07.01. Statutes and Songs

I. STATUTES AND SONGS

Psalms 119:54 THE Jews have never forgotten that they are the descendants of a pilgrim race, From the day that their great forefather crossed the Euphrates, and became the Hebrew, to the present, they have been the nation of the wan­dering foot, found in every land, but at home in none. Their literature is dyed with this con­ception. It abounds with the confession that they are strangers and sojourners upon earth. Abraham made it when he stood up from before his dead, and pur­chased the cave of Machpelah from the sons of Heth. Jacob made it when he stood in the presence of Pharaoh and of the solid memorials of Egyptian great­ness. Hezekiah made it when he com­pared his life to a shepherd’s tent. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews made it when he alleged that the con­tinuing city was yet to come. It is made here: "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." But these plaintive confessions are not confined to Jews; they are the heritage of all nations. Few things in our language are more touching than the comparison made by the Northumbrian chieftain, on the eve of the introduction of Christianity, between man’s life and the flight of a sparrow through a lighted hall, coming out of the darkness and storm, and after a brief flight going forth into it again. Under this head, what more suggestive than Chaucer’s "Can­terbury Tales," told in an inn!

Earth is but a camping-ground, on which we halt for a little on our journey forward into the great eternity which awaits us. Other generations have been here before us, and have gone, we know not whither; but they are marching on­ward and forward somewhere, and we must follow them, as others us. Indeed, our world has been compared to the site of a Gipsy encampment, where the gray ash, broken pottery, and fluttering rags tell of previous caravans that made it their halting-place for a few nights, and then yoked in the lank steeds and went on to other camping-grounds. The merry-go-rounds will stop, the oil lamps cease to flare, the fair will be done, and we shall be away with the daybreak.

These things need to be repeated; we are so apt to forget. The mere fact of returning night after night to our homes and beds makes us think that they are permanent abiding-places, when, in point of fact, we never come back to them where we left them. During our ab­sence at the mill or the school they have been moved farther along the road we are traveling, as Arabs move forward the tents of European tourists in Pales­tine, so that they are awaiting them for the evening meal. Our homes are tents, always moving forward, because we are ever on the march toward our eternal abode.

We are exiles beside the river of time, as Israel was in Babylon, and we mingle our tears with its waters as we reflect on the brevity and transience of our days. THE HOUSE OF OUR PILGRIMAGE.

What can this be but our mortal body? "The Word was made flesh, and taber­nacled among us"; "I must put off this my tabernacle"; "When the earthly house of this tabernacle is broken up, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." It has been truly said that we are not flesh and blood, but are made partakers of flesh and blood. Each one of us is an immortal spirit, created in the like­ness of God, and for a little while brought under the conditions of mortality as an education for our eternal condition. During our brief sojourn here we reside in the body as our tent. It is the house of our pilgrimage. The tent is frail. "The veil, that is to say, His flesh." Only a veil hangs between us and the great constellations of eternity, between us and the world of realities, between us and the face of God. A breath may wave it, an insect’s sting may pierce it, a thorn may rend it. The tent is not always perfect to begin with. Some of us start on our pilgrim­age with a crazy house, which is always in need of attention and repair. Life is much more difficult under such condi­tions. Paul’s thorn in the flesh made it less likely that he could achieve as much as other men; it was by God’s grace that he actually achieved more. All honor to the men who have triumphed over the limitations and deficiencies of their physical environment, and have become more than conquerors through Him who loved them. We are all proud of a former Postmaster-General, who, not­withstanding his blindness, was able to reach and hold with credit one of the highest positions in the land. The tent has a limited durability. It is not intended to last for more than eighty or ninety years at the utmost. Its average duration is much less than this. With all our efforts for its repair, it inevitably wears out at last. But how important to distinguish between tent and tenant! The one material and tem­porary; the other spiritual and immor­tal. When you come upon a wrecked signal-box, a ruined house, you know that the inmate has moved on. He is living somewhere. This is only the place where he lived and wrought-the lab­oratory of the chemist, the forge of the eager worker, the observatory of the heaven-soaring thinker. So, when the body is all that is left you of the dear one in whose company you were accus­tomed to make pilgrimage, treat it reverently and lovingly, but remember it is the worn-out tent of the spirit, which is clothed upon with its new house, which is from heaven. MY SONGS. "Songs in the house of my pilgrimage." This is startling. The pilgrim’s lot is so changeful. No sooner has he become settled than he must be gone. The enchanting prospect, the sweet beauty of nature in her loveli­est dress, the tender love of friends, the delicious sense of repose-all must be abandoned when the bugle sounds the reveille. So fair is the site that one would fain linger, but there is no alternative than to strike the tent and follow. See, the pillar of cloud is already on its way, moving in stately march over the desert sand! Is it possible to sing, when such partings and settings forth and farewells are ever our lot? The weak heart clings to the past, dreads the un­known-can it sing? The pilgrim’s life is so perilous. Take the experiences of an explorer. The fruits he plucks on the unknown soil may poison him; the flowers may narco­tize him with their scent; miasma may lurk amid the most bewitching scenery; the waters of certain streams may be unfit to drink. He does not know the native customs, and at any time may involve himself, most innocently, in their undying hatred. Every day leads him through strange and difficult circum­stances; every night is spent at a new resting-place. Amid so much that is trying and perplexing, is it possible for the heart to sing? Yet this is what the psalmist says: "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

THY STATUTES. A clue to the song will perhaps be forthcoming when we inquire more closely into the nature of God’s statutes. What are they? A statute is something which is established, fixed, permanent. God’s statutes are what He has laid down as the founda­tions of His dealings with men, and which are more lasting than the ever­lasting hills. This wonderful acrostic psalm, which weaves into its texture the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, abounds in references to the divine statutes. Seven times over the psalmist utters the prayer, "Teach me Thy statutes," and toward the close of the psalm he rejoices in the assurance that God has answered his cry and become his Instructor. There are seven other references to the divine statutes, on which we have now no space to dwell at length, though each is full of instruction and inspiration.

God’s statutes may probably be com­prehended in three classes: His promises. His procedure, i.e., the method of His government.

See how songful each of these is to the loving and obedient heart, though only to such. His precepts yield song. Shakespeare says that music is "the consent of sweet sounds." But it is more, just as poetry consists of something more than harmo­nious words. Music is the language of the unseen and eternal, and song is the accord of the heart with this the utter­ance of eternity. Of course there are evil songs, which show that the heart of the singer is in accord with the dark nether world of evil; but good and holy songs show that the heart of the singer has caught the strains and chords of the bright, blessed world of God and the holy angels. But how should we know the thoughts and principles of the unseen and eternal world, if it were not for the divine pre­cepts? God has set them up on earth, that we might know, through them, the order of the divine realm, and might, by obedience, bring ourselves into accord with it. Take, then, the precepts of the Bible, especially those given by our Lord-His reiterated commands to love, to pray, to sacrifice self. Embody them in every act of the life and every pulse of thought; learn them, obey them, fol­low them; and when the life is married to them, as noble music to noble words, there will come a new gladness into the heart and a new song in the life. What rapture there is in obedience! What comfort and joy in the Holy Ghost! What songfulness in having a conscience void of offense toward God and man! Thus God’s precepts become our songs in the house of our pilgrimage. His promises are conducive to song. Is the pilgrim life so changeful? Lis­ten to His promise that He will abide the same, even to hoar hairs and forever. Is it so perilous? Remember, He has promised to go before to prepare the path, and to follow after as our rearward. Is it so lonely? Have lover and friend stood aside? Have the companions of early years dropped away? Are all the faces growing strange and unfamiliar? Still, recall His promise that He will never leave, neither forsake.

Let us con the promises, remember­ing that they are ordered in all things and sure, that they touch every possi­ble phase of life, that they are the bank­notes of heaven, each bearing the signa­ture of the Almighty, that they are yea and amen in Christ; and as we meditate and pray there will be a sense of secu­rity and wealth breathed into us, which will awaken songs. God’s promises will become songs in the house of our pilgrimage. The order of the divine procedure and government is also provocative of song. The world around is full of the at­tempts and triumphs of high-handed wrong. Pride and will-worship, the lust of the flesh and of the eyes, the down-treading of the weak by the strong, the spoiling of the defenseless by the arro­gant oppressor, the apparent success of those that set at naught God’s law­-these facts are patent to us all. They accost us in every street and flaunt themselves before our eyes. And the waters of a full cup are wrung out to us as we cry, with one of old, "Why do the wicked prosper?" But when we turn our thoughts heavenward we are arrested by the order, regularity, prevalence, of God’s statutes -this, that light is stronger than dark­ness, and Christ than Satan; this, that holiness and purity mean always and everywhere blessedness; this, that false­hood and wrong-doing carry with them­selves the seeds of disintegration and decay; this, that those who love their lives lose them, while to those who seek first the kingdom of God all else is added. And as we consider the certainty that ultimately God will justify Himself be­fore the eyes of the universe and estab­lish righteousness and justice, vindicating the oppressed and punishing the wrong­doer, we seem to be standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God, and singing the song of the redeemed: "Great and marvelous are Thy works; ... just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints." Thus the order and pro­cedure of the divine government may become our songs in the house of our pilgrimage. And if our songs be so heaven-soar­ing and glad when we are yet in the shifting tent, surrounded by much that, as the psalmist says in the previous verse, is calculated to fill us with horror, what will they not be when we draw near our home, our true abiding-place, our city with its foundations; nay, what will they not be when we have crossed the threshold, and are mingling with the innumerable company of angels and with the spirits of the perfected saints! If there are festal days when the pilgrims meet in the inn on the way to their home, what will not the overflowing gladness be when they are at home forever!

"Free from a world of death and sin, With God eternally shut in."