^ The fables, the philosophy, and the experience of all nations, are crowded with lessons that men are blind,and ignorant,and selfish, and know not what is best for them ; that they cannot enumerate their mercies ; that the overruling of an infinite Mind and Will is the only refuge for their ignorance, the only hope of the race. He must be a bold man, or a fool, who would dare to take his lot into his own government, and be the master of his own destiny. The same principle will apply equally well, if we suppose our merely human desires to be made the measure of God's benedic- tions to us — of the spiritual blessings which are of the greatest necessity for us. Some are longing for more power to work, when probably God sees that they want more patience to endure, more
' Helen H. Jackson, Verses.
PSALM XXXVII. 4 163
power to feel. Some are ever yearning after new truth, when God sees that their need is to understand more fully the truth already within their reach.^
2. When we delight in God, we are freed from the distraction of various desires by the one master attraction. Such a soul is still as the great river above the falls, when all the side currents and dimpling eddies and backwaters are effaced by the attraction that draws every drop in the one direction; or like the same stream as it nears its end, and, forgetting how it brawled among rocks and flowers in the mountain glens, flows " with a calm and equable motion " to its rest in the central sea. When we possess God, all other desires are put in their right place. The presence of the king awes the crowd into silence. When the full moon is in the nightly sky, it makes the heavens bare of flying cloud-rack, and all the twinkling stars are lost in the peaceful, solitary splendour. So let delight in God rise in our souls, and lesser lights pale before it — do not cease to be, but add their feebleness, unnoticed, to its radiance. The more we have our afiection-s set on God, the more shall we enjoy, because we subordinate. His gifts. The less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. The capitalist does not think so much of the year's gains as the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. If we have God for our " enduring substance," we can face all varieties of condition, and be calm, saying :
Give what Thou wilt, without Thee I am poor, And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.
^ Some men make themselves God, without knowing what they are doing. The deity they appeal to is really their deeper, higher self. When they feel God's approval, it is really their own self-praise. When God reproaches them, it is their own self- rebuke. When they go apart from the world to hold communion with Him, it really is an entrance into their own self -conscious- ness. To other men some good fellow-man, more or less con- scioiisly and completely enlarged into an ideal of humanity, answers the same purpose, and is in reality their God. To still others, a vague presence of a high purpose and tendency felt in everything — Tennyson's "one increasing purpose," and Arnold's ^ H. R. Reynolds, Notes of the Christian Life, 115.
i64 DELIGHTING IN THE LORD
" something not ourselves which makes for righteousness." Tliis fulfils the end and makes the substitute for God. But none of these supply the place of a true Personality outside ourselves, yet infinitely near to us.^
3. To delight in God is to have a desire for spiritual good ; and the desire for spiritual good never goes unsatisfied. No man ever prayed but in the moment he was a better and a wiser man. To go into the sanctuary of God is to understand. To let our requests be made known unto God is to gain the peace that passeth all understanding. As we pray, our sins are set in the light of God's countenance. We see the beauty of holiness. We behold the beauty of the Lord. We open the sluice-gates of the soul, and the swelling tides of God's love and grace flood within. New penitence, new resolves, new endeavours are born in the depth of the will. That truth is written large in the history of every saint. Prayer is a mode of power within to learn the mind of Christ. His words and deeds become memorable and signifi- cant to us. We sometimes receive a more vivid insight into what He was, and did, as we serve Him in the toilsome duties of life. But when we pray, then those spiritual changes which are vital, determining, eternal, take place within. F. W. H. Myers, in his poem on St. Paul, so full of the seer's insight into the history of the soul, has set this truth in impassioned verse. He is speaking of Paul's shame at his failure, and he conceives him in the pain of his penitence, seeking the presence and the peace of Christ.
Straight to Thy presence get me and reveal it, Nothing ashamed of tears upon Thy feet.
Show the sore wound and beg Thine hand to heal it, Pour Thee the bitter, pray Thee for the sweet.