THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.

A Mirror of the Soul

Short Studies in the Psalter

By Rev. John Vaughan, M.A.

Chapter 2 COMMUNION WITH GOD

IT will be well to begin with that aspect of the Book of Psalms, which is its main characteristic, that which -gives it its unique value, and which explains to us the reason why, in every age, it has appealed so forcibly to the religious instincts of men. We mean the deep sense of communion with God which is evinced in psalm after psalm of this wonderful collection. Nowhere else in the Bible, except in the life and teaching of our Blessed Lord, do we meet with the same intense spirit of devotion, the same clear recognition of the union of the human soul with its divine Master and Friend. This, as Dean Stanley well said, is " the crowning glory"1 of the Psalter. "All nature," he adds, quoting from another,2 "is ran sacked by the Psalmists for metaphors to express this single thought, 'God is for my soul, and my soul is for God.' Father, Brother, Friend, King, Master, Shepherd, Guide, are common titles. God is their Tower, their Glory, their Rock, their Shield, their Sun, their Star, their Joy, their Portion, their Trust, their Life. The Psalmist de scribes his soul as God's only and favourite child, His darling one. So it is that joy bursts out into praise, and all things look brilliant, and hardship seems easy, and duty becomes delight, and contempt is not felt, and every morsel of bread is sweet. The whole world seems fresh to him with sweetness before untasted."

1. ITS EARLY DEPTH AND FULNESS.

Now what renders the depth and reality of the spiritual life, as exhibited in the Psalter, the more remarkable, is the early stage in the history of revelation to which the experiences belong. " Composed at a time of the great revelation," as Mr. Gladstone,3 in his beautiful little preface to The Psalter written during his retirement at Hawarden Castle, well puts it, " earlier and less matured than that under which we live, and there fore presenting to us on particular subjects chequered and imperfect lights, the Psalter nevertheless remains to this day the first among all the records of the experiences of the human soul to Godward." The fact becomes the more striking if we compare the Psalms with other poetical compositions of the Old Testament. Songs of triumph like those of Miriam and of Deborah, prophecies like that of Balaam, lyrical retrospects as the Song of Moses, thanksgivings like Hannah's, or lamentations like that of David over Saul and Jonathan, even the mysterious Book of Job — these are to be understood under the circumstances of the time. But the Book of Psalms stands on an entirely different spiritual level. In it, as Dean Church has pointed out,4 " the religious affections are full grown : it was the highest expression of them which the world was to see. The profoundest religious thinkers have met there what they feel after. The highest saint cannot soar higher to the eternal throne of justice and love." Here, it must be admitted, is something more than " the mere working of the mind of man." Indeed, we may go so far as to agree with Mr. Gladstone, that there are many verses of the Psalms on which, taken severally, we might be content, so lofty is their nature, to stake the whole argument for a divine revelation.

"In the Psalter then," as Dr. Driver5 says, " the devotional element of the religious character finds its completest expression, and the soul is displayed in converse with God, disclosing to him its manifold emotions, desires, aspirations, or fears." And this spirit of personal communion with God belongs to the deep elemental ideas of true religion. It is with these permanent ideas that the Psalmist is mainly concerned. He has to do with religion, not with theology. And whilst "creeds change, litanies remain the same." Personal religion, as Robertson of Brighton6 truly says, " is the same in all ages. The deeps of our humanity remain unruffled by the storms of time which change the surface." How many of the psalms, written from two to three thousand years ago, might have been written yesterday; they describe the vicissitudes of spiritual life in an Englishman of to-day, as truly as in that of a Jew in the time of the monarchy or the exile.

2. ITS VIVID SENSE OF THE DIVINE.

Nowhere does this spirit of communion with God show itself more vividly than in the clearness with which the Divine Personality is portrayed. "Jehovah liveth, and blessed be my strong helper," is written, it has been well remarked, on the book, within and without. The inconceivable majesty, the unapproachable glory of God is fully realized; and yet this High and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity healeth those that are broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness. On the one hand the Psalmist could cry, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting, and world without end "; on the other, he feels that this Infinite Being is yet near and tender. He can say, " O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee " : "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God " : " My soul fleeth unto the Lord; before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch."

"No sacred book of any nation," writes Professor Davison in his masterly article on the Book of Psalms in Hastings' 'Dictionary of the Bible,7 " has solved this fundamental problem of all religion, how to preserve at the same time the Infinity and the Personality of God, as has the Psalter." " Who would think," asks Dean Church,8 " of pouring out his heart to the Indra of the Vedas; who would dream of being athirst for the Father Zeus of Homer, or longing after the Jupiter, though styled the Best and Greatest, of later times? It never occurred to these worshippers, that besides the sacrifices and praises... the soul could have secret yet real access, everywhere, every moment, to infinite compassion, infinite loving-kindness, infinite and all-sufficing goodness, to whom, as into the heart of the tenderest of friends it could pour out its distresses, before whom, as before the feet of a faithful comforter and guide, it could lay down the burden of its care, and commit its way. But this, I need not remind you," he goes on to say, " is the idea of religion which appears on the face of every single psalm. It is the idea of the unfailing tenderness of God, His under standing of every honest prayer, the certainty that in the vastness and the catastrophes of the world the soul in its own singleness has a refuge, is linked at the throne of the worlds to its own reward and strength, is held by the hand, is guided by the eye, of One who cares for the weakest as much as He is greater than the greatest of His creatures."

3. ITS UNION OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN.

We all take as illustrations of this sublime sense of communion with God two psalms, familiar to all of us, which reveal, in the most striking manner, the friendship of the soul with its Divine Creator — the 23rd Psalm and the 13 9th.

Psalm 23.

The 23rd Psalm is unrivalled in the whole collection for its entire trust in God. It depicts a peace so perfect, a serenity so pro found, that death itself cannot disturb it. " It is demanded of a lyric poem," says Mr. Stopford Brooke in a beautiful sermon,9 on this psalm, " that it should be a united whole. There must remain at the end of a perusal a single great impression. Now we find this poem impregnated with one feeling, the feeling of trust in God. This enters into all the images and their ideas. This it is which harmonizes all its contrasts, mellows all its changes, and unites into one whole the quiet contemplation of the first verses, the gloom of the fourth, the triumph of the fifth, and the combined retrospect and prophecy of the last. David's spirit of trust in God pervades the whole."

The imagery under which this trust is portrayed is taken from the pastoral life of the country. It comes with special force if the psalm be indeed that of the shepherd-king. In any case the figure would appeal to the imagination of the Hebrew people. The thought of a shepherd and his flock was bound up with their national life. The patriarchs were shepherds. Moses was a shepherd. David was a shepherd. The metaphor is frequent in the prophetical writings as applied both to Jehovah and to earthly kings. It may well have been, as Bishop Westcott suggests,10 that David gathered up his own personal experiences, as a shepherd on the downs of Bethlehem, and as a ruler on the throne of Israel, when in the memorable confession which "lives through all time and beyond time," he said, " The Lord is my Shepherd."

For Christians the psalm has doubt less received additional lustre from the use made of the same metaphor by our Blessed Lord. It is indeed hardly possible for us to read the 23rd Psalm without associating the words with the divine declaration, " I am the Good Shepherd." In this sense the psalm has been used by myriads of Christian people; and has been rendered into verse by more than one English poet. George Herbert and Isaac Watts both made versions of it; and the famous paraphrase of Joseph Addison, "The Lord my pasture shall prepare," has added no little to his literary fame.

In the 23rd Psalm then we recognise in a marked degree the sense of entire confidence in God. It exhibits a condition of unruffled serenity and peace. It is, as the author of Ecce Homo11 truly said, " the most complete picture of happiness that ever was or can be drawn. It represents that state of mind for which all alike sigh, and the want of which makes life a failure to most : it represents that Heaven which is everywhere if we could but enter it, and yet almost nowhere because so few of us can. The two or three who win it may be called victors in life's conflict; to them belongs the regnum et diadema tutum"

Psalm 139.

In Psalm 139 the sense of intimate communion with God finds its fullest expression. Indeed Aben Ezra12 pronounced it to be the crown of all the Psalms. The poet, as it were, gazes on the attributes of Jehovah — His omniscience, His omnipresence, His omnipotence; and so far from seeking to escape from God, he desires only to yield himself more fully to the divine influence. "This," writes Dr. Maclaren in his illuminating work on the Book of Psalms,13 " is the noblest utterance in the Psalter of pure and contemplative theism, animated and not crushed by the thought of God's omniscience and omnipresence. No less striking than the unequalled force and sublimity with which the psalm hymns the majestic attributes of an all-filling, all-knowing, all-creating God, is the firmness with which the singer's personal relation to that God is grasped. Only in the last verses is there reference to other men. In the earlier parts of the psalm there are but two beings in the Universe — God and the Psalmist. With impressive re iteration, God's attributes are gazed on in their bearings on him. Not mere omniscience, but a knowledge which knows him altogether; not mere omnipresence, but a presence that he can never escape; not mere creative power, but a power which shaped him, fill and thrill the Psalmist's soul. This is no cold theism, but vivid religion. Con science and the consciousness of individual relation to God penetrate and vitalise the whole."

It is interesting to notice how strongly, from another standpoint, this psalm impressed itself on the mind of Joseph Addison. He refers to it on more than one occasion. In the Spectator for 7th June 1712, he writes,14 " I shall conclude my essay with observing that the two kinds of hypocrisy I have here spoken of, namely, that of deceiving the world and that of imposing on ourselves, are touched with wonderful beauty in the 139th Psalm. The folly of the first kind of hypocrisy is there set forth by reflections on God's omniscience and omnipresence, which are celebrated in as noble strains of poetry as any other I ever met with, either sacred or profane. The other kind of hypocrisy, whereby a man deceives himself is intimated in the two last verses, where the Psalmist addresses himself to the great Searcher of hearts in that emphatical petition, 'Try me, O God, and seek the garden of my heart : prove me, and examine my thoughts. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me; and lead me in the way ever lasting.' "

4. THE ELEMENT THAT ABIDES.

The question might be asked how far this last sentence, " the way everlasting," has reference to the life beyond death, or whether the Psalmist's thought is limited to that of communion with God here on earth. The question, it is clear, would involve the larger one as to how far the hope of immortality finds expression in the Psalter. The trend of opinion among modern Old Testament scholars is undoubtedly in the direction of limiting this and similar passages15 to the experience of communion with God in this pre sent state of existence. It must, however, be admitted that, if the hope of immortality be dim, yet in this psalm, and in those to which we have referred, " the germ or principle," as Dr. Kirkpatrick16 puts it, of the doctrine of eternal life is present. The intimate communion with God of which they speak, as the highest happiness of man, cannot conceivably be limited to this present life. The pit of corruption, or the shadowy existence of Sheol, cannot be regarded as " the end of all for the friend of God." One who could say, " Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison with thee," who could cry, " O God, thou art my God," must, we instinctively feel, have God as his portion for ever.

We are not then doing violence to the inspired words of the Psalmists if we read them in the clearer light of Easter Day. The Psalter is " a prophetic manual of prayer " and devotion, and for us its pages are illuminated by the teaching of Him who brought life and immortality to light. We read the Psalms, we repeat them, as Arch-bishop Alexander17 beautifully says, "in the College Chapel, in the Parish Church, some times with the elevating accessories of Cathedral worship, sometimes

'Where no organ's peal

Invests the stern and naked prayer,'

and they express for us the deepest and most sacred thoughts of spiritual communion." " More," he adds, " than fifty generations of Christian believers bear witness that, when we sing the Psalms with fair weather in the soul, we still hear sweet voices from distant hills, and the soft sighing of an eternal sea that flows towards the spot on which we stand."