loweth hard after Thee;" or, in other
words, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from
longing through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the
right hand of God.

The first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in his
sorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowed
from the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. One
of our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus:
"There were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reeds
and rushes, and here and there a tamarisk." This lonely land, cracked
with drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comes
not, is the image of his painful yearning for the Fountain of living
waters. As his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting for
thirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for the
refreshment of that gracious presence. Then he remembers how in happier
days he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in the
tabernacle. Probably the words should read, "Thus in the sanctuary have
I gazed upon Thee, to see Thy power and Thy glory." In the desert and in
the sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been able
to behold the symbol which bore the name, "the glory,"--and now he
wanders far from it. How beautifully this regretful sense of absence
from and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitably
pathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired to
share his exile. "And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of
God into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He will
bring me again, and show me both it and His habitation."

The fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. The swiftness of the
answer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalm
passes from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. In the
one breath "my soul thirsteth;" in the next, "my soul is satisfied"--as
when in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been
baked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white
stones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged
with budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills the
soul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of "marrow
and fatness," on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. The
abundant del