PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 4
50 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE
L
Going Out and Coming In.
1. These words practically mean the activities, the intercourse, the incidents of life. Again and again we meet with this phrase in the Old Testament Scriptures. Take for instance 2 Sam. iiL 25 There Joab warns David that Abner has come with the pretence of friendship, but really to take note of his circumstances and the weak points at which to attack his throne. " He came," said Joab, " to know thy going out and thy coming in, and to know all that thou doest." Again, see Isaiah xxxvii. 28 ; there the Lord through His prophet is speaking of the terrible Sennacherib, the assailant of Jerusalem. " I know thy abode," so run the words, " and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me." Here in both passages, the meaning clearly is the whole course and conduct of life, all its active incidents, all things in which man goes out amongst others and comes home to himself again, alternating company and privacy, engaging in the varied under- takings of an active existence. It is in fact life, not spent in the monotony of a cloister, or of a wilderness, but thronging with the realities of the common day and hour.
2. Home is the centre of the picture ; the day begins and ends here. Its journey does not take its bearings from the points of the compass. It is not eastward or westward, but homeward or away from home. So simple are the directions of the daily pilgrimage, going out and coming in, that some of us perhaps hardly value the fair promise that God shall protect them both. We, whose lives move through a limited field, easily form the habit of prosaic outlooks, regarding our existence as a common- place and dull matter. We go out without wonder, and return without surprise. We lose that fine fancy of childhood which made a walk into the next street an expedition and brought us back from the woodlands as travellers from a far country. That we can now step from the door with no thrill in the morning, and that our hearts do not throb as our hands feel for the latch at eventide, speaks an imagination of crippled power.
PSALM cxxi. 8 51
^ One of the great dividing-lines in human life is the threshold- line. On one side of this line a man has his " world within the world," the sanctuary of life, the sheltered place of peace, the scene of Hfe's most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations. And on the other side lies the larger life of mankind, wherein also a man must take his place and do his work. Life is spent in crossing this threshold-line, going out to the many and coming in to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in to take the right to rest. And over us all every hour there watches the Almighty Love. The division-lines in the life of man have nothing that corresponds to them in the love of God. We may be here or there, but He is everywhere.^
3. The threshold of the home does not draw the truest division- line in life between the outward and the inward. Life is made up of thought and action, of the manifest things and the hidden things. " Thy going out." That is our life as it is manifest to others, as it has points of contact with the world about us. We must go out. We must take up some attitude towards all other life. We must add our word to the long human story and our touch to the fashioning of the world. We need the pledge of Divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. " And thy coming in " — into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did we say uninvaded ? Not so. In that inner room of life there sits Eegret with her pale face, and Shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes. Our coming in is a pitiable thing at times. More than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in. " The Lord shall keep . . . thy coming in." That means help for every lonely, impotent, inward hour of life.
^ It is as we convince and persuade ourselves that God is our Keeper who is also the Maker of heaven and earth, that we are delivered from our bondage to care and fear. We could do no wiselier, then, if we are still seeking the rest of faith, than to translate the phrases of this ancient Psalm into the terms of our modern experience, and to adopt them as a meditation and a prayer : —
" I am beset with cares, night and day — cares for myself and cares for my friends, cares for health physical and mental, cares
1 P. C. Ainsworth, The Threshold Grace, 11.
52 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE
of business and cares of home, cares about life and cares about death, cares for both body and soul. Where shall I look for help ? None can really help me but God. He vnll help me. And He is the Maker of all things. What can I want, then, that He cannot give ? What need I fear when He is my Shield ? He is not a man, as I am, soon fatigued, soon exhausted. He has worked hitherto, and will work. The whole course of the human story has been ordained and conducted by Him ; and, in every age and every nation, those who have sincerely trusted in Him have been content and at peace. Why should I distrust Him, then ? I will not distrust Him. He will keep me in the perils of the day, and in the perils of the night. No form of evil can evade His eye or resist His will. Why should He not keep me from all evil, if He cares for me, as He does, and for all men ? When I go down to business He will keep me. He will watch over, not my body alone, or my health, or my life: He will also keep my soul, strengthening it by adversity and by the changes of time. No change, no lapse of time, neither death, nor even life, can separate me from Him, my chief Good, and the Source of all other good. I will trust in Him. I will rest in Him. I have done with care, and fear, and the frets of life, and the dread of death ; for I have taken sanctuary in Him, who will be the health of my soul from this time forth and for evermore."