^ I have a very great confidence indeed in the kindness of God towards us. I do believe if we shall find ourselves mistaken on either side in Eternity, it will be in finding God more merciful than we expected.^
^ W. Landels. ^ Life of Charles Loriity Brace, 83.
I
PSALM XXIII. 6 503
^ Miss E. having told Dr. Duncan that a young man had said at a meeting that " there was not mercy in God from everlasting — there could not be mercy till there was misery," he said, " God is unchangeable ; mercy is an attribute of God. The man is con- founding mercy with the exercise of mercy. There could not be the exercise of mercy till there was misery ; but God was always a merciful God. You might as well say that there could not be justice in God till there were creatures towards whom to exercise punitive justice." ^
Silent, alone ! The river seeks the sea,
The dewdrop on the rose desires its sun! Oh, prisoned Soul, shalt thou alone be free?
Shalt thou escape the curse of death and birth
And merge thy sorrows in oblivion?
Thou, thou alone of all the living earth?
Silent, alone ! I know when next the dawn Shall cast its vision through the desert sea
And find me not, the sword that I have drawn Shall flash between the twilights, and a word Shall praise what I was not but strove to be. Saying : " Behold the mercy of the Lord." ^
3. "Goodness and mercy shall follow me." It is a strong word that the Psalmist uses, the strong fierce word pursue — the very word used of the pursuit of the enemy in battle. It is as if God's love were so eager to find the man that it was determined to run him down. Look ! there they are, two blessed and gentle figures, Love and Pity, angels twain, on the heels of every man, run- ning and resolved to find him. And when they find him, and bring him into the quiet tent, as the guest of God, is it any wonder that he longs to dwell there "throughout the length of days " ?
He pursues us with the zeal of a foe, and the love of a Father ; pursues us " throughout the length of days " with a Divine im- patience that is never faint and never weary. He is not content to follow us ; He pursues us, because He means to find us. Be- hind the loneliest man is a lovely apparition ; nay, no apparition, but angels twain, Goodness and Mercy, shielding and urging him
^ Memoir of John Duncan, LL.D., 422.
* George Cabot Lodge, Poems and Dramas, i. 55.
504 PURSUIT AND PERMANENCE
on. Will he not turn round and look at them ? For not to smite, but to bless, are the hands uplifted behind him. Had the powers that pursue us not been Goodness and Mercy, they would have slain us long ago, as cumberers of the ground.^
^ When night came the church was packed. " Now, beloved friends," said the preacher, " if you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text." He preached the most extraordinary sermon from that verse. He did not divide the text into " secondly " and " thirdly " and " fourthly " ; he just took the whole verse, and then went through the Bible from Genesis to Eevelation to prove that in all ages God loved the world. I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not keep back the tears. It was like news from a far country : I just drank it in. So did the crowded congregation. I tell you there is one thing that draws above everything else in this world, and that is love?"
^ How many unsatisfied hearts there are, tired of their own tired question, "Who will show us any good?" Nor are they only the hearts which have tried the less pure springs of earthly happiness and rest. Not long ago there died a man eminent in scientific knowledge and achievement, who towards the close of his comparatively brief life was brought back from remote mental wanderings to God in Christ. I refer to the late Mr George Eomanes. He was a man of blameless morals, exemplary in every personal duty ; and he seemed constrained, to his own in- finite unhappiness, to disbelieve in God. He tried, in this sad condition, to make life satisfactory without Him. He gave him- self up fully to his own refined and elevated line of thought and work. He was a diligent and masterly observer and enquirer amidst the mysteries of nature, and a kindly and unselfish man besides. But was he satisfied ? Listen to his own avowal : " I felt as if I were trying to feed a starving man with light con- fectionery." It would not do. Nothing would do but the living God. He sought, he felt, he knelt his way back to Him, and he was satisfied at last.^
4. The idea of goodness and mercy following a man is exceed- ingly beautiful and suggestive. There is a phrase in the Bible, with which we are familiar, which speaks of the "preventing