Psalms 37:7

Psalms THE SECRET OF TRANQUILLITYPsalm 37:4 - Psalm 37:5 , Psalm 37:7 . ‘I have been young, and now am old,’ says the writer of this psalm. Its whole tone speaks the ripened wisdom and autumnal calm of age. The dim eyes have seen and survived so much, that it seems scarcely worth while to be agitated by what ceases so soon. He has known so many bad men blasted in all their leafy verdure, and so many languishing good men revived, that- ‘Old experience doth attainTo something of prophetic strain’; and is sure that ‘to trust in the Lord and do good’ ever brings peace and happiness. Life with its changes has not soured but quieted him. It does not seem to him an endless maze, nor has he learned to despise it. He has learned to see God in it all, and that has cleared its confusion, as the movements of the planets, irregular and apparently opposite, when viewed from the earth, are turned into an ordered whole, when the sun is taken for the centre. What a contrast between the bitter cynicism put into the lips of the son, and the calm cheerful godliness taught, according to our psalm, by the father! To Solomon, old age is represented as bringing the melancholy creed, ‘All is vanity’; David believes, ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ Which style of old age is the nobler? what kind of life will lead to each?

These clauses, which I have ventured to isolate from their context, contain the elements which secure peace even in storms and troubles. I think that, if we consider them carefully, we shall see that there is a well-marked progress in them. They do not cover the same ground by any means; but each of the later flows from the former. Nobody can ‘commit his way unto the Lord’ who has not begun by ‘delighting in the Lord’; and nobody can ‘rest in the Lord’ who has not ‘committed his way to the Lord.’ These three precepts, then, the condensed result of the old man’s lifelong experience, open up for our consideration the secret of tranquillity. Let us think of them in order. I. Here is the secret of tranquillity in freedom from eager, earthly desires-’Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ The great reason why life is troubled and restless lies not without, but within. It is not our changing circumstances, but our unregulated desires, that rob us of peace. We are feverish, not because of the external temperature, but because of the state of our own blood. The very emotion of desire disturbs us; wishes make us unquiet; and when a whole heart, full of varying, sometimes contradictory longings, is boiling within a man, how can he but tremble and quiver? One desire unfulfilled is enough to banish tranquillity; but how can it survive a dozen dragging different ways?