I.

"Oh, would I were as free to riseAs leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,The arrowy light of sunset skies,Or sound—or rays—or star of morn,Which meets in heaven at twilight's close,Or aught which soars uncheck'd and free,Through earth and heaven, that I might loseMyself in finding Thee!"

"Oh, would I were as free to rise

As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne,

The arrowy light of sunset skies,

Or sound—or rays—or star of morn,

Which meets in heaven at twilight's close,

Or aught which soars uncheck'd and free,

Through earth and heaven, that I might lose

Myself in finding Thee!"

"O mysterious Jesus, teach us Thy works and Thy plans. Let our hearts pant after Thee as the hart after the water-brooks. Create a thirst which nothing shall satisfy but the fountain of eternal love. See the velocity with which the needle flees to the magnetwhen it gets within distance; so shall we hasten to our Magnet—our Beloved—as we approach Him."—Lady Powerscourt's Letters."As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."—Verse 1.

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."—Verse 1.

We have pictured, in a preceding chapter, the uncrowned Monarch of Israel seated, pensive and sad, amid "the willows by the water-courses;" or wandering forth, amid the deepening twilight-shadows, with the roll of Jordan at his side, perhaps, like his great ancestor, to "wrestle with God until the breaking of the day."

We have already adverted to the simple incident which arrested his attention. A breathless tenant of the forest bounded past him to quench its thirst in the neighbouring river. That unconscious child of nature furnishes the key-note of his song. Let us sit by the banks, as the Exile takes down his harp, and thus sings—"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."

God is the only satisfying portion of the soul.Every theory of human happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the infinite, man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its borrowed light, will compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as well expect the caged wild beast to be happier within the iron bars of his den than roaming lord of the forest, as for the human spirit to be content with the present and the finite as a substitute for the immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone could slake the thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have offered it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks of Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have bounded down the valley in search of the stream.

So with the soul. Nothing but the stream flowing from the Everlasting Hills will satisfy it. You may tempt a man, as he is hurrying on his immortal way, with the world's pastures,—you may hold out to him the golden sheaves of riches,—you may detain him amid the sunny glades of pleasure, or on thehill-tops of fame (and he is but too willing for a while to linger)—but satisfy him they cannot! When his nobler nature acquires its rightful ascendancy he will spurn them all. Brushing each one in succession away, as the stag does the dewy drops of the morning, he will say—"All are insufficient! I wish them not. I have been mocked by their failure. I have found that each has a lie in its right hand;—it is a poor counterfeit—a shadowy figure of the true. I want the fountain of living waters—I want the Infinite of Knowledge, Goodness, Truth, Love!" "In theLordput I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"[17]

The fact is, it is the very grandeur of the soul which leads it thus to pant after God. Small things satisfy a small capacity, but what is made receptive of the vast and glorious can only be satisfied with great things. The mind of the child is satisfied with the toy or the bauble; the mind of the untutored savage with bits of painted glass or tinsel; but the man, the sage, the philosopher, desiderate higher possessions, purer knowledge, nobler themes of thought and objects of ambition. Some insects areborn for an hour, and are satisfied with it. A summer's afternoon is the duration of existence allotted to myriads of tinyephemera. Intheircase, youth and age are crowded into a few passing minutes. The descending sun witnesses their birth and death;—the lifetime of other animals would be to them an immortality. The soul, being infinite and unlimited in its capacities, has correspondingly high aspirations. Vain would be the attempt to fill up a yawning gulf by throwing into it a few grains of sand. But not more vain or ineffectual than try to answer the deep yearnings of the human spirit by the seen and the temporal.

Yes! on all the world's fountains, drink at them as you may, "thirst again" is written. Of the world's mountains, climb them as you may, you will never say, "I have reached the coveted summit. It is enough." Men go sighing on, drinking their rivers of pleasure and climbing their mountains of vanity. They feel all the while some undefined, inarticulate, nameless longing after a satisfying good; but it is a miserable travestie to say that it has been found, or can be found, in anything here. "Who will shew us any good?" will still be the cry of the gropingseeker till he has learned to say, "Lord, liftThouupon me the light of thy countenance."

We know how hard and difficult it is to convince of these sublime verities. The soul, even in its hours of trouble and deep conviction, is like a castaway from shipwreck, who sees from his raft-planks something cresting the waves. He imagines it an island! As he nears it, he fancies he sees purple flowers drooping over the solid rock, and the sea-birds nestling in the crevices. But it is only an aggregate of withered leaves and rotten branches, which the receding tide has tossed together, the wayward freak of old ocean.

"All are wanderers gone astrayEach in his own delusions; they are lostIn chase of fancied happiness, still woo'dAnd never won. Dream after dream ensues;And still they dream that they shall still succeed,And still are disappointed. Rings the worldWith the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,And add two-thirds of the remaining half,And find the total of their hopes and fearsDreams, empty dreams."[18]—Cowper's Task.

"All are wanderers gone astray

Each in his own delusions; they are lost

In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd

And never won. Dream after dream ensues;

And still they dream that they shall still succeed,

And still are disappointed. Rings the world

With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,

And add two-thirds of the remaining half,

And find the total of their hopes and fears

Dreams, empty dreams."[18]—Cowper's Task.

Let him who would solve this great problem of Happiness go to that parable of nature—the hunted Stag seeking the water-brooks, the thirsty soul seeking its God. God is thehomeof the soul, and he is away from home who pitches his tent and weaves his heart-affections around anything short of Him. Who has not heard of "home-sickness"—the desolate feelings of the lonely stranger in a strange land? Let affection, and friendship, and pity do what they may to alleviate the pang of distance and separation, though beaming faces be around, and hands of love and sympathy be extended, still will the heart (despite of all) be roaming the old hallowed haunts, climbing in thought the hills of childhood, gazing on the old village church with its festoons of ivy, seated under the aged elm, or listening to the music of the passing brook and the music of voices sweeter and lovelier than all! The soul is that stranger, dwelling in the tents of Kedar, and panting for Heaven and God. Its language is, "I amnotat home, I am a stranger here." Manifold, too, are the voices in this the land of itsexile, whispering, "Arise ye and depart, for this isNOTyour rest!"[19]

You may have seen in our mountain glens, in the solemn twilight, birds winging their way to their nests. There may be lovely bowers, gardens of fragrance and beauty, close by,—groves inviting to sweetest melody, Nature's consecrated haunts of song. But they tempt them not. Their nests—theirhomes—are in yonder distant rock, and thither they speed their way! So with the soul. The painted glories of this world will not satisfy it. There is no rest in these for its weary wing and wailing cry. It goes singing up and home to God. It has its nest in the crevices of the Rock of Ages. When detained in the nether valley, often is the warbling note heard, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest." And when the flight has been made from the finite to the infinite—from the lower valleys of sense to the hills of faith—from the creature to the Creator—from man to God,—as we see it folding its buoyant pinion and sinking into the eternal clefts, we listen to the song, "Return unto thy rest, O my soul!"

Reader! may this flight be yours. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found!" The creature may change, He cannot. The creature must die, He is eternal. "O God, thou art my God; early will I seekThee:my soul thirsteth forThee,my flesh longeth forTheein a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.... Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee." (Ps. lxiii.)

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herdLong since. With many an arrow deep infix'dMy panting side was charged, when I withdrew,To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.There was I found by One who had HimselfBeen hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.With gentle force soliciting the darts,He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"—Cowper.

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd

Long since. With many an arrow deep infix'd

My panting side was charged, when I withdrew,

To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.

There was I found by One who had Himself

Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,

And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"

—Cowper.

"It was in this extremity it occurred to her that, in the deficiency of all hope in creatures, there might behope and help in God. Borne down by the burdens of a hidden providence (a providence which she did not then love, because she did not then understand it) she yielded to the pressure that was upon her, and began to look to Him in whom alone there is true assistance."—Madame Guyon's Life, p. 38."As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."—Verse 1.

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."—Verse 1.

Are we not warranted to infer that it was thewoundedstag which David now saw, or pictured he saw, seeking the brooks?—the hart hit by the archers, with blood-drops standing on its flanks, and its eye glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death? But for these wounds it would never have come to the Valley. It would have been nestling still up in its native heath—the thick furze and cover of the mountain heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring aim; and, with distended nostril and quivering limb, it hastens to allay the rage of its death-thirst.

Picture of David, ay, and of many who have been driven to drink of that "river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." They arewoundedspirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing their life-blood. Faint, trembling, forlorn,weary, they have left the world's high ground—the heights of vanity, and indifference, and self-righteousness, and sin—and have sought the lowly Valley of humiliation.

What are some of these arrows? There are arrows from the quiver ofMAN, and arrows from the quiver ofGod.

Thearrows of manare often the cruellest of all. "Lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart." (Ps. xi. 2.)Envyis an archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood.Jealousyis a bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival.Revengehas his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to retaliate the real or imagined injury.Maliceis an archer that seeks his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton mischief—irreparable injury—on the absent or innocent.Contemptis a bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn on others. The teeth of such "are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." (Ps. lvii. 4.)Deceit.—He is, in these our days, a huntsmanof repute—a modern Nimrod—with gilded arrows in his quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren look, within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless, on "the mountains of prey!" "Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper." (Ps. cxx. 2-4.)

But there are arrows also from thequiver ofGod. "The arrows of the Almighty," says Job, "are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit." (Job vi. 4.) "He hath bent His bow," says Jeremiah, "and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins." (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?—"Let me fall into the hands of God, for great areHismercies!" "Faithful are the wounds ofthisfriend." (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.)

We need not stop to enumerate particularly thesearrows. There is the blanched arrow ofsickness, the rusted arrow ofpoverty, the lacerating arrow ofbereavement, stained and saturated with tears, and feathered from our own bosoms! There is the arrow, too, (though of a different kind,) of God's own blessedWord, "quick and powerful." "Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies." (Ps. xlv. 5.)

Yet, blessed be God, these are often arrows which wound only to heal; or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding, panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself. Suffering one! be thankful for thy wounds. But for these shafts thou mightest have been, at this moment, sleeping on the mountain heights of self-righteousness, or worldliness, or sin, with no thought of thy soul; the streams of salvation disowned; forsaking, and continuing to forsake, the "Fountain of Living Waters."

Let me ask, Has this been the result of thy woundings? Have they led thee from the "broken (leaky) cistern" to say, "All my springs are inThee?" Remember affliction, worldly calamity, bereavement, have a twofold effect. It is a solemn alternative! They may drive thee nearer, they may drive thee farther from, thy God. They may drivethee down to the gushing stream, or farther up the cold, freezing mountain-side. The wounded hart of this Psalm, on receiving the sting of the arrow, might have plunged only deeper and deeper into the toils of the huntsmen, or the solitudes of the forest. It might have gone with its pining eye, and broken heart, and bleeding wound, to bury itself amid the withered leaves.

How many there are whose afflictions seem to lead to this sad consequence; who, when mercies and blessings are removed, abandon themselves to sullen and morbid fretfulness; who, instead of bowing submissive to the hand that wounds and is able to heal, seem to feel as if they were denuded of their rights! Their language is the bitter reproach of Jonah—"I do well to be angry, even unto death." Muffling themselves in hardened unbelief, their wretched solace is that of despair—"It is better for me to die than to live."

"Blessed is the man thatENDURETHtemptation," not who rushes away to pine, and bleed, and die;—or to feed still on husks and the garbage of the wilderness, but who makes the nobler resolve, "I will arise and go to my Father." Blessed is the man whosecry, like that of the child, is answered by his heavenly Parent bending over the cradle of his sorrow;—who feels, as the Psalmist did, that his gracious Father and God is never so near him as in a time of trial. "When my spirit was overwhelmed,THENThouknewest my path." The bird of the desert is said to bury its head in the sand on the approach of its foes, and to abandon itself to destruction; but blessed is the man who rather is like the bird of the grove, the first twigs of whose nest have been ruthlessly pulled to pieces by the hand of violence. Hovering for a while over her pillaged home, she fills the wood with her plaintive lament, then soars away from the haunt of the destroyer to begin a fresh one, in a place of safety, on the top branch of some cedar of God!

Such was the case with David on the occasion of this Psalm. He had read to him the most touching homily the worldcouldread on the precarious tenure of earthly blessings. His sceptre, his crown, his family, were like the bubbles on that foaming stream on which he gazed, dancing their little moment on its surface, then gone, and gone for ever. Is he to abandon himself to an ignoble despair? Ishe to conclude that the Lord has made him a target on which to exhaust His quiver—that He has "forgotten to be gracious?" Is he to join marauding chiefs beyond the Jordan, savage freebooters—become a mountain adventurer on these Gentile borders, and forget Zion and Zion's God? No! the earthly crown may fade, but the homeless, uncrowned, unsceptred monarch has a better home and a better King above; invisible walls and battlements, better than all the trenches and moats of an earthly fortress, encompass the wanderer. With his eye on these, thus he weaves his warrior song—"I will say of the Lord, He is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." (Ps. xviii. 2.)

Reader! let me ask you, in closing this chapter, areyoupanting for God?

This is not the way—this is not the history ofmost. They are panting, butnotfor God! They are panting up the hill, like Sisyphus, with their huge stone.Ambitionis panting up the hill—no time to take a breath.Pleasureis panting up the hill—pursuing her butterfly existence—a phantom-chase—rushingfrom flower to flower, extracting all the luscious sweets she can.Fameis panting up the hill, blowing her trumpet before her, eager to erect her own monument on the coveted apex.Mammonis pushing up the hill with his panting team, to erect the temple of riches. Multitudes of hapless wayfarers in the same reckless scramble have tumbled into crevices, and are crying for help. Mammon's wheels are locked,—his treasure-chests have fallen into the mire;—and yet,onhe goes, driving his jaded steeds over the poor, and weak, and helpless—ay, those that assisted him to load before he started at the mountain base. He must gain the top at all hazards as best he may; and he will be crowned a hero, too, and lauded for his feat!

Ah! strange that men should still be pursuing that phantom-chase. Or, rather, strange that they should live so immeasurably beneath the grandeur of their own destiny; rasping the shallows when they should be out in the deep sea; furling and warping the sails of immortality, instead of having every available yard of canvas spread to the breeze of heaven.

These objects of earthly, perishable pursuit,maydo when the world is bright, the heart unwounded, the eye undimmed. These may do when the sun shines unclouded in our firmament, when our fields are waving, when fortune is weaving her golden web, and the bark of existence with its white sails is holding its way through summer seas. These may do when the home circle is unbroken; when we miss no loved face, when we mark no silent voice, no vacant chair.Butwhen the muffled drum takes the place of life's joyous music;—when our skies are robed in sackcloth, when Nature takes on its hue of ashen paleness; when every flower, seared and frost-bitten, seems to droop its head in sadness and sorrow, and hide its tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay!—whatthen? The prophet's voice takes up the lesson—"The voice said, Cry; and he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass!" Poor trifler that thou art! to be so long mocked and deceived by a dead and dying world; desolate, friendless, hopeless, portionless; a vessel driven from its moorings, out unpiloted on a tempestuous sea!Butthere is a havenfor the tempest-tossed. The Saviour thou hast long despised and rejected, is a provided harbour for such asthee. "AMANshall be an hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." (Isaiah xxxii. 2.)

Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee—Let him that is athirst, come.

Athirst!who is not athirst? It is the attribute of universal humanity! Who does not feel that this world is presenting us with muddy streams and broken, leaky cisterns? Who does not feel, in their moments of deep and calm reflection, when we are brought face to face with the great enigma of existence, that the world is serving up faded flowers instead of those redolent with imperishable fragrance, and glowing with unfading bloom?Friendless one!—thou who art standing alone like a solitary tree in the forest whom the woodman's axe has spared—thy compeers cut down at thy side—Come!Child of calamity!—the chill hand of penury laid on thine earthly comforts—the widow'scruise fast failing, her staff of bread diminishing—Come!Child of bereavement!—the pillars in thy heart-shrine crumbling to decay, thy head bowed like a bulrush—thou who knowest that fortune may again replace and replenish her dismantled walls, but that nothing can reanimate thy still marble, or refill the vacant niche in thy heart of hearts—Come!Prodigal!—wanderer from God, exile from peace, roaming the forest-haunts of sin, plunging deeper and deeper into their midnight of ruin and despair—has an arrow, either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded thy heart? Art thou, in thy agony, seeking rest and finding none,—having the gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction with all created things, and an undefined longing for a solace they cannot give? Yes! forthee, too, for thy gaping, bleeding wound there is "balm in Gilead, and a Physician there." I repeat, Jesus this day stands by the glorious streams of His own purchased salvation, and cries, saying—"If any manTHIRST,let him come unto me and drink!"

"Yea, Lord!" be it yours to reply—"Lord, Icome!thirsty, faint, forlorn, wounded, weary! I come, 'just as I am, without one plea.' Thou art allI need, all I require, in sickness and health, in joy and in sorrow, in life and in death, in time and through eternity. The snow-clad hills may cease to feed the brooks;—that sun may cease to shine, or nature grow weary of his loving beams;—that moon may cease on her silver lyre, night by night, to discourse to the listening earth;—the birds may become mute at the voice of the morning;—flowers may droop, instead of ringing their thousand bells at the jubilant step of summer;—the gasping pilgrim may rush from the stream, and prefer the fiery furnace-glow of the desert sands,—but 'this God shall be my God for ever and ever;' and, even when death is sealing my eyes, and the rush of darkness is coming over my spirit, even then will I take up the old exile strain—the great sigh of weary humanity—and blend its notes with the song of heaven—'As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.'"

"Hear me! To Thee my soul in suppliance turneth;Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearneth:Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."

"Hear me! To Thee my soul in suppliance turneth;

Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.

For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearneth:

Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."

"Oh, it is His own self I pant after. Fellowship—living, constant, intimate fellowship with Him, is the cry He often hears from the desolate void of my unloving heart. How do I loathe the sin which makes the atmosphere so misty—the clouds so thick and dark!"—Life of Adelaide Newton, p. 246."My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"—Verse 2.

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"—Verse 2.

In the two former chapters, we listened to the first sigh of the exile—the first strain of his plaintive song. It was the groping and yearning of his soul after God, as the alone object of happiness.

You may have watched the efforts of the plant, tossed amid rack and weed in some dark cellar, to climb to the light. Like the captive in the dungeon longing to cool his fevered brow in the air of heaven, its sickly leaves seem to struggle and gasp for breath. They grope, with their blanched colours, towards any chink or crevice or grated window, through which a broken beam is admitted. Or garden flowers choked amid rank luxuriance, or under the shade of tree or wall, how ambitious to assert their freedom, and pay homage to the parent sun, lifting their pendant leaves or petals as a target for his golden arrows!

The soul, away from the great Sun of its being, frets and pines and mourns! Every affection droops in languor and sadness when that light is away. Its abortive efforts to obtain happiness in other and meaner joys, and its dissatisfaction with them, is itself a testimony to the strength and loftiness of its aspiration—a manifesto of its real grandeur! The human affections must be fastened onsomething! They are like the clinging ivy which creeps along the ground, and grasps stones, rocks, weeds, and unsightly ruins, if it can find nothing else on which to fix its tendrils; but when it reaches the root of the tree, or base of the castle wall, it spurns its grovelling existence, and climbs its upward way till it hangs in graceful festoons from the topmost branch or turret.

We are to contemplate, now, a second breathing of this exiled supplicant—a new element in his God-ward aspiration.

"My soul thirsteth for God,for the living God:when shall I come and appear before God?"

This is no mere repetition of the former verse. It invests the believer's relationship to the object of his faith and hope with a new and more solemn interest.

For David's present condition and experience in the land of his exile—the feeling of utter isolation throbbing through the pulses of his soul,—there were required some extraordinary and peculiar sources of comfort. The old conventional dogmas of theology, at such seasons, are insufficient. Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is blighted and withered like grass;—who has not been conscious of a longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us to the quick? What of His character, His attributes, His ways! There is a feeling, such as we never had before, to draw aside the veil which screens the Invisible. It may be faith in its feeblest form, awaking as from a dream; lisping the very alphabet of Divine truth, and asking, in broken and stammering accents, "Does Godreally live?—Is it,after all, Deity, or is it Chance, that is ruling the world? Is this great Being near, or is He distant? Does He take cognizance of all events in this world; or are minute, trivial occurrences, contingent on the accidents of nature or the caprice of man?Is Hethe living One?" God, a distant abstraction shrouded in the awful mystery of His own attributes, will not do;—we must realise His presence; our cry, at such a time, is that of the old patriarch at the brook Jabbok, or of his descendant at the brooks of Gilead—"Tell me thyNAME."[20]Is it merelylove, or is it the lovingOne? Is itomnipotence, or is it the almightyOne? Is it some mysterious, impalpable principle, some property of matter or attribute of mind—or is it apersonalJehovah, one capable of loving and of being loved? Have the lips of incarnate truth and wisdom deceived us by a mere figure of speech, when, in the great Liturgy of the Church universal, in the prayer which is emphatically "His own," He hath taught us, in its opening words, to say, "OurFatherwhich art in heaven, hallowed be thyNAME!"

How earnestly do the saints in former times, andespecially in their seasons of trial, cleave to the thought of thispersonalpresence; in other words, a thirst for "theliving God!"

What was the solace of the patriarch Job, as he was stretched on his bed of sackcloth and ashes, when other friends had turned against him in bitter derision, and were loading him with their reproaches? It was the realisation of aliving defenderwho would vindicate his integrity,—"I know that my Redeemer liveth." (Job xix. 25.)

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The symbol taught him encouraging truths;—that the Hebrew race, after all their experience of fiery trial, would come forth unscathed and unconsumed. But the shepherd-leader desired more than this: he craved the assurance of aLIVING GOD—an ever-present guardian, a pillar to guide by day, and a column of defence by night. It was the truth that was borne to his ear from the desert's fiery oracle. There could be no grander watchword for himself, or for the enslaved people,—"God said unto Moses,I am that I am!" No comment is subjoined;—nothing to diminish the glory of that majestic utterance. The Almighty Speaker doesnot qualify it by adding, "I am light, power, wisdom, glory;" but He simply declares Hisbeing and existence—He unfolds Himself as "the living God!" It is enough!

Elijah is in his cave at Horeb. All nature is convulsed around him. The rocks are rent with an earthquake. The sky is lurid with lightnings. Fragments of these awful precipices are torn and dislocated by the fury of the tempest, and go thundering down the Valley. Nature testifies to the presence, and majesty, and power of her God: but He is not in any of these! "The Lord is not there!" The Prophet waits for a further disclosure. He is not satisfied with seeing the skirts of God's garment. He must see the hand, and hear (though it be in gentle whispers) the voice of Him who sits behind the elements He has awoke from their sleep. Hence this formed the closing scene in that wild drama of the desert. "After the fire there came a still small voice."The Lord is there!He is proclaiming Himself the prophet's God! with him in the depths of that howling wilderness, as He had been with him on the heights of Carmel. "And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped hisface in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave." (1 Kings xix. 12, 13.)

Shall we go for illustration of the same truth to New Testament and gospel times?

The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice of alivingSaviour proclaims Hisname. "It is I(lit.I am);be not afraid!" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest, lulls their trembling spirits to rest.

John, in Patmos, beheld, in a vision of surpassing brightness, his Lord arrayed in the lustres of exalted humanity. Overpowered by the glory which unexpectedly burst upon him, "he fell at His feet as one dead." His misgivings are stilled; his confidence and hope restored, by the proclamation of alivingSaviour-God. "I am He thatLIVETH" (lit.the Living One)—and a similar comforting symbol was given him in a subsequent vision, when he saw that same covenant angel "ascending from the east, having the seal of theLivingGod." (Rev. i. 18, and vii. 2.)

This was "thelivingJehovah" whom David now sought in the forest-depths of Gilead. He goes out to that solitude to meditate and pray. But it is nodream of earthly conquest that occupies him. Deeper thoughts have taken possession of his soul than the loss of a kingdom and the forfeiture of a crown! A fiercer battle engrosses his spirit than any mortal conflict. "Let me have God," he seems to say, "as the strength of my heart and my portion for ever, and I heed not other portions besides." At another time that lover of nature would have caught inspiration from the glories of the impressive sanctuary around. He would have sung of the water-brooks at his side, the trees bending in adoration, the rocky gorges through which Jordan fretted his tortuous way, the everlasting hills of Hermon and Lebanon,—the silent guardians of the scene,—"the wild beasts of the forest creeping forth" and "seeking their meat from God." But now he has but one thought—one longing—"Thouart more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey." (Ps. lxxvi. 4.) None was more dependent on the realised consciousness of the Divine favour than he. His Psalms seem to utter the language of one who lived in God's presence, and to whom the withdrawal of that endearing intercourse and communion would be death indeed. His expressions, in these holy breathingsof his soul to the Father of spirits, seem like those of one loving friend to another. God, the abstraction of the Philosopher, has no place in his creed. He speaks of "the Lord thinking upon him," "putting his tears into His bottle," "guiding him with His eye," "His right hand upholding him," he himself "rejoicing under the shadow of His wings;" and as if he almost beheld some visible, tangible form, such as Peter gazed upon when the question was put to him on the shore of Gennesaret, "Lovest thou me?" we hear this warm, impulsive Peter of Old Testament times thus avowing his personal attachment—"I will love thee, O Lord my strength;" "I love the Lord, because He hath heard my voice and my supplications;" "The LordLIVETH; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted."

Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as aliving God? Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes. But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever nigh, compassingyour path and your lying down? Do you know ofOne, brighter than the brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from temptation—the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"

And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and who chastises youbecauseHe loves you. The world, in their cold vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak ofProvidence, "the wil ofProvidence," "the strokes ofProvidence."Providence!What is that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world? Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of bereavementto drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God—to see that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning, and the wings of the whirlwind—and to say like David, on the occasion of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; becauseThoudidst it." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)

The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The redeemed multitude, while on earth, "thirsted" for the living God, but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the earthly valley is answered—"When shall we come andappear before God?"

And what this living God is to the Church above, He is also to the Church below. In one sense we need Him more! The drooping, pining plant, battered down by rain, and hail, and tempest, standsmore in need of the fostering hand and genial sunbeam than the sturdy tree whose roots are firmly moored in the soil, or sheltered from the sweep of the storm. Pilgrims in the Valley of Tears! seek to live more under the habitual thought of God's presence. In dark passages of our earthly history we know how supporting it is to enjoy the sympathy of kindredhumanfriends. What must it be to have the consciousness of the presence, and support, and nearness of the Being of all beings; when some cherished "light of the dwelling" is put out, to have a better light remaining, which sorrow cannot quench! All know the story of the little child who, in simple accents, quieted its own fears and that of others in the midst of a storm. When the planks were creaking beneath them—the hoarse voice of the thunder above mingling with that of the raging sea;—his tiny finger pointed to the calm visage of the pilot, who was steering with brawny arm through the surge, "My father," said he, "is at the helm!" Would you weather the tempests of life, and sit calm and unmoved amid "the noise of its many waters," let your eye rest on aliving God—a loving Father—a heavenly Pilot. See Him guiding theVessel of your temporal and eternal destinies! Let Faith be heard raising her triumphant accents amid the pauses of the storm—"O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, Thou stillest them." (Psalm lxxxix. 9.)

Above all, be it yours to enjoy what David knew imperfectly, the conscious nearness of a livingSaviour,—a Brother on the throne of Heaven—"Christ our life"—God in our nature—"the man Christ Jesus,"—susceptible of every human sympathy—capable of entering, with infinite tenderness, into every human want and woe—bending over us with His pitying eye—marking out for us our path—ordering our sorrows—filling or emptying our cup—providing our pastures, and "making all things work together for our good!" The words at this moment are as true as when, eighteen hundred years ago, they came fresh from His lips in Patmos—"I amthe livingOne!—Behold, I amalivefor evermore!" (Rev. i. 18.)

What is the great lesson from this meditation? Is it not to strive tobe like God? What does "thirsting" for God mean, but a longing of thesoul after likeness and conformity to the Divine image? Let us not lose the deep truth of the text under the material emblem. To thirst for God is to desire His fellowship; and we can only hold fellowship with a congenial mind. No man is ever found to covet the companionship of those whose tastes, likings, pursuits, are opposed to his own. Place one whose character is scarred with dishonour and his life with impurity, introduce him into the company of high-souled men—spirits of sterling integrity and unblemished virtue, who would recoil from the contaminating touch of vice, who would scorn a lie as they would a poisoned dart—hecouldnot be happy; he would long to break away from associates and associations so utterly distasteful and uncongenial. No man can thirst after God who is not aiming after assimilation to His character. God isHOLY. He who thirsts for God must be athirst forholiness—he must scorn impurity in all its forms, in thought, word, and deed. He who longs for the pure cistern must turn with loathing from the muddy pools of earth and sin. Again, God isLOVE. Love is pencilled by Him on every flower, and murmured in every breeze. The world is resonantwith chimes of love, and Calvary is love's crowning triumph and consummation. He who "thirsts for God" "in him verily is theloveof God perfected." He must have the lineaments in outline, at least, of a loving nature. He must hate all that is selfish, delight in all that is beneficent, and seek an elevating satisfaction in being the minister of love to others. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for God,—to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him—no longing for His presence—no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to you, as to the believer, aLIVINGGod. Yes—scorner of His mercy! ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible,—the God with whom you will yet have "to do,"thatGodLIVES! His eye is upon you—His book is open—His pen is writing—the indelible page is filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones of His voice. His very mercy andforbearance may be misconstrued by you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the dead hieroglyphics of the past—the obsolete tool-marks of the God of primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the control of universal laws!

Nay—God lives! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! thislivingGodagainstyou!Youliving, and content to live His enemy! rushing against the bosses of His buckler! and if you were to die, it would be in the attitude of onefighting against God!

No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but, blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness. Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the unfailing stream.

See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. He who unlocked that fountain is even now standing by it, and saying, as He contrasts it with all earth's polluted cisterns, "Whosoever drinketh ofTHISwater shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

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