November 26

There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.—Psalms 4:6.

THE psalmist here returns to himself and his own affairs, and having sufficiently admonished his enemies concerning the true and only good, enforces his exhortation by his example, that if they thought fit, they might follow it, for this is the most efficacious manner of teaching. But if they would not, that he might at least enjoy the benefit of his own counsel, and wrapping himself up in his own happiness, might from that eminence, look down upon all the vain and wretched pursuits of the mad vulgar. Like drunken men, they reel and stagger from place to place; they often fall down upon their face, and strike and dash themselves against what they desired to embrace. Through all their life, with an unstable pace, they catch at flying forms of good; and after all their falls and their bruises, they cry out again and again, Who will show us any good? And when they behold any new species or shadow of it, they immediately run to it. Nay, perhaps so light and various are they in their pursuit, they return again to that in which they had been frequently deceived, and which they had as often abandoned. Rabbi Solomon paraphrases the words thus: "When Israel saw the nations prosperous, he said, 'Who will show us a like prosperity?' But David says, 'Envy them not; we have a sublimer prosperity in the light of thy Divine countenance.'" "That is good," says the great philosopher of the schools, "which all pursue." The various affections and desires of the mind are as the pulse and natural respiration; but certain internal principles, which, not inwrought by nature, are afterward received and deeply engraved upon the heart, are the springs of that motion: our different opinions of different things do nevertheless all meet in this—that we would see good. But they who select, from the various objects that present themselves, a suitable, complete, and substantial good, and who, neglecting every thing else, bend all their pursuits to that, are the only wise and happy men.

This, the psalmist professes he did, and freely invites all that pleased, to join and take a part with him in these desires and pursuits, well knowing that the happiness was abundantly sufficient from many, for all that would apply themselves to it, and such as could not at all be diminished by being imparted, for it was indeed the self-sufficient and all-sufficient good, which was one of the titles that some of the wiser heathens gave their Jupiter. But he of whom we speak is the living and true God; nor is there any other good whatsoever adequate to the human mind. And what we say of his infinite sufficiency, is most aptly signified by this adumbration which the psalmist uses,—I say, by the adumbration of light, nor do I think fit to correct it as an incongruous expression, for light is indeed as it were the shadow of God, and that fullness of supreme good which is in him, is in some degree shadowed out by light, which entirely illustrates, with the full stream of its rays, all who behold it, and is not broken into little fragments, to be sparingly distributed to each. Many seek many things; they pursue any good, with uncertain and ignorant desires; but we have fixed upon the one petition we should insist upon, for in this one is all, Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us. Oh rich, grand, and incomparable desire! Without this, all the proudest palaces of monarchs are gloomy caverns, dark as hell, and all the riches of all the earth mere indigences. This is the proper light of the intellectual world, and it puts gladness into the heart.

"Light in thy light, O may I see, Thy grace and mercy prove; Revived, and cheer'd, and blest by thee, The God of pard'ning love.

"Light up thy countenance serene, And let thy happy child Behold, without a cloud between, The Godhead reconciled."