Up to the Hills

THE one hundred and twenty-first psalm is one of the most soul-inspiring in the whole psalter. It is named a “song of degrees,” that is, a song of ascents, leading from the lower up to the higher. Whether this was originally intended as a musical expression or as a description of the ascent to the sacred mount in Jerusalem, it happily describes the spiritual idea of the psalm. The key-note is in the first verse. ‘’ I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills or mountains from whence cometh my help. My help is from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The grand idea is that we must look higher if we would live higher. We must have help from heaven if we would reach heaven. In things material and in things spiritual not one of us is created to entire independence. From infancy, when we depend on a mother’s milk for nourishment, and childhood, when we depend on our teachers for instruction, clear through the activities of manhood, which require the aid of customers and clients in order to prosper, we cannot ever live a year in and by ourselves. Still more true is it that our moral life is one of weakness and of want. The important question is: WJiere shall we find the supplies for the soul’s wants and the help for the soul’s weakness? And the fatal mistake so often made is that the soul docs not look high enough to secure substantial help and to insure a complete victory. For example, we are exposed to perpetual temptations, which draw us toward sin and thus tend to drag us downward. How arc we to meet them.’ We may employ arguments that are wholly of the earth, earthy. They have no motives that are not essentially selfish; they do not recognize anything higher than self-interest, or appeal to any supernatural power for aid. Here is a young man of ardent temperament, who is strongly tempted to sensual indulgence. He may say to himself: “This will not pay for the risks. I shall injure my health; I shall stain the reputation of another; I may be discovered and disgraced.’” Assuredly the young Hebrew who was put to the strain of a tremendous temptation in the house of Potiphar laid hold of vastly higher motives than these. He lifted his eyes to the hills and made his appeal to God. “How can I do this great wickedness,” he cries out, ‘’and sin .against God?” That appeal lashed him, as it were, to the everlasting throne, and divine grace made him temptation-proof.

Here is the only safeguard under the

pressure of assaults against conscience or of powerful enticements to some sinful self-gratification. The young man who is too fond of the champagne-glass needs something more than the conviction that the bottle is endangering his health and his pocket, in order to keep him abstinent. He must recognize sin, as well as sorrow, in the sting which the ‘* viper in the glass” inflicts, and seek his help from the Highest. That is no trustworthy honesty which spurns the enticement to fraud simply because detection may bring disgrace, because the man may persuade himself that in his circumstances detection is impossible. He is only safe when he looks up from these paltry motives, — up high enough to see God. In these days, when the press teems with obituaries of lost characters, it ought to be known that the only principle which can hold a merchant, or a cashier or an accountant, is a Bible-conscience, which draws its strength from the everlasting hills of Right.

There are some of us who have known what it is to drink bitter draughts of affliction, and to have the four corners of our house smitten by a terrible sorrow. At such times, how hollow and worthless were many of the stereotyped prescriptions for comfort! “Time must do its work,” was one of them. As if time could bring back the dead, or cruelly eradicate the beloved image from the memory! ‘’ Travel,” is another of these quack recommendations for a wounded spirit. Just as if God had ever made an Atlantic wide enough to carry us out of the reach of heart-breaking misery! Wretched comforters are they all. The suffering heart heeds not the voice of such charmers, charm they never so wisely. Never, never have I been able to gain one ray of genuine consolation until I lifted my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh the Almighty help. As soon as I have begun to taste of God’s exceeding great and precious promises my strength has begun to revive. As soon as His everlasting arm got hold around me the burden grew lighter, — yea, it carried me and the load likewise. God opened to me paths of usefulness which were in the line of His service, and also of blessings to my fellow-men. And so help flowed down to me from the hills like the streams that make music from the precipices to one who climbs the Wenzern Alp.

This sublime passage from the hundred and twenty-first psalm throws its suggestive side-light on the question why many of my readers have never obtained a solid and satisfactory religious hope. You will admit in your honest hours that you are not what you ought to be, nor what you yet intend to be. You admit that you are sinners. You have no expectation of being lost to all eternity. Certain steps you have taken in past times, but they all left you as low down as you started. Both your motives and your methods were pitched too low. All attempts at self-salvation were as futile as would be the attempt to lift yourself by grasping hold of your own shoes. Even religious services failed to bring you any substantial change of heart and character, because you did not get your eye or thought above them. The best sermon ever preached is only a cup after all. It may bring the water, but the cup itself cannot quench thirst.

What you need is to lift your eyes above your sinful, needy self, above your churchgoings and other religious observances, above every one and everything, to the only mountain whence cometh your help. That mountain is Calvary. The crucified and now living Son of God is the object on which you must fix your eye. As a living man, you need a living Christ. You want not a system of doctrine, but a personal Saviour. You need some one not only to lay your hand upon, but one who can return the grasp of that hand. The lift must come from Him. The new life must come from Him. “His blood cleanseth from all sin” is a mere abstract truth until you come up to that atoning blood for yourself. Submit to its cleansing, as Naaman submitted to be washed in Jordan. “A living trust in Jesus has power unto salvation only because it Is the means by which the saving power of God may come into your heart.” Faith is not a mere intellectual opinion. It is a heart transaction, by which you lay hold on Jesus and Jesus saves. His sacrifice for sin avails for you; His strength becomes yours; His example teaches you how to live your own daily life; His Spirit comes to dwell within you; His armor protects you; and His service becomes the inspiration of your whole being. When you ascend into Christ you reach a loftier, purer atmosphere. Security is gained up there as in a stronghold on a cliff. Six times over in this psalm the inspired penman tells us how the Lord is thy keeper, and how He shall preserve thy soul to all eternity. My friend, lift your eyes upward. Let your voice go up in fervent prayer to the everlasting hills. Put your feet firmly on the path that leads straight toward God. When you reach Him in this world you have reached heaven in the next world.