"When darkness long has veiled my mind,
And smiling day once more appears,
Then, my Redeemer, then I find,
The folly of my doubts and fears:
Straight I upbraid my wandering heart,
And blush that I should ever be
Thus prone to act so base a part,
Or harbor one hard thought of Thee!"
"Here deep calls to deep. Yet in the midst of those deeps
faith is not drowned. You see it lifts its head above water."—Hall.
"We perceive the Psalmist full of perplexed thought, and
that between strong desires and griefs, and yet in the midst of them
intermixing strains of hope with his sad complaints. . . What is the whole
thread of our life but a chequered twist, black and white, of delights and
dangers interwoven? And the happiest passing of it is, constantly to enjoy and
to observe the experiences of God's goodness, and to praise Him for them."—Leighton,
1649.
"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all
your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life." Psalm 42:7-8
In the previous chapter we spoke of the two verses which
form the turning-point in the psalm—the climax of the conflict therein so
strikingly described between belief and unbelief. We referred to the boldness
and expressiveness of the figure: the troubles of the believer, like the
billows of the ocean calling on one another to unite their strength that they
might effect his overthrow, but faith rising triumphant above them all. At
times, when all human comfort gives way, God himself appears. "The voice of
the Lord is upon the waters." (Psalm 29:3.) He not only "commands
His loving-kindness in the daytime," but "in THE NIGHT His song is with
us." Our heavenly Parent comes in earth's darkest, most tempestuous hours,
sits by our side, sings His night-song—His own lullaby—"PEACE, BE STILL!"
"So gives He His beloved sleep!" (Psalm 127:2.) God's "songs" sound always
sweetest "by night"—the deep, dark night of affliction. The
nightingale's notes are nothing by day—they would be lost in the chorus of
other birds; but when these have retired to their nests, she prolongs her
tuneful descant, and serenades, with her warblings, the silent earth. The
world can only give its song by day. It can speak only in the
sunshine of prosperity. But "God our Maker gives songs in the night!"
(Job 35:10.) His promises, like the nightingale, sound most joyously, and,
like the glow-worm, shine most brightly, in the dark!
Let us pause before proceeding with the sequel of the
Psalm, and ponder the great lesson to be derived from this experience of
David.
It is, to TRUST GOD in the darkest, gloomiest night of
earthly trial! To wait His own time, and to say when the billows are
highest, "Yet the Lord will." This is one great end and design of
trial, to exercise the grace of patience. There is nothing God loves
better than a waiting soul. "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him."
(Lam. 3:25.) "I waited patiently," says David, in another Psalm,
(or, as it is literally, "I waited, waited,") "for the Lord, and He
inclined unto me, and heard my cry." (Psalm 40:1.) "I know your works,"
says Jesus, speaking of old, in the language of commendation, to His
church at Ephesus: "how you have BORNE, and have patience, and for my
name's sake have labored, and have not FAINTED." (Rev. 2:3.) How often has
our way appeared to be hedged up with thorns—as if there were no possibility
of departure! In sailing among some of our own Highland lakes and inland seas,
where the mountains, in a thousand fantastic forms, rise abrupt from the
shore, we frequently seem to be landlocked, and able to get no farther. Yet
the vessel pursues its serpentine course; and as we double the first jutting
promontory, the lake again expands; the same waters appear beyond, gleaming
like a mirror of molten gold. We find what we imagined to be an impassable
barrier, is only a strait, opening into new combinations of mountain majesty
and beauty.
So is it in the Voyage of life. Often, in its fitful
turnings and windings, do we seem to be arrested in our way—"Hill
Difficulties" rising before us, and appearing to impede our vessel's
course—but as faith steers onwards, impediments vanish, new vistas and
experiences of loving-kindness open up. Where we expected to be stopped by
walls of frowning rock and barren mountains, lo! limpid waves are seen laving
the shore, and joyful cascades are heard singing their way to the silver
strand!
And not only does God thus "command His loving-kindness" in
disappointing our fears, but "in the night His song shall be with us." He will
turn the very midnights of our sorrow into occasions of grateful praise! Yes!
if not now, we shall come yet to see the "needs be" of every trial. We have
only a partial view here of God's dealings—His half-completed, half-developed
plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great
finished Temple of Eternity!
Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest King, to the heights
of the forest of Lebanon. See that noble Cedar, the pride of its compeers, an
old wrestler with the northern blasts of Palestine! Summer loves to smile upon
it—night spangles its feathery foliage with dew-drops—the birds nestle on its
branches—the wild deer slumber under it shadow—the weary pilgrim, or wandering
shepherd, repose under its curtaining boughs from the midday heat or from the
furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall—the old inhabitant of
that primeval forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke! As we see
the unsparing axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk—then the noble
limbs stripped of their branches—and at last the proud "Tree of God" coming
with a crash to the ground; we exclaim against the wanton destruction—the
demolition of this noblest of pillars in the temple of nature—and we are
tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier
stem—invoking inanimate things to resent the affront—"Howl, fir-tree, for
the cedar has fallen!"
But wait a little!—follow that gigantic trunk as the
workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side—thence conveyed in giant
rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean—and last of all, behold it
set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God—and then, as you see its
destination—gazing down on the very Holy of Holies, set in the diadem of the
Great King—say, can you grudge that the crown of Lebanon was despoiled, in
order that this jewel might have so noble a setting? That cedar stood as a
stately beam and pillar in nature's temple, but the glory of the latter
house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls are like
these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and bared them—we see no
reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but He has a noble end and object
in view—to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple,
to make them "a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in
the hand of our God!"
Or take another illustration. Go to one of our
repair-docks, where the weather-beaten vessel has been weeks or months in the
carpenter's hands. Her shaken timbers are replaced, her shattered keel
renewed, the temporary props and scaffoldings have been removed, and with her
gay streamers afloat, and her crew on deck, she stands ready and equipped for
sea. What is needed? Nothing but the opening of the sluices, to reunite her to
her old watery element. She lies a helpless, decrepit thing, until these
dock-gates be opened, and the buoyant waves rush to clasp her anew in their
embrace. It is done! But at first all is noise, and wrath, and tumult. These
gurgling waters, discolored with mud and sediment, convert the noble granite
basin into an inky, turgid whirlpool. Before long, however, the strife ceases;
the great wooden wall raises itself like a child that has been awoke in its
cradle by the voice of the storm—the waters gradually calm and subside—higher
and still higher is the vessel lifted, until, amid the cheers of the crew, she
passes by the opened gates, and, with every sail spread to the breeze, is off
to new voyages in her ocean-home.
Child of trial! "vessel of mercy!" your God sees fit at
times to bring you into the repair-dock, that He may put His tools upon you,
and refit and prepare you for the great voyage of immortality. When He opens
the sluices of trial, you may see no mercy in His dealings. It may be "deep
calling to deep"—the roar and heaving of antagonist waters; they may at first,
too, stir up nothing but the dregs and sediment of sin—expose the muddy pools,
the deep corruptions of the heart. But be still! He will yet vindicate the
rectitude and wisdom of His own procedure. Before long, these surging waves
will settle peacefully around you, the shadows of heaven reflected in their
glassy surface; and better still, strengthened and renovated by that season of
trial, you will go forth from the Repairer's hands more ready to brave the
billows, grapple with the tempest, and reach at last the haven where you would
be!
It is hard discipline—the undowny pillow, the
trench-work and midnight vigils—which makes the better soldier. The type of
strength in the kingdom of inanimate nature, is not the sickly plant of the
hot-house, or the tree or bush choked in the dark jungle; but the pine rocked
by Alpine or Norwegian tempests, or the oak mooring its roots in the rifted
rock! David would neither have been the King or the Saint he was, but for the
caves of Adullam and Engedi, the rocks of the wild goats, the forest exile of
Hermon and Gilead. He had to thank affliction for his best spiritual
graces. The redeemed in glory are ready to tell the same. "We would never have
been here but for these storms of 'great tribulation.' But for the loss of
that child—that worldly calamity—that protracted sickness—that cutting
disappointment—that wounding of my heart's affection—that annihilation of
earthly pride and ambition—that 'deep calling to deep'—I would not now have
been wearing this crown!" Trials have been well compared to the winds God
employs to fill our sails and fetch us home to the harbor of everlasting
peace!
One word of caution before we close this chapter. From all
we have said of "deeps" and "floods," storms and waterfalls, and midnight
darkness—are any to leave these pages with the feeling that Religion is a
gloomy, repulsive thing—that the believer's life is one of darkness and
despair—that better far is the world's gaiety and folly—the merry laugh of its
light-hearted votaries—than a life of sadness like this? Mistake us not! We
repeat what we have already said. The experience we have been now considering
is, in many respects, peculiar; one of those dark passages which stand alone
in the diary of the spiritual life. Religion gloomy! Who says so? Shall
we take Paul as our oracle? What is his testimony? In all his letters he tries
to crowd as much as he can into little space. In one of these, he has room for
only two injunctions. But instead of giving two that are different, he prefers
to repeat the one. It is the emphatic tautology, "Rejoice in the Lord
always: and AGAIN I say, REJOICE." (Phil. 4:4.)
Or shall we seek a different tribunal? Go gather together
all the philosophers of antiquity—Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. Bring together
the wise men of Greece—the philosophers of Alexandria—the sages of Rome. Ask
if their combined and collected wisdom ever solved the doubts of one awakened
soul, as have done these leaves of this Holy Book? Which of them ever dried
the tear of widowhood as these? Which of them ever smoothed the cheek of the
fatherless as these? Which of them ever lighted the torch of hope and peace at
the dying bed as these, and flashed upon the departing soul visions of
unearthly joy? O Pagan darkness! where was your song in the night? In
the region and shadow of death, where did your light arise?
But WE have a "more sure word of prophecy, to which we do
well to take heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place." The Christian is
the man who alone can wear the sunny countenance. The peace of God,
keeping the heart within, cannot fail to be mirrored in the look and life
without! And if (as often is the case) he has his appointed seasons of
trial—the sea of life swept with storms of great tribulation—it is with him as
with yonder ocean. To the eye of the young voyager, gazing on its mountain
billows, it would seem as if its lowest caverns were stirred, and the world
were rocking to its foundations; while, after all, it is only a
surface-heaving! There are deeps, unfathomed deeps, of calm rest and peace,
down in that ocean's undisturbed recesses.
Believer in Jesus! with all your trials, you are a happy
man. Go on your way rejoicing. Tribulation may fret and ruffle the calm of
your outer life, but nothing can touch the deeps of your nobler being.
Troubles may rise, and "terrors may frown," and "days of darkness" may fall
around you, but "You will keep him, O God, IN PERFECT PEACE whose mind is
stayed on YOU!"