^ P. Bayne, Lessons from My Masters, 284.
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law cannot possibly be the same for an Israelite who stands before the flame-girt Horeb and the believer who bows wondering before the Cross where the Man of Sorrows bears the burdens of man- kind. The commandment is broad before the vision of the man, to whom all life is becoming a theophany.^
^ Christ is the personification not of one part only, but of the whole of the law of God. His character has not the littleness of a mere teacher, nor the narrowness of a hermit or a saint, nor the eccentricity of genius. " His shoulder," as the Prophet says, is broad enough " to bear the government " and the sins of the whole world. His mind is wide enough to sympathize with all our infirmities, as well as with all our efforts after good in every direction. No griefs of life are more trying than those which arise from the half-goodness or the half-wisdom of those whom we wish to love and respect. It is when we think of these things that the Perfect Law and the Perfect Mind of Christ is so in- expressibly consoling.2
3. Unlike that story of the iron shroud or . room, which enclosed its prisoner, day by day, within a narrower and narrower circle, the chamber of duty and of God's commandment widens, and opens, and expands with new interests, new enjoyments, new affections, new hopes, at every successive step we take, till we find ourselves at last in that Presence, where there is indeed " fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore."
Our earthly life, the earthly life of those whom we have known and loved, is cut short by that dark abyss into which we cannot penetrate, and over which our thoughts can hardly pass. But God's commandment — and the fulfilment of God's command- ment— is "exceeding broad"; it is broad enough to span even that wide and deep river which parts this life and the next. For it is this that makes this life and the next life one. Know- ledge, prophecies, gifts of all kinds pass away, but the love of God and the love of man never fail. They continue into the unseen world beyond the grave ; the remembrance of these things, as we have known them here, enables us still to think of them there ; the unselfish purpose, the generous sympathy, the deep affection, the transparent sincerity, the long self-control, the simple humility, of those to whom the commandment of God has been precious —
' T. G. Selby, The Slremiotis Gospel, 394. * A. P. Stanley, Servians in (he East, 129.
PSALM cxix. 96 453
these are the arches of that bridge on which our thoughts and hopes cross and re-cross the widest and most mysterious of all the chasms which divide us ; the gulf which divides the dead and the living, the gulf which divides God and man.
^ In Stark's Life of Murker of Banff we have this portrait of a church member : The last day on which her pastor saw Elspeth alive he asked, " Have you no fears at all in crossing the Jordan ? " " No," was the reply, " what should I be fear'd for, when I see Him who is the life an' the resurrection on the ither side. His word drives awa' a' the mists. I'm just like a bairn that's been awa' on the fields pu'in' flowers, an' I maun confess whyles chasin' butterflies, and noo when the sun's fa'en I'm gaun toddlin' hame. I've a wee bit burnie to cross ; but, man, there's the stappin'-stanes 0' His promises, an' wi' my feet firm on them, I've nae cause tae fear." After awhile she again opened her lips, and was heard to say, " He is wi' me in the swellings of Jordan." ^
III.
The Value of Dissatisfaction.
1. The Psalmist had desired and purposed to keep God's law, to be and to do the best according to his light, and had never been able to accomplish his object, had been always falling short of it ; the perfection he craved and sought had always evaded him ; he had striven worthily, and had more or less done worthily too ; but it did not satisfy him — there was an excellence to be reached that was not reached. Or he had had conceptions of duty that had seemed to him all-comprehending, embracing all that could be required of him. Here, he had thought, was the whole duty of man ; but in acting out, or endeavouring to act out, these concep- tions, others, larger and loftier, had risen upon him. In follow- ing his standard of right, the standard rose, leaving him far behind when he fancied himself nigh ; in yielding to the demands of conscience, the demands increased ; the more he did, the more his obligation grew ; so that he would have said with a modern poet —
I see the wider but I sigh the more, Most progress is most failure.
^ J. Stark, John Murker of Banff, 188.
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Nothing satisfied the Psalmist; the present discredited the past, only to be in its turn discredited ; every seeming fulness proved shortly an illusion, and why ? Because a Divine command- ment had been revealed to him which continually transcended all, which was continually showing something more and greater to be done, and continually urging him on when any height was gained. The more he looked into it, the more it enlarged for him the field of duty. When he fancied he had fulfilled all, it would straightway be whispering in his ear some fresh claim; when he meditated repose, it would still be disturbing him. Had he not known this commandment, he might have known the peace of satisfaction ; it was its presence with, and pressure on, him that made an end of perfection, and kept him always discontented with the best that had been wrought. Yet our Psalmist would not have been without the commandment. " Oh, how I love thy law ! " he cries, in the very next verse. This, in fact, was his distinction, his dignity, and blessedness — that he had it to his perpetual rest- lessness and dissatisfaction, and could not be as careless and happy as the heathen, though he should propose to be; that he had a vision of the right and of the good which robbed him of ease, and before which every highest attainment paled to poorness.