But great as were the privileges which he enjoyed in the city of refuge, they were only temporary. He was only to dwell there till his case should be investigated by the proper authorities, or at the utmost till the death of the man who happened to be high priest at the time. He must then, if pronounced guilty, be given up to the just doom connected with his crime, or, if found innocent, depart to his own home. But it is not so with the house of the Lord, to which the Psalmist refers. David knew that the sanctuary on Zion would be a secure place of refuge ; and often did he long with an intense yearning for its privileges, and contrast the miserable spiritual privations of his exile in the wilderness with the means of grace which he used to enjoy. But even if he had been restored to the sanctuary, he could not have said of it, " This is my rest for ever : here will I dwell ; for I have desired it."
^ At Cadiz, in Spain, above the entrance of the Casa di Misericordia, or House of Refuge, is carved the inscription in the words of the one hundred and thirty-second Psalm — " This is my rest : here will I dwell." The ear misses the two familiar words of the Psalm " for ever." A friend has told me that as he looked
5IO PURSUIT AND PERMANENCE
up one day at the inscription and noticed the omission, the Superior, who happened to be near, with a smile explained the reason. " This Casa," he said, " is the rest of the poor — but not for ever." ^
2. David must have looked beyond the earthly sanctuary to the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God ; beyond the dark valley of the shadow of death to the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. There alone should he be everlastingly safe and blessed.
We also fled to this house of the Lord for safety in a time of sore distress ; and we have found in it the true rest of life. We were driven by stress of trial and danger into it when all other refuge failed us, and we looked on our right hand and viewed, but there were none to know or help us ; and now so blessed are we in it that we would not leave it if we could. No sin can accuse us there; no death can snatch us from its joy. Nothing can shake the security, nothing can mar the peace, of those who dwell thus in the house of the Lord. Goodness and mercy have wiped away all the evils of our life, and converted them into good. And " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
3. But the dwelling does not begin when the " days of our life " are ended ; the two are simultaneous, and go on together. There is indeed no termination to the dwelling in God's house, it reaches into eternity and never ceases ; but it begins at present, and runs parallel with our enjoyment of God's goodness and mercy. It is the "one thing" that David says elsewhere he desired of the Lord, and would seek after all the days of his life, and that inspired such Psalms as the Sixty-third and Eighty-fourth, which express so wonderfully the soul's longing for conscious fellowship with God,
We see the faith and feeling of the man expand and en- large, till they embrace the great and ultimate future of the life that is to be ; and he says, I feel that I have been led onwards to that. These capacities and affections of mine, the stirring of a 1 H. Macmillan, The Mystery of Grace, 148.
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spiritual life within me, were never made to find their perfection here. I carry within myself, in my own religious consciousness, a prophecy, an earnest of something greater than the life which now is ; and I believe that " I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever," and that the goodness and the mercy that have followed me hitherto, and which, I believe, will follow me still, shall effloresce and bear fruit in the upper world, in the blessedness which is prepared for the people of God. I believe it ! I believe that 1 shall pass away from the rich satisfactions of the spiritual life here, which, however rich, are still mingled. I am still in the presence of my enemies ; and though they do not hurt me or come near me, still they suggest feelings, thoughts, that partake of fear, and occasion a necessity for watchfulness, and for the exercise of duties from which I shall one day be delivered. I shall pass away from the feast here, rich as it is, to a richer and a better ; for I shall " sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb." Or — to change the figure, and go back to the previous picture — I believe, reasoning from the past and the present to that which is to come, that 1 shall pass away from this lower scene, these verdant and pleasant pastures, only to find myself, in a higher world, one of that flock of which it is said — "For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters : and they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." " Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life : and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."