Stilled and Quieted

Psalm cxxxi. 2

This psalm is perhaps the most exquisite expression of the Christ-spirit before the incarnation. There is nothing to match it, save the words which tell that the heart of the Redeemer is meek and lowly, and that the childlike and humble are the special subjects of the kingdom which He is setting up among men.

It is one of the shortest of the psalms, because the humble and contrite spirit is content to fill but a little space, and yet, for all its brevity, it has probably exerted as much influence on men as its companion Psalm cxix. The one is as the silvery treble pipe, the other as the deep bass in the organ of Scripture, to which the Psalter may be very properly likened.

The psalm is also unadorned. Others of its companions bear traces of splendid conception and elaboration; they come forth bedecked with the jewels of imaginative poetry; but there is here no attempt at anything more than a statement of the placid experience of the inner life, which was once rocked and overcast with storms, but is now pellucid and tranquil as a mountain tarn in summer.

It is said to be “A Song of Ascents” (R.V.). At first sight it might seem out of harmony with the rest of these glorious pilgrim hymns, well suited to those who are climbing to the city of

God. It resembles rather Bunyan’s shepherd boy, singing to himself in the valley, than the stalwart pilgrims breasting the steep. So meditative and lowly, there is little of the exulting strain to match the soaring soul. But it is better to climb by stooping, to ascend by our descents, to mount up with wings because we have learned to lie among the pots. It is noticeable that this psalm of the child-heart follows that in which the psalmist claims forgiveness with the sob of penitential contrition. Perhaps we must appropriate the former before we can properly appreciate the latter. It is very strange, but true, that only through the gate of true soul-sorrow for sin can we pass into complete likeness to the little child who is as yet innocent of conscious sin. It is as if there is a kinship between the forgiven prodigal

and the sweet child that has not gone i L. Di beyond the precincts of the Father’s home. Thus, in heaven, saints like Augustine will be perfectly at home with the hundred and forty-four thousand who have never defiled their garments. The psalm is attributed to David, and there is no reason to doubt his authorship. But this adds new interest to it, for it is clear that it was not natural to that lion-heart to write like this. From his earliest maturity he had been a man of war, trained in the camp and court, where force and pride hold sway; compelled to force his way to the throne through intrigue and calumny, too stained with blood to be permitted to build the temple of peace — his was not the hand that we should have naturally credited with this tender and delicate sonnet. It must have come to him when some of the rougher experiences of his life had passed and he had felt the necessity of curbing his strong, impetuous spirit. If this be the case there is some hope that others of us, whose life has been stormy, and whose natural bent is in the direction of pride and self-sufficiency, may be led through similar exercises of soul to say, as he did, “The days in which my heart was haughty and mine eyes lofty are past. Not now do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too wonderful for me. I have learned to still and quiet my soul like a weanling upon its mother’s knee.” I. The sentiments of this psalm

ARE NOT NATURALLY OURS. The heart of man is full of pride, which shows itself in many ways.

There is the Pharaoh phase, in which we proudly refuse to renounce, at the bidding of God, that which we claim to have acquired by our own ingenuity or capacity. “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him to let Israel go?”

There is the Naaman phase, which starts back in a rage from some simple ordinance to which the Lord claims obedience.

There is the Haman phase, that cannot endure the refusal of a Mordecai to stand up or move for him. “All this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”

There is the Hezekiah phase, in which we show all the treasures of our home in the spirit of ostentation and vain display.

There is the Pilate phase, which refuses the remonstrances of the Christ that stands to be judged.

Proud of our religious observances, of our charities and self-denials, of the positions we hold in the church, of our very humility and courtesies to the poor; impatient of the least slight; annoyed if not treated with sufficient or customary respect; quick to take offense; cherishing feelings of dislike to those who outstrip us; bent on edging our way to front positions; priding ourselves on the successes we have achieved, the talents with which we are gifted, the services we have rendered to the cause of Christ — few of us can say, “My heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty.” %

What a contrast between us, dwelling amid the luxuries and superfluities of modern life, pampered and well provided with everything that delights the flesh, and a man like John Woolman, one of the rarest souls God ever made, who spent his time in walking from one Friends* meeting to another, habited in the simplest garb, faring on the plainest food, taking the rebuffs of the wealthy and arrogant without surprise, and content to be counted the offscouring of all if only he might raise his protest on behalf of the suffering and downtrodden!

II. The need of string dealing

WITH OURSELVES. David evidently had passed through a crisis at some period of his life. He seems to have taken himself seriously in hand. Up to a certain point the impulses and desires of his nature had reigned over him, bringing him into captivity; then he resolved that their sway should be at an end, and, in the power of the divine Spirit, quieted and stilled his soul. His illustrations are borrowed from the storm and the home.

To the storm he goes for his first image. His inner life had been swept by strong billows, driven across it by the winds of passionate desire. We know something of these billows, too. We also are swept by these winds: longings for the gratification of sense, the cries of our appetites for forbidden food, cravings for notice, notoriety, reputation, advancement, the imperious insistence that our personality should be taken account of, our gift and position reckoned on, our services valued. When our demands in these directions have been met with disdain or refusal, we have simply retired into the shadow, to eat out our hearts in chagrin and rage. Those standing around us may have seen a calm mantling our face, but it has been a very superficial covering for the fierce storm which has beaten vehemently in the heart. Under such circumstances David seems to have arisen, and, in the energy of the divine Spirit, to have stood on the shore of his tempest-swept soul, bidding the hurricane “be still.” You and I have tried to do as much, but have failed as egregiously as Canute to stay by his word the incoming waters of the sea. Ah! we need a stronger power than human to hush the inward storm. Christ alone can put the curb upon our seething passion or inordinate desire. He waits our request before He can undertake to quell the whirlwind and quiet the wave. If you cannot say, “Surely / have stilled and quieted my soul through faith,” you can say, “Jesus my Saviour has done it for me, and He keeps me still and quiet, though the storms may pass over the sky.”

The other illustration is borrowed from the home. The babe has been nourished at its mother’s breast. Almost instinctively it has reached out its hands for the supply through which pure love has passed to its soul as well as nourishment to its body; but now the time has arrived for it to be weaned, that it may be able to take stronger food to build up its enlarging frame. The breast must be withdrawn and the little one accustomed to other sources of supply. It is a bitter ordeal, and the sorrowful babe vents its complaint with much wailing and piteous outcry. It sobs as though its very heart must break; it beats with its tiny hands against the loving mother- face that bends over it; it threatens to be inconsolable. At last, beaten and exhausted, it accepts its privation, falls back upon its mother’s arm, and no longer adds the violence of its strife to the sense of its loss. It suffers one evil instead of two. It acquiesces in the loving choice of another. It passes through a necessary privation to a life which is infinitely preferable, and which it would choose, did it understand.

David must have seen this process repeated many a time, and one day it came upon him, as a flash of inspired insight, that he, too, had been clinging to the breasts of human consolation, that he had been nourishing his life from sources which, however pleasant, were not compatible with the highest development. To relinquish them meant sorrow that was hard to the flesh, but he saw that it was useless to spend his life in vain regrets. It was better a thousand times to accept the divine arrangements and allow himself to fall back upon the strong and tender arms of that God in whom motherhood and fatherhood blend.

The weaning is God’s part. At the destined moment — ‘the moment in which our highest interests demand His interpositions — God will not hesitate to wean us from sources of supply which He permitted to us in the time of our comparative immaturity. He loves us too well to perpetuate ministries of creature help and comfort which are interfering with our attaining to the full stature of Christ. When the time comes for us to be weaned God will wean us, but everything depends upon the way in which we take His discipline. We may at once acquiesce, and in this case we pass through the transition stage at as little cost of suffering as may be. On the other hand, we may sedulously and petulantly resist. Then will ensue weeks and perhaps months of repining, murmuring, and bitter complaint, that will expend and wear us out. And all the while we shall be missing the deepest lesson that God can teach — a lesson of loving, trustful acquiescence in His will; for, in addition to the advantage of passing from a lower to a higher stage of Christian experience, this weaning is intended to bring out a more perfect trust. We thus doubly thwart the divine intention when we murmur and complain.

After a while, exhausted, beaten, strengthless, helpless, we give up our insistence for our own way, our rebellion against His. We give up the conflict. We yield our will to His, and fall back on the everlasting arms of Him who comforts us as a mother her first-born. How much better it would have been to have done this at the first, before we had expended ourselves so largely and had given observers the impression that the ways of God with His children were severe! As a weaned child after its struggles lies upon its mother’s knee, and presently comes again into loving accord with her gentle face tenderly regarding it, so the soul finds its tranquillity in resignation to the will of God, which is our peace.

There is a certain definitehess in the act which resigns the entire conduct of life to the Almighty. At a given moment of time a certain attitude is taken up, which dates a new era, and thereafter care is exercised not to tamper with imperious desires which it has cost so much to quell. I greatly admire that entry in the diary of the late General

Gordon: “March 8, 1882. I have come to a conclusion; may God give me strength to keep it! Stop all the newspapers. It is no use mincing the matter; as the disease is dire, so also must be the remedy. These are the words which have done this: ‘My son, unglue thyself from the world and its vanities. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ; find Him thy wisdom, righteousness, redemption; thy riches, thy strength, thy glory.’” III. The difference between

STOICISM AND TRUE RELIGION. A stoic like Marcus Aurelius might have written the first two verses of this psalm and there stopped short. He could not have said, “Hope thou in the Lord from henceforth, even forevermore.” For him there might be the negative, the refusal to be perturbed by vain desire and intolerable care; but there was no such knowledge of God, in His ability to fill the void of the soul, as to enable him to turn thitherward in hope. The stoic reckons himself dead to the thousand misfortunes of life; he has no knowledge of the thousand compensations of God. He shuts all the doors and windows of the lower ranges of the heart, but fails to open the upper to the blue sky and the sunlit air. Be sure, if you are weaned from the breast of human comfort, you turn with invincible comfort to the heart of God. Do not simply deny yourself, but receive from Christ all, and more than all, that you forego. Forsake what you will, but appropriate spiritual equivalents for all that you renounce. Hope in God, for the heart of a man has never yet conceived of all that He can become to those who give all up for Him. All human love and comfort are not comparable to the love and beauty of the Redeemer.

Hope in God; from henceforth believe in His mother-love and that He is doing the best possible for each of us. Never go back from this moment. Stand to it, whatever betides, that God has done, is doing, will do, His very best. Refuse to discuss the matter with yourself or with any other. Let this be as absolutely fixed as your trust in the constancy of your closest friend.

Hope in God forevermore. As the years pass they will but deepen and intensify the sense of His trustworthiness. Time can never utter all the depths that await us in God: the tenderness of His sympathy, the closeness of His heart against ours, the delicacy with which His hand wipes away our tears. Thus, as the outer man decays, the inward man will be renewed day by day, and affliction will seem light and momentary compared with the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.