By John MacDuff
"And will You hear the fevered heart
To You in silence cry?
As the inconstant wild fires dart
Out of the restless eye.
"You will, for many a languid prayer
Has reached You from the wild
Since the lone mother, wandering there,
Cast down her fainting child.
"You will be there and not forsake,
To turn the bitter pool
Into a bright and breezy lake,
The throbbing brow to cool!
"Until, left awhile with You alone,
The willful heart be sincerely to own
That He, by whom our bright hours shone,
Our darkness best may rule."--Christian Year.
"The wilderness and the solitary place."--Isaiah 35:1.
"Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep." Genesis 28:10-11
The fugitive, having selected his resting-place for the night, would again unbind his belt and open the bag containing the few provisions with which doubtless he had been supplied on his hasty departure. After concluding his simple meal, he betakes himself to his stony pillow.
In the preceding chapter, we have taken the 'night' and the 'sunset' as figuratively descriptive of a peculiar class of sorrows; such as the darkness of personal and family bereavement, or the yet denser gloom of intellectual and spiritual doubt. May we not make the title of the present chapter suggestive of a different phase of trial what may be brought under the category of the hardships of existence--the fight with adverse circumstances--the often hopeless struggle with secular things. This, with many, (though feebly realized by those in affluence and abundance), is indeed a 'pillow of stone.' Hapless seems the destiny of such sufferers! The sun sets placidly on the hamlets in the valley--curling smoke, and gleaming lights telling of peace and serenity, while they are out with Jacob in the bleak uplands, with scanty coverlet and downless couch. Can they fail to contrast that happy fire-glow and the music of child-voices, with the cold of the rock and the sigh and sob of the night wind; perhaps the memory of some Beersheba tent, with similar loving hands and cheerful faces in the far away of life, only adding a fresh pang of bitterness to the experiences of the present hour? We have known not a few of such cases, when the cruel load, pressing like the chill of an avalanche on the soul, seems as if it were greater than could be borne, and the cry of wild despair rises unsuccoured. Why such a fate as this? Why this toiling misery? Why the rod instead of the smile? Why the pitiless rain streaming on the desert rocks, instead of the sunshine falling on the sheltering roof? Why, while OTHERS can warble of
"Lilies white,
A painted skiff with a singing crew,
Sky reflections soft and bright,
Tremulous crimson, gold and blue."
Or others, of
"A shining reach,
A crystal couch for the moonbeam's rest,
Starry ripples along the beach,
Sunset songs from the breezy west."
Why should MY experience be--
"foam and roar.
Restless heave and passionate dash,
Shingle-rattle along the shore,
Gathering boom and thundering crash?"
We cannot reply. It would be presumption to attempt answering the question; and the more so, when the mysterious fact is too patent, that the rough stone seems at times the appointed lot of the brave and loving, the generous and true; while the soft bed and the fine linen are often bestowed on the selfish and grasping, the base and unworthy. It is the old startling perplexity embodied in the plaintive wail of the Psalmist--"My steps had well-near slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world" (Psalms 73:2, 3, 12).
All we can say is, that in the case of Jacob (and is it not so in the case of many?) it was the stony pillow which was followed by the heavenly vision. If we may so express it, it was through an iron, not a golden gate, that he had revealed to him the vista of angels and the dream of God. He was not the first who was able to take up an inspired after-song--"I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God--many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord" (Psalms 40:1-3).
It must be borne in mind, as a key to many enigmas deemed now insoluble, that life, with all, (but with some more than others) is a probation. "I proved you," says God, speaking of and to His Israel (Psalms 81:7). But what is the end of that probation-discipline? Is the burden always to crush? Is there to be no remission of the load, no rift in the cloud of sorrow, no escape from the hard degrading bondage? Is the "thundering crash" to boom in the ear forever? Hear other words of the Divine Speaker in that same Psalm--"Now I will relieve your shoulder of its burden; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks. You cried to me in trouble, and I saved you; I answered out of the thundercloud. I tested your faith at Meribah, when you complained that there was no water." (Psalms 81:6, 7). It has been well remarked that Adam fell, not in a wilderness, but in a garden, while the second Adam conquered, not in a garden, but in a wilderness. The training to "endure hardness" is the true stuff of which men and heroes are made--
"Oh, fear not in a world like this
And you shall know, 'fore long,
Know how sublime a thing it is,
To suffer and be strong."
That is the noblest victory of faith, which after protracted struggle can convert apparently crushing defeats into trophies; hard trials into material for praise. Just as we have seen a forest tree ravaged by the storm, torn up by the roots, and lying prostrate on the sward with the nests of its feathered tenants scattered pitilessly around--yet the birds, which for a time uttered their wailing cries around the pillaged home, come at last to nestle in the prone branches and to resume their warblings. The man with his head resting on the hardest stone is not to be pitied, in comparison with many whose downy pillows are only inducing a deeper sleep of apathy and forgetfulness--
"Those hearts that cower
In willful slumber, deepening every hour;
That draw their curtains closer round,
The nearer swells the trumpet's sound."
Better far to have the poet's prayer answered, for the couch of rock and the crude awakening--
"Lord, before our trembling lamps sink down and die,
Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel You nigh."
Another thought suggested by the Patriarch and his desert pillow, is in connection with the loneliness of his present position. He, who, as the great Sheik's son at Lahairoi, Beersheba, and Kirjath-Arba, had night after night his mat spread and his meals served by scores of willing slaves, was now absolutely unattended. So lonely was he, that these very stones which were to form the night-rest for his head, were carried by his own hands. "He took the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows." One who was habituated from boyhood to the stir of camp life, and the sympathy of friendly voices--accustomed ever and anon to hear the well-known welcome of hospitality to the passing stranger or wayfarer, "Turn in, my lord, turn in" (Judges 4:18 ), while he was served up in the "lordly dishes" (Judges 5:25 ), is all at once plunged into solitude. The very tinkle of bells on sheep and camels, once so familiar to him, has died away in the far distance. But here, again, solitude was another factor (to use a modern term) which prepared him for the visions which followed. He entered the vestibule of silence, before being admitted into the Inner Sanctuary.
His experience was in harmony with that of the most privileged saints of every age. Loneliness indeed would almost seem to be a necessary condition of receptivity in regard to the loftiest and divinest revelations of a personal God. Moses was alone in the solitudes of Sinai when Jehovah appeared to him in the midst of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1). Eliphaz was alone, (in the passage previously alluded to,) when the mysterious spirit passed before his eyes. He specially notes "There was silence" (Job 4:16). Job was alone on his bed of ashes, resting on a harder pillow than Jacob's, when the near Presence there unfolded itself--and when he thus solitary, the foundation Article in the creed of Christendom was uttered--"I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25). Elijah was alone in the cave of Horeb, when he became spectator of the great drama of the desert, which began with the mighty wind, and ended with the still small voice (1 Kings 19:12). John was alone in the Isle of Patmos, when he heard behind him "the voice of a great trumpet" and beheld his Lord arrayed in the lusters of glorified humanity (Revelation 1:9). And it was when all other lights were paled, and when, (no other footstep near,) Jacob lay in the darkness away from the trodden highway, that the path of angels was made visible and the voice of God was heard.
It is so, often, with His most favored people still. Periods of loneliness, stated seasons of quiet and retirement, are demanded for the nurturing of the spiritual nature. The finer sensibilities get soiled by constant contact with the world, its fevered heats and tempted hours, and restless turmoil. The soul needs, at times, removal to a calmer atmosphere--"the sphere of silence."
The picture may be recalled of penitent Israel in future times. All the tribes are represented as mourning alone; "every family apart, every individual apart" (Zechariah 12:12). But what, are we told, is the immediate result and sequence of that season of solemn seclusion and heart probing--sitting thus alone, in meditative silence? It is the fullest revelation of Gospel grace and mercy--"In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Zechariah 13:1).
Not that by any means "frames and feelings" are to be made tests and interpreters of reality in religious experience. But this introspection has its genuine side, as well as its counterfeit. We never surely can suspect the Apostle Paul of being the morbid analyst of mere emotions. He was far too real and practical for that. Yet his exhortation stands recorded--"Let a man examine himself." He knew the tyranny of the secular--the constant friction which wears the wheels of the spiritual as of the physical life. He who had his own lengthened season of solitude and retirement in the desert of Arabia (Galatians 1:17), knew how wise and needful were occasional pausing-places in the journey, to enable the Pilgrim of Eternity to breathe with greater intensity the soliloquy which closes the Old Testament psalm to the omniscient Jehovah--"Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalms 139:23, 24).
More than this; there is an instructive lesson surely conveyed, when ONE, greater than Apostle or Psalmist--One who required no such retreat to purge His soul from sin, and who was most habitually conversant with heavenly things, said to His disciples, (and that too in the midst of their round of spiritual activities,) "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." (Mark 6:31). No, who Himself ever preceded what may be called the great crisis-hours of His life and ministry, by silent prayer and communion--alone in the wilderness--alone on the midnight hills around Gennesaret--alone in the moon-lit glades of Olivet. "And He continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12). "Sit here" (He must be alone) "while I go and pray yonder" (Mark 14:32). The Divine breathings, "O My Father, if it be possible;" "Not as I will, but as You will," were uttered, not amid the holy fellowships of the supper table, but amid the loneliness of Gethsemane.
To return to the solitary dreamer at Bethel. Would the conflict of inner feeling--the sting of bitterly-felt self-reproach--forbid him, before he laid his head on his stony resting place, to, accord with the hallowed usages of his previous life, by kneeling on the bare rock in this open Temple of the Great Universe and invoke the blessing of his father's God? We cannot tell. Perhaps the lustrous, watchful stars gleaming above him--in one sense the chapters and verses of His Bible--would suffuse a calming, re-assuring influence on his perturbed spirit. It might be as if one of the angels of the vision, preceding his fellows, had thus addressed the exile before he resigned himself to slumber--"Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number--He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one fails. Why say you, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Have you not known, have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary?" (Isaiah 40:26-28.)
And HOW are His people still brought into this silent, secluded contact with the God of Jacob? It is, often at least, by means we have already dwelt upon; through temporary seasons of trial; by having their hearts and homes darkened with sorrow. They are thus impelled to escape from the fever and whirl of life, the passions and interests and engrossments of the hour, and taken out on the lonely Bethel-heights to hold converse with Himself. "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence" (Hosea 2:14, 15). The vineyards would have been unsought and untasted, the "comfortable words" would have been unheeded, but for the wilderness discipline, the wilderness silence--the tearful eye closing on the wilderness pillow. "Come, My people," says the same Divine Being in another place, as He beckons apart from 'the loud stunning tide of human care,' "Come, My people, enter into your chambers, and shut your doors about you" (Isaiah 26:20).
It is in such moments of often enforced retirement, that they are able to realize the littleness of the frets and annoyances of the way which have too frequently disturbed their serenity and poisoned their peace; and which, moreover, may have dimmed and dwarfed their faith. While it is at such seasons, also, that they rise from the rough stone and the night-watch with fresh incentives for holy duty, and resolutions for a nobler life. They have "seen God face to face;" and a new dignity is given to human existence by vividly linking it with the divine.
"Oh for 'a desert place' with only the Master's smile!
Oh for the 'coming apart' with only His 'rest awhile!'
Yes, I have longed for a pause in the rush and whirl of time,
Longed for silence to fall, instead of its merriest chime.
"Longed for a calm, to let the circles die away
That tremble over the heart, breaking the heavenly ray,
And to leave its wavering mirror true to the Star above,
Brightened and stilled to its depths with the quiet of 'perfect love.'"
--Ministry of Song
