We answer, Yes. The Bible recognises such Spiritual darkness—absence of all spiritual comfort and joy—is no figment of man's theological creed. It is a sad and solemn verity—the experience, too, of God's own children. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?" (Isa. l. 10.) "Oh," says the afflicted patriarch of Uz, "that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness." (Job xxix. 2, 3.) "In my prosperity," is the testimony of David, at a later period of his life, "I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled." (Ps. xxx. 5-7.) "I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.... My beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer." (Sol. Song iii. 2, v. 6.) Can we forget a more awful and impressive example? One soaring above the reach of all grovelling human experiences, but yet who tells us, in His bitter Eloi cry, that even He knew what it was to be God-deserted and forsaken!
Are there any whose eyes trace these pages who have ever undergone such a season? or it may be are undergoing it now? I stop not to inquire as to the cause;—indulged sin, omitted or carelessly performed duty, neglect of prayer, worldly conformity.[15] Are you feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of many, has waxed cold;—are you mourning that you have not the nearness to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,—not the love of your Bibles, and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,—that a heavy cloud mantles your spiritual horizon,—God's countenance, not what once it was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,—nor heaven what once it seemed, a second home?
"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, not comforted!" do not despond. In these very sighings and moanings of your downcast spirit, there are elements for hope and comfort, not for despair. They are the evidences and indications that the spark, though feeble, is not quenched—that the pulse, though languid, still beats—that faith, though like a grain of mustard-seed, is still germinating. "O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?" It is that very shadow that has now come athwart your soul, and which you so bitterly mourn, which tells of sunshine. As it is the shadow which enables us to read the hours on the dial, so is it in the spiritual life. It is because of these shadows on the soul's dial-face that we can infer the shining of a better Sun. "The wicked have no bands in their (spiritual) death." Their life has been nothing but shadow; they cannot therefore mourn the loss of a sunshine they never felt or enjoyed. Well has it been said, "When the refreshing dews of grace seem to be withheld, and we are ready to say, 'Our hope is lost, God hath forgotten to be gracious'—this is that furnace in which one that is not a child of God never was placed. For Satan takes good care not to disquiet his children. He has no fire for their souls on this side everlasting burnings; his fatal teaching ever is, Peace, peace!"[16] But what, desponding one, is, or ought to be, thy resort? Go! exile in spirit—go, like that royal mourner amid the oak-thickets of Gilead! Brood no more in unavailing sorrow and with burning tears. Thou mayest, like him, have much to depress thy spirit. Black and crimson sins may have left their indelible stain on the page of memory. In aching heart-throbs, thou mayest be heaving forth the bitter confession, "Mine iniquities have separated between me and my God." But go like him! take down thy silent harp. Its strings may be corroded with rust. They may tell the touching story of a sad estrangement. Go to the quiet solitude of thy chamber. Seek out the unfrequented path of prayer;—choked it may be with the weeds of forgetfulness and sloth. Cast thyself on thy bended knees; and, as the wounded deer bounds past thee (emblem of thine own bleeding heart), wake the echoes of thy spirit with the penitential cry, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!"
CONTENTS OF THE PSALM.
I.
The Hart Panting.
"Oh, would I were as free to rise