^ W. Garrett Border.
132 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
I stand upon the mount of God,
With sunlight in my soul ; I hear the storms in vales beneath,
I hear the thunders roll.
But I am calm with Thee, my God,
Beneath these glorious skies ; And to the height on which I stand
Nor storms nor clouds can rise.
Oh, this is life ! Oh, this is joy !
My God, to find Thee so! Thy face to see, Thy voice to hear,
And all Thy love to know.
3. Mountain chains have been a refuge for the oppressed in all ages. Liberty, bruised and broken on the level plain, has fled into the mountain ranges and there has found a refuge. Out of the level plains of Egypt Israel escapes and find's its life in the rocky ranges of Mount Horeb. In the mountains of Palestine the Israelites escape from Moabitish hosts on the east of them and the Philistine hosts on the south of them. In the mountain caves of En-gedi David hides from the persecuting hosts of Saul. In the mountains Greece finds its escape from the overwhelming Persian hosts. In the mountains of Switzerland liberty is cradled, while all over Europe despotism is triumphant. In the mountains of Northern Italy the Waldenses keep alive the Protestant religion before Protestantism has been born.
We are not accustomed to think that God is a refuge because of His righteousness. We rather, perhaps, think His righteous- ness closes His heart to us in our sinfulness. Perhaps we will say that a good man, a benevolent man, a merciful man, will serve as a refuge to us in our hour of need, but not a man strong in his righteousness. And yet, if we will consider a little, it is not the righteousness, it is the unrighteousness, of men that makes them unmerciful and therefore repellent. One man repels another, not because the first man is too righteous to have mercy, but because he is not righteous enough. The men that are fighting scepti- cism are half sceptics. The man who only half believes is at enmity with the man who does not believe at all, because he is in
PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 133
perpetual fear lest his half-belief shall be taken away from him ; but he who is anchored, by a chain that cannot be broken, to the eternal verities has no fear, and therefore has a heart open to all argument and all reasons, and considers them with patience and gentleness. So it is a dormant sense of unrighteousness in us that makes us afraid of the unrighteous.
^ In that marvellous story, Hawthorne's Marble Faun, when Miriam has fallen into a great sin and comes to Hilda, and Hilda will not receive her because of that sin, bidding her not come nearer, and Miriam cries, " Because I have sinned I need your friendship the more," Hilda replies, " If I were one of God's angels, incapable of stain, I would keep ever at your side and try to lead you upward. But I am a poor, lonely girl, and God has given me my purity, and told me to take it back to Him unstained, and I dare not associate with the criminal lest I carry back to Him a stained and spotted garment." It is the consciousness of a dormant impurity in the pure Hilda that makes her dread to receive to her heart the impure as her companion. It is not Hilda's perfection of righteousness, it is her imperfection, that makes her fail as a refuge to poor, sinful, despairing Miriam. Now, God's righteousness is of the kind that never can be harmed.^
IV.
The Judgments of God.
" Thy judgements are a great deep."
By "judgments" are not meant merely the acts of God's punitive righteousness, the retributions that destroy evil-doers, but all God's decisions and acts in regard to man. Or, to put it into other and briefer words, God's judgments are the whole of the " ways," the methods of the Divine government. So St. Paul, allud- ing to this very passage, when he says, " How unsearchable are his judgments," adds, as a parallel clause, meaning the same thing, " and thy ways past finding out." That includes all that men call, in a narrower sense, judgments ; but it includes, too, all acts of kindness and loving gifts. God's judgments are the expressions of His thoughts, and these thoughts are thoughts of good and not of evil.
^ Lyman Abbott.
134 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
Perhaps it was the great and wide sea that the Psahnist thought of while he spoke — the secret of whose depths only Omni- science could see, the noise of whose billows only Omnipotence could still. Or perhaps it w^as some land-locked lake, on whose shining surface he looked down, as it crisped with the breezes or slept in the calms of a long summer day. But in either case, the picture yields a ready lesson : " Thy judgments," he says, " are a great deep." It is the one touch that is needed to enhance the description ; for what were mercy, faithfulness, and righteousness, without infinite wisdom to plan and direct the whole ? But this wisdom is evermore a great deep, unsearchable and unfathomable, whether it lies in the heart of God as His purpose, or in the word of God as His statutes, or in the ways of God as His Providence. " Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst thou know ? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." " 0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"