Bible Commentaries
Psalms 139

Verse 5

The Encompassing God

Thou hast beset me behind and before,

And laid thine hand upon me.— Psalms 139:5

1. That God besets us behind and before and has laid His hand on us is the crowning glory, as it is also the perpetual mystery, of human life. In the light of this truth nothing seems small or negligible. Every incident and every association of our lot takes on a new meaning. The stars have a fresh message for us; the flowers look up to us with intelligent faces; God walks in His garden still, and His voice calls for our recognition. Nothing becomes impossible for us; our strength is sufficient for our day, and new ideals press upon us for acceptance as soon as we have faithfully done the work of the immediate present.

2. We speak of God as a Person, for want of a better term to express the thought that He is self-conscious and freely acting, of a kind with ourselves in all that makes for the difference between the realm of the Personal and that of the Impersonal, though infinitely higher, not only than we are, but even than we can conceive. But we reach an even greater truth when we say that God is an all-encompassing Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, a Presence everywhere and in all things, a Source of boundless energy and influence, the Cause and Sustainer and Hope of all that is. There is nothing inconsistent in these propositions. It is the same God who, being a pervasive Spirit and having created us in His own image, maintains relations of tender watchfulness over His children.

Two great ideas underlie this beautiful text:

I. God’s Intimate Knowledge of Man.

II. God’s Individual Care of Man.

I

God’s Intimate Knowledge of Man

1. God accurately and exhaustively knows all that a man knows of himself. Every man who lives amid Christian influences has an intimate knowledge of himself. He thinks of the moral quality of some of his own feelings. He considers the ultimate tendency of some of his own actions. In other words, there is a part of his inward and his outward life with which he is well acquainted; of which he has a distinct apprehension. There are some thoughts of his mind at which he blushes at the very time of their origin, because he is vividly aware what they are, and what they mean. There are some emotions of his heart at which he trembles and recoils at the very moment of their uprising, because he perceives clearly that they involve a very malignant depravity. There are some actings of his will of whose wickedness he is painfully conscious at the very instant of their rush and movement.

Now, in reference to all this intimate self-knowledge, man is not superior to God. He may be certain that in no respect does he know more of himself than the Searcher of hearts knows. He may be an uncommonly thoughtful person, and little of what is done within his soul may escape his notice; let us make the extreme supposition that he arrests every thought as it rises, and looks at it; that he analyzes every sentiment as it swells his heart; that he scrutinizes every purpose as it determines his will—even if he should have such a thorough and profound self-knowledge as this, God knows him equally profoundly and equally thoroughly. This process of self-inspection may even go on indefinitely, and the man grow more and more thoughtful, and obtain an everlastingly augmenting knowledge of what he is and what he does, so that it seems to him that he is going down so far on that path which “the vulture’s eye hath not seen,” is penetrating so deeply into those dim and shadowy regions of consciousness where the external life takes its very first start, as to be beyond the reach of any eye and the ken of any intelligence but his own; and then he may be sure that God understands the thought that is afar off, and deep down, and that at this lowest range and plane in his experience He besets him behind and before.

Let us adore God for the streams of bounty which flow unceasingly from the fountains of His life, to all His countless creatures. But, on the other hand, beware lest in thus enlarging your view of the Infinite One, you lose your hold of the correlative truth—that though all beings of all worlds are His care, though His mind thus embraces the universe, He is yet as mindful of you, as if that universe were blotted out, and you alone survived to receive the plenitude of His care. 1 [Note: W. E. Channing.]

2. Although the Creator designed that man should thoroughly understand himself, and gave him the power of self-inspection that he might use it faithfully and apply it constantly, yet man is exceedingly ignorant of himself. Men, says an old writer, are nowhere less at home than at home. Very few persons practise serious self-examination at all, and none employ the power of self-inspection with that carefulness and diligence with which they ought. Hence men generally are unacquainted with much that goes on within their own minds and hearts.

But God knows perfectly all that man might but does not know of himself. Though the transgressor is ignorant of much of his sin, because, at the time of its commission he sins blindly as well as wilfully, and unreflectingly as well as freely; and though the transgressor has forgotten much of that small amount of sin of which he was conscious, and by which he was pained, at the time of its perpetration; though on the side of man the powers of Self-inspection and memory have accomplished so little towards this preservation of man’s sin, yet God knows it all, and remembers it all. “He compasseth man’s path, and his lying down, and is acquainted with all his ways.” “There is nothing covered, therefore, that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops.” The Creator of the human mind has control over its powers of self-inspection and of memory, and when the proper time comes, He will compel these endowments to perform their legitimate functions, and do their appointed work.

You will never know what the Psalmist had in mind till you come upon a young mother all alone with her laughing babe. The hours are not long. The house is not lonesome for her, though she has been left for the day. She has her babe. See, it lies all uncovered in her lap! The mother is fair, but the child is fairer. She counts its fingers, she pulls its toes, she kisses its dimples, she pats its pudgy arms, she studies its features, she sounds to their depths its eyes and matches their colour with the skies. She helps it to stand. She coaxes it to walk. She teaches it to talk. She infects it with laughter. She bathes it with love. She tells it her secrets. She cries over it for joy. She multiplies its happiness and bears its sorrow. Mother and babe—in all the world there is no other vision one-half so fair. There is no knowledge like love, no explorer like solicitude. She knows every strength, every weakness, every beauty, every mark or scar, every characteristic, every disposition, every tendency, every fault, every charm. The mother has searched her babe and knows it. A mother with her babe in her arms—that is the Psalmist’s picture of the tender care of God for men. 1 [Note: N. M. Waters.]

3. Let us not forget that there is a bright as well as a dark side to this picture. For if God’s exhaustive knowledge of the human heart wakens dread in one of its aspects, it starts infinite hope in another. If that Being has gone down into these depths of human depravity, and seen it with a more abhorring glance than could ever shoot from a finite eye, and yet has returned with a cordial offer to forgive it all, and a hearty proffer to cleanse it all away, then we can lift up the eye in adoration and in hope. There has been an infinite forbearance and condescension. The worst has been seen, and that too by the holiest of beings, and yet eternal glory is offered to us! God knows from personal examination the worthlessness of human character, with a thoroughness and intensity of knowledge of which man has no conception; and yet, in the light of that knowledge, in the very flame of that intuition, He has devised a plan of mercy and redemption.

Might I follow the bent of my own mind, my pen, such as it is, should be wholly employed in setting forth the infinite love of God to mankind in Christ Jesus, and in endeavouring to draw all men to the belief and acknowledgment of it. The one great mercy of God, which makes the one, only happiness of all mankind, so justly deserves all our thoughts and meditations, so highly enlightens and improves every mind that is attentive to it, so removes all the evils of this present world, so sweetens every state of life, and so inflames the heart with the love of every Divine and human virtue, that he is no small loser whose mind is either by writing or reading detained from the view and contemplation of it. 1 [Note: William Law, An Earnest and Serious Answer.]

II

God’s Individual Care of Man

“Thou hast beset me.” Even words may fall into bad company. Because of its association many a noble word is misjudged. “Beset” is such a word. We speak of the “besetments” of life. We pray about the “sin which doth so easily beset us.” Job was beset with calamities. A traveller from Oriental lands tells us that at Cairo he was beset with dogs and beggars. A young man goes wrong, and through his tears of shame he tells how for months he has been literally beset with temptations. “Beset” we associate with evil. That is the ordinary use of the word. But that is not the Psalmist’s use. It is the glory of the Scriptures that they are always finding gold where men see only clay. The Psalmist takes this word out of man’s vocabulary and gives it a heavenly meaning. “Beset” is a strong word and it shall not belong to evil. The writer snatches it out of its evil surroundings and makes it spell out for evermore the love of God. “Thou hast beset me behind and before.” He is talking about God. It is a startling statement. It is like the old prophet and his servant. So long we have been pursued by evil. Every day we have seen the Syrians coming up against us. Every morning we have seen them closer, having moved up in the night. We are beset by them. That is the testimony of the generations. And now on this morning our eyes are opened, and, lo! the hills are “full of horses and chariots of fire.” Like the young man we cry: “They that be with us are more than they that be with them.” “We are besieged by goodness.” God has beset us!

When I was a very little boy I knew my father loved me. I took it as a matter of course; but I did not see that he had me in mind very much. When I was very little I thought houses and clothes and food and money were a matter of course, and I did not know anybody worked very hard to provide them for me. It takes a child quite a while to know that these ever-present necessaries are not free for the using like air for breathing, but that they cost somebody a great deal of sweat and anxiety. When I grew older I knew of course that father did it all—the home and food and clothes and money; but I did not know how much he did it for me. I saw but little of him. I heard him talk only a little. He was away and so busy and all wrapped up in his farm and mill and cattle and horses. That was his business and care. I was just incidental. Then I grew up to adult life and I saw it all as it was. He did not think about anything but his children. His mind was only a little on his farm. It was on his home. He did not care for his business except as it ministered to his family. His business was fatherhood; his farm was only the incident. He was laying his plans ahead. If the children were hungry, there was bread. If winter came, there were clothes. When they were old enough, there was a teacher ready for them. When temptation came to do wrong, there was also close at hand an enticement to do good. Once he was sick, and he thought, and we all thought, he was going to die. I heard him talking to mother and grandfather, laying out all his business plans, and I heard him say over and over: “That money is not to be touched beforehand. It is there to take Nancy to college.” He even spoke of the after years and said: “When the girls marry, I want them to have so and so.” Child that I was, I began to realize that father carried us all on his heart, and that in his plans he thought not only of the present, but took in all the future years. He really with his care and foresight “beset me behind and before.” 1 [Note: N. M. Waters.]

1. “Thou hast beset me behind.” God stands between us and our enemies in the rear. He defends us from the hostility of our own past. He does not cut us away from our yesterdays. Consequences are not annihilated; their operations are changed. They are transformed from destructives into constructives. The sword becomes a ploughshare; the implement of destruction becomes an agent of moral and spiritual culture. The Lord “besets me behind,” and the sins of yesterday no longer send their poisoned swords into my life. They are changed into the ministers of a finer culture, nourishing godly sorrow, and humility, and meekness and self-mistrust. The failures and indiscretions of yesterday are no longer creatures of moral impoverishment and despair. He “besets me behind,” and they become the teachers of a quiet wisdom and well-proportioned thought.

When you reflect that your evil thoughts and dispositions as well as acts all lie naked and open before the Eye of God, even though they may have escaped the view of man, is this a subject of satisfaction, or of dissatisfaction? Would you have it otherwise if you could, and hide them from Him also? The Christian hates sin, and finding that neither his own nor any other human eye can effectually track it out in him, while he knows it to be the true and only curse and pest of the universe, must rejoice to think that there is One from whom it cannot lie hid—One who will weigh his own case, which he may feel to be to him unfathomable, in the scales of perfect justice and boundless mercy. 1 [Note: Letters on Church and Religion of W. E. Gladstone, ii. 159.]

2. “And before.” God comes between us and the enemy that troubles us from to-morrow, the foe that lies ambushed in futurity and disturbs the peace of to-day. And so He deals with our fears and anxieties, and repeats the miracle of transformation, and changes them from swords into ploughshares. He changes destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness. He converts a lacerating fretfulness into an energetic contentment. He transforms an abject fear into a holy reverence. He takes the terror out of to-morrow, and enables us to live and labour in a fruitful calm.

When thunders roll

And lightnings slash the sky,

God of the Elements

Stand by.

When warring worlds

Make men in thousands die,

God of the Battle-field

Stand by.

When terrors lurk

And hearts in anguish cry,

God of humanity

Stand by.

When storm blasts rage

And lives in peril lie,

God of the Universe

Stand by.

When life ebbs low

And death is drawing nigh,

God of Eternity

Stand by. 1 [Note: L. Leigh, The White Gate and Other Poems, 40.]

3. “And laid thine hand upon me.” When God lays His hand upon us, it means manifold blessing.

(1) His hand is a restraining hand.—One of the hardest tasks of parental love is to correct, to restrain. For is it not strange that a child who comes into life so pure from God should hold within it the possible germ of future wrong! The father, watching with proper pride the wonderful growth of thought and passion and will, is fearful of the day when first his child will follow evil. So long as that day is a day delayed, laughter and joy fill the home. But, in a moment, the germ of evil starts into life. It grows from less to more, until one day rebellion oversweeps the prentice soul, and the glamour of heaven is gone. A passion of anger shakes the child to the very foundation of its being. It is the first good-bye to innocence. Then come correction and punishment and restraint. A father’s strong arms hold the little body in check, as in the grip of an iron vice. The very touch of love in such a moment irritates. For anger maddens every soul. But there the father sits, in stern silence, holding his child in restraint, until he has gained the mastery. And when the passion has spent itself, then come floods of tears from the poor little penitent soul as he lays his conquered head upon his father’s breast.

The great American orator Daniel Webster, being asked what was his greatest thought, replied, “The greatest thought that ever entered my mind was that of my personal responsibility to a personal God.” In a famous speech he expanded the thought: “There is no evil that we cannot either face or flee from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and, in that sense of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God has given us grace to perform it.”

If you would see the same principle in life, open your Shakespeare; imagine yourself on Bosworth field, before the tents of Richard and of Richmond; hear the ghosts as they rise and speak. At the door of Richard’s tent—

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!

Think, how thou stab’dst me in my prime of youth

At Tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die!

At Richmond’s tent—

Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged souls

Of butcher’d princes fight in thy behalf:

King Henry’s issue, Richmond, comforts thee.

On Richard’s own confession—

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!…

Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d

Came to my tent; and every one did threat

Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.

Ghosts all, yet speaking in the voice of reality. Conscience wears the form of a haunting fiend as well as of a guiding friend. Yet it is no haunting fiend. “Thou hast beset me … and laid thine hand upon me.” “I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

The promise is fulfilled as truly in the condemning voice of conscience as in our conviction of God’s power and peace. 1 [Note: F. Ealand, The Spirit of Life, 55.]

(2) The hand suggests the ministry of guidance.—That is a most suggestive word, constantly in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “And the Lord said unto me with a strong hand.” Speech by strong graspings! Suggestion by grips! Guidance by the creation of a mighty impulse! The Lord declared His will unto the prophet Isaiah by implanting in his life the sense of a tremendous imperative, a terrific “must,” a consciousness which the prophet expressed under the symbol of the grasp of a “strong hand.” “Thy right hand shall guide me.”

There is surely nothing remote or obscure in the theme of God’s guidance. It is relevant and immediate to everybody. We differ in many things and in many ways; we differ in age and in calling, in physical fitness and in mental equipment; we differ in knowledge and accomplishments; we are greatly different in temperament, and therefore in the character of our daily strife. But in one thing we are all alike—we are pilgrims travelling between life and death, on an unknown road, not knowing how or when the road may turn; not knowing how or when it may end; and we are in urgent need of a Greatheart who is acquainted with every step of the way. We are all in need of a leader who will be our guide by the “waters of rest,” and also in the perilous ways of the heights. 1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, Things that Matter Most, 111.]

(3) The hand suggests the ministry of soothing and comfort.—The nurse lays her cool hand upon the burning brow of her patient, and he exclaims, “How lovely that is!” And when we come into a sudden crisis in life, and are tempted to become feverish, and “heated hot with burning fears,” the Lord lays His cooling hand upon us, and we grow calm again. “And Jesus touched her, and the fever left her.”

Dr. Miller never forgot the universal need of comfort. “We forget how much sorrow there is in the world,” he one day remarked. “Why, there are hearts breaking all about us. I have made it a rule of my ministry never to preach a sermon without giving some word of comfort to the sorrowing. In every congregation there is sure to be some soul hungering for consolation. I spent the afternoon of Wednesday with two or three sore sufferers. In conversation with them I spoke freely of their trials and their comforts.… Comfort is one of life’s best blessings. Even the comfort of earthly friends is soothing and sweet. But the real comfort which the Holy Spirit brings to the heart of the Christian mourner is infinitely better.… It is better to go into the furnace and get the image of Christ out of the fire, than to be saved from the fire and fail of the blessed likeness.” 2 [Note: J. T. Faris, Jesus and I are Friends: Life of Dr. J. R. Miller, 102.]

Literature

Barnett (T. R.), The Blessed Ministry of Childhood, 51.

Ealand (F.), The Spirit of Life, 55.

Jowett (J. H.), Brooks by the Traveller’s Way, 22.

Martineau (J.), Endeavours after the Christian Life, 13

Street (C. J.), in Sermons by Unitarian Ministers, i. 13.

Christian Age, xxxiv. 386 (H. P. Liddon).

Homiletic Review, xlix. 371 (N. M. Waters).

National Preacher, xxxvi. 191 (W. G. T. Shedd).

Preachers’ Monthly, v. 73 (C. S. Robinson).

Verses 23-24

The Searcher of Hearts

Search me, O God, and know my heart:

Try me, and know my thoughts:

And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.— Psalms 139:23-24

1. No intellectual man has ever dared to despise this poem, which has been called “the crown of all the psalms,” and its teaching has had to be reckoned with by all schools of thought for many centuries. It is one of those pieces of literature which Bacon said should be “chewed and digested.” There is much food for the intellect here; but to every man who is anxious about the culture of his spirit we would say: “Test your heart by this psalm. If your heart is of steel, it will be attracted by its teaching, as by a magnet; if you find nothing in it to move you to reverence, wonder, penitence, and prayer, be sure that your heart is not true, that you are in a morally perilous condition.”

2. The Psalmist sets forth in poetry what theology calls the doctrine of the Divine Omniscience. He believes in Jehovah, the God of all the earth, and therefore believes in a Providence so universal that nothing is missed. It is not an intellectual dogma to him, but a spiritual intuition. It is not stated as an abstraction of thought, but flows from the warm personal relation between God and man, which is the great revelation of the Bible. God’s providence is everywhere, but it does not dissipate itself in a mere general supervision of creation. It is all-seeing, all-surrounding, all-embracing, but it is not diffused in matter and dispersed through space. It extends—and this is the wonder of it—to the individual: O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me.

3. The practical ethical thought suggested to the Psalmist by such a conception is the question, How can God, the pure and holy One, with such an intimate and unerring knowledge, tolerate wicked men? He feels that God cannot but be against evil, no matter what appearances seem to suggest that God does not care. The doom of evil must be certain; and so the Psalmist solemnly dissociates himself from the wicked men who hate and blaspheme God. And the conclusion is simply and humbly to throw open the heart and soul to God, accepting the fact that He cannot be deceived, praying God to search him and purify him and lead him. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

In the general reform of conventual and monastic life, the Abbey of Port Royal had set a striking example. Behind its cloistered walls were gathered some of the purest and most devoted women of France, under the strict rule of Mère Angélique Arnauld. The spiritual directions of St. François de Sales, who loved the Port-Royalists, had tempered firmness with gentleness, and given a charm to the pursuit of personal holiness; the Petites Ecoles of the abbey rivalled the educational establishments of the Jesuits. But St. Cyran, who succeeded François de Sales as spiritual director, was suspected of heresy, and Port Royal was involved in the charge. Persecution fell upon the community. It was to a psalm that they appealed. “The sisters of Port Royal,” says Blaise Pascal (and his own sister was one of the first victims of the persecution), “astonished to hear it said that they were in the way of perdition, that their confessors were leading them to Geneva by teaching them that Jesus Christ was neither in the Eucharist nor at the right hand of God, and knowing that the charge was false, committed themselves to God, saying with the Psalmist, ‘See if there be any way of wickedness in me.’ ” 1 [Note: R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 214.]

I

The Searching of God

1. The Psalmist realized that he could not thoroughly search himself. We have all of us tendencies and inclinations which we cannot gauge and do not know the force or the power of. We have depths and abysses in our natures which no human measuring line can fathom. Our souls are so disordered and disturbed by the crossing of many varied feelings, high and low, clashing and fretting against each other, good thoughts mingled with so much that is base, pure high feelings with so much that is low and degraded. We have in us sometimes perhaps more good than we realize, or more evil than we ever guessed. There is in us, not only our sinful acts, but also a deep spirit of wickedness, a mystery of evil, which no human power can comprehend. Said the prophet truly, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” No one can. Not even ourselves, who think we know ourselves well. We do not know what is in us, what powers or capabilities we have for good or for evil.

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone

Decidedly can try us;

He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias.

One of the precepts which Thales the great philosopher, who lived about the same time as Josiah king of Judah, inculcated was, “Know thyself,” and it is a precept full of the highest sense and wisdom. It was regarded by the ancients as a duty of paramount importance, and received by them with all the authority of a Divine command. It is not as a matter of curiosity, but of deepest necessity, that we should have a thorough acquaintance with the state in which we are before God, and should try to see ourselves and to estimate ourselves, not as others do, but as God does, for it is a subject on which we are apt to make great and dangerous mistakes, and it is one of which many are in complete ignorance. 1 [Note: R. Stephen, Divine and Human Influence, i. 262.]

2. The Psalmist is sure that God has perfect knowledge of him. He is as certain of God as he is of his own existence; indeed it is not too much to say that it is only as he is conscious of being searched and known by God—only as he is overwhelmed by contact with a Spirit which knows him better than he knows himself—that he rises to any adequate sense of what his own being and personality mean. He is revealed to himself by God’s search; he knows himself through God. Speaking practically—and in religion everything is practical—God alone can overcome atheism, and this is how He overcomes it. He does not put within our reach arguments which point to theistic conclusions; He gives us the experience which makes this psalm intelligible, and forces us also to cry, “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.”

It is a fact well known to seamen that objects under water, such as shoals and sunken rocks, become visible, or more visible, when viewed from a height; and it is customary at sea, when a sunken object is suspected of lying in a vessel’s course, but cannot be seen from the deck, to send a man aloft, when the higher he can climb the mast the farther will his vision penetrate beneath the waves. From the top of a lofty cliff the depth is seen better still; whilst the elevation of a balloon enables the spectator to see most perfectly beneath the surface, and to detect the sunken mines, torpedoes, and the like which may be concealed there. Now, just as there is an optical reason why the depth is best penetrated from the height, so there is a moral reason why the holy God best knows the plagues and perils of the human heart. He who from the pure heaven of eternal light and purity looks down into the depths of the heart is cognizant of its defects long before they report themselves in the creature-consciousness. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Fatal Barter, 101.]

Colonel Seely, shortly before he resigned office as Secretary of State for War in the spring of 1914, unfolded in the House of Commons the Supplementary Army Estimates; and, speaking of the vote for the Army Air Service, he gave a striking instance of the range of vision from a height. From an aeroplane up 5000 feet in the air one could see, he explained, quite clearly every detail of the landscape. An airman could perceive from that not only the roads and the hedges beneath, but, for instance, whether there were two horses or one attached to a cart going along a road. Persons could be seen walking in the streets of a town. “How easy then,” concluded the War Secretary, “to see any troops! Thus the commander of an army without aeroplanes—other things being equal—is doomed if faced by a force with aeroplanes, for every movement of the enemy’s troops, except at night or in a fog, can be watched and reported by the air scouts.”

3. The Psalmist was satisfied that God would search him fully, fairly and impartially. The word which is rendered “search” is a very emphatic and picturesque one. It means to dig deep. God is prayed, as it were, to make a section into the Psalmist, and lay bare his inmost nature, as men do in a railway cutting, layer after layer, going ever deeper down till the bed-rock is reached. “Search me”—dig into me, bring the deep-lying parts to light—“and know my heart”; the centre of my personality, my inmost self.

This prayer is also an expression of absolute willingness to submit to the searching process. God is represented in the text as seeking into the secrets of a man’s heart, not that God may know, but that the man may know. By His Spirit He will come into the innermost corners of our nature, if this prayer is a real expression of our desire. And there the illumination of His presence will flash light into all the dark corners of our experience and of our personality.

Men may applaud or revile, and make a man think differently of himself, but He judgeth of a man according to his secret walk. How difficult is the work of self-examination! Even to state to you, imperfectly, my own mind, I found to be no easy matter. Nay, St. Paul says, “I judge not mine own self, for he that judgeth me is the Lord.” That is, though he was not conscious of any allowed sin, yet he was not thereby justified, for God might perceive something of which he was not aware. How needful then the prayer of the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and try my heart, and see if there be any evil way in me.” 1 [Note: Life and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, 28.]

II

The Tests to which we are Subjected

1. We are searched and known by the slow and steady passing of the years.—There is a revealing power in the flight of time, just because time is the minister of God. In heaven there will be no more time; there will be no more need of any searching ministry. There we shall know even as we are known, in the burning and shining of the light of God. But here, where the light of God is dimmed and broken, we are urged forward through the course of years, and the light of the passing years achieves on earth what the light of the Presence will achieve in glory. He is a wise father who knows his child, but he is a wiser child who knows himself. Untested by actual contact with the world, we dream our dream in the sunshine of the morning. And then comes life with all its hard reality, with the changes and the calling of the years, and we turn round on the swift flight of time, and say, “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.” We may not have achieved anything splendid. Our life may have moved along in quiet routine, not outwardly different from the lives of thousands. Yet, however dull and quietly uneventful, God has so ordered the flight of time for us that we know far more about ourselves to-night than we knew in the upland freshness of the morn. Brought into touch with duty and with man, we have begun to see our limitations. We know in a measure what we cannot do; thank God, we know in a measure what we can do. And underneath it all we have discerned the side on which our nature leans away to heaven, and the other side on which there is the door that opens on to the filthiness of hell. It does not take any terrible experience to reach the certainty of power and weakness. The common days, which make the common years, slowly and inevitably show it. So by the pressure of evolving time—and it is God, not we, who so evolves it—for better or for worse we come to say, “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.”

1 Jan. 1878. Marine Parade, Brighton, 6 a.m. When one thinks of the immensity of time and of the Christian hope that there is endless existence before us, one is perplexed that this infinity of time should take its character from a few years that seem to bear no proportion to it. One observes, however, that in the time here by far the greatest portion is determined by certain hours or it may be minutes.

In itself a thought,

A slumbering thought, is capable of years—

says Byron, and certain it is that all our lives are under the influence of moments when fresh convictions dawned on us, or when we made some important resolution, or when we passed through some special trial. With most of us the greater part of our life seems merely wasted. We eat, drink, and sleep, join in meaningless chit-chat, pay calls and the like. Others get through an immense amount of work; but at times we have glimpses which show us that life consists neither in chit-chat nor in work, and that even the latter needs something in it, but not of it, before it can be good for anything “in the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps the scanty moments we give to prayer may in importance be the chief part of our existence. 1 [Note: Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, 70.]

2. God searches us by the responsibilities He lays upon us.—It is in our duties and not in our romance that the true self is searched and known. Think of those servants in the parable who received the talents. Could you have gauged their character before they got the talents? Were they not all respectable and honest and seemingly worthy of their master’s confidence? But to one of the servants the master gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, and what distinguished and revealed the men was the use they made of their responsibility. They were not searched by what they had to suffer; the men were searched by what they had to do. They were revealed by what their master gave, and by the use they made of what they got. And so is it with all of us to whom God has given a task, a post, a talent—it is not only a gift to bless our neighbour; it is a gift to reveal us to ourselves.

See, I hold a sovereign in my hand. It appears to bear the image and superscription of the King. That is merely an optical illusion. It bears my own image and superscription. I have earned it, and it is mine. But now that it is mine, the trouble begins. For that sovereign becomes part of myself and will henceforth represent a pound’s worth of me! If I am a bad man, I shall spend it in folly, and accelerate the forces that make for the world’s undoing. If I am a bad man, that is to say, it will be a bad sovereign, however truly it may seem to ring. If I am a good man, I shall spend it in clean commerce, and enlist it among the forces that tend to the uplift of my brothers. Yes, gold is very good if we are very good, and very bad if we are very bad. Here is the song of the sovereign—

Dug from the mountain-side, washed in the glen,

Servant am I or the master of men;

Steal me, I curse you;

Earn me, I bless you;

Grasp me and hoard me, a fiend shall possess you;

Lie for me, die for me;

Covet me, take me,

Angel or devil, I am what you make me! 1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mountains in the Mist, 62.]

3. God searches us by bringing new influences to bear upon our lives.—Troubles and temptations are great discoverers of human character. Our passions and special inclinations may lie like some minerals, far down, and we may bore long and find no trace of their existence, but by and by we may pierce deeper, and a thick seam of evil may be found. Or our nature may, like a breakwater, stand long, and seem secure, unharmed by many a gale, but some fiercer storm, some stronger onslaught of temptation, may overthrow it, or some single stone may be dislodged, or some joint weakened, and the sea works its way in, and the whole is upset, dashed, and pounded to ruin. So you may resist long, and come unscathed through much evil, but it comes with fiercer power at some time, or it dashes upon you suddenly or unexpectedly, advancing upon you not like the long roll of the ocean, with steady force, but with a quick impact, a sudden surprise—as temptation came to Peter—and your power of resistance is destroyed.

Just as engineers are not satisfied with respect to the soundness and durability of iron girders or links of ships’ cables merely because these look well, but proceed to test them by pressure, and ascertain the amount of strain they will bear, and the weight they will sustain, so by the rough handling of the world’s vexations and by the strain of trouble and sorrow you must be tried, to show what you really are: whether your temper patiently endures this provocation, whether your pride will submit to that mortification, your vanity to that slight, your passions to that force of temptation, your faith to that severe disappointment, your love to that heavy sacrifice.

In the making of great iron castings, through some defect in the mould, portions of air may lurk in the heart of the iron, and cavities like those of an honey-comb may be formed in the interior of the beam, but the defects and flaws may be effectively concealed under the outer skin; when, however, it is subjected to a severe strain it gives way. So under the stress of some great trial, the hollowness of the nature may be revealed and secret faults and evils exposed, and the man appears in what people say is a changed character. In reality that is his true character. If metal be real iron, the blast of the furnace will temper it into steel, and if there is reality and truth in the nature, trial will develop its finer qualities; but if these do not exist, trial will only expose that nature’s inherent badness and make it worse. 1 [Note: R. Stephen, Divine and Human Influence, i. 285.]

4. God tests us by holding up to us the mirror of another’s life.—We never know ourselves until we see ourselves divested of all the trappings of self-love. It was thus that God dealt with David, when he had so terribly sinned. For all the depth and the grandeur of his character, David was strangely blind to his own guilt. But then came Nathan with his touching story of the man who had been robbed of his ewe lamb, and all that was best in David was afire at the abhorrent action of that robber.

Especially when we draw near to Christ, who knows what is in all of us, and whose eye could read and single out the traitor whom no one suspected; when, too, He is looking at us and scanning our deepest hearts, reading in them the love we have to Him and the faith we have in Him, or detecting the treachery and perfidy that may lurk within us, surely it is right that we should ask Him to search us and try us and let us know and see ourselves as He knows and sees us. Surely we should ask Him to purify our hearts from every evil thought and feeling, and so to fill them with His love that when He asks us, as He asked Peter, “Lovest thou me?” we may be able to say truly, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.”

Bishop Westcott preached what was to prove his last sermon in Durham Cathedral on the Saturday preceding his death. It was the annual service of the Durham miners, who came in their thousands to hear the prelate that shortly before had successfully acted as peacemaker in the great North of England coal strike. The Bishop’s address has a pathos of its own, since it was his last, and apparently felt by the speaker himself to be his last public utterance. The discourse was as beautiful as it was touching and impressive. Brief, yet complete, and instinct with love, it reveals the man and indicates the secret of his power. The closing words were—

“Since it is not likely that I shall ever address you here again, I have sought to tell you what I have found in a long and laborious life to be the most prevailing power to sustain right endeavour, however imperfectly I have yielded myself to it—even the love of Christ; to tell you what I know to be the secret of a noble life, even glad obedience to His will. I have given you a watchword which is fitted to be the inspiration, the test, and the support of untiring service to God and man: the love of Christ constraineth us.” 1 [Note: Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, ii. 394.]

III

The Purpose in View

1. The purpose of this searching is that we may be delivered from our own way of life. “See if there be any way of wickedness in me.” The Psalmist recognizes that human life is determined from within. The “way” is first “in” us. How often do we see this! A youth is set in the right path, every assistance is secured for him, every encouragement is given him to pursue it; but he soon breaks away from this, forms other habits, adopts other companions, pursues an altogether different life. He does not follow the path that was opened up to him from the outside, but elects one already traced in his heart. We popularly say of such a wilful soul, “He took his own way, followed his own course.” A modern cry calls upon us to “fulfil ourselves.” That really means to work out our own fancies, tastes, and passions; to propose our own ideals, be ruled by self-will, take counsel of the pride and passion of our own hearts, chase our own phantoms. But if everybody should “fulfil” himself, it would mean pandemonium; it would be the working out of ignorance, egotism, and lust. This is precisely what the Psalmist deprecates. He urgently pleads for deliverance from himself; from the poisonous particle, the diseased fibre, the false substance and quality which may exist latent within him, waiting for the stimulation of circumstance, opportunity, and association.

(1) Our own way is a way of emptiness. Some would translate these words, “any way of idols in me.” It signifies the vanity, the unreality, the delusiveness of the objects on which the natural man fixes his ambition and hope. We sometimes say of a thing, “There is nothing in it.” We may say this of wealth, honour, pleasure, fame; if we make idols of them, we know that an idol is nothing in the world. If we follow the desires and devices of our own hearts, we walk in a vain show and disquiet ourselves in vain.

(2) Our own way is a way of pain. “See if there is any way of grievousness in me.” The path of self-fulfilment is hard and bitter. If the roses in the broad road of sensual pleasure, sordid gain, and worldly pride are red, there is no wonder; enough blood has been shed to make them so. In the forests of South America, where gorgeous orchids dazzle the eyes and gay blossoms carpet the earth, are also creepers furnished with formidable thorns known as “the devil’s fishing-hooks”; and as these trail insidiously on the ground, their presence is revealed only by the wounded foot that treads upon them. How closely this pictures the wayward, sensual, worldly life!

(3) Our own way is a way of destruction. It does not lead to a goal of lasting felicity, but descends into darkness and despair. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” That is the path and doom of self-fulfilment. We do not know why Solomon, in another place, exactly repeats this warning, unless, perhaps, because it is so immensely significant, and yet so likely to be overlooked. So, then, we must pray that God will not abandon us to ourselves; that we may not be permitted to work out the lurking naughtiness of our heart.

Let a man persevere in prayer and watchfulness to the day of his death, yet he will never get to the bottom of his heart. Though he know more and more of himself as he becomes more conscientious and earnest, still the full manifestation of the secrets there lodged is reserved for another world. And at the last day who can tell the affright and horror of a man who lived to himself on earth, indulging his own evil will, following his own chance notions of truth and falsehood, shunning the cross and the reproach of Christ, when his eyes are at length opened before the throne of God, and all his innumerable sins, his habitual neglect of God, his abuse of his talents, his misapplication and waste of time, and the original unexplored sinfulness of his nature, are brought clearly and fully to his view? Nay, even to the true servants of Christ the prospect is awful. “The righteous,” we are told, “will scarcely be saved.” Then will the good man undergo the full sight of his sins, which on earth he was labouring to obtain, and partly succeeded in obtaining, though life was not long enough to learn and subdue them all. Doubtless we must all endure that fierce and terrifying vision of our real selves, that last fiery trial of the soul before its acceptance, a spiritual agony and second death to all who are not then supported by the strength of Him who died to bring them safe through it, and in whom on earth they have believed. 1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, i. 48.]

2. The searching shows us also how we may walk in God’s way. “Lead me in the way everlasting.” The greatest test of a man’s life is with regard to leadership. Who shall lead? Shall it be the world, or self, or God? There is no advance until that is settled; yet not to have settled it is to have decided in favour of self and sin: “He that is not with me is against me.” It is a vital question, and presses for an instant response. This petition obviously includes surrender and submission, and it is to be a constant, continuous thing. It therefore rightly completes the circle of the permanent, universal elements in religion. “The way everlasting,” which is so beautifully interpreted in Isaiah 35 as “the way of holiness,” “an highway,” upon which no unclean thing shall walk, but “the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein: … and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads,” has been made clear in Jesus Christ, and He will lead us in triumph along this way towards the everlasting Zion. Let us welcome the leadership of Him who has come to “present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”

There is a story told of a good old preacher in Wales, in those early days when preachers used to go about Wales from one end of the country to the other. The custom among Christians who realized their privileges and responsibilities was, when a man had preached the Gospel on one side of a mountain, and had to preach it the following night on the other side, that some kind friend accompanied him a large part of the way, if not the whole way, and thus showed him the path to take. But there were some who begrudged this kindly service. The preacher of whom I speak came on one occasion into contact with one of these. He was a wealthy farmer in the district. The preacher stayed the night at this man’s house. On the following morning, when the preacher was about to start, the farmer took out a bit of a slate and traced on it the way over the mountain to the other side, and said, “Now follow this. Here the road divides, and there a path turns to the right,” etc. etc. The good old man tried to follow it, and, after making very many mistakes on the wild mountain, succeeded at length in reaching his destination. Some time after that he visited the same people a second time, and preaching from one of those tender references of Paul to those who were so ready to minister to him, significantly said, “Ah, these were a people who, when Paul preached to them, and he had to cross a mountain in order to preach the next night, would not give him a map on a slate, but would accompany him on the way and further him on his journey.” That is exactly it. There are some people who will give you a map on the slate to tell you how to walk through life, and how to enter heaven at last. They give men a few outlines of Christian teaching, or a few precepts of morality. Some are especially fond of referring you to the Sermon on the Mount, adding that you do not need anything else, as you have only to trace what Christ has taught there. What sinful men need is not a map only, although that be traced by a Divine hand. The Psalmist felt that what he wanted was a guide, who would take him by the hand, and hold him up when he was ready to fall, along the rugged journey, or on the brink of a dangerous precipice. “Lead me in the way everlasting.” 1 [Note: D. Davies, Talks with, Men, Women and Children, iii. 495.]

O might it please God that we should little regard the course of the way we tread, and have our eyes fixed on Him who conducts us, and on the blessed country to which it leads! What should it matter to us whether it is by the desert or by the meadows we go, if God is with us and we go into Paradise? 2 [Note: St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Letters.]

Literature

Black (H.), Christ’s Service of Love, 158.

Bradley (C.), Sermons, ii. 337.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 490.

Garbett (E.), Experiences of the Inner Life, 106.

Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 78.

Joynt (R. C.), Liturgy and Life, 125.

Keble, (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Lent to Passion-tide, 253.

Kemble (C.), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 43.

Mackennal (A.), Christ’s Healing Touch, 45.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms 51–145, 360.

Maclaren (A.), The Wearied Christ, 170.

Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 87.

Mountain (J.), Steps in Consecration, 13.

Slater (W. F.), Limitations Human and Divine, 97.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 903.

Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, i. 262.

Thackeray (F. St. J.), Sermons Preached in Eton College Chapel, 120.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1872), No. 775.

Voysey (C.), Sermons, iv. (1881), No. 40.

Walker (A. H.), Thinking about It, 1.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Fatal Barter, 95.

Wilkinson (J. B)., Mission Sermons, ii. 152.

Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 105.