This will account for the peculiarly brilliant, elevated, and unqualified character of all those bursts of praise which we find throughout sacred Scripture. The creature is set aside: God is the object. He fills the entire sphere of the soul's vision. There is nothing of man, his feelings, or his experiences, and therefore the stream of praise flows copiously and uninterruptedly forth. How different is this from some of the hymns we so often hear sung in Christian assemblies, so full of our failings, our feebleness, our shortcomings. The fact is, we can never sing with real, spiritual intelligence and power when we are looking at ourselves. We shall ever be discovering something within which will act as a drawback to our worship. Indeed, with many, it seems to be accounted a Christian grace to be in a continual state of doubt and hesitation; and, as a consequence, their hymns are quite in character with their condition. Such persons, however sincere and pious, have never yet, in the actual experience of their souls, entered upon the proper ground of worship. They have not yet got done with themselves,--they have not passed through the sea, and, as a spiritually baptized people, taken their stand on the shore, in the power of resurrection. They are still, in some way or another, occupied with self: they do not regard self as a crucified thing, with which God is forever done.
May the Holy Ghost lead all God's people into fuller, clearer, and worthier apprehensions of their place and privilege as those who, being washed from their sins in the blood of Christ, are presented before God in all that infinite and unclouded acceptance in which He stands, as the risen and glorified Head of His Church. Doubts and fears do not become them, for their divine Surety has not left a shadow of a foundation on which to build a doubt or a fear. Their place is within the vail. They "have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." (Heb. x. 19.) Are there any doubts or fears in the holiest? Is it not evident that a doubting spirit virtually calls in question the perfectness of Christ's work--a work which has been attested, in the view of all created intelligence, by the resurrection of Christ from the dead? That blessed One could not have left the tomb unless all ground of doubting and fearing had been perfectly removed on behalf of His people. Wherefore it is the Christian's sweet privilege ever to triumph in a full salvation. The Lord Himself has become his salvation; and he has only to enjoy the fruits of that which God has wrought for him, and to walk to His praise while waiting for that time when "Jehovah shall reign forever and ever."
But there is one note in this song to which I shall just invite my reader's attention.--"He is my God, and I will prepare Him a habitation." It is worthy of note that when the heart was full to overflowing with the joy of redemption, it gives expression to its devoted purpose in reference to "a habitation for God." Let the Christian reader ponder this. God dwelling with man is a grand thought pervading Scripture from Exodus xv. to Revelation. Hearken to the following utterance of a devoted heart: "Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, nor slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord, _a habitation_ for the mighty God of Jacob." (Ps. cxxxii. 3-5.) Again, "For the zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up." (Ps. lxix. 9; John ii. 17.) I do not attempt to pursue this subject here; but I would fain awaken such an interest concerning it in the breast of my reader as shall lead him to pursue it, prayerfully, for himself, from the very earliest notice of it in the Word until he arrives at that soul-stirring announcement, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." (Rev. xxi. 3, 4.)
"So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; and they went out into the wilderness of Shur: and they went three days into the wilderness and found no water." (Ver. 22.) It is when we get into wilderness experience that we are put to the test as to the real measure of our acquaintance with God and with our own hearts. There is a freshness and an exuberance of joy connected with the opening of our Christian career, which very soon receives a check from the keen blast of the desert; and then, unless there is a deep sense of what God is to us, above and beyond everything else, we are apt to break down, and, "in our hearts, turn back again into Egypt." The discipline of the wilderness is needful, not to furnish us with a title to Canaan, but to make us acquainted with God and with our own hearts; to enable us to enter into the power of our relationship, and to enlarge our capacity for the enjoyment of Canaan when we actually get there. (See Deut. viii. 2-5.)