THE HART
AND
THE WATER-BROOKS;

A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION OF
THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

BY THE
REV. JOHN R. MACDUFF,
AUTHOR OF "MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES," "MEMORIES OF GENNESARET,"
"WORDS Of JESUS," ETC. ETC.

"The portion of God's Word that is specially precious to me, more so than I am able to express, is Psalm forty-second."—Harrington Evans' Life, p. 399.

"What a precious, soul-comforting Psalm is that forty-second!"—Life Of Captain Hammond, p. 289.

LONDON:
JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.
M.DCCC.LX.

EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY,
PAUL'S WORK.

THE FORTY-SECOND PSALM.

¶ To the Chief Musician, Maschil, for the Sons of Korah.

1 As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,—so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:—when shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my meat day and night,
While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:
For I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,—with a multitude that kept holy day.

5 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 [or, His presence is salvation].

6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me:
Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites,
From the hill Mizar.

7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts;
All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

8 Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time,
And in the night his song shall be with me,
And my prayer unto the God of my life.

9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me?
Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
While they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul?—and why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him,
Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.[1]

The following is an excellent poetical paraphrase of the Psalm, by Bishop Lowth:—

I.

The Scene of the Psalm.

"The spot was so attractive to me, as well as the view of the surrounding country so charming, that I had great difficulty in tearing myself away from it. In the foreground, at my feet, was the Jordan flowing through its woods of tamarisks. On the other side rose gently the plain of Beisan surmounted by the high tell of that name. In the distance were the mountains of Gilboa—the whole stretch of which is seen, even as far as ancient Jezreel."—Van de Velde's Travels in Syria and Palestine, vol. ii. p. 355.

I.

THE SCENE OF THE PSALM.

All recent explorers of Palestine speak in glowing terms of that "solemn eastern background," with its mellow tints of blue and purple, rising conspicuous, as if a wall built by giants, from the deep gorge or valley of the Jordan. This mountain range, and especially the hills of Gilead, with their rugged ravines and forests of sycamore and terebinth, are full of blended memories of joy and sadness. From one of these slopes, the Father of the Faithful obtained his first view of his children's heritage. On another, the Angels of God—the two bright celestial bands—greeted Jacob on his return from his sojourn in Syria.[2] From another, trains of wailing captives on their way to Babylon, must oft and again have taken through their tears their last look of "the mountains round about Jerusalem." Nigh the same spot, the footsteps of our blessed Redeemer Himself lingered, when death was hovering over the couch of the friend He loved at Bethany. Martha and Mary, from their Village-home, must have lifted their eyes to these same "hills," from whence they knew, in the extremity of their anguish, their "help" alone could come. While, at a later period, the same spot was rendered illustrious as the locality of Pella, the mountain fortress and asylum whither their Lord had admonished His followers to flee, when the Imperial Eagles of Rome were gathered by Titus around the devoted city.[3]

This "land beyond the Jordan" still further derives an imperishable interest from being the exile-retreat of the sweet Singer of Israel in the most pathetic period of his chequered life and reign. There is no more touching episode in all Hebrew history than the recorded flight of David from his capital on the occasion of the rebellion of Absalom and the defection of his people. Passing, barefoot and weeping, across the brook Kedron, and thence by the fords of Jericho, he sped northwards with his faithful adherents, and found a temporary shelter amid these remote fastnessess.

Minds of a peculiar temperament have often found it a relief, in seasons of sadness, to give expression to their pent-up feelings in poetry or song. Ancient as well as modern verse and music abound with striking examples of this,—"Songs in the Night," when the mouldering harp was taken down from the willows by some captive spirit, and made to pour forth its strains or numbers in touching elegy. David's own lament for Jonathan is a gush of intensified feeling which will occur to all, and which could have been penned only in an agony of tears.[4]

It was a spirit crushed and broken with other, but not less poignant sorrows, which dictated this Psalm of his exile. May we not imagine that, in addition to the tension of feeling produced by his altered fortunes, there was in the very scene of his banishment, where the plaintive descant was composed, much to inspire poetic sentiment? The alternate calm and discord of outer nature found their response in his own chequered experiences. Nature's Æolian harp—its invisible strings composed of rustling leaves and foaming brooks, or the harsher tones of tempest and thunder, flood and waterfall—awoke the latent harmonies of his soul. They furnished him with a key-note to discourse higher melodies, and embody struggling thoughts in inspired numbers. In reading this Psalm we at once feel that we are with the Minstrel King, not in the Tabernacle of Zion, but in some glorious "House not made with hands,"—some Cathedral whose aisles are rocky cliffs and tangled branches, and its roof the canopy of Heaven!

Let us picture him seated in one of those deep glens listening to the murmur of the rivulet and the wail of the forest. Suddenly the sky is overcast Dark clouds roll their masses along the purple peaks. The lightning flashes; and the old oaks and terebinths of Bashan bend under the tumult of the storm. The higher rivulets have swelled the channel of Jordan,—"deep calls to deep"—the waves chafe and riot along the narrow gorges. Suddenly a struggling ray of sunshine steals amid the strife, and a stray note from some bird answers joyously to its gleam. It is, however, but a gleam. The sky again threatens, fresh bolts wake the mountain echoes. The river rolls on in augmented volume, and the wind wrestles fiercely as ever with the denizens of the forest. At last the contest is at an end. The sky is calm—the air refreshed—the woods are vocal with song—ten thousand dripping boughs sparkle in the sunlight; the meadows wear a lovelier emerald; and rock, and branch, and floweret, are reflected in the bosom of the stream.

As the royal spectator with a poet and painter's eye is gazing on this shifting diorama, and when Nature is laughing and joyous again amid her own tear-drops, another simple incident arrests his attention. A Hart or Deer, hit by the archers or pursued by some wild beast on these "mountains of the leopards," with hot eyeballs and panting sides, comes bounding down the forest glade to quench the rage of thirst. The sight suggests nobler aspirations. With trembling hand and tearful eye the exiled spectator awakes his harp-strings, and bequeaths to us one of the most pathetic musings in the whole Psalter. The 23d has happily been called "the nightingale of the Psalms;" this may appropriately be termed "the turtle-dove." We hear the lonely bird as if seated on a solitary branch warbling its "reproachful music," or rather struggling on the ground with broken wing, uttering a doleful lament. These strains form an epitome of the Christian life—a diary of religious experience, which, after three thousand years, find an echo in every heart. Who can wonder that they have smoothed the death-pillow of dying saints, and taken a thorn from the crown of the noble army of martyrs![5]

II.

The General Scope of the Psalm.

"The Scriptures have laid a flat opposition between faith and sense. We live by faith and not by sense. They are two buckets—the life of faith and the life of sense; when one goes up, the other goes down."—Bridge, 1637.

"There are twins striving within me; a Jacob and an Esau. I can, through Thy grace, imitate Thy choice, and say with Thee, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. Blessed God! make Thou that word of Thine good in me, that the elder shall serve the younger."—Bishop Hall, 1656.

II.

THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE PSALM.

"If the Book of Psalms be, as some have styled it, a mirror or looking-glass of pious and devout affections, this Psalm, in particular, deserves as much as any one Psalm to be so entitled, and is as proper as any other to kindle and excite such in us. Gracious desires are here strong and fervent; gracious hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, are here struggling. Or we may take it for a conflict between sense and faith; sense objecting, and faith answering."[6]

In these few words, the Father of commentators, with his wonted discernment, has given us the key to the true interpretation of this sacred song. It may be regarded, indeed, as the Old Testament parallel to the 7th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which another inspired writer truthfully and powerfully portrays the same great struggle between corruption and grace, faith and sense, "the old and the new man."

There are two antagonist principles in the heart of every believer, corresponding to the great forces which act in the material world. The tendency of his new nature is to gravitate towards God—the Divine Sun of his being—the centre of his fondest affections—the object of his deepest love. But "there is a law in his members warring against the law of his mind;"[7]—the remains of his old nature, leading him to wander in wide and eccentric orbit from the grand Source of light, and happiness, and joy! "What will ye see in the Shulamite?" asks the Spouse in the Canticles, personating the believer (at a time, too, when conscious of devoted attachment to the Lord she loved). The reply is, "As it were the company of two armies." (Sol. Song vi. 13.) Sight on the one hand, Faith on the other. The carnal mind, which is enmity against God, battling with the renewed spiritual mind, which brings life and peace. Affections heaven-born, counteracted and marred by affections earth-born. The magnet would be true to its pole but for disturbing moral influences. The eagle would soar, but it is chained to the cage of corruption. The believer would tread boldly on the waves, but unbelief threatens to sink him. He would fight the battles of the faith, but there is "a body of death" chained to his heavenly nature, which compels him to mingle denunciations of himself as "a wretched man" with the shouts of victory.[8]

We may imagine David, when he composed this Psalm, wrapped in silent contemplation—the past, the present, and the future suggesting mingled reflections. The shepherd, the king, the fugitive! Sad comment on the alternations of human life! humbling lesson for God's Anointed! It furnishes him with a true estimate of the world's greatness. It has taught him the utter nothingness of all here as a portion for the soul. Amid outward trial and inward despondency, Faith looks to its only true refuge and resting-place. His truant heart softened and saddened by calamity, turns to its God,—"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" (Ver. 1, 2.) But the wave is beaten back again! He remembers his sins and his sorrows, and (more galling to his sensitive spirit) the taunts of ungodly scoffers. "My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" (Ver. 3.) Moreover, he is denied the solace of public ordinances. He can no longer, as once he could, light the decaying ashes of his faith at the fires of the altar. Memory dwelt with chastened sadness on the hours of holy convocation. "When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day." (Ver. 4.) But, once more, the new-born principle regains the mastery. He rebukes his own unbelief, urges renewed dependence on God, and triumphs in the assurance of His countenance and love. "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." (Ver. 5.) But again the harp is muffled! Unbelief musters her ranks; fresh remembrances of sin and sorrow crowd upon him. "O my God, my soul is cast down within me." (Ver. 6.) Faith, however, has its antidote at hand, and the momentary cause of depression is removed. The memory of former succours and mercies inspires with confidence for the future, and he immediately adds, "I will remember Thee (in this the place of my Exile) from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar."

But the storm-clouds are still wreathing his sky;—nay, it seems as if the tempest were deepening. Fresh assaults of temptation are coming in upon him;—there seems no light in the cloud, no ray in the darkness. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." (Ver. 7.) But again, his own extremity is God's opportunity; Faith is seen cresting the resurgent waves. Lifting his voice above the storm, he thus expresses his assurance in God's faithfulness, "Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life." (Ver. 8.) Nay, he resolves in all time to come to provide against the return of seasons of guilty distrust and misgiving. He dictates and transcribes the very words of a prayer to be employed as an antidote in any such recurring moments of despondency. He resolves to rise above frames and feelings, and to plant his feet on the Rock of Ages, which these fluctuating billows can never shake;—"I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" (Ver. 9.) The Old nature makes one last and final effort, ere abandoning the conflict. Unbelief rallies its strength. A former assault is renewed. "As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?" (Ver. 10.) But he reverts to his prayer! He adopts his own liturgy for a time of sorrow. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him." (Ver. 11.) He seems to be "answered while yet speaking;" for he closes with the joyful declaration, "Who is the health of my countenance, and my God." (Ver. 11.) He had made a similar assertion in a former verse (Ver. 5), "I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance;" but now he can add the language of triumphant assurance, "My God!" The conflict is ended;—sense quits the field, and faith conquers. He began the Psalm in trouble, he ends it with joy. Its notes throughout are on the minor key, but these merge at last into a strain of triumph. He began comparing himself to the stricken deer—the helpless, breathless, panting fugitive;—he ends it with angel's words,—with the motto and watchword in which a seraph might well glory—heaven knows no happier—"My God!"

"He looked," says Matthew Henry, "upon the living God as his chief good, and had set his heart upon Him accordingly, and was resolved to live and die by Him; and casting anchor thus at first, he rides out the storm."

O child of God! touchingly expressive picture have we here of the strange vicissitudes in thy history. The shuttle in the web of thy spiritual life, darting hither and thither, weaving its chameleon hues; or, to adopt a more appropriate emblem, thy heart a battle-field, and "no discharge in that war" till the pilgrim-armour be exchanged for the pilgrim-rest:—sense and sin doing their utmost to quench the bivouac-fires of faith, and give the enemy the advantage: ay, and they would succeed in quenching these, did not the Lord of pilgrims feed with the oil of His own grace the languishing flame. "Sometimes," it has been well said, "in the Voyages of the Soul, we feel that we can only go by anxious soundings,—the compass itself seeming useless—not knowing our bearings,—nearing here Christ—then perhaps the dim tolling bell amidst the thick darkness warning us to keep off."[9] But fear not; He will "bring you to the haven where ye would be." The voice of triumph will be heard high above the water-floods. The contest may be long, but it will not be doubtful. He who rules the raging of the sea will, in His own good time, say, "Peace, be still, and immediately there will be a great calm." Have you ever watched the career of the tiny branch or withered leaf which has been tossed into a little virgin rill on one of our high-table lands or mountain moors? For a while, in its serpentine course, it is borne sluggishly along, impeded by protruding moss, or stone, or lichen. Now it circles and saunters hither and thither on the lazy streamlet—now floating back towards the point of departure, as if uncertain which direction to choose. A passing breath of wind carries it to the centre, and the buoyant rivulet sings its way joyously onward, bearing its little burden through copse, and birch, and heather. But again it is obstructed. Some deep inky pool detains it in the narrow ravine. There it is sucked in, whirled and twisted about, chafed and tortured with the conflict of waters; or else it lies a helpless prisoner, immured by the rocks in their fretting caldrons. But by and by, with a new impulse it breaks away along the rapid torrent-stream, bounding over cascade and waterfall, home to its ocean destiny.

So it is with the soul! It is often apparently the sport and captive of opposing currents. It has its pools of darkness, its eddies of unbelief, its jagged rocks of despair, but it will eventually clear them all. "All motion," to use the words of one of the best and saintliest of the old writers on this very Psalm (Sibbs), and which carry out our illustration, "All motion tends to rest, and ends in it. God is the centre and resting-place of the soul; and here David takes up his rest, and so let us. We see that discussing of objections in the consistory of the Soul, settles the Soul at last—Faith at length silencing all risings to the contrary. Then whatsoever times come, we are sure of a hiding-place and a sanctuary."

Yes! your life, notwithstanding all these fluctuations, will end triumphantly. It may, as in this Psalm, be now a pæan, then a dirge; now a Miserere, then a Te Deum. The Miserere and Te Deum may be interweaved throughout; but the latter will close the Life-story—the concluding strain will be the anthem of Victory. You may arrest the arrow in its flight—you may chain the waterfall, or stay the lightning, sooner than unsay the words of God, "He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." (Phil. i. 6.)

Remember, God does not say, that "good work" is never to be impeded. He has never given promise in Scripture of an unclouded day—uninterrupted sunshine—a waveless, stormless sea. No, "the morning without clouds" is a heavenly emblem. The earthly one is "a day, in which the light shall neither be clear nor dark." (Zech. xiv. 6.) The analogy of the outer world of nature, at least under these our chequered and ever-varying skies, teaches us this. Spring comes smiling, and pours her blossoms into the lap of Summer. But the skies lower, and the rain and battering hail descend, and the virgin blossoms droop their heads and almost die. Summer again smiles and the meadows look gay; the flowers ring merry chimes with their leaves and petals, and Autumn with glowing face is opening her bosom for the expected treasure. But all at once drought comes with her fiery footsteps. Every blade and floweret, gasping for breath, lift their blanched eyelids to the brazen sky; or the night-winds rock the laden branches and strew the ground. Thus we see it is not one unvarying, unchecked progression, from the opening bud to the matured fruit. But every succeeding month is scarred and mutilated by drought and moisture, wind and rain, storm and sunshine. Yet, never once has Autumn failed to gather up her golden sheaves; ay, and if you ask her testimony, she will tell that the very storm, and wind, and rain you dreaded as foes, were the best auxiliaries in filling her yellow garners.

If the experience of any one here present be that of "the deep" and "the water-flood"—"the stormy wind and tempest," think ever of the closing words of the Psalm, and let them "turn your mourning into dancing; take off your sackcloth, and gird you with gladness!" You may change towards God, but He is unchanging towards you. The stars may be swept from our view by intervening clouds, but they shine bright as ever,—undimmed altar-fires in the great temple of the universe. Our vision may be at fault, but not their radiance and undying glory. The Being "not confined to temples made with hands," who met this wrestler of old in the forest of Gilead, and poured better than Gilead's balm into his bosom, is the same now as He was then. And if thou art a wrestler too, He seems through the moaning of the storm to say, "Though thou fall, yet shalt thou not be cast down utterly, for the Lord upholdeth thee with his right hand."

"My God!" Oh, if that be the last entry in the Diary of religious experience, be not desponding now because of present passing shadows, but "thank God and take courage." It is written that "at evening-time it shall be light." (Zech. xiv. 7.) The sun may wade all day through murky clouds, but he will pillow his head at night on a setting couch of vermilion and gold. "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."[10] It was said by aged Jacob, in his prophetic death-song, regarding that very tribe on the borders of which the royal exile now sang, "Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last."[11] Was not this the key-note of his present elegy? Faith could lift its head triumphant in the clang of battle, amid these troops of spiritual plunderers, and sing, "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in THIS will I be confident."[12]

III.

A Peculiar Experience.

"If we listen to David's harp, we shall hear as many hearse-like harmonies as carols."—Lord Bacon.

"If we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here. If not, we must sympathise with those whose case they speak too plainly, and thank God it is not our own case."—Matthew Henry.

III.

A PECULIAR EXPERIENCE.

Although this Psalm, in bold and striking figure, presents a faithful miniature picture of the Believer's life, we must regard it as depicting an extraordinary experience at a peculiar passage of David's history, and which has its counterpart still in that of many of God's children.

The writer of the Psalm was evidently undergoing "spiritual depression"—what is sometimes spoken of as "spiritual desertion,"—that sorrow, awful in its reality—too deep for utterance—deeper than the yawning chasm made by family bereavement—the sorrow of all sorrows, the loss of God in the soul!

There is much caution needed in speaking of this. There are causes which lead to spiritual depression which are purely physical, arising from a diseased body, an overstrung mind—a succession of calamities weakening and impairing the nervous system. We know how susceptible are the body and mind together, of being affected by external influences. "We are," says an able analyser of human emotions, "fearfully and wonderfully made. Of that constitution which in our ignorance we call union of soul and body, we know little respecting what is cause, and what effect. We would fain believe that the mind has power over the body; but it is just as true that the body rules the mind. Causes apparently the most trivial—a heated room, want of exercise—a sunless day, a northern aspect—will make all the difference between happiness and unhappiness; between faith and doubt; between courage and indecision. To our fancy there is something humiliating in being thus at the mercy of our animal organism. We would fain find nobler causes for our emotions."[13] Yes—many of those sighs and tears, and morbid, depressed feelings, which Christians speak of as the result of spiritual darkness and the desertion of God, are merely the result of physical derangement, the penalty often for the violation of the laws of health. The atmosphere we breathe is enough to account for them. They come and go—rise and fall with the mercury in the tube. These are cases, not for the spiritual, but for the bodily physician. Their cure is in attendance to the usual laws and prescriptions which regulate the healthy action of the bodily functions.

There is another class of causes which lead to spiritual depression which are partly physical and partly religious. There must necessarily be depression where there is undue elation; where the soul-structure is built on fluctuating frames and feelings, and the religious life is made more subjective than objective.

Many imagine, unless they are at all times in a glow of fervour—an ecstatic frame of feeling—all must be wrong with them.[14] Now, there is nothing more dangerous or deceptive than a life of mere feeling; and its most dangerous phase is a life of religious emotional excitement. It is in the last degree erroneous to consider all this glowing ecstasy of frame a necessary condition of healthy spiritual life. Artificial excitement, in any shape, is perilous. Apart altogether from the moral and religious aspect of the question, the tendency of the ball-room and theatre, and a preference in reading for works of fiction, is to make a man nauseate the plain, commonplace work, the occurrences and themes of this every-day world. Feed him on dainties and forced meats, and he despises husks and plain fare. Equally true is this with regard to the life of the soul. It is not fed on luscious stimulants and ecstatic experiences. When it is so, the result is every now and then a collapse; like a child building his mimic castle too high, the perpendicular and equilibrium are lost. It totters and falls, and he has just to begin again. The dew distils, and hangs its spangled jewels on blade and flower, gently and in silence. The rain comes down in tiny particles and soft showers, not in drenching water-floods. So the healthy Christian holds on the even tenor of his way, unaffected by the barometer of feeling. He knows this is apt to be elevated and depressed by a thousand accidents over which he has no control. His life is fed, not from the fitful and uncertain streams issuing from the low ground of his own experience, but from the snow-clad summits—the Alps of God. Were he thus suffering himself to depend on the rills of his own feelings, his brook would often be dry in summer—the season when he most needed it; whereas the supply from the glacier-beds on which the sun shines, is fullest in these very times of drought.

Add to this, religion is shorn of its glory when it is dwarfed into a mere thing of sentiment and feeling. Its true grandeur and greatness is, when it incorporates itself with active duty, and fulfils its best definition as not a "being" but a "doing." Of nothing, therefore, do we require to be more jealous, than a guilty, unmanly, morbid dwelling on feelings and experiences. You remember Elijah, when he fled pusillanimous and panic-stricken from his work, and took to a hermit-cell amid the solitudes of Sinai. We find him seated in his lonely cave, his head drooping on his breast, sullen thought mantling his brow, muttering his querulous soliloquy, "I am left alone." The voice of God hunts out the fugitive from duty. "What doest thou here, Elijah? Why in this cave, brooding in a coward spirit, unworthy of thee? Art thou to cease to work for Me, because the high day of excitements on the heights of Carmel are over? Here is food to strengthen thy body, and here is 'the still, small voice' of my love to strengthen thy soul. Go forth to active duty. Leave thy cave and thy cloak behind thee. Take thy pilgrim-staff and scrip, and with the consciousness of a great work in hand, and a brief time to do it in, arise, and onward to Horeb, the mount of God!" (1 Kings xix.)

But having thrown out these preliminary cautions, the question occurs: Are there no cases of spiritual depression or desertion, arising purely from spiritual causes?

We answer, Yes. The Bible recognises such Spiritual darkness—absence of all spiritual comfort and joy—is no figment of man's theological creed. It is a sad and solemn verity—the experience, too, of God's own children. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?" (Isa. l. 10.) "Oh," says the afflicted patriarch of Uz, "that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness." (Job xxix. 2, 3.) "In my prosperity," is the testimony of David, at a later period of his life, "I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled." (Ps. xxx. 5-7.) "I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.... My beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer." (Sol. Song iii. 2, v. 6.) Can we forget a more awful and impressive example? One soaring above the reach of all grovelling human experiences, but yet who tells us, in His bitter Eloi cry, that even He knew what it was to be God-deserted and forsaken!

Are there any whose eyes trace these pages who have ever undergone such a season? or it may be are undergoing it now? I stop not to inquire as to the cause;—indulged sin, omitted or carelessly performed duty, neglect of prayer, worldly conformity.[15] Are you feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of many, has waxed cold;—are you mourning that you have not the nearness to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,—not the love of your Bibles, and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,—that a heavy cloud mantles your spiritual horizon,—God's countenance, not what once it was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,—nor heaven what once it seemed, a second home?

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, not comforted!" do not despond. In these very sighings and moanings of your downcast spirit, there are elements for hope and comfort, not for despair. They are the evidences and indications that the spark, though feeble, is not quenched—that the pulse, though languid, still beats—that faith, though like a grain of mustard-seed, is still germinating. "O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?" It is that very shadow that has now come athwart your soul, and which you so bitterly mourn, which tells of sunshine. As it is the shadow which enables us to read the hours on the dial, so is it in the spiritual life. It is because of these shadows on the soul's dial-face that we can infer the shining of a better Sun. "The wicked have no bands in their (spiritual) death." Their life has been nothing but shadow; they cannot therefore mourn the loss of a sunshine they never felt or enjoyed. Well has it been said, "When the refreshing dews of grace seem to be withheld, and we are ready to say, 'Our hope is lost, God hath forgotten to be gracious'—this is that furnace in which one that is not a child of God never was placed. For Satan takes good care not to disquiet his children. He has no fire for their souls on this side everlasting burnings; his fatal teaching ever is, Peace, peace!"[16] But what, desponding one, is, or ought to be, thy resort? Go! exile in spirit—go, like that royal mourner amid the oak-thickets of Gilead! Brood no more in unavailing sorrow and with burning tears. Thou mayest, like him, have much to depress thy spirit. Black and crimson sins may have left their indelible stain on the page of memory. In aching heart-throbs, thou mayest be heaving forth the bitter confession, "Mine iniquities have separated between me and my God." But go like him! take down thy silent harp. Its strings may be corroded with rust. They may tell the touching story of a sad estrangement. Go to the quiet solitude of thy chamber. Seek out the unfrequented path of prayer;—choked it may be with the weeds of forgetfulness and sloth. Cast thyself on thy bended knees; and, as the wounded deer bounds past thee (emblem of thine own bleeding heart), wake the echoes of thy spirit with the penitential cry, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!"

CONTENTS OF THE PSALM.

I.

The Hart Panting.