De Prefundis Clamavi
J. Baldwin Brown, B. A. Psalm 42:7 Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterspouts: all your waves and your billows are gone over me. I. THE FORCE OF THE IMAGE WHICH IS HERE EMPLOYED. In Jonah we have almost the same words (chap. 11.). There is nothing that moves with such mighty, majestic sweep as the ocean. But the sea is pitiless. The waves succeed each other with a certain measured, harmonious mot, ion. It is the music of destruction. Unhasting, unresting, they surge on. The strongest things that man can build are tossed as waifs on their crests or flung as wrecks on the strand. Again, the ocean is profoundly melancholy and restless, yet it aims at and accomplishes nothing, thus adding to the aptness of this image of calamity of which David tells. II. Let us try to ESTIMATE THE EXPERIENCE WHICH THE IMAGE PORTRAYS. 1. There are two spheres of pain. The one comprehends the common experience of mankind. God loves not monotonies, and there is none so sad as a monotony, because a satiety, of joy. And hence God has ordained that every life should be chequered. The play of the sunlight and the shadows makes on the whole, for most, a tolerably happy experience of life. Indeed joy and sorrow are very relative terms. "Make up your mind," says Mr. Carlyle, "that you deserve to be hanged, and it will be a happiness only to be shot." Very small pleasures to some are intense joys to others. 2. We mean something quite different from this when we speak of calamity, the anguish through which a soul may be called to pass, and the despair in which it may be lost. Few pass far along the path of life without learning how sorrows differ from calamities; without having to breast a shock which threatens the whole framework of their fortunes. But there are those whose sadder lot it is, like young David, to know little else. Storm after storm, rising and raging with brief intervals of sunlight, till the strength is exhausted, and hope even is ready to expire. It is this "wave upon wave" which is so exhausting. One shock we can breast and master, and if it leave us drenched and shivering, no matter; the sunlight comes, and in the haven the sense of dangers faced and conquered makes the heart throb, and the eyes flash with a proud and joyful fire. You say — Never was man so tried! Well, be it so. You are here, the living, to pray and to praise; here with life, God, and an eternal future. "Why should a living man complain," when he has God, and a future which transcends an archangel's destiny, and out-soars the most daring dreams? David was not so faithless. Hardly had the moan crossed his lips, when it was drowned in a burst of glorious joy. "Watchman, what of the night?" The night is far spent, the day is at hand; the golden flush is already stealing up in the eastern sky. Cease thy moan, faint heart; tune thy lips to praise. See beyond the sullen tempest and the moaning sea a band of golden light in the far distance. A sure pilot steers thy storm-tossed vessel, and He will not leave the helm till He has landed thee on that blessed shore. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. WEB: Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.