^ Mr. Edmund Gosse's poem, " To Tusitala," addressed to Eobert Louis Stevenson, reached him at Vailima three days before his death. It was the last piece of verse read by Stevenson, and it is the subject of the last letter he wrote on the last day of his life. The poem was read by Mr. Lloyd Osborne at the funeral. It is now printed in Mr. Gosse's In Busset and Silver. It concludes as follows : —
By strange pathways God has brought you,
Tusitala, In strange webs of fortune sought you, Led you by strange moods and measures To this paradise of pleasures !
^ R. W. Dale, in The Sunday Magazine, 1892, p. 38,
440 GOOD GUIDANCE
And the body-guard that sought you To conduct you home to glory, — Dark the oriflammes they carried, In the mist their cohort tarried, — They were Languor, Pain, and Sorrow,
Tusitala ! Scarcely we endured their story Trailing on from morn to morrow. Such the devious roads they led you, Such the error, such the vastness, Such the cloud that overspread you, Under exile bow'd and banish'd. Lost, like Moses in the fastness. Till we almost deem'd you vanished. Vanish'd? Ay, that's still the trouble,
Tusitala. Though your tropic isle rejoices, 'Tis to us an Isle of Voices Hollow like the elfin double Cry of disembodied echoes, Or an owlet's wicked laughter. Or the cold and horned gecko's Croaking from a ruined rafter, — Voices these of things existing. Yet incessantly resisting Eyes and hands that follow after; You are circled, as by magic. In a surf-built palmy bubble,
Tusitala ; Fate hath chosen, but the choice is Half delectable, half tragic. For we hear you speak, like Moses, And we greet you back, enchanted, But reply's no sooner granted. Than the rifted cloudland closes.^
^ My mother's unquestioning evangelical faith in the literal truth of the Bible placed me, as soon as I could conceive or think, in the presence of an unseen world ; and set my active analytic power early to work on the questions of conscience, free will, and responsibility, which are easily determined in days of innocence ; but are approached too often with prejudice, and always with disadvantage, after men become stupefied by the opniions, or tainted by the sins, of the outer world : while the gloom, and even ^ J. A. Hamnierton, Stevensoniana, 92.
PSALM XXIII. 3 441
terror, with which the restrictions of the Sunday, and the doctrines of the Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, and Quarles' Emblems, oppressed the seventh part of my time, was useful to me as the only form of vexation which I was called on to endure ; and redeemed by the otherwise uninterrupted cheerfulness and tran- quillity of a household wherein the common ways were all of pleasantness, and its single and strait path, of perfect peace.^
III.
The Assurance.
"For his name's sake."
1. The ground of the Psalmist's confidence that God will guide him aright is expressed in the words " for his name's sake." That phrase is the secret of God's kindness to us. God hath loved us with an everlasting love. Divine love springs from nothing external to God Himself. It is His very essence and being. " I do not this for your sakes, 0 house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake." And here is our hope and inspiration. The love we do not cause we cannot change or destroy. Be our state what it may, we are still the objects of the love of God. Then with all our sins, if we throw ourselves on that absolute and boundless affection, we shall be both welcomed and blessed.
^ Very falsely was it said, " Names do not change Things." Names do change Things ; nay, for most part they are the only substance which mankind can discern in Things.^
2. A true name of old not only pointed out and identified, but also described. It did not merely turn our thoughts to a particular individual, but was significant — carried a meaning in it, declared something characteristic of the individual. Thus the dying Eachel called her boy Benoni, "the son of my sorrow"; and Hannah called hers Samuel, " asked of God," saying, " Because I have asked him of the Lord."
^ The name of God not only distinguishes Him from other beings, but describes Him ; tells who He is, and what He is ; so that if we know His name, we know Himself. The name is much more glorious for us than it was for David. Marvellous dis-
' Ruskin, Praeterita, i. 224. 2 Carlyle, Miscellanies, iv. 116.
442 GOOD GUIDANCE
closures have been made since his time, both in word and act; above all, the name has been revealed in Jesus, so that " whosoever hath seen him hath seen the Father also." I do not think that David has in view the name as given to Abraham or to Moses ; but the name which he has used in the beginning of this Psalm — the shepherd-name — which tells of care, love, guidance, defence, fellowship, salvation.^
3. When God leads us in the paths of righteousness " for his name's sake," it is implied that the reason for the leading is not in us, but in Himself; He is true to His shepherd-name. It is a name that He has taken to Himself ; and He will not falsify, He will not dishonour it. In all His dealings with me He will show forth that He is my Shepherd. And this is why He leads me in the paths of righteousness : it is " for his name's sake."