then the active, bustling man learns the much-needed 
 lesson of rest in the Lord, and of waiting patiently for Him, 
 because he can do nothing else but rest ; and when he 
 once gets a little over his hurry and fretting, and begins 
 to open his eyes to the greenness of the pastures, he finds 
 that resting in God's pasture-lands is not such a bad thing 
 after all. Many a man has had to thank God for some 
 
60 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 such enforced season of rest, in which he first learned the 
 sweetness of meditation on the Word, and of lying still in 
 God's hands and waiting God's pleasure. 
 
 At the same time, the Shepherd provides for the active 
 side of the life. There is motion under God's leadership. 
 " He leadeth me beside the still waters." The fact that 
 activity is an essential element of a godly life, is too famil- 
 iar to need comment ; but we may observe how it is pos- 
 sible for some of the calmness and tranquillity of the con- 
 templative life to perpetuate itself in the active life. There 
 are indeed times when one stops beside the flowing stream, 
 and leisurely surveys its beauties or disports himself in its 
 waters ; but even as he goes on, he may keep the stream 
 in sight, and be soothed by its soft ripple, and refreshed 
 by its varied scenery. And just so it is possible for a man 
 to make his active life restful. He may carry the atmos- 
 phere of the closet into the street. There is no contra- 
 diction in this. The Shepherd promises to lead him be- 
 side still waters ; and those are the deepest waters. Christ 
 Himself says " I will give you rest," even while He says in 
 the same breath, "Take My yoke upon you." ! This fev- 
 erish, hurried life which too many of us lead, is not in 
 God's economy, depend upon it. If we live in this way, 
 it is because we push on before the Shepherd, instead of 
 letting him lead us beside still waters. If we were more 
 docile, we should be more restful. 
 
 Only when the soul is brimful of the life of faith does it 
 work in rest. Not until we shall have let our life drop 
 back behind God, to follow at the rate which He pre- 
 
 1 Matthew xi. 28, 29. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 61 
 
 scribes, shall we learn what the words mean " Thou 
 wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on 
 Thee." l 
 
 Our errors in this and in other things, point us to a 
 farther need for which we find provision made as we go 
 on with the Psalm ; RESTORATION ; " He restoreth my 
 soul." Eastern travellers tell us that the shepherd is 
 much occupied with the straying sheep. Only a few 
 keep near him. The majority run from bush to bush, 
 jump into neighboring fields, climb into leaning trees 
 from which they fall and break their limbs, or wander to 
 great distances and get lost among the mountain defiles ; 
 so that much of the shepherd's time and care are con- 
 sumed in seeking and restoring these wanderers. Simi- 
 larly, it is true, that restoration occupies a prominent place 
 in God's economy ; indeed it is essentially an economy 
 of restoration. Here we see restoration under three 
 phases; ist forgiveness. It is not too much to say that 
 the whole human flock is niade up of straying sheep. 
 Even while we sing : " We are His people and the sheep 
 of His pasture," 2 we must needs run into the minor strain 
 " Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lov- 
 ing-kindness. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, 
 and cleanse me from my sin." It is here that the shep- 
 herdly tenderness of God pre-eminently appears : just 
 here where the world's shallow charity exhausts itself. 
 The world will yield to almost any prayer sooner than 
 to the prayer for forgiveness. David might well ask to 
 fall into God's hands rather than into man's ; for it is 
 
 1 Isaiah xxvi. 3. 2 Psalm c. 3. 3 Psalm li. I, 2.. 
 
62 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 man's way to say " Let the foolis.h, headstrong, conceited 
 sheep reap the reward of its folly." But hear how Psalm 
 and Gospel answer to each other. " He restoreth my 
 soul." " How think ye ? If a man have a hundred sheep, 
 and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the 
 ninety and nine and goeth into the mountains, and 
 seeketh that -which is gone astray ? And if so be that 
 he mid it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of 
 that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not 
 astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which 
 is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish." * 
 Then too, this restoration appears in the rest and re- 
 freshment bestowed upon faithful servants. Good men 
 become weary, not of d6ing God's will, but in doing it. 
 Even Jesus, whose meat was to do the will of Him 
 that sent Him, was faint at Jacob's well. How many 
 ways God has of refreshing the courage and toning up 
 the enthusiasm of His weary ones : now by a promise, 
 now by a well-timed success, now by a lightening of the 
 burden. What, for example, is the Sabbath but one of 
 those green pastures, fenced round by a divine mandate 
 " In it thou shalt do no work." How often the Lord re- 
 peats to His later disciples the invitation to the twelve 
 " Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest 
 awhile." a You remember how the pilgrims in Bunyan's 
 allegory went on their way to a pleasant river, upon the 
 banks of which they " walked with great delight; they 
 drank also of the water of the river which was pleasant 
 and enlivening to their weary spirits. On either side of 
 
 1 Matthew xviii. 12, 14. 2 Mark vi. 31. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 63 
 
 the river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with 
 lilies ; and it was green all the year long. In this meadow 
 they lay down and slept, for here they might lie doiun 
 safely. When they awoke they gathered again of the 
 fruit of the trees, and drank again of the water of the 
 river, and then lay down again to sleep. Thus they did 
 several days and nights. Then they sang : 
 
 Behold ye how these crystal streams do glide, 
 
 To comfort pilgrims by the highway side ; 
 
 The meadows green, beside their fragrant smell, 
 
 Yield dainties for them : and he that can tell 
 
 What pleasant fruit, yea leaves, these trees do yield, 
 
 Will soon sell all, that he may buy this field." 
 
 Again, this restorative care comes in where all care 
 but the Shepherd's is valueless ; in times of sorrow. No 
 touch then is 'so tender as that of the very staff which 
 smites. And of all these phases of restoration it is to be 
 observed that they are radical : they act upon the springs 
 of the life. "He restoreth my soul my life. 11 Is it 
 forgiveness ? He puts " a new heart " into man. Is it 
 refreshment? Its fountain-head is rest of heart. Is it 
 consolation ? His words go deeper than the cold con- 
 ventionalities of men ; they bring the abiding peace of 
 settled trust in fatherly love, and of the vision of eternal 
 
 joy- 
 
 And the thought which follows is kindred to this re- 
 storative economy of God. " He leadeth me in the 
 paths of righteousness for His name's sake." The ways 
 of righteousness or Tightness. God seeks to make His 
 children right for their own good, but primarily for His 
 
64 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 glory ; for their highest good is involved in His being 
 glorified. " Seeing He hath taken upon Him the name 
 of a good Shepherd, He will discharge His part, what- 
 ever His sheep be. It is not their being bad sheep that 
 can make Him leave being a good shepherd, but He will 
 be good and maintain the credit of His name in spite of 
 all their badness ; and though no benefit come to them 
 of it, yet there shall glory accrue to Him by it, and His 
 name shall nevertheless be magnified and extolled." J In 
 the man once restored, God shows forth His own right- 
 eousness. He makes him a partaker of the divine nature. 
 He does more than bring him back to the fold ; his res- 
 toration is only the beginning of the divine manhood in 
 him. Nor does God set Himself to develop some single 
 virtue merely. He leads him not in one path, but in 
 paths of righteousness. The new character permeates the 
 man's whole being and all this is for His 'NAME'S sake ; 
 not for man's glory :.O, no ! What has man had to do 
 with the matter? All his part has been, like a wounded 
 sheep, to lie still in the Shepherd's strong arms, and be 
 carried back to the safe and peaceful fold. All his part 
 henceforth is to follow in the paths where God shall lead 
 him. It is for His name's sake ; " that in the ages to 
 come he might show the exceeding riches of His grace in 
 his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus." 2 It is to 
 vindicate His promise that He will make a grand, pure, 
 efficient manhood out of this wreck of character. It is to 
 show how His grace can make a blazing beacon out of a 
 charred brand, a mitred priest out of a criminal. 3 How 
 
 1 Sir Richard Baker. 2 Ephesians ii. 7. 3 Zechariah iii. 2, 5. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 65 
 
 His wisdom can preserve him in temptation, how His 
 power can keep him from falling, and present him blame- 
 less at last before His presence. " For Mine own sake, 
 even for Mine own sake will I do it ; for how should My 
 name be polluted? And I will not give my glory to 
 another." l 
 
 With the fourth verse, we pass into another scene. 
 The recollections of the natural scenery amid which David 
 fed his sheep, give coloring to the Psalm and shape its im- 
 agery. Often his wanderings had brought him to one of 
 those gloomy ravines which penetrate the cliffs overhang- 
 ing the Dead Sea : places beset with dangers ; for here 
 the robber made his haunt, and the beast of prey lurked. 
 In the figurative meaning of these words, the Psalmist's 
 reference was not primarily to death. A "valley of death " 
 or of "death-darkness," was simply a very dark and gloomy 
 valley ; but the Church in all ages has delighted to find, as 
 it rightfully may, an allusion to the last and sorest strait 
 of the believer the agony of death ; and these words 
 have been quoted by more dying lips than any ten texts 
 of Scripture together. We need not therefore try to divert 
 the thought from this familiar channel. Here where he 
 most needs Him, God's child finds the shepherd with His 
 rod and staff. Let us look at the verse a little in detail. 
 " Yea, though I walk" It is perhaps a little fanciful, 
 yet it is a beautiful and comforting fancy which a modern 
 preacher 2 has drawn out of the English text: "Yea, 
 though I walk. As if the believer did not quicken his 
 pace when he came to die, but still calmly walked with 
 
 1 Isaiah xlviii. n. 2 Spurgeon. 
 
66 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 God. To walk indicates the steady advance of a soul 
 which knows its road, knows its end, resolves to follow 
 the path, feels quite safe, and is therefore perfectly calm 
 and composed. The dying saint is not in a flurry. He 
 does not run as if he were alarmed, nor stand still as 
 though he would go no farther ; he is not confounded nor 
 ashamed, and therefore keeps his old place." Thus 
 Enoch walked with God ; and our last glimpse of him re- 
 veals him still walking in the same blessed company, as 
 God gently takes him out at the gate which leads to 
 heaven. 
 
 Then look at the word shadow : " the shadow of 
 death." Literally it means only the darkness or shade : 
 and yet there is a Gospel thought in the word. Suppose 
 your child, walking with you, should come to the mouth 
 of a ravine, and should see cast across it the gigantic 
 shadow of an armed man, at which he should begin to cry 
 and draw back in terror. And suppose that you should 
 take him not into the shadow, but around behind the 
 armed man, and show how he was chained fast to his post, 
 and could not move a step toward the road, nor hurl a 
 dart at a traveller. And is not this just what the Gospel 
 does for us poor children of dust ? 
 
 4 We start and fear to die : 
 
 What timorous worms we mortals are ! " 
 
 Our hearts grow cold as we approach the entrance to the 
 valley, and we see the shadow of gigantic arms and of 
 pointed darts before us in the pathway ; but our blessed 
 Shepherd comes to meet us. He sits down with us there 
 at the mouth of the valley, and tells us of His fight with 
 
The Pasture Gate. 67 
 
 the monster. He tells us that He " abolished death ;" l 
 that through death He destroyed "him that had the power 
 of death," that He might "deliver them who through fear 
 of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." 2 He 
 shows His child that the monster is chained : that he has 
 not to encounter the dart, but only to pass through the 
 shadow: and with this assurance, the "Feeble-minds" 
 and "Ready-to-halts" rise and strike boldly into the dark- 
 ness, and we hear them saying as they pass from our sight 
 " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy 
 victory ? " 3 
 
 Nor does the Shepherd merely tell the story of His own 
 victory. He does not leave His follower to go through the 
 valley alone. " Thou art with me : Thy rod and Thy 
 staff they comfort me." The shepherd carries with him a 
 rod or crook to guide the flock and to correct them when 
 they are disobedient, and a staff on which to lean. Both 
 these His rod and His staff the divine Shepherd offers to 
 His people to comfort them therewith ; and we must not 
 miss the force of that good old word " comfort." It means 
 far more than simply to console. It signifies to tone up 
 the whole nature, to strengthen a man so that all his en- 
 ergy can be brought to bear. If anywhere he needs com- 
 fort in this sense, it is in the valley of the shadow ; and 
 so God comforts him first with His rod, the instrument of 
 correction. Aye, comforts him with the rod: for the 
 very afflictions and pains which wait about the entrance to 
 the valley are God's messengers and instruments of per- 
 fection to make him meet for a better inheritance. Do 
 
 1 ^ Timothy i. 10. 2 Hebrews ii. 14. 3 I Corinthians xv. 55. 
 
68 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 you remember those words of God to Israel by the prophet 
 Ezekiel ? "I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I 
 will bring you into the bond of the covenant ; " ' and do 
 you know the picture that was in the prophet's mind ? 
 He had stood by one of those stone enclosures where the 
 sheep are folded for the night, and he had seen the shep- 
 herd stand by the door as the sheep passed in, laying his 
 rod across the entrance that they might not crowd in so 
 rapidly as to prevent his counting them. Every sheep 
 passes under the rod before it enters the fold ; and so the 
 shepherd gets none but his own and all of his own. So 
 stands the great Shepherd before the eternal gate, and 
 every one of His chosen shall pass under the rod, the 
 rod which sometimes smites and bruises, that, being made 
 perfect through suffering, they may be counted among 
 them that are sanctified. And then, when the rod has 
 done its work, the staff is given. When the pilgrim's knees 
 begin to totter, then come "the everlasting arms," 2 and 
 the strong staff makes firm his step, and naught can shake 
 his foothold until he passes out of the shadow into the 
 light of heaven. 
 
 The fifth verse develops a new and interesting line of 
 thought in setting forth the relations of God's child to 
 those outside the fold ; whereas the Psalm thus far has 
 been occupied with his relations to the Shepherd. It is 
 enough to say that the relation to the Shepherd settles 
 every minor relation. The very enemies of God are com- 
 pelled to acknowledge the prosperity of His child. They 
 cannot molest him. They frown impotently upon him as 
 
 1 Ezekiel xx. 37. 2 Deuteronomy xxxiii. 27. 
 
The Pasture Gate. 69 
 
 the robber might have looked down upon the sheep feed 
 ing in the pastures, without the power of annoying, them. 
 He is without fear in their very presence. He has not 
 even to snatch his meal hurriedly ; a table is deliberate- 
 ly spread while they look on, and the anointing, and the 
 overflowing cup which mark the ceremonious welcome of 
 a guest, are bestowed in the presence of his foes. Even 
 so does God's child feast on angels' food, while cares 
 eddy round him, and temptations beset, and slander wags 
 its tongue, and sickness and pain and misfortune thrust 
 sore at him. Why should he not rest and feast ? The 
 Lord is his shepherd. 
 
 "Perhaps," says a recent expositor of the Psalms, 1 
 " there is no Psalm in which the absence of all doubt, mis- 
 giving, fear, anxiety, is so remarkable." It might be add- 
 ed that the sense of trustfulness becomes more positive as 
 the Psalm proceeds, until, in the last verse, it culminates in 
 an exultant outburst of assurance as respects the writer's 
 future lot. The future is no less secure than the present. 
 " Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days 
 of my life." And note that the basis of this assurance is 
 not the fact that God has allotted him his place in green 
 pastures, but in the fact that the Lord is his Shepherd. He 
 clearly perceives that it may be God's pleasure to change 
 this happy lot and to direct his course into the gloomy 
 valley of the shadow; but the goodness and the loving 
 kindness shall none the less be his. Goodness and mercy 
 do not mean to God's child flowering meads and wells of 
 refreshment only ; they may equally mean rocky denies, 
 
 1 Canon Perowne. 
 
7O Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 and rough paths, and darkness, and enemies. When Paul 
 promises the Corinthians all things in Christ, he couples, 
 in the most natural and matter-of-course way, death and 
 things to come, with life and things present, treating them 
 all alike as God's good gifts. 1 It is all one so long as they 
 are Christ's. Goodness and loving kindness, now and 
 evermore, are represented to David simply by those five 
 words THE LORD is MY SHEPHERD. Darkness, rough- 
 ness, hostility, will be goodness and mercy still, so long 
 as they shall not separate him from his Shepherd's society, 
 guidance and comfort. There are dark rooms in God's 
 own house, in which He appoints that His children dwell 
 sometimes. It matters little so long as they are under 
 His roof. " ONE THING," says David, elsewhere, " have 
 I desired of the Lord : that will I seek after." a Not 
 sunshiny days : the Lord is my light. Not earthly secu- 
 rity : the Lord is my salvation. Not human strength : the 
 Lord is the strength of my life. I need not the beauties 
 of art or of nature, if I may behold the beauty of Jehovah. 
 I can dispense with human wisdom, if I may inquire in 
 His temple. " One thing have I desired of the Lord 
 that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of 
 my life." 
 
 I know not whether David's thought reached beyond 
 this life. " To him it may have been enough that he was 
 the sheep for whom the Divine Shepherd cared, the guest 
 for whom the Divine Host provided." 8 Yet he may, on 
 the other hand, have seen farther than we think. It may 
 be that, in the words of Calvin, " he shows in this passage 
 
 1 i Corinthians iii. 21-23. 2 Psalm xxvii. 4. 3 Perowne. 
 
The Pasture Gate. Ji 
 
 that he lives least of all in earthly pleasures and profits, 
 but sets a mark for himself in heaven to which he refers 
 all things." Be that as it may, in the light of Christ's 
 words concerning Himself as the Good Shepherd, David's 
 words speak to the Christian reader of heaven no less 
 than of earth. This psalm and the tenth chapter of John 
 form two links in a chain which finds its completing link 
 in the seventh chapter of Revelation " Therefore are 
 they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and 
 night in His temple, and He that sitteth on the throne 
 shall spread His habitation over them. 1 They shall hunger 
 no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun ever 
 light upon them, no, nor any heat ; because the LAMB, 
 which is in the midst of the throne, SHALL SHEPHERD THEM, 
 and shall guide them to the fountains of the waters of life ; 
 and God shall wipe away every tear out of their eyes." 
 
 1 Or, more literally, " shall pavilion them." 
 
THE REGISTRY GATE 
 
PSALM XXV. 
 
 7. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgres- 
 sions. According to Thy mercy remember Thou me 
 for Thy goodness' sake, O Lord. 
 
V. 
 
 THE REGISTRY GATE. 
 
 THE true significance of the present is not revealed in 
 the present. The present usually tells us only half truths, 
 and sometimes falsehoods. Time detaches our actions 
 from the circumstances which color them, from the uncon- 
 scious influences which give them bias, and leaves them 
 before us in their naked good or evil. Only the lapse 
 of years makes us dispassionate judges of our earlier 
 selves. 
 
 And hence the past often, perhaps commonly, comes 
 into our maturer life as an element of pain and reproach. 
 There is not one of us who has not said, again and again 
 " What would I not give to have this or that thing to do 
 over again with to-day's experience. How much better 
 I w6uld do it. How differently I would plan it. How 
 many things I would omit from it." 
 
 This text is such an expression. It is the utterance of 
 a ripe and rich experience of a man about whom the 
 shadows have begun to lengthen, and who is letting a sor- 
 rowful and faultml past come home to his matured judg- 
 ment, to be tried by its higher standards and by its clearer 
 discrimination. 
 
 And yet, with the knowledge we have of David's youth, 
 
76 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 we are, at first, astonished at the keenness of feeling man- 
 ifest in this prayer. So far as we know, his youth and 
 early manhood were comparatively innocent. He had led 
 the life of a simple shepherd, he had not been spoiled by 
 parental indulgence, but had rather been the servant of a 
 family of older brothers. That he had shown real cour- 
 age, and fidelity, and piety, while yet an underling, his 
 history bears witness. That he had meditated on the 
 glory of God in nature appears from the inspired songs of 
 his later life. That he had undergone the discipline of 
 sorrow and persecution before the world's burden comes 
 heavily on most men we can see for ourselves. Why then 
 does he so earnestly plead that the sins of his youth be 
 not remembered by God ? 
 
 The answer to this question is to be found in the stand- 
 point from which David contemplated his life ; for while 
 the cool retrospect of a life brings disappointment and dis- 
 gust to every thoughtful man, the nature and degree of 
 this disgust are regulated according to the standard of 
 judgment which is applied. The majority of men come, 
 sooner or later, to think of themselves as fools in their 
 earlier years, but they do not likewise come to think of 
 themselves as sinners. One may look back upon the 
 errors of his earlier life with an amused chagrin, coupled 
 with an easy tolerance, as he would view to-day the follies 
 of a child. He may lament over many a sinful deed, not 
 because of its sinfulness, but because he now sees how it 
 affected his self-interest, impaired his health or his foi- 
 tune, or made him a laughing-stock where he desired to 
 shine. If he has a warning for another, it is not based on 
 the moral obliquity of his course, but on its disadvantages. 
 
The Registry Gate. 77 
 
 He sees a youth indulging in drink or in licentiousness, 
 and he says " It will not pay. Look at me and take 
 warning lest you be diseased or crippled as I am." He 
 does not call on God not to remember his errors, but tries 
 to forget them himself, and is quite content if he can bring 
 himself to believe that they have not impaired his social 
 standing, nor put farther pleasure out of his power. 
 
 And with such views, one's retrospect is, naturally, very 
 limited and partial. His rule of judgment is short, and is 
 laid off in wide spaces. It measures only grosser errors, 
 or those which entail direct consequences. Much which 
 went to give the most decisive bent and shape to charac- 
 ter, is entirely overlooked. 
 
 But when one begins to review his life from the stand- 
 point of his moral relation to God, he sees through a glass 
 which greatly enlarges the range of his retrospect. 
 Thoughts as well as deeds, intention as well as perform- 
 ance, motive no less than act enter into his review. 
 Secret faults come under inspection with presumptuous 
 sins : what he is not, as well as what he is. His losses 
 are tried by another standard. The result of years of hon- 
 est toil, his full storehouses, his praises on the lips of men, 
 may seem as nothing beside the possible moral achieve- 
 ments in which he has failed. 
 
 Thus it is with David. He hints at a page of his ear- 
 lier history which he does not turn for us. There have 
 been other wanderings in his youth than those beside still 
 waters, concerning which he communes only with God 
 and with his own heart ; and whatever his youthful days 
 may seem to others, they come back to him laden with 
 experiences upon which, if it were possible, he would shut 
 
78 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 even the memory of God. " Remember not the sins of 
 my youth." 
 
 But why does David plead so earnestly for this ? for 
 this Psalm is the cry of a man in trouble, and burdened 
 with painful apprehensions. The truth assumed in these 
 words is one which concerns the character of God, which 
 gives tone to this whole prayer of David, and which it 
 very much concerns us to see as clearly as he did the 
 truth, namely, that God can'not \>z passive in any moral 
 relation. If God's remembrance (humanly speaking) of 
 sin began and ended with itself, if David's sins or your 
 sins or mine were merely stored up in the Divine mind 
 as an insignificant fact or date is retained in our minds, 
 David had no need to trouble himself, nor have we. But 
 sin cannot come to the notice of God without setting 
 something in motion against itself, any more than the 
 poles of a battery can be brought together without start- 
 ing an electric current. An infinitely and essentially 
 holy Nature cannot be aware of sin, without being 
 roused to active dealing with it. He could not be 
 passive toward it and remain true to himself. It is 
 aimed at the pillars of His throne, it is a challenge of 
 His sovereignty, a departure from His established order. 
 He must rouse himself either to thwart it, or to punish it, 
 or to turn it, spite of itself, to some beneficent end, or to 
 forgive it. He cannot let it alone. As a Lawgiver, he 
 must take cognizance of violated law. As a Father, he 
 must strive to restore an erring son. As an administra- 
 tor, he must anticipate the far-reaching consequences of 
 a violation of moral order. For God to remember sin is 
 to assume an active and hostile relation to sin, When 
 
The Registry Gate. 79 
 
 the sins of men rise to His presence, like the sun-drawn 
 drops to the upper air, the clouds gather and the thun- 
 ders mutter. 
 
 Here is where men make such a vital mistake. They 
 are deceived, and mock God by thinking that He can, by 
 any possibility, be false to His own pure being. They 
 measure Him by their own standards, and think that their 
 own good-natured tolerance of sin is mirrored in Him. 
 You may take a piece of common window-glass and put 
 it in the photographer's camera, and let the sunbeams 
 stream through the lens upon it for a week, and it will be 
 as blank at the end of that time as when you put it in. 
 Put the coated plate in its place for a second, and the 
 smallest object is reproduced with a fidelity which bears 
 the test of the microscope. Perhaps, if the window-glass 
 were conscious, it might wonder at the sensitiveness of 
 the prepared plate, just as men wonder and chafe when 
 they are told of the sensitiveness of Divine purity to the 
 slightest development of evil. " Why repel us," they say, 
 " with the picture of so strict a God ? Why should He 
 make so much of what we generously tolerate in each 
 other ? " Simply because His nature is not like yours. 
 You think Him altogether such an one as yourself. You 
 transfer to Him your own obtuseness. You do not see that 
 God's nature must, by the law of its own perfection, recoil 
 from evil ; that He must rouse himself to extirpate it from 
 a universe into which it is an intruder ; that truth must 
 array itself actively against the smallest falsehood, and 
 purity against the faintest shadow of a stain. Thus this 
 thought of God remembering sin, is a pregnant thought. 
 It means, not a dry inventory in the Divine mind, but a 
 
8o Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 stirring up of the Divine indignation ; a setting in motion 
 of the recording angel's pen, writing down to the sinner's 
 credit his lawful wages death. Well might David pray 
 " remember not the sins of my youth." 
 
 And if we stop here, the case is sad enough ; but 
 David, while he prays like a man in anguish, prays also 
 like a man in hope, with an assurance that something 
 may yet be done with those iniquities stored up in the 
 memory of God, so that they shall cease to trouble or to 
 threaten him any more. Being confronted with this 
 startling problem, he applies directly to the only person 
 who can solve it to Him against whom he has sinned. 
 
 If a man will once deliberately consider the outbranch- 
 ings and consequences of a single sin, even in the light 
 of familiar laws of cause and effect, he will readily see 
 what a stupendous problem is that of forgiveness, and 
 will echo the scribe's question "Who can forgive sins 
 but God only ? " 1 For take any single sinful act, such as 
 the carelessness and wantonness of youth often perpe- 
 trate, and see how it goes on multiplying itself, setting in 
 motion evil forces which, in their turn, set others in 
 motion, drawing ever new victims into the train of con- 
 sequences, unaffected, in all physical results, by prayers 
 and tears and who is bold enough to so much as attempt 
 to trace out and remedy the woe that has sprung up 
 along its lines ? And when the ramifications of a whole 
 life of sin are contemplated, with all their multiplied 
 crossing and recrossing consequences as well attempt 
 to reduce to order a tropical jungle. It cannot be done. 
 
 1 Mark ii. 7. 
 
The Registry Gate. 81 
 
 The most ordinary mind at once discerns the impossi- 
 bility of retrieving and correcting the results of a sinful 
 life. They are beyond the reach of money, time, and 
 labor. The only course possible is to put the whole 
 tingled mass into God's hands. This David at once per- 
 ceives, and to this end he prays ''Unto thee, O Lord 
 do I lift up my soul. I know not how the gigantic, 
 hopeless task is to be performed, but I throw it upon 
 Thy wisdom. Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord, 
 for He shall pluck my feet out of the net." 
 
 And now, what are we to expect in answer to such an 
 appeal as this ? 
 
 Certainly not that God will literally shut these things 
 out of His remembrance. This, it need hardly be said, is 
 essentially impossible. " All things are," and must con- 
 tinue to be, -"naked and open unto the eyes of Him with 
 whom we have to do." ! 
 
 Nor yet are we to expect that God will change His 
 attitude toward sin. That is unalterably fixed. So long 
 as He is God, He can have but one feeling towards sin of 
 every kind and degree utter loathing. 
 
 But while God's relation to sin remains fixed as the 
 principles of His own being, His relation with- the sinner 
 may be changed. As we have seen that His remembrance 
 of sin involves active hostility to sin, so we may now see 
 that His remembrance of the sinner involves all the infi- 
 nite activity of His love towards the sinner. " God com- 
 mendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sin- 
 ners Christ died for us." 3 The prodigal's father loved 
 
 1 Hebrews iv. 13. 2 Romans v. 8. 
 
 4* 
 
82 Gates into tlie Psalm Country. 
 
 him no less when he sat among the swine, than when he 
 had him at his table with the ring on his hand. It was 
 the son's love and not the father's that had wandered. 
 And, such being the case, we may expect that when a 
 man is put in right relation to this unchanging love of 
 God, that love will put him in some new relation to his 
 old sins which will suffer them no longer to come between 
 God and His child, and which will be, to all intents 
 and purposes, as though God had literally forgotten 
 them. 
 
 It is on this relation of God to the sinner that David 
 throws himself. When he looks at the sins of his youth, 
 he prays " O Lord, forget them." When he looks at 
 himself, he cries " O Lord, remember me according to 
 Thy mercy. Not according to my efforts at reformation, 
 not according to the depth of my sorrow, not according 
 to my attempts at restitution, but according to Thy mercy 
 remember Thou me for Thy goodness' sake, O Lord. I 
 know that Thou frownest on the r.ampant passion of 
 youth : remember it not, O Lord ; but I know that Thou 
 dost pity the weak and passion-blinded youth. Such was 
 I. Remember me, O Lord. I know that Thou hatest 
 self-conceit. Remember not my foolish vanity. But I 
 know Thy fatherly heart yearns over the straying son, who, 
 in his self-sufficiency, flees from Thy wise and tender 
 guidance. So did I. Remember me, O Lord, for Thy 
 goodness' sake, not toward sin, but towards Thine erring 
 children whose frame Thou knowest and rememberest 
 that they are dust." ' 
 
 1 Psalm ciii. 14. 
 
The Registry Gate. 83 
 
 How then, in answer to this prayer, will man stand re- 
 lated to the follies and sins of his past life ? 
 
 He will not be entirely rid of their consequences, espe- 
 cially of their physical consequences. If a youth of dis- 
 sipation has undermined his health, God will not work a 
 miracle and make him sound again. If a youth of indo- 
 lence has made him the inferior of men of his own years 
 in knowledge, culture, or disciplined power, the loss will 
 not be fully made up. 
 
 Nor will God cease to use the faultful past in the new 
 man's education. He will point His new lessons with the 
 warnings which the old experience has burnt deep into 
 His pupil's memory. He will keep him back from many 
 an enchanted ground by the bitter remembrance of old 
 bondage ; and He will touch his lips with the eloquence 
 of sad experience, as He shall use him to warn others 
 from the way whose end is death. 
 
 He will never taunt him with the past. He wants to 
 use the past as a help only, not as a sting. See how 
 Jesus dealt with Peter, Peter the braggart, the swearer, 
 the coward, the denier of his Lord. Christ had plainly 
 foretold it all to Peter, and yet, when the third denial fell 
 from his lips, He did not turn upon him and say " I told 
 you so." He only looked at him and broke His heart. 
 And then, on that memorable morning by the lake, 1 after 
 the resurrection, what an opportunity for holding Peter 
 up to the ridicule of his companions, or for recalling his 
 treachery with scathing words : and yet the only hint of 
 the sorrowful past was conveyed in the question " Lovest 
 
 1 John xxi. 
 
84 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 thou Me more than these ? " As if He had said " Have 
 you learned your severe lesson, or are you still the same 
 Peter who professed such surpassing love for Me ? " 
 
 And into the heart there will come a tranquil rest, a 
 deep peace, founded not upon hope of retrieving the past, 
 for there may be little time left j but simply upon the 
 conviction that God has taken the whole sadly confused 
 and stained life into His own hands. Even while the 
 man looks upon the 
 
 " Confusions of a wasted youth," 
 
 and perhaps of a wasted manhood, he realizes that the 
 strain has passed over from him to Christ. Often one 
 keeps fighting in a helpless sort of way, not becaus-e he 
 has any real hope of making good the past, but because 
 he is conscientiously afraid to drop all concern about it : 
 and there is blessed relief in giving over the struggle ; in 
 accepting true conclusion that it is hopeless, and that, if 
 the consequences of past sin are to be adjusted at all, 
 God must do it in His own time and way. 
 
 And with this conclusion there will come a turning with 
 fresh zest to redeem the time which remains. God says 
 to him : " Forget the things that are behind, even though 
 the most of your life is behind. In the little time that 
 remains, throw off the burden of the past on Me and press 
 forward." 
 
 ** Old age hath yet his honor and his toil ; 
 Death closes all : but something ere the end, 
 Some work of noble note may yet be done. 
 
 The wise woman of Tekoah gave David good advice 
 
The Registry Gate. 85 
 
 when she bade him cease mourning for the slain Amnon, 
 and call home the banished Absalom. " We must needs 
 die," she said, " and are as water spilt on the ground, 
 which cannot be gathered up again ; neither doth God 
 respect any person ; yet doth He devise means that His 
 banished be not expelled from Him. " l Yes, we must 
 needs die. Our dying, weak natures, unstable as water, 
 have proved their quality in the abuse of past years ; 
 yet God, for that reason, will not cut off the opportunities 
 that remain. He forbids you .to seek the living among 
 the dead. He tells you not to pass the days that are 
 left in mourning over what is dead, but to spend them in 
 coming back from your banishment, through the faithful 
 use of the means which His infinite grace has devised. 
 
 Hither then we bring the past. Into these skilful 
 hands we may put the hopelessly entangled mesh, wet 
 with penitent tears, and turn our faces peacefully and 
 firmly to the future, as we hear our justly offended but 
 still loving Father saying : " I will be merciful to their 
 unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I 
 remember no more." 2 God only can adjust the past. 
 Whether you know and believe it or not, the element of 
 bitterness in it, the thing which makes it a burden, is 
 sin ; and for sin there is but one remedy. That which 
 has made all other relations ineffective or disastrous, has 
 been the want of a proper relation to God. The great 
 thing now, the immediate, pressing duty, is to get into a 
 right relation with Him. 
 
 Look forward therefore. Hear the apostle responding 
 
 1 2 Samuel xiv. 14. 2 Hebrews viii. 12. 
 
86 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 to the son of Jesse : " Forgetting those things which are 
 behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are 
 before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
 calling of God in Christ Jesus." ! The high calling. Yes, 
 God is calling us from the low ground of tears, from the 
 heavy atmosphere of sighs, from a dead past, up to the 
 high table lands of a present full of work and of aspiration. 
 We have made mistakes : then let us remember that, in 
 the stirring words of Robertson, " Life, like war, is a 
 series of mistakes ; and he is not the best Christian nor 
 the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor 
 mediocrity may secure that ; but he is the best who wins 
 the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. 
 Forget mistakes. Organize victory out of mistakes." 
 
 You are not what you desire to be ; not what you 
 ought to be. But why look back ? If God is ready to 
 forget the sins of your youth, why may not you leave 
 them behind also ? If there is any good in store for you, 
 it lies on before. 
 
 Granting your attainments were ever so great, they 
 would not win you the prize. If you shall ever be admitted 
 to the Lamb's marriage feast, it will be in borrowed robes, 
 in Christ's righteousness, not in yours. You can do but 
 one thing, look unto Jesus and go forward. 
 
 One may be sadly saying to-day, " It is too late. My 
 cheek is furrowed, my hair is white, the days of my 
 strength are gone, and they have been given, not to God, 
 but to the world. I have but a few withered stalks to 
 bring to the Lord of the harvest." Well, it is sad, but 
 
 1 Philippians iii. 13, 14. 
 
The Registry Gate. 87 
 
 then it is done. You cannot bring back past time now, 
 and for the time which remains, which is the better 
 course to stay in that old past, rummaging amid its 
 bsoken plans and distorted forms for a little comfort and 
 self-gratulation, or to leave it all in the hands of a tender, 
 pitying Christ, and to let Him send you forth to the vine- 
 yard at the eleventh hour ? Surely the latter is the bet- 
 ter course. Begin to press forward, and it may yet be 
 with you as sometimes, after a day of dark clouds, and 
 howling wind, and driving rain, just at eventide the veil 
 lifts itself from the gloomy west, and the sun goes down 
 in a glory of purple and gold, which sets the dark pines 
 on fire, and bathes the frowning rocks with splendor. 
 Jesus can fill these later hours, free from the heat of 
 youthful passion and of wild ambition, with tranquil hope, 
 with holy joy, aye, and with some good work which may 
 yet leave the world the richer for your having lived. 
 
THE TREASURY GATE, 
 
PSALM XXXI. 
 
 (19.) Oh how great is Thy goodness, which thou hast laid up 
 for them that fear Thee ; which Thou hast wrought 
 for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE TREASURY GATE. 
 
 WHEN a man searching for metals lights upon a frag- 
 ment of gold or copper or iron ore, he is apt to conclude 
 that the fragment is part of a larger mass a metallic vein. 
 The same is true of the words of Scripture. We find 
 everywhere single verses which sparkle with truth, single 
 words heavy with Divine meaning; but closer examina- 
 tion shows that they belong to great veins of truth, and 
 lie in the line of great principles of God's administration. 
 This text, for instance, is the expression of a divine law : 
 the law of GocFs wise reserve in dispensing His favors. 
 He does not reveal Himself, nor bestow His blessings, 
 nor develop His purposes, nor mature His plans all at 
 once. This latter is what an ignorant and vulgar con- 
 ception of God would demand. To some minds the 
 highest ideal of God would be a magician, after the pat- 
 tern of Aladdin's genius, who should gratify every mon- 
 strous wish for the asking, and accomplish, with a touch, 
 the results of years of human labor. 
 
 The God of Scripture is not such as this. Whether in 
 nature or in providence, we see God revealing Himself 
 through processes. In the revolution of the year, we see 
 a progress of the seasons from the cold and apparent 
 deadness of winter, to the rich fruitfulness laid up in the 
 heart of the autumn. Man advances to the inheritance 
 
92 Gates into tJie Psalm Country. 
 
 of the powers and enjoyments of manhood by slow grada- 
 tions, from a feebleness and helplessness compared with 
 which the infancy of a dog or of a horse is robust vigor. 
 God's great plans in the administration of the world con- 
 sume "centuries. Christ did not come until the fulness 
 of time had arrived ; and Christ himself illustrated the 
 growth of God's kingdom in the world by the slow pro- 
 cesses of vegetation. Thus, at each season of the year, 
 at each human birthday, at each stage of the world's his- 
 tory, there is something still in reserve ; something laid 
 up something which God holds back because the time is 
 not ripe. 
 
 Here we have a single application of this principle to 
 our personal experience of God's goodness. " How 
 great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them 
 that fear Thee." The words " laid up " literally mean 
 " hidden ; " and the verse may be construed in two 
 senses, which, however, often blend in one thought. The 
 first sense is that God's best gifts are peculiarly the 
 treasure of those who fear Him. They are laid up or 
 hidden from the rest of the world, just as a rich father lays 
 up a fortune for his child and for him only. They are as 
 a secret between God and his child ; as the Psalmist else- 
 where says " The secret of the Lord is with them that 
 fear Him." x It was this side of the thought which Christ 
 expressed when he said, " I have meat to eat which ye 
 know not of" 8 and which is also conveyed in the prom- 
 ise, " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the 
 hidden manna." 8 
 
 1 Psalm xxv. 14. 8 John iv. 32. 3 Revelation ii. 17. 
 
The Treasury Gate. 93 
 
 The other sense is in the line of the general principle 
 we have illustrated ; namely, that in the distribution of 
 His blessings to His children, God follows a law of re- 
 serve. He gives liberally, but not the whole. He keeps 
 something always in the background ; there is always 
 something better in store for those who fear Him. There 
 is in His word, His promises, His providences .a hidden 
 element which comes out only through time, and experi- 
 ence, and search, and diligent effort. 
 
 The case cannot be otherwise. Reverently speaking, 
 according to the laws which God Himself has stamped 
 upon our being, He cannot deal otherwise with us. 
 There are certain great blessings of God which no man 
 is able to receive at once, without preparation. In re- 
 spect of this, the law is not different in the spiritual 
 region from the law in ordinary life. There are, for in- 
 stance, great treasures, rich enjoyments, grand powers 
 laid up for the schoolboy in the realm of knowledge and 
 culture upon which he is just entering ; but his teacher 
 cannot put him in possession of them at once. He must 
 gain the preparatory discipline first ; the rudimentary 
 knowledge without which all that lies beyond would be 
 useless. So the judicious executor has a rich fortune in 
 store for his ward ; but he cannot, with safety to the 
 child, put him in possession of his fortune without ruining 
 both him and the fortune. He must be prepared by 
 education and by contact with the world to administer 
 his affairs before he can enjoy his wealth. God had a 
 wonderful work to do in the home of that widow whose 
 cruse of oil the prophet replenished : ! a wonderful token 
 
 1 2 Kings iv. 1-7. 
 
94 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 of His goodness laid up for the widow but she was 
 not ready for it. She had not vessels enough to receive 
 God's gift, and so the gift was held back until she should 
 have borrowed from her neighbors. In like manner 
 there are a good many of God's blessings which a.re ours, 
 field by Him for us, but which He cannot give us yet 
 because we are not ready to receive them. They belong 
 to a later point of our experience. It would have been 
 useless to take the Israelites out of Egypt and to set them 
 down at once in the Promised Land. They were not fit 
 to enter at once upon the privileges and duties of citizen- 
 ship. Just so there are certain gifts of God which mark 
 your life to-day, certain duties, the discharge of which 
 is your highest joy, certain responsibilities under the pres- 
 sure of which your manhood ripens and grows, which you 
 can very plainly see did not belong to an earlier period. 
 You were not fk to discharge the duties, nor to b.ear the 
 responsibilities. There are certain views of truth in 
 which you greatly rejoice, which you count it among the 
 best gifts of God to have had revealed to you : and yet 
 you can see, perhaps, that it was far better the revelation 
 should have been delayed. You can understand our 
 Lord's words to the disciples " I have yet many things 
 to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." ! You 
 can see that the truth was one which it needed some ex- 
 perience to use rightly ; that it has sides which you might 
 have magnified unduly and pressed so as to do harm 
 rather than good. In short, it was an instrument which 
 God kept laid up for you, and did not give into your 
 
 1 John xvi. 12. 
 
The Treasury Gate. 95 
 
 hands until some preparatory discipline and experience 
 had fitted you both to use and to enjoy it. 
 
 And it ought not to be forgotten, moreover, that a part 
 of this preparation depends upon ourselves ; and that 
 therefore it is sometimes our fault that the laid-up good- 
 ness is kept back. If we neglect the preparation, we shall 
 fail of the blessing, just as the widow might have thwarted 
 the prophet's intended kindness by refusing to borrow the 
 vessels. A professing Christian, for instance, says " I wish 
 I enjoyed the public and social church service more than 
 I do. I fairly envy the keen delight with which my neigh- 
 bor in the next pew enters into song and sermon, and 
 prayer. I have no fault to find with the preaching ; I sup- 
 pose it is good enough, but I don't enjoy my church priv- 
 ileges as I suppose I should." Well, you know David 
 was a man who especially enjoyed the sanctuary. You 
 know how he pined after it when he was in exile ; how, 
 even when he was hiding from Saul in the cave, he de- 
 clared that he would praise the Lord among the people 
 and sing praises among the nations. 1 He will tell you in 
 the fifty-seventh and one hundred and eighth Psalms the 
 secret of his enjoyment. " O God, my -heart is fixed [liter- 
 ally prepared\. I will sing and give praise, even with my 
 glory." 3 Continually we are hearing this cry from church- 
 goers " We are not interested: " as if forsooth the preach- 
 ing of the word and the social means of grace must take 
 them up bodily like so many children, and interest them 
 whether they will or not. Too much of the burden is shifted 
 from the right shoulders. If the pulpit and the prayer-meet- 
 
 1 Psalm Ivii. 9. a Psalm cviii. I. 
 
g6 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 ing are justly chargeable in some instances with the failure 
 to interest, the difficulty is quite as often that men and 
 women come to their ministrations with unprepared hearts, 
 depending upon these to lift them as so much dead weight, 
 and to strike fire out of their iciness. Of course they do 
 not receive the goodness which God has laid up for them 
 in His temple ; the interest is all outside of themselves ; 
 there is no responsive interest in themselves. I have 
 noticed when travelling among the woods and mountains 
 that when a man was really thirsty, he was not very fini- 
 cal about the particular way of getting a drink. If he had 
 a silver drinking-cup with him, he used it of course ; but 
 he seemed to drink with no less relish when he had to use 
 a tin-cup, or a cow-horn, or even to lie flat down on the 
 bank and drink from the stream itself. The amount of it 
 was, he was thirsty ; and people will not drink pure water 
 when they are not thirsty ; they want something sweetened 
 or spiced to tickle the palate. Only let our churches be 
 filled with souls thirsting for the goodness which God has 
 laid up for them in His word and ordinances, and there 
 will soon be interest enough. 
 
 God really consults for our pleasure by His judicious 
 reservation of His bounties. You take a child to a cabinet 
 with six drawers full of pictures and curiosities, and give 
 him the keys of the whole six, and let him rummage them 
 all in one morning, and he will be one of the unhappiest 
 of children. Allow him to open only one each day, or 
 every two days, and you heighten his pleasure. He en- 
 joys more deliberately. He finds more in each drawer 
 than he would in a morning's overhauling of the whole six. 
 Men, like children, are often disposed to want all their 
 
The Treasury Gate. 97 
 
 happiness at once ; and often, when God does send a 
 blessing, they are so annoyed because He did not send 
 something more, that they do not half enjoy what they 
 have. Yet God was wiser than they in keeping something 
 laid up. You would not enjoy travelling over a long road 
 where all the beautiful scenery was crowded into the first 
 mile, leaving twenty miles of barren, flat, dismal country. 
 When you visit Niagara Falls, the whole scene comes to 
 you at once. In a glance you take in the American fall, 
 and Goat Island, and the Horseshoe, and both rapids, 
 and the green, swirling, foam-streaked river bebw. And 
 yet not a few people prefer the quieter and gradually un- 
 folding beauty of Trenton, where you wind your way up 
 the stream through a succession of fresh and gradually 
 opening views, coming upon fall after fall, at once charmed 
 with the present scene, and lured on by the roar of waters 
 to new beauties beyond. Similarly, God makes a happier, 
 a more beautiful life for us by keeping a part of our bless- 
 ings laid up in store, by distributing them over a larger 
 surface, by mixing them up with sadder experiences, thus 
 at once tempering the sadness, and keeping prosperity 
 from making us unruly. 
 
 Another of God's designs in this policy of reservation, is 
 to stimulate us to effort. No one can study the Scriptures 
 long without seeing that God's gifts are to be sought for. 
 If our joy is to be full, it is on condition that we ask. 
 Christ's disciples were rebuked because they had asked 
 nothing. And there is this peculiarity about God's bless- 
 ings, that, while they satisfy the present need they create 
 new needs, and stimulate to fresh search and asking. The 
 Arabian story tells of the young prince who, having squan- 
 
98 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 dered his patrimony in dissipation, was directed in a vision 
 to dig up the floor of his chamber ; and on doing so dis- 
 covered a subterranean apartment. On exploring this, he 
 found an urn ; and on opening the urn discovered a key. 
 This set him looking for the lock to which the key be- 
 longed, and having at last discovered a secret door in the 
 wall, he opened another chamber containing eleven stat- 
 ues of pure gold, and a pedestal for a twelfth, with an in- 
 scription bidding him search for the remaining statue. 
 Even so each blessing of God reveals another on beyond, 
 by revealing the need of another. When you shall receive 
 a gift which leaves you no wish but to sit down and enjoy 
 it, you may seriously question whether that gift is a bless- 
 ing from God ; since God's blessings always point to the 
 goodness that is laid up. We have the truth illustrated in 
 Paul's experience. It was a wonderful display of God's 
 goodness, when he was, as he puts it, "grasped" or 
 " seized " by Christ * snatched from his narrow Jewish 
 prejudices and from his enmity to Christ and to His 
 church. " But," he says, " there was something to be 
 attained after that. I count not myself to have ap- 
 prehended. When Christ laid hold of me, He lifted 
 me to a height from which I discovered new spiritual 
 treasures to be won, larger knowledge of heavenly things, 
 new enemies to be subdued ; and so I forget the things 
 which are behind, and press towards the mark for the 
 prize of my high calling ; for God is calling me higher 
 and higher, even unto heaven." He was like a man 
 who climbs a peak and looks out over a new conti- 
 
 1 Philippians iii. 12. 
 
The Treasury Gate. 99 
 
 nent, full of goodness laid up. Take your own experience. 
 Go back to the beginning of your Christian life. How 
 joyful was the sense of forgiven sin. How your whole 
 heart went out in the words of the old Psalm "Bless the 
 Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy 
 name, who forgiveth all thine iniquities." ' Yet how long 
 was it before that very experience set you seeking for 
 fresh displays of His goodness ? It had set you on a 
 track where there was daily work to be done as well as 
 pardoning love to enjoy ; and you must needs draw on 
 the goodness laid up for wisdom to map out your work, 
 and for strength to prosecute it. Then, when you had 
 gotten that, you found that your work led you into dark 
 places, and brought you face to face with hard problems, 
 and you were getting weary and discouraged and sorrow- 
 ful ; and there came a large draft on the goodness laid up, 
 for patience, for sympathy, for comfort, for victory ; and so 
 it has been all along the course ; one experience has led 
 the way to another, and each succeeding one has devel- 
 oped new demands upon the goodness laid up, and new 
 and ever richer revelations of that goodness. 
 
 Illustrations of this principle of reserve are seen par- 
 ticularly in God's promises, and in His providences. 
 
 A promise of God seems a very simple thing at first 
 view. So does an acorn. No one who did not know 
 the facts of vegetable life would dream that there is an 
 oak tree enfolded in it. In a single promise are folded 
 an infinite variety of provisions and adaptations, laid up, 
 and not manifesting themselves until they are wanted. 
 
 1 Psalm ciii. 
 
IOO Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 It is very much like the tent about which we used to read 
 in the fairy story, which could be shut up in the hand, 
 and yet could be spread out on occasion so as to cover 
 a whole army. When a man takes a promise into his 
 life, he finds it continually developing unsuspected re- 
 sources. It conies in to help and to comfort him at points 
 where he never dreamed it could be of any service to 
 him. It is something as when an inexperienced traveller 
 goes out for an excursion among the Alps, and is bidden 
 to take a rope with him. He does not exactly see what 
 he is going to want with it, but when he gets upon a 
 snow slope, the guide ties him to himself with the rope ; 
 and when he slips into a crevasse, he finds that the rope 
 is all there is between him and death. They come to a 
 steep ledge, and the rope is in demand again. They set 
 up their mountain tent for the night, the rope coms into 
 play. That traveller finds out how many uses are laid up 
 in a rope before he gets back to his lodging. He never 
 will think of going into the mountains again without one. 
 So a Christian takes a familiar promise like " cast thy 
 burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall 
 never suffer the righteous to be moved." * When his first 
 little trial or sorrow comes, he falls back on his promise, 
 and he finds that it answers perfectly. By and by troubles 
 thicken, and burdens grow heavier, and he looks round 
 for a promise, and the old one falls under his hand again ; 
 and he is surprised to find that it does not bend under 
 the heavier load. And again troubles come in an ava- 
 lanche. Not only are resources and friends gone, but he 
 
 1 Psalm Iv. 22. 
 
The Treasury Gate. 101 
 
 is broken, and he lies a helpless wreck, with hardly 
 strength to grope round for a promise ; and when he 
 does, he lights on "he shall sustain thee ; " and somehow 
 it never seemed so large and so strong before ; and he 
 finds that the same promise which held up his first little 
 care, now bears up the whole mountain of sorrow, and 
 the dead weight of his poor wrecked self into the bargain. 
 And sometimes Christians go for a good while in trouble 
 through not realizing what riches of goodness are laid up 
 for them in a familiar promise. They are like a foreigner 
 who walks our streets weak and hungry, and who does 
 not know the value of the five dollar bill hidden in his 
 pocket. It is with a shock of surprise that it now and 
 then comes to you as you read that old promise " why 
 that means me ! " When Christian and Hopeful strayed 
 out of the path upon forbidden ground, and found them- 
 selves locked up in Despair Castle for their carelessness, 
 there they lay for days, until one night they began to 
 pray. " Now a little before it was day, good Christian, as 
 one half amazed, broke out in this passionate speech : 
 'What a fool,' quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking 
 dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty. I have a 
 key in my bojom called PROMISE, that will. I am per- 
 suaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.' Then said 
 Hopeful, ' That's good news, good brother ; pluck it out 
 of thy bosom and try.' Then Christian pulled it out of 
 his bosom, and began to try at the dungeon door, whose 
 bolt gave back, and the door flew open with ease, and 
 Christian and Hopeful both came out." And what is 
 true of the promises may be applied to the whole word. 
 Away back in David's time men were praising God for 
 
IO2 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the treasures laid up in His word ; and the centuries have 
 passed on, and learning, and genius, and piety have been 
 digging in this mine all the while. There never was so 
 much known about the word of God as there is to day, 
 and yet never was there such stimulus to farther research : 
 we cannot exhaust it. It is a fountain fed by eternal 
 springs : 
 
 "Its streams the whole creation reach, 
 
 So plenteous is the store : 
 Enough for all, enough for each, 
 Enough for evermore I " 
 
 Again, God's goodness is laid up in His providences. 
 Their meaning is not grasped at once, and their result is 
 not reached at once. One of God's dispensations seems 
 like a single act : a blow, a rending asunder, a blight, a 
 wreck, and it is done ; that is the end of it ; let us get 
 over the consequences as we may. That, I say, is the 
 short-sighted human view of the matter ; but that is not 
 the end of it. That single dispensation has a wide range. 
 It is in many parts ; and the man who patiently follows 
 God along its line, will see it unfold into new meanings 
 and new bearings upon his life. 
 
 k His purposes will ripen fast, 
 Unfolding every hour." 
 
 I am not so sure about the fast ripening. I am in- 
 clined to think that God's purposes often unfold rather 
 slowly, and not hour by hour. But as to the unfolding 
 itself there can be no doubt. Great store of goodness, 
 of love, of beneficent purpose is laid up in these provi- 
 
T/ie Treasury Gate. 103 
 
 dences which seem so severe, as a gem is sometimes 
 found enclosed in a rough, hard stone. A man who sets 
 himself to watch and to follow the development of one of 
 these providences is like one who watches the unrolling 
 of a rich web from a foreign loom. First appears a 
 rough selvage : then follows a dark, sombre fabric : no 
 beauty there : then, perhaps, a streak of gold or a line of 
 embroidery : then more and more gold and color, until at 
 last the web unfolds its whole pattern, blazing in gold and 
 in gorgeous dyes. So you do not see the gold nor the 
 purple in the first unfolding of God's providence. It is 
 all rough and sad-hued; but the purple and gold are 
 laid up none the less in the heart of the providence : 
 they are of one piece with the sombre web, and God will 
 bring the whole pattern to light by and by to the praise 
 of the great goodness which He has laid up for them that 
 fear Him. 
 
 God has strange wrappers for His promises. He lays 
 up His goodness sometimes in strange places. There is 
 one promise of His presence and companionship which 
 lies in the very depth of the waters, and another still 
 which can only be found in the heart of the fire. " When 
 thou passest through the waters I will be with thee. When 
 thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, 
 neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." l 
 
 Out of this truth grows a practical admonition which 
 cannot but be serviceable to us as we face the work and 
 trial of the future : an exhortation to faith in God, to 
 patient waiting and hopefulness. There is another clause 
 
 1 Isaiah xliii. 2. 
 
IO4 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 to the text " Which Thou hast wrought before the sons 
 of men for them that trust in Thee." God's goodness 
 is not always kept hidden. If there is reserve there is 
 also unfolding. If there is laying up of goodness, there 
 is also working it out publicly before men's faces. But if 
 we want the goodness wrought out, we must have faith in 
 the goodness which is laid up. If we want the perform- 
 ance, we must trust the promise ; or, as one has said 
 "As God's faithfulness engageth us to believe, so our faith, 
 as it were, engageth God's faithfulness to perform the 
 promise." 1 We are often speculating on what is to come ; 
 whether the years shall bring life or death, prosperity or 
 sorrow. You ask the watchman, "What of the night?" 
 You who trust Him, you who are His dear children through 
 faith in Jesus Christ, may take this answer as regards the 
 coming years : you are going forth into nothing but good- 
 ness. " All things work together for good to them that 
 love God." 2 I cannot say that you may not be going 
 forward into trouble, humiliation, toil, disappointment. It 
 may well be; but I repeat it, if you are walking at God's 
 side, you are going forward to nothing but good : great 
 goodness is laid up for you on the simple condition of 
 your trust in God. Take this truth as a fact and not as a 
 poetic fancy : God has great goodness laid up for me. 
 If the worst which I fear shall come to pass, I shall find 
 His goodness laid up in the heart of the disaster. If 
 there is some cherished desire yet unfulfilled, for which 
 you have been looking year after year, perhaps it is laid 
 up for a time when the fulfilment will do you more good 
 
 1 Nathanael Hurdy, quoted by Spurgeon. 2 Romans viii. 28. 
 
The Treasury Gate. 105 
 
 than now. Peril aps God's goodness is laid up in not ful- 
 filling it : at any rate, follow the line of God's providence 
 whither it leads you, take the good as it falls in along the 
 line, and be thankful as you know that, with God as your 
 guide, you cannot be travelling any road which does not 
 lead to something better. 
 5* 
 
THE GATE TO THE CONFES- 
 SIONAL. 
 
PSALM XXXII. 
 
 (1) Blessed is he whose transgression is taken away, whose 
 
 sin is covered : 
 
 (2) Blessed is the man to whom Jehovah reckoneth not 
 
 iniquity, 
 And in whose spirit there is no guile. 
 
 (3) For while I kept silence, my bones waxed old 
 Through my roaring all the day long. 
 
 (4) For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me ; 
 My moisture was turned into the drouth of summer. 
 
 (5) I would acknowledge my sin unto Thee, 
 And mine iniquity did I not cover. 
 
 I said, I will confess my transgressions unto Jehovah, 
 And Thou tookest away the iniquity of my sin. 
 
 (6) For this cause let every godly man pray to Thee 
 In a time when Thou mayest be found ; 
 
 So surely when the great waters overflow, 
 They shall not reach him. 
 
 (7) Thou art my hiding-place ; 
 
 Thou wilt preserve me from trouble ; 
 
 Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance. 
 
 (8) I will instruct and teach thee in the way thou shouldest 
 
 go; 
 I will watch over thee with mine eye. 
 
 (9) Be ye not as horse, or as mule without understanding, 
 Whose trapping is with bit and bridle to hold them, 
 'Or else they will not come nigh unto thee. 
 
 (10) Many sorrows are to the wicked, 
 
 But whoso trusteth in Jehovah, loving kindness com- 
 passeth him about. 
 
 (11) Rejoice in Jehovah and exult, O ye righteous ; 
 And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE CONFESSIONAL. 
 
 THE point at which the earlier brilliancy of David's 
 career began to merge in the shadow which overhung his 
 later years, was his fearful sin in the matter of Uriah the 
 Hittite. It was indeed an awful crime or cluster of 
 crimes; yet the shock of his defilement is tempered and 
 relieved for us by the spectacle of his penitence. If we 
 grieve at the weakness which yielded so abjectly to temp- 
 tation, we cannot but admire the vigor and promptitude 
 with which resolution gathers itself up amid the wreck of 
 character, and with manly sorrow, frank confession, and 
 honest penitence, begins a new life in God's strength. 
 One has truly said, " He is not what he was before ; but 
 he is far nobler and greater than many a just man who 
 never fell and never repented. He is far more closely 
 bound up with the sympathies of mankind than if he had 
 never fallen." ' 
 
 It is with this lighter side of the sad history that our 
 Psalm deals. Whatever else it may teach us, it teaches us 
 this broad truth that the forgiven penitent, under God' 1 's 
 economy, is not a wretched man. " Blessed is he whose 
 
 1 Stanley, Jewish Church. 
 
no Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 transgression is forgiven." If the world forgives, it gen- 
 erally vouchsafes a kind of stinging forgiveness which 
 perpetuates the smart of the crime. It is at no pains to 
 cover the sin. We can say of one thus forgiven, " He is 
 tolerated: he has a new chance given him," but scarce- 
 ly " he is blessed." This Psalm, on the contrary, while 
 it is one of the saddest, is at the same time one of the 
 most joyful of the inspired lyrics. It is no less the record 
 of a bitter, penitential sorrow, than the expression of a 
 heart full of praise. It comes. to us to-day to tell us that 
 the worst sinner, forgiven by God, is a happy man. 
 
 The true nobility of repentance shows itself in nothing 
 more impressively than in the willingness it begets to put 
 such sad experience at the disposal of the world for warn- 
 ing and for instruction. It would be but a natural dictate of 
 the heart to cover the sin as God has covered it. It would 
 be the natural prompting of self-interest to say, " The 
 world knows too much already. No need of refreshing its 
 recollection of my short-comings." But, if I may use the 
 words of an old writer " This is a remark of a true peni- 
 tent, when he hath been a stumbling-block to others, to 
 be as careful to raise them up by his repentance, as he was 
 hurtful to them by his sin ; and I never think that man 
 truly penitent who is ashamed to teach sinners repentance 
 by his own particular proof. Happy and thrice happy 
 is the man who can build so much as he hath cast 
 down." ' 
 
 In this Psalm, David gives to the world his experience 
 as a sinner. He tells us 
 
 J Archibald Symson, quoted by Spur^eon. 
 
The Gate to the Confessional. in 
 
 Is t. OF THE BLESSEDNESS OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 2d. OF THE RESULT OF His ATTEMPTS TO COVER His 
 
 SIN. 
 
 ^d. OF THE REMEDY WHICH HE FOUND. 
 4th, OF THE RESULT OF ITS APPLICATION. 
 5th. DRAWS A PRACTICAL LESSON FOR OUR INSTRUC- 
 TION. 
 
 When a shipwrecked sailor has been rescued from 
 death, and is sitting warm and dry by the fire, his first 
 thought, his first utterance is one of congratulation. 
 " How fortunate I am to have escaped. How thankful I 
 am to those who saved my life." After this feeling has 
 found vent, he will go on to tell the story of his shipwreck 
 and of his rescue. Hence nothing could be more natural 
 than the ordering of this Psalm. David is a rescued man ; 
 and thanksgiving, and congratulation on his present secu- 
 rity come to his lips, before he tells the story of his moral 
 shipwreck. He brings the blessedness of the pardoned 
 soul before us under three phases. First, his sin is taken 
 away. Perhaps David had in his mind the picture of that 
 strange rite, so often repeated in the wilderness, the high 
 priest standing with his hands upon the head of the scape- 
 goat, and confessing over it the sins of the people, and 
 the animal led away, with its mystical burden of trangres- 
 sions, into the wilderness. But whatever the image, that 
 is fat fact concerning a pardoned soul ; its sins are taken 
 away. u In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, 
 the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be 
 none ; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found." * 
 
 1 Jeremiah L 20. 
 
U2 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 Like the entry in a creditor's book, they are blotted out. 
 God does not, indeed, when He takes away sin, agree to 
 take away all the consequences of sin. There were certain 
 results of David's sin which even God's forgiveness could 
 not remove. Forgiveness could not set Uriah again in 
 his place in the army or in his household ; it could not 
 wipe away the dishonor from his door. There were cer- 
 tain complications in the royal family and in the state 
 natural outgrowths of David's polygamy, which took their 
 own course, spite of his repentance and his pardon. Amid 
 their sinful indulgences, men should keep it before them 
 that Nature knows nothing of forgiveness. But the utter- 
 ance of the Psalm concerns sin in its relations to God and 
 to future judgment. As affecting the sinner's relations to 
 these, it is taken away. It never will appear against him 
 again : he may fall again, and lower than before ; but those 
 sips, freely forgiven, will never be laid to his account. 
 
 2d. He is blessed in that his sins are covered or hid- 
 den, and that from God ; not from men. There is no real 
 blessedness in the fact that men do not know our sins ; 
 and it is worthy of notice that these words strike at the 
 very sentiment underlying the social and moral rottenness 
 which is coming to light so wonderfully in these days : 
 the sentiment that makes men content to live a life 
 which is an awful, hollow cheat in God's sight, disturbed 
 only by the prospect of detection by their fellow-men, as 
 if the chief end of man were not to be found out : as if 
 man's relations to GOD were not first : as if the first thing 
 to be provided for were not the scrutiny of the divine eye : 
 as if exposure to the world were not as a grain of sani 
 when weighed against exposure to the eye of Him with 
 
The Gate to tJie Confessional. 113 
 
 whom we must deal sooner or late, and to whom " all 
 things are naked and opened." l If you would estimate 
 the blessedness of such covering of sin, read the familiar 
 story of Ananias and Sapphira : example for all time of 
 those who would stand well with men at the expense of a 
 lie, without a thought of the God whose service they were 
 caricaturing. That thought comes uppermost in the 
 words of the apostle who pronounces their sin and their 
 doom : " Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the 
 Holy Ghost? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto 
 God." 2 How different the feeling of David. His sin is 
 public ; the story of his moral fall has spread from the 
 court to the army and through the kingdom : yet there is 
 not a hint of sorrow for that. Nay, as we have seen, he 
 holds up his own sin as a beacon to warn the world. 
 Man's estimate of the matter does not seem to occur to 
 him ; but only the joyful fact that it is covered from God: 
 that God himself covers it. However men may comment or 
 rail, it matters little while God says " I have blotted out as 
 a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins." ! 
 3d. He is blessed still farther in that he is treated as 
 innocent. The Lord does not impute nor lay the iniquity 
 to his charge. Paul gives us, in the fourth chapter of 
 Romans, the Christian development of this thought, con- 
 firming it by these very words of David. " To him that 
 worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the un- 
 godly, his faith is counted for righteousness." That is, 
 God treats him who, in faith, lays his sins upon Jesus 
 Christ, just as though he were righteous. 
 
 1 Hebrews iv. 13. 2 Acts v. 3, 4. 3 Isaiah xliv. 22. 
 
114 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 But we notice that there follows a phrase which, if I 
 may so speak, brackets all these three. From whom does 
 the Lord take away sin ? For whom does He cover it ? 
 To whom does He not impute it? Who is this blessed 
 man ? He is the one " in whose spirit there is no guile : " 
 not the man who is innocent, but he who does not seek 
 to conceal or to extenuate his fault by excuses and sub- 
 terfuges and self-deceptions. Let us be sure that we put 
 the emphasis in the right place : " Blessed is the man 
 to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity." We are not 
 blessed because we do not impute iniquity to ourselves; 
 that is a reckoning with which we cannot be trusted. 
 There is a natural guile in the human heart which always 
 makes it strike the balance on the wrong side ; that is, 
 to its own credit. Men are very much like little children 
 who hide their faces in their hands, fancying that no one 
 sees them, because they do not see themselves. The 
 Spirit gives us a specimen of that kind of self-delusion in 
 the message to the church of Laodicaea. The churcK s 
 reckoning ran thus : " I am rich and increased with 
 goods, and have need of nothing." The Spirit's reckon- 
 ing ran thus : " Thou art wretched and miserable, and 
 poor, and blind, and naked ; " and, worst of all, " thou 
 knowest it not." ! O, remember that sin is not covered 
 because we cover it from ourselves ! God covers sin 
 only when man frankly uncovers it. " If we confess our 
 sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
 cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 2 When man covers, 
 God is sure to discover. 
 
 1 Revelation iii. 15-18. 8 i John I 9. 
 
The Gate to the Confessional. 115 
 
 However, men sometimes need experience to teach 
 them this truth, and that was the case with David. He 
 tried the policy of covering his sin, and he gives us the 
 result of the experiment in the following verses. He 
 withheld confession ; he kept silence. Perhaps he sought 
 to still that secret voice which was urging him to lay bare 
 his sin, by plunging into the business of state, or into the 
 pleasures of his court ; but all in vain. " When I kept 
 silence my bones waxed old." The very seat of strength 
 was invaded. His body suffered from the terrors of re- 
 morse. What an image is this that follows the pressure 
 of a strong hand, hampering all free activity. No joy in 
 work or in study any more. The healthy competitions of 
 business, the free play of social converse, the sweet inter- 
 changes of the household, all repressed and devitalized 
 by this painful consciousness of guilt. What ails the man 
 who was but late so sparkling, so magnetic, so enthusias- 
 tic ? " Day and night, THY hand was heavy upon me ; 
 my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." The 
 old freshness of heart is gone, like a running stream dried 
 up in the sickening heat of the eastern sun, and leaving 
 nothing but the tasteless details of duty, like the stones 
 and patches of sand in the bed of the brook. Truly has 
 one said, " God's hand is very helpful when it uplifts, 
 but it is awful when it presses down." Has David 
 read your heart ? Has David told your story ? Have 
 you had any better success in keeping silence, and in try- 
 ing to cover your sin, than he had ? If not, you must be 
 looking for relief by this time. If not, anything must be 
 thrice welcome which will take off the pressure of that 
 heavy hand, and set the springs of your freshness running 
 
Ii6 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 again in your heart. You can do no better now than to 
 keep by David, and to seek relief where he sought it. 
 What, then, was his remedy ? 
 
 It was confession. " I acknowledged my sin unto 
 Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will 
 confess my transgressions unto the Lord." This, David 
 tells us, is a very effective medicine. Let us analyze its 
 properties a little. We find it, all through Scripture, pre- 
 scribed as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness. 
 "Speak unto the children of Israel," says God to Moses, 
 " when a man or woman shall commit any sin that men 
 commit to do a trespass against the Lord, and that person 
 be guilty, then they shall confess their sin which they have 
 done." ] " He that covereth his sins," says Solomon, 
 " shall not prosper ; but whoso confesseth them, and for- 
 saketh them, shall have mercy." 2 
 
 "Well," you say, " if God knows all about my sin, why 
 should I confess it?" God knows what you want in 
 prayer before you ask Him, and yet you will not get it if 
 you do not ask Him. He has conditioned forgiveness 
 upon confession, just as He has conditioned finding upon 
 seeking. 
 
 But besides this, you are to remember that the mere 
 mention of the fact of your sin before God does not con- 
 stitute confession. It is, indeed, nothing for you to re- 
 peat to Him a fact which He knows perfectly well ; but 
 true confession implies your viewing that fact in the same 
 light in which God views it. Your little boy gets angry 
 and strikes his brother. You call him to you and say, 
 
 1 Numbers v. 6, 7. 3 Proverbs xxviii. 13. 
 
The Gate to the Confessional. 117 
 
 " Did you strike your brother ? " " Ye?, I struck him." 
 "My son, you have done wrong. You have shown a 
 wicked spirit. Your brother provoked you, but you 
 should have returned good for evil. Is not that so ? 
 Don't you see that you did wrong ? " And the boy shuts 
 his teeth hard, and says, " No, it was right. He hurt me, 
 and I punished him. When I get a chance I will strike 
 him again-." Now, the boy has confessed the act, but 
 you see very clearly that you cannot forgive him so long 
 as he insists that the act was right. You will most assur- 
 edly punish him if he do not come to you and say, 
 " Father, I did wrong. My temper was very wicked. I 
 deserve to be punished." And just so you may go to 
 God and rehearse the whole catalogue of your misdeeds 
 in detail; but you may just as well spare your breath if 
 you are not ready to acknowledge the guilt of your acts, 
 as well as the acts themselves. God will have the decla- 
 ration from your own lips, that you are a transgressor at 
 every point where He charges you with transgression ; 
 that every defence is broken down ; that your most cher- 
 ished and most stoutly defended sin is just what His 
 Word declares it to be ugly and without excuse ; that 
 the law has a just charge against you, and that God is 
 fully justified in every word of condemnation which he 
 utters against you. That is the way in which David 
 viewed it, as appears from his words in the fifty-first 
 Psalm, which grew out of this same sin. " Against THEE, 
 THEE, ONLY, have I sinned, and done this evil in THY sight, 
 that Thou might est be justified when Thou speakest, and 
 be clear when Thou judgest" 
 
 Again, let it be remembered that confession implies re- 
 
Ii8 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 nunc lotion. When a hardened criminal in his cell glee- 
 fully recounts to his visitor or lawyer the details of his 
 wicked life, that is not a confession which commends 
 him to mercy. The man who makes formal acknowledg- 
 ment of his sins to God, knowing in his secret heart that 
 he is going forth to do the same deeds again, is only mock- 
 ing and defying God. 
 
 And, once more : True confession is not something 
 extorted by terror and by fear of impending justice. Such 
 an acknowledgment implies only fear and despair. It is 
 not the utterance of a man who arises and goes J:o his 
 father, but of one whom bailiffs arrest while he flees 
 from his father. True confession implies faith in God's 
 pardoning grace, and confidence in his power to make 
 the broken bones rejoice, and to wash the tainted heart 
 whiter than snow. It is a voluntary laying bare of the 
 wound to the eye of a trusted surgeon. 
 
 Confession, therefore, as implying godly sorrow and 
 true repentance, is David's remedy in this strait. The 
 Prodigals of the Old and of the New Testament answer 
 to each other : "I will confess my transgressions unto the 
 Lord." " I will arise and go to my father, and will say 
 unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before 
 thee." ' 
 
 And now, how does the remedy work in Davids case ? 
 
 He first sums up the result in a single sentence : " Thou 
 forgavest the iniquity of my sin." He has a whole cata- 
 logue of joyful consequences of his confession to present to 
 us ; but he is careful to make it perfectly clear at the outset 
 
 1 Luke xv. 1 8. 
 
The Gate to the Confessional. 119 
 
 that all these consequences are linked with forgiveness. 
 The man is not blessed who can forget his sins ; who can 
 blind himself to them who can divert his mind from 
 them ; who can temporarily escape their consequences. 
 Blessed is he, and only he, whose transgression is for- 
 given. Thus we get back to the key-note of the Psalm. 
 
 And now what a sudden change reveals itself. The 
 tone of the last few verses has been like the sigh of the 
 wind through the dry valleys. Now we begin to hear 
 the running of streams. The abject penitent, moaning 
 day and night under God's, heavy hand, is transformed 
 into a joyful singer of praises ; a prophet, with a fresh 
 lesson of God's goodness kindling on his lips. As in 
 every case of true spiritual restoration, the subject's 
 thought goes beyond himself. This experience of mine 
 shall be the experience of every one who fears God. 
 " For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in 
 a time when thou mayest be found." For this because 
 such has been my blessed experience. And yet there is 
 an undercurrent of warning mingling with the note of 
 praise : " in a time when Thou mayest be found." There 
 are then times of finding God ; and, by implication, times 
 when He may not be found. You ask, is this indeed so ? 
 May not God be found at any time ? I reply, God is 
 always the same. His promise never varies : "If thou 
 shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him, if thou 
 seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul." * But 
 you have not unfrequently known cases where, though 
 something you much desired to find was in its right place, 
 
 1 Deuteronomy iv. 29. 
 
I2O Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 yet through some forgetful ness or confusion or careless- 
 ness on your part you could not find it. So, one may in- 
 capacitate himself for fulfilling the condition upon which 
 God promises to be found. He may resist His Spirit 
 until he shall have no disposition to seek Him ; no dis- 
 position to repent and to confess. " God," says Cole- 
 ridge, " 'has promised pardon on penitence ; but has 
 He promised penitence on sin? Is the repentance, 
 the passing into a new and contrary principle of action, 
 in the sinner-'s own power ? at his own liking ? Has 
 he but to open his eyes to the sin, and the tears are 
 close at hand to wash it away ? Verily the tenet of 
 tran substantiation is scarcely at greater variance with 
 the common-sense and experience of mankind, than this 
 self-change as the easy means of self salvation." ' It 
 is not safe to struggle away from the pressure of God's 
 hand. Not safe to let those times slip by when God 
 seems so near, when conscience is so sensitive, and per- 
 ception of Divine truth and of one's own condition as a 
 sinner so clear. It is better to uncover the sin at once. 
 When the sin is uncovered, God is discovered. The hid- 
 ing of the sin hides God. 
 
 But, apart from this warning, the tone of the Psalmist is 
 joyful to the very end. I have escaped from the pressure 
 of the hand that was heavy upon me. Whereas it bore 
 me down, now I lean upon it, and it leads me into pas- 
 tures of peace, and folds me like a tired child to my 
 Father's heart. I no longer fear the impending judgment 
 of God. In he floods of great waters, in the time when 
 
 1 Aids to Reflection. 
 
The Gate to tJie Confessional. 121 
 
 Divine wrath shall swallow up the rebellious sons of men 
 as in a whirlpool, the floods shall not come nigh me. 
 While the ungodly shall be calling upon rocks and moun- 
 tains to fall on them and hide them from His face, I will 
 go to Him, my Rock and my Fortress, and hide myself 
 in Him. "Thou art my hiding-place." Thou from 
 whom I strove of late to hide, shalt now hide me Thy- 
 self in the secret of Thy tabernacle. Thy word was of 
 late my dread. Sharper than any two edged sword, it 
 divided soul and spirit, and pierced me with a thousand 
 pangs: but now "I hope in Thy word." I feared but 
 just now that Thou wouldst destroy me. Thy lightnings 
 were terrible : the sound of Thy thundering made me sick 
 at heart : I shrank from Thy step as from the tread of 
 an avenger and destroyer : Thou wert my trouble when I 
 remembered Thee. But THOU the same God, " Thou 
 shalt preserve me from trouble." Thou from whose voice 
 I fled like Adam in the garden, " Thou shalt fence me 
 about with songs : " whithersoever I turn I shall see Thy 
 hand and hear Thy voice, and shall see and hear only to 
 break forth into an answering song of praise and thanks- 
 giving. See what God can do for a sinner. Look at this 
 sinful, denied soul, but now wallowing in his lust, raging 
 and smiting in his passion, blighting the fairest flowers of 
 domestic peace in his selfishness, crushed and withered 
 by remorse, groaning under God's hand and say if any- 
 thing but Divine grace, Divine compassion, Divine for- 
 giveness can change such an one into the joyful singer 
 of praises who speaks to us to-day through this familiar 
 Psalm. 
 
 And the legitimate result of every such experience is to 
 6 
 
122 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 make its subject a teacher. Christ bade Peter make use 
 of his own terrible sifting to strengthen his brethren. 1 
 David anticipates the lesson ; and these words of his 
 have been the text-book of penitent souls from his time 
 to the present. " I will instruct thee and teach thee in 
 the way which thou shalt go ; " this way of repentance 
 and confession in which I have walked. Be not obsti- 
 nate in refusing to walk therein. Heed my experience, 
 ye who feel the pressure of God's hand, whose moisture is 
 turned into the drought of summer. " Be not like the 
 horses and the mules without understanding, whose orna- 
 ments are bridle and bit for restraint, because they do not 
 come near unto thee." That is a terrible comparison. 
 Think of it for a moment. The bridle which restrains 
 the beast is its ornament. It is a well-known fact that 
 certain animals have a delight in gaudy trappings, 3 and 
 yet these very things are the signs of their degradation; 
 proofs that they cannot be appealed to on the grounds of 
 reason and of conscience. And it is also true that the 
 rebellious attitude which a sinful man assumes towards 
 God, is often his pride. He tells his companions he is 
 too wise to yield to such foolish notions : too strong to 
 be frightened by those " painted devils " death and judg- 
 ment ; too far-seeing to have his reason cramped and fet- 
 tered by such nonsense as repentance and faith : too free 
 to be in subjection to any power in heaven or on earth. 
 
 1 Luke xxii. 32. 
 
 * Ruodi. " How well the collar graces that cow's neck ! " 
 Kuoni. u She knows, as well as you, that she's the leader, 
 And, should I strip it off, she'd cease to eat." 
 
 Schiller's " Wilhelm Tell," Act i. Scene I. 
 
The Gate to the Confessional. 123 
 
 And yet, if he but knew it, this very attitude is his humili- 
 ation. It stamps him as an unreasoning creature which 
 does not appreciate its relations to God and to eternity. 
 God would gladly deal with him on noble and generous 
 terms, as a free man in Christ Jesus : would fain guide 
 him by His eye : says to him, u Come, and let us reason 
 together : " but if man refuses, he must be dealt with on 
 other terms. If he will not accept the guidance of the 
 eye, he must take up with that of the bit and bridle. God 
 appealed to Pharaoh first as a man, with fair reasoning 
 and respectful solicitation ; and this failing, he was treated 
 as a lower creature, and animals and insects became the 
 instruments of his torment. If men will not come nigh 
 unto God and fall in with His economy, they must be re- 
 strained from interfering with it. 
 
 The two conditions are before us. They are summed 
 up for us by the Psalmist himself as the result of his own 
 painful experience of sin, and of his joyful experience of 
 forgiveness and salvation. Many sorrows shall be to the 
 wicked ; but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall 
 compass him about." The two pictures are before us, 
 we can judge for ourselves. Shall we have the dryness 
 and the mourning, the blackness of guilt, the pressure of 
 the heavy hand, the terror and dread of God, the restraint 
 of bit and bridle, or the confession and submission, the 
 songs of deliverance, the joy of forgiveness, the guidance 
 of the eye, the hiding-place in God, the shout of the up- 
 right in heart ? 
 
THE GATE TO THE WAITING- 
 PLACE. 
 
PSALM XXXVII. 
 
 (7) Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him : fret not 
 thyself because of Him who prospereth in his way, be- 
 cause of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE WAITING-PLACE. 
 
 MEN who live selfish lives, walking according to the 
 course of this world, are very apt to take a comfortable 
 view of the condition of society, at least so long as they 
 themselves are happy and prosperous. " It is a very 
 good kind of world after all," they will tell you : " there is 
 a great deal in it that is enjoyable, and a great deal of its 
 evil is exaggerated." Such sentiments are very often the 
 expression of a selfishness which cares very little about the 
 condition and tendencies of society, or of a blindness and 
 ignorance which know very little about its condition and 
 tendencies. 
 
 When a man has once come into right relations with 
 God, has begun to live for others rather than for self, has 
 begun to seek " the kingdom of God and His righteous- 
 ness," and that not for himself only, but for his fellow- 
 men, when his desires are summed up in the prayer 
 " Thy kingdom come," he is apt to grow uneasy as he 
 sees how slow the Divine kingdom is in coming, and how 
 many indications there are of the presence and tremen- 
 dous power of another and hostile kingdom in society. 
 
 This Psalm is addressed to a soul which is confused and 
 alarmed by this aspect of the world. It clearly recognizes 
 the facts which make it uneasy and tempt it to fretful- 
 
128 Gates into tlie Psalm Country. 
 
 ness. Hints of them are scattered from one end of it to 
 the other. The very first verse recognizes the presence 
 and work of evil-doers. They plot against the just ; they 
 watch the righteous : they lie in wait to slay him. Not 
 only so, they succeed. They bring wicked devices to pass. 
 They are in great power, and spread themselves like green 
 bay trees. Good men are slandered, pure reputations are 
 blackene-d, the helpless and the innocent fall under the 
 harrow of the wicked and the designing. From such facts 
 the thought runs naturally to the whole great mystery of 
 God's administration in the world. God's administration ! 
 So dire is the confusion at times, so sharp the contradic- 
 tion, so baffling the mystery of providence, so impercep- 
 tible the progress of truth and of virtue, that the hold 
 of the strongest faith trembles, and the spectral doubt 
 thrusts its leering lineaments into the face of God's child 
 " Do all things indeed work together for good ? " It is 
 not only that wickedness is rampant, but that goodness is 
 tainted ; that good men are weak, and bigoted, and most 
 positive and aggressive where they should be most humble 
 and docile ; that the very men and women who seem most 
 necessary are stricken down ; that 
 
 "The good die first, 
 
 While those whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket ;" 
 
 that in religion, no less than in worldly things, men are 
 carried away by the shallow, the plausible, and the tran- 
 sient, rather than anchored to the deep, abiding, eternal 
 truth. 
 
 While the Psalm opens to us this picture and it is as 
 
The Gate to the Waiting- Place. 129 
 
 old as human society, and has tortured the minds of good 
 and true men from the beginning of time, it also puts us 
 in the right attitude towards this mystery and confusion. 
 Over against it all it sets the great truth " GOD REIGNS," 
 and the consequent precept " TRUST IN HIM." To the 
 man who is thus troubled, and anxious, and tempted to 
 fret, it says " Fret not thyself. Society, lawless, aimless 
 as it appears, is held in God's hand. Leave it there : 
 labor to improve your corner of it : do good in your own 
 day and generation : instead of despairing, trust in the 
 Lord : instead of fretting, delight yourself in God : instead 
 of being restless, rest in the Lord : hold thou still in Jeho- 
 vah : He shall bring it to pass." 
 
 " Yes," is the reply, " but He is so long in bringing it to 
 pass : He makes me wait so long." So He does, and 
 probably will ; and it is this side of the lesson of faith in 
 God which I want to bring out of this Psalm the lesson 
 of waiting. 
 
 For that is the side of faith which develops most slowly. 
 Working is not always a sign of faith. There are certain 
 natures to which work is an instinct and a necessity ; and 
 such usually turn to work in times of sorrow or trouble, to 
 " work it off" as they say. But if a man merely diverts 
 his mind from trouble, or forgets trouble in work, his 
 relief is work^ not God" Diversion and oblivion are not 
 faith. Successful work involves no faith ; it is only joy. 
 Faith's harder lesson is given in making a man lie still, 
 and not work at all, but simply bear and wait ; it is given 
 in God's both smiting him and tying his hands; in his 
 being forced to stand still and see wrong consummated, 
 and villainy successful, and the wicked in great power ; 
 
130 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 it is given in his being compelled to work without success, 
 as men style it ; to labor for consummations which God 
 indefinitely postpones ; it is under such discipline that he 
 wants GOD, no one less, to say to him, " Hold thou still 
 in Jehovah, and wait patiently for Him." 
 
 As we go through the Psalm, we may gather out of it 
 several thoughts which illustrate and enforce this idea of 
 waiting. 
 
 We are to wait unwaveringly. In the thirty-fourth verse 
 we read, " Wait on the Lord and keep His way." God 
 brings men to His consummations only by His own road. 
 Whatever apparent prosperity they may reach by other 
 roads, no matter how long, is not of God's giving ; and 
 therefore, no matter how tedious God's way is, or how tor- 
 tuous, or how long God keeps them walking in it, they are 
 to keep His way if they would win His good. And this 
 is often a severe trial of faith. It is as when one has been 
 travelling for long hours over a rough road, amid storm 
 and mist, with night drawing on, looking, as he gains the 
 top of every successive hill, for the spires of the city -to 
 which he is going, and seeing instead only a new stretch 
 of dreary road, and a new hill to be climbed he is tempt- 
 ed to think his guide has lost the way, and to take matters 
 into his own hands. To the man who waits on God it is 
 indispensable that he trust his guide. Having committed 
 his way unto the Lord as he is bidden in the fifth verse, he 
 is to bear always in mind the assurance of the twenty-third 
 verse that " the steps of a good man are ordered of the 
 Lord." The Lord will not order one step too many ; He 
 will not order one step in the wrong direction ; but men on 
 God's road are often tempted, as they are on country roads, 
 
The Gate to the Waiting-Place. 131 
 
 by the alluring promise of short-cuts. They think they 
 see a short way to success to wealth, reputation, social 
 reform and into it they rush, and go on smoothly enough 
 for awhile only to find themselves at last in some treach- 
 erous bog, where reputation and wealth are swamped, 
 and reform is retarded, and the true good is farther off 
 than ever. 
 
 Again, while men are often tempted into wavering from 
 God's way, they are also often scared into wavering. 
 God's way is a safe way to the man who keeps in it. " He 
 that walketh uprightly walketh surely " * but God's way 
 nevertheless leads through dangers. Daniel found it so 
 when it led him to the mouth of the lions' den, and into it. 
 The three Hebrews found it so, when it led into Nebu- 
 chadnezzar's furnace. Paul found it so when it lay through 
 the flying stones of the Lystran mob ; and no Christian 
 ever tries to walk God's road without the risk of being 
 scared from duty. It may not be by the threat of coarse 
 and brutal persecution, but it will be by influences just as 
 potent. It costs money sometimes for a man to be true 
 to God ; it costs the displeasure of good men sometimes 
 for a man to hold to God's methods, and to refuse to adopt 
 shorter and more plausible ones which promise a quicker 
 result. Not a few men are entrapped into indorsing what 
 their deepest convictions condemn, by the fear of seem- 
 ing to oppose a good work. There is more real courage 
 and close cleaving to God's way than is often supposed, 
 among heretics so called. 
 
 1 Proverbs x. 9. 
 
132 Gates into tJie Psalm Country. 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 To human reason, safety lies in stepping out of God's way 
 when these dangers appear ; to faith safety lies only in keep- 
 ing in His way. By stepping out he may save his reputa- 
 tion, his money, his social standing, his reputation for ortho- 
 doxy ; but by keeping in he will save his manhood, his life t 
 his soul. 
 
 To wait on the Lord rightly is to wait cheerfully. 
 
 " Fret not thyself," says the Psalmist in the first verse, 
 "because of evil-doers;" and again in the eighth verse, 
 " cease from anger and forsake wrath, fret not thyself 
 in any wise to do evil." You have seen two children 
 bidden by their parent to wait in a certain place for an 
 hour, until he should return, or until some promised 
 pleasure should be prepared : and you have seen the one 
 cheerfully occupy himself with a book or with some ob- 
 ject at hand, while the other, though he obeyed the com- 
 mand to remain, fretted, and watched the clock, and won- 
 dered when father would return, and was angry because 
 he did not come sooner, and began to fear that he would 
 not come at all, and so made himself generally miserable 
 until the hour had expired. Thus, obedience is not 
 always cheerful ; and just in proportion to its lack of 
 this element, it is defective. For obedience is of the very 
 nature of faith. In the New Testament, to obey and to 
 believe are the same word ; and true faith is always cheer- 
 ful and restful, busying itself with the present good while 
 it waits for the promised good, trusting in the Lord and 
 doing good, and never doubting that the promised good 
 will come in God's own time. Whereas some of God's 
 
The Gate to the Waiting- Place. 133 
 
 children, when He asks them to wait for Him, are like a 
 boy at boarding-school when his letter from home fails to 
 come at the usual time. The first day he is uneasy ; the 
 second day he spends all his spare time running to the 
 post-office ; the third day he is very tearful and woe-be- 
 gone, and is beginning to think his parents are very cruel 
 and negligent to forget him in that way. The fourth day 
 the letter comes, full of love and of pleasant tidings, and 
 the little fellow is heartily ashamed at having distrusted his 
 parents' affection. You must have noticed the difference 
 in Elijah's behavior at two different crises of his life. 
 On Carmel, after God had sent down fire upon the sacri- 
 fice, the prophet went up to pray for rain. God had 
 answered by fire, and he believed He would answer by 
 water. Faith heard the sound of " the tread of the rain," 
 and yet God made Elijah wait. He prayed, and sent 
 his servant to look toward the sea, and there was not a 
 cloud. He prayed again and sent the servant, and still 
 the skies were as brass ; and again, and still again, to the 
 seventh time, "when the cloud was seen no bigger than a 
 hand ; and meanwhile not a word of impatience, murmur- 
 ing or distrust. But a little later came Jezebel's threat, 
 and Elijah fled into the wilderness, and sat down under a 
 juniper tree and prayed to die. God was too slow for him 
 then. He did not vindicate His power at once ; He did 
 not lay His hand on that vile queen, but let her rage and 
 send out her messengers of wrath, and slay the prophets ; 
 and Israel, too, showed no sign of spiritual life. They 
 had forsaken God's covenant and thrown down His altars. 
 The revival was too long in coming, and he cried " It is 
 enough; now, O Lord, take away my life." That is the 
 
134 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 spirit which, now and then, gets the better of not a few 
 of God's children a spirit half despairing, half angry, 
 which says, " If God cannot show me any better result 
 of my life and work than this, He may as well take me 
 out of the world and have done with it \ " and after we 
 have fretted and chafed awhile, and have wasted precious 
 days moping in secret places, like Elijah in his cave, we 
 are very likely to get God's message to Elijah that still, 
 small voice of authority, not bidding us die, but saying, 
 " What dost thou here ? go, return on thy way." O how 
 often we need reminding that " he that believeth shall not 
 make haste." 1 Some one tells a story of visiting an in- 
 sane asylum, where there was a patient, but slightly de- 
 ranged, who occupied himself with taking apart and put- 
 ting together watches. One day, without a moment's 
 warning, he was seized with a fit of frenzy, and, snatching 
 the watches, dashed one after the other upon the floor. 
 When he was removed to another room and had become 
 more quiet, the physician said, " How came you to de- 
 stroy your favorite watches, so much as you loved them 
 and so quiet as you are ? " The poor patient replied, in 
 a tone of piercing agony " I could not bear the tick, 
 tick, ticking, and so I dashed them on the pavement." a 
 And so it is with us if we employ our waiting time in 
 brooding and counting the minutes of God's delay, 
 looking painfully out at the windows, and straining the 
 ear to catch the sound of His chariot-wheels, keeping our 
 thought fastened on the delay, and not on God, and on the 
 work which God sends to occupy the time of His delay. 
 
 1 Isaiah xxviii. 16. 2 From Spurgeon's " Treasury of David." 
 
The Gate to the Waiting- Place. 135 
 
 The " tick, tick," will drive us into rebellious and angry 
 thoughts and presumptuous words. But if we can only 
 get firm hold of that truth in the thirty-first Psalm "My 
 times are in Thy hand," if we can leave off looking at 
 the watch, and fix our eyes on the Hand that holds it, if 
 we shall stop brooding over delay, and rest in the thought 
 that we and the delay are alike in God's hand, if we shall 
 assure ourselves that, however long this or that develop- 
 ment of God's providence may be in coming round, God 
 himself is ours here, and now, and forever that will be 
 rest indeed. " My times are in Thy hand." Why, we 
 have no trouble at all about the natural succession of 
 times. Spring, it is true, is a little late now and then, or 
 frost comes a little earlier than usual, but we never think 
 that the course of nature is going to be overthrown. We 
 have no doubt that the crocuses will be found in the 
 woods, and the time of the singing of birds come, and the 
 green forests in due season glow with autumn purple and 
 gold : and why should we be any more troubled about 
 delays in providence ? It is all one economy. The dis- 
 tinction between nature and providence is artificial. You 
 and I move in an order as fixed as the order of the sea- 
 sons, and controlled by the same hand ; our times as 
 well as nature 's times are in His hand ; may we not wait 
 as cheerfully and hopefully for the late coming providence 
 as for the late spring ? 
 
 And we have no more business to fret at the times we 
 live in than we have at the delays of Providence. A 
 good many people who dare not grumble at Providence, 
 make it up by grumbling at the times. Try as hard as we 
 may to make the age better, we shall not revolutionize it 
 
136 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 at once, and why not accept the fact, do the best and 
 most we can with a cheerful spirit, and then, with equal 
 cheerfulness, wait for God to make right what we cannot 
 help ? But this cheerful waiting seems to be unknown in 
 the experience of some Christians. They wait, they pray, 
 they work, but they fret and scold enough to well nigh 
 spoil both work and prayer. They harp on the degen- 
 eracy of the times ; they muse on the days of old, and tell 
 us the former days were better than these ; they predict 
 ruin and disaster to Church and State ; they are in a con- 
 tinuous state of fury against the enemies of religion and 
 of social order. Does it do any good ? The Psalmist 
 says not: "Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil;" 
 that is, evil will be the result of thy fretting. And it will. 
 An angry state of the heart is a bad thing for the spiritual 
 life ; it throws it off its balance ; it impairs its power 
 of seeing and estimating truly; it indisposes the soul to 
 communion with God ; it tends to make men unjust and 
 uncharitable and despondent and listless. A man cannot 
 carry round with him such a raging fire in his bosom, and 
 at the same time trust in the Lord and do good, and de- 
 light himself in the Lord. From being angry at men and 
 things, the transition is easy to suspecting the wisdom of 
 God. No, there is much to sadden us no doubt ; much 
 which is adapted to excite indignation, much which is 
 tediously long in righting itself. We are not the only 
 men who have felt the pressure and sadness of the long 
 delay. We are waiting still for what David waited for ; 
 but then we are waiting with our faces toward sunrise. 
 The night is farther on now than then ; the windows in 
 God's prophecy all open on the east, and over against all 
 
The Gate to the Waiting-Place. 137 
 
 the causes of despondency and wrath we have this : " He 
 shall bring it to pass" and on the strength of that promise, 
 God bids us look out on the night like one who opens a 
 window which commands a sleeping city, reeking with its 
 wickedness and filth and disease, and who for the moment 
 lifts his eyes above its dark, pestilential streets, and sees 
 the encircling mountains reddening in the fast, coming 
 dawn. 
 
 And therefore, we may wait confidently. The Psalm 
 backs its exhortations by numerous promises. " Thou 
 shalt dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed." " He 
 shall give thee the desires of thine heart." " He shall 
 bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judg- 
 ment as the noonday." "The righteous shall inherit the 
 land and dwell therein forever." Look especially at the 
 twenty-third verse. We have been watching the course 
 of a man in God's way a traveller who is long in coming 
 to the end on whom God's providence imposes various 
 and trying delays. To the eye of reason it seems as 
 though the man were walking aimlessly ; as though his 
 life, with its continual interruption, and confusion, and 
 stumbling, and baffling, were an utter, irredeemable failure. 
 And so it seems not only to reason, but to weak faith. 
 There have come times to most of us when we have lost 
 out of our lives all sense of plan or order, and have just 
 gone on from day to day, doing and taking what the day 
 brought with it. We have thought, I say, that those were 
 disordered periods. They were not. Did you ever study 
 the waves of the ocean ? If so, you have noticed that each 
 wave was full of little, irregular swirlings and eddies, mov- 
 ing in all possible directions. And if you could fasten youi 
 
138 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 eyes upon a square foot of that water and shut out all the 
 rest, you might say that it was a mere watery chaos ; but 
 when your eye takes in the whole wave, you see that a 
 common movement propels its whole mass, and takes up 
 into itself all these minor movements, and bears them on 
 with the regularity of a marching host. So these spaces 
 of apparent confusion in our lives are not out of order. 
 They are carried on in the larger order of God's plan. 
 Perhaps we cannot, usually we cannot see the whole 
 movement, but it bears steadily and continuously onward, 
 every incident, every crossing and confusion of incidents 
 swept on at God's own rate and in nice adjustment with 
 God's own plan. There is no disorder in the life of the 
 man who walks steadfastly in God's way. "The steps of 
 a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth 
 in his way. Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast 
 down, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand." Aye, 
 he delighteth in his way ; even in that way which is so full 
 of stumbles and falls ; that way where we spend so much 
 time in repairing damages. If you are disposed to doubt 
 it, just put yourself back to the days when that stalwart, 
 manly son of yours began to walk. You remember well 
 the first day he staggered to his feet and timidly put one 
 foot before the other. You remember how you delighted 
 in that tottering, uncertain way, with its frequent stum- 
 bles. You remember how you saw in those timid steps 
 the promise of the strong, manly stride of the vigorous 
 youth and man ; and you remember, too, how you upheld 
 the tottering child with your hand and raised him tenderly 
 up when he fell, not to save him from walking, but to set 
 him up to walk again. Does your Father in Heaven any 
 
The Gate to the Waiting- Place. 139 
 
 less delight in your way because it is a feeble, uncertain 
 going ? Does He any more leave you to yourself when 
 you fall ? Does He any less see and rejoice in the promise 
 of that day when you shall walk with a steady step among 
 the strong sons of God, on the King's highway of holi- 
 ness ? 
 
 Mark too that the steps are ordered. The whole way 
 is ordered it is true, but ordered through the steps. 
 Human philosophy says that the world is moved in the 
 mass, and that the mass carries the details helplessly 
 along with it. Divine philosophy says the mass is moved 
 by the details. Just as gravitation acts upon each sepa- 
 rate particle of the stone which rolls down the mountain- 
 side, so God's general providence reaches its result 
 through the special providences. 1 The philosopher sneers 
 at the marking of the sparrow's fall ; but it is in the order- 
 ing of just such details that God fulfils Himself in history. 
 So our lives are what their details are. The goal is 
 reached by God's ordering of their separate steps. The 
 only thing we are to be careful about is that we step each 
 time in Godls track. We see only a little of the way in 
 front ; we have got to make our way by single steps, if 
 we make it at all ; and though God checks our steps, and 
 turns our steps in strange directions, makes us step now 
 and then off what seems to us solid ground, upon what 
 seems like treacherous soil, makes us wait, and wait, and 
 wait in our slow stepping for the appearance of the prom- 
 ised goal all is well if we only hold fast the truth that 
 each step is in the line of a Divine order, and that the 
 
 1 Dr. Mark Hopkins, " Evidences of Christianity," Lect. III. 
 
140 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 way by which God leads us, though it seem like thread- 
 ing a hopeless labyrinth, is the way in which He delights, 
 because it leads up to Him. 
 
 Rest in the Lord then. Hold thou still in Jehovah and 
 wait patiently for Him. Whether He bid thee stand still, 
 or wait in working for the long delayed end wait thou 
 unwaveringly, keeping His way, and not turning aside to 
 thine own; wait thou cheerfully, not fretting thyself in 
 any wise to do evil ; wait thou confidently, trusting in 
 Him to bring His perfect will to pass, and to cast down 
 every vain thing which exalteth itself against God. Are 
 you unable to make plans ? Does the outlook seem dark 
 and confused? Move on step by step then, for your 
 steps are ordered by Him. Are you waiting for time to 
 vindicate your reputation, and to disperse the mists in 
 which malice and slander have shrouded your name ? 
 Trust in Him, " and He shall bring forth thy righteous- 
 ness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." 
 
 " To God thy way commending, 
 
 Trust Him whose arm of might, 
 The heavenly circles bending, 
 
 Guides every star aright ; 
 The winds, and clouds, and lightning, 
 
 By His sure hand are led; 
 And He will, dark shades brightening, 
 
 Show thee what path to tread. 
 
 Trust, with a faith untiring, 
 In thine omniscient King ; 
 
 And thou shalt see, admiring, 
 What He to light will bring. 
 
The Gate to the Waiting- Place. 141 
 
 Of all thy griefs the reason 
 
 Shall at the last appear; 
 Why now denied a season, 
 
 Will shine in letters clear. 
 
 Then raise thine eyes to heaven, 
 
 Thou who canst trust His frown ; 
 Thence shall thy meed be given, 
 
 The chaplet and the crown : 
 Thy God the palm victorious 
 
 In thy right hand shall plant, 
 Whilst thou, in accents glorious, 
 
 Melodious, hymns shall chant. PAUL GERHARD. 
 
THE GATE TO THE PHYSI- 
 CIAN'S. 
 
PSALM XLII. 
 
 (1) As a hart which panteth after the water brooks, 
 So panteth my soul after thee, O God. 
 
 (2) My soul is athirst for God, for the living God : 
 When shall I come and appear before God ? 
 
 (3) My tears have been my food day and night, 
 
 While they say unto me continually, Where is thy 
 God? 
 
 (4) These things would I remember, and pour out my soul 
 
 in me, 
 
 How I passed with the (festal) throng, 
 How I led them in procession to the house of God, 
 With the voice of loud song and thanksgiving a mul- 
 titude keeping holy day. 
 
 (5) Why art thou bowed down, O my soul, 
 And (why) art thou disquieted in me ? 
 
 Hope in God ; for I shall yet give Him thanks, 
 Who is the health of my countenance and my God. 
 
 (6) My God, my soul is bowed down in me ; 
 Therefore do I remember Thee from the land of 
 
 Jordan, 
 And from the Hermons, from the mountain of Mizai. 
 
 (7) Deep calleth unto deep at the voice of Thy cataracts ; 
 All Thy breakers and Thy billows have passed over 
 
 me. 
 
 (8) Yet in the daytime will Jehovah command His loving- 
 
 kindness ; 
 
 And in the night His song (will be) with me, ' 
 A prayer unto the God of my life. 
 
 (9) (So) will I say unto God my Rock, " Why hast Thou 
 
 forgotten me ? 
 
 Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the 
 enemy ? " 
 
 (10) As though they would break my bones mine enemies 
 
 reproach me, 
 
 While they say unto me all day long, " Where is thy 
 God?" 
 
 (11) Why art thou bowed down, O my soul, 
 And (why) art thou disquieted in me ? 
 Hope in God ; for I shall yet praise Him, 
 
 (Who is) the health of my countenance, and my God. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE PHYSICIAN'S. 
 
 PERHAPS somebody will one day write a book which 
 shall gather up the services which unknown men have 
 rendered to their race. Among these the author will 
 surely include this forty-second Psalm. It has been, for 
 centuries, one of the most powerful cordials for the heart- 
 sick and despondent, and its virtue has grown rather than 
 diminished with the lapse of years, and yet we do not 
 know its author, nor its date, nor the peculiar circum- 
 stances under which it was written. All we know is that 
 it is the utterance of some one in deep trouble, and that 
 it tells us how he found comfort, and how we may find it 
 under similar circumstances. 
 
 The Psalm presents to us first, a picture of extreme 
 despondency, through a succession of graphic figures. 
 First, we have the beautiful gazelle of the desert standing, 
 with panting sides, by the dry watercourses which cleave 
 the mountain range on the east of the Jordan. Dr. 
 Thompson says that he has seen large flocks of these 
 shy creatures gathered by the valley streams in the great 
 deserts of central Syria, so subdued by thirst that they 
 could be approached quite nearly before they fled. 
 
 The writer of the Psalm was, apparently, an exile in 
 this mountain region, in sight of the familiar scenes of 
 7 
 
146 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 worship and of domestic tranquillity, and his soul is in 
 great trouble because he is cut off from the sanctuary and 
 from the privileges of public worship. His longing for 
 these is an intense thirst, like that of the hart for the 
 water brooks. It is easy for us to say that God's pres- 
 ence is not dependent upon the sanctuary, and that the 
 Psalmist need not have wanted the light of God's coun- 
 tenance even in his exile ; but we are to remember that, 
 under the old economy, men depended more upon the 
 form and medium of worship than we do ; and that, there- 
 fore, the absence of these helps was more keenly felt. 
 And even we are not so independent of these forms that 
 we do not seriously feel their absence. Pure spiritual 
 worship is a very easy thing to a pure spirit, but we who 
 are in the flesh do not very often get above the need of 
 sensible helps. Our humanity craves the aid of a few 
 visible, tangible steps under us in our efforts to mount 
 heavenward. Some of us have not been altogether out 
 of sympathy with the Psalmist's thirst, when circumstances 
 have separated us from the familiar scenes of worship. 
 As the weeks rolled on, we have found our heart gath- 
 ering up its deep feeling in the words of the eighty-fourth 
 Psalm : " How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of 
 hosts ! My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts 
 of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the 
 living God." Moreover, we must not forget another im- 
 portant element of the Psalmist's distress. In his day 
 men were accustomed to look for sensible tokens of the 
 Divine favor or displeasure. If a man was prosperous, 
 he regarded himself as blessed of God ; if he was afflicted, 
 his first feeling was that he had incurred God's displeas- 
 
The Gate to tJic Physician's. 147 
 
 nre. Hence the writer may, very naturally, have asso- 
 ciated his exile with God's anger, and have regarded his 
 banishment from the sanctuary as a banishment from 
 God's favor ; at any rate this feeling would be strong 
 enough to awaken a tormenting doubt in his mind, and 
 the consequent thirst for God of which he here speaks. 
 
 However the psalmist may have regarded it, his ene- 
 mies were only too glad to put this construction upon it. 
 Yes, God had forsaken him ; the man who was wont to 
 make his boast in the Lord ; the man on whom God had 
 showered visible tokens of his favor God had proved 
 false to him at last. God had left him to wander alone 
 in the wilderness ; and so their reproach was murder in 
 his bones, because it allied itself to the doubt in his own 
 soul. They gave utterance, with their taunts, to the 
 very thought against which his weak faith was, perhaps, 
 struggling : Where is thy God ? Why does He not 
 come and help thee ? It was the very same sarcasm 
 which the priests and scribes hurled at the crucified Lord : 
 " He trusted in God ; let Him deliver him now, if He 
 will have him ; for he said, ' I am the Son of God.' " ! 
 
 Added to this is the remembrance of past joys, all the 
 sweeter now that they are gone. Indeed, 
 
 ' ' This is truth the poet sings, 
 That a sorrow's crown of sorrow, is remembering happier things." 
 
 Those old days in the sanctuary how sweet they were ! 
 When I went with the multitude to the house of God, 
 with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that 
 
 1 Matthew xxvii. 43. 
 
148 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 kept holy-day. Shall those days ever come again ? My 
 soul thirsteth for God for the living God. When shall 
 I come and appear before God ? 
 
 Another picture. Stand by the sea-coast of Palestine 
 on some windy day, and watch the clouds which hang 
 like a pall along the horizon. Now, suddenly, you shall 
 see on the skirts of the clouds, a mass of black vapor, 
 shaped like a long funnel, its smaller end resting on the 
 sea, and the whole mass at once whirling on its own axis, 
 and driven on by the wind with a terrific roar. Look 
 down now at the sea, and behold how the commotion of 
 its surface answers to the commotion above. Where the 
 water-spout moves with its roar, the deep lifts up its voice 
 in an answering roar. " Deep calleth unto deep at the 
 noise of Thy water-spouts." And when these spouts 
 break, as they do sometimes, on the mountains, then woe 
 to the harvests and to the flocks. The dry beds of the 
 streams are swollen in a few minutes into furious rivers 
 cataracts, whose waves and billows go over grain and 
 olives, sheep and goats, and men, and sweep them away 
 to destruction. The tumult and distress in the Psalmist's 
 soul could only be described by such a picture as this 
 flood calling unto flood; wave after wave sweeping away 
 his harvest of hope ; doubts and fears within answering to 
 calamity without, as the deep to the water-spout. In the 
 exaggeration of sorrow and terror, he puts it as though all 
 God's chastisements had been massed upon him : "All 
 Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me." 
 
 Thus much for the disease. The picture is sad enough 
 to move our compassion, and true enough to our own ex- 
 perience to awaken our sympathy. But with the disease 
 
The Gate to the Physician's. 149 
 
 we have the remedy. The Psalm contains a prescription 
 for a downcast soul, consisting of three ingredients, which 
 we shall now consider in order. 
 
 The first is INQUIRY. Why art thou cast down ? Re- 
 ligious despondency must have a cause ; and if we can 
 discover it in any case, the old proverb holds good, that 
 a knowledge of the disease is half the cure. Many a man 
 is in great spiritual darkness, without knowing, or being 
 able to discover the reason. He has been trying to live 
 rightly, so far as he knows. He has not neglected prayer 
 nor the house of God, and yet God seems to have hidden 
 His face ; his peace is gone ; his soul is full of harrowing 
 doubts and suggestions deep calling unto deep in one 
 continuous tone of menace or of wailing. In such cases 
 the question which most vexes a sincere soul is, " Is this 
 state of mind a mark of God's displeasure, or not ? " As 
 we shall presently see, it may be, but again it may not be. 
 For instance, Christians sometimes forget that they have 
 bodies ; and that the condition of their bodies has a good 
 deal to do with the brightness or darkness of their spirit- 
 ual moods ; and now and then a man, through sheer 
 ignorance, persists in some course of life, some habit of 
 eating or drinking, which, by keeping his body in an un- 
 healthful state, correspondingly lowers the tone of his spir- 
 itual life. Often the devil which torments him is one 
 that goeth not out but by fasting. It is a good deal 
 gained when the man has discovered this ; when he has 
 found that, by a little attention to his lower life, he can 
 get out from among the waves and billows which go over 
 him, and can climb up to the high grounds of spiritual 
 peace and clear-seeing. Or the cause may lie deeper, 
 
150 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 in some mental disease possibly an inherited one. You 
 know the case of the poor hypochondriac poet, Cowper, 
 who wrote : 
 
 " Where is the blessedness I knew, 
 When first I saw the Lord ? 
 
 And again, in the very spirit of the fourth verse of this 
 Psalm : 
 
 " What peaceful hours I once enjoyed ! 
 
 How sweet their memory still ! 
 But they have left an aching void, 
 The world can never fill." 
 
 Did you ever hear anything sadder than this? " Adam's 
 approach to the tree of life, after he had sinned, was not 
 more effectually prohibited by the flaming sword that 
 turned every way, than mine to its great Antitype has been, 
 now almost these thirteen years. For what reason it is 
 that I am thus long excluded, if I am ever again to be 
 admitted, is known to God only. If the ladder of Chris- 
 tian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very 
 presence of God, it has nevertheless its foot in the abyss. 
 And if Paul stood, as no doubt he did, when he was caught 
 up into the third heaven, on the topmost round of it, I 
 have been standing and still stand on the lowest, in this 
 thirteenth year that has passed since I descended." You 
 see what hypochondria will do. 
 
 But then, on the other hand, the distress may arise from 
 estrangement between man and God. One may be among 
 the billows because he has voluntarily tempted them. 
 Peter, when he went out and wept bitterly, was cast down 
 and disquieted as he deserved to be. He had put him- 
 
The Gate to the Physicians, 151 
 
 self by his cowardice and treachery among the black bil- 
 lows of remorse. And no Christian can expect bright out- 
 looks, a clear sense of acceptance with God, a peaceful 
 conscience, who is living in the habitual neglect of known 
 duty, or in the habitual indulgence in known evil. Any- 
 thing which, under such circumstances, seems like peace 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost is a delusion. Such depressed 
 spiritual states will be very likely to follow the neglect of 
 prayer for instance. The road which leads to the closet is 
 the road to hope and to praise. The road which leads 
 past the closet leads down to the billows. Or, depression 
 may come from the neglect of the public means of grace. 
 If God's minister hung out a lamp ion your feet and a light 
 for your path on the day when, for your own pleasure, you 
 stayed from the house of God, whose fault is it if you are 
 bruised and sore from your fall into the trap which the 
 light illumined, but which you were not there to see ? 
 Perhaps there was a time of refreshing from the presence 
 of the Lord at that social meeting to which you did not 
 choose to go ; and you know what Thomas, the doubter, lost 
 because he was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 
 
 Or the question, " Why art thou disquieted ? " may 
 open suggestions of another kind. If you cannot, on in- 
 quiry, discover that sin is at the bottom of your disquie- 
 tude, it may occur to you that 6W has sent it. It is not 
 unlike Him to disquiet those whom He loves sometimes, in 
 the way of His discipline. You are in affliction, it may be, 
 and in the despondency which affliction brings with it. 
 Why art thou disquieted, my soul ? God knew of this af- 
 fliction, did He not ? He could have averted it, could He 
 not ? Yes, and yet He suffered it to fall. If then He in- 
 
I $2 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 tended it for thee, O Soul, why art them disquieted ? Thou 
 art satisfied that the source of thy trouble is divine ; is 
 that something to be disquieted about ? Or dost thou fear 
 it will be more than thou canst bear ? O reflect that the 
 Father is the husbandman. He is pruning thee that thou 
 mightest bring forth more fruit. Shall the knife in thy 
 Father 's hand cut off more than it is best thou shouldst 
 lose for thine own growth's sake ? Why art thou disquiet- 
 ed, my soul ? Dost thou think thou art an exception in 
 thy trial ? Dost thou forget Him who was made per- 
 fect through suffering, and who was in all points tempted 
 and tried like as thou art ? Why art thou disquieted ? 
 Is it because thou canst not see the end thy God has in 
 view in thy trial, or wilt thou forget that this "light afflic- 
 tion which is but for a moment, worketh out for thee a far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory " ? * 
 
 Thus this " WHY " is one element of the Psalmist's pre- 
 scription for spiritual despondency. Only, a man who is 
 downcast must ask that question of his soul in good faith, 
 meaning to get an answer if he can, and not sentimen- 
 tally and insincerely, shutting his eyes to the revelation of 
 what he more than suspects is at the root of his trouble. 
 The only answer which will come back then from the 
 questioned soul will be, " Thou knowest full well why I 
 am cast down. Why dost thou mock God by asking 
 why?" 
 
 But our prescription has a second ingredient, which is 
 REMEMBRANCE ; and in the Psalm we see this under two 
 aspects ; the Psalmist's remembrance of his own experi- 
 
 1 2 Corinthians iv. 17. 
 
The Gate to the Physician's. 15-3 
 
 ence, and his remembrance of God's gracious dealing 
 with others. In the fourth verse, his own experience re- 
 curs. " I am an unhappy exile now. My heart is heavy, 
 and all God's billows have gone over me. But there was 
 a happier time. I went with the multitude to the sanctu- 
 ary. My heart was joyful, and my mouth was full of songs. 
 At least let me not forget Thy benefits in the past. I will 
 remember them and Thee with a thankful heart." Ah, 
 how often we need the Psalmist's admonition to his own 
 soul not to forget all God's benefits. Trouble, like a thick 
 mist, has the power of exaggerating and distorting facts ; 
 and in the midst of it, we are very apt to forget that God 
 has ever sent anything but trouble. We so readily say, 
 "All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me." 
 That is a mistake. Mr. Spurgeon's words are as true as 
 they are beautiful : "All the breaking waves of Jehovah 
 have passed over none but the Lord Jesus. There are 
 griefs to which He makes His children strangers for His 
 love's sake." But, on the other hand, He says that with 
 Christ He will freely give us all things ; and while we are so 
 ready to say "All the waves have gone over me," we do 
 not say to our souls " Forget not all His benefits." And I 
 know no better cordial for a downcast soul than the recol- 
 lection of God's mercies. They will crowd, at the sum- 
 mons of memory, thickly down to the very edge of to- 
 day's trouble, like the cloud which followed the Israelites 
 down to the marge of the Red Sea ; and like that cloud 
 will send light over the troubled waters through which lies 
 the line of march. To-day's trouble will be lighter, and 
 to-day's outlook more hopeful through the remembrance 
 of the blessed past. 
 7* 
 
1 54 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 But this remembrance of the Psalmist also takes in 
 God's dealings with His people. No one has such a 
 range of history at his command as the believer who is 
 in trouble; since the history of God's children is largely 
 made up of trouble, and as largely of God's deliverances 
 out of trouble. And the form which this truth takes here, 
 while it is poetical, is at once instructive and beautiful. 
 The scene of the Psalm is among the mountains on the 
 east of the Jordan valley. From these mountains the 
 spectator had unfolded to him a magnificent panorama of 
 the Land of Promise. Lebanon, the sea of Galilee, 
 the plain of Esdraelon, Carmel, the Mediterranean, the 
 whole range of the mountains of Judah and of Ephraim, 
 Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, could be seen from differ- 
 ent standpoints. As to the traveller from the East, to 
 Abraham and to Jacob, for example, coming from Mes- 
 opotamia, the first view of the promised inheritance 
 burst upon the sight in descending these mountains, so, 
 in later days, it was from these same heights that many an 
 eye took its last look, through falling tears, at the familiar 
 scenes of home and worship. The ridge was in a sense 
 consecrated by the tears and sighs of exiles. David, in 
 his flight from Absalom, Abner, driven by the Philistines, 
 the captive Jews on their way to Babylon each and all 
 had turned ere they went down to " the great red plains 
 of the East," or plunged for hiding amid the mountain 
 defiles, to look their last upon the land of their love and 
 pride. And yet just here, amid so many distressing asso- 
 ciations, the exile or the captive might look off from the hill 
 Mizar or from any other summit of the range, and recall 
 enough of God's goodness to His people to fill him with 
 
The Gate to the Physician's. 155 
 
 wonder and love, and almost to make him forget his own 
 trouble. How many displays of His power, how many 
 visions of His beauty were associated with that very 
 ridge. There was Mahanaim, " the two camps," where 
 Jacob, afraid at the coming of Esau, had met the host of 
 God, and had learned that there was another camp there 
 beside his tents and flocks ; that l f the angel of the Lord 
 encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth 
 them." l There, in the deep bed of the Jabbok, he had 
 wrestled with the Covenant Angel, and had won the crown 
 of a Prince of God. From those heights Moses had be- 
 held the Land of Promise, and Balaam had prophesied 
 the future glory of Israel. There was Jordan, which had 
 parted for the passage of the conquering people, and had 
 held back its sweeping waters while the ark of God stood 
 still in the river bed. There was Jericho, with the mem- 
 ories of the circling priests and of the falling ramparts : 
 the whole wondrous history of God's deliverances for Is- 
 rael was spread out in panorama before the sorrowful 
 eyes of the exile ; and he might relieve his sorrow and 
 fortify his spirit by the perusal of this record. So it is 
 that in the sorrowful passages of Christian life, God often 
 makes use of the memories of His goodness to strengthen 
 and to encourage us. The height to which sorrow leads 
 is rugged and storm-swept, but it often commands a won- 
 derful retrospect. Sometimes a man is so engrossed with 
 the pleasure and business of the present, that memory 
 has no chance to do her work, and he is in danger of for- 
 getting God's benefits altogether ; and so God leads him 
 
 1 Psalm xxxiv. 7. 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 j^XX' OF THE " 
 
156 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 away alone, whither he does not like to go, but where, 
 cut off from the occupations of the present, he has oppor- 
 tunity to survey the rich and fruitful past, and to grow 
 grateful amid his sorrow. Yea, often the very land of 
 exile is the land of precious memories. More than one 
 has found the very path where God has caused him to 
 walk in tears, most fruitful in memories of blessing. 
 At any rate, with such a history of God's salvation at our 
 command, we cannot tread any path, however rough, 
 but that we shall find footsteps there before us memo- 
 rials of God's deliverance on that very spot. Men of old 
 have had their faith, their courage, their patience, tried 
 sorely in the very places where our faith and courage and 
 patience are tried ; and their experience of God's saving 
 goodness and power calls on us to remember that the 
 God of salvation is the same, yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever. It is worth noting how this element of remem- 
 brance was emphasized in all God's discipline of His an- 
 cient people ; how often their history was rehearsed in 
 their hearing ; how, on every occasion of note, they were 
 bidden to rear visible memorials like Jacob's stone at 
 Bethel, or the cairn on the Jordan bank to commemorate 
 the parting of the river, or the stone Eben-ezer set up by 
 Samuel as a memorial of victory. And even in the very 
 forms of address to God, this element comes in. " God 
 of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob" every such address, 
 while it draws the thought of the worshipper to his Divine 
 Helper, also reminds him of the men whom God has 
 helped, and strengthens his faith by the memory of God's 
 goodness and compassion in the past. 
 
 A few words, now, concerning the third ingredient of 
 
The Gate to the Physician's. 157 
 
 the prescription, which is HOPE. " Hope thou in God, 
 for I shall yet praise Him." 
 
 And notice, in the first place, that hope is to be in 
 God. There is nothing like trouble to open a man's 
 eyes to the need of a personal God. All the talk about 
 God being an essence diffused through rocks, and trees, 
 and waves, and all the various forms of nature, is worse 
 than chaff to the soul that is cast down and disquieted by 
 calamity or by sin. It is a very pleasing sentiment as 
 one stands safely on the shore, that God is in those foam- 
 ing, tossing billows ; but when all the waves and billows 
 are going over a man, he wants a God who is apart from 
 the billows, and who rules the raging of the sea. In 
 the midst of calamity, man's heart cries out for a Father in 
 heaven. " What we want," says one who knew as much 
 as any other man of the deep desolation of sorrow, is 
 not infinitude, but a boundless ONE ; not to feel that love 
 is the law of the universe, but to feel One whose name is 
 love ; for else, if, in this world of order, there be no one 
 in whose bosom that order is centred, and of whose being 
 it is the expression, then order, affection, contrivance, 
 wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the 
 dreary universe alone. It is a dark moment when the 
 sense of that personality is lost more terrible than the 
 doubt of immortality." * 
 
 Then, too, the downcast soul must hope in God, and 
 not in change of circumstances. There is a great deal of 
 hope which rests only upon change of circumstances, and 
 which does not touch God at all. A man is downcast, 
 
 1 Frederick W. Robertson. 
 
158 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 for instance, because he has lost his property ; but what 
 hope he has, he gets out of the possibility that his pros- 
 perous days may return, and that he may be a rich man 
 again. True hope, the Psalmist's hope, would say, 
 " This loss is God's work ; I am God's child ; this is God's 
 discipline \ through this He may be working out for me 
 something far better than worldly prosperity. The best 
 thing I have left, the thing to which I anchor my present 
 and my future is God is mine. This matter is all in 
 God's hands, and whatever He may do with me or with 
 my fortune, whether He give back my prosperity or not, I 
 shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance 
 and my God." 
 
 And, once more, this hope is a different thing from 
 faith, while the operations of the two are nevertheless 
 closely allied. God's people now and then get into just 
 such places as the writer of this Psalm was in, when the 
 waves and billows are going over them, and when faith 
 does not realize the presence of God, and cannot feel it 
 for the time. Then they cry, like Job, " Oh that I knew 
 where I might find Him." When a physician gives to a 
 sick man a remedy which for the time increases his distress, 
 he does not realize nor feel that the work of restoration is 
 going on ; and in the dark places of Christian experience 
 through which God causes a man to pass in the course of 
 His discipline, the man does not always realize that God 
 is doing a beneficent work upon him, or how He is doing 
 it. Then hope comes in. " If we hope for what we see 
 not, then do we with patience wait for it." * Under such 
 
 1 Romans viii. 25. 
 
The Gate to the Physician's. 159 
 
 circumstances one is tempted to call out to God in his 
 sorrow, " Why dost Thou deal with me thus ? " And the 
 answer he gets is, " What I do thou knowest not now, 
 but thou shalt know hereafter ;" l so that we can only 
 hope in God. Clouds and darkness are round about him ; 
 he cannot see the light of God's countenance, but he 
 knows the bright face is behind the cloud, and waits in 
 confident hope that " the Lord will command His loving 
 kindness in the daytime" and His song in the night 
 
 Here, then, is God's own prescription for a downcast 
 and disquieted soul. So many of these there are to-day, 
 buffeting the stormy tides of business, torn away from 
 much in which their hearts delighted, filled with dread of 
 the uncertain future to such the Psalm addresses itself, 
 bidding you inquire ', " Why art thou cast down ? " Per- 
 haps you are wrongfully disquieted \ perhaps because 
 you were trusting too much to riches or to position ; per- 
 haps because you have strayed from God, who ought to 
 be your chief joy ; or, possibly, your disquietude is His 
 call to you to come back to His side. At all events, it is 
 worth while to find the cause if you can ; and in finding 
 the cause you may find the remedy. It bids you not to 
 forget gratitude in your sorrow. It bids you remember the 
 wonderful mercies of God, and to strengthen your faith 
 with the thought that He who has wrought so graciously 
 for you and for His people in the past, will be your God 
 forever ; your guide even unto death. 2 It bids you hope, 
 never losing out of your mind the disciplinary purpose 
 of God in all sorrow, and waiting in the confident expec- 
 
 1 John xiii. 7. 8 Psalm xlviii. 14. 
 
160 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 tation that " these light afflictions, which are but for a 
 moment," shall work for you " a far more exceeding and 
 eternal weight of glory." ! If not here, why then by 
 and by. If the clouds do not disperse until the dark 
 river be past, yet you may walk by God's voice though 
 you see not His face ; and in the .land of eternal light you 
 shall forever praise Him, who through all the changes of 
 this mortal life is still YOUR GOD, and who shall be yours 
 forever. 
 
 1 2 Corinthians iv. 17. 
 
\ 
 
 THE GATE TO THE CAVE 
 
PSALM LVII. 
 
 (i) Be gracious unto me, O God, be gracious unto me, 
 For in Thee hath my soul found refuge ; 
 And in the shadow of Thy wings will I find refuge, 
 Until the destruction be overpast. 
 
 (2) I will call upon God Most High, 
 
 Upon the God who conferreth benefits upon me. 
 
 (3) He shall send from heaven and save me, 
 
 Though he that would swallow me up hath re- 
 proached 
 God shall send His loving kindness and His truth. 
 
 (4) As for my life in the midst of lions must I lie, 
 (Among) those who are ready to devour, (even) the chil- 
 dren of men, 
 
 Whose teeth are spears and arrows, 
 And their tongue a sharp sword. 
 
 (5) Be Thou exalted above the heavens, O God, 
 (And) Thy glory above all the earth. 
 
 (6) They prepared a net for my steps ; 
 My soul w r as bowed down. 
 
 They digged before me a pit ; 
 
 They fell into the midst thereof (themselves). 
 
 (7) My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast ; 
 I will sing and play (upon the harp). 
 
 (8) Awake up, my glory ; awake harp, and lute ; 
 I will wake the morning-dawn. 
 
 (9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord, 
 I will play unto Thee among the nations. 
 
 (10) For great unto the heavens is Thy loving kindness, 
 
 And unto the clouds Thy truth, 
 (n) Be Thou exalted above the heavens, O God, 
 
 (And) Thy glory above all the earth. 
 
X. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE CAVE. 
 
 (7) " My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed ; I will sing 
 and give praise." Psalm Ivii. 
 
 THIS psalm is very strangely compounded. It is de- 
 scribed in the title as the utterance of David when he fled 
 from Saul and hid himself in the cave. 1 It is the cry of a 
 man beset with trouble and danger ; yet all through it, we 
 are startled by sudden transitions from cries for help, and 
 stones of wrong to cheerful expressions of hope and out- 
 bursts of praise. Thus it begins in the sad minor strain : 
 " Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me : for 
 my soul trusteth in Thee : yea, in the shadow of Thy wings 
 will I make my refuge until these calamities be overpast. 
 I will cry unto God Most High." Now there is a hint of 
 better things : " Unto God who performed! all things for 
 me." Now a change into a tone of bold, cheerful hope : 
 " He shall send from heaven and save me from the re- 
 proach of him that would swallow me up. God shall send 
 forth His mercy and His truth." Now into the minor key 
 again : " They have prepared a net for my steps ; my soul 
 is bowed down. They have digged a pit before me." And 
 still another change, and this time into an exultant strain : 
 
 1 I Samuel xxiii. 
 
1 64 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 " My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed : I will sing 
 and give praise. Awake up, my glory : awake psaltery and 
 harp : I myself will awake early." 
 
 This condition of hopefulness and of cheerful steadfast- 
 ness in the midst of trouble is one of those things which 
 always puzzle a mere man of the world, but which present 
 no mystery to a soul which walks with God. But the fact 
 goes much farther than cheerfulness in trouble. The word 
 "fixed" literally means "prepared," "fit," " ready '." " O 
 God, my heart is prepared." Among the most uncongenial 
 circumstances, in times and places most unsuited for wor- 
 ship or for praise, for composed thought and joyful commun- 
 ion, the Psalmist yet professes himself ready for worship and 
 praise and communion. This would seem to indicate an 
 habitual readiness of heart to turn to God under all circum- 
 stances. We might say that danger would naturally drive 
 him to prayer, which would be true. That would enable us 
 to understand the " Be merciful unto me," and " I will cry 
 unto God ; " but danger and sorrow do not habitually 
 drive a man to praise ; and when we hear him in such cir- 
 cumstances, saying " I will sing and give praise," the only 
 conclusion we can come to is that that man lives habitually 
 in an atmosphere of faith and of heavenly communion, so 
 that in all seasons his heart is prepared to wait on God. 
 It is about this habitual preparation of heart that I wish 
 to speak. 
 
 The ideal perfect Christian life would be a life in con- 
 tact with God along its whole line. It would be every- 
 where and always in communion with God. God's will 
 and God's love would fill and move in every inlet and 
 curve of the life, as the ocean in its gulfs and creeks and 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 165 
 
 round its promontories ; and upon this high plane, the gen- 
 eral tenor of the life would be more even. There would 
 be no struggles for the vision of God's face when His face 
 should be constantly unveiled. There would be fewer, or, 
 perhaps, no seasons of special communion with God, when 
 the whole life should be one long communing with Him. 
 The seer on Patmos, in his vision of the heavenly Jerusa- 
 lem, saw no temple therein. There was no need of the 
 special forms and occasions of worship where the spirit 
 lived forever in the immediate presence of Christ. 
 
 It hardly needs to be said that we do not live in this 
 condition, and that we do need certain special influ- 
 ences to recall our minds to heavenly things, to lift them 
 into the atmosphere of rest and of devotion, and to keep 
 them from drifting away into worldliness and sensuality. 
 God has recognized the need and has met it. He has 
 given the Sabbath with its rest from labor, He has given 
 the sanctuary with its quickening influences, He has com- 
 mended the season of special prayer, He has made prayer 
 draw some of its inspiration and get some of its character 
 from special facts, as for example, in family prayer ; He 
 has instituted the sacraments to be formally, statedly, and 
 decently observed, and thus has attached a certain spirit- 
 ual power to occasions, of which He expects us to avail 
 ourselves to the largest extent for the quickening of our 
 religious life ; so that we are not justified in neglecting or 
 despising these things because the perfect ideal of Christian 
 living omits them. It may be true that, in a future day, 
 we shall ask Him nothing, because the perfect oneness of 
 the divine life and ours shall do away with the necessity 
 of asking and receiving ; but it is true now that we are to 
 
1 66 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 ask and receive. There may be no temple in the heaven- 
 ly Jerusalem ; but on earth, it remains true that the Lord 
 loveth the gates of Zion, and bids His people not forsake 
 the assembling of themselves together. 1 It is true that by 
 and by the disciples shall drink the new wine of the king, 
 dom with Christ in heaven, or, in other words, shall ex- 
 change symbolic for personal communion ; but none the 
 less are we bidden now to assemble round His table, and 
 to do this in remembrance of Him. 
 
 Moreover, we are not to ignore the spiritual power 
 which attaches to stated religious occasions. We may say 
 that, in a perfect state, religious experience would be much 
 more level, that there would be no alternations of feeling, 
 that the soul would habitually live in an atmosphere of 
 holy joy and peace. That may be ; though even in the 
 perfect, ideal state, I am not sure that spiritual experience 
 will be a dead level, or that there may not be exceptional 
 heights of spiritual vision and ecstasy, rising even above 
 the high table-land of heavenly life. Be that as it may, 
 we are to accept the fact that these special religious occa- 
 sions induce quickened feeling, and quickened spiritual 
 perception. After you have been immersed in business 
 and distracted all day with worldly cares, it would be 
 strange indeed if the influence of the place of prayer 
 should not lift you into a calmer region, and bring you in- 
 to closer communion with Heaven. Even as the feeling 
 of the disciples was more deep and intense on that even- 
 ing when they gathered round the table in the upper 
 chamber, when the sense of the approaching crisis was on 
 
 1 Hebrews x. 25. 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 167 
 
 their hearts, and when every word and act of Christ took 
 on a double impressiveness even, I say, as their feeling 
 was more intense than in their daily, ordinary intercourse 
 with their Master so in the sacrament, in which we 
 more definitely recall those closing scenes, and read their 
 meaning in the light of our own spiritual experience, and 
 of the history of Christ's atoning work through all the 
 Christian centuries we may expect to have feeling 
 heightened, and thought quickened, and perception clari- 
 fied. Life is not all spiritual. The flesh lusteth against 
 the spirit, and the continuous fight will issue in alternations, 
 variations of the level of Christian joy and peace, depres- 
 sions from which we must be raised by special influences, 
 " unmannerly distractions," from which we need the closet 
 and the sanctuary and the communion to recall us. 
 
 But, this being admitted, we are none the less to guard 
 against the tendency to make our Christian life and expe- 
 rience, our Christian peace and restfulness centre in these 
 occasions. We see this tendency breaking out in its 
 grosser forms, in the cases of those who dissociate re- 
 ligion and morality ; in the devotee who leaves the confes- 
 sional or the communion to begin a new series of debauch- 
 eries ; in one who formally abstains from certain amuse- 
 ments, or gayeties, or indulgences, and carefully frequents 
 church during Lent, only to give up the rest of the year to 
 unbounded worldliness ; in one whose thought detaches 
 itself from business or from pleasure only at the time of 
 communion, and who devotes himself for a week to spe- 
 cial preparation for that event, and then drops back again 
 into the sweeping tide of the world, and goes down with 
 the current until another communion season. 
 
1 68 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 These, I say, are grosser manifestations of this tendency. 
 They do not indicate a fixed or prepared heart, but a 
 heart which must be specially worked up to special prep- 
 aration at definite intervals. There are subtler manifes- 
 tations of this tendency. Sometimes I have been led to 
 question whether this very service 1 does not reveal some 
 of them. 
 
 Christ ordained the sacrament, but He ordained prayer 
 also. The preaching of the word is as truly His institu- 
 tion as the sacrament of His passion and death. Fidelity 
 to the observance of the sacrament is enjoined by Him, 
 but so is fidelity to every other duty ; and neither Christ 
 nor His apostles anywhere emphasize fidelity to one ob- 
 servance to the neglect or disparagement of the others. 
 If it be the duty of Christians to hear the word when it has 
 special reference to the celebration of the communion, I 
 cannot understand why it is less their duty to hear it when 
 it bears upon other departments of Christian duty. If a 
 devotional and tender spirit in the Church is desirable every 
 two or three months on the eve of the sacrament, I do 
 not understand why it should be less desirable every week, 
 or how conscience can acquit a Christian for the neglect 
 of the means instituted for fostering it. 
 
 Let us clearly understand, then, that all special occa- 
 sions in the life of church or of individual church servi- 
 ces, stated preaching, social meetings, closet communing, 
 sacraments are aimed directly at our ordinary life : are 
 designed to help us live that better. We are led up to 
 these Pisgahs and Hennons of spiritual vision, to the end 
 
 1 Preparatory lecture before communion. 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 169 
 
 that we may carry the power of these visions into life's 
 common routine, to sanctify and to elevate that. These 
 things are not an end unto themselves. Christ Himself 
 withdrew to the mountains for high and solemn converse 
 with God a communing on which the imagination refuses 
 to intrude in order that He might be braced and inspired 
 for the daily contact with commonplace minds, and with 
 the wretchedness, filth and squalor, the disease, and igno- 
 rance, and bigotry to which so much of His life was em- 
 ployed in ministering. The disciples were not permitted 
 to stay on the Transfiguration Mount, but that glorious 
 vision would have failed of its main purpose if it had not 
 strengthened and kindled their hearts for the hard mission 
 for which they were chosen. These exceptional experi- 
 ences in our lives are intended to foster in us that con- 
 stantly prepared, fixed heart of which David here sings : 
 the heart that shall be prepared for praise, and for trust, 
 and for worship, not only while sitting in heavenly places, 
 but also among lions, among them that are set on fire, 
 when the net has been prepared for the steps and the soul 
 is bowed down, amid the fret and worry of life, and on 
 the dead level of daily duty and care. 
 
 It is a great thing to have a heart thus prepared, but it 
 is not an impossible thing. If the Bible is to be believed, 
 there have been men who walked with God. Paul says, 
 " Our conversation is in heaven," ' and that does not mean 
 merely talking about heaven or hoping for heaven, but 
 living habitually in a heavenly atmosphere, in which one 
 is sensitive and responsive to every voice from heaven. 
 
 1 Philippians iii. 21. 
 
170 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 And you have met such persons : men who went vigor- 
 ously about their business like other men ; who seemed 
 to be as much absorbed in it as other men, yet who never 
 seemed to find it hard to slip into talk about heavenly 
 things, and whose response to any suggestion of heaven 
 or of divine truth was so quick and natural and unforced 
 that you saw at once that the heart was prepared, and that 
 God and Christ were the uppermost facts in their lives. 
 And that prepared state of the heart settles a great many 
 questions. There, for instance, is the question of Sab- 
 bath observance. You find persons who challenge its 
 claim to be a day of religious worship and instruction. 
 " It is a day of rest," they say. " Why should we mew 
 ourselves up in church ? Why should our thoughts be 
 forced into religious channels ? Why should we not 
 spend the day in amusement ?" A Sabbath thus observed 
 under protest could scarcely be profitable ; but that mat- 
 ter apart, the question is settled for a prepared heart by 
 never being raised. When you have a holiday, you gen- 
 erally spend it in doing the thing most congenial to you. 
 You hunt, or fish, or read, as you please. And similarly 
 if God is a man's best friend, if his heart is charged with 
 love to God, the day which relieves him from the distract- 
 ing cares of business, will find him not only ready but 
 eager to meet the Lord in the sanctuary. The opportu- 
 nity of dwelling on the congenial truths of revelation 
 will be eagerly embraced. It will not be a question of 
 duty at all, but a leaping of the heart for very joy as it 
 moves into the green pastures of the word. Such an one 
 will rest, but he will rest in the Lord. A friend once said 
 to me, " When I was a boy in my father's house, and we 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 171 
 
 were singing at family worship or at other times, the 
 chords of the piano, though no one struck the keys, would 
 often vibrate so strongly as to startle us all. Only, if we 
 happened to sing a little off the key a little too high or 
 too low the instrument would be mute." And the ordi- 
 nances of God's house worship, praise, preaching, sacra- 
 ments are a good deal like that piano. If the heart is 
 prepared, if the life is set in the key of love and faith, 
 these things will respond most harmoniously and mightily. 
 You know how it is sometimes, that a social meeting or a 
 communion season seems to fill the whole soul with its 
 gracious influence : when you are as sensitive and respon- 
 sive to every thought and word as the aspen to the wind. 
 Perhaps you thought that the service in itself was unusu- 
 ally interesting and impressive ; but often the impressive- 
 ness has grown out of the fact that you were in right rela- 
 tion to the service ; that your heart was prepared, your 
 devotional feeling set in the right key. We might very 
 easily have more of such delightful seasons ; the secret 
 lies mainly in having a prepared heart ; in maintaining 
 the glow of faith and prayer in our daily walk ; in keeping 
 our heart tender and susceptible to divine influences. If 
 you come to the sermon or to the place of prayer without 
 such preparation of heart, depending on the occasion to 
 lift you bodily into a condition of sympathy with heavenly 
 things, the chances are you will be disappointed. Most 
 of the spiritual energy of the occasion will be expended 
 in bringing you up to the point from which you ought to 
 have started. Some of us remember the old fashioned 
 foot-stoves which our grandmothers used to take with 
 them to church in the olden days. The reason why the 
 
172 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 stoves kept them comfortable in church, was because they 
 put the fire in them before they left home, and fanned the 
 fire in their walking or riding to the sanctuary ; and that 
 church will have the warmest and most sympathetic 
 atmosphere in its Sabbath services and social meetings, 
 where there is most godly living and prayer and medita- 
 tion on the word in the daily experience of its members. 
 The fire will be ready kindled in those prepared hearts 
 when they reach the sanctuary, and a single breath of the 
 spirit will set them in a glow. There is a difference in 
 the way social meetings are conducted : one man is a 
 better leader than another. There is a difference in ser- 
 mons. A pastor may preach a good sermon one Sabbath 
 and an inferior one the next ; but, after all, the difference 
 in the tone of religious services is not altogether explained 
 by these variations ; a part of the cause lies with the peo- 
 ple. Scripture tells us of those to whom the word was 
 preached faithfully and pungently, yet who were not 
 profited thereby because they did not hear it with faith. 1 
 Isaiah's lips. were touched with a coal from God's own 
 altar, and yet, in sending him forth to his work, God said, 
 " Go and tell this people, * hear ye indeed but understand 
 not ; and see ye indeed but perceive not. Make the 
 heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and 
 shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes and hear 
 with their ears, and understand with their heart, and con- 
 vert and be healed.' " a 
 
 We need, then, to keep in mind clearly this thought 
 that religion in the ordinary life habitual communion with 
 
 1 Hebrews iv. 2. 2 Isaiah vi. 9, 10. 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 173 
 
 God, daily abiding in the atmosphere of heaven is the 
 great end to which Christ and His apostles point us ; and 
 that all special or exceptional religious agencies point 
 that way, and have their chief value in fostering the con- 
 dition which is described as having the conversation in 
 heaven. It is right that we should look up and forward 
 from the routine, or struggle, or distraction of our lives 
 to these mounts of vision, with expectation and with 
 longing ; but it is also right and indispensable that we 
 should look from the mountain-top down along the stretch 
 of dusty, rocky road to which we must soon descend, and 
 feel that the prime object of the blessed rest and clear 
 revealing of the mountain is, that we may walk the more 
 diligently and- tranquilly and patiently on the road. Too 
 often our lives are like buildings of two stories ; one on 
 the ground, damp and cluttered with bales and boxes and 
 household stuff, blackened with smoke and ringing with 
 the clamor of business and of domestic life, and where we 
 pass most of our time. The other, whither we climb on 
 Sundays, perhaps once a week besides, possibly for a few 
 minutes each day a place where more of God's light 
 comes in, where there is more quiet and less outward 
 taint of sordidness, and where we have an outlook at the 
 sky and beyond the limits of our daily round of domestic, 
 or business, or other care, and get out of the reek of the 
 lower story for the time. It is well that we do this so 
 often ; well that we have a higher plane for our lives to 
 walk on now and then ; but it might be better. Granting 
 we must have the two stones, there is no reason why all 
 the light and freshness should be confined to the chambers 
 whither we go up to look at the heavens and to commune 
 
174 Gates into tlie Psalm Country. 
 
 with God. Windows ought to be cut somewhere to let 
 the light and warmth from above into that ground floor ; 
 and the breath of God ought to have some way of getting 
 in there and lifting the dull atmosphere of care and worry. 
 There will be a difference between the two stories, but 
 it ought not to be so marked. Christ, with all His 
 power and sweetness and refreshing, is willing to come 
 down into our common life ; to teach us how to make our 
 " common task " "bring us daily nearer God ; " and the 
 seasons which we spend in the upper chambers ought to 
 make us so in love with Christ's presence that we cannot 
 do without it when we descend, but must have Him, as He 
 desires to be, " with us alway even unto the end of the 
 world." When He shall thus abide with us and we with 
 Him, all our life, whether commonplace or sublime, will 
 get its character from that abiding : business, domestic 
 life, pleasure, all will fall into the key of His spirit, and he 
 who thus walks with Him, will know, in the ready response 
 of every detail of his life to Christ's touch, what the 
 Psalmist meant when he said " My heart is prepared." 
 
 "My heart is fixed." "Ah!" one will say, "My 
 heart ! There is just the trouble : that traitorous, rebel- 
 lious heart ; if I could only get it fixed and resting in 
 God, then indeed it would be prepared for all things ; 
 but to-day it is at peace with God, the next day laden 
 with the consciousness of sin. To-day it rejoices, to-mor- 
 row it will be in heaviness through manifold temptations ; 
 to-day it is hopeful and trustful, to-morrow it will, very 
 likely, be racked with doubt ; to-day I think it conse- 
 crated fully, to-morrow I may have reason to doubt 
 whether it is consecrated at all." 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 175 
 
 I think there is comfort for you. Very probably you 
 try to get out of this experience by renewing your con- 
 secrations at intervals, by making new and solemn vows 
 and resolutions, by endeavoring by the act of your will 
 to make a full surrender of self, hoping that some time 
 you will do this so thoroughly that God will no longer 
 withhold Himself, and you will be free. And you may be 
 sure that if you persevere in that course, you will not get 
 free. You will keep on alternating between light and 
 darkness, defeat and victory. Your heart will not be 
 fixed. But there is a way out. If you will stop studying 
 your own consecrations, and your self surrenders, stop 
 studying self so much, and begin to study Christ, you will 
 find that way out. That is to say, if, instead of feeling 
 that you have got to fight your way to confidence and 
 peace and habitual victory over temptation by a series 
 of self-offerings, you will just receive Christ, and let Him 
 come in and do the whole work, you will find it done 
 much better. He will crucify self in you much more 
 effectively than you can. it is they that receive Him 
 that have power given them to become sons of God. 1 
 If Christ shall possess you fully, self will go out as a 
 matter of course. I am reminded just here of the words 
 of a venerable minister 2 now in heaven ; a giant in the 
 pulpit, and a little child in the wisdom of Christian ex- 
 perience. " Deliverance, habitual joy in God, and vic- 
 tory over old habits and temptations came when I had 
 become perfectly assured that God had freely given Him- 
 self to me. I do not mean until God had revealed Him- 
 
 2 Rev. Dr. James, of Albany. 
 
Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 self in a personal manner, but until I had become prac- 
 tically convinced and settled in the doctrine that the love 
 of God was a fountain for humanity, free, in its fulness, 
 to every one who desired it ; that nothing at all was re- 
 quired to make it mine ; that it was mine now by virtue of 
 what Christ had done for me, to which nothing could be 
 added by me. Sin and the world are already conquered 
 so far as that persuasion is rooted in you ; hold fast to it, 
 and in a little while, God's glory will be a constant, loving 
 manifestation." It was not strange that his peace was 
 like a river, not strange that his heart was prepared, so 
 that, when he saw the approach of death, he could write 
 to a friend : "No young girl ever felt a more delightful 
 fluttering in the prospect of a European tour, than I feel 
 in the prospect of soon seeing the Land of never wither- 
 ing flowers ; of seeing Christ and knowing Him and being 
 known of Him." 
 
 You want to go with a prepared heart to the Lord's 
 table. I do not know any better preparation than you 
 will find in that single thought : The love of God is free, 
 in its fulness, to every one who desires it. Nothing is 
 required to make it yours beyond your accepting it. It 
 is yours now by virtue of what Christ has done for you, to 
 which nothing can be added by you. If that is true, you 
 can but say joyfully as you move towards the table which 
 tells you this truth in symbol, " I am a sinner, I am 
 weak, I am fallible, I am unworthy, but the love of God 
 is mine, and Christ the gift of His love is mine, and 
 therefore Christ's table is mine. It is my Father who 
 presides at the board, it is my Elder Brother who meets 
 me there." 
 
The Gate to the Cave. 177 
 
 You want a thought to feed your mind while you eat the 
 bread and drink the cup. This thought will last you longer 
 than the hour of communion. The love of God is free in 
 its fulness ; yours now by virtue of what Christ has done 
 for you. Can any thought impart to you a higher joy ? 
 Can the hungriest soul desire aught else to satisfy it ? 
 
 And the hour of communion will pass, and the time 
 come round but too quickly when you must plunge again 
 into life's busy routine. You will cast a glance down into 
 the seething and turmoil, and you will shrink. You will 
 turn back to the peaceful scenes of communion as to a 
 mount where you would gladly build a tabernacle and stay 
 until the day shall come for drinking the wine new in the 
 heavenly kingdom. But that may not be. The world 
 calls you, and you must go and do God's work in the 
 world like a Christian man or woman. Take this with you 
 from the table to prepare your heart. The love of God is 
 free in its fulness to every one who desires it. It is yours 
 by virtue of what Christ has done for you. That thought 
 will give a new character to your life. That thought, once 
 grasped and held, will show you how life is yours with 
 Christ no longer the wave which smites and drives you 
 at will, but master ed-\yy you, made to help you on to God, 
 and to make you meet, through its vicissitudes and trials 
 for a better inheritance with the saints in light. 
 
 " Too soon we rise. The symbols disappear ; 
 
 The feast, though not the love is past and gone. 
 The bread and wine remove, but THOU art here, 
 Nearer than ever, still my Shield and Sun. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 8* 
 
178 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 I know that deadly evils compass me, 
 
 Dark perils threaten, yet I would not fear, 
 Nor poorly shrink, nor feebly turn to flee ; 
 
 Thou, O my Christ, art buckler, sword, and spear. 
 But see ! The pillar-cloud is rising now, 
 
 And moving onward through the desert night. 
 It beckons and I follow ; for I know 
 
 It leads me to the heritage of light." 1 
 
 1 Bonar. 
 
THE GATE TO THE SEA. 
 
PSALM LXXVII. 
 
 (19) Thy way was in the sea, 
 
 And Thy paths in the mighty waters, 
 And Thy footsteps were not known. 
 
 (20) Thou leddest Thy people like sheep 
 By the hand of Moses and Aaron. 
 
XL 
 
 THE GATE TO THE SEA. 
 
 PERHAPS no illustration of divine power was better 
 adapted to impress a Hebrew mind than this. A God 
 who could rule the sea, and make His own and His peo- 
 ple's path through the midst of it, must be a mighty God. 
 For we, made familiar with the sea by our reading, our 
 travels, our scientific researches, our sports to many of 
 whom a sea voyage is a luxury we can but faintly realize 
 the dread which the ocean inspired in a Hebrew. It was 
 a significant threat which Moses threw out in his address 
 to the Israelites, that, if they should refuse obedience to 
 God, they should be carried back to Egypt in ships* 
 They would have dreaded the conveyance as much as the 
 bondage itself. The ocean was a fearful mystery, and 
 neither science nor experience mitigated its terrors. You 
 never find in Old Testament poetry any of those mus- 
 ings upon the beauty of the sea, any of those expressions 
 of restfulness and delight in its contemplation, which so 
 abound in the writings of modern poets. David's ideal 
 of happy repose is not a seaside retreat, but a walk by still 
 waters. It is when he wishes to picture trouble, grief, 
 sore extremity, frightful rage, that he brings in the sea. 
 
 1 Deuteronomy xxviii. 68. 
 
1 82 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 "All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me. 
 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy water-spouts." ] 
 " If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when 
 men rose up against us, when their wrath was kindled 
 against us, then the proud waters had gone over our soul." a 
 The very extreme of disaster from which God is confidently 
 appealed to as a refuge, is the carrying of the mountains 
 into the midst of the sea. God is our refuge even then ; 
 "though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though 
 the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." s 
 
 And therefore it added greatly to the impressiveness of 
 Israel's deliverance from bondage, that it was associated 
 so wonderfully with that realm of mystery and terror ; that 
 God should have led them through the sea, in its most aw- 
 ful aspect, " in the depth of midnight, amidst the roar of 
 the hurricane which caused the sea to go back, amidst a 
 darkness lit up only by the broad glare of the lightning, as 
 the Lord looked out of the thick darkness of the cloud." * 
 With all the triumph and joy which accompanied the event, 
 its mysteriousncss was distinctly and awfully marked. The 
 dividing of the sea was a mystery ; the pillar of cloud and 
 fire, which led them through the depths, was a strange, 
 weird, awful guide. They moved through mystery, and 
 after mystery, following One whose footsteps were not 
 known. 
 
 Out of these facts there springs up for us not merely an 
 impressive symbol, but a great practical truth ; the truth 
 namely that those who follow God, follow a leader whose 
 
 1 Psalm xlii. 7. * Psalm cxxiv. 2-5. 
 
 8 Psalm xlvu 2, 3. 4 Stanley, Jewish Church. 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 183 
 
 footsteps are not known ; that, in other words, he who 
 accepts the service of God accepts with it much which he 
 cannot understand, finds himself constrained both to do 
 and to suffer much for which he can see no reason, and 
 to order his life after a plan of which his reason cannot 
 take in the whole circumference. Mystery, in short is 
 bound up with God's revelation and dealing with the human 
 race; and though he no longer cleaves the sea nor kindles 
 pillars of fire, it remains as true for us as it was for Israel 
 that His way lies through deep places, and that His foot- 
 steps are not known. 
 
 The pride of the human heart rebels against such an 
 economy as this. It wants to understand just how God 
 makes a passage through the sea ; and insists on forcing 
 its way into the heart of the cloudy pillar to see how it is 
 made up ; and only on these terms will it yield its rever- 
 ence and obedience. 
 
 And yet a very little thought will expose the unreason- 
 ableness of human reason in this matter. Such talk and 
 reason as though God purposely and arbitrarily thrust 
 upon them an economy of darkness and confusion ; as 
 though, in mere wantonness, He set himself at work to 
 puzzle them ; as though He deliberately beclouded things 
 which they have the right and the ability to understand ; 
 forgetting that the ability to comprehend God is just 
 what is wanting ; that the infinite. God must be incom- 
 prehensible to a finite being in the very nature of the case ; 
 and that the plans and dealings of an infinite Being will 
 naturally partake of His own infinitude, and be, therefore, 
 on a scale transcending human understanding. Zophar 
 put the case to Job, and rightly, as a matter of simple im- 
 
1 84 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 possibility. " Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
 Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection ? It is 
 high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? Deeper than hell ; 
 what canst thou know ? The measure thereof is longer 
 than the earth and broader than the sea." ! Take a little 
 lad of ten years, and put him into an assembly of states- 
 men discussing the gravest questions of diplomacy and in- 
 ternational law, to carry documents and messages from 
 one desk to another. In that assembly the lad has a defi- 
 nite place and a definite duty which he can understand 
 and do. But suppose he should refuse to carry a paper 
 of which he did not understand the meaning and bearing. 
 Suppose he should throw up his position as page, on the 
 ground that he was not made acquainted with the whole 
 course of complicated negotiation carried on in that 
 chamber. Would any sane man regard the boy as an in- 
 jured being ? Would any one think of reproaching those 
 statesmen with unkindness or injustice ? W^ould not the 
 lad be simply laughed at ? Even supposingthat every man 
 in the chamber were disposed to grant his ridiculous demand 
 and to explain the business to him could they do it ? 
 Could the child's mind grasp the destinies of nations ? 
 And yet, if this is absurd, what shall be said of a finite 
 being, with his scanty knowledge, with his limited capa- 
 city, with his little range of experience, refusing allegiance 
 to a God whose purposes comprehend eternity, and move 
 in orbits vaster than his utmost reach of thought can even 
 begin to conceive ; in whose plan the countless details of 
 all being in the eternity, past and future, are grouped and 
 
 'Job xi 7-9. 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 185 
 
 unified what, I repeat, shall be said of the stupendous 
 folly of a poor little man, the difference between whom 
 and God is barely shadowed by the difference between a 
 statesman and a babe, yet who refuses allegiance to God 
 because he cannot, by searching, find out the Almighty to 
 perfection ? 
 
 And not only so, but on their own principles, such men 
 would refuse, if they could understand God. The proud- 
 est of them would say, " Never will I bow the knee to 
 aught less than the infinite." And yet, to go back to the 
 illustration, if the discussions of that assembly of statesmen 
 were such as could be thoroughly understood by a child, 
 if he could mingle freely in their talk, and interchange 
 ideas with them, men would say that the assembly was 
 a farce, and that its members were unworthy to deal with 
 such mighty questions ; and the boy himself would cease 
 to revere them. So, if I may thoroughly know God, I 
 must cease to worship Him. I cannot adore what I can 
 measure. If His plans are within my comprehension, they 
 are finite. If there is nothing in God which I cannot find 
 out by searching, then God is finite and is not God. He 
 lets me feel the touch of His hand, He daily compasses 
 me with His love, He draws sharply for me the great out- 
 lines of His character, He restrains and forms me by His 
 law, He teaches me by His providence, guides me by His 
 wisdom, upholds and saves me by His power. But while 
 there is thus a side of revelation in contact with me and 
 daily available for me, I must never forget that it is only a 
 side ; that God's revelation is not God, but, as it were, a 
 line of light on the verge of a narrow horizon, beyond 
 
1 86 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 which lie depths and glories of Divine Being unconceived 
 and inconceivable by the heart of man. 
 
 This mystery of God's being Naturally extends itself, as 
 has been hinted, to His dealings with men. It is no more 
 to be expected that we can understand all these than that 
 we can understand Him ; and hence His way in the 
 world's history has been very largely a way in the sea, 
 marked by much mystery and darkness, beset with hard 
 problems which we are quite as far from solving as were 
 the men of Job's day. There is the great mystery of evil 
 for instance. Why did God mark out His path right 
 through this awful fact of sin ? How did it come into the 
 world ? Why is it not swept away by a righteous and 
 pure God? Why must the Church spring up from the 
 blood of the martyrs ? Why are such carnivals of blood 
 and lust as that now in progress under the very eyes of 
 Christian Europe, tolerated ? Why must helpless women 
 and innocent children suffer at the hands of the vile Turk ? 
 Why is not that loathsome blot on the map of Europe 
 wiped out at a stroke ? Why do good men suffer and bad 
 men prosper ? 
 
 Or take the instruments with which God has carried on 
 His work among men, a work involving so much knowl- 
 edge, delicacy, and tact. He led His people by the hand 
 of Moses and Aaron ; of Moses whose hasty presumption 
 debarred him from the Promised Land ; of Aaron the 
 maker of the golden calf; by the hands of wily and selfish 
 men like Jacob ; of wild, fierce men like Samson ; of men 
 stained with murder and lust and effeminacy like David 
 and Solomon. By Elijah the prophet of fire ; by Thomas 
 who doubted, and by Peter who denied. So, down through 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 187 
 
 the history of the Church, the Church which, somehow, has 
 been a power in the earth to keep alive faith in the hearts of 
 men, which has won souls, and defended the truth in the 
 face of death, yet with such a large mixture of passion, pride, 
 worldliness, and vanity in its saints. And the Church 
 of the present ! Why we shall be texts to the Church of 
 the future, as the Church of the past furnishes texts to 
 us. If we shall be held up as examples for their imitation, 
 let us be sure that we shall furnish abundance of warnings 
 also. And yet God's footsteps move on through all this 
 error, weakness, narrowness, lovelessness in the very 
 Church itself. Still He continues to put the gospel treasure 
 in earthen vessels ; continues to commission imperfect* 
 erring men, to train and guide human hearts and souls ; 
 and through all their blundering, evolves results which 
 awaken the wonder of men, and the joy of heaven. 
 
 Individual experience, too, proclaims the same fact from 
 every side. Look at any single life ; your own, if you 
 will, for you know that best, and tell me if God's way in 
 it has not been as a way in the sea. Ah, he is a wise man 
 among you who can go back and explain his life. Talk 
 of mysteries ! You need not go to the sea, nor to the rocks 
 to find them. Enwrapped in each separate manhood and 
 womanhood is a mystery of providence deeper and subtler 
 than any that the sea holds in its bosom. Child of God, 
 Christian, do you know how you became what you are 
 to-day ? How is it that you are something different from 
 what you meant to be, not so great it may be, or it may 
 be greater ? Or do you know why, supposing you are or 
 have what you desired, you were led to it by a road so dif- 
 ferent from that which you chose ? Do you understand 
 
1 88 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 why God has put certain responsibilities upon yon, the 
 very ones from which you shrank, or why. on the other 
 hand, He has assigned to others the duties you coveted ? 
 Or do you know why your goal of earthly good is still be- 
 low the horizon, and why God keeps you plodding along 
 the road ? He has smitten you where you thought you 
 did not deserve it. He has taken away from you the 
 earthly, help you seemed to need most ; He has let seven 
 troubles come together when you thought you had your 
 hands full with one ; you believe God has led you, and 
 yet His footsteps are not known. And you are not alone 
 in this ; you are in good company the noble army of 
 Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles of all of them as of Israel 
 on the night of the exodus, it might be said, " Thou leddest 
 Thy people by the way of the sea, and Thy footsteps were 
 not known." It was a curious way of bringing Israel into 
 Egypt by bereaving Jacob. It was a strange beginning of 
 their wonderful emigration the finding of a Hebrew baby 
 in the Nile rushes. The sheepfold was a strange place in 
 which to look for a king, and a ruddy shepherd lad a sin- 
 gular candidate for royalty. The school of Hillel, and the 
 Sanhedrim, did not seem likely to furnish an Apostle of a 
 gospel which recognized neither Greek nor Jew, Circum- 
 cision nor Uncircumcision. Yet so it has been, and is. 
 This element of mystery enters into the personal experi- 
 ence of God's people everywhere, and in all times. On 
 each life God writes this comment : " My thoughts are not 
 your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." * 
 
 Accepting this fact, then, what are we to do with it ? 
 
 1 Isaiah Iv. 8. 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 189 
 
 We have seen that it is an essential fact of God's infinity, 
 and an universal fact in the history of His dealings. If 
 we deal with God at all we cannot evade it. What 
 then ? Shall we submit to it passively and sadly, as those 
 who yield to the inevitable, and who stand chafing at a 
 door which God will not open ? 
 
 We can do better than that. There is nothing discour- 
 aging in this truth, unless we persist in viewing it apart 
 from other truths ; and no truth of Scripture was ever in- 
 tended to be viewed in that way. 
 
 In the first place, we are not to conclude that because 
 there is a mystery in God's dealings, they are therefore 
 without a plan. The ancient Jew, as he looked upon 
 the sea, saw nothing there ivhich suggested life or order 
 or good. It was to him, as we have seen, the type of all 
 confusion, danger, and trouble a mere tumbling, chaotic 
 waste. Not so the modern student. To -him the heaving 
 ocean suggests law and organized life. Its expanse is 
 mapped, its depth is plumbed, the conformation of its bot- 
 tom is known, the law of its currents is determined, and 
 its inhabitants are classified. So, in viewing the dealings 
 of God, often so dark, and confused, and apparently aim- 
 less, we are always to remember that the confusion is in 
 us and not in God's work ; that God's counsel is not dark- 
 ened because we are blind. 
 
 Again, we are not to conclude that this mystery of prov- 
 idence is the outgrowth of unkindness. Now and then 
 you will hear a man reasoning on this wise : " If God 
 were the benevolent being I have been taught to believe 
 Him, surely he would make this thing a little clearer." 
 That is very poor logic. The man of olden time, with his 
 
Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 overwhelming sense of the mystery and terror of the sea, 
 knew not the bountiful mercy which was veiled by that 
 mystery. Likewise mystery on God's part does not imply 
 cruelty. We become entirely used to certain invisible and 
 mysterious influences in nature, and we never are disposed 
 to question their utility and blessing because they are hid- 
 den from us. The various atmospheric influences and 
 electric currents, for instance, nourish and quicken our 
 life, yet the most ignorant man never thinks himself hard- 
 ly treated because he does not know the secrets of the air. 
 We carry within us a greater mystery than any providence 
 of God, and yet we do not call God cruel because he does 
 not reveal to us the secret of the soul's life. And if we 
 accept these things as consistent with divine benevolence, 
 why not accept others equally strange to i>s ? Luther was 
 once in earnest prayer over some matter of great moment, 
 desiring to know the mind of God in it, and it seemed as 
 though he heard God say to him, u I am not to be traced : " 
 and some one, commenting on this, adds, " If God is not 
 to be traced, He is to be trusted" 
 
 The writer of this Psalm has evidently reached very sat- 
 isfactory conclusions on this subject. He is in great trou- 
 ble and darkness ; he is tempted to doubt the goodness 
 of the Lord ; he asks, " Hath God forgotten to be gra- 
 cious?" But he reaches into the cloud which veils the 
 Divine dealings, and draws strength and comfort out of it. 
 He says, " This is my infirmity, but I will remember the 
 years of the right hand of the Most High ; " those very 
 years when He veiled himself in darkness, yet amid thun- 
 ders and hurricane led His people through the dark and 
 dreadful sea. " Thy way was in the sea, and Thy path 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 191 
 
 in the great waters, and Thy footsteps were not known. 
 Thou leddest Thy people like a flock." 
 
 And the secret of this confidence is revealed in the i3th 
 verse, in the words, " Thy way, O God, is in the sanctu- 
 ary ; " or, as the best interpreters now render it, " Thy 
 way is in holiness" Put these two thoughts together, and 
 one explains the other. Thy way is in the sea, dark, mys- 
 terious, dreadful; but Thy way is in holiness ; in perfect 
 wisdom inspired by perfect love, and therefore a way of 
 truth, leading up through the darkness into the eternal 
 light. No matter how strange the way, if it be a way of 
 holiness. What kind of a way that is Isaiah tells us. 1 It 
 is- a clean way : " the unclean shall not pass over it." It 
 is a plain way for the trusting spirit : " The wayfaring 
 men, though fools, shall not err therein." It is a safe 
 way : " : No ravenous beast shall go up thereon." It is a 
 \vayf0r redeemed men, redeemed from the world's econo- 
 my of sight and sense, and translated into the kingdom 
 and life of faith : they shall walk there, yea though it lie 
 through the midst of the sea, with songs in the night and 
 with everlasting joy upon their heads. No matter how deep 
 the mystery, provided God's holiness is behind it. If any 
 one less than God invite us to follow him into the dark, 
 we may rightly tremble ; but if He leadeth His own peo- 
 ple like a flock, what matters it by what ways ? So long 
 as holiness leads, Asaph and Paul may unite in saying 
 " We know that all things work together for good to them 
 that love God, to them who are the called according to 
 His purpose ; " 2 not their own purpose. If God calls us 
 
 1 xxxv. 8-10. a Romans viii. 28. 
 
192 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 to fulfil His purpose, we ought to expect that He will lead 
 us in His way, and, best of all, to His goal ; and His goal 
 is " To be conformed to the image of His Son ;" * but 
 we shall not be that, until we see Him as He is ; and that 
 will not be here, but after the sea shall have been passed 
 and there shall be no more sea. 
 
 " Thou leddest Thy people." The whole philosophy of 
 life is here, here for us no less than for Israel. If we think 
 we need some other theory of living because the Israel- 
 ites were only poor slaves, and we intelligent nineteenth 
 century Christians (or so we fancy), we are greatly mis- 
 taken. After all these centuries, God has nothing to add 
 to this, that men let Him lead them, in His own way, 
 through the sea if so He will it. The true philosophy of 
 life, I repeat, is summed up here, in simply following God. 
 Over the Apennines there is a wonderful railroad, on which, 
 in a space of less than seventy miles, one passes through 
 forty-three tunnels, some of them of very great length. 
 The road is full of magnificent outlooks, but every few 
 moments you go plunging into a tunnel. And certainly 
 the traveller over this road would show his good sense by 
 sitting still and being carried along the line of the rail ; and 
 not by getting out at the first station, and striking into 
 the mountains to find another path, because he did not 
 like the tunnels. He would be almost sure to be lost 
 and to starve to death. The road has been built to 
 carry him to his destination by the shortest way, and he 
 will get there more quickly and safely through the tunnels 
 than in any other way. O, if we could only believe the 
 
 1 Romans viii. 29. 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 193 
 
 same thing of God's way ! We want to build our own 
 road, all out in the light ; and the consequence is, it is 
 much less direct than God's, and much more dangerous, 
 and we cannot bring it out where we wish. God's way 
 lies through the tunnels, long ones often, but it is the 
 best road, the safest road : we shall reach the end most 
 surely and quickly by it. And remember, it is not all 
 tunnels either : in the region of the high rocks, where the 
 tunnels are needed, are the most glorious prospects. If 
 God's way is partly in darkness, the light places are full 
 of beauty, commanding such outlooks of mercy and love 
 as ought to reconcile us to the intervals of darkness. 
 
 I do not say that we ought not to make plans, nor to 
 try to carry them out. Every earnest man will do that : 
 only there is wisdom in holding our plans loosely, and 
 subject to God's modification. Too often we are fettered 
 by our plans : our minds are bent on carrying out our 
 life along those lines, and when God proceeds to change 
 those lines, they are so rigid that there is a good deal of 
 friction and pain attending the change. A plan assumes 
 a future, and involves forecast ; and forecast is just the 
 point where we are weakest, and the future the very 
 thing about which we are most uncertain. Therefore, as 
 a matter of ordinary probability, our plans will change : it 
 is not to be supposed that we shall forecast the same 
 things which Infinite Wisdom will forecast for us. It is 
 wisdom to accept this fact, especially since we see it con- 
 stantly illustrated in experience. I doubt if many men's 
 success lies in the line they had marked out : often it lies 
 in something running parallel with what they call their 
 main work, in something which they style incidental ; but 
 9 
 
194 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the future proves that the power of their life centred in 
 the incidental and not in the main work. A man, for 
 instance, goes into a country town to pass a few months. 
 Perhaps he is a learned man ; perhaps an eloquent man ; 
 perhaps he has written books, or swayed multitudes from 
 the platform, and has become accustomed to associate 
 his efficiency with great efforts like these. And he prob- 
 ably thinks very little of his occasional contact with the 
 people of that quiet town. He goes into their homes, a 
 Christian gentleman, winning their respect and confidence 
 and admiration by his bright, intelligent talk, and his 
 Christian courtesy, and he goes away never perhaps 
 dreaming that those few months of such intercourse may 
 have wrought more than all his books and lectures. The 
 trouble is that when such a man is laid aside from his 
 greater work, and compelled to accept such desultory 
 work, he is apt to rebel. His plan of life was laid out on 
 what seemed to him the longer lines, and his pride is hurt 
 when God lays it out on what appears to be a smaller 
 scale. Well for him if he lets God lead him. We are 
 apt to provide for the expansion of our plans, but not for 
 shrinkage ; and he is the wise man who humbly follows 
 God's leading ; who, though his road seems to lie straight 
 and broad before him, out into wide domains of useful- 
 ness, happiness, and power, yet when God suddenly turns 
 down some by-path, full of windings, leading he does not 
 dream whither, obediently and cheerfully follows, content 
 to go in dark and crooked ways with God, rather than on 
 the widest path without him. I remember once, in Italy, 
 climbing a mountain up which a broad, fine carriage road 
 led almost to the summit ; but there the road suddenly 
 
The Gate to the Sea. 195 
 
 ceased, and nothing appeared but a narrow foot-path 
 leading round the shoulder of the mountain, and that soon 
 dwindled into a sheep-track : and the sun beat down with 
 terrible power, and the way was rough, and more than 
 once I was tempted to go back ; but never shall I forget 
 the vision which burst upon me as at last I reached the 
 end of the narrow way : it repaid all the toil. So, I say, do 
 not be afraid of the narrow way if God turns you into it. 
 The great thing is that HE lead you ; and if HE lead, even 
 though His footsteps are not known, you know that His 
 way is in holiness, and ends at last in eternal good. 
 
THE GATE TO GOD'S ACRE. 
 
PSALM XC. 
 
 (1) Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place 
 In all generations. 
 
 (2) Before the mountains "were brought forth, 
 
 Or ever Thcvu gavest birth to the earth and the world, 
 Yea, from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. 
 
 (3) Thou turnest frail men to dust, 
 
 And Thou sayest ; * Return, ye children of men. 1 
 
 (4) For a thousand years in Thy sight 
 
 Are (but) as yesterday, when it passeth, 
 And as a watch in the night. 
 
 (5) Thou sweepest them away (as with a flood) ; they are (as) 
 
 a sleep in the morning : 1 
 They are as grass which springeth afresh : 
 
 (6) In the morning it flourisheth and springeth afresh, 
 In the evening it is cut down and withereth. 
 
 (7) For we have been consumed by thine anger, 
 And by Thy fury have we been terrified ; 
 
 (8) Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, 
 
 Our secret (sins) in the light of Thy countenance. 
 
 (9) For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath, 
 We have spent our years as a thought : 
 
 (10) The days of our years are threescore years and ten, 
 
 Or (perchance) by reason of much strength, fourscore 
 
 years ; 
 
 And their pride is (but) labor and vanity, 
 For it passeth swiftly, and we have fled away. 
 
 (11) Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, 
 
 And Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto 
 Thee? 
 
 (12) So teach us to number our days, 
 That we may gain a heart of wisdom. 
 
 (13) Return, O Jehovah ! How long ? 
 
 And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants. 
 
 (14) O satisfy us in the morning with Thy loving-kindness, 
 That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. 
 
 (15) Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast 
 
 afflicted us, 
 The years wherein we have seen evil. 
 
 (16) Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, 
 And Thy majesty upon their children. 
 
 (17) And let the graciousness of Jehovah our God be upon 
 
 us ; 
 
 And the work of our hands do Thou establish upon us ; 
 Yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. 
 
 1 I have given Hupfeld's rendering of this passage, instead of 
 Perowne's. So also Alexander. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE GATE TO GOD'S ACRE. 
 
 LET your thoughts go back to the wilderness of the 
 wanderings, where, for nearly forty years, the Israelites 
 have been working out the terrible curse pronounced on 
 them for their murmuring and rebellion. To Moses, as he 
 gazed upon the scene, with its purple mountains, its deep- 
 ly cut, narrow valleys, and the huts of the people cluster- 
 ing about the tabernacle, its suggestions and memories 
 must be well nigh overpowering. Let us put ourselves, if 
 we can, in the place of one whose life had been largely 
 given to the guidance of this people, and who bore them 
 upon his heart as his daily care ; and try to conceive the 
 overwhelming power of this single thought a whole 
 people dying out in this lonely, rocky camp ; a nation 
 waiting here in these solitudes until their fathers shall all 
 have passed away under God's curse. And this was but 
 one of many such thoughts which must have crowded on 
 the mind of the man of God. There was his own history. 
 First the bulrush ark, then the royal palace, then the quiet 
 years in the mountain solitudes among the sheep, then 
 back to face an angry king, and to wield the rod of divine 
 vengeance over his empire, then the work for which all 
 his past life had been a preparation, the endless, wearying 
 duties of the leader and lawgiver of a slave population en- 
 
2OO Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 taring upon the inheritance of freedom : and then, as he 
 looked forward, no more rest on earth : no dwelling for 
 him among the sunny corn-lands and vineyards of the 
 Promised Land. He too had sinned and he should not 
 enter in. Forty years ! What years of change, of care, of 
 decaying and renewed life, of tried patience : and yet they 
 were gone like a dream, and the new generation was stir- 
 ring with the hope of the rest in the new land. Death, 
 change, homelessness, human insignificance and frailty, 
 these were the stories told by the lonely booths, the play- 
 ing children, and his own whitened locks. What words 
 would come more naturally to his lips under the burden 
 of such thoughts, than these : " Lord, Thou hast been our 
 dwelling place in all generations. Ere these stern, pur- 
 ple mountains reared their heads, yea, ere the solid earth 
 out of which they rise was created, from everlasting to 
 everlasting. Thou art, O God." 
 
 It is the oldest of stories, sung in this oldest of Psalms ; 
 of human weakness, turning in dismay from the change 
 and decay about it, to find refuge in the eternity of God. 
 The Psalm belongs to the nineteenth century no less than 
 to Moses' time. It deals with universal, and not with 
 temporary and local truths. Let us not be repelled from 
 it because its undertone is sad and solemn ; for its lesson 
 is wholesome if sad, bracing if bitter, and leading up to 
 conclusions full of comfort and rest. 
 
 We cannot fail to notice how, at the very introduction 
 of this sacred poem, we are confronted with a theological 
 truth, dogmatically stated : and, in the general prevalence 
 of the prejudice against all that is supposed to be conveyed 
 by such words as dogma, doctrine, and theology, it will do 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 201 
 
 Bible-readers no harm to be reminded how much of all 
 three there is in the Scriptures, underlying even its poems 
 and allegories. The issue between doctrine and living, 
 between theology and religion, is often raised out of a 
 misunderstanding of terms : since there is no life-truth 
 (so called) which does not rest on a doctrine, and no truth 
 of religion, which does not belong equally to theology. 
 The fact that a truth is a part of a theologic system does 
 not affect its value any more than the healing qualities of 
 a familiar field-plant are destroyed by its classification in 
 a botanical treatise. 
 
 Look now at this Psalm, and observe that it sets out 
 with the definite statement of a theologic doctrine, no less 
 so because the form of statement is poetic ; the doctrine 
 of THE ETERNITY OF GOD. And here we may gain some 
 idea of the way in which the Bible teaches theology. This 
 doctrine, for instance, is well adapted to call out theologic 
 musing. Set the mind at work on this simple thought, 
 God is eternal, and h$nv the vast theme absorbs and leads 
 it captive. How thought struggles with the problem of 
 existence without beginning and without end. But the 
 Bible never leads us so long in that direction, as to suffer 
 us to become unconscious of our own spiritual condition. 
 It furnishes abundance of themes adapted to excite mus- 
 ing and speculation, but it never suffers these musings to 
 be an end unto themselves. The attributes of God, omni- 
 science, omnipotence, justice, immutability, are not set 
 forth merely as a pageant to excite wonder and awe. How- 
 ever Inspiration may kindle over them into poetic rapture, it 
 is not long ere it begins to set them forth in their relations 
 to the conscience and to the life. If it portrays _thed or y of 
 
 UNIVERSITY, 
 
2O2 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 God in the starry heavens, it turns naturally to the perfec- 
 tion of the moral law as illustrated by the natural law. 1 
 If it kindles at the thought of the protecting tenderness of 
 divine love, in almost the next breath it puts a prayer 
 upon the reader's lips, laden with confession of helplessness, 
 and with desire for the shelter of the wings of love. 2 The 
 grandest portraitures, the most glowing statements of ab- 
 stract truth, bear on their face a design to affect man's 
 moral susceptibilities, to call out his love and homage, to 
 foster his loyalty, to make him rejoice in moral order, and 
 order his steps in the Divine Word. 
 
 In this Psalm, therefore, we are not suffered to waste 
 time in the attempt to comprehend the abstract truth of 
 God's eternity. The truth itself is plainly shown to have 
 a practical bearing upon our mortal life, and this is the 
 chief end for which it is presented. We are lifted for the 
 moment, in order that we may descend ; suffered to grasp 
 a few of the treasures of the Divine Glory, that we may 
 carry them back to glorify our earthly life. 
 
 Thus, in the first place, this splendid thought of the 
 divine eternity is made to touch the shifting and incon- 
 stant character of our earthly state, by the single word 
 " dwelling place." " Lord, a home hast Thou been to us, 
 in generation and generation." We have seen with what 
 relief Moses turned from the thought of the desert wander- 
 ings of the Israelites, to that of an abiding dwelling-place 
 in God ; and Paul puts himself in the same attitude when 
 he says to the Corinthians, " For we know that if our 
 earthly house of this tabernacle (or tent) were dissolved, 
 
 1 Psalm xix. a Psalm xvii. 7, 8. 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 203 
 
 we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, 
 eternal in the heavens." * Now first this truth of God's 
 eternity assumes a real interest to us. What matters it to 
 me that God is eternal, if He be only the Epicurean's God, 
 sitting aloof in eternal bliss and splendor, and letting time 
 and change work their will with me and mine ? But now 
 God's eternity opens itself to my needs. I am a wan- 
 derer on earth, there is an eternal home for me : I am 
 weary, there is eternal rest for me ; I am sick of confu- 
 sion and change, there is eternal abiding in Him who is 
 the same, yesterday, to-day and forever, and only a change 
 "into the same image from glory to glory." 2 The eternity 
 of God puts itself at my disposal to change my broken and 
 transient communion with Him into eternal, confidential 
 fellowship with Him ; to give me, for occasional glimpses 
 of His face, the everlasting vision of the King in His 
 beauty : to renew eternally the sweet Christian kinships 
 and friendships which have passed away like a blessed 
 dream, and left a long heartache behind. " An eternal 
 home ! " Often, as you walk through the halls of the Vati- 
 can, you may read these words on the tablets brought 
 thither from the tombs of the heathen dead ; but the words 
 freeze the heart as you read in them the utterance, not of 
 hope, but of despair. This is the eternal home; this 
 gloomy catacomb, this marble coffin. Better Moses amid 
 the rocks of the desert, and the fragile huts of the long 
 wandering tribes, with faith beholding an eternal home in 
 the eternal God, than the Roman Patrician, turning from 
 his city of palaces to confront nothing but a charnel-house. 
 
 1 2 Corinthians v. I. S 2 Corinthians iii. 18. 
 
2O4 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 But a correct view of the eternity of God conveys warn- 
 ing as well as comfort. The more it is studied, the 
 stronger is the contrast into which it throws the brevity 
 and uncertainty of human life. From this brevity and un- 
 certainty we look up for refuge : from the refuge we look 
 down upon human life with a deepened sense of its insig- 
 nificance. This is the thought carried on in the next four 
 verses of the Psalm ; for 
 
 i st. The eternal power of God convicts us of helpless- 
 ness. Notice the sharp contrast. " From everlasting to 
 everlasting, O God," Thy life is self-sustained in Thine 
 own power : man's life, that gift in which he so exults and 
 on which he presumes to play " such fantastic tricks be- 
 fore high heaven," that which flowers out in his pride 
 and high endeavor, in his ambitions, plans, and grand en- 
 terprises, is a thing so little in his power, that Thou turn- 
 est him even unto the finest dust with a word ; and, with 
 another word, " Return, ye children of men " callest 
 others into being to fill his place. 
 
 2d. The eternal being of God is used to convict us of 
 delusion. We measure life by false standards. The Psalm 
 brings us back to the true rule of measurement. " A 
 thousand years, in Thy sight, are but as yesterday when it 
 is past, and as a watch in the night. Teach us to num- 
 ber our days by Thy standard, that we may be wise." That 
 old delusion, older than Moses, is woven into man's very 
 nature, and is fed and flattered with every gilded cheat 
 that his fancy can devise ; the delusion which leads him 
 to think seventy years a long time. What need to dwell 
 on a theme so trite, were it not that the delusion shows 
 itself still so fruitful in mischief? Still the evil servant 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 205 
 
 saith, " My Lord del ay eth His coming," ! and begins to eat 
 and drink with the drunken, and to beat his fellow-ser- 
 vants. Still the master of the house comes suddenly, and 
 finds the trusted servant with ungirded loins and extin- 
 guished lamp. Still men waste the hours, and delay re- 
 pentance, and persist in rebellion, and at the bottom of 
 all is this old cheat life is long, there is time enough ; 
 and notwithstanding all the denials repeated and empha- 
 sized by the swiftly passing generations, and by the daily 
 growing cities of the dead, we still have need that Moses 
 call to us out of the desert, and tell us that even the patri- 
 archs' lives of centuries are represented to God's eye by 
 a vanished yesterday, or a brief night-watch. What life is 
 long, measured by an eternal standard ? Well said Ben- 
 gel, " As to a rich man, a thousand pounds are as a penny, 
 so to God, a thousand years are as a day." Evidently 
 we are poor reckoners when life is a factor of the problem. 
 We need eternal wisdom to teach us to number our days, 
 so as to apply our hearts unto wisdom. 
 
 These suggestions are enforced by the figures which 
 follow. They will bear study : for they are not the mere 
 overflowings of the poet's imagination. Each of them 
 sets forth a truth of its own. There is, first, the fact that 
 man passes swiftly from life. "Thou earnest them away 
 as with a flood." And here let us try to get before us the 
 picture which Moses had in mind, without which the say- 
 ing will lose much of its force. He stood, as we have 
 seen, in the desert, amid mountains penetrated by deep 
 and narrow valleys, and he knew what a mountain torrent 
 
 1 Matthew xxiv. 48. 
 
206 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 was in those pent up denies a boiling, roaring flood, fill- 
 ing a valley sometimes to the depth of four hundred feet, 
 carrying down huge boulders of rock as though they were 
 so many pebbles, and sweeping whole families to destruc- 
 tion. Remember that a single thunder-storm, with a heavy 
 shower of rain, falling on the naked granite mountains, is 
 sufficient to cpnvert a dry and level valley into a roaring 
 river in a few short hours, and you have some faint 
 idea of the intensity with which the swiftness of man's 
 passage from time to eternity appealed to the mind of 
 Moses. " Thou carriest men away from life, as a moun- 
 tain torrent, rising in an hour, sweeps away the frail hut 
 that man has built." 
 
 Take the next figure : and to the same thought of the 
 swift passage of life, we have added that of its unsubstan- 
 tial, unreal character, and of man's unconsciousness of 
 its passage. Punctuate the fifth verse so as to read, 
 "They are as a sleep in the morning." We lie down and 
 wake, hours have passed, we know not how, yet the inter- 
 val has been filled with dreams. We have been busy, we 
 have achieved great triumphs, we have made long jour- 
 neys, we have happily escaped from old troubles ; but as 
 the morning dawns, and we spring up at the rising of the 
 sun to face life's actual work again, how dim and distant 
 and unreal appear all these visions of the night. The suc- 
 cess is not achieved, the old trouble not escaped. Perhaps 
 we have overslept ourselves, and we are surprised and angry 
 to find how much time sleep has stolen from us, while it 
 has been beguiling us with dreams. Is it not a common 
 experience, when a birthday or an anniversary comes to 
 us like a waking hour, that we are startled to find how 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 207 
 
 old we are, how little we have done, how many plans we 
 must abandon, and wonder what has become of the time, 
 and why that work which has kept our hand so busy and 
 our brain so fretted, seems such a little unreal thing after 
 all ? " Surely every man walketh in a vain shew ; surely 
 they are disquieted in vain." 1 And when we shall have 
 awaked in God's likeness, to see no more " through a 
 glass, darkly," but "as we are seen," and to "know as 
 we are known," 2 we shall realize what we have so often 
 sung together on earth, 
 
 " This life's a dream, an empty show." 
 
 Again, look at the third image : the grass which flourish- 
 et'h in the morning and is cut down at evening. Here 
 .still is the old 'key-note the quick passing of the life ; but 
 with a new thought, namely, how the beauty and strength 
 and aspiration of life are disregarded in the swift flight of 
 time. The grass may be taken here as the representa- 
 tive of vegetation generally ; of something which is sown 
 or planted with a view to future beauty or use ; which 
 struggles ever more into the light, and takes on colors, 
 and blooms ; yet what cares the mower for the beauty of 
 a million of prairie-flowers ? Human life is full of plans 
 and ambitions ever growing toward something, rejoicing 
 in beauty or looking forward to fruitfulness, and yet it is a 
 familiar subject of comment how little time the best man 
 is allowed to work out his plans. Just as he is ready to 
 do the best work of his life, with his gathered experience 
 and matured power, the blow falls, and the voice of God 
 says, "return unto the dust." 
 
 1 Psalm xxxix. 6. 2 i Corinthians xiii. 12. 
 
208 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 It is cut down. Why this strong expression, as if it 
 were not left to wither of itself, but were destroyed by vio- 
 lence ? 
 
 The question marks the transition to the next portion 
 of the Psalm, embraced in the next four verses. This 
 matter of brief life and swift death is a mystery, is it also 
 an accident ? Man does not always die by violence, often 
 he lives longer than he can serve society, and passes 
 away by what is called a natural death, and yet he is de- 
 scribed as cut down. Already in the Psalm we have had 
 a hint of a power and will behind this mystery of death. 
 It is not said, man returns to dust, but "Thou turnest 
 him ;" and these four verses now bring out clearly the 
 theme of which only single chords have been struck, this 
 namely, death is a cutting off, because of God 1 s wrath 
 against sin. Listen ! " We fail in Thine anger, in Thy 
 wrath are we affrighted. Thou hast set our iniquities be- 
 fore Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. 
 For all our days are gone in Thine anger, we consume 
 our years like a thought." 
 
 Man, therefore, is not here represented as unfortunate, 
 but as guilty. Not as the victim of accident, but as the 
 subject of punishment. The Bible, as some one remarks, 
 throws the blame of death on man himself. And here 
 again we have our poet teaching theology. Paul will 
 take the thought out of its poetical form, and put it for 
 you in set and logical phrase. "As by one man sin en- 
 tered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed 
 upon all men, for that all sinned." ! 
 
 1 Romans v. 12. 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 209 
 
 And so the Bible wastes no time in sentimental condo- 
 lence over the brevity of life and the swift coming of 
 death. It is a fact to be dealt with, and not merely be- 
 moaned. When the dweller in the mountain valley sees 
 the water beginning to pour down along the dry channels, 
 that is not the time for him to sit down and mourn that 
 fate has led him to plant his home in such a spot. The 
 devouring flood flows faster than his tears, and he must 
 be up quickly and away to the high lands. The Bible 
 speaks to man as to one that must be saved. " Thou art 
 a sinner, O man ! Thou art swept away like a flood be- 
 cause of sin. Thou art frightened because death draws 
 nigh. Thou mayst well be frightened, but not at death. 
 That which is behind death, that which propels it so swiftly 
 and resistlessly is more terrible than death, the wrath of a 
 holy God against sin." God has no easy good-nature or 
 false tenderness which lead Him to conceal the terrors of 
 sin. It is the Comforter who convinces of sin and of 
 judgment. 1 His face beams with tenderness upon man, 
 His voice calls him to find his home and his rest in the 
 eternal God, but the very brightness of His face which 
 lights up the way to eternal rest, brings out with terrible 
 distinctness the outlines of human iniquity, and the secret 
 sins which lurk in the deepest heart. 
 
 And it is interesting to see how, in this old Psalm, the 
 same low views of this subject are recognized and cen- 
 sured, which characterize a large class of modern religion- 
 ists. " Who knoweth the power of Thine anger ? " " Who 
 knoweth Thy wrath as becomes those that fear Thee ? " 
 
 1 John xvi. 7, 8. 
 
2io Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 Then as now, men were prone to say, " Man is to be 
 pitied : man is the victim of circumstances : man is not 
 guilty, but unfortunate : man is not depraved, but fet- 
 tered : man deserves not punishment, but compassion : 
 sin is no ground for wrath, but for tolerance." True it 
 is that the Bible is an evangel of love and pardon and 
 compassion : true that God knoweth our frame and re- 
 membereth that we are dust : true that " like as a father 
 pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
 him ; " ! but also true that the Bible, from beginning to 
 end, blazes like Sinai with God's hatred of sin, resounds 
 with warnings of man's danger from sin, and sets forth as 
 in letters of fire that man is responsible for sin, and 
 liable to its penalties : true that History and Prophecy 
 and Psalm and Gospel and Epistle are grouped round one 
 definite purpose, to save him from the power, dominion, 
 and consequences of sin. In view of these terrible facts, 
 and of men's persistent blindness to the power of God's 
 anger then as now, is it strange that Moses prayed, is 
 there not good cause for us to pray, " Teach us to num- 
 ber our days ? " Teach us how short our life is : teach us 
 the true meaning of its brevity, as a punishment and not 
 as an unhappy accident : teach us how we may use its 
 brief hours to escape the consequences of God's wrath : 
 teach us to number our days, until, as Thy humble pupils 
 we bring a heavenly wisdom to bear upon the conduct of 
 our lives. 
 
 The remaining five verses bring us back to the starting 
 
 1 Psalms ciii. 1 3. 
 
The Gate to God's Acre. 211 
 
 point of the Psalm. Whither should these contempla- 
 tions of human mortality as related to sin, and of divine 
 wrath against sin, cause us to turn but to God, our eter- 
 nal home ? Whither shall a sinful, short-lived man flee, 
 but to a holy and eternal God ? What can he say amid 
 the gathering sadness of his swift-going days, amid the 
 maze of his sins and infirmities, in his terror at the on- 
 coming judgment what but this, Lord THOU art our 
 dwelling-place in all generations ? " Thither turns the 
 prayer of these last five verses, and turns with hope and 
 confidence. Man is the subject of God's wrath, but 
 there is mercy with Him to satisfy him who flees from the 
 wrath to come. Man is a pilgrim and a stranger, with 
 no continuing city, but there is gladness and rejoicing in 
 God for all his brief days. Man's beauty consumes as 
 the moth, but " the beauty of the Lord our God " shall be 
 upon him, and that beauty is immortal, untouched by 
 time and change. Man's work is fragmentary, his plans 
 often disconcerted, his grandest enterprises nipped in the 
 bud by death, but God's touch upon human work imparts 
 to it the fixedness of eternity ; and if He establish the 
 work of our hands, it shall abide though the world pass 
 away and the lust thereof. He will make good the suf- 
 ferings of sin by the joys of Holiness. Glory, beauty, 
 establishment. A strange ending of this wail from the 
 desert ; and yet not strange in the gospel light in which 
 we read it to-day. It is only the prophecy of the saved 
 man's triumph over mortality and sin and death : of the 
 victim of the down-sweeping flood snatched from its fury, 
 and landed safely in the eternal dwelling-place in " the 
 
212 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 everlasting arms : " of the mown grass garnered, of the 
 sleeper awaking, satisfied, in God's likeness. It is the 
 foreshadowing of that blessed story of the wandering son 
 brought home at last, and seated at the Father's table to 
 go no more out forever. 
 
THE GATE TO REST. 
 
PSALM CXVI. 
 
 (7) Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt 
 bountifully with thee. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE GATE TO REST. 
 
 THIS Psalm is an expression of thanksgiving for deliver- 
 ance from some great trouble. The trouble is set forth in 
 very strong language. " The sorrows of death compassed 
 me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me : I found trou- 
 ble and sorrow." The deliverance is referred directly to 
 God. " He hath heard my voice and my supplications. 
 I was brought low and He helped me. Thou hast deliv- 
 ered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears and my 
 feet from falling." And, thus satisfied that he owes his 
 deliverance to God, the Psalmist encourages his own soul 
 to be tranquil once more. Thou hast been disturbed, tor- 
 mented with the sorrows of death. Thy rest has been 
 rudely broken. But God hath delivered thee, return unto 
 thy" rest, O my soul. 
 
 We cannot doubt where that soul's point of rest would 
 be found. It simply goes back to God who has dealt 
 bountifully, and rests in Him. Rests lovingly ; " I love the 
 Lord because He hath heard my voice : " rests obediently ; 
 " I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living :" rests 
 adoringly ; " I will take the cup of salvation and call up- 
 on the name of the Lord:" rests thankfully ; "I will 
 offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving : " rests believ- 
 ingly ; " I believed, therefore have I spoken." God is to 
 
216 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 that soul the permanent centre of love, obedience, adora- 
 tion, thanksgiving, and faith. 
 
 This idea of rest in God, is in some sense a very famil- 
 iar one to our Christian thought. It may be called, in- 
 deed, one of our staple ideas. It cannot be too familiar ; 
 but to be fully available it wants to be studied on all sides, 
 and penetrated to its very core. The deeper we get into 
 it, so far from finding ourselves in a region of speculation 
 and abstruse philosophy, we shall find ourselves closer to 
 truths which touch our life and thinking at vital practical 
 points. What I have to say concerns not so much our 
 attitude of restful faith, as it does God Himself as the cen- 
 tre of our rest ; and if our faith has perchance in any way 
 strayed from its resting point, perhaps these contempla- 
 tions may help to draw it back. 
 
 Possibly we have come to think it unnecessary for us 
 ever to inquire into the nature of our belief in God. We 
 say, "Of course we believe in God." God is a fixed, unal- 
 terable fact in our religious consciousness : God is taken 
 for granted by us in our thinking and doing : the belief in 
 God has become so habitual that it is in some sense un- 
 conscious : we should as soon think of going down every 
 month to examine the foundations of the house we live in. 
 Well, my question is, whether it may not be desirable to 
 go down now and then to this foundation truth, God ? 
 Whether it may not be well to bring it distinctly into 
 our consciousness ? Such a thing might be as a right foun- 
 dation-stone wrongly laid. Probably none of us doubts 
 the existence of God ; probably all of us acknowledge Him 
 as our Creator ; probably most of us pay God some for- 
 mal, stated recognition at least ; and yet all this does not 
 
The Gate to Rest. 217 
 
 make it superfluous for us to examine the practical rela- 
 tion of the idea of God to our minds. What is God to 
 us ? How does He lie in our thought ? How does the 
 thought of God bear upon us ? What does it do for us ? 
 How much does it restrain us ? It has a resting-place in 
 our souls, how much do we rest on it ? What do we lay 
 upon it and refer to it ? For what does it stand as re- 
 spects our views of our origin, our conduct, our destiny ? 
 It is just possible that, after prosecuting such an inquiry, 
 we may find that God is, after all, much less to us than 
 we have been used to think. We may find that there are 
 certain points where we do not practically recognize His 
 contact with our lives, where perhaps we rather avoid con- 
 tact with Him. We may find that God is merely assumed 
 by us to be somewhere back of our lives, in the dark, in a 
 region of abstractions, instead of being a realized fact in 
 our lives ; that God, in short, is practically, little more 
 than an idea, or a gigantic phantom looming dimly up 
 through the mists and confusions of this earthly state. 
 
 If such is the case, then, whatever God may be to us, 
 He is not our rest. A religion in which God is not the 
 rest of the soul, in which God is not the fixed foundation 
 of joy, the goal of hope, the prime impulse to duty, the 
 supreme source of comfort and wisdom, is a contradiction 
 of terms. " Religion is the maintenance of a real relation 
 with the personal God, or with a Divine Person really in- 
 carnate in Jesus Christ. Accordingly religion, both Jew- 
 ish and Christian, is described as a covenant ; it is a bond 
 or understanding between the nation or the soul and God ; 
 or, still more, it is personal communion with God. ' That 
 which we have seen and heard,' says John, 'declare we 
 10 
 
218 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 unto you, that ye also may have communion with us ; and 
 truly our communion is with the Father and with His Son 
 Jesus Christ.'" 1 
 
 This is the very spirit of this verse. The Psalmist ex- 
 horts his soul to return unto its rest ; not because it has 
 heard of God, or has seen His power in nature ; not be- 
 cause he recognizes Divine order in the universe, not be- 
 cause his poetical feeling is kindled by the thought of 
 Divine majesty and glory, but because he has had per- 
 sonal dealings with God. " Return unto thy rest, O my 
 soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee." I 
 supplicated Him, He "heard" my supplication. I was 
 brought low, He " helped " me : He " delivered my soul 
 from death." He wiped the tears from my eyes and gave 
 His angels charge to keep my feet from falling. There- 
 fore, on my side, I too, will deal with Him. I will " call " 
 upon Him : I will "rest" in Him : I will "walk before" 
 Him : I will " believe " in Him : I will "pay my vows " 
 to Him. 
 
 We really need to get back to the old Hebrew concep- 
 tion of God's relation to man. There, everything was\ 
 pushed back to rest on God. Was a man a farmer ? The 
 fruitfulness of his fields depended upon God. " Thou vis- 
 etest the earth and waterest it. Thou preparest them 
 corn when Thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest 
 the ridges thereof, abundantly : Thou settlest the furrows 
 thereof. Thou makest it soft with showers. Thou crovvn- 
 est the year with Thy goodness." 2 Was he a warrior ? 
 God was the Lord of Hosts. His defence and his victory 
 
 1 Liddon : u Some Elements of Religion." 2 Psalm Ixv. 9-11. 
 
The Gate to Rest. 219 
 
 were of God. " Though an host should encamp against 
 me, my heart shall not fear ; though war should rise up 
 against me, in this will I be confident. The LORD is my 
 light and my salvation." l Was he an inquirer about his 
 destiny ? He left it in God's hand. " Thou wilt not 
 leave my soul in the realm of the dead." a "I shall be satis- 
 fied with Thy likeness when I awake." " And everywhere 
 where we put natural causes wind, rain, lightning, armies, 
 statesmanship the Hebrew put God. He overleaped 
 all the secondary causes, and went back to the first Cause ; 
 whereas our modern thought is prone to emphasize the 
 secondary causes and sometimes to ignore the first Cause 
 altogether. 
 
 I say we need to get back to this old Hebrew direct- 
 ness of relation between God and man. But we never 
 can do so through any conception of God which makes 
 Him less than a. personal Father in Heaven. If God is 
 merely a law, a settled order, we may as well give up all 
 thought of finding rest in that. The moment the personal 
 God is taken away, and an abstract law substituted, we 
 are robbed of prayer, of worship, of spiritual communion, 
 of heavenly love, of faith, of thanksgiving, of the whole 
 range of moral affections and acts which must attach to 
 the object of the soul's rest. A law has no wisdom, no 
 foresight, no love. You cannot pray to a law ; you can- 
 not bow at the shrine of gravitation, nor sing praises to 
 cohesion. Not until you get a person behind the law, 
 can you look up to the heavens for justice or mercy, or 
 send up petitions and thanksgivings from earth. 
 
 1 Psalm xxvii. I, 3. 3 Psalm xvi. 10. 3 Psalm xvii. 15. 
 
220 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 Now let us look at three questions in the light of this 
 thought of the soul's rest, all of them practical questions 
 which every thoughtful man asks. "Whence do I come ? " 
 "How shall my life be ordered?" "Whither am I 
 going?" No soul is at rest until it can answer these 
 three questions ; and no soul will ever find rest until it 
 shall have found its answer in God. 
 
 As to the first of these questions "Whence did I 
 come ? " Modern thought is seeking rest for itself, not 
 in God, but in scientific theories of the origin of man. 
 We have no fault to find with such researches. They are 
 right, they are wholesome, they widen the range of our 
 knowledge. But after all, a human soul is not set at rest 
 by the pursuit or by the discovery of a theory, not even 
 if the theory should prove to be correct. A soul is a 
 moral being, and its moral cravings are not satisfied by 
 solving an intellectual problem ; and the question of 
 man's origin is quite as much a moral question as a ques- 
 tion of natural philosophy. It is quite as important to 
 you and to me to know what makes will, and conscience, 
 and hope, and love, as to know what makes bone and 
 muscle. It makes some difference to us as moral and 
 intellectual beings whether we are linked to heaven or to 
 the dust. 
 
 Well, then, suppose that in your search for a resting- 
 point in the matter of your origin, you get back to this. 
 You were not created by any God. A mass of pulp 
 called protoplasm produced you by its own inherent force. 
 Will that set you at rest ? Can you, a being with reason 
 and affections and tastes and aspirations, look back to 
 that mass of matter, and say, " Return unto thy rest, O 
 
The Gate to Rest. 221 
 
 my soul : be content that this gave you being : you sprang 
 from matter?" Is there a child who would not ask at 
 once, " Who made the matter 2 Who gave it power to 
 produce you ? " Was it not the most natural of all things 
 for the heathen, who was taught the old Indian fable that 
 the world stood on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a ser- 
 pent, to go below tortoise and serpent, and ask what was 
 under both ? So, if you are forced back to matter for 
 your origin, you are not at rest, for you ask, "What is 
 behind matter ? " And if you are convinced that there is 
 nothing, I ask if that conviction is restful? No, no. You 
 are a child, and the child's instinct is strong in you. 
 Something deeper than reason, that something which even 
 now, old man that you are, makes your heart swell and 
 your eye moisten every time you look at your father's 
 picture, sends you wandering and groping through God's 
 universe for your Father and Creator. Rest ! Your con- 
 nection with heaven has been cut : your relationship with 
 the clod has been established: you have been severed 
 from all those moral influences which the thought of a 
 personal Creator is adapted to produce. Of what use is 
 it any more to tell you to remember your Creator ? To 
 what will you say, " I will praise Thee, for I am fear- 
 fully and wonderfully made ? " * To that little mass of 
 matter ? Shall you be warned against defiling the temple 
 of the body, and be told that the temple is holy because 
 it is the temple of protoplasm ? 
 
 But the scientist will say, " We are seeking truth ; and 
 a thing is not necessarily true because it is restful. Truth 
 
 1 Psalm cxxxix. 14. 
 
222 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 is better than rest." I grant that. If I must choose be- 
 tween truth and rest, let it be truth at all hazards. I 
 know of no one who makes a firmer stand for that princi- 
 ple than Christ He will have no peace at the expense 
 of truth : He went to the cross on that issue. All I say 
 now is that the scientist does not give you anything rest- 
 ful, even if he succeeds in proving that God had no hand 
 in your creation. You go on craving a Father in heaven 
 just the same. You are restless as ever, no less restless 
 than the child who knows his mother is in her grave, but 
 who, nevertheless, cries for her unceasingly. You want 
 the truth, but may not your filial instinct be truthful ? 
 May not your sense of sonship be a sense of a stupendous 
 truth ? 
 
 To go on now to the second great question, the con- 
 duct of life. How shall I live ? How make the most 
 and best of life ? What guides shall I follow ? Here 
 again we find a point of rest only in a personal God, a 
 God of providence, who interferes, (I am not afraid of 
 the term) in our affairs. You may prove, if you can, that 
 your life moves on under the guidance of mere, settled, 
 mechanical order. That conclusion will not give you 
 rest. You have met with some great misfortune, let us 
 say. You sit down and go over the history of years in 
 detail, and call up every event, and piece all together, and 
 see how one joins itself to the other, and think you know 
 how it all came about. Is there any rest in that ? Sup- 
 pose you do know just how you lost your fortune, just 
 how you were bereaved of your children, just by what 
 succession of causes your business was ruined : what 
 then ? Does the wounded man smart any the less be- 
 
The Gate to Rest. 223 
 
 cause he knows who wounded him and with what kind of 
 a weapon it was done ? Suppose you satisfy yourself 
 that you are swept along in the orbit of natural law, with 
 no God at the centre. Is that conclusion restful ? Why 
 there is no thought more terrible or more harrowing than 
 that thought of material law without God. Have you 
 ever sounded the depth of meaning that lies in Paul's 
 words to the Ephesians, where he is describing their 
 moral condition before they believed on Christ, and ends 
 the description with " without God in the world ? " 1 If 
 you look at that word " world," you find that it is the 
 word which originally meant " order ; " and which the 
 Greeks transferred to the universe as indicating its har- 
 mony and order. The succession of the words is startling ; 
 " Godless " amid the great settled order of the universe. 
 Well might he add " having no hope." There is some- 
 thing awful, cruel, in the inexorableness of natural law, if 
 one cannot discern a Father back of it. Niagara leaves 
 on the mind an impression of terror which sometimes 
 well nigh swallows up the sense of its beauty, because of 
 this suggestion of pitiless, remorseless power. To stand 
 and see that current moving straight towards the preci- 
 pice, with its tremendous volume, its resistless sweep, 
 and then to think of it as mere brute force, obeying a 
 fixed law, no pity in that boiling flood, compelled by the 
 very law of its being to destroy you if you fall into its 
 grasp that is a picture of the order of the world without 
 God. There is no rest in such a picture. If it be all 
 true God forbid it should be but if it be true that we 
 
 1 Ephesians ii. 12. 
 
224 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 are without God in the world, the orderly world of mat- 
 ter, which turns not one jot from its course because your 
 heart aches, or my dearest treasures lie in its track, the 
 materialist is welcome to all the consolation and rest he 
 can get out of the truth. So of the world of society. If 
 this world of men which we see and of which we are a 
 part, with all its clashing and contradiction, its triumph 
 of evil and its struggle of good, is uncontrolled by a 
 Supreme Will, if men like grains of sand, merely fly be- 
 fore the wind that drives them against the rocks and 
 against each other, if change, and sickness, and ruin, and 
 death come just as the water shoots the precipice, just as 
 two and two make four, it is but mockery to point our 
 souls to such a conception of life and say, " Return unto 
 thy rest, O my soul." We can obtain a calm, restful out- 
 look upon life, a tranquil, cheerful participation in life, 
 only as we get back to God. We find these only when 
 Christ leads us as he led the disciples of old to the mar- 
 ket, and points to the little dead sparrow, and says " Your 
 Father marked its fall ; fear not, ye are of more value 
 than many sparrows." 1 We shall not be frightened at a 
 mystery, provided we know God is behind it. We can sit 
 patiently and cheerfully before closed doors if we know 
 that God is within. We can look out tranquilly upon 
 the confusion around us, yea, feel its terrible whirl undis- 
 mayed, while we feel the Rock of Ages under our feet, 
 and know that all things work together for good to them 
 that love God. So we will return unto our rest. We will 
 look out upon the graves of our dead, and assure our- 
 
 1 Matthew x. 29, 31. 
 
The Gate to Rest. 225 
 
 selves that they are not mere pitfalls into which our be- 
 loved have helplessly stumbled under a push from a blind 
 fate, but resting-places where infinite tenderness has laid 
 them, and where fatherly care watches over their sleep. 
 We are sick, and we know why perhaps, but our rest is 
 in going back to a higher " why," in knowing that there 
 is a reason for our trial in the infinite mind, looking to- 
 ward our growth in purity and in power. We will rejoice 
 in law, but chiefly as it is the outcome of fatherhood. The 
 statutes which delight us shall rejoice our hearts because 
 they are the Lord's. 1 
 
 And, once more, the soul finds no rest as regards the 
 question of destiny, until it finds it in God. Ah, how lit- 
 tle, comparatively, we know of the world to come, and 
 how little rest we are likely to get by constructing or 
 studying theories about it. Take heaven, for instance, 
 and begin to inquire where heaven is, and what heaven is, 
 and to what conditions it is going to introduce us, and in- 
 stead of finding rest, we shall find ourselves in a mist of 
 endless speculation, and shall come back from our re- 
 searches no wiser than we went. Whatever restful thought 
 of heaven we have, whatever knowledge of its conditions 
 we have, comes entirely from the moral quality of heaven, 
 and therefore from the thought of God ; for, take out God 
 from the universe, and no determinate moral quality is 
 left anywhere, in heaven or in earth. Heaven is heaven 
 to us because God is there ; because God's law rules 
 there absolutely ; because its happiness is the happiness 
 of perfect moral order. Take the Father out of it, and 
 
 1 Psalm xix. 8. 
 10* 
 
226 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 you have an eternal waste, un thrilled by a single pulsation 
 of love or sympathy or praise. And, as respects that terri- 
 ble subject of retribution, that subject which grows darker 
 and darker the more it is studied, we shall get little rest 
 out of theories. We shall get little satisfaction in efforts 
 to reconcile our sympathies with our convictions of divine 
 justice. After we shall have done our best, we shall still 
 be burdened, and compelled to go back for rest to the sim- 
 ple thought of God ; to go back in faith, not with knowl- 
 edge, and to base our conviction of the rightness and har- 
 mony of all the developments of the coming world in every 
 moral sphere, upon the simple truth that God doeth all 
 things well. It was well said by a poet whom our coun- 
 trymen have learned to revere : " I do believe that the 
 Divine love and compassion follow us in all worlds, and 
 that the Heavenly Father will do the best that is possible 
 for every creature He has made. What that will be must 
 be left to His infinite wisdom and goodness." ' 
 
 That this point of rest may be clearly, sharply defined 
 to us, God presents himself in Christ as the Soul's rest. 
 In Christ He stands, saying to a restless world, " Come 
 unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest." 2 He has not meant that the soul's rest 
 should be hidden away under figures and metaphors, with- 
 drawn afar off in the vague splendor of the heavens. The 
 incarnate Rest comes down to man. The God of rest 
 becomes man, and the life and the words of the Son of 
 Man are a thousandfold echo of the words, " Return unto 
 thy rest, O my soul." 
 
 - J Whittier. a Matthew xi. 28. 
 
The Gate to Rest. 227 
 
 Jesus sets forth an economy of salvation, which points 
 back of itself to a condition of lost sonship, and so tells 
 us we are by creation sons of God, while it is instinct with 
 the promise to restore us to that forfeited sonship. Are 
 we not reminded by Him of our high lineage, as he 
 teaches us to say " Our Father"? as he says, " He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father " ? l 
 
 Do we ask concerning the basis, the order, the conduct 
 of our life ? Again Christ answers us, as his life reminds 
 us of one who ever rested in God and walked with God ; 
 who, when forsaken by all, could say, " I am not alone, 
 for the Father is with me ; " 2 a life which took all its im- 
 pulses from God, and the motto of which was, " My meat 
 is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His 
 work." 8 
 
 And as to destiny, even now the Savior's words come 
 back to us from the upper chamber, " Until the day when 
 I drink it new with you in My father's kingdom." 4 " In 
 my father's house are many mansions, I go to prepare a 
 place for you, and I will come again and receive you un- 
 to Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." 6 He 
 needed to say nothing more. That is Christ's description 
 of heaven: " Where I am ;" a description which seems 
 meagre and vague to careless thought and to shallow ex- 
 perience, but which grows in brightness and beauty and 
 suggestiveness, as we penetrate deeper into the life of 
 faith, and know more of Him whom to know aright is 
 life eternal. 
 
 1 John xiv. 9. 8 John iv. 34. 
 
 2 John xvi. 32. 4 Matthew xxvi. 29. 
 
 5 John xiv. 23. 
 
THE GATE TO THE HERI- 
 TAGE. 
 
PSALM CXIX. 
 
 (in) "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for- 
 ever ; 
 For they are the rejoicing of my heart." 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE HERITAGE. 
 
 A HERITAGE is something which appeals to every man. 
 There never yet was a man who was not deeply interested 
 in the reading of his father's will. There never was a son 
 who did not walk over his father's estate with the thought 
 these acres will one day be mine. 
 
 Thus, by establishing a parallel between an earthly and 
 a heavenly heritage, Inspiration seeks to draw the thought 
 from the material to the spiritual ; to se.t it instituting 
 comparisons, and thus to bring home to it the transcen- 
 dent superiority of the divine heritage over the world's 
 lands and gold. 
 
 A testimony is a ivitness. By the testimonies of God 
 we mean, all those things by which He bears witness to 
 His own character and perfections. Thus His testimo- 
 nies include the evidences of His wisdom and power and 
 love in nature ; the traces of His purpose and work in 
 human history, and His express declarations concerning 
 Himself in His written Word. 
 
 This vast and various range of testimonies is the heri- 
 tage of His children. 
 
 An inheritance carries with it two sets of suggestions : 
 the one having reference to the past, and the other to the 
 future. We will take these two classes of suggestions, and 
 
232 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 try to find their parallels in the heritage of God's testi- 
 monies. \ 
 
 First then, an inheritance suggests the past. The heir, 
 as he looks at the bundles of deeds and certificates, as he 
 inspects the various tenements, and walks abroad over the 
 acres of pasture and forest, or examines the vast mining or 
 manufacturing establishments, sees in these the results of a 
 long and laborious past. These things did not come into 
 his parent's hand in a night. They represent careful plan- 
 ning, slow and gradual accumulation, widening of expe- 
 rience, growth of power. They represent toil and conflict 
 and suffering. They tell too of forecast, which, far back 
 in the years before the heir was born, was planning and 
 working towards the rich result which is now his own. 
 With this, too, come tenderer and nobler thoughts. There 
 is a sense of honest pride in the inheritance, as it bears the 
 mark of character, of the father's energy, integrity, wisdom, 
 love for his children, and noble uses of power. Death 
 sets its seal upon all, and makes even the most common 
 material thing an awakener of the love which lies buried 
 in a father's tomb. 
 
 In like manner the testimonies of God point us back 
 of themselves. A mountain with its crags and peaks and 
 forests may be a picturesque object to the eye, or a 
 good stand-point for an outlook : but it will have a far 
 deeper interest for us if we know with what throes the 
 strata piled themselves up, what powers of the air cut the 
 peaks into those fantastic shapes, if we can read the stories 
 of earthquake and fire and deluge and iceberg written 
 upon those rocks. So, it is not enough that we receive 
 and enjoy the testimonies of God. We do not truly in- 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 233 
 
 herit them if we fail to study them. Their value to us lies 
 largely in their history. 
 
 We shall, perhaps, deal with the subject more easily, 
 if we confine ourselves to God's testimonies as represented 
 by the Bible. For, while it is true that these testimonies 
 are to be found both in nature and in the whole history 
 of humanity, yet it is also true that the Bible gathers into 
 itself and represents all these classes of testimony, and, 
 what is most important, interprets them in the common 
 light of one ruling idea the saving purpose of God. A 
 great deal of discussion, and a great many charges of 
 bigotry and narrowness might be saved if it were clearly 
 appreciated that the Bible is God's testimony, not because 
 it contains the only testimony to God, but because it is 
 the key to all testimony from whatever quarter. A great 
 mass of the heritage of God's testimony lies outside of 
 Bible times and in regions not distinctively religious : but 
 the Bible alone teaches us how to read this testimony, or 
 rather teaches us the great principle on which it should 
 be read. Jt is the schedule according to which the vari- 
 ous items of the heritage are to be classed : and Bible 
 history is valuable, therefore, not because it is the only 
 significant history in respect of morals and religion, but 
 because in it, we are distinctly pointed to God's move- 
 ment ; because we are there shown a history developing 
 along lines of providence. There, for example, is the 
 history of Abraham. Take the naked historic facts, and 
 the historian might say, " it is only the record of the 
 migration of an oriental tribe or family, of the same class 
 with the movement of the Huns upon Western Europe, or 
 of the Tartars upon Russia." But it is just at this point that 
 
234 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the Bible guards us. It says that Abraham's movement 
 means more than this. It shows us not only that Abraham 
 had an outlook into the. future, but that it was a moral out- 
 look ; that a divine call impelled him ; and that his going 
 out from his country and kindred was the first step of a 
 process which culminated in the Hebrew civilization. J 
 As we trace the movement through Isaac and Jacob, 
 Joseph and Pharaoh, Moses and Egypt and the Desert 
 and Canaan, we are never suffered to lose sight ofthe 
 fact that this story is a testimony to God : to His power 
 and love and foresight. In the romance of Bethel, and of 
 the sale of Joseph, and of the hiding and finding of Moses, 
 we are ever confronted with the /#<:/, this is God's work. 
 Thus this testimony has a double purpose and value. It 
 is not only the record of God's work and purpose in that 
 particular history, but it teaches us how to look at all 
 history. When you turn from your Bible to Gibbon, for 
 instance, and begin to see the rude northern nations com- 
 ing to the front, and the empire divided, and the seat of 
 dominion shifted to the East, you are not to think that 
 you leave God behind : you are to search equally for 
 God's intent, and to read this history equally with the 
 other in that light. The barbarians meant something 
 when they moved upon Rome, but God meant something 
 too. Thus the Bible itself, instead of narrowing our 
 heritage of testimonies to God, teaches us how large 
 it is. 
 
 If we sit down with the Apostle's words, " all things 
 
 is admirably developed in the first chapter of Mozley's 
 " Ruling Ideas of the Early Ages." 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 235 
 
 are yours," l and begin to examine our heritage, we shall 
 be led irresistibly back to the past. For instance, what a 
 heritage of years we shall find wrapped up in that sentence ; 
 years that have yielded their rich result to the present. 
 How slowly God has suffered our heritage of experience 
 and tradition and example to accumulate : how prodigal 
 He has been of time. Take the history of Israel alone. 
 God might have called into being by a word a nation 
 thoroughly equipped with all the conditions of civilization, 
 but he preferred to let it grow, and it grew leisurely 
 enough. No haste while Jacob was pining in loneliness, 
 and Joseph rising to honor in the Egyptian court. No 
 haste, while Moses was receiving his careful training in 
 the Egyptian schools, and maturing in the solitudes of 
 Horeb. No haste to tide over those weary years of 
 Israel's wandering in the wilderness. No haste through 
 that strange, wild period of ferment, which threw to 
 the surface Deborah and Gideon and Sampson, when 
 there was no king in Israel and every man did that 
 which was right in his own eyes. No haste in the long 
 succession of degenerate kings at Samaria and Jeru- 
 salem. No haste in the weary years beside the willows 
 of Babylon, where, at last, Israel learned that the Lord is 
 one God. 
 
 And, in the growth of these long, weary centuries, what 
 a rich variety of testimonies God has accumulated. How 
 many laws of conduct^ for instance, have taken shape in 
 the various situations in which the men of the Bible his- 
 tory have been placed ; how many shining examples of 
 
 1 I Corinthians iii. 21. 
 
236 Gates into tlie Psalm Country. 
 
 distinct virtues ; patience in Job, faith in Abraham, fidel- 
 ity in Moses, brave hopefulness in Caleb, zeal in Elijah, 
 affectionateness in John, earnestness in Peter : what won- 
 derful varieties of character, illustrated in Sampson, Sam- 
 uel, Elisha, Balaam, Isaiah, Paul : what a variety of meth- 
 ods of teaching ; the direct communications of God to 
 Abraham and Jacob, the symbolic lessons of the Levitical 
 code, the burning utterances of prophecy, the inspired mel- 
 ody of the Psalms, the Gospel, the Epistle, the Apocalypse. 
 And the Bible gives unity to this whole mass of testimony, 
 ranges it all round the one thought of God, makes all its 
 variety tell of God's teaching, God's power, God's pur- 
 pose, God's love, God's hatred of sin. Thus it is summed 
 up in the introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
 "God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners spake 
 unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
 spoken unto us by His Son." Abraham and Christ, though 
 separated by such long time, though speaking in such 
 diverse manners, yet speak one voice, and are parts of 
 one heritage of testimony. 
 
 Moreover, just as the thought that a father has been ac- 
 cumulating property with direct reference to his children's 
 enjoyment and comfort, lends a peculiar interest to the in- 
 heritance in their eyes, so the thought that God has, through 
 all the past, been accumulating this mass of testimony for 
 our use, gives a wonderful interest to the Bible. Paul 
 brings out this thought in the tenth chapter of first Corin- 
 thians, where he touches upon certain points in the history 
 of Israel, and sums up the whole with the words, " Now 
 all these things happened unto them for ensamples ; and 
 they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 237 
 
 of the world are come : " l so that, in counting our heri- 
 tage we must not, as some are too ready to do, cast aside 
 the past. The old, musty parchment, which the enthusi- 
 astic young heir might be tempted to throw into the fire, 
 may be the title deed to the best of his estate. At any 
 rate, our heritage in God's testimonies is one, and we can- 
 not safely divide it. Just as an old mortgage or lease may 
 explain or confirm a later instrument, so the Old Testa- 
 ment is necessary to the New. God does not speak to 
 Israel as he does to Paul, nor to Elijah as to John ; but we 
 need Moses to understand Paul, and Paul to understand 
 Moses, and we do not truly measure Elijah, until we see 
 him through the gospel of love as given by the fourth 
 Evangelist. Those who, in their fancied zeal for Christ 
 and for His gospel, cast contempt on the Old Testament, 
 and exclude it from their closets and family altars, need to 
 be reminded that they despise what Christ himself honored 
 and commended. It was of these Old Testament scrip- 
 tures that Jesus said "they are they which testify of me." 2 
 
 And, once more, it is always an affecting thought to an 
 affectionate son, that his father's estate was accumulated 
 with toil, and self-denial and suffering. It comes almost 
 with the power of a reproach to his sensitive heart, that 
 he is to inherit in comfort and tranquility that which re- 
 calls so much struggle and pain and anxious thought. 
 
 And this fact attaches in a peculiar sense to God's her- 
 itage of testimony. Beyond any other book, the Bible has 
 evolved itself out of sorrow. That is the reason why it 
 responds to the instincts of the race as no other book 
 
 1 i Corinthians x. u. a John v. 39. 
 
238 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 does or can. It is the history of humanity, and of sinful 
 humanity ; and sinful humani y must needs be sorrowful. 
 As, when you examine that intensely brilliant light which 
 now and then illumines sections of our streets, you find 
 behind it nothing but a lump of common lime, played up- 
 on by a flame of different gases, so the Bible is the rec- 
 ord of our crude humanity passing under the various 
 forces of God's discipline and punishment ; and for that 
 very reason is *' a lamp to our feet, and a light unto our 
 path." * Jesus Himself, the focal point of the Bible, who 
 gathers up all its scattered rays into Himself, and thus be- 
 comes the " light of the world," Jesus Himself was " a 
 man of sorrows," and, in that fact, becomes His people's 
 light and guide ; " for it became Him for whom are all 
 things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons 
 unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect 
 through sufferings." 2 And Christ, in this as in other 
 things, represents the race : and the Bible, therefore, while 
 it brings out this fact respecting Christ, is also the ex- 
 pression of the same fact in the history of humanity, the 
 fact that it makes no approach to perfection save through 
 suffering. Take the single thought of the unity of God, 
 so familiar to us : yet through what a long and terrible pro- 
 cess of discipline, through what a series of disasters and 
 punishments, that thought was finally lodged in the deep- 
 est convictions of the Jewish race. Or look at the war 
 and blood and cruelty through which the race pushed its 
 way up from its low, crude moral ideals to a higher plane 
 of life. Consider the individual trials of God's repre- 
 
 1 Psalm cxix. 105. 2 Hebrews ii. 10. 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 239 
 
 sentative men. Go down the portrait gallery of God's 
 saints from Abraham onwards, and where do you find a 
 face that is not written over with the lines of sorrow and 
 struggle? And when at last you stop before the Leader 
 of "the cloud of witnesses," 1 behold "His visage so 
 marred more than any man, and his form more than the 
 sons of men." * Or take the Bible as a book. What a 
 fight it has had for its position. What book ever underwent 
 such a terrible sifting ? How many have gone to the 
 stake and to the block for its sake ; in how many secret 
 corners has it been hidden from the race of persecutors, 
 and how often read by stealth in dens and caves of the 
 earth. What toil and study in translating and explaining 
 it : how many risks and sacrifices of life and comfort and 
 safety are represented in that collection of translations 
 which may be seen at the rooms of the American Bible 
 Society. And these things are only a part. The heri- 
 tage of God's testimony in the Word is a veritable battle- 
 ground, its greenest and most fruitful fields moistened 
 with blood, and covering the relics of the slain. 
 
 But let, us look now at this heritage as it stands related 
 to the future. From the associations and memories of the 
 past, the heir turns to study what capacity for develop- 
 ment there is in the estate ; to examine the investments 
 and to see how they promise. He may be disappointed ; he 
 may find that a good part of the estate has become un- 
 productive, and can never be made to yield what it did in 
 his father's time, or he may find that it contains sources 
 of wealth of which his father never dreamed. 
 
 1 Hebrews xii. 1,2. 2 Isaiah Hi. 14. 
 
240 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 The Psalmist, in thus inspecting the heritage of God's 
 testimonies, is evidently well satisfied with the prospect, 
 though he takes the longest possible outlook : "Thy tes- 
 timonies have I taken as an heritage FOREVER." And we 
 may safely share his satisfaction. The man who chooses 
 the Word of God as his moral inheritance, may do so in 
 full confidence that it will amply meet the demands of his 
 whole future, and of the whole future of his race. 
 
 No one can read the Bible long without seeing that it is 
 prophetic ; not only in the sense of occasionally predict- 
 ing the future, but in that its facts imply other facts to fol- 
 low ; present sockets, into which future facts are to fit. Its 
 utterances are folded in upon themselves like a flower. 
 You see certain petals already exposed to the light ; but 
 you see within the circle of these something more which is 
 to unfold in its season. The whole book is full of a sense 
 of anticipation : the foundations it lays are for a large su- 
 perstructure : the plans it foreshadows require an immense 
 future for their development. If you should come, a 
 stranger to this city, and should be taken to the top of one 
 of the piers of the East River bridge on a misty morning, 
 when you could not see whether the two shores were a 
 half mile or ten miles apart, if you could only measure a 
 short section of the arc formed by one of the cables, you 
 could easily calculate the distance from shore to shore. 
 So, if you start from the Old Testament pier of God's 
 Word, you do not go far without perceiving that that Word 
 has a mighty span, a reach into the infinite future. The 
 Bible never betrays anywhere the consciousness that the 
 remotest future will make it superfluous. It plainly asserts 
 the contrary. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 241 
 
 my words shall not pass away." ' Whatever we may think 
 of such claims, they are boldly preferred ; and if we accept 
 the history of the Bible we must accept its prophecy, for 
 the history and the prophecy are inseparably intertwined. 
 The history itself is instinct with prophecy. You cannot 
 read Abraham's history for five minutes without perceiving 
 that God is working through him towards a large destiny : 
 and the fact is all the more singular as you look at the 
 society of Abraham's time, and see that it has no outlook 
 into the future, little idea that things will ever be different 
 from what they are in its own day. But Abraham's vision 
 takes in a horizon which includes all the nations of the 
 earth. All nations are to be blessed in him, in a richer 
 future. This thought is the main-spring of his history ; 
 and, as has been justly observed, Christ himself " has sin- 
 gled out this prophetic look of Abraham as something un- 
 exampled in clearness, certainty and far-reaching extent. 
 * Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day ; and he 
 saw it and was glad.' " 2 Christ himself tells his disciples 
 that His own work is only a beginning, 3 and accordingly 
 we see that the whole New Testament history from His 
 departure onward is a growth toward a still remoter future ; 
 and when we have come to the end of the Epistles, the 
 Apocalypse begins to open to us, indistinctly indeed, a 
 vision of a heavenly consummation in a community based 
 and ordered upon the principles laid down in the Bible ; 
 the dream of a perfect civilization realized in the city of 
 
 1 Matthew xxiv. 35. 
 
 2 Mozley, " Ruling Ideas of the Early Ages." John viii. 56. 
 
 3 John xvi. 12-14. 
 
 ii 
 
242 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 God coming down out of Heaven. 1 Thus the great prin- 
 ciples of truth to which the word of God bears testimony 
 at the beginning, are laid down with the understanding 
 that they will equally fit into the latest, perfect order of 
 things. The truth which is sounded at the very opening 
 of Scripture, " God reigns," will be the central, confessed 
 truth of the new heaven and the new earth in which shall 
 dwell righteousness ; and the righteousness toward which 
 God appears, in the twilight of early Scripture, already 
 lifting the race of man in all its crudeness and hardness, 
 will be the righteousness which shall fill the redeemed 
 universe with joy and praise. 
 
 Coming down from these broader conceptions to the 
 individual, we find in these facts a pungent caution against 
 the tendency to regard the Bible as an exploded and 
 effete production. Facts show that the Bible is quite as 
 necessary to the present age as it was to any past age. 
 Certain human theories about it may indeed have been 
 exploded ; certain interpretations of it may quite reason- 
 ably have been left behind ; but the significant fact is that 
 in shaking itself clear from these, the Bible looms up 
 larger than before. In clearing certain parts of the heri- 
 tage of the weeds which men's bigotry or carelessness has 
 suffered to grow there, we find how rich the soil is for 
 nobler growths. Society, so far from finding the Bible 
 out of sympathy with the rapid growth and enterprise and 
 bold thinking of the present, finds that the Bible has an- 
 ticipated these. The young man who goes down into life 
 
 1 This whole line of thought is well worked out in Bernard's " Prog- 
 ress of Doctrine in the New Testament." 
 
The Gate to the Heritage. 243 
 
 with his Bible in his hand and in his heart need have 
 no fear that he will ever outgrow it. It will make itself 
 more and more necessary to him the greater man he be- 
 comes. It will lead him into paths where it alone can 
 guide him ; it will set him asking questions which it alone 
 can answer ; it will lay upon him duties which only its 
 inspiration will enable him to do, take him up to moun- 
 tains of sacrifice where only its power will nerve him to 
 wield the knife, and point him to a heaven of rest and 
 purity to which it alone can show him the way. 
 
 Such then being the character of the heritage of God's 
 testimonies, is it any wonder that this heritage inspired 
 the Psalmist with joy, and led him to call these testi- 
 monies "the rejoicing of his heart" Nothing is more 
 noticeable in this long Psalm than the Author's uncon- 
 cealed delight in the Word of God. It comes out in such 
 words as these, " Oh, how love I Thy law." " Thy testi- 
 timonies are my delight and my counsellors." " How 
 sweet are Thy words unto my taste." " I will delight 
 myself in Thy commandments which I have loved." We 
 cannot read this Psalm without being reminded of a 
 young heir just come into his heritage, ranging over the 
 fields and woods, constantly lighting on some new object 
 of beauty or source of wealth, breaking out into wonder 
 or joy as new prospects open to his eyes, or new riches 
 or curiosities are displayed in the cabinets of his ancestral 
 halls. This heritage of the word grows richer with time. 
 The preacher who thinks he has exhausted a text will 
 find another sermon in it when he goes to it again. The 
 man who goes through his Bible for the fiftieth time, finds 
 it richest in fresh treasures. 
 
244 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 *' We search the world for truth ; we cull 
 The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
 From graven stone and written scroll, 
 From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
 And, weary seekers of the best, 
 We come back laden from our quest, 
 To find that all the sages said 
 Is in the book our mothers read, 
 And all our treasure of old thought 
 In His harmonious fulness wrought, 
 Who gathers in one sheaf complete 
 The scattered blades of God's sown wheat, 
 The common growth that maketh good 
 His all-embracing fatherhood. ' ' * 
 
 1 Whittier: " Miriam." 
 
THE GATE TO THE DRILL- 
 GROUND. 
 
PSALM CXIX. 
 
 (133) Establish my steps in Thy saying, 
 
 And let no iniquity have dominion over me. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE DRILL-GROUND. 
 
 THE " steps" or the "walk" of a man are constantly 
 used in Scripture to describe his ordinary deportment or his 
 habit of life. Life demands an economy, a plan of ad- 
 ministration. When we rise from the sphere of nature, 
 where the seasons succeed each obher in regular order, 
 and the planets revolve in fixed orbits, and enter the sphere 
 of human life and intelligence, we do not leave law behind 
 us. We are still in the atmosphere of obligation All the 
 freedom which man justly claims for himself as a rational 
 being, so far from setting him above law, emphasizes the 
 obligation of law. Even if he is a law unto himself, he is 
 still the subject of order. What a modern thinker l has 
 said about political liberty, holds equally true of moral 
 liberty, that "if in one sense it is a sheer negative and a 
 doctrine of rights, in another sense it is thoroughly posi- 
 tive, and a gospel of duties." 
 
 We have in this verse three aspects of this truth. 
 
 I. It recognizes and accepts the obligation of moral or- 
 der. " Order my steps." 
 
 II. It fixes the legitimate source and centre of that or- 
 der. " In Thy Word." 
 
 1 John Morley, u Voltaire." 
 
248 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 III. It deprecates the consequences of moral lawless- 
 ness. " The dominion of iniquity." 
 
 First, then, the Psalmist recognizes and accepts his obli- 
 gation to be subject to moral order. He prays that his 
 daily life, not only in its large outlines, but in its details, 
 its "steps" may be ordered. The word "order" here 
 combines two kindred ideas, " regulation " and "estab- 
 lishment." We need a rule of life, and we need also to 
 become established in a habit of loyalty to that rule. The 
 prayer, " Order my steps," is, therefore, a prayer for hab- 
 itual subjection to divine order. It is not a prayer for 
 great spiritual impulses or spring-tides of emotion. It is 
 a prayer that the life may be right, and always and per- 
 sistently right. 
 
 A religion which does not regulate a man's life is no re- 
 ligion at all. It contradicts its own name ; for, accord- 
 ing to its derivation, religion is something which binds 
 together God and man, and therefore puts the whole of 
 man's life in contact with God. All talk about the delights 
 of spiritual communion, and the cultivation of the spiritual 
 faculties, is worse than nonsense, if the cultivation do not 
 reach into man's daily doing. You might as well talk of 
 the rain staying on the mountain tops. If the rain falls 
 on the mountains, the valleys will get it in the simple order 
 of nature. Whatever comes into men's higher life, ap- 
 pears in some form in their lower life. All spiritual influ- 
 ences, however high they are lodged, gravitate inevitably 
 to men's ordinary level of life. " As he thinketh in his heart 
 so is h^." 1 What you are in your thoughts, your im- 
 
 ' Proverbs xxiii. 7. 
 
The Gate to the Drill-Ground. 249 
 
 pulses, your highest spiritual affinities, men will find you 
 on the plane where they commonly meet you. 
 
 To one penetrated with the teaching of the Gospel, the 
 divorce between religion and morality appears monstrous 
 and unnatural. Yet we are familiar with it as a fact. We 
 know the stories of the days when men went forth from 
 the shadow of the Church, and with the taste of the sacra- 
 mental bread upon their lips, to murder and pillage. We 
 read the caustic words of VOLTAIRE concerning the 
 younger French clergy of his time, who rose from their 
 shameless debaucheries and gallantries " to implore the 
 enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, calling themselves the 
 successors of the apostles." We see how often the week- 
 day service of the devil is offset by the devotional activity 
 of the Sabbath, how the spiritual coldness and loose liv- 
 ing of nine months is merged in the revival fervors of the 
 remaining three, how sentiment and " the enjoyment of 
 religion," popularly so called, creeps into the room of 
 duty, and how helps to holy living are converted into sub- 
 stitutes for it. 
 
 There has been no lack, in these later years, of influen- 
 ces claiming the highest spiritual sanction, and bearing, ap- 
 parently with wonderful spiritual power, upon the region 
 of Christian heart-experience. The Churches have been 
 swept by revivals, a literature has arisen in the interest of 
 spiritual holiness, and yet, it must be confessed, that even 
 in the Church itself, the sense of obligation, of habitual 
 fidelity, of the paramount claim of duty, has not gained 
 ground as rapidly as we might expect. 
 
 These hard times have developed some terrible facts. 
 The strokes of adversity have laid bare a fearful amount 
 n* 
 
250 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 of moral rottenness where it was least suspected. Morn- 
 ing after morning we have taken up the newspapers only 
 to be appalled by another and another fall of men whom 
 religious principle had been thought to have placed almost 
 beyond temptation. We have turned with sinking of 
 heart from that ghastly heap of ruined savings-banks, in- 
 surance and trust companies, and stock corporations, 
 steeped with the tears of beggared widows and orphans ; 
 from those detected betrayals of trust, those shameful 
 flights, those tell-tale suicides of men whom the Church 
 had delighted to honor, from the trifling with public funds 
 and the repudiation of public obligations. And what is 
 worse, behind these startling developments is a long growth 
 of moral corruption. These things are not sudden outbreaks 
 through the line of rectitude under the power of sudden 
 temptation. Behind them appear whole economies of 
 fraud, long reaches of villainy, and we shudder at the 
 moral condition of the man who could bear to be a hypo- 
 crite so long. 
 
 Now Christianity is not a failure, nor has moral integ- 
 rity departed from the Church or from the world ; but these 
 and other facts show that the religious teaching of this day 
 cannot afford to weaken the emphasis on the connection 
 between religion and right living. From whatever cause, 
 there has crept into the Church a subtle sorcery which has 
 bewitched the eyes of too many Christian men and women, 
 and has made them see two things where they ought to 
 see but one. Insensibly to themselves, not a few have 
 come to look at their devotions and their spiritual exer- 
 cises as practically belonging to a different order from their 
 daily living. Religion has taken on the character of a dis- 
 
The Gate to the Drill-Ground. 251 
 
 tinct economy, into which they might pass, on occasion, 
 from the shop or from the professional arena, as from one 
 house to another. And these have not seen that feeling 
 and living, religious sentiment and religious practice, their 
 state of mind and the state of their accounts, their admin- 
 istration of Church charities, and their business dealing 
 with the widow and the orphan their feelings in prayer- 
 meeting and their tempers at home, properly belong to- 
 gether and ought to be of one piece. 
 
 Is the Church's teaching entirely blameless of this state 
 of things? Has this moral order been sufficiently pressed 
 upon each man as he came under the Church's care ? 
 Has he been made to feel that though a freeman in 
 CHRIST JESUS, and under a new commandment, he was 
 under a commandment still ? We talk a good deal about 
 preaching the Gospel instead of the law, but are we not 
 in some danger of forgetting that the Gospel includes all 
 that is vital in the law ? " Do we make void the law 
 through faith ? GOD forbid. Yea, we establish the law." ' 
 And does the Church impress the minds of its new con- 
 verts as a sphere in which their footsteps are watched over, 
 in which they are getting ordered in GOD'S Word, and be- 
 ing taught how to live in the world ? Is it not true that, 
 in many of our Churches, young Christians have somehow 
 received the impression that their great work was to learn 
 how to speak or to pray in religious meetings, or to do some 
 work which centred in a Church association and revolved 
 round the Church edifice or the Sunday-School room, in- 
 stead of discovering that their first business was to learn 
 
 1 Romans iii. 31. 
 
252 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 how to carry Church influences into their home or school- 
 life, how to bring these to bear in making them diligent 
 and faithful, in controlling their tempers and in making 
 them gentle and unselfish ? 
 
 Is it not true that some Christians have lost hold of the 
 connection between religious enjoyment and duty ? 
 There is a religious sensuousness which presents a much 
 more subtle temptation than worldly pleasure to a certain 
 class of minds, which practically sacrifices Christian duty 
 to Christian joy or what passes for such, and which turns 
 away from all that cannot feed this craving for joyful and 
 exultant frames of mind. 
 
 For example, talk with our mission pastors, and they will 
 tell you that not a few of their young people, professing 
 Christians, the very ones who need to be impressed with 
 this thought of divine order, the very ones who need syste- 
 matic, careful religious training run away from these in- 
 fluences and betake themselves to hall services, or to " Gos- 
 pel Tents/' to listen to the speaking or to sing in the choirs. 
 And why do they go ? Ask them and they will unlock the 
 whole secret in a word. They have "a better time" and 
 religion with many of them means simply this the having 
 a good time. The steady influences which tend to make 
 them thoughtful, to lead them to self-examination, to make 
 them conscientious and intelligent in Christian service, 
 are not as pleasing as the stir of a superficial religious 
 sentiment created by crowds and by the contagion of pop- 
 ular song. 
 
 That thing is not peculiar to missions either. Take the 
 regular Church services on Sabbath or week-day. It does 
 sometimes seem as if the sense of duty had ceased to at- 
 
The Gate to the Drill-Ground. 253 
 
 tach to these ; as if the covenant into which a people en- 
 tered with their pastor, to hold up his hands and to sustain 
 him in the discharge of his duties, were supposed to be 
 binding only at each one's pleasure. But the point is this, 
 that you are very apt to find these same people at excep- 
 tional services services which carry along with them a 
 great popular enthusiasm, and under the power of which 
 they have a good time. No one objects to the good time, 
 no one grudges the joy of quickened feeling, but the ques- 
 tion is how the joy matches the neglected duty and the 
 broken covenant. And I say without hesitation, that any 
 religious enjoyment which a Christian reaches through 
 neglect of duty is worthy of suspicion. Those two things 
 do not belong together. They are as opposite as Christ 
 and Belial; and when a Christian man finds that he recon- 
 ciles the two without any qualms of conscience, he had 
 better look into the state of his conscience. 
 
 Or look at the multitude at large. We are told that 
 the Churches should be supplemented, and perhaps some 
 think they should be supplanted, by hall services and 
 tent services. The Churches don't reach the masses, 
 and the masses do go to halls. That is the argument and 
 it looks very plausible. That question, however, I do not 
 propose to discuss ; only there is one aspect of the mat- 
 ter which ought to be considered : this, namely, that hun- 
 dreds of the people who frequent such services in prefer- 
 ence to those of the Church, do so because those services 
 lay them under no obligation. A man says, " I can go to a 
 hall and hear the Gospel preached, and I enjoy the singing, 
 and I like it a great deal better than going to Church." And 
 do you know why? Because he can thus enjoy the senti- 
 
254 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 <ment of religion without feeling its habitual pressure of 
 'obligation. If he identifies himself with a Church, duty 
 appeals to his pocket, duty levies contributions upon his 
 time, duty imposes a s little routine, duty puts him under 
 certain standing obligations to his fellow members, and 
 that is just what he does not want, and why he is forever 
 venting cheap sarcasms upon the pride and exclusiveness 
 and luxury of the Churches. He wants to be unfettered. 
 He wants to go and come as he pleases. It is a trifling 
 matter to put his ten or twenty-five cents into the box at 
 the hall, and he is in no danger of being called on for 
 Church-work. He passes unnoticed in the crowd, and 
 enjoys his intellectual or emotional treat, and he does not 
 care to have religion carry him any farther ; and, while I 
 make no attack on such movements, while I am grateful 
 for whatever spiritual power they exert, yet I am bound in 
 simple justice to ask how much the Church ought to con- 
 cede to this popular demand ; whether the Church which 
 represents Christ's economy, Christ's rule and Christ's 
 yoke, is not obligated to make some stand for the rule 
 and the burden and the yoke, and to be cautious how 
 she encourages the sentiment which seeks to evade them. 
 God forbid that I should depreciate genuine Christian 
 emotion. God forbid I should throw into the faintest 
 shadow the necessity of the great heart change which must 
 precede every man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven. 
 God forbid that I should speak slightingly of crude Chris- 
 tian experience, or be intolerant of its weakness and error. 
 It is rather because of its weakness and error, and because I 
 know that no one but Christ can deal with it at once wisely 
 and tenderly, that I would have it come at once under the 
 
The Gate to the Drill- Ground. 255 
 
 yoke, and learn that it comes into Christ's kingdom to 
 acquire a fixed habit of doing right, and of respecting 
 moral obligation first everywhere. 
 
 Perhaps the Church needs no less preaching about the 
 state of the heart, but it needs more preaching going to 
 show how spiritual conditions everywhere touch practical 
 life. It is a very comfortable theory that evil is so mighty 
 in human nature that a man may as well give up all idea 
 of moral consistency, and go blundering along any way, 
 provided he feels that he is justified by faith. That theory 
 will not stand the test of the Gospel. I know God's law 
 is perfect. I know men are imperfect and weak. 1 know 
 they will inevitably stumble. The Lord Himself admits 
 that in the very passage where He tells us that the steps 
 of a good man are ordered of the Lord. But granting all 
 that, any faith which does not issue in character, any faith 
 which does not put a man's life on the lines of moral 
 order, any faith which calls weakly toward practical duty, 
 any faith which does not charge his nature with the pur- 
 pose ever renewed amid all his lapses to have his steps 
 ordered in God's Word, is a sham and a delusion, and will 
 shrivel like gauze in the judgment fire. Character is what 
 the world wants of Christian men, and not raptures. The 
 strongest argument the Gospel can bring to bear on the 
 world, is a man whose life is an embodiment of heavenly 
 order, who carries the mark of his heavenly citizenship in 
 his common intercourse as distinctly as a Frenchman or a 
 German does the stamp of his nationality, and who moves 
 straight out on the line of God's Word, no matter whose 
 word lies across the track. 
 
 For, turning now to the second suggestion of the text, 
 
256 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 we see that the Psalmist recognizes the source and centre 
 of all moral order. God is its centre and God's Word its 
 manual, and to God he addresses himself in prayer that 
 he may be drawn and kept within the sphere of His heav- 
 enly order. "Wherewithal," he elsewhere asks, "shall a 
 young man cleanse his way?" And he answers, "By 
 taking heed thereto according to Thy Word." 1 This whole 
 long Psalm is a series of variations on that theme the 
 law of God, the Word of God as the guide and inspirer 
 of human life. And we must look at the whole Bible from 
 this standpoint. It was not given to teach us natural 
 science, nor philosophy, nor history, but to reveal to us 
 divine character, to help us reproduce it in ourselves, and 
 to inspire us with heavenly affections. Hence, the Bible 
 is, first of all, a text-book of moral order. It has an or- 
 der in itself, for instance. To the careless reader it seems 
 like a mass of disjointed fragments ; a deeper study shows 
 the steady development of a great moral purpose pervad- 
 ing it from Genesis to Revelation. Those emigrations, 
 wars, and revolutions do not tread upon each other's heels 
 in wild confusion, however they may seem to do so. A 
 power is behind and through them all, ranging them on 
 the lines of a divine order, and directing them towards a 
 divine purpose. 
 
 Then, too, the Bible is not only the history of this un- 
 folding purpose. Along with the unfolding goes a power 
 which is ever seeking to draw men into its track, to put 
 them in practical sympathy and co-operation with God's 
 order. You must have noticed how full of yearning the 
 
 1 Psalm cxix. 9. 
 
The Gate to the Drill-Ground. 257 
 
 Bible is, how it pulsates with Divine attraction, how every 
 history and every argument and every impassioned burst 
 of holy song, comes round in some way to man with invi- 
 tation, or warning, or instruction ; how its closest logic 
 warms into appeal, and its most formal statement has a 
 side on which it grapples with the living soul and pulls it 
 toward the kingdom of God, the realm of His moral 
 order. 
 
 And the Bible brings to bear upon a man a variety of 
 influences, all tending to the ordering of his steps. 
 
 First, it CENTRES him. Whatever the Bible is, it is, first 
 of all, a revelation of God. It keeps God before him con- 
 tinually. All its own movement centres in God, all its 
 sanctions are God's. There is no detail but is referred 
 to God. There is no escape from God. He must love 
 God first and above all. He must obey God at all haz- 
 ards. His life must take its highest inspiration from God, 
 his trust must be in God only, he must work on God's 
 plans and be satisfied with God's measure and quality of 
 success. God must be all and in all, and the very key- 
 note of his daily thought must be, " Whom have I in 
 heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I de- 
 sire beside Thee." J 
 
 Secondly, it REGULATES him. The statutes of the Lord 
 are right, and are meant, as some one has quaintly said, 
 " to set us to rights." It does not make itself superfluous. 
 It does not bring man into the sphere of God's order, and 
 leave him there, but it leads him along in that order, order- 
 ing every step until he steps from earth to heaven. To 
 
 1 Psalm Ixxiii. 25. 
 
258 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 take a single point, how strenuously it insists on the order- 
 ing of the steps. There never was a book which pressed 
 so strongly for the right regulation of details. The Bible 
 will not allow us to regard anything as a trifle in our moral 
 development. No sin is to be carelessly dismissed be- 
 cause it is a little one. No work is to be shirked because 
 it is small. No place is to be negligently filled because 
 it is remote and obscure. No man is to be despised be- 
 cause he is insignificant. No lesson of Providence is to 
 go unheeded because it is only a hint. No step in life is 
 to be carelessly taken because it is but a step. No op- 
 portunity is to be discarded because it promises but a 
 little good. With all its broad outlook, with all its gener- 
 ous freedom, it keeps a sharp eye upon these details, and 
 insists that they all shall come under its divine order. 
 
 Thirdly, it RESTRAINS him. There is no order without 
 restraint. Restraint is implied in guidance. Yonder planet 
 which fulfils its appointed course in its orbit, and century 
 by century traverses the same unvarying track, moves in- 
 deed under a power which propels it from the centre, but 
 it moves also under a power which holds it to the centre. 
 And noching in the Bible is more striking than this union 
 of impulse and restraint. What tremendous impulses it 
 gives. What a wonderful inspiration it has communicated 
 to certain men. What intense enthusiasm its principles 
 have created in great bodies of men. What power, what 
 directness, what concentration it has imparted to moral 
 movements. And yet what checks it imposes. How it 
 curbs the ill-judged zeal of the Peters, and rebukes the 
 faithless caution of the Thomases. How it damps the 
 conceited courage which is ready to venture into tempta- 
 
The Gate to the Drill- Ground. 259 
 
 tion, and rebukes the spirit which would make showy sacri- 
 fice stand for humble obedience. How it cools down our 
 feverishness in our haste to be rich or great, and lays a 
 detaining hand upon the burdens with which our ambi- 
 bition or our avarice would oppress our souls and divide 
 them from God. How clearly the Psalmist recognized 
 this restraining quality of the Word when he said, " More- 
 over by them is thy servant warned ; keep back thy serv- 
 ant also from presumptuous sins." 1 
 
 And then, fourthly, it ESTABLISHES him. The Bible 
 brings the element of fixedness more and more into our 
 lives. We throw away from our ideas of life and duty as we 
 grow older, much which at one time appeared to us vital, 
 and the Bible encourages us to throw it away ; but we settle 
 down more and more upon a few great, underlying truths 
 God, Christ, worship, obedience, purity, love to our neigh- 
 bor : and more and more, year by year, the Bible fastens 
 us to these, and reveals in them new power and longer 
 reach, and greater variety of application. We become 
 established in our convictions as we learn more of Christ 
 the truth. We become established in godly living as we 
 find out for ourselves that godliness is profitable. We be- 
 come established in our love for God's order, as we find, 
 everywhere along its track, precious consolations, new 
 hopes, substantial joys, sweet fellowships. So with these, 
 and with its healthful and sometimes severe touch upon 
 lax moral fibre and wavering resolution, the Bible builds 
 up character, conveying into it more and more of the 
 eternal stability of God's character, rooting and grounding 
 
 1 Psalm xix. 11-13. 
 
260 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 it in love, and stablishing, strengthening, settling it in faith. 
 Some of you can look back over periods of restlessness, 
 shifting conviction, and unsettled resolution, and you can 
 see how, through these, you have worked your way, with 
 the help of God and of the Word, to a point where, though 
 you believe fewer things, you believe those few with all 
 your heart ; where you stand on certain immutable truths 
 as on the bases of the mountains ; where you never think 
 of turning to any refuge save one in your trouble ; where 
 it has gotten to be the settled habit of your life to obey 
 conscience, and to accept God's verdict as final; and in 
 this blessed fixedness you can sing, 
 
 " Now rest, my long divided heart ; 
 
 Fixed on this blissful centre, rest ; 
 Nor ever from thy Lord depart, 
 
 With Him of every good possessed." 
 
 Having acknowledged the obligation to be under moral 
 order, having recognized the source and centre of that 
 order, having prayed that he might be introduced to that 
 divine order and kept in it, the Psalmist naturally prays 
 to be delivered from the consequence of moral lawless- 
 ness : and that consequence is expressed in a word sub- 
 jection. In his prayer that iniquity may not have domin- 
 ion over him, he utters the truth that sin is servitude ; the 
 truth which Paul expressed in those significant words, 
 " Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves serv- 
 ants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, 
 whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto right- 
 eousness ? !> That is not what men want or expect 
 
 1 Romansvi. 16, 
 
The Gate to the Drill-Ground. 261 
 
 when they seek to escape God's order. They resent the 
 attempt to order their steps, on the ground that such order- 
 ing impairs their freedom ; but they find that, instead of 
 securing freedom, they but go from one dominion to 
 another ; that, in keeping out of God's order, they fall into 
 Satan's kingdom. 
 
 Well, then, may we join in the Psalmist's prayer, " Or- 
 der my steps in Thy Word, and let not any iniquity have 
 dominian over me." This is not a text for special emer- 
 gencies, but for to-day, and for to-morrow, and for every 
 day, with its steps which lead us, now in many paths of 
 routine, now through darkness and now through light ; for 
 lives which are made up of multitudinous details, which 
 are full of pettiness and of common-place. We can take 
 down into these no better prayer than this, " Order my 
 steps in Thy Word." Out of these things character is 
 built. The great distinguishing stamp which is set upon 
 our life as a whole, comes through the right ordering of 
 these details. O, aim for this. Aim to contribute to the 
 Church's work and to the world's welfare this high, grand 
 gift of character. Aim to keep before that portion of 
 society which you touch, the spectacle of a life regulated 
 by a higher law than the world's elastic law of expediency. 
 And that you may do this, keep your lives in contact with 
 the Word, and feed them from its living springs. So shall 
 every step be ordered, and men as they behold you shall 
 say, " He walks with God." 
 
THE GATE TO THE HIGH 
 LANDS. 
 
PSALM CXXI. 
 
 (1) I lift up mine eyes unto the mountains ; 
 Whence should my help come ? 
 
 (2) My help (cometh) from Jehovah, 
 The Maker of heaven and earth. 
 
 (3) May He not suffer thy foot to be moved ; 
 May He that keepeth thee not slumber. 
 
 (4) Behold, He doth neither slumber nor sleep 
 That keepeth Israel. 
 
 (5) Jehovah is thy Keeper, 
 
 Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand. 
 
 (6) The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
 Nor the moon by night. 
 
 (7) Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil, 
 He shall keep thy soul. 
 
 (8) Jehovah shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, 
 From this time forth and for evermore. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE HIGHLANDS. 
 
 THIS is one of the "Pilgrim Psalms," or " Songs of 
 Degrees," sung by the Jews in their annual journeys or 
 " goings up " to Jerusalem. 
 
 It has been supposed that this, the second of these 
 songs, may have been used by the caravans, when they 
 encamped, on the evening previous to their entering the 
 city, in sight of the mountains which " are round about 
 Jerusalem." Mountains naturally suggest refuge and de- 
 fence. Hence it is said, " As the mountains are round 
 about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people." * 
 " How say ye to my. soul, flee, as a bird, to your moun- 
 tain ?" 2 Nothing could be more suggestive of shelter 
 than the position of the Holy City within its rampart of 
 mountains ; and farther, the circumstances of travellers 
 like those pilgrims were such as to emphasize the thought 
 of protection and shelter. By day they were exposed to 
 the glare and stroke of the blazing Eastern sun ; by night 
 it was supposed that the rays of the bright moon had 
 power to affect those who were exposed to them ; the 
 camp, too, might be surprised by a night attack of the 
 plundering desert hordes. All these thoughts would 
 blend in the pilgrims' mind with the sense of loneliness 
 
 1 Psalm cxxv. 2. 2 Psalm xi. i. 
 
 12 
 
266 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 and of absence from home, which deepened with the 
 gathering shades of evening, and would prompt the ques- 
 tion " Whence shall my help come ? " And as the eye 
 took in the dark mountains behind which lay the city of 
 their love and pride, what wonder if the pilgrims should 
 break out into song "I will lift up mine eyes unto the 
 mountains. Whence should my help come? My help 
 cometh from the Lord." 
 
 There are no points in our earthly pilgrimage where 
 the need of Divine help is not more or less remotely 
 suggested. Experience has taught us not to hold our- 
 selves absolutely secure, even in the most happy times 
 and under the most prosperous circumstances. In our 
 homes, no less than on the sea, as we walk the quiet 
 streets, no less than when we are whirled along the rail- 
 way, we are reminded of the old, somewhat doleful, but 
 nevertheless truthful lines : 
 
 " Dangers stand thick through all the ground, 
 
 To push us to the tomb ; 
 And fierce diseases wait around, 
 
 To hurry mortals home." 
 
 And when we add to these the spiritual darkness and 
 perplexity out of which we so often have to " stretch 
 lame hands" towards God, the questions before which 
 our minds sink helplessly down, the doubts which distract 
 and torment us, how much of our life is left in which 
 this strain will not come appropriately to our lips " I 
 will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains ; whence should 
 my help come ?" 
 
 It is to be noted that the expectation of the singer of 
 
The Gate to tJie Highlands. 267 
 
 this Psalm is that help shall come down to him. He is as 
 one who fights a battle in the plain, and who looks to see 
 the reserves descending the mountain- side to his support. 
 " I will lift up mine eyes. Whence shall help come 
 tome?" The question, observe, is not how he shall 
 make his way to the help ; how he shall get up to the 
 mountains : the help is to come down from the moun- 
 tains : " My help cometh from the Lord." 
 
 And here we touch one of the great mistakes in both 
 Christian teaching and Christian experience. As to Chris- 
 tian teaching, we too often hear about what men must do 
 to get near to God ; what steps they must mount, what 
 methods they must use to make God's promises available ; 
 instead of having the fact emphasized that God himself, 
 and with Him help, strength, pardon, wisdom, all tilings, 
 come down to us, and are put freely at our disposal. We 
 do not have first to lift ourselves to God : God comes 
 down to us ; and whatever lifting there is to be done, He 
 does. We do not have to climb to our refuge : He coin- 
 passes our path and our lying down : fortifies the places 
 where we walk and where we rest. We do not have to 
 march to our reserves : when we are hard beset'they pour 
 down from the hills of God and range themselves around 
 and beside us, as Elisha saw them from the house-top in 
 Dothan. I remember receiving a letter from a highly-culti- 
 vated woman, not then a Christian, but profoundly and anx- 
 iously thoughtful about divine truth ; and in the letter oc- 
 curred these words : " How shall I get to Christ ? By virtue 
 of what I am, I feel that I can go near to human souls, and 
 claim what belongs to me of their best spiritual possessions, 
 because their sphere, so to speak, is mine. But with Christ 
 
268 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the case is different. My sphere is infinitely below His. 
 How shall I get into it that I may touch Him and draw 
 virtue out of Him ? " There is the error distinctly ex- 
 pressed. The thought in the writer's mind which kept 
 her far from God, which prevented her drawing virtue at 
 once from Christ, was the thought that she must get into 
 Christ's sphere before she could avail herself of Him : 
 whereas the truth was that Christ stood ready to save her 
 all that trouble by coming down into her sphere and giv- 
 ing her what she needed. I pointed her to the tenth chap- 
 ter of Romans : u The righteousness which is of faith speak- 
 eth on this wise. Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend 
 into heaven ? (that is to bring Christ down from above): 
 or, who shall descend into the deep ? (that is to bring up 
 Christ again from the dead): but what saith it ? The word 
 is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart." By vir- 
 tue of what we are, we cannot get into Christ's sphere. My 
 friend's difficulty was a real one. But Christ by virtue 
 of what He is or becomes, can and does put Himself into 
 our sphere. It is with us as with that poor woman who 
 touched the hem of His garment. 1 If she had had to make 
 her way by some long journey to the Lord, she never could 
 have touched Him, and never could have been healed ; but 
 Jesus came where she was : He put himself, even amid all 
 that throng, where she could reach Him, and then it was 
 her own fault if she did not touch and be healed. We reason 
 as if we had got to be something other or better or higher 
 than we are before we can expect God's help : whereas the 
 the help has already descended from the hills. God Hirn- 
 
 1 Matthew ix. 20-22. 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 269 
 
 self comes down into the sphere of our weakness, imper- 
 fection, ignorance, spiritual obtuseness, and from that low 
 level commences the work of lifting, enlightening and de- 
 veloping us. What we want is to have our eyes open so 
 that we may see Him here and now^ available to us as we 
 are. Too often we are like the disciples on the way to 
 Emmaus. 1 Christ was the one object of their desire and 
 hope ; they could talk of nothing else. They trusted that 
 it had been He which should have redeemed Israel. Some 
 of them had been to the tomb that morning, and had found 
 nothing but the napkin and the linen clothes : and now, 
 " Where is He ? He is not here. He is still beyond our 
 reach or knowledge." Ah ! what a mistake. He was 
 there all the while. He was talking with them, their 
 hearts were burning under some strange power, the Word 
 was nigh them in their heart and in their mouth ; and by 
 and by their eyes were opened and they knew their help 
 had come, and that they need look into the tomb, and 
 strain their thought into the world of spirits no more. 
 j The Psalm gives us two assurances of God's help, 
 namely, His power in creation and His power in human 
 history. 
 
 We get a hint of the first of these in the words, " My 
 help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth ; 
 HE will not suffer thy foot to be moved." This is one 
 of those expressions which, seeming at first to be merely 
 poetical, is seen, on closer study, to carry one of the 
 great primary facts of God's character and administration : 
 this, namely, that the God of creation is also the God of 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 13-34. 
 
2/O Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 providence. How positively, how assuredly, how natu- 
 rally, without the slightest hint that the process requires 
 any explanation or apology, does this verse blend together 
 God's superintendence of the vast work of creation, and 
 His special care for one poor, helpless man, girt round by 
 the dangers of the night in the desert. My help cometh 
 from the CREATOR. Here, over the pilgrim's head, 
 stretches the blue vault with its countless stars and its 
 bright round moon. " The heavens declare the glory of 
 God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork." 1 Here 
 is the tabernacle for the sun : the influences of these orbs 
 radiate forth to the very ends of the earth : a perfect 
 order and harmony pervades them. There are the moun- 
 tains, raised on their deep lying strata by almighty Power. 
 Centuries pass over them and they are the same. " By 
 His strength He setteth fast the mountains, being girded 
 with power." 2 And yet I will lift up mine eyes to the 
 hills ; my help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven 
 and earth ; the ordering of the universe keeps Him not 
 from ordering my steps ; if He holds the sun and the 
 moon in their courses, He none the less gives them charge 
 not to smite me by day or by night ; if He setteth fast the 
 mountains, none the less will He not suffer my foot to be 
 moved ; if He orders the succession of seasons and of 
 day and night, none the less are my steps " ordered of the 
 Lord." 8 The Psalm tells a different story from certain of 
 the high priests of modern science. They tell us that 
 some one or something made the world, or that the world 
 somehow came to pass, and that, being wound up like 
 
 1 Psalm xix. i, a Psalm Ixv. 6. 8 Psalm xxxvii. 23 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 271 
 
 some great machine, it pursues its course with its whole 
 attendant train of suns and stars ; and that rivers and 
 oceans and seas, and snow and vapor and stormy wind 
 simply follow a great mechanical law, and the poor little 
 man must get on in the midst of this stupendous machine- 
 ry as best he can. In other words, creation and provi- 
 dence are disjoined. Creation excludes providence* I 
 shiver in this atmosphere. Let me rather go back to the 
 pilgrims' tent, and sit there and see the night gather over 
 the mountains, and feel that the God of the mountains 
 and' of the stars is my God also. Let me rather feel the 
 facts of providential care, and daily oversight, and fatherly 
 sympathy, emphasized by the evidences of creative power 
 and wisdom which I see in the mountains and in the stars. 
 This, at any rate, is the way Scripture puts the case. The 
 whole thrust of Scripture is upon man. The whole move- 
 ment of its doctrine, its history, its imagery is from God 
 downwards to man ; and the incarnation, which gathers up 
 all Scripture into itself, which is the key to all its history 
 and to all its symbolism, is expressly a movement out of 
 the very heart of God, down to sick, suffering, erring, sin- 
 stained man. The life, the words, the death of Jesus 
 Christ are simply God's way of saying to man, "All 
 things are yours : " and so the Hebrew pilgrim was on the 
 right track when he combined creative power and provi- 
 dential care in one and the same Being ; when he recog- 
 nized in the God of the mountains, the Father " full of 
 grace and truth," and saw nothing inconsistent in God's 
 creating and ordering the heavenly host, and in God's 
 making himself a shadow in the heat for a weary man in 
 the desert : in God's keeping watch and ward round the 
 
272 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 circuit of the heavens, and in God's acting as sentinel of 
 a pilgrim's tent in the wilderness. 
 
 The Psalmist draws a second assurance of Divine pro- 
 tection from history. Having reasoned that the God of 
 nature will care for him, he now reasons that the God of 
 nations will care for him. " He that keepeth Israel will 
 neither slumber nor sleep." The Hebrew's range of his- 
 tory was indeed limited to the history of his own people, 
 but the study of that record had resulted in rooting deeply 
 in the Hebrew mind the conception of God in history. 
 All his education had emphasized one thought, that God 
 had chosen his race and had taken it under His especial 
 protection. He had been taught to associate God directly 
 and intimately with all the heroes of his nation, and with 
 all the incidents of its history. " The God of Abraham, 
 of Isaac and of Jacob " was a familiar formula of speech 
 and of prayer. The migrations, the battles, the victories, 
 the escapes of His people had been God's work. It was 
 a grand result. It was worth a great deal of severe ex- 
 perience to get that thought so rooted in the mind of a 
 whole people, that twenty centuries have not been able to 
 dislodge it ; and it is a pity that an age which writes as 
 much history as ours does, and writes it so well, an age 
 which studies history as much as ours does, and studies it 
 so broadly, should nevertheless so often press history into 
 the service of practical atheism, and leave God out of it. 
 But the point to be particularly noted here is that the 
 Hebrew drew from his study of history quite an opposite 
 conclusion to that which the modern philosopher draws 
 from the same study. For the philosopher sees the move- 
 ment of history in great masses, and under great general 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 273 
 
 laws, and concludes that it takes little or no account of 
 the individual man, and that he lives his little life and is/ 
 swallowed up and whirled away with no one or nothing to 
 look after him. And so, whatever grand and sublime con- 
 ceptions of-'history he may get, he gets very little personal 
 comfort out of it, very little which warms his heart. The 
 Hebrew, on the contrary, made all history his own. The 
 more clearly he saw God working for the race, the more 
 clearly he saw God working for him. The grandeur of 
 God's dealings with the people as a whole, the occasions 
 on which He handled them as one man, did not at all in- 
 terfere with his sense of God's hand upon him individually. 
 The fact that God watched over Israel as a nation, was to 
 him the best reason for believing that He watched over 
 him. The fact that God was the Lord of Hosts, encour- 
 aged him to say " the Lord is my light and my salvation." * 
 The God whose unslumbering eye had watched the desti- 
 nies of Israel through all the changing years, was the very 
 One whom the pilgrim could most trust to preserve his 
 life from all evil. And the Hebrew was nearer the truth 
 than the philosopher. He not only won comfort, but he 
 drew it legitimately. All the past of all men is yours and 
 mine, for the reason that God is in it : and whatever les- 
 sons of His power or mercy or forbearance, of his good- 
 ness and love, of his favor and vengeance, it contains, we 
 may take, and he means us to take for our own individual 
 assurance or instruction or warning. 
 
 " KEEPING " is the key-note of this Psalm ; God the 
 KEEPER. The word "keep "or "preserve" occurs six 
 
 1 Psalm xxvii. I. 
 12* 
 
274 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 times in the course of it ; and from what we have read of 
 it thus far, we might be tempted to think that the Psalmist 
 recognized God's keeping only in special dangers, like 
 that from sunstroke or from the midnight robber ; but as 
 we read farther that impression is removed. "The Lord 
 shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy 
 soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and ihy com- 
 ing in" an expression which denotes the whole life and 
 occupations of a man. How complete is this protection, 
 extending to all that the man is and does. "Thee," 
 " thy soul," " thy going out and thy coming in." How 
 forcibly one is reminded of Paul's prayer for the Thessa- 
 lonians, "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body 
 be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." * But while there is assurance of complete pro- 
 tection, there is also the significant hint of danger every- 
 where, calling for a constant abiding " under the shadow 
 of the Almighty." 8 One thought which we need to en- 
 courage is that we are nowhere safe, and not a moment 
 safe without God : and we never shall feel the full weight 
 of that conviction until we shall have clearly perceived 
 the meaning of the hint conveyed in the words, " The 
 Lord shall preserve thy soul." When we are most secure 
 from bodily harm we are sometimes in greatest danger 
 from spiritual evil ; and danger to the soul is our greatest 
 and most imminent danger, calling for God's continuous 
 protection. All these promises in the Psalm would be of 
 very little account without God's promise to preserve the 
 soul. Temptation sometimes arises out of the very cir- 
 
 1 i Thessalonians v. 23. 8 Psalm xci. I. 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 275 
 
 cumstances which make us the most safe from outward 
 danger. More men have fallen into sin through a sense 
 of security than from a sense of impending danger. The 
 soul is the very citadel of the life, and if God's protection 
 do not extend to that, what is a man profited if he be ever 
 so safe as regards the whole world ? If he be cased in 
 impenetrable armor, or shut up in an impregnable fortress, 
 if he go down to threescore and ten without a scratch or 
 a bruise, what does it avail if his soul is a seat of unholy 
 passions, given over to the dominion of sin, lost to God 
 and to good ? Hence the promise of God's protection of 
 the soul is a hint that we need that protection. It carries 
 with it the exhortation, " Keep thy heart with all diligence, 
 for out of it are the issues of life." ! 
 
 At the same time, it is true that outward danger, by 
 making us feel our helplessness and throwing us upon 
 God's keeping, has a tendency to encourage that faith and 
 prayer and watchfulness which are the indispensable con- 
 ditions of both spiritual* safety and spiritual tranquillity. 
 Charles Kingsley, in a discourse on prayer, 2 speaks of 
 the fact that prosperity, ease and safety often tend to 
 draw men away from God. They find the world so well 
 ordered outwardly that it seems able to go on its way 
 without a God. " They have, themselves, so few sorrows, 
 that they never feel that sense of helplessness, of danger, 
 of ignorance, which has made the hearts of men in every 
 age, yearn for an unseen helper, deliverer and teacher." 
 And then he goes on to show that adversity and danger 
 are wholesome, so much so that, " according to the testi- 
 
 1 Proverbs iv. 23. 2 Westminster Sermons. 
 
276 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 mony of history, the most happy and successful commu- 
 nities have been those who, through perpetual danger and 
 struggle, have learned in the depth to cry out of the depth 
 to God ; to lift up their eyes unto the Lord, and to know- 
 that their help comes from Him." He continues, " I 
 know a village down in the far west where the one hundred 
 and twenty-first Psalm was a favorite and more than a 
 favorite. Whenever it was given out in church (and the 
 congregation used often to ask for it), all joined in sing- 
 ing it with an earnestness, a fervor, a passion such as I 
 never heard elsewhere ; such as showed how intensely 
 they felt that the Psalm was true, and true for them. Of 
 all congregational singing I ever heard, never have I heard 
 any so touching as those voices, when they joined in the 
 old words they loved so well : 
 
 " Sheltered beneath the Almighty wings 
 
 Thou shall securely rest, 
 Where neither sun nor moon shall thee 
 
 By day or night molest. 
 At home, abroad, in peace, in war, 
 
 Thy God shall thee defend, 
 Conduct thee through life's pilgrimage 
 
 Safe to thy journey's end.' 
 
 " Do you fancy these people were especially comforta- 
 ble, prosperous folk, who had no sorrows and lived safe 
 from all danger, and therefore knew that God protected 
 them from all ill ? Nothing less. There was hardly a 
 man who joined in that Psalm but knew that he carried 
 his life in his hand from year to year, that any day might 
 see him a corpse, drowned at sea. Hardly a woman who 
 sang that Psalm but had lost a husband, a father, a brother, 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 277 
 
 a kinsman, drowned at sea. A sudden shift of wind might 
 make, as I knew it once to make, sixty widows and 
 orphans in a single night. The fishery for the year might 
 fail. The young men would go out on voyages, and often 
 never come back again, dying far from home. And yet 
 they believed that God preserved them. Surely their 
 faith was tried if ever faith was tried. But as surely their 
 faith failed not, for, if I may so say, they dared not let it 
 fail. If they ceased to trust God what had they to trust 
 in ? Without trust in God their lives would have been 
 lives of doubt and terror, forever anxious about the mor- 
 row : or else of blind recklessness saying, ' Let us eat 
 and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Because they kept 
 their faith in God,, their lives were, for the most part, lives 
 of hardy and hopeful enterprise ; cheerful always, in bad 
 luck as in good ; thankful when their labors were blest with 
 success ; and when calamity and failure came, saying < I 
 have received good from the hand of the Lord and shall 
 I not receive evil ? Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
 in Him.'" > 
 
 Thus, as we gather up the lessons of the Psalm on which 
 we have touched, we find a suggestion of our own help- 
 lessness in the words which assure us of divine protec- 
 tion : we have the positive assurance of that protection 
 based upon God's power in creation, and God's wisdom 
 and love as shown in the past experience of His people. 
 We are made to see that as our chief danger is spiritual, 
 so our need of protection is constant, and that none but 
 a divine Protector can insure our safety ; and that, in 
 
 1 The latter part of the extract is condensed. 
 
278 Gdtes into the Psalm Country. 
 
 order to avail ourselves of this eternal safeguard, we 
 must live within its compass, and not think that we can 
 pass our time at our own pleasure, and in the place of 
 our own choosing, and then claim God's protection when 
 emergencies arise. He that dvvelleth in the secret place 
 of the Most High, and abides under the shadow of the 
 Almighty, he only can say of the Lord " He is my re- 
 fuge and my fortress." " Because thou hast made the Most 
 High thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, 
 neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. Be- 
 cause he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I de- 
 liver him." * Thus all the pledges and assurances of the 
 Psalm grow up in the sphere of life in God. It is a close 
 walk with God, a life hidden in Him, which alone can in- 
 terpret the sweetness of these pledges and make them 
 fully available. And, farther, we see that for this help 
 and keeping we need not ascend wearily into the hills of 
 God to find* Him out. The Word is nigh us. God is in 
 the midst of us, adapting Himself to our low estate, com- 
 ing down to the plane of our ignorance and weakness, 
 His heart throbbing with such pity as a parent feels to- 
 wards a helpless child, 3 to keep us by His mighty power 
 from the foes which would destroy our life, and to " raise 
 us to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 8 Oh, how 
 rich in comfort is this thought to such as feel their spirit- 
 ual danger and helplessness ; who even now, it may be, 
 are lifting up their eyes unto the hills for help. Cease 
 considering what you can ,do to get up to where God is, 
 what you can do to make yourself ready for God, but be 
 
 1 Psalm xci. 2, 9, 14. 2 Psalm ciii. 13. 8 Ephesians ii. 6. 
 
The Gate to the Highlands. 279 
 
 rather content to let God come down to you, just as you 
 are, and do in you and for you what needs to be done. You 
 will rise only as He shall raise you. You will tread the 
 high hills of His peace only as he shall carry you up the 
 steeps in His arms, even as a lost and tired lamb. 
 
 And we have need too to learn this Psalm by heart and 
 to ponder it well, and to keep it by us for daily use in 
 daily doing and burden-bearing. How much disquiet 
 these times beget we all know ; and it will be the easiest 
 thing in the world for us to get ourselves into such a state 
 of worry and uneasiness and fear, as that life shall be shorn 
 of all its peace. Can we not get back into the atmos- 
 phere of this Psalm ? Is it not possible for us to enter 
 into the calm which encircles that pilgrim's tent, and to 
 catch something of the old peace which filled the travel- 
 ler's heart as he sat in the evening shadow, and felt the 
 cool breath coming down from the mountains behind 
 which lay the city of God, so that with him we may sing, 
 " My help cotneth from the Lord who made heaven and 
 earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. The 
 Lord is thy keeper. The Lord shall preserve thy going 
 out and thy coming in from this time forth and even for- 
 evermore " ? Is it not possible, I say ? Do we believe 
 the word of the living God ? Do we believe that the 
 Spirit of God inspired this Psalm? Do we believe that 
 God wrote it as the legitimate expression of His children's 
 confiding faith in Him, and of their sweet rest in His 
 power and love ? Do we believe this, and do we believe 
 that we are His children ? Ah, God tries our faith by 
 such questions as these. Whatever the measure of our 
 faith, the promise is sure as the hills. The help is there 
 
280 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 for us if we will take it. We may have the rest. We may 
 go in and out assured that the Lord preserves our going 
 out and our coming in, and will do so, from this time 
 forth. Whether our fears centre in personal or in national 
 troubles, we may trust. God is the God of nations. He 
 is wiser and stronger than men ; and while men plot and 
 plan, the Keeper of Israel slumbereth not. 
 
 " Father, beneath Thy sheltering wing 
 
 In sweet security we rest. 
 And fear no evil earth can bring, 
 In life, in death, supremely blest. 
 
 " For life is good whose tidal flow 
 
 The motions of Thy will obeys ; 
 And death is good, that makes us know 
 The Love Divine that all things sways. 
 
 *' And good it is to bear the cross, 
 
 And so Thy perfect peace to win ; 
 
 And naught is ill, nor brings us loss, 
 
 Nor works us harm, save only sin. 
 
 " Redeemed from this, we ask no more, 
 
 But trust the love that saves, to guide. 
 The grace that yields so rich a store 
 Will grant us all we need beside." 
 
THE GATE TO THE HAR- 
 VEST-FIELD. 
 
PSALM CXXVI. 
 
 (1) When Jehovah brought back the returned of Zion, 
 We were like unto them that dream. 
 
 (2) Then was our mouth filled with laughter, 
 And our tongue with songs of joy. 
 
 (3) Then said they among the nations, 
 
 " Jehovah hath done great things for them." 
 
 (4) (Yea) Jehovah hath done great things for us ; 
 (Therefore) were we glad. 
 
 (5) Bring back, O Jehovah, our captives, 
 As the streams in the South. 
 
 (6) They that sow in tears 
 Shall reap with songs of joy. 
 
 (7) He may go weeping as he goeth, 
 Bearing (his) store of seed ; 
 
 (8) He shall come, he shall come with songs of joy, 
 Bearing his sheaves. 
 
XVII. 
 
 THE GATE TO THE HARVEST-FIELD. 
 
 THERE were three things which greatly astonished the 
 Jewish exiles on their return from Babylon. The first was 
 the capture of the city by the Medes and Persians. 
 The popular feeling of amazement is reflected in the vision 
 of Isaiah portrayed in the twenty-first chapter of his proph- 
 ecy. From his watch-tower he beholds the vast city of 
 Babylon by night, its lights gleaming, and the sound of 
 mad revelry rising from its palaces. Then succeed the ap- 
 parition of armed forms stealing through the streets, fol- 
 lowed by the cry, *' Babylon is fallen, and all the graven 
 images of her gods He hath broken under the ground." 
 Those who intelligently read this prophecy will see with 
 what wonder the captives of Judah saw the great empire 
 of the East give way before the comparatively unknown 
 tribes of Persia. 
 
 The second source of wonder was the escape of the re- 
 turning exiles from the perils of the journey. This Psalm, 
 let it be remembered, belongs to the time after the first 
 band had returned from Babylon under the command of 
 Zerubbabel. The journey from Babylon to Jerusalem was 
 one which the best equipped host might not accomplish 
 without some danger. " The prospect of crossing that 
 vast desert which intervened between Chaldasa and Pal- 
 
284 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 estine, was one which filled the minds of the exiles with 
 all manner of terrors. It seemed like a second wandering 
 in the desert of Sinai. It was a journey of nearly four 
 months at the slow rate at which such caravans then trav- 
 elled. Unlike the wilderness of Sinai, it was diversified 
 by no towering mountains, no delicious palm groves, no 
 gushing springs. A hard gravel plain from the moment 
 they left the banks of the Euphrates till they reached the 
 northern extremity of Syria, with no solace except the oc- 
 casional wells and walled stations ; or, if their passage was 
 in the spring, the natural herbage and flowers which clothed 
 the arid soil. Ferocious herds of Bedouin robbers then as 
 now swept the whole tract." 1 
 
 But again, in the vision of Isaiah, we see revealed the 
 wonder of God's love and power in safely carrying His ran- 
 somed ones through this dangerous journey. Nay, more : 
 the exiled band is not to return in straggling meanness as 
 a troop of broken-spirited slaves. Their homeward march 
 is to be rather that of a royal procession. They are the 
 people of the King of kings. A voice as of a herald goes 
 before them, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Their 
 way is His way : " Make straight the paths in the desert, 
 gather the stones out of the way." No fear of thirst, or of 
 hunger, or of dropping down by the way through weariness. 
 "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd. He shall gather 
 the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom. 
 He will open rivers in high places and fountains in the 
 midst of the valleys. He will make the wilderness a pool 
 of water and the dry lands springs of water." No fear of 
 
 1 Stanley, Jewish Church. Vol. iii. 
 
The Gate to the Harvest-Field. 285 
 
 the smiting sun in the shadeless gravel plain. He will 
 "plant in the wilderness the cedar," He will "set in the 
 desert the fir tree and the pine and the box tree together." 
 No fear of the swoop of the fierce desert tribes. " The 
 Lord God will come with a strong hand." The people is 
 as grass that wi there th before the breath of the Lord. 1 
 
 The third thing which amazed these exiles was, that they 
 should have been permitted to return at all. How could 
 they dream that Cyrus, the Persian, would acknowledge 
 the God of their fathers ? Yea, that he should be called 
 by Jehovah himself, His " shepherd," * His " anointed ser- 
 vant," His "right hand," 8 and that his heart should turn 
 with pity and favor towards those thousands of captive 
 Jews whom it would have seemed for his own interest to 
 keep in bondage ? 
 
 When, therefore, the first band of exiles, forty-two 
 thousand in number, found themselves once more in the 
 city of their fathers, when they recalled the former glories 
 of Jerusalem, and caught glimpses of a possible glorious 
 future, a restored temple and worship, a flourishing na- 
 tional metropolis, a reinvigorated national life, it seemed 
 too good to be true. In the language of our Psalm they 
 were "like them that dream." Their mouth was filled 
 with laughter and their tongue with singing. They recog- 
 nized their deliverance with all its marvels, as the work of 
 Jehovah, and gave Him the glory, saying, " The Lord 
 hath done great things for us whereof we are glad." Even 
 the heathen for once refrained from scoffing. The deliv- 
 erance, the return, were so wonderful, so directly in the 
 
 1 Isaiah xl., xll a Isaiah xliv. 28. 3 Isaiah xlv. i. 
 
286 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 face of all probability, that they were forced to acknowl- 
 edge the interposition of some higher power ; and they, 
 too. took up the current saying, "Jehovah hath done 
 great things for them." 
 
 Yet we may easily imagine that the occasion was not 
 one of unmingled laughter or singing. They had returned 
 to their home, it is true, but it was to find it in ruins. 
 The streets must be cleared, the temple rebuilt, the wall- 
 restored to keep out the plundering hordes of Samaritans ; 
 years of hard toil opened before them, and for so great 
 work their numbers seemed small. And therefore their 
 minds turned naturally back to Babylon, where so many 
 of their brethren still remained, and another thought arose, 
 " Would that they were with us. How our hands would 
 be strengthened : with how much more hope and cheer 
 could we undertake this mighty task." And this thought 
 now pours itself out in prayer. " Turn again our captiv- 
 ity; bring back, O Jehovah, our captives." And we must 
 not fail to notice the beautiful figure in which this prayer 
 is couched. " Bring back our captives, O Jehovah, as 
 the streams in the South" The South was the general 
 term for that plain which stretched southward from Jeru- 
 salem to the edge of the Arabian desert. In the heats 
 of summer it lies parched and barren, the water-courses 
 dry, not the smallest rill trickling over the hot stones, 
 every remnant of vegetation withered. But when- the 
 winter snows begin to dissolve upon the mountains and 
 the spring rains to fall, soon the parched ground becomes 
 a pool. The channels are filled, the streams, in an incredi- 
 bly short time, convert the wilderness into a fruitful field. 
 Thus the exiles pray that their brethren may return as 
 
The Gate to the Harvest-Field. 287 
 
 the streams flow down to the South country in the spring. 
 " Our land, O Lord, is barren. Jerusalem is a waste and 
 a desolation. Our little band is but as a tiny rill in the 
 desert, not enough to make thy heritage blossom. Turn 
 back our captives even as the streams in the South. Flood 
 our land with men, so shall the wilderness and the soli- 
 tary places be glad, and the desert shall rejoice." 
 
 But with the prayer is joined, as there ought to be with 
 all prayer, an expression of faith. They do not know 
 that Jehovah will answer this particular request. He may 
 make them wait long for the needed reinforcements, but 
 they are sure that this painful waiting and working will 
 have a joyful issue at last. And this thought, too, is con- 
 veyed under a beautiful figure, the lesson of which will 
 occupy the remainder of our study upon this Psalm. 
 " They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth 
 forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless 
 come again with rejoicing bringing his sheaves with 
 him." 
 
 The weeping sower may seem to us a conception pe- 
 culiar to the exaggerated style of .Oriental imagery : and 
 yet it is not so far from the literal fact as we might at first 
 suppose, especially when we remember that the Oriental 
 is more demonstrative in the expression of his feelings 
 than the cooler man of the West. Many things might 
 conspire to send the Eastern husbandman to his field in 
 tears. Sometimes, as is well known, the supply of grain 
 is so scanty, that to use it for sowing is almost to take the 
 bread out of the children's mouths; and it would not be 
 hard to imagine even a New England farmer going forth 
 to his sowing with moistened eyes, if he knew that his 
 
288 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 seed-bag contained well nigh the last bushel of corn in 
 the house, and that in a time of general scarcity. But 
 apart from the literal accuracy of the figure, there would 
 be very much to make the Eastern farmer's seed-time a 
 time of sorrow and weariness and danger. For instance, 
 his life would not be absolutely secure. He might have 
 to go six or seven miles from his village to his field, and 
 so much nearer the desert border, from which a robber 
 band could easily make him their prey, or take his life, 
 and carry off or scatter the precious handfuls of seed on 
 which the life of his household depended. So it was with 
 the servants of Job who were ploughing when the Sabae- 
 ans fell upon them. 1 
 
 But what a change reveals itself in the Psalmist's 
 next sentence. As with the slide of a magic lantern, 
 he puts beside this picture of the sad-faced sower 
 another picture of the gladness of harvest. " The valleys 
 stand thick with corn." There are no tears now, but 
 only the shouting and the happy faces of the reapers 
 as they gather the full ears. " They that sow in tears 
 shall reap in joy." 
 
 It is the peculiarity of the Bible that, while all its inci- 
 dents have their local coloring, and their lesson for their 
 own time, they have no less their teaching for later times, 
 and for quite different circumstances. No two things 
 could be apparently farther apart than our condition to-day 
 and that of the poor Jewish exiles just returned to their 
 desolate city : yet this song is ours no less than theirs, 
 and that from the fact that under its local coloring and 
 
 1 Job i. 15. 
 
The Gate to the Harvest-Field. 289 
 
 imagery it carries certain universal human truths to which 
 our own experience responds, and on which our faith and 
 hope lay hold. 
 
 All human life as related to the larger life of eternity is 
 a sowing-time ; and largely a sowing-time of tears. Life 
 is a season of preparatory discipline for immortality ; and 
 the experience through which this discipline is perfected 
 is often severe. 
 
 But it is not of this that I wish to speak, so much as 
 of the sowing and reaping within the compass of our 
 earthly life ; for it is very evident that the different parts 
 of our life stand thus related to one another : the earlier to 
 the later, the time of preparation to the time of fruition. 
 
 And we may lay it down as a general law that the sow- 
 ing-time, whether it be in agriculture, or in learning, or in 
 morals, or in experience, is a hard, painful, uncomfortable 
 time ; often a time of risk and danger. 
 
 For instance, take our early education. I suspect 
 there is a good deal of mere sentiment in the wishing to 
 be boys again, and longing for the happy school-days. No 
 doubt there were certain elements of happiness peculiar 
 to those days, especially our freedom from real care and 
 responsibility, which do not enter into our present life ; 
 but the process of breaking up our boyish crudity, of tam- 
 ing our childish will, of pricking our conceit, was some- 
 thing we should not care to go through again. The re- 
 straints of school, the turning away from the long, bright 
 summer days, from the delights of wood and stream, to the 
 desk and the book and the slate, were not unlike sowing 
 in tears. We found it no easy thing to learn well and thor- 
 oughly. Lessons were often hard, and teachers severe, 
 13 
 
290 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 and the open page of arithmetic or grammar was often wet 
 with childish tears. 
 
 Or take the young man's first essay in life : his emer- 
 gence from the charmed circle of college, and home, and 
 admiring friends, upon the first square contact with men, 
 as a man : the getting established in business or in a pro- 
 fession : how many the wounds to his pride : what revela- 
 tions of weakness where he thought himself strongest : 
 what a letting down of the scale at which he had rated 
 his own talent : what struggles with established success 
 before he reaps the fruit of patient industry and of con- 
 firmed reputation. It is the sowing-time of tears. 
 
 And no less does the truth hold in the religious life. 
 Can the beginnings of that life be better described than as a 
 sowing in tears ? What else is the dawn of self-knowledge ? 
 What else the awakened sense of sin and of absence from 
 God ? What was it when the prodigal awoke from his 
 mad dream of pleasure to find the roses faded and the cup 
 drained, and nothing left but the husks and the swine ? 
 The " Father I have sinned/' comes before the robe and 
 the ring: the " O wretched man that I am," 1 before the 
 " peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 
 
 And in this line of thought, it is interesting to remem- 
 ber that this very Psalm may have been more than once 
 upon the lips of the Son of Man as He journeyed with the 
 pilgrim bands to the Holy City. " They that sow in tears 
 shall reap in joy." What was it but the very truth which 
 He Himself uttered later, aye, and illustrated too," Except 
 a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth 
 
 1 Romans vii. 24. a Romans v. i. 
 
The Gate to the Harvest- Field. 291 
 
 alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. " * The 
 process by which He reached the height to which God 
 hath exalted Him, the harvest of love and worship and 
 ministry which He garners daily from the world's heart and 
 life, was the emptying Himself, and taking the form of a 
 servant, and becoming obedient unto the death of the 
 cross ; 2 and he who attains Christian manhood attains it in 
 the same way. He who is chief among men, is so through 
 service, service which has no taint of self in it : and self- 
 forgetful service is not learned easily nor without tears. 
 God makes us men in Christ Jesus by hard blows at self, 
 by sorrows which cut to the quick, by losses which make 
 us feel that nothing but God is left, which is just what He 
 wants us to feel. It is sowing for a rich harvest, but none 
 the less sowing in tears. 
 
 Now, in the Psalm, the two pictures of the weeping 
 sower and of the joyful reaper are placed side by side : but 
 in fact, as we all know, a large and thickly crowded inter- 
 val lies between them : and it is in this interval that we shall 
 find the great practical lesson for our immediate use. And 
 the lesson is this ; simple steadfastness, patience and 
 hopefulness all through the tearful sowing-time. That joy- 
 ful harvest scene means that the sower did not let his 
 tears blind his eyes to the duty that lay before him. It 
 was a bitter day when he went out with the seed folded 
 in his robe : but the furrows lay before him, and the seed 
 must be sown, and he went faithfully over every foot of 
 the ground, promising or unpromising, and gave and did 
 his best. And that is the lesson, very easy to stat-e, but 
 
 1 John xii. 24. a Philippians ii. 7-9. 
 
292 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 very, very hard to practise, which you and I must carry 
 out in our sowing-fields if we ever reap a harvest. If we 
 can only get it rooted in our minds that the tears, and the 
 barrenness, and the lack of promise, and the hard toil and 
 drudgery, and the present disappointment, mean joyful 
 reaping by and by, that these are really God's ways to 
 a harvest, we shall have gained very much. For that is 
 the simple truth ; but then it is a truth which becomes 
 realized in fact only as we accept God's meaning in it, and 
 work through the barrenness and the drudgery with God, 
 towards the fulfilment of God!s intent : only as we accept 
 the corrective hints which our discipline gives, enter and 
 follow out to the end each line of duty on which it puts 
 us, not despairing of ourselves, nor of our work, nor of 
 God and Heaven, not wasting time in tears over the 
 hardness of the soil or the scantiness of the seed, not try- 
 ing to get round our allotted experience by some by-path, 
 but going straight through it from end to end. There are 
 times in battle when an army cannot make a flank move- 
 ment, but must pierce the centre of the enemy if it win the 
 day : and in the battle of life there are no flank move- 
 ments : the way to victory lies through the centre every 
 time. Sorrow, discipline, hard work have got to be borne, 
 not evaded, if Christ's soldier is ever to win promotion. 
 Notice the way in which Paul puts that fact in those well- 
 known words at the conclusion of the eighth chapter of 
 Romans : " Who shall separate us from the love of 
 Christ ? " Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, 
 nakedness, peril, sword, the being counted as sheep for 
 the slaughter ? " Nay," he replies, " IN all these things 
 we are more than conquerors." There is no shirking 
 
The Gate to the Harvest-Field. 293 
 
 them. We take the peril and the nakedness and the 
 famine, and in the very midst of them we conquer. 
 
 Thus, then, the final issue of these times of preparation 
 and discipline is joy. When a life has passed through 
 God's crucible, and the fiery blast lias purged away its 
 dross, and God's coining press has struck it, it comes forth 
 with the image and superscription of the Great King, and 
 passes into the world's hands as current coin of solid gold. 
 What true man asks for any higher joy than that of en- 
 riching his race in that which makes it truly joyful ? 
 
 " He that goeth forth weeping and bearing precious 
 seed shall doubtless (how positive the promise is) come 
 again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." 
 There have been times in oar own lives when we have 
 gone forth to this sowing, hardly able to see the furrows 
 for our tears : when we have gone up and down the field, 
 sowing with a trembling hand, and crying and cutting our- 
 selves with stones. It looked little like sheaves then : 
 little like sheaves when the blight had passed over the 
 household and withered the sweetest and best ; little like 
 joyful harvest when bread was hard to win, and financial 
 disaster had made the heritage like the dry plains of the 
 South, and slander was darting fiery breaths at our good 
 name. But those sorrowful sowing days have blossomed 
 out into power and sweetness in these later years. Did 
 you ever go into the woods late in the autumn, on a day 
 of howling wind and driving rain, and did you ever see a 
 drearier spectacle or hear drearier sounds ? The sough 
 and the rush of the wind through the almost bare branches, 
 the drip, drip, of the rain upon the masses of withered 
 leaves, the air filled with flying leaves fluttering down into 
 
294 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 the gloom of the forest as into a grave, the delicate colors 
 of trunk and moss all changed and stained and blended by 
 the soaking of the rain, how hard to believe that that dreari- 
 ness has any relation to the beauty of the summer forest. 
 And yet we know that it is just that wind which is rocking 
 the trees and howling so dismally, just that streaming rain 
 and those rotting leaves which will help to clothe the forest 
 trees next year with verdure, and to make the woods sing 
 for joy and pulsate with life. So you are better and purer 
 and stronger men and women to-day for the tears and the 
 sighing and the desolation. You know and the world knows 
 that your life is richer, better poised, more trustful, less 
 selfish, more detached from the things of sense, that its 
 whole atmosphere is somehow purer and more vitalizing. 
 
 Or take the work God gives us : in the family for exam- 
 ple. Those children, how we cherish them ! Never did 
 sower wrap the last handful of seed more anxiously in his 
 robe'than we fold those precious ones in our heart. But 
 O how anxious the sowing ! What daily cares for their men- 
 tal and moral culture ! What anxious hours over their way- 
 wardness ! But there is a picture in the next Psalm which 
 may put heart into us in some hours of this tearful sowing- 
 time : the picture of the father surrounded by his manly 
 sons standing in the gate of the city in controversy with 
 his adversaries, defended by their strength, and aided by 
 their counsels. " Happy is the man that hath his quiver 
 full of them : they shall not be ashamed, but they shall 
 speak with the enemies in the gate." ' 
 
 And this leads to the truth that we must learn to look 
 
 1 Psalm cxxvii. 5. 
 
The Gate to the Harvest-Field. 295 
 
 for the fulfilment of the promise of joyful reaping in other 
 lives than our own. I mean just this ; that a servant of 
 God is to undertake his work with the clear understand- 
 ing that he may not, personally, during his own life, reap 
 the fruits of it. He must sow the seed in view of the pos- 
 sibility that the reapers may go to and fro over his grave 
 to gather the harvest. And he must farther learn to re- 
 joice in their reaping as his own : to feel that if he do 
 not gather an ear with his own hand, he shall reap just the 
 same in the harvest which other hands gather. The best 
 work which is being done for the world is the work which 
 makes the least noise. The forces which are at work to 
 move society most profoundly and to revolutionize it most 
 thoroughly are those of which the general public is not 
 conscious. And the man who joins forces with that kind 
 of sowing, need not be surprised if it be forbidden his feet 
 to tread among the standing corn. Nevertheless he shall 
 reap. There is a passage in the history of Isaiah J which 
 always moves me deeply. God revealed Himself to him 
 in a vision. He saw the Lord sitting upon a throne. He 
 heard the seraphim cry " Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of 
 Hosts ! " He saw the posts of the door move at the voice 
 of Him that cried, and before that glory he felt himself 
 undone, and of unclean lips. Then God touched his lips 
 with a coal from the altar, and purified and consecrated 
 Him to bear His message, and then He told him that the 
 people would not "hear nor understand him. That an- 
 ointed prophet, the grandest spirit that ever touched the 
 strings of the prophetic harp, should preach to dull ears and 
 
 1 Isaiah vi. 
 
296 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 to hard hearts. None the less was he to sow : the reap- 
 ing would come by and by. A long interval stretched 
 between seed-time and harvest, filled with wasted cities, 
 and houses without man, and desolate lands, but the word 
 of the Lord would bear fruit in His own time in repentance 
 and submission. Meantime the prophet was to deliver 
 his message without what men call success. He was to 
 draw his inspiration from God, not from success. Nay, 
 did not a greater than Isaiah share the same lot? Who 
 was it that said, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might 
 have life ! " 1 u How often would I have gathered you and 
 ye would not " ? 2 Was it not He who said " Herein is 
 that saying true, one soweth and another reapeth " ? 8 
 
 The thought of the Psalm is rich in suggestions to us. 
 In our own life, in the condition of society, in the aspects 
 of the times, both civil and religious, there is much that 
 savors of the tearful sowing-time. There is but one thing 
 for us to do ; and that is to take up our seed, and in God's 
 strength and with God's good cheer in our hearts, go 
 forth to the sowing, be the ground good or stony, be the 
 prospect of harvest never so remote. 
 
 The way to the harvest lies straight through the thickest 
 of these trials and discouragements. We shall reap, only 
 as we shall resolutely take up our lot, make the most and 
 best of our position, squarely face our responsibilities, 
 let the full pressure of our burdens come down on our 
 shoulders, and work on for Christ's sake, whether men 
 will hear or forbear. Not in spite of these, but by means 
 of these the harvest is to come ; and if we shun the weep- 
 ing we shall miss the reaping. 
 
 1 John v. 40. a Matthew xxiii. 37. 3 John iv. 37. 
 
THE GATE OF THE CARAVAN; 
 OR, THE PILGRIM PSALMS. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE GATE OF THE CARAVAN; OR, 
 THE PILGRIM PSALMS. 
 
 THE title Pilgrim Psalms is applied to the fifteen 
 Psalms from the one hundred and twentieth to the 
 one hundred and thirty-fourth. This is not one of the five 
 parts or books into which the Hebrew Psalter is divided ; l 
 but forms one of two groups in the fifth book (the other 
 group being the Hallelujah Psalms), each of which seems 
 to have been, originally, a distinct hymn book or lit- 
 urgy. 2 
 
 These fifteen Psalms are styled " Songs of Degrees :" 
 "Songs of Ascents : " Songs of the Goings Up." The 
 meaning of this title is a subject of much dispute, and the 
 following are the principal views. First, That the title is 
 given from their peculiar rhythmical structure : a kind of 
 step rhythm, consisting in the last clause of a verse carry- 
 ing forward a thought or an expression into the next 
 verse ; where it has another turn given to it, is expanded, 
 or receives something added to it. Take, for example, 
 the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm. " I lift my eyes 
 to the hills. From whence shall help come to me ? " The 
 second verse carries on the thought of help : "My help 
 
 H.-xli., xlii.-lxxii., Ixxiii.-lxxxix., xc.-cvi., cvii., cl. 
 8 Perowne. 
 
300 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 comes from the Lord, the Creator of Heaven and Earth." 
 The third verse adds the thought of Confirmer and Keep- 
 er to that of Creator. " He will not suffer thy foot to 
 be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber." 
 Then the fifth verse carries on the thought of the Keeper 
 and of the sleeplessness ; adding the thought of the 
 nation's keeper to that of the keeper of the individual. 
 " Behold the Keeper of Israel sleeps not and slumbers 
 not." 
 
 The objection to this explanation is that, while each of 
 these Psalms has the title" A Song of. Degrees," this 
 rhythmical structure is not common to all the Psalms ; 
 which, if the hypothesis were correct, must have been the 
 case. It does not occur, for instance, in the one hundred 
 and twenty-seventh, one hundred and twenty-eighth, one 
 hundred and thirty-first, and one hundred and thirty- 
 second. Hengstenberg says it does not occur even once 
 throughout, in any one of these Psalms, and that the one 
 hundred and twenty-first is the only one in which it is at 
 all prominent. Moreover, we are entitled to expect that, 
 as they have certain common characteristics, the title which 
 they have in common should furnish the key to these, which 
 this title does not. "The remaining peculiarities of these 
 Psalms," as the same commentator remarks, "can by 
 no means be considered as flowing from the one which, 
 according to this explanation, is indicated in the title." 
 Once more, the structure is not peculiar to these Psalms, 
 but may be found in the twenty-ninth Psalm, in certain 
 portions of Isaiah, 1 and in the song of Deborah. 2 
 
 1 xvii. 12 j xxvi. 5. 2 Judges v. 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 301 
 
 The second explanation is suggested in the name " step- 
 songs." According to this, these fifteen Psalms were 
 sung on the fifteen steps in the temple, leading from the 
 court of the men to the court of the women. This ex- 
 planation is based upon a passage of the Talmud, which, 
 however, only compares the fifteen Psalms to fifteen steps, 
 and gives elsewhere a different explanation of the title. 
 It is due moreover to later Jewish expositors, and is fanci- 
 ful, although Hengstenberg's objection that such Psalms 
 as the one hundred and twenty-first and one hundred 
 and twenty-second could not have been appropriately 
 sung in the temple, is very far from being decisive as he 
 says it is ; since the latter, at least, might very appro- 
 priately have been sung under such circumstances. 
 
 According to the third explanation, the fifteen Psalms 
 are songs of the going up from Babylon ; that is, songs 
 sung by the Jewish exiles on their return from the captiv- 
 ity. The passage relied upon for this explanation, is 
 the ninth verse of the seventh chapter of Ezra. " For 
 upon the first day of the first month, began he (Ezra 
 and his company) to go up from Babylon." This has 
 more in its favor than the others. The contents of 
 most of the Psalms would adapt themselves to it; but 
 against it is urged the use of the plural in the titles of 
 the Psalms ; " Songs of goings up ; " while, on the 
 other supposition, it would be " songs of the going up ; " 
 a great national crisis being distinctly specified. Ten of 
 the fifteen Psalms, moreover, make no allusion to the con- 
 dition of captives. It is also urged in opposition that, 
 according to this explanation, the titles of the four Psalms 
 attributed to David, and of the one attributed to Solo- 
 
3O2 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 mon, would give false information : but in order to make 
 this argument of any weight, the question of the Davidic 
 and Solomonic authorship of these five Psalms must first 
 be settled \ which is far from being the case. 
 
 We come now to a fourth explanation, which seems to 
 meet more of the conditions of the question than any 
 other ; namely, that these songs derived their title from 
 being sung by the pilgrim caravans in their annual jour- 
 neys to Jerusalem to present themselves before the Lord. 
 " Thrice every year, at the beginning and at the close of 
 the wheat harvest, and again, when the grapes were 
 gathered and the wine made, every son of the law 
 had to appear before God." ! That the caravans 
 went up with singing, appears from Isaiah. 2 " Ye shall 
 have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is 
 kept, and gladness of heart as when one goeth with a 
 pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the 
 Mighty One of Israel." The word to "go up" is the 
 usual expression for these festival journeys. The use 
 of the article "the goings up," indicates the ordinary 
 journeys yearly repeated. All other journeys to Jeru- 
 salem would have needed some expression added to 
 define them. The plural "goings up," indicates 
 something of frequent recurrence : and, finally, the con- 
 tents of several of the Psalms, as for instance, the one 
 hundred and twenty-first, one hundred and twenty-second, 
 and one hundred thirty-fourth, show that they must have 
 been used for this purpose, as we shall presently see. 
 
 The authorship of these fifteen Psalms, and the time of 
 
 1 Cox, " Pilgrim Psalms." 2 xxx. 29. 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 303 
 
 their arrangement, are of course matters of conjecture. 
 Canon Perowne says that this collection in its present 
 form must have -been made after the return from Babylon ; 
 some of the songs containing manifest allusions to the 
 captivity, as still fresh in the recollection of the writers. 
 Hengstenberg's hypothesis agrees with this as to time, and 
 assumes that the four Psalms ascribed to David, 1 and the 
 one ascribed to Solomon, 2 sung by the people in their 
 annual journey before the captivity, were made the basis 
 of a whole series or system, designed for the same use, by 
 an inspired writer after the restoration, who added ten 
 Psalms of his own. 
 
 However we may settle such critical questions, it re- 
 mains true that these Psalms are among the most charm- 
 ing portions of the Psalter, full of deep and tender feel- 
 ing, simple and graceful in structure, so that a Spanish 
 writer, cited by several commentators, has said that this 
 collection is to the rest of the Psalms what Paradise was 
 to the world at its first creation. 
 
 It now remains to show how the title Pilgrinr Psalms is 
 borne out in the Psalms themselves. But at the outset 
 we stumble upon something which might reasonably damp 
 any enthusiasm called out by our Spanish commenta- 
 tor's praise. As to the first of these Psalms, there is, 
 apparently, as much reason for calling it an imprecatory 
 Psalm, as a pilgrim Psalm. To quote the words of a 
 French writer, 3 " It may be regarded as one of the most 
 obscure of the whole Psalter. The ideas are faintly indi- 
 
 cxxn., cxxiv., cxxxi., cxxxiii. 2 cxxvii. 
 
 3 Reuss, cited by Perowne. 
 
304 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 cated, the imagery is obscure, and the historical allusions 
 are as good as enigmas." What a song about lying lips 
 and the fate of slanderers, and a lament at being com- 
 pelled to dwell amid barbarous tribes, can have to do with 
 a joyful pilgrimage, it is not easy to determine. As to 
 the historical references, some have supposed that the 
 Psalmist pictures the heathen among whom he dwells in 
 exile ; others, the wild tribes with whom no treaty can be 
 kept, and by whom he is beset on his way back from Baby- 
 lon to Palestine : others, the Samaritans who interfered 
 with the rebuilding of the temple. Mr. Cox, who is always 
 fresh, ingenious and suggestive, calls this " the song of 
 the start." It is the utterance of a man smarting under 
 calumny, unable to be at peace with his neighbors, people 
 whom he can compare only to the barbarous Moschi, 
 haunting the skirts of the Caucasus, or the Arabian 
 hordes of Kedar types of " implacable cruelty." From 
 these he cries for deliverance. " Deliver my soul from 
 lying lips." On these he denounces Divine vengeance, 
 like sharpened arrows of a hero's bow, or fire kindled with 
 juniper coals, which retain their heat for a long time. Now 
 the Hebrew pilgrim, according to our commentator, jeal- 
 ous of his reputation, and conscious of the stain which 
 lying lips would bring upon it, might find in this song, 
 when he was about to leave home, an expression of his 
 feeling that he was leaving his reputation at the mercy of 
 slanderers during his absence : or an expression of his 
 conscientious fear lest, on the journey, in the gossip of 
 the caravan, he might be tempted to speak unadvisedly 
 and bitterly of a neighbor ; or, again, an expression of 
 his longing to be quit for awhile of the strife of tongues, 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 305 
 
 and to enjoy the rest and peace of the sanctuary of God 
 in Jerusalem, from which he should come back with " a 
 bettered and more patient heart, to his duties and strifes." 
 But no such difficulty attaches to the following Psalm. 1 
 This is 'a Pilgrim Psalm on its very face.' 2 It is an ex- 
 pression of trust in the Creator and Keeper of Israel. 
 Its key-note is the word "keep," which is repeated 
 six times in the last five verses. It is not hard to see 
 how appropriate such a song would be to one who had 
 left his home and family in the keeping of Heaven, and 
 who was travelling to Zion, exposed to the peculiar dan- 
 gers of an Eastern journey. We may picture the caravan 
 making its evening halt within sight of the mountains, 
 amid which Jerusalem stands. The tents are pitched, the 
 darkness gathers, and the sense of loneliness steals over 
 his heart as he thinks how the desert robber may break in 
 upon his camp ; and as he looks up to the mountains, 
 and remembers how help has so often appeared on the 
 hills, coming down to the aid of an army struggling in the 
 plain, and thinks that that mountain rampart before him 
 compasses the City of his God, he breaks out into the 
 chant " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. Whence 
 should my help come ?" Perhaps another voice takes up 
 the strain and answers " My help is from Jehovah, the 
 Maker of Heaven and Earth." So the thought goes on. 
 The Creator of the earth is also the Creator of Israel 
 and her keeper. He has led the nation through all the 
 vicissitudes of its history. He who keeps the nation will 
 also keep the individual. Therefore he assures himself. 
 
 1 cxxi. 2 See chap. xvi. " The Gate to the Highlands." 
 
306 Gates' into the Psalm Country. 
 
 HE verily will not suffer thy foot to swerve. HE will 
 watch and guard thee on thy journey, and in thy nightly 
 rest. The sun shall not strike thee in thy day's march ; 
 the moon shall not hurt thee though thou sleep in its daz- 
 zling rays ; robbers, disease, whatever may threaten, 
 JEHOVAH shall keep thee from all evil, even inward evil, 
 for He shall preserve thy soul, or thy life, and not only 
 now, but in^all thy goings in and out forevermore. 
 
 Even more strongly is the pilgrim mark upon the fol- 
 lowing Psalm. 1 The time of the feast draws near, and 
 friends and neighbors come, inviting him to join them 
 in their visit to Jerusalem. He was glad when they said 
 unto him " Let us go into the house of Jehovah." Now 
 the scene shifts suddenly to the Holy City itself. Our 
 feet have stood (perhaps a strict perfect, have stood and 
 are still standing) within thy gates, O Jerusalem : Jeru- 
 salem that art built again ; thou that wast laid low, and 
 thy holy and beautiful house burned with fire, thou art 
 builded again : the gaps and waste places and heaps of 
 ruins are gone : thou art a city " compact together." 
 Here are expressed the pride and the thankfulness of an 
 exile who finds the city of his love and honor restored. 
 Others, however, explain the "compact" by the conforma- 
 tion of the site of the city. The hill of Zion was cut off 
 by ravines from the rocky plateau of which it forms a part, 
 and could not overleap the valleys of Kidron nor of Hin- 
 nom. Hence the city was built closely together ; every 
 foot of ground was occupied. 
 
 Under the power of emotions excited by a great historic 
 
 1 cxxii. 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 307 
 
 centre, the mind naturally runs back into the past, and re- 
 calls the incidents of the history. So is it with our pilgrim. 
 He is doing to day what his fathers did. To this city the 
 tribes were wont to go up of old according to God's statute, 
 and as a testimony of their covenant relation to Him : to 
 this city, the centre not only of worship, but of civil au- 
 thority ; where thrones had long been set up for David and 
 for his descendants. What more natural than that, from a 
 review of the past, the thought should turn to prayer for 
 the future prosperity of the Holy City and temple ; in- 
 voking .peace upon the city of peace ? " Peace be within 
 thy walls : prosperity within thy palaces : not only on my 
 own behalf, but for the sake of my brethren and friends, I 
 repeat it, Peace be upon thee." 
 
 This is one of the Psalms which are ascribed to David ; 
 but it contains some things which it is not easy to explain 
 on this supposition. The expression " thrones of the 
 house of David," pointing to a long-established dynasty, 
 would not 'be a natural one upon David's lips : and when 
 we remember that Jerusalem was first wrested from the 
 Jebusites by David, it would seem unlikely that he should 
 speak of it as the place in which, for generations past, the 
 Hebrew tribes had come up before Jehovah. 
 
 The one hundred and twenty-third Psalm has been 
 called the " oculus sperans" y 1 the song of one whose 
 eye is lifted with hope to God. Whether it was origin- 
 ally the plaint of an exile looking for deliverance from 
 captivity, or of one who, after the return, was feeling 
 the contempt and scorn of the Samaritans, it would be 
 
 1 Eye of hope. 
 
308 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 often sung by the pilgrims of later date, as recalling the 
 conditions of that sorrowful time, and as being, no less 
 to them than to their oppressed and suffering ancestors, 
 an appropriate expression both of hope and of desire. 
 " Our eyes wait on Thee to whom our fathers looked. 
 We watch the intimations of Thy will, as the slave watches 
 the master's hand. We supplicate Thee in our own sor- 
 rows." It is easy to conceive how appropriate this Psalm 
 might be to pilgrims in the days of the Roman occupation 
 of Jerusalem. To borrow Mr. Cox's words, "As the 
 caravan advanced from range to range, from city to city, 
 and they saw new proofs that the enemy was in the land, 
 and the alien ruled over them ; as they watched the Roman 
 cohort winding along the road, or saw the Roman guard 
 lounging in the city gate, or were plundered by the Pub- 
 licans who searched their baggage, and demanded the 
 Roman dues and tolls, and felt how impossible it was for 
 them to resist a power so mighty, and so ubiquitous, if 
 the fiercer spirits among them were roused to a stern and 
 fiery resentment, those of a gentler mould might well sigh 
 out their grief and hope in the verses of our Psalm." Nay, 
 who knows if the words may not, as has been suggested 
 by the same author, have been more than once upon the 
 lips of Him who was "despised and rejected of men, op- 
 pressed and afflicted" and esteemed " smitten of God'" ? 1 
 Who knows but He who cried, " Father, save me from this 
 hour," 8 may have given voice to kindred yearnings in the 
 words " Unto Thee do I lift up mine eyes, O Thou that 
 art throned in the Heavens " ? 
 
 1 Isaiah liii. 3, 4. 2 John xii. 27. 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 309 
 
 I can do no more now, than group loosely and sketch 
 some general features of the remaining Psalms, with a view 
 to show how well they might serve as expressions of the 
 thought of pilgrims bound to the Holy City. 
 
 There are, for instance, Psalms of HISTORIC RETROSPECT. 
 What has already been said about the one hundred and 
 twenty-second Psalm, will apply to several of the others. 
 Every journey to Jerusalem would awaken memories of 
 other days, and would lead the minds of the pilgrims over 
 portions of the nation's history. For instance, in the one 
 hundred and twenty-fourth, we have the song of deliver- 
 ance from exile. The sorrows of foreign oppression are de- 
 scribed by imagery which suggests the first deliverance from 
 Egypt, no less than the latest deliverance from Babylon. 
 " The waters," like the Red Sea, " the stream, the proud 
 waters," like the rushing mountain torrent, had well nigh 
 swallowed them up. They were as a bird in a fowler's 
 snare, but they are escaped. Never would a song of thanks- 
 giving for this deliverance be inappropriate ; and often, in 
 after times, when their land was overrun by foreign foes, 
 Greek, Syrian, Roman, it would strengthen the hearts of 
 pilgrims to recall the old deliverance. So they might sing 
 the one hundred and twenty-fifth, the expression of trust 
 on the part of the returned exiles, molested by the Sa- 
 maritans, and troubled by defections among the Jew r s 
 themselves, the righteous "putting forth their hands to 
 iniquity" and "turning aside to crooked ways," contract- 
 ing marriages with the heathen, and neglecting Jehovah's 
 worship as they had done, largely, before Nehemiah's 
 arrival. This, I say, is the song of the faithful remnant ; a 
 song of trust in the God who is " round about His people 
 
3IO Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 as the mountains compass Jerusalem : " who will protect 
 them though no walls are round the city, and who will not 
 suffer "the rod of the wicked to rest upon the lot of the 
 righteous" and tempt them to despair and sin. What 
 later pilgrim could ever look upon the circling mountain 
 ramparts of the Holy City, and not think and sing of his 
 fathers' struggle and of his fathers' faith? So in the one 
 hundred and twenty-sixth, the joy which " filled the exiles' 
 mouth with laughter " is tempered by the feebleness of 
 the little band in the presence of the gigantic work to be 
 done, and of the numerous and powerful enemies. They 
 are but as a tiny thread of water in the sandy plain of the 
 South. 1 They pray, " Turn again our captivity : send home 
 our exiles in such numbers that it may be as when the tor- 
 rents flood this southern plain in the rainy season." They 
 hope while they pray. The tearful sower shall be the joy- 
 ful reaper. It would be a good historic retrospect for any 
 pilgrim of any date. The one hundred and twenty-ninth 
 recalls again the sorrows of captivity, when " the ploughers 
 ploughed upon the back and made long their furrows : " 
 and who that thought of Jerusalem would not think of its 
 sanctuary? of the strange wanderings of the ark, now at 
 Ephratah, now at Kirjath-Jearim, the field of the wood ; 
 of David's yearning to find a place for Jehovah, a dwelling 
 for the Mighty One of Jacob ; of the priests' song as the 
 ark was moved in triumphal procession to its final resting- 
 place : " Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the 
 ark of Thy strength ; " and of the rich promise to the 
 dynasty of David and to Zion his capital. Thus the one 
 
 1 See chap. xvii. " The Gate to the Harvest-Field." 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 311 
 
 hundred and thirty-second falls naturally into the group 
 of pilgrim Psalms. 
 
 2. There are pilgrim Psalms of DOCTRINE AND SPIRIT- 
 UAL EXPERIENCE. Such are the one hundred and thir- 
 tieth and one hundred and thirty-first. The former 
 the u fl.e profundis" is a cry to God for forgiveness, 
 a pleading of trust and of long waiting, an exhortation 
 to Israel likewise to hope and to wait. This is a the- 
 ological Psalm. Luther called it one of the Pauline 
 Psalms, because he said it taught the forgiveness of sins 
 without the law and without works. It reveals the two 
 great roots of Christian theology, sin and forgiveness. 
 What a light is thrown upon the human heart by the 
 words " If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, 
 who shall stand ?" What a glimpse into the redemptive 
 work of God is opened by the succeeding verse ; " There 
 is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayst be feared." 
 What a testimony is borne throughout the Psalm, by the 
 union of personal experience with dogma, that a true 
 theology is bound up with experience and elaborated in 
 living. 
 
 So the one hundred and thirty-first is a song of humility, 
 celebrating the blessedness of him who is of a meek and 
 lowly spirit, as becomes a" forgiven soul ; the "heart not 
 haughty nor the eyes lifted up, quiet as a weaned child." 
 Would not such Psalms as these suggest themselves to 
 one whose eyes were turned toward the sanctuary of the 
 living God, and who was looking forward to. appearing 
 there with offerings for sin, with humble confession and 
 with prayer ? 
 
 3. We have Psalms inspired by DOMESTIC AND Civic 
 
312 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 LIFE. In the one hundred and twenty-seventh and one- 
 hundred and twenty-eighth, we see how home and city 
 are kept by God alone. God is the safeguard of the com- 
 monwealth to whose metropolis the pilgrim is journey- 
 ing, and of the far off home with wife and children, which 
 he is leaving behind. " Mild and bright pictures, 1 ' says 
 Isaac Taylor, 1 "humanizing in the best sense : they retain 
 certain elements of Paradise, and yet more, the elements of 
 the patriarchal era, with the addition of that patriotism and 
 of that concentration in which the patriarchal life was want- 
 ing." In these modern days, when fashion is striking at the 
 dignity and the privilege of motherhood, stamping it as a 
 bar to selfish pleasure, or branding its work as tame and 
 commonplace beside the so-called missions of imsexed 
 women, the old Hebrew conception of the household, with 
 its sense of the honor of parentage and of the sorrow of bar- 
 renness, is like a breath from the mountains in a land of 
 miasma and fever. Would that in every newly-founded 
 household there might be hung the twin pictures in these 
 two Psalms the stalwart sons in the gate, the pride of 
 their father, supporting his dignity and sharing his coun- 
 sels, and the cloistered court, fit type, with its clustering 
 vines and thrifty olives, of the wife and children on the 
 "inner sides of the house;" and, spanning both, the 
 words of the FATHER of " the whole family in heaven and 
 earth," 2 " Behold that THUS shall the man be BLESSED 
 that feareth the Lord." 
 
 We might perhaps group with these the one hundred 
 and thirty-third, the old lesson of brotherly love so power- 
 
 1 Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry. a Ephcsians iii. 15. 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 313 
 
 fully suggested by the sight of Zion. Psalm and Gospel 
 answer to each other. While we listen to Christ, saying, 
 " This is my commandment, that ye love one another/' l 
 we go back to the pilgrim Psalm to see the same lesson in 
 picture, as the fragrant oil drops from the head of God's 
 priest : to learn that only he who loves is God's anointed, 
 and that love, like the dew which bathes alike the lofty 
 Hermon and the lower Zion, alone unites the lofty and 
 the lowly, all social grades and varieties of culture 
 and of fortune, in the Lord's blessing of life forever- 
 more. 
 
 The closing Psalm, if it were not purposely placed at 
 the head of the series, nevertheless admirably serves the pur- 
 pose of a final blessing. Its thought seems to be couched 
 in the imagery of the night-watch of the temple. Some 
 suppose that the greeting in the first and second verses 
 was addressed to the guard going off duty by those who 
 came to relieve them ; who, in turn, received the answer 
 in the third verse. Others, that the greeting was inter- 
 changed between two companies of the night-watch, when 
 they met in making their rounds through the temple. 
 Others again that the first two verses are addressed by 
 the congregation to the priests and Levites who had charge 
 of the night service, and that the third verse is an answer 
 of blessing from them to the congregation gathered on the 
 temple mount. Mr. Cox adopts a variation of this latter 
 view, and draws a graphic picture of a caravan of pilgrims 
 starting on their return before daybreak. Looking up to 
 the temple mount, and seeing the moving torches in the 
 
 1 John xv. 12. 
 
3 14 Gates into the Psalm Country. 
 
 hands of the priestly watchmen, they lift up their voices 
 to the temple guard and cry 
 
 " Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, 
 Who stand in the house of the Lord by night. 
 Lift up your hands toward the sanctuary, 
 And bless ye the Lord." 
 
 And the priests, hearing the salutation, respond, 
 
 " The Lord bles? thee out of Zion. 
 The Maker of Heaven and Earth." 
 
 It is not strange that Bible students love these pilgrim 
 songs. They attach their great theological and moral 
 utterances to the mind through simple and graphic picture- 
 lessons. There is one word which of itself gives them a 
 lasting hold upon the thought and feeling of all Christian 
 ages, and which gathers all their truths and illustrations 
 into one sheaf. The emotion which shook the Hebrew's 
 heart whenever JERUSALEM was named, pervades them all. 
 Each pilgrim has his eye upon Moriah while he sings, as 
 the Moslem turns to Mecca in his prayer. Jerusalem ! 
 The glory of Solomon, the loved goal of generations of 
 pilgrims, the bitter memory of the exile by the Euphrates, 
 the sorrow of Jesiis, the inspiration of Maccabeus, the 
 fiery text of Peter the Hermit, the battle-cry of God- 
 frey and of Tancred pervaded, even in eclipse, with that 
 subtle attraction which drew two centuries against its 
 walls in successive billows of blood, burden of mediaeval 
 hymns, touched with the glow of Dante's verse and mov- 
 ing Tasso to immortal song, God's own type of eternal 
 rest, of a perfect society, and of a pure church, so has 
 
The Gate of the Caravan. 315 
 
 the name passed into Christian thought and Christian 
 song, that he who thinks of Heaven has always the yearn- 
 ing of Bernard's hymn in his heart, if not its words upon 
 his lips : 
 
 " Jerusalem the glorious ! 
 
 The glory of the elect. 
 O dear and future vision 
 
 That eager hearts expect ! 
 Ev'n now by faith I see thee, 
 
 Ev'n here thy walls discern ; 
 To thee my thoughts are kindled, 
 
 And strive, and pant, and yearn." 
 
 They are no less sermons for being poems. Their les- 
 sons are human, not local, fitting as aptly into the nine- 
 teenth century as into their own era ; as fresh and as 
 wholesome to-day as when the Hebrew pilgrim beguiled 
 with their melody his way through the desert, or chanted 
 them in the streets of his beloved city : and as the shad- 
 ows lengthen and the degrees grow fewer by which we 
 mount to the Jerusalem above, these pilgrim songs will 
 be oftener on our lips, till we exiles tread the streets 
 where they sing a new song, and need no more the shade 
 at noon and the watch by night. 
 
 THE 
 


 SEVENTH DY 
 
 1 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY