CHAPTER VII. THE HART. "As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God." -Ps. xlii. 1, 2. THE hart is the old English name for the male of the red deer or the stag, while the hind is the name for the female. The female is probably meant here; for, though the noun is masculine, the verb is feminine. All nations have found their symbols of the soul in the female rather than in the male, and we feel that the choice is just. For instance, in the famed picture, “Lux in Tenebris," the soul is represented as a young, shrinking girl. There are many kinds of deer in the East, and many names for them: the antelope, the ibex, the gazelle, the roe. As all the Bible-writers like to wed their lessons to the commonest objects, David probably has in his eye the common gazelle of Syria. It was a great pleasure to our party to surprise a small herd of gazelles. The gazelle is one of the loveliest, cleanest, gentlest, and most sprightly of animals. It constantly "snuffs up the wind," and travels against the wind; and its scent is so very keen that it rarely fails to detect a lurking foe. Its swiftness is pro verbial, and it is famed for its feats of leaping. It can outstrip the fleetest horse or greyhound in the chase. It was often used as an emblem of womanly beauty, and its name was a favourite name for women. Mr. Kinglake, in his Eothen, calls it "a darling," a beauty." Dorcas and Tabitha both mean gazelle. Like robin redbreast among birds, the gazelle, more than any other animal, awakens in man an interest of peculiar tenderness—all the more that it is easily tamed, and still is often kept as a pet. Thus the Eastern has a sort of half-human feeling towards this little creature, and a dim sense of respect and comradeship. You can thus understand why it is a great pet with the poets. Byron, Moore, and Wordsworth all praise the surpassing beauty of "the dear gazelle." Solomon does the same when he says, "My beloved is like a roe or a young hart." In his White Doe of Rylestone, Wordsworth regards it, or the order to which it belongs, as in some mysterious sense nearer man than other animals are. He describes "A doe most beautiful, clear white, And of the dead lady Aäliza, he says "To the grief of her soul that doth come and go, The timidity of the gazelle also adds a fine touch to the fitness of this symbol. When the Emperor Hadrian was about to die, he touchingly addressed his soul as a little, shrinking, trembling creature, the guest and companion of his body. These are some of the interesting reasons why this one animal suggested the soul to the poet David. His good taste would not allow him to find his image among big beasts and gross feeders like swine and bullocks. He chose the gazelle because it had so much spirit in it. This beautiful image of the soul took the fancy of the early Christians, for it is often found on the walls of their catacombs, and is usually represented drinking at a stream. David's hart is a great drinker, and most impatient of thirst. When summer's drought has dried up the streams, the life of the hart becomes one desire. It would then almost go through fire to get water. The Arabs lie in wait for the thirsty gazelles at their watering-places, and shoot them. And it searches for water till it finds it, or dies on the way. Its scent for water is keener than its sight, and keener even than its scent for its lurking foes. There are wells among the ridges of the desert known only to the gazelles, and for which the Arabs search in vain. When thirsty, the hart pants, or, as the word means, brays after the waterbrooks. It then makes a strange, piercing sound: its whole heart and flesh cry out for water. In that braying heart, David traces the semblance of his own soul longing for the living God. He also has the greatest wants and the keenest desires: he too must go out of himself for that of which he has no stock or store within. To a child of the desert, how beautiful the image, how affecting the sense in these words, "As the hart brayeth after the waterbrooks, so brayeth my soul after Thee, O God." It is summer in Palestine. All the streams among the hills are dried up, and each channel is now a wady or dry river-bed, which makes a great impression upon the imagination of the traveller. It is a perfect picture of desolation; and under the stinging heat, the bleached stones have a sickening effect. It is as if the Angel of Death had spread his wings over the scene. Their accustomed watering-places only mock and increase the thirst of the gazelles, and the panting, braying creatures roam in search of water. And such is the lot of those who hope to slake the thirst of their souls only at earth's streams. It is hard for us to learn this vast truth of the Bible, and of human life. Many of us start life with the hope of finding satisfaction without giving ourselves to God and Christ Jesus; and some, after the bitterest failures, still cling to this vain hope. The earthly good from which one expected earthly joy has mocked him, but he says, "Oh, I had too little of it; I did not give it a fair chance; if I could add this earthly pleasure and that, then I should have the satisfaction I desire." Thus millions in vain vex and torture nature for pleasure. But no art can make blessedness spring out of the cold earth, no chemistry can extract it out of clay. Let the trees be our teachers. For some weeks I have been watching the lime-trees near me. In early spring the tender buds were wrapped up in shining purple sheaths, each of which was a silk and waterproof mantle protecting the little nursling against wind, and rain, and cold. But soon the growing leaf laid off its sheath as you have laid off your winter overcoat; and then thousands of these purple sheaths were trampled in the dust. I transferred my admiration from the shining sheaths to the beautiful fragrant blossoms, but I found that the cradle of the flower was so contrived as to become also its coffin. The exquisite leaves were still left for me to admire, but now they are rain-bedashed, wind-blown, and besooted; and, worse than all, envious little insects have riddled them with holes. The ragged tree now wakes my pity more than my admiration, and soon winter's surly blast shall leave me nothing but the bare, staring branches. All its perfume gone, the stag-headed thing for many a month will seem to me little more than a bundle of withered sticks. I was lately examining some papers carefully preserved in a locked drawer. The vile insinuating dust had marred the beauty of my precious things, and my joy in possessing them. It is not an idle fancy that fetches illustrations of my subject from these lime-trees and these dusty documents. There is some flaw or crack in everything under heaven, some God-given hint that we must seek better things than our eyes have ever seen. God has dashed every earthly joy with some pain, that we may seek those joys that know no sorrow. F |