assurance, and knew that Jesus had put all evil away; but "I will fear no
evil;" as if even his fears, those shadows of evil, were gone for ever. The
worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination.
If we had no troubles but real troubles, we should not have a tenth part of
our present sorrows. We feel a thousand deaths in fearing one, but the
psalmist was cured of the disease of fearing. "I will fear no evil," not
even the Evil One himself; I will not dread the last enemy, I will look upon
him as a conquered foe, an enemy to be destroyed, "For thou art with me."
This is the joy of the Christian! " Thou art with me." The little child
out at sea in the storm is not frightened like all the other passengers on
board the vessel, it sleeps in its mother's bosom; it is enough for it that
its mother is with it; and it should be enough for the believer to know that
Christ is with him. " Thou art with me; I have, in having thee, all that I
can crave: I have perfect comfort and absolute security, for thou art with
me." "Thy rod and thy staff," by which thou governest and rulest thy
flock, the ensigns of thy sovereignty and of thy gracious care— "they
comfort me." I will believe that thou reignest still. The rod of Jesse
shall still be over me as the sovereign succour of my soul.
Many persons profess to receive much comfort from the hope that they
shall not die. Certainly there will be some who will be "alive and remain"
at the coming of the Lord, but is there so very much of advantage in such an
escape from death as to make it the object of Christian desire? A wise man
might prefer of the two to die, for those who shall not die, but who "shall
be caught up together with the Lord in the air," will be losers rather than
gainers. They will lose that actual fellowship with Christ in the tomb
which dying saints will have, and we are expressly told that they shall have
no preference beyond those who are asleep. Let us be of Paul's mind when he
said that "To die is gain," and think of "departing to be with Christ, which
is far better." This twenty-third psalm is not worn out, and it is as sweet
in a believer's ear now as it was in David's time, let novelty-hunters say
what they will.
Verse 5. "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies." The good man has his enemies. He would not be like his Lord if
he had not. If we were without enemies we might fear that we were not the
friends of God, for the friendship of the world is enmity to God. Yet see
the quietude of the godly man in spite of, and in the sight of, his enemies.
How refreshing is his calm bravery! "Thou preparest a table before me."
When a soldier is in the presence of his enemies, if he eats at all he
snatches a hasty meal, and away he hastens to the fight. But observe: "Thou
preparest a table," just as a servant does when she unfolds the damask
cloth and displays the ornaments of the feast on an ordinary peaceful
occasion. Nothing is hurried, there is no confusion, no disturbance, the
enemy is at the door, and yet God prepares a table, and the Christian sits
down and eats as if everything were in perfect peace. Oh! the peace which
Jehovah gives to his people, even in the midst of the most trying
circumstances!
"Let earth be all in arms abroad,
They dwell in perfect peace."
"Thou anointest my head with oil." May we live in the daily enjoyment of
this blessing, receiving a fresh anointing for every day's duties. Every
Christian is a priest, but he cannot execute the priestly office without
unction, and hence we must go day by day to God the Holy Ghost, that we may
have our heads anointed with oil. A priest without oil misses the chief
qualification for his office, and the Christian priest lacks his chief
fitness for service when he is devoid of new grace from on high. "My cup
runneth over." He had not only enough, a cup full, but more than enough, a
cup which overflowed. A poor man may say this as well as those in higher
circumstances. "What, all this, and Jesus Christ too?" said a poor cottager
as she broke a piece of bread and filled a glass with cold water. Whereas a
man may be ever so wealthy, but if he be discontented his cup cannot run
over; it is cracked and leaks. Content is the philosopher's stone which
turns all it touches into gold; happy is he who has found it. Content is
more than a kingdom, it is another word for happiness.
Verse 6. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life." This is a fact as indisputable as it is encouraging, and therefore
a heavenly verily, or "surely" is set as a seal upon it. This sentence
may be read, " only goodness and mercy," for there shall be unmingled mercy
in our history. These twin guardian angels will always be with me at my
back and my beck. Just as when great princes go abroad they must not go
unattended, so it is with the believer. Goodness and mercy follow him
always— "all the days of his life" —the black days as well as the
bright days, the days of fasting as well as the days of feasting, the dreary
days of winter as well as the bright days of summer. Goodness supplies our
needs, and mercy blots out our sins. "And I will dwell in the house of the
Lord for ever." "A servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the son
abideth ever." While I am here I will be a child at home with my God; the
whole world shall be his house to me; and when I ascend into the upper
chamber, I shall not change my company, nor even change the house; I shall
only go to dwell in the upper storey of the house of the Lord for ever.
May God grant us grace to dwell in the serene atmosphere of this most
blessed Psalm!
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Whole Psalm. David has left no sweeter Psalm than the short twenty-
third. It is but a moment's opening of his soul; but, as when one, walking
the winter street sees the door opened for some one to enter, and the red
light streams a moment forth, and the forms of gay children are running to
greet the comer, and genial music sounds, though the door shuts and leaves
the night black, yet it cannot shut back again all that the eyes, the ear,
the heart, and the imagination have seen—so in this Psalm, though it is
but a moment's opening of the soul, are emitted truths of peace and
consolation that will never be absent from the world. The twenty-third
Psalm is the nightingale of the Psalms. It is small, of a homely feather,
singing shyly out of obscurity; but, oh! it has filled the air of the whole
world with melodious joy, greater than the heart can conceive. Blessed be
the day on which that Psalm was born! What would you say of a pilgrim
commissioned of God to travel up and down the earth singing a strange
melody, which, when one heard, caused him to forget whatever sorrows he had?
And so the singing angel goes on his way through all lands, singing in the
language of every nation, driving away trouble by the pulses of the air
which his tongue moves with divine power. Behold just such an one! This
pilgrim God has sent to speak in every language on the globe. It has
charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world. It has
remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more
thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the sea-shore. It has comforted
the noble host of the poor. It has sung courage to the army of the
disappointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the heart of the
sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of
orphans in their loneliness. Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read
to them; ghastly hospitals have been illuminated; it has visited the
prisoner, and broken his chains, and, like Peter's angel, led him forth in
imagination, and sung him back to his home again. It has made the dying
Christian slave freer than his master, and consoled those whom, dying, he
left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone, as because they were
left behind, and could not go too. Nor is its work done. It will go
singing to your children and my children, and to their children, through all
the generations of time; nor will it fold its wings till the last pilgrim is
safe, and time ended; and then it shall fly back to the bosom of God, whence
it issued, and sound on, mingled with all those sounds of celestial joy
which make heaven musical for ever.
Henry Ward Beecher, in "Life Thoughts."
Whole Psalm. This Psalm may well be called David's bucolicon, or
pastoral, so daintily hath he struck upon the whole string, through the
whole hymn. Est Psalmis honorabilis, saith Aben-ezra; it is a noble
Psalm, written and sung by David, not when he fled into the forest of Hareth
(1 Samuel 22:5), as some Hebrews will have it; but when as having overcome
all his enemies, and settled his kingdom, he enjoyed great peace and quiet,
and had one foot, as it were, upon the battlements of heaven. The Jews at
this day use for most part to repeat this Psalm after they are sat down to
meat.
John Trapp.
Whole Psalm. Augustine is said to have beheld, in a dream, the one
hundred and nineteenth Psalm rising before him as a tree of life in the
midst of the paradise of God. This twenty-third may be compared to the
fairest flowers that grew around it. The former has even been likened to
the sun amidst the stars—surely this is like the richest of the
constellations, even the Pleiades themselves!
John Stoughton, in "The Songs of Christ's Flock," 1860.
Whole Psalm. Some pious souls are troubled because they cannot at all
times, or often, use, in its joyous import, the language of this Psalm.
Such should remember that David, though he lived long, never wrote but one
twenty-third Psalm. Some of his odes do indeed express as lively a faith as
this, and faith can walk in darkness. But where else do we find a whole
Psalm expressive of personal confidence, joy, and triumph, from beginning to
end? God's people have their seasons of darkness and their times of
rejoicing.
William S. Plumer.
Verse 1. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Let them say
that will, "My lands shall keep me, I shall have no want, my merchandise
shall be my help, I shall have no want;" let the soldier trust unto his
weapons, and the husbandman unto his labour; let the artificer say unto his
art, and the tradesman unto his trade, and the scholar unto his books,
"These shall maintain me, I shall not want." Let us say with the church,
as we both say and sing, "The Lord is my keeper, I shall not want." He that
can truly say so, contemns the rest, and he that desires more than God,
cannot truly say, the Lord is his, the Lord is this shepherd, governor and
commander, and therefore I shall not want.
John Hull, B.D., in "Lectures on Lamentations," 1617.
Verse 1. "The Lord is my shepherd; I want nothing:" thus it may be
equally well rendered, though in our version it is in the future tense.
J. R. Macduff, D.D., in "The Shepherd and his Flock," 1866.
Verse 1. "The Lord is my shepherd." We may learn in general from the
metaphor, that it is the property of a gracious heart to draw some spiritual
use or other from his former condition. David himself having sometimes been
a shepherd, as himself confesseth when he saith, "he took David from the
sheepfold from following the sheep," etc., himself having been a shepherd,
he beholds the Lord the same to him. Whatsoever David was to his flock—
watchful over them, careful to defend them from the lion and the bear, and
whatsoever thing else might annoy them, careful of their pasturage and
watering, etc., the same and much more he beholds the Lord to himself. So
Paul: "I was a persecutor, and an oppressor: but the Lord had mercy on me."
This we may see in good old Jacob: "With this staff," saith he, "I passed
over Jordan;" and that now God had blessed him and multiplied him
exceedingly. The doctrine is plain; the reasons are, first, because true
grace makes no object amiss to gather some gracious instruction: it skills
not what the object be, so that the heart be gracious; for that never wants
matter to work upon. And secondly, it must needs be so, for such are guided
by God's Spirit, and therefore are directed to a spiritual use of all
things.
Samuel Smith's "Chiefe Shepheard," 1625.
Verse 1. "Shepherd." May this sweet title persuade Japhet to dwell in