"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life."
"All the days." What days may not come? Spring days, when all the world shall be full of glad young life,
frolicking in the fields; carolling in the skies; bursting into leaf and flower at our feet. Summer days, in which
the year shall have reached its glorious prime, with golden light and long-drawn-out evenings and balmy nights.
Autumn days, when the fields shall be filled with sheaves of corn, while busy hands tear from orchard boughs and
trailing vines and towering hot-plants the rich produce of the year. Winter days, in which the foot shall tread
down the crackling leaves that carpet the forest glade; days of mist and rain and sombre light, when we gather
round the bier of the departed glory of the year, and lay it to the dust.
We sometimes stand, as it were, on the brow of an overhanging hill, peering wonderingly into the valley at our
feet, and asking what kind of days lie there, enveloped in the impenetrable mists, which only part as we advance.
What lies in the course of the years? Will the days be golden, lit by heaven's warm, sunny glow? Will they be red-letter,
not only in the usual sense of the word, but because stained with the blood of suffering' and sacrifice? Will they
be drab, attired in sombre tints, dark and sad? Birthdays; death-days; marriage-days; anniversaries of a dead past,
which refuses to be forgotten; fast-days; feast-days; saint-days, because associated with some whom we have known
and loved as the very elect of God. Only a few short hours,- like the flash of a revolving light seen far out at
sea between two long pauses of black darkness; or like a diamond set in ebony, and yet how much of weal or woe,
of bitter memory or eager foreboding, may be crowded into one brief space of time which we call a day!
But there never will come a day throughout all the future in which we shall not have the two guardian angels, heavenly
escorts, and God-sent messengers, Goodness and Mercy, who have been told off and commissioned to attend the believer
during all the days of his earthly pilgrimage.
When, benumbed with cold and bewildered with the mist which has suddenly settled down upon his track, the traveller
across the highland moor sinks down exhausted on the drenched herbage, what an infinite comfort it is, through
a momentary rent in the mist, to get a glimpse of the plaided figure of a shepherd close beside him; or to discover
two servants from the distant paternal home, sent out to scour the hills in search of the missing one, and to bring
him safely to its shelter and warmth! But it is in some such way as this that the eye of the believer may detect,
in moments of weariness and solitude, the presence of those twin angels of God, GOODNESS and MERCY.
We have never seen angels like the two that came to Sodom; nor even their effigies, like the two angelic forms
which bent over the ark in the inner shrine of the holy tent. But we can imagine their pure faces, their ethereal
forms, their gentle ways. But here is something better than angel help: the personified attributes of God, His
goodness, His mercy; that is, Himself, in all the tenderest manifestations of His love and pity towards men.
Goodness AND Mercy. Not goodness alone, for we are sinners needing forgiveness. Not mercy alone, for we need many
things besides forgiveness. But each with the other linked.
Goodness to supply every want, mercy to forgive every sin; goodness to provide, mercy to pardon. David often links
these two together, as when he says, "The Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting." What shall we say
of these blessed attributes? Take Goodness. It is laid up in vast reservoirs in the nature of God; prepared for
the poor, the food of the hungry, the lodge of the righteous, the crown of the year, the very sun of life. "Oh,
taste and see that the Lord is good."
"How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!"
Take Mercy. She is the daughter of God: His delight, "He delighteth in mercy;" His wealth, "He is
rich in mercy;" His throne, "I will commune with thee from off the mercy seat." Who shall count
the rays that sparkle from this jewel! Tender, plenteous, sure, everlasting. Truly our Lord might say, "Your
Father is merciful."
And they shall follow. In the East the shepherd always goes in front. And our Good Shepherd never puts us forth
to the work or warfare of any day without going before us. But His shepherd dogs bring up the rear. We have a rear-guard
against the attack of our treacherous foes. We have two strong helpers to lift us from tier to tier of the pyramid
of life, keeping us from falling backward, whispering words of comfort, and placing strong hands under our arms
in circumstances of difficulty and stumbling.
In that word "follow" is it possible that there is a suggestion that we are going away from God, and
that He sends His goodness and mercy after us to call us back? It may be so. If a prodigal leaves a widowed mother
for the sea, she never forgets him; her prayers and tears and loving thoughts follow him; and to win him back she
sends out only the tenderest yearnings of a heart almost crushed. Even so with God and His own; they may wander
from Him, but He follows them, He sets Goodness and Mercy on their track. Sometimes it seems as if disaster on
disaster, stroke on stroke, pursues them; but it is not really so. Things are not always as they seem. And these
are but the disguises which Goodness and Mercy assume; their outer garb, protecting the delicate woollen garments
which are prepared for the weary head and tired limbs of the wearied, wandering, starved, and ragged prodigal.
He will not break off His kindness, nor suffer His faithfulness to fail, nor forsake the works of His hands, for
"His mercy endureth for ever."
You have only to turn round, or to swoon backward, and you will find yourself caught in the arms of God's goodness
and mercy, which are following you always. You may ' not realise that they are near; you may feel lonely and sad
and desolate; it may be one of your bad days, sunless and dreary, without a ray of comfort or a flash of hope,
surrounded by objects and forms of dread. Yet there, close by you, evident to God's angels, though veiled from
your faithless sight, stand the glorious, loving, pitying forms of God's infinite goodness, which cannot fail,
and His tender mercy. They will spread you a table in the desert as they did for Elijah; or they will flash through
the storm and stand beside you, bidding you fear not, as they did for Paul.
"Though unperceived by mortal sense,
Faith sees them always near,
A Guide, a Glory, a Defence:
Then what have you to fear?"
And in such hopes there need be no element of doubt. "Surely,'' says the psalmist. Why so sure? Because God
is God, unchangeable and everlasting; He cannot withdraw what He has once given. If we believe not, He abideth
faithful; He cannot deny · Himself. His gifts are without repentance.
The Giver of every good and perfect gift is also the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow
cast by turning. And when once He has begun to follow us in goodness and mercy, we may wander from His paths and
neglect His love and do despite to His Spirit, ignore the presence of His messengers, and bid them begone; and
yet they will not remove. They may follow at a greater distance, but they will follow still, never satisfied till
they have won us back to Himself.
Surely, because God has never failed in the past. Surely, because it would not become Him to take in hand and not
complete. Surely, because He has pledged Himself by exceeding great and precious promises. Surely, because the
united testimony of all His saints attests that He never fails or forsakes. Surely, because if He has set His love
on us in eternity, He is not likely to forget us in time. So surely shall never a day come in our earthly pilgrimage
in which God shall not be at our side in goodness and mercy.
Instead of surely, some commentators make it only. "Only goodness and mercy shall follow me." Just as
in the Seventy-third Psalm they read, "God is good, and only good," nothing but good, "to Israel,
even to such as are of a clean heart." It may be so; and it is certainly a fact that God's dealings with us
are never anything less than good and merciful. They may not seem so; but it is sometimes a greater test of love
to withhold than to give; to deny than to consent; to take away than to crowd the bosom full of overflowing benefits.
Fearful and fainting hearts, dreading the dark way alone, take heart; gird yourselves with new courage; lift up
the hands which hang down, and confirm the feeble knees! God knows how many days of life remain; He knows their
needs, their temptations, and their sorrows; and He pledges Himself that as the day, so shall be the strength;
that the day shall never come which shall be unblessed with His goodness and mercy; and that He Himself, in the
person of the blessed Lord, will be with us all the days, "even unto the end of the age."