The Soul rejoicing in God.
These words express:
I. The satisfaction which man's reason experiences at contact with God. God satisfies some of the deepest yearnings of our intellectual nature. For instance, all men and women who think at all desire, if they can, to refer the various facts and objects which meet them when they look out from themselves upon life to some common principle, to some all-comprehending law, under which each can be set in its proper place, some law which will harmonise all, explain all, adjust what seems at variance, interpret what appears to be irregular, by the light poured upon all from a higher unity. God the supreme Author and End of all existence satisfies the intellectual demand of the human soul, which can be satisfied by none less than God. God furnishes the soul with the secret of the unity of all existence; and man, in the joy of this profound satisfaction offered to his reason, exclaims, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour."
II. But the words express also the satisfaction which God yields to another part of our spiritual being the affections on the emotions. Among these look: (1) at the emotion of awe. Why are we men drawn, we scarcely know how or why, towards what is sublime or magnificent? Stern determination, great vigour of will, have an attraction for the majority of men. Most of us are irresistibly attracted towards that which is higher, greater, stronger, than ourselves. It was this principle which led the heathen nations of antiquity to give Divine honours to men whom they considered extremely eminent; but in reality this enthusiasm for greatness can be satisfied only in Him who alone is great great in Himself, and not by the bequest of another. (2) We all feel, in various degrees, the love of beauty. It is He, depend upon it, it is He whose presence penetrates us at all the pores of our being which are alive to the sense of beauty in the world of nature and the world of thought. (3) God satisfies our filial affection. When we have found Him the parent who unites a father's authority with a mother's tenderness, it is natural to exclaim, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour."
III. Note a third satisfaction which God yields to our spiritual nature. He supports and justifies conscience. He gives to conscience basis, firmness, consistency. He relieves its anxieties; He reconciles by a fuller revelation its questionings about Himself. Conscience incessantly chants before the Cross that it magnifies the Lord, and that it rejoices in God its Saviour.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 671.