A HYMN OF HEART'S EASE. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, WE Nor mine eyes lofty: SUNDAY READINGS FOR MAY. BY PROFESSOR ELMSLIE, M.A. Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, FIRST SUNDAY. Read Job xxvi, and 1 Cor. xiii. THE SOURCE OF UNREST. "Things too high for me." E are apt to think and speak as if difficulty of faith were an experience peculiar to our age. It is indeed true that at particular periods speculative uncertainty has been more widely diffused than at others, and our own age may be one of them. But the real causes of perplexity in things religious are permanent and unchanging, having their roots deep-seated in the essential nature of man's relation to the world and to God. There has never been a time, when men have not had to fight hard battles for their faith against the dark mysteries and terrors of existence, that pressed in upon their souls and threatened to enslave them. What is this brief Psalm, echoing like a sea-shell in its tiny circle the heart-beat of a vanished world, but the pathetic record of a soul's dread struggle with doubt and darkness, telling in its simple rhythm and quiet cadences the story, how through the breakers of unbelief it fought its way to the firm shores of faith and peace and hope. It reads like a tale of yesterday. It is just what we are seeking, suffering, achieving. Yet more than two thousand years have come and gone since the brain that thought and the hand that wrote have mouldered into dust. The poem must have been penned at a time when the poet's own misfortunes, or the general disorders of the age, were such as seemed to clash irreconcilably with his preconceived notions of God's goodness, character, and purposes. The shock of this collision between fact and theory shook to its foundations the structure of his inherited creed, and opened great fissures of questioning in the fabric of his personal faith. He was tempted to abandon the believing habits of a religious training and the confiding instincts of a naturally devout heart, and either to doubt the being and power of the Almighty or to deny His wisdom and beneficence. For a long time he was tossed hither and thither And quieted myself; As a child that is weaned of his mother, PSALM CXXXI. on the alternate ebb and flow of questioning denial and believing affirmation, finding nowhere any firm foothold amid the unstable tumult of conflicting evidence and inconclusive reasoning. At last out of the confusion there dawned on his mind a growing persuasion of something clear and certain. He perceived that not only was the balance of evidence indecisive, but also that the issue never could but be indeterminate. For he saw that the method itself was impotent, and could never reach or unravel the themes of his agonized questioning. A settled conviction forced itself in upon his mind, that there are in life problems no human ingenuity can solve, questions that baffle man's intellect to comprehend, "great matters and things too high for him." It was a discovery, startling, strange, and painful. But at least it was something solid and certain; it was firm land on which one's feet might be planted. Moreover, it was not an ending, but a beginning, a starting point that led somewhere. Perchance it might prove to be the first step in a rocky pathway, that should guide his footsteps to heights of clearer light and wider vision, where the heart, if not the intellect, might reach a solution of its questionings and enter into rest. The quest he had commenced had turned out a quest of the unattainable, but it had brought him to a real and profitable discovery. He had recognised and accepted once and for ever the fact of the fixed and final limitation of human knowledge. It is an experience all men have to make ; an experience that grows with age and deepens with wisdom, as we more and more encounter the mysteries of existence, and fathom the shallowness of our fancied knowledge. What do we know of God, the world, ourselves? How much and how little! How much about them, how little of them! Who of us, for instance, has any actual conception of God in his absolute being? You remember how in dreamy childhood you would vainly strive to arrest and fasten in some definite image the vague vision of dazzling glory you had learned to call God, which floated before your soul, awing you with its majesty and immeasurable beauty, but evading every effort to grasp it. With gathering years and widening horizon you watched the world's changeful aspects and ceaseless movements, till nature seemed the transparent vesture of its mighty maker, but it was all in vain that you tried to pierce the thin veil and behold the invisible worker within. You took counsel with science, and it told you much concerning the properties of matter and the sequences of force, but the ultimate cause, that which is beneath, that which worketh all in all, it could not reveal. You turned to philosophy, and you traced the soaring thoughts of the sages, that rushed upward like blazing rockets, as if they would pierce and illumine the remotest heaven; but you saw how, ere they reached that far goal, their fire went out, their light was quenched, and they fell back through the darkness, baffled and spent. You betook yourself to revelation, counting that at last you were entering the inner shrine; and you did indeed learn much that was new and precious, but soon came the discovery that here also we do but see through a glass darkly, and that our best knowledge of God is no more than a knowledge in part. "Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways; and how small a portion we know of them! But the thunder of His power, who can understand?" We are, as it were, surrounded on every hand by mighty mountain peaks, whose rocky sides foil every effort to explore the pinnacles that lie hidden in distant cloud and mist. The achievements of the human intellect are many and marvellous, but above and beyond its realm remain, and doubtless ever shall remain, "great matters and things too high for us." SECOND SUNDAY. Read Ps. xxxvii. and Matt. xi. THE SECRET OF REST. "Lord, my heart is not haughty nor mine eyes lofty." There is in the human intellect an insatiable eagerness, and an indomitable energy of acquisitiveness. It carries in its consciousness an ineradicable instinct of domination, that spurs it to boundless enterprise, and prompts it to spurn defeat. This lordly quality of the human mind is the natural outcome of its sovereignty over the physical creation, and the appropriate expression of its kinship with the creator. It is part of man's divine birthright, and the insignia of his nobility. But it brings with it the peril of all special prerogative, the inevitable temptation that accompanies the possession of power. It tends to breed a haughtiness that is restive of restraint, a selfsufficiency that forgets its own boundaries, and an arrogance that refuses to wield the sceptre of aught but an unlimited empire. So it comes to pass, when reason in its restless research is brought to a stop by the invisible but very actual confines of human knowledge, it resents the suggestion of limitation, and declines to accept the arrest of its onward march. The temptation that besets it is twofold. On the one hand pride, irritated by the check, but too clear sighted to ignore it, is tempted to refuse to admit any truths it cannot fathom or substantiate, and to deny the real existence of any realm of being beyond its natural ken. This is the characteristic error of rationalism and positivism. On the other hand, there is in the opposite direction a tendency born equally of intellectual pride and self-will, to refuse the restriction, to ignore reason's incapacity, and so to venture to state and explain that which is inexplicable. Alike in the spheres of science and of religion men strive recklessly to remove from God's face the veil which His own hand has not drawn, and irreverently intrude into mysteries hopelessly beyond human thought to conceive or human speech to express. This is the transgression of rash speculation and of arrogant dogmatism, and it is in itself as sinful, and in its consequences as harmful, as are the blank negations of scepticism. Each of these errors the author of our poem was fortunate enough to escape. Recognising the limitation of all earthly knowledge, he does not rage against the restrictions and beat himself against the environing bars. He does not take it on himself, by a foolish fiat of his finite littleness, to decree the non-existence of everything too subtle for his dim eyes to perceive, or too fine for his dull ear to hear. Where he fails to understand the wisdom or goodness of God's ways, he does not intrude and try to alter them, neither does he wildly struggle to comprehend their meaning, nor madly refuse to submit to them. He adapts himself to the divine dealing, and is content to obey without insisting on knowing the reason why. He curbs in the cravings of his mind, nor will suffer the swift stream of his thought to rush on like an impetuous torrent, dashing itself against obstructing rocks and fretting its waters into froth and foam. He possesses his soul in patience, and does not "exercise himself in great matters or in things too high for him." This attitude of acquiescence is the position imposed on us by necessity, and pre scribed by wisdom. But, as a matter of fact, its practical possession depends on the presence of a certain inner mood or disposition. We have seen that the denials of scepticism and the excesses of dogmatism are alike the offspring of pride, and spring from an overestimation of the potency of reason. Therefore, as we might expect, the poet's simple acceptance of limitation and contentment with partial knowledge are due to the fact, that he has formed a modest estimate of himself. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty." His submission to restraint has its root in humility. He does not exaggerate his capacity. He takes the measure of his mind accurately. He does not expect to be able to accomplish more than his abilities are equal to. It seems to him quite natural that men should not be able to comprehend all God's ways. It is to be expected that there should be many things in God's operations beyond their knowledge, and in his thoughts passing their understanding. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that men should encounter in God's universe "great matters and things too high for them." Nay, the wonder and disappointment would be, if there were no mysteries, no infinitudes transcending our narrow souls. Would it gladden you, if indeed God were no greater than our thoughts of him? What if the sun were no brighter and no vaster than the shrunken, dim, and tarnished image of his radiance framed in a child's toy mirror. Alas! for us, if God and the universe were not immeasurably grander than mankind's most majestic conceptions of them! Measuring ourselves thus, in truth and lowliness, over against God, who will not say with the poet of our Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me." THIRD SUNDAY. Read Ps. lxxiii. and Heb. xii. CALM AFTER STORM. "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself." Peace bulks largely in all our dreams of ideal happiness. Without repose of heart we cannot conceive of perfect contentment. But we must not forget that the peace of inexperience is a fragile possession, and that the only lasting rest is the repose that is based upon conquest. We speak with languid longing and ease-seeking envy of the peace of Jesus, because we for get that His peace was a peace constituted out of conflict, maintained in the face of struggle, and made perfect through suffering. Therefore it was a peace strong and majestic, and the story of His life is the world's greatest epic. A life that commenced with effortless attainment, proceeded in easy serenity, and ended in tranquillity, were a life without a history, pleasant but monotonous, devoid of dramatic interest, and destitute of significance. The young cadet, in his boyish bloom and unworn beauty, furnishes the painter with a fairer model, but the grizzled hero of a hundred fights, with his battered form and furrowed face, makes the greater picture. It means so much more. And it means more precisely because the tried valour of the veteran is so much more than the promise of the untested tyro. Innocence unsullied and untried has a loveliness all its own, but it lacks the pathos of suggestion, the depth of significance, and the strength of permanence, that make the glory of virtue that has borne the brunt of battle, and has known the bitterness of defeat, the agony of retrieval, and the exultation of recovered victory. We talk proudly of the faith that has never felt a doubt, that has been pierced by no perplexity, and shows no mark of the sweat and stress of conflict. We look askance on difficulty of faith, have no mercy on lack of assurance, and reckon them happy who are convinced without trouble and believe without effort. That is not quite the Bible estimate. Psalms echo with the prayers of hard-pressed faith, and throb with the cries of agonized doubt. The New Testament speaks of faith as a fight, counts them happy who endure, and pronounces blessed the man who encounters and overcomes temptation. "strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life," how should faith be easy, since faith is that gate, that way? The truth is, that we invert the divine standard of values, and put last what God puts first. We count enviable the landlocked harbours of unthreatened belief, that are protected from assault by their very shallowness and narrowness. We are blind to the providential discipline which ordains that men should wrestle with difficulty, and in overcoming it attain a tried and tempered faith possible only to those who have passed through the furnace of temptation. For sinful men there can be no real strength that is not transmuted weakness, no permanent peace that is not a triumph over rebellion, no perfect faith that is not a victory over doubt. The saints that have most reflected the spirit of Christ formed their fair character, like their Master, in lives of which it may be said, "without The If were fightings, within were fears." The way of the cross has ever been a way of conflict, and it is they who come out of great tribulation that enter into the rest that remaineth. The deep lakes that sleep in the hollows of high mountains, and mirror in their placid depths the quiet stars, have their homes in the craters of volcanoes, that have spent their fury, quenched their fires, and are changed into pools of perpetual peace. of faith is less arduous than it is for others. But in almost every life there come crises, when this same battle has to be fought. For it is not always easy to be content to trust without seeing, and to follow God's leading in the dark, when the way seems all wrong and mistaken. There are things in life that rudely shake our faith from its dreamless slumber, and sweep the soul away over the dreary billows of doubt and darkness. There are times when, to our timorous hearts, it seems too terrible to be compelled just to trust and not to understand. Such conflicts come to us all more or less. Painful and protracted the struggle sometimes is, but not necessarily evil, not even harmful. For, if we do but fight it out honestly and bravely, the fruits will be, as they were with our poet, wholesome, good, and peaceable. FOURTH SUNDAY. "As a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child." There breathes through our Psalm an atmosphere of infinite repose-a subdued rest, like the hush of a cradle song. Nevertheless, if we listen closely enough to its music, we catch under its lullaby the low echo of a bygone anguish, the lingering sob of a vanished tempest. Nature's most exquisite embodiment of calm is the sweet, fresh air that is left by a great storm; and the perfection of the Psalm's restfulness is that it consists of unrest conquered and transmuted. For the poet's peace is the result of a great struggle, the reward of a supreme act of selfsubjection. "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself;" or, preserving the imagery of the words, "Surely I have calmed and hushed my soul." His submissiveness had It is good to cheer men on in a noble strife not been native, but acquired. His lowliness by speaking of the certainty of victory, and of heart was not a natural endowment, but a by the story of heroic deeds to nerve their laborious accomplishment. His acquiescence arms for battle and stir their hearts to war. in God's mysterious ways was a thing not But that is not enough. They want more inborn and habitual, but was rather the calm than that. They want to learn how to wage that follows a storm, when the tempest has a winning war, how to secure the highest moaned itself into stillness, and the great triumph, how out of conflict to organize waves have rocked themselves into unruffled peace. In the good fight of faith what is rest. For his soul had once been rebellious the secret of success? Has our Psalm any like a storm-lashed sea dashing itself against light on that point? By what method did the iron cliffs that bounded its waves, and the poet still the turmoil of his doubt and impetuous like a tempest rushing through reach his great peace? The process is finely the empty air, seeking to attain the unat- pictured in a homely but exquisite image: tainable, and spending its force vainly in "Like a weaned child on its mother, like a vacancy. He had longed to flash thought, weaned child is my soul within me." What lightning-like, athwart the thick darkness does that mean? Torn by an insatiable that surrounded Jehovah's throne, and to longing to know the meaning of God's myslay bare its hidden secrets. It was all in terious ways, he had struggled fiercely to vain. Hemmed in on every hand, beaten wring an answer from the Almighty. His back in his attempts to pierce the high heart was long the abode of unrest, and heaven, baffled in every effort to read the storm, and tempest. At length peace falls enigma of God's ways, he had been tempted on the fray; there is no more clangour of to revolt, and either to renounce his trust in contention; all is quietness and rest. How the Almighty's goodness or to refuse to sub- is this? Has he succeeded in solving the mit to His control. It cost him a hard and enigmas that pained him? Have his cravweary struggle to regain his reliance, to re-ings for an answer from God been gratified? store his allegiance, to calm and hush his soul. There was nothing wonderful in this conflict, nor anything exceptional in the experience. It is the common lot of men. True, there are some natures for whom the tenure If not, how has he attained this perfect repose? His peace is the peace of a weaned child. Not, therefore, by obtaining that which he craved has he found rest; for the rest of a weaned child is not that of gratification, but of resignation. It is the repose not of satisfied desire, but of abnegation and submission. After a period of prolonged and painful struggle to have its longings answered, the little one gives over striving any more, and is at peace. That process was a picture to our poet of what passed in his own heart. Like a weaned child, its tears over, its cries hushed, reposing on the very bosom that a little ago excited its most tumultuous desires, his soul that once passionately strove to wring from God an answer to its eager questionings, now wearied, resigned, and submissive, just lays itself to rest in simple faith on that goodness of God, whose purposes it cannot comprehend, and whose ways often seem to it harsh, and ravelled, and obscure. It is a picture of infinite repose and of touching beauty-the little one nestling close in the mother's arms, its head reclining trustfully on her shoulder, the tears dried from its now quiet face, and the restful eyes, with just a lingering shadow of bygone sorrow in them still, peering out with a look of utter peace, contentment, and security. It is the peace of accepted pain, the victory of self-surrender. The transition from doubt to belief, from strife to serenity, is remarkable. We want to know what produced this startling change of mood, what influences fostered it, what motives urged it, what reasons justified it. Perhaps a glimpse, a suggestion of the process is hinted in the simile chosen from child life. The infant takes its rest on the breast of its mother-of its mother whose refusal of its longings caused it all the pain and conflict, whose denial of its instinctive desires seemed so unnatural and so cruel. How is it, then, that instead of being alienated the child turns to her for solace in the sorrow she caused, and reposes on the very breast that so resolutely declined to supply its wants? It is because over against this single act of seeming unkindness stand unnumbered deeds of goodness and acts of fondness, and so this one cause of doubt and of aversion is swallowed up in a whole atmosphere of unceasing tenderness and love. Besides, rating the apparent unmotherliness at the very highest, still there is no other to whom the child can turn that will better help it and care for it than its mother. So, since it cannot get all it would like, the little one is content to take what it may have, the warmth, and shelter, and security of its mother's breast. This process of conflict between doubt and trust, rebellion and resignation, which half unconsciously takes place in the child, is a miniature of the strife that had surged to and fro in the poet's soul. Pained and perplexed by the mystery of God's ways, foiled in his efforts to fathom them, denied all explanation by the Almighty, he was beset by the temptation to abandon faith and cast off his allegiance to his heavenly friend. But he saw that that would not solve any enigma, or lighten the darkness. Rather it would confront him with still greater difficulties, and leave the world only more empty, dark, and dreary. Then, benumbed and tired out, he gave over thinking and arguing, and was content for a little just to live in the circle of light and sunshine that ever is within the great darkness. Gradually it dawned upon him that in the world of men's experience there was much, very much of goodness that could only be the doing of the God that moves in the mystery and in the darkness. The warmth of the thought crept into his heart, softer feelings woke, love and lowliness asserted themselves, and at length he became content to just trust God spite of all perplexities, partly because there was so much undeniable proof of His tenderness, and partly because there was more of rest and comfort in this course than in any other. FIFTH SUNDAY. Read Gen. xxxii, and Rev. vii. THE RECOMPENSE OF FAITH. "Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.” Who has not wondered why there is so much mystery in the universe, such perplexity in our life, and in revelation itself why so many doubts are permitted to assail our souls and make it hard for us to be Christians? Is this wisely or kindly ordered? Perchance it is necessary, but is it not evil? Can warfare ever be aught but loss and not gain? The question is natural, but the answer is not uncertain. The fight of faith is a good fight. Success means no bare victory, but one crowned with splendid spoil. We shall be the better for having had to fight. The gain of the conflict shall outweigh all the loss, and in the final triumph the victors shall manifestly appear more than conquerors. This is no paradox, but the common law of life. The same principle rules in the homely image of the child. Weaning is not needless pain, is not wasted suffering. It is a blessing in disguise. The distressing process is in truth promotion. It is the vestibule of pain that leads to a maturer and larger life. In like fashion the |