"Blessed is the man that ENDURETH temptation," not who rushes away to pine, and bleed, and die;—or to feed still on husks and the garbage of the wilderness, but who makes the nobler resolve, "I will arise and go to my Father." Blessed is the man whose cry, like that of the child, is answered by his heavenly Parent bending over the cradle of his sorrow;—who feels, as the Psalmist did, that his gracious Father and God is never so near him as in a time of trial. "When my spirit was overwhelmed, THEN Thou knewest my path." The bird of the desert is said to bury its head in the sand on the approach of its foes, and to abandon itself to destruction; but blessed is the man who rather is like the bird of the grove, the first twigs of whose nest have been ruthlessly pulled to pieces by the hand of violence. Hovering for a while over her pillaged home, she fills the wood with her plaintive lament, then soars away from the haunt of the destroyer to begin a fresh one, in a place of safety, on the top branch of some cedar of God!
Such was the case with David on the occasion of this Psalm. He had read to him the most touching homily the world could read on the precarious tenure of earthly blessings. His sceptre, his crown, his family, were like the bubbles on that foaming stream on which he gazed, dancing their little moment on its surface, then gone, and gone for ever. Is he to abandon himself to an ignoble despair? Is he to conclude that the Lord has made him a target on which to exhaust His quiver—that He has "forgotten to be gracious?" Is he to join marauding chiefs beyond the Jordan, savage freebooters—become a mountain adventurer on these Gentile borders, and forget Zion and Zion's God? No! the earthly crown may fade, but the homeless, uncrowned, unsceptred monarch has a better home and a better King above; invisible walls and battlements, better than all the trenches and moats of an earthly fortress, encompass the wanderer. With his eye on these, thus he weaves his warrior song—"I will say of the Lord, He is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." (Ps. xviii. 2.)
Reader! let me ask you, in closing this chapter, are you panting for God?
This is not the way—this is not the history of most. They are panting, but not for God! They are panting up the hill, like Sisyphus, with their huge stone. Ambition is panting up the hill—no time to take a breath. Pleasure is panting up the hill—pursuing her butterfly existence—a phantom-chase—rushing from flower to flower, extracting all the luscious sweets she can. Fame is panting up the hill, blowing her trumpet before her, eager to erect her own monument on the coveted apex. Mammon is pushing up the hill with his panting team, to erect the temple of riches. Multitudes of hapless wayfarers in the same reckless scramble have tumbled into crevices, and are crying for help. Mammon's wheels are locked,—his treasure-chests have fallen into the mire;—and yet, on he goes, driving his jaded steeds over the poor, and weak, and helpless—ay, those that assisted him to load before he started at the mountain base. He must gain the top at all hazards as best he may; and he will be crowned a hero, too, and lauded for his feat!
Ah! strange that men should still be pursuing that phantom-chase. Or, rather, strange that they should live so immeasurably beneath the grandeur of their own destiny; rasping the shallows when they should be out in the deep sea; furling and warping the sails of immortality, instead of having every available yard of canvas spread to the breeze of heaven.
These objects of earthly, perishable pursuit, may do when the world is bright, the heart unwounded, the eye undimmed. These may do when the sun shines unclouded in our firmament, when our fields are waving, when fortune is weaving her golden web, and the bark of existence with its white sails is holding its way through summer seas. These may do when the home circle is unbroken; when we miss no loved face, when we mark no silent voice, no vacant chair. But when the muffled drum takes the place of life's joyous music;—when our skies are robed in sackcloth, when Nature takes on its hue of ashen paleness; when every flower, seared and frost-bitten, seems to droop its head in sadness and sorrow, and hide its tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay!—what then? The prophet's voice takes up the lesson—"The voice said, Cry; and he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass!" Poor trifler that thou art! to be so long mocked and deceived by a dead and dying world; desolate, friendless, hopeless, portionless; a vessel driven from its moorings, out unpiloted on a tempestuous sea! But there is a haven for the tempest-tossed. The Saviour thou hast long despised and rejected, is a provided harbour for such as thee. "A MAN shall be an hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." (Isaiah xxxii. 2.)
Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee—Let him that is athirst, come.
Athirst! who is not athirst? It is the attribute of universal humanity! Who does not feel that this world is presenting us with muddy streams and broken, leaky cisterns? Who does not feel, in their moments of deep and calm reflection, when we are brought face to face with the great enigma of existence, that the world is serving up faded flowers instead of those redolent with imperishable fragrance, and glowing with unfading bloom? Friendless one!—thou who art standing alone like a solitary tree in the forest whom the woodman's axe has spared—thy compeers cut down at thy side—Come! Child of calamity!—the chill hand of penury laid on thine earthly comforts—the widow's cruise fast failing, her staff of bread diminishing—Come! Child of bereavement!—the pillars in thy heart-shrine crumbling to decay, thy head bowed like a bulrush—thou who knowest that fortune may again replace and replenish her dismantled walls, but that nothing can reanimate thy still marble, or refill the vacant niche in thy heart of hearts—Come! Prodigal!—wanderer from God, exile from peace, roaming the forest-haunts of sin, plunging deeper and deeper into their midnight of ruin and despair—has an arrow, either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded thy heart? Art thou, in thy agony, seeking rest and finding none,—having the gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction with all created things, and an undefined longing for a solace they cannot give? Yes! for thee, too, for thy gaping, bleeding wound there is "balm in Gilead, and a Physician there." I repeat, Jesus this day stands by the glorious streams of His own purchased salvation, and cries, saying—"If any man THIRST, let him come unto me and drink!"
"Yea, Lord!" be it yours to reply—"Lord, I come! thirsty, faint, forlorn, wounded, weary! I come, 'just as I am, without one plea.' Thou art all I need, all I require, in sickness and health, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death, in time and through eternity. The snow-clad hills may cease to feed the brooks;—that sun may cease to shine, or nature grow weary of his loving beams;—that moon may cease on her silver lyre, night by night, to discourse to the listening earth;—the birds may become mute at the voice of the morning;—flowers may droop, instead of ringing their thousand bells at the jubilant step of summer;—the gasping pilgrim may rush from the stream, and prefer the fiery furnace-glow of the desert sands,—but 'this God shall be my God for ever and ever;' and, even when death is sealing my eyes, and the rush of darkness is coming over my spirit, even then will I take up the old exile strain—the great sigh of weary humanity—and blend its notes with the song of heaven—'As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.'"