2. By whomsoever written, the psalm makes it plain that the writer was thinking and speaking not only for himself, but for all his own people of Israel, if not for the whole race of mankind. These opening words are the Eternal Gospel of the Fatherly Love of God, in which the sons of men can ever find their "home." How precious is that last word, and what a pity that our trans- lators did not adopt it instead of " dwelling place." Alas ! how many there are whose dwelling-place is not a "home." The
' Prayer-Book Version is a little better in giving us the word " refuge " ; for to most of us home is the best refuge we can find, if not the only one. It is our retreat after the toils and turmoils of the busy world, our refuge from the strife of tongues, our covert from the scornful rebuke of the proud. Our home, if it be as God intended it should be, is the place where all that is best
' Isaac Taylor, S^nrit of the Hebrew Poelry, 161.
PSALM xc. I 213
and sweetest in life is cherished and enjoyed, the one sacred shrine where even the outcast can find love, and the stern, hard heart can also find an opportunity for giving a little love in return. Home is the scene of our keenest anxieties and our bitterest griefs, no less than of our most restful peace and of our highest joys. But in the process of evolving and growing mankind, all things are yet unfinished and imperfect ; even our very homes are not full enough of purity and peace and love to satisfy the immortal heart of man. Defect, disturbance, and decay, with all the varied chances of this mortal life, make even the best of homes partial and transient. Our immortal souls want ever- lasting security, unbroken peace, unalloyed happiness. Nothing less than the Eternal God can be a perfect refuge, a perfect home, for the souls of His children. And in Him is all that the most craving and grasping can possibly desire. God has made us so that nothing shall, nothing can, ever satisfy us but Himself. And when we have found Him, and made Him our real refuge and home, we have gained the Eternal Peace, which the whole world can neither give nor take away.
^ " Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." Beside that venerable and ancient abode, that has stood fresh, strong, incorruptible, and unaffected by the lapse of millenniums, there stands the little transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are spent. ... If I make God my Eefuge, I shall get some- thing a great deal better than escape from outward sorrow — namely, an amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all the poison, though He leaves plenty of the bitterness in it ; for bitterness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it in the measure in which we make God our Eefuge, and all will be " right that seems most wrong," when we recognize it to be " His sweet will." ^
I.
Home.
1. Men everywhere have either burrowed under the ground or built above it, and sought to provide some kind of place in which ^ A. Maclaren, The God of the Amen, 166.
214 THE HOME OF THE SOUL
they might dwell, and which they call home. Eude and im- perfect it often is, made of such materials as they could find to hand, or in such ways as their faculties could devise. Or where civilization and intelligence have advanced or wealth abounded, men have built houses larger, more splendid, and furnished with ample conveniences. But in all, the aim and desire have been to have a place where they couid obtain shelter and rest.
The wilderness episode in Israel's life meant that they had no home. They were always moving, moving — all the year, and then another year, for forty years. Never settling down at home, always moving — you might well call such an experience a wilder- ness. Old Egypt, the land of bondage, had been bad enough ; but at least there were homes in Egypt, and it was no wonder if at times the people longed to turn back into Egypt. Homes had been promised in Canaan, but that promise was for the benefit of their children. These adult Israelites through one -long forlorn generation must be always moving. And the long-continued homelessness taught them something. For all time to come the memory of that homeless wilderness would make them value the homes that God should give them in Canaan.
^ Archbishop Leighton died in an inn in 1684 during a visit to London. He had often expressed a wish to die in an inn " because it looks so like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world is all a pilgrimage." ^
^ How passionately the longing could possess Stevenson is familiar to all those who have read the thoughts of home from abroad in Songs of Travel and Vailhna Letters. In a deeper sense, as it concerned the inward life, the same thing is true. Apparently an unresting traveller in the spiritual country, he yet had come to rest upon certain great convictions, in which his spirit had its home. These he expresses often with an evident sense of relief and the comfortable peace of assurance. In the longest journey of all, the lifelong journey, the same shadowy but hospitable and firelit sweetness awaits its close. The Covenanters pass the dark river amid a " storm of harsh and fiercely jubilant noises " which add a tenfold peacefulness to the shores which they had reached. For himself, who does not know the Requiem which, written seven years before his death, was inscribed upon his tombstone at the last :