Spiritual Growth

“Zte brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, a?id established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.” — Ps. xl. 2, 3.

The Psalmist is tracing the stages of his own experience, the successive steps by which he climbed the mount of God. At first it was only the deliverance from a dark past: “He brought me up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay.” It was a stage of moral elevation rather than of moral fixedness, a lifting into the air, but not yet the settling on a rock. That stage came secondly. There came a time when God set his feet on a rock and established his goings. He was transported from the air to the ground, from the flight to the walk, from the mere sense of liberation to the principle of that truth which made him free. But he was not yet complete; principle is mere duty, it is not yet love. The mind may be settled on a rock and yet the heart may be cold. He wanted not only a path for his feet but a new song for his mouth, and that which he wanted came. To the rigidness of the rock was added the heart of joy: “He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” One other step remained to crown, to culminate the life; the Psalmist must relinquish the thought of himself, even the thought of his own progress. He must come to value his spiritual joy, not so much for what it is as for what it can do. He must come to see that the glory of his salvation is its power to be the salvation of others; his life will be complete when he shall say, “Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”

My soul, that progress must be thine also. Marvel not that thou art not instantaneously in possession of the fulness of joy; there is much to be done within thee ere the new song shall come. Thine must at first be only the sense of deliverance, of emancipation from the pit and from the mire. The weaning from the old does not at once bring the joy of the new. Thou mayest come even to rest on the settled rock without an immediate entrance into that joy; the power of duty may make thee strong without yet making thee buoyant. But the hour of love is at hand, and will not tarry — the hour when the walk of the feet shall be accompanied by the song of the heart. Thy table is spread at first in the presence of thine enemies, and thy path of principle seems a path of sternness, but ere long law shall be lost in love, and thy cup shall overflow. Thy cup shall overflow in most abundance when thou thyself shalt overflow. Thou shalt find thy deepest peace when thou hast forgotten its presence in the care for interests not thine own, and thy new song shall reach its full melody when its joys shall be this: “Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”