Introduction
We stand amazed at what we most admire:
Ah, what are saints the better for our praise!
He that commends this volume does no more Than warm the fire or gild the massy ore.*
Let me stand silent, then. O may that Spirit Which led thine hand direct mine eye, my breast,
That I may read and do, and so inherit (What thou enjoy'st and taught'st) eternal rest!
Fool that I was! to think my lines could give Life to that work, by which they hope to live.
FRA[NCIS] QUA[RLES].†
THE SOUL'S CONFLICT WITH ITSELF
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.—PSALM 42:11.
THE Psalms are, as it were, the anatomy of a holy man, which lay the inside of a truly devout man outward to the view of others. If the Scriptures be compared to a body, the Psalms may well be the heart, they are so full of sweet affections and passions. For in other portions of Scripture God speaks to us; but in the Psalms holy men speak to God and their own hearts, as In this Psalm we have the passionate passages of a broken and troubled spirit.
At this time David was a banished man, banished from his own house, from his friends, and, which troubled him most, from the house of God, upon occasion of Saul's persecution, who hunted him as a partridge upon the mountains. See how this works upon him.
1. He lays open his desire springing from his love; love being the prime and leading affection of the soul, from whence grief springs, from being crossed in that we love. For the setting out of which his affection to the full, he borroweth an expression from the hart. No hart, being chased by the hunters, panteth more after the waters than my heart doth after thee, O God, ver. 1. Though he found God present with him in exile, yet there is a sweeter presence of him in his ordinances, which now he wanted and took to heart. Places and conditions are happy or miserable as God vouchsafeth his gracious presence more or less; and, therefore, 'When, O when shall it be that I appear before God?' ver. 2.
2. Then, after his strong desire, he lays out his grief, which he could not contain, but must needs give a vent to it in tears; and he had such a spring of grief in him as fed his tears day and night, ver. 3. All the case he found was to dissolve this cloud of grief into the shower of tears.
Quest. But why gives he this way to his grief?
Ans. Because, together with his exiling from God's house, he was upbraided by his enemies with his religion, 'Where is now thy God?' ver. 3. Grievances come not alone, but, as Job's messengers, Job 1, follow one another. These bitter taunts, together with the remembrance of his former happiness in communion with God in his house, made deep impressions in his soul, when he 'remembered how he went with the multitude into the house of God,' ver. 4, and led a goodly train with him, being willing, as a good magistrate and master of a family, not to go to the house of God alone, nor to heaven alone, but to carry as many as he could with him. Oh! the remembrance of this made him pour forth, not his words or his tears