Psalm 42:7 Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterspouts: all your waves and your billows are gone over me. "Deep calleth unto deep." It is the profound responsiveness of life which those words utter — the responsiveness of the world and the human nature which inhabits it to one another. How clear they are, and how they call and answer to each other — the world and man! It may be in the region of thought or in the region of action; it may be a great problem awakening the profoundest intelligence, and saying, "Come, find my solution," or it may be a great task summoning the active powers, and saying, "Come, do me"; it may be in an excitement and a tumult which shakes the nature through and through, or it may be in a serene and open calmness which means more than any tumult. The form is nothing; the substance of the experience is everything. "Deep calleth unto deep." It is a great inspiring spectacle when this is seen taking place in a young man's life. There is a beautiful exhilaration in it. The mysterious world lifts up its voice and asks its old unanswered questions problems which have puzzled all the generations which have come and gone, lo! they are not dead. They are still alive. All that is most serious and earnest in him tells him that their answers must be somewhere. Perhaps he can find what all who have gone before have failed to find. So the best which the young man is leaps to wrestle with the hardest which the world can show; so deep answereth to deep. At the other end of life the same thing comes, only in another way. When the great shadow of the earth lies on the old man's soul, and the light of the life beyond is gathering in the western sky — how often then a patience and a faith, a love and trust and spiritual certainty come forth which all the life has been preparing unconsciously; and in the silent days which wait the end, the soul hears the eternity, and "Deep calleth unto deep." This, then, is what we mean by deep calling unto deep. You see what kind of life it makes. There is another kind of life by contrast with which this kind may perhaps best be understood. There is a life to which the world seems easy, and so in which the strongest powers of the human nature are not stirred. I call that the life in which shallow calleth unto shallow. Like little pools lying in the rock, none of them more than an inch deep, all of them rippling and twinkling in the sunshine and the breeze — so lie the small interests of the world and the small powers of man; and they talk with one another, and one perfectly answers the demand which the other makes. Do you not know all that? The world simply as a place of enjoyment summons man simply as a being capable of enjoyment. It is the invitation of the surface to the surface — of the surface of the world to the surface of the man. What shall we say of this? It is real. It is legitimate. In its degree and its proportion it is good; but made the whole of life and cut off from connection with the deeper converse between the world and the soul, it is dreadful, The world does say to us, "Enjoy"; and it is good for us to hear her invitation. But for the world to say, and for us to hear, nothing better or deeper than "Enjoy" is to turn the relation between the world and man into something hardly better than which exists between the corn-field and the crows. Only when the deeper communion, rich and full and strong, is going on below, between the depths of life and the depths of man — only then is the surface communion healthy and natural and good. I have spoken of deep calling upon deep, which is great and noble; and of shallow calling upon shallow, which is unsatisfactory and weak. The words of David suggest to me also that there is such a thing as deep calling unto shallow — by which I mean, of course, the profound and sacred interests of life crying out and finding nothing but the slight and foolish and selfish parts of a man ready to reply. There are a host of men who will not leave great themes and tasks alone and be content to live trivially among trivial things. They are too enterprising, too alive for that. They have perception enough to hear the great questions and see the great tasks; but they have not earnestness and self-control enough to answer them with serious thought and strong endeavour; so they sing their answer to the thunder, which is not satisfied or answered. Now let us turn and, with another ear, listen to the shallow calling to the deep. When the mere superficial things of life, which are all legitimate enough in their true places and enlisting their own kind of interest, aspire to lay hold of man's serious anxiety and to enlist his earnest thought, then there is born a sense of disproportion just the opposite of that of which I have been speaking — a disproportion which seems to be rightly described as the shallow calling to the deep. If we are offended when eternity calls to men, and men chatter about it as if it were a trifle, so we also ought to be offended when some trifle speaks to them and they look solemn and burdened and anxious over it, and discuss it as if it were a thing of everlasting import. Have you never stood in the midst of the world of fashion and marvelled how it was possible that men and women should care, as those around you seem to care, about the little conventionalities which made the scenery and problems of its life? There is a noble economy of the deepest life. There is a watchful reserve which keeps guard over the powers of profound anxiety and devoted work, and refuses to give them away to any first applicant who comes and asks. Wealth rolls up to the door and says, "Give me your great anxiety"; and you look up and answer, "No, not for you; here is a little half-indifferent desire which is all that you deserve." Popularity comes and says, "Work with all your might for me"; and you reply, "No; you are not of consequence enough for that. Here is a small fragment of energy which you may have, if you want it; but that is all." Even knowledge comes and says, "Give your whole soul to me"; and you must answer once more, "No; great, good, beautiful as you are, you are not worthy of a man's whole soul." But then at last comes One far more majestic than them all — God comes with His supreme demand for goodness and for character, and then you open the doors of your whole nature and bid your holiest and profoundest devotion to come trooping forth. Oh, at least do this. If you are not ready to give your deepest affections, your most utter loyalty to God and Christ, at least refuse to give them to any other master. None but God is worthy of the total offering of man! (Bishop Phillips Brooks.) Parallel Verses KJV: Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. |
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