May 9
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, the holy place of Thy ttniple. — Psalm lxv. 4.
jg. g The inmost meaning of the Psalmist’s desire is that the con- ’ sciousness of God shall be diffused throughout the whole of a man’s days, instead of being coagulated here and there at points. The Australian rivers in a drought present a picture of the Christian life of far too many of us — a stagnant, slinking pool here, a stretch of blinding gravel there; another little drop of water a mile away, then a long line of foul-smelling mud, and then another little pond. Why! it ought to run in a clear stream — that has a scour in it, and that will take all filth off the surface.
The Psalmist wanted to break down the distinction between sacred and secular; to consecrate work, of whatsoever sort it was. He had learned what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our religion does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of little use; and that if the field in which our religion has power to control and impel is not that of the trivialities and secularities of our ordinary life, there is no field for it at all.
“All the days of my life!” — Not only on Sundays; not for five minutes in the morning, when I am eager to get to my daily work, and less than five minutes at night, when I am half asleep, but through the long day doing this, that, and the other thing for God, and by God, and with God, and making Him the motive and the power of my course, and the companion to heaven! And if we have, in our lives, things over which we cannot make the sign of the Cross, the sooner we get rid of them the better. And if there is anything in our daily work, or in our characters, about which we are doubtful, here is a good test: does it seem to check our continual communion with God as a ligature round the wrist might do the continual flow of the blood? or does it help us to realise His presence? If the former, let us have no more to do with it; if the latter, let us seek to increase it.
Modern teachers tell us that the religious emotions may be exercised, and all the blessing and all the advantage of them secured, although they are not directed to a personal God. The God of this religion without a God is, according to some, collective humanity; according to others, a vague unknowable; according to others, nature, or the physical universe, which can call forth the admiralion and dependence and suljmission, which are the constituents of “religion.” But all that is “moonshine.” The only real religion is the religion which lays a believing hand on Jesus Christ as the Revealer of the Father and the Saviour of the world; and sees in Him a God near enough to be known, tender enough to be loved, mighty enough to succour, compassionate enough to answer and to forgive. There can be no substitute for the living God. Reverence, worship, the consecration of heart and life, need a living person to evoke them, and deep beneath all other necessities and cries of the human spirit hes this, so tragically misinterpreted by many of us: “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God,” who is made known to us in the fulness of His gentleness and Flis power in the person and face of Jesus Christ.