Psalm 31:20 You shall hide them in the secret of your presence from the pride of man… The author of this psalm had evidently suffered much from the talk of society. The strife of tongues had raged, and its armies had wounded him. And his experience is that of not a few. A large share of good men's troubles come out of the talk of others. Every man has his own little public, and that public talks, and their talk worries, so that the subject of it cries out for the wings of a dove that he may fly away and be at rest. I. THE STRIFE OF TONGUES. What an expressive phrase that is. How the element of contention asserts itself in the great mass of the world's talk. I remember being once at a fair in a foreign city, and before each booth stood a crier, sometimes aided by musical instruments; each crier endeavouring to raise his voice above the others in advertising the attractions of his show. It was a good picture of the world at large, where so many people have something to say, something which they are determined the world shall hear, no matter who else goes unheard. Then, how much debate — often useless — there is. And how selfish, carried on not for others, but the man's own advantage. And, then, there is the hiss of slanderous tongues striving against the innocent, and of gossiping tongues striving which can tell most news — bad or good, false or true, it matters not. Now, men get weary of this. We grow blinded and stunned by this excess of talk. We want leisure to think, and to weigh, and to adjust things. If perchance a great seed-thought has floated to us on these winds of oratory and debate, we would fain give it time to strike its roots deep down into our hearts and minds. And we grow ashamed of ourselves, because we are so often drawn into this current of talk about our neighbours. We hear the gossip, and we happen to know a fact or to have heard a piece of news, and almost ere we know it, in it goes into the common stock: and, if we are not very careful, we find ourselves falling into censorious talk, flinging out sharp arrows of sarcasm or pulling a neighbour's defects a little farther out into the light; and when we come to sit down and think over what we have said, unless we are very much hardened, we feel ashamed. II. THE REFUGE. 1. Now, it will not do for us to defy public talk, and to do, wantonly, what shocks social sentiment and multiplies talk. For the talk of society is by no means an unmixed evil. It hurts a good many men, and that unjustly; but it also keeps not a few men steady. It begets a wholesome fear. It is good to have a manly respect for public opinion, and a manly desire for society's esteem. Defiance of society, then, is not our refuge from the strife of tongues. 2. The world does not afford it. To get out of the reach of talk is to quit the world altogether, which is no man's duty but his sin if he attempts it. God provides better for men than by withdrawing them from the world where their work lies. 3. Man is delivered from temptation, not by being taken out of it, but by being helped to conquer it. In putting a man in right relations with Himself, God puts him in right relation to the world's talk. III. Let us look at SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THIS, growing out of what has been already said. 1. There is the matter of slander and abuse. God does not always exempt good men from these. The man of science delights to show you how he can handle fire, and even go into the fire unhurt. That is a greater achievement than keeping away from the fire. A good man is given to thinking that, if his good name in the world is gone, if the world's talk casts up nothing hut mire and dirt, it is all over with him. God shows him that he can live, and live quietly and cheerfully, on the simple fact of his conscious integrity before God. 2. Sometimes God saves one from the strife of tongues by putting him where he cannot talk and where others cannot talk to him. He sends a calamity so overwhelming that his friends do not know what to say to him, and the man himself cannot reason about it, cannot argue, cannot explain, is simply reduced to silence. All that he can say is, "I am dumb; I open not my mouth because Thou didst it." He must find his only explanation in that simple fact, God did it. God seems to say to him, "Be still! There is only one thing you can know about this matter. Be still and know that I am God." 3. Again, God shields good men from the world's talk by hardening them against it. Exposure is often the best remedy for certain bodily ailments, and that is a kind of cure God often employs for the soul. Archbishop Whately, of Dublin, who died in 1863, was among the sturdiest men of his time, a man of undaunted courage, and withal of that genuine originality which awakens comment and opposition. Much of his official life was passed under a fire of censure, lie once said of himself, "My stumbling-block most to be guarded against was the dread of censure. Few would conjecture this from seeing how I have braved it all my life, and how I have perpetually been in hot water, when, in truth, I had a natural aversion to it. So I set myself resolutely to act as though I cared nothing for either the sweet or the bitter, and in time I got hardened. But no earthly object could ever pay me for the labour and the anguish of modelling my nature in these respects. I have succeeded so far that I have even found myself standing firm where some men of constitutional intrepidity have given way. And this will always be the case more or less, through God's help, if we will but persevere from a right motive." 4. Again, God hides His servant from the strife of tongues by filling his hands with work for others. Tim more one is interested in the welfare of men, the less he will care for their talk; for a good deal of sensitiveness is merely selfishness, after all. That, is a kind of sensitiveness which may be cured; and the best way of curing it is to get the life filled with Christ's spirit of ministry. Then what the world is saying of you will go by you like the idle wind. I remember how I went with the Christian commission during the war to help in nursing the sick and wounded. I was peculiarly sensitive to the sight of physical suffering, and my friends laughed at me and said, "You will faint at the sight of blood." And I quite feared I should. But it was not so. From the moment that I sat down beside the first man that met my eye, a poor fellow with a muskeg-bullet through his jaw, and tried, while I applied the cooling water, to drop a word or two about Christ and His rest for the weary — all my shrinking vanished. I thought only of those wounded men. I had little or no self-consciousness left. I saw only that colossal misery. That experience was worth a great deal to me, and that is the reason I tell it to you, for it illustrates a universal truth. Get yourself thoroughly interested in other people's bodies and souls; get the question, "What can I do for them?" uppermost in your thought, and the world's gossip about you will attract as little notice as the drifting sea-weed. 5. And I need scarcely add that this is the best way to keep ourselves from being sharers in the world's gossip. He who dwells in the secret of God's presence learns to take God's attitude toward infirmity and error — the attitude of One who remembers that His children are dust, and pities them accordingly. The tongue of such an one will not be a weapon of strife. These are some of the methods in which God hides His people from the strife of tongues; and all these methods are embraced in this one comprehensive fact — that He hides them in the hiding-place of His presence. Then, "your life is hid with Christ in God." If we are really Christ's, then back into the very bosom of His Father where Christ is hid, there lie will carry us. We, too, shall look out and be as calm and as independent as He is. The needs of men shall touch us just as keenly as they touch Him, but the sneers and strifes of men shall pass us by as they pass by Him and leave no mark on His unruffled life. This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. In this world we must be exposed to the strife of tongues. Let God hide thee in the secret of His pavilion and thou needest not fear. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. |
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