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TOPIC: MacDuff, John - The Deer and the Water-Brooks (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 10 Hope
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HOPE
"When the water-floods of grief
Round your helpless head shall rise,
When there seems no relief,
Lift your gaze to yonder skies;
There behold how radiantly
Beams the star of HOPE divine!
Yesterday it shone for thee,
And today it still shall shine.
Ask no aid the world can give,
LOOKING UNTO Jesus, live!"
"When I ask the question, 'Why are you cast down, O my soul?' I am ashamed of the answer that must be returned. What if property, credit, health, friends and relatives were all lost, you have a Father, a friend, an advocate, a comforter, a mansion, a treasure in heaven."—Bishop Hall.
"Why are you cast down, O my soul? and why are you disturbed in me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance."—Verse 5.
Take the wings from a bird, and it is the most helpless of animals. Bring the eagle from his eyrie, and rob him of his plumage, and he who an hour before was soaring monarch of the sky, is more powerless than the worm crawling at his side, or than the bleating lamb that trembled and cowered under his shadow.
Such was David now. The wounded bird of Paradise flutters in the dust. The taunting cry everywhere assails him, "Where is your God?" The future is a mournful blank, and the past is crowded with joyous and happy memories, which only aggravate and intensify the sorrows of the present.
But though soiled and mutilated, the wings of faith are not broken. He struggles to rise from his fall. In the verse we are now to consider, he plumes his pinions for a new flight. We found him a short time before, making his tears a microscopic lens, looking through them into the depths of his own sorrowing and sinning heart. So long as he does so, there is ground for nothing but misgiving and despair. But he reverses the lens. He converts the microscope into a telescope. In self-oblivion, he turns the prospect-glass away from his own troubles and sorrows, his fitful frames and feelings, his days alike of sunshine and shade, to Him who is above all mutation and vicissitude. In this position, with his eye Godwards, he begins to interrogate his own spirit as to the unreasonableness of its depression. He addresses a bold remonstrance to guilty unbelief. In the preceding verse, he alluded to the dense multitude—the many thousands of Israel—he was used to lead in person to the feasts of Zion. Now he is alone with one auditor—that auditor is HIMSELF. "Why are you cast down, O MY SOUL?"
And what is his antidote? What is the balm and balsam he applies to his wounded spirit? "Hope in God!"
HOPE! Who is insensible to the music of that word? What bosom has not kindled under its utterance? Poetry has sung of it; music has warbled it; oratory has lavished on it its bewitching strains. Pagan mythology, in her vain but beautiful dreams, said that when all other divinities fled from the world, Hope, with her elastic step and radiant countenance and lustrous attire, lingered behind. HOPE! well may we personify you, lighting up your altar-fires in this dark world, and dropping a live coal into many desolate hearts; gladdening the sick-chamber with visions of returning health; illuminating with rays, brighter than the sunbeam, the captive's cell; crowding the broken slumbers of the soldier by his camp-fire, with pictures of his sunny home, and his own joyous return. HOPE drying the tear on the cheek of woe! As the black clouds of sorrow break and fall to the earth, arching the descending drops with your own beauteous rainbow! Yes, more, standing with your lamp in your hand by the gloomy realms of Hades, kindling your torch at Nature's funeral pile, and opening vistas through the gates of glory!
If Hope, even with reference to present and finite things, be an emotion so joyous—if uninspired poetry can sing so sweetly of its delights, what must be the believer's hope, the hope which has God for its object, and heaven its consummation? How sweet that strain must have sounded from the lips of the exile Psalmist amid these glens of Gilead! A moment before, his sky is dark and troubled, but blue openings begin once more to tremble through the clouds. The mists have been hanging dense and thick, hiding out the water-brooks. But now the sun shines. They rise and circle in wreaths of fantastic vapor, disclosing to the wounded Deer "the springs in the valleys which run among the hills; which give drink to every beast in the field, and where the wild donkeys quench their thirst." The wilderness has become once more "a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water." Rebuking his unworthy tears, Faith once more takes down her harp, and thus wakes its melodies, "I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I HOPE." "Let Israel HOPE in the Lord." (Psalm 130:5, 7.)
And is it not well for us from time to time to open the gates of our own souls, and hold a similar consistory?—to make solemn inquisition with our hearts in their seasons of trouble and disquietude?
"Why are you cast down?" Is it outward trial that assails you? Has calamity abridged your earthly comforts? Have the golden heaps you may have been a lifetime in amassing, dissolved like a snow-wreath—the waxen wings of capricious fortune, when you were soaring highest, melting like those of fabled Icarus of old, and bringing you helpless to the ground? Or is it sickness that has dulled your eye, paralyzed your limb, and ploughed its furrows on your cheek; shutting out from you the din of a busy world, and chaining you down to a couch of languishing? Or is it the treachery of your trusted friend that has wounded you; blighting your affections, crushing your hopes, dashing your cup of earthly bliss to the ground? Or is it bereavement that has made gaps in your beloved circle; torn away the fixtures which gave your dwelling and life itself all its gladness and joy?
"HOPE in GOD." The creature has perished. God is imperishable! You may be saying in the bitterness of your spirit, "All these things are against me;" there may be no gleam of light in the tempest, no apparent reason for the dark dispensation; you feel it is with stammering lips and a misgiving heart you give utterance to the reluctant word, "Your will be done." But, "My soul, wait only upon God;" (or, as Calvin translates this, "Be silent before God;") "for my expectation is from Him." (Psalm 62:5.) "Commit also your way unto the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass." (Psalm 37:5.) Here is the province of faith—implicit trust in dark dealings. God brings His people into straits; sends often what is baffling and unaccountable, to lead them devoutly to say, "Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him." Oh! beautiful is it thus to see HOPE sitting, like the seabird, calmly on the crested wave. While others (strangers to the peace of the gospel) are beating their breasts in tumultuous grief, indulging in wild paroxysms of rebellious sorrow—beautiful is it to see the smitten one prostrate at the feet of the great CHASTENER, saying through teardrops of resignation, "Even so, Father; for so it seems good in Your sight!" Believe it, in the apparently rough voice of your God there is, as in the case of Joseph to his brethren, tones of secret love, disguised utterances of affection— "Although you say you cannot see Him, yet judgment is before Him; therefore trust in Him." (Job 35:14.)
Besides, this lofty grace of HOPE requires stern discipline to bring it into exercise, and to develop its noble proportions. It is the child of tribulation. The Apostle thus traces its pedigree— "Tribulation works patience; and patience, experience; and experience, HOPE." (Rom. 5:3, 4.) As there can be no rainbow in the natural heavens without the cloud, so Hope cannot span the moral firmament, with its triumphal arch, without the clouds of tribulation. As the mother eagle is said, when other expedients fail, to put a thorn in the side of her nest to urge her young brood to fly, so tribulation is the thorn which drives Hope to the wing.
"And you shall yet praise Him." "YET!" We cannot venture to scan or measure that word. It may be after many bitter tears of sorrow—it may be after many struggles with a murmuring heart—many storms may still sweep—many hours of pining sickness may be endured—many a rough and thorny path may have to be trodden—the harp may be muffled in sadness to the last; but, "at evening-time it shall be light." There is a season infallibly coming when the fettered tongue shall be loosed—the lingering cloud dispelled—and faith's triumph complete; when, with regard to the very dispensation on earth which caused you so much perplexity, you will be able triumphantly to say, "I know" (yes, I SEE) "that Your judgments are right, and that You in faithfulness have afflicted me." (Psalm 119:75.)
But your depression may proceed from a different cause. It may not be outer trial, but inward sources of disquietude, which are causing despondency and doubt. It may be thoughts regarding your spiritual condition. Latent corruption in a partially renewed and sanctified heart—the power of remaining sin robbing you of your peace; at times leading you to question whether you have any real interest in Gospel blessings and Gospel hopes—whether you have not long ago quenched the strivings of the Holy Spirit by your impenitence and unbelief—whether your hopes of heaven may not after all be a shadowy delusive dream. "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" Who, I ask, is teaching you to breathe out these penitential sighings after a happiness to which at present you feel you are a stranger? Who is it that is teaching you thus to interrogate yourself about the erring past? It is not Nature's work. If there be within you one true breathing after repentance and return, that secret aspiration is the work of that Spirit who, although He will not always strive, is hereby showing you that He is striving still with you! Think of all that God has done for you in the past, and is still willing to do. After the gift of His Son—after such an expenditure of wrath and suffering on the head of a guiltless Surety, and all this that a way of reconciliation might be opened up—think how dishonoring it would be to distrust either His ability or His willingness to save you. Having bestowed this greatest boon, He will "with Him also freely give you all things." Turn away from self—sinful self, righteous self, condemned self—and direct your believing regards to Him who is "the HOPE of Israel and the Savior thereof." Keep your eye steadily fixed on the infinite grandeur of His finished work and righteousness. Look to Jesus and believe! Look to Jesus and live! No, more; as you look to Him, hoist your sails, and buffet manfully the sea of life. Do not remain in the haven of distrust, or sleeping on your shadows in inactive repose, or allowing your frames and feelings to pitch and toss on one another like vessels idly moored in a harbor. The religious life is not a brooding over emotions, grazing the keel of faith in the shallows, or dragging the anchor of hope through the oozy tide-mud, as if afraid of encountering the healthy breeze. Away! with your canvas spread to the gale, trusting in Him who rules the raging of the waters. The safety of the timid bird is to be on the wing. If its haunt be near the ground—if it fly low—it exposes itself to the fowler's net or snare. If we remain groveling on the low ground of feeling and emotion, we shall find ourselves entangled in a thousand meshes of doubt and despondency, temptation and unbelief. "But surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of THAT WHICH HAS A WING" (Prov. 1:17, marginal reading). "Those who wait (or hope) in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles." (Isaiah 40:31.)
HOPE strengthens and invigorates her pinions the higher she soars. She gathers courage from the past, and looks with eagle eye to the future. "I know," says Paul, "in whom I have believed," (hoped, or trusted,) "and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him." "I will hope continually," says David, "and will yet praise You more and more." Again, using a kindred emblem—the bird in the tempest rushing for shelter under the mother's wing—"You have BEEN my help, THEREFORE in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice." (Psalm 63:7.)
Can such be said of the world's hopes? Does experience lead to repose in them with similar implicit confidence? Hope—the hope of earthly good, and earthly joy, and earthly happiness—is often (too often) the mirage of life; the bubble on the stream, tinted with evanescent glory, a flash of prismatic beauty, and then gone! Multitudes flock to this enchantress in her cave, and though mocked and duped, and mocked and duped again, still they resort to her oracle, and kiss her magic wand. She has built for them again and again air castles—turret on turret, buttress on buttress, gilded dome and glittering minaret, and these have melted like frost-work. But yet these Babel builders, with the same avidity as ever, return to the work, and again the fantastic battlements are piled high in mid air!
We do not condemn these noble aspirations and struggles of this noble emotion—far from it. What would the world be without Hope? It is the oil which keeps its vast machinery in play; it is the secret of all success—the incentive to all enterprise. Annihilate hope, and you blot out a sun from the firmament. Annihilate hope, and the husbandman would forsake his furrow, the physician his patient, the merchant his traffic; the student would quench his midnight lamp; science would at this hour have been lisping its alphabet, and art and philosophy would have been in their infancy.
But this we say, that if so much is periled on a peradventure—if hope—the motivation of earth—be so greedily pursued—why the cold and careless indifference regarding "the hope which makes not ashamed"—the hope which is beyond the possibility of disappointment; promises which never fail; words which rest on a firmer and surer basis than the foundations of earth and the pillars of heaven? Shall the disappointed hewer still go on patching the shivered and broken earthly cistern? Shall the man of science, undeterred by successive failures, pursue his unwearied analysis? Shall the merchant remain unbaffled by adverse markets that have drained his coffers, or successive storms that have stranded his vessels and wrecked his cargo? Shall the fragments of a brave army re-muster at the bugle call, and, amid dying comrades around and a shower of iron hail in front, return with undaunted hearts to the charge? Shall pining captives in a beleaguered garrison, pressed by famine, decimated by disease, outnumbered by force—shall these light their beacon-fires of hope, and sit to the last by their smouldering ashes, struggling on, either until calm endurance win its recompense, or until hope and life expire together? And shall the spiritual builder, or merchant, or soldier, be left alone coward and fainthearted, and give way to unworthy distrust, or pusillanimous despair; and that, too, when the guarantees of their hope are so amazing? Listen to them! What words could be stronger? what pledges more inviolable? "IN HOPE of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began." (Titus 1:2.) "God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given us both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can take new courage, for we can hold on to his promise with confidence. This confidence is like a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain of heaven into God's inner sanctuary." (Heb. 6:17-19.)
Oh, beautiful figure! Hope casts its anchor into the Rock of Ages within the veil. The ship may be tossing in the surging sea below, but a chain of everlasting love and grace links it to the throne of God.
I love to walk through the Bible, and gaze on its many delineations of Hope. It is a picture-gallery of this noble grace! As the great painters of the middle ages clung to favorite subjects, so HOPE seems ever to meet us in some form or other, as we tread this long corridor of inspired portraits.
Here is the earliest. A picture hung in a framework of sorrow. Its subject is two drooping exiles going with tears out of Eden. But, lo! a tinge of light gleams in the dark sky, and the angel of Hope drops in their ears healing words of comfort.
Here is another. An ark is tossed in a raging deluge. The heavens are black above. Neither sun nor stars appear. All around is a waste wilderness of waters. But, lo! by the window of the ark a weary bird is seen fluttering, and bearing in its mouth an olive branch of Hope!
Here, again, is a picture called "The Father of the Faithful." Its subject is a solitary pilgrim, one of the world's gray patriarchs. He is treading along amid some wild pastoral hills, all ignorant of his destiny; but he has a staff in his hand—it is the staff of Hope!
Here is another. It is an Arabian nobleman, once a Prince of the East, sitting amid ashes, the victim of a loathsome disease; and, worse than all, of Satanic power. But Hope tunes his lips to sing, "I know that my Redeemer lives."
Here is a vast exodus of six hundred thousand slaves from a land of bondage, separated by an inhospitable desert from the land of their fathers; but Hope silvers the edges of their pillar of cloud, and gleams by night in their pillar of fire.
Here is another picture, of exiled patriots seated by the waters of Babylon. They have hung their harps on the willows. They refuse to sing the Lord's song in that strange land. But HOPE is represented restoring the broken strings; and with their eyes suffused with tears, yet glistening with joyous visions, thus they pour out their plaintive prayer—"Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south." (Psalm 126:4.)
Time would fail to traverse these halls and walls of ancient memory. HOPE, in every diversified form and attitude, is portrayed in the history of the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of prophets, the noble army of martyrs—yes, sustaining too, in the midst of His sufferings and sorrows, the very bosom of the Son of God—for was it not hope ("the joy that was set before Him") that made Him "endure the cross, despising the shame? " (Heb. 12:2.)
And what Hope has proved in the history of the Church collectively, it is in the life of every individual believer. By nature he is a "prisoner," but "a prisoner of hope." (Zech. 9:12.) The gospel is a "gospel of hope." Its message is called "the good hope through grace." (2 Thess. 2:16.) The God of the gospel is called "the God of Hope." (Rom. 15:13.) The "helmet of salvation" is the helmet of "hope." (1 Thess. 5:8.) The "anchor of the soul" is the anchor of "hope." (Heb. 6:19.) The believer "rejoices in hope," (Rom. 12:12.) and "abounds in hope." (Rom. 15:13.) Christ is in him "the hope of glory." (Co. 1:27.) He "sorrows not as others, who have no HOPE." (1 Thess. 4:13.) When death comes, Hope smooths his dying pillow, wipes the damps from his brow, and seals his eyes. "Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My HOPE is in You." (Psalm 39:7.) Hope stands with her torch over his grave, and in the prospect of the dust returning to its dust, he says, "My flesh shall rest in hope." (Psalm 16:9.)
Hope is one of three guardian graces that conduct him to the heavenly gate. Now abides these three, "Faith, HOPE, and Love," and if it be added, "the greatest of these is Love," it is because Hope and her companion finish their mission at the celestial portal! They proceed no farther, they go back to the world, to the wrestlers in the earthly conflict. Faith returns to her drooping hearts, to undo heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free. Hope goes to her dungeon vaults, her beds of sickness, her chambers of bereavement and sorrow. To take Faith or Hope to heaven, would be to take the Physician to the healthy man, or to offer crutches to the strong, or to help to light the meridian sun with a tiny candle; Faith is then changed to sight, and Hope to full fruition. LOVE alone holds on her infinite mission. Faith and Hope are her two soaring pinions. She drops them as she enters the gates of glory. The watcher puts out his beacon when the sun floods the ocean—the miner puts out his lamp when he ascends to the earth. Hope's candle light is unneeded in that world where "the sun shall no more go down, neither for brightness shall the moon withdraw itself, but where the Lord our God shall be an everlasting light, and the days of our mourning shall be ended."