Right Guidance

“This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the ref resiling” —

‘?^E IctJ tljcm fort 62 tfje rigfjt bag, tat tfitg mt’gljt go to a cttg

of ijabttation.”

—Ps. cvii. 7.

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This is a stray note from one of the grandest
Psalms, whether of the Exodus or the Captivity.

Its refrain, four times repeated, is the Lord’s ’ goodness ’ and His ’ wonderful works ’ — and that, too, despite of all the ‘solitariness’ and ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst,’ the ’ distress and labour,’ the ’ darkness and shadow of death,’ which chequered the experience of the pilgrim tribes. The psalm ends, as does many a life-psalm still, with the attestation, “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord” (v. 43).

Observe, however, it was a retrospective song. In its primary application to the march through the Sinai wilderness it could have been sung but falteringly, when the God of the pillar-cloud often seemed to fail “satisfying the longing soul, and filling the hungry soul with goodness” (v. 9). Is it not often so with us? The pillar, alike of cloud and of fire, is there; but we cannot discern, or we scruple to follow it. We are prone to harbour guilty surmises as to the rectitude and wisdom and faithfulness of the divine procedure. Confronted with baffling providences, the reason of which perplexes our best ingenuity, we are tempted at times to ask, ‘Why these unanswered — nay, defeated prayers? — the urgent plea not only left unheard, but responded to in the way we most dreaded and deprecated — the circuitous route “by the way of the wilderness,” instead of the short and apparently safe one direct to Canaan? ‘To take an illustration not inappropriate to the words of our motto-verse, many a mother pleads in earnest supplication that God may overrule events and arrangements so as to prevent her son going to some place — some “city of habitation” that might too surely prove a position of peril or temptation. How is her prayer at times answered? Her child is sent to the distant, dreaded city, instead of being continued under the fostering influences and salutary restraints of home. In silence and solitude, and under the bitter consciousness of frustrated wishes, she is driven to give way to the plaintive soHloquy, “Surely my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God.” So thought and reasoned an illustrious name in the roll of Christian parents — Monica, the devout mother of Augustine. He tells us in his “Confessions” that she had besought earnestly — pleaded night and day — that the God she served would not permit her son to fulfil his own wish and intention of leaving his home and going to Italy. She too truly feared the vices and contaminations of the Roman capital. Yet her prayers were not heard. To Italy he went, and in Rome he sojourned; and the yearning heart he had left behind could only picture, in her hours of lone agony, the moral shipwreck of all that was dearest to her. But the journey, and the resort so dreaded, became to Augustine his spiritual birthplace. That city of moral darkness was made to him a Bethel for the visions of God, where he erected his life altar, and vowed his eternal vow.

There is surely no small blessedness in the thought that the bounds of our habitation are divinely appointed. Our lots in life — our occupations, our positions, our dwellings — what the fatalist calls our destinies — what heathen mythology attributed to the Fates — all this is marked out by Him who “seeth the end from the beginning.” “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” It is He who takes us to the distant dwelling — it may be the distant land. It is He who takes us from solitude — from grove and woodland and murmuring brook — from the green fields of childhood and youth, and brings us among the eddies and currents of some busy mart. It is He who takes us to our sweet shelters of prosperity — our Elim-groves with their sparkling fountains of joy. It is He who, when He sees meet, conducts us into the land of drought and among the tents of Kedar. He gives the gourd — He sends the worm. Oh, it is our comfort to know, in this mysterious, ravelled, manifold life of ours, that there is One above and over all, evolving good out of evil and order out of confusion. He sent Onesimus, the runaway slave, to Rome — and Lydia, the seller of purple, to Philippi — and Zaccheus, the tax-gatherer, to Jericho — and Paul, the bigot Pharisee, to Damascus. But these, and other notable examples, were brought thither for their souls’ everlasting welfare; and the new song was put into their lips — “Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed us His marvellous kindness in a strong city!” How many still can tell the same? Then: choice of abode seemed to them something purely arbitrary and capricious. A mere trifle seemed, as they thought, to have determined or altered their whole future. But the finger of God had, unknown, been pointing. The

KIGIir GUIDANCE. inarticulate voice of God had been calling them forth “by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.” Human, it may be base and unworthy purposes, are often thwarted and counteracted by the higher purposes of the Supreme Disposer. How many can say, in the words of one who, more than most, could, through a strange series of baffling providences, vindicate the ways of the Almighty to men — “So then,” said Egypt’s princely ruler, as he confronted the fratricides who stood abashed in his presence — “so then, it was not you that brought me thither, but God.”

His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. “A man deviseth his (ow7i) ways; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Would that we could believe that at times the denial of our prayers may be the best, the kindest, the paternal answer to them; that when crossed and thwarted in our aspirations after what we think is for our good, we are tempted to pronounce with the patriarch the hasty verdict, “All these things are against me! “we could trust the All-loving to guide our steps, not according to our finite and fallible wisdom, but according to the counsel of His sovereign but gracious will. Many of His own children have had to confront what was bitter and painful — leaving the quiet nooks and valleys of life for the storm-clouds of the mountain. Let them trust their sure, unfaltering Guide, that He will bring light out of darkness, and show that, often in an apparently adverse lot, there are undreamt-of blessings in reversion either for themselves or for others.” To think,” says Lady Powerscourt, “that led by Him we are safe from everything. No evil shall ever touch us — evil at the end or evil on the way — all is paved with love.” There ought, indeed, to be no such thing as ’ misfortune ’ in the vocabulary of the children of

God. Theirs may not be the bright way, the pleasant way, the way of their own choosing. It may be the very reverse. It may be thorny and sunless and rugged. But it is His appointing, and therefore must be “the right way.”

Meanwhile be it ours to sit in calmness and confidence under the shadow of our wilderness palm, feeling assured that the day is coming when, with ingathered Israel, we shall be able — no longer in the desert encampment, but within ’ the gates of the city ’ — to take up the noble strain of which our motto-verse forms a part: —

“O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good,
For His mercy endureth for ever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy.
And gathered them out of the lands,

From the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; They found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, And He delivered them out of their distresses. And He led them forth by the right way, That they might go to a city of habitation. O that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men!”

“my presence shall go with you, and I WILL
GIVE YOU REST.”