We mean hereby, that we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled all sorrows which man can taste. He filled the cup of misery to the brim, and drained it to the dregs. He was afflicted in all David’s afflictions, in the afflictions of all mankind. He bare all their sicknesses, and carried all their infirmities; and therefore we read this psalm upon Good Friday, upon the day in which He tasted death for every man, and went down into the lowest depths of terror, and shame, and agony, and death; and, worst of all, into the feeling that God had forsaken Him, that there was no help or hope for Him in heaven, as well as earth—no care or love in the great God, whose Son He was—went down, in a word, into hell; that hell whereof David and Heman, and Hezekiah after them, had said, “Shall the dust give thanks unto thee? and shall it declare thy truth?”—“Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.”—“My life draweth nigh unto hell. . . I am like one stript among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more; and they are cut off from thy hand. . . . Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? and shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of destruction?”—“For the grave cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down to the pit cannot hope for thy truth.”
Even into that lowest darkness, where man feels, even for one moment, that God is nothing to him, and he is nothing to God—even into that Jesus condescended to go down for us. That worst of all temptations, of which David only tasted a drop when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus drained to the very dregs for us.—He went down into hell for us, and conquered hell and death, and the darkness of the unknown world, and rose again glorious from them, that He might teach us not to fear death and hell; that He might know how to comfort us in the hour of death: and in the day of judgment, when on our sick bed, or in some bitter shame and trouble, the lying devil is telling us that we are damned and lost, and forsaken by God, and every sin we ever did rises up and stares us in the face.
Truly He is a king!—a king for rich and poor, young and old, Englishmen and negro; all alike He knows them, He feels for them, He has tasted sorrow for them, far more than David did for those poor, oppressed, sinful Jews of his. Read those Psalms of David; for they speak not only of David, now long since dead and gone, but of the blessed Jesus, who lives and reigns over us now at this very moment. Read them, for they are inspired; the honest words of a servant of God crying out to the same God, the same Saviour and Deliverer as we have. And His love has not changed. His arm is not shortened that He cannot save. Your words need not change. The words of those psalms in which David prayed, in them you and I may pray. Right out of the depths of his poor distracted heart they came. Let them come out of our hearts too. They belong to us more than even they did to the Jews, for whom David wrote them—more than even they did to David himself; for Jesus has fulfilled them—filled them full—given them boundlessly more meaning than ever they had before, and given us more hope in using them than ever David had: for now that love and righteousness of God, in which David only trusted beforehand, has come down and walked on this earth in the shape of a poor man, Jesus Christ, the Son of the maiden of Bethlehem.
Oh, you who are afflicted, pray to God in those psalms; not merely in the words of them, but in the spirit of them. And to do that, you must get from God the spirit in which David wrote them—the Spirit of God. Pray for that Spirit; for the spirit of patience, which made David wait God’s good time to right him, instead of trying, as too many do, to right himself by wrong means; for the spirit of love, which taught David to return good for evil; for the spirit of fellow-feeling, which taught David to care for others as well as himself; and in that spirit of love, do you pray for others while you are praying for yourself. Pray for that Spirit which taught David to help and comfort those who were weaker than himself, that you in your time may be able and willing to comfort and help those who are weaker than yourselves. And above all, pray for the Spirit of faith, which made David certain that oppression and wrong-doing could not stand; that the day must surely come when God would judge the world righteously, and hear the cry of the afflicted, and deliver the outcast and poor, that the man of the world might be no more exalted against them. Pray, in short, for the Spirit of Christ; and then be sure He will hear your prayers, and answer them, and show Himself a better friend, and a truer King to you, than ever David showed himself to those poor Jews of old. He will deliver you out of all your troubles—if not in this life, yet surely in the life to come; and though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds in Him who loved you, and gave Himself for you, that you might inherit all heaven and earth in Him.
XXVI.
THE VALUE OF LAW.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God.—Romans xiii. 1.
What is the difference between a civilised man and a savage? You will say: A civilised man can read and write; he has books and education; he knows how to make numberless things which makes his life comfortable to him. He can get wealth, and build great towns, sink mines, sail the sea in ships, spread himself over the face of the earth, or bring home all its treasures, while the savages remain poor, and naked, and miserable, and ignorant, fixed to the land in which they chance to have been born.
True: but we must go a little deeper still. Why does the savage remain poor and wretched, while the civilised people become richer and more prosperous? Why, for instance, do the poor savage gipsies never grow more comfortable or wiser—each generation of them remaining just as low as their forefathers were, or, indeed, getting lower and fewer? for the gipsies, like all savages, are becoming fewer and fewer year by year, while, on the other hand, we English increase in numbers, and in wealth, and knowledge; and fresh inventions are found out year by year, which give fresh employment and make life more safe and more pleasant.
This is the reason: That the English have laws and obey them, and the gipsies have none. This is the whole secret. This is why savages remain poor and miserable, that each man does what he likes without law. This is why civilised nations like England thrive and prosper, because they have laws and obey them, and every man does not do what he likes, but what the law likes. Laws are made not for the good of one person here, or the other person there, but for the good of all; and, therefore, the very notion of a civilised country is, a country in which people cannot do what they like with their own, as the savages do. “Not do what he likes with his own?” Certainly not; no one can or does. If you have property, you cannot spend it all as you like. You have to pay a part of it to the government, that is, into the common stock, for the common good, in the shape of rates and taxes, before you can spend any of it on yourself. If you take wages, you cannot spend them all upon yourself and do what you like with them. If you do not support your wife and family out of them, the law will punish you. You cannot do what you like with your own gun, for you may not shoot your neighbour’s cattle or game with it. You cannot do what you like with your own hands, for the law forbids you to steal with them. You cannot do what you like with your own feet, for the law will punish you for trespassing on your neighbour’s ground without his leave. In short, you can only do with your own what will not hurt your neighbour, in such matters as the law can take care of. And more, in any great necessity the law may actually hurt you for the good of the nation at large. The law may compel you to sell your land, to your own injury, if it is wanted for a railroad. The law may compel you, as it did fifty years ago, to serve as a soldier in the militia, to your own injury, if there is a fear of foreign invasion; so that the law is above each and all of us. Our own wills are not our masters. No man is his own master. The law is the master of each and all of us, and if we will not obey it willingly, it can make us obey unwillingly.
Can make us? Ay, but ought it to make us? Is it right that the law should over-ride our own free wills, and prevent our doing what we like with our own?