III.
A PECULIAR EXPERIENCE.
Although this Psalm, in bold and striking figure, presents a faithful miniature picture of the Believer's life, we must regard it as depicting an extraordinary experience at a peculiar passage of David's history, and which has its counterpart still in that of many of God's children.
The writer of the Psalm was evidently undergoing "spiritual depression"—what is sometimes spoken of as "spiritual desertion,"—that sorrow, awful in its reality—too deep for utterance—deeper than the yawning chasm made by family bereavement—the sorrow of all sorrows, the loss of God in the soul!
There is much caution needed in speaking of this. There are causes which lead to spiritual depression which are purely physical, arising from a diseased body, an overstrung mind—a succession of calamities weakening and impairing the nervous system. We know how susceptible are the body and mind together, of being affected by external influences. "We are," says an able analyser of human emotions, "fearfully and wonderfully made. Of that constitution which in our ignorance we call union of soul and body, we know little respecting what is cause, and what effect. We would fain believe that the mind has power over the body; but it is just as true that the body rules the mind. Causes apparently the most trivial—a heated room, want of exercise—a sunless day, a northern aspect—will make all the difference between happiness and unhappiness; between faith and doubt; between courage and indecision. To our fancy there is something humiliating in being thus at the mercy of our animal organism. We would fain find nobler causes for our emotions."[13] Yes—many of those sighs and tears, and morbid, depressed feelings, which Christians speak of as the result of spiritual darkness and the desertion of God, are merely the result of physical derangement, the penalty often for the violation of the laws of health. The atmosphere we breathe is enough to account for them. They come and go—rise and fall with the mercury in the tube. These are cases, not for the spiritual, but for the bodily physician. Their cure is in attendance to the usual laws and prescriptions which regulate the healthy action of the bodily functions.
There is another class of causes which lead to spiritual depression which are partly physical and partly religious. There must necessarily be depression where there is undue elation; where the soul-structure is built on fluctuating frames and feelings, and the religious life is made more subjective than objective.
Many imagine, unless they are at all times in a glow of fervour—an ecstatic frame of feeling—all must be wrong with them.[14] Now, there is nothing more dangerous or deceptive than a life of mere feeling; and its most dangerous phase is a life of religious emotional excitement. It is in the last degree erroneous to consider all this glowing ecstasy of frame a necessary condition of healthy spiritual life. Artificial excitement, in any shape, is perilous. Apart altogether from the moral and religious aspect of the question, the tendency of the ball-room and theatre, and a preference in reading for works of fiction, is to make a man nauseate the plain, commonplace work, the occurrences and themes of this every-day world. Feed him on dainties and forced meats, and he despises husks and plain fare. Equally true is this with regard to the life of the soul. It is not fed on luscious stimulants and ecstatic experiences. When it is so, the result is every now and then a collapse; like a child building his mimic castle too high, the perpendicular and equilibrium are lost. It totters and falls, and he has just to begin again. The dew distils, and hangs its spangled jewels on blade and flower, gently and in silence. The rain comes down in tiny particles and soft showers, not in drenching water-floods. So the healthy Christian holds on the even tenor of his way, unaffected by the barometer of feeling. He knows this is apt to be elevated and depressed by a thousand accidents over which he has no control. His life is fed, not from the fitful and uncertain streams issuing from the low ground of his own experience, but from the snow-clad summits—the Alps of God. Were he thus suffering himself to depend on the rills of his own feelings, his brook would often be dry in summer—the season when he most needed it; whereas the supply from the glacier-beds on which the sun shines, is fullest in these very times of drought.
Add to this, religion is shorn of its glory when it is dwarfed into a mere thing of sentiment and feeling. Its true grandeur and greatness is, when it incorporates itself with active duty, and fulfils its best definition as not a "being" but a "doing." Of nothing, therefore, do we require to be more jealous, than a guilty, unmanly, morbid dwelling on feelings and experiences. You remember Elijah, when he fled pusillanimous and panic-stricken from his work, and took to a hermit-cell amid the solitudes of Sinai. We find him seated in his lonely cave, his head drooping on his breast, sullen thought mantling his brow, muttering his querulous soliloquy, "I am left alone." The voice of God hunts out the fugitive from duty. "What doest thou here, Elijah? Why in this cave, brooding in a coward spirit, unworthy of thee? Art thou to cease to work for Me, because the high day of excitements on the heights of Carmel are over? Here is food to strengthen thy body, and here is 'the still, small voice' of my love to strengthen thy soul. Go forth to active duty. Leave thy cave and thy cloak behind thee. Take thy pilgrim-staff and scrip, and with the consciousness of a great work in hand, and a brief time to do it in, arise, and onward to Horeb, the mount of God!" (1 Kings xix.)
But having thrown out these preliminary cautions, the question occurs: Are there no cases of spiritual depression or desertion, arising purely from spiritual causes?