PSALM XXIII. 6 507
He bade me linger not till light Had touched with gold the morning height, But to begin my course by night, And day would follow me.
He told me when my hours were dark To wait not the revealing spark, But breast the flood in duty's ark, And peace should follow me.
Therefore, 0 Lord, at Thy command I go to seek the unknown land, Content, though barren be the sand, If Thou shalt follow me.
I go by night, I go alone, I sleep upon a couch of stone; But nightly visions shall atone If Thou shalt follow me.
I sow the seed in lowly ground, I sow in faith and hear no sound ; Yet in full months it may be found That Thou hast followed me.^
^ There is a mercy which goes before us, and there is a mercy which follows us. The one is the clearing of our own path ; the other is the clearing of a path for our brother man. There is an expression, *' May your path be strewn with flowers ! " That may mean one or other of two things. It may be the wish that you may be called to tread a flowery way, or it may be the wish that when you tread the thorny way you may leave flowers where you have passed. The latter is the Psalmist's aspiration, and it is the nobler aspiration. It is an aspiration which can come only from a "restored soul." Any man can desire to be cradled in green pastures and led by quiet waters. But to desire that my life may make the pastures green, to desire that my life may make the waters quiet — that is a Divine prayer, a Christlike prayer. There is a prosperity for which every good man is bound to pray. It is finely expressed, I think, in a line of Tennyson's " Maud " —
Her feet have touched the meadows, and have left the daisies rosy.
' G, Matheson, Sacred Songs, 10.
5o8 PURSUIT AND PERMANENCE
The daisies were not rosy in advance ; they became rosy by the feet touching them. It was the footsteps themselves that exerted a transforming power ; they created a flowery path for future travellers ; goodness and mercy followed them.^
5. The hope uttered here has no element of doubt mingling with it. This is indicated by the word "surely." Here is not only hope, but the full assurance of it. When our hope rests on an earthly friend, it is necessarily more or less troubled, because our friend may change, his love may grow cold, his power may fail, he may forget us in his own distractions, he may die, or in some one of a thousand ways we may pass out of the sphere within which alone he can help us ; but there is no such element of distiu'bance and unquietness in the hope we repose in God ; it is, it has reason to be, assured hope. Instead of " surely" some commentators make it " only " — " only goodness and mercy shall follow me"; just as in the 73rd Psalm they read, "God is good and only good — nothing but good — to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart." Nothing but goodness and mercy shall pursue me. What a contrast to the lot of the wicked man, pursued by the angel of judgment (xxxv. 6), hunted by calamity (cxl. 11).
6. " All the days of my life." A continuance of grace and strength is needed every hour till the close. Often is the saint surprised by severe trial even when nearing home, like a vessel which has safely weathered the storms of a voyage and seems past all danger, but is nevertheless wrecked almost in entering port. Above all such fear of failing at last the believer's con- fidence triumphs in the assurance that He whom he has known and trusted will never leave his side.
^ Grace being an endowment above the strength of nature, what is it else, but young glory ? For that the knowledge of the one will lead us by the hand unto the knowledge of the other : as glory is grace in the bloom and fullest vigour, so grace is glory in the bud and first spring-time ; the one is holiness begun, the other holiness perfected ; the one is the beholding of God darkly, as through a glass, the other, beholding Him face to face.^
^ G. Matheson, Rests by the River, 50. - Andrew Wellwood.
PSALM XXIII. 6 509
II.
Pekmanence.
" I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."
1. Not only are Goodness and Mercy — these two white-robed messengers of God — to follow us instead of the avenger of blood, but we are to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. The man- slayer who fled to one of the old cities of refuge in Palestine had not only the right of asylum there, safety from the vengeance of the friends of the murdered man, but also the right of citizenship. Though he did not by birth belong to the city to which he fled, and had no possession in it ; though his crime had made him an outcast from his own city and inheritance, his very necessity constituted a title to be received as a citizen in the new dwelling- place. And by the merciful provision of the Mosaic law, his very misery and danger raised him from the condition of a stranger and a fugitive, to be an associate with the priests of God in their holiest services.