Psalms 63:1–63:8

Psalm 63:1-4 1. O God! thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul has thirsted for thee, my flesh has longed for thee in [425] a desert and thirsty [426] land, where no water Isaiah 2 . Thus have I beheld thee in the sanctuary, to see thy power and thy glory. 3. Because thy mercy is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. 4. Thus will I bless thee while I:live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. 1. O God! thou art my God. The wilderness of Judah, spoken of in the title, can be no other than that of Ziph, where David wandered so long in a state of concealment. We may rely upon the truth of the record he gives us of his exercise when under his trials; and it is apparent that he never allowed himself to be so far overcome by them, as to cease lifting up his prayers to heaven, and even resting, with a firm and constant faith, upon the divine promises. Apt as we are, when assaulted by the very slightest trials, to lose the comfort of any knowledge of God we may previously have possessed, it is necessary that we should notice this, and learn, by his example, to struggle to maintain our confidence under the worst troubles that can befall us. He does more than simply pray; he sets the Lord before him as his God, that he may throw all his cares unhesitatingly upon him, deserted as he was of man, and a poor outcast in the waste and howling wilderness. His faith, shown in this persuasion of the favor and help of God, had the effect of exciting him to constant and vehement prayer for the grace which he expected. In saying that his soul thirsted, and his flesh longed, he alludes to the destitution and poverty which he lay under in the wilderness, and intimates, that though deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence, he looked to God as his meat and his drink, directing all his desires to him. When he represents his soul as thirsting, and his flesh as hungering, we are not to seek for any nice or subtile design in the distinction. He means simply that he desired God, both with soul and body. For although the body, strictly speaking, is not of itself influenced by desire, we know that the feelings of the soul intimately and extensively affect it. 2. Thus in the sanctuary, etc. It is apparent, as already hinted, that God was ever in his thoughts, though wandering in the wilderness under such circumstances of destitution. The particle thus is emphatic. Even when so situated, in a wild and hideous solitude, where the very horrors of the place were enough to have distracted his meditations, he exercised himself in beholding the power and glory of God, just as if he had been in the sanctuary. Formerly, when it was in his power to wait upon the tabernacle, he was far from neglecting that part of the instituted worship of God. He was well aware that he needed such helps to devotion. But now, when shut out, in the providence of God, from any such privilege, he shows, by the delight which he took in spiritual views of God, that his was not a mind engrossed with the symbols, or mere outward ceremonial of religion. He gives evidence how much he had profited by the devotional exercises enjoined under that dispensation. It is noticeable of ignorant and superstitious persons, that they seem full of zeal and fervor so long as they come in contact with the ceremonies of religion, while their seriousness evaporates immediately upon these being withdrawn. David, on the contrary, when these were removed, continued to retain them in his recollection, and rise, through their assistance, to fervent aspirations after God. We may learn by this, when deprived at any time of the outward means of grace, to direct the eye of our faith to God in the worst circumstances, and not to forget him whenever the symbols of holy things are taken out of our sight. The great truth, for example, of our spiritual regeneration, though but once represented to us in baptism, should remain fixed in our minds through our whole life, [427] ( Titus 3:5 ; Ephesians 5:26 .) The mystical union subsisting between Christ and his members should be matter of reflection, not only when we sit at the Lord's table, but at all other times. Or suppose that the Lord's Supper, and other means of advancing our spiritual welfare, were taken from us by an exercise of tyrannical power, it does not follow that our minds should ever cease to be occupied with the contemplation of God. The expression, So have I beheld thee to see, etc., indicates the earnestness with which he was intent upon the object, directing his whole meditation to this, that he might see the power and glory of God, of which there was a reflection in the sanctuary. 3 Because thy mercy is better than life, etc. I have no objections to read the verse in this connected form, though I think that the first clause would be better separated, and taken in with the verse preceding. David would appear to be giving the reason of his earnestness in desiring God. By life is to be understood, in general, everything which men use for their own maintenance and defense. When we think ourselves well provided otherwise, we feel no disposition to have recourse to the mercy of God. That being (to speak so) which we have of our own, prevents us from seeing that we live through the mere grace of God. [428] As we are too much disposed to trust in aids of a carnal kind, and to forget God, the Psalmist here affirms that we should have more reliance upon the divine mercy in the midst of death, than upon what we are disposed to call, or what may appear to be, life. Another interpretation has been given of the words of this verse, but a very meagre and feeble one, -- That the mercy of God is better than life itself; or, in other words, that the divine favor is preferable to every other possession. But the opposition is evidently between that state of secure prosperity, in which men are so apt to rest with complacency, and the mercy of God, which is the stay of such as are ready to sink and perish, and which is the one effectual remedy for supplying (if one might use that expression) all defects. The word which I have rendered life, being in the plural number in the Hebrew, has led Augustine to assign a meaning to the sentence which is philosophical and ingenious, but without foundation, as the plural of the word is quite commonly used in the singular signification. He considered that the term lives was here used in reference to the truth, That different men affect different modes of life, some seeking riches, and others pleasure; some desiring the luxuries, and some the honors of this world, while others are given to their sensual appetites. He conceived that there was an opposition stated in the verse between these various kinds of life and eternal life, here by a common figure of speech called mercy, because it is of grace, and not of merit. But it is much more natural to understand the Psalmist as meaning, that it was of no consequence how large a share men possess of prosperity, and of the means which are generally thought to make life secure, the divine mercy being a better foundation of trust than any life fashioned out to ourselves, and than all other supports taken together. [429] On this account the Lord's people, however severely they may suffer from poverty, or the violence of human wrongs, or the languor of desire, or hunger and thirst, or the many troubles and anxieties of life, may be happy notwithstanding; for it is well with them, in the best sense of the term, when God is their friend. Unbelievers, on the other hand, must be miserable, even when all the world smiles upon them; for God is their enemy, and a curse necessarily attaches to their lot. In the words which follow, David expresses his consequent resolution to praise God. When we experience his goodness, we are led to open our lips in thanksgiving. His intention is intimated still more clearly in the succeeding verse, where he says that he will bless God in his life There is some difficulty, however, in ascertaining the exact sense of the words. When it is said, So will I bless thee, etc., the so may refer to the good reason which he had, as just stated, to praise God, from having felt how much better it is to live by life communicated from God, than to live of and from ourselves. [430] Or the sense may be, so, that is, even in this calamitous and afflicted condition: for he had already intimated that, amidst the solitude of the wilderness, where he wandered, he would still direct his eye to God. The word life, again, may refer to his life as having been preserved by divine interposition; or the sense of the passage may be, that he would bless God through the course of his life. The former meaning conveys the fullest matter of instruction, and agrees with the context; he would bless God, because, by his goodness, he had been kept alive and in safety. The sentiment is similar to that which we find elsewhere, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord;" -- ( Psalm 118:17 ) and again; -- "The dead shall not praise the Lord, neither any that go down into silence, but we who live will bless the Lord," ( Psalm 115:17 , 18.) In the lifting up of hands, [431] in the second clause of the verse, allusion is made to praying and vowing; and he intimates, that besides giving thanks to God, he would acquire additional confidence in supplication, and be diligent in the exercise of it. Any experience we may have of the divine goodness, while it stirs us up to gratitude, should, at the same time, strengthen our hopes of the future, and lead us confidently to expect that God will perfect the grace which he has begun. Some understand by the lifting up of his hands, that he refers to praising the Lord. Others, that he speaks of encouraging himself from the divine assistance, and boldly encountering his enemies. But I prefer the interpretation which has been already given. Footnotes: [425] The Syriac, and several MSS., read k'rph, ke-erets, as a land, instead of k'rph, be-erets, in a land, like the parallel text of Psalm 143:6 . The two letters, k, caph, and v, beth, may be easily mistaken for each other, differing less than the Roman letters c and g [426] The Hebrew word yph, ayeph, here rendered thirsty, is literally weary; "that is," says Horsley, "a land that creates weariness by the roughness of the ways, the steepness of the hills, and the want of all accommodations." He reads, "dry and inhospitable." [427] "Suivant cela, nous devons toute notre vie porter engrave en notre entendement le lavement spirituel, lequel Christ nous a une fois represente au baptesme." -- Fr. [428] "Denique nostrum esse, ut ita loquar, perstringit nobis oculos, ne cernamus sola Dei gratia nos subsistere." -- Lat. "Brief, notre Etre, si ainsi faut parler, nous eblouit les yeux, tellement que nous ne voyons pas que c'est par la seule grace de Dieu que nous subsistons." -- Fr. [429] "Thy loving-kindness, chsdk, chasdeca, thy effusive mercy is better, mchyym, me-chayim than Lives: it is better, or good beyond, countless ages of human existence." -- Dr Adam Clarke [430] "Melius esse nobis vivificari ab ipso quam apud nos vivere." [431] "The practice of lifting up the hands in prayer towards heaven, the supposed residence of the object to which prayer is addressed, was anciently used, both by believers, as appears from various passages in the Old Testament, and by the heathen, agreeably to numerous instances in the classical writers. Parkhurst, considering the hand' to be the chief organ or instrument of man's power and operations, and properly supposing the word to be thence used very extensively by the Hebrews for power, agency, dominion, assistance, and the like, regards the lifting up of men's hands in prayer as an emblematical acknowledging of the power, and imploring of the assistance of their respective gods. Is it not, however, rather the natural and unstudied gesture of earnest supplication?" -- Mant.

< {a} wilderness of Judah.>> O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul {b} thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; (a) That is, of Ziph 1Sa 23:14. (b) Though he was both hungry and in great distress, yet he made God above all meat and drink.

« A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. » O God, thou [art] my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; When he was in the wilderness of Judah — That is, of Idumea, saith Genebrard, which bordered upon the tribe of Judah; but better understand it either of the forest of Hareth, 1 Samuel 22:5 , or of the wilderness of Ziph, 1 Samuel 23:14 , where David was, In deserto desertus exul, et omnis fere consolationis inept, not only destitute of outward comforts, but in some desertion of soul; Et sic miserrimus, et calamitosissimus oberravit, saith Beza. O God, thou art my God — And that is now mine only comfort; Divini mellis alvearium, the bee hive of heavenly honey. Early will I seek thee — Now they who seek God early have a promise that they shall find him. Aben-Ezra rendereth it, Sicut mercator gemmas, inquiram re, I will diligently seek thee, as a merchant doth the precious stones ñåçã (Mercator). My soul thirsteth for thee — Thirst is Taclith hattaavah, say the Rabbis, the perfection of desire. The whole life of a Christian is nothing else but Sanctum desiderium, saith Austin. How many broken spirits spend and exhale themselves in continual sallies, as it were, and egressions of affection unto God, thirsting after, not only a union, but a unity with him? My flesh longeth for thee — Non habet haec vex secium, saith Aben-Ezra; this word is here only found. It is a notable metaphor, saith another interpreter, taken from women with child, to express the earnest affection that he had to God-ward. The Septuagint rendereth it ποσαπλως , Quam multipliciter. His soul, his flesh, all was on a light fire, as it were, with ardent affection towards God (R. Solomon). In a dry and thirsty land — Where I am hardly bestead, and at a great fault for outward accommodations, but much more for sweet and spiritual communion with thee in holy ordinances; there lieth the pinch of my grief.

O God, thou art my God,.... Not by nature only, or by birth; not merely as an Israelite and son of Abraham; but by grace through Christ, and in virtue of an everlasting covenant, the blessings and promises of which were applied unto him; and he, by faith, could now claim his interest in them, and in his God as his covenant God; who is a God at hand and afar off, was his God in the wilderness of Judea, as in his palace at Jerusalem. The Targum is, "thou art my strength;'' early will I seek thee; or "I will morning thee" (o); I will seek thee as soon as the morning appears; and so the Targum, "I will arise in the morning before thee;'' it has respect to prayer in the morning, and to seeking God early, and in the first place; see Psalm 5:3 ; or "diligently" (p); as a merchant seeks for goodly pearls, or other commodities suitable for him; so Aben Ezra suggests, as if the word was to be derived, not from "the morning", but from "merchandise"; and those who seek the Lord both early and diligently shall find him, and not lose their labour, Proverbs 2:4 ; my soul thirsteth for thee; after his word, worship, and ordinances; after greater knowledge of him, communion with him, and more grace from him; particularly after pardoning grace and justifying righteousness; see Psalm 42:1 ; My flesh longeth for thee; which is expressive of the same thing in different words; and denotes, that he most earnestly desired, with his whole self, his heart, soul, and strength, that he might enjoy the presence of God; in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; such was the wilderness of Judea, where he now was, and where he was destitute of the means of grace, of the ordinances of God's house, and wanted comfort and refreshment for his soul, which he thirsted and longed after, as a thirsty man after water in a desert place. (o) "sub auroram quaero te", Piscator. (p) "Studiosissime", Gejerus, Michaelis.

,2 Early will I seek thee. The true Christian devotes to God the morning hour. He opens the eyes of his understanding with those of his body, and awakes each morning to righteousness. He arises with a thirst after those comforts which the world cannot give, and has immediate recourse by prayer to the Fountain of the water of life. The true believer is convinced, that nothing in this sinful world can satisfy the wants and desires of his immortal soul; he expects his happiness from God, as his portion. When faith and hope are most in exercise, the world appears a weary desert, and the believer longs for the joys of heaven, of which he has some foretastes in the ordinances of God upon earth.

PSALM 63 Ps 63:1-11. The historical occasion referred to by the title was probably during Absalom's rebellion (compare 2Sa 15:23, 28; 16:2). David expresses an earnest desire for God's favor, and a confident expectation of realizing it in his deliverance and the ruin of his enemies. 1. early … seek thee—earnestly (Isa 26:9). The figurative terms— dry and thirsty—literally, "weary," denoting moral destitution, suited his outward circumstances. soul—and—flesh—the whole man (Ps 16:9, 10).

O God, thou art my God - The words here rendered God are not the same in the original. The first one - אלהים 'Elohiym - is in the plural number, and is the word which is usually employed to designate God Genesis 1:1 ; the second - אל 'Êl - is a word which is very often applied to God with the idea of strength - a strong, a mighty One; and there is probably this underlying idea here, that God was the source of his strength, or that in speaking of God as his God, he was conscious of referring to him as Almighty. It was the divine attribute of power on which his mind mainly rested when he spoke of him as his God. He did not appeal to him merely as God, with no reference to a particular attribute; but he had particularly in his eye his power or his ability to deliver and save him. In Psalm 22:1 , where, in our version, we have the same expression, "My God, my God," the two words in the original are identical, and are the same which is used here - אל 'Êl - as expressive of strength or power. The idea suggested here is, that in appealing to God, while we address him as our God, and refer to his general character as God, it is not improper to have in our minds some particular attribute of his character - power, mercy, love, truth, faithfulness, etc. - as the special ground of our appeal. Early will I seek thee - The word used here has reference to the early dawn, or the morning; and the noun which is derived from the verb, means the aurora, the dawn, the morning. The proper idea, therefore, would be that of seeking God in the morning, or the early dawn; that is, as the first thing in the day. Compare the notes at Isaiah 26:9 . The meaning here is, that he would seek God as the first thing in the day; first in his plans and purposes; first in all things. He would seek God before other things came in to distract and divert his attention; he would seek God when he formed his plans for the day, and before other influences came in, to control and direct him. The favor of God was the supreme desire of his heart, and that desire would be indicated by his making him the earliest - the first - object of his search. His first thoughts - his best thoughts - therefore, he resolved should be given to God. A desire to seek God as the first object in life - in youth - in each returning day - at the beginning of each year, season, month, week - in all our plans and enterprises - is one of the most certain evidences of true piety; and religion flourishes most in the soul, and flourishes only in the soul, when we make God the first object of our affections and desires. My soul thirsteth for thee - See the notes at Psalm 42:2 . My flesh longeth for thee - All my passions and desires - my whole nature. The two words - "soul" and "flesh," are designed to embrace the entire man, and to express the idea that he longed supremely for God; that all his desires, whether springing directly from the soul, or the needs of the body, rose to God as the only source from which they could be gratified. In a dry and thirsty land - That is, As one longs for water in a parched desert, so my soul longs for God. The word thirsty is in the margin, as in Hebrew, weary. The idea is that of a land where, from its parched nature - its barrenness - its rocks - its heat - its desolation - one would be faint and weary on a journey. Where no water is - No running streams; no gushing fountains; nothing to allay the thirst.

Psalms THIRST AND SATISFACTION Psalm 63:1 , Psalm 63:5 , Psalm 63:8 . It is a wise advice which bids us regard rather what is said than who says it, and there are few regions in which the counsel is more salutary than at present in the study of the Old Testament, and especially the Psalms. This authorship has become a burning question which is only too apt to shut out far more important things. Whoever poured out this sweet meditation in the psalm before us, his tender longings for, and his jubilant possession of, God remain the same. It is either the work of a king in exile, or is written by some one who tries to cast himself into the mental attitude of such a person, and to reproduce his longing and his trust. It may be a question of literary interest, but it is of no sort of spiritual or religious importance whether the author is David or a singer of later date endeavouring to reproduce his emotions under certain circumstances. The three clauses which I have read, and which are so strikingly identical in form, constitute the three pivots on which the psalm revolves, the three bends in the stream of its thought and emotion. ‘My soul thirsts; my soul is satisfied; my soul follows hard after Thee.’ The three phases of emotion follow one another so swiftly that they are all wrapped up in the brief compass of this little song. Unless they in some degree express our experiences and emotions, there is little likelihood that our lives will be blessed or noble, and we have little right to call ourselves Christians. Let us follow the windings of the stream, and ask ourselves if we can see our own faces in its shining surface. I. The soul that knows its own needs will thirst after God. The Psalmist draws the picture of himself as a thirsty man in a waterless land. That may be a literally true reproduction of his condition, if indeed the old idea is correct, that this is a work of David’s; for there is no more appalling desert than that in which he wandered as an exile. It is a land of arid mountains without a blade of verdure, blazing in their ghastly whiteness under the fierce sunshine, and with gaunt ravines in which there are no pools or streams, and therefore no sweet sound of running waters, no shadow, no songs of birds, but all is hot, dusty, glaring, pitiless; and men and beasts faint, and loll out their tongues, and die for want of water. And, says the Psalmist, such is life, if due regard be had to the deepest wants of a soul, notwithstanding all the abundant supplies which are spread in such rich and loving luxuriance around us-we are thirsty men in a waterless land. I need not remind you how true it is that a man is but a bundle of appetites, desires, often tyrannous, often painful, always active. But the misery of it is-the reason why man’s misery is great upon him is-mainly, I suppose, that he does not know what it is that he wants; that he thirsts, but does not understand what the thirst means, nor what it is that will slake it. His animal appetites make no mistakes; he and the beasts know that when they are thirsty they have to drink, and when they are hungry they have to eat, and when they are drowsy they have to sleep. But the poor instinct of the animal that teaches it what to choose and what to avoid fails us in the higher reaches; and we are conscious of a craving, and do not find that the craving reveals to us the source from whence its satisfaction can be derived. Therefore ‘broken cisterns that can hold no water’ are at a premium, and ‘the fountain of living waters’ is turned away from, though it could slake so many thirsts. Like ignorant explorers in an enemy’s country, we see a stream, and we do not stop to ask whether there is poison in it or not before we glue our thirsty lips to it. There is a great old promise in one of the prophets which puts this notion of the misinterpretation of our thirsts, and the mistakes as to the sources from which they can be slaked, into one beautiful metaphor which is obscured in our English version. The prophet Isaiah says, according to our reading, ‘the parched land shall become a pool.’ The word which he uses is that almost technical one which describes the phenomenon known only in Eastern lands, or at least known in them only in its superlative degree; the mirage, where the dancing currents of ascending air simulate the likeness of a cool lake, with palm-trees around it. And, says he, ‘the mirage shall become a pool,’ the romance shall turn into a reality, the mistakes shall be rectified, and men shall know what it is that they want, and shall get it when they know. Brethren! unless we have listened to the teaching from above, unless we have consulted far more wisely and far more profoundly than many of us have ever done the meaning of our own hearts when they cry out, we too shall only be able to take for ours the plaintive cry of the half of this first utterance of the Psalmist, and say despairingly, ‘My soul thirsteth.’ Blessed are they who know where the fountain is, who know the meaning of the highest unrests in their own souls, and can go on to say with clear and true self-revelation, ‘My soul thirsteth for God!’ That is religion. There is a great deal more in Christianity than longing, but there is no Christianity worth the name without it. There is moral stimulus to activity, a pattern for conduct, and so on, in our religion, and if our religion is only this longing-well then, it is worth very little; and I fancy it is worth a good deal less if there is none of this felt need for God, and for more of God, in us. And so I come to two classes of my hearers; and to the first of them I say, Dear friends! do not mistake what it is that you ‘need,’ and see to it that you turn the current of your longings from earth to God; and to the second of them I say, Dear friends! if you have found out that God is your supreme good, see to it that you live in the good, see to it that you live in the constant attitude of longing for more of that good which alone will slake your appetite. ‘The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine,’ and unless we know what it is to be drawn outwards and upwards, in strong aspirations after something-’afar from the sphere of our sorrow,’ I know not why we should call ourselves Christians at all. But, dear friends! let us not forget that these higher aspirations after the uncreated and personal good which is God have to be cultivated very sedulously and with great persistence, throughout all our changing lives, or they will soon die out, and leave us. There has to be the clear recognition, habitual to us, of what is our good. There has to be a continual meditation, if I may so say, upon the all-sufficiency of that divine Lord and Lover of our souls, and there has to be a vigilant and a continual suppression, and often excision and ejection, of other desires after transient and partial satisfactions. A man who lets all his longings go unchecked and untamed after earthly good has none left towards heaven. If you break up a river into a multitude of channels, and lead off much of it to irrigate many little gardens, there will be no force in its current, its bed will become dry, and it will never reach the great ocean where it loses its individuality and becomes part of a mightier whole. So, if we fritter away and divide up our desires among all the clamant and partial blessings of earth, then we shall but feebly long, and feebly longing, shall but faintly enjoy, the cool, clear, exhaustless gush from the fountain of life-’My soul thirsteth for God!’-in the measure in which that is true of us, and not one hairsbreadth beyond it, in spite of orthodoxy, and professions, and activities, are we Christian people. II. The soul that thirsts after God is satisfied. The Psalmist, by the magic might of his desire, changes, as in a sudden transformation scene in a theatre, all the dreariness about him. One moment it is a ‘dry and barren land where no water is’; the next moment a flash of verdure has come over the yellow sand, and the ghastly silence is broken by the song of merry birds. The one moment he is hungering there in the desert; the next, he sees spread before him a table in the wilderness, and his soul is ‘satisfied as with marrow and with fatness,’ and his mouth praises God, whom he possesses, who has come unto him swift, immediate, in full response to his cry. Now, all that is but a picturesque way of putting a very plain truth, which we should all be the happier and better if we believed and lived by, that we can have as much of God as we desire, and that what we have of Him will be enough. We can have as much of God as we desire. There is a quest which finds its object with absolute certainty, and which finds its object simultaneously with the quest. And these two things, the certainty and the immediateness with which the thirst of the soul after God passes into a satisfied fruition of the soul in God, are what are taught us here in our text; and what you and I, if we comply with the conditions, may have as our own blessed experience. There is one search about which it is true that it never fails to find. The certainty that the soul thirsting after God shall be satisfied with God results at once from His nearness to us, and His infinite willingness to give Himself, which He is only prevented from carrying into act by our obstinate refusal to open our hearts by desire. It takes all a man’s indifference to keep God out of his heart, ‘for in Him we live, and move, and have our being,’ and that divine love, which Christianity teaches us to see on the throne of the universe, is but infinite longing for self-communication. That is the definition of true love always, and they fearfully mistake its essence, and take the lower and spurious forms of it for the higher and nobler, who think of love as being what, alas! it often is, in our imperfect lives, a fierce desire to have for our very own the thing or person beloved. But that is a second-rate kind of love. God’s love is an infinite desire to give Himself. If only we open our hearts-and nothing opens them so wide as longing-He will pour in, as surely as the atmosphere streams in through every chink and cranny, as surely as if some great black rock that stands on the margin of the sea is blasted away, the waters will flood over the sands behind it. So unless we keep God out, by not wishing Him in, in He will come. The certitude that we possess Him when we desire Him is as absolute. As swift as Marconi’s wireless message across the Atlantic and its answer; so immediate is the response from Heaven to the desire from earth. What a contrast that is to all our experiences! Is there anything else about which we can say ‘I am quite sure that if I want it I shall have it. I am quite sure that when I want it I have it’? Nothing! There may be wells to which a man has to go, as the Bedouin in the desert has to go, with empty water-skins, many a day’s journey, and it comes to be a fight between the physical endurance of the man and the weary distance between him and the spring. Many a man’s bones, and many a camel’s, lie on the track to the wells, who lay down gasping and black-lipped, and died before they reached them. We all know what it is to have longing desires which have cost us many an effort, and efforts and desires have both been in vain. Is it not blessed to be sure that there is One whom to long for is immediately to possess? Then there is the other thought here, too, that when we have God we have enough. That is not true about anything else. God forbid that one should depreciate the wise adaptation of earthly goods to human needs which runs all through every life! but all that recognised, still we come back to this, that there is nothing here, nothing except God Himself, that will fill all the corners of a human heart. There is always something lacking in all other satisfactions. They address themselves to sides, and angles, and facets of our complex nature; they leave all the others unsatisfied. The table that is spread in the world, at which, if I might use so violent a figure, our various longings and capacities seat themselves as guests, always fails to provide for some of them, and whilst some, and those especially of the lower type, are feasting full, there sits by their side another guest, who finds nothing on the table to satisfy his hunger. But if my soul thirsts for God, my soul will be satisfied when I get Him. The prophet Isaiah modifies this figure in the great word of invitation which pealed out from him, where he says, ‘Ho! everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.’ But that figure is not enough for him, that metaphor, blessed as it is, does not exhaust the facts; and so he goes on, ‘yea, come, buy wine’-and that is not enough for him, that does not exhaust the facts, therefore he adds, ‘and milk.’ Water, wine, and milk; all forms of the draughts that slake the thirsts of humanity, are found in God Himself, and he who has Him needs seek nowhere besides. Lastly- III. The soul that is satisfied with God immediately renews its quest. ‘My soul followeth hard after Thee.’ The two things come together, longing and fruition, as I have said. Fruition begets longing, and there is swift and blessed alternation, or rather co-existence of the two. Joyful consciousness of possession and eager anticipation of larger bestowments are blended still more closely, if we adhere to the original meaning of the words of this last clause, than they are in our translation, for the psalm really reads, ‘My soul cleaveth after Thee.’ In the one word ‘cleaveth,’ is expressed adhesion, like that of the limpet to the rock, conscious union, blessed possession; and in the other word ‘after Thee’ is expressed the pressing onwards for more and yet more. But now contrast that with the issue of all other methods of satisfying human appetites, be they lower or be they higher. They result either in satiety or in a tyrannical, diseased appetite which increases faster than the power of satisfying it increases. The man who follows after other good than God, has at the end to say, ‘I am sick, tired of it, and it has lost all power to draw me,’ or he has to say, ‘I ravenously long for more of it, and I cannot get any more.’ ‘He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.’ You have to increase the dose of the narcotic, and as you increase the dose, it loses its power, and the less you can do without it the less it does for you. But to drink into the one God slakes all thirsts, and because He is infinite, and our capacity for receiving Him may be indefinitely expanded; therefore, ‘Age cannot wither, nor custom stale His infinite variety’; but the more we have of God, the more we long for Him, and the more we long for Him the more we possess Him. Brethren! these are the possibilities of the Christian life; being its possibilities they are our obligations. The Psalmist’s words may well be turned by us into self-examining interrogations and we may-God grant that we do!-all ask ourselves; ‘Do I thus thirst after God?’ ‘Have I learned that, notwithstanding all supplies, this world without Him is a waterless desert? Have I experienced that whilst I call He answers, and that the water flows in as soon as I open my heart? And do I know the happy birth of fresh longings out of every fruition, and how to go further and further into the blessed land, and into my elastic heart receive more and more of the ever blessed God?’ These texts of mine not only set forth the ideal for the Christian life here, but they carry in themselves the foreshadowing of the life hereafter. For surely such a merely physical accident as death cannot be supposed to break this golden sequence which runs through life. Surely this partial and progressive possession of an infinite good, by a nature capable of indefinitely increasing appropriation of, and approximation to it is the prophecy of its own eternal continuance. So long as the fountain springs, the thirsty lips will drink. God’s servants will live till God dies. The Christian life will go on, here and hereafter, till it has reached the limits of its own capacity of expansion, and has exhausted God. ‘The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.’