The Ground of Survival

‘‘T will make the place of my feet glorious.” — Isa. lx. 18.

HERE are some places which have only been made glorious by the feet that have trodden them. There are villages so obscure that in themselves they would never be heard of; but they have been the birthplace of genius, and in that light they glow. There are barren swamps that on their own account would never attract the eye; but they have been the scene of great battles, and they are thronged from all lands. Judea is indebted for her glory to the fact that religion once dwelt there. Nothing else has made her glorious. Measured by herself, she would be despised and rejected of men. When we see her, there is no natural beauty which we desire in her. She is below the Indian in philosophy, beneath the Egyptian in architecture, inferior to the Greek in culture, eclipsed by the Roman in power, dwarfed by the Assyrian in magnificence. She has nothing on the secular side which she could live by, nothing by which her memory could have survived half an hour. How then has she been the most immortal of nations, the only nation that has outlived its environment? It is because she has been “the place of God’s feet.” She had no possession except for God. Her poetry was psalmody, her songs were hymns, her bards were prophets. When she built houses it was for God — either a tower for reaching heaven or a shrine for hallowing earth. When she made laws it was for God — laws for His honour, laws for His service. When she practised music it was for God — efforts to praise Him on an instrument of ten strings. When she crowned kings it was for God — the anointing of a priest to serve Him outside the sanctuary. This nation was emphatically what the poet declares the earth to be collectively — *“bound with gold chains about the feet of God.”

Therefore, my soul, has she survived. Dost thou marvel at her survival? Seems it to thee the survival of the unfittest? Learn then the parable, for it is meant for thee! If thou art fit for life eternal thou art fit for life temporal, The man fittest to keep alive on earth is the man saturated with the thought of heaven. The “place of God’s feet” is the place where the step has been elastic, springy. Where thou treadest lightly time treads lightly too. If God be in thy heart, thy heart will keep young. If thy heart be young, thou shalt never be unfit to live. All the disadvantages of Judea may be thine. Thine may be outward weakness, social isolation, intellectual limits, ignorance of the world, bad fortune, the storm and stress of wandering in desert places. But if through these places thy step is the step of God, if through these places thou walkest by the will of God, if through these places thou leapest by the love of God, the light heart will keep thee young. Be it ever so rough, be it ever so steep, be it ever so miry, the place of His feet is glorious. Take God on thy route, and thou shalt banish wrinkles from thy brow. Gethsemane itself shall not age thee if thou tread by the side of Jesus; for it is not the place of thy travel that makes thee weary — it is the heaviness of thy step.