September 14

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.—Psalms 130:1.

OH, the immortal power of Divine faith, which lives and breathes in the midst of the waves, in which it may be plunged, but can not be sunk under any of the hugest billows: but raises itself, and the soul in which it resides, and emerges and swims above all, having this in common with that Divine love of which Solomon speaks in his Song, that many waters can not quench it. Whatever great things the stoics may speak of their wise men, and whatever all philosophy may say of fortitude, it is Divine faith that truly and heartily performs all, by which the good man, though stripped of every help and comfort, wraps himself up, as it were, not in his own virtue and strength, but in that of God; and hence it is that he can not be conquered by any tyranny, by any threatenings, by any calamities of life, by any fear of death. for he leans upon Omnipotence. The Lord, says he, is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Let war arise, let the enemy measure out his tents against me, I, says Faith, am secure under the shadow of the Most High, and embracing him, I will fear nothing.

You have here the Psalmist crying with confidence out of the deeps. Behold also the prophet Jonah indeed, and, as we say, literally, in the deeps, and in circumstances which might have greater efficacy to shake his faith than the bowels of the fish, or any other depth into which he might be cast, as he was not entirely free from blame, but had the intermingling guilt of his own perverseness; yet, among all these discouragements, his faith is not swallowed up: I have cried unto thee in my distress, and from the very belly of hell. Thou hast cast me into the deep, and all thy waves were gone over me, so that I might truly say, I am cast out from thy sight; yet at the same time I said, I will look again toward the temple of thy holiness. I went down to the root and caverns of the mountains; the abyss surrounded me; yet when my soul was thus overwhelmed within me, I remembered the Lord. You have, among others, an excellent example of faith in David, 1 Sam. xxx., when the invading enemy had burst Ziklag, and carried the women captive, and the people, in the madness of their rage and grief, speak of stoning David himself; yet, besieged with all these miseries, he strengthens himself in the Lord his God. Nor can any thing have greater depth and strength than the expression of Job, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: not only when fainting and dying, but while expiring, as it were, of the wound which I had received from the hand of God himself, yet will I hope for life and salvation from that very hand which has given death, and in the jaws of death would send out his last word with the last breath, and with my departing soul, Destroy not, O Lord, one that trusteth in thee.

Nor is this confidence of a pious soul, an opinion fluctuating among the waves, or a light conjecture that it shall raise its head above them, but a certain, firm, and infallible assurance. That is a vulgar and weak word of comfort, "To-morrow may be better than to-day." But the language of Divine faith is stronger and firmer, even when deep calls unto deep, and most certainly determines that it will not be in vain; and therefore in the forty-second Psalm, not dubious and trembling, but with a steady voice, he silences all the noisy tumults of an agitated mind, and says, Repose thyself on God, for I shall still praise him, or as it may be rendered, I am going to praise him—. Amid all those tempests which rage about me, I am thinking of that hymn of praise which I shall pay to him for my deliverance, and for the happy exit out of all my sorrows. Though at present we have nothing in sight but darkness, and whirlwinds, and rocks, and the raging, foaming sea, let the skill and power of the Great Pilot be opposed to all these. And what the psalmist says elsewhere of sailors, may evidently be applied to those who go down into the sea; they gain this by their dangers, that they see the works of this Great Pilot in the abyss, and contemplate his wonders in the deep. And he who gives himself up to his care, and fixes his eye and hope wholly on him, though he be, or rather seem to be, shipwrecked, and lose all his goods, yet if he does not make shipwreck of faith, he loses nothing that is properly his own. Nay, when he is swallowed up in the abyss of death, he does not perish, but swims through it to the further shore of eternity, where he finds a banquet, a palace prepared for him, and a kingdom that can not be moved, but remains to endless ages.