Bible Commentaries

Day and Night Leading

Psalm 78:14

Did some man imagine this? I thank him. Life is the sweeter for having such men among us. What a man it was that thought of this condescension and love on the part of the miracle-working God described in this most musical psalm! It was worth being born to imagine this conception of God. It is so tender, so fatherlike, so comforting; it is charged to the full with inspiration of the best kind; it makes all things feel securer; it brings to the soul contributions from all quarters, contributions that increase its wealth, that improve its quality, that inspire its courage. Are we, then, face to face with a poem? so be it: the society is good; the touch of this man has healing in it,—"In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire." Can men imagine such history as that without anything to go upon, without a germ to start with? Why we are told the universe began with a puff of smoke, and was whirled into its present rotundity and glory by persistent force; but this man had nothing to go by. His conception of God is a greater miracle than the creation of the universe itself, even according to the suggestions of physical science—for there is no providence, no father, no rhythm of movement, in all the great action of life; it is a tumble, a scramble, a fierce on-rush, a phenomenon of madness. Yet this man dreamed one night that God in the daytime led his people with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. Thank God for such a vision: it brings with it its own authority; its music is its inspiration, its comfort is its indisputable credential. We may linger in the society of this poet; he may prove to be a prophet.

A startling statement that people were led in the daytime. Surely there is no need for leadership in the season of light. When all the heaven is aflame with glory, every man surely can lead himself. The audacity of the statement begets some interest in the speaker. An irony of this kind could only be uttered by a very great Psalm 78:25

The reference, of course, is to the manna which fell in the wilderness; and there many people might be content to leave the whole case. We soon tell by our appearance what food we have been eating. You cannot hide the bill of fare. The face is a tell-tale. The more the sensualist eats the greater a sensualist he appears to be. He feeds the flesh. He gets coarser every day; what little music there was in his voice is all dead and gone; he has choked it with the food of beasts. Once there was a little child in him, well spoken of, thought to be the germ of a fine man; but that child-angel is dead. Every mouthful of meat the man now takes makes him more beast-like. You may eat out of the very basin with Christ, but if you eat with an Iscariot's digestion, it will turn into devil. Say not that it is of no consequence what a man eats. It is of vital consequence. The mystery, however, is this, that even the best food may be turned into evil nutriment, according to the nature of the man who partakes of it. All God's wheatfields are lost upon some natures. They would seem to have put themselves beyond the range of God's almightiness. What we take we turn into our own nature. The lion grows as a lion the more he eats; though it be of the daintiest food it all becomes lion. So with us bodily, intellectually, spiritually: we tell what our food is. The glutton grows flesh: call him successful when the beast can grow no more; hang his prize on his neck and let him lie down, a specimen of brutish nature. The poet turns his food into poetry; the suppliant at God's throne takes his food and becomes a more eloquent intercessor. The nature determines everything. Herein is a great mystery of nature, of physiology, of moral purposes controlling physical appetences, of spiritual inspiration subduing everything to its own design. Yet there stands the law, that we turn whatever we appropriate into our own nature—the lion into lion, the wolf into wolf, the angel into angel, the poet into poet. Blame not in all cases the food; there are instances in which it is to be blamed: but how much depends upon the nature! how mysterious are the processes of assimilation! Our intellectual food determines our intellectual quality. We can tell what books a man has been reading by his conversation. Why ask a catalogue from the student? Simply listen to him; the catalogue is of no use. He may have gone through all the books, and they have left no impression upon him; he must be judged by his intellectual quality, bulk, force, aptitude; there need be no doubt whatever as to the process through which he has passed; your examination may be a farce; the man tells his own tale by the first sentence he utters, by the first question he propounds. If we keep companionship with wise men we grow wiser if we profit by the opportunities which have been put within our reach: we may be the more foolish, because our companionship may have been used to feed our vanity; it may have been so used as but to enable us to tell others on what a ladder we have climbed, how we have simply climbed into nothing. But the rule taken in its natural operation ought to stand thus: That the companion of the wise shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. We cannot now, supposing ourselves to have profited by our study and experience, read the books we were wont to read many years ago. Is there a more interesting exercise within its own limits than to take up the books that used to charm us? What has occurred? Nothing in the books themselves; they are just what they always were: why, then, not revive old delights? Why not re-enter into old enthusiasms regarding them? A change has taken place in the reader. Now he knows what was meant by the man who said: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Yet the things are useful in their own time. There is a contempt that is ungrateful. The boy needed one kind of food, and the man requires another. How foolish it is for persons to suppose that they must always remain at the same point, with the same elections, and the same aversions, and must never change! That is not progress; that is fatuity, insanity. There be those who say that such-and-such persons were wont to be content with such-and-such things, therefore they ought still to be content with them. That is an insult to the genius of progress. Once you were quite content to lie in the little cradle: why do you not lie there now? That is what you were used to: why do you claim any larger accommodation? Remember your beginnings, and go back to your cradle! Once you were content with little painted toys, they amused you by the hour: what do you now want with painted picture, and poem in stone, and great castle, and an environment marked all round with what used to be considered luxury? Why did you not carry your toys in your pocket that you may amuse yourself down to old age? How we used to be delighted then with certain books! They were enough for us, they just touched our terminal line; they were a little above us, still we could avail ourselves of their suggestion, and we thought ourselves philosophers because we understood them in some degree: now we smile at the couplets that used to make us wild with joy, and turn away from the men who charmed us like magicians, asking for some, it may be, ruder, sterner, directer stuff, that touches the life in its pain, that thrusts a spear in the blood, and makes us plunge forward with fiery eagerness towards some further goal. Milk for babes, strong meat for men, angels" corn for those who can appropriate and assimilate celestial food. Grow in grace: ask for larger supplies of the best material, the material upon which you can feed the soul, nourish it and strengthen it, enlarging its capacities, and qualifiying it for the ready and useful discharge of all the functions and responsibilties of life.

Our intellectual food tells upon our face. You can tell when a man has been neglecting reading; you can tell when a man has been a diligent student—not by formal beauty, over which he has no control, but by expression, and radiance, and force, and quality, not always to be described in words; you feel that he has been eating with the prophets, and he has been finding nutriment in corn from heaven. There is no deception about this matter. They who have eyes made to see, and that are sharpened by keen uses, can tell every new wrinkle that comes into a familiar face, and can see where light begins to dawn upon the flesh and almost transfigure it into spirit. If this be so intellectually, it is infinitely more so religiously. Men speak about falling from grace as if it were some mysterious process: what is easier to detect than that a man has gone down in the spirituality of his tone? At first you cannot quite understand he change, because you think it impossible that such a man can have abridged his prayers, slurred over his sacrifices, waited perfunctorily at the altar; you will not allow the heart of trust to suspect a betrayal of the Lord; yet the talk is very different, the estimate of things is quite changed, the outlook is no longer vast, but is a prison of clouds, a line of encroaching night: what is the reason of this? The man has not been praying seven times a day; if he has been praying the number of times, his window has not been opened in the right direction; if he has been through the ceremony, he has omitted the sacrifice; if he has used the words, he has lost the blood. Only blood is accepted in heaven. Is that to be understood in some merely literal sense? Then indeed it had better not be understood. It is to be understood in the sense that nothing is accepted of God that does not carry with it life, fire, consecration, absolute love,—that is blood; all else is a foul and detestable offering. Hence, it becomes comparatively easy to tell when a man has not been eating angels" food, or walking on the right levels, or keeping up his commerce with heaven; for now any frivolity will satisfy him; the fool easily laughs, the empty nature is soon filled; but the immortal disdains the table of mortality. We are all eating, we are always eating; all life is a process of absorption, appropriation, assimilation. Eating, sleeping, praying, doing business, conducting all the processes of life, we are appropriating all the time, and what we do will reveal itself in the poet's eye, or in the beast's vacancy.

Under what circumstances may men be said to eat angels" food, corn of heaven, bread sent down from God? When earth cannot satisfy him any longer, the good food is beginning to tell upon him. Earth was enough for a long time; it was called "the great globe," and men passed up and down rebuking the dreamers who called the earth a vale of tears, a land of shadows, a garden of graves; but little by little, imperceptibly as to the advance of time, man began to feel that he had not standing-ground enough here; he said, This world is not so great as I was told it was: what is the measure of things in their totality? What are these lights that gleam upon me from on high? Are they flecks of amber which some cunning hand has set there to be gazed at? or are they golden portals that fall back upon infinite palaces? I feel as if I must go up there, as if I had some rights of property there, as if there I could understand the language, and begin the life of the place at once. Why lift up your eyes on high? Why not look below you? Because there is nothing to see below me. This poor little earth has but its transient opportunities, and if it be vigilant and faithful it may grow a little in the summer-time, and then want a whole winter's repose for the poor little effort which it put forth in the middle of the year: things here only grow in handfuls: I feel as if yonder "infinite day excludes the night, and pleasures banish pain."

What has a man been doing who talks thus ecstatically? He has been eating angels" food, and he is growing angel-like; already he is more in heaven than on earth; the food is telling upon him. A man may be said to eat angels" food when he grows in spirituality. You can no longer deceive him by the letter, or limit him by the narrow dogma; he says, All these things are beginnings, alphabets, hints, dawns; but yonder is the meaning of it all: I seek a country out of sight; I will not have your land flowing with milk and honey, a little Canaan that could be measured by field-surveyors; I pant, I yearn, for a land far off, infinite as God's infinity: meanwhile, being here, I will do the day's work, not with a hireling's industry, but with the consecration of one who is anointed from on high; this work shall not be spoiled because of its littleness, but done with all the patience and care and hopefulness of love: yet all the while I will feel that I would not do this little work in this little space, but for what lies beyond: an eternal impulse makes me do the temporal service. Growing in spirituality is not a metaphysical process; it is concrete, intelligible, patent to the observation; it is not a growth in mere sentiment, it is not an enrichment of the nature in mere foam of ecstasy and rapture: it is a larger outlook, a firmer grasp of things eternal, a clearer view of distant things; it is a growth in preparation, in the estimate of relative values, in sympathy with God. Growing so the whole world changes; its duties become light, its burdens become comparatively easy, its wealth a handful of dust that may be thrown up and caught again and laid down with a conjuror's ease. Growth in spirituality means larger intercourse with God, keener perception of religious essences and moral affinities. Growth in spirituality means a throwing-off of mere burdensomeness and ceremony and ritual; a forsaking of the fleshpots of Egypt, and a yearning for the society of angels and spirits, blessed and immortal. There is no immodesty in claiming that there may be direct consciousness of these things. Where there could be any boasting about them that very boasting would destroy the reality of the claim. The nearer a man comes to God the more he says, "I exceedingly fear and quake." Moses did not grow in pious frivolity when he grew in intimacy with God. Now and again a man or two might follow him up the mountains so far; but there is a point on the mountains of God where every man must break oft from every other man, and go up alone. How high the hill, how solemn the silence, how infinite the outlook! Does the mountain tremble under the man's feet? Is heaven coming down upon him like a burden to crush him? Is the air peopled with innumerable: spirits? There is no one with whom to converse, with whom to exchange fears, an exchange that might mitigate the terror; there is nothing but solitude.

We can now do better than eat angels" food, a larger feast has been prepared for us,—we can eat the body and drink the blood of Christ: "Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." When the disciples heard that they felt a new hunger in the soul, and they said, "Lord, evermore give us this bread." When Jesus Christ spoke about the water, he made the poor woman at the well thirsty, so that she, said, " sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." What a way he had of preaching his gospel! When he said "bread," the heart hungered; when he said "water," the soul thirsted,—"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." "Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.... I am that bread." Other men have died, said Christ, whatever they have eaten: "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness," and called it angels" food, "and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." This is the table that is spread for the soul's satisfaction today. "Assuredly, assuredly, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.... This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." They were offended, because they were literalists, and did not understand such poetry as this. At once they seized the most obvious idea, and thought of actually and literally eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus Christ! but he said: "The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,"—not the words as a doctrine, but the words he was now speaking about flesh and blood: when he said "flesh," he meant truth; when he said "blood," he meant life: when he said "eat my flesh and drink my blood," he said, Appropriate me, take me, have none other but me. Into this mystery the soul must enter if it would hold high sacrament. Without a realisation of this mystery, the sacrament becomes but a ceremony, a vain show, an empty ritual. What is it, then, that becomes the true factor in all the sacred emblemism and sacred worship? It is faith. Still faith removes mountains, works miracles, creates and establishes vital transformations. Faith is the soul's life. "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Without faith it is impossible to please him. Faith takes the bread, and turns it into the flesh of Christ; faith takes the emblematic wine, and makes it sacrificial blood. All that is outward and literal is but initial and helpful. If we stop there, we are like men who have gone to seek a king, and have halted beside the gate; yea, we may have opened the gate and gone inside, but we have gone no further. The king is not at the gate; the gate but opens upon the palace; we must pass the gate, ascend the road, go higher, and ask for the presence-chamber itself; and if Reason opened the gate, Faith must complete the pilgrimage, and originate the introduction, and secure the exchange of communications. Lord, increase our faith!

Let not the bad man think that he can disguise the processes through which he is conducting his life. Let that be insisted upon. The countenance cannot be made to tell a permanent lie. For a time it may be painted and decorated, for a moment or two a smile may light upon it which may deceive the simple and the unwary; but the countenance, caught at off times, watched narrowly all the day, searched through and through with a seer's eyes, tells at what tavern a man has been drinking, at what hostelry he has been sleeping, at what table he has been feeding his hunger. The most successful hypocrite can get through but one moment's real deception with wise men. Even the completeness of his mimicry tells against him. He is too successful in his mimetics. Were he to stumble and blunder now and then, such halting might be a tribute to his honesty; but living for the occasion, appealing to the immediate judgment, snatching a prize with a dishonest hand, he will be blown out, and there shall come down upon his candle, already far burnt, one drop of rain from heaven, and with a noise it shall go out and be lighted no more. The triumphing of the hypocrite is short; the candle of the wicked shall be put out, and nothing shall be known of it but an evil odour. There is bread enough in your Father's house: why perish with hunger? Let your hunger prove your manhood; let your necessities prove the divinity of your origin; let that panting for other water, that hunger for other food, which must now and again seize the soul that is not dead, testify to the fact that you were made to be guests of God, that you were meant to be children of the Most High. " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." "Eat and drink abundantly, O beloved." The Bible is the hospitable book. It is always preparing a table for the hungry, opening fountains in the desert for the thirsty and the weary. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water,"—springing water, water that comes up out of the rock, pure as the crystal river that flows fast by the throne of God. Lord, evermore give us this bread! Lord, evermore give us of this water of life!