"When I ask the question, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' I am ashamed of the answer that must be returned. What if property, credit, health, friends and relatives were all lost; thou hast a Father, a friend, an advocate, a comforter, a mansion, a treasure in heaven."—Bishop Hall.
"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance."—Verse 5.
VII.
HOPE.
Take the wings from a bird, and it is the most helpless of animals. Bring the eagle from his eyrie, and rob him of his plumage, and he who an hour before was soaring monarch of the sky, is more powerless than the worm crawling at his side, or than the bleating lamb that trembled and cowered under his shadow.
Such was David now. The wounded bird of Paradise flutters in the dust. The taunting cry everywhere assails him, "Where is thy God?" The future is a mournful blank, and the past is crowded with joyous and happy memories, which only aggravate and intensify the sorrows of the present.
But though soiled and mutilated, the wings of faith are not broken. He struggles to rise from his fall. In the verse we are now to consider, he plumes his pinions for a new flight. We found him a short time before, making his tears a microscopic lens, looking through them into the depths of his own sorrowing and sinning heart. So long as he does so, there is ground for nothing but misgiving and despair. But he reverses the lens. He converts the microscope into a telescope. In self-oblivion, he turns the prospect-glass away from his own troubles and sorrows, his fitful frames and feelings, his days alike of sunshine and shade, to Him who is above all mutation and vicissitude. In this position, with his eye God-wards, he begins to interrogate his own spirit as to the unreasonableness of its depression. He addresses a bold remonstrance to guilty unbelief. In the preceding verse, he alluded to the dense multitude—the many thousands of Israel—he was wont to lead in person to the feasts of Zion. Now he is alone with one auditor—that auditor is HIMSELF. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?"
And what is his antidote? What is the balm and balsam he applies to his wounded spirit? "Hope thou in God!"
Hope! Who is insensible to the music of that word? What bosom has not kindled under its utterance? Poetry has sung of it; music has warbled it; oratory has lavished on it its bewitching strains. Pagan mythology, in her vain but beautiful dreams, said that when all other divinities fled from the world, Hope, with her elastic step and radiant countenance and lustrous attire, lingered behind. Hope! well may we personify thee, lighting up thy altar-fires in this dark world, and dropping a live coal into many desolate hearts; gladdening the sick-chamber with visions of returning health; illuminating with rays, brighter than the sunbeam, the captive's cell; crowding the broken slumbers of the soldier by his bivouac-fire, with pictures of his sunny home, and his own joyous return. Hope! drying the tear on the cheek of woe! As the black clouds of sorrow break and fall to the earth, arching the descending drops with thine own beauteous rainbow! Ay, more, standing with thy lamp in thy hand by the gloomy realms of Hades, kindling thy torch at Nature's funeral pile, and opening vistas through the gates of glory!
If Hope, even with reference to present and finite things, be an emotion so joyous,—if uninspired poetry can sing so sweetly of its delights, what must be the believer's hope, the hope which has God for its object, and heaven its consummation? How sweet that strain must have sounded from the lips of the exile Psalmist amid these glens of Gilead! A moment before, his sky is dark and troubled, but blue openings begin once more to tremble through the clouds. The mists have been hanging dense and thick, hiding out the water-brooks. But now the sun shines. They rise and circle in wreaths of fantastic vapour, disclosing to the wounded Hart "the springs in the valleys which run among the hills; which give drink to every beast in the field, and where the wild asses quench their thirst." The wilderness has become once more "a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water." Rebuking his unworthy tears, Faith once more takes down her harp, and thus wakes its melodies,—"I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I HOPE." "Let Israel HOPE in the Lord."[28]