Taste and see


This is the language of experience, and that of no common character. The psalmist desires that all who might be partakers of his trial might be sharers in his deliverance. He tells us —

I. OF HIS EXPERIENCE. Paul, as David, speaks of having "tasted of the heavenly gift." The word is most emphatic, for the sense of taste includes most of the others — sight and smell and touch. And certainly it is so in spiritual things. There are among those who are called Christians three distinct classes. There are, first, those who hear without seeing; there are those who both hear and see, without tasting; and there are those in whom all three combine — to whom "faith cometh by hearing," in whom faith groweth by seeing, in whom faith is perfected and consummated by tasting.

II. THE INVITATION. Those who have had the experience of the psalmist cannot but desire it for others.

III. THE BLESSING. Such a man is blessed, even in the trust itself; and the blessing is one which not even the errors of his own weak judgment shall destroy, which not even the infirmity of his own frail purpose shall impair.

(Thomas Dale, M. A.)

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