THE HART
AND
THE WATER-BROOKS;

A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION OF
THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

BY THE
REV. JOHN R. MACDUFF,
AUTHOR OF "MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES," "MEMORIES OF GENNESARET,"
"WORDS Of JESUS," ETC. ETC.

"The portion of God's Word that is specially precious to me, more so than I am able to express, is Psalm forty-second."—Harrington Evans' Life, p. 399.

"What a precious, soul-comforting Psalm is that forty-second!"—Life Of Captain Hammond, p. 289.

LONDON:
JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.
M.DCCC.LX.

EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY,
PAUL'S WORK.

THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

¶ To the Chief Musician, Maschil, for the Sons of Korah.

1 As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,—so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:—when shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my meat day and night,
While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:
For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,—with a multitude that kept holy day.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul?—and why art thou disquieted in me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him
For the help of his countenance [or, His presence is salvation].
6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me:
Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites,
From the hill Mizar.
7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts;
All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
8 Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time,
And in the night his song shall be with me,
And my prayer unto the God of my life.
9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me?
Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
While they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul?—and why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him,
Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.[1]

The following is an excellent poetical paraphrase of the Psalm, by Bishop Lowth:—

"As pants the wearied hart for cooling springs,

That sinks exhausted in the summer's chase;

So pants my longing soul, great King of kings!

So thirsts to reach Thy sacred dwelling-place.

"On briny tears my famish'd soul hath fed,

While taunting foes deride my deep despair;

'Say, where is now thy Great Deliverer fled,

Thy mighty God, deserted wanderer, where?'

"Oft dwell my thoughts on those thrice happy days,

When to Thy fane I led the willing throng;

Our mirth was worship, all our pleasure praise,

And festal joys still closed with sacred song.

"Why throb, my heart? why sink, my saddening soul,

Why droop to earth, with various foes oppress'd?

My years shall yet in blissful circles roll,

And peace be yet an inmate of this breast.

"By Jordan's banks with devious steps I stray,

O'er Hermon's rugged rocks and deserts dear:

E'en there Thy hand shall guide my lonely way,

There Thy remembrance shall my spirit cheer.

"In rapid floods the vernal torrents roll,

Harsh sounding cataracts responsive roar;

Thine angry billows overwhelm my soul,

And dash my shatter'd bark from shore to shore.

"Yet Thy sure mercies ever in my sight,

My heart shall gladden through the tedious day;

And 'midst the dark and gloomy shades of night,

To Thee I'll fondly tune the grateful lay.

"Rock of my hope! great Solace of my heart!

Why, why desert the offspring of Thy care,

While taunting foes thus point th' invidious dart,

'Where is thy God, abandon'd wanderer, where?'

"Why faint, my soul? why doubt Jehovah's aid?

Thy God the God of mercy still shall prove;

Within His courts thy thanks shall yet be paid,

Unquestion'd be His pity and His love."

I.

The Scene of the Psalm.

"Where is thy favour'd haunt, Eternal Voice,

The region of Thy choice,

Where, undisturb'd by sin and earth, the soul

Owns Thine entire control?

'Tis on the mountain's summit dark and high,

Where storms are hurrying by:

'Tis 'mid the strong foundations of the earth,

Where torrents have their birth.

No sounds of worldly toil ascending there

Mar the full burst of prayer;

Lone nature feels that she may freely breathe,

And round us and beneath

Are heard her sacred tones: the fitful sweep

Of winds across the steep,

The dashing waters where the air is still,

From many a torrent rill—.

Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart

For thought to do her part."

"The spot was so attractive to me, as well as the view of the surrounding country so charming, that I had great difficulty in tearing myself away from it. In the foreground, at my feet, was the Jordan flowing through its woods of tamarisks. On the other side rose gently the plain of Beisan surmounted by the high tell of that name. In the distance were the mountains of Gilboa—the whole stretch of which is seen, even as far as ancient Jezreel."—Van de Velde's Travels in Syria and Palestine, vol. ii. p. 355.

I.

THE SCENE OF THE PSALM.

All recent explorers of Palestine speak in glowing terms of that "solemn eastern background," with its mellow tints of blue and purple, rising conspicuous, as if a wall built by giants, from the deep gorge or valley of the Jordan. This mountain range, and especially the hills of Gilead, with their rugged ravines and forests of sycamore and terebinth, are full of blended memories of joy and sadness. From one of these slopes, the Father of the Faithful obtained his first view of his children's heritage. On another, the Angels of God—the two bright celestial bands—greeted Jacob on his return from his sojourn in Syria.[2] From another, trains of wailing captives on their way to Babylon, must oft and again have taken through their tears their last look of "the mountains round about Jerusalem." Nigh the same spot, the footsteps of our blessed Redeemer Himself lingered, when death was hovering over the couch of the friend He loved at Bethany. Martha and Mary, from their Village-home, must have lifted their eyes to these same "hills," from whence they knew, in the extremity of their anguish, their "help" alone could come. While, at a later period, the same spot was rendered illustrious as the locality of Pella, the mountain fortress and asylum whither their Lord had admonished His followers to flee, when the Imperial Eagles of Rome were gathered by Titus around the devoted city.[3]

This "land beyond the Jordan" still further derives an imperishable interest from being the exile-retreat of the sweet Singer of Israel in the most pathetic period of his chequered life and reign. There is no more touching episode in all Hebrew history than the recorded flight of David from his capital on the occasion of the rebellion of Absalom and the defection of his people. Passing, barefoot and weeping, across the brook Kedron, and thence by the fords of Jericho, he sped northwards with his faithful adherents, and found a temporary shelter amid these remote fastnessess.

Minds of a peculiar temperament have often found it a relief, in seasons of sadness, to give expression to their pent-up feelings in poetry or song. Ancient as well as modern verse and music abound with striking examples of this,—"Songs in the Night," when the mouldering harp was taken down from the willows by some captive spirit, and made to pour forth its strains or numbers in touching elegy. David's own lament for Jonathan is a gush of intensified feeling which will occur to all, and which could have been penned only in an agony of tears.[4]

It was a spirit crushed and broken with other, but not less poignant sorrows, which dictated this Psalm of his exile. May we not imagine that, in addition to the tension of feeling produced by his altered fortunes, there was in the very scene of his banishment, where the plaintive descant was composed, much to inspire poetic sentiment? The alternate calm and discord of outer nature found their response in his own chequered experiences. Nature's Æolian harp—its invisible strings composed of rustling leaves and foaming brooks, or the harsher tones of tempest and thunder, flood and waterfall—awoke the latent harmonies of his soul. They furnished him with a key-note to discourse higher melodies, and embody struggling thoughts in inspired numbers. In reading this Psalm we at once feel that we are with the Minstrel King, not in the Tabernacle of Zion, but in some glorious "House not made with hands,"—some Cathedral whose aisles are rocky cliffs and tangled branches, and its roof the canopy of Heaven!

Let us picture him seated in one of those deep glens listening to the murmur of the rivulet and the wail of the forest. Suddenly the sky is overcast Dark clouds roll their masses along the purple peaks. The lightning flashes; and the old oaks and terebinths of Bashan bend under the tumult of the storm. The higher rivulets have swelled the channel of Jordan,—"deep calls to deep"—the waves chafe and riot along the narrow gorges. Suddenly a struggling ray of sunshine steals amid the strife, and a stray note from some bird answers joyously to its gleam. It is, however, but a gleam. The sky again threatens, fresh bolts wake the mountain echoes. The river rolls on in augmented volume, and the wind wrestles fiercely as ever with the denizens of the forest. At last the contest is at an end. The sky is calm—the air refreshed—the woods are vocal with song—ten thousand dripping boughs sparkle in the sunlight; the meadows wear a lovelier emerald; and rock, and branch, and floweret, are reflected in the bosom of the stream.

As the royal spectator with a poet and painter's eye is gazing on this shifting diorama, and when Nature is laughing and joyous again amid her own tear-drops, another simple incident arrests his attention. A Hart or Deer, hit by the archers or pursued by some wild beast on these "mountains of the leopards," with hot eyeballs and panting sides, comes bounding down the forest glade to quench the rage of thirst. The sight suggests nobler aspirations. With trembling hand and tearful eye the exiled spectator awakes his harp-strings, and bequeaths to us one of the most pathetic musings in the whole Psalter. The 23d has happily been called "the nightingale of the Psalms;" this may appropriately be termed "the turtle-dove." We hear the lonely bird as if seated on a solitary branch warbling its "reproachful music," or rather struggling on the ground with broken wing, uttering a doleful lament. These strains form an epitome of the Christian life—a diary of religious experience, which, after three thousand years, find an echo in every heart. Who can wonder that they have smoothed the death-pillow of dying saints, and taken a thorn from the crown of the noble army of martyrs![5]

II.

The General Scope of the Psalm.

"Like unto ships far off at sea,

Outward or homeward bound are we:

Before, behind, and all around

Floats and swings the horizon's bound;

Seems at its outer rims to rise,

And climb the crystal wall of the skies;

And then again to turn and sink,

As if we could slide from its outer brink.

Ah! it is not the sea that sinks and shelves,

But ourselves

That rock and rise

With endless and uneasy motion—

Now touching the very skies,

Now sinking into the depths of ocean."

"The Scriptures have laid a flat opposition between faith and sense. We live by faith and not by sense. They are two buckets—the life of faith and the life of sense; when one goes up, the other goes down."—Bridge, 1637.

"There are twins striving within me; a Jacob and an Esau. I can, through Thy grace, imitate Thy choice, and say with Thee, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. Blessed God! make Thou that word of Thine good in me, that the elder shall serve the younger."—Bishop Hall, 1656.

II.

THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE PSALM.

"If the Book of Psalms be, as some have styled it, a mirror or looking-glass of pious and devout affections, this Psalm, in particular, deserves as much as any one Psalm to be so entitled, and is as proper as any other to kindle and excite such in us. Gracious desires are here strong and fervent; gracious hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, are here struggling. Or we may take it for a conflict between sense and faith; sense objecting, and faith answering."[6]

In these few words, the Father of commentators, with his wonted discernment, has given us the key to the true interpretation of this sacred song. It may be regarded, indeed, as the Old Testament parallel to the 7th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which another inspired writer truthfully and powerfully portrays the same great struggle between corruption and grace, faith and sense, "the old and the new man."

There are two antagonist principles in the heart of every believer, corresponding to the great forces which act in the material world. The tendency of his new nature is to gravitate towards God—the Divine Sun of his being—the centre of his fondest affections—the object of his deepest love. But "there is a law in his members warring against the law of his mind;"[7]—the remains of his old nature, leading him to wander in wide and eccentric orbit from the grand Source of light, and happiness, and joy! "What will ye see in the Shulamite?" asks the Spouse in the Canticles, personating the believer (at a time, too, when conscious of devoted attachment to the Lord she loved). The reply is, "As it were the company of two armies." (Sol. Song vi. 13.) Sight on the one hand, Faith on the other. The carnal mind, which is enmity against God, battling with the renewed spiritual mind, which brings life and peace. Affections heaven-born, counteracted and marred by affections earth-born. The magnet would be true to its pole but for disturbing moral influences. The eagle would soar, but it is chained to the cage of corruption. The believer would tread boldly on the waves, but unbelief threatens to sink him. He would fight the battles of the faith, but there is "a body of death" chained to his heavenly nature, which compels him to mingle denunciations of himself as "a wretched man" with the shouts of victory.[8]

We may imagine David, when he composed this Psalm, wrapped in silent contemplation—the past, the present, and the future suggesting mingled reflections. The shepherd, the king, the fugitive! Sad comment on the alternations of human life! humbling lesson for God's Anointed! It furnishes him with a true estimate of the world's greatness. It has taught him the utter nothingness of all here as a portion for the soul. Amid outward trial and inward despondency, Faith looks to its only true refuge and resting-place. His truant heart softened and saddened by calamity, turns to its God,—"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" (Ver. 1, 2.) But the wave is beaten back again! He remembers his sins and his sorrows, and (more galling to his sensitive spirit) the taunts of ungodly scoffers. "My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" (Ver. 3.) Moreover, he is denied the solace of public ordinances. He can no longer, as once he could, light the decaying ashes of his faith at the fires of the altar. Memory dwelt with chastened sadness on the hours of holy convocation. "When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day." (Ver. 4.) But, once more, the new-born principle regains the mastery. He rebukes his own unbelief, urges renewed dependence on God, and triumphs in the assurance of His countenance and love. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance." (Ver. 5.) But again the harp is muffled! Unbelief musters her ranks; fresh remembrances of sin and sorrow crowd upon him. "O my God, my soul is cast down within me." (Ver. 6.) Faith, however, has its antidote at hand, and the momentary cause of depression is removed. The memory of former succours and mercies inspires with confidence for the future, and he immediately adds, "I will remember Thee (in this the place of my Exile) from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar."

But the storm-clouds are still wreathing his sky;—nay, it seems as if the tempest were deepening. Fresh assaults of temptation are coming in upon him;—there seems no light in the cloud, no ray in the darkness. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." (Ver. 7.) But again, his own extremity is God's opportunity; Faith is seen cresting the resurgent waves. Lifting his voice above the storm, he thus expresses his assurance in God's faithfulness, "Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life." (Ver. 8.) Nay, he resolves in all time to come to provide against the return of seasons of guilty distrust and misgiving. He dictates and transcribes the very words of a prayer to be employed as an antidote in any such recurring moments of despondency. He resolves to rise above frames and feelings, and to plant his feet on the Rock of Ages, which these fluctuating billows can never shake;—"I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" (Ver. 9.) The Old nature makes one last and final effort, ere abandoning the conflict. Unbelief rallies its strength. A former assault is renewed. "As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?" (Ver. 10.) But he reverts to his prayer! He adopts his own liturgy for a time of sorrow. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him." (Ver. 11.) He seems to be "answered while yet speaking;" for he closes with the joyful declaration, "Who is the health of my countenance, and my God." (Ver. 11.) He had made a similar assertion in a former verse (Ver. 5), "I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance;" but now he can add the language of triumphant assurance, "My God!" The conflict is ended;—sense quits the field, and faith conquers. He began the Psalm in trouble, he ends it with joy. Its notes throughout are on the minor key, but these merge at last into a strain of triumph. He began comparing himself to the stricken deer—the helpless, breathless, panting fugitive;—he ends it with angel's words,—with the motto and watchword in which a seraph might well glory—heaven knows no happier—"My God!"

"He looked," says Matthew Henry, "upon the living God as his chief good, and had set his heart upon Him accordingly, and was resolved to live and die by Him; and casting anchor thus at first, he rides out the storm."

O child of God! touchingly expressive picture have we here of the strange vicissitudes in thy history. The shuttle in the web of thy spiritual life, darting hither and thither, weaving its chameleon hues; or, to adopt a more appropriate emblem, thy heart a battle-field, and "no discharge in that war" till the pilgrim-armour be exchanged for the pilgrim-rest:—sense and sin doing their utmost to quench the bivouac-fires of faith, and give the enemy the advantage: ay, and they would succeed in quenching these, did not the Lord of pilgrims feed with the oil of His own grace the languishing flame. "Sometimes," it has been well said, "in the Voyages of the Soul, we feel that we can only go by anxious soundings,—the compass itself seeming useless—not knowing our bearings,—nearing here Christ—then perhaps the dim tolling bell amidst the thick darkness warning us to keep off."[9] But fear not; He will "bring you to the haven where ye would be." The voice of triumph will be heard high above the water-floods. The contest may be long, but it will not be doubtful. He who rules the raging of the sea will, in His own good time, say, "Peace, be still, and immediately there will be a great calm." Have you ever watched the career of the tiny branch or withered leaf which has been tossed into a little virgin rill on one of our high-table lands or mountain moors? For a while, in its serpentine course, it is borne sluggishly along, impeded by protruding moss, or stone, or lichen. Now it circles and saunters hither and thither on the lazy streamlet—now floating back towards the point of departure, as if uncertain which direction to choose. A passing breath of wind carries it to the centre, and the buoyant rivulet sings its way joyously onward, bearing its little burden through copse, and birch, and heather. But again it is obstructed. Some deep inky pool detains it in the narrow ravine. There it is sucked in, whirled and twisted about, chafed and tortured with the conflict of waters; or else it lies a helpless prisoner, immured by the rocks in their fretting caldrons. But by and by, with a new impulse it breaks away along the rapid torrent-stream, bounding over cascade and waterfall, home to its ocean destiny.

So it is with the soul! It is often apparently the sport and captive of opposing currents. It has its pools of darkness, its eddies of unbelief, its jagged rocks of despair, but it will eventually clear them all. "All motion," to use the words of one of the best and saintliest of the old writers on this very Psalm (Sibbs), and which carry out our illustration, "All motion tends to rest, and ends in it. God is the centre and resting-place of the soul; and here David takes up his rest, and so let us. We see that discussing of objections in the consistory of the Soul, settles the Soul at last—Faith at length silencing all risings to the contrary. Then whatsoever times come, we are sure of a hiding-place and a sanctuary."

Yes! your life, notwithstanding all these fluctuations, will end triumphantly. It may, as in this Psalm, be now a pæan, then a dirge; now a Miserere, then a Te Deum. The Miserere and Te Deum may be interweaved throughout; but the latter will close the Life-story—the concluding strain will be the anthem of Victory. You may arrest the arrow in its flight—you may chain the waterfall, or stay the lightning, sooner than unsay the words of God, "He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. i. 6.)

Remember, God does not say, that "good work" is never to be impeded. He has never given promise in Scripture of an unclouded day—uninterrupted sunshine—a waveless, stormless sea. No, "the morning without clouds" is a heavenly emblem. The earthly one is "a day, in which the light shall neither be clear nor dark." (Zech. xiv. 6.) The analogy of the outer world of nature, at least under these our chequered and ever-varying skies, teaches us this. Spring comes smiling, and pours her blossoms into the lap of Summer. But the skies lower, and the rain and battering hail descend, and the virgin blossoms droop their heads and almost die. Summer again smiles and the meadows look gay; the flowers ring merry chimes with their leaves and petals, and Autumn with glowing face is opening her bosom for the expected treasure. But all at once drought comes with her fiery footsteps. Every blade and floweret, gasping for breath, lift their blanched eyelids to the brazen sky; or the night-winds rock the laden branches and strew the ground. Thus we see it is not one unvarying, unchecked progression, from the opening bud to the matured fruit. But every succeeding month is scarred and mutilated by drought and moisture, wind and rain, storm and sunshine. Yet, never once has Autumn failed to gather up her golden sheaves; ay, and if you ask her testimony, she will tell that the very storm, and wind, and rain you dreaded as foes, were the best auxiliaries in filling her yellow garners.

If the experience of any one here present be that of "the deep" and "the water-flood"—"the stormy wind and tempest," think ever of the closing words of the Psalm, and let them "turn your mourning into dancing; take off your sackcloth, and gird you with gladness!" You may change towards God, but He is unchanging towards you. The stars may be swept from our view by intervening clouds, but they shine bright as ever,—undimmed altar-fires in the great temple of the universe. Our vision may be at fault, but not their radiance and undying glory. The Being "not confined to temples made with hands," who met this wrestler of old in the forest of Gilead, and poured better than Gilead's balm into his bosom, is the same now as He was then. And if thou art a wrestler too, He seems through the moaning of the storm to say, "Though thou fall, yet shalt thou not be cast down utterly, for the Lord upholdeth thee with his right hand."

"My God!" Oh, if that be the last entry in the Diary of religious experience, be not desponding now because of present passing shadows, but "thank God and take courage." It is written that "at evening-time it shall be light." (Zech. xiv. 7.) The sun may wade all day through murky clouds, but he will pillow his head at night on a setting couch of vermilion and gold. "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."[10] It was said by aged Jacob, in his prophetic death-song, regarding that very tribe on the borders of which the royal exile now sang, "Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last."[11] Was not this the key-note of his present elegy? Faith could lift its head triumphant in the clang of battle, amid these troops of spiritual plunderers, and sing, "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in THIS will I be confident."[12]

III.

A Peculiar Experience.

"I ask'd the Lord that I might grow

In faith, and love, and every grace;

Might more of His salvation know,

And seek more earnestly His face.

"'Twas He who taught me thus to pray;

And He, I trust, has answer'd prayer,

But it has been in such a way

As almost drove me to despair.

"I hoped that in some favour'd hour

At once He'd answer my request;

And by His love's constraining power,

Subdue my sins and give me rest.

"Instead of this, He made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of hell

Assault my soul in every part."

—Cowper.

"If we listen to David's harp, we shall hear as many hearse-like harmonies as carols."—Lord Bacon.

"If we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here. If not, we must sympathise with those whose case they speak too plainly, and thank God it is not our own case."—Matthew Henry.

III.

A PECULIAR EXPERIENCE.

Although this Psalm, in bold and striking figure, presents a faithful miniature picture of the Believer's life, we must regard it as depicting an extraordinary experience at a peculiar passage of David's history, and which has its counterpart still in that of many of God's children.

The writer of the Psalm was evidently undergoing "spiritual depression"—what is sometimes spoken of as "spiritual desertion,"—that sorrow, awful in its reality—too deep for utterance—deeper than the yawning chasm made by family bereavement—the sorrow of all sorrows, the loss of God in the soul!

There is much caution needed in speaking of this. There are causes which lead to spiritual depression which are purely physical, arising from a diseased body, an overstrung mind—a succession of calamities weakening and impairing the nervous system. We know how susceptible are the body and mind together, of being affected by external influences. "We are," says an able analyser of human emotions, "fearfully and wonderfully made. Of that constitution which in our ignorance we call union of soul and body, we know little respecting what is cause, and what effect. We would fain believe that the mind has power over the body; but it is just as true that the body rules the mind. Causes apparently the most trivial—a heated room, want of exercise—a sunless day, a northern aspect—will make all the difference between happiness and unhappiness; between faith and doubt; between courage and indecision. To our fancy there is something humiliating in being thus at the mercy of our animal organism. We would fain find nobler causes for our emotions."[13] Yes—many of those sighs and tears, and morbid, depressed feelings, which Christians speak of as the result of spiritual darkness and the desertion of God, are merely the result of physical derangement, the penalty often for the violation of the laws of health. The atmosphere we breathe is enough to account for them. They come and go—rise and fall with the mercury in the tube. These are cases, not for the spiritual, but for the bodily physician. Their cure is in attendance to the usual laws and prescriptions which regulate the healthy action of the bodily functions.

There is another class of causes which lead to spiritual depression which are partly physical and partly religious. There must necessarily be depression where there is undue elation; where the soul-structure is built on fluctuating frames and feelings, and the religious life is made more subjective than objective.

Many imagine, unless they are at all times in a glow of fervour—an ecstatic frame of feeling—all must be wrong with them.[14] Now, there is nothing more dangerous or deceptive than a life of mere feeling; and its most dangerous phase is a life of religious emotional excitement. It is in the last degree erroneous to consider all this glowing ecstasy of frame a necessary condition of healthy spiritual life. Artificial excitement, in any shape, is perilous. Apart altogether from the moral and religious aspect of the question, the tendency of the ball-room and theatre, and a preference in reading for works of fiction, is to make a man nauseate the plain, commonplace work, the occurrences and themes of this every-day world. Feed him on dainties and forced meats, and he despises husks and plain fare. Equally true is this with regard to the life of the soul. It is not fed on luscious stimulants and ecstatic experiences. When it is so, the result is every now and then a collapse; like a child building his mimic castle too high, the perpendicular and equilibrium are lost. It totters and falls, and he has just to begin again. The dew distils, and hangs its spangled jewels on blade and flower, gently and in silence. The rain comes down in tiny particles and soft showers, not in drenching water-floods. So the healthy Christian holds on the even tenor of his way, unaffected by the barometer of feeling. He knows this is apt to be elevated and depressed by a thousand accidents over which he has no control. His life is fed, not from the fitful and uncertain streams issuing from the low ground of his own experience, but from the snow-clad summits—the Alps of God. Were he thus suffering himself to depend on the rills of his own feelings, his brook would often be dry in summer—the season when he most needed it; whereas the supply from the glacier-beds on which the sun shines, is fullest in these very times of drought.

Add to this, religion is shorn of its glory when it is dwarfed into a mere thing of sentiment and feeling. Its true grandeur and greatness is, when it incorporates itself with active duty, and fulfils its best definition as not a "being" but a "doing." Of nothing, therefore, do we require to be more jealous, than a guilty, unmanly, morbid dwelling on feelings and experiences. You remember Elijah, when he fled pusillanimous and panic-stricken from his work, and took to a hermit-cell amid the solitudes of Sinai. We find him seated in his lonely cave, his head drooping on his breast, sullen thought mantling his brow, muttering his querulous soliloquy, "I am left alone." The voice of God hunts out the fugitive from duty. "What doest thou here, Elijah? Why in this cave, brooding in a coward spirit, unworthy of thee? Art thou to cease to work for Me, because the high day of excitements on the heights of Carmel are over? Here is food to strengthen thy body, and here is 'the still, small voice' of my love to strengthen thy soul. Go forth to active duty. Leave thy cave and thy cloak behind thee. Take thy pilgrim-staff and scrip, and with the consciousness of a great work in hand, and a brief time to do it in, arise, and onward to Horeb, the mount of God!" (1 Kings xix.)

But having thrown out these preliminary cautions, the question occurs: Are there no cases of spiritual depression or desertion, arising purely from spiritual causes?

We answer, Yes. The Bible recognises such Spiritual darkness—absence of all spiritual comfort and joy—is no figment of man's theological creed. It is a sad and solemn verity—the experience, too, of God's own children. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?" (Isa. l. 10.) "Oh," says the afflicted patriarch of Uz, "that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness." (Job xxix. 2, 3.) "In my prosperity," is the testimony of David, at a later period of his life, "I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled." (Ps. xxx. 5-7.) "I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.... My beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer." (Sol. Song iii. 2, v. 6.) Can we forget a more awful and impressive example? One soaring above the reach of all grovelling human experiences, but yet who tells us, in His bitter Eloi cry, that even He knew what it was to be God-deserted and forsaken!

Are there any whose eyes trace these pages who have ever undergone such a season? or it may be are undergoing it now? I stop not to inquire as to the cause;—indulged sin, omitted or carelessly performed duty, neglect of prayer, worldly conformity.[15] Are you feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of many, has waxed cold;—are you mourning that you have not the nearness to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,—not the love of your Bibles, and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,—that a heavy cloud mantles your spiritual horizon,—God's countenance, not what once it was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,—nor heaven what once it seemed, a second home?

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, not comforted!" do not despond. In these very sighings and moanings of your downcast spirit, there are elements for hope and comfort, not for despair. They are the evidences and indications that the spark, though feeble, is not quenched—that the pulse, though languid, still beats—that faith, though like a grain of mustard-seed, is still germinating. "O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?" It is that very shadow that has now come athwart your soul, and which you so bitterly mourn, which tells of sunshine. As it is the shadow which enables us to read the hours on the dial, so is it in the spiritual life. It is because of these shadows on the soul's dial-face that we can infer the shining of a better Sun. "The wicked have no bands in their (spiritual) death." Their life has been nothing but shadow; they cannot therefore mourn the loss of a sunshine they never felt or enjoyed. Well has it been said, "When the refreshing dews of grace seem to be withheld, and we are ready to say, 'Our hope is lost, God hath forgotten to be gracious'—this is that furnace in which one that is not a child of God never was placed. For Satan takes good care not to disquiet his children. He has no fire for their souls on this side everlasting burnings; his fatal teaching ever is, Peace, peace!"[16] But what, desponding one, is, or ought to be, thy resort? Go! exile in spirit—go, like that royal mourner amid the oak-thickets of Gilead! Brood no more in unavailing sorrow and with burning tears. Thou mayest, like him, have much to depress thy spirit. Black and crimson sins may have left their indelible stain on the page of memory. In aching heart-throbs, thou mayest be heaving forth the bitter confession, "Mine iniquities have separated between me and my God." But go like him! take down thy silent harp. Its strings may be corroded with rust. They may tell the touching story of a sad estrangement. Go to the quiet solitude of thy chamber. Seek out the unfrequented path of prayer;—choked it may be with the weeds of forgetfulness and sloth. Cast thyself on thy bended knees; and, as the wounded deer bounds past thee (emblem of thine own bleeding heart), wake the echoes of thy spirit with the penitential cry, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!"

CONTENTS OF THE PSALM.

I.

The Hart Panting.

"Oh, would I were as free to rise

As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,

The arrowy light of sunset skies,

Or sound—or rays—or star of morn,

Which meets in heaven at twilight's close,

Or aught which soars uncheck'd and free,

Through earth and heaven, that I might lose

Myself in finding Thee!"

"O mysterious Jesus, teach us Thy works and Thy plans. Let our hearts pant after Thee as the hart after the water-brooks. Create a thirst which nothing shall satisfy but the fountain of eternal love. See the velocity with which the needle flees to the magnet when it gets within distance; so shall we hasten to our Magnet—our Beloved—as we approach Him."—Lady Powerscourt's Letters.

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

I.

THE HART PANTING.

We have pictured, in a preceding chapter, the uncrowned Monarch of Israel seated, pensive and sad, amid "the willows by the water-courses;" or wandering forth, amid the deepening twilight-shadows, with the roll of Jordan at his side, perhaps, like his great ancestor, to "wrestle with God until the breaking of the day."

We have already adverted to the simple incident which arrested his attention. A breathless tenant of the forest bounded past him to quench its thirst in the neighbouring river. That unconscious child of nature furnishes the key-note of his song. Let us sit by the banks, as the Exile takes down his harp, and thus sings—"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."

God is the only satisfying portion of the soul. Every theory of human happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the infinite, man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its borrowed light, will compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as well expect the caged wild beast to be happier within the iron bars of his den than roaming lord of the forest, as for the human spirit to be content with the present and the finite as a substitute for the immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone could slake the thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have offered it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks of Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have bounded down the valley in search of the stream.

So with the soul. Nothing but the stream flowing from the Everlasting Hills will satisfy it. You may tempt a man, as he is hurrying on his immortal way, with the world's pastures,—you may hold out to him the golden sheaves of riches,—you may detain him amid the sunny glades of pleasure, or on the hill-tops of fame (and he is but too willing for a while to linger)—but satisfy him they cannot! When his nobler nature acquires its rightful ascendancy he will spurn them all. Brushing each one in succession away, as the stag does the dewy drops of the morning, he will say—"All are insufficient! I wish them not. I have been mocked by their failure. I have found that each has a lie in its right hand;—it is a poor counterfeit—a shadowy figure of the true. I want the fountain of living waters—I want the Infinite of Knowledge, Goodness, Truth, Love!" "In the Lord put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"[17]

The fact is, it is the very grandeur of the soul which leads it thus to pant after God. Small things satisfy a small capacity, but what is made receptive of the vast and glorious can only be satisfied with great things. The mind of the child is satisfied with the toy or the bauble; the mind of the untutored savage with bits of painted glass or tinsel; but the man, the sage, the philosopher, desiderate higher possessions, purer knowledge, nobler themes of thought and objects of ambition. Some insects are born for an hour, and are satisfied with it. A summer's afternoon is the duration of existence allotted to myriads of tiny ephemera. In their case, youth and age are crowded into a few passing minutes. The descending sun witnesses their birth and death;—the lifetime of other animals would be to them an immortality. The soul, being infinite and unlimited in its capacities, has correspondingly high aspirations. Vain would be the attempt to fill up a yawning gulf by throwing into it a few grains of sand. But not more vain or ineffectual than try to answer the deep yearnings of the human spirit by the seen and the temporal.

Yes! on all the world's fountains, drink at them as you may, "thirst again" is written. Of the world's mountains, climb them as you may, you will never say, "I have reached the coveted summit. It is enough." Men go sighing on, drinking their rivers of pleasure and climbing their mountains of vanity. They feel all the while some undefined, inarticulate, nameless longing after a satisfying good; but it is a miserable travestie to say that it has been found, or can be found, in anything here. "Who will shew us any good?" will still be the cry of the groping seeker till he has learned to say, "Lord, lift Thou upon me the light of thy countenance."

We know how hard and difficult it is to convince of these sublime verities. The soul, even in its hours of trouble and deep conviction, is like a castaway from shipwreck, who sees from his raft-planks something cresting the waves. He imagines it an island! As he nears it, he fancies he sees purple flowers drooping over the solid rock, and the sea-birds nestling in the crevices. But it is only an aggregate of withered leaves and rotten branches, which the receding tide has tossed together, the wayward freak of old ocean.

"All are wanderers gone astray

Each in his own delusions; they are lost

In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd

And never won. Dream after dream ensues;

And still they dream that they shall still succeed,

And still are disappointed. Rings the world

With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,

And add two-thirds of the remaining half,

And find the total of their hopes and fears

Dreams, empty dreams."[18]—Cowper's Task.

Let him who would solve this great problem of Happiness go to that parable of nature—the hunted Stag seeking the water-brooks, the thirsty soul seeking its God. God is the home of the soul, and he is away from home who pitches his tent and weaves his heart-affections around anything short of Him. Who has not heard of "home-sickness"—the desolate feelings of the lonely stranger in a strange land? Let affection, and friendship, and pity do what they may to alleviate the pang of distance and separation, though beaming faces be around, and hands of love and sympathy be extended, still will the heart (despite of all) be roaming the old hallowed haunts, climbing in thought the hills of childhood, gazing on the old village church with its festoons of ivy, seated under the aged elm, or listening to the music of the passing brook and the music of voices sweeter and lovelier than all! The soul is that stranger, dwelling in the tents of Kedar, and panting for Heaven and God. Its language is, "I am not at home, I am a stranger here." Manifold, too, are the voices in this the land of its exile, whispering, "Arise ye and depart, for this is NOT your rest!"[19]

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

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

II.

The Hart Wounded.

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd

Long since. With many an arrow deep infix'd

My panting side was charged, when I withdrew,

To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.

There was I found by One who had Himself

Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,

And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"

—Cowper.

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

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

II.

The Hart Wounded.

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

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

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

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

But there are arrows also from the quiver of God. "The arrows of the Almighty," says Job, "are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit." (Job vi. 4.) "He hath bent His bow," says Jeremiah, "and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins." (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?—"Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are His mercies!" "Faithful are the wounds of this friend." (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee—Let him that is athirst, come.

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

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

III.

The Living God.

"Hear me! To Thee my soul in suppliance turneth;

Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.

For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearneth:

Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."

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

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

III.

THE LIVING GOD.

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

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

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

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

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice of a living Saviour proclaims His name. "It is I (lit. I am); be not afraid!" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest, lulls their trembling spirits to rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV.

The Taunt.

"'Wilt thou leave me thus,' I cried,

'Whelm'd beneath the rolling tide?'

Ah! return and love me still;

See me subject to Thy will;

Frown with wrath, or smile with grace,

Only let me see Thy face!

Evil I have none to fear,

All is good, if Thou art near.

King, and Lord, whom I adore,

Shall I see Thy face no more?"

—Madame Guyon.

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

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

IV.

THE TAUNT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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