^ " Perhaps to suffer," wrote the Swiss theologian, Vinet, in one of his letters, " is nothing else than to live deeply. Love and sorrow are the conditions of a profound life." A truer word was never spoken. The tragedy in which we live is meant to educate us. There would indeed be no understanding of life at all did we not know from experience that in life's depths we receive our best teaching and training. Out of the depths have come the finest poetry, the finest music, the finest speech of the world. " The Bible owes its place in literature," said Emerson, " not to miracles, but to the fact that it comes from a profounder depth of life than any other book." Out of the depths have come the most inspired and inspiring of the psalms of faith, both ancient
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and modem. Out of the depths men have brought blessings which are rarely found in green pastures and by still waters. We never know how much God is the one great need of the soul till we go down to the depths.^
III.
The Hearek of Prayer.
The Psalmist's cry is addressed to the Lord, and we notice that the word " Lord " is printed in capital letters ; and whenever the word Lord is in capitals it stands for Jehovah. This was the highest name of God. It was considered so sacred by the Jew that he never pronounced it. When he read the Scriptures he substituted another name — Adonai — which was of a less sacred character. This name appears in the second and third verses of the psalm. Indeed we cannot be quite certain as to the right pronunciation of this incommunicable name of the God of Israel.
1. Does this God hear ? Is there a Divine response to man's cry from the depths ? There must be in the nature of things, we are persuaded, such a response, something outside of man answer- ing to his inner life and fulfilling its needs, actual movement and manifestation on the part of God corresponding to our natural cravings after Him. Out of the depths man cries, down to the depths God must come, meeting with a corresponding answer every real want of the souls He has made to seek after Him, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him. Whatever may be the relations between human aspiration and Divine condescension, whatever may be the conditions of the coming down of the heavenly help to human need, it is simply impossible for any religious soul to think that there is no approach of God to man. Unless life is a tremendous unreality and illusion, and we come into the world only to be fooled and cheated ; unless the universe departs from its order in dealing with the spiritual necessities of mankind and the cry for God meets with exceptional treatment, quite unlike that given to the other functions and attitudes of our nature, it is simply inconceivable that the fundamental cravings
* J. Hunter, De Pro/undis Clamavi, 22.
PSALM cxxx. I 123
of the soul can exist without their satisfaction and the prayer from the depths remain unanswered.
^ The objection that prayer involves the dictation of man to God; that prayer, where it is answered, means the control of things by man's uninformed wishes, rather than by infinite wis- dom, or by the reign of law, falls at once to the ground when we consider what true prayer really is. It is a travesty of the idea to suppose it means saying to God, " Do this, or that " ; " Give me what I want." For the genuine prayer comes in the first instance not from man, but from God Himself. It is the gracious circula- tion of Divine ideas through the human soul. It is the rain from heaven, falling upon this prepared soil, and springing up there in love, and trust, and holy resignation to a Will higher than itself. It is, as Goethe has somewhere put it, God seeking for Himself and meeting Himself in man. Prayer at its truest is not man having his way with God, but God having His way with man.^
2. God answers man's cry for forgiveness, for reconciliation and union with Him. The great obstacle to religion in our world is not ignorance, but sin. More than enlightenment, we need salvation. Can all our civilization minister to a troubled con- science ? Can all our culture heal a guilty pang ? Can the knowledge of any scientific, philosophical, or theological truth sub- due an evil passion ? But in the depths of our weakness and sin God is our salvation. The deliverance of man is dear to God. It is the essential nature of love to seek and to save. Because God is love. He is ever coming down to the depths of our life, depths of sorrow and sin, the deepest depths of degradation, in order to help and to bring to Himself by all the power of His love His wayward and disobedient children. Whether it be a fallen or a rising world we live in, we know in our hearts that we need re- conciliation with the God of the world. Blessed be His eternal love ! He has never been outside His world, but has been always in it, bearing the sins and carrying the sorrows of our race. Its history is the history of redemption, the history of the unceasing efforts of Him with whom we have to do, to influence without compelling the vagrant and stubborn wills of men.