XXXVIII.
TWILIGHT AND NOON.
My eyes are ever towards the Lord.--_Psa._ xxiv. 15.
How marvellous is the vehemence of David’s utterances when we consider the dimness with which God revealed Himself in the time of twilight before the coming of Christ! He was not altogether the hidden God. Throughout His dealings with His people we are struck by the mingling of light and darkness, distance and nearness, terrific chastisement and the tenderest blandishments of love. There was wonderful condescension and approach in the tabernacle of the wilderness, in the revelations to the prophets, in the interventions of mercy that times without number succoured the stiff-necked people. There are words of love in the Old Testament unsurpassed perhaps in tenderness by any in the New. Yet when His presence is nearest, when His reproaches are most touching, His words most endearing, we are conscious of the measureless difference between God’s manifestation in the past and the intimacy and familiarity brought into our relations with Him by the Incarnation. We who live in the full illumination of that day which kings and prophets desired to see, cannot but feel how little earth’s most enlightened men knew the God Who made them, before “the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us”.
Yet so powerfully were they drawn to Him, that their words are the fittest exponents of every human heart when by desire, praise, affection, thanksgiving, it leaps up to God. They give expression to our every need. But, alas! they give too much matter also for self-reproach.
“_My eyes are always towards the Lord_,” said David. God revealed Himself with special intimacy to the man according to His own Heart, that spoke in his own person of the sufferings and the glories of Him Who was to delight in the name of the Son of David. Yet after all what did David know of the Lord compared with the knowledge vouchsafed to the least enlightened of the Church’s children! He had the memory of past mercies to the “seed of Abraham His servant, the sons of Jacob His chosen”.[122] He had the shadowy presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant. And he had the dim foreknowledge of One to come, of the root of Jesse, “beautiful above the sons of men,”[123] yet “a worm, and no man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people,”[124] of “a Holy One Who should not see corruption,”[125] but “sit on the right hand of God till all His enemies be made His footstool”.[126] This was all. But it was enough to keep the eyes of David fixed on God: “_My eyes are always towards the Lord_.”
I think of myself. I think of the careful teaching from my childhood onwards: of the Gospel stories so familiar to me that I may follow the life of the God-man from His crib to His cross; living in His company; listening to His teaching; noting His look and gesture and act; studying His ways and dealings with men, His likes and dislikes, the human character which individualised Him and endeared Him to His friends. I may watch Him at His work, I may mark the effect upon Him of kindness and appreciation, and, on the other hand, of ingratitude, scorn, cruelty and hate. I may see him thirsty, wayworn, footsore, and feast the eyes of my soul on the absolute perfection with which all the eventualities of life were met by Him Who, very God of very God, was yet the Son of Man and one of us.
Again, I may contemplate Him abiding ever with His Church, the source of every supernatural act throughout its length and breadth. I may see the Divine sap flowing through the vine to its furthest extremities, the principle of life and growth, of beauty and of fruitfulness in every soul His grace has sanctified. I know that all His merits are placed at my disposal; that He desires to make the meanest actions of my life meritorious of an eternal reward by uniting them with His. I have his invitation in the early morning to offer with Him His daily sacrifice that is offered for me. I hear Him asking of me, if not a daily, at least a frequent invitation to my heart. I hear him calling “Come aside and rest a little” when in afternoon hours the day’s tasks are lightening; calling me to Him for an evening blessing when the day’s work is done. Through the long hours of day and night His eye is following me--how often are my eyes towards the Lord?
O eager heart of David, that has met, if not with adequate response, at least with all your strength, the advances of our God, become to ours the stimulus they so sadly need! In our noontide splendour, in the fulness of fruition, we turn back to catch the glowing heat of your desires: “_O God my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day. For Thee my soul hath thirsted; for Thee my flesh, oh, how many ways!_”[127]
Your envying of our happier days and higher privileges shall make us appreciate them better: “They have seen Thy goings, O God, the goings of my God, of my King Who is in His sanctuary”.[128]
We will prize His sanctuary in our midst; the sanctuary nearest to us, where most of all our homage and our love are due. Morning, afternoon, and evening we will seek Him there to bless Him and be blessed. “In the churches bless ye God the Lord.”[129] “Seek ye the Lord, and be strengthened, seek His face evermore.”[130]
[122] Psa. civ.
[123] _Ibid._ xliv.
[124] _Ibid._ xxi.
[125] _Ibid._ xv.
[126] _Ibid._ cix.
[127] Psa. lxii.
[128] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[129] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[130] _Ibid._ civ.