334 THE PERFECT LAW
Psalmist's words, "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart."
^ To the growing soul, there are, with maturing life, deeps of joy and an ever-increasing capacity for delight. Ever grander are the chords of happiness struck by experience — provided we keep near the Author and Giver of all, who has more yet to bestow. " Experience worketh hope." It is simple fact, absolute truth, verifiable science, that delighting oneself in the Lord means constant joy. As surely as Huyghens demonstrated the wave- theory, of which Marconi's wu-eless was but practical proof, so have the prophets, martyrs and common saints shown in their lives the truth of the psalm of delights. They have fulfilled the joy of Jesus. Even the Son of God in humanity did not disdain the motive of happiness. He "for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame." Surely, this is a challenge to us to do the same. So ought we to learn that the daily cultivation of joy is both a duty and the best strengthener for life's burdens. It prepares us for whatever mortal existence may, and the eternities certainly will, bring us. Life is short, and affliction light. Joy is for ever. He who is " made after the power of an endless life " teaches this.^
4. " The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." The metaphor is perhaps that of pure water, in whose uninterrupted medium a man can see himself reflected. It suggests that the revealing medium of Nature is not uninterrupted. Nature does not convey the impression of an unmixed revelation of love. It has its storms as well as its calms, its clouds as well as its sunshine, its thunders and earthquakes and fires as well as its still small voices. To-day it is all gentle, serene, placid; to- morrow its brow may be furrowed with wrath and its accents hoarse with anger. The Psalmist cannot see in Nature a pure reflexion of his human wants. It adapts itself to his wants chiefly in those points in which he is allied to the beast of the field ; meets him rather as a creature than as a human creature ; fails to supply his needs the moment his needs rise above the level of the irrational creation. But when he enters the secret places of his own soul, he looks upon a pure water of life in which he sees himself reflected at full length. It is true there are storms here also; indeed, we are not sure that Schenkel is not right 1 W. Elliot Griffis, The Call of Jesus to Joy, 9.
PSALM XIX. 7-9 335
when he says that the very idea of Conscience implies a disturb- ance in the moral nature. But here lies the difference between the storms of Nature and the storms of Conscience : in the former my destiny is obscured, in the latter it is made manifest. In the moral tempest of the heart I see myself more clearly. I recognize in the very sense of struggle an adaptation to my deepest wants as a human being; for I find in the sense of struggle the prophetic intimation that this is not my rest, and I hear the ever-repeated command which was heard by the ancient patriarch, " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred." The struggles of Conscience are the soul's premonitions of an unfulfilled destiny ; and the human portraiture bulks larger when reflected through the troubled waters. " The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes."
^ Another abstract theme which "Watts has impersonated is " Conscience," or the Dweller in the Innermost. A female figure with stern gesture and eyes like a flame of fire, is seen in the centre of a Iviminous mist that ripples round it to the edge. There is a radiant star in the middle of her forehead, and on either side are doves with soft plumage and half-outstretched wings. The breast is covered with a downy, loosely-fitting mantle, out of which at regular intervals protrude large dark feathers, which form a strange kind of halo around the face and neck. One arm is laid across her bosom, and the other supports her head in an attitude of meditation. In her lap are the arrows with which she pricks the hearts of men into conviction, and the trumpet which shall ultimately summon to the judgment-seat all mankind, there to be tried for the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. The star on the brow may mean the eternal light of truth, of which conscience is the presentment; the doves that surround the head, the innocence and purity that characterize all her thoughts and ways ; and the feathers in the mantle may remind us of the rapid flight and the keen vision of birds, with which the quick decisions, and the all-discerning, all- penetrating insight of conscience may be suitably compared. Conscience is thus light, is winged, dwells in the heart of life, is armed with avenging weapons, and looks into the unseen. We ask ourselves when gazing upon that mysterious Being with the fiery eyes and the sharp arrows and the trumpet of judgment, why it is that the Dweller in the Innermost has not a more complete control of our lives. Why is it that it enables us to see what is right, and yet we care little for it when we have seen it ;