Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 5

past, and confirming it by his own life's history. And has any one that has lived since then
stood up and said--'Behold! I have found it otherwise. I have waited on God, and He has
not heard my cry. I have served Him, and that for nought. I have trusted in Him, and been
disappointed. I have sought His face--in vain. And I say, from my own experience, that
the man who trusts in Him is not blessed'? Not one, thank God! The history of the past,
so far as this matter is concerned, may be put in one sentence 'They looked unto Him and
were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed,' and as for the present, are there not
some of us who can say, 'This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out
of all his troubles'?
Brethren! make the experiment for yourselves. Test this experience by your own simple

affiance and living trust in Jesus Christ. We have the experience of all generations to
encourage us. What has blessed them is enough for you and me. Like the meal and the oil,
which were the Prophet's resource in famine, yesterday's supply does not diminish
to-morrow's store. We, too, may have all that gladdened the hearts and stayed the spirits
of the saints of old. 'Oh! taste and see that God is good.' 'Blessed is the man that trusteth
in Him.'
So, too, God's gift produces man's praise.
What is it that He desires from us? Nothing but our thankful recognition and reception of
His benefits. We honour God by taking the full cup of salvation which He commends to
our lips, and by calling, while we drink, upon the name of the Lord. Our true response to
His Word, which is essentially a proffer of blessing to us, is to open our hearts to receive,
and, receiving, to render grateful acknowledgment. The echo of love which gives and
forgives, is love which accepts and thanks. We have but to lift up our empty and impure
hands, opened wide to receive the gift which He lays in them--and though they be empty
and impure, yet 'the lifting up of our hands' is 'as the evening sacrifice'; our sense of need
stands in the place of all offerings. The stained thankfulness of our poor hearts is
accepted by Him who inhabits the praises of eternity, and yet delights in the praises of
Israel. He bends from heaven to give, and all He asks is that we should take. He only
seeks our thankfulness--but He does seek it. And wherever His grace is discerned, and
His love is welcomed, there praise breaks forth, as surely as streams pour from the cave
of the glacier when the sun of summer melts it, or earth answers the touch of spring with
flowers.
And that effect is produced, notwithstanding all the complaints and sighs and tears which
sometimes choke our praise. It is produced even while these last; the psalms of
thanksgiving are not all reserved for the end of the book. But even in those which read
like the very sobs of a broken heart, there is ever present some tone of grateful
acknowledgment of God's mercy. He sends us sorrow, and He wills that we should
weep--but they should be tears like David's, who, at the lowest point of his fortunes,
when he plaintively besought God, 'Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle'--could say in the
same breath, 'Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto Thee.' God works
on our souls that we may have the consciousness of sin, and He wills that we should
come with broken and contrite hearts, and like the king of Israel wail out our confessions
and supplications--'Have mercy upon me, O God! according to Thy loving-kindness.' But,
like him, we should even in our lowliest abasement, when our hearts are bruised, be able
to say along with our contrition, 'Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy
praise.' Our sorrows are never so great that they hide our mercies. The sky is never so
covered with clouds that neither sun nor stars appear for many days. And in every
Christian heart the low tones of lamentation and confession are blended with grateful
praise. So it is even in the darkest moments, whilst the blast of misfortune and misery is
as a storm against the wall.
But a brighter hope even for our life here rises from these words, if we think of the place
which they hold in the whole book. They are the last words. Whatever other notes have
been sounded in its course, all ends in this. The winter's day has had its melancholy grey
sky, with many a bitter dash