"O mysterious Jesus, teach us Your works and Your plans.
Let our hearts pant after You as the deer after the water-brooks. Create a
thirst which nothing shall satisfy but the fountain of eternal love. See the
velocity with which the needle flees to the magnet when it gets within
distance; so shall we hasten to our Magnet—our Beloved—as we approach
Him."—Lady Powerscourt's Letters.
"As the deer pants after the water-brooks,
so pants my soul after you, O God."—Verse 1.
We have pictured, in a preceding chapter, the uncrowned
Monarch of Israel seated, pensive and sad, amid "the willows by the
water-courses;" or wandering forth, amid the deepening twilight-shadows, with
the roll of Jordan at his side, perhaps, like his great ancestor, to "wrestle
with God until the breaking of the day."
We have already adverted to the simple incident which
arrested his attention. A breathless tenant of the forest bounded past
him to quench its thirst in the neighboring river. That unconscious child of
nature furnishes the keynote of his song. Let us sit by the banks, as the
Exile takes down his harp, and thus sings—"as the deer pants after the
water-brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God."
God is the only satisfying portion of the soul. Every
theory of human happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the
aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the infinite,
man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its borrowed light, will
compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as well expect the caged wild
beast to be happier within the iron bars of his den than roaming lord of the
forest, as for the human spirit to be content with the present and the finite,
as a substitute for the immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone
could slake the thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have
offered it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades
of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks of
Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have bounded
down the valley in search of the stream.
So with the soul. Nothing but the stream flowing from the
Everlasting Hills will satisfy it. You may tempt a man, as he is hurrying on
his immortal way, with the world's pastures—you may hold out to him the golden
sheaves of riches—you may detain him amid the sunny glades of pleasure, or on
the hill-tops of fame (and he is but too willing for a while to linger)—but
satisfy him, they cannot! When his nobler nature acquires its rightful
ascendancy he will spurn them all. Brushing each one in succession away, as
the stag does the dewy drops of the morning, he will say—"All are
insufficient! I wish them not. I have been mocked by their failure. I have
found that each has a lie in its right hand—it is a poor counterfeit—a shadowy
figure of the true. I need the fountain of living waters—I need the Infinite
of Knowledge, Goodness, Truth, Love!" "In the Lord I put my trust: why do you
say to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?" (Psalm. 11:1)
The fact is, it is the very grandeur of the soul which
leads it thus to pant after God. Small things satisfy a small capacity, but
what is made receptive of the vast and glorious can only be satisfied with
great things. The mind of the child is satisfied with the toy or the bauble;
the mind of the untutored savage with bits of painted glass or tinsel; but the
man, the sage, the philosopher, desires higher possessions, purer knowledge,
nobler themes of thought and objects of ambition. Some insects are born for an
hour, and are satisfied with it. A summer's afternoon is the duration of
existence allotted to myriads of tiny ephemera. In their case,
youth and age are crowded into a few passing minutes. The descending sun
witnesses their birth and death—the lifetime of other animals would be to them
an immortality. The soul, being infinite and unlimited in its capacities, has
correspondingly high aspirations. Vain would be the attempt to fill up a
yawning gulf by throwing into it a few grains of sand. But not more vain or
ineffectual than try to answer the deep yearnings of the human spirit by the
seen and the temporal.
Yes! on all the world's fountains, drink at them as you
may, "thirst again" is written. Of the world's mountains, climb them as
you may, you will never say, "I have reached the coveted summit. It is
enough." Men go sighing on, drinking their rivers of pleasure and climbing
their mountains of vanity. They feel all the while some undefined,
inarticulate, nameless longing after a satisfying good; but it is a miserable
travesty to say that it has been found, or can be found, in anything here.
"Who will show us any good?" will still be the cry of the groping seeker
until he has learned to say, "Lord, lift upon me the light of your
countenance."
We know how hard and difficult it is to convince of these
sublime verities. The soul, even in its hours of trouble and deep conviction,
is like a castaway from shipwreck, who sees from his raft-planks something
cresting the waves. He imagines it an island! As he nears it, he fancies he
sees purple flowers drooping over the solid rock, and the sea-birds nestling
in the crevices. But it is only an aggregate of withered leaves and rotten
branches, which the receding tide has tossed together, the wayward freak of
old ocean.
"All are wanderers gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed
And never won. Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed. Rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
And add two-thirds of the remaining half,
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams."—Cowper.
"I was at the very zenith of earthly happiness. On
returning from the ball, I took a hasty review of the evening I had passed as
I lay sleepless upon my pillow. The glitter—the music—the dance—the
excitement—the attention—the pleasure—all passed before me. But, oh! I felt a
deficiency I could not describe. I sighed, and, throwing my arm over my head,
whispered to myself these expressive words, 'Is that all?'"—Mrs.
Winslow, Life.
Let him who would solve this great problem of Happiness go
to that parable of nature—the hunted Stag seeking the water-brooks—the thirsty
soul seeking its God. God is the home of the soul, and he is away from
home who pitches his tent and weaves his heart affections around anything
short of Him. Who has not heard of "home-sickness"—the desolate feelings of
the lonely stranger in a strange land? Let affection, and friendship, and pity
do what they may to alleviate the pang of distance and separation, though
beaming faces be around, and hands of love and sympathy be extended, still
will the heart (despite of all) be roaming the old hallowed haunts, climbing
in thought the hills of childhood, gazing on the old village church with its
festoons of ivy, seated under the aged elm, or listening to the music of the
passing brook and the music of voices sweeter and lovelier than all! The soul
is that stranger, dwelling in the tents of Kedar, and panting for Heaven and
God. Its language is, "I am not at home, I am a stranger here."
Manifold, too, are the voices in this the land of its exile, whispering,
"Arise and depart, for this is NOT your rest!" (Micah 2:10)
You may have seen in our mountain glens, in the solemn
twilight, birds winging their way to their nests. There may be lovely bowers,
gardens of fragrance and beauty, close by—groves inviting to sweetest melody,
Nature's consecrated haunts of song. But they tempt them not. Their
nests—their homes are in yonder distant rock, and there they speed their way!
So with the soul. The painted glories of this world will not satisfy
it. There is no rest in these for its weary wing and wailing cry. It goes
singing up and home to God. It has its nest in the crevices of the Rock of
Ages. When detained in the nether valley, often is the warbling note heard,
"Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest."
And when the flight has been made from the finite to the infinite—from the
lower valleys of sense to the hills of faith—from the creature to the
Creator—from man to God—as we see it folding its buoyant pinion and sinking
into the eternal clefts, we listen to the song, "Return unto your rest, O
my soul!"
Reader! may this flight be yours. "Seek the Lord while He
may be found!" The creature may change, He cannot. The creature must die, He
is eternal. "O God, you are my God; early will I seek YOU: my soul thirsts
for YOU, my flesh longs for YOU in a dry and thirsty land, where no water
is.…Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise
You." (Ps. 63)