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hearts, and whose decrees, as unalterable in the eternal future as in the eternal past, yet in the close verity of visible fact, bend, like reeds, before the fore-ordained and faithful prayers of His children.^
0 strong, upwelling prayers of faith, From inmost founts of life ye start, — •
The spirit's pulse, the vital breath Of soul and heart!
From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad, Unheard of man, ye enter in
The ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains; The simple heart, that freely asks In love, obtains.
For man the living temple is:
The mercy-seat and cherubim, And all the holy mysteries.
He bears with him.
And most avails the x^rayer of love,
Which, wordless, shapes itself in deeds,
And wearies Heaven for naught above Our common needs.^
4. There are two ways of not lacking a thing in this world. He lacks nothing who has everything. If one could take the stars from the sky, and the rivers from their beds, he might say, " I lack nothing." To get everything possible for the soul to want is one way of saying, " I want nothing." The better way is for a man to look up and bring his desires down to that which God sees fit to give him. This applies emphatically to things of faith. If I knew all the mysteries of God, I might say, " I lack no know- ledge of God." But if, knowing only what God has told me, I let all the gaps in my knowledge go because He has not chosen to fill them, in a richer sense I may say, " I lack no knowledge of God."
1 Ruskin, On the Old Road. ^ J. G. Wliittier, TKe Hermit of the Thcbaid,
PSALM XXIII. I 399
^ God does not say He will supply every one of our wants, but He does say He will supply every one of our needs. The two words are not coincident in any one of our lives. Half of the difficulty in our lives is caused by letting our wants pre- dominate and not keeping them within our grip.^
^ I once said to a servant girl who had got into a good family, " Are you happy where you are ? " She had got what for a servant was a good situation, and I shall not forget the quietly confident way in which with beaming face she said, " Oh yes, sir, I have £22 a year, and all found." " The Lord is my shepherd," and all is found. " I shall not want." " All found." That was evidently more to her than the small sum total of the actual pounds. She dwelt upon that, and said with emphasis, " and all found." 2
^ The Oriental shepherd was always ahead of his sheep. He was down in front. He was eyes and ears, heart and brain for his flock. Any attack upon them had to take him into account. He was the defence force — the advance guard, that had to be measured and reckoned with. Now, what the Eastern shepherd was to his sheep, God is to His people. He is down in front, both as to time and place. He is in the to-morrows of our history. It is to-morrow that tyrannizes over men and fills them with dread. It is the unknown that paralyses the heart and puts such tension on the nerves. But once let the thought of God as Shepherd take its place among the certainties of our life, and straightway we are delivered from this thrall. The future is guaranteed. He is there already. All the to-morrows of our life have to pass Him before they can get to us. We literally take them from His hand. We step down into to-morrows that are filled and flooded with God, The deduction for the Psalmist was inevitable: "I shall not want," "Want" and "Jehovah" are mutually exclusive ideas. They cannot co-exist in the mind excepting in antithesis. They cancel each other, Jehovah stands for all a man needs for time and for eternity. Give a worried man, or a careworn woman, this assurance, and at once life takes on a different complexion, and moves upward to a higher plane. He who is not delivered from the fear of want can never touch the highest levels of life or achievement. Christ saw this when He said, " Be not anxious for the morrow," and assured His hearers that it was along the lines of fulfilled relations to God that life would find all its satisfaction and supply.^
^ G. Beesley Austin. ' Jolin McNeill,
»H. Howard, The Shepherd Psalm, 16.
400 A PERSONAL PROVIDENCE
When God shall ope the gates of gold, The portals of the heavenly fold, And bid His flock find pasture wide Upon a new earth's green hillside —
What poor strayed sheep shall thither fare, Black-smirched beneath the sunny air. To wash away in living springs The mud and mire of earthly things !
What lonely ewes with eyes forlorn, With weary feet and fleeces torn, To whose shorn back no wind was stayed, Nor any rough ways smooth were made !
What happy little lambs shall leap To those sad ewes and spattered sheep, With gamesome feet and joyful eyes, From years of play in Paradise !