PSALM cxxx. I 115
We are often only passing judgment upon ourselves, upon our want of thought, imagination, and insight, when we proclaim our fellows to be lacking in those elements to which the great and deep things of life make their appeal. In the circle in which we live and move there would be many rich discoveries for any one with fine imaginative power, skilled to see into
The depths of human souls —
Souls that appear to have no depth at all
To careless eyes.
^ There is a well-known poem by Matthew Arnold entitled "The Buried Life" — a poem full of haunting music and rare introspective power. It is a picture of many a soul, and it is not difficult to fill in from experience the outline which it supplies. We all have the power of living so completely upon the surface of our souls as to be ignorant of what is hidden in their depths. It is, indeed, a large part of the pathos and tragedy of life that we are so disobedient to the oracle which bids us know ourselves. We either do not care for self-knowledge, or imagine we have it in such abundance that we can swear by it at times — " as well as I know myself ! " But there are moments when we have glimpses of what we are and may be, of hitherto unknown capacities and powers, and from beneath our conscious life there rise the murmuring voices of a deeper — a buried life.
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain.*
2. Perhaps the Psalmist personifies the nation. The later days of Israel's history were days of storm and stress. The golden age of national prosperity had passed away. Storm after storm had swept over the nation. The great Powers of the East had arisen. They felt their strength, and the little exclusive Israelitish nation was their constant and ready prey. Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt arose in their might. Part of the nation was dispersed and ^ J. Hunter, De Profundis Clamavi, 3.
ii6 DE PROFUNDIS
disappeared, and part of it was carried away. Those who returned after the Exile were but a poor and broken remnant, still under the dominion of their conquerors. We may hear in this pathetic psalm the voice of the nation crying to the Lord out of the deep waters of its distress. Its pride is humbled, its soul is brought low even to the dust by the wholesome discipline of adversity.
^ We all remember those long, dark months at the beginning of the South African War, when we were appalled by the news of one reverse after another. There was the dread suspense, the anxious waiting. In many a home the interest was a personal one, and mothers and wives and children were in the depths of apprehension for loved ones far away. In that dark experience the nation betook itself to prayer and learnt to lift up its eyes to One above, and found in Him a very present help and stay in trouble.^
3. Whatever the original reference of the phrase " out of the depths," it comes to us with a larger meaning than the writer could apprehend. It is not an incident of life, it is life itself that constitutes for us the deep out of which we cry. We of this modern world have caught, as men never before have caught, a sense of the mystery of life. Men have lost, perhaps for ever, the art of unconscious objective living, the habit of looking upon life as a child looks upon its mother, gratefully accepting her gifts and asking no questions. We have well-nigh tortured all beauty and joy out of life by our fierce, relentless probings. In return we have captured here and there a fact, a force, a law, a glimpse of the methods by which life fulfils itself. Our sciences and philo- sophies have broadened our conceptions. To us life is a larger, richer thing than to our fathers. But, after all, our deepest questions are unanswered. There is no possibility of their answer. What is life ? What is its purpose ? Whence did it come ? Whither does it go ? Why am I here, living to-day a conscious, sentient, thinking drop in the mighty torrent of life that pours unceasingly from the exhaustless bosom of nature ? I am borne on the flow of the torrent. Whence ? Wliither ? Wherefore ? These are questions a man asks when he disengages himself from the rush of the world and tries to find some meaning for his life. It may be an unhealthy business ; but never were men so busy at
» R. B. Tweddell.
PSALM cxxx. I 117
it as now. The difficulty is that life echoes back our questions unanswered. It refuses to explain itself. We are simply sub- merged in the stream which flows through nature, as the planets roll in their orbits, and the waves of light pulse through the ether. What remains ? There remains the mystery which we call prayer, almost as great a mystery as life itself.