Again, let me suggest that iniquity at our heels is sometimes an old sin in a new form. You remember the difficulty that Hiawatha had in hunting down Pau-puk Keewis. That mischievous magician assumed the form of a beaver, then that of a bird, then that of a serpent; and though each in turn was slain, the magician escaped and mocked his pursuer. Surely a parable of our strife with sin. We smite it in one form and it comes to life in another. One day a man is angry—clenched fingers and hot words. He conquers his anger; but the next day there is a spirit of bitterness rankling in his heart, and maybe a tinge of regret that he did not say and do more when his heart was hot within him and fire was on his lips. The sin he faced and fought yesterday has become iniquity at his heels. Having failed to knock him down, it tries to trip him up. Maybe many waste their energies trying to deal with the forms of sin, and never grapple with the fact of sin. Hence the evil things that compass men's souls about with their dread ministries of suggestion, and flutter on unhallowed wings in the wake of life. The sin that confronts us reveals to us our need of strength, but the sin that dogs our steps has, maybe, a deeper lesson to teach us—even our need of heart-deep holiness. Good resolution will do much to clear the path ahead, but only purity of character can rid us of the persistent haunting peril of the sin that plucks at the skirt of life. The deliverance God offers to the struggling soul covers not only the hour of actual grappling with the foe, but all the hours when it is the stealth and not the strength of evil that we most have cause to fear.
Iniquity at my heels. These words remind us that sin is not done with after it is committed. God forgives sin, but He does not obliterate all its consequences, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. A man may have the light of the City of God flashing in his face, and a whole host of shameful memories and bitter regrets crowding at his heels. We do not know what sin is till we turn our backs on it. Then we find its tenacity and its entanglement. What would we not give if only we could leave some things behind us! What would we not do if only we could put a space between ourselves and our past! The fetters of evil habit may be broken, but their marks are upon us, and the feet that bore the fetters go more slowly for them many days. The hands that have been used to grasping and holding do not open without an effort, even though the heart has at last learned that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Yes, and our sins come to life again in the lives of others. The light word that ought to have been a grave word and that shook another's good resolution, the cool word that ought to have been a warm word and that chilled a pure enthusiasm—we cannot have done with these things. Parents sometimes live to see their sins of indulgence or of neglect blighting the lives of those to whom they owed a debt of firmness and kindness. It is iniquity at the heels. These passages of carelessness and unfaithfulness haunt men, be their repentance never so bitter and their amendment never so sincere and successful. But all this is for discipline and not for despair. It casts us back upon God's mercy. It keeps the shadow of the cross upon all our path. It has something to do with the making of 'a humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart.' The memory of the irreparable is a sorrow of the saints.
Saint, did I say? With your remembered faces,
Dear men and women whom I sought and slew!
Ah, when we mingle in the heavenly places,
How will I weep to Stephen and to you!
Only let us not be afraid nor wholly cast down. Rather let us say, 'Wherefore should I fear when the iniquity at my heels compasseth me about?' By the grace of God the hours of the soul's sad memory and of clinging regrets shall mean unto us a ministry of humility and a passion of prayer. And through them God shall give us glimpses of the gateway of that life where regret and shame and sorrow fall back unable to enter. There is a place whither the iniquity at a man's heels can no longer follow him, and where in the perfect life the soul, at last, is able to forget.
X.
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
Then would I fly away, and be at rest….
I would haste me to a shelter
From the stormy wind and tempest.
Ps. lv. 6, 8.
These words are the transcript of a mood. The writer is not unfolding to us any of the deep persistent longings of his spirit; he is telling us of a thought that shadowed his soul for an hour. Let us look into this mood of his. It is not his in any unique or even peculiar sense. In moods, as in manners, history is wont to repeat itself. The writer of this poem has voiced one of the great common experiences of humanity. But let us be quite clear as to what that experience really is. Let us not be misled by the music and the seeming unworldliness of these words about winged flight from a world of trouble and strife. The Psalmist was not looking heavenward, but earthward, when this plea for wings broke from his heart. He was moved to speak as he did, not by the surpassing charm of a heavenly vision, but by the dark unrest of the earthly outlook. The emphatic note here is that of departure, not of destination. It is necessary to remind ourselves that this is so, for these words have become the classic of the home-sick soul. They have been used to voice the farthest and most truly divine desires of the human heart. And by virtue of such use they have gathered a meaning which was not theirs at the beginning. At that meaning we will presently look, but let us first of all look at this longing as it stands in the psalm and as it represents an experience that is threaded through the history of humanity.