"Oh, would I were as free to rise As leaves on autumn's whirlwind borne, The arrowy light of sunset skies, Or sound--or rays--or star of morn, Which meets in heaven at twilight's close, Or aught which soars uncheck'd and free, Through earth and heaven, that I might lose Myself in finding Thee!"
"O mysterious Jesus, teach us Thy works and Thy plans. Let our hearts pant after Thee as the hart after the water-brooks. Create a thirst which nothing shall satisfy but the fountain of eternal love. See the velocity with which the needle flees to the magnet _when it gets within distance_; so shall we hasten to our Magnet--our Beloved--as we approach Him."--_Lady Powerscourt's Letters._
"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."--_Verse 1._
We have pictured, in a preceding chapter, the uncrowned Monarch of Israel seated, pensive and sad, amid "the willows by the water-courses;" or wandering forth, amid the deepening twilight-shadows, with the roll of Jordan at his side, perhaps, like his great ancestor, to "wrestle with God until the breaking of the day."
We have already adverted to the simple incident which arrested his attention. A breathless tenant of the forest bounded past him to quench its thirst in the neighbouring river. That unconscious child of nature furnishes the key-note of his song. Let us sit by the banks, as the Exile takes down his harp, and thus sings--"AS THE HART PANTETH AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS, SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, O GOD."
God is the only satisfying portion of the soul. Every theory of human happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the infinite, man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its borrowed light, will compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as well expect the caged wild beast to be happier within the iron bars of his den than roaming lord of the forest, as for the human spirit to be content with the present and the finite as a substitute for the immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone could slake the thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have offered it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks of Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have bounded down the valley in search of the stream.