Bible Commentaries
Psalms 110

Verse 3

A Volunteer Army

Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power:

In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning,

Thou hast the dew of thy youth.— Psalms 110:3.

1. This psalm was composed by some patriotic Hebrew poet on the sallying forth of the king to war, to whom he hears Jehovah promising support and success in the coming campaign, and sees in imagination Jehovah Himself accompanying the king as his chariot rolled away, driving with him, seated by his side, to the battle. Fired by this vision, he pictures him triumphantly victorious over his foes, their power shattered, and the field heaped with their dead bodies; while he describes the enthusiasm of the people for the sovereign and his cause, the readiness with which they flock to follow him on his march to the frontier, the great multitude eager to put themselves at his disposal for the fray; and the splendid appearance of the troops, in their glittering armour, like priests clad in sacred vestments, or victims decked for the sacrifice, innumerable and brilliant as dew-drops from the womb of morning, and fresh as dew in comprising all the fine youth, all the young blood and vigour of the land.

But in the course of time the psalm came to be read as a prophetic description of what should be achieved by the future Messiah of whom the nation dreamt; to whom, indeed, would be the gathering of the people; who would prove the champion of Israel’s redemption, and of whose Kingdom and dominion there would be no end, His name enduring for ever, His name continuing as long as the sun throughout all generations.

This was a favourite psalm of Luther’s. “The 110th,” he says, “is very fine. It describes the kingdom and priesthood of Jesus Christ, and declares Him to be the King of all things and the intercessor for all men; to whom all things have been remitted by His Father, and who has compassion on us all. ’Tis a noble psalm; if I were well, I would endeavour to make a Commentary upon it.” 1 [Note: R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 122.]

2. In accordance with the warlike tone of the whole psalm, the subjects of the monarch are described as an army. The military metaphor comes out more clearly when we attach the true meaning to the words, “in the day of thy power”: Calvin translates, “at the time of the assembling of their army”—“au jour des montres,” “in the day of the review.” And the meaning is, “Thy subjects shall be ready in the day when thou dost muster thy forces, and set them in array for the war.”

I

Patriots

“Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power.”

1. The subjects of the King are true patriots. There are no mercenaries in these ranks, no pressed men. The soldiers are all volunteers.

There are two kinds of submission and service. There is submission because you cannot help it, and there is submission because you like it. There is a sullen bowing down beneath the weight of a hand which you are too feeble to resist, and there is a glad surrender to a love which it would be a pain not to obey. Some of us feel that we are shut in by immense and sovereign power which we cannot oppose. And yet, like some raging rebel in a dungeon, or some fluttering bird in a cage, we beat ourselves all bruised and bloody against the bars in vain attempts at liberty, alternating with fits of cowed apathy as we slink into a corner of our cell. Some of us, however, feel that we are enclosed on every side by that mighty hand which none can resist, and from which we would not stray if we could; and we joyfully hide beneath its shelter, and gladly obey when it points. Constrained obedience is no obedience. Unless there be the glad surrender of the will and heart, there is no surrender at all. God does not want compulsory submission. He does not care to rule over people who are only crushed down by greater power. He does not count that those serve who sullenly acquiesce because they dare not oppose. Christ seeks for no pressed men in His ranks. Whosoever does not enlist joyfully is not reckoned as His.

An ironic historian sets side by side Frederick the Great’s account of the performance of his troops in one battle and a home letter of a recruit engaged in it. “Never,” says Frederick, “have my troops done such marvels in point of gallantry, never since it has been my honour to lead them.” And the soldier tells his squalid story, of men driven into battle with blows from sergeants’ canes, skulking, when they could, behind walls, and taking the opportunity of passing through a vineyard to desert in scores. Frederick won many battles, but he won them in spite of a detestable system, and this poet finds a promise of triumph for his King in the glad loyalty with which He inspires His soldiers. 1 [Note: W. M. Macgregor, Jesus Christ the Son of God, 59.]

2. The soldiers are not only volunteers; they are animated by a spirit of self-surrender and sacrifice. The word here rendered “willing” is employed throughout the Levitical law for “freewill offerings.” It is a striking word in the Hebrew. We have a similar idea in Psalms 68:9, where we are told that God has poured forth a refreshing rain for His inheritance because it is weary. And as we receive the refreshing rain of God’s Holy Spirit from heaven, in order that we may become a river pouring out His riches, so the real meaning of the Hebrew is this, “Thy people shall become a freewill offering in the day of thy power.” It is in that host as it was in the army whose heroic self-devotion was chanted by Deborah under her palm tree—“The people willingly offered themselves.” Hence came courage, devotion, victory. With their lives in their hands they flung themselves on the foe, and nothing could stand against the onset of men who recked not of themselves.

For there is this one grand thing even about the devilry of war—the transcendent self-abnegation with which, however poor and unworthy may be the cause, a man casts himself away, “what time the foeman’s line is broke.” The poorest, most vulgar, most animal natures rise for a moment into something like nobility, as the surge of the strong emotion lifts them to that height of heroism. Life is then most glorious when it is given away for a great cause. That sacrifice is the one noble and chivalrous element which gives interest to war, the one thing that can be disentangled from its hideous associations, and can be transferred to higher regions of life. That spirit of lofty consecration and utter self-forgetfulness must be ours, if we would be Christ’s soldiers. Our obedience will then be glad when we feel the force of, and yield to, that gentle persuasive entreaty, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.”

“I raised such men,” said Cromwell, “as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did; and from that day forward, I must say they were never beaten.”

To be true to himself, to renounce nothing which he knew to be good and yet bring all things captive to the obedience of Christ, was the problem before him. He hesitated long before he could believe that such a solution was possible. His heart was with this rich, attractive world of human life, in the multiplicity and wealth of its illustrations, until it was revealed to him that it assumed a richer but a holier aspect when seen in the light of God. But to this end, he must submit his will to the Divine will in the spirit of absolute obedience. Here the struggle was deep and prolonged. It was a moral struggle mainly, not primarily intellectual or emotional. He feared that he should lose something in sacrificing his own will to God’s will. How the gulf was bridged he could not tell. He wrote down as one of the first of the texts on which he should preach, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power,” with the comment that “willingness is the first Christian step.” Thus the conversion of Phillips Brooks becomes a representative process of his age. So far as the age has been great, through science or through literature, its greatness passed into his soul. The weakness of his age, its sentimentalism, its fatalism, he overcame in himself when he made the absolute surrender of his will to God. All that he had hitherto loved and cherished as the highest, instead of being lost, was given back to him in fuller measure. To the standard he had now raised there rallied great convictions and blessed experiences, the sense of the unity of life, the harmony of the whole creation, the consciousness of joy in being alive, the conviction that heaven is the goal of earth. 1 [Note: Phillips Brooks: Memories of his Life, by A. V. G. Allen, 82.]

II

Patriot-Priests

“In the beauties of holiness.”

The phrase “in the beauty of holiness” is frequently used for the sacerdotal garments, the holy festal attire of the priests of the Lord. So the soldiers are priests as well as patriots.

1. The King and Leader is Himself a Priest of God’s making, another Melchizedek. In different ages of the world there have been men in whom a certain native priestliness has been apparent, men born to bring others into the secrets of God, and seeming to need no introduction or furtherance themselves; men who, in the Scots phrase, are “far ben,” for they always, with unveiled face, see God. It is their task to make the hidden things apprehensible to those who belong to the rough world outside. And God’s King, when He comes, will be a priest of that kind, whose priesthood is a matter of native endowment and not of human ordination.

The mediæval emperor was a deacon in the Roman Church, just as the pope, on his side, was a great secular prince. In Israel, too, the king had something of priestly rank. But here is no such fictitious dignity. “Thou art a priest of my making,” says God, “another Melchizedek.” Professor Davidson comments on the picture which is given us of Melchizedek—without father, without mother, without descent. “He passes over the stage a king, a priest, living; that sight of him is all we ever get. He is like a portrait having always the same qualities, presenting always the same aspect, looking down on us always with the same eyes, which turn and follow us wherever we may stand—always royal, always priestly, always individual, and neither receiving nor imparting what he is, but being all in virtue of himself.”

The conquering King whom the psalm hymns is a Priest for ever; and He is followed by an army of priests. The soldiers are gathered in the day of the muster, with high courage and willing devotion, ready to fling away their lives; but they are clad not in mail, but in priestly robes, like those who wait before the altar rather than like those who plunge into the fight, like those who compassed Jericho with the ark for their standard and the trumpets for all their weapons. We can scarcely fail to remember the words which echo these and interpret them. The armies which were in heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

Christina Rossetti comments on the strangeness of such armour against cut of sword and thrust of spear. But the suggestion is that the soldiers have one heart with their Leader, and are great in consecration like Himself. They go out after Him where hard blows are struck, where there is turmoil and shouting and the burden of the weary day, but they go as priests. That warfare which belongs to the extension of the Kingdom of God calls for services which may often be sordid and ugly and painful; but when they are rightly rendered they are as sacred and as acceptable as any incense offering in the dim seclusion of a temple. The one priestly sacrifice worth speaking of which men can render is the offering of a heart given willingly to the Divine service: and the cause is sure to prevail which can count on volunteers of that complexion.

Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, writing of Keith-Falconer, who had been one of his pupils at Harrow, says: “I do not think our dear friend and I had any further communication with each other till the end of last year (1886), when I received from him at Davos-Platz a most kind letter of congratulation on my appointment to the Mastership of Trinity. He told me also of the plan which he had formed for going to Aden, and there employing his knowledge of Arabic for missionary purposes. The result of this generous enterprise we know but too well. The work was scarcely begun before it reached its earthly end. To those who believe in the abiding results of devotion to the cause and the Person of Christ, his short life will not seem a failure. His image will remain fresh in the hearts of many as of a man exceptionally noble and exceptionally winning, recalling to them their own highest visions of unselfish service to God and man, and helping them to hold fast the truth that in the spiritual world nothing but self-sacrifice is permanently fruitful, and that the seed of a truly Christian life is never quickened except it die.” 1 [Note: R. Sinker, Memorials of the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, 23.]

2. The priestly attire suggests that the great power which we are to wield in our Christian warfare is character. Purity of heart and life, transparent simple goodness, manifest in men’s sight—these will arm us against dangers, and these will bring our brethren glad captives to our Lord. We serve Him best, and advance His Kingdom most, when the habit of our souls is that righteousness with which He invests our nakedness. Be like your Lord, and as His soldiers you will conquer, and as His priests you will win some to His love and fear. Nothing else will avail without that. Without that dress no man finds a place in the ranks.

“I have known many a man,” says Thoreau, “who pretended to be a Christian; but it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it.” This poet was persuaded that his King would go far because of the temper of the people. “They offer themselves willingly; in holy, beautiful garments they come, fresh, young, countless like dew at the dawn.” 1 [Note: W. M. Macgregor.]

Turn your energies towards your moral cultivation. In doing so you will accumulate imperishable riches. All that your worldly care can bring will be the doubtful possession of riches of doubtful value. In the possession of the moral wealth of a noble and disciplined character, you possess that which can neither wither nor be stolen. What we have we must leave at the threshold of the grave. What we are goes with us into the other world. Riches will drop from our dying hand into the grasp of others. Character passes with us into the presence of God. Character is everything. This, rather than worldly riches, is the true end of life. The perfecting of this is the true purpose of God in life. 2 [Note: Bishop Boyd Carpenter.]

Few things tell on character more surely and precisely than the goal on which the heart is set and the temper in which that goal is sought. And certainly the Christian character, as it appears in Christ-like lives, does not look at all as though it had been formed and fostered and determined by a mercenary attention to a selfish aim. For the faculties and the capacity that grow in those who try to be true to Christ in daily life are strikingly ill-suited for the opportunities of enjoyment which might be imagined in a heaven of selfishness. Christians do not grow in the capacity for selfish pleasure, nor attain an exceptional power of relishing to the utmost a separate and individual gratification. The faculty which they develop is the faculty of self-denial; of glad, unhindered self-forgetfulness for others’ sake; of delighting in goodness and eliciting what is best in others; of simple, cheerful, unclouded self-surrender. These, and such as these, are the powers that accrue to those who choose the Christian life; and it is strange if the way along which they are acquired is a way of self-seeking; strange if, in striving towards a paradise of selfish pleasure, there is formed a character which would be as wretched there as a selfish character in the heaven of the saints. Surely it is a very different sort of aim and quest that is betrayed in the development of the Christian character and in the lines on which it presses forward; its preparation through the discipline of this life is for something else than what is here called pleasure or success; the faculties that are strengthened with its strength must have a work surpassing all our thoughts, and the capacity it brings can never be satisfied with aught that is created. For, in truth, the Christian character prophesies of this—that God has made us for Himself; and that there is neither rest, nor goal, nor joy for man, save in His love. 1 [Note: Francis Paget, Studies in the Christian Character.]

III

Patriot-Priests in Perpetual Youth

“From the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth.”

Alexander Henderson, expounding this passage, says: “The words are somewhat obscure even to the learned ear, but look to the 133rd Psalm, and there ye will see a place to help to clear them. Always (however) observe here, ‘from the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth,’ that as in a May morning, when there is no extremity of heat, the dew falls so thick that all the fields are covered with it, and it falls in such a secret manner that none sees it fall, so the Lord, in the day of His power, He shall multiply His people, and He shall multiply them in a secret manner; so that it is marvellous to the world, that once there should seem to be so few or none of them, and then incontinent He should make them to be through all estates.”

1. The “dew of thy youth” has often been understood to mean the fresh youthful energy attributed by the psalm to the Priest-King. It has been suggested that the historical setting of the psalm is to be found in the Maccabean period. The heroic Judas had fallen in battle. Only one Maccabee remained, an elder brother, Simon, who had been passed over till this time—a great man and a wise one, it would seem, who had deliberately and unselfishly stood aside while his younger brethren had been doing their mighty work. He had been their lieutenant, counsellor, helper in every way. “The father of them all” was the affectionate title which he bore among them; the organizer and statesman of the valiant band; one of those strong, keen, silent souls who are content to work in obscurity, so that the grand object is obtained, but who often have more real power than those who stand glittering in the front. But now his time was come—come when he was apparently more than sixty years of age. He rose to the occasion; he took the critical and dangerous place. He went up to Jerusalem, stood among the excited and trembling multitude, and said: “Ye yourselves know what great things I and my brethren and my father’s house have done for the laws and the sanctuary. You know the battles and troubles we have seen, by reason whereof all my brethren are slain for Israel’s sake, and I am left alone. Now therefore, be it far from me that I should spare mine own life in any time of trouble, for I am no better than my brethren. I will defend my nation and the sanctuary, and our wives and our children, though all the heathen be gathered together to destroy us for very malice.”

The people gazed upon the grand old man. They watched his kindling eye, his martial bearing; they saw the fires of a still youthful spirit burning in the aged frame, and they answered with a loud voice, “Thou shalt be our leader. Fight thou our battles, and whatsoever thou commandest us, we will do.” Then they brought him into the temple, clothed him in the sacred robes, placed the tiara upon his head, and saluted him as the great Priest-King of Israel: and it may be that this 110th Psalm preserves the memory of the coronation anthem sung at that service in the temple when the old man with the brave young heart inside him stood before the awestruck multitudes and took the perilous honour of the lofty place. A joy-shout of the people finds its echo in the text, “From the breaking of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth”; that is to say, “Though aged, it is upon thee still.”

Certain leaders in their young days have led their troops to battle, and, by the loudness of their voice, and the strength of their bodies, have inspired their men with courage; but the old warrior hath his hair sown with grey; he begins to be decrepit, and no longer can lead men to battle. It is not so with Jesus Christ. He has still the dew of His youth. The same Christ who led His troops to battle in His early youth leads them now. The arm which smote the sinner with His word smites now; it is as unpalsied as it was before. The eye which looked upon His friends with gladness, and upon His foemen with a glance most stern and high—that same eye is regarding us now, undimmed, like that of Moses. He has the dew of His youth. 1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

As I witness the energies of nature, I feel that the heart that fashioned it was young. There is no sign of age about creation. There is no trace of the weariness of years. It is inspired with an abounding energy that tells me of a fresh and youthful mind. Christ may have lived from everlasting ages before the moment of creation came; but the eternal morning was still upon His brow when He conceived and bodied out the world. There are the powers of youth in it. There are the energies of opening life. “Thou hast the dew of thy youth.” 2 [Note: G. H. Morrison, Flood-Tide, 286.]

2. We may however take “youth” to be a collective noun, equivalent to young men. In that case the army is described as a host of young warriors, led forth in their fresh strength and countless numbers and gleaming beauty, like the dew of the morning. Did you never see the dew-drops glistening on the earth? and did you never ask, “Whence came these? How came they here so infinite in number, so lavishly scattered everywhere, so pure and brilliant?” Nature whispered the answer, “They came from the womb of the morning.” So God’s people will come forth as noiselessly, as mysteriously, as divinely, as if they came “from the womb of the morning,” like the dew-drops. Science has laboured to discover the origin of dew, and perhaps has guessed it; but to the Eastern, one of the greatest riddles was, Out of whose womb came the dew? Who is the mother of those pearly drops? Now, so will God’s people come mysteriously. Again, the dew-drops—who made them? Do kings and princes rise up and hold their sceptres, and bid the clouds shed tears, or affright them to weeping by the beating of the drum? Do armies march to the battle to force the sky to give up its treasure, and scatter its diamonds lavishly? No; God speaks; He whispers in the ears of nature, and it weeps for joy at the glad news that the morning is coming. God does it; there is no apparent agency employed, no thunder, no lightning; God has done it. That is how God’s people shall be saved; they come forth from the “womb of the morning”; divinely called, divinely brought, divinely blessed, divinely numbered, divinely scattered over the entire surface of the globe, divinely refreshing to the world, they proceed from the “womb of the morning.”

When you go out, delighted, into the dew of the morning, have you ever considered why it is so rich upon the grass;—why it is not upon the trees? It is partly on the trees, but yet your memory of it will be always chiefly of its gleam upon the lawn. On many trees you will find there is none at all. I cannot follow out here the many inquiries connected with this subject, but, broadly remember the branched trees are fed chiefly by rain,—the unbranched ones by dew, visible or invisible; that is to say, at all events by moisture which they can gather for themselves out of the air; or else by streams and springs. Hence the division of the verse of the song of Moses: “My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew: as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.” 1 [Note: Ruskin, Proserpina, i. chap. iii. § 22.]

Until I heard from my friend Mr. Tyrwhitt of the cold felt at night in camping on Sinai, I could not understand how deep the feeling of the Arab, no less than the Greek, must have been respecting the Divine gift of the dew,—nor with what sense of thankfulness for miraculous blessing the question of Job would be uttered, “The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?” Then compare the first words of the blessing of Isaac: “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of earth”; and, again, the first words of the song of Moses: “Give ear, oh ye heavens,—for my speech shall distil as the dew”; and you will see at once why this heavenly food (manna) was made to shine clear in the desert, like an enduring of its dew;—Divine remaining for continual need. Frozen, as the Alpine snow—pure for ever. 2 [Note: Ruskin, Deucalion, i. chap. vii. § 12.]

3. The soldiers of this King retain their youth. He who has fellowship with God, and lives in the constant reception of the supernatural life and grace which come from Jesus Christ, possesses the secret of perpetual youth. The world ages us, time and physical changes tell on us all, and the strength which belongs to the life of nature ebbs away; but the life eternal is subject to no laws of decay and owes nothing to the external world. So we may be ever young in heart and spirit. It is possible for a man to carry the freshness, the buoyancy, the elastic cheerfulness, the joyful hope of his earliest days, right on through the monotony of middle-aged maturity, and even into old age shadowed by the long reflection of the tombs which the setting sun casts over the path. It is possible for us to grow younger as we grow older, because we drink more full draughts of the fountain of life, and so to have to say at the last, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” If we live near Christ, and draw our life from Him, then we may blend the hopes of youth with the experience and memory of age; be at once calm and joyous, wise and strong, preserving the blessedness of each stage of life into that which follows, and thus at last possessing the sweetness and the good of all at once. We may not only bear fruit in old age, but have buds, blossoms, and fruit—the varying product and adornment of every stage of life united in our characters.

A man is not old, however hoary and bent, who is conversing, as Emerson says, with what is above him, with the religious eye looking upward, and abandoned the while with delight to the inspirations flowing in from all sides. A man is not old in whom the faculty of imagination is undecayed, who throbs with sympathy as eager and strong as ever for whatsoever is just and lovely and pure and true; whose mind, still responsive and aspiring, is fully open to new thoughts and new ideas, and cherishes dreams of the ideal; upon whom no weight of custom or of habit lies so heavily that he cannot move out of grooves under the direction of some felt better way, or who carries with him the optimism which, without hiding its face from the dark and ugly facts of existence, can front them smilingly, and sing its song in defiance of them, because of faith in humanity and trust in the divine purpose of the Universe. A man is not old, who is at one with Michael Angelo when, just before he died on the verge of ninety, he carved an allegorical figure, and inscribed on it in large letters, “Still learning,” or whose heart echoes Robert Browning, when he sang:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith “A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!”

1st December 1895. A pleasant party at York House. The conversation straying to Watts, Miss Lawless, who was sitting on one side of me, mentioned that he had said to her: “I think I am quite accurate in telling you that I saw the sun rise every day last summer,” and Mrs. Tyrrell, who was sitting on my other side, told us that he had said to her: “I am seventy-eight, and I hope still to do my best work.” 1 [Note: M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1892–95, ii. 290.]

4. The soldier of the cross should exercise in the world a gracious refreshing influence, like the dew. The dew, formed in the silence of the darkness while men sleep, falling as willingly on a bit of dead wood as anywhere, hanging its pearls on every poor spike of grass, and dressing everything on which it lies with strange beauty, each separate globule tiny and evanescent, but each flashing back the light, and each a perfect sphere, feeble one by one, but united mighty to make the pastures of the wilderness rejoice—so, created in silence by an unseen influence, feeble when taken in detail but strong in their myriads, glad to occupy the lowliest place, and each “bright with something of celestial light,” Christian men and women are to be in the midst of many people as dew from the Lord.

The personal influence of Henry Bradshaw (the librarian at Cambridge University) was extraordinary. It was not gained by any arts, nor did he ever manifest the slightest wish to interfere or to exercise influence. One just knew him to be a man of guileless life, laborious, high-principled, incapable of any sort of meanness or malice. To love is to understand everything, says the French proverb. It is not easy really to improve people by scolding them or lecturing them, but if one knows that a generous, unsuspicious, high-minded man has a real affection for one, it is impossible not to be restrained by the thought from acting in a way that he would disapprove. Bradshaw’s influence over the men he knew was stronger than the influence of any other man at Cambridge. But his affection was sisterly—if one can use the word—rather than paternal. He was fond of little demonstrations of affection, would pat and stroke one’s hand as he talked, and yet there was never the least shadow of sentimentality about it. I have never heard any one suggest that there was anything weak or unmanly about his tenderness. It was preserved from that by his critical judgment, his excellent sense, his power of saying the most incisive things, and the irony which, however lambent, had got a very clear cutting edge, and which he was always ready to use if there was occasion. If any one traded on the affection of Bradshaw or counted on indulgence, he was sure to be instantly and kindly snubbed. It was more that there was an atmosphere of intimacy and confidence in one’s relations with him, which pervaded the time spent in his company as with fragrant summer air. 1 [Note: A. C. Benson, The Leaves of the Tree, 225.]

When love has made the most of the man himself it overflows to bless others. Christ’s disciples are not here to be ministered unto, but to minister. Religion, says Christ, is love, and love is gentle toward those with hollow eyes and faminestricken faces. Love is kindly toward those who have a tragedy written in the sharpened countenance. Love is patient toward those who have lost fidelity as a man loses a golden coin; who have lost morality as one who flounders in the Alpine drifts. And this religion of love takes on a thousand modern forms. If it is not rowing out against the darkness and storm, as did Grace Darling, to save the shipwrecked, it is going forth to those tossed upon life’s billows, to succour and to save. For love is making the individual life beautiful, making the home beautiful, and will at last make the Church and State beautiful. Men will not bow down to crowned power nor philosophic power nor æsthetic power; but in the presence of a great soul, filled with vigour of inspiration and glowing with love, man will do obeisance. There is no force upon earth like Divine love in the heart of man, and at last that force will sweeten and regenerate society. 2 [Note: N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Influence, 274.]

Literature

Ball (C. J.), Testimonies to Christ, 209.

Critchley (G.), When the Angels have gone Away, 163.

Duff (R. S.), Pleasant Places, 120.

Henderson (A.), Sermons, 9.

Macgregor (W. M.), Jesus Christ the Son of God, 52.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, iii. 321.

Meyer (F. B.), Christian Living, 62.

Morrison (G. H.), Flood-Tide, 282.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, vii. 129.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, ii. No. 74.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlvii. (1901), No. 2724.

Tipple (S. A.), Days of Old, 200.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons to Children, i. 132.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xxv. (1884), No. 1291.

Verse 7

The Brook in the Way

He shall drink of the brook in the way:

Therefore shall he lift up the head.— Psalms 110:7.

1. This jubilant and magnificent psalm opens with a passage which was taken possession of by the Apostles, in the name of their Lord, so long ago that it has lost any suggestion of foreignness; and just as some of our older colonies have acquired a look of England overseas, so do we welcome these verses when we come upon them, as if they were an outlying tract of the New Testament. They give a description of the King, set at God’s right hand, a Priest for ever, which in itself is great; and yet, in the writer’s view, it was only a preparation for something else. These things were spoken of Him that faith might have a chance; for what possessed the poet was not that his King was great and highly favoured, but that a King so great would go far and that of His conquests there would be no end. It is through getting big thoughts of the King that men are prepared to cherish worthier expectations with regard to the Kingdom.

2. The poet first shows the kingship at rest, as it is in its dignity, created and secured by God, and when his heart is full of that he goes on to show the kingship in action. A royalty based upon the will of God, which, indeed, is nothing else than an instrument of that will, cannot but make way; present and future have nothing in them to withstand it, and thus it will go farther and farther, passing out at last beyond the imagination of men. That is the poet’s idea, which a rhetorician would have expressed in some resounding phrase; but as an artist this man had no liking for vague words without any picture in them. He wanted men to feel that the King beyond their sight was pushing His conquests still, and he manages that by a quaint touch of imagination. The King, urging on His enemies in their flight, stops for a moment to drink, and then He passes off the scene with head uplifted, fresh as when the battle-day began. There He is—the true King, God’s gift to men, travelling out beyond our sight, on always vaster enterprises, and without a sign of flagging strength. That fired the poet’s soul, and it should live with us as the scope and outlook of the psalm.

I

The Ideal King

1. Who is this King and Captain that the poet celebrates? The answer must be that we have here not a portrait but an ideal, which embodies the dream of those who trusted that God would give them one day a ruler who should be all that a king can be to men. The poet follows this warrior priest, this priestly king, to the war; he sees him winning victory after victory, until the earth seems filled with the slaughtered bodies of his foes. But he grows weary and tired in the conflict; his tongue cleaves to his mouth for thirst; his sword well-nigh drops from his hand for sheer weariness as he toils on beneath the fierce glare of the Eastern sun. And it seems as if he must faint and fall before the full fruits of victory are reaped, when suddenly a little brook of cool and limpid water presents itself to his gaze, and the faint and tired warrior stoops and drinks a long, deep draught, and the clear, cool water brings refreshing and new strength to his exhausted frame, so that, with new vigour and determination, he resumes the pursuit, and makes the victory final and complete. “He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.”

2. This ideal King overthrows all His enemies and wins a lasting dominion because He is God’s own partner. He knows how to conquer. He is content that His battles should be taken out of His hands, and that the victory when it comes should be God’s victory and not His own. In Him there is no self-assertion or display; He accepts what God allows and asks no more. Inferior men may be restless, as they take on themselves the burden of the world and its future, striking hotly in defence of their view of truth, and growing troubled and dejected when that view does not make way. But in the true Master of men there is a superlative trust in God; He suffers His own effort and His own message to pass into the sum of God’s providential forces, which are working for new heavens and a new earth. He does not bear the burden of the world anxiously, but leaves it in the strong hands of Him who can sustain it all. Peter speaks of Jesus “sitting at the right hand of God, expecting,” which is a word of admonition for all unquiet minds so ludicrously solicitous about the interests and the work of God. But whilst He was still on earth, Jesus suffered God to fight His battles for Him. He tarried for the Lord’s leisure. He believed in powers which work slowly and without noise, and He knew the rest of heart of those who wait for God and are content that He should work.

3. “What is to hinder this man from governing?” says Carlyle of the Abbot Samson. “There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by. He has the living ideal of a governor in him.” In like fashion the poet sweeps aside the whole mob of kings so called, David and Solomon and their posterity, who in turn had claimed to sit on the throne of Jehovah. He did not mean that kind of thing at all—a merely titular kingship, which had no promise in it. One day there will be born a King, possessing every gift of rule, born to command the wavering hearts of men; and when He comes the first to acknowledge Him will be God, who will make a place in His universe for Him, and raise Him not to where these spectral majesties have sat, these uneasy phantasms which have flitted across the scene, but to where none ever eat before. “Sit at my right hand.”

Thus Christ alone answers fully to the description of the conquering King, who is also “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” It is He alone who goes forth at the head of an army numberless as the dewdrops of a summer morn, every soldier in it clothed in holy garments, sweeping His enemies before Him, gaining one victory after another until they are all beneath His feet, and His Kingdom stretches from the river unto the ends of the earth.

4. This King not only sits as partner with the King of kings, but is content to share the lot of the common soldier. The Psalmist writes of “his Lord” at the right hand of Jehovah, that He shall be refreshed along His conquering march, not with the rich wines of Helbon cooled in the snows of Lebanon, but, like any private soldier, from the wayside brook. And He shall need refreshment, having taken His full share of toil. This contrast between a splendid destiny and the simplest life was never so true of any as of Jesus Christ. It is this contrast that moves St. Paul to astonishment in the words, “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmity, but One who was tempted in all points like as we are—weary, athirst, and faint. For thirty years Jesus lived the frugal and simple life of a carpenter’s son in a quiet village among the hills of Galilee. His first recorded temptation was to break His fellowship with us by claiming miraculous supplies, at least of bread; but this help, which He gave to others, He would not Himself employ. Never once did Jesus use His special powers for Himself to make a difference between His life and ours, or drink of other streams but such as ran by the wayside for all. His first miracle was to make large supplies of wine for a marriage feast; but, for His own part, He would sit by the wayside fountain, waiting, and would ask a lost woman to bestow on Him a cup of cold water. The fever of His cruel death was alleviated by the vinegar, the sour wine, of the private soldiers beneath His cross. Even after His resurrection, when He had already entered upon that sublime and mysterious life which it is our highest hope to share, He did not scorn to take of the fish which they had drawn from the Lake of Galilee, and, again, even of the cold fish which remained from a former meal.

The troops of Charles the Twelfth, in sore distress and half inclined to mutiny, brought him a specimen of their bread, which was hard and sour and black. To their astonishment, the king ate it with a relish, and quietly answered: “It is not good bread, but it can be eaten.” There was no more thought of mutiny in that camp; nor will such a leader ever lack men to follow, to suffer, and to die with him. 1 [Note: G. A. Chadwick, Pilate’s Gift, 269.]

(1) The Son of God became one with us in taking our nature. He did not come to the world robed in cloud and fire and storm, and attended by an army of angels. Rather, He did much to conceal His majesty during the time that He lived on earth. He was born a Jew; and the Hebrew nation was “the fewest of all peoples”—not one of the great broad streams of mankind, but as a “brook in the way”; yet the Lord Jesus drank of that brook. “He took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Without for a moment ceasing to be God, He stooped to become a babe in the manger, a humble and inquiring boy growing up a working carpenter in a country town, then a homeless wayfarer, a rejected religious teacher, and at last a crucified slave.

(2) Our Great Captain at length bowed His head to drink our cup of suffering and sorrow. That bitter cup was put into His hand in the garden of Gethsemane, and He did not refuse to drink it. He did not, as He might have done, use His almighty power to deliver Himself from His enemies. He gave Himself up, a weary and unarmed man, to their wicked will. Out of love for us, and with a view to our redemption, He allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross. And there He was “made a curse for us,” bearing our sin and shame and doom.

Nothing can have a more tranquillizing effect upon us in this world than the frequent consideration of the afflictions, necessities, contempt, calumnies, insults, and humiliations which our Lord suffered from His birth to His most painful death. When we contemplate such a weight of bitterness as this, are we not wrong in giving to the trifling misfortunes which befall us even the names of adversities and injuries? Are we not ashamed to ask a share of His Divine patience to help us to bear such trifles as these, seeing that the smallest modicum of moderation and humility would suffice to make us bear calmly the insults offered to us? 1 [Note: The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, 172.]

Before the apotheosis of the cross, suffering was a curse from which man fled; now it becomes a purification of the soul, a sacred trial sent by Eternal Love, a Divine dispensation meant to sanctify and ennoble us, an acceptable aid to faith, a strange initiation into happiness. O power of belief!—All remains the same, and yet all is changed. A new certitude arises to deny the apparent and the tangible; it pierces through the mystery of things, it places an invisible Father behind visible nature, it shows us joy shining through tears, and makes of pain the beginning of joy. And so, for those who have believed, the tomb becomes heaven, and on the funeral pyre of life they sing the hosanna of immortality; a sacred madness has renewed the face of the world for them, and when they wish to explain what they feel, their ecstasy makes them incomprehensible; they speak with tongues. A wild intoxication of self-sacrifice, contempt for death, the thirst for eternity, the delirium of love—these are what the unalterable gentleness of the Crucified has had power to bring forth. By His pardon of His executioners, and by that unconquerable sense in Him of an indissoluble union with God, Jesus, on His cross, kindled an inextinguishable fire and revolutionized the world. 1 [Note: Amiel’s Journal (trans. by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 168.]

Christ’s Heart was wrung for me, if mine is sore;

And if my feet are weary, His have bled;

He had no place wherein to lay His Head;

If I am burdened, He was burdened more.

The cup I drink, He drank of long before;

He felt the unuttered anguish which I dread;

He hungered who the hungry thousands fed,

And thirsted who the world’s refreshment bore.

If grief be such a looking-glass as shows

Christ’s Face and man’s in some sort made alike,

Then grief is pleasure with a subtle taste:

Wherefore should any fret or faint or haste?

Grief is not grievous to a soul that knows

Christ comes,—and listens for that hour to strike. 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Verses, 37.]

II

The Common Brook

“He shall drink of the brook in the way.” It is wonderful to think of the spiritual life of Jesus nourished by the same means of grace as are available for us all. At every point in Christ’s experience there was a sense of obstacle and resistance. Salvation for Him was every day a task entailing agony. But always He bore down the resistance, and, welcoming the reliefs that were given Him by God, He passed on with lifted head to the burden and the battle of the new day, sure of Himself, sure of His cause, very sure of God and victory. “True souls always are hilarious.” Think of Him when the disciples came back from their first excursion, elated, as small men will be, by their minute successes; their ministry, one may suppose, had scarcely drawn attention in the single province of Galilee, and He had taken on Himself the redemption of the world. But hear His comment, “When you were away I was watching Satan and he was fallen” (an imperfect tense followed by an aorist). The most meagre encouragement, the first faint effort of a soul to free itself, spoke home to His heart, and He drew water with joy out of the wells of salvation.

We do not find that one innocent pleasure which came “in the way” to Jesus was sourly or wilfully refused by Him. He would leave a feast at once, if called by Jairus to a sick-bed; but He would not refuse the feast of His friends in Bethany, though He knew that He was reproached for eating and drinking, and though He felt His death to be so near that the ointment then poured upon Him would go with Him to His burial. How does His example affect us? We may have to refuse pleasures because we are weak, because temptations must be avoided, because we have no longer any choice except to cripple our life, or, having two feet, to be cast into hell fire; but this is not a thing to boast of. Or, like St. Paul, we may deny ourselves for our weak brother’s sake, which is an honour, and a Christ-like thing; but the rule, apart from special cases, is that the best and truest life is such as welcomes and is refreshed by all simple pleasures which sparkle and sing by our life’s path, which do not require us to leave the road of duty that we may drink of them.

Eastern people have a very skilful way of drinking from a flowing stream without stopping in their running. They throw the water up into the mouth. An Eastern traveller writes: “In an excursion across an Arabian desert, some of the Arabs, on coming to water, rushed to it, and, stooping sufficiently to allow the right hand to reach the water, they threw it up into their mouths so dexterously, that I never observed any of the water to fall upon the breast. I often tried to do it, but never succeeded.”

1. Jesus found refreshment in quiet communion with nature. In one of his letters Nathaniel Hawthorne speaks about bathing himself in “the refreshing waters of solitude and open-air nature,” and there is no season of the year in which we may not find this source of rest and refreshment for the mind and heart. The creation may always be our recreation. To be in love with this beautiful world is to be at the secret source of many a noble pleasure. To have a mind and heart open to the highest impressions of the natural universe, to be able to enter into the life of a summer or a winter day, to enjoy a night of stars, to feel the beauty of a flower, the grandeur of a storm, the spell of the wide waters or the high mountains, is to have abundant means of recovery and renewal always nigh at hand whenever we feel the need of calling ourselves off for a time from the excitement and strain of the daily conflict. It is true that nature does not yield the sympathy which the passionate human heart requires, but insensibly she helps her lovers to bear their burdens and to find rest in God. We are quickened and comforted by outward things more than we know. The sun and moon and stars, unaffected by our little controversies, rebuke and soothe us as we gaze on their tranquil glory. The mountains bring peace, and our fretfulness is carried away by the rushing river at our feet. Not only in the synagogue did Jesus find refreshment, but in the lilies of the field, in the sunset sky, among the hills, and by the Lake of Galilee.

In his suggestive journal, Amiel, describing a country walk taken when a dark and troubled mood was upon him, thus writes: “The sunlight, the green leaves, the sky, all whispered to me, ‘Be of good cheer and courage, poor wounded one!’ ” We are all at times poor wounded ones, needing all the refreshment and healing we can find. And,

What simple joys from simple sources spring! 1 [Note: J. Hunter, The Angels of God, 32.]

By the avenue, on to the mansion,

There runs a clear stream all the way,

Pursuing my path, I can see it,

And list to its roundelay;

Still gleaming and glancing,

Still laughing and dancing,

It carols along all day.

In summer its rippling music,

Delight and refreshing instils,

In winter, by torrent-notes swollen,

Its songs all the dreariness fills;

Still leaping and bounding,

Its echoes resounding,

With rapture my soul it thrills.

And precious my “Brook by the way” is,

As Homewards I journey along,

New life in His depths I discover,

New courage I take from His song;

In gloom and in gladness,

In sunshine and sadness,

He is my Salvation strong! 1 [Note: T. Crawford, Horae Serenae, 71.]

2. One of the richest streams that water the desert of life is that of social sympathy and helpfulness, whereby we give and take of the rich solace of brotherly love. To feel that the world is a little better for our being, that, when the little light of our life goes out, it will not have altogether failed to light some other fire of warmth and helpfulness; that some lives will go onward a little stronger, and more hopeful, for something we have been, or said, or even tried to be, this is a brook of consolation which becomes the more precious the nearer we draw to the isolation of death. Wretched is the man who has missed this brook of gentle human ministry in life’s way, and recognized too late how much of his soul’s life he has lost in saving it.

Nor, that time,

When nature had subdued him to herself,

Would he forget those Beings to whose minds

Warm from the labours of benevolence

The world, and human life, appeared a scene

Of kindred loveliness: then he would sigh,

Inly disturbed, to think that others felt

What he must never feel.

George MacDonald says: “To know a man who can be trusted will do more for one’s moral nature than all the books of divinity that were ever written.” The beauty of the outward world is full of Divine help, but there is more beauty and more inspiration in living excellence than in the fairest natural scenes. Wonderfully refreshing is the heart’s speech of the truly wise and good, but more beneficent is the brave thought when it becomes the brave deed, and more life-giving the Divine Word when it is made flesh and dwells among us. How rich the quickening and renewing influences which come from the presence and example of men who lift clearly before us the nobler ideals of life; from the memory of the faithful dead; and from the biographic page—

Bright affluent spirits, breathing but to bless,

Whose presence cheers men’s eyes and warms their hearts,

Whose lavish goodness this old world renews,

Like the free sunshine and the liberal air. 1 [Note: J. Hunter, The Angels of God, 36.]

There is a mysterious power in sympathy, and I thank God that the stream of sympathy is ever “in the way” of sorrowing souls. I see much sorrow, much pain, much heartbreak, but I see also, and I thank God for it, much sympathy. Indeed, I am persuaded we never know what a wealth of sympathy and love there dwells in many a heart until sorrow calls it forth. And how a little sympathy comforts, and cheers, and refreshes the soul. “She did help me,” said a poor soul about one who was a veritable angel of mercy. “I felt so much better for her visit.” “Well, what did she say to you?” I asked. “Well, she didn’t say much, but she sat with me and held my hand.” That good woman’s sympathy, silent sympathy, was a veritable “brook in the way” to that poor bereaved and lonely soul, and she drank of it and lifted up her head.

3. Another brook may be found in the appointed means of grace. Christ frequently drank of it. “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.” We must seek, as our fathers did, the perennial springs of refreshment that are to be found in the private and public ordinances of religion. The excitements and exhaustions of modern life make this duty even more imperative. Industry and enterprise are good; but life is not only action, it is thought and feeling also. We do ourselves the greatest wrong if we allow our activities to crowd meditation and prayer out of our days and to rob us of the secret of rest in God. To have depth and elevation and tranquillity in life, and the aim kept high, and the impulse true and steady, it is absolutely necessary for mind and heart to have constant access to the Source of inspiration. It is a moral calamity to lose the meditative and worshipful spirit. Reverence, faith, and aspiration are the springs of noble and fruitful living. Sunday and the Church stand for our highest life. They invite us to drink of waters that rise from cool and unpolluted depths. They offer an opportunity of finding that truest rest and recreation which come through mental and spiritual quickening and uplifting, and of verifying the word of prophecy, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”

I know a little chapel in my own native land, away out in the country, far from village and town. But every Sabbath from miles around the farmers and farm labourers gather in the little building to hear the gospel preached. Their lives are hard and monotonous enough; but they find peace, joy, love, in the little chapel, and because of what it has been to them they have called it “Elim.” There the name stands graven over the door—Elim, the place of springing water and shady palm trees. And that is what the sanctuary always is to the humble worshipper. Whether it is called by the name or not, it is an Elim to him. I read in the old Book of one who was sore distressed by the difficulties and troubles of life. They harassed him and well-nigh drove him to distraction. And it seemed as if the trouble would crush and overwhelm him, until—notice that—until he went into the sanctuary, and then the trouble all disappeared and his heart was filled with the peace of God. “I came to church tired,” wrote one to me only last week. “I came to church tired, and not a little soul weary; I left rested, refreshed, strengthened; I met my Lord there.” 1 [Note: J. D. Jones, The Elims of Life, 182.]

4. The brook that truly quenches our thirst issues from the throne of God. All merely ethical and philanthropic systems lack power to slake man’s thirst, apart from the love of Him who was Love Incarnate. He, and He alone, it is who makes human life glad with the rivers of God; who gives us to drink not only of the “still waters” of His peace, but of the rich renewing wine of His blood.

Faith that looks up to Him finds “streams in the desert,” and many a brook of consolation and refreshment in the way of life’s sternest conflicts. Of such a faith it is true—

The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

I remember an incident in the biography of a prince in learning, who, alas, was not a little child in the family of God. Once, in a time of depression, John Stuart Mill found comfort in music, until the thought came to him that, the octave having no more than eight tones in it, there must be limitations to the possibilities of melody. Even this spiritual octave of ours, various and marvellous as its messages are, has its limitations. Let us quench our thirst at the Fountainhead. 1 [Note: A. Smellie, Service and Inspiration, 70.]

Augustine tried the broken cisterns and he was thirsty still. “Turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. I wandered into fruitless seed-beds of sorrow, with a proud dejectedness and a restless weariness. I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose it I found not.” So the eager and often disappointed quest went on, until, under the fig-tree in the garden at Milan, in the year of our Saviour 386, he put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and made no provision for the flesh. Then his lips were opened, and he could sing: “This is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee and of Thee and for Thee; this is it, and there is no other. Too late I learned to know Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, too late I learned to love Thee! Many and great are my infirmities; but Thy medicine is mightier.”

5. The use of the brook is to give refreshment and strength to continue the battle. Each age has its own impulse which carries it a little way, but then there is the temptation to relax and to rest in what has been attained, as if that were the measure of the thought of God. But with another age a new call has come and courage to deal with it. Men have not come to the end of the warfare to which Christ has committed them. The gospel has a promise for every creature under heaven; it has an application to every variety of condition; it proves its power in men of every age. “It starts each epoch and each century with renewed ardour and redoubled vigour.” The things that have been are the pale shadows of things which are to be. But every victory over sin in the present or in the future has its explanation in the greatness of the heart of the Redeemer, who still passes undiscouraged on His way.

At the extreme limit of his vision this poet saw not rest and quiescence, but the King setting forth upon yet greater conquests. We are a laggard race, ever anxious and unready, afraid of what may come, doubtful if righteousness can really win the day; and our chief need is to kindle faith for the world afresh by a better study of the world’s King. “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law.”

I think I have sometimes noticed in you an impatience of mind which you should guard against carefully. Pin this maxim up in your memory—that Nature abhors the credit system, and that we never get anything in life till we have paid for it. Anything good, I mean; evil things we always pay for afterwards, and always when we find it hardest to do it. By paying for them, of course, I mean labouring for them. Tell me how much good solid work a young man has in him, and I will erect a horoscope for him as accurate as Guy Mannering’s for young Bertram. Talents are absolutely nothing to a man except he have the faculty of work along with them. They, in fact, turn upon him and worry him, as Action’s dogs did—you remember the story? Patience and perseverance—these are the sails and the rudder even of genius, without which it is only a wretched hulk upon the waters. 1 [Note: Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. 183.]

The husbandman sows his seed and toils on, and persistence reaps the harvest. The scholar opens his books and toils on, and persistence reaps fame. The reformer attacks the evil and toils on, and persistence destroys the evil. The force that is constant will always overcome the force that is less constant. Indeed, there never lived a man that came to anything who lacked this quality of pertinacity and adherence. How is it that the mountain-climber reached that summit of 23,000 feet? Plainly by going on and on until his foot was on the last stone and the whole earth was under his feet. The motto of David Livingstone was in these words: “I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.” When Livingstone’s work in Africa was done, the Dark Continent was mapped out and spread fully before the merchants of the world. He crossed Africa four times, and marched for days up to his armpits in water, endured twenty-seven attacks of fever, was surrounded with enemies on every side, faced mutiny, poisoned arrows, wild beasts, the bite of serpents, but never gave up. By sheer, dogged persistence and faith in God he conquered, acting as if he thought his body was as immortal as his spirit. 1 [Note: N. D. Hillis, The Contagion of Character, 228.]

By his zeal, constancy, and wisdom, by his mechanical genius and his gift of languages, Mackay had made himself a household word and a power in the whole region of Uganda. His hopefulness and courage never failed him. The misfortunes which overtook the Uganda mission at various times were regarded by timid and fearful souls at home as indications from God that the work there should be abandoned. When Mackay heard of these proposals, he wrote: “Are you joking? If you tell me in earnest that such a suggestion has been made, I only answer, Never! Tell me, ye faint hearts, to whom ye mean to give up the mission? Is it to murderous raiders like Mwanga, or to slave-traders from Zanzibar, or to English and Belgian dealers in rifles and gunpowder, or to German spirit-sellers? All are in the field, and they make no talk of ‘giving up’ their respective missions!” That was the spirit which burnt in the heart of Mackay to the end of his brief life. 2 [Note: W. G. Berry, Bishop Hannington, 180.]

Literature

Chadwick (G. A.), Pilate’s Gift, 266.

Hanks (W. P.), The Eternal Witness, 81.

Hunter (J.), The Angels of God, 27.

Jerdan (C.), Gospel Milk and Honey, 245.

Jones (J. D.), The Unfettered Word, 145.

Norton (J. N.), Old Paths, 231.

Piggott (W. C.), The Imperishable Word, 190.

Smellie (A.), Service and Inspiration, 49.