11.
Giving in Sleep.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the English equiva- lent for the Hebrew words is, "He giveth to His beloved in sleep." "He giveth blessing to His beloved during sleep." If the words so rendered are less perfect rhythmically, and suggest a less beautiful meaning or no meaning at all, we cannot help it. Some may think that this is almost a wanton and needless inter- ference with a verse rendered sacred by long association; but when we consider that it really is the deepest line in the poem, the line which sums up and expresses the central thought of the poet, that where it stands it is a highly original thought, a genuine poetic flash, and that the old rendering of it robs it of its freshness and makes it very commonplace, we feel bound to make a little sacrifice of association and soothing sound in the interest of truth and fact.
The theme of the Psalmist is that, apart from the Divine blessing and working, all human effort is vain. By his own unaided efforts man can effect nothing. Even in such a matter as the building of a house, where, apparently, the hands of man accomplish everything and God is not in evidence at all, it is really God who builds. He has supplied the material. He has * Jean Nicolas Grou, The Hidden Life of the Soul.
PSALM cxxvii. 2 101
supplied the mind and the strength by which the material is shaped and put in its place. The watchers on the walls of the city may be never so vigilant and active, and everything may seem to depend on their wakefulness and care ; but unless God watches with them and through them, their vigilance will avail nothing.
Moreover, God works when men do not work at all. He blesses and prospers them without effort of their own. The builders go home after a hard day's toil and, laying themselves down to rest, get fresh strength for their work; and God, by giving them sleep, is really building the house. The guards on the city wall retire in turn and betake themselves to repose, and God by this gift of sleep is Himself watching all the while. He blesses all who love Him when they know it not. He blesses us and furthers the work of spiritual life while we work not, blesses us silently, as if in the watches of the night, when we are all unconscious of it. Yes, He giveth to His beloved in sleep.
f The whole thought has a certain kinship with the teaching of our Lord when He says, " Be not anxious for the morrow. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." God blesses them, as it were, without effort of their own ; they, as it were, dream through life. They are silent, receptive; He gives them beauty in their flower-sleep. Or perhaps it comes still closer to our Lord's beautiful parable of the silent, unseen, unconscious growth of the spiritual life, both in the soul of man and in the spread of His Kingdom in the world : " And he said. So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how." ^
1. God's secret ministry is patent in our infancy. The little child is yet, so to say, asleep. His conscious environment is a very tiny and a very dreamy one. His heaven, as some one has said, " is only three feet high ! " The familiar cares that are lying upon the hearts of those about him mean nothing for him ; still less is he awake to the greater life that is passing out of doors. And that is as it should be. We would feel it unnatural if he understood too much of what went on about him. The * E. B. Speirs, A Present Advent, 280.
102 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP
things that occupy his elders' minds, the work of which their hands are full, ought to have no concern for him. It is right that he should be unconscious of all that. Watchers by a bedside may settle great affairs while the sleeper does not stir. And so, pillowed on innocence, the little child should be all unaware of the life that plays around it; so far as this goes, it should be asleep. All the while stooping over it there is a mother's love, and all the splendour of a mother's patience. Shielding it there is a father's strength, and to provide for all it needs, a father's labour. And it is clad, and fed with food convenient, and cradled to rest, and sheltered from the storm. And should it ail, the best skill in the city is urgently summoned to the tiny sufferer. What a wealth of love and of love's care is here, yet who more passive than that little infant ! Have these small hands helped in the preparation ? Has that new heart done any of the planning ? Helpless it lies, and doomed to certain death, if life depended on its puny efforts. But God " giveth unto his beloved sleep."