^ The story of a night of seemingly fruitless toil, which resulted in great blessing, is retold in the Illustrated Missionary News. Miss Harris, of Medak, in India, utterly tired out, was one even- ing about to return home, when the son of the head-man of an important village, who had been poisoned, was hurriedly brought into the compound. She saw it was impossible to save him, and yet she kept the night vigil, rendering him the most menial service — service hardly fit for the village scavenger. The father
^ Owen Meredith.
PSALM Lxv. II 177
and brothers watched all the time, and although the missionary returned home utterly spent next morning, feeling as if nothing had been accomplished, the chief and his family, as they watched, had judged between Hinduism and the Gospel of Christ, and within six months the whole of the large family of the village chief was baptized ; soon a church and school were founded in the village, and from the chief's family there are now (so runs the encouraging report) no fewer than ten evangelists and Bible- women.
A Sower went forth to sow;
His eyes were dark with woe;
He crushed the flowers beneath his feet,
Nor smelt their perfume, warm and sweet,
That prayed for pity everywhere.
He came to a field that was harried
By iron, and to heaven laid bare;
He shook the seed that he carried
O'er that brown and bladeless place.
He shook it, as God shakes the hail
O'er a doomed land,
When lightnings interlace
The sky and the earth, and his wand
Of love is a thunder-flail.
Thus did that Sower sow; His seed was human blood, And tears of women and men. And I, who near him stood, Said : " When the crop comes, then There will be sobbing and sighing, Weeping and wailing and crying, Flame, and ashes, and woe."
It was an autumn day When next I went that way. And what, think you, did I see ? What was it that I heard. What music was in the air ? The song of a sweet- voiced bird? Nay — but the songs of many, Thrilled through with praise and prayer. Of all those voices not any Were sad of memory; PS. xxv.-cxix. — 12
178 THE CROWNING OF THE YEAR
But a sea of sunlight flowed,
A golden harvest glowed,
And I said : " Thou only art wise,
God of the earth and skies !
And I praise Thee, again and again,
For the Sower whose name is Pain."*
1 R. W. Gilder, The Sower,
The Burden-Bearing God.
«»
Literature.
Ainsworth (P. C), A Thornless World, 154.
Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 27.
Clifford (J.), The Secret of Jesus, 57,
Cuyler (T. L.), Stirring the Eagle's Nest, 39.
Dix (M.), Christ at the Door of the Heart, 195.
Forbes (J. L.), God's Measure, 176.
Hamilton (J.), Works, vi. 430.
Jowett (J. H.), Thirsting for the Springs, 41.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Psalms li.-cxlv., 93.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 145.
Morrison (G. H.), The Afterglow of God, 320.
Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 312.
Raleigh (A.), Quiet Besting-Places, 331.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlii. (1903), No. 2830.
Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vi. 145.
Vaughan (J.), Sermoiis (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1872), No. 793.
Christian World Pulpit, lii. 74 (T. Jones).
Church of England Pulpit, xxxviii. 195.
Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., ii. (1891) 247 (H. G. Youard).
Literary Churchman, xxxii. (1886) (M. Fuller), 355.
iSo
The Burden-Bearing God.
Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden. — Ps. Ixviii. 19.
The occasion of this psalm was the removal of the ark to Zion after it had been returned by the Philistines. Under the figures of a military invasion and occupation and settlement of the land, David represents Jehovah as Leader conquering His enemies, possessing Himself of their land, choosing a city for the seat of His Empire, and advancing in triumphal procession to enter upon His chosen residence. In the passage of the ark, the sign of God's presence, through the land to the site on Mount Zion, chosen aa the religious Metropolis of the world, David sees a repetition in the religious realm of the earlier march into and occupation of the country in the birth-time of the nation. His mind runs back to that first victorious advance of God through the desert at the head of His chosen race ; to the entrance of the victorious people into the land of Canaan ; to the establishment of Zion as the place of His settled worship; and he sees in this second and more illustrious establishment of Zion as the place of God's rest not only the security for the blessedness of his own land, but the promise of a universal dominion, of whicli the fitful gleams of peace and happiness that they had as a nation under the new monarchy formed but a faint and imperfect foreshadowing.
And then, as he thinks of the splendid issue of this Divine occupation of Mount Zion, and the establishment there of the true worship, he breaks forth into a direct ascription of praise to God. He looks back on the long years of the Divine patience and forbearance ; on not only the special times of deliverance, but the day-by-day guardianship and sustenance of God, and as he does so he says :