Our heaven must be within ourselves,
Our home and heaven the work of faith All thro' this race of life which shelves Downward to death.
So faith shall build the boundary wall.
And hope shall plant the secret bower, That both may show magnifical With gem and flower.
While over all a dome must spread,
And love shall be that dome above ; And deep foundations must be laid, And these are love.^
^ We see here into the inmost nature of the Old Testament belief. All the blessedness and glory of the future life which the New Testament unfolds is for the Old Testament faith con- tained in Jehovah. Jehovah is its highest good ; in the posses- sion of Him it is raised above heaven and earth, life and death ; to surrender itself blindly to Him, without any explicit know- ledge of a future life of blessedness, to be satisfied with Him, to rest in Him, to take refuge in Him in view of death, is character- istic of the Old Testament faith.^
^ The impotence of death on the relation of the devout soul to God is a postulate of faith, whether formulated as an article of faith or not. Probably the Psalmist had no clear conception of a future life ; but certainly he had a distinct assurance of it, because he felt that the very " sweetness " of present fellowship with God " yielded proof that it was born for immortality." *
1 A. F. Kirkpatiiek, ^ Christina G. Rossctti.
* Delitzsch. * A. Maclaren.
286 THE VISION OF GOD
I.
The Immediate Earthly Experience.
The soul's desire for a vision of God is satisfied by spiritual communion here and now.
1. The opening phrase of this verse is expressive of a noble singularity. " As for me." The man who says that isolates himself in an attitude of moral grandeur from all that is base, carnal, and worldly. It is the utterance of moral manhood, of a soul that has the heroism to separate itself from the majority, and stand majestically aloof acd alone in its superior choice. "As for me." This is the motto of a spiritual aristocracy. Noblesse oblige. The man who utters it ranks himself with the world's moral minorities. " As for me." That is the language of true soul-nobility. And there are times when we too must dare to utter it, if we would be true to our higher nature and count for anything in the world.
This man has a consciousness of a religious, Divine life in him. He describes the wicked, the worldly, the men that have their portion in this life, who believe in nothing but appetite, what they can grasp and handle, the men who never call on God, who do not serve Him. But, he says, " I believe in God ; I pray to God ; I have communion with God. As for me, I stand separate from these men. I am not living simply for the senses, the appetites, the passions, gaining all I can get, and keeping all I gain, or spending it upon my lusts. I am not doing that ; I am conscious that I am not. And I am conscious that I have within me a Divine faith ; I have a communion with God ; I can bare my heart to God, and say. Thou hast tried me, and hast found nothing — no insincerity." This is not the language of the Pharisee, " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men ; I pay tithes ; I fast twice in the week." It is not that. It is not a persuasion founded upon mere ritualism and externalism. It is a humble, thankful, moral, spiritual consciousness that this man, believing in God, loves Him, has communion with Him, and, under the influence of that Divine faith, keeps himself from the
PSALM XVII. 15 287
path of the destroyer, from the works and the society of the wicked.
^ It cannot be supposed that the bodily shape of man resembles, or resembled, any bodily shape in Deity. The likeness must there- fore be, or have been, in the soul. Had it wholly passed away, and the Divine soul been altered into a soul brutal or diabolic, I suppose we should have been told of the change. But we are told nothing of the kind. The verse (Gen. i. 26 — God created man in his own image) still stands as if for our use and trust. It was only death which was to be our punishment. Not change. So far as we live, the image is still there ; defiled, if you will ; broken, if you will ; all but defaced, if you will, by death and the shadow of it. But not changed. We are not made now in any other image than God's. There are, indeed, the two states of this image — the earthly and heavenly, but both Adamite, both human, both the same likeness ; only one defiled, and one pure. So that the soul of man is still a mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, the image of the mind of God.^
^ We become like those with whom we associate. A man's ideals mould him. Living with Jesus makes us look like Himself. We are familiar with the work that has been done in restoring old fine paintings. A painting by one of the rare old master painters is found covered with the dust of decades. Time has faded out much of the fine colouring and clearly marked outlines. With great patience and skill it is worked over and over. And some- thing of the original beauty, coming to view again, fully repays the workman for all his pains. The original image in which we were made has been badly obscured and has faded out. But if we give our great Master a chance He will restore it through our eyes. It will take much patience and skill nothing less than Divine. But the original will surely come out more and more till we shall again be like the original, for we shall see Him as He is.^