Personal experience of Divine mercies.
"Let them now that fear the Lord say, that his mercy endureth for ever." The term "fear the Lord" suggests personal apprehensions of God, personal dealings with God, and personal relations with him. It is inconceivable that there can have been these close personal associations with God without their having left a deep impression of the abundance, adaptation, and continuance of the Divine mercy. No man can look over his life, and trace God's manner of dealing with him, without being disposed to say, "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses;" "Also unto thee belongeth mercy, for thou renderest to every man according to his works." What impressions of the Divine mercies come to us out of our personal experience?
I. THE MERCY OF GOD HAS TAKEN SHAPE AS A DIVINE PATIENCE. That may well be put first, for, when the heart is tender, it is that comes to us most affectingly. When anything like a fitting sense of our own willfulness and waywardness comes upon our hearts, it is the marvel, over which we never tire of brooding, that God has been so patient with us. Never offended with us, as our fellow-men have easily been; never "dealing with us after our sins, nor rewarding us according to our iniquities." It is not only that he has quietly waited, it is that he has so gently borne with us. Divine patience is never to be thought of as a mere sitting down and waiting. It is best suggested by a mother's ways with a sickly babe; or the doctor's ways with an irritable, fractious patient. There be many to whom God's mercy always appears as his patience and long-suffering, and they praise him for that.
II. THE MERCY OF GOD HAS TAKEN SHAPE AS A DIVINE DISCIPLINE. This is the thought that comes to us as life advances, and the events of the past gain their true perspective. At the time things seemed to be afflictions, calamity, needless strain, and we fretted ourselves weary in trying to find why such hard things were put into our lot. Distance from them increases, and we find they look quite differently. Things are related which we thought had nothing to do with each other. We see how our cultured power came out of our stern experiences; and then we see that God's mercy is the way in which he has made the hard things of life train and discipline characters meet for the heavenly spheres.—R.T.
God's power in a human life.
The figure in Psalms 118:5 is very striking and suggestive. The Hebrew is, "I called upon the Lord from the straitness;" or, "From the narrow gorge I called upon Jab, and Jab answered me in the open plain." It is not necessary to fix any historical associations to the psalm in order to see the point of such a figure. It does but poetically represent a common experience. Continually in human life we come upon times of straitness; our way is hedged up; it is as if we were in a narrow gorge, full of fears lest the overhanging rocks should fall on us, and seeing no way out. Who has not thus felt hemmed in? "All these things are against us." Human wisdom, energy, and persistency alike are baffled and beaten back. "We cannot do the things that we would." Every one and everything seems to be against us. And at such times we easily think hard things of our fellow-men, and think that they are actively against us, when they are only indifferent. What can the psalmist say of such times?
I. FROM THE NARROW GORGE HE CALLED UPON GOD. That at least we can always do. No circumstances of human life need ever prevent the soul's uplook, or silence the soul's cry. Bunyan pictures his pilgrim in sore straitness, picking his perilous way through the Valley of the Shadow. Weapons are of no use there. Human care and skill and watching are of small avail there. But there is one thing the pilgrim can do, and that one thing is everything—he can pray; he can "call upon the Lord." It is well to fix that truth of fact, and to illustrate it fully. There is no perplexity, worry, disaster, or depression can ever come to any man, and destroy his power to pray. Oppress and alarm a man how you may, in any narrow gorge of life, he can always pray. Nothing can overwhelm a man while he can call upon God.
II. IN THE OPEN PLAIN BE HAD THE RESPONSE OF GOD. The figure is kept up. The pilgrim-soul, with the uplifted eyes, presses forward through the darkness or the mist, which permits him to see but one step at a time; and then suddenly the dawn breaks or the mist lifts, and he is filled with a joyous surprise. He is in the gorge no longer; behold, it is the "open plain;" there is plenty of space all around, and the restful blue sky up above, and a clear way before his feet; God has heard his call; he is on his side. Neither man nor things can hurt him now. And such is the experience of all the saints.—R.T.
The really better may not be the apparently better.
It may truly be said that the object of the discipline and experience of life is to deliver us from the fascination of what seems, and to get our conduct and relationships swayed and charactered and toned by what is. This, indeed, is presented in Eastern religions in extravagant forms. But we never need refuse to accept a truth, because somebody, somewhere, has exaggerated it into a mischievous untruth. Creatures conditioned by senses, and placed in sense-relations, as we are, must live in a world of appearances; we can only know what our senses present to us, and they can only present the accidents of things. Reflection, working on the things which the senses offer to us, gradually helps us to the apprehension of that which is—the substance and reality of things. The psalmist here is expressing this fact of life in one of its forms and relations. Man is always disposed to trust in his fellow man, and especially in those of his fellow men who may occupy positions of authority and power. We all incline to trust in man, especially in princes; we can see them. We have sense-estimates of them. We can sensibly apprehend what they can do for us. We fly to, and lean upon, human helpers in every emergency of life.
I. LEANING UPON MAN MAY BE GOOD. It is not necessary to think or speak as if men were always untrustworthy. True, there is always an element of uncertainty in man, and an absolute reliance is not possible. But it would be wholly untrue to say that men always fail us. We have all proved, over and over again, how loyal, constant, and faithful the friends of our life have been. Some of the purest and most satisfying joys we have ever had in life have come out of our human fellowships. The psalmist is therefore true to fact when he speaks of something better, and implies that this confidence in man may be good.
II. LEANING UPON GOD MUST BE BETTER. Just what advancing life and experience bring home to us is that the unseen is the real and permanent. And the very heart and essence of the unseen is God. All reality is unseen; it takes on appearance for the sake of the senses. We are passing on into the unseen; and we reach rest and satisfaction in the measure of our apprehending the unseen as we move towards the consummation. It is better to keep in the sphere of the "real." It is better to "trust in God."—R.T.