^ We have listened to some sweet melody, and we cannot escape from its gracious thraldom. It pervades the entire day. It interweaves itself with all our changing affairs. We hear it in our work and in our leisure ; when we retire to rest and when we awake. It haunts us. The analogy may help us to some appre- hension of what is meant by the fear of God. The man who fears God is haunted by God's presence. God is an abiding conscious- ness. God is " continually before him." Everything is seen in relationship to God. The Divine presence pervades the mind and shapes and colours the judgment. Here are two descriptions from the Word of God, in the contrast of which the meaning will be made quite clear. " God is not in all his thoughts." The Eternal does not haunt his mind. Everything is secularized, and nothing is referred to the arbitrament of the Divine Will. He is not God- possessed. " Pray without ceasing." Here is the contrasted mind, from which the sense of God is never absent. Like an air of penetrating music the Divine presence pervades the exercise of all his powers. He is God-haunted, and in the consciousness of that presence he lives and moves and has his being. He fears God.2
III.
Happiness.
1. The secret of happiness is love. The people of God love Him, and He loves them; their habitual feeling is that their affection and gratitude bear no proportion to the greatness of His claims. Like the penitent disciple who had had much forgiven, they can solemnly appeal to His omniscience and say, "Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou knowest that I love thee." And He loves them with a love which has a height and depth, and
1 Phillips Brooks, New Starts in Life, 275,
^ J. H. Jowett, Brooks by the Traveller's Way, 173.
14 THE SECRET OF THE LORD
length and breadth passing knowledge — a love which has thrown open to them the book of Nature that their eyes might be filled with its beauty and their souls with its truth — a love which sings sweet songs in the carol of the bird, in the murmur of the brook, in the whispering of the breeze, and in the joyous music of the domestic hearth — a love which covers the earth with golden grain, and casts abundance into the lap of life — a love which has toiled, and bled, and died that the soul of man might be taken from the spoiler who has held it under his cruel and polluting sway, and be brought under the dominion of its rightful Lord and made fully happy, and that for ever, in His fellowship.
^ He looked out on the world through the eyes of Love, and that is why it was to him ever beautiful in its infinite variety, and in its amazing friendliness. He lived to be seventy-one as the world counts years, but even then he was Youth and Joy — in the best sense of the word he refused to grow up.^
^ Though Mr. Paynter was a deeply spiritual man, there was nothing in his life or speech to suggest gloom ; certainly there was not in his looks. Many a laugh have we had together, over some amusing incident or story, in the lighter interludes of life ; and though he himself rarely told a story, yet sometimes he would make a " dry " remark, which showed that the sense of humour was not absent. He was a happy man — happy in all the domes- ticities of his home and family life — happy among his flowers — happy in his work — happy always in doing good to others, and all because he was happy in God, and had learned what St. Paul meant when he said, " All things are yours." ^
Just to recollect His love,
Always true; Always shining from above,
Always new. Just to recognize its light
All-enfolding ; Just to claim its present might,
All-upholding. Just to know it as thine own,
That no power can take away. Is not this enough alone
For the gladness of the day ? ^
> Love and Life : The Slory of J. Dcnholm Brash (1913), 8.
2 S. M. Niigfiit, Life Radiant: Memorials (ftlie Rev. F. Paynter, 228.
' F. R. Havergul.
PSALM XXV. 14 15
2. We learn the secret of happiness as we try to express our love in noble character and unselfish conduct. Men are so con- stituted that obedience is its own reward. There is no delight so deep and true as the delight of doing the will of Him whom we love. There is no blessedness like that of the increasing com- munion with God and of the clearer perception of His will and mind which follow obedience as surely as the shadow follows the sunshine. There is no blessedness like the glow of approving conscience, the reflection of the smile on Christ's face.
To have the heart in close communion with the very Fountain of all good, and the will in harmony with the will of the best Beloved; to hear the Voice that is dearest of all ever saying, " This is the way, walk ye in it " ; to feel " a spirit in my feet " impelling me upon that road ; to know that all my petty deeds are made great, and my stained offerings hallowed by the altar on which they are honoured to lie ; and to be conscious of fellowship with the Friend of my soul increased by obedience — this is to taste the keenest joy and good of life, and he who is thus " blessed in his deed " need never fear that that blessedness will be taken away, or sorrow though other joys be few and griefs be many.