1. The faithfulness of God reaches to the clouds of sin and remorse. — Think of David after his terrible fall. The clouds gathered round him then as they never gathered before. As he had sowed, so he was reaping ; and no sufferings are so terrible or so testing as the sufferings that are the obvious outcome and natural retribution of a man's own follies and crimes. What of the darkness that envelops him then — when the sword that he had lifted against Uriah was turned against himself, and he ex- perienced in the sins of his family the reproduction of his own, to the overshadowing and embitterment of his later years ? Youth gone from him, his spirit crushed — does the man lose his hope and let go his hold on the promise of a truth-keeping God ? Behind clouds such as these, does he fail to grasp and to cling to the faith- fulness he spoke of in the years long gone by ? Listen : " Although my house be not so with God ; yet he hath made with me an ever- lasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure : for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, though he make it not to grow." Yes, whom God loves He loves throughout, and He loves to the end.
^ A friend once showed an artist a costly handkerchief on which a blot of ink had been made. " Nothing can be done with it now, it is absolutely worthless." The artist made no reply, but carried it away with him. After a time he sent it back, to the great surprise of his friend, who could scarcely recognize it. In a most skilful and artistic way he had made a fine design in India ink, using the ^ Letters of Thomac Erskine of Lmlathen, ii. 242.
126 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
blot as a basis, making the handkerchief more valuable than ever. A blotted life is not necessarily a useless life. Jesus can make a life beautiful though it has been marred by sin.^
2. The faithfulness of God reaches to the clouds of trouble. — God has hid His Church ere this in the mountain mists and in the deep places of the earth, till they were dead or vanished that sought its life.
^ You remember the story of tlie godly family whose home lay across the track a returning army was expected to follow, when flushed with victory and athirst for rapine and blood. " Be a wall of fire unto us, 0 God," was the prayer which the father put up as he knelt at the household altar ere retiring for the night, and having thus committed himself and his circle to the hands of a preserving God, he and they together laid them down in peace, and took their quiet rest, knowing who it was that made them dwell in safety. The night-watches hastened on, morning came, and the family awoke. AH was uuwontedly dark and still when they rose. Tliere was no light from chink or from window, nor sound of stirring life around. Noiselessly, and all unseen, the hand whose protection they craved stole forth from the wintry heavens, not, indeed, in the shape of a wall of fire, but in some- thing as sufficient and safe — in wreath upon wreath of driven snow. Meanwhile the foe had passed by, and had gone on his way, and those whom he threatened breathed freely, for they knew that their tabernacle was at peace.^
III.
The Righteousness of God.
"Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God."
1. The idea in the mind of the Psalmist was that the righteous- ness of Jehovah is fixed and unchangeable. Men's ideas of righteousness may change. Those of one age may differ from those of another ; one land may have a different standard from that of another. But in spite of this there is an everlasting, an unchanging righteousness in God. Nothing in this world so impresses the mind with the idea of unchangeableness as the great mountains.
* Twentieth Century Pastor, xxviii. (1911) 252.
• W. A. Gray, The Shadow of the Hand, 15.
PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 127
The dwellings of men in the valleys are ever undergoing change ; at every visit something new strikes one — the fields which men cultivate produce their different crops, the forests on the mountain sides grow denser and taller, the rivers alter their course, even the sea is restless, now receding from and now encroaching on the land ; but the great mountains seem to be lifted to a realm beyond change. The snow upon them, it is true, is ever melting; the glaciers between them are ever moving, but the granite rock beneath seems ever the same. The generations of men who dwell beneath them live their little life and pass away ; year after year new and wondering eyes look up to these mountains, but there they stand, the most impressive symbol of permanence in a world of change.
(1) The mountains are stable and permanent. — The mountains were thought to be the most ancient parts of the earth, the frame- work on which the Great Architect of the Universe had builded ; next the earth generally ; and then the world, or, in the Hebrew sense, the fruitful, habitable part of the earth. So in the Athanasian Creed, " The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal." Eternal and changelessly the same through- out eternity, and therefore we do not read, " Thou wast God from everlasting," or, " Thou wilt be God world without end " ; but, "Thou art God, the same past, present, and to come." As we look up to-day, so have the successive generations of men lifted up their eyes to the mountains that speak to each of an unimagin- able and almost limitless past.