And grief may hide an evening guest. But joy shall come with early light.^
* F. Smitli, in Homiletic Review, xlix. 224. 2 W. C. Bryant, Poems, 39.
PS. XXV.-CXIX. — 4
Room to Live.
Literature.
Adams (J.), Sermons in Syntax, 51.
Ainsworth (P. C), The Pilgrim Church, 201.
Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 333.
Ellis (J.), Through Christ to Life, 52.
Miller (J. R.), Week- Day Religion, 1.
Morrison (G. H.), The Afterglow of God, 143.
Christian World Vul-pit, Ixxix. 253 (B. J. Gibbon) ; Ixxx. 158 (C. F.
Perry). Treasury (New York), xii. 175 (T. W. Anderson).
Room to Live.
Thou hast set my feet in a large place. — Ps. xxxi. 8.
The idea is common in the Psalms of distress as restraint, irksome confinement. The man in trouble is shut up : he is in a strait place. Consequently the idea of deliverance takes the form of enlargement. The distressed man is led out of a narrow gorge into a wide plain. He dwells now in a broad place. He enjoys the sense of ample space. " Thou hast set my feet in a large place." We have the same figure, although our use of it is perhaps not so common, in our own language. We talk of " straitened circumstances," and again of " room to breathe " and " elbow room."
L
Straitened. Circumstances.
There are agencies and influences always operating, whose nature it is to reduce life to a narrow area. The most potent are sin, trouble, and grinding toil.
1. The narrowing effect of sin, more than of anything else, seems to be suggested by these words. There is the inherited weakness and the encircling contagion — within us, the evil tendency; without us, the unhallowed opportunity. Sometimes a man ac- cepts the pressing solicitation of evil, or yields to the hot-handed grip of the world's desire; and then with a demeaned dignity and lowered self-respect, he measures life and finds he has but a few square feet in which to stand and call himself a fool. He measures his shame and his weakness — his poor failure — and he says, Life is a narrow place.
^ When William Blake the poet was an old man, there came a lady one day to see him. She was beautiful and rich, and she
53
54 ROOM TO LIVE
had the world at her feet, as we express it. Blake looked at her, as with a look of pity he put his hand upon her head and said, " My child, may God make the world as beautiful to you as it has been to me." Let a young man have a pure imagination and his world will be a world of glory. He may be poor, and his days may be monotonous, but life will be clad for him in royal splendour. And that is where the curse of sin comes in, defiling and polluting everything. Let it once creep into the imagination, and everything bright and beautiful is gone.^
So dear to Heav'n is saintly chastity
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.
And in clear dream, and solemn vision.
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape.
The unpolluted temple of the mind.
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence.
Till all be made immortal: but when lust
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres.
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it lov'd,
And link't itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.^
2. Trouble and adversity make life a small room. It is true that at times a stone pillow brings a man, like dreaming Jacob, near heaven, but generally the heart is full of unsatisfied longings, of unutterable thoughts. We are shut in by sordid circumstances, like the lark by its cheap cage, or we drag behind us a chain of anxiety and regret ; we are clogged by ill-health or mean cares ; parts of our being lie waste, or yield crops that cause pain and shame. At times the sky is grey, the heart full of bitterness.
1 G. II. Morrison, The Afterglow of God, 143. ' Milton, Comus.
PSALM XXXI. 8 55
All is so flat and depressing, and no outlook promises better weather to come.
^ In every life are there not strange events, unlooked-for catastrophes, heartbreaking bereavements, mysterious contradic- tions, unfathomed problems shed all along our path, in which it seems as though by some sudden combination the very heavens are blotted out ? Do we not sometimes feel like the pelican in the wilderness or the stranger left by the caravan to die alone in a dry and thirsty land where no water is ? Life's heaviest blows often come most unexpectedly. Death appears, and our astonish- ment is even greater than our grief. Losses arise, and we are petrified with surprise as our treasure disappears in the most unlikely directions. Friends and comrades fail us, and amaze- ment almost chokes us. Have we not times in which prayer fails and hope dies down to a poor flicker, and we can do nothing and think nothing, and when we feel as dead men that cumber the ground ? Do we not know what it is to walk about with that sickening of heart which makes our food like bitter herbs, and in the morning makes us wish for evening and at night makes us long for morning ? ^