PSALM 91

The Ninety-first Psalm is one of the very greatest chapters in the whole Bible. It is one of those chapters that everybody knows by heart. Yet, like so many familiar Bible passages, it is unfortunately among the least understood. It must, of course, be interpreted in the spiritual way, and it is only thus that the true meaning is arrived at. Like the rest of Scripture, the underlying thought is developed through a series of symbols, and it is by the appreciation of the values lying behind these that the power of this prayer is appropriated.

  The Book of Psalms has been called “The Little Bible,” and it certainly forms a matchless treasure-house of spiritual riches. This wonderful collection of poems, lyrical, dramatic, elegiac, contains something to fit every mood, and to meet every need of humanity. All through the centuries of both Old Testament and Christian history, they have been a never failing source of inspiration and comfort for men and women of every kind and every walk of life, and it is safe to say that no soul in need has ever turned to the Book of Psalms in vain.

  The Ninety-first Psalm when scientifically understood, is found to be one of the most powerful prayers ever written. All sorts of people have got themselves out of every conceivable kind of trouble working on this prayer every day, in the spiritual way. Other cases are on record of people who had not prayed for years turning to this prayer in some great emergency and overcoming their difficulty; with only the surface meaning to help them. It will easily be seen, therefore, how well worth while it is to make oneself thoroughly acquainted with at least the principal ideas contained within it, for then one has always ready to hand a practical prayer of unparalleled power.

  The best way to get the most out of this psalm is to read it through quietly; pause after each clause to consider the meaning as given in the commentary; assent to this mentally; and then pass on to the next. Remember that all this is praying. Prayer is, essentially, thinking about God—not necessarily addressing God, helpful though this may be at times—and while you are working on this psalm, analyzing the text, and considering the meaning in your own mind, you are praying, and in a very efficient way too. If you are in a specific difficulty, and particularly if you are rather fearful, you will find, after working through the prayer once or twice or perhaps three times, that most of your fear will have gone, and that you are now looking at things from a different point of view—and this is the change in mentality that brings about results.

  Let us then consider the prayer in detail, taking it verse by verse.

  He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. The Secret Place of the Most High is your own consciousness, and this fact is the most important practical discovery in the whole science of religion. The error that is usually made is to suppose the Secret Place of the Most High to be somewhere outside of yourself; across the sea, or up in the sky probably. This error is usually fatal to our hopes, because our prospects of success in prayer depend upon our succeeding in getting some degree of contact with God, and since He is only to be contacted within, and never without, as long as we are looking without we must naturally fail in our objective. Jesus emphasized this truth again and again; indeed it is the foundation-stone of his whole teaching. “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” he said, and, when asked where that kingdom could be found, replied, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” And again he said that when we pray we are to enter into the closet and shut the door, meaning, to retire in thought within our own consciousness and to withdraw our attention from outer things. In fact, this doctrine of the Secret Place and the wonders that can happen therein is taught right throughout the Bible.

  To abide under the shadow of the Almighty means to live under the protection of God Himself. “Under the shadow,” is a dramatic, Oriental expression for safety. Eastern people, and especially those with a desert background, such as the people of Palestine, look upon the sun as a danger, even an enemy, from which they need to be safeguarded. In the West, as a rule, we look upon him as our greatest friend, and we can hardly get enough sun to satisfy us; but in the East it is otherwise. There, shade is sanctuary, or safety—“the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” The exhausted traveller, on attaining his goal, sinks down in the shade for his long-sought rest, feeling that now at last he is safe.

  Let us note that here God is called “The Almighty,” this title being selected from among the many other titles that the Bible has for God, in order to impress us at this point with the fact that He really is Almighty, and that He can therefore overcome our present difficulty for us, no matter how big it may seem at the moment—“With God all things are possible.” Consider, however, that the promise is made to “him that dwelleth.” If we only run into the Secret Place now and again when we are in trouble, we can scarcely be said to dwell there. God will always come to our rescue whenever we pray, but if we seldom think of Him at other times, we may experience considerable difficulty in making our contact in an emergency; or we may even be so perturbed as to forget altogether to pray. By means of regular daily prayer and meditation we dwell in the Secret Place, and then we may expect to abide under the shadow, and to enjoy the protection of the Power that is indeed All Powerful.

  At this point we notice a change in the form of the psalm from the third person to the first. This is a literary stroke of rare skill. Observe that the poem opens by definitely announcing the irresistible power of prayer. It states a general Cosmic Law in a form of scientific detachment. In order to bring home to you with unmistakable clearness the fact that this law applies to you, as much as to anything or anyone in the universe, and that by no possibility could you be an exception, it now changes over to the first person and makes you say “I.” In the language of metaphysics, it compels you to voice the I AM.

  I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. The Lord means God, in particular your own knowledge of Truth, as that knowledge is in itself the Presence of God in the one who knows it, his Indwelling Christ. How can knowledge be a presence? Secular knowledge, which is intellectual, cannot; but the true knowledge of God is not an intellectual theory; it is an actual experience—not a thing of the head, but of the heart—and this is indeed a Presence. It is indeed one’s own higher, or Real Self. It is pure Spirit. It is at one with God. As a general rule, people contact this Real Self only vaguely and occasionally at first, often calling the experience “intuition.” Then, if they pray regularly in the scientific way, and especially if they frequently pray for inspiration, the flickering gleams of intuition gradually magnify and strengthen into a clear and definite sense of the Presence of God, when He really becomes their Lord. The student should understand, however, that it is by no means necessary to get this clear sense of the Divine Presence in order to have the help of God. The very fact that you are praying at all means that the action of God is taking place in your consciousness, and the action of God must have results.

  In Him will I trust. However worried or depressed you may be, however full of doubts and misgivings, still the very fact that you are praying means that you have at least enough faith for that. The faith to go on praying in the midst of doubts about results is the tiny grain of mustard seed that Jesus says is sufficient for practical purposes. “In Him will I trust” is an expression of your determination to trust in God in spite of appearances. It means that you have now determined to trust practically in God by ceasing to worry and fear. This is the legitimate and spiritual use of the will. Your will is a Divine faculty, and has its own place in the spiritual life. Of course, the will can be misused. We must not try to bring events to pass by the direct exertion of will power, even to produce a bodily healing; but the will must be employed to say whether we are going to pray or not to pray; whether we are going to give way to fear or to refuse to do so; whether we are going to yield to temptation or not. In the case of temptation, it is notorious how often will power fails, but that is because the will should be employed, not to fight the temptation directly, but to choose to pray about it instead of giving way to it.

  This phrase means, not that you have already attained a sense of security, but that—though you still feel yourself to be in danger—you are choosing by the correct exercise of your power of will to put your trust in the Love of God, instead of in the impending danger.

  At this point the poem dramatically changes again, this time from the first person to the second. You have now voiced the I AM; you have recognized both the power and the goodness of God; and the fact of the living Presence of God in you and with you. You have determined, by a spiritual act of will, to trust in God, and by this procedure you have brought the action of God into play in your life. You have done your part. Now the Word of Truth is represented as addressing you with an authoritative assurance that your prayer will be answered, that in some way or other—not by any means necessarily in the way that you expect, but in some good way—you will be rescued from your difficulty. Again the Eastern instinct for dramatic form drives the great truth home with unequalled power in this employment of the second person.

  Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Needless to say, both the fowler’s snare and the noisome pestilence are to be interpreted in the most general sense as including any kind of danger, material, moral, or spiritual, that can threaten your welfare; and very apt descriptions they are of many of the perils that beset the children of men in their daily round. You are, however, to have no apprehension, for your protection is now assured to you in one of those beautiful illustrations from simple everyday life in which the Bible abounds. What child has not watched with delight the familiar farmyard scene in which the motherly old hen, at the slightest threat of danger, gathers the little chicks under her wings, covering them “with her feathers,” from any possible harm. Thus does God shield you from all danger once you have elected to trust Him. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. It is the knowledge of the Truth about God and man that makes the demonstration. One does not do something with Divine Truth; it is the knowing of that Truth that in itself heals the condition. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

  Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by days; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. These two verses together with verse 13, lower down, constitute a superb analysis of the rationale of man’s psychological nature. The respective characteristics of our conscious and subconscious minds are contrasted with unsurpassed insight. For practical purposes, all our troubles may be classified as belonging to either the conscious or the subconscious mind, and have to be dealt with accordingly. The arrow that flieth by day and the destruction that wasteth at noon refer to any difficulty of which you are consciously aware, whether that difficulty be a physical ailment, a business problem, trouble with another person, or what-not. The point here is that you are aware of the difficulty, and that you are seeking in one way or another to overcome it. It is, so to say, a daytime problem.

  The terror by night and the pestilence that walketh in darkness, on the contrary, imply something that, unknown to you, is working in your subconscious mind, or, unsuspected by you in the world outside of yourself. Modern psychology has shown conclusively that most of our difficulties have their roots far out of sight in the depths of the subconscious, and that these subconscious minds, in fact, contain an enormous amount of material whose presence we little suspect. These are indeed terrors of the mental night and pestilences of the darkness. In a less personal sense, they refer to any danger from outside of yourself of which you may be unaware. An impending accident, for instance, would come under this heading, or any hostile activities by people secretly inimical to you. If, let us say, an enemy were covertly working against you, or, as occasionally happens, a business partner or an employee were acting to your detriment, unsuspected by you, such things would come under this heading of hidden trouble.

  A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. This clause has been gravely misunderstood. It has been taken to indicate some kind of favoritism on the part of God, whereas, of course, such a thing is utterly impossible. “No respecter of persons.” It really means, quite simply, that prayer does change things, that those who pray are saved from trouble that would otherwise overtake them, and that does, in fact, overtake those who do not pray. The word “wicked” originally meant bewitched, and the wicked need not necessarily be conscious wrongdoers, but are much more frequently just those who do not rely upon God, or trouble to say their prayers, because they are bewitched or deceived by materialism, or atheism, or by simple doubt in the efficacy of prayer. Because they do not pray they cannot expect to escape from trouble and do not succeed in doing so.

  Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. This is one of the most definite and concrete promises given in the whole Bible. In all the many declarations of the nearness and certainty of God’s help, which abound in the Scriptures, not one is more precise or more definite than this. It says that once you have made this Divine Christ Power your refugee, by living regularly in the spiritual consciousness—making it your habitation—no trouble can touch you. Could the thing possibly be more pointedly and convincingly stated?

  The Bible has an idiom that is all its own, and in this idiom the word “promise” is the name given to a statement of some metaphysical law. It is not used in the sense in which you promise a person to do something at some future date, meaning an agreement or pledge. Such a promise is supposed to be a matter of choice on the part of its author who says in effect, “I am willing to do such a thing next week or next year. I choose now to agree to do it.” Thus one may promise to pay a sum of money in six months’ time, or one may promise a child to take it to a show next week. A Bible “promise” is a statement of a natural law in metaphysics, just as a “law” of physics such as Boyle’s law or Ohm’s law is a statement of the consequences, upon the physical plane, that will naturally follow upon certain other occurrences.

  So, a Bible “promise” is a statement of the consequences that naturally follow from certain thoughts and states of consciousness. If Boyle’s law were written in the Bible idiom, it would read something like this: “As I live, saith the Lord, whenever thou shalt double the pressure of a gas, thou shalt halve the volume, temperature remaining constant.” In the language of natural science, our Bible promise would run: “By meditating regularly on the Presence of God with you, and directing your life in accordance with that fact, you become immune from any kind of danger.”

  For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. This is one of the very loveliest of all the promises in the Bible. For tender beauty it stands alone. Re-read it carefully now, and ask yourself whether human language could possibly say anything more exquisite than this, or promise anything more wonderful. He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways—and it is meant for you and for me. It might have seemed appropriate that some extraordinary or exalted Being should be given an escort of angels, as a bodyguard, to support him, to keep him in all his ways. But the Bible is the book of Everyman, and this promise is given to you and to me.

  It would be no bad thing if you made this single verse the subject of careful meditation every day for a month. If, in that way, you came to realize, however feebly, the real significance of this promise—that you are to be in the charge of angels and safeguarded in all your ways (not merely in certain ways, but in all your ways); safeguarded for bodily health, for food, clothing, rent, and the other necessaries of life; for right activity and self-expression; for congenial companionship; safeguarded from temptation and from fear as well—what a staggering difference this would make in your life.

  Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Having sung of the invincible protection and loving kindness of God in this glorious burst of poetry, the inspired writer now re-states the same idea from the scientific or psychological point of view. The great Illumined Ones who wrote the Bible under Divine inspiration well knew all the teaching of modern psychology. They understood human nature as no other teachers have ever understood it, and they wrote of it in their own way as no others have ever written of it before or since. The ideas concerning the subconscious mind and the part it plays in our scheme of things, which have lately been put forward by investigators like Freud and Jung and others, novel though they appear to the modern world, were all quite familiar to the great Initiates of the Bible—that is to say, the portions of these teachings which are correct, for, of course, they are on many points at variance with fact. Moses, Isaiah, John, and the author of this psalm, for example, knew all that is to be known about the subconscious mind and the way in which it functions. They knew all about what we call complexes and neuroses, the unconscious motive, the phenomena of dissociation and splitting, and many other things too that our psychologists have not yet discovered. Here the Psalmist draws a further contrast between the subconscious danger and the consciously realized difficulty, as a development of verses 5 and 6. Now it is the adder and the dragon put against the lion. The lion stands for a difficulty about which we are informed; one of which we are so afraid that it seems a very lion in our path. The lion has his faults; he is indeed extraordinarily undesirable as a companion—ferocious, pitiless, quick as lightning, strong as steel; but credit he must be given for one major virtue—he is no sneak. He rushes at you in the open; you know what you have to meet, and can take your measures. How different, on the other hand, is the attack of the adder, or snake; for it is hidden. It creeps upon you in the dark, and ordinarily you have no sense of danger until the blow falls. You cannot fight this enemy squarely, because you cannot see it. Here, of course, we again recognize subconscious trouble, and in the repeated and parallel phrase so characteristic of Hebrew poetry the lion becomes a young or particularly vigorous lion, and the adder becomes a dragon, and this is the Bible term for what in modern psychology is called a complex. A complex is a group of ideas heavily charged with emotion and hidden away in the subconscious, mind. These emotions usually have their roots in one of the great primary instincts of human nature, and this fact endows them with what is often a terribly destructive power.

  And here you are promised that your complexes shall be dissolved by the Christ Truth, the realization of God. Utterly dissolved. Completely dispersed. Trampled under feet, is the telling phrase employed to express their complete annihilation. There is nothing that can be done by psycho-analysis or any other form of psycho-therapy that cannot be much better done by Scientific Prayer, or the Practice of the Presence of God. Prayer, which is the appeal to God, as distinct from any form of mere mental treatment, goes straight to the seat of the trouble, wherever it may be, without need of any direction on your part. When you pray about any specific difficulty, enough prayer will remove that difficulty by removing its real mental cause, whatever or wherever it may be, even though you do not in the least suspect the cause, or even though you may be erroneously attributing it to quite a wrong cause. However deep down in the subconscious life the trouble may be, the Christ Truth will find it and redeem it. (He descended into hell.)

  The last three verses constitute the final stanza. They are in themselves a glorious psalm of ringing joy and triumph. Even when used alone, they form a complete and wonderful spiritual treatment. Here once more we find a dramatic change in the presentation, with the object of compelling you to voice the I AM on the highest note. Thus your simple prayer gradually develops into nothing less than the Logos, the creative Word of God, spoken through you.

  Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore until I deliver him. This is one of those gnomic sayings in which the Bible abounds, where an ocean of teaching is crystallized into a phrase. It is a definite statement that you are to be delivered from your difficulty because you have set your love upon God. That, definitely and simply. There is nothing hypothetical or contingent here; no conditions whatever either expressed or implied. The statement indicates the accomplished fact—the fixed decision, as it were—I will deliver him. And why?—because he hath set his love upon me. “But, alas,” you may say, “this cannot apply to me, because, to be honest, I do not really feel any very strong sense of love for God. How I should like to!—but I do not.” To which the answer is, that your love for God is not an emotion. It has really nothing to do with the feelings at all. In these matters emotion is too often misleading. We demonstrate and prove our love for God by praying, and by refusing to recognize error as having any power over us; by declining, out of loyalty to God, to accept anything less than the perfect harmony which is His Will. If you love Me, keep My commandments. By the very fact that you have been praying about a difficulty, going through this psalm, for instance, you have been setting your love upon God, no matter how depressed or how doubtful you may have felt. And, therefore, He will deliver you.

  I will set him on high, because he hath known My Name. In the Bible the “name” of anything means the nature or character of that thing. Now the nature of God is perfect, omnipresent, all-powerful good, boundless love; and to “know” this is to be set on high above all your difficulties—that is, to be taken out of them, into freedom, security, and happiness. This is because, in Biblical language, to know a thing is not a mere intellectual apprehension, but involves a certain degree of understanding and realization. So we see that when we have, through our prayers, attained some real appreciation of the Allness of God, our troubles disappear.

  The last two verses gather up, so to say, all the implications and promises of this most wonderful stanza, and present them to the fearful or doubting heart as a song of triumph; promising counsel, and guidance in perplexity, salvation in trouble, and a long and joyous career, culminating in complete spiritual triumph. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him by salvation.

1. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

4. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

5. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.

6. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.

7. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

8. Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.

9. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

10. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

11. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

EMMET FOX