This present life is like crossing the Stelvio. We are going towards the glorious secret, but meantime the way hides it. The more we think of the land within the veil, the more we must look
^ Lucy Larcora.
PSALM XXI. 3 381
forward to the top of the pass, when we shall see the secret for ourselves. It is ready, as Peter writes, to be revealed. When we behold it, shall we not adore the loving-kindness of Him who hid that He might reveal, in whose light it is ours now to see light clearly ? ^
^ A famous city in the East has triple walls. Within the huge, strong gates of the first wall the trading and mercantile populations dwell ; within the gates of the second wall the space is reserved for tribesmen who are akin to the reigning house ; and within the gates of the innermost wall nestle palace and park and imperial pleasure-grounds. The first gate to which Christ holds the key looks forth into infinite vistas. The gospel opportunity gives access into a new standing-ground of privilege, and through the new standing-ground passes a highway into the favoured and sacred sphere, where dwell members of a royal and priestly race, and through this sphere approach is at last made to the blessed and glorious realms beyond the angel-guarded gates.2
^ A. Philip, The Father's Hand, 91.
2 T. G. Selby, The Divine Craftsman, 80.
A Personal Peovidence.
383
Literature.
Brooks (P.), The Sinritual Man, 281.
Burns (J. D.), Memoir and Remains, 293.
Clarke (G.), From the Cross to the Crown, 1.
Cooke (G. A.), The Progress of Revelation, 105.
Culross (J.), God^s Shepherd Care, 1.
Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 69, 83.
Freeman (J. D.), Life on the Uplands, 1.
Gray (W. H.), Our Divine Shepherd, 1.
Howard (H.), The Shepherd Psalm, 1.
Jones (J. M.), The Cup of Cold Water, 17.
McFadyen (J. E.), The City with Foundations, 201.
Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, i. 307.
Parker (J.), The City Temple Pulpit, vii. 270.
Smith (G. A.), Four Psalms, 1.
Spurgeon (C. H.), The Treasury of David, 398.
Stalker (J.), The Good Shepherd, 17.
Stoughton (J.), The Song of Christ's Flock, 1,
Christian World Pulpit, Ixv, 232 (Parker).
Expository Times, xxii. 302.
384
A Personal Providence.
The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. — Ps. xxiii. i.
Pekhaps no single lay in the Psalter has taken such a hold of the imagination and the heart of believers as the 23rd Psalm, None can estimate its influence on the Church of God throughout the past, whether on her spiritual life generally or in the case of particular individuals. The sorrowful have been cheered by it ; the troubled have been led into peace ; the prisoner has sung it in his dungeon and felt himself a captive no more ; the pilgrim has been gladdened by it as he wandered in the wilderness, in a solitary way, and found no city to dwell in ; the fainting soul has been refreshed by it, and enabled to mount up as on eagles' wings; doubts and fears and questionings of Providence, and forebodings of ill, and all the black brood of unbelief, have been chased away by it, like the shades of night by the day-star ; it has been God's balm to the wounded spirit ; it has strengthened God's people to bear the cross, and to suffer their lives to be guided by His will ; it has been whispered by dying lips, as the last earthly utterance of faith and gratitude and hope, the prelude of the New Song in which there is no note of sorrow.
^ Probably few Psalms are oftener read, or with stronger feeling, by careless readers than the twenty-third, singing of God's grace to the humble, and the twenty-fourth, singing of God's grace to the noble ; and there are probably no other two whose real force is so little thought of. Which of us, even the most attentive, is prepared at once to tell, or has often enough con- sidered, what the " Valley of the Shadow of Death " means, in the one, or the " Hill of the Lord," in the other ? ^
^ Spurgeon says of this matchless Psalm : " It is David's Heavenly Pastoral ; a surpassing ode, which none of the daughters
^ Ruskin, Eodc Honeycomb ( Works, xxxi. 203). JOB-PS. XXX. — 25
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S6 A PERSONAL PROVIDENCE
of music can excel. The clarion of war here gives place to the pipe of peace, and he who so lately bewailed the woes of the Shepherd, tunefully rehearses the joys of the flock. We picture David singing this unrivalled pastoral with a heart as full of glad- ness as it can hold. This is the pearl of Psalms, whose soft, pure radiance delights every eye ; a pearl of which Helicon need not be ashamed, though Jordan claims it." Some one else has said : " What the nightingale is among the birds, that is this Divine ode among the Psalms, for it has rung sweetly in the ear of many a mourner in his night of weeping, and has bidden him hope for a morning of joy." I will venture to compare it also to the lark, which sings as it mounts, and mounts as it sings, until it is out of sight, and then not out of hearing. The whole Psalm is more fitted for the eternal mansions than for these dwelling-places below the clouds. The truths which are found in every sentence are almost too wondrous for mere mortal to grasp, and the heights of experience we are invited to ascend are almost too high for human climbing. ^