Glorious Attributes and Wants
“This is the rest whcreiuith ye may cause the weary to rcit, and this is the refreshing” —
“2rf),g tnn-rg, ILortJ, is in tfjc Ijrafacns; anti faitf)fulntgsrcadjctl) unta tfjc cloutis. rtgljtrousnrss is lifte tfje great tnountaius! Srijg juUgmcnts arc a great ticrp: ILortf, STfjou prrscrbfst man anti beast, ftofo excellent is loijingunliness, ffiot)! tijerefore tfje cljiltiren of mm put their trust untier tfjc sfjaJobj of (Tfjg brings. jFor bitfj iTfjce is tlje fountain of life: in ligfjt sljall toe sec ligijt.”
—Ps. xxxvi. 5, 6, 7, 9.
These verses sound like the rustling
of many palm-leaves around the wells
of the desert.
The King of Israel, himself a prince among pilgrims, when he wrote this psalm, was probably in the wilderness, not of Sinai, but of Judah; — nigh the Dead Sea, from the margin of whose waters wild cliffs rose to the height of 1500 feet. As he gazes up to the heavens, he sees written on their blue vault, “God is mercy,” “God is love.” He looks to the clouds as they gather, gradually dimming and darkening the azure; but he sees them spanned with the bow of “faithfulness.” He looks to the mountains, their tops resting amid these clouds and rainbow-tints; and beholds them radiant with “justice,” — stable, immutable rectitude. He gazes down into the depths of the lake, sleeping at their base, and reflecting their forms in its unrufiled mirror. He sinks his plummet-line, but in vain! It is unfathomable. “Thy judgments (Thy providential dealings) are “a great deep.” Jehovah’s righteousness, like the great mountains, is visible; patent to the gaze. But His judgments are often like the lake beneath. Their unsounded mysteries lie beyond mortal ken, far down below! Next (ver. 7), as a saint of God, he flees for refuge “under the shadow of the Almighty’s wings:” — a beautiful emblem of security; one used by the Saviour Himself, many centuries later, on the occasion of His weeping over Jerusalem — “How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God, therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.” Then, he adds, “Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures; For with Thee is the fountain of life.” Another figure still, perhaps, also suggested by a well-known fountain (Ain Jidy), which survives to this day in that desolate waste, amid the rocks of the wild goats, bursting from a shelf or cleft in the mountain: — “For with Thee,” as it has been rendered, is the “spring of immortality” (Bishop Horsley); — “in Thy light shall we see light.” He here speaks not of his present blessings, but of his future prospects. He looks forward, anticipating the time when all the past anomalies in God’s moral government shall be explained.. “We shall see light!” we shall behold Him, not in a glass, darkly; not as now, “through the lattice;” but “face to face:” — knowing experimentally the reality of His own divine beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
The psalm begins with a minor note — “The transgression of the wicked” (ver. i). It describes the pang with which the upright beUever witnesses the unblushing iniquity and godlessness around him; — speculative infidelity, practical atheism, — the iniquity, the deceit, the “devising of mischief,” — hatching schemes of ambition and sin in their very beds: the world’s crooked poHcy, tortuous ways, and unprincipled ends. All this may well fill the righteous with painful solicitude and sadness. But he looks from man to God. He looks from this surging sea, vexed and disquieted by waves of human passion and discord, to the giant mountains of the Divine faithfulness towering grandly overhead. Dominating all, he sees the Divine mercy “in the heavens.” Jehovah’s mercy in Christ, as a Covenant God, is high above the great flood, and the great mountains and the great clouds.
In this sublime contemplation he reposes. He knows — though at times “deep may call to deep;” though these hill-tops be muffled in angry tempests, those heavens darkened with murky vapours; — yet the day is coming — “the morning without clouds,” when all shall be made bright like “the clear shining after rain.” “Justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne.” The impersonation of Justice, in the Greek and Roman mythology, with bandaged eyes and equally-balanced scales, was the faint image of a grander Verity. “He judgeth righteous judgment.” “Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. And He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday!” “By faith,” says one who is now experiencing the sublime reality, “you are enabled to say * All is well! ’ and if a voice could reach you from the Everlasting, would it not re-echo back, ‘All is well’?”
May this lofty psalm, of which these are the keynotes, be sung by us, not in the Church of earth alone, but in the Church of the first-born: when its beautiful and magnificent imagery will come to be truly fulfilled: — reposing under the shadow of the Heavenly Palm, the shelter and covert of Jehovah’s wings; ’ satisfied with the fatness of His house,’ and ’ drinking of the river of His pleasures; ’ taking up, through all eternity, the joyous strain these opening words suggest, — “O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for His Mercy endureth for ever!”
“Blessed day, which hastens fast,
End of conflict and of sin;
Death itself shall die at last,
Heaven’s eternal joys begin.
Then eternity shall prove,
God is Light, and God is Love I”
“O CONTINUE THY LOVING-KINDNESS UNTO THEM THAT
KNOW THEE; AND THY RIGHTEOUSNESS TO THE
UPRIGHT IN HEART.”