The Secret of Submission
“This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing” —
“Saas Ijumb, C opmrU not mg moutlj; because hiBst i’i”
—Ps. xxxix. 9.
, „ Never was there a more sorrow-stricken
J,,, Pilgrim than he who uttered these words.
He was” wandermg m the wilderness m a
solitary way” — a dethroned king; a fugitive, attired in sackcloth, with his head muffled, his feet unsandalled, and more direful memories and trials crushing his soul, which no Israelite at Elim could have shared.
Yet he was not without his sheltering palm in this desert of tribulation. Under one of these he here reposes. When Shimei, the representative of the abandoned house of Saul, base of heart and foul of tongue, came forth and cursed him, hurling stones and dust on the outcast sovereign; — the faithful retainers of the King, stung to the quick with the reproaches of the miscreant, would willingly have crossed the gorge and silenced him with their swords.
‘Hush,’ says the humbled monarch, ’ listen not to these taunts. Hear as if you heard them not. This expulsion from my throne and kingdom is not man’s doing — the result of uncontrolled human passion or wayward caprice.
God has sent this “son of Belial” on his mission of insult. Let him curse on, for the Lord hath bidden him.’ And he weaves the reflections of the hour into one of the most touching and plaintive of his psalms.
Never, indeed, is David more worthy of admiration than in this time of adversity — never truly greater is this Cedar of God than when wrestling with the storm! His keenness of temperament might have roused far other emotions. If he had been naturally reserved, stolid, phlegmatic, we should not have wondered to see him submitting passively to his fate. But with feelings so finely set — cut to the quick with the imputation of unmerited wrong (for “reproach,” he tells us, had “broken his heart “), could we have wondered, if, stung to madness — chafed like a honess robbed of her whelps — we had witnessed uncontrollable irritation, some outburst of vehement rage, some vow of fierce revenge? How different! “I said I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it!” Nor let any say, the King of Israel was a veteran in trial, that his more sensitive feelings were now blunted, that he made a virtue of necessity, and submitted with cold stoical endurance to the stern fortunes of war. Nay; we see the saint of God, the resigned believer — his soul even as a weaned child — remaining calm and unmoved like a rock in the midst of the surge, because cherishing the spirit of an older and kindred sufferer — whose very words, indeed, he himself on this occasion repeats — “It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth good unto Him” (i Sam. iii. 18, and 2 Sam. XV. 26).
“Thou didst it.” Would that we were ever ready to endorse with these words all that befalls us! That prop removed — “Thou didst it;” that gourd withered — “Thou didst it;” that lily gathered — “Thou didst it;” that mysterious blight in my life-prospects — “Thou didst it!” Oh, to rise above the atheism of second causes — the reflections which, if not in vocal utterance, at least in inward thought, are thus often formulated — ‘If such and such had been done, my child would have been spared; but for some untoward accident — some cruel misfortune — bright stars, now expunged from my firmament, would still have been lighting me with their radiance! ‘Or these reflections may take the still sadder form of surmises on the Divine faithfulness; impugning the wisdom and righteousness of the Divine dealings. ‘Where is the justice and judgment which are said to be the habitation of God’s throne? — where the mercy and truth which are said to go before His face? ’
In the case of David, some might be disposed to think there was room for such questionings and repinings. ‘It is hard for me,’ he himself might have felt and said, ’ to encounter this sweeping blast in my old age. After a life of devotion to the God of Israel; after seeking to discharge, even though with mournful shortcomings, my duties as His anointed servant, the King of His covenant people, and the minstrel of His Church — hard it is to have the harp snatched from my hand, or left hanging tuneless and mute in my Cedar-palace, and to be driven a wanderer on aHen soil! ‘But no such reasoning escapes his lips. Of all the psalms he ever sung, this life-psalm was the grandest; — when he pursues his mournful way, so humble, unselfish, generous, submissive — “not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing.”
Let us seek to have such a heart in us in our nfihctions. When the Almighty in a moment overturns our cherished schemes, and sends us forth, ’ barefoot and weeping,’ across the mount of trial, be it ours to feel that all is ordered; and to say, looking high above human instruments — O God! here am I, do to me as seemeth good to Thee: take me, use me for Thy glory. I wish not to evade any cross. The lot may be a bitter one cast into the lap, “but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord!” If my cup be filled with unmerited blessings, “Thou didst it;” if emptied and its fragments strewn on the ground, “Thou didst it.” Let the world speak of its accident or chance, but let mine be a nobler, truer philosophy — “The Lord gave, Hie Zord hath taken.”
Cherishing such a spirit, may we not add, that unlooked-for refreshments and solaces — palm-groves of comfort — will be vouchsafed to us in the very season and desert of our trial? The aged King of Judah had such in his hour of adversity: — temporal refreshment (2 Sam. xvi. 14), and the better solace of generous and faithful friendships, destined long to survive the season of exile — crowning all with a safe return from beyond Jordan, and a triumphant entrance within the walls of his beloved Zion. So in the case of His tried people. For them, too, does He spread a table in the wilderness. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them.” “I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (Isaiah xli. 18). Thus does He cause them to sing of mercy in the midst of judgment; imparting, when they most need it, new and undreamt-of consolations — strength in the hour of weakness, succour in the hour of danger, friends in the hour of loneliness, sympathy, human and Divine, in the hour of sorrow. Above all, whatever be their wilderness experiences and wilderness trials, bringing them at last, in safety, across the border-river to the Heavenly Zion — the New Jerusalem — where the wail of sadness, the dirge of crushed hopes and blighted or buried affections, shall never more be heard.
Oh! with this motto in all time of your tribulation, “Thou didst it,” trust a faithful, covenant-keeping God. Yes, trust Him — even when, like David, you may have the sackcloth on your loins and the tear in your eye — when you seem to be under the shadow, not of the green palm, but of the mournful cypress. “Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”
“Go not far from me, O my Strength,
Whom all my times obey;
The strongest prop on earth may fail,
But go not Thou away, — And let the storm that does Thy work
Deal with me as it may.
“Thy love has many a lighted path
No outward eye can trace;
And Thee my heart sees in the deep,
With darkness on its face,
And communes with Thee ‘mid the storm
As in a secret place.
“Safe in Thy sanctifying grace,
Almighty to restore,
Borne onward — sin and death behind,
And love and life before — Oh, let my soul abound in hope.
And trust Thee more and more!”
“THE LORD IS GOOD: A STRONGHOLD IN THE DAY OF TROUBLE, AND HE KNOWETH THEM THAT TRUST IN HIM.”