An Address delivered by Dr. Heyman Wreford at the Victoria Hall, Exeter, Sunday afternoon, November 27th 1892.
(107th Psalm. vs. 1 to 31.)
NO gladder sight has met my eyes on all my journey round the world than that I now look upon, and as I read the words, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever.” I could truly echo it from my heart. It is indeed a glad and glorious thing to be gathered together, and to sing the praises of God. “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy.” Let every one who knows what redemption is, let everyone redeemed from the hand of the enemy and delivered from his power say so, and let Heaven ring with the story of what Jesus has done for our souls. We read of the wanderers “gathered out of the lands from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South,” who had wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way, and found no city to dwell in, and those wanderers have been found and brought in with the gladness of God shining in their faces, and found themselves in the sweet company of others who have been redeemed also, and their voices are mingled together as they sing, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever.” They were “hungry and thirsty, and their souls fainted in them,” but they “cried to the Lord in their distress,” and God in Heaven heard their cry. As He rained down manna from Heaven to feed His chosen people in the wilderness, so it is now, and shall be again and again, and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled. I can safely assert that there is not a man or woman in this Hall, or in this City, or in the whole world, who has ever known what true satisfaction was without first coming to the Lord Jesus. He only satisfieth the longing soul. The world is full of unsatisfied ones, longing for this thing and the other, and crying “who will show us any good?” Only He Who led His people in the right way could do it. The blind and helpless who know not what to do or where to turn can all have their longing souls satisfied by Him, and sing while their hearts are bursting with joy, as if they were already standing at the gates of Heaven. “Oh, be thankful to the Lord for He is good.” Turn to the 10th verse, and you will see it continue. “Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death being bound in affliction and iron.” They were justly condemned and imprisoned, because, as the next verse says, “They rebelled against the words of God.” You and I have done that. I rebelled against God, and He showed me I was a sinner, and that I must come to Him. I was in darkness, and the shadow of death was over me, and I was bound in affliction and iron. He brought down their heart with labor, and He brought down my heart. That is how God in His mercy deals with men and women, and when they are crushed and cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivers them out of their distresses. Their cry reaches the Most High in His glory, and even from the dunghill they can lay hold on the throne of God. The poor thief hung on the cross, his heart was broken, he was bound in affliction and iron, and there was none to help, but he cried to the Lord, and the Lord delivered him. So the captive and rebellious soul is delivered when it turns to the Lord, and with every manacle struck off, and every fetter gone, it can sing, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever.” There is a hymn “Mercy from first to last!” Mercy’s golden thread runs through all God’s dealings with us, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord.”
Further on in the Psalm we have a picture of the foolish who will not turn to Him. “Fools because of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities are afflicted,” says the 17th verse. “The fool says in his heart there is no God,” and men must be fools if they deliberately take the road to hell. But these fools in the Psalm found out how foolish they were, and so they became wise, “they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.”
The 19th verse, and the next verse, tells us that “He sent His Word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.” So their voices could mingle in that burst of rapture, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever.”
Another thing I should like to observe in this beautiful Psalm is the broad view which it takes of God’s wonderful creation. The Psalmist seems to notice everything in the external world with the same close observation which he applies beyond almost all other men, to the deep workings, of the human heart; and as he looked round he saw how wonderful beyond all expression the works of God were, he gave utterance to his song of praise and cried, “O, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.” He saw the stamp of God’s goodness upon all created things; he saw that everything was created for a purpose, for God never does anything without a Divine purpose. There is no waste: in all His universe; everything there has a distinct place and use, and the laws of creation go on in their fixed unchanging way, and everything works harmoniously-together because God Himself has set everything in motion. Whether we gaze upon the starry heavens by night, or upon the sun by day in all his splendor, or on the plants, and flowers at our feet, they are full of wonderful mysteries which year after year they go on revealing to our gaze, and God’s servant, looking upon the heavens, and on the great waters, and upon the valleys and ravines of earth, and the cattle upon a thousand hills, and seeing God’s goodness in all created things, bursts out into his beautiful Psalm of thanksgiving and praise.
The Psalmist saw man’s true position in creation, too, with much clearer eyes than we do; and when he considered the wonderful place God had given to man in His universe, and the intellect, power and dignity with which the great Creator had endowed him to rule the lower order of created things, when he looked into the human heart, and saw the-poor return man made for all the benefits received, it was like a weight or burden on the Psalmist’s soul, and as he contrasts the little that man renders back, with all that God deserves, he utters the plaintive cry, “Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!” Oh, do look: into your hearts, as I try to look into mine, and let us realize how little we have given to God for all He has given to us.
Just for a moment or two let me draw your attention to the 23rd and 24th verses of the Psalm we have read: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters: These see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.” Whoever has been a long voyage as we have, and gone “from sea to sea,” and seen the wonders of the Lord in the deep, has experienced some, at least, of the feeling expressed in these verses. Thank God He gave us for the greater part a quiet sea, and smoothed the waves before us; but I must not stop to say more than a few words about what we saw or where we went on our journeyings now. When we had passed the Bay of Biscay and got into the Mediterranean, we came to the island of Melita, to the place where tradition says that Paul was shipwrecked. There is a statue to the Apostle there, with the face looking on the place supposed to have been the spot where the wreck took place. As we stood there I read from my Bible the account of that memorable wreck, and the scenes of those far-off, bye-gone days Were vividly impressed upon us. We passed near Crete, spoken of in the 27th Acts, and near Cyprus, too, and among those historic scenes full of solemn memories of the past, I thanked God most fervently that we had learned to love the New Testament and to believe its sacred truths. When we came to Alexandria, the old land of slavery, my thoughts went back to the dark oppression of the Israelites, and as we gazed for the first time on the Nile, I felt I was looking on the river where the little ark of Moses rested. While we were at Cairo we saw the mummies of the Pharaohs, and we were permitted to gaze on one which was supposed to be the mummy of the very Pharaoh who oppressed the children of Israel. There we still saw the features of men over whom thousands of years had passed since their voices were heard, and it is a very remarkable circumstance that the tombs of all the Pharaohs have been found except one, and that one may have been the one who was drowned in the Red Sea with all his mighty host. We not only gazed on the Pharaohs, but we even brought back a photograph of one, the one reputed to have been the oppressor of the children of Israel, and all these things become very real to us if we have read and believed our Bible. On the Red Sea we passed the probable site of the crossing of the children of Israel, and we had the mountain of Sinai pointed out to us in the far distance.
We could not, from the sea, identify the actual mountain. Standing on Sinai you can view the Red Sea, but you cannot single out the particular n1ountain peak among others from the steamer.
Now my time is gone, but in concluding I want to ask you whether there is anyone in this Hall who has never uttered a single note of praise to God for all His benefits, and who, if they died today, would not have one word of thanksgiving written against their names in the Books of Heaven? “The living praise Thee, O God!” The dead cannot praise Thee. The sinner dead in trespasses and sins cannot praise Thee; only those with living souls can say, “I know in Whom I have believed.” Think for a moment, when the redeemed come from North and South, East and West, clad in shining robes, and the rolling praises of their song shall be like the mighty waves that beat upon the shore, will you be there to sing, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever”?
When the changeful sea of time is past, trill your souls come safely to anchor with ours in the peaceful harbor of Eternity; in the blessed presence of Him, Whom not having seen we love? Oh, may it be so; may you all be there, and may our voices mingle together then as we sing the glad new song of the redeemed throughout the countless ages of Eternity, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.