III THE WELL IN THE VALLEY OF BACA Blessed is the man. . . in whose heart are the ways of them, who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well. Psalm lxxxiv. 5, 6. ACA means weeping. The valley of lation, or regret; the dry, sterile, desert, unwelcome valley through which one in his journey has to pass. Perhaps there really was just such a valley on the way up to Jerusalem. This is what is called a Pilgrim-psalm, sung by pious travellers as they approached the holy city. "My soul," they sang, "longeth for the courts of the Lord." "A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand." But as they thus sing they remember, perhaps, the cheerless road by which they have come. They recall to each other that parching, shadeless valley, deep down between the rocky hills, and sing their thanks to the man who, as he passed through that valley, dug there a well. It is not easy in a country like ours to appreciate how people in a land like Palestine felt to the man who had dug a well. In ancient Rome the highest honor was given to the man who had built a bridge over the treacherous Tiber. The high priest who first planned such a work was called a pontifex, a bridge-builder; and even to-day the head of the Church of Rome is known as the greatest of bridge-builders, the Pontifex Maximus. In countries farther east, however, the great need is not to bridge water, but to find it. The valleys lie waterless and treeless, withering and shadeless, indescribably barren and stony, so that a traveller in Palestine once said that the country looked as if it had been stoned for its sins. The one thing that a man or a camel wants to be sure of in his day's march is a sufficiency of water, and the chief hope of the traveller is for a mid-day halt and rest where there shall be a little tinkling stream and a bit of grass. Thus for thousands of years the nation remembered in its gratitude the man who had dug a well. It is the very heart of the East that sings this psalm. Still, the traveller pauses at the spot where the Patriarch Jacob dug a well and drank thereof, himself and his children and his cattle; and still, outside each little Galilean town, the women troop at evening to the village well, just as they did when Jesus met the Samaritan woman; and they set their water-pots on the curb and chatter together as the sun sinks behind the violet hills. Blessed is the man who, passing through the valley of trouble, digs there a well. It seems at first sight quite out of place to meet a company of light-hearted people, such as gather here of a pleasant afternoon, and ask them to think of the valleys of trouble. Why not talk of youth and happiness and hope and the hilltops of promise? And yet, who is there of us so young, or so inexperienced, or so unobservant, as not to have come already in his life's journey into some stern valley, with its withering of doubt, or its scorching of temptation, or the pitilessness with which life beats down like the tropical sun and cannot be escaped. Older people, indeed, as a rule, very much underestimate the amount of seriousness there is in many a young, laughing, chaffing, apparently careless life, and how surely it has already passed, or is perhaps just now passing, all alone, through its valley of trouble. Sometimes it is one's out ward circumstances which thus shut in upon one, as the hills crowd in upon the narrow valley, so that there is hardly room to walk; sometimes it is one's inward experiences of anxiety, or discouragement, or depression, or disillusion, or self-distrust, that make the road seem pitiless and sterile. Indeed, there is a time just between youth and maturity when life naturally passes through its own special valley of trouble. It is the time when the interests and aims of childhood have lost their charm, and yet have not been wholly supplanted by the interests of maturity. What am I to do with my life? cries out such a young soul. What was I made for? Was I made for anything? Is there any place in the busy world for me? O my God, open the way before me! Help me through this weary valley of decision, and I shall find nothing but delight in climbing the rough hills of work. So, many a young life passes through its valley of Baca, and finds it as stern and dry as that man in the parable found his life when he had put away the devils of his earlier life, and then wandered through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. Now, when any one of us, young or old, enters thus into the valley of Baca, what is there for him to do? Some people try to get round it, as though they could find some easier path high up among the shadows of the hills. But nothing can be more misleading than these attempts to avoid one's troubles. You go a long way round, until you seem to have got by them, and then, returning to your path of life again, there is the valley still ahead of you. The only way out of the problems of experience is not round them, but through them; the more you shrink from them, the more difficult they grow. And what is there more pathetic and piteous than to see a life, which has been trying to believe that the way of life is all shady and happy and smooth, come to its own valley of Baca, and simply sink there, defenceless and unprepared, under the heat and burden of inevitable life? Another way is to march straight through the valley of Baca and to bear it. That is a brave, straightforward, patient thing to do. You take life just as it comes, without flinching or dodging, and you just get through its hard places as quickly as you can. But, after |