*[f By the term shield is meant that our salvation, which would otherwise be perilled by countless dangers, is in perfect safety under God's protection. The favour of God in communicating life to us would be far from adequate to the exigencies of our condi- tion, unless at the same time, in the midst of so many dangers, He interposed His power as a buckler to defend us.^
^ Grove mentioned that at some period when Havana was under martial law, a man had been killed in a row in the street. Everybody ran away except an Englishman, who, having nothing to do with the murder, thought there was no occasion to do so, and was, of course, immediately arrested. Some one naturally was found to swear that he was the culprit, and he was sentenced to be shot next morning. The English Consul (Mr. Crawford), hearing what was going on, went in full uniform to the place of execution and claimed the man as a British subject. The officer in charge of the firing party showed his orders, and said he could not give him up. " Very well," said Mr. Crawford, " at least you will not object to my shaking hands with him before he is shot ? " " By no means," was the answer. He then walked up, whipped the Union Jack out of his pocket and threw it round the man. " Now," he said to the officer, " shoot if you dare." The officer applied for instructions to the Governor, and the prisoner's innocence was soon made clear.^
1 Calvin. » M. E. Grant DufiF, Notes from a Diary, 1S92-5, i. 126.
The Home of the Soul.
PS. xxv.-cxix. — 14
Literature.
Clifford (J.), Social Worship an Everlasting Necessity, 26. Glover (R.), The Forgotten Resting-place, 3. Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide in St. Paul's, 240. Marten (C. H.), Plain Bible Addresses, 173. Myres (W. M.), Fragments that Remain, 122. Kendall (G. H.), Charterhouse Sermons, 276. Richards (W. R.), For IVliom Christ Died, 141. Shannon (F, F.), The SouVs Atlas, 68.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, i, (1855), No. 46. Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, ii. 255. Christian Commonwealth, xxxi. (1911) 557 (R. J. Campbell). Christian World Pulpit, xlvii. 396 (W. Sinclair) ; Ixiv. 419 (E. H. Eland) ; Ixv. 102 (R. Rainy).
The Home of the Soul.
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling- place In all generations. — Ps. xc. i.
The 90th Psalm, says Isaac Taylor, might be cited as perhaps the most sublime of human compositions, the deepest in feeling, the loftiest in theologic conception, the most magnificent in its imagery. True is it in its report of human life as troubled, transitory, and sinful; true in its conception of the Eternal — the Sovereign and the Judge, and yet the refuge and the hope of men who, notwithstanding the most severe trials of their faith, lose not their confidence in Him, but who, in the firmness of faith, pray for, as if they were predicting, a near-at-hand season of refreshment. Wrapped, one might say, in mystery, until the distant day of revelation should come, there is here conveyed the doctrine of Immortality ; for in this very plaint of the brevity of the life of man, and of the sadness of these his few years of trouble, and their brevity, and their gloom, there is brought into contrast the Divine immutability : and yet it is in terms of a submissive piety : the thought of a life eternal is here in embryo. No taint is there in this psalm of the pride and petulance, the half-uttered blasphemy, the malign disputing or arraignment of the justice or goodness of God, which have so often shed a venomous colour upon the language of those who have writhed in anguish, personal or relative. There are few, probably, among those who have passed through times of bitter and distracting woe, or who have stood, the helpless spec- tators of the miseries of others, that have not fallen into moods of mind violently in contrast with the devout and hopeful melancholy which breathes throughout this Ode. Eightly attributed to the Hebrew lawgiver or not, it bespeaks its remote antiquity, not -merely by the majestic simplicity of its style, but negatively, by the entire avoidance of those sophisticated turns of thought which belong to a late — a lost — age, in a people's intellectual and moral
212 THE HOME OF THE SOUL
history. This psalm, undoubtedly, is centuries older than the moralizing of that time, when the Jewish mind had listened to what it could never bring into a true assimilation with its own mind — the abstractions of the Greek Philosophy.^
1. There was a tradition among the Jews, although these tradi- tions are not altogether trustworthy, that Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm or prayer. And it has always been felt that the psalm seemed to have some special connexion with, or reference to, the experience and the impressions of the children of Israel in the days that they were doomed to wander up and down in the wilderness without being allowed to enter into the Promised Land. And there is much in the psalm that corroborates that view. It is the psalm of a generation of men who felt themselves to be wasting away under God's wrath, consumed by His anger. They are spending their years as a tale that is told. The vanity and emptiness of life are pressed home upon them with 'great severity. At the same time, it is not a psalm of mere wailing and lamenta- tion. Very far from it. There is the exercise of faith in it, not only in the first verse, but in the appeal to God to come and dwell with them as their case requires, and make them experience His mercy. The cloud is dark that hangs over the congregation, but faith is still, as it were, seeing the bow in the cloud.