1. Help from God is sure to come when our spirits hold fellowship with Him. To do this often, and on occasion to linger long, cannot but have a great influence on our spirit. We become
44 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS
more and more of a heavenly mind, and look to heaven as our own place and as the goal of all our hopes. We live here with a view to our life there. We choose our intimates from those who shall still be our fellows there. We seek such gains as we can lay up there against the time of our coming. We disengage ourselves from all that we shall have to leave, and we refuse to make a home where our spirit never can feel at home. We keep our- selves free to arise at any moment and, by help from beyond the hills, to pass beyond, and not return.
^ Did you ever read that fascinating chapter in Washington Irving's Life of Columbus where he describes the bursting of the New World upon the little crew which set out with Columbus on that memorable voyage ? It is one of the most thrilling and most pathetic bits of recorded history. Columbus from a boy had dreamt of this discovery. Kings, statesmen, and philosophers had all been against him. But on he fought undaunted ; and at last the reward was here.
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, And disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind. And break a pathway to those unknown realms That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled; Endurance is the crowning quality. And patience all the passion of great hearts; One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, One soul against the flesh of all mankind.^
2. When God sends help, the spirit finds rests. He who penned this psalm, being a slave and a foreigner, had much to bear and to fear, and he lived under constant strain. For him, moreover, there was no break in the routine, and only a faint hope of one day being set free to find his way home. His spirit, however, was beyond the hand of the conqueror, and need sufiFer no exile. It was lord of itself, and could choose its own place and take rest at due times. It had wings swifter than the dove's, and could fly beyond the hills and alight within the hush of the Holy Shrine. Tliere, with all about him so different from the accustomed scene, he found a peace such as common words
' D. W. Whincup, The Training of Life, 89.
PSALM cxxi. I, 2 45
could not express. To tell it, he had to sing it, and in this world of unquiet hearts his song has been so prized that now no other is more widely known.
One and all, we are bent on winning this same rest of spirit. All our quest is, indeed, but this one endeavour. We strive after success, or pleasure, or influence ; but, behind it all, there is our inborn longing for the one true home and the one true life. Such rest can come to us — sinners, and exiles because of our sin — only as we look, with this man, beyond the hills to the blood- besprinkled Mercy Seat. There, where we see the Divine pardon, we see a Help that is alert by day and night, and that is active against all that would do us ill.
•II The Archduke Palatine died in 1847, a humble and believing penitent at the foot of the Cross. He had for many years been a regular reader of the Bible, but it was only when the shadows of the coming darkness gathered round him that full spiritual light arose in his soul. Several months before his death he was seized with a violent illness, which threatened to carry him oJBF. From this he partially recovered. A cloud passed over him for a time, but it was dissolved, and he became unusually cheerful. He acknowledged afterwards that in the days of gloom he had been reviewing his past life, and had everywhere discovered sin, and that now he put his whole trust in the merits and righteousness of Christ. Soon afterwards his last illness began. A few hours before his death his wife said to him, " As you are now so soon to stand before the judgment-seat of God, I wish to hear from you for the last time what is the ground on which you rest your hope." His immediate reply was, "The blood of Christ alone," with a strong emphasis on the alone}
3. The help of the Lord means moral health and vigour. To this poet, life in Babylon was a ceaseless jeopardy of spirit. As he passed from day to day he seemed to himself as one hastening on foot across the desert. The sun blazed on him from a cloud- less sky, and spears of fire struck into his heart and drank his strength. When the longed-for night came, the moon brought a dew that chilled him to the marrow, while she sought to pierce eye and brain with her arrows of steel. Nevertheless he journeyed unfainting and unfevered ! One, unseen, walked at his right hand to do what his right hand, with all its strength and skill, could G. Carlyle, A Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 44,