Stillness in the Confidence of God’s Triumph

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”—Psalm xlvi. 10.

There is a class of persons who are designated by Divines and Church historians as Quietists. They have not formed a community, but they have been found in all communities. They are not distinguishable by their doctrines so much as by a certain temper or habit of mind. They have perhaps abounded most in the two religious bodies which are most diametrically opposed to each other, the Roman Catholics and the Quakers. It is difficult to say what age or circumstances have proved most favourable to their growth. They are to be traced among the Religious Orders of the fourteenth century, amidst the tumults of the Protestant sects in the sixteenth, in our Civil Wars, in the splendour and corruption of the French capital under Louis XIV., in the bustle and restlessness of these days.

It is unfair to judge of these Quietists from the representations of their opponents, or even from those which they have put forth themselves, if we are not acquainted with the context of their lives, with their education, with all the causes which may have led them to exaggerate the worth of one form of character and to depreciate another. But certainly, so far as they have manifested dislike to energetic qualities, to conflict, to mixture with the business and perplexities of their fellow-men, so far their spirit seems alien from that which we discover in the holy men whom the Bible brings before us. They seem to be living in an element of perpetual contention, and they confess that they are meant to live in it. Enemies are all around them; they cannot stand still or fly; they must be continually advancing, continually winning posts, or submitting to be made the spectacle in a triumph. A Quietist, who thinks that every day and year is to be a Sabbatical day or year, must find the Psalms especially a very uncongenial book. He cannot understand how a warrior like David could be a man after God’s own heart; how he can have given thoughts and prayers and music to the Church in all periods.

And yet surely there is a Sabbatical character in these Psalms; they have a quiet of their own; all people have felt that they have. It has been the very charm which weary and tempest-tost pilgrims have discovered in them. To meditate on the Law by day and night; to commune with his own heart on his bed; to wait patiently for the Lord; to rest in Him, is the continual effort of the same man who was engaged with hosts of visible and invisible foes. He learns the delight of rest through perpetual labour. He learns how vain, and idle, and hopeless labour is which is not grounded in rest. Only the man who feels that he has a home, can venture abroad into all the bustles of the world with a free and brave heart. Only one who knows the secret of being still, can toil manfully.

Here, then, is the true quietism of the Book of Psalms: quietism in the midst of action; quietism which only one who hears the call to act, and obeys it, can understand or prize. The ground of such quiet is contained in the verse I have read to you: “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The 46th Psalm opens with the words, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” In such a time it must have been written; no one Psalm in the Book bears clearer and deeper traces of struggle and suffering. Many have referred it to the time of Hezekiah. They have seen in the words, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of our God,” an allusion to the stopping of the watercourses by Sennacherib, when he besieged Jerusalem; they have discovered in it some resemblance to the language of Isaiah, and have conjectured that he might be the author of it. Undoubtedly everything in the tone and spirit of the Psalm befits such a season. And the recurring burden of it, “The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge,” recalls that memorable passage in Isaiah, which belongs however to the time of Ahaz, where he tells those who were confederated against the Holy City, that if they associate themselves, they shall be broken in pieces; if they gather themselves together, it shall not stand: for God is with us.

The idea of the Emmanuel, the God with us, which comes forth so strongly in that passage, it has been truly felt, is the pervading one of Isaiah’s prophecy; the one which gives the mind of the writer, and his discourses, all their sublimity. It is also the pervading idea of this Psalm, “The Lord of Hosts is with us.” He is not coming down among us like some heathen god, to help us in an emergency, He is with us; not visible to our eyes, but really present, the strength and refuge of our hearts. “Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

And therefore “Be still.” The thought of possible succour coming to us from some propitious Divinity, descending to the fight when other help fails, may impart a certain elevation to the spirit, may prevent it from utterly giving way; but it cannot bring stillness. It must rather occasion a flutter of expectation, a feverish anxiety, till the looked-for vision appears. Only the belief of a Presence near us, with us, can inspire habitual awe, can keep us steady when all things are rocking around us, can take away the eagerness to move, or the cowardice which paralyzes movement.

“Be still and know.” You cannot know this deep and eternal truth unless you are still. If you keep the waters of your spirit in continual stir, you will see nothing in them, or only the reflection of your own perturbed self. To know, is not to follow after a number of scattered fragments of information, or a multitude of ingenious speculations; it is to find a centre to which we can refer ourselves and all things else; it is to feel the ground upon which we are standing, to feel what that is which we did not create, which is and which must abide. Such knowledge must come in stillness. But, on the other hand, this knowledge will make us still. If we have it not, or are not seeking to have it, we must be restless and impatient; just so far as it is granted to us, it must bring tranquillity.

For “Be still and know that I am God.” You may wonder to observe how often this form of speech is adopted in Scripture. The persons are frequently changed: sometimes God is spoken of; sometimes He speaks. We should experience a grievous loss if this were not so. Much more is expressed by this change of form than could be expressed by adherence to that which may seem to us more obvious and natural. So we are instructed that it is God who reveals Himself to us. He says, “I am God”; not a conception of your minds, not one Whom you make what He is, by your mode of thinking of Him, but a living Person, Who is saying to you what He said to Moses in the bush, “I am”; Who is teaching you that you could not be, if He were not; that all the thoughts, apprehensions, intimations of your spirits, were given you by Him, and are meant to lead you to Him. “Be still and know that I am God”; not a mere Being, not a mere Ruler, but the perfectly Good Being, the perfectly Righteous Ruler, “the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin”: the God from Whom all dreams, and impressions, and images of goodness, which you find in yourselves, which you see in your fellow-creatures, which you try to embody in the works of your hands, have been derived; Who can alone show you what the perfect goodness is, Who can alone open your eyes to take in that image after which you are formed, to see Whose it is, and to perceive that from its fulness all creatures have received grace for grace.

The Jew was taught, by a wonderful discipline, to turn from the likeness of all things in Heaven above or in the earth beneath, to turn from the works of his own hands, and from whatever he was most prone to adore, to this Living God, Who had chosen him and his fathers, that they might know His Name and confess Him to be the Lord. They were trained in a school of suffering, to feel the emptiness and falsehood of all visible creature-worship; to feel that if they were to be preserved in any time of trouble, to be delivered from the curse of their own follies, to be a wise, understanding, righteous people, they must go back to the unseen King and Deliverer; they must seek in stillness to know Him; they must confess Him to be the Lord of those spirits which had revolted from Him, and which, in their effort to be independent, had become the slaves of all that was earthly and grovelling.

But the lesson would have been imperfect without the words that follow: “I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.” They were not withdrawn from the contemplation and worship of visible objects, that they might despise them. They were not separated from the nations round about, that they might regard their thoughts, and acts, and life, as of no value in God’s account. The Lord Whom they worshipped, Whom in stillness they were permitted to know, Who was their strength and refuge in every time of trouble, to Whom they might return when they had forgotten His covenant and worshipped strange gods, was the Ruler of all the nations, had created the earth and all its treasures for His service. To despise the Heathen, or to despise the earth, was to despise Him; the Jew existed to assert the sacredness of both, by claiming both as parts of His dominion. Even as a comfort in any disaster, individual or national, the belief in God’s presence, in His personality, in His goodness, would have been unsatisfactory, if it had not been accompanied with this belief in His power, with this assurance that it would one day make itself manifest over the universe, and would crush all that opposed it. For the powers of the Heathen were threatening them; they were asserting that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was like the gods of Hamath and Arphad, of Hena and Ivah, that His power and government might be swept away as theirs had been. The dynasts of the earth, the powers of nature, were measuring their strength against Him. They must triumph and become the tyrants over mankind for ever, if there were not a sure witness and prophecy, that the God of Righteousness and Truth would establish His Kingdom over them all, and that of that Kingdom there should be no end.

Those Israelites who had learnt these lessons, who had really sought in stillness to know God, were prepared to receive the Only Begotten Son as the Express Image of His Person. But it was hard to understand how He Who came in great humility, though He might through that humility show forth all the righteousness and graciousness of the Father, could ever be exalted over the Heathen, could ever be exalted over the earth. It needed the death, and resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, to reconcile that conviction, which gave the heart all its rest and calmness, with that which gave it all its hope. It needed the descent of the Holy Spirit to make it possible for men to feel at once that the Lord of Hosts was with them, that the knowledge of Him was peace and rest and eternal life; and to go forth as conquerors of the Heathen and of the earth. The want of a continual refuge from the troubles which beset them round, drove them to seek God in His secret habitation; the love which they acquired for their fellow-men through converse with Him, urged them to carry His name into all lands, to claim all people for His servants and His children. They found that the Church had no ground to stand upon except the assurance, “I am God,” and therefore that its true home and rest were in the unseen world; they found that it could not claim that home or that rest, unless it said that every corner of the earth, every creature that walked upon it, all that was done in it, had been redeemed for God, and was subject to His sovereignty. They saw that if ever the members of the Church forgot that it belonged to the invisible world, it would lose all its influence over the visible world; that if ever they forgot to exalt its Master over the nations and over the earth, they would also lose their interest and fellowship in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Brethren, it is a great question for us to ask ourselves, whether both these dangers are not assailing us at this time, and from the same cause? The words, “Be still and know that I am God,” sound like strange words in the ears of most of us. “How can we be still,” we ask, “while all things are in movement, while all things are unsettled? How can we be still when every one is hasting to be rich, hasting to get beyond his neighbour? How can we be still when all the political world is full of slumbering fires, ready to break forth? How can we be still while all the religious world is full of controversies, tumults, hatreds?” The answer surely should be, “Because there is all this mutation, restlessness, insecurity, therefore this is the very time to obey the command, Be still. For assuredly if we do not, we never shall know that the Lord He is God; we shall not believe, however we may pretend it, that He abides, and that He is with us, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the depths of the sea.” And if we have not that belief, what other can we have? What other will be worth anything to us?

There is, however, another inquiry,—Why have we to complain of all this tumult and confusion, this hasting to be rich, this eagerness to outstrip and to trip up each other, these convulsions in civil governments and societies, these deeper and more fearful rendings in spiritual bodies? Why is it so hard to be still? Why is it so difficult to rest in the faith that the Lord is God? Surely because we have not believed His other words, “I will be exalted among the Heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.” We sometimes think that we ought to make some great efforts to Christianize the nations, to put down the false worships which are defiling the earth. But we cannot satisfy ourselves what efforts we are to make; whether we should hold out some rewards to those who will embrace our faith, whether we should do anything to render the profession of another faith disagreeable, if not penal, whether we shall merely continue to argue in support of our own convictions, as we have done hitherto with so little effect, whether we should trust to the gradual influences of knowledge and civilization, which have apparently worked no moral change in those whom they have reached, which leave the mass of the people utterly undisturbed in their superstitions.

My brethren, if we have no faith that the God Whom we worship does design to exalt Himself among the Heathen, to exalt Himself in the earth, if we do not think that He is working to bring men out of darkness to light, out of communion with evil beings to communion with His Own truth, it seems to me that we must despair of one of these methods as much as the other. For us to expect that our skilful arguments, our machinery, religious or political, will shake the belief of ages, for us to think that we worms can exalt Him Whom we proclaim to be the Lord of Heaven and Earth,—what vanity, what madness is this! What restlessness there must be in the struggle! what despair in the issue! But if we verily and in our hearts believe that every glimpse of knowledge we possess respecting the Living God has been His gift, if we think that we are not bowing to stocks and stones, because He has redeemed the world of which we are members, and has sent His Spirit to guide us out of falsehood into truth,—if we recollect that those who preached His Gospel to the Heathen— who preached it to us—lived, fought, died in the faith that they were His servants, and not their own, that they were simply fulfilling His will,—if this is our faith, we may get rid of some of those questions which are disturbing us, at once, we may look much more steadily and hopefully at those which remain. Penalties and persecutions may be advisable means of enforcing the religions which we desire to extirpate. If we want to convert men to the worship of a Destroyer, in his name let us destroy. Bribes are admirable means for tempting men to certain kinds of service. If we confess Mammon to be the God of the English, in his name let us scatter promises, gifts, offices, among Hindoos and Mussulmans. We shall not be disappointed; with such inducements they will press in crowds to that altar.

If, again, we aspire to exalt a God who shall be a negation of all the gods to which Heathens are now doing service,—if we wish to take from them all the trust and hopes which they have, let us spend our time in arguing with them about their follies and confusions, in scoffing at all which they reverence. We shall have our reward in that effort too. Experience justifies us in anticipating it. We shall turn idolaters into atheists.

But if we do believe the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to be the Lord, if we worship and adore Him Who is revealed to us at the Cross, then I say the proclamation of that God is still the instrument now, as it was of old, for putting down the false, for establishing the true, for scattering the darkness, for gathering in all the rays that are dispersed in the midst of it. The preacher, who can only make a feeble, hopeless fight against the devil while he regards him as indeed the Lord of the Universe, will strike deadly-pressing blows when he assures himself that he is going forth in the name of the real Lord, to beat down a usurper whose head is bruised already. He will tell the Heathen how God is speaking to them, acting upon them, turning them to Himself. In calmness and stillness he will be able to perceive how everything about him, which seems most to contradict God, indeed is bearing witness of Him. All His Own works, all the works of men’s hands, all science, all ignorance, all sorrow, all sin, all death, will bring in such arguments as no man’s wit could ever devise. He will hear every hill and grove and idol temple echoing with the words, “Know that I am God. I will be exalted among the Heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

And if you say, “This is for the preacher. But cannot the statesman, the soldier, the collector, cooperate?” Yes, indeed, he can. Let each one say in his own heart, “I for myself do not worship the Destroyer, the Money God, the God that is the negation of all other Gods. I worship Him Whom Jesus revealed. In my quiet thoughts, in my open acts, I will do Him homage. I mean to show in my earthly dealings, as much as in my words concerning invisible things, that I renounce all Lords but Him. I mean to bear witness of Him as the Friend of all men, as the Deliverer of all men, by my justice in asserting right, in punishing wrong, Christians and despisers of Christianity, by my sympathy with human beings, by my zeal to deliver them from all fetters which hinder them from being righteous and brave and noble and free, as God would have them be. And because I find myself tempted to speak lies and act lies, apt to become in essentials like these poor idolaters, therefore will I ask that God Whom I serve to exalt Himself in my heart, to reign over me. Therefore will I ask Him, by that Spirit of Truth and Freedom and Unity which He has promised, to overcome the spirits of Falsehood, of Slavery, of Division, which have led these idolaters captive, and may too lead us captive as much as them.” I say, Let the statesmen, soldiers, servants of all kinds to the Queen of England, in lands where Heathens dwell, take up this language, form this resolution. The Gospel asks nothing more of them than that. God asks nothing more from them than that. He will exalt Himself in the earth. We have only to ask that He will not let us strive to exalt ourselves, or any vile thing, into His holy place.