^ J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, 134.
* W. C. Piggott, The Imperishable Word, 68.
440 THE WONDROUS LAW
hearts to God. They avoid all thoughts of religion unless only to sneer at it, or to look down upon it with supercilious curiosity. They never attend public worship or put themselves in the way of hearing what they never have heard. "What is the use," cry the more intelligent among them — " what is the use of praying to a God who is absolutely unknowable ? " But they forget that God is unknowable only to those who think Him to be 80, to those who never pray. If they did but confer with those who have lifted up their hearts to God and have found Him, they might be brought to go down upon their knees to pray, " Lord, open Thou mine eyes that I may see."
^ A little steam vessel in which I was sailing round the coast of Arran, emitted such a thick pall of smoke as to blot out the vision of Goat Fell. And sometimes our souls create those obscuring clouds and hide the glory of God. It may be the vapour of pride. It may be the steam of unclean passion. It may be the smoke of timidity and fear.
O may no earth-born cloud arise
To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes.^
Night comes ; soon alone shall fancy follow sadly in her flight Where the fiery dust of evening, shaken from the feet of light, Thrusts its monstrous barriers between the pure, the good,
the true. That our weeping eyes may strain for, but shall never after view. Only yester eve I watched with heart at rest the nebulae Looming far within the shadowy shining of the Milky Way ; Finding in the stillness joy and hope for all the" sons of men ; Now what silent anguish fills a night more beautiful than then : For earth's age of pain has come, and all her sister planets
weep. Thinking of her fires of morning passing into dreamless sleep. In this cycle of great sorrow for the moments that we last We too shall be linked by weeping to the greatness of lier
past: But the coming race shall know not, and the fount of tears
shall dry, And the arid heart of man shall be arid as the desert sky. So within my mind the darkness dawned, and round me
everywhere Hope departed with the twilight, leaving only dumb despair.'
1 J. H. Jowett. * A. E., ColltUed Poems (1913), 26.
PSALM cxix. i8 441
The Psalmist does not ask for a new faculty, but for clearer vision. The eyes are there already ; they need only to be opened. It is not the bestowal of a new and supernatural power that enables a man to read the Bible to profit, but the quickening of a power he already possesses. A man will never grow into the knowledge of God's Word by idly waiting for some new gift of discernment, but by diligently using that which God has already bestowed upon him, and using at the same time all other helps that lie within his reach. There are men and books that seem, beyond others, to have the power of aiding insight. All of us have felt it in the contact of some affinity of nature which makes them our best helpers ; the kindred clay upon the eyes by which the great Enlightener removes our blindness (John ix. 6). Let us seek for such, and if we find them let us employ them without leaning on them. Above all, let us give our whole mind in patient, loving study to the book itself, and where we fail, at any essential part, God will either send His evangelist Philip to our aid (Acts viii.) or instruct us Himself. But it is only to patient, loving study that help is given. God could have poured all knowledge into us by easy inspiration, but it is by earnest search alone that it can become the treasure of the soul.
1. If we are to get spiritual sight our prayer must be sincere. The old Hebrew poet, speaking with a true insight confirmed by experience, says: "If thou seek him, he will be found of thee ; yea, if thou seek him diligently with thy whole heart." That is the secret. It will not do to be seeking God with a heart looking back to the idol which had taken His place. It will not do to be wanting to have God and the idol at one and the same time. God has made that to be impossible for the soul of man. One God or idol at a time, or not God at all. And while any lingering love for the idol remains, there is no room for God to enter in. It is not His fault, or His unwilling- ness, or His jealousy. But it is our own Divine incapacity to trifle or dissemble with Him; it is our own Divine necessity for wholeness, for uprightness and sincerity, that mak<es any attempt at double-mindedness futile.
442 THE WONDROUS LAW
^ An old colleague and friend of Denholm Brash writes : — " Chief among my impressions of his excellences is that of his utter sincerity. It was so invariable that it bewildered the average man. He never troubled about maintaining any position he might have taken up yesterday. He told you what he thought to-day ; every passing mood was faithfully reflected in his words; the fleeting opinion or feeling was not concealed. You were allowed to trace processes in his thought which most men hide from view. ... I have seen him confound an old fox of a man by sheer candour. He left the enemy breathless with surprise at a simplicity he had thought faded out of the world with Eden. The man's arts would have been a match for any arts they encountered, bub artlessness dumb- founded him. The armour of light not only defended the wearer, but dismayed the assailant. Never was thi.s servant of truth ' off duty,' and with the audacious simplicity of love he would attack an apparently impregnable fortress, and with one well-planted shot would bring a wliole pile of hypocrisies toppling down. He had a short method with some of these Goliaths which worked wonders." ^