Let us not think that we can ever have comfort in merging individual sins in a general confession. This is the great and pre-eminent advantage of secret closet-prayer. Social prayer and public prayer are eminently means of securing the Divine blessing; but it is in the quiet of the chamber, when no eye and ear are on us but that of "our Father that seeth in secret," that we can bring our secret burdens to His altar,—crucify our secret sins, acknowledge the peculiar sources of our weakness and temptation, and get special grace to help us in our times of need.
But we may here ask, Have we any assurance that the prayers of David, at this critical emergency, were indeed answered? Or,(as we are often tempted in seasons of guilty unbelief to argue regarding our prayers still,) did they ascend unheard and unresponded to?—did the cries of the supplicant die away in empty echoes amid these glens of Gilead? We have his own testimony, in a magnificent ode of his old age,[96] one of the last, and one of the noblest his lips ever sung, that Jehovah had heard him in the day of his trouble. It is a Psalm, as we are told in the title, written by him on his return to his capital, when victory had crowned his arms, and his kingdom was once more in peace. The aged Minstrel takes in it a retrospective survey of his eventful pilgrimage. Many a Mizar-hill in the long vista rises conspicuously into view. He climbs in thought their steeps, and erects his Ebenezer! As his flight and sojourn beyond Jordan formed the latest occurrence in that chequered life, we may well believe that in uttering these inspired numbers, the remembrance of his memorable soul-struggle there must have been especially present to his mind. Let us listen to his own words: "The sorrows of death compassed me, and THE FLOODS OF UNGODLY MEN made me afraid.... In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry came before Him, even into His ears." In the sublimest poetical figures of all his Psalms, Jehovah is further represented in this hymn of thanksgiving as hastening with rapid flight, in august symbols of majesty, to the relief and succour of His servant—"bowing the heavens"—"the darkness under His feet"—"riding upon a cherub"—"flying upon the wings of the wind"—"sending out His arrows, and scattering His foes"—"shooting out lightnings"—and "discomfiting them." And with the writer's mind still resting on the same emblems which he uses in his Exile-Psalm,—the "deep calling to deep"—the "noise of the water-spouts"—the "waves and billows,"—he interweaves other references and experiences with this unequivocal testimony to God his "Rock," as the Hearer of prayer,—"He sent from above, He took me, He drew me out of many waters.... Who is God save the Lord? or who is a Rock save our God?... The Lord liveth; and blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted!"[97]
Reader! let me ask, in conclusion, do you know in your experience the combined triumphs of faith and prayer—these two heavenly spies that fetch back Eschol-clusters of blessing to the true Israel of God? Do you know what it is, in the hour of adversity, to repair to "the Rock of your strength?" Do you believe in His willingness to hear, and in His power to save? How sad the case of those who, in their seasons of trial, have no refuge to which they can betake themselves, but some fluctuating, perishing, earthly one;—who, when they lose the world, lose their all! The miser plundered of his gold, cleaving to the empty coffers;—the pleasure-hunter seeking to drain the empty chalice, or to extract honey out of the empty comb;—the bereaved grasping with broken hearts their withered gourd, and refusing to be comforted! The worldling is like the bird building its nest on the topmost bough of the tree. There it weaves its wicker dwelling, and feels as if nothing can invade its security and peace. By and by the woodman comes,—lays down his axe by the root. The chips fly off apace. The pine rocks and shivers; in a few moments it lies prone on the forest-sward. The tiny bird hovers over its dismantled home—the scene of desolation and havoc—and then goes screaming through the wood with the tale of her woes! The Christian, again, is like the sea-fowl, building its nest in the niches of the ocean cliff, which bids defiance at once to the axe and the hand of the plunderer. Far below, the waves are lifting their crested tops, and eddying pools are boiling in fury. The tempest may be sighing overhead, and the wild shriek of danger and death rising from some helpless bark that is borne like a weed on the maddened waters. But the spent spray can only touch these rocky heights,—no more; and the curlew, sitting with folded wings on her young, can look calm and undismayed on the elemental war. "What is the best grounds of a philosopher's constancy," says Bishop Hall, "but as moving sands, in comparison of the Rock that we may build upon!"
Yes! build in the clefts of that immoveable Rock, and you are safe. Safe in Christ, you can contemplate undismayed all the tossings and heavings of life's fretful sea! So long as the Psalmist looked to God, he was all secure. When he looked to himself, he was all despondency. Peter, when his eye was on his Lord, walked boldly on the limpid waves of Gennesaret; when he diverted it on himself, and thought on the dangers around him, and the unstable element beneath him, "he began to sink!"
Believer! is your heart overwhelmed? Are you undergoing a similar experience with the Psalmist? Your friends (perhaps your nearest and best) misunderstanding your trial, unable to probe the severity of your wound, mocking your tears with unsympathising reflections and cruel jests—"a sword in your bones!" Turn your season of sorrow into a season of prayer. Look up to the God-man Mediator, the tender Kinsman within the veil! He knoweth your frame. When He sees your frail bark struggling in the storm, and hears the cry of prayer rising from your lips, He will say, as He said of old, "I know their sorrows, and I will go down to deliver them! O wounded Hart! panting after the water-brooks, I was once wounded for thee. O smitten soul! seamed and scarred with the lightning and tempest, see how I myself, the Rock of Ages, was smitten and afflicted!" Ay, and thou canst say too, "God MY Rock!" Thou canst individually repose in that sheltering Refuge, as if it were intended for thee alone. The loving eye of that Saviour is upon thee, as if thou wert alone the object of His gaze,—as if no other struggling castaway breasted the billows but thyself!
Blessed security, who would not prize it! Blessed shelter, who would not repair to it! Oh that the Psalmist's creed and resolution might be ours—"I will say of the Lord, He is my Rock and MY Fortress, and MY Deliverer."—"O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation!"