December 23

I have gone astray like a lost sheep. - Psalms 119:176.

HERE the Psalmist refers to his moral infirmities or deviations from duty. And what is the whole course of a state of nature but a series of wanderings? wanderings from the truth, from righteousness, from God; from God as our sovereign, our portion, our centre, and our end.

Even when we have been brought back to God, how sadly prone are we to depart from him again. Alas! even in his renewed state, the Christian has too frequently reason to adopt this confession, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; “though he may be able to add, “Seek thy servant, since I do not forget thy commandments; and with Dr. Watts to say:

“I need the influence of thy grace

To speed me on my way,

Lest I should loiter in my race,

Or turn my feet astray.”

“All we,” says the Church, “like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way.” In meditation how the mind is turned aside. In prayer what wanderings of thought-depriving the suppliants of pleasure in the exercise, and often filling them with fear as to the success of it. In hearing the precious word of God how often do we find our heart, like the fool’s eye, in the ends of the earth. And these wanderings are known unto God, “to whom all hearts are open, and from whom nothing is hid.” Hence David, in addressing God, says, “Thou tellest my wanderings.”

Although he “knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust,” yet he cannot approve of these wanderings; he sees sin in them, and he will correct his people for them. It will be well if we are able to say in reference to this as David did, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes: for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.”

Affliction falls upon the Christian as the evening darkness falls, which at once hides the earth, and lays open the sky. Affliction is a call from these rovings, or else a hindrance to check them. We may see this exemplified in God’s dispensation towards the Jews in the time of Hosea. The Church was wandering after her lovers who had given her corn and wine and oil to induce her to go astray. “But,” says God, “behold I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths; then shall she say, I will go and return unto my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.”

It is well if God sees that we feel these moral wanderings to be our afflictions as well as our infirmities; and well if his goodness, instead of casting us off for them, leads us to repentance, inducing us to sorrow after a godly sorrow, and to say-

“My soul hath gone too far astray,

My feet too often slip,

Yet since I’ve not forgot thy way,

Restore thy wandering sheep.”