The Springs of Tears

“Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not Thy law.” — PsaLM cxix. 1386.

HerreE is a man before whose eyes the law of the Lord is blazing in incomparable splendour. In this wonderful Psalm, in all its windings of thought and adoration, the law of God is shining in every verse. There is not a single step in all its long journeyings where the Lord passes out of sight. We are never made to say, “‘ It is gone for a moment, but it will soon return,”’ as though it were a temporarily clouded moon emerging again in the bare heavens. It is always there. It is as it is in some parts of Switzerland, where you can wander for a whole day, and the Matterhorn is never out of sight. “O how I love Thy law!” His eyes were continually filled with the glory.

And just because the law of God was continually shining before him he was painfully awake to the presence of lawlessness. That is one of the divine ordinances of life. Refinement in one direction implies a corresponding exquisiteness in another. To be very sensitive to harmony involves an equal sensitiveness to discord. To be alert to the beautiful is also to be startled by the ugly. The great artist has to wear a crown of thorns. To respond to the noble means that one sickens at the shameful. If I glory in the law of the Lord, I must necessarily be deeply troubled when the law is broken. This is the order of life. Fine chords have a two-fold responsiveness: they are the ministers of joy and they are the ministers of pain. To enter into the joy of the Lord, is, in some degree, to enter into the sorrows of Gethsemane. ‘To know the power of Christ’s resurrection we are obliged to share the fellowship of His sufferings. There are light and dark sides to the same shield. Morning and evening make the one day. And therefore I am not surprised that the Psalmist, whose soul is so sensitive to the law of the Lord, who delights in that law, and meditates upon it day and night, should weep when he looks round upon the lawlessness of men. It is like turning the eyes from spiritual order to carnal riot, or from some winged presence, fair and delicate as Ariel, to a coarse and grovelling presence like Caliban. And the Psalmist wept. How could it be otherwise? Josephine Butler was born and bred amid manifold types of order and beauty. Nature spread her glories outside her home, grace spread her glories inside the home. She gazed into the face of her Saviour and adored. And one day she saw the fallen womanhood of her country, and her heart was sick and troubled. ‘I felt that unless I went into the streets and cried aloud my heart would break!” The very strength of her faith was the cause of her sorrow. It was because she knew Him in whom she had believed that the wrongs of this blighted sisterhood scorched her soul like fire. It was because she could rejoice in the Lord that she could also weep with Him and share His bitter tears.

And therefore, ‘‘ O for a closer walk with God!” That is the preparation for a more vitally human communion. All our springs are in Him, even the springs of our tears. Our power to weep, with a Crusader’s pity, belongs to the manifold power of the Holy Spirit. It is only by seeking a rarer spiritual refinement and a more appreciative realisation of the Lord that our senses will be awake to the sins and sorrows of the world for which He died.