The Soul's Hill-Country

T will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.”,- — Psaum cxxi. 1.

Tue pilgrim, approaching Mount Zion for one of the great feasts, lifted up his eager fe i RR ISS I AOR A The Soul’s Hill-Country 243

eyes unto the hills for the first glimpse of the place where God’s glory abode, and where He deigned to commune with His people. On the plains of Babylon the exile fondly rested the eyes of his imagination upon those far-off hills that were rich with the witness of God’s glory and grace, and which would some day resound with the good news of his emancipation. To the heart-sick captive of the plains that hill-country held the promise of dawn; it was the home of vision,. the birth-ground of his most inspiring hope. In all his cold isolation, in his bereavement that was worse than death, and in his daily drudgery, this was the song of his heart, ‘‘ I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.”

And no soul can be healthy without its hill-country, its sacred heights whence come new mornings, and release from small limitations, and sense of space and outlook. The very monotony of the plains, the unrelieved stretch of dead level, becomes oppressive, and tends to afflict the soul with the feeling of imprisonment. I have recently met a noble Scotsman, a man who is doing great ministerial work out on the vast plains of Canada; and how that man’s heart yearns for the hills and mountains of his native land! But in imagination he climbs them every day. He roams the well-known tracks to the well-known heights! The Grampians are on the prairies! Ben Cruachan and Ben More are nearer than his neighbour across the way. It might truly be said of him that “in his heart are the ways of the Highlands,” as ‘“‘ the ways of Zion ’’ were said to be in the hearts of the exiles of long ago. Such men carry their hill-country with them, and, passing through prairies or wildernesses, they fill them with springs and running streams.

And so must the soul lift up its eyes unto the hills. And the soul must climb its hills even when its circumstances are like a low, monotonous plain. It must climb the mount of the revealed purposes of God. It must take a turn up the slopes of some outstanding promise. Get thee up into the high mountains of grace! Look up and get up where good tidings are born, and where thou canst see the land that is very far-off! ‘*Go stand upon the mountain before the Lord!” ‘If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.”