It is not by accident, nor is it a mere piece of tautology, that we read the Lord his God.' For, if you will remember, the very keynote of the psalms which are ascribed to David is just that expression, My God,' My God.' So far as the very fragmentary records of Jewish literature go, it would appear as if David was the very first of all the ancient singers to grapple that thought that he stood in a personal, individual relation to God, and God to him. And so it was his God that he laid hold of at that dark hour.
Now I am not putting too much into a little word when I insist upon it that the very essence and nerve of what strengthened David, at that supreme moment of desolation, was the conviction that welled up in his heart that, in spite of it all, he had a grip of God's hand as his very own, and God had hold of him. Just think of the difference between the attitude of mind and heart expressed in the names that were more familiar to the Israelitish people, and this name for Jehovah. The God of Israel'--that is wide, general; and a man might use it and yet fail to feel that it implied that each individual of the community stood by himself in a personal relation to God. But David penetrated through the broad, general thought, and got into the heart of the matter. It was not enough for him, in his time of need, to stay himself upon a vague universal goodness, but he had to clasp to his burdened heart the individualizing thought, the God of Israel is my God.'
Think, too, of the contrast of the thoughts and emotions suggested by My God,' and by the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.' Great as that name is, it carries the mind away back into the past, and speaks of a historical relation in former days, which may or may not continue in all its tenderness and sweetness and power into the prosaic present. But when a man feels, not only the God of Jacob is our Refuge,' but, the God of Jacob is my God,' then the whole thing flashes up into new power. My sun '--will one man claim property in that great luminary that pours its light down on the whole world? Yes.
The sun whose beams most glorious are,
as the old song has it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens all men that come into the world. My atmosphere'--will one man claim the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will pour into his lungs; and yet his brother will be none the poorer.
I would not go the length of saying that the living realization, in heart and mind, of this personal possession of God is the difference between a traditional and vague profession of religion and a vital possession of religion, but if it is not the difference, it goes a long way towards explaining the difference. The man who contents himself with the generality of a Gospel for the world, and who can say no more than that Jesus Christ died for all, has yet to learn the most intimate sweetness, and the most quickening and transforming power, of that Gospel, and he only learns it when he says,' Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.'
So do not let us be content with saying, the God of Israel,' and its many thousands, or' the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob,' who filled the past with His luster, but let us bring the general good into our own houses, as men might draw the waters of Niagara into their homes through pipes, and let us cry: My Lord and my God!' David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'
