{transcriber's note: obvious typos, printing errors and mis-spellings have been corrected, but spellings have not been modernized. footnotes follow immediately the paragraph in which they are noted. in chapter xv, eighth paragraph, second last line, "his" changed to "his" in the sentence "happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking" to agree with the author's obvious reference to david rather than to god.} =the household library of exposition.= the life of david as reflected in his psalms. the life of david as reflected in his psalms. by alexander maclaren, d.d. _ninth edition._ =london:= hodder and stoughton , paternoster row mcmiii _butler & tanner, the selwood printing works, frome, and london_ contents page i. introduction, ii. early days, iii. early days--_continued_, iv. the exile, v. the exile--_continued_, vi. the exile--_continued_, vii. the exile--_continued_, viii. the exile--_continued_, ix. the king, x. the king--_continued_, xi. the king--_continued_, xii. the king--_continued_, xiii. the tears of the penitent, xiv. chastisements, xv. the songs of the fugitive, index, works by the same author, bible class expositions, the household library of exposition, i.--introduction. perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of david is its romantic variety of circumstances. what a many-coloured career that was which began amidst the pastoral solitudes of bethlehem, and ended in the chamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that announced the accession of bathsheba's son! he passes through the most sharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness for his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout feeling. the early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and has left its traces on many a line of his psalms. "love had he found in huts where poor men lie; his daily teachers had been woods and rills; the silence that is in the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills." and then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties of these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous course through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companion and friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of god--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his lowlier, and perhaps happier days. the scene changes with startling suddenness to the desert. he is "hunted like a partridge upon the mountains," a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign courts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited from the "dangerous classes" of israel. like dante and many more, he has to learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, how homeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering the suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his "natural enemies." one more swift transition and he is on the throne, for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved. "nor did he change; but kept in lofty place the wisdom which adversity had bred," till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past, and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart and the prosperity of his kingdom. thenceforward trouble is never far away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of his great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his family, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom. none of the great men of scripture pass through a course of so many changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. like his great son and lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the solace and strength of the whole world. poets "learn in suffering what they teach in song." these quick transitions of fortune, and this wide experience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his psalms is woven. and while the life is singularly varied, the character is also singularly full and versatile. in this respect, too, he is most unlike the other leading figures of old testament history. contrast him, for example, with the stern majesty of moses, austere and simple as the tables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of elijah. these and the other mighty men in israel are like the ruder instruments of music--the trumpet of sinai, with its one prolonged note. david is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of god murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of all devout emotions. the man had his faults--grave enough. let it be remembered that no one has judged them more rigorously than himself. the critics who have delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own confession. his tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by the delights of sense, led him astray. there are traces in his life of occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile and war do not wholly palliate. flashes of fierce vengeance at times break from the clear sky of his generous nature. his strong affection became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy son. but when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable character. he is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends of the east especially love to paint. the shepherd's staff or sling, the sword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. that union of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and is very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of samuel ( sam. xxiii.) which begins, "these be the last words of david," and after giving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist of israel," passes immediately to the other side of the dual character, with, "these be the names of the mighty men whom david had." thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. he was made to be the inspired poet of the religious affections. and, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military leader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm count for more than strategic skill. he dashes at goliath with an enthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. while still in the earliest bloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows himself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as lightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat, calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his men, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever watchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men. the basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his shepherd god, an ardour of personal love to him, such as had never before been expressed, if it had ever found place, in israel. that trust "opened his mouth to show forth" god's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight." he has told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was sustained: "i have set the lord always before me. because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved. therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth." (psa. xvi. , .) thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination which only the greatest exercise. from the day when he stole like a sunbeam into the darkened chamber where saul wrestled with the evil spirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. the women of israel chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of saul confesses her love unasked, the noble soul of jonathan cleaves to him, the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his longing for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's flocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him with goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the heart of abigail; the very king of the philistines tells him that he is "good in his sight as an angel of god;" the unhappy saul's last word to him is a blessing; six hundred men of gath forsake home and country to follow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark close of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his kingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before absalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no common character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready to die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light of israel." it was a prophetic instinct which made jesse call his youngest boy by a name apparently before unused--david, "beloved." the spirit of god, acting through these great natural gifts, and using this diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of inspiration. the law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some measure, of the heart, of god to man. the psalm is the echo of the law, the return current set in motion by the outflow of the divine will, the response of the heart of man to the manifested god. there had, indeed, been traces of hymns before david. there were the burst of triumph which the daughters of israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over pharaoh and his host; the prayer of moses the man of god (psa. xc.), so archaic in its tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and the law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (deut. xxxii.); the passionate pæan of deborah; and some few briefer fragments. but, practically, the psalm began with david; and though many hands struck the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of israel." the psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked similarity of manner. their characteristics have been well summed up as "creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and movement, antique but lucid style;"[a] to which may be added the intensity of their devotion, the passion of divine love that glows in them all. they correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as given in the historical books. the early shepherd days, the manifold sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. the illusions, indeed, are for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. his words are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of other lives. but it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually illustrative. much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed, and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness of many of david's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as throwing light upon the narrative of his career. the attempt is made in some degree in this volume. [a] delitzsch, kommentar, u. d. psalter ii. . it will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the davidic psalms in general. can we tell which are david's? the psalter, as is generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some idea that it corresponded with the pentateuch. these five books are marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. the first portion consists of psa. i.-xli.; the second of psa. xlii.-lxxii; the third of psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth of psa. cvii.-cl. the psalms attributed to david are unequally distributed through these five books. there are seventy-three in all, and they run thus:--in the first book there are thirty-seven; so that if we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first book proper only two which are not regarded as david's. the second book has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. the third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen, eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. the intention is obvious--to throw the davidic psalms as much as possible together in the first two books. and the inference is not unnatural that these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of david, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the end, so as to round off the whole. be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the order of the collection in the grouping not only of davidic psalms, but also of those attributed to the sons of korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to asaph (lxxiii.-lxxxiii.) the question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly debated. the balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their genuineness. as in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. the extreme form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of ewald, who has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of david's psalms,--which is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which has attained it. these editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such considerations as these: the septuagint translators found them, and did not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain them; the book of chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very rare in the two last books of the psalter (delitzsch, ii. ). in some cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they are appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon these, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness. they are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration, and, as dr. perowne puts it in his valuable work on the psalms, stand on a par with the subscriptions to the epistles in the new testament. regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are prefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with some confidence to david, and with these we shall be concerned in this book. ii.--early days the life of david is naturally divided into epochs, of which we may avail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. these are--his early years up to his escape from the court of saul, his exile, the prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flight before absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end. we have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing by samuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. but perhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office, is of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could have been. it teaches us the point of view from which scripture regards its greatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are god's instruments. hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of it is history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character of its heroes. hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that indifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with half a dozen strokes of the chisel. we do not know the age of david when samuel appeared in the little village with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. the only approximation to it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning of his reign. ( sam. v. .) if we take into account that his exile must have lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, his second flight to the philistines, was sixteen months, sam. xxvii. ),--that the previous residence at the court of saul must have been long enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, and thereafter for the gradual development of the king's insane hatred,--that further back still there was an indefinite period, between the fight with goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician to the palace, which was spent at bethlehem, and that that visit itself cannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear and familiar to saul,--it will not seem that all these events could be crowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he could have been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when samuel's hand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls. how life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from the narrative of scripture. his father's household seems to have been one in which modest frugality ruled. there is no trace of jesse having servants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which he sends to his king when david goes to court was simple, and such as a man in humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, and one kid--his flocks were small--"a few sheep." it would appear as if prosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of jesse's grandfather, boaz, that "mighty man of wealth." david's place in the household does not seem to have been a happy one. his father scarcely reckoned him amongst his sons, and answers samuel's question, if the seven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with a trace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, "and, behold, he keepeth the sheep." of his mother we hear but once, and that incidentally, for a moment, long after. his brothers had no love for him, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes. the boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up in uncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised with by the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all the more decisively upon themselves. the process sours and spoils some, but it is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature is thrown back upon god, and not on its own morbid operation, strength comes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. he may have received some instruction in one of samuel's schools for the prophets, but we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfold itself were given to his budding life. whatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the bible story were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which it brought to him. the limbs, "like hinds' feet," the sinewy arms which "broke a bow of steel," the precision with which he used the sling, the agility which "leaped over a rampart," the health that glowed in his "ruddy" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands, where he kept his father's sheep. his early life taught him courage, when he "smote the lion" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bear that "rose against him," rearing itself upright for the fatal hug. solitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical side of his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blends so strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most part kept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. they threw him back on god who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. besides this, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on the throne, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds his office in order that he may protect and guide. and in the lowly associations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people, their simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--a priceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king. a breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by samuel's astonishing errand. the story is told with wonderful picturesqueness and dramatic force. the minute account of the successive rejections of his brothers, samuel's question and jesse's answer, and then the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns, heighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. and then what a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! "he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to" ( sam. xvi. )--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among these swarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is the meaning of the words which the english bible renders "of a beautiful countenance"), large and liquid as become a poet. so he stood before the old prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holy chrism. in silence, as it would seem, samuel anointed him. whether the secret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to be disclosed in future years, is not told. but at all events, whether with full understanding of what was before him or no, he must have been conscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures and olive yards of the little hamlet and of a new spirit stirring in him from that day forward. this sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given new materials for thought when he went back to his humble task. responsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly. graver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust in god who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work of years. and the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future in order to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would add self-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. how swiftly he matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--his summons to the court of saul, by the character of him drawn by the courtier who recommends him to the king. he speaks of david in words more suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. he is minstrel and warrior, "cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man," and "skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and the lord is with him." ( sam. xvi. .) so quickly had the new circumstances and the energy of the spirit of god, like tropical sunshine, ripened his soul. that first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, however helpful to his growth it may have been. it would give him the knowledge of new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. but it cannot have been of very long duration. possibly his harp lost its power over saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with its notes. for whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, and gladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to a merely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy of samuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes about bethlehem. there he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quiet days before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeper thoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon, until the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, and flung into the whirlpool of his public career. there are none of david's psalms which can be with any certainty referred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traces on many of them. the allusions to natural scenery and the frequent references to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens of these. one characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithful remembrance and cherishing of early days. how fondly he recalled them is shown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile, for one draught of water from the well at bethlehem--where in the dear old times he had so often led his flocks. but though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior to his first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be, are echoes of his thoughts in these first days. this is especially the case in regard to the group which describe varying aspects of nature--viz., psalms xix., viii., xxix. they are unlike his later psalms in the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace of pressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. in their self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence about sorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works of many a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness of life's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. they may not unnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisure from itself, and from pain, far from men and very near god. the fresh mountain air of bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life's quiet morning is on them. the early experience supplied their materials, whatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see what his inward life was in these budding years. the gaze of child-like wonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on the mighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creation spoke of god, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts ever welcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward light brighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness which may become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of close relation to god as his anointed and his servant, the cry for help and guidance--all this is what we should expect david to have thought and felt as he wandered among the hills, alone with god; and this is what these psalms give us. common to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, so uniform in david's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. he can smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paint landscapes. he feels the deep analogies between man and his dwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life, the reflection of our own. creation is to him neither a subject for poetical description, nor for scientific examination. it is nothing but the garment of god, the apocalypse of the heavenly. and common to them all is also the swift transition from the outward facts which reveal god, to the spiritual world, where his presence is, if it were possible, yet more needful, and his operations yet mightier. and common to them all is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again a characteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tenderness and pathos of david's later hymns. the nineteenth psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, as the eighth by night. the former gathers up the impressions of many a fresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising over the mountains of moab, which close the eastern view from the hills above bethlehem. the sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have voice for his ear. "no speech! and no words! unheard is their voice." but yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line,[b] and in the end of the habitable world their sayings." the heavens and the firmament, the linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of god's glory, with silent speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. and as he looks, there leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the bridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. how the joy of morning and its new vigour throb in the words! and then he watches the strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats down into the deep cleft of the jordan, and all the treeless southern hills, as they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath the beams. [b] their boundary, _i.e._, their territory, or the region through which their witness extends. others render "their chord," or sound (lxx. ewald, etc.) the sudden transition from the revelation of god in nature to his voice in the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on the supposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together by a later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain that "the feeling which saw god revealed in the law did not arise till the time of josiah."[c] but such a hypothesis is not required to explain either the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm between the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. the turn from the outer world to the better light of god's word, is most natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference of style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. there is also an obvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is described by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun, enlightening the eyes. [c] "psalms chronologically arranged"--following ewald. the word which declares the will of the lord is better than the heavens which tell his glory. the abundance of synonyms for that word show how familiar to his thoughts it was. to him it is "the law," "the testimonies" by which god witnesses of himself and of man: "the statutes," the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches "the fear of god," the "judgments" or utterances of his mind on human conduct. they are "perfect, firm, right, clean, pure,"--like that spotless sun--"eternal, true." "they quicken, make wise, enlighten," even as the light of the lower world. his heart prizes them "more than gold," of which in his simple life he knew so little; more than "the honey," which he had often seen dropping from "the comb" in the pastures of the wilderness. and then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of prayer. he feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits than any into which the noontide sun shines. he speaks as one who is conscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and his prayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thus very unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence and plead for pardon. "errors," or weaknesses,--"faults" unknown to himself,--"high-handed sins,"[d]--such is the climax of the evils from which he prays for deliverance. he knows himself "thy servant" ( sam. vii. , ; psa. lxxviii. )--an epithet which may refer to his consecration to god's work by samuel's anointing. he needs not only a god who sets his glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made known, but one who will touch his spirit,--not merely a maker, but a pardoning god; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song closes with the sacred name of the covenant jehovah, repeated for the seventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart, as "my rock, and my redeemer." [d] the form of the word would make "reckless men" a more natural translation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravated sort of sin. the eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like the former, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens, whether its composition fall within this early period or no. the prophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject in the present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on this grand hymn. what does it show us of the singer? we see him, like other shepherds on the same hills, long after "keeping watch over his flocks by night," and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky, with its lambent lights. so bright, so changeless, so far,--how great they are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. are they gods, as all but his own nation believed? no,--"the work of thy fingers," "which thou hast ordained." the consciousness of god as their maker delivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, and wakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers above all the stars. he is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the early composition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, already beginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, god perfects praise. there speaks the sweet singer of israel, prizing as the greatest of god's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his god-given words as nobler than the voice of "night unto night." god's fingers made these, but god's own breath is in him. god ordained them, but god visits him. the description of man's dignity and dominion indicates how familiar david was with the story in genesis. it may perhaps also, besides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have some special reference to his own earlier experience. it is at least worth noting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that which was dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either of sorrow or of sin,--a fact which may point to his younger days, when lofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in his case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in all his later works had not fallen upon him. perhaps, too, it may not be altogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy surrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the fold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in his enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, where he ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing god everywhere, and learning to perfect praise from his youthful lips. iii.--early days--_continued_. in addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to the devout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection with david's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to be his. the twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with the glory of god as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as the recipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundest tranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and the peace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult and noise. it is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm, such as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouched under some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge about him. its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling peals reverberating among the hills. there is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry, calling upon the "sons of god," the angels who dwell above the lower sky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, to ascribe to jehovah the glory of his name--his character as set forth in the tempest. they are to cast themselves before him "in holy attire," as priests of the heavenly sanctuary. their silent and expectant worship is like the brooding stillness before the storm. we feel the waiting hush in heaven and earth. then the tempest breaks. it crashes and leaps through the short sentences, each like the clap of the near thunder. _a._ the voice of jehovah (is) on the waters. the god of glory thunders. _jehovah (is) on many waters._ the voice of jehovah in strength! the voice of jehovah in majesty! _b._ the voice of jehovah rending the cedars! _and jehovah rends the cedars of lebanon_, and makes them leap like a calf; lebanon and sirion like a young buffalo the voice of jehovah hewing flashes of fire! _c._ the voice of jehovah shakes the desert, _jehovah shakes the kadesh desert_. the voice of jehovah makes the hinds writhe and scathes the woods--and in his temple-- --all in it (are) saying, "glory." seven times the roar shakes the world. the voice of the seven thunders is the voice of jehovah. in the short clauses, with their uniform structure, the pause between, and the recurrence of the same initial words, we hear the successive peals, the silence that parts them, and the monotony of their unvaried sound. thrice we have the reverberation rolling through the sky or among the hills, imitated by clauses which repeat previous ones, as indicated by the italics, and one forked flame blazes out in the brief, lightning-like sentence, "the voice of jehovah (is) hewing flashes of fire," which wonderfully gives the impression of their streaming fiercely forth, as if cloven from some solid block of fire, their swift course, and their instantaneous extinction. the range and effects of the storm, too, are vividly painted. it is first "on the waters," which may possibly mean the mediterranean, but more probably, "the waters that are above the firmament," and so depicts the clouds as gathering high in air. then it comes down with a crash on the northern mountains, splintering the gnarled cedars, and making lebanon rock with all its woods--leaping across the deep valley of coelo-syria, and smiting hermon (for which sirion is a sidonian name), the crest of the anti lebanon, till it reels. onward it sweeps--or rather, perhaps, it is all around the psalmist; and even while he hears the voice rolling from the furthest north, the extreme south echoes the roar. the awful voice shakes[e] the wilderness, as it booms across its level surface. as far south as kadesh (probably petra) the tremor spreads, and away in the forests of edom the wild creatures in their terror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of their leafy honours. and all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding on through the tumult, the voice of the sons of god in the heavenly temple is heard proclaiming "glory!" [e] delitzsch would render "whirls in circles"--a picturesque allusion to the sand pillars which accompany storms in the desert. the psalm closes with lofty words of confidence, built on the story of the past, as well as on the contemplation of the present. "jehovah sat throned for (_i.e._, to send on earth) the flood" which once drowned the world of old. "jehovah will sit throned, a king for ever." that ancient judgment spoke of his power over all the forces of nature, in their most terrible form. so now and for ever, all are his servants, and effect his purposes. then, as the tempest rolls away, spent and transient, the sunshine streams out anew from the softened blue over a freshened world, and every raindrop on the leaves twinkles into diamond light, and the end of the psalm is like the after brightness; and the tranquil low voice of its last words is like the songs of the birds again as the departing storm growls low and faint on the horizon. "the lord will bless his people with peace." thus, then, nature spoke to this young heart. the silence was vocal; the darkness, bright; the tumult, order--and all was the revelation of a present god. it is told of one of our great writers that, when a child, he was found lying on a hill-side during a thunderstorm, and at each flash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, and stirred to ecstasy. david, too, felt all the poetic elevation, and natural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he felt something more. to him the thunder was not a power to tremble before, not a mere subject for poetic contemplation. still less was it something, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, and which he had done with when he knew its laws. no increase of knowledge touching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the point of view which these nature-psalms take. david said, "god makes and moves all things." we may be able to complete the sentence by a clause which tells something of the methods of his operation. but that is only a parenthesis after all, and the old truth remains widened, not overthrown by it. the psalmist knew that all being and action had their origin in god. he saw the last links of the chain, and knew that it was rivetted to the throne of god, though the intermediate links were unseen; and even the fact that there were any was not present to his mind. we know something of these; but the first and the last of the series to him, are the first and the last to us also. to us as to him, the silent splendour of noonday speaks of god, and the nightly heavens pour the soft radiance of his "excellent name over all the earth." the tempest is his voice, and the wildest commotions in nature and among men break in obedient waves around his pillared throne. "well roars the storm to those who hear a deeper voice across the storm!" there still remains one other psalm which may be used as illustrating the early life of david. the twenty-third psalm is coloured throughout by the remembrances of his youthful occupation, even if its actual composition is of a later date. some critics, indeed, think that the mention in the last verse of "the house of the lord" compels the supposition of an origin subsequent to the building of the temple; but the phrase in question need not have anything to do with tabernacle or temple, and is most naturally accounted for by the preceding image of god as the host who feasts his servants at his table. there are no other notes of time in the psalm, unless, with some commentators, we see an allusion in that image of the furnished table to the seasonable hospitality of the gileadite chieftains during david's flight before absalom ( sam. xvii. - )--a reference which appears prosaic and flat. the absence of traces of distress and sorrow--so constantly present in the later songs--may be urged with some force in favour of the early date; and if we follow one of the most valuable commentators (hupfeld) in translating all the verbs as futures, and so make the whole a hymn of hope, we seem almost obliged to suppose that we have here the utterance of a youthful spirit, which ventured to look forward, because it first looked upward. in any case, the psalm is a transcript of thoughts that had been born and cherished in many a meditative hour among the lonely hills of bethlehem. it is the echo of the shepherd life. we see in it the incessant care, the love to his helpless charge, which was expressed in and deepened by all his toil for them. he had to think for their simplicity, to fight for their defencelessness, to find their pasture, to guard them while they lay amid the fresh grass; sometimes to use his staff in order to force their heedlessness with loving violence past tempting perils; sometimes to guide them through gloomy gorges, where they huddled close at his heels; sometimes to smite the lion and the bear that prowled about the fold--but all was for their good and meant their comfort. and thus he has learned, in preparation for his own kingdom, the inmost meaning of pre-eminence among men--and, more precious lesson still, thus he has learned the very heart of god. long before, jacob had spoken of him as the "shepherd of israel;" but it was reserved for david to bring that sweet and wonderful name into closer relations with the single soul; and, with that peculiar enthusiasm of personal reliance, and recognition of god's love to the individual which stamps all his psalms, to say "the lord is my shepherd." these dumb companions of his, in their docility to his guidance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret of peace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. the green strips of meadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flocks sheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream, the refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths which he tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had to pass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, and was never lifted in anger,--all these, the familiar sights of his youth, pass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different social state, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and the wisest love. the psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart the consciousness of god must have been, which could thus transform and glorify the little things which were so familiar. we can feel, in a kind of lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggest thoughts of god--because it is not our life. but it needs both a meditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of our own daily tasks speak to us of him. the heavens touch the earth on the horizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from the spot where we stand. to the psalmist, however,--as in higher ways to his son and lord,--all things around him were full of god; and as the majesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds and fishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly. with such lofty thoughts he fed his youth. the psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of perfect rest in god. we have referred to the absence of traces of sorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possibly favouring the supposition of an early origin. but it matters little whether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into the unknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weighty hopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted in god. the spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly david's, that in his younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows, it must have been especially strong. we may therefore fairly take the tone of this song of the shepherd god as expressing the characteristic of his godliness in the happy early years. in his solitude he was glad. one happy thought fills the spirit; one simple emotion thrills the chords of his harp. no doubts, or griefs, or remorse throw their shadows upon him. he is conscious of dependence, but he is above want and fear. he does not ask, he has--he possesses god, and is at rest in him. he is satisfied with that fruition which blesseth all who hunger for god, and is the highest form of communion with him. as the present has no longings, the future has no terrors. all the horizon is clear, all the winds are still, the ocean at rest, "and birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed wave." if there be foes, god holds them back. if there lie far off among the hills any valley of darkness, its black portals cast no gloom over him, and will not when he enters. god is his shepherd, and, by another image, god is his host. the life which in one aspect, by reason of its continual change, and occupation with outward things, may be compared to the journeyings of a flock, is in another aspect, by reason of its inward union with the stability of god, like sitting ever at the table which his hand has spread as for a royal banquet, where the oil of gladness glistens on every head, and the full cup of divine pleasure is in every hand. for all the outward and pilgrimage aspect, the psalmist knows that only goodness and mercy--these two white-robed messengers of god--will follow his steps, however long may be the term of the days of his yet young life; for all the inward, he is sure that, in calm, unbroken fellowship, he will dwell in the house of god, and that when the twin angels who fed and guided him all his young life long have finished their charge, and the days of his journeyings are ended, there stretches beyond a still closer union with his heavenly friend, which will be perfected in his true house "for ever." we look in vain for another example, even in david's psalms, of such perfect, restful trust in god. these clear notes are perhaps the purest utterance ever given of "the peace of god which passeth all understanding." such were the thoughts and hopes of the lad who kept his father's sheep at bethlehem. he lived a life of lofty thoughts and lowly duties. he heard the voice of god amidst the silence of the hills, and the earliest notes of his harp echoed the deep tones. he learned courage as well as tenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast between them and the high vocation which samuel's mysterious anointing had opened before him. if we remember how disturbing an influence the consciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with god, we may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription which refers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose that it expresses the contentment, undazzled by visions of coming greatness, that calmed his heart. "lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do i exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. surely i have smoothed and quieted my soul: like a weanling on his mother's (breast), like a weanling is my soul within me." (psa. cxxxi.) so lying in god's arms, and content to be folded in his embrace, without seeking anything beyond, he is tranquil in his lowly lot. it does not fall within our province to follow the course of the familiar narrative through the picturesque events that led him to fame and position at court. the double character of minstrel and warrior, to which we have already referred, is remarkably brought out in his double introduction to saul, once as soothing the king's gloomy spirit with the harmonies of his shepherd's harp, once as bringing down the boasting giant of gath with his shepherd's sling. on the first occasion his residence in the palace seems to have been ended by saul's temporary recovery. he returns to bethlehem for an indefinite time, and then leaves it and all its peaceful tasks for ever. the dramatic story of the duel with goliath needs no second telling. his arrival at the very crisis of the war, the eager courage with which he leaves his baggage in the hands of the guard and runs down the valley to the ranks of the army, the busy hum of talk among the israelites, the rankling jealousy of his brother that curdles into bitter jeers, the modest courage with which he offers himself as champion, the youthful enthusiasm of brave trust in "the lord, that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear;" the wonderfully vivid picture of the young hero with his shepherd staff in one hand, his sling in the other, and the rude wallet by his side, which had carried his simple meal, and now held the smooth stone from the brook that ran between the armies in the bottom of the little valley--the blustering braggadocio of the big champion, the boy's devout confidence in "the name of the lord of hosts;" the swift brevity of the narrative of the actual fight, which in its hurrying clauses seems to reproduce the light-footed eagerness of the young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed into the thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon the earth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge head with goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full of character, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of the impotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a living enthusiasm of faith in god, may, for our present purposes, be passed with a mere glance. one observation may, however, be allowed. after the victory, saul is represented as not knowing who david was, and as sending abner to find out where he comes from. abner, too, professes entire ignorance; and when david appears before the king, "with the head of the philistine in his hand," he is asked, "whose son art thou, young man?" it has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and gave him an office of trust about his person. suppositions of "dislocation of the narrative," the careless adoption by the compiler of two separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. but it may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming discrepancy, that when saul had passed out of his moody madness it is not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in his paroxysm. it is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his mental aberration. and as for abner's profession of ignorance, an incipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the "captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could concerning a probable formidable rival. there is no need to suppose he was really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was. with this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed, and a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. the impression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in a psalm which the septuagint adds to the psalter. it is not found in the hebrew, and has no pretension to be david's work; but, as a _résumé_ of the salient points of his early life, it may fitly end our considerations of this first epoch. "this is the autograph psalm of david, and beyond the number (_i.e._, of the psalms in the psalter), when he fought the single fight with goliath:-- "( .) i was little among my brethren, and the youngest in the house of my father: i kept the flock of my father. ( .) my hands made a pipe, my fingers tuned a psaltery. ( .) and who shall tell it to my lord? he is the lord, he shall hear me. ( .) he sent his angel (messenger), and took me from the flocks of my father, and anointed me with the oil of his anointing. ( .) but my brethren were fair and large, and in them the lord took not pleasure. ( .) i went out to meet the philistine, and he cursed me by his idols. ( .) but i, drawing his sword, beheaded him, and took away reproach from the children of israel." iv.--the exile. david's first years at the court of saul in gibeah do not appear to have produced any psalms which still survive. "the sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought." it was natural, then, that a period full of novelty and of prosperous activity, very unlike the quiet days at bethlehem, should rather accumulate materials for future use than be fruitful in actual production. the old life shut to behind him for ever, like some enchanted door in a hill-side, and an unexplored land lay beckoning before. the new was widening his experience, but it had to be mastered, to be assimilated by meditation before it became vocal. the bare facts of this section are familiar and soon told. there is first a period in which he is trusted by saul, who sets him in high command, with the approbation not only of the people, but even of the official classes. but a new dynasty resting on military pre-eminence cannot afford to let a successful soldier stand on the steps of the throne; and the shrill chant of the women out of all the cities of israel, which even in saul's hearing answered the praises of his prowess with a louder acclaim for david's victories, startled the king for the first time with a revelation of the national feeling. his unslumbering suspicion "eyed david from that day." rage and terror threw him again into the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings his heavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fierce vows of murder. the failure of his attempt to kill david seems to have aggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts and averted all dangers. a second stage is marked not only by saul's growing fear, but by david's new position. he is removed from court, and put in a subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings him into more immediate contact with the mass of the people. "all israel and judah loved david, because he went out and came in before them." then follows the offer of saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope that by playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might be urged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal. some new caprice of saul's, however, leads him to insult david by breaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride to another. jonathan's heart was not the only one in saul's household that yielded to his spell. the younger michal had been cherishing his image in secret, and now tells her love. her father returns to his original purpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious changefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding a grotesquely savage dowry, to secure david's destruction. but that scheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house. this third stage is marked by saul's deepening panic hatred, which has now become a fixed idea. all his attempts have only strengthened david's position, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe. he calls, with a madman's folly, on jonathan and on all his servants to kill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better nature comes over him, and with a great oath he vows that david shall not be slain. for a short time david returns to gibeah, and resumes his former relations with saul, but a new victory over the philistines rouses the slumbering jealousy. again the "evil spirit" is upon him, and the great javelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. it is night, and david flies to his house. a stealthy band of assassins from the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress, and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. michal, who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by love, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges immediate flight. her hands let him down from the window--the house being probably on the wall. her ready wit dresses up one of those mysterious teraphim (which appear to have had some connection with idolatry or magic, and which are strange pieces of furniture for david's house), and lays it in the bed to deceive the messengers, and so gain a little more time before pursuit began. "so david fled and escaped, and came to samuel to ramah," and thus ended his life at court. glancing over this narrative, one or two points come prominently forth. the worth of these events to david must have lain chiefly in the abundant additions made to his experience of life, which ripened his nature, and developed new powers. the meditative life of the sheepfold is followed by the crowded court and camp. strenuous work, familiarity with men, constant vicissitude, take the place of placid thought, of calm seclusion, of tranquil days that knew no changes but the alternation of sun and stars, storm and brightness, green pastures and dusty paths. he learned the real world, with its hate and effort, its hollow fame and its whispering calumnies. many illusions no doubt faded, but the light that had shone in his solitude still burned before him for his guide, and a deeper trust in his shepherd god was rooted in his soul by all the shocks of varying fortune. the passage from the visions of youth and the solitary resolves of early and uninterrupted piety to the naked realities of a wicked world, and the stern self-control of manly godliness, is ever painful and perilous. thank god! it may be made clear gain, as it was by this young hero psalmist. david's calm indifference to outward circumstances affecting himself, is very strikingly expressed in his conduct. partly from his poetic temperament, partly from his sweet natural unselfishness, and chiefly from his living trust in god, he accepts whatever happens with equanimity, and makes no effort to alter it. he originates nothing. prosperity comes unsought, and dangers unfeared. he does not ask for jonathan's love, or the people's favour, or the women's songs, or saul's daughter. if saul gives him command he takes it, and does his work. if saul flings his javelin at him, he simply springs aside and lets it whizz past. if his high position is taken from him, he is quite content with a lower. if a royal alliance is offered, he accepts it; if it is withdrawn, he is not ruffled; if renewed, he is still willing. if a busy web of intrigue is woven round him, he takes no notice. if reconciliation is proposed, he cheerfully goes back to the palace. if his life is threatened he goes home. he will not stir to escape but for the urgency of his wife. so well had he already begun to learn the worthlessness of life's trifles. so thoroughly does he practice his own precept, "fret not thyself because of evil-doers;" "rest in the lord, and wait patiently for him." (psa. xxxvii. , .) this section gives also a remarkable impression of the irresistible growth of his popularity and influence. the silent energy of the divine purpose presses his fortunes onward with a motion slow and inevitable as that of a glacier. the steadfast flow circles unchecked round, or rises victorious over all hindrances. efforts to ruin, to degrade, to kill--one and all fail. terror and hate, suspicion and jealousy, only bring him nearer the goal. a clause which comes in thrice in the course of one chapter, expresses this fated advance. in the first stage of his court life, we read, "david prospered" ( sam. xviii. , margin), and again with increased emphasis it is told as the result of the efforts to crush him, that, "he prospered in all his ways, and the lord was with him" (verse ), and yet again, in spite of saul's having "become his enemy continually," he "prospered more than all the servants of saul" (verse ). he moves onward as stars in their courses move, obeying the equable impulse of the calm and conquering will of god. the familiar scripture antithesis, which naturally finds its clearest utterance in the words of the last inspired writer--namely, the eternal opposition of light and darkness, love and hate, life and death, is brought into sharpest relief by the juxtaposition and contrast of david and saul. this is the key to the story. the two men are not more unlike in person than in spirit. we think of the one with his ruddy beauty and changeful eyes, and lithe slight form, and of the other gaunt and black, his giant strength weakened, and his "goodly" face scarred with the lightnings of his passions--and as they look so they are. the one full of joyous energy, the other devoured by gloom; the one going in and out among the people and winning universal love, the other sitting moody and self-absorbed behind his palace walls; the one bringing sweet clear tones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spear in his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, the other paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct of the war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the divine presence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe of his evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened into torpor; the one steadily growing in power and favour with god and man, the other sinking in deeper mire, and wrapped about with thickening mists as he moves to his doom. the tragic pathos of these two lives in their fateful antagonism is the embodiment of that awful alternative of life and death, blessing and cursing, which it was the very aim of judaism to stamp ineffaceably on the conscience. david's flight begins a period to which a large number of his psalms are referred. we may call them "the songs of the outlaw." the titles in the psalter connect several with specific events during his persecution by saul, and besides these, there are others which have marked characteristics in common, and may therefore be regarded as belonging to the same time. the bulk of the former class are found in the second book of the psalter (ps. xlii.-lxxii.), which has been arranged with some care. there are first eight korahite psalms, and one of asaph's; then a group of fifteen davidic (li.-lxv.), followed by two anonymous; then three more of david's (lxviii.-lxx.), followed by one anonymous and the well-known prayer "for solomon." now it is worth notice that the group of fifteen psalms ascribed to david is as nearly as possible divided in halves, eight having inscriptions which give a specific date of composition, and seven having no such detail. there has also been some attempt at arranging the psalms of these two classes alternately, but that has not been accurately carried out. these facts show that the titles are at all events as old as the compilation of the second book of the psalter, and were regarded as accurate then. several points about the complete book of psalms as we have it, seem to indicate that these two first books were an older nucleus, which was in existence long prior to the present collection--and if so, the date of the titles must be carried back a very long way indeed, and with a proportionate increase of authority. of the eight psalms in the second book having titles with specific dates, five (ps. lii., liv., lvi., lvii., lix.) are assigned to the period of the sauline persecution, and, as it would appear, with accuracy. there is a general similarity of tone in them all, as well as considerable parallelisms of expression, favourite phrases and metaphors, which are favourable to the hypothesis of a nearly cotemporaneous date. they are all in what, to use a phrase from another art, we may call david's earlier manner. for instance, in all the psalmist is surrounded by enemies. they would "swallow him up" (lvi. , ; lvii. ). they "oppress" him (liv. ; lvi. ). one of their weapons is calumny, which seems from the frequent references to have much moved the psalmist. their tongues are razors (lii. ), or swords (lvii. ; lix. ; lxiv. ). they seem to him like crouching beasts ready to spring upon harmless prey (lvi. ; lvii. ; lix. ); they are "lions" (lvii. ), dogs (lix. , ). he is conscious of nothing which he has done to provoke this storm of hatred (lix. ; lxiv. .) the "strength" of god is his hope (liv. ; lix. , ). he is sure that retribution will fall upon the enemies (lii. ; liv. ; lvi. ; lvii. ; lix. - ; lxiv. , ). he vows and knows that psalms of deliverance will yet succeed these plaintive cries (lii. ; liv. ; lvi. ; lvii. - ; lix. , ). we also find a considerable number of psalms in the first book of the psalter which present the same features, and may therefore probably be classed with these as belonging to the time of his exile. such for instance are the seventh and thirty-fourth, which have both inscriptions referring them to this period, with others which we shall have to consider presently. the imagery of the preceding group reappears in them. his enemies are lions (vii. ; xvii. ; xxii. ; xxxv. ); dogs (xxii. ); bulls (xxii. ). pitfalls and snares are in his path (vii. ; xxxi. ; xxxv. ). he passionately protests his innocence, and the kindliness of his heart to his wanton foes (vii. - ; xvii. , ); whom he has helped and sorrowed over in their sickness (xxxv. , )--a reference, perhaps, to his solacing saul in his paroxysms with the music of his harp. he dwells on retribution with vehemence (vii. - ; xi. - ; xxxi. ; xxxv. ), and on his own deliverance with confidence. these general characteristics accurately correspond with the circumstances of david during the years of his wanderings. the scenery and life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemies as wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits and snares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and god as his rock. their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical indications of saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish the psalms of this period from those of absalom's revolt, in which the remembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims. in like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are too triumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heart yearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearly broke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. their confidence in god, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with the buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the sauline persecution. if then we may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that period, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon us from them. we see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhere about five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fully conscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts his spirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with god which no tumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgression troubled and stained. his harp is his solace in his wanderings; and while plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for the deepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clear ringing notes of glad affiance in the "god of his mercy." distinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are, undoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than has been sometimes carelessly assumed. their infrequency and comparative vagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptions which allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. but in so far as it is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surely rather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. for if these are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to which they are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by a tradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter? besides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expect precisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailed allusions to the writer's circumstances. the poetic imagination does not reproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but the echo of them broken up and etherealised. it broods over them till life stirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar. if we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the first of these songs of the outlaw. it refers to the time "when saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him." those critics who reject this date, which they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos of assumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. the chaldean invasion, the assaults in the time of nehemiah, and the era of the maccabees, are alleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. "we believe that it is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific to ignore these hypotheses built on nothing." (delitzsch.) it is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in samuel. there we get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round david's house; of michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, and of his hasty flight to samuel at ramah. in the narrative david is, as usual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm, we learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all the vulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith. the psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which is repeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremity of the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. the peculiar tenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly friend, which is so characteristic of david's psalms, and which they were almost the first to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help, "my god." the enemies are painted in words which accurately correspond with the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable they were to the psalmist. they "lie in wait (literally weave plots) for my life." they are "workers of iniquity," "men of blood," insolent or violent ("mighty" in english version). he asserts his innocence, as ever in these sauline psalms, and appeals to god in confirmation, "not for my transgressions, nor for my sins, o lord." he sees these eager tools of royal malice hurrying to their congenial work: "they run and prepare themselves." and then, rising high above all encompassing evils, he grasps at the throne of god in a cry, which gains additional force when we remember that the would-be murderers compassed his house in the night. "awake to meet me, and behold;" as if he had said, "in the darkness do thou see; at midnight sleep not thou." the prayer is continued in words which heap together with unwonted abundance the divine names, in each of which lie an appeal to god and a pillar of faith. as jehovah, the self-existent fountain of timeless being; as the god of hosts, the commander of all the embattled powers of the universe, whether they be spiritual or material; as the god of israel, who calls that people his, and has become theirs--he stirs up the strength of god to "awake to visit all the heathen,"--a prayer which has been supposed to compel the reference of the whole psalm to the assaults of gentile nations, but which may be taken as an anticipation on david's lips of the truth that, "they are not all israel which are of israel." after a terrible petition--"be not merciful to any secret plotters of evil"--there is a pause (selah) to be filled, as it would appear, by some chords on the harp, or the blare of the trumpets, thus giving time to dwell on the previous petitions. but still the thought of the foe haunts him, and he falls again to the lower level of painting their assembling round his house, and their whispers as they take their stand. it would appear that the watch had been kept up for more than one night. how he flings his growing scorn of them into the sarcastic words, "they return at evening; they growl like a dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). one sees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs that infest eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as they crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. then growing bolder, as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "behold they pour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?" in magnificent contrast with these skulking murderers fancying themselves unseen and unheard, david's faith rends the heaven, and, with a daring image which is copied in a much later psalm (ii. ), shows god gazing on them with divine scorn which breaks in laughter and mockery. a brief verse, which recurs at the end of the psalm, closes the first portion of the psalm with a calm expression of untroubled trust, in beautiful contrast with the peril and tumult of soul, out of which it rises steadfast and ethereal, like a rainbow spanning a cataract. a slight error appears to have crept into the hebrew text, which can be easily corrected from the parallel verse at the end, and then the quiet confident words are-- "my strength! upon thee will i wait, for god is my fortress!" the second portion is an intensification of the first; pouring out a terrible prayer for exemplary retribution on his enemies; asking that no speedy destruction may befall them, but that god would first of all "make them reel" by the blow of his might; would then fling them prostrate; would make their pride and fierce words a net to snare them; and then, at last, would bring them to nothing in the hot flames of his wrath--that the world may know that he is king. the picture of the prowling dogs recurs with deepened scorn and firmer confidence that they will hunt for their prey in vain. "and they return at evening; they growl like a dog, and compass the city. they--they prowl about for food if (or, since) they are not satisfied, they spend the night (in the search.)" there is almost a smile on his face as he thinks of their hunting about for him, like hungry hounds snuffing for their meal in the kennels, and growling now in disappointment--while he is safe beyond their reach. and the psalm ends with a glad burst of confidence, and a vow of praise very characteristic on his lips-- "but i--i will sing thy power, and shout aloud, in the morning, thy mercy, for thou hast been a fortress for me. and a refuge in the day of my trouble. my strength! unto thee will i harp, for god is my fortress--the god of my mercy." thrice he repeats the vow of praise. his harp was his companion in his flight, and even in the midst of peril the poet's nature appears which regards all life as materials for song, and the devout spirit appears which regards all trial as occasions for praise. he has calmed his own spirit, as he had done saul's, by his song, and by prayer has swung himself clear above fightings and fears. the refrain, which occurs twice in the psalm, witnesses to the growth of his faith even while he sings. at first he could only say in patient expectance, "my strength! i will wait upon thee, for god is my fortress." but at the end his mood is higher, his soul has caught fire as it revolves, and his last words are a triumphant amplification of his earlier trust: "my strength! unto thee will i sing with the harp--for god is my fortress--the god of my mercy." v.--the exile--_continued_. "so david fled, and escaped and came to samuel to ramah, and told him all that saul had done unto him. and he and samuel went and dwelt in naioth" ( sam. xix. )--or, as the word probably means, in the collection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of the prophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right of sanctuary. driven thence by saul's following him, and having had one last sorrowful hour of jonathan's companionship--the last but one on earth--he fled to nob, whither the ark had been carried after the destruction of shiloh. the story of his flight had not reached the solitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honour due to the king's son-in-law. he pleads urgent secret business for saul as a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; and the priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungry fugitives with the shewbread. but david's quick eye caught a swarthy face peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary, and as he recognised doeg the edomite, saul's savage herdsman, a cold foreboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms from the peaceful priest. the lonely tabernacle was guarded by its own sanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of good omen to david--goliath's sword. he eagerly accepts the matchless weapon which his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, and thus armed, lest doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from the pursuit which he knew that the edomite's malignant tongue would soon bring after him. the tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindness brings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of saul. he rages at his servants as leagued with david in words which have a most dreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly: "all of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that is sorry for me" ( sam. xxii. .) doeg is forward to curry favour by telling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignorance of david's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting the rebel knowingly. then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit, and the whole priestly population of nob are summoned before him, loaded with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. the very soldiers shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. the wild blood of edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and doeg crowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, no doubt--"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod," and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless little city. one psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to this period, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of the psalm is doubtful. it is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destruction directed against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in "devouring words." the portrait does not apply very accurately to the doeg of the historical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as "a mighty man,"--or rather as "a hero," and as trusting "in the abundance of his riches,"--and makes the point of the reproach against him that he is a confirmed liar. but the dastardly deed of blood may be covertly alluded to in the bitterly sarcastic "hero"--as if he had said, "o brave warrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests and women?" and doeg's story to saul was a lie in so far as it gave the impression of the priests' complicity with david, and thereby caused their deaths on a false charge. the other features of the description are not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obvious harmony with it. the psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeply david's soul was stirred by the tragedy. he pours out broken words of hot and righteous indignation: "destructions doth thy tongue devise, like a razor whetted--o thou worker of deceit." * * * * * "thou lovest all words that devour:[f] o thou deceitful tongue!" [f] literally, "words of swallowing up." he prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation of the righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the old covenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modern sentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over and over again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and of individuals when evil men fade: "when the wicked perish, there is shouting"-- "also god shall smite thee down for ever, will draw thee out,[g] and carry thee away from the tent, and root thee out of the land of the living; and the righteous shall see and fear, and over him shall they laugh." in confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with god to this dark tragedy of retribution: "but i--(i am) like a green olive tree in the house of god." [g] the full force of the word is, "will pluck out as a glowing ember from a hearth" (delitzsch). the enemy was to be "rooted out;" the psalmist is to flourish by derivation of life and vigour from god. if robinson's conjecture that nob was on the mount of olives were correct (which is very doubtful), the allusion here would gain appropriateness. as the olives grew all round the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by the shrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in loving fellowship with god. be that as it may, the words express the outlaw's serene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of god, and re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, "i will dwell in the house of the lord for ever." the stormy indignation of the earlier verses passes away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust: "i will praise thee for ever, for thou hast done (it), and wait on thy name in the presence of thy beloved, for it is good." hunted from nob, david with a small company struck across the country in a southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangled mountains, till, from the western side of the hills of judah, he looked down upon the broad green plain of philistia. behind him was a mad tyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his god. his condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures. that nearest philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he looked down from his height, was gath; the glen where he had killed its champion was close beside him,--every foot of ground was familiar by many a foray and many a fight. it was a dangerous resource to trust himself in gath, with goliath's sword dangling in his belt. but he may have hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought that saul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, at the philistine court. so he made the plunge, and took refuge in goliath's city. discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. it was an ugly sign that the servants of achish should be quoting the words of the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of their countryman. vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. the doubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to have been at first privately communicated to the king. they somehow reached david, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear. the depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading trick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life. what a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct when achish's servants came to arrest him. he "twisted himself about in their hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the leaves of the gate,[h] and "let his spittle run down into his beard." ( sam. xxi. .) israelitish quickness gets the better of philistine stupidity, as it had been used to do from sampson's time onwards, and the dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions with a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the last thing he was short of. a hasty flight from philistine territory ended this episode. [h] the septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here from that of our present hebrew text, and the change adds a very picturesque clause to the description. a madman would be more likely to hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate. the fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period, seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions drawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to confirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. the terrified fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. the psalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? instead of taking the contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm is wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful for another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we cannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, god accepts a tremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a feeble hand the word of god, and the memory of all his past deliverances. it is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which the psalm sets before us. it falls into three portions, the first and second of which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. , , )--a structure which is characteristic of several of these sauline persecution psalms (_e.g._, lvii. , ; lix. , ). the first part of each of these two portions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to the faith expressed in the closing words. the repetition of the same thoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of composition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts. he sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be many fighting against me disdainfully"[i] (ver. ). whilst the terror creeps round his heart ("he was sore afraid," sam. xxi. ), he rouses himself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically the co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality of even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt and dread. [i] literally, "loftily." can there be any allusion to the giant stature of goliath's relations in gath? we hear of four men "born to the giant in gath," who were killed in david's wars. ( sam. xxi. .) "(in) the day (that) i am afraid--i trust on thee." and then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which he has climbed by the ladder of prayer. "in god i praise his word, in god i trust, i do not fear:-- what shall flesh do to me?" how profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being not merely the promise of god--which in david's case may be the specific promise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the god who promises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union with god, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him now to say, "i do _not_ fear." but again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over him, and almost washes him from his rock. his foes, with ceaseless malice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they long for his life. the crowded clauses portray the extremity of the peril and the singer's agitation. his soul is still heaving with the ground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are dying into calm. he is not so afraid but that he can turn to god; he turns to him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, who had so much of terror that they must awake their master, but so much of trust that his awaking was enough. he pleads with god, as in former psalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion, and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of god over the whole earth. he plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words which exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which are beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "my wanderings dost thou, even thou, number." he is not alone in these weary flights from gibeah to ramah, from ramah to nob, from nob to gath, from gath he knows not whither. one friend goes with him through them all. and as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's equipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender metaphor of the next clause, "put my tears in thy bottle,"--a prayer for that very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he immediately declares his confidence--"are they not in thy book?" the true office of faithful communion with god is to ask for, and to appropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. he knows that his cry will scatter his foes, for god is for him. and thus once again he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his feet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even fuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the only time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his triumphant strain-- "in god i praise the word; in jehovah i praise the word: in god i trust, i do not fear:-- what shall man do to me?" and from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline. prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth understanding. the foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise for deliverance, as if it had been already achieved-- "thou hast delivered my life from death, (hast thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling, that i may walk before god in the light of the living?" he already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of doubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all god's dealings with him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the happy consciousness of _his_ eye who is at once guardian and judge of his children. how far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint risen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm! david naturally fled into israelitish territory from gath. the exact locality of the cave adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but several strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which places it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down from bethlehem to the dead sea. we should expect it to be much more accessible by a hasty march from gath. obviously it would be convenient for him to hang about the frontier of philistia and israel, that he might quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared. further, the city of adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in connections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of philistia, and not far from gath. ( chron. xi. , etc.) there is no reason to suppose that the cave of adullam was in a totally different district from the city. the hills of dan and judah, which break sharply down into the plain within a few miles of gath, are full of "extensive excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold, where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down over the vast sweep of the rich philistine country. gath lay at his feet, close by was the valley where he had killed goliath, the scenes of samson's exploits were all about him. thither fled to him his whole family, from fear, no doubt, of saul's revenge falling on them; and there he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty and misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight. they were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque description, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains." they were not freebooters, but seem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern bedouins and western philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom saul's government was too weak to protect. in this desultory warfare, and in eluding the pursuit of saul, against whom it is to be observed david never employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. the effect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his unconditional dependence on god; by the alternations of heat and cold, fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it flexible, tough and bright as steel. it evolved the qualities of a leader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and patience, valour and gentleness. it won for him a name as the defender of the nation, as nabal's servant said of him and his men, "they were a wall unto us, both by night and by day" ( sam. xxv. ). and it gathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic attachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty friendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the glimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars. vi.--the exile--_continued_. we have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of david's stay at adullam,--the thirty-fourth. the supposition that it dates from that period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity to what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. unlike those already considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of exhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were written when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. it reads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its burden is to tell of god's deliverance, and to urge to trust in him. how perfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after his escape from gath to adullam need not be more than pointed out. the dangers which he had dreaded and the cry to god which he had sent forth are still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a subtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is drowned in the waves of some triumphant music. "i sought the lord, and he heard me, and from all my alarms he delivered me. * * * * * this afflicted (man) cried, and jehovah heard, and from all his troubles he saved him." and the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with the circumstances of adullam. how appropriate, for instance, does the form in which the divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of the little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "the angel of the lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." like his great ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "and he calls the name of that place mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), as discerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of an encircling host of the warriors of god, through whose impenetrable ranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. from samson's time we read of lions in this district (judges xiv. , ), and we may recognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among the ravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. "the young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the lord shall not want any good" (ver. ). and then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, which derive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men of the principles on which his camp is to be governed. "come, ye children, hearken unto me." he regards himself as charged with guiding them to godliness: "i will teach you the fear of the lord." with some remembrance, perhaps, of his deception at gath, he warns them to "keep" their "tongues from evil" and their "lips from speaking guile." they are not to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in their hands, are to "seek peace, and pursue it." on these exhortations follow joyous assurances of god's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, and his ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoever hardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianship which "keepeth all the bones" of the righteous, so that neither the blows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them,--all crowned with the contrast ever present to david's mind, and having a personal reference to his enemies and to himself: "evil shall slay the wicked, and the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty. jehovah redeems the life of his servants, and no penalty shall any suffer who trust in him." such were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his little band,--noble "general orders" from a commander at the beginning of a campaign! we venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. it is generally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its davidic authorship, to belong to the time of absalom's rebellion. the main reason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. to dwelling in the house of the lord and inquiring in his temple.[j] this is supposed to require a date subsequent to david's bringing up of the ark to jerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. but whilst longing for the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the later wanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the present case that desire, which david represents as the longing of his life, was a desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. indeed, the very language seems to forbid such an interpretation. surely the desire for an abode in the house of the lord--which was his one wish, which he longed to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which was to surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be as the munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbid desire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle,--a desire fitter for some sickly mediæval monarch who buried his foolish head and faint heart in a monastery than for god's anointed. we have seen an earlier germ of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of which are referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is the interpretation of the other. the psalmist breathes his longing for the divine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, and hidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall break into music of perpetual praise. [j] "the fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written after the temple was built."--"the psalms chronologically arranged," p. --following ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked "must have been," works wonders. if, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt the later date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds with the earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood at this period. one such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver. ), "when the wicked came against me to devour my flesh, my enemies and my foes,--they stumbled and fell;" which have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without any allusion to a specific event. but there was one incident in david's life which had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril at gath--his duel with goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiar language here. the psalm employs the same word as the narrative, which tells how the philistine "arose, and came, and drew near to david." the braggart boast, "i will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the beasts of the fields," is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm; and the emphatic, rapid picture, "they stumbled and fell," is at once a reminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thick forehead, "and he fell upon his face to the earth;" and also a reference to an earlier triumph in israel's history, celebrated with fierce exultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morsel under the tongue, as it tells of sisera-- "between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay; between her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead." another autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed on insufficient grounds: "for my father and my mother forsake me, and jehovah takes me up." (ver. .) it is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention of his parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in precisely with this period of the history, and is such as might have suggested these words. we read ( sam. xxii. , ) that he once ventured all the way from adullam to moab to beg an asylum from saul's indiscriminate fury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share his perils, as the rest of his family did. having prepared a kindly welcome for them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of ruth the moabitess in jesse's veins, he returned to bethlehem, brought the old couple away, and guarded them safely to their refuge. it is surely most natural to suppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most pathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at bethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks, and his parents exiles in heathen lands. tears fill his eyes, but he lifts them to a father that is never parted from him, and feels that he is no more orphaned nor homeless. the psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which cleaves it into two parts; one (vers. - ) full of jubilant hope and enthusiastic faith, the other (vers. - ) a lowly cry for help. there is no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two independent hymns bound together in error. he must have little knowledge of the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swift a passage from confidence to conscious weakness. whilst the usual order in the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is that prayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with god is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on god, and realizing the mysteries of beauty in his secret place, ere it drops to earth. the lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. it is perhaps a nobler effect of faith to begin with god and hymn the victory as if already won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. but with whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and so long as we are weak, and god our strength, its elements must be "supplication and thanksgiving." the prayer of our psalm bends round again to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once more into confidence (vers. , ). the psalmist shudders as he thinks what ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in god, and leaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful gulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom of the abyss. "if i had not believed to see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living!" then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been saved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are themselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it: "wait on jehovah! courage! and let thy heart be strong! yea! wait on jehovah!" here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with god, when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a golden ring of happy trust. let the name of our god be first upon our lips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on him be last, and then we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes, and fears, without losing our hold of our father's hand. david in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with god. it was a man in real peril who said, "the lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall i fear?" it was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew not yet whether saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "though war should rise against me, in this will i be confident." it was in thankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the hills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in god with words coloured by his circumstances, "in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock." it was with philistia at his feet before and saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant confidence was sure that "now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me." it was in weakness, not expelled even by such joyous faith, that he plaintively besought god's mercy, and laid before his mercy-seat as the mightiest plea his own inviting words, "seek ye my face," and his servant's humble response, "thy face, lord, will i seek." together, these made it impossible that that face, the beams of which are light and salvation, should be averted. god's past comes to his lips as a plea for a present consistent with it and with his own mighty name. "thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, o god of my salvation." his loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemies who watch him, and, like a later saul, "breathe out cruelty" (see acts ix. ), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear, but arguments with god; and having thus mastered all that was distressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help, he rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on god, to be strong and bold, because his expectation is from him. a noble picture of a steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasons for fear, but because of presence of god and faith in him. having abandoned adullam, by the advice of the prophet gad, who from this time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign ( sam. xxiv. ), and who subsequently became his biographer ( chron. xxix. ), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in the woods. in his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills of judah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the philistines on one of the unhappy border towns. the marauders had broken in upon the mirth of the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's harvest. the banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral foes. perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at gibeah, who was only stirred to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of israel. the little band bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered philistines, recaptures the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from the ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. but the cowardly townspeople of keilah had less gratitude than fear; and the king's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he was of their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. saul, who had not stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned a hasty muster, in the hope of catching david in the little city, like a fox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homes by surrendering their champion. david and his six hundred saved themselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking up into detachments. "they went whithersoever they could go" ( sam. xxiii. ); whilst david, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitable wilderness which stretches from the hills of judah to the shores of the dead sea, and skulked there in "lurking places" among the crags and tangled underwood. with fierce perseverance "saul sought him every day, but god delivered him not into his hand." one breath of love, fragrant and strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when jonathan found his way where saul could not come, and the two friends met once more. in the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and the beautiful unselfishness of jonathan is wonderfully set forth in his words, "thou shalt be king over israel, and i shall be next unto thee;" while an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless will consciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, "and that also saul, my father, knoweth." in such resistance the king's son has no part, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house. treachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs david's steps. the people of ziph, a small place on the edge of the southern desert, betray his haunt to saul. the king receives the intelligence with a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted religion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange self-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "blessed be ye of the lord, for ye have compassion on me!" he sends them away to mark down his prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with his force and posts them round the hill where david and his handful lurk. the little band try to escape, but they are surrounded and apparently lost. at the very moment when the trap is just going to close, a sudden messenger, "fiery red with haste," rushes into saul's army with news of a formidable invasion: "haste thee and come; for the philistines have spread themselves upon the land!" so the eager hand, ready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepest distress is the hour of deliverance. at some period in this lowest ebb of david's fortunes, we have one short psalm, very simple and sad (liv.) it bears the title, "when the ziphims came and said to saul, doth not david hide himself with us?" and may probably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men of ziph. the very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet. the sore need has shortened his prayer. he is too sure that god hears to use many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiege his throne with much speaking. he is confident as ever; but one feels that there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over the brief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and the uneasiness of protracted anxiety. two notes only sound from his harp: one a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance as already achieved. the two are bound together by the recurrence in each of "the name" of god, which is at once the source of his salvation and the theme of his praise. we have only to read the lowly petitions to feel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, and relaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust. ( ) o god, by thy name save me, and in thy strength do judgment for me ( ) o god, hear my prayer, give ear to the words of my mouth. ( ) for strangers are risen against me, and tyrants seek my life. they set not god before them. the enemies are called "strangers;" but, as we have seen in the first of these songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to suppose that they were not israelites. the ziphites were men of judah like himself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight into the spiritual character of the true israel in calling them foreigners. the other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it, tyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of saul in his later years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. if so, the softening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is in beautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through all david's conduct to him. hard words about saul himself do not occur in the psalms. his counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated david to him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature,--the tools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselves should be carried out, kindle david's wrath, but it scarcely ever lights on the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while he lived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. the allusion is made all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence with the narrative which records that "saul was come out to seek his life" ( sam. xxiii. .) a chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought of the foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. in it thanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the former portion. but the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust so victorious, as we have seen them. "the peace of god" has come in answer to prayer, but it is somewhat subdued: "behold, god is my helper; the lord is the supporter of my life." the foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives the antithesis, "saul sought him every day, but god delivered him not into his hand." the rendering of the english version, "the lord is with them that uphold my soul," is literally accurate, but does not convey the meaning of the hebrew idiom. god is not regarded as one among many helpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. believing that, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his enemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. the prophetic lip of faith calls things that are not as though they were. in the midst of his dangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices of praise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervid utterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his own spirit above its fears: ( ) with willinghood will i sacrifice unto thee. i will praise thy name for it is good. ( ) for from all distress it has delivered me. and on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire) the name--the revealed character of god--was the storehouse of all the saving energies to which he appealed in verse . it is the theme of his praise when the deliverance shall have come. it is almost regarded here as equivalent to the divine personality--it is good, _it_ has delivered him. thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the single thought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the lord, and teaches by its simple pathos how the contemplation of god as he has made himself known, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving; whilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of that mighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in an accomplished deliverance. and all such thoughts should be held with a faith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the "name" of the lord is "declared" by him who is the full revelation of god, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his "brethren." (heb. ii. .) a little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towards the dead sea about the centre of its western shore. it is girdled round by savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a bold headland to the water's edge. at either extremity is a stream flowing down a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees, canes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. high up on the hills forming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and falls to the flat below in long slender threads. some grey weathered stones mark the site of a city that was old when abraham wandered in the land. traces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were cleared for its site (hazezon tamar, the palm-tree clearing) have been found, encrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terraces for vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. but the fertility of david's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a jungle haunted by leopard and ibex. this is the fountain and plain of engedi (the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and care to make it a little paradise. here david fled from the neighbouring wilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges and rugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain and the streams. the picturesque and touching episode of his meeting with saul has made the place for ever memorable. there are many excavations in the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black as night to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of sunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to one looking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermost recesses of which david lay hid while saul tarried in its mouth. the narrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among the little band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within their grasp. the fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be "tempting providence" to let such an opportunity escape; but the nobler nature of david knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest days is flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. he cannot, however, resist the temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearance by stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of saul's long robe. it was little compared with what he could as easily have done--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. but it was a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly returning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he had clambered back with his trophy. he felt that the sanctity of saul's office as the anointed of the lord should have saved him from the gibe. the king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not regained his men, when david, leaving his band (very much out of temper no doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship and calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in his generous emotion. the pathetic conversation which ensued is eminently characteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woe to one another. david's remonstrance ( sam. xxiv. - ) is full of nobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude, of solemn devout appeal to the judgment of god. he has no words of reproach for saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repaying hate with hate. he almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there is nothing undignified or feeble in his tone. the whole is full of correspondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which we assign to this period. the calumnies which he so often complains of in these are the subject of his first words to saul, whom he regards as having had his heart poisoned by lies: "wherefore hearest thou men's words, saying, behold! david seeketh thy hurt." he asserts absolute innocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as he does so decisively in the psalms. "there is neither evil nor transgression in my hand, and i have not sinned against thee." as in them he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like the goats in the cliffs of engedi, so he tells saul, "thou huntest my life to take it." and his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions, and cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of god, is couched in language, every clause of which may be found in his psalms. "the lord, therefore, be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thy hand." the unhappy saul again breaks into a passion of tears. with that sudden flashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so significant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises david's generous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. for a moment, at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of the black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his rival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits on the throne. the picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for the poor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a great solitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient nobleness still break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion at gibeah, and david to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness. vii.--the exile--_continued_. there are many echoes of this period of engedi in the psalms. perhaps the most distinctly audible of these are to be found in the seventh psalm, which is all but universally recognised as david's, even ewald concurring in the general consent. it is an irregular ode--for such is the meaning of shiggaion in the title, and by its broken rhythms and abrupt transitions testifies to the emotion of its author. the occasion of it is said to be "the words of cush the benjamite." as this is a peculiar name for an israelite, it has been supposed to be an allegorical designation for some historical person, expressive of his character. we might render it "the negro." the jewish commentators have taken it to refer to saul himself, but the bitter tone of the psalm, so unlike david's lingering forbearance to the man whom he never ceased to love, is against that supposition. shimei the benjamite, whose foul tongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before absalom, has also been thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier date are too numerous to make that reference tenable. it seems better to suppose that cush "the black" was one of saul's tribe, who had been conspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen david complaining to the king. and if so, there is no period in the sauline persecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present. its main thoughts are precisely those which he poured out so passionately in his eager appeal when he and saul stood face to face on the solitary hill side. they are couched in the higher strain of poetry indeed, but that is the only difference; whilst there are several verbal coincidences, and at least one reference to the story, which seem to fix the date with considerable certainty. in it we see the psalmist's soul surging with the ground swell of strong emotion, which breaks into successive waves of varied feeling--first (vers. , ) terror blended with trust, the enemy pictured, as so frequently in these early psalms, as a lion who tears the flesh and breaks the bones of his prey--and the refuge in god described by a graphic word very frequent also in the cotemporaneous psalms (xi. ; lvii. , etc.). then with a quick turn comes the passionate protestation of his innocence, in hurried words, broken by feeling, and indignantly turning away from the slanders which he will not speak of more definitely than calling them "this." ( ) jehovah, my god! if i have done this-- if there be iniquity in my hands-- ( ) if i have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me-- yea, i delivered him that without cause is mine enemy-- ( ) may the enemy pursue my soul and capture it, and trample down to the earth my life, and my glory in the dust may he lay! how remarkably all this agrees with his words to saul, "there is neither evil nor transgression in my hand, ... yet thou huntest my soul to take it" ( sam. xxiv. ); and how forcible becomes the singular reiteration in the narrative, of the phrase "my hand," which occurs six times in four verses. the peculiarly abrupt introduction in ver. of the clause, "i delivered him that without cause is mine enemy," which completely dislocates the grammatical structure, is best accounted for by supposing that david's mind is still full of the temptation to stain his hands with saul's blood, and is vividly conscious of the effort which he had had to make to overcome it. and the solemn invocation of destruction which he dares to address to jehovah his god includes the familiar figure of himself as a fugitive before the hunters, which is found in the words already quoted, and which here as there stands in immediate connection with his assertion of clean hands. then follows, with another abrupt turn, a vehement cry to god to judge his cause; his own individual case melts into the thought of a world-wide judgment, which is painted with grand power with three or four broad rapid strokes. ( ) awake for me--thou hast commanded judgment. ( ) let the assembly of the nations stand round thee, and above it return thou up on high. ( ) jehovah will judge the nations. judge me, o jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine integrity in me! each smaller act of god's judgment is connected with the final world-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; and he, who at the last will be known as the universal judge of all, certainly cannot leave his servants' cause unredressed nor their cry unheard till then. the psalmist is led by his own history to realize more intensely that truth of a divine manifestation for judicial purposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints its solemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. he sees the gathered nations standing hushed before the judge, and the victor god at the close of the solemn act ascending up on high where he was before, above the heads of the mighty crowd (psalm lxviii. ). in the faith of this vision, and because god will judge the nations, he invokes for himself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, and asks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. nothing but the most hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficulty of such words. david is not speaking of his whole character or life, but of his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to saul. the righteous integrity which he calls god to vindicate is not general sinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of god, but his blamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. his prayer that god would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cry for deliverance, which should, as by a divine arbitration, decide the debate between saul and him. the whole passage in the psalm, with all its lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the very same thought which we find so prominent in his words to saul, already quoted, concerning god's judging between them and delivering david out of saul's hand. the parallel is instructive, not only as the prose rendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond the possibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory of the date which we have assigned to the latter. it is so improbable as to be almost inconceivable that the abrupt disconnected themes of the psalm should echo so precisely the _whole_ of the arguments used in the remonstrance of the historical books, and should besides present verbal resemblances and historical allusions to these, unless it be of the same period, and therefore an inlet into the mind of the fugitive as he lurked among the rugged cliffs by "the fountain of the wild goat." in that aspect the remainder of the psalm is very striking and significant. we have two main thoughts in it--that of god as punishing evil in this life, and that of the self-destruction inherent in all sin; and these are expressed with such extraordinary energy as to attest at once the profound emotion of the psalmist, and his familiarity with such ideas during his days of persecution. it is noticeable, too, that the language is carefully divested of all personal reference; he has risen to the contemplation of a great law of the divine government, and at that elevation the enemies whose calumnies and cruelties had driven him to god fade into insignificance. with what magnificent boldness he paints god the judge arraying himself in his armour of destruction! ( ) god is a righteous judge, and a god (who is) angry every day. ( ) if he (_i.e._, the evil-doer) turn not, he whets his sword, his bow he has bent, and made it ready. ( ) and for him he has prepared weapons of death, his arrows he has made blazing darts. surely there is nothing grander in any poetry than this tremendous image, smitten out with so few strokes of the chisel, and as true as it is grand. the representation applies to the facts of life, of which as directed by a present providence, and not of any future retribution, david is here thinking. among these facts is chastisement falling upon obstinate antagonism to god. modern ways of thinking shrink from such representations; but the whole history of the world teems with confirmation of their truth--only what david calls the flaming arrows of god, men call "the natural consequences of evil." the later revelation of god in christ brings into greater prominence the disciplinary character of all punishment here, but bates no jot of the intensity with which the earlier revelation grasped the truth of god as a righteous judge in eternal opposition to, and aversion from, evil. with that solemn picture flaming before his inward eye, the prophet-psalmist turns to gaze on the evil-doer who has to bear the brunt of these weapons of light. summoning us to look with him by a "behold!" he tells his fate in an image of frequent occurrence in the psalms of this period, and very natural in the lips of a man wandering in the desert among wild creatures, and stumbling sometimes into the traps dug for them: "he has dug a hole and hollowed it out, and he falls into the pitfall he is making." the crumbling soil in which he digs makes his footing on the edge more precarious with every spadeful that he throws out, and at last, while he is hard at work, in he tumbles. it is the conviction spoken in the proverbs of all nations, expressed here by david in a figure drawn from life--the conviction that all sin digs its own grave and is self-destructive. the psalm does not proclaim the yet deeper truth that this automatic action, by which sin sets in motion its own punishment, has a disciplinary purpose, so that the arrows of god wound for healing, and his armour is really girded on for, even while it seems to be against, the sufferer. but it would not be difficult to show that that truth underlies the whole old testament doctrine of retribution, and is obvious in many of david's psalms. in the present one the deliverance of the hunted prey is contemplated as the end of the baffled trapper's fall into his own snare, and beyond that the psalmist's thoughts do not travel. his own safety, the certainty that his appeal to god's judgment will not be in vain, fill his mind; and without following the fate of his enemy further, he closes this song of tumultuous and varied emotion with calm confidence and a vow of thanksgiving for a deliverance which is already as good as accomplished: ( ) i will give thanks to jehovah according to his righteousness, and i will sing the name of jehovah, most high. we have still another psalm (lvii.) which is perhaps best referred to this period. according to the title, it belongs to the time when david "fled from saul in the cave." this may, of course, apply to either adullam or engedi, and there is nothing decisive to be alleged for either; yet one or two resemblances to psalm vii. incline the balance to the latter period. these resemblances are the designation of his enemies as lions (vii. ; lvii. ); the image of their falling into their own trap (vii. ; lvii. ); the use of the phrase "my honour" or "glory" for "my soul" (vii. ; lvii. --the same word in the original); the name of god as "most high" (vii. ; lvii. ), an expression which only occurs twice besides in the davidic psalms (ix. ; xxi. ); the parallelism in sense between the petition which forms the centre and the close of the one, "be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens" (lvii. , ), and that which is the most emphatic desire of the other, "arise, o lord, awake, ... lift up thyself for me" (vii. ). another correspondence, not preserved in our english version, is the employment in both of a rare poetical word, which originally means "to complete," and so comes naturally to have the secondary significations of "to perfect" and "to put an end to." the word in question only occurs five times in the old testament, and always in psalms. four of these are in hymns ascribed to david, of which two are (lvii. ), "the god that _performeth_ all things for me," and (vii. ), "let the wickedness of the wicked _come to an end_." the use of the same peculiar word in two such dissimilar connections seems to show that it was, as we say, "running in his head" at the time, and is, perhaps, a stronger presumption of the cotemporaneousness of both psalms than its employment in both with the same application would have been. characteristic of these early psalms is the occurrence of a refrain (compare lvi. and lix.) which in the present instance closes both of the portions of which the hymn consists. the former of these ( - ) breathes prayerful trust, from which it passes to describe the encompassing dangers; the second reverses this order, and beginning with the dangers and distress, rises to ringing gladness and triumph, as though the victory were already won. the psalmist's confident cleaving of soul to god is expressed (ver. ) by an image that may be connected with his circumstances at engedi: "in thee has my soul taken refuge." the english version is correct as regards the sense, though it obliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering "trusteth." the literal meaning of the verb is "to flee to a refuge," and its employment here may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likens his secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-place which his spirit found in god his habitation. a similar analogy appears in the earliest use of the expression, which may have been floating in the psalmist's memory, and which occurs in the ancient song of moses (deut. xxxii.). the scenery of the forty years' wanderings remarkably colours that ode, and explains the frequent recurrence in it of the name of god as "the rock." we have false gods, too, spoken of in it, as, "their rock in whom they took refuge," where the metaphor appears in its completeness (ver. ). our psalm goes on with words which contain a further allusion to another part of the same venerable hymn, "and in the shadow of thy wings will i take refuge," which remind us of the grand image in it of god's care over israel, as of the eagle bearing her eaglets on her mighty pinions (ver. ), and point onwards to the still more wonderful saying in which all that was terrible and stern in the older figure is softened into tenderness, and instead of the fierce affection of the mother eagle, the hen gathering her chickens under her wings becomes the type of the brooding love and more than maternal solicitude of god in christ. nor can we forget that the only other instance of the figure before david's psalms is in the exquisite idyl which tells of the sweet heroism of david's ancestress, ruth, on whose gentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, "a full reward be given thee of the lord god of israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust" (ruth ii. ). we may perhaps also see in this clause an extension of the simile which unquestionably lies in the verb, and may think of the strong "sides of the cave," arching above the fugitive like a gigantic pair of wings beneath which he nestles warm and dry, while the short-lived storm roars among the rocks--a type of that broad pinion which is his true defence till threatening evils be overpast. in the past he has sheltered his soul in god, but no past act of faith can avail for present distresses. it must be perpetually renewed. the past deliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the true use of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve that we will still rely on the help we have so often proved. "i have trusted in thee" should ever be followed by "and in the shadow of thy wings will i trust." the psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. he takes refuge by prayer in god, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances is the ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design, and complete his servant's lot. "i will call to god most high; to god who perfects (his purpose) for me." and then assured hope gleams upon his soul, and though the storm-clouds hang low and black as ever, they are touched with light. "he will send from heaven and save me." but even while this happy certainty dawns upon him, the contending fears, which ever lurk hard by faith, reassert their power, and burst in, breaking the flow of the sentence, which by its harsh construction indicates the sudden irruption of disturbing thoughts. "he that would swallow me up reproaches (me)." with this two-worded cry of pain--prolonged by the very unusual occurrence, in the middle of a verse, of the "selah," which is probably a musical direction for the accompaniment--a billow of terror breaks over his soul; but its force is soon spent, and the hope, above which for a moment it had rolled, rises from the broken spray like some pillared light round which the surges dash in vain. "god shall send forth his mercy and his truth"--those two white-robed messengers who draw nigh to all who call on him. then follows in broken words, the true rendering of which is matter of considerable doubt, a renewed picture of his danger: ( ) (with) my soul--among lions will i lie down. devourers are the sons of men; their teeth a spear and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword the psalmist seems to have broken off the construction, and instead of finishing the sentence as he began it, to have substituted the first person for the third, which ought to have followed "my soul." this fragmentary construction expresses agitation of spirit. it may be a question whether the "lions" in the first clause are to be regarded as a description of his enemies, who are next spoken of without metaphor as sons of men who devour (or who "breathe out fire"), and whose words are cutting and wounding as spear and sword. the analogy of the other psalms of this period favours such an understanding of the words. but, on the other hand, the reference preferred by delitzsch and others gives great beauty. according to that interpretation, the fugitive among the savage cliffs prepares himself for his nightly slumbers in calm confidence, and lays himself down there in the cave, while the wild beasts, whose haunt it may have been, prowl without, feeling himself safer among them than among the more ferocious "sons of men," whose hatred has a sharper tooth than even theirs. and then this portion of the psalm closes with the refrain, "be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth." a prayer that god would show forth his power, and exalt his name by delivering his servant. what lofty conviction that his cause was god's cause, that the divine honour was concerned in his safety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known god's praise over all the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst he prays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifying of god, than as it affects himself personally! the second part continues the closing strain of the former, and describes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit, into which they fall themselves. the contemplation of this divine nemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving with which the psalm closes-- ( ) fixed is my heart, o god! fixed my heart! i will sing and strike the harp.[k] ( ) awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![l] i will awake the dawn. [k] properly, "sing with a musical accompaniment." [l] two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which is very obscure. if the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence, this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. he lay down in peace among lions; he awakes to praise. he calls upon his soul to shake off slumber; he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the sleeping dawn. like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while before day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all his wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to his praise. but a still loftier thought inspires him. this hunted solitary not only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the consciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story of his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to the world, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his own land into the whole earth-- ( ) i will praise thee among the peoples, o lord, i will strike the harp to thee among the nations. ( ) for great unto the heavens is thy mercy, and to the clouds thy truth. these two mighty messengers of god, whose coming he was sure of (ver. ), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling all the creation. they shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. and then with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again to supplication, and dies into silent waiting before god till he shall be pleased to answer. thus triumphant were the hopes of the lonely fugitive skulking in the wilderness; such bright visions peopled the waste places, and made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. the cxlii. is also, according to the title, one of the cave-psalms. but considerable doubt attaches to the whole group of so-called davidic compositions in the last book of the psalter (p. - ), from their place, and from the fact that there are just seven of them, as well as in some cases from their style and character. they are more probably later hymns in david's manner. the one in question corresponds in tone with the psalms which we have been considering. it breathes the same profound consciousness of desolation and loneliness: "my spirit is darkened within me;" "refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul." it glows with the same ardour of personal trust in and love to god which spring from his very loneliness and helplessness: "i cry unto thee, o jehovah! i say thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living." it triumphs with the same confidence, and with the same conviction that his deliverance concerns all the righteous: "they shall _crown themselves in me_, for thou hast dealt bountifully with me;" for such would appear to be the true meaning of the word rendered in our version "compass me about;" the idea being that the mercy of god to the psalmist would become a source of festal gladness to all his servants, who would bind the story of god's bounty to him upon their brows like a coronal for a banquet. viii.--the exile--_continued_. as our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will not be necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuch as there is little reference to these in the psalms. we must pass over even that exquisite episode of abigail, whose graceful presence and "most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" soothed david's ruffled spirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. the glimpse of old-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hint of the kind of black mail by which david's little force was provided, the snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of nabal, david's fierce blaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness and honour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady last of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wise words--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant to hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light how unworthy of god's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but yet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not abject, and yet full of supplication,--the quick response of david's frank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; the budding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her and her wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from "hurting _thee_," and the dramatic close in their happy union,--all make up one of the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of scripture, all fragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. the story lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly affections which they record! after a second betrayal by the men of ziph, and a second meeting with saul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessing and predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, david seems to have been driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves, and to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himself on the frontier and to elude saul's vigilance. possibly others than nabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up on behalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. at all events he once more made a plunge into philistine territory, and offers himself and his men to the service of the king of gath. on the offer being accepted, the little town of ziklag was allotted to them, and became their home for a year and four months. to this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to belong--the xxxi., which, in tone and in certain expressions, corresponds very well with the circumstances. there are many similarities in it with the others of the same period which we have already considered--such, for instance, as the figure of god his rock (ver. ), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. ), the allusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. , ), his safe concealment in god (ver. : compare xxvii. ; lvii. ; xvii. , etc.), and the close verbal resemblance of ver. with the closing words of psalm xxvii. the reference, however, which has been taken as pointing to david's position in ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkable words (ver. ): "blessed be the lord, for he hath showed me his marvellous loving-kindness in a strong city." of course, the expression may be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the divine protection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. but the general idea of the encompassing shelter of god has just been set forth in the magnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secret of his presence in which he hides and guards his servants. and the further language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by a rapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiar as to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in some event which had recently happened to the psalmist. no period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement as the sixteen months of his stay in ziklag, during which he was completely free from fear of saul, and stood high in favour with the king of gath, in whose territory he had found a refuge. we may well believe that to the hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and hurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that behind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern wilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to their defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. their eyes would lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay aside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, though they were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss of peaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives. no wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from the leader's lips! no wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortified city as the result of a miracle of divine mercy! he describes the tremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindness in language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept across his soul after his final interview with saul, and which led to his flight into philistine territory, "and david said in his heart, i shall now perish one day by the hand of saul" ( sam. xxvii. ). how completely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for the difference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughts which had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strong city--"i said in my haste,[m] i am cut off from before thine eyes; nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. ). and rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to the great truths concerning god's care of his children, the discovery of which was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household of god-- ( ) o love jehovah, all ye beloved of him! the faithful doth jehovah preserve, and plentifully repayeth the proud-doer. ( ) courage! and let your heart be strong, all ye that wait for jehovah! [m] confusion (perowne), distrust (delitzsch), anguish (ewald), trepidation (calvin). the word literally means to sway backwards and forwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear; and then, perhaps, to flee in terror. the glow of personal attachment to jehovah which kindles in the trustful words is eminently characteristic. it anticipates the final teaching of the new testament in bringing all the relations between god and the devout soul down to the one bond of love. "we love him because he first loved us," says john. and david has the same discernment that the basis of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of god, and that the only response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the echo of its own divine voice in our hearts. love begets love; love seeks love; love rests in love. our faith _corresponds_ to his faithfulness, our obedience to his command, our reverence to his majesty; but our love _resembles_ his, from which it draws its life. so the one exhortation is "love the lord," and the ground of it lies in that name--"his beloved"--those to whom he shows his loving-kindness (ver. ). the closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. they are distinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening to courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait on the lord." the resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the same epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances from a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at adullam, to one of greater security, like his residence in ziklag. the same persons who were called to love the lord because they were participant of his loving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soul because their hope is fixed on jehovah. the progress of thought is significant and obvious. love to god, resting on consciousness of his love to us, is the true armour. "there is no fear in love." the heart filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters, while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea of life. love, too, is the condition of hope. the patience and expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the sweetness of the former. of these fair sisters, love is the elder as the greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which hope forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance; and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. to love the lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the lord. so had the psalmist found it for himself. in his changeful, perilous years of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. not in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his feet from their stormy waves. not in vain will ours be to us, if we learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait on the lord." our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of this period. it is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been already considered fairly represent the whole. the xi., xiii., xvii., xxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as belonging to the sauline persecution. to this list some critics would add the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. but if we exclude them, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each other, but with those which have been presented to the reader. the imagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us, continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares, the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked, the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the intense yearning of soul after god--are all repeated in these psalms. single metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met with recur--as, for instance, "the shadow of thy wings" (xvii. , lvii. ), and the singular phrase rendered in our version, "show thy marvellous loving-kindness" (xvii. , xxxi. ), which is found only here. in one of these psalms (xxxv. ) there seems to be a reference to his earliest days at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with saul's darkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him to soothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. the words are so definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion: and as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth, with fasting i humbled my soul, and my prayer into my own bosom returned. so truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. the outward marks of mourning became the natural expression of his feelings. such is plainly the meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the following verse. as the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, it seems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a picture of the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed,[n] than to break the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate for his sympathy,[o] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that he could desire nothing more for himself.[p] he goes on with the enumeration of the signs of sorrow: "as if (he had been) a friend, a brother to me, i went,"--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow: "as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments i bowed down,"--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by a mother's death, with the garb of woe. thus faithfully had he loved, and truly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion and poisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. and that same love clung by him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learn of god to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope all things. [n] so ewald and delitzsch. [o] hupfeld. [p] perowne. of these psalms the xxii. is remarkable. in it david's personal experience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purely messianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcend anything recorded of his sorrows. the impossibility of finding occurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs and burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some critics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile describing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor in babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of israel there. but the davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of resemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially with those of the sauline period, while the difficulty of finding historical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met, by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. of course, if we believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. but, unless we have a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in this psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering messiah. in most of the other psalms where david speaks of his sorrows we have only a typical foreshadowing of christ. but in this, and in such others as lxix. and cix. (if these are david's), we have type changing into prophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the image which, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distant before his prophet gaze,--the image of one who should be perfectly all which he was in partial measure, the anointed of god, the utterer of his name to his brethren, the king of israel,--and whose path to his dominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach, and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction was light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. and when the psalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and patience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over, he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolving revelation of god's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded more distinctly than before "the sufferings of the messiah," was ripening for the unveiling, in his kinghood, of "the glory that should follow." ix.--the king. we have now to turn and see the sudden change of fortune which lifted the exile to a throne. the heavy cloud which had brooded so long over the doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of gilboa. where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a soul which makes shipwreck "of faith and of a good conscience," than that awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and measureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a suicide's death, with sons and armour-bearer and all his men, a ghastly court of corpses, laid round him? he had once been brave, modest, and kind, full of noble purposes and generous affections--and he ended so. into what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag a soul, when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! and what a pathetic beam of struggling light gleams through heavy clouds, in the grateful exploit of the men of jabesh, who remembered how he had once saved them, while yet he could care and dare for his kingdom, and perilled their lives to bear the poor headless corpse to its rude resting-place! the news is received by the fugitive at ziklag in striking and characteristic fashion. he first flames out in fierce wrath upon the lying amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by falsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. a short shrift and a bloody end were his. and then the wrath melts into mourning. forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor soul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness of his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of saul and jonathan the mantle of his sweet elegy, and bathes them with the healing waters of his unstinted praise and undying love. not till these two offices of justice and affection had been performed, does he remember himself and the change in his own position which had been effected. he had never thought of saul as standing between him and the kingdom; the first feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a less devout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought of the empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain from the sense of an empty heart. and even when he begins to look forward to his own new course, there is that same remarkable passiveness which we have observed already. his first step is to "inquire of the lord, saying, shall i go up to any of the cities of judah?" ( sam. ii. ). he will do nothing in this crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hope seemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his shepherd shall lead him. rapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions, followed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once, while all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, he holds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check to hear what god will say. so fully did he fulfil the vow of his early psalm, "my strength! upon thee will i wait" (lix. ). we can fancy the glad march to the ancient hebron, where the great fathers of the nation lay in their rock-hewn tombs. even before the death of saul, david's strength had been rapidly increasing, by a constant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into which the kingdom had fallen. even benjamin, saul's own tribe, sent him some of its famous archers--a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes; the hardy half-independent men of manasseh and gad, from the pastoral uplands on the east of jordan, "whose faces," according to the vivid description of the chronicler ( chron. xii. ), "were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as roes upon the mountains," sought his standard; and from his own kinsmen of judah recruits "day by day came to david to help him, until it was a great host like the host of god." with such forces, it would have been child's play to have subdued any scattered troops of the former dynasty which might still have been in a condition to keep the field. but he made no attempt of the sort; and even when he came to hebron he took no measures to advance any claims to the crown. the language of the history seems rather to imply a disbanding of his army, or at least their settling down to domestic life in the villages round hebron, without a thought of winning the kingdom by arms. and his elevation to the partial monarchy which he at first possessed was the spontaneous act of "the men of judah," who come to him and anoint him king over judah. the limits of his territory are substantially those of the kingdom over which his descendants ruled after jeroboam's revolt, thus indicating the existence of a natural "line of cleavage" between north and south. the geographical position of benjamin finally attached it to the latter monarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which it had had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a feeble and lingering opposition to david, headed by saul's cousin abner, and rallying round his incompetent son ishbosheth.[q] the chronology of this period is obscure. david reigned in hebron seven years and a half, and as ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these years, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if the philistines had held the country, with the exception of judah, in such force that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that five years passed before the invaders were so far cleared out as to leave leisure for civil war. [q] the canaanitish worship of baal seems to have lingered in saul's family. one of his grand-uncles was named baal ( chron. ix. ); his son was really called eshbaal (fire of baal), which was contemptuously converted into ishbosheth (man of shame). so also mephibosheth was properly meribbaal (fighter for baal). the summary narrative of these seven years presents the still youthful king in a very lovable light. the same temper which had marked his first acts after saul's death is strikingly brought out ( sam. ii.-iv.) he seems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to joab, as if he shrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. when he does interfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferocious vengeance and dastardly assassination. the incidents recorded all go to make up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting for god to fulfil his purposes, of longing that the miserable strife between the tribes of god's inheritance should end. he sends grateful messages to jabesh-gilead; he will not begin the conflict with the insurgents. the only actual fight recorded is provoked by abner, and managed with unwonted mildness by joab. the list of his children born in hebron is inserted in the very heart of the story of the insurrection, a token of the quiet domestic life of peaceful joys and cares which he lived while the storm was raging without. eagerly, and without suspicion, he welcomes abner's advances towards reconciliation. he falls for a moment to the level of his times, and yields to a strong temptation, in making the restoration of his long-lost wife michal the condition of further negotiations--a demand which was strictly just, no doubt, but for which little more can be said. the generosity of his nature and the ideal purity of his love, which that incident shadows, shine out again in his indignation at joab's murder of abner, though he was too meek to avenge it. there is no more beautiful picture in his life than that of his following the bier where lay the bloody corpse of the man who had been his enemy ever since he had known him, and sealing the reconciliation which death ever makes in noble souls, by the pathetic dirge he chanted over abner's grave. we have a glimpse of his people's unbounded confidence in him, given incidentally when we are told that his sorrow pleased them, "as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people." we have a glimpse of the feebleness of his new monarchy as against the fierce soldier who had done so much to make it, in his acknowledgment that he was yet weak, being but recently anointed king, and that these vehement sons of zeruiah were too strong for him; and we have a remarkable trace of connection with the psalms, in the closing words with which he invokes on joab the vengeance which he as yet felt himself unable to execute: "the lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness." the only other incident recorded of his reign in hebron is his execution of summary justice upon the murderers of the poor puppet-king ishbosheth, upon whose death, following so closely that of abner, the whole resistance to david's power collapses. there had never been any real popular opposition. his enemies are emphatically named as "the house of saul," and we find abner himself admitting that "the elders of israel" wanted david as king ( sam. iii. ), so that when he was gone, it is two benjamites who give the _coup-de-grâce_ to ishbosheth, and end the whole shadowy rival power. immediately the rulers of all the tribes come up to hebron, with the tender of the crown. they offer it on the triple grounds of kinship, of his military service even in saul's reign, and of the divine promise of the throne. a solemn pact was made, and david was anointed in hebron, a king by divine right, but also a constitutional monarch chosen by popular election, and limited in his powers. the first result of his new strength is the capture of the old hill-fortress of the jebusites, the city of melchizedek, which had frowned down upon israel unsubdued till now, and whose inhabitants trusted so absolutely in its natural strength that their answer to the demand for surrender was the jeer, "thou wilt not come hither, but the blind and lame will drive thee away." this time david does not leave the war to others. for the first time for seven years we read, "_the king_ and his men went to jerusalem." established there as his capital, he reigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal and loving people, with this for the summary of the whole period, "david went on and grew great, and the lord god of hosts was with him" ( sam. v. ). these years are marked by three principal events--the bringing up of the ark to the city of david, the promise by nathan of the perpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories over the surrounding nations. these are the salient points of the narrative in the book of samuel ( sam. v.-viii.), and are all abundantly illustrated by the psalms. we shall have next then to consider "the songs of the king." how did the fugitive bear his sudden change of fortune? what were his thoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and never sought was his? the answer is ready to our hand in that grand psalm (ps. xviii.) which he "spake in the day that the lord delivered him from all his enemies, and from the hand of saul." the language of this superscription seems to connect the psalm with the period of internal and external repose which preceded and prompted david's "purpose to build an house for the lord" ( sam. vii.) the same thankfulness which glows so brightly in the psalm stimulated that desire, and the emphatic reference to the mercy promised by god to "his seed for evermore," which closes the hymn, points perhaps to the definite promise of the perpetuity of the kingdom to his descendants, which was god's answer to the same desire. but whether the psalm belongs to the years of the partial sovereignty at hebron, or to those of the complete dominion at jerusalem, it cannot be later than the second of these two dates; and whatever may have been the time of its composition, the feelings which it expresses are those of the first freshness of thankful praise when he was firmly settled in the kingdom. some critics would throw it onwards to the very close of his life. but this has little in its favour beyond the fact that the author of the book of samuel has placed his version of the psalm among the records of david's last days. there is, however, nothing to show that that position is due to chronological considerations. the victories over heathen nations which are supposed to be referred to in the psalm, and are relied on by the advocates of later date, really point to the earlier, which was the time of his most brilliant conquests. and the marked assertions of his own purity, as well as the triumphant tone of the whole, neither of which characteristics corresponds to the sad and shaded years after his great fall, point in the same direction. on the whole, then, we may fairly take this psalm as belonging to the bright beginning of the monarchy, and as showing us how well the king remembered the vows which the exile had mingled with his tears. it is one long outpouring of rapturous thankfulness and triumphant adoration, which streams from a full heart in buoyant waves of song. nowhere else, even in the psalms--and if not there, certainly nowhere else--is there such a continuous tide of unmingled praise, such magnificence of imagery, such passion of love to the delivering god, such joyous energy of conquering trust. it throbs throughout with the life blood of devotion. the strong flame, white with its very ardour, quivers with its own intensity as it steadily rises heavenward. all the terrors, and pains, and dangers of the weary years--the black fuel for the ruddy glow--melt into warmth too great for smoke, too equable to blaze. the plaintive notes that had so often wailed from his harp, sad as if the night wind had been wandering among its chords, have all led up to this rushing burst of full-toned gladness. the very blessedness of heaven is anticipated, when sorrows gone by are understood and seen in their connection with the joy to which they have led, and are felt to be the theme for deepest thankfulness. thank god that, for the consolation of the whole world, we have this hymn of praise from the same lips which said, "my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing." "we have seen the end of the lord, that the lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." the tremulous minors of trustful sorrow shall swell into rapturous praise; and he who, compassed with foes, cries upon god, will, here or yonder, sing this song "unto the lord, in the day that the lord delivers him from the hand of all his enemies." x.--the king--_continued_. in our last chapter we have seen that the key-note of "the songs of the king" may be said to be struck in psalm xviii. its complete analysis would carry us far beyond our limits. we can but glance at some of the more prominent points of the psalm. the first clause strikes the key-note. "i love thee, o jehovah, my strength." that personal attachment to god, which is so characteristic of david's religion, can no longer be pent up in silence, but gushes forth like some imprisoned stream, broad and full even from its well-head. the common word for "love" is too weak for him, and he bends to his use another, never elsewhere employed to express man's emotions towards god, the intensity of which is but feebly expressed by some such periphrasis as, "from my heart do i love thee." the same exalted feeling is wonderfully set forth by the loving accumulation of divine names which follow, as if he would heap together in one great pile all the rich experiences of that god, unnamed after all names, which he had garnered up in his distresses and deliverances. they tell so much as the poor vehicle of words can tell, what his shepherd in the heavens had been to him. they are the treasures which he has brought back from his exile; and they most pathetically point to the songs of that time. he had called on god by these names when it was hard to believe in their reality, and now he repeats them all in his glad hour of fruition, for token that they who in their extremity trust in the name of the lord will one day have the truth of faith transformed into truth of experience. "jehovah, my rock and my fortress," reminds us of his cry in ziklag, "thou art my rock and my fortress" (xxxi. ), and of the "hold" (the same word) of adullam in which he had lain secure. "my deliverer" echoes many a sigh in the past, now changed into music of praise. "my rock" (a different word from that in a preceding clause), "in whom i take refuge," recalls the prayer, "be thou my rock of strength" (xxxi. ), and his former effort of confidence, when, in the midst of calamities, he said, "my soul takes refuge in thee" (lvii. .) "my shield" carries us back to the ancient promise, fresh after so many centuries, and fulfilled anew in every age, "fear not, abram, i am thy shield," and to his own trustful words at a time when trust was difficult, "my shield is upon god" (vii. ). "my high tower," the last of this glowing series, links on to the hope breathed in the first song of his exile, "god is my defence" (the same expression); "thou hast been my defence in the day of trouble" (lix. , ). and then he sums up his whole past in one general sentence, which tells his habitual resource in his troubles, and the blessed help which he has ever found, "i call on jehovah, who is worthy to be praised;[r] and from my enemies am i saved" (verse ). [r] the old english word "the worshipful" comes near the form and meaning of the phrase. no comment can heighten, and no translation can adequately represent, while none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of the description which follows, of the majestic coming forth of god in answer to his cry. it stands at the very highest point, even when compared with the other sublime passages of a like kind in scripture. how pathetically he paints his sore need in metaphors which again bring to mind the songs of the outlaw:-- the snares of death compassed me, and floods of destruction made me afraid; the snares of sheol surrounded me, the toils of death surprised me. as he so often likened himself to some wild creature in the nets, so here death, the hunter, has cast his fatal cords about him, and they are ready suddenly to close on the unsuspecting prey. or, varying the image, he is sinking in black waters, which are designated by a difficult phrase (literally, "streams of belial," or worthlessness), which is most probably rendered as above (so ewald, hupfeld). in this dire extremity one thing alone is left him. he is snared, but he has his voice free to cry with, and a god to cry to. he is all but sinking, but he can still shriek (so one of the words might be rendered) "like some strong swimmer in his agony." and it is enough. that one loud call for help rises, like some slender pillar of incense-smoke, straight into the palace temple of god--and, as he says, with a meaning which our version obscures, "my cry before him came into his ears." the prayer that springs from a living consciousness of being in god's presence, even when nearest to perishing, is the prayer that he hears. the cry is a poor, thin, solitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise to heaven; the answer shakes creation. one man in his extremity can put in motion all the magnificence of god. overwhelming is the contrast between the cause and the effect. and marvellous as the greatness, so also is the swiftness of the answer. a moment suffices--and then! even whilst he cries, the rocking earth and the quivering foundations of the hills are conscious that the lord comes from afar for his help. the majestic self-revelation of god as the deliverer has for its occasion the psalmist's cry of distress, and for its issue, "he drew me out of many waters." all the splendour flames out because a poor man prays, and all the upheaval of earth and the artillery of heaven has simply this for its end, that a poor man may be delivered. the paradox of prayer never found a more bold expression than in this triumphant utterance, of the insignificant occasion for, and the equally insignificant result sought by, the exercise of the energy of omnipotence. the divine deliverance is set forth under the familiar image of the coming of god in a tempest. before it bursts, and simultaneous with the prayer, the "earth rocks and quivers," the sunless "pillars of the hills reel and rock to and fro," as if conscious of the gathering wrath which begins to flame far off in the highest heavens. there has been no forth-putting yet of the divine power. it is but accumulating its fiery energy, and already the solid framework of the world trembles, anticipating the coming crash. the firmest things shake, the loftiest bow before his wrath. "there went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it." this kindling anger, expressed by these tremendous metaphors, is conceived of as the preparation in "his temple" for the earthly manifestation of delivering vengeance. it is like some distant thunder-cloud which grows on the horizon into ominous blackness, and seems to be filling its ashen-coloured depths with store of lightnings. then the piled-up terror begins to move, and, drawing nearer, pours out an avalanche of gloom seamed with fire. first the storm-cloud descends, hanging lower and lower in the sky. and whose foot is that which is planted upon its heavy mass, thick and frowning enough to be the veil of god? "he bowed the heavens, and came down, and blackness of cloud was under his feet." then the sudden rush of wind which heralds the lightning breaks the awful silence:-- and he rode upon a cherub, and did fly, yea, he swept along upon the wings of the wind. the cherubs bear, as in a chariot, the throned god, and the swift pinions of the storm bear the cherubs. but he that sits upon the throne, above material forces and the highest creatures, is unseen. the psalmist's imagination stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into that light above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. instead of pagan attempts at a likeness of god, we have next painted, with equal descriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchy blackness which hides him. in the gloom of its depths he makes his "secret place" his "tent." it is "darkness of waters," that is, darkness from which streams out the thunder-rain; it is "thick clouds of the skies;" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, "heavy masses of clouds." then comes the crash of the tempest. the brightness that lies closer around him, and lives in the heart of the blackness, flames forth, parting the thick clouds--and through the awful rent hail and coals of fire are flung down on the trembling earth. the grand description may be rendered in two ways: either that adopted in our version, "at the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed--hailstones and coals of fire;" or, "through his thick clouds there passed hailstones and coals of fire." the former of these is the more dramatic; the broken construction expresses more vividly the fierce suddenness of the lightning blaze and of the down-rush of the hail, and is confirmed by the repetition of the same words in the same construction in the next verse. that verse describes another burst of the tempest--the deep roll of the thunder along the skies is the voice of jehovah, and again the lightning tears through the clouds, and the hail streams down. with what profound truth all this destructive power is represented as coming from the brightness of god--that "glory" which in its own nature is light, but in its contact with finite and sinful creatures must needs become darkness, rent asunder by lightning! what lessons as to the root and the essential nature of all punitive acts of god cluster round such words! and how calm and blessed the faith which can pierce even the thickest mass "that veileth love!"--to see the light at the centre, even though the circumference be brooding thunder-clouds torn by sudden fires. then comes the purpose of all this apocalypse of divine magnificence. the fiery arrows scatter the psalmist's enemies. the waters in which he had well nigh drowned are dried up before the hot breath of his anger. "that dread voice" speaks "which shrinks their streams." and amid the blaze of tempest, the rocking earth, and the failing floods, his arm is thrust forth from above, and draws his servant from many waters. as one in later times, "he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, lord, save me; and immediately he stretched forth his hand and caught him." a calmer tone follows, as the psalmist recounts without metaphor his deliverance, and reiterates the same assertion of his innocence which we have already found so frequently in the previous psalms (vers. - ). rising from his personal experience to the broad and lofty thoughts of god which that experience had taught him, as it does all who prize life chiefly as a means of knowing him, he proclaims the solemn truth, that in the exercise of a righteous retribution, and by the very necessity of our moral nature, god appears to man what man is to god: loving to the loving, upright to the upright, pure to the pure, and froward to the froward. our thoughts of god are shaped by our moral character; the capacity of perceiving depends on sympathy. "unless the eye were light, how could it see the sun?" the self-revelation of god in his providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according to our moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harsh and antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. there is a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forth the tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightest revelation of his love is made to froward prodigals. but that is not in the psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law of retribution in its own sphere. the purely personal tone is again resumed, and continued unbroken to the close. in the former portion david was passive, except for the voice of prayer, and god's arm alone was his deliverance. in the latter half he is active, the conquering king, whose arm is strengthened for victory by god. this difference may possibly suggest the reference of the former half to the sauline persecution, when, as we have seen, the exile ever shrunk from avenging himself; and of the latter to the early years of his monarchy, which, as we shall see, were characterized by much successful military activity; and if so, the date of the psalm would most naturally be taken to be the close of his victorious campaigns, when "the lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about" ( sam. vii. ). be that as it may, the latter portion of the psalm shows us the soldier king tracing all his past victories to god alone, and building upon them the confidence of a world-wide dominion. the point at which memory passes into hope is difficult to determine, and great variety of opinion prevails on the matter among commentators. it is perhaps best to follow many of the older versions, and the valuable exposition of hupfeld, in regarding the whole section from ver. of our translation as the expression of the trust which past experience had wrought. we shall then have two periods in the second half of the psalm--the past victories won by god's help (vers. - ), the coming triumphs of which these are the pledge (vers. -end). in the former there shine out not only david's habitual consciousness of dependence on and aid from god, but also a very striking picture of his physical qualifications for a military leader. he is girded with bodily strength, swift and sure of foot like a deer, able to scale the crags where his foes fortified themselves like the wild antelopes he had so often seen bounding among the dizzy ledges of the cliffs in the wilderness; his hands are trained for war, and his sinewy arms can bend the great bow of brass. but these capacities are gifts, and not they, but their giver, have made him victorious. looking back upon all his past, this is its summing up:-- "thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy right hand hath holden me up, and thy lowliness hath made me great." god's strength, god's buckler, god's supporting hand, god's condescension, by which he bows down to look upon and help the feeble, with the humble showing himself humble--these have been his weapons, and from these has come his victory. and because of these, he looks forward to a future like the past, but more glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulness of our god should encourage us to take all the blessings which we have received as but the earnest of what is yet to come. he sees himself pursuing his enemies, and smiting them to the ground. the fierce light of battle blazes through the rapid sentences which paint the panic flight, and the swift pursuit, the vain shrieks to man and god for succour, and the utter annihilation of the foe:-- ( ) "and i will pound them like dust before the wind, like street-filth will i empty them out." then he gives utterance to the consciousness that his kingdom is destined to extend far beyond the limits of israel, in words which, like so many of the prophecies, may be translated in the present tense, but are obviously future in signification--the prophet placing himself in imagination in the midst of the time of which he speaks:-- ( ) "thou deliverest me from the strivings of the people (_i.e._, israel), thou makest me head of the heathen; people whom i knew not serve me. ( ) at the hearing of the ear they obey me. the sons of the stranger feign obedience to me. ( ) the sons of the stranger fade away, they come trembling from their hiding-places." the rebellion which weakened his early reign is subdued, and beyond the bounds of his own people his dominion spreads. strange tribes submit to the very sound of his name, and crouch before him in extorted and pretended submission. the words are literally "lie unto me," descriptive of the profuse professions of loyalty characteristic of conquered orientals. their power withers before him like a gathered flower before a hot wind, and the fugitives creep trembling out of their holes where they have hid themselves. again he recurs to the one thought which flows like a river of light through all the psalm--that all his help is in god. the names which he lovingly heaped together at the beginning are in part echoed in the close. "the lord liveth, and blessed is my rock, and the god of my salvation is exalted." his deliverances have taught him to know a living god, swift to hear, active to help, in whom he lives, who has magnified his own name in that he has saved his servant. and as that blessed conviction is the sum of all his experience, so one glad vow expresses all his resolves, and thrills with the expectation which he had cherished even in his lonely exile, that the music of his psalm would one day echo through all the world. with lofty consciousness of his new dignity, and with lowly sense that it is god's gift, he emphatically names himself _his_ king, _his_ anointed, taking, as it were, his crown from his brows and laying it on the altar. with prophetic eye he looks onward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series of miracles enduring for ever, and the mercy of god sustaining the dominion of his house through all generations:-- ( ) "therefore will i give thanks to thee among the nations, o jehovah, and to thy name will i strike the harp: ( ) who maketh great the deliverances of his king and executeth mercy for his anointed, for david and his seed for evermore." and what were his purposes for the future? here is his answer, in a psalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as a kind of manifesto of the principles which he intended should characterize his reign (psa. ci.): "i will walk within my house with a perfect heart. i will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." for himself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to make it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law above his will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if his people and his public life are to be what they should be, his own personal and domestic life must be pure. as for his court and his ministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and sting and buzz about a throne. the froward, the wicked, privy slanderers, proud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will not suffer--but "mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land; he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me." he is fired with ambition, such as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkened to cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of god's, and to bring the actual israel into conformity with its ancient magna charta, "ye shall be to me a holy nation." and so, not knowing perhaps how hard a task he planned, and little dreaming of his own sore fall, he grasps the sword, resolved to use it for the terror of evil-doers, and vows, "i will early destroy all the wicked in the land, that i may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the lord." such was his "proclamation against vice and immorality" on his accession to his throne. xi.--the king--_continued_. the years thus well begun are, in the historical books, characterized mainly by three events, namely, the bringing up of the ark to the newly won city of david, nathan's prophecy of the perpetual dominion of his house, and his victories over the surrounding nations. these three hinges of the narrative are all abundantly illustrated in the psalms. as to the first, we have relics of the joyful ceremonial connected with it in two psalms, the fifteenth and twenty-fourth, which are singularly alike not only in substance but in manner, both being thrown into a highly dramatic form by question and answer. this peculiarity, as we shall see, is one of the links of connection which unite them with the history as given in the book of samuel ( sam. vi.). from that record we learn that david's first thought after he was firmly seated as king over all israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of the long-forgotten ark. that venerable symbol of the presence of the true king had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it had been carried round the walls of jericho. superstitiously borne into battle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts were not right with god, the presence which they had invoked became their ruin, and israel was shattered, and "the ark of god taken," on the fatal field of aphek. it had been carried in triumph through philistine cities, and sent back in dismay. it had been welcomed with gladness by the villagers of bethshemesh, who lifted their eyes from their harvest work, and saw it borne up the glen from the philistine plain. their rude curiosity was signally punished, "and the men of bethshemesh said, who is able to stand before this holy lord god, and to whom shall he go up from us?" it had been removed to the forest seclusion of kirjath-jearim (the city of the woods), and there bestowed in the house of abinadab "upon the hill," where it lay neglected and forgotten for about seventy years. during saul's reign they "inquired not at it," and, indeed, the whole worship of jehovah seems to have been decaying. david set himself to reorganize the public service of god, arranged a staff of priests and levites, with disciplined choir and orchestra ( chron. xv.), and then proceeded with representatives of the whole nation to bring up the ark from its woodland hiding-place. but again death turned gladness into dread, and uzzah's fate silenced the joyous songs, "and david was afraid of the lord that day, and said, how shall the ark of god come unto me?" the dangerous honour fell on the house of obed-edom; and only after the blessing which followed its three months' stay there, did he venture to carry out his purpose. the story of the actual removal of the ark to the city of david with glad ceremonial need not be repeated here; nor the mocking gibes of michal who had once loved him so fondly. probably she bitterly resented her violent separation from the household joys that had grown up about her in her second home; probably the woman who had had teraphim among her furniture cared nothing for the ark of god; probably, as she grew older, her character had hardened in its lines, and become like her father's in its measureless pride, and in its half-dread, half-hatred of david--and all these motives together pour their venom into her sarcasm. taunts provoke taunts; the husband feels that the wife is in heart a partisan of the fallen house of her father, and a despiser of the lord and of his worship; her words hiss with scorn, his flame with anger and rebuke--and so these two that had been so tender in the old days part for ever. the one doubtful act that stained his accession was quickly avenged. better for both that she had never been rent from that feeble, loving husband that followed her weeping, and was driven back by a single word, flung at him by abner as if he had been a dog at their heels! ( sam. iii. ). the gladness and triumph, the awe, and the memories of victory which clustered round the dread symbol of the presence of the lord of hosts, are wonderfully expressed in the choral twenty-fourth psalm. it is divided into two portions, which ewald regards as being originally two independent compositions. they are, however, obviously connected both in form and substance. in each we have question and answer, as in psalm xv., which belongs to the same period. the first half replies to the question, "who shall ascend the hill of the lord, and who shall stand in his holy place?"--an echo of the terror-struck exclamation of the people of bethshemesh, already quoted. the answer is a description of the _men who dwell with god_. the second half deals with the correlative inquiry, "who is the king of glory?" and describes the _god who comes to dwell with men_. it corresponds in substance, though not in form, with david's thought when uzzah died, in so far as it regards god as drawing near to the worshippers, rather than the worshippers drawing near to him. both portions are united by a real internal connection, in that they set forth the mutual approach of god and man which leads to communion, and thus constitute the two halves of an inseparable whole. most expositors recognise a choral structure in the psalm, as in several others of this date, as would be natural at the time of the reorganization of the public musical service. probably we may gain the key to its form by supposing it to be a processional hymn, of which the first half was to be sung during the ascent to the city of david, and the second while standing before the gates. we have then to fancy the long line of worshippers climbing the rocky steep hill-side to the ancient fortress so recently won, the levites bearing the ark, and the glad multitude streaming along behind them. first there swells forth from all the singers the triumphant proclamation of god's universal sovereignty, "the earth is the lord's and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. for he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods." it is very noteworthy that such a thought should precede the declaration of his special dwelling in zion. it guards that belief from the abuses to which it was of course liable--the superstitions, the narrowness, the contempt of all the rest of the world as god-deserted, which are its perversion in sensuous natures. if israel came to fancy that god belonged to them, and that there was only one sacred place in all the world, it was not for want of clear utterances to the contrary, which became more emphatic with each fresh step in the development of the specializing system under which they lived. the very ground of their peculiar relation to god had been declared, in the hour of constituting it to be--"all the earth is mine" (exod. xix. ). so now, when the symbol of his presence is to have a local habitation in the centre of the national life, the psalmist lays for the foundation of his song the great truth, that the divine presence is concentrated in israel, but not confined there, and concentrated in order that it may be diffused. the glory that lights the bare top of zion lies on all the hills; and he who dwells between the cherubim dwells in all the world, which his continual presence fills with its fulness, and upholds above the floods. then, as they climb, a single voice perhaps chants the solemn question, "who shall ascend the hill of the lord, or who shall stand in the place of his holiness?" and the full-toned answer portrays the men who shall dwell with god, in words which begin indeed with stringent demands for absolute purity, but wonderfully change in tone as they advance, into gracious assurances, and the clearest vision that the moral nature which fits for god's presence is god's gift. "the clean-handed, and pure-hearted, who has not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully;" there is the eternal law which nothing can ever alter, that to abide with god a man must be like god--the law of the new covenant as of the old, "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see god." but this requirement, impossible of fulfilment, is not all. if it were, the climbing procession might stop. but up and up they rise, and once again the song bursts forth in deeper and more hopeful words, "he shall _receive_ the blessing from jehovah, and righteousness from the god of his salvation." then that righteousness, which he who honestly attempts to comply with such requirements will soon find that he does not possess, is to be received from above, not elaborated from within; is a gift from god, not a product of man's toils. god will make us pure, that we may dwell with him. nor is this all. the condition of receiving such a gift has been already partially set forth in the preceding clause, which seems to require righteousness to be possessed as the preliminary to receiving it. the paradox which thus results is inseparable from the stage of religious knowledge attained under the mosaic law. but the last words of the answer go far beyond it, and proclaim the special truth of the gospel, that the righteousness which fits for dwelling with god is given on the simple condition of _seeking_ him. to this designation of the true worshippers is appended somewhat abruptly the one word "jacob," which need neither be rendered as in the english version as an invocation, nor as in the margin, with an unnecessary and improbable supplement, "o god of jacob;" but is best regarded as in apposition with the other descriptive clauses, and declaring, as we have found david doing already in previous psalms, that the characters portrayed in them, and these only, constituted the true israel. this is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face--(this is) jacob. and so the first question is answered, "who are the men who dwell with god?"--the pure, who receive righteousness, who seek him, the true israel. and now the procession has reached the front of the ancient city on the hill, and stands before the very walls and weather-beaten gates which melchizedek may have passed through, and which had been barred against israel till david's might had burst them. national triumph and glad worship are wonderfully blended in the summons which rings from the lips of the levites without: "lift up your heads, o ye gates! and be ye lift up, ye doors (that have been from) of old!" as if even their towering portals were too low, "and the king of glory shall come in." what force in that name here, in this early song of the king! how clearly he recognises his own derived power, and the real monarch of whom he is but the shadowy representative! the newly-conquered city is summoned to admit its true conqueror and sovereign, whose throne is the ark, which was emphatically named "the glory,"[s] and in whose train the earthly king follows as a subject and a worshipper. then, with wonderful dramatic force, a single voice from within the barred gates asks, like some suspicious warder, "who then is the king of glory?" with what a shout of proud confidence and triumphant memories of a hundred fields comes, ready and full, the crash of many voices in the answer, "jehovah strong and mighty, jehovah mighty in battle!" how vividly the reluctance of an antagonistic world to yield to israel and israel's king, is represented in the repetition of the question in a form slightly more expressive of ignorance and doubt, in answer to the reiterated summons, "who is he, then, the king of glory?" with what deepened intensity of triumph there peals, hoarse and deep, the choral shout, "the lord of hosts, he is the king of glory." that name which sets him forth as sovereign of the personal and impersonal forces of the universe--angels, and stars, and terrene creatures, all gathered in ordered ranks, embattled for his service--was a comparatively new name in israel,[t] and brought with it thoughts of irresistible might in earth and heaven. it crashes like a catapult against the ancient gates; and at that proclamation of the omnipotent name of the god who dwells with men, they grate back on their brazen hinges, and the ark of the lord enters into its rest. [s] "and she named the child i-chabod (where is the glory?) saying, the glory is departed from israel: because the ark of god was taken."-- _sam._ iv. . [t] it has been asserted that this is the first introduction of the name. ("psalms chronologically arranged by four friends," p. ). but it occurs in hannah's vow ( sam. i. ); in samuel's words to saul (xv. ); in david's reply to goliath (xvii. ). we have it also in psalm lix. , which we regard as his earliest during his exile. do the authors referred to consider these speeches in sam. as not authentic? xii.--the king--_continued_. the second event recorded as important in the bright early years is the great promise of the perpetuity of the kingdom in david's house. as soon as the king was firmly established and free from war, he remembered the ancient word which said, "when he giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety, then there shall be a place which the lord your god shall choose to cause his name to dwell there" (deut. xii. , ). his own ease rebukes him; he regards his tranquillity not as a season for selfish indolence, but as a call to new forms of service. he might well have found in the many troubles and vicissitudes of his past life an excuse for luxurious repose now. but devout souls will consecrate their leisure as their toil to god, and will serve him with thankful offerings in peace whom they invoked with earnest cries in battle. prosperity is harmless only when it is accepted as an opportunity for fresh forms of devotion, not as an occasion for idle self-indulgence. so we read, with distinct verbal reference to the words already quoted, that "when the lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies, the king said unto nathan the prophet, see now, i dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of god dwelleth in curtains." the impulse of generous devotion, which cannot bear to lavish more upon self than it gives to god, at first commended itself to the prophet; but in the solitude of his nightly thoughts the higher wisdom speaks in his spirit, and the word of god gives him a message for the king. the narrative in sam. makes no mention of david's warlike life as unfitting him for the task, which we find from chron. was one reason why his purpose was set aside, but brings into prominence the thought that david's generous impulse was outrunning god's commandment, and that his ardour to serve was in some danger of forgetting his entire dependence on god, and of fancying that god would be the better for him. so the prophetic message reminds him that the lord had never, through all the centuries, asked for a house of cedar, and recalls the past life of david as having been wholly shaped and blessed by him, while it pointedly inverts the king's proposal in its own grand promise, "the lord telleth thee that he will make thee an house." then follows the prediction of a son of david who should build the house, whose kingdom should be perpetual, whose transgressions should be corrected indeed, but never punished as those of the unhappy saul; and then, in emphatic and unmistakable words, the perpetuity of david's house, his kingdom, and his throne, is reiterated as the close of the whole. the wonderful burst of praise which sprang from david's heart in answer cannot be dealt with here; but clearly from that time onwards a new element had been added to his hopes, and a new object presented to his faith. the prophecy of the messiah enters upon a new stage, bearing a relation, as its successive stages, always unmistakably did, to the history which supplies a framework for it. now for the first time can he be set forth as the king of israel; now the width of the promise which at first had embraced the seed of the woman, and then had been narrowed to the seed of abraham, and thereafter probably to the tribe of judah, is still further defined as to be fulfilled in the line of the house of david; now the personal messiah himself begins to be discerned through the words which are to have a preparatory fulfilment, in itself prophetic, in the collective davidic monarchs whose very office is itself also a prophecy. many echoes of this new message ring through the later psalms of the king. his own dominion, his conquests, and his office, gradually became to himself a solemn prophecy of a mysterious descendant who should be really and fully all that he was in shadow and in part. as the experience of the exile, so that of the victorious monarch supplied the colours with which the spirit of prophecy in him painted "beforehand the sufferings of christ and the glory that should follow." in both classes of psalms we have two forms of the messianic reference, the typical and the purely prophetic. in the former the events of david's own biography and the feelings of his own soul are so portrayed and expressed as to suggest his greater son. in the latter, the personality of the psalmist retreats into the background, and is at most only the starting-point for wails of sorrow or gleams of glory which far transcend anything in the life of the singer. there are portions, for instance, of the xxii. and lxix. psalms which no torturing can force into correspondence with any of david's trials; and in like manner there are pæans of victory and predictions of dominion which demand a grander interpretation than his own royalty or his hopes for his house can yield. of course, if prophecy is impossible, there is no more to be said, but that in that case a considerable part of the old testament, including many of david's psalms, is unintelligible. perhaps the clearest instance of distinct prophecy of the victorious dominion of the personal messiah is the th psalm. in it we do see, no doubt, the influence of the psalmist's own history, shaping the image which rises before his soul. but the attributes of that king whom he beholds are not his attributes, nor those of any son of his who wore the crown in israel. and whilst his own history gives the form, it is "the spirit of christ that was in" him which gives the substance, and transfigures the earthly monarchy into a heavenly dominion. we do not enter upon the question of the davidic authorship of this psalm. here we have not to depend upon jewish superscriptions, but on the words of him whose bare assertion should be "an end of all strife." christ says that david wrote it. some of us are far enough behind the age to believe that what he said he meant, and that what he meant is truth. this psalm, then, being david's, can hardly be earlier than the time of nathan's prophecy. there are traces in it of the influence of the history of the psalmist, giving, as we have said, form to the predictions. perhaps we may see these in zion being named as the seat of messiah's sovereignty and in the reference to melchizedek, both of which points assume new force if we suppose that the ancient city over which that half-forgotten name once ruled had recently become his own. possibly, too, his joy in exchanging his armour and kingly robe for the priest's ephod, when he brought up the ark to its rest, and his consciousness that in himself the regal and the sacerdotal offices did not blend, may have led him to meditations on the meaning of both, on the miseries that seemed to flow equally from their separation and from their union, which were the precursors of his hearing the divine oath that, in the far-off future, they would be fused together in that mighty figure who was to repeat in higher fashion the union of functions which invested that dim king of righteousness and priest of god in the far-off past. he discerns that _his_ support from the right hand of god, _his_ sceptre which he swayed in zion, _his_ loyal people fused together into a unity at last, _his_ triumphant warfare on the nations around, are all but faint shadows of one who is to come. that solemn form on the horizon of hope is his lord, the true king whose viceroy he was, the "bright consummate flower" for the sake of which the root has its being. and, as he sees the majestic lineaments shimmering through the facts of his own history, like some hidden fire toiling in a narrow space ere it leaps into ruddy spires that burst their bonds and flame heaven high, he is borne onwards by the prophetic impulse, and the spirit of god speaks through his tongue words which have no meaning unless their theme be a divine ruler and priest for all the world. he begins with the solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont to be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true character. the "oracle" or "word of jehovah unto my lord," which he heard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. he is taken up and listens to the divine voice calling to his right hand, to the most intimate communion with himself, and to wielding the energies of omnipotence--him whom david knew to be his lord. and when that divine voice ceases, its mandate having been fulfilled, the prophetic spirit in the seer hymns the coronation anthem of the monarch enthroned by the side of the majesty in the heavens. "the sceptre of thy strength will jehovah send out of zion. rule thou in the midst of thine enemies." in singular juxtaposition are the throne at god's right hand and the sceptre--the emblem of sovereignty--issuing from zion, a dominion realised on earth by a monarch in the heavens, a dominion the centre of which is zion, and the undefined extent universal. it is a monarchy, too, established in the midst of enemies, sustained in spite of antagonism not only by the power of jehovah, but by the activity of the sovereign's own "rule." it is a dominion for the maintenance of which devout souls will burst into prayer, and the most powerful can bring but their aspirations. but the vision includes more than the warrior king and his foes. imbedded, as it were, in the very heart of the description of the former comes the portraiture of his subjects, for a witness how close is the union between him and them, and how inseparable from his glories are those who serve him. they are characterised in a threefold manner. "thy people (shall be) willing in the day of thine array." the army is being mustered.[u] they are not mercenaries, nor pressed men. they flock gladly to the standard, like the warriors celebrated of old in deborah's chant of victory, who "willingly offered themselves." the word of our psalm might be translated "freewill offerings," and the whole clause carries us into the very heart of that great truth, that glad consecration and grateful self-surrender is the one bond which knits us to the captain of our salvation who gave himself for us, to the meek monarch whose crown is of thorns and his sceptre a reed, for tokens that his dominion rests on suffering and is wielded in gentleness. the next words should be punctuated as a separate clause, co-ordinate with the former, and adding another feature to the description of the army. "in the beauties of holiness" is a common name for the dress of the priests: the idea conveyed is that the army is an army of priests, as the king himself is a priest. they are clothed, not in mail and warlike attire, but in "fine linen clean and white," like the armies which a later prophet saw following the lord of lords. their warfare is not to be by force and cruelty, nor their conquests bloody; but while soldiers they are to be priests, their weapons purity and devotion, their merciful struggle to bring men to god, and to mirror god to men. round the one image gather all ideas of discipline, courage, consecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader; round the other, all thoughts of gentleness, of an atmosphere of devotion calm and still as the holy place, of stainless character. christ's servants must be both soldiers and priests, like some of those knightly orders who bore the cross on helmet and shield, and shaped the very hilts of their swords into its likeness. and these soldier-priests are described by yet another image, "from the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth," where we are to regard the last word as used in a collective sense, and equivalent to "thy young warriors." they are like the dew sparkling in infinite globelets on every blade of grass, hanging gems on every bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting the sunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet together freshening the thirsty world. so, formed by an unseen and mysterious power, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring god and quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of the priest-king are to be "in the midst of many people like the dew from the lord." [u] the word translated "power" in our version, has the same double meaning as that has in old english, or as "force" has now, sometimes signifying "strength" and sometimes an "army." the latter is the more appropriate here. "the day of thine army" will then be equivalent to the day of mustering the troops. another solemn word from the lips of god begins the second half of the psalm. "jehovah swears," gives the sanction and guarantee of his own nature, puts in pledge his own being for the fulfilment of the promise. and that which he swears is a new thing in the earth. the blending of the royal and priestly offices in the messiah, and the eternal duration in him of both, is a distinct advancement in the development of messianic prophecy. the historical occasion for it may indeed be connected with david's kingship and conquest of melchizedek's city; but the real source of it is a direct predictive inspiration. we have here not merely the devout psalmist meditating on the truths revealed before his day, but the prophet receiving a new word from god unheard by mortal ears, and far transcending even the promises made to him by nathan. there is but one person to whom it can apply, who sits as a priest upon his throne, who builds the temple of the lord (zech. vi. , ). as the former divine word, so this is followed by the prophet's rapturous answer, which carries on the portraiture of the priest-king. there is some doubt as to the person addressed in these later verses. "the lord at thy right hand crushes kings in the day of his wrath." whose right hand? the answer generally given is, "the messiah's." who is the lord that smites the petty kinglets of earth? the answer generally given is, "god." but it is far more dramatic, avoids an awkward abruptness in the change of persons in the last verse, and brings out a striking contrast with the previous half, if we take the opposite view, and suppose jehovah addressed and the messiah spoken of throughout. then the first divine word is followed by the prophetic invocation of the exalted messiah throned at the right hand and expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. the second is followed by the prophetic invocation of jehovah, and describes the lord messiah at god's right hand as before, but instead of longer waiting he now flames forth in all the resistless energy of a conqueror. the day of his array is succeeded by the day of his wrath. he crushes earth's monarchies. the psalmist's eye sees the whole earth one great battle-field. "(it is) full of corpses. he wounds the head over wide lands," where there may possibly be a reference to the first vague dawning of a hope which god's mercy had let lighten on man's horizon--"he shall bruise thy head," or the word may be used as a collective expression for rulers, as the parallelism with the previous verse requires. thus striding on to victory across the prostrate foe, and pursuing the flying relics of their power, "he drinks of the brook in the way, therefore shall he lift up the head," words which are somewhat difficult, however interpreted. if, with the majority of modern commentators, we take them as a picturesque embodiment of eager haste in the pursuit, the conqueror "faint, yet pursuing," and stooping for a moment to drink, then hurrying on with renewed strength after the fugitives, one can scarcely help feeling that such a close to such a psalm is trivial and liker the artificial play of fancy than the work of the prophetic spirit, to say nothing of the fact that there is nothing about pursuit in the psalm. if we fall back on the older interpretation, which sees in the words a prophecy of the sufferings of the messiah who tastes death and drinks of the cup of sorrows, and therefore is highly exalted, we get a meaning which worthily crowns the psalm, but seems to break somewhat abruptly the sequence of thought, and to force the metaphor of drinking of the brook into somewhat strained parallelism with the very different new testament images just named. but the doubt we must leave over these final words does not diminish the preciousness of this psalm as a clear, articulate prophecy from david's lips of david's son, whom he had learned to know through the experiences and facts of his own life. he had climbed through sufferings to his throne. god had exalted him and given him victory, and surrounded him with a loyal people. but he was only a shadow; limitations and imperfections surrounded his office and weakened himself; half of the divine counsel of peace could not be mirrored in his functions at all, and death lay ahead of him. so his glory and his feebleness alike taught him that "one mightier than" he must be coming behind him, "the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose"--the true king of israel, to bear witness to whom was his highest honour. the third characteristic of the first seventeen years of david's reign is his successful wars with surrounding nations. the gloomy days of defeat and subjugation which had darkened the closing years of saul are over now, and blow after blow falls with stunning rapidity on the amazed enemies. the narrative almost pants for breath as it tells with hurry and pride how, south, and east, and north, the "lion of the tribe of judah" sprang from his fastness, and smote philistia, edom, moab, ammon, amalek, damascus, and the syrians beyond, even to the euphrates; and the bounding courage of king and people, and the unity of heart and hand with which they stood shoulder to shoulder in many a bloody field, ring through the psalms of this period. whatever higher meaning may be attached to them, their roots are firm in the soil of actual history, and they are first of all the war-songs of a nation. that being so, that they should also be inspired hymns for the church in all ages will present no difficulty nor afford any consecration to modern warfare, if the progressive character of revelation be duly kept in mind. there is a whole series of such psalms, such as xx., xxi., lx., and probably lxviii. we cannot venture in our limited space on any analysis of the last of these. it is a splendid burst of national triumph and devout praise, full of martial ardour, throbbing with lofty consciousness of god's dwelling in israel, abounding with allusions to the ancient victories of the people, and world-wide in its anticipations of future triumph. how strange the history of its opening words has been! through the battle smoke of how many a field they have rung! on the plains of the palatinate, from the lips of cromwell's ironsides, and from the poor peasants that went to death on many a bleak moor for christ's crown and covenant, to the doric music of their rude chant-- "let god arise, and scattered let all his enemies be; and let all those that do him hate, before his presence flee." the sixtieth psalm is assigned to david after joab's signal victory over the edomites ( sam. viii.). it agrees very well with that date, though the earlier verses have a wailing tone so deep over recent disasters, so great that one is almost inclined to suppose that they come from a later hand than his. but after the first verses all is warlike energy and triumph. how the glad thought of ruling over a united people dances in the swift words, "i will rejoice, i will divide shechem, and mete out the valley of succoth;" he has, as it were, repeated joshua's conquest and division of the land, and the ancient historical sites that fill a conspicuous place in the history of his great ancestor are in his power. "gilead is mine, and manasseh is mine, ephraim also is the defence of my head, judah my staff of command." he looks eastward to the woods and pastoral uplands across the jordan, whose inhabitants had been but loosely attached to the western portion of the nation, and triumphs in knowing that gilead and manasseh own his sway. the foremost tribes on this side the river are to him like the armour and equipments of a conqueror; he wears the might of ephraim, the natural head of the northern region, as his helmet, and he grasps the power of judah as his baton of command or sceptre of kingly rule (gen. xlix. ). thus, strong in the possession of a united kingdom, his flashing eye turns to his enemies, and a stern joy, mingled with contempt, blazes up as he sees them reduced to menial offices and trembling before him. "moab (is) my washing-basin; to edom will i fling my shoe; because of me, philistia, cry out" (in fear). the three ancestral foes that hung on israel's southern border from east to west are subdued. he will make of one "a vessel of dishonour" to wash his feet, soiled with battle; he will throw his shoes to another the while, as one would to a slave to take care of; and the third, expecting a like fate, shrieks out in fear of the impending vengeance. he pants for new victories, "who will bring me into (the) strong city?" probably the yet unsubdued petra, hidden away in its tortuous ravine, with but one perilous path through the gorge. and at last all the triumph of victory rises to a higher region of thought in the closing words, which lay bare the secret of his strength, and breathe the true spirit of the soldier of jehovah. "in god we shall do valiantly; and he, even he, shall tread down our enemies." the twentieth psalm, another of these stirring war-songs, is in that choral manner which we have already seen in psalm xxiv., and the adoption of which was probably connected with david's careful organization of "the service of song." it is all ablaze with the light of battle and the glow of loyal love. the army, ready drawn up for action, as we may fancy, prays for the king, who, according to custom, brings sacrifices and offerings before the fight. "jehovah hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the god of jacob defend thee, send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of zion, remember all thine offerings, and accept thy burnt sacrifice." then, as they wave their standards in the sunshine, or plant before the ranks of each tribe its cognizance, to be defended to the death, the hoarse shout rises from the files, "in the name of our god we will set up (or wave) our banners." then the single voice of the king speaks, rejoicing in his soldiers' devotion, which he accepts as an omen that his sacrifice has not been in vain: "now know i that jehovah saveth his anointed. he will hear him from the heaven of his holiness with the strength of the salvation of his right hand;" not merely from a god dwelling in zion, according to language of the previous prayer, but from the lord in the heavens, will the strength come. then again the chorus of the host exclaims, as they look across the field to the chariots and cavalry of the foe--forces which israel seldom used--"these (boast[v]) of chariots, and those of horses, and we, of the name of jehovah, our god, do we boast." ere a sword has been drawn, they see the enemy scattered. "they are brought down and fallen; and we, we are risen and stand upright." then one earnest cry to god, one more thought of the true monarch of israel, whom david would teach them to feel he only shadowed; and with the prayer, "jehovah! save! let the king hear us in the day when we cry," ringing like the long trumpet blast that sounds for the charge, they dash forth to victory! [v] lit. "make mention of" or "commemorate." xiii.--the tears of the penitent. adversity had taught david self-restraint, had braced his soul, had driven him to grasp firmly the hand of god. and prosperity had seemed for nearly twenty years but to perfect the lessons. gratitude had followed deliverance, and the sunshine after the rain had brought out the fragrance of devotion and the blossoms of glad songs. a good man, and still more a man of david's age at the date of his great crime, seldom falls so low, unless there has been previous, perhaps unconscious, relaxation of the girded loins, and negligence of the untrimmed lamp. the sensitive nature of the psalmist was indeed not unlikely to yield to the sudden force of such a temptation as conquered him, but we can scarcely conceive of its having done so without a previous decay of his religious life, hidden most likely from himself. and the source of that decay may probably be found in self-indulgence, fostered by ease, and by long years of command. the actual fall into sin seems to have been begun by slothful abdication of his functions as captain of israel. it is perhaps not without bitter emphasis that the narrative introduces it by telling us that, "at the time when kings go forth to battle," david contented himself with sending his troops against ammon, and "tarried still at jerusalem." at all events, the story brings into sharp contrast the levy _en masse_, encamped round rabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take his share of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siesta in the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of his sweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on his palace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if his heart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills that he could almost see from his height, as they grew purple in the evening twilight. he has fallen to the level of an eastern despot, and has lost his sense of the responsibilities of his office. such loosening of the tension of his moral nature as is indicated in his absence from the field, during what was evidently a very severe as well as a long struggle, prepared the way for the dismal headlong plunge into sin. the story is told in all its hideousness, without palliation or reserve, without comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion so characteristic of the bible records of its greatest characters. every step is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word of emotion. not a single ugly detail is spared. the portraiture is as vivid as ever. bathsheba's willing complicity, her punctilious observance of ceremonial propriety while she is trampling under foot her holiest obligations; the fatal necessity which drags sin after sin, and summons up murder to hide, if it be possible, the foul form of adultery; the stinging rebuke in the conduct of uriah, who, hittite as he was, has a more chivalrous, not to say devout, shrinking from personal ease while his comrades and the ark are in the field, than the king has; the mean treason, the degradation implied in getting into joab's power; the cynical plainness of the murderous letter, in which a hardened conscience names his purposed evil by its true name; the contemptuous measure of his master which joab takes in his message, the king's indifference to the loss of his men so long as uriah is out of the way; the solemn platitudes with which he pretends to console his tool for the check of his troops; and the hideous haste with which, after her scrupulous "mourning" for one week, bathsheba threw herself again into david's arms;--all these particulars, and every particular an aggravation, stand out for ever, as men's most hidden evil will one day do, in the clear, unpitying, unmistakable light of the divine record. what a story it is! this saint of nearly fifty years of age, bound to god by ties which he rapturously felt and acknowledged, whose words have been the very breath of devotion for every devout heart, forgets his longings after righteousness, flings away the joys of divine communion, darkens his soul, ends his prosperity, brings down upon his head for all his remaining years a cataract of calamities, and makes his name and his religion a target for the barbed sarcasms of each succeeding generation of scoffers. "all the fences and their whole array," which god's mercies and his own past had reared, "one cunning sin sweeps quite away." every obligation of his office, as every grace of his character, is trodden under foot by the wild beast roused in his breast. as man, as king, as soldier, he is found wanting. lust and treason, and craft and murder, are goodly companions for him who had said, "i will walk within my house with a perfect heart. i will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." why should we dwell on the wretched story? because it teaches us, as no other page in the history of god's church does, how the alchemy of divine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out of the filth of sin; and therefore, though we turn with loathing from david's sin, we have to bless god for the record of it, and for the lessons of hope that come from david's pardon. to many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (li., xxxii.), all blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, have been as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. they are too familiar to need, and too sacred to bear, many words here, but we may briefly note some points connected with them--especially those which assist us in forming some image of the psalmist's state of mind after his transgression. it may be observed that of these two psalms, the fifty-first is evidently earlier than the thirty-second. in the former we see the fallen man struggling up out of the "horrible pit and miry clay;" in the latter he stands upon the rock, with a new song in his mouth, even the blessedness of him "whose sin is covered." it appears also that both must be dated after the sharp thrust of god's lancet which nathan drove into his conscience, and the healing balsam of god's assurance of forgiveness which nathan laid upon his heart. the passionate cries of the psalm are the echo of the divine promise--the effort of his faith to grasp and keep the merciful gift of pardon. the consciousness of forgiveness is the basis of the prayer for forgiveness. somewhere about a year passed between the crime and the message of nathan. and what sort of a year it was the psalms tell us. the coarse satisfactions of his sin could not long content him, as they might have done a lower type of man. nobody buys a little passing pleasure in evil at so dear a rate, or keeps it for so short a time as a good man. he cannot make himself as others. "that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, in that ye say, we will be as the families of the nations, which serve wood and stone." old habits quickly reassert their force, conscience soon lifts again its solemn voice; and while worse men are enjoying the strong-flavoured meats on sin's table, the servant of god, who has been seduced to prefer them for a moment to the "light bread" from heaven, tastes them already bitter in his mouth. he may be far from true repentance, but he will very soon know remorse. months may pass before he can feel again the calm joys of god, but disgust with himself and with his sin will quickly fill his soul. no more vivid picture of such a state has ever been drawn, than is found in the psalms of this period. they tell of sullen "silence;" dust had settled on the strings of his harp, as on helmet and sword. he will not speak to god of his sin, and there is nothing else that he can speak of. they tell of his "roaring all the day long"--the groan of anguish forced from his yet unsoftened spirit. day and night god's heavy hand weighed him down; the consciousness of that power, whose gentleness had once holden him up, crushed, but did not melt him. like some heated iron, its heaviness scorched as well as bruised, and his moisture--all the dew and freshness of his life--was dried up at its touch and turned into dusty, cracking drought, that chaps the hard earth, and shrinks the streamlets, and burns to brown powder the tender herbage (ps. xxxii.). body and mind seem both to be included in this wonderful description, in which obstinate dumbness, constant torture, dread of god, and not one softening drop of penitence fill the dry and dusty heart, while "bones waxing old," or, as the word might be rendered, "rotting," sleepless nights, and perhaps the burning heat of disease, are hinted at as the accompaniments of the soul-agony. it is possible that similar allusions to actual bodily illness are to be found in another psalm, probably referring to the same period, and presenting striking parallelisms of expression (ps. vi.), "have mercy upon me, jehovah, for i languish (fade away); heal me, for my bones are affrighted. my soul is also sore vexed. i am weary with my groaning; every night make i my bed to swim. i water my couch with my tears." the similar phrase, too, in psalm fifty-one, "the bones which thou hast broken," may have a similar application. thus, sick in body and soul, he dragged through a weary year--ashamed of his guilty dalliance, wretched in his self-accusations, afraid of god, and skulking in the recesses of his palace from the sight of his people. a goodly price he had sold integrity for. the bread had been sweet for a moment, but how quickly his "mouth is filled with gravel" (proverbs xx. ). david learned, what we all learn (and the holier a man is, the more speedily and sharply does the lesson follow on the heels of his sin), that every transgression is a blunder, that we never get the satisfaction which we expect from any sin, or if we do, we get something with it which spoils it all. a nauseous drug is added to the exciting, intoxicating drink which temptation offers, and though its flavour is at first disguised by the pleasanter taste of the sin, its bitterness is persistent though slow, and clings to the palate long after that has faded utterly. into this dreary life nathan's message comes with merciful rebuke. the prompt severity of david's judgment against the selfish sinner of the inimitable apologue may be a subtle indication of his troubled conscience, which fancies some atonement for his own sin in stern repression of that of others; for consciousness of evil may sometimes sting into harshness as well as soften to lenity, and sinful man is a sterner judge than the righteous god. the answer of nathan is a perfect example of the divine way of convincing of sin. there is first the plain charge pressed home on the individual conscience, "thou art the man." then follows, not reproach nor further deepening of the blackness of the deed, but a tender enumeration of god's great benefits, whereon is built the solemn question, "wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the lord, to do evil in his sight?" the contemplation of god's faithful love, and of the all-sufficient gifts which it bestows, makes every transgression irrational as well as ungrateful, and turns remorse, which consumes like the hot wind of the wilderness, into tearful repentance which refreshes the soul. when god has been seen loving and bestowing ere he commands and requires, it is profitable to hold the image of the man's evil in all its ugliness close up to his eyes; and so the bald facts are repeated next in the fewest, strongest words. nor can the message close until a rigid law of retribution has been proclaimed, the slow operation of which will filter bitterness and shame through all his life. "and david said unto nathan, i have sinned against the lord." two words (in the hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real though shaded peace. no lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of self-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows god does not need. more would have been less. all is contained in that one sob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and rolls away, swept before the strong flood. and as brief and simple as the confession, is the response, "and nathan said unto david, the lord also hath put away thy sin." how full and unconditional the blessing bestowed in these few words; how swift and sufficient the answer! so the long estrangement is ended. thus simple and divine is the manner of pardon. in such short compass may the turning point of a life lie! but while confession and forgiveness heal the breach between god and david, pardon is not impunity, and the same sentence which bestows the remission of sin announces the exaction of a penalty. the judgments threatened a moment before--a moment so far removed now to david's consciousness that it would look as if an age had passed--are not withdrawn, and another is added, the death of bathsheba's infant. god loves his servants too well to "suffer sin upon them," and the freest forgiveness and the happiest consciousness of it may consist with the loving infliction and the submissive bearing of pains, which are no longer the strokes of an avenging judge, but the chastisements of a gracious father. the fifty-first psalm must, we think, be conceived of as following soon after nathan's mission. there may be echoes of the prophet's stern question, "wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the lord, to do evil in his sight?" and of the confession, "i have sinned against the lord," in the words, "against thee, thee only have i sinned, and done evil in thy sight" (ver. ), though perhaps the expressions are not so peculiar as to make the allusion certain. but, at all events, the penitence and prayers of the psalm can scarcely be supposed to have preceded the date of the historical narrative, which clearly implies that the rebuke of the seer was the first thing that broke up the dumb misery of unrepented sin. although the psalm is one long cry for pardon and restoration, one can discern an order and progress in its petitions--the order, not of an artificial reproduction of a past mood of mind, but the instinctive order in which the emotion of contrite desire will ever pour itself forth. in the psalm all begins, as all begins in fact, with the grounding of the cry for favour on "thy loving-kindness," "the multitude of thy tender mercies;" the one plea that avails with god, whose love is its own motive and its own measure, whose past acts are the standard for all his future, whose compassions, in their innumerable numbers, are more than the sum of our transgressions, though these be "more than the hairs of our head." beginning with god's mercy, the penitent soul can learn to look next upon its own sin in all its aspects of evil. the depth and intensity of the psalmist's loathing of self is wonderfully expressed in his words for his crime. he speaks of his "transgressions" and of his "sin." looked at in one way, he sees the separate acts of which he had been guilty--lust, fraud, treachery, murder: looked at in another, he sees them all knotted together, in one inextricable tangle of forked, hissing tongues, like the serpent locks that coil and twist round a gorgon head. no sin dwells alone; the separate acts have a common root, and the whole is matted together like the green growth on a stagnant pond, so that, by whatever filament it is grasped, the whole mass is drawn towards you. and a profound insight into the essence and character of sin lies in the accumulated synonyms. it is "transgression," or, as the word might be rendered, "rebellion"--not the mere breach of an impersonal law, not merely an infraction of "the constitution of our nature"--but the rising of a subject will against its true king, disobedience to a person as well as contravention of a standard. it is "iniquity"--perversion or distortion--a word which expresses the same metaphor as is found in many languages, namely, crookedness as descriptive of deeds which depart from the perfect line of right. it is "sin," _i.e._, "missing one's aim;" in which profound word is contained the truth that all sin is a blunder, shooting wide of the true goal, if regard be had to the end of our being, and not less wide if regard be had to our happiness. it ever misses the mark; and the epitaph might be written over every sinner who seeks pleasure at the price of righteousness, "thou fool." nor less pregnant with meaning is the psalmist's emphatic acknowledgment, "against thee, thee only have i sinned." he is not content with looking upon his evil in itself, or in relation only to the people who had suffered by it; he thinks of it in relation to god. he had been guilty of crimes against bathsheba and uriah, and even the rough soldier whom he made his tool, as well as against his whole subjects; but, dark as these were, they assumed their true character only when they were discerned as done against god. "sin," in its full sense, implies "god" as its correlative. we transgress against each other, but we sin against him. nor does the psalmist stop here. he has acknowledged the tangled multiplicity and dreadful unity of his evil, he has seen its inmost character, he has learned to bring his deed into connection with god; what remains still to be confessed? he laments, and that not as extenuation (though it be explanation), but as aggravation, the sinful nature in which he had been born. the deeds had come from a source--a bitter fountain had welled out this blackness. he himself is evil, therefore he has done evil. the sin is his; he will not contest his full responsibility; and its foul characteristics declare the inward foulness from which it has flowed--and that foulness is himself. does he therefore think that he is less to blame? by no means. his acknowledgment of an evil nature is the very deepest of his confessions, and leads not to a palliation of his guilt, but to a cry to him who alone can heal the inward wound; and as he can purge away the transgressions, can likewise stanch their source, and give him to feel within "that he is healed from that plague." the same intensity of feeling expressed by the use of so many words for sin is revealed also in the reiterated synonyms for pardon. the prayer comes from his lips over and over again, not because he thinks that he shall be heard for his much speaking, but because of the earnestness of his longing. such repetitions are signs of the persistence of faith, while others, though they last like the prayers of baal's priests, "from morning till the time of the evening sacrifice," indicate only the suppliant's doubt. david prays that his sins may be "blotted out," in which petition they are conceived as recorded against him in the archives of the heavens; that he may be "washed" from them, in which they are conceived as foul stains upon himself, needing for their removal hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some commentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"--the technical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring him clear of the taint. he also, with similar recurrence to the mosaic symbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop." there is a pathetic appropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had become defiled by contact with a dead body, were thus purified; and on whom did the taint of corruption cleave as on the murderer of uriah? the prayer, too, is even more remarkable in the original, which employs a verb formed from the word for "sin;" "and if in our language that were a word in use, it might be translated, 'thou shalt un-sin me.'"[w] [w] donne's sermons, quoted in perowne, _in. loc._ in the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon there comes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restoration to "joy and gladness"--an indication surely of more than ordinary confidence in the full mercy of god, which would efface all the consequences of his sin. and following upon them are petitions for sanctifying, reiterated and many-sided, like those that have preceded. three pairs of clauses contain these, in each of which the second member of the clause asks for the infusion into his spirit of some grace from god--that he may possess a "steadfast spirit," "thy holy spirit," "a willing spirit." it is perhaps not an accident that the central petition of the three is the one which most clearly expresses the thought which all imply--that the human spirit can only be renewed and hallowed by the entrance into it of the divine. we are not to commit the theological anachronism which has been applied with such evil effect to the whole old testament, and suppose that david meant by that central clause in his prayer for renewal all that we mean by it; but he meant, at least, that his spiritual nature could be made to love righteousness and hate iniquity by none other power than god's breathing on it. if we may venture to regard this as the heart of the series, the other two on either side of it may be conceived as its consequences. it will then be "a right spirit," or, as the word means, a steadfast spirit, strong to resist, not swept away by surges of passion, nor shaken by terrors of remorse, but calm, tenacious, and resolved, pressing on in the path of holiness, and immovable with the immobility of those who are rooted in god and goodness. it will be a free, or "a willing spirit," ready for all joyful service of thankfulness, and so penetrated with the love of his god that he will delight to do his will, and carry the law charactered in the spontaneous impulses of his renewed nature. not without profound meaning does the psalmist seem to recur in his hour of penitence to the tragic fate of his predecessor in the monarchy, to whom, as to himself, had been given by the same anointing, the same gift of "the spirit of god." remembering how the holy chrism had faded from the raven locks of saul long before his bloody head had been sent round philistine cities to glut their revenge, and knowing that if god were "strict to mark iniquity," the gift which had been withdrawn from saul would not be continued to himself, he prays, not as anointed monarch only, but as sinful man, "take not thy holy spirit from me." as before he had ventured to ask for the joy of forgiveness, so now he pleads once more for "the joy of thy salvation," which comes from cleansing, from conscious fellowship--which he had so long and deeply felt, which for so many months had been hid from him by the mists of his own sin. the psalmist's natural buoyancy, the gladness which was an inseparable part of his religion, and had rung from his harp in many an hour of peril, the bold width of his desires, grounded on the clear breadth of his faith in god's perfect forgiveness, are all expressed in such a prayer from such lips at such a time, and may well be pondered and imitated by us. the lowly prayer which we have been tracing rises ere its close to a vow of renewed praise. it is very beautiful to note how the poet nature, as well as the consciousness of a divine function, unite in the resolve that crowns the psalm. to david no tribute that he could bring to god seemed so little unworthy--none to himself so joyous--as the music of his harp, and the melody of his songs; nor was any part of his kingly office so lofty in his estimation as his calling to proclaim in glowing words the name of the lord, that men might learn to love. his earliest song in exile had closed with a like vow. it had been well fulfilled for many a year; but these last doleful months had silenced all his praise. now, as hope begins to shine upon him once more, the frost which had stilled the stream of his devotion is melting, and as he remembers his glad songs of old, and this miserable dumbness, his final prayer is, "o lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise." the same consciousness of sin, which we have found in a previous verse discerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads also to the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices--a thought which is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product of the latest age of judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole of the history, and indicates not the date, but the spiritual elevation of its utterer. david sets it on the very summit of his psalm, to sparkle there like some stone of price. the rich jewel which he has brought up from the abyss of degradation is that truth which has shone out from its setting here over three millenniums: "the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, o god, thou wilt not despise." the words which follow, containing a prayer for the building up of zion, and a prediction of the continuous offering of sacrifice, present some difficulty. they do not necessarily presuppose that jerusalem is in ruins; for "build thou the walls" would be no less appropriate a petition if the fortifications were unfinished (as we know they were in david's time) than if they had been broken down. nor do the words contradict the view of sacrifice just given, for the use of the symbol and the conviction of its insufficiency co-existed, in fact, in every devout life, and may well be expressed side by side. but the transition from so intensely personal emotions to intercession for zion seems almost too sudden even for a nature as wide and warm as david's. if the closing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awaking to a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected, first, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbid self-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious one that the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. but there is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecture that these verses are a later addition, probably after the return from captivity, when the walls of zion were in ruins, and the altar of the temple had been long cold. if so, then our psalm, as it came from david's full heart, would be all of a piece--one great gush of penitence and faith, beginning with, "have mercy upon me, o god," ending with the assurance of acceptance, and so remaining for all ages the chart of the thorny and yet blessed path that leads "from death unto life." in that aspect, what it does not contain is as noteworthy as what it does. not one word asks for exemption from such penalties of his great fall as can be inflicted by a loving father on a soul that lives in his love. he cries for pardon, but he gives his back to the smiters whom god may please to send. the other psalm of the penitent (xxxii.) has been already referred to in connection with the autobiographical materials which it contains. it is evidently of a later period than the fifty-first. there is no struggle in it; the prayer has been heard, and this is the beginning of the fulfilment of the vow to show forth god's praise. in the earlier he had said, "then will i teach transgressors the way;" here he says, "i will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go." there he began with the plaintive cry for mercy; here with a burst of praise celebrating the happiness of the pardoned penitent. there we heard the sobs of a man in the very agony of abasement; here we have the story of their blessed issue. there we had multiplied synonyms for sin, and for the forgiveness which was desired; here it is the many-sided preciousness of forgiveness possessed which runs over in various yet equivalent phrases. there the highest point to which he could climb was the assurance that a bruised heart was accepted, and the bones broken might still rejoice. here the very first word is of blessedness, and the close summons the righteous to exuberant joy. the one is a psalm of wailing; the other, to use its own words, a "song of deliverance." what glad consciousness that he himself is the happy man whom he describes rings in the melodious variations of the one thought of forgiveness in the opening words! how gratefully he draws on the treasures of that recent experience, while he sets it forth as being the "taking away" of sin, as if it were the removal of a solid something, or the lifting of a burden off his back; and as the "covering" of sin, as if it were the wrapping of its ugliness in thick folds that hide it for ever even from the all-seeing eye; and as the "non-reckoning" of sin, as if it were the discharge of a debt! what vivid memory of past misery in the awful portrait of his impenitent self, already referred to--on which the mind dwells in silence, while the musical accompaniment (as directed by the "selah") touches some plaintive minor or grating discord! how noble and eloquent the brief words (echo of the historical narrative) that tell the full and swift forgiveness that followed simple confession--and how effectively the music again comes in, prolonging the thought and rejoicing in the pardon! how sure he is that his experience is of priceless value to the world for all time, when he sees in his absolution a motive that will draw all the godly nearer to their helper in heaven! how full his heart is of praise, that he cannot but go back again to his own story, and rejoice in god his hiding-place--whose past wondrous love assures him that in the future songs of deliverance will ring him round, and all his path be encompassed with music of praise. so ends the more personal part of the psalm. a more didactic portion follows, the generalization of that. possibly the voice which now speaks is a higher than david's. "i will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. i will guide thee with mine eye," scarcely sounds like words meant to be understood as spoken by him. they are the promise from heaven of a gentle teaching to the pardoned man, which will instruct by no severity, but by patient schooling; which will direct by no harsh authority, but by that loving glance that is enough for those who love, and is all too subtle and delicate to be perceived by any other. such gracious direction is not for the psalmist alone, but it needs a spirit in harmony with god to understand it. for others there can be nothing higher than mere force, the discipline of sorrow, the bridle in the hard mouth, the whip for the stiff back. the choice for all men is through penitence and forgiveness to rise to the true position of men, capable of receiving and obeying a spiritual guidance, which appeals to the heart, and gently subdues the will, or by stubborn impenitence to fall to the level of brutes, that can only be held in by a halter and driven by a lash. and because this is the alternative, therefore "many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth in the lord, mercy shall compass him about." and then the psalm ends with a great cry of gladness, three times reiterated, like the voice of a herald on some festal day of a nation: "rejoice in jehovah! and leap for joy, o righteous! and gladly shout, all ye upright in heart!" such is the end of the sobs of the penitent. xiv.--chastisements. the chastisements, which were the natural fruits of david's sin, soon began to show themselves, though apparently ten years at least passed before absalom's revolt, at which time he was probably a man of sixty. but these ten years were very weary and sad. there is no more joyous activity, no more conquering energy, no more consciousness of his people's love. disasters thicken round him, and may all be traced to his great sin. his children learned the lesson it had taught them, and lust and fratricide desolated his family. a parent can have no sharper pang than the sight of his own sins reappearing in his child. david saw the ghastly reflection of his unbridled passion in his eldest son's foul crime (and even a gleam of it in his unhappy daughter), and of his murderous craft in his second son's bloody revenge. whilst all this hell of crime is boiling round him, a strange passiveness seems to have crept over the king, and to have continued till his flight before absalom. the narrative is singularly silent about him. he seems paralysed by the consciousness of his past sin; he originates nothing. he dares not punish ammon; he can only weep when he hears of absalom's crime. he weakly longs for the return of the latter from his exile, but cannot nerve himself to send for him till joab urges it. a flash of his old kingliness blazes out for a moment in his refusal to see his son; but even that slight satisfaction to justice vanishes as soon as joab chooses to insist that absalom shall return to court. he seems to have no will of his own. he has become a mere tool in the hands of his fierce general--and joab's hold upon him was his complicity in uriah's murder. thus at every step he was dogged by the consequences of his crime, even though it was pardoned sin. and if, as is probable, ahithophel was bathsheba's grandfather, the most formidable person in absalom's conspiracy, whose defection wounded him so deeply, was no doubt driven to the usurper's side out of revenge for the insult to his house in her person. thus "of our pleasant vices doth heaven make whips to scourge us." "be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." it is not probable that many psalms were made in those dreary days. but the forty-first and fifty-fifth are, with reasonable probability, referred to this period by many commentators. they give a very touching picture of the old king during the four years in which absalom's conspiracy was being hatched. it seems, from the forty-first, that the pain and sorrow of his heart had brought on some serious illness, which his enemies had used for their own purposes, and embittered by hypocritical condolences and ill-concealed glee. the sensitive nature of the psalmist winces under their heartless desertion of him, and pours out its plaint in this pathetic lament. he begins with a blessing on those who "consider the afflicted"--having reference, perhaps, to the few who were faithful to him in his languishing sickness. he passes thence to his own case, and, after humble confession of his sin,--almost in the words of the fifty-first psalm,--he tells how his sickbed had been surrounded by very different visitors. his disease drew no pity, but only fierce impatience that he lingered in life so long. "mine enemies speak evil of me--when will he die, and his name have perished?" one of them, in especial, who must have been a man in high position to gain access to the sick chamber, has been conspicuous by his lying words of condolence: "if he come to see me he speaketh vanity." the sight of the sick king touched no chord of affection, but only increased the traitor's animosity--"his heart gathereth evil to itself"--and then, having watched his pale face for wished-for unfavourable symptoms, the false friend hurries from the bedside to talk of his hopeless illness--"he goeth abroad, he telleth it." the tidings spread, and are stealthily passed from one conspirator to another. "all that hate me whisper together against me." they exaggerate the gravity of his condition, and are glad because, making the wish the father to the thought, they believe him dying. "a thing of belial" (_i.e._, a destructive disease), "say they, is poured out upon him, and now that he lieth, he shall rise up no more." and, sharpest pang of all, that among these traitors, and probably the same person as he whose heartless presence in the sick chamber was so hard to bear, should be ahithophel, whose counsel had been like an oracle from god. even he, "the man of my friendship, in whom i trusted, which did eat of my bread"--he, like an ignoble, vicious mule--"has lifted high his heel" against the sick lion. we should be disposed to refer the thirty-ninth psalm also to this period. it, too, is the meditation of one in sickness, which he knows to be a divine judgment for his sin. there is little trace of enemies in it; but his attitude is that of silent submission, while wicked men are disquieted around him--which is precisely the characteristic peculiarity of his conduct at this period. it consists of two parts (vers. - and - ), in both of which the subjects of his meditations are the same, but the tone of them different. his own sickness and mortality, and man's fleeting, shadowy life, are his themes. the former has led him to think of the latter. the first effect of his sorrow was to close his lips in a silence that was not altogether submission. "i held my peace, even from good, and my sorrow was stirred." as in his sin, when he kept silence, his "bones waxed old," so now in his sorrow and sickness the pain that could not find expression raged the more violently. the tearless eyes were hot and aching; but he conquered the dumb spirit, and could carry his heavy thoughts to god. they are very heavy at first. he only desires that the sad truth may be driven deeper into his soul. with the engrossment so characteristic of melancholy, he asks, what might have been thought the thing he needed least, "make me to know mine end;" and then he dilates on the gloomy reflections which he had been cherishing in silence. not only he himself, with his handbreadth of days, that shrink into absolute nothingness when brought into contrast with the life of god, but "every man," even when apparently "standing" most "firm, is only a breath." as a shadow every man moves spectral among shadows. the tumult that fills their lives is madness; "only for a breath are they disquieted." so bitterly, with an anticipation of the sad, clear-eyed pity and scorn of "the preacher," does the sick and wearied king speak, in tones very unlike the joyous music of his earlier utterances. but, true and wholesome as such thoughts are, they are not all the truth. so the prayer changes in tone, even while its substance is the same. he rises from the shows of earth to his true home, driven thither by their hollowness. "my hope is in thee." the conviction of earth's vanity is all different when it has "tossed him to thy breast." the pardoned sinner, who never thereafter forgot his grievous fall, asks for deliverance "from all his transgressions." the sullen silence has changed into full acquiescence: "i opened not my mouth, because thou didst it,"--a silence differing from the other as the calm after the storm, when all the winds sleep and the sun shines out on a freshened world, differs from the boding stillness while the slow thunder-clouds grow lurid on the horizon. he cries for healing, for he knows his sickness to be the buffet and assault of god's hand; and its bitterness is assuaged, even while its force continues, by the conviction that it is god's fatherly chastisement for sin which gnaws away his manly vigour as the moth frets his kingly robe. the very thought which had been so bitter--that every man is vanity--reappears in a new connection as the basis of the prayer that god would hear, and is modified so as to become infinitely blessed and hopeful. "i am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." a wanderer indeed, and a transient guest on earth; but what of that, if he be god's guest? all that is sorrowful is drawn off from the thought when we realise our connection with god. we are in god's house; the host, not the guest, is responsible for the housekeeping. we need not feel life lonely if he be with us, nor its shortness sad. it is not a shadow, a dream, a breath, if it be rooted in him. and thus the sick man has conquered his gloomy thoughts, even though he sees little before him but the end; and he is not cast down even though his desires are all summed up in one for a little respite and healing, ere the brief trouble of earth be done with: "o spare me, that i may recover strength before i go hence, and be no more." it may be observed that this supposition of a protracted illness, which is based upon these psalms, throws light upon the singular passiveness of david during the maturing of absalom's conspiracy, and may naturally be supposed to have favoured his schemes, an essential part of which was to ingratiate himself with suitors who came to the king for judgment by affecting great regret that no man was deputed of the king to hear them. the accumulation of untried causes, and the apparent disorganization of the judicial machinery, are well accounted for by david's sickness. the fifty-fifth psalm gives some very pathetic additional particulars. it is in three parts--a plaintive prayer and portraiture of the psalmist's mental distress (vers. - ); a vehement supplication against his foes, and indignant recounting of their treachery (vers. - ); and, finally, a prophecy of the retribution that is to fall upon them (vers. - ). in the first and second portions we have some points which help to complete our picture of the man. for instance, his heart "writhes" within him, the "terrors of death" are on him, "fear and trembling" are come on him, and "horror" has covered him. all this points, like subsequent verses, to his knowledge of the conspiracy before it came to a head. the state of the city, which is practically in the hands of absalom and his tools, is described with bold imagery. violence and strife in possession of it, spies prowling about the walls day and night, evil and trouble in its midst, and destruction, oppression, and deceit--a goodly company--flaunting in its open spaces. and the spirit, the brain of the whole, is the trusted friend whom he had made his own equal, who had shared his secretest thoughts in private, who had walked next him in solemn processions to the temple. seeing all this, what does the king do, who was once so fertile in resource, so decisive in counsel, so prompt in action? nothing. his only weapon is prayer. "as for me, i will call upon god; and the lord will save me. evening, and morning, and at noon, will i pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice." he lets it all grow as it list, and only longs to be out of all the weary coil of troubles. "oh that i had wings like a dove, then would i fly away and be at rest. lo, i would flee far off, i would lodge in the wilderness. i would swiftly fly to my refuge from the raging wind, from the tempest." the langour of his disease, love for his worthless son, consciousness of sin, and submission to the chastisement through "one of his own house," which nathan had foretold, kept him quiet, though he saw the plot winding its meshes round him. and in this submission patient confidence is not wanting, though subdued and saddened, which finds expression in the last words of this psalm of the heavy laden, "cast thy burden upon jehovah. he, he will sustain thee.... i will trust in thee." when the blow at last fell, the same passive acquiescence in what he felt to be god's chastisement is very noticeable. absalom escapes to hebron, and sets up the standard of revolt. when the news comes to jerusalem the king's only thought is immediate flight. he is almost cowardly in his eagerness to escape, and is prepared to give up everything without a blow. it seems as if only a touch was needed to overthrow his throne. he hurries on the preparations for flight with nervous haste. he forms no plans beyond those of his earlier wish to fly away and be at rest. he tries to denude himself of followers. when the six hundred men of gath--who had been with him ever since his early days in philistia, and had grown grey in his service--make themselves the van of his little army, he urges the heroic ittai, their leader, to leave him a fugitive, and to worship the rising sun, "return to thy place, and abide with _the king_"--so thoroughly does he regard the crown as passed already from his brows. the priests with the ark are sent back; he is not worthy to have the symbol of the divine presence identified with his doubtful cause, and is prepared to submit without a murmur if god "thus say, i have no delight in thee." with covered head and naked feet he goes up the slope of olivet, and turning perhaps at that same bend in the rocky mountain path where the true king, coming to the city, wept as he saw its shining walls and soaring pinnacles across the narrow valley, the discrowned king and all his followers broke into passionate weeping as they gazed their last on the lost capital, and then with choking sobs rounded the shoulder of the hill and set their faces to their forlorn flight. passing through the territory of saul's tribe--dangerous ground for him to tread--the rank hatred of shimei's heart blossoms into speech. with eastern vehemence, he curses and flings stones and dust in the transports of his fury, stumbling along among the rocks high up on the side of the glen, as he keeps abreast of the little band below. did david remember how the husband from whom he had torn michal had followed her to this very place, and there had turned back weeping to his lonely home? the remembrance, at any rate, of later and more evil deeds prompted his meek answer, "let him curse, for the lord hath bidden him." the first force of the disaster spent itself, and by the time he was safe across jordan, on the free uplands of bashan, his spirit rises. he makes a stand at mahanaim, the place where his great ancestor, in circumstances somewhat analogous to his own, had seen the vision of "bright-harnessed angels" ranked in battle array for the defence of himself and his own little band, and called the name of the place the "two camps." perhaps that old story helped to hearten him, as the defection of ahithophel from the conspiracy certainly would do. as the time went on, too, it became increasingly obvious that the leaders of the rebellion were "infirm of purpose," and that every day of respite from actual fighting diminished their chances of success, as that politic adviser saw so plainly. whatever may have been the reason, it is clear that by the time david had reached mahanaim he had resolved not to yield without a struggle. he girds on his sword once more with some of the animation of early days, and the light of trustful valour blazes again in his old eyes. xv. the songs of the fugitive. the psalms which probably belong to the period of absalom's rebellion correspond well with the impression of his spirit gathered from the historical books. confidence in god, submission to his will, are strongly expressed in them, and we may almost discern a progress in the former respect as the rebellion grows. they flame brighter and brighter in the deepening darkness. from the lowest abyss the stars are seen most clearly. he is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in the wilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and the danger stands clear before him. like some good ship issuing from the shelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her over on her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from a terror, but she rises above the tossing surges and keeps her course. we may allocate with a fair amount of likelihood the following psalms to this period--iii.; iv.; xxv. (?); xxviii. (?); lviii. (?); lxi.; lxii.; lxiii.; cix. (?); cxliii. the first two of these form a pair; they are a morning and an evening hymn. the little band are encamped on their road to mahanaim, with no roof but the stars, and no walls but the arm of god. in the former the discrowned king sings, as he rises from his nightly bivouac. he pours out first his plaint of the foes, who are described as "many," and as saying that, "there is no help for him in god," words which fully correspond to the formidable dimensions of the revolt, and to the belief which actuated the conspirators, and had appeared as possible even to himself, that his sin had turned away the aid of heaven from his cause. to such utterances of malice and confident hatred he opposes the conviction which had again filled his soul, that even in the midst of real peril and the shock of battle jehovah is his "shield." with bowed and covered head he had fled from jerusalem, but "thou art the lifter up of mine head." he was an exile from the tabernacle on zion, and he had sent back the ark to its rest; but though he has to cry to god from beyond jordan, he answers "from his holy hill." he and his men camped amidst dangers, but one unslumbering helper mounted guard over their undefended slumbers. "i laid me down and slept" there among the echoes of the hills. "i awaked, for jehovah sustained me;" and another night has passed without the sudden shout of the rebels breaking the silence, or the gleam of their swords in the starlight. the experience of protection thus far heartens him to front even the threatening circle of his foes around him, whom it is his pain to think of as "the people" of god, and yet as his foes. and then he betakes himself in renewed energy of faith to his one weapon of prayer, and even before the battle sees the victory, and the divine power fracturing the jaws and breaking the teeth of the wild beasts who hunt him. but his last thought is not of retribution nor of fear; for himself he rises to the height of serene trust, "salvation is of the lord;" and for his foes and for all the nation that had risen against him his thoughts are worthy of a true king, freed from all personal animosity, and his words are a prayer conceived in the spirit of him whose dying breath was intercession for his rebellious subjects who crucified their king, "thy blessing be upon thy people." the fourth psalm is the companion evening hymn. its former portion (vers. - ) seems to be a remonstrance addressed as if to the leaders of the revolt ("sons of men" being equivalent to "persons of rank and dignity"). it is the expression in vivid form, most natural to such a nature, of his painful feeling under their slanders; and also of his hopes and desires for them, that calm thought in these still evening hours which are falling on the world may lead them to purer service and to reliance on god. so forgivingly, so lovingly does he think of them, ere he lays himself down to rest, wishing that "on their beds," as on his, the peace of meditative contemplation may rest, and the day of war's alarms be shut in by holy "communion with their own hearts" and with god. the second portion turns to himself and his followers, among whom we may suppose some faint hearts were beginning to despond; and to them, as to the very enemy, david would fain be the bringer of a better mind. "many say, who will show us good?" he will turn them from their vain search round the horizon on a level with their own eyes for the appearance of succour. they must look upwards, not round about. they must turn their question, which only expects a negative answer, into a prayer, fashioned like that triple priestly benediction of old (numbers vi. - ). his own experience bursts forth irrepressible. he had prayed in his hour of penitence, "make me to hear joy and gladness" (psa. li.); and the prayer had been answered, if not before, yet now when peril had brought him nearer to god, and trust had drawn god nearer to him. in his calamity, as is ever the case with devout souls, his joy increased, as greek fire burns more brightly under water. therefore this pauper sovereign, discrowned and fed by the charity of the gileadite pastoral chief, sings, "thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and wine increased." and how tranquilly the psalm closes, and seems to lull itself to rest, "in peace i will at once lie down and sleep, for thou, o jehovah, only makest me dwell safely." the growing security which experience of god's care should ever bring, is beautifully marked by the variation on the similar phrase in the previous psalm. there he gratefully recorded that he had laid himself down and slept; here he promises himself that he will lie down "in peace;" and not only so, but that at once on his lying down he will sleep--kept awake by no anxieties, by no bitter thoughts, but, homeless and in danger as he is, will close his eyes, like a tired child, without a care or a fear, and forthwith sleep, with the pressure and the protection of his father's arm about him. this psalm sounds again the glad trustful strain which has slumbered in his harp-strings ever since the happy old days of his early trials, and is re-awakened as the rude blast of calamity sweeps through them once more. the sixty-third psalm is by the superscription referred to the time when david was "in the wilderness of judah," which has led many readers to think of his long stay there during saul's persecution. but the psalm certainly belongs to the period of his reign, as is obvious from its words, "_the king_ shall rejoice in god." it must therefore belong to his brief sojourn in the same wilderness on his flight to mahanaim, when, as we read in sam., "the people were weary and hungry and thirsty in the wilderness." there is a beautiful progress of thought in it, which is very obvious if we notice the triple occurrence of the words "my soul," and their various connections--"my soul thirsteth," "my soul is satisfied," "my soul followeth hard after thee;" or, in other words, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from longing through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the right hand of god. the first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in his sorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowed from the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. one of our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus: "there were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reeds and rushes, and here and there a tamarisk." this lonely land, cracked with drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comes not, is the image of his painful yearning for the fountain of living waters. as his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting for thirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for the refreshment of that gracious presence. then he remembers how in happier days he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in the tabernacle. probably the words should read, "thus in the sanctuary have i gazed upon thee, to see thy power and thy glory." in the desert and in the sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been able to behold the symbol which bore the name, "the glory,"--and now he wanders far from it. how beautifully this regretful sense of absence from and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitably pathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired to share his exile. "and the king said unto zadok, carry back the ark of god into the city. if i find favour in the eyes of the lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation." the fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. the swiftness of the answer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalm passes from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. in the one breath "my soul thirsteth;" in the next, "my soul is satisfied"--as when in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been baked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white stones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged with budding willows. the fulness of satisfaction when god fills the soul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of "marrow and fatness," on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. the abundant delights of fellowship with god make him insensible to external privations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home in his wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that is depressing: "my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips." the little camp had to keep keen look-out for nightly attacks; and it is a slight link of connection, very natural under the circumstances, between the psalms of this period, that they all have some references to the perilous hours of darkness. we have found him laying himself down to sleep in peace; here he wakes, not to guard from hostile surprises, but in the silence there below the stars to think of god and feel again the fulness of his all-sufficiency. happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking. "i remember thee upon my bed." the fruition heartens for renewed exercise of confidence, in which david feels himself upheld by god, and foresees his enemies' defeat and his own triumph. "my soul cleaveth after thee"--a remarkable phrase, in which the two metaphors of tenacious adherence and eager following are mingled to express the two "phases of faith," which are really one--of union with and quest after god, the possession which pursues, the pursuit which possesses him who is at once grasped and felt after by the finite creature whose straitest narrowness is not too narrow to be blessed by some indwelling of god, but whose widest expansion of capacity and desire can but contain a fragment of his fulness. from such elevation of high communion he looks down and onward into the dim future, his enemies sunken, like korah and his rebels, into the gaping earth, or scattered in fight, and the jackals that were snuffing hungrily about his camp in the wilderness gorging themselves on corpses, while he himself, once more "king," shall rejoice in god, and with his faithful companions, whose lips and hearts were true to god and his anointed, shall glory in the deliverance that by the arbitrament of victory has flung back the slanders of the rebels in their teeth, and choked them with their own lies. our space forbids more than a brief reference to psalm lxii., which seems also to belong to this time. it has several points of contact with those already considered, _e.g._, the phrase, "sons of men," in the sense of "nobles" (ver. ); "my soul," as equivalent to "myself," and yet as a kind of quasi-separate personality which he can study and exhort; the significant use of the term "people," and the double exhortations to his own devout followers and to the arrogant enemy. the whole tone is that of patient resignation, which we have found characterising david now. the first words are the key-note of the whole, "truly unto god my soul is silence"--is all one great stillness of submissive waiting upon him. it was in the very crisis of his fate, in the suspense of the uncertain issue of the rebellion, that these words, the very sound of which has calmed many a heart since, welled to his lips. the expression of unwavering faith and unbroken peace is much heightened by the frequent recurrence of the word which is variously translated "truly," "surely," and "only." it carries the force of confident affirmation, like the "verily" of the new testament, and is here most significantly prefixed to the assertions of his patient resignation (ver. ); of god's defence (ver. ); of the enemies' whispered counsels (ver. ); to his exhortation of his soul to the resignation which it already exercises (ver. ); and to the triumphant reiteration of god's all-sufficient protection. how beautifully, too, does that reiteration--almost verbal repetition--of the opening words strengthen the impression of his habitual trust. his soul in its silence murmurs to itself, as it were, the blessed thoughts over and over again. their echoes haunt his spirit "lingering and wandering on, as loth to die;" and if for a moment the vision of his enemies disturbs their flow, one indignant question flung at them suffices, "how long will ye rush upon a man? (how long) will ye all of you thrust him down as (if he were) a bowing wall, a tottering fence?" and with a rapid glance at their plots and bitter words, he comes back again to his calm gaze on god. lovingly he accumulates happy names for him, which, in their imagery, as well as in their repetition, remind us of the former songs of the fugitive. "my rock," in whom i hide; "he is my salvation," which is even more than "from him cometh my salvation;" my "fortress," my "glory," "the rock of my strength," "my refuge." so many phases of his need and of god's sufficiency thus gathered together, tell how familiar to the thoughts and real to the experience of the aged fugitive was his security in jehovah. the thirty years since last he had wandered there have confirmed the faith of his earlier songs; and though the ruddy locks of the young chieftain are silvered with grey now, and sins and sorrows have saddened him, yet he can take up again with deeper meaning the tones of his old praise, and let the experience of age seal with its "verily" the hopes of youth. exhortations to his people to unite themselves with him in his faith, and assurances that god is a refuge for them too, with solemn warnings to the rebels, close this psalm of glad submission. it is remarkable for the absence of all petitions. he needs nothing beyond what he has. as the companion psalm says, his soul "is satisfied." communion with god has its moments of restful blessedness, when desire is stilled, and expires in peaceful fruition. the other psalms of this period must be left unnoticed. the same general tone pervades them all. in many particulars they closely resemble those of the sauline period. but the resemblance fails very significantly at one point. the emphatic assertion of his innocence is gone for ever. pardoned indeed he is, cleansed, conscious of god's favour, and able to rejoice in it; but carrying to the end the remembrance of his sore fall, and feeling it all the more penitently, the more he is sure of god's forgiveness. let us remember that there are sins which, once done, leave their traces on memory and conscience, painting indelible forms on the walls of our "chambers of imagery," and transmitting results which remission and sanctifying do not, on earth at least, wholly obliterate. let david's youthful prayer be ours, "keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins: then shall i be upright, and i shall be innocent from much transgression." it does not fall within the scope of this volume to deal with the suppression of absalom's revolt, nor with the ten years of rule that remained to david after his restoration. the psalter does not appear to contain psalms which throw light upon the somewhat clouded closing years of his reign. one psalm, indeed, there is attributed to him, which is, at any rate, the work of an old man--a sweet song into which mellow wisdom has condensed its final lessons--and a snatch of it may stand instead of any summing-up of the life by us: "trust in the lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and enjoy security; delight thyself also in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart. commit thy way unto the lord. rest in the lord and wait patiently for him. i have been young and now am old, yet have i not seen the righteous forsaken. i have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green tree.... yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not." may we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him calling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed though it were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many storms nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of god: "mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace?" into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset, all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. the music of his songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until the jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes in. one strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books that prophesy of the true king, whom his own failures and sins, no less than his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. the dying eyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of him who is to be a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence, and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe the world. as the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens. he departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. it was fitting that this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them in twain. and then, for earth, the richest voice which god ever tuned for his praise was hushed, and the harp of jesse's son hangs untouched above his grave. but for him death was god's last, best answer to his prayer, "o lord, open thou my lips;" and as that cold but most loving hand unclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the choirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving breaking from his immortal lips, "thou hast put a new song into my mouth," whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and pain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and left to be the solace and treasure of all generations! index. psalm page iii. iv. vii. viii. xi. xiii. xv. xvii. xviii. and xix. xx. xxii. xxiii. xxiv. xxv. xxvii. xxix. xxxi. xxxii. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvii. xxxix. xli. li. lii. liv. lv. lvi. lvii. lix. lx. lxii. lxiii. lxiv. lxviii. cx. cxliii. _works by the same author._ _crown vo, cloth, price s. d. each._ the psalms. vol. i.--psalms i.-xxxviii. " ii.--psalms xxxix.-lxxxix. " iii.--psalms xc-cl. in the "expositor's bible." "the work of a brilliant and effective teacher. he writes with real power and insight."--_saturday review._ "dr. maclaren has evidently mastered his subject with the aid of the best authorities, and has put the results of his studies before his readers in a most attractive form, and if we add that this commentary really helps to the better understanding of the psalms, that, far from degrading, it vivifies and illuminates these sublime stories, and that it is written in a charming style, very seldom falling below the dignity of the subject, we believe we only give it the praise which is its due."--_scotsman._ "it is scholarly, honest, thoughtful, and suggestive."--_daily chronicle._ "striking thoughts, strongly expressed, are to be found on every page."--_manchester guardian._ "there is certainly room for the work which dr. maclaren does here--largely because it is he who does it. the book is most heartily to be commended. preachers will find it to be a mine of wealth, and to christians of all kinds it may serve as a manual of devotion."--_christian world._ "dr. maclaren's charming pages furnish a most fruitful field of study, alike for those whose chief aim is personal edification, and for those who are in quest of suggestions in the line of ministerial service. altogether a most valuable book."--_united presbyterian magazine._ "most heartily do we welcome this new volume of dr. maclaren's 'exposition of the psalms.' it fully sustains the traditions of insight, scholarly instinct, and spiritual force which gather around that beloved name. notwithstanding the rich treasures of devout literature which the psalter has called forth, there is a special niche for this book, and it makes a distinct advance in tone and method upon all other commentaries on the psalms. we greatly err if this does not prove the most popular and useful commentary in the english language, both among preachers and the commonality of christ's church."--_evangelical magazine._ london: hodder & stoughton. bible class expositions. _crown vo, cloth, s. d. each volume._ the gospel of st. matthew. two vols. "they are all written in clear, forcible language, and bring abundant illustration from science, the facts of life and history and scripture. all through they manifest a true philosophical spirit, and a deep knowledge of human nature. none can read them without profit."--_leeds mercury._ the gospel of st. mark. "as clear, luminous, and pellucid as is everything that comes from the pen of the great manchester preacher. even in treating the simplest incident he surprises his readers, and that without once forcing the note, or seeking sensationalism."--_christian world._ the gospel of st. luke. "dr. maclaren is a prince of expositors, and his expositions are as wholesome as they are able, and as interesting as they are instructive and edifying. every paragraph is luminous with vivid expression."--_the london quarterly review._ the gospel of st. john. "there is much freshness and suggestiveness in these papers. dr. maclaren has studied the art of compression with great success, and no teacher of a class could desire anything better for his purpose than these lessons. they may be heartily recommended to all teachers as about the best things of the kind to be had."--_glasgow herald._ the acts of the apostles. "the more this volume is read and studied the more do we admire the humility that ranks such a book as for bible classes only. it is for them beyond all question, and better fare has nowhere been provided for them. whether they be bible classes or preachers who study this volume they will be enriched and strengthened by it."--_presbyterian._ london: hodder & stoughton. {transcriber's note: the following list of books has been moved from the front to the back of the book to make the beginning more reader-friendly.} the household library of exposition =the life of david as reflected in his psalms.= by alexander maclaren, d.d. ninth edition. _s._ _d._ =isaac, jacob, and joseph.= by marcus dods, d.d. sixth thousand. _s._ _d._ =the last supper of our lord, and his words of consolation to the disciples.= by principal j. marshall lang, d.d. third edition. _s._ _d._ =the speeches of the holy apostles.= by the rev. donald fraser, d.d., london. second edition. _s._ _d._ =the galilean gospel.= by the rev. professor a.b. bruce, d.d. fourth edition. _s._ _d._ =the lamb of god: expositions in the writings of st. john.= by w.r. nicoll, m.a., ll.d. second thousand. _s._ _d._ =the lord's prayer.= by charles stanford, d.d. fourth thousand. _s._ _d._ =the parables of our lord. first series.= as recorded by st. matthew. by marcus dods, d.d. twelfth thousand. _s._ _d._ =the parables of our lord. second series.= as recorded by st. luke. by the same author. tenth thousand. _s._ _d._ =the law of the ten words.= by principal j. oswald dykes, d.d. fourth thousand. _s._ _d._ london: hodder & stoughton, , paternoster row. the english churchman's library the christian use of the psalter by the rev. a. r. whitham, m.a. _principal of culham training college, and formerly vice-principal of cuddesdan college_ impleta sunt quæ concinit david fidelis carmine a. r. mowbray & co., ltd. london: great castle street, oxford circus, w. oxford: high street the english churchman's library _one shilling each net_ the mysteries of grace. by t. a. lacey, chaplain of the house of mercy, highgate. letters to a godson. first series. by cyril bickersteth, priest of the community of the resurrection, mirfield. first studies in s. mark. by g. m. ireland blackburne. spiritual counsels to district visitors and others. by the late george howard wilkinson, d.d., bishop of s. andrews: primus. the christian use of the psalter. by a. r. whitham, m.a., principal of culham training college. our working girls and how to help them. by flora l. freeman, author of "sunshine of everyday life." letters to a godson. second series. by cyril bickersteth, m.a. the practical religion. by vernon staley, provost of inverness cathedral. _others in preparation._ a. r. mowbray & co., ltd. church publishers london: , great castle street, w. oxford: , high street {v} preface this little book, based on three lectures delivered to the s. paul's lecture society in january, , is not intended so much for the scholar as for the plain man who goes to church and loves the prayer book, but finds the psalms sometimes puzzling. they are certainly the most difficult, though the most characteristic, part of the daily offices of the church. what has been attempted in these lectures is not to explain them in detail, but to suggest the broad lines of interpretation which seem always to have been in the mind of the church in her use of the psalter. a few additional helps have been suggested in the notes. culham, . {vii} contents page preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v _lecture i_ part i.--general principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . part ii.--difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _lecture ii_ christ in the psalter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _lecture iii_ the church in the psalter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _appendix_ brief suggestions as to the christian use of each psalm . index of psalms referred to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . { } the christian use of the psalter lecture i part i. general principles haereditate acquisivi testimonia tua in aeternum: quia exsultatio cordis mei sunt. the christian use of the psalter is as old as christianity itself. the new-born catholic church, returning from her earliest conflict with the kingdoms of this world, found the most natural expression of her faith and her need in the words of the nd psalm: why did the gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? the kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the lord, and against his anointed. (acts iv. , , r.v.) { } before this, on the very birthday of the church, the chief of the apostles had appealed to the witness of "david," for the resurrection and triumph of the holy one (pss. xvi., cx. in acts ii. - , , ). and even earlier, during the ten days of waiting, the great psalms of righteous wrath (thought so impossible by many to-day) had supplied the prophecy of the fall of judas: let his habitation be made desolate, and let no man dwell therein; and the justification of the election of matthias: his office let another take. (pss. lxix. and cix. in acts i. .) so harmoniously did the praise-book of the jewish church pass into the service of christ; so clearly did the first believers recognise that the spirit of christ was the same who had spoken by "david." this immediate appropriation of the psalter as a book of christian witness is remarkable evidence to the felt unity and continuity of the two covenants. no book of the old testament, with the exception of isaiah, is so frequently quoted in the new as the book of psalms. but still more remarkable is the influence of the psalter on christian _worship_. the church { } exists in the world not only as the teaching, but also as the worshipping community. as the ages pass she ceases not to bear the witness of her praise and thanksgiving to the father, the son, and the holy ghost. from the beginning she showed a tendency to do this in ordered and liturgical forms. the apostolic church continued steadfast in "the prayers" (acts ii. , r.v.). the expression implies not merely a daily gathering for worship, but the offering of that worship in a fixed and orderly manner, suggested, no doubt, by the existing jewish services. whatever may have been the actual form of "the prayers" in the first age of the church, or whatever stages they may have passed through, there can be no doubt that they are the germ of all the rich later developments of the liturgy of the church, such as are represented in the middle ages by the missal and the breviary, and to-day by our own book of common prayer. the regular services of the church fall naturally into two classes. the eucharist, the service of the altar, took the place of the sacrificial worship of the temple. the divine office, the service of the choir, may have been suggested by the services of the synagogue. but if so, there is one most significant difference. { } the christian church made a much fuller public use of the psalms than the synagogue ever seems to have done.[ ] the psalms in the jewish church seem to have been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its central feature. the divine office of the christian church practically is the psalter. the readings from other parts of scripture, so prominent in the synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place. the recitation of the psalms, which appears from very early times as the characteristic christian devotion, became the very centre and core of the sevenfold daily choir office of the mediæval church. the whole psalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at mattins (the midnight office), while selected psalms formed the chief part of the subsequent services of the day.[ ] the english reformers, however hastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these services of the breviary, showed the true catholic instinct in this at least, that they provided as the leading feature of morning and evening prayer an unbroken and systematic recitation of the psalms. in this respect their claim was justified that they had provided an { } order "much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers."[ ] it was a return from mediæval complications to a more primitive ideal. what, then, was this book of praise and worship which the catholic church found ready to hand, and made unhesitatingly her own, and which has set the standard and provided the chief material for her continual voice in the ear of god? the psalter, as we know it now, had been for some time before christ the recognised praise-book of israel. its hebrew name is simple and significant--_tehillim_, "praises." its historical origins and growth are still indeed wrapt in obscurity, and to discuss them would be alien from our present purpose. suffice it to say that there seems no conclusive reason for discrediting the universal jewish and christian tradition that the psalter begins at least with david. some of the earlier and more personal psalms are naturally felt to reflect his character and youthful struggles. nor is it unreasonable to believe that the later historical books are substantially correct in making him the founder { } of the temple choir ( chron. xv.; ezra iii. ). doubtless the majority of the psalms belong to a later age, and their collection is due to the scrupulous care and reverence of the period of jewish history which begins with ezra. the singers of the temple after, perhaps even before, the captivity formed various collections of sacred lyrics, which passed under characteristic names, some being entitled "psalms of david" (though not of necessity all his work); others bearing the names of ancient leaders of the temple choir, like asaph, or of the guilds of singers, like "the sons of korah." another collection with a distinct individuality would be the "songs of degrees" or "ascents" (cxx.-cxxxii.), the pilgrim-songs of the faithful israelites as they journeyed from their homes to keep the annual feasts at jerusalem. at some unknown time these different collections, or selections from them, must have been brought together into one. many scholars consider that the compilation cannot have been complete before the age of the maccabees, as more than one psalm is thought to refer to the agonies of faithful israel during that great national crisis (e.g. pss. xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.). but it must have been substantially complete by the time that the septuagint translation was made (in the second century { } b.c.); and so ancient then were the titles of the psalms in the hebrew that these alexandrine scholars seem to have been frequently puzzled by them. this collection of psalms, whenever precisely it may have been made, was divided into five books, each ending with an outburst of praise to the god of israel.[ ] the key to this somewhat artificial arrangement is no doubt to be found in the desire to make the psalter correspond with the pentateuch. "moses," says a rabbinical commentator (midrash _tillim_), "gave five-fifths of the law, and correspondingly david gave the book of _tehillim_, in which are five books." of this dr. cheyne says, "the remark is a suggestive one: it seems to mean this--that the praise-book is the answer of the worshipping community to the demands made by its lord in the law, the reflexion of the external standard of faith and obedience in the utterance of the believing heart." this criticism is so illuminating that it may well suggest the first great principle in our own christian use of the psalter. i. the psalter is the inspired answer of praise which human faith is privileged to make to { } god's revelation. it is the "new song" put in the mouth of humanity by its creator. "thou preparest their heart, and thine ear hearkeneth thereto" (ps. x. ). this is surely a very great thought. the old testament is the record of god's gradual unveiling of himself to his elect, whom for the world's sake he had chosen out of the world. the revelation was not indeed to them alone. god had spoken in many ways, more than even the church yet recognises, to the heathen world. yet to israel god gave that highest privilege of receiving and keeping the true knowledge of himself, of his unity, his universality, his moral being, his holiness, his love, and of the demand which this knowledge makes on human conscience. the unknown author of esdras, looking back on history after the great blow had fallen on jerusalem, has expressed this in vivid and pathetic language: "of all the flowers of the world thou hast chosen thee one lily: and of all the depths of the sea thou hast filled thee one river: and of all builded cities thou hast hallowed sion unto thyself: ... and among all the multitudes of peoples thou hast gotten thee one people: and unto this people, whom thou lovedst, thou gavest a law that is approved of all" ( esd. v. - ). in the psalter god { } has provided, as it were, for his people the words of praise in which their thankful hearts may express their love and loyalty to what he has revealed. this feature, the glad response to revelation, is stamped upon the psalter from end to end. thus the st psalm describes the secret of human blessedness: his delight is in the law of the lord: and in his law will he exercise himself day and night. the th psalm is an outburst of thanksgiving to "the name" of god, who is revealed as the moral governor of the world. the th couples the self-revelation of god in nature, god whose glory the heavens declare, with the revelation given in the law, which is, as it were, the sun in the moral world restoring the soul and enlightening the eyes. the th reads like a comment from man's heart on the great proclamation of god's name given to moses in the "cleft of the rock"--"the lord, the lord, a god full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (ex. xxxiii. , xxxiv. - ). so the psalmist prays, as it were, in answer: { } call to remembrance, o lord, thy tender mercies: and thy loving-kindnesses, which have been ever of old. o remember not the sins and offences of my youth: but according to thy mercy think thou upon me, o lord, for thy goodness. the th offers the response of a converted will to what is found and recognised in the law: in the roll of the book it is written of me: i delight to do thy will, o my god. (r.v.) the th recounts the long history of rebellious israel as in itself part of the "testimony" of god. the mingled record of deliverance and failure, of judgment and hope, is in itself "a parable," a "dark saying of old," which faith can read and make answer to. the st expresses the very fundamental spirit of faith, the essential temper and attitude of the church, the spirit of humility, of intellectual submission, of obedience, which is the same under the gospel dispensation as under the old covenant. { } lord, i am not high-minded: i have no proud looks. i do not exercise myself in great matters: which are too high for me. but the most remarkable illustration of this characteristic attitude of the believer is the th psalm. it is like a piece of music, every verse a subtle and harmonious variation on one dominant theme. it is the voice of the converted soul, learning the one lesson which man must learn in this world's school, if he is to attain his true being--learning to be ever turning away from self, from one's own doubts, troubles, persecutions, sufferings, to rest on what god has revealed in his statutes, his judgments, his testimonies, his laws. nor is it without a subtle propriety that this psalm is arranged as an acrostic under the twenty-two letters of the hebrew alphabet. these letters are, as it were, the rudiments out of which man is enabled to exercise his characteristic gift of articulate speech; and in the acrostic psalms they are visibly consecrated to his service who made the mouth of man. and each part of the th psalm consists of eight verses, a significant hebrew number, the symbol of the { } resurrection and the restoration of all things in that eighth day, the octave of eternity, which is yet to come, and will complete the work of the seven days of the first creation. this psalm, which expresses the unchanging spirit of true religion, was most naturally appropriated by christian devotion to form the services for the working part of each day, beginning at prime, when "man goeth forth to his work and his labour" with that benediction which comes on labour done with a pure motive in god's name: blessed are those that are undefiled in the way: and walk in the law of the lord, and ending at none, the hour of the death of the lord, when day visibly declines, with the confession that the worker, as he looks back, must always make: i have gone astray like a sheep that is lost: o seek thy servant, for i do not forget thy commandments. it was like a stream of water, crossing unexpectedly a dusty way--_mirabilia testimonia tua_! in psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly fresh, the soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout { } hour, from the sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in contemplation of the unfaltering vigour of the divine righteousness, which had still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night, but alert in the drowsy afternoon.[ ] we can scarcely exaggerate the value, in our own time especially, of this use, not only of the th psalm, but of the whole psalter, as the response of the church and the human soul to the revealed word of god. these times of christ have indeed filled and enriched the early conception of "the name" of god. we have learned to see in the trinity the justification of belief in the divine unity; we have learned more of the fatherhood of god in the face of his only son; we have learned that the cross is the key to human suffering; we have learned the catholic nature of the divine sovereignty: nevertheless the foundation teaching of the psalmists as to the relation of the creature to his creator remains unchanged. we still find in the psalter a guide for our uncertain footsteps in our journey back to god. is not the answer to every problem of faith, even such mysteries as the existence and continuance of evil, or the calamities that fall on the just, { } still to be found as the author of the rd psalm found it, in returning and rest upon the god who has made _himself_ known to suffering man? my flesh and my heart faileth: but god is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. the prevailing thought of the th psalm, that god's revelation is fixed and permanent and the law of human life, marks the great separation between the world and the church. such a belief is abhorrent and distasteful always to the natural mind, while it is familiar to and welcomed by the catholic church, as it was by the jewish. the church's witness to the world is of a revelation from above: she has _received_ it; she may not alter it without apostasy. her mission in the world is not to be the mirror of each succeeding phase of human thought, nor merely the consecration of human aspirations, but rather to speak with a supernatural authority, to tell men what god is and what is his will, "whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear." and the church can only deliver her message aright, in the face of the frowns of the princes of this world, so long as worship gladdens and confirms her { } witness, so long as she herself finds her joy in contemplating her treasure and returning thanks for it to the giver. as the devout israelite found in the psalter the natural expression of an intelligent devotion to the god who had revealed himself in law and prophets, so the christian church, with no break of continuity, found the psalter still adequate to express her joy in her fuller knowledge. for that fuller knowledge was strictly in line with the old. the faith of israel had not been changed, but carried forward, developed, illuminated. in the law the gospel lay hid, and the christian church felt in the old words of devotion no outworn or alien accents, but living utterances of the spirit of life, which renewed their youth with hers. so from the beginning she found strength and comfort in her warfare for the truth, in the praises of israel. from the beginning she based her ordered worship on the services of temple and synagogue. the choirs of the catholic church find their most lasting and characteristic voice not in hymn or anthem, but in-- "the chorus intoned as the levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned." { } ii. a second great principle of the christian use of the psalter will be found in its humanism. the psalms are profoundly human. they sympathise with the soul of man in all his varied efforts after god. they find a voice for him in his battles for truth and right, in his moments of defeat as well as his victories, in his doubts no less than his certainties. they put words into his mouth as he contemplates the variety, the beauty, and the law of nature, or the injustice, the obstinacy, the treachery of men. the psalms make his bed in his sickness; they strengthen him in the inward agonies of faith; they go with him to the gates of death, and farther still, even to god's "holy hill and his dwelling"; they point him to the eternal morning, when he will wake up and be satisfied with god's likeness (_cf._ pss. civ., x., xli., lxxvii., lxxxviii., xliii., xvii.). we have all no doubt felt something of this abiding sympathy of the psalter. dean church expressed it very remarkably in a letter written by him shortly before his death: the thought of what is to take the place of things here is with me all day long, but it is with a strange mixture of reality and unreality, and i wish it did me all the good it might. books are not satisfactory--at least, i have always found it { } so. it seems to me that there is nothing equal to letting the psalms fall on one's ears, till at last a verse starts into meaning, which it is sure to do in the end (_life and letters_, p. , ed. ). the psalter has in this way endeared itself to many generations of struggling and dying men, and appealed even to many who were alien from its spirit. it has interwoven itself with striking scenes and moments of history, as when hildebrand chanted "he that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn" (ii.) before the encircling hosts of emperor and anti-pope; or when s. athanasius, on that night of fear when the imperial soldiers had blockaded the doors of the church, and the fate of the faith of nicæa seemed to hang in the balance, bade the deacon intone that psalm which tells of god smiting great kings, "for his mercy endureth for ever" (cxxxvi.); or when henry v. turned his face to the wall and died, confessing that his ideal was unfulfilled, and that god, and not he, must "build the walls of jerusalem" (li.). this humanism of the psalter makes it pre-eminently a christian possession, for christianity is human through and through. it is the religion of "the soul which is by nature christian." it redeems and consecrates, as no other religion could ever dare to do, all the fulness of man's being. { } and why? here we touch the innermost secret of the psalter. it is the book of the incarnation. "the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." god himself has taken to himself a human soul and spirit as well as a human body. and the incarnate word found on earth the voice of his communing with the father, as the faithful of his own adopted nation did, in the words of the psalms. these words rise naturally to his lips in the supreme agony on the cross; they must have provided his prayers and thanksgivings, we may reverently imagine, not only in the public services which he attended, but in his home at nazareth, and in his lonely vigils of prayer. he gathered together in himself all the human experiences of the past which are reflected in the psalter. hence the psalter is also the characteristic voice of his church, that church which was founded by him, and is united to him, and is the assembly of the first-born of humanity calling him "lord" and mary "mother." the consideration of these great truths will be reserved for subsequent lectures; but it would be impossible to speak of general principles in our christian use of the psalter without pointing out on the very threshold its indissoluble connection, historically and doctrinally, with the { } "author and finisher of our faith," and with his church "the household of faith." iii. once again, the psalter is appropriate for christian use because it is the book of hope. the world estranged from god is without hope. the heathen looked back to a golden age; virgil stands almost alone in his dream of its possible return.[ ] the israel of god is the fellowship of the future. it feels itself in harmony with an increasing purpose of god. the great revelation to moses of the name of god, "i will be that i will be" (ex. iii. , r.v. marg.), left its mark on all subsequent history. so the old testament writers, under every imaginable difficulty and persecution and reverse, among the treacheries of friends, as well as the attacks of a hostile heathen world, are ever straining forward to a coming of god and a kingdom of god. like the spirits in virgil's vision: stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum, tendebantque manus ripæ ulterioris amore.[ ] { } the psalms throughout delight in this attitude. the most casual reader is struck by the constancy with which an outlook of hope and joy succeeds to the sorrow and stress of the opening verses of psalm after psalm. even the darkest have their gleams of promise. and so the christian church, having learned what the hope of israel meant, found the psalms come naturally to her lips. she could sing with fuller meaning of the rising up again of the righteous (xli.), of the deliverances from the stormy waters and from the wandering out of the way in the wilderness (cvii.), of the bringing up of the sufferer "from the deep of the earth again" (lxxi.). the psalter was and is to the christian not merely the reflection of his characteristic sorrows and trials, but the book of the resurrection, of the restitution of all things, of the doing away of the imperfect and the coming of the perfect. thou shalt shew me the path of life; in thy presence is the fulness of joy: and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. (xvi. .) thus the psalter is ours, for it is the new song of gratitude to him who has given us the { } catholic faith; it is ours because it is the book of him who has redeemed us by making himself one with us, and "taking the manhood into god"; it is ours because it has not merely the human consecration of ages of christian use, but it is the channel which the holy spirit, who dwells in the church, seems deliberately to have chosen in which to make his ineffable intercession for the sons of god who wait for their adoption, "the redemption of the body" (rom. viii. - ). appreciation of the psalter grows with the devout use of it. the obligation to recite it month by month in the daily office is one of the best gifts the church has given to her priests; and both priest and laity alike will find increasingly that the psalms need no apology. they are the noblest and most comprehensive form of public worship; they are the most truly satisfying book of private devotion. [ ] note a, p. . [ ] note b, p. . [ ] "concerning the service of the church," the original preface to the prayer book. [ ] xli. , lxxii. - , lxxxix. , cvi. , cl. [ ] walter pater, _gaston de latour_. [ ] virgil, _eclogue_ iv. [ ] virgil, _aeneid_, vi. , (_cf._ heb. xi. ): praying, they stood with hands of love outspread, if but that farther shore each might be first to tread. { } part ii. difficulties servus tuus sum ego: da mihi intellectum ut sciam testimonia tua. besides general principles, we are also to consider some of the general difficulties in the use of the psalter as a christian book. the psalms are certainly not easy. nothing as great as they are ever could be easy. none of the books of the bible yield their secret except to labour and prayer, and the psalms present special difficulties of their own. these are of various kinds and need various methods of approach. there is a difficulty inherent in the very origin and history of the psalms. they are translated somewhat imperfectly from an ancient language, not akin to our own--a language which, if not difficult in itself, is rendered so by the comparative scantiness of its literature. the psalms, humanly speaking, are the work of a race widely different from ourselves in habits and in modes of thought and expression. they contain allusions to events and circumstances imperfectly known or realised to-day. most of our interpretation of these things is necessarily guess-work. the same psalm may be ascribed { } with equal probability, by scholars of equal learning and reverence, to periods many centuries apart. was the sufferer of ps. xxii. david or jeremiah, or is it altogether an ideal portrait? was the coming of the heathen into god's inheritance of ps. lxxix. that of the babylonians in the sixth century b.c. or of the soldiers of antiochus in the second? who was the "king's daughter" in ps. xlv. and who "the daughter of tyre"? is the temple of the psalms ever the first temple, or is it always the second? such problems still wait an answer. again, there are difficulties inherent in hebrew thought. it is intensely concrete and personal, in contrast with our more usual abstractions and generalities. the psalmists speak habitually of "the wicked" and "the ungodly," where we should more naturally speak of the qualities rather than the persons. they ignore, as a rule, immediate or secondary causes, and ascribe everything in nature or human affairs to the direct action or intervention of god. thus a thunder-storm is described: there went a smoke out in his presence: and a consuming fire out of his mouth, so that coals were kindled at it. (xviii. .) { } and thus a national calamity: thou hast shewed thy people heavy things: thou hast given us a drink of deadly wine. (lx. .) such ways of describing god's work in nature or his providence are partly, of course, due to the fact (often overlooked by the half-educated) that the psalms are poetry and not prose. for the same reason inanimate objects are personified: "the earth trembled at the look of him," "the mountains skipped like lambs"; the mythical "leviathan" appears both as a title of egypt (lxxiv. ) and as an actual monster of the deep (civ. ). god himself, again, is spoken of in language that might seem more appropriate to man. he is "provoked," and "tempted." he awakes "like a giant refreshed with wine." he is called upon, not to sleep nor to forget, to avenge, to "bow the heavens and come down." nor do the psalms in their literal meaning rise always above the current and imperfect religious conceptions of their time. the moral difficulties involved in this will be considered a little later, but it may be interesting to point out here some examples which bear on { } the progressiveness of revelation in the old testament by which heathen ideas became, under god's guidance, "stepping-stones to higher things." the psalms seem sometimes to speak as if "the gods of the heathen" really existed and were in some way rivals of the god of israel, universal and supreme though he is acknowledged to be. they are spoken of as "devils" as well as idols. they are called upon to "worship him" (_cf._ cvi. , xcvii. , , cxxxviii. i). again, the psalmists' horizon is, for the most part, limited to this present life, which is regarded as if it were the chief, almost the only, scene in which moral retribution would be worked out. and occasionally there appears the primitive hebrew idea of the after-world as the vague and gloomy sheol, like the shadowy hades of homer, where the dead "go down into silence," where, instead of purpose and progress, there is but a dawnless twilight, the land "without any order" of job (xlix., lxxxviii., cxv. ). and yet the more one studies and uses the psalms in the light of other scriptures and the church's interpretation, the more it is found that these partial, at first sight erroneous, conceptions have still their practical value for christians. there is nothing in them that is { } positively false, and they suggest, on the other hand, aspects of truth which we tend to forget. thus in the instances given above, by "the gods of the heathen" the christian may well be reminded of the continued existence and influence in the heathen world of the powers of evil, of the malignant warfare that is still being waged by "principalities and powers" against light and truth. the ancient conception of the shadowy abode of the dead has also its value. even the lord himself could speak of the night coming "when no man can work" (john ix. ), and such psalms as the th and the th may serve to remind us that this life is a time of work and probation in a sense that the life after death is not, that the grave cannot reverse the line that has been followed here nor put praises in the mouth of those who have never praised god "secretly or in the congregation" in this world. and again, the "present-worldliness" of the psalter may well point the duty of christians in respect of what they see and know around them here. many are content, while repeating pious phrases about heaven, to ignore the fact that this present human life is the great sphere of christian activity, and that whether the church is able to regenerate human society here or { } not, it is her business to try to do it, as fellow-workers with him-- who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong: who feedeth the hungry. (cxlvi. .) have we not a remarkable witness to the continuity of the holy spirit's teaching, and to the fact that not "one jot or one tittle" of the law is to remain unfulfilled, in the way that these apparent imperfections and limitations of the psalter fall into their place in connection with the later revelation? another obvious difficulty of the psalter lies in the frequent obscurity of connection between verse and verse, in the rapid transitions, in the uncertainty as to the sequence of thought, or the meaning of the psalm as a whole. this difficulty, as it bears upon the liturgical use of the psalms, has been increased by the abolition of the _antiphons_, which in the pre-reformation offices certainly helped at times to suggest a leading thought, or to guide the worshipper as to the church's intention in the recitation of this or that psalm. (note c, p. .) sometimes indeed, the connection between the verses of a psalm is really very slight, more a matter { } of suggestion or association than of logic. such is the case in "proverbial" psalms, like the rd, th, and th, or the th. but in others it is well worth the effort to gain a continuous view of the psalm as a whole. a simple commentary will give this, or even sometimes the r.v. alone, or the headings in the a.v., such as the very suggestive one prefixed to the th: " the kingdom, the priesthood, the conquest, and the passion of christ." (note d, p. .) there are also difficulties caused by a real obscurity in the hebrew, or by mistranslations. here, again, a comparison with the r.v. is of great value. the meaning of the th springs to light at once when we read "this one was born there," instead of the mysterious "lo, there was he born," etc. the psalm refers not to the birth of the messiah, but to the new birth of individuals out of the heathen races who thus become citizens of sion. "so let indignation vex him, even as a thing that is raw" (lviii. ), becomes certainly more intelligible as "he shall take them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike" (a metaphor from a traveller's fire of brushwood, blown away by a sudden wind); and even if "the beasts of the people" remains still obscure in ps. lxviii. in the revised { } translation, its "why hop ye so, ye high hills?" is more significant when it is read-- why look ye askance, ye high mountains: at the mountain which god hath desired for his abode? sometimes the alteration of a single word makes the difference between obscurity and sense, as in xlix. , where "the wickedness of my heels" becomes intelligible as "iniquity at my heels"; or in ps. xlii., where "therefore will i remember thee concerning the land of judah and the little hill of hermon" is made clear at once by the substitution of "from" for "concerning." the verse is the cry of the exile, who, far away in northern palestine, among the sources of the jordan, yearns for the temple and its services, which he is no longer able to visit. doubtless the reasons which prevented the older version of the psalms being changed in the prayer book in the seventeenth century, when other passages of scripture were revised, still hold good. neither a.v. nor r.v. are so well adapted for music, nor have they endeared themselves to the worshipper by daily use. those who have time and opportunity may { } discover for themselves more exact meanings or clear up difficulties by private study. but even those who have not may find that there are better uses of the psalter than a merely intellectual grasp of its meaning. possibly an occasional obscurity may even have a humbling or awe-inspiring effect on the mind. the strange version of the vulgate of ps. lxxi. , though incorrect, is not without its point: quoniam non cognovi litteraturam, introibo in potentias domini.[ ] learning by itself can never lift the soul on the wings of devotion and worship. the unlearned, christ's "little ones," have in every age found a voice that spoke to them in the liturgy of the catholic church, even though its accents were inarticulate, and its message music rather than words. such considerations may prevent us distressing ourselves because something, perhaps much, in the church's book of praise is unintelligible and must remain so. two practical suggestions may be offered here to those who find themselves hindered in devotion by the difficulties of the psalter, by its rapid transitions, or its constantly varying tone. the leading purpose of the psalter in { } the church's use is expressed in its hebrew title, _tehillim_, "praises." "we shall do well," says dr. cheyne, "to accustom ourselves to the intelligent use of this title, and to look out in every psalm for an element of praise." it is good to allow this thought to dominate our mind while the psalms are being read or sung in the church's service. for this and for that our fathers in the faith thanked god; for what he had revealed, or promised or done. and he is the same, he changes not. ever and anon as the service proceeds, a verse will suggest some ground of thanksgiving for ourselves or for the church we love. we need to keep our minds, like our bodies, in the attitude of praise and aspiration, like that exiled lover of his nation who wrote ps. cvi.: remember me, o lord, according to the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: o visit me with thy salvation; that i may see the felicity of thy chosen: and rejoice in the gladness of thy people, and give thanks with thine inheritance. (cvi. , .) { } not only the attitude of praise should be cultivated, but also that of sympathy. this will be especially fruitful as we take upon our lips these constantly recurring expressions of penitence, struggle, and sorrow. these are certain to be at times unreal to us, unless we can remember that we recite them not merely for ourselves, but as part of the church's intercession for the world, in which it is our privilege to take part. others are suffering under the burden of sin and grief, others are overwhelmed with sorrow, racked with pain, harried by the slanderer and the persecutor. it is such as these that we remember before god, as fellow-members of the one body. and will not such a remembrance, such sympathy, bring us very near to our blessed lord's own use of the psalter in his days on earth, who "himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses"? yet beyond all these difficulties of language, history, and modes of thought, whether they yield to study or not, there are outstanding _moral_ difficulties of the psalter. some of the psalms appear to be inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel, or even with the moral sense of mankind, educated as it has been for so long in the gospel-school. this objection seems at first { } sight a more serious difficulty than any of the others; but before it can be satisfactorily dealt with, another and more fundamental question must be faced. what is the attitude, as a whole, of the objector to the revealed word of god? there are those to whom the psalms seem to speak altogether in an alien tongue, who find the recitation of them in the church's service "tedious" (a reason alleged recently as one of those which keep people from attending church), to whom the th psalm appears to be "mechanical and monotonous," whose very expression in church proclaims them "bored." such feelings may be only the result of ignorance, or lack of effort, or inherited misconceptions. or the reason may lie deeper. the worship of the catholic church can only be understood by those who are of the mind of the church, who have learned to place themselves in the believer's attitude towards god and his revelation. however much the word "conversion" may have been abused, and turned into a mere catchword or shibboleth, it is unquestionable that the christian religion demands a fundamental change of mind and attitude, a change which does not come by education only, nor by any natural process. there is a hidden wisdom in the church which to the natural man is { } "foolishness" ( cor. ii. ); it can only be learned by those who humbly set themselves to be taught by the spirit. this change, come it suddenly or very slowly, must have its effect upon the whole man, his intellect, as well as his heart and will. "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." especially will it rule our attitude towards holy scripture. without such a change neither historical nor grammatical explanations can make the scripture sweet or even intelligible. not least will our comprehension of the psalter be influenced by it. how impossible is it really to say, "lord, what love have i unto thy law," if one has never realised that there is a law of god, supreme and absolute, to be read in the scriptures and in the witness of the church; and that only in obedience to this law can man find his true self and "walk at liberty." it is vain to seek to be critics before we are disciples. and the psalter is clearly meant for the initiated, not for him who merely follows the crowd. the divine office, which the psalter fills and dominates, is the means whereby the instructed faithful express their unchanging delight in, and loyalty to, what they have received freely from god. it is not the church's message to the unconverted world, nor the voice of man's natural desires and sympathies, { } undisciplined by grace. the catholic temper, the mind of the church, is an absolute first principle in the right use of the church's book of praise, and the key to its chief difficulties. bearing this in mind, let us endeavour to face, in conclusion, this moral difficulty of some parts of the psalter--a difficulty which undoubtedly causes pain and uncertainty to some who are really devout, and which has led many to ask for a revised or expurgated psalter for the public services. first, there is what appears to be the self-righteousness of the psalter. side by side with the most perfect expressions of humility and penitence, there are found protestations of innocence and purity which, if they were merely personal, we should rightly hesitate to make our own. but the "i" of the psalter is not merely personal; it is the collective voice of the church, and of the church in her ideal aspect, such as we confess her in the creed--"one, holy, catholic." it is the voice of the great company of the holy souls from the beginning of the world, on earth and beyond the veil. it is with these that we recite our psalms, with these that we humbly associate ourselves, it is their righteousness that we seek to make our own, for it is the righteousness of christ. and if the "i" of the psalter is the { } self-expression of the communion of saints, still more is it the voice of the king of saints, the immaculate lamb, in whose name we offer our worship. but there is still the problem of the psalms of imprecation. what can we say of their apparent fierceness and vindictiveness, their reflection of the stormy passions and bitter warfare of a primitive age? there is much indeed that can be rightly urged, here, as in the other old testament writings, from the point of view of the difference between hebrew modes of expression and our own, and from the progressive character of revelation, much that may help to remove prejudice and clear away apparent inconsistencies. but the larger view of the psalter as the book primarily of the church is of still greater importance. the imprecations of the psalms, though expressed in so vividly personal a manner, are no more personal than the protestations of innocency. they express rather that age-long passion for righteousness, that burning belief in a moral judge of the world who must do right, which have always been the church's saving salt among the corruptions and indifference of the world. it is this spirit that inspires them, rather than the thirst for { } vengeance or the vindication of self. they express the church's belief that there is a world-conflict ever proceeding between the cause of god, the cause of truth and right, and the passions of men urged on by the powers of evil. for lo, thine enemies make a murmuring: and they that hate thee have lift up their head. they have imagined craftily against thy people: and taken counsel against thy secret ones. (lxxxiii. , .) lay hand upon the shield and buckler: and stand up to help me. bring forth the spear and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, i am thy salvation. (xxxv. , .) this sense of an irreconcilable conflict between the malignity of evil and the will of god, between the carnal mind and that reflection of god's will which he has implanted in the human conscience, is much to seek in our own day. we are too much inclined to minimise the reality of sin, and to imagine that it is { } disappearing before civilisation and the growth of gentler ways and sentiments. the psalmists knew better--they knew that the battle was to the death, and that god alone can win his own victory; and they express, sternly and roughly perhaps, but with the utmost sincerity, their undying faith that he will; that the overthrow of malice and falsehood and treachery must one day be manifested, god shall suddenly shoot at them with a swift arrow, and that the part we each have played in the battle will be the true measure of our worth. all they that are true of heart shall be glad. (lxiv.) in this sense we may even repeat the dreadful conclusion of the babylonian exiles' psalm: blessed shall he be that taketh thy children: and throweth them against the stones. (cxxxvii.) for what are babylon and her children but the powers of falsehood, oppression, and cruelty? and blessed still and ever is he who is afire with indignation against such things, who scorns { } any easy compromise with them, who burns to deal a blow at them for jerusalem's sake! and there is still another justification for the continued use of these psalms, which will be understood by those who have begun to be disciples in the church's school. the psalms are not merely the response to revelation, they are part of that revelation themselves. the church uses them not as mere human utterances, but as the inspired words which god himself has given her, and which the lord jesus consecrated by his own personal use of them. god cannot contradict himself. the gospel may expand the law, or do away with its letter in order to bring out the underlying spirit, but it cannot abrogate it. if there were a real discrepancy between the imprecatory psalms and the new testament, it would be scarcely conceivable that the first word of scripture quoted in the first history of the church would be that sentence already alluded to: let his habitation be made desolate: and let no man dwell therein. the severities of the psalms are matched by the severities of the gospels. there is no real difference between our lord's sentence on the scribes and pharisees, "behold, your house is { } left unto you desolate," and the sentence which the holy spirit puts into our mouth against the hypocrite and the traitor, "let his children be fatherless: and his wife a widow" (cix. ). god is still "a god of judgment" and a "consuming fire," and there is a "wrath of the lamb" revealed, even though he is "the lamb of god that taketh away the sins of the world." god has, as it were, put upon our lips, in these psalms, his own great condemnation of sin, and made us our own judges. we recite, remembering that it is his word, and not our own, the denunciation of the sensual and the covetous, the traitor and the liar, the persecutor, the slanderer, and the hypocrite. from this point of view the recitation of such psalms as the th or the th should be an exercise of personal humility, of godly fear for ourselves and others, and might well bring to our mind often that other great challenge of the spirit: why dost thou preach my laws, and takest my covenant in thy mouth? whereas thou hatest to be reformed: and hast cast my words behind thee. (ps. l. , .) { } these are considerations which surely ought to be well weighed before we seek to make the psalter a book of "smooth things" only, or eliminate any part of its witness. there are no short or easy methods applicable to its deeper difficulties. like all the ultimate problems of faith, they fade away only before the uncreated light of the spirit of god, when he visits the heart. i have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth _thee_. (job xlii. .) [ ] "inasmuch as i know not man's learning, i will enter into the mighty works of the lord." { } lecture ii christ in the psalter paravi lucernam christo meo. jewish and christian tradition alike connect the psalter with the great name of david. whether david himself wrote any of the psalms or not is a question that may continue to agitate the minds of scholars. but there can be no question that the permanency of the throne of david and the divine promises on which it rested are leading thoughts in the psalter. the starting-point must be sought earlier in the old testament, in the great oracle communicated by nathan to david ( sam. vii., referred to directly in ps. lxxxix. , etc.), "thy throne shall be established for ever." in this was recognised from the first something more than a mere promise of the long continuance of the crown in the family of the son of jesse. it carried with it some special sanction and { } blessing over and above the ordinary divine authority of heaven-anointed kings. the words "i will be his father, and he shall be my son" seemed to imply a peculiar and unique relationship between god himself, the true king of israel, and his earthly representative. the comment ascribed to david himself is significant: "is this the manner of _man_, o lord god?" no mere human sovereignty, however glorious or firmly settled, would satisfy such a prophecy as this. the thoughts of the pious in israel must have dwelt often and deeply in after-time upon this promise and its connection with the divine calling of the sacred nation and her mission in the world. it is remarkable how persistently this thought of the permanence and supernatural character of the davidic sovereignty recurs in the prophetic writings--even when the crown had passed to an unworthy head, or seemed to have been plucked off for ever. jeremiah, when the clouds are gathering thickly round the doomed city, foretells that the covenant of david will be as lasting as that of "the day and the night in their season," and that the seed of david will be unnumbered "as the host of heaven and the sand of the sea" (jer. xxxiii.). ezekiel from his far-off exile { } by the waters of babylon, while he proclaims the divine sentence against the degenerate son of david--"remove the mitre, and take off the crown: this shall be no more: ... i will overturn, overturn, overturn it, ... until he come whose right it is"--predicts the time when judah and ephraim shall be one, and "david my servant shall be their prince for ever" (ezek. xxi. , , xxxvii. - ). haggai, in the days of the return, continues the promise to the uncrowned prince, zerubbabel--"i have chosen thee, saith the lord of hosts" (hag. ii. ). it is not to be wondered at that in the psalter, the inspired response of worshipping israel to the revelation of god, we should find psalms that rejoice in this indestructible and royal hope, psalms that look beyond present failures and imminent perils to a perfect fulfilment of what god had spoken "sometime in visions to his saints." thus the nd psalm tells triumphantly of the divine "law" or "decree" concerning david's son, and sees in it the assurance of a world-wide empire, the discomfiture of the raging of the nations and the gathering of the kings of the earth: thou art my son, this day have i begotten thee. { } desire of me, and i shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance: and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. the th describes the almighty riding on his chariot of whirlwind and storm, coming down from heaven itself in his condescension, to pluck his anointed out of "many waters," "to deliver him from the strivings of the people, and to make him the head of the heathen." the th tells, with "the pen of a ready writer," of this everlasting sceptre and throne, founded on truth and righteousness, of a king to whom divine titles are given, "anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows," and sees in the marriage of this king with a foreign princess the earnest of a kingdom over all the earth. the nd describes not only the prosperity, but the moral greatness of this empire stretching from sea to sea, "from the river to the ends of the earth." not like the giant empires of the east, founded on aggression and cruelty, with no motive but the monstrous pride of their founders and rulers, the davidic king is to be the champion of the poor, the needy, and the helpless: he shall deliver their souls from falsehood and wrong: { } and dear shall their blood be in his sight. the th, while it tells how god has found david his servant and anointed him with holy oil, and made him "his first-born, higher than the kings of the earth," is bold to face in those later days the agonising problem of the apparent failure of all this lofty promise: but thou hast abhorred and forsaken thine anointed: and art displeased at him. thou hast broken the covenant of thy servant, and cast his crown to the ground. "lord, how long? ... lord, where are thy old loving-kindnesses? ... remember, lord!" the nd, also apparently a psalm of a later age, though ascribed to david, dwells with joy on david's love of the sanctuary of god, pleads for the fulfilment of the promise, asks that the lamp may not be put out, nor the face of god's anointed "turned away" in confusion. rightly are such psalms as these called "messianic." we feel that even those who { } originally wrote them looked for more than "transitory promises." they were learning to look for the redemption of israel and of the world itself through israel and her kings. they were bold to believe, even when the crown was gone and the purple faded, and israel was no longer a sovereign state, that the ancient word of god to david could never be exhausted. so when at last the great message of the archangel came to the virgin of the house of david, it was felt by those who had read aright the history of their nation that here was no mere fanciful resuscitation of a dead past, but the vindication of god's undying purpose: "he shall be great, and shall be called the son of the most high: and the lord god shall give unto him the throne of his father david: and he shall reign over the house of jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (luke i. , ). it was therefore strictly legitimate, and in line with all the history of revelation, that the christian church should adopt these messianic psalms as her own thanksgiving for the mysteries of the incarnation. thus on christmas day she welcomes the nativity in some of the psalms already alluded to--in that which tells of the reconciliation of mankind with one { } another and with god under the figure of the marriage between the anointed king and the king's daughter "all glorious within" (xlv.); in that which pleads the great promises to him who so loved god's presence that he would not "suffer his eyes to sleep nor his eyelids to slumber" until he had found a permanent resting-place for that presence among men (cxxxii.); or in that, again, which in the strength of faith can gaze even on the casting down of the throne and the breaking of the covenant, resting still on god's faithfulness among "the rebukes of many people" (lxxxix.). but there are other psalms which, if they cannot strictly be called messianic, yet bear their witness to another aspect of the same great hope of israel. in the voice of prayer, or joyful confidence, they look forward to some _coming_ of god to earth, some visible manifestation of his righteousness and his world-wide purpose: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: and with righteousness to judge the world, and the people with his truth (xcvi. ), { } or-- bow thy heavens, o lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. (cxliv. .) in the th, one of the psalms appointed for christmas day, this advent of god is spoken of in words which are re-echoed in the prologue to s. john's gospel (i. ) as a dwelling or "tabernacling" of god's glory, not in the darkness of a holy of holies (as the later jews imagined the shekinah), but as a new and permanent fact in the moral order of the world: for his salvation is nigh them that fear him: that glory may dwell in our land. mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. truth shall flourish out of the earth: and righteousness hath looked down from heaven. in such prophetic visions as these, as well as in the psalms that speak of the glories of the messianic king, the christian conscience has { } rightly recognised definite predictions of the coming of christ, of him who was both "the effulgence of god's glory" (heb. i. ) and also, by his human birth, the son of david and king of israel, and who manifested the holiness of god in human flesh and blood. he himself, when he came, selected from the psalms one striking phrase, in which both ideas, the divine glory and the human calling, are combined. for he quotes, as a witness to himself and as a corrective of imperfect views, the th psalm (again a proper psalm for christmas day), where the messianic king is spoken of both as ruler and victor and priest of humanity, and as standing also in a unique relationship to god, which exalts him far above any mere earthly connection with david: the lord said unto my lord: sit thou on my right hand-- if david then calleth him lord, how is he his son? (matt. xxii. .) but besides all these prophecies, which look onward to the great outcome of israel's history, there is another and wider sense, as the christian fathers apprehended, in which the whole psalter is the book of the { } incarnation and speaks of christ. "david," says s. jerome, "on his harp and ten-stringed lute, sings throughout of christ, and brings him up from the dead." however fanciful and over-subtle the early christian commentators may seem to us in their working out of this idea, they had grasped a profound truth. when we once recognise that christ, knowing who he was and why he came into the world (_cf._ john xiii. ), must in the jewish services or in private prayers have recited the psalms with a perfect intention, and found in them the true expression of himself, with regard both to the eternal father and to his brethren, we are compelled to admit the possibility of each verse of the psalms having some bearing on the incarnation. it is a conclusion which might at first sight seem extravagant; but it forces itself upon us as we realise the true humanity of the saviour. he is "the son of man"; he took of the substance of his virgin-mother the fulness of human nature; he has a human body, a human soul, a human spirit; he is "the second adam," the great head of our race, who, in the striking phrase of s. irenaeus, has "summed up" (_recapitulavit_) all humanity and all the long history of man. "for verily, not of angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the { } seed of abraham" (heb. ii. ). he has gathered into himself all truly human experience, the hopes of humanity, and its sufferings; its infinite pathos, its capacity of sorrow and of joy, its progress towards god, and its final apprehension and vision of god. this is the key to the most constant feature of the psalter, the portrait of the righteous sufferer. whether we regard it as the personification of the holy nation or the self-expression of human conscience in its moral witness and its conflicts, it is an ideal that is only fulfilled in the just one, jesus christ. he appeared in the world as the pattern man, in whom the divine image is perfected and whose moral nature corresponds with that holiness which is god's essential character. he appeared, too, as the perfect realisation of the filial spirit, that spirit of sonship which is the true attitude of the creature towards the creator. therefore it is in christ himself that the witness of the psalms to righteousness, their expression of man's effort towards his ideal, is taken up, illuminated, made perfect. therefore it is that a new testament writer is found applying directly and without question to christ not only the descriptions of the self-revealing god of the old testament, "thou, lord, in the beginning hast { } laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands" (heb. i. , from ps. cii.), and the portrait of the messianic king, "the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom" (_ib._, from ps. xlv.), but also the description of _man_ in his ideal excellence and supremacy: thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands (heb. ii., from ps. viii.), and that word in which some unknown psalmist and prophet had consecrated the free obedience of his will to god, as a higher offering than the sacrifices of the law: wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body didst thou prepare for me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure: then said i, lo, i am come { } (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, o god." (heb. x., from ps. xl.) this line of interpretation may be followed out with great spiritual profit in the varied aspects of the psalms. the thanksgivings of the psalter are in the same spirit as those recorded by the evangelists from our lord's own lips, as when he thanked the father for the revelation made to babes rather than to the wise and understanding (matt. xi. ), or at the grave of lazarus gave thanks that his prayer was heard (john xi. ). the prayers of the psalter might well be those in which the incarnate son communed with the father. for he fought our human battle with the human weapons of faith and prayer. the great description given by the author of the epistle to the hebrews of christ as "the author and finisher of our faith" (heb. xii. ), implies one who inaugurated our effort of faith by himself first taking part in it, and himself perfectly accomplished it by bearing to the very final and utmost strain our human temptations. hence we may hear the voice of christ himself in those pathetic outcries of the psalter; in its appeal of faith as the righteous one wrestles with doubt and { } depression or faces the contradiction of sinners; in its stedfast hold on god even when sin is triumphing, and a world created good seems given over into the hand of the wicked. all these utterances have a new meaning, a fuller efficacy, when we recognise in them the words of the "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." there is nothing either fantastic or presumptuous in this reading of the gospel in the psalter. did not he himself vouchsafe to shew us something of this human struggle of faith in the words spoken on the eve of his passion, when he confessed that his soul was troubled, and he would fain have said, "father, save me from this hour" (john xii. )? did he not lift the veil even further in admitting us to the dark sanctuary of gethsemane, in suffering us to hear even his utterances from the cross? the fourth word from the cross, so often misunderstood, is the opening of the nd psalm. this cry at the climax of the passion is really the voice of faith, faith triumphing over desolation of spirit, faith holding on by the unseen, amidst the falling away and the vanishing for the time of every consolation. it is not _merely_ "why didst thou forsake me?" but it is "my god, my god," the fundamental confession of a personal faith in a personal god, seeing him { } who is invisible, waiting for him who hides his face, believing, even though his truth and justice seem blotted out of the world, that god is, and that he is still "enthroned upon the praises of israel" (v. ). and this faith finds its last utterance of peace and thanksgiving and renewed consciousness of union with the father in the seventh word, again from the psalter, "into thy hands i commend my spirit" (ps. xxxi. ). one of the most fruitful lines of christian meditation will be found in this christological aspect of the psalms. it throws a wonderful light on the inner life of our lord, and gives the psalter a value which no merely literary study could give. the five psalms appointed by our church for good friday are a rich storehouse of the secrets of the passion. the nd and the th bear upon it very directly, and present many points of similarity. in each the sufferings of the righteous are described minutely and pathetically, in each these sufferings lead on to triumph and to the assurance of their world-wide efficacy: all the ends of the earth shall remember themselves, and be turned unto the lord: { } and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before him. (xxii. .) for god will save sion, and build the cities of judah: that men may dwell there and have it in possession. the posterity also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein. (lxix. , .) each, again, in its picture of undeserved suffering, brings out the true nature and the malignity of _sin_. in the nd sin is portrayed in its cruelty and its irrational character, as if men led by it were but wild beasts, "wild oxen," "bulls of bashan," "dogs," and "lions." in the th we see its ingratitude, and its pitiless and causeless malice, and the fact that, whatever its immediate object, it is really directed against god himself: for thy sake i have suffered reproach. * * * * * the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. both these psalms, again, contain what we { } must confess to be definite predictions of details of the passion. the nd tells of the very words and gestures which the chief priests and pharisees in their blindness made use of to insult the crucified: all they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying, he trusted in god, that he would deliver him: let him deliver him now, if he will have him. (_cf._ matt, xxvii. - .) another startling prediction is that of the piercing of the hands and the feet. no such punishment was used by the jews, or endured, as far as we know, by any of the martyrs of the old testament. all the four evangelists, again, note the literal fulfilment of xxii. : they part my garments among them: and cast lots upon my vesture. indeed, this nd psalm along with isaiah liii. stands forth beyond all the other writings of the old testament as a witness which is proof against all attempts to explain it away, to the { } truth that "the spirit of christ" was in the prophets "testifying beforehand of the sufferings of christ "( peter i. ). the th (like the th) may have been originally suggested by the persecution of the prophet jeremiah, when he was thrown into the miry cistern (jer. xxxviii.); but it contains an anticipation of calvary, whose fulfilment is described by all the evangelists, in the wine mingled with myrrh, and the vinegar and gall offered in mockery before the crucifixion: they gave me gall to eat: and when i was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink. s. john, the nearest to the cross and to the heart of the crucified, tells us moreover that this verse was consciously appropriated by christ himself, when, "knowing that all things are now finished, that the scripture might be accomplished, he saith, i thirst" (john xix. ). each of the other proper psalms for good friday bears its witness to the suffering christ. the th, at first sight one of the most difficult in the psalter, a psalm whose darkness seems scarcely illuminated by any ray of hope, is clearly chosen to illustrate christ's desolation on the cross, the three hours of darkness, his { } burial and his descent into hades. the sufferer is absolutely alone, lover and friend are in darkness; he is fighting the battle with that last enemy of mankind, the king of terrors, yet overcoming the sharpness of death by faith and patient endurance; he is looking on to the dawn of easter: unto thee have i cried, o lord: and early shall my prayer come unto thee; or-- in the morning shall my prayer come before thee (r.v.). may not even those strange words "from my youth up thy terrors have i suffered with a troubled mind" have been on the lips and in the thought of the "man of sorrows" as the cross cast its shadow over him, perhaps from his earliest years? "for not even our lord jesus christ himself," says _the imitation_ in one of those chapters which sweeten the tears of the world, "was ever one hour without the anguish of his passion as long as he lived" (_imit._ ii. ). both the th and the th suggest that inner secret of the atonement which the writer of the { } epistle to the hebrews has fixed upon as giving christ's passion its universal efficacy: an offering of a free heart will i give thee. (liv. .) i come--that i should fulfil thy will, o my god. (xl. , .) "by which will we have been sanctified, through the offering of the body of jesus christ once for all" (heb. x. ). for the passion is the supreme oblation of the freewill of man, the re-direction into the right attitude of that high faculty by which man had sinned and fallen originally, the consecration of it to its true end, voluntary obedience to god. "not my will, but thine be done"; that christ as man should bring the human will perfectly into conformity with the will of god is what "in the volume of the book"--_i.e._ in the writings of all the line of prophets--was written of him; for this "the body was prepared" for him in the pure flesh of the virgin-mother; for this his "ears were opened," that as child and youth and man he might perfectly hear and obey the word of the father. but the th verse of the th psalm suggests { } an obvious difficulty in the application of the psalms as a whole to christ personally: my sins have taken such hold upon me that i am not able to look up: yea, they are more in number than the hairs of my head, and my heart hath failed me. how can we ascribe these words, or any of the confessions of sin in the psalter, to the sinless lamb of god? are not these at least all our own? and yet he himself must on earth have repeated them. in their original meaning they referred either to personal or national guilt. in either sense the recitation of them, at first sight, would seem to be alien and external to his pure conscience. but do they not take a deeper and more solemn tone when we consider them in the light of the prophet's great description of the atoning sufferer, "the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (is. liii. ), or of s. paul's statement, "him who knew no sin, he made to be sin on our behalf" ( cor. v. )? such words as these contain more than the mere bearing of the punishment of sin; they imply some inward connection between the sufferer and the sin. indeed, rightly understood, they help to { } remove the difficulty that many have felt as to the apparent injustice or unreality of a vicarious atonement. christ was not merely a victim suffering for human sin; he was man's creator taking that sin upon himself. thus these expressions of penitence in the psalter may be regarded as the voice of the sympathetic love of the sin-bearer, the love which stands by the sinner's side, and feels with him so intimately that it makes its own what is not its own but utterly alien and hateful, makes it its own that it may burn it up in the flame of love. so in these psalms we may hear the son of man confessing and making reparation for all the age-long sin of man; speaking of it as if it were his own sin, so closely has he made himself one with us in our extremest need. cardinal newman, in one of the most eloquent of his sermons, "the mental sufferings of our lord in his passion," has developed this thought in language whose daring is only justified by its devotion. it is a description of christ kneeling alone in gethsemane: his very memory is laden with every sin which has been committed since the fall, in all regions of the earth, with the pride of the old giants, and the lusts of the five cities, and the obduracy of egypt, and the ambition of babel, and the { } unthankfulness and scorn of israel. of the living and the dead and of the as yet unborn, of the lost and of the saved, of thy people and of strangers, of sinners and of saints, all sins are there.... it is the long history of a world, and god alone can bear the load of it.... they are upon him, they are all but his own. he cries to his father as if he were the criminal, not the victim. his agony takes the form of guilt and compunction. he is doing penance, he is making confession, he is exercising contrition with a reality and a virtue infinitely greater than that of all saints and penitents together; for he is the one victim for us all, the sole satisfaction, the real penitent, all but the real sinner.[ ] connected closely with these confessions of sin, these outcries of suffering and expiation, with the _miserere_ and the _de profundis_, are those solemn declarations of god's wrath upon the impenitent sinner which have already been alluded to in a previous lecture. viewed as the utterances of the son of man such psalms are more rightly to be called _judicial_ than denunciatory. it is he to whom all judgment has been committed by the father, he whose coming into the world was inevitably "for judgment," who seems here to be delivering { } sentence. he is taking up and confirming the fragmentary utterances of older days, in which the human conscience, imperfectly perhaps, and not without some mixture of personal feeling, yet on the whole rightly, had cried out against falsehood and wrong, and appealed to the wrath of god. the words of such a psalm even as the th might have been used by him who twice scourged the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and who denounced in words that burn like fire through the centuries the cruelty and hypocrisy of scribes and pharisees; who himself in mercy warned us of the outer darkness and the unquenched flame. but the psalms not only illustrate the passion of christ in its mercy and judgment; they also supply words befitting his resurrection and triumph. it may be true that there is no clear or continuous line of prophecy in the old testament concerning the life after death. but it is at least equally true that the belief is there, grasped in moments of intuition by the saints of israel, disappearing for a time like a buried river, but coming ever and anon again to the surface. so in the psalms there are certainly evidences of the undying hope of the faithful that truth and justice must one day { } visibly triumph, and that man, in proportion as he is true to these things and therefore true to god, whose nature they are, and true to himself, as made in god's image--man must also be immortal. he will not go down into silence; an endless future opens before him, as yet unfathomed and unknown, but certain. so in the psalms which the christian instinct, illuminated by the spirit of pentecost, seized upon in its first words of witness (acts ii. - ) as prophetic of christ, we have the assurance: i have set god always before me: for he is on my right hand, therefore i shall not fall. wherefore my heart was glad, and my glory rejoiced: my flesh also shall rest in hope. for why? thou shalt not leave my soul in hell:[ ] neither shalt thou suffer thy holy[ ] one to see corruption. (ps. xvi. - .) { } and again: as for me, i will behold thy presence in righteousness: and when i awake up after thy likeness, i shall be satisfied with it. (ps. xvii. .) so again, in that profoundly spiritual psalm, the rd, the writer turns from the puzzles of the moral order and the misgivings of his own heart, and seeks refuge in the abiding fact of his personal fellowship with god. he finds _there_ the assurance not only that the wicked will pass away "like a dream when one awaketh," but that the righteous is undying: my flesh and my heart faileth: but god is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. such psalms as these find their full meaning only in the light of easter. the resurrection of christ was no mere portent or isolated miracle; it was strictly in line with all that man had risen up to in his highest spiritual intuitions in the past. it is true, in a much fuller sense than that of accomplishing a mere prediction, that christ "rose again, according to the scriptures." this essential immortality of the righteous, through his union with god, is implied throughout { } the easter psalms, especially in the th (part of "the egyptian hallel"), words which must have been recited by the lord and his apostles at the passover supper, in the very imminence of the passion. the voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous: ... i shall not die, but live: and declare the works of the lord. ascension day completes the triumph of man raised to immortality through his union with god in christ. it inaugurates the accomplishment of man's ideal, in the eternal mediatorial reign of christ as the head of the human race. the appointed psalms are again most suggestive. the th sings triumphantly of the supremacy of man over all the works of god, man crowned "with glory and worship." the th and the th describe the moral perfections which are the condition of this exaltation: lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle: or who shall rest upon thy holy hill? even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life: and doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart. * * * * * { } whoso doeth these things: shall never fall. (xv.) the st and the th look back to the promises to david and to the typical character of his wars and victories. they shew that these events were part and parcel of the divine warfare; they were a foretaste of the triumph of god himself. they suggest that the ascension of christ, while it gathers into itself all the moral victories of the past, is the beginning of a new order. it brings in a catholic empire of truth and righteousness, which, in spite of puzzles and warfare and contradictions, parallel to those which vexed the heart of the prophets of old, is now absolutely certain in its hope: who will lead me into the strong city: and who will bring me into edom? hast not thou forsaken us, o god: and wilt not thou, o god, go forth with our hosts? o help us against the enemy: for vain is the help of man. through god we shall do great acts: and it is he that shall tread down our enemies. (cviii.) { } thus, to him who, by god's mercy, has learned the catholic faith, the psalms are full of christ from end to end. he reads christ in them, not by a pious imagination, but as the legitimate and only perfect key to their meaning and their use by the church. in the psalms he worships christ as god: thy seat, o god, endureth for ever. (xlv. .) in the psalms he worships with christ as the son of man, with him who alone could say rightly: my soul hath kept thy testimonies: and loved them exceedingly. (cxix. .) the human sorrows and struggles which cry out in the psalter have been taken into the sacred heart of him who is the word of the father, and the king and priest and prophet of humanity, in whom is fulfilled the saying: he sent his word, and healed them: and they were saved from their destruction. (cvii. .) this catholic secret of the psalter, writ large as it is over the history of the church's worship, { } is yet something that eludes mere human research, and is a stumbling-block to human learning and scholarship. it can only be taught by that "hidden wisdom" of which s. paul has told us ( cor. ii.), the wisdom given often to the weak of this world, the wisdom of the spirit who dwells in the church, and makes her "the pillar and ground of the truth" ( tim. iii. ). [ ] _discourses to mixed congregations_, xvi. [ ] _i.e._ sheol, hades, the grave or place of departed souls. [ ] _i.e._ godly or pious, a characteristic word of the psalmists, implying not only consecration but active devotion to god. { } lecture iii the church in the psalter gloriosa dicta sunt de te: civitas dei. it has already been pointed out that the personal element in the psalms, vivid and even passionate as it appears, if they are read as mere lyrics, has been transformed by the church's use of them as her hymns of worship. the "i" of the psalter has become the voice of the worshipping community. the jews themselves recited the personal psalms in a national sense. even such an intensely personal confession of sin as the st psalm becomes through the last two verses (possibly added by a later pen) the confession of national penitence and the voice of national hope: o be favourable and gracious unto sion: build thou the walls of jerusalem. { } but besides such liturgical adaptations, whether of letter or spirit, many of the later psalms, especially those which clearly belong to the period of the second temple, were written intentionally for the nation as a whole. "we" predominates, instead of the earlier "i." in these psalms the nation reviews her past history, or cries out against her present oppressors, or looks onward to liberty and enlargement in the future. but the nation which thus finds her voice in the psalms is of a different spirit from the kingdoms of this world. her patriotism is of a higher order. she is conscious of a divine vocation, separating her from the nations of the heathen: thou hast brought a vine out of egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. (lxxx. .) what time as they went from one nation to another: from one kingdom to another people; he suffered no man to do them wrong: but reproved even kings for their sakes; touch not mine anointed: and do my prophets no harm. (cv. - -) { } she has a treasure committed to her keeping, which others have not: he sheweth his word unto jacob: his statutes and ordinances unto israel. he hath not dealt so with any nation: neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws. (cxlvii. - .) she has a hope that burns within her, which to the world would be foolishness: the lord hath chosen sion to be a habitation for himself: he hath longed for her. this shall be my rest for ever: here will i dwell, for i have a delight therein. (cxxxii. , .) in other words, the community which speaks in the psalter is more than a nation; she is a theocracy, a church. her characteristic names are prophetic; they suggest supernatural dealings and a heavenly calling. she is "israel," heiress of him who "persevered with god" and won the blessing; she is the "seed of abraham," in which it was promised that "all the nations of { } the earth should be blessed"; she is "sion," the "stronghold," "jerusalem," name of ideals, "vision" or "possession" or "foundation"--"of peace"! it is as this sacred congregation, this _ecclesia_, that the nation rejoices in the psalms in her calling and illumination, sorrows over her failures, prays in her warfare, waits for her glory. it is not surprising that the catholic church recognised here her own portrait, or that the outlines sketched in the psalter have been filled with light and colour and detail during the christian centuries. the catholic church instinctively felt herself to be the true successor of the israel of the psalms. the ancient titles were retained, but in a fuller meaning. to s. paul the church is the "israel of god" (gal. vi. ) in contrast to the "israel after the flesh." the author of the epistle to the hebrews tells his christian readers that they are "come unto mount sion" (xii. ). s. peter applies to the church the old titles given to israel in the law, "an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" ( peter ii. ). s. john in the apocalypse sees the new jerusalem, having not only the names of "the twelve apostles of the lamb" on her jewelled foundations, but the names of the "twelve tribes of the children of israel" on { } her gates of pearl (rev. xxi. , ). old things had passed away, the sacred people of god remained, but no longer confined to the narrow boundaries of palestine, nor to the dispersed descendants of abraham: her children were "princes in all lands," all who were "of faith" were counted her seed. the church knew herself to be the israel of the future, custodian of a greater treasure, called to a grander work. the psalter indeed demands this higher interpretation. just as the portrait of the righteous one would have been an unfulfilled ideal had not christ made it his own, so the glowing descriptions of israel would have been but pious dreamings had not the catholic church risen up out of the fallen tabernacle of david. as the songs of the temple falter and die away, the new spirit of praise clothes itself in the ancient forms. "from the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, glory to the righteous" (is. xxiv. ). the very words of the psalter become transfigured like the garments of the lord on the holy mount. nor is this passing away of the glory of old israel into the greater glories of the catholic israel of god without some foreshadowing in the psalter itself. in the nd, the great { } psalm of the passion, the sufferer passes from the dogs and lions and the mocking faces that surround him to contemplate the far-off fruit of his anguish. he seems to see "a great congregation," in the midst of which he himself hereafter will praise god who has heard his prayer. mysteriously it seems to rise, this "seed," this "people that shall be born," out of the very hopelessness and desolation of the cross. "all the ends of the earth" are united in it, "all the kindred of the nations" worship there. the rich and the poor alike have their place in this kingdom of the future. and the special characteristic of this new creation of god will be the sharing in a sacrificial feast, the sufferer's thanksgiving, his eucharist in which he "pays his vows." here "the meek shall eat and be satisfied," here eating and worshipping are strangely intermingled--a prophecy unread and unfulfilled until the church learnt the secret "in the same night that he was betrayed." "therefore we, before him bending, this great sacrament revere; types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here." this ecclesiastical aspect of the psalter is { } of very high importance. there is perhaps no part of the christian faith which is more difficult for "the natural man" than "the holy catholic church." an erroneous or imperfect idea of the church seems to pass muster, among christians even, so much more readily than error in other matters of faith. all through christian history the true idea of the church has been obscured, now by imperialism, with its misleading traditions of the roman empire; now by nationalism, as if the church were only the religious aspect of a civil community; or again by individualism, as if she were no more than a collection of separate units. erastianism and puritanism in turn have led men astray. the warning against such things is written largely enough in the history of ancient israel. the jews of our lord's time, while insisting keenly, even bitterly, on their separation from the gentiles, were for the most part forgetful of what that separation really involved. their ambition to be separate from the nations of the earth only meant for them a worldly and selfish exclusiveness. in earlier days the clamour for a king, the thirst for alliances with egypt and assyria and babylon, had displayed in the opposite manner much the same spirit. religious privileges, that divine calling which { } had made them a nation, were to be used as a means to worldly advancement and security. in the psalter there stands out a truer conception of the church as the spiritual commonwealth, a kingdom of god in the world, but not of this world's spirit, organised for higher ends than self-protection or self-development, aiming not at conquest but at the conversion and good of mankind, glorying not in privilege but in vocation, not in self but in the law of god. and this is the pattern for all time. the christian church may find in the psalter her own just self-expression in a fuller manner than ever ancient israel did or could. indeed, we may trace indelibly stamped on the psalter the true lineaments of the ideal church. first in the psalter there is the note of _comprehensiveness_. the heathen, the nations, so often denounced or prayed against in the psalms, are, after all, not so much those who are outside the boundaries of israel as those who are alien from her spirit. they are communities, societies, untouched by grace, governed by passion and worldly ambitions rather than by conscience or the divine law. and side by side with threats and foreboding of their utter destruction in the day of god there are glimpses here and there of the possibility of { } their conversion, and even of their becoming one family with israel. the great psalm of whitsunday, the th, passes from the thought of god wounding the head of his enemies, of his warriors dipping their feet in the blood of the vanquished, to the hope of the princes coming out of egypt, and ethiopia making haste to stretch out her hands unto god. so, again, the th psalm looks forward to the essential sovereignty of god over all the earth being recognised even by this world's rulers: the princes of the people are joined unto the people of the god of abraham.[ ] and lest it should be thought that such hopes referred only to an empire of external rule, like that of solomon's, we have the startling predictions of ps. lxxxvii. here the people of rahab (egypt) and babylon, the philistines, the tyrians, the ethiopians, all types of the obstinate and idolatrous heathen world, are pictured as forsaking their natural lineage and descent to be born again in zion, enrolling themselves there as citizens of the lord's { } glorious foundation upon the holy mountains, finding there their joy and the fount of their inspiration. the lord shall count, when he writeth up the peoples: this one was born _there_. they that sing as well as they that dance shall say, all my fountains are in thee. (r.v.) surely this is one of the most remarkable foreshadowings in the old testament of the catholicity of the church, and of that new birth of baptism by which men of every race and tongue are grafted into the one body, "where there cannot be greek and jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, scythian, bondman, freeman: but christ is all, and in all" (col. iii. ). in this and in many other psalms (_cf._ lxvii., xcviii., c.) we confess the essentially _missionary_ vocation of the church; that she calls to all mankind, not to the western nations only, nor to the progressive and civilised only. hers is the one faith for all men, her citizenship unlimited by any barriers of race or temperament. if the catholicity of the church is so clearly sketched in the psalter, no less clear is { } her _social_ ideal. the poor, the oppressed, those who have no helper, are equally called to share in israel's hope and her gifts. god himself is her pattern, who-- taketh up the simple out of the dust: and lifteth the poor out of the mire; that he may set him with the princes: even with the princes of his people. (cxiii.) the messianic king will count the blood of the poor and needy equally precious with that of the rich and great (lxxii.). the sufferer of the passion psalm (xxii.) looks forward, as we have seen, to the result of his triumph, in not only calling the "fat ones of the earth" to eat and worship at his table, but in finding there an equal place for-- even him that cannot keep his soul alive. (xxii. , r.v.) these are lessons which we have as yet gone but a little way in learning. yet the psalter, as we recite it day by day, puts in our own mouth the condemnation of exclusiveness and pride and of deafness to the complaint of the poor; it makes us confess at least the catholic { } ideal of unity, of universal justice, of the imperishable value of the individual life, of the transformation of human society in the light of the divine sovereignty of christ. the two lines of the church's activity just alluded to, missionary and social, so prominent in the psalms, are calling to-day so loudly for self-humiliation and new effort, that they may profitably be dwelt on a little further. the psalmist's prophecy of the kings of arabia and saba bringing gifts (lxxii.) is still largely unfulfilled. the east is still almost untouched. asia has not yet brought her characteristic gift to christ. she is still under the dominion of imperfect religions--buddhism, hinduism, islam. and yet india is our possession; japan is our pupil. "the way of the kings of the east" is already "prepared" (rev. xvi. ), but where is the adequate response from english christianity? "who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger that i send?" and turning homewards, what are we to say of these grotesque and monstrous contrasts between wealth and poverty, luxury and squalor in england to-day, where rich and poor alike are baptized? what of the immoralities of commerce, of the bad work of the labourer as well as the swindling of the capitalist? does { } not the spirit of the psalter cut across it all like the keen breath of the mountain wind? yet englishmen are spending time and energy in ritual debates and persecutions, and educational and social strife. worse still, the rich and intellectual, for some prejudice or political motive, are eager to deny the poor the beauties of worship or the definiteness of the catholic faith. surely thou hast seen it: for thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong. (x. .) in view of these unfulfilled ideals of the church, the psalter provides us in such psalms as the th, the th, or the th with confession of sin and failure under the figure of hebrew history. the recitation of these may well remind us not merely of personal faults but of our own share in the shortcomings of the church of god: we have sinned with our fathers: we have done amiss and dealt wickedly. for the church as well as ourselves we are taught to pray, "turn us again, o lord god of hosts." the sorrows and desolations of zion are never represented in the psalms as being _merely_ the effect of heathen malice, { } though they are so largely that, but as calls to look back upon history, and also to look within, to consider what unfaithfulness there may have been and is, what "starting aside like a broken bow" in our fathers and in ourselves. from this point of view the penitential psalms"[ ] might profitably be used not merely as the expression of personal penitence, but as an act of reparation, an offering to god of our sorrow for the worldliness and imperfections of his church; as an incentive also to effort, that we may do our part to remove the "reproach of the heathen," to restore the church from within, to seek her unity and peace. there is, however, another side to the problem of the church's failures. israel and jerusalem are constantly described in the psalms as being the marks for the malignity and opposition of external enemies. indeed, a persistent note of the church, jewish as well as christian, is the hatred which she awakens in the powers of this world. the object of suspicion and attack from egypt, assyria, and babylon in early days, jerusalem fares no better after the humiliation of the captivity. the attempts to { } rebuild the temple and restore the city arouse the bitterest hostility from the surrounding peoples, a hostility not merely political, but traceable to a deeper cause. the attempts of antiochus epiphanes in the second century b.c. to break down jewish separation and to destroy jewish worship are marked by the same spirit, working in a more arrogant and brutal manner. our lord himself promises no smoother or more popular course for his faithful ones. "ye shall be hated of all men." s. paul recognises the same antagonism running throughout the history of the elect: "as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now" (gal. iv. ). the psalter will not allow us to shut our eyes to this malignant and persecuting attitude of the world. the enemies of the righteous find a place in almost every psalm. the malice of human nature at its worst seems to be marshalled against him, in slander and ingratitude and treachery. but there is also the opposition of the heathen as a whole against israel. the vicissitudes of her history are typical; they illustrate a permanent principle which is found working from age to age. it was not less active nor less brutal in the first three christian centuries { } than it was in the days of antiochus. to-day, though its attack is less outwardly cruel, the spirit which prompts it is just as deeply seated, and more malignant perhaps in proportion as it is veiled. the church has not merely to contend with the hatred of those who have chosen and loved evil, and find the righteous a standing reproach. there is gathered against her also the world's steady resentment of spiritual authority; the world's antipathy against all that refuses to come to terms, or water down its witness to suit changing fashions of men's thought. it is the same spirit which in earlier days called the christians "the enemies of the human race," and in these later times directs its sneers and opposition against the creeds, the sacraments, the priesthood--"the spirit of antichrist." the th psalm, perhaps belonging to the time of the great maccabæan struggle, makes its pathetic appeal to god amidst the scorn and blasphemy of the heathen, and, what is worse, the bitterness of apparent failure and defeat which seem to justify the heathen. my confusion is daily before me: the shame of my face hath covered me: { } for the voice of the slanderer and blasphemer: for the enemy and avenger. faith indeed does not fail the psalmist: he clings to god; he still recognises the hand of god throughout these sufferings; he prefers to attribute them to god rather than to man: _thou_ makest us to turn our backs upon our enemies: ... _thou_ lettest us be eaten up like sheep: ... _thou_ sellest thy people for nought: and takest no money for them. nevertheless, it is all a puzzle, a bewildering maze in which faith seems walking blindfold, like the lord himself when the malice of the high-priest's servants bandaged his eyes and smote him in derision and bade him prophesy! the light of god's presence seems to have gone out of the world: wherefore hidest thou thy face: and forgettest our misery and trouble. very similar is the th psalm, with its same high consciousness of faithfulness to god, the same agonising sense of contradiction in the enemies of god being suffered to break down { } the carved work of the sanctuary, the same feeling of helplessness and lack of guidance. the adversaries' banners are manifest enough, _their_ tokens are clear; but with the faithful it is otherwise: we see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more. o god, how long! ... remember! ... arise! ... forget not! probably of the same period is the th, written apparently in the very hour of the heathen triumph, when the temple is defiled, jerusalem "an heap of stones," the blood of the righteous flowing on every side like water. and there is still the characteristic turning away from self and personal humiliation to the thought of the dishonour done to god himself. for to the faithful the honour of god is dearer than their own liberty or life. help us, o god of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: o deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for thy name's sake. the rd belongs perhaps to an earlier age. it seems to recall the great confederacy of the nations against jehoshaphat ( chron. xx.). the psalmist cries out to god against the { } gathering hordes who have no interest in common, except their mutual hatred of israel and israel's god. it is a sorry catalogue: edomites, ishmaelites, moabites, hagarens; gebal, ammon, and amalek; philistines, tyrians, assyrians: "all the warring hosts of error sworn against her, move as one." but the hot indignation which prays that this rabble of malice and mischief may be swept like the stubble before the whirlwind, consumed like the dry grass before the mountain fires, is yet tempered with a higher thought. defeat may lead to conversion and to a better mind: make their faces ashamed, o lord: that they may seek thy name. once again, the nd psalm breathes out the pathetic appeal of the exile, or the lonely, friendless watcher over the desolations of the holy city. his heart is "smitten down and withered like grass"; he has "eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled his drink with weeping." but his fasting and tears are not for himself; there is the eternal background of hope; god is unchanging; future generations { } will know again the happiness of worship and service--his sorrow is for zion: thy servants think upon her stones: and it pitieth them to see her in the dust. do not experiences and prayers like these come home to christians with a curious sense of familiarity? is not this tragedy of faith repeated in every age? in every christian generation it has been "given" to the beast to war against the saints and overcome them (rev. xiii. ). his undying malice has too often been seconded by the impotence, the lack of unity, the fear of truth and its consequences, which have marred the christian defence. we find eloquent illustrations of this unceasing, heart-sickening warfare in such moments of history as that in the fourth century, when "the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself arian";[ ] in the seventh and eighth, when the armies of islam swept away the divided and bickering churches of the east and that church of north africa, once so glorious, where holiness had not kept pace with zeal; in the fifteenth, { } when constantinople fell, and the great cathedral of s. sophia passed into the hands of the turks, and this very day, where once christian worship was offered, and christian emblems high on its walls still make their silent protest, "moslem prayers profane at morn and eve come sounding;" in the sixteenth, when the fair abbeys of england were despoiled and suffered to fall into ruin, through covetousness and irreligion masquerading under the garb of piety; in the seventeenth, when the voice of the church's worship was stifled, and the faithful were interrupted in their very christmas communion by the levelled muskets of the cromwellian troopers[ ]; in our own day, when liberality can tolerate everything except the catholic faith? verily these hebrew psalms are a christian possession for ever. they speak to us and speak for us in accents of undying truth, and every year that passes verifies their witness and points more sharply their appeal. but not only does the psalter tell of the church and her ideals, of her warfare and her failures, it insists with equal conviction on her _stability_. god's great promise to the line of { } david carried with it the preservation of david's city. the attacks of the heathen seemed to have reached their climax when sennacherib's army had taken all the fortified cities of judæa, and jerusalem was left isolated and helpless ( kings xix.). yet when human hope was gone, the prophet's word rang out with the certainty of faith. "i will defend this city to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant david's sake." the sequel was one of the most startling catastrophes in history. the assyrian hosts were destroyed in a single night, and assyrian invasions ceased. again, in a later generation, when the promise seemed at last to have failed, and the temple had fallen, the city was burnt and her king and citizens in captivity, the prophets never waver in their vision of a future restoration when sin has been repented and national guilt expiated. zerubbabel and joshua, ezra and nehemiah, judas maccabæus and his descendants, restore and maintain temple and city to last till "the fulness of the time," when the true meaning of the davidic promises was revealed. the sense of this supernatural continuance has left its mark on the psalms. the rout of the assyrian armies is commemorated in one at least, the th: { } the proud are robbed, they have slept their sleep: and all the men whose hands were mighty have found nothing. at thy rebuke, o god of jacob: both the chariot and horse are fallen. the secret of victory preludes the psalm. jerusalem is the seat of god's special presence: at salem is his tabernacle: and his dwelling in sion. the th may also refer to the same event. the flood of heathen invasion is breaking itself in vain against the walls of the city of god: god is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed: god shall help her, and that right early. the great historical psalm, the th, speaks at its close of the hill of sion and the temple "built there on high" as coeval with the earth itself; its foundation is "like the ground which he hath made continually."[ ] and the later { } psalms seem even to unite sion and jerusalem and the sacred nation with the very eternity of god himself: this shall be my rest for ever. * * * * * the lord thy god, o sion, shall be king for evermore. * * * * * praise the lord, o jerusalem: praise thy god, o sion. for he hath made fast the bars of thy gates: and hath blessed thy children within thee. (cxxxii. , cxlvi. , cxlvii. , .) the end of earthly jerusalem, when it came, was no less significant than her long continuance. the double destruction of the city by the roman armies (a.d. and a.d. ) was consummated by the strangeness of the failure of julian the apostate to rebuild and re-establish the temple; flames burst out from the foundations and the workmen fled in terror.[ ] but long before this the christian church had recognised that in her world-wide citizenship and her worship, confined no longer { } (as the lord had foretold) either to jerusalem or a mountain in samaria, she had inherited in fuller measure these promises of continuance. had it not been said, when the great apostle made his confession of christ's divinity, "upon this rock i will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it"? and in this consciousness the catholic church rightly appropriated to herself the songs of sion's confidence. just as early christian art set above the altars the figure of the living christ enthroned as the eternal king of the universe, so the church has always known in her darkest moments that her continuance is as certain as her master's throne; and that as he remains the same, though the heavens and the earth decay, and are changed as a garment, the promise of the nd psalm is hers for ever: the children of thy servants shall continue: and their seed snail stand fast in thy sight. once again, the psalmists feel that as israel, the church, is in a sense partaker in god's own eternity, so she is, even on earth, a shadow of his essential beauty, she appeals with his attractiveness to the soul of man. hence the { } christian finds in the psalter words in which he may express his joy in his calling in the church, his love and delight in his heavenly citizenship; words which may also remind him that, in spite of all the failures and littlenesses of the visible church, it is through her that he is in touch with the ideal and the invisible. thus in no mere partisan or ecclesiastical spirit we are invited in the psalms to express our love of the catholic church. on whit sunday, the church's birthday, we take up the ancient strain of affection: the hill of sion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth. we gaze with awe upon her jewelled foundations and her jasper walls; we wander with delight in her spacious golden streets: walk about sion, and go round about her: and tell the towers thereof. mark well her bulwarks, set up her houses:[ ] that ye may tell them that come after. for this god is our god for ever and ever: he shall be our guide unto death. (xlviii.) { } in another psalm, the nd, one of the pilgrim-psalms recited of old as the faithful drew near to jerusalem, we contemplate with joy and self-forgetfulness the ideal unity of the church as the true centre of the earth, and as "the seat of judgment" to which all this world's shams and shadows must come sooner or later for their reformation or their sentence: o pray for the peace of jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. peace be within thy walls: and plenteousness within thy palaces. for my brethren and companions' sakes: i will wish thee prosperity. yea, because of the house of the lord our god: i will seek to do thee good. it is an aspiration that should find an echo in the heart of every faithful son of the church, especially in such "a day of trouble and of rebuke and blasphemy" as our own. thus while we recognise in the psalter the expression, put into our lips by the holy spirit, of our own personal struggles and joys and sorrows in the spiritual life, while we remember with awe and gratitude that the { } eternal son of god himself here speaks and prays and suffers as one of us, we shall find here also the voice of our corporate consciousness, our life and worship as citizens even on earth of that "jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all." and so as we conclude every psalm in the church's service with the _gloria_, with that confession of our faith which prophets and kings would fain have known and knew not, let us lift up our hearts and give glory to the father, who has revealed to us his name; glory to the son, who has vouchsafed in all things to be made like unto us his brethren; glory to the holy ghost, whose word and power in the church is undying, who is still bringing forth from the ancient treasury old things which are ever new. gloria patri, et filio: et spiritui sancto. sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in sæcula sæculorum. amen. [ ] the princes of the people are gathered together, to be the people of the god of abraham. (r.v.) [ ] vi., xxxii., xxxviii., li., cii., cxxx., cxliii. [ ] "ingemuit totus orbis et se arianum esse miratus est" (s. jerome). [ ] evelyn's diary: dec. , . [ ] the earth which he hath established for ever (r.v.). [ ] gibbon, _decline and fall_, c. xxiii. [ ] "consider her palaces" (r.v.). { } notes a. the extent to which the psalms were used liturgically by the jews in temple and synagogue is not at all fully known. the following list of uses is interesting in itself, but probably does not by any means cover the whole field. and it seems certain, from the free and natural way in which the psalms are referred to in the new testament, that, even if a comparatively small number were used in the public services, the psalter must have been very familiar indeed to the pious jew of our lord's time and have formed practically his book of private devotion. daily in the temple (and probably elsewhere): _first day_. ps. xxiv. the earth is the lord's, etc. _second day_. ps. xlviii. great is the lord. _third day_. ps. lxxxii. god standeth in the congregation. _fourth day_. ps. xciv. o lord god, to whom vengeance belongeth. { } _fifth day_. ps. lxxxi. sing we merrily unto god our strength. _sixth day_. ps. xciii. the lord is king. _sabbath day_. ps. xcii. it is a good thing to give thanks. the passover, and on other great festivals. the hallel, probably pss. cxiii.-cxviii. feast of tabernacles: _first day_. ps. cv. o give thanks. _second day_. ps. xxix. bring unto the lord. _third day_. ps. l. . but unto the ungodly said god. _fourth day_. ps. xciv. . who will rise up with me. _fifth day_. ps. xciv. . take heed, ye unwise. _sixth day_. ps. lxxxi. . i eased his shoulder. pss. cxx.-cxxxiv. songs of degrees. _seventh day_. ps. lxxxii. . they will not be learned. new moon of seventh or sabbatical month. ps. lxxxi. sing we merrily. dedication. the hallel, as at the passover. presentation of first-fruits. ps. cxxii. i was glad. ps. xxx. i will magnify thee, o lord. b. the allusions to the singing of psalms in the new testament shew that it was from the first a recognised christian devotion, both in public and private (acts xvi. ; cor. xiv. ; eph. v. ; { } james v. ). this is borne out by the evidence of the christian fathers (see, for example, s. athanasius' _epistle to marcellinus_; s. aug. _confess._ ix. ; s. jerome, ep. xlvi.). but it was no doubt the rise of the monastic life in egypt and its subsequent spread over the whole church in the fourth and fifth centuries that led by its disciplined devotion to the systematic arrangement of the psalter for daily services and to its continuous recitation. many of the early monks, indeed, recited the whole psalter daily; but the western use, settled traditionally by s. gregory the great, aimed at a weekly recitation, and this system in theory dominated the breviary services all through the middle ages. the normal arrangement of the psalter in the daily offices was, roughly speaking, as follows: at _mattins_, ps. i.-cix., divided into nine "nocturns," three of which were said on sunday, and one on each of the following week-days, beginning each day with the th, the invitatory psalm. at _lauds_, pss. lxiii., lxvii., cxlviii.-cl., with certain other varying psalms. at _prime_, always ps. liv. and the first four portions of the th, and one varying psalm. at _terce_, the next six portions of the th. at _sext_, the next six portions of the th. at _none_, the last six portions of the th. at _vespers_, pss. cx.-cxlvii., divided into seven portions, omitting the th. at _compline_, iv., xxxi. - , xci., cxxxiv. { } thus the bulk of the psalms were said at the two offices which corresponded most closely to our morning and evening prayer; some few were said daily, the st was said at every one of the offices, and the others were said weekly. but in practice a festival arrangement of the psalms, in which a much smaller number, and chiefly of the shorter psalms, were recited, was largely substituted for the normal or ferial use, thus justifying the criticism of our reformers, "now of late time a few of them have been daily said and the rest utterly omitted." the following special uses are also interesting: the office of the dead: _vespers_ (the "placebo"): cxvi., cxx., cxxi., cxxx., cxxxviii. _mattins_ (the "dirge"): v., vi., vii.; xxiii., xxv., xxvii., xl., xli., xlii. _lauds_: li., lxv., lxiii., cxlviii.-cl., cxlv. preparation for mass: lxxxiv., lxxxv., lxxxvi., cxvi. ., cxxx., xliii. thanksgiving after mass: cl. c. antiphons were originally verses sung as a refrain between each verse of the psalms, one side of the choir taking the former and the other the latter. the refrain varied at different seasons and festivals. an example of this early and more elaborate use survived in the breviary in the treatment of the venite as an invitatory psalm. but gradually, for the sake of brevity, this method { } was abandoned, and the normal use of antiphons in the breviary was simply after (or on festivals before and after) each psalm or set of psalms. the advantage of the antiphon lay in the fact that it shewed at once with what particular intention the psalm was sung, as the same psalm naturally might be sung on many different occasions and with reference to a different season or festival. but the very complex nature of the antiphons or "anthems" led the english reformers to abandon them altogether; "many times," as they said, "there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out." the only traces of antiphons left in the prayer book are: ( ) "o sapientia," in the kalendar on december , the first words of the first of the "greater antiphons" to the magnificat, which began on that day and continued till christmas eve, each commencing with some striking old testament title of the messiah; ( ) in the litany, the repetition of the words, "o lord, arise," etc., shews that this is the antiphon to the psalm "o god, we have heard" (perhaps originally the whole of ps. xliv., but now one verse only); ( ) the words "o saviour of the world," etc., in the office for the visitation of the sick. the last is the best example: the antiphon connects the recitation of ps. lxxi. with the passion of our lord; the _intention_ of the psalm is thus shewn to be the association of our sufferings in sickness with { } the cross of christ (_cf._ the second exhortation in the same office). d. helps to the study of the psalter. _literal meaning_: kirkpatrick, in the _cambridge bible_ ( vols.). the introduction is extremely useful, and an excellent list of the literature bearing on the psalter is also given. perowne, _the book of psalms_. cheyne, _the book of psalms_. barry, _teacher's prayer book_. _mystical and spiritual meaning_: neale and littledale, _commentary on the psalms_ ( vols.). this has a very valuable introduction on the psalms as used in the offices of the church, and a dissertation (in vol. i.) on the mystical and literal interpretation of the psalms. walpole, _the people's psalter_. _general_: prothero, _the psalms in human life_. marson, _the psalms at work_. church, _the sacred poetry of early religions_, in _the gifts of civilisation_. _the discipline of the christian character_, iii. robertson smith, _the old testament in the jewish church_, lect. vii. orr, _the problem of the old testament_, c. xii. alexander (archbishop), _the witness of the psalms to christ_. { } appendix _brief suggestions as to the christian use of each psalm_ the following suggestions, which follow the lines of the preceding lectures, do not claim any special authority, except in cases noted, where the new testament or the church's actual use has appropriated a psalm to some particular christian application. psalm i. _beatus vir_ the church's witness to the blessedness of the life of holiness, based on obedience to the revealed word of god (the great example of which is the life of christ himself); with which is contrasted the eternal failure of the ungodly. psalm ii. _quare fremuerunt gentes?_ acts iv. - . easter day, morning (prayer book) the futile warfare of the princes of this world against christ and his church. the certainty { } of christ's victory and his universal kingdom, as seen in his resurrection and ascension. psalm iii. _domine, quid multiplicati?_ [introit for second mass on easter day, in prayer book] christ's victory in his resurrection over all his enemies; the blessedness of his church. psalm iv. _cum invocarem_ the deliverance of christ from the contradiction of sinners. the church's certainty of salvation in christ, both in this life and in that which is to come, contrasted with the doubts and uncertain riches of the world. [one of the compline psalms, in which the christian commends himself to sleep in christ.] psalm v. _verba mea auribus_ a psalm illustrating the life of prayer, public and private; witnessing to prayer and meditation as the source of inward strength and guidance, both in the life of christ and in that of his people, in the face of this world's treachery and cruelty. [one of the psalms for the dirge (whence it derives its name, ver. , "dirige"), referring to god's leading the departed soul through the attacks of evil spirits to its rest in him.] { } psalm vi. _domine, ne in furore_ ash wednesday, morning (prayer book) the prayer of the human soul suffering the temporal punishments, bodily and mental, of sin. christ himself endured these sufferings to the utmost, not for himself, but for his people, and in this sense it, with the other penitential psalms, may be called a psalm of the incarnation. psalm vii. _domine, deus meus_ the declaration of the innocency of christ against the persecution and treachery of his enemies; his appeal to the father's justice. psalm viii. _domine, dominus noster_ heb. ii. ascension day, morning (prayer book) the glory of god's name (or revelation of himself) in nature and in the incarnation. the triumph and universal empire of christ as the son of man, and the second adam. psalm ix. _confitebor tibi_ thanksgiving for the triumph of god's righteousness in christ, which is the pledge of the future destruction of all evil. psalm x. _ut quid, domine?_ continues the thought of ps. ix., and prays for the manifestation of god's righteousness in christ, { } in view of the continuance of evil, the apparent immunity of the wicked, and their unceasing warfare against the church. psalm xi. _in domino confido_ a psalm of the passion of christ; his faith in the father's righteousness, and in the ultimate overthrow of the wicked. psalm xii. _salvum me fac_ a prayer of christ and his church against the evil tongues of the wicked; with these are contrasted the purity and certainty of the divine revelation, "the words of the lord." psalm xiii. _usque quo, domine?_ a prayer of christ and his faithful ones in view of the approach of death. psalm xiv. _dixit insipiens_ rom. ii. - the judgment of the world's unbelief, contrasted with the church's faith, and her hope in the coming of christ. psalm xv. _domine, quis habitabit?_ ascension day, morning (prayer book) the human perfections of christ, enthroned in heaven as the son of man. { } also a picture of the saintly life, in union with christ, who is god's tabernacle among men (rev. xxi. ). psalm xvi. _conserva me, domine_ acts ii. - . [introit for easter day, prayer book of ] christ's devotion to the father; his preservation through death and the grave; his resurrection and eternal joy at the right hand of the father. psalm xvii. _exaudi, domine_ a prayer of christ and his church against the temptations of the world, in view of the hope of the resurrection and the life everlasting. psalm xviii. _diligam te, domine_ the triumph of christ (under the figure of david); his universal empire. psalm xix. _coeli enanant_ rom. x. . christmas day, morning (prayer book) the church's thanksgiving for god's word in nature, in the incarnation, in the bible; and her prayer for faithfulness. { } psalm xx. _exaudiat te dominus_ king's accession (prayer book) the church's witness to christ her king as he goes forth to battle in the power of his finished sacrifice. suitable also as a prayer for a christian ruler, whose strength is in christ. psalm xxi. _domine, in virtute tua_ ascension day, morning (prayer book) the church's joy in the triumph of christ; in the father's answer to his prayer, and in his glorious coronation as the son of man. psalm xxii. _deus, deus meus_ matt. xxvii. - (with parallels in other evangelists), heb. ii. . good friday, morning (prayer book) christ's prayer in his passion and crucifixion; his prophecy of the calling of his church, and of the eucharist. (see above, pp. , .) psalm xxiii. _dominus regit me_ john x. - , - the church's confession of faith in christ the good shepherd, and in his sacramental gifts. psalm xxiv. _domini est terra_ ascension day, evening (prayer book) the joy of the church and of the angels in the ascension of christ, the king of glory. { } psalm xxv. _ad te, domine, levavi_ a confession of faith in the name of god; the church's prayer for deliverance from temptation and adversity. psalm xxvi. _judica me, domine_ a prayer of christ as he approaches his passion; and of the christian priest when about to offer the holy eucharist. psalm xxvii. _dominus illuminatio_ the hope of christ and his church in the fatherhood of god; a prophecy of the resurrection and the holy eucharist (vv. , ). psalm xxviii. _ad te, domine_ the prayer of christ for deliverance from his enemies; and for his church (ver. ). psalm xxix. _afferte domino_ the church's thanksgiving for the sovereignty of christ over all the powers of nature, and over his church. psalm xxx. _exaltabo te, domine_ a thanksgiving of christ and his church for the resurrection. { } psalm xxxi. _in te, domine, speravi_ s. luke xxiii. christ's prayer in his passion and crucifixion; his exhortation to his church (vv. , ). psalm xxxii. _beati, quorum_ rom. iv. - . ash wednesday, morning (prayer book) the church's confession of sin, and the blessedness of forgiveness through faith in christ. (see on ps. vi.) psalm xxxiii. _exultate, justi_ the church's thanksgiving for creation and redemption, and for her own exceeding blessedness in being called to be the people of the lord. psalm xxxiv. _benedicam domino_ a thanksgiving of christ for his resurrection. his call to his church to obedience, to holiness, to courage. psalm xxxv. _judica, domine_ a prayer of christ against the persecution and false witness of his enemies, and on behalf of those who love him. psalm xxxvi. _dixit infustus_ the church's witness to the awfulness of sin; { } her confession of hope in the blessedness of the life eternal in contrast with the doom of the ungodly. psalm xxxvii. _noli cemulari_ a psalm of a proverbial character; the testimony of the church's experience of the justice of god, in spite of the apparent prosperity of the wicked: it expresses the _restfulness_ of the life of faith. _cf._ ver. ii with matt. v. . psalm xxxviii. _domine, ne in furore_ ash wednesday, morning (prayer book) a psalm of christ bearing in loneliness and silence the burden of human sin, confessing it on man's behalf to the father, and praying for our salvation. psalm xxxix. _dixi, custodiam_ burial of the dead (prayer book) continues in some respects the tone of the previous psalm. it may be regarded as a psalm of christ bearing the sorrow of man's mortality, and interceding on man's behalf with the father. psalm xl. _expectans expectavi_ heb. x. - . good friday, morning (prayer book) a psalm of christ's incarnation, passion, sin-bearing, and resurrection; it expresses the { } secret of his atonement (see above, pp. , ) and his fulfilment of o.t. prophecy (ver. ). psalm xli. _beatus qui intelligit_ john xiii. a psalm of christ's compassion; and of the treachery of his enemies, especially of judas. psalm xlii. _quemadmodum_ [introit for burial of the dead, prayer book of ] a psalm of christ's human soul in his earthly pilgrimage, and in the prospect of death; his desire to return to the father. hence also suitable for the christian soul in sickness and dying. psalm xliii. _judica me, deus_ a continuation of the previous psalm. christ speaks in it to the father as he approaches his passion, and contemplates with joy the sacrifice he is about to offer for man. hence this psalm has long been used in the church as the immediate preparation of the priest for offering the holy eucharist. psalm xliv. _deus, auribus_ rom. viii. the appeal of the suffering and persecuted { } church to christ; her confession of faithfulness to that which he has entrusted to her keeping. psalm xlv. _enructavit cor meum_ heb. i. christmas day, morning (prayer book) the church celebrates the incarnation under the figure of a royal marriage. the bridegroom is christ himself, described in vv. - ; the bride, the king's daughter, is the church destined to spread into all lands. the "daughter of tyre" is symbolical of the heathen world coming to christ. the "queen" (or queen-mother) of ver. has often been interpreted of the blessed virgin. psalm xlvi. _deus nosier refugium_ a psalm of the church's confidence: she is conscious of the presence of christ and the holy spirit (ver. , r.v.) within her; and confesses that this is her eternal strength amidst the warfare and tumult of the world. psalm xlvii. _omnes gentes, plaudite_ ascension day, morning (prayer book) the joy of the church in the glorious ascension of christ; and in his universal sovereignty, which all the world will ultimately acknowledge. psalm xlviii. _magnus dominus_ whitsun day, morning (prayer book) the joy of the church in her ideal beauty and { } her steadfastness; and her sure hope of ultimate victory over all the powers of this world. [the psalm should be compared both with the promise of christ in matt. xvi. and the picture of the perfected church in rev. xxi., xxii.] psalm xlix. _audite hæc, omnes_ the church's meditation upon the vanity of human riches and greatness in view of death; the need of man's redemption through christ alone (vv. , ); the certainty of the resurrection of the faithful through the resurrection of christ. psalm . _deus deorum_ the second advent of christ as the final judge of the world, and especially of his church. psalm li. _miserere mei, deus_ ash wednesday (commination service) the church's confession of sin, and of failure to fulfil her great vocation in the world; her prayer to christ for forgiveness and restoration. (see on ps. vi.) psalm lii. _quid gloriaris?_ the church's challenge to "the prince of this world" and to antichrist; and the confession of her own eternal hope in christ. { } psalm liii. _dixit insipiens_ see on ps. xiv. psalm liv. _deus, in nomine_ good friday, morning (prayer book) a prayer of christ in his passion, and his self-consecration to the father. psalm lv. _exaudi, deus_ a prayer of christ in his loneliness and desolation, amidst the treachery of his enemies and especially of his false disciple. psalm lvi. _miserere mei, deus_ christ's complaint to the father against the contradiction of sinners; his confidence in the father's word, and his sure hope in his resurrection. psalm lvii. _miserere mei, deus_ easter day, morning (prayer book) the psalm of christ "glorified" through his passion and resurrection. psalm lviii. _si vere utique_ christ's judgment upon sinners; the vindication of divine justice. { } psalm lix. _eripe me de inimicis_ a prayer of christ in his passion against the malice of his enemies; his denunciation of their impenitence; his hope of the resurrection and the final vindication of divine justice. psalm lx. _deus, repulisti nos_ a prayer of the scattered and persecuted church, and the answer of the triumphant christ (under the figure of david's victories). psalm lxi. _exaudi, deus_ a prayer of the scattered church, praying to be established on the rock of christ; her confession of faith in the eternal royalty of christ. psalm lxii. _nonne deo?_ the church's confidence in christ her rock in contrast with the falsehood of the world and the deceitfulness of riches; her faith in the ultimate manifestation of the divine justice. psalm lxiii. _deus, deus meus_ a prayer of the exiled church; her joy in worship, and her confidence in the sovereignty of christ. psalm lxiv. _exaudi, deus_ a prayer of christ in his passion; the { } prediction of the overthrow of the jewish nation, and the continual testimony of this overthrow to the truth of christ. psalm lxv. _te decet hymnus_ the church's hope of her heavenly inheritance in christ, and of the regeneration of the earth by the river of his spiritual gifts. the psalm seems to be a forecast of the joy and prosperity of "the new heaven and the new earth." psalm lxvi. _jubilate deo_ thanksgiving after a storm at sea (prayer book) the thanksgiving of the church in the conversion of the world; she looks forward to the end of this world and her deliverance from its sufferings, and contemplates her entrance into the eternal worship of heaven. psalm lxvii. _deus misereatur_ alternative to nunc dimittis; holy matrimony (prayer book) the joy of the church in the conversion of the world to christ; her hope of god's blessing upon all her works. psalm lxviii. _exurgat deus_ whitsun day, morning (prayer book) the triumphant procession-hymn of the catholic { } church in her progress through the world; rejoicing in the gifts of the ascended christ, and in the hope of the conversion of the heathen. psalm lxix. _salvum me fac_ matt. xxvii. ; john ii. , xix. , ; rom. xv. . good friday, evening (prayer book) a psalm of the passion and crucifixion of christ; a denunciation of divine vengeance upon the jews; concluding with a prophecy of the calling and continuance of the church. psalm lxx. _deus in adjutorium_ a psalm similar in tone to the preceding; it may be applied to christ in his passion, or to the faithful ones who suffer with him, and look to him as redeemer. psalm lxxi. _in te, domine, speravi_ visitation of the sick (prayer book) a psalm of christ sharing our human life with its vicissitudes and troubles--born of mary, increasing in wisdom and stature, suffering persecution, proclaiming the gospel, dying, and rising "from the deep of the earth again" (ver. ). consequently it is a psalm of the saintly life in its conformity to christ, { } psalm lxxii. _deus, indicium_ matt. ii. - the church's joy in christ, as the son of david and the king of humanity. the peace and justice of his kingdom are described, its universality and eternity. psalm lxxiii. _quam bonus israel!_ a psalm of the inward struggle and victory of _faith_. christ himself may be heard speaking in it, as he is "the author and finisher of our faith," and in his human soul fought for us the battle of faith. so the psalm becomes the church's testimony to the individual believer of that ultimate answer to the trials of faith which is found in union with god through christ. psalm lxxiv. _ut quid, deus?_ a psalm of the church, persecuted and despoiled, appealing to the eternal sovereignty of christ over nature and man, as it has been revealed in all the history of the church, both under the old covenant and the new. psalm lxxv. _confitebimur tibi_ a dialogue, as it were, between christ and his church. he asserts his sovereignty over the world, his justice, and its ultimate vindication. { } psalm lxxvi. _notus in judæa_ a psalm of the victory of christ; of "the wrath of the lamb," and the final judgment of the world. psalm lxxvii. _voce mea ad dominum_ like ps. lxxiii., a psalm of the struggles of faith. the thought of god's past work in his church as revealed in history, and of his eternal years, is the church's consolation when he seems to hide his face. psalm lxxviii. _attendite, popule_ matt. xiii. ; _cf._ xxiii. the voice of christ recounting the history of his church, his patience and mercy with backslidings, his many deliverances; ending with his own incarnation and personal rule of his church, under the figure of david's call to the throne. psalm lxxix. _deus, venerunt_ a prayer of the church, especially of the martyrs and confessors, in time of persecution and bloodshed. psalm lxxx. _qui regis israel_ a prayer of the church when the light of god's presence waxes dim, when christ's vineyard is broken into by secular oppression. the church { } prays that christ's power may again be made known (ver. ) and that she herself may be converted. psalm lxxxi. _exultate deo_ the church's joy in her past deliverances; the warning voice of christ (ver. onwards) shewing that the church's own failures in loyalty are the cause of her oppressions. greater faithfulness would have brought deliverance, and greater joy in christ's sacramental gifts (ver. ). psalm lxxxii. _deus stetit_ john x. - the voice of christ bearing witness to the ideal greatness of man, and to man's failure in his responsibility as god's vicegerent in the world, especially in the administration of justice. he himself is set forth as the true and perfect judge of the world. psalm lxxxiii. _deus, quis similis?_ a prayer of the church against the confederacy of her enemies. she prays that their defeat may lead to their conversion to christ. psalm lxxxiv. _quam dilecta!_ a psalm of the church in her pilgrimage through this world. she expresses especially her joy in { } public worship, the comfort which the hope of the heavenly worship brings amidst human sorrows, and her eternal hope in christ. psalm lxxxv. _benedixisti, domine_ christmas day, morning (prayer book) a psalm of the church's joy in the incarnation, as the proof of forgiveness for the past, and the beginning of a new and better world. psalm lxxxvi. _inclina, domine_ a psalm of christ and of the christian soul, renewing the dedication of self to god, praying for strength against the trials of the world, and for the manifestation to the world of god's presence with those who love him. psalm lxxxvli. _fundamenta ejus_ a psalm describing the catholicity of the church, and the new birth of baptism whereby members of all nations become her citizens and find in her the source of all joy and refreshment. psalm lxxxviii. _domine deus_ good friday, evening (prayer book) a psalm of christ's desolation, the darkness on the cross, his death and burial and descent into hell. { } psalm lxxxix. _misericordias domini_ christmas day, evening (prayer book) the church's praise for the promises of the incarnation, and their fulfilment in the line of david. the certainty of the eternal reign of christ and the preservation of his church. at ver. the tone changes to prayer respecting the present eclipse of christ's glory, and the failures of his church. the psalm ends, as it were, with the appeal of christ himself to the father ( - ) for his suffering church. psalm xc. _domine, refugium_ burial of the dead (prayer book) the psalm of the church's hope in the eternity of god, and the unfailing nature of his purpose to restore man in christ, in contrast with man's mortality, his short life and earthly failure. psalm xci. _qui habitat_ a psalm of the trust of christ and of the christian soul in the providence of god, in the continual ministry of the angels, and in the final discomfiture of the powers of evil. psalm xcii. _bonum est confiteri_ a thanksgiving of christ for his resurrection and for the eternal hope of his church. { } psalm xciii. _dominus regnavit_ a psalm of the sovereignty of the ascended christ; his supremacy over nature and the storms of this world. psalm xciv. _deus ultionum_ a prayer of the church for the second coming of christ, and the manifestation of the divine justice; ending (ver. , etc.) with the expression of the church's patience, her acceptance of tribulation, and her sure confidence in the coming of christ. psalm xcv. _venite, exultemus_ heb. iii. -iv. . morning prayer, daily (prayer book) the church's prelude to worship: the expression of her joy and trust in god's creation and preservation; her daily warning against failure through unbelief (like israel of old) to enter into god's rest. psalm xcvi. _cantate domino_ the church's outburst of joy in the universal sovereignty of christ. she calls to the heathen world to acknowledge him, and looks forward with rapture to his second advent. psalm xcvii. _dominus regnavit_ the church's declaration to the world of the sovereignty of christ, and of his second advent. { } she reminds herself of the moral fruits of christ's kingdom, and of the christian joy which springs from his service. psalm xcviii. _cantate domino_ alternative to magnificat (prayer book) the triumph song of the church in the redeeming work of christ, in which she calls all nature and the heathen world to join. psalm xcix. _dominus regnavit_ again, a psalm of the sovereignty of christ. the church sings of the essential holiness of his kingdom, of his mercy and his chastisements, and calls on the world to worship him. psalm c. _jubilate deo_ alternative to benedictus (prayer book) the church's triumphant call to all the world to worship with her; she confesses her dependence on christ, and the unfailing truth of his gospel. psalm ci. _misericordiam et judicium_ king's accession (prayer book) a psalm of the church testifying her desire and endeavour to imitate both the mercy and the justice of christ, and to exercise just discipline over her members, remembering the judgment-seat of { } christ. a psalm also appropriate to a christian ruler, as the minister of christ. psalm cii. _domine exaudi_ heb. i. - . ash wednesday, evening (prayer book) this may be regarded in part as appropriate to our lord weeping over jerusalem; in a wider sense it is a psalm of the faithful sorrowing over the decay of the church, offering their penitence, looking forward to restoration, and trusting in the changelessness of christ, who remains the same though earth and heaven pass away, and has promised the like continuance to his church. psalm ciii. _benedic, anima mea_ a psalm of the church's thanksgiving for god's forgiveness in christ, for his love in the past and the certainty of its continuance in the future. angels and saints and the powers of nature are summoned to join in this thanksgiving. psalm civ. _benedic, anima mea_ whitsun day, evening (prayer book) the church's witness to the immanence of the word in all creation; she recognises this in the beauty, the order, the preservation of all forms of varied life. especially in the renewal of natural life (vv. - ) she recognises and praises { } the life-giving activity of the holy spirit, and sees in it a prophecy of the restoration of all things in the resurrection to their first perfection, and the final overthrow of evil. psalm cv. _confitemini domino_ a psalm of the church's thanksgiving as she reviews her history and the providence which has preserved her in all vicissitudes, and considers the eternal inheritance which is the reward of obedience. psalm cvi. _confitemini domino_ also an historical psalm, in which the church in time of exile and persecution recalls god's providence, and her many failures; she places her trust in the intercession of christ, of whom moses was a type, and prays for her restoration. psalm cvii. _confitemini domino_ thanksgiving after a storm at sea (prayer book) the church celebrates the age-long compassion of god towards the wanderer, the prisoner, the sufferer, as seen in the salvation of his church, and in the incarnation of the word (ver. ). the refrain (vv. , , , ) exhorts to thanksgiving, and especially to the offering of the holy eucharist (ver. ). { } psalm cviii. _paratum cor meum_ ascension day, evening (prayer book) a psalm of christ glorified in his resurrection, praying for his church and foretelling his future victories (under the figure of david's wars). the last three verses seem to be the prayer of the church and the voice of her confidence of ultimate triumph in christ. psalm cix. _deus laudem_ acts i. a psalm of christ's judgment upon impenitent sinners; his prayer for himself in his passion, and for his church in whose sufferings at the hands of sinners he himself is crucified afresh. psalm cx. _dixit dominus_ matt. xxii. - (parallels in mark and luke); acts ii. , ; heb. i. , v. -vii. christmas day, evening (prayer book) the church's witness to the divinity of christ, to his eternal priesthood, his warfare, sufferings, and victory. psalm cxi. _confitebor tibi_ easter day, morning (prayer book) a psalm of christ praising the father for his resurrection; in which his church also joins, commemorating the eucharist (ver. ), the new and { } eternal covenant, and the sacredness of the truth committed to her keeping. psalm cxii. _beatus vir_ the church's testimony to the blessedness of the life of faith, hope, and charity, of which she has seen the perfect example in christ himself. psalm cxiii. _laudate, pueri_ easter day, evening (prayer book) the world-wide joy of the church in the catholic faith of the incarnation, by which man is exalted from the dust of adam's fall, and is no longer "subject to vanity," but made equal to the angels. psalm cxiv. _in exitu israel_ easter day, evening (prayer book) the church's song of deliverance through the mighty power of the resurrection. a psalm also of the christian soul delivered from the egypt of this world, and crossing the jordan of death to the joy of the heavenly canaan. psalm cxv. _non nobis, domine_ a continuation of the previous psalm: the church's joy in the living god, in whom she hopes for life eternal; she calls upon priests and people alike to praise him. { } psalm cxvi. _dilexi, quoniam_ churching of women (prayer book) a thanksgiving of christ and his church for the resurrection; with reference especially to the offering of the eucharist, and the joy of holy communion, and also to the final rest and thanksgiving of the saints in paradise. psalm cxvii. _laudate dominum_ the church's call to the heathen world to praise god by conversion to the faith of christ. psalm cxviii. _confitemini domino_ matt. xxi. , , xxiii. (with parallels in mark and luke). easter day, evening (prayer book) the great psalm of thanksgiving by christ and his church for the resurrection, the victory over death and the judgment of the prince of this world. a psalm especially appropriate for sunday, and as a prelude to the church's worship in the holy eucharist. [it is the special psalm for sunday at prime in the breviary.] psalm cxix. _beati immaculati_ the characteristic psalm of the catholic church, in which she expresses her loyalty to and joy in { } all that god has revealed and commanded. it is animated throughout by the spirit of _sonship_, of which the perfect realisation is seen in christ himself. it may therefore be regarded as a psalm of christ, with whom the church associates herself in its recitation. psalm cxx. _ad dominum_ a psalm of the pilgrim church praying for peace and deliverance from the ceaseless and bitter warfare of this world. psalm cxxi. _levavi oculos_ accession service (prayer book) a psalm of the church's pilgrimage through this world's perils, as she journeys towards the eternal hills and the city of god. psalm cxxii. _lætatus sum_ the joy of the christian soul in the catholic church and in catholic worship. the hope of the church in her pilgrimage towards the heavenly jerusalem and the throne of christ. psalm cxxiii. _ad te levavi oculos meos_ a psalm of the pilgrim church amidst this world's scorn and contempt, expressing her absolute dependence upon christ. { } psalm cxxiv. _nisi quid dominus_ part of the hymn of thanksgiving for a victory at sea (prayer book) a psalm of the pilgrim church's deliverance from the storms and waves of this troublesome world; her unshaken confidence in christ. psalm cxxv. _qui confidunt_ the confidence of the pilgrim church in the unceasing protection of christ against the attacks of an evil world, and the apostasy of false christians. psalm cxxvi. _in convertendo_ the joy of the pilgrim church in her great deliverance from the captivity of this world; her hope that through tribulation she will be made perfect. psalm cxxvii. _nisi dominus_ churching of women (prayer book) a psalm of the pilgrim church confessing that her progress and her enlargement cannot be the fruit of human care and labour, but of the grace of christ only. psalm cxxviii. _beati omnes_ holy matrimony (prayer book) a psalm of the pilgrim church celebrating the consecration of human life and labour through the incarnation. { } psalm cxxix. _sæpe expugnaverunt_ a psalm of the warfare and persecutions of the pilgrim church, and of the vanity and fruitlessness of the attacks of her enemies. psalm cxxx. _de profundis_ ash wednesday, evening (prayer book) a psalm of the sorrows, the ceaseless watching, and the undying hope of the pilgrim church. especially appropriate to the souls of departed christians, the church expectant, who wait for the second advent. psalm cxxxi. _domine, non est_ a psalm of the pilgrim church expressing her humility, her submission to revelation, her unceasing trust in christ. psalm cxxxii. _memento, domine_ christmas day, evening (prayer book) a psalm in which the pilgrim church joyfully commemorates before god the incarnation of his son, and his age-long indwelling within her; and his gift in the eucharist (ver. ); and expresses her faith in the eternal sovereignty of christ. psalm cxxxiii. _ecce, quam bonum!_ a psalm in which the pilgrim church expresses her joy in her essential unity, the gift of the unction { } of the holy spirit poured upon her from the ascended christ. psalm cxxxiv. _ecce nunc_ a psalm of the pilgrim church as she contemplates her entry into the eternal sanctuary, the heavenly city of christ, and the fellowship of the angels in their unceasing praise. psalm cxxxv. _laudate nomen_ the church's thanksgiving for her calling in christ, and the eternal rule of christ over nature and man; she expresses her confidence in the living christ who dwells within her, in contrast with this world's idolatries. psalm cxxxvi. _confitemini_ a psalm of the church's thanksgiving for the eternal mercy of christ, as seen in creation, and in her own history and deliverances, and also in his abiding gift of the eucharist (ver. ). psalm cxxxvii. _super flumina_ a psalm of the sorrows of the church in her captivity in this world, where she is persecuted and misunderstood. she expresses her loyalty to her heavenly calling, her desire for "jerusalem which is above," and her warfare with babylon, for whose overthrow she confidently waits. { } psalm cxxxviii. _confitebor tibi_ a psalm of christ and his saints, giving praise for the resurrection, the hope of the conversion of the world, the church's final deliverance, and the "redemption of the body." psalm cxxxix. _domine, probasti_ a psalm of the creature to the creator, celebrating his omnipresence, his wisdom, his claim to love; praying for sincerity and the gift of perseverance. it is appropriate to christ in his sacred manhood, in which he is "inferior to the father" (athanasian creed); and therefore also a psalm of the church in which the human body and soul are regenerate and consecrated by the incarnation. psalm cxl. _eripe me, domine_ a psalm of christ's warfare and passion; pronouncing the overthrow and judgment of the wicked, and the eternal continuance of his church. psalm cxli. _domine, clamavi_ a psalm of the church's devotion to christ; her humility in accepting rebuke and tribulation; her unceasing spirit of prayer. psalm cxlii. _voce mea ad dominum_ a psalm of christ's prayer to the father in his { } passion and death, and his longing for the gathering together of his church to himself as the fruit of his resurrection. psalm cxliii. _domine, exaudi_ ash wednesday, evening (prayer book) a psalm of prayer for those who suffer with christ; of preparation for death, and hope of the resurrection, through the gift of the holy spirit. psalm cxliv. _benedictus dominus_ a psalm of the triumph of christ (under the figure of david), and of the eternal blessedness of his church through him. psalm cxlv. _exaltabo te, deus_ whitsun day, evening (prayer book) a psalm of the everlasting joy of the church in christ her king, in the holy eucharist (ver. ), in the communion of saints, and in the certainty of the answer to prayer. psalm cxlvi. _lauda, anima mea_ like the preceding, a psalm of the church's thanksgiving for the eternal sovereignty of christ in its mercy and its judgment. psalm cxlvii. _laudate dominum_ the joy of the church in her calling and preservation { } by christ, in the gospel committed to her trust, and in the truth that all things temporal as well as eternal are hers in christ, who is lord of all. psalm cxlviii. _laudate dominum_ the church's call to the angels, to all the powers of nature, and to all estates of men to give thanks to christ, with her. psalm cxlix. _cantate domino_ a psalm of the communion of saints, in which the living and departed (ver. ) unite to praise christ their king, and ascribe to him their victory over the powers of this world. psalm cl. _laudate dominum_ the eternal song of praise of the church militant and triumphant, in which man's powers and development are consecrated to their true end, the giving of glory to the eternal trinity. { } index of psalms referred to psalm page i. . . . . . . . , ii. . . . . . . , , , iii. . . . . . . iv. . . . . . . , v. . . . . . . . , vi. . . . . . . , , vii. . . . . . . , viii. . . . . . , , ix. . . . . . . , x. . . . . . . . , , , xi. . . . . . . xii. . . . . . . xiii. . . . . . xiv. . . . . . . xv. . . . . . . - , xvi. . . . . . . , , , xvii. . . . . . , , xviii. . . . . . , , xix. . . . . . . , xx. . . . . . . xxi. . . . . . . , xxii. . . . . . , , , , , , , xxiii. . . . . . , xxiv. . . . . . , , xxv. . . . . . . , , xxvi. . . . . . xxvii. . . . . . , xxviii. . . . . xxix. . . . . . , xxx. . . . . . . , xxxi. . . . . . , , xxxii. . . . . . , xxxiii. . . . . , xxxiv. . . . . . , xxxv. . . . . . , xxxvi. . . . . . xxxvii. . . . . , xxxviii. . . . . , xxxix. . . . . . xl. . . . . . . , , , , - , , xli. . . . . . . , , , , xlii. . . . . . , , xliii. . . . . . , , xliv. . . . . . , , , xlv. . . . . . . , , , , xlvi. . . . . . , xlvii. . . . . . , xlviii. . . . . , , xlix. . . . . . , , , l. . . . . . . . , , li. . . . . . . , , , , lii. . . . . . . liii. . . . . . liv. . . . . . . , , , lv. . . . . . . lvi. . . . . . . lvii. . . . . . lviii. . . . . . , lix. . . . . . . lx. . . . . . . , lxi. . . . . . . lxii. . . . . . lxiii. . . . . . , , lxiv. . . . . . , lxv. . . . . . . , lxvi. . . . . . lxvii. . . . . . , , lxviii. . . . . , , lxix. . . . . . , , , , , lxx. . . . . . . lxxi. . . . . . , , , lxxii. . . . . . , , , , lxxiii. . . . . , , lxxiv. . . . . . , , , lxxv. . . . . . lxxvi. . . . . . , lxxvii. . . . . , lxxviii. . . . . , , , lxxix. . . . . . , , , , lxxx. . . . . . , lxxxi. . . . . . , lxxxii. . . . . , , lxxxiii. . . . . , , lxxxiv. . . . . , lxxxv. . . . . . , , lxxxvi. . . . . , lxxxvii. . . . . , , , lxxxviii. . . . , , , , lxxxix. . . . . , , , , xc. . . . . . . xci. . . . . . . , xcii. . . . . . , xciii. . . . . . , xciv. . . . . . , , xcv. . . . . . . , xcvi. . . . . . , xcvii. . . . . . , xcviii. . . . . , xcix. . . . . . c. . . . . . . . , ci. . . . . . . cii. . . . . . . , , , , , ciii. . . . . . civ. . . . . . . , , cv. . . . . . . , , cvi. . . . . . . , , , cvii. . . . . . , , cviii. . . . . . , cix. . . . . . . , , , cx. . . . . . . , , , cxi. . . . . . . cxii. . . . . . cxiii. . . . . . , cxiii.-cxviii. . cxiv. . . . . . cxv. . . . . . . , , cxvi. . . . . . , cxvii. . . . . . cxviii. . . . . , cxix. . . . . . - , , , , , , cxx. . . . . . . , cxx.-cxxxiv. . . , cxxi. . . . . . , cxxii. . . . . . , , cxxiii. . . . . cxxiv. . . . . . cxxv. . . . . . cxxvi. . . . . . cxxvii. . . . . cxxviii. . . . . cxxix. . . . . . cxxx. . . . . . , , cxxxi. . . . . . , , cxxxii. . . . . , , , , cxxxiii. . . . . cxxxiv. . . . . , cxxxv. . . . . . cxxxvi. . . . . , cxxxvii. . . . . , cxxxviii. . . . , , cxxxix. . . . . cxl. . . . . . . cxli. . . . . . cxlii. . . . . . cxliii. . . . . , cxliv. . . . . . , cxlv. . . . . . , cxlvi. . . . . . , , cxlvii. . . . . , , cxlviii. . . . . cxlviii.-cl. . . , cxlix. . . . . . cl. . . . . . . , , this ebook was produced by david widger from etext # prepared by dennis mccarthy, atlanta, georgia and tad book, student, pontifical north american college, rome. the holy bible translated from the latin vulgate diligently compared with the hebrew, greek, and other editions in divers languages the old testament first published by the english college at douay a.d. & and the new testament first published by the english college at rheims a.d. with annotations the whole revised and diligently compared with the latin vulgate by bishop richard challoner a.d. - the book of psalms the psalms are called by the hebrews tehillim, that is, hymns of praise. the author, of a great part of them at least, was king david: but many are of opinion that some of them were made by asaph, and others whose names are prefixed in the titles. psalms chapter beatus vir. the happiness of the just and the evil state of the wicked. : . blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence: : . but his will is in the law of the lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night. : . and he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. and his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper. : . not so the wicked, not so: but like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth. : . therefore the wicked shall not rise again in judgment: nor sinners in the council of the just. : . for the lord knoweth the way of the just: and the way of the wicked shall perish. psalms chapter quare fremuerunt. the vain efforts of persecutors against christ and his church. : . why have the gentiles raged, and the prople devised vain things? : . the kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the lord, and against his christ. : . let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us. : . he that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the lord shall deride them. : . then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage. : . but i am appointed king by him over sion, his holy mountain, preahing his comandment. : . the lord hath said to me: thou art my son, this day have i begotten thee. : . ask of me, and i will give thee the gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. : . thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. : . and now, o ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth. : . serve ye the lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling. : . embrace discipline, lest at any time the lord be angry, and you perish from the just way. : . when his wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed are all they that trust in him. psalms chapter domine, quid multiplicati. the prophet's danger and delivery from his son absalom: mystically, the passion and resurrection of christ. : . the psalm of david when he fled from the face of his son absalom. : why, o lord, are they multipied that affict me? many are they who rise up against me. : many say to my soul: there is no salvation for him in his god. : . but thou, o lord, art my protector, my glory, and the lifter up of my head. : . i have cried to the lord with my voice: and he hath heard me from his holy hill. : . i have slept and have taken my rest: and i have risen up, because the lord hath protected me. : . i will not fear thousands of the people surrounding me: arise, o lord; save me, o my god. : . for thou hast struck all them who are my adversaries without cause: thou hast broken the teeth of sinners. : . salvation is of the lord: and thy blessing is upon thy people. psalms chapter cum invocarem. the prophet teacheth us to flee to god in tribulation, with confidence in him. : . unto the end, in verses. a psalm for david. unto the end... or, as st. jerome renders it, victori, to him that overcometh: which some understand of the chief musician; to whom they suppose the psalms, which bear that title, were given to be sung: we rather understand the psalms thus inscribed to refer to christ, who is the end of the law, and the great conqueror of death and hell, and to the new testament.-ibid. in verses, in carminibus... in the hebrew, it is neghinoth, supposed by some to be a musical instrument, with which this psalm was to be sung.-ibid. for david, or to david... that is, inspired to david himself, or to be sung. : . when i called upon him, the god of my justice heard me: when i was in distress, thou hast enlarged me. have mercy on me: and hear my prayer. : . o ye sons of men, how long will you be dull of heart? why do you love vanity, and seek after lying? : . know ye also that the lord hath made his holy one wonderful: the lord will hear me when i shall cry unto him. : . be ye angry, and sin not: the things you say in your hearts, be sorry for them upon your beds. : . offer up the sacrifice of justice, and trust in the lord: many say, who sheweth us good things? : . the light of thy countenance, o lord, is signed upon us: thou hast given gladness in my heart. : . by the fruit of their corn, their wine, and oil, they rest: : . in peace in the self same i will sleep, and i will rest: : . for thou, o lord, singularly hast settled me in hope. psalms chapter verba mea auribul. a prayer to god against the iniquities of men. : . unto the end, for her that obtaineth the inheritance. a psalm for david. for her that obtaineth the inheritance... that is, for the church of christ. : . give ear, o lord, to my words, understand my cry. : . hearken to the voice of my prayer, o my king and my god. : . for to thee will i pray: o lord, in the morning thou shalt hear my voice. : . in the morning i will stand before thee, and i will see: because thou art not a god that willest iniquity. : . neither shall the wicked dwell near thee: nor shall the unjust abide before thy eyes. : . thou hatest all the workers of iniquity: thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie. the bloody and the deceitful man the lord will abhor. : . but as for me in the multitude of thy mercy, i will come into thy house; i will worship towards thy holy temple, in thy fear. : . conduct me, o lord, in thy justice: because of my enemies, direct my way in thy sight. : . for there is no truth in their mouth: their heart is vain. : . their throat is an open sepulchre: they dealt deceitfully with their tongues: judge them, o god. let them fall from their devices: according to the multitude of their wickednesses cast them out: for they have provoked thee, o lord. : . but let all them be glad that hope in thee: they shall rejoice for ever, and thou shalt dwell in them. and all they that love thy name shall glory in thee. : . for thou wilt bless the just. o lord, thou hast crowned us, as with a shield of thy good will. psalms chapter domine, ne in furore. a prayer of a penitent sinner, under the scourge of god. the first penitential psalm. : . unto the end, in verses, a psalm for david, for the octave. for the octave... that is, to be sung on an instrument of eight strings. st. augustine understands it mystically, of the last resurrection, and the world to come; which is, as it were, the octave, or eighth day, after the seven days of this mortal life: and for this octave, sinners must dispose themselves, like david, by bewailing their sins, whilst they are here upon earth. : . o lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, nor chastise me in thy wrath. : . have mercy on me, o lord, for i am weak: heal me, o lord, for my bones are troubled. : . and my soul is troubled exceedingly: but thou, o lord, how long? : . turn to me, o lord, and deliver my soul: o save me for thy mercy's sake. : . for there is no one indeath, that is mindful of thee: and who shall confess to thee in hell? : . i have laboured in my groanings, every night i will wash my bed: i will water my couch with my tears. : . my eye is troubled through indignation: i have grown old amongst all my enemies. : . depart from em, all ye workers of iniquity: for the lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. : . the lord hath heard my supplication: the lord hath received my prayer. : . let all my enemies be ashamed, and be very much troubled: let them be turned back, and be ashamed very speedily. psalms chapter domine, deus meus. david, trusting in the justice of his cause, prayeth for god's help against his enemies. : . the psalm of david, which he sung to the lord, for the words of chusi, the son of jemini. : . o lord, my god, in thee have i put my trust; same me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me. : . lest at any time he seize upon my soul like a lion, while there is no one to redeem me, nor to save. : . o lord, my god, if i have done this thing, if there be iniquity in my hands: : . if i have rendered to them that repaid me evils, let me deservedly fall empty before my enemies. : . let the enemy pursue my soul, and take it, and tread down my life, on the earth, and bring down my glory to the dust. : . rise up, o lord, in thy anger: and be thou exalted in the borders of my enemies. and arise, o lord, my god, in the precept which thou hast commanded: : . and a congregation of people shall surround thee. and for their sakes return thou on high. : . the lord judgeth the people. judge me, o lord, according to my justice, and according to my innocence in me. : . the wickedness of sinners shall be brought to nought; and thou shalt direct the just: the searcher of hearts and reins is god. : . just is my help from the lord; who saveth the upright of heart. : . god is a just judge, strong and patient: is he angry every day? : . except you will be converted, he will brandish his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. : . and in it he hath prepared to instruments of death, he hath made ready his arrows for them that burn. for them that burn... that is, against the persecutors of his saints. : . behold he hath been in labour iwht injustice: he hath conceived sorrow, and brought forth iniquity. : . he hath opened a pit and dug it: and he is fallen into the hole he made. : . his sorrow shall be turned on his own head: and his iniquity shall come down upon his crown. : . i will give glory to the lord according to his justice: and will sing to the name of the lord the most high. psalms chapter domine, dominus noster. god is wonderful in his works; especially in mankind, singularly exalted by the incarnation of christ. : . unto the end, for the presses: a psalm for david. the presses... in hebrew, gittith, supposed to be a musical instrument. : . o lord, our lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! for thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens. : . out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thy enemies, that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger. : . for i will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded. : . what is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? : . thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour: : . and hast set him over the works of thy hands. : . thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover, the beasts also of the fields. : . the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea. : . o lord, our lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! psalms chapter confitebor tibi, domine. the church praiseth god for his protection against her enemies. : . unto the end, for the hidden things of the son. a psalm for david. the hidden things of the son... the humility and sufferings of christ, the son of god; and of good christians, who are his sons by adoption; are called hidden things, with regard to the children of this world, who know not the value and merit of them. : . i will give lpraise to thee, o lord, with my whole heart: i will relate all thy wonders. : . i will be glad, and rejoice inthee: i will sing to thy name, o thou most high. : . when my enemy shall be turned back: they shall be weakened, and perish before thy face. : . for thou hast maintained my judgment and my cause: thou hast sat on the throne, who judgest justice. : . thou hast rebuked the gentiles, and the wicked one hath perished; thou hast blotted out their name for ever and ever. : . the swords of the enemy have failed unto the end: and their cities thou hast destroyed. their memory hath perished with a noise: : . but the lord remaineth for ever. he hath prepared his throne in judgment: : . and he shall judge the world in equity, he shall judge the lpeople in justice. : . and the lord is become a refuge for the poor: a helper in due time in tribulation. : . and let them trust in thee who know thy name: for thou hast not forsaken them that seek thee, o lord. : . sing ye to the lord, who dwelleth in sion: declare his ways among the gentiles: : . for requiring their blood, he hath remembered them: he hath not forgotten the cry of the poor. : . have mercy on me, o lord: see my humiliation which i suffer from my enemies. : . thou that liftest me up from the gates of death, that i may declare all thy praises in the gates of the daughter of sion. : . i will rejoice in thy salvation: the gentiles have stuck fast in the destruction which they prepared. their foot hath been taken in the very snare which they hid. : . the lord shall be known when he executeth judgments: the sinner hath been caught in the works of his own hands. : . the wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget god. : . for the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not perish for ever. : . arise, o lord, let not man be strengthened: let the gentiles be judged in thy sight. : . appoint, o lord, a lawgiver over them: that the gentiles may know themselves to be but men. here the late hebrew doctors divide this psalm into two, making ver. the beginning of psalm . and again they join psalms and into one, in order that the whole number of psalms should not exceed . and in this manner the psalms are numbered in the protestant bible. (psalm chapter according to the hebrews.) : . why, o lord, hast thou retired afar off? why dost thou slight us in our wants, in the time of trouble? : . whilst the wicked man is proud, the poor is set on fire: they are caught in the counsels which they devise. : . for the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul: and the unjust man is blessed. : . the sinner hath provoked the lord, according to the multitude of his wrath, he will not seek him: : . god is not before his eyes: his ways are filthy at all times. thy judgments are removed form his sight: he shall rule over all his enemies. : . for he hath said in his heart: i shall not be moved from generation to generation, and shall be without evil. : . his mouth is full of cursing, and of bitterness, and of deciet: under his tongue are labour and sorrow. : . he sitteth in ambush with the rich, in private places, that he may kill the innocent. : . his eyes are upon the poor man: he lieth in wait, in secret, like a lion in his den. he lieth in ambush, that he may catch the poor man: so catch the poor, whilst he draweth him to him. : . in his net he will bring him down, he will crouch and fall, when he shall have power over the poor. : . for he hath said in his heart: god hath forgotten, he hath turned away his face, not to see to the end. : . arise, o lord god, let thy hand be exalted: forget not the poor. : . wherefore hath the wicked provoked god? for he hath said in his heart: he will not require it. : . thou seest it, for thou considerest labour and sorrow: that thou mayst deliver them into thy hands. to thee is the poor man left: thou wilt be a helper to the orphan. : . break thou the arm of the sinner and of the malignant: his sin shall be sought, and shall not be found. : . the lord shall reign to eternity, yea, for ever and ever: ye gentiles shall perish from his land. : . the lord hath heard the desire of the poor: thy ear hath heard the preparatgion of their heart. : . to judge for the fatherless and for the humble, that man may no more presume to magnify himself upon earth. psalms chapter in domino confido. the just man's confidence in god in the midst of persecutions. : . unto the end. a psalm to david. : . in the lord i put my trust: how then do you say to my soul: get thee away from hence to the mountain, like a sparrow. : . for, lo, the wicked have bent their bow: they have prepared their arows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark the upright of heart. : . for they have destroyed the things which thou hast made: but what has the just man done? : . the lord is in his holy temple, the lord's throne is in heaven. his eyes look on the poor man: his eyelids examine the sons of men. : . the lord trieth the just and the wicked: but he that loveth iniquity, hateth his own soul. : . he shall rain snares upon sinners: fire and brimstone, and storms of winds, shall be the portion of their cup. : . for the lord is just, and hath loved justice: his countenance hath beheld righteousness. psalms chapter salvum me fac. the prophet calls for god's help against the wicked. : . unto the end: for the octave, a psalm for david. : . save me, o lord, for there is now no saint: truths are decayed from among the children of men. : . they have spoken vain things, every one to his neighbour: with deceitful lips, and with a double heart have they spoken. : . may the lord destroy all deceitful lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things. : . who have said: we will magnify our tongue: our lips are our own: who is lord over us? : . by reason of the misery of the needy, and the groans of the poor, now will i arise, saith the lord. i will set him in safety: i will deal confidently in his regard. : . the words of the lord are pure words: as silver tried by the fire, purged from the earth, refined seven times. : . thou, o lord, wilt preserve us: and keep us from this generation for ever. : . the wicked walk round about: according to thy highness, thou hast multiplied the children of men. psalms chapter usquequo, domine. a prayer in tribulation. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. how long, o lord, wilt thou forget me unto the end? how long dost thou turn away thy face from me? : . how long shall i take counsels in my soul, sorrow in my heart all the day? : . how long shall my enemy be exalted over me? : . consider, and hear me, o lord, my god. enlighten my eyes, that i never sleep in death: : . lest at any time my enemy say: i have prevailed against him. they that trouble me, will rejoice when i am moved: : . but i have trusted in thy mercy. my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation: i will sing to the lord, who giveth me good things: yea, i will sing to the name of the lord, the most high. psalms chapter dixit insipiens. . the general corruption of man before our redemption by christ. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. the fool hath said in his heart: there is no god. they are corrupt, and are become abominable in their ways: there is none that doth good, no not one. : . the lord hath looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there be any that understand and seek god. : . they are all gone aside, they are become unprofitable together: there is none that doth good: no not one. their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they acted deceitfully: the poison of asps is under their lips. their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood. destruction and unhappiness in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known: there is no fear of god before their eyes. : . shall not all they know that work iniquity, who devour my people as they eat bread? : . they have not called upon the lord: there have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear. : . for the lord is in the just generation: you have confounded the counsel of the poor man; but the lord is his hope. : . who shall give out of sion the salvation of israel? when the lord shall have turned away the captivity of his people, jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. psalms chapter domine, quis habitabit. what kind of men shall dwell in the heavenly sion. : . a psalm for david. lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? or who shall rest in thy holy hill? : . he that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice: : . he that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours. : . in his sight the malignant is brought to nothing: but he glorifieth them that fear the lord. he that sweareth to his neighbour, and deceiveth not; : . he that hath not put out his money to usury, nortaken bribes against the innocent: he that doth these things, chall not be moved for ever. psalms chapter conserva me, domine. christ's future victory and triumph over the world and death. : . the inscription of a title to david himself. preserve me, o lord, for i have put my trust in thee. the inscription of a title... that is, of a pillar or monument, staylographia: which is as much as to say, that this psalm is most worthy to be engraved on an everlasting monument. : . i have said to the lord, thou art my god, for thou hast no need of my goods. : . to the saints, who are in his land, he hath made wonderful all my desires in them. : . their infirmities were multiplied: afterwards they made haste. i will not gather together their meetings for bloodofferings: nor will i be mindful of their names by my lips. : . the lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is thou that wilt restore my inheritance to me. : . the lines are fallen unto me in goodly places: for my inheritance is goodly to me. : . i will bless the lord, who hath given me understanding: moreover, my reins also have corrected me even till night. : . i set the lord always in my sight: for he is at my right hand, that i be not moved. : . therefore my heart hath been glad, and my tongue hath rejoiced: moreover, my flesh also shall rest in hope. : . because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption. : . thou hast made known to me the ways of life, thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance: at thy right hand are delights even to the end. psalms chapter exaudi, domine, justitiam. a just man's prayer in tribulation against the malice of his enemy. : . the prayer of david. hear, o lord, my justice: attend to my supplication. give ear unto my prayer, which proceedeth not from deceitful lips. : . let my judgment come forth from thy countenance: let thy eyes behold the things that are equitable. : . thou hast proved my heart, and visited it by night, thou hast tried me by fire: and iniquity hath not been found in me. : . that my mouth may not speak the works of men: for the sake of the words of thy lips, i have kept hard ways. : . perfect thou my goings in thy paths: that my footsteps be not moved. : . i have cried to thee, for thou, o god, hast heard me: o incline thy ear unto me, and hear my words. : . shew forth thy wonderful mercies; thou who savest them that trust in thee. : . from them that resist thy right hand keep me, as the apple of thy eye. protect me under the shadow of thy wings. : . from the face of the wicked who have afflicted me. my enemies have surrounded my soul: : . they have shut up their fat: their mouth hath spoken proudly. their fat... that is, their bowels of compassion: for they have none for me. : . they have cast me forth, and now they have surrounded me: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth. : . they have taken me, as a lion prepared for the prey; and as a young lion dwelling in secret places. : . arise, o lord, disappoint him and supplant him; deliver my soul from the wicked one; thy sword : . from the enemies of thy hand. o lord, divide them from the few of the earth in their life: their belly is filled from thy hidden stores. they are full of children: and they have left to their little ones the rest of their substance. divide them from the few, etc... that is, cut them off from the earth, and the few trifling things thereof; which they are so proud of, or divide them from the few; that is, from thy elect, who are but few; that they may no longer have it in their power to oppress them. it is not meant by way of a curse or imprecation; but, as many other the like passages in the psalms, by way of a prediction, or prophecy of what should come upon them, in punishment of their wickedness. ibid. thy hidden stores... thy secret treasures, out of which thou furnishest those earthly goods, which, with a bountiful hand thou hast distributed both to the good and the bad. : . but as for me, i will appear before thy sight in justice: i shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear. psalms chapter diligam te, domine. david's thanks to god for his delivery from all his enemies. : . unto the end, for david, the servant of the lord, who spoke to the lord the words of this canticle, in the day that the lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of saul: and he said: : . i will love thee, o lord, my strength: : . the lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. my god is my helper, and in him will i put my trust. my protector, and the horn of my salvation, and my support. : . praising, i will call upon the lord: and i shall be saved from my enemies. : . the sorrows of death surrounded me: and the torrents of iniquity troubled me. : . the sorrows of hell encompassed me: and the snares of death prevented me. : . in my affliction i called upon the lord, and i cried to my god: and he heard my voice from his holy temple: and my cry before him came into his ears. : . the earth shook and trembled: the foundations of the mountains were troubled and were moved, because he was angry with them. : . there went up a smoke in his wrath: and a fire flamed from his face: coals were kindled by it. : . he bowed the heavens, and came down, and darkness was under his feet. : . and he ascended upon the cherubim, and he flew; he flew upon the wings of the winds. : . and he made darkness his covert, his pavilion round about him: dark waters in the clouds of the air. : . at the brightness that was before him the clouds passed, hail and coals of fire. : . and the lord thundered from heaven, and the highest gave his voice: hail and coals of fire. : . and he sent forth his arrows, and he scattered them: he multiplied lightnings, and troubled them. : . then the fountains of waters appeared, and the foundations of the world were discovered: at thy rebuke, o lord, at the blast of the spirit of thy wrath. : . he sent from on high, and took me: and received me out of many waters. : . he delivered me from my strongest enemies, and from them that hated me: for they were too strong for me. : . they prevented me in the day of my affliction: and the lord became my rotector. : . and he brought me forth into a large place: he saved me, because he was well pleased with me. : . and the lord will reward me according to my justice; and will repay me according to the cleanness of my hands: : . because i have kept the ways of the lord; and have not done wickedly against my god. : . for all his judgments are in my sight: and his justices i have not put away from me. : . and i shall be spotless with him: and shall keep myself from my iniquity. : . and the lord will reward me according to my justice: and according to the cleanness of my hands before his eyes. : . with the holy thou wilt be holy; and with the innocent man thou wilt be innocent: : . and withe the elect thou wilt be elect: and with the perverse thou wilt be perverted. : . for thou wilt save the humble people; but wilt bring down the eyes of the proud. : . for thou lightest my lamp, o lord: o my god, enlighten my darkness. : . for by thee i shall be delivered from temptation; and through my god i shall go over a wall. : . as for my god, his way is undefiled: the words of the lord are fire-tried: he is the protector of all that trust in him. : . for who is god but the lord? or who is god but our god? : . god, who hath girt me with strength; and made my way blameless. : . who hath made my feet like the feet of harts: and who setteth me upon high places. : . who teacheth my hands to war: and thou hast made my arms like a brazen bow. : . and thou hast given me the protection of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath held me up: and thy discipline hath corrected me unto the end: and thy discipline, the same shall teach me. : . thou hast enlarged my steps under me; and my feet are not weakened. : . i will pursue after my enemies, and overtake them: and i will not turn again till they are consumed. : . i will break them, and they shall not be able to stand: they shall fall under my feet. : . and thou hast girded me with strength unto battle; and hast subdued under me them that rose up against me. : . and thou hast made my enemies furn their back upon me, and hast destroyed them that hated me. : . they cried, but there was none to save them, to the lord: but he heard them not. : . and i shall beat them as small as the dust before the wind; i shall bring them to nought, like the dirt in the streets. : . thou wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the people; thou wilt make me head of the gentiles. : . a people which i knew not, hath seerved me: at the hearing of the ear they have obeyed me. : . the children that are strangers have lied to me, strange children have faded away, and have halted from their paths. : . the lord liveth, and blessed by my god, and let the god of my salvation be exalted. : . o god, who avengest me, and subduest the people under me, my deliverer from my enraged enemies. : . and thou wilt lift me up above them that rise up against me: from the unjust man thou wilt deliver me. : . therefore will i give glory to thee, o lord, among the nations, and i will sing a psalm to thy name. : . giving great deliverance to his king, and shewing mercy to david, his anointed: and to his seed for ever. psalms chapter coeli enarrant. the works of god shew forth his glory: his law is greatly to be esteemed and loved. : . unto the end. apsalm chapter for david. : . the heavens shew forth the glory of god, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands. : . day to day uttereth speech, and night to night sheweth knowledge. : . there are no speeches nor languages, where their voices are not heard. : . their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world. : . he hath set his tabernacle in the sun: and he as a bridegroom coming out of his bridechamber, hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way: : . his going out is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof: and ther is no one that can hide himself from his heat. : . the law of the lord is unspotted, converting souls: the testimony of the lord is faithful, giving wisdom to little ones. : . the justices of the lord are right, rejoicing hearts: the commandment of the lord is lightsome, enlightening the eyes. : . the fear of the lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever: the judgments of the lord are true, justified in themselves. : . more to be desired than gold and many precious stones: and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. : . for thy servant keepeth them, and in keeping them there is a great reward. : . who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, o lord: : . and from those of others spare thy servant. if they shall have no dominion over me, then shall i be without spot: and i shall be cleansed form the greatest sin. : . and the words of my mouth shall be such as may please: and the meditation of my heart always in thy sight. o lord, my helper and my redeemer. psalms chapter exaudiat te dominus. a prayer for the king. : . unto the end. a psalm for david. : . may the lord hear thee in the day of tribulation: may the name of the god of jacob protect thee. : . may he send thee help from the sanctuary: and defend thee outof sion. : . may he be mindful of all thy sacrifices: and may thy whole burntoffering be made fat. : . may he give thee according to thy own heart; and confirm all thy counsels. : . we will rejoice in thy salvation; and in the name of our god we shall be exalted. : . the lord fulfil all thy petitions: now have i known that the lord hath saved his anointed. he will hear him from his holy heaven: the salvation of his right hand is in powers. the salvation of his right hand is in powers... that is, in strength. his right hand is strong and mighty to save them that trust in him. : . some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the lord, our god. : . they are bound, and have fallen: but we are risen, and are set upright. o lord, save the king: and hear us in the day that we shall call upon thee. psalms chapter domine, in virtute. praise to god for christ's exaltation after his passion. : . unto the end. a psalm for david. : . in thy strength, o lord, the king shall joy; and in thy salvation he shall rejoice exceedingly. : . thou hast given him his heart's desire: and hast not withholden from him the will of his lips. : . for thou hast prevented him with belssings of sweetness: thou hast set on his head a crown of precious stones. : . he asked life of thee: and thou hast given him length of days for ever and ever. : . his glory is great in thy salvation: glory and great beauty shalt thou lay upon hom. : . for thou shalt give him to be a blessing for ever and ever: thou shalt make him joyful in gladness with thy countenance. : . for the king hopeth in the lord: andthrough the mercy of the most high he whall not be moved. : . let thy hand be found by all thy enemies: let thy right hand find out all them that hate thee. : . thou shalt make them as an oven of fire, in the time of thy anger: the lord shall trouble them in his wrath, and fire shall devour them. : . their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth: and their seed from among the children of men. : . for they have intended evils against thee: they have devised counsels which they have not been able to establish. : . for thou shalt make them turn their back: in thy remnants thou shalt prepare their face. in thy remnants thou shalt prepare their face... or thou shalt set thy remnants against their faces. that is, thou shalt make them see what punishments remain for them hereafter from thy justice. instead of remnants, st. jerome renders it funes, that is, cords or strings, viz., of the bow of divine justice, from which god directs his arrows against the faces of his enemies. : . be thou exalted, o lord, in thy own strength: we will sing and praise thy power. psalms chapter deus deus meus. christ's passion: and the conversion of the gentiles. : . unto the end, for the morning protection, a psalm for david. : . o god my god, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me? far from my salvation are the words of my sins. the words of my sins... that is, the sins of the world, which i have taken upon myself, cry out against me, and are the cause of all my sufferings. : . o my god, i shall cry by day, and thou wilt not hear: and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me. : . but thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of israel. : . in thee have our fathers hoped: they have hoped, and thou hast delivered them. : . they cried to thee, and they were saved: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. : . bukt i am a worm, and no man: the reproach of men, and the outcast of the prople. : . all they that saw me have laughed me to scorn: they have spoken with the lips, and wagged the head. : . he hoped in the lord, let him deliver him: let him save him, seeing he delighteth in him. : . for thou art he that hast drawn me out of the womb: my hope from the breasts of my mother. : . i was cast upon thee from the womb. from my mother's womb thou art my god, : . depart not from me. for tribulation is very near: for there is none to help me. : . many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have besieged me. : . they have opened their mouths against me, as a lion ravening and roaring. : . i am poured out like water; and all my bones are scattered. my heart is become like wax melting in the midast of my bowels. : . my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and thou hast brought me down into the dust of death. : . for many dogs have encompassed me: the council of the malignant hath besieged me. they have dug my hands and feet. : . they have numbered all my bones. and they have looked and stared upon me. : . they lparted my garments amongst them; and upon my vesture they cast lots. : . but thou, o lord, remove not thy help to a distance from me; look towards my defence. : . deliver, o god, my soul from the sword: my only one from the hand of the dog. : . save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns. : . i will declare thy name to my brethren: in the midst of the church will i praise thee. : . ye that fear the lord, praise him: all ye the seed of jacob, glorify him. : . let all the seed of israel fear him: because he hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of the poor man. neither hath he turned away his face form me: and when i cried to him he heard me. : . with thee is my praise in a great church: i will pay my vows in the sight of them that fear him. : . the poor shall eat and shall be filled: and they shall praise the lord that seek him: their hearts shall live for ever and ever. : . all the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall be converted to the lord: and all the kindreds of the gentiles shall adore in his sight. : . for the kingdom is the lord's; and he shall have dominion over the nations. : . all the fat ones of the earth have eaten and have adored: all they that go down to the earth shall fall before him. : . and to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him. : . there shall be declared to the lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the lord hath made. psalms chapter dominus regit me. god's spiritual benefits to faithful souls. : . a psalm for david. the lord ruleth me: and i shall want nothing. ruleth me... in hebrew, is my shepherd, viz., to feed, guide, and govern me. : . he hath set me in a place of pasture. he hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: : . he hath converted my soul. he hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake. : . for though i should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, i will fear no evils, for thou art with me. thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. : . thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me. thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebreateth me, how goodly is it! : . and thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. and that i may dwell in the house of the lord unto length of days. psalms chapter domini est terra. who are they that shall ascend to heaven: christ's triumphant ascension thither. : . on the first day of the week, a psalm for david. the earth is the lord's and the fulness thereof: the world, and all they that dwell therein. : . for he hath founded it upon the seas; and hath prepared it upon the rivers. : . who shall ascend into the mountain of the lord: or who shall stand in his holy place? : . the innocent in hands, and clean of heart, who hath not taken his soul in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour. : . he shall receive a blessing from the lord, and mercy from god his saviour. : . this is the generation of them that seek him, of them that seek the face of the god of jacob. : . lift up your gates, o ye lprinces, and be ye lifted up, o eternal gates: and the king of glory shall enter in. : . who is this king of glory? the lord who is strong and mighty: the lord mighty in battle. : . lift up your gates, o ye princes, and be ye lifted up, o eternal gates: and the king of glory shall enter in. : . who is this king of glory? the lord of hosts, he is the king of glory. psalms chapter ad te, domine, levavi. a prayer for grace, mercy, and protection against our enemies. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. to thee, o lord, have i lifted up my soul. : . in thee, o my god, i put my trust; let me not be ashamed. : . neither let my enemies laugh at me: for none of them that wait on thee shall be confounded. : . let all them be confounded that act unjust things without cause. shew, o lord, thy ways to me, and teach me thy paths. : . direct me in thy truth, and teach me; for thou art god my saviour; and on thee have i waited all the day long. : . remember, o lor, thy bowels of compassion; and thy mercies that are from the beginning of the world. : . the sins of my youth and my ignorances do not remember. according to thy mercy remember thou me: for thy goodness' sake, o lord. : . the lord is sweet and righteous: therefore he will give a law to sinners in the way. : . he will guide themild in judgment: he will teach the meek his ways. : . all the ways of the lord are mercy and truth, to them that seek after his covenant and his testimonies. : . for thy name's sake, o lrod, thou wilt pardon my sin: for it is great. : . who is the man that feareth the lord? he hath appointed him a law in the way he hath chosen. : . his soul shall dwell in good things: and his seed shall inherit the land. : . the lord is a firmament to them that fear him: and his covenant shall be made manifest to them. : . my eyes are ever towards the lord: for he shall pluck my feet out of the snare. : . look thou upon me, and have mercy on me; for i am alone and poor. : . the troubles of my heart are multiplied: deliver me from my necessities. : . see my abjection and my labour; and forgive me all my sins. : . consider my enemies for they are multiplied, and have hated me with an unjust hatred. : . deep thou my soul, and deliver me: i shall not be ashamed, for i have hoped in thee. : . the innocent and the upright have adhered to me: because i have waited on thee. : . deliver israel, o god, from all his tribulations. psalms chapter judica me, domine. david's prayer to god in his distress, to be delivered, that he may come to worship him in his tabernacle. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. judge me, o lord, for i have walked in my innocence: and i have put my trust in the lord, and shall not be weakened. : . prove me, o lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart. : . for thy mercy is before my eyes; and i am well pleased with thy truth. : . i have not sat with the council of vanity: neither will i go in with the doers of unjust things. : . i have hated the assembly of the malignant; and with the wicked i will not sit. : . i will wash my hands among the innocent; and will compass thy altar, o lord: : . that i may hear the voice of thy praise: and tell of all thy wondrous works. : . i have loved, o lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth. : . take not away my soul, o god, with the wicked: nor my life with bloody men: : . in whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts. : . but as for me, i have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me. : . my foot hath stood in the direct way: in the churches i will bless thee, o lord. psalms chapter dominus illuminatio. david's faith and hope in god. : . the psalm of david before he was anointed. the lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall i fear? the lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall i be afraid? : . whilst the wicked draw near against me, to eat my flesh. my enemies that trouble me, have themselves been weakened, and have fallen. : . if armies in camp should stand to gether against me, my heart shall not fear. if a battle should rise up against me, in this will i be confident. : . one thing i have asked of the lord, this will i seek after; that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life. that i may see the delight of the lord, and may visit his temple. : . for he hath hidden me in his tabernacle; in the day of evils, he hath protected me in the secret place of his tabernacle. : . he hath exalted me upon a rock: and now he hath lifted up my head above my enemies. i have gone round, and have offered up in his tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation: i will sing, and recite a psalm to the lord. : . hear, o lord, my voice, with which i have cried to thee: have mercy on me and hear me. : . my heart hath said to thee: my face hath sought thee: thy face, o lord, will i still seek. : . turn not away thy face from me; decline not in thy wrath from thy servant. be thou my helper, forsake me not; do not thou despise me, o god my saviour. : . for my father and my mother have left me: but the lord hath taken me up. : . set me, o lord, a law in thy way, and guide me in the right path, because of my enemies. : . deliver me not over to the will of them that trouble me; for unjust witnesses have risen up against me; and iniquity hath lied to itself. : . i believe to see the good things of the lord in the land of the living. : . expect the lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the lord. psalms chapter ad te, domine, clamabo. david's prayer that his enemies may not prevail over him. : . a psalm for david himself. unto thee will i cry, o lord: o my god, be not thou silent to me: lest if thou be silent to me, i become like them that go down into the pit. : . hear, o lord, the voice of my supplication, when i pray to thee; when i lift up my hands to thy holy temple. : . draw me not away together with the wicked; and with the workers of iniquity destroy me not: who speak peace with their neighbour, but evils are in their hearts. : . give them according to their works, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. according to the works of their hands give thou to them: render to them their reward. : . because they have not understood the works of the lord, and the operations of his hands: thou shalt destroy them, and shalt not build them up. : . blessed be the lord, for he hath heard the voice of my supplication. : . the lord is my helper andmy protector: in him hath my heart confided, and i have been helped. and my flesh hath flourished again, and with my will i will give praise to him. : . the lord is the strength of his people, and the protector of the salvation of his anointed. : . save, o lord, thy people, and bless thy inheritance: and rule them and exalt them for ever. psalms chapter afferte domino. an invitation to glorify god, with a commemoration of his mighty works. : . a psalm for david, at the finishing of the tabernacle. bring to the lord, o ye children of god: bring to the lord the offspring of rams. : . bring to the lord glory and honour: bring to the lord glory to his name: adore ye the lord in his holy court. : . the voice of the lord is upon the waters; the god of majesty hath thundered, the lord is upon many waters. : . the voice of the lord is in power; the voice of the lord in magnificence. : . the voice of the lord breaketh the cedars: yea, the lord shall break the cedars of libanus. : . and shall reduce them to pieces, as a calf of libanus, and as the beloved son of unicorns. shall reduce them to pieces, etc... in hebrew, shall make them to skip like a calf. the psalmist here describes the effects of thunder (which he calls the voice of the lord) which sometimes breaks down the tallest and strongest trees; and makes their broken branches skip, etc. all this is to be understood mystically of the powerful voice of god's word in his church; which has broken the pride of the great ones of this world, and brought many of them meekly and joyfully to submit their necks to the sweet yoke of christ. : . the voice of the lord divideth the flame of fire: : . the voice of the lord shaketh the desert: and the lord shall shake the desert of cades. : . the voice of the lord prepareth the stags: and he will discover the thick woods: and in his temple all shall speak his glory. : . the lord maketh the flood to dwell: and the lord shall sit king for ever. the lord will give strength to his people: the lord will bless his people with peace. psalms chapter exaltabo te, domine. david praiseth god for his deliverance, and his merciful dealings with him. : . a psalm of a canticle, at the dedication of david's house. : . i will extol thee, o lord, for thou hast upheld me: and hast not made my enemies to rejoice over me. : . o lord my god, i have cried to thee, and thou hast healed me. : . thou hast brought forth, o lord, my soul from hell: thou hast saved me from them that go down into the pit. : . sing to the lord, o ye his saints: and give praise to the memory of his holiness. : . for wrath is in his indignation; and life in his good will. in the evening weeping shall have place, and in the morning gladness. : . and in my abundance i said: i shall never be moved. : . o lord, in thy favour, thou gavest strength to my beauty. thou turnedst away thy face from me, and i became troubled. : . to thee, o lord, will i cry: and i will make supplication to my god. : . what profit is there in my blood, whilst i go down to corruption? shall dust confess to thee, or declare thy truth? : . the lord hath heard, and hath had mercy on me: the lord became my helper. : . thou hast turned for me my mourning into joy: thou hast cut my sackcloth, and hast compassed me with gladness: : . to the end that my glory may sing to thee, and i may not regret: o lord my god, i will give praise to thee for ever. psalms chapter in te, domine, speravi. a prayer of a just man under affliction. : . unto the end, a psalm for david, in an ecstasy. : . in thee, o lord, have i hoped, let me never be confounded: deliver me in thy justice. : . bow down thy ear to me: make haste to deliver me. be thou unto me a god, a protector, and a house of refuge, to save me. : . for thou art my strength and my refuge; and for thy name's sake thou wilt lead me, and nourish me. : . thou wilt bring me out of this snare, which they have hidden for me: for thou art my protector. : . into thy hands i commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, o lord, the god of truth. : . thou hast hated them that regard vanities, to no purpose. but i have hoped in the lord: : . i will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy. for thou hast regarded my humility, thou hast saved my soul out of distresses. : . and thou hast not shut me up in the hands of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a spacious place. : . have mercy on me, o lord, for i am afflicted: my eye is troubled with wrath, my soul, and my belly: : . for my life is wasted with grief: and my years in sighs. my strength is weakened through poverty and my bones are disturbed. : . i am become a reproach among all my enemies, and very much to my neighbours; and a fear to my acquaintance. they that saw me without fled from me. : . i am forgotten as one dead from the heart. i am become as a vessel that is destroyed. : . for i have heard the blame of many that dwell round about. while they assembled together against me, they consulted to take away my life. : . but i have put my trust in thee, o lord: i said: thou art my god. : . my lots are in thy hands. deliver me out of the hands of my enemies; and from them that persecute me. : . make thy face to shine upon thy servant; save me in thy mercy. : . let me not be confounded, o lord, for i have called upon thee. let the wicked be ashamed, and be brought down to hell. : . let deceitful lips be made dumb. which speak iniquity against the just, with pride and abuse. : . o how great is the multitude of thy sweetness, o lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee! which thou hast wrougth for them that hope inthee, in the sight of the sons of men. : . thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face, from the disturbance of men. thoushalt protect them in thy tabernacle form the contradiction of tongues. : . blessed be the lord, for he hath shewn his wonderful mercy to me in a fortified city. : . but i said in the excess of my mind: i am cast away from before thy eyes. therefore thou hast heard the voice of my prayer, when i cried to thee. : . o love the lord, all ye his saints: for the lord will require truth, and will repay them abundantly that act proudly. : . do ye manfully, and let your heart be strengthened, all ye that hope in the lord. psalms chapter beati quorum. the second penitential psalm. : . to david himself, understanding. blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. : . blessed is the man to whom the lord hath not inputed sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile. : . because i was silent my bones grew old; whilst i cried out all the day long. because i was silent, etc... that is, whilst i kept silence, by concealing, or refusing to confess my sins, thy hand was heavy upon me, etc. : . for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: i am turned in my anguish, whilst the thorn is fastened. i am turned, etc... that is, i turn and roll about in my bed to seek for ease in my pain whilst the thorn of thy justice pierces my flesh, and sticks fast in me. or, i am turned: that is, i am converted to thee, my god, by being brought to a better understanding by thy chastisements. in the hebrew it is, my moisture is turned into the droughts of the summer. : . i have acknowledged my sin to thee, and my injustice i have not concealed. i said i will confess against my self my injustice to the lord: and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin. : . for this shall every one that is holy pray to thee in a seasonable time. and yet in a flood of many waters, they shall not come nigh unto him. : . thou art my fefuge from the trouble which hath eencompassed me: my joy, deliver me from them that surround me. : . i will give thee understanding, and i will instruct thee in this way, in which thou shalt go: i will fix my eyes upon thee. : . do not become like the horse and the mule, who have no understanding. with bit and bridle bind fast their jaws, who come not near unto thee. : . many are the scourges of the sinner, but mercy shall encompass him that hopeth in the lord. : . be glad in the lord, and rejoice, ye just, and glory, all ye right of heart. psalms chapter exultate, justi. an exhortation to praise god, and to trust in him. : . a psalm for david. rejoice in the lord, o ye just: praise becometh the upright. : . give praise to the lord on the harp; sing to him with the psaltery, the instrument of ten strings. : . sing to him a new canticle, sing well unto him with a loud noise. : . for the word of the lord is right, and all his works are done with faithfulness. : . he loveth mercy and judgment; the earth is full of the mercy of the lord. : . by the word of the lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth: : . gathering together the waters of the sea, as in a vessel; laying up the depths in storehouses. : . let all the earth fear the lord, and let all the inhabitants of the world be in awe of him. : . for he spoke and they were made: he commanded and they were created. : . the lord bringeth to nought the counsels of nations; and he rejecteth the devices of people, and casteth away the counsels of princes. : . but the counsel of the lord standeth for ever: the thoughts of his heart to all generations. : . blessed is the nation whose god is the lord: the people whom he hath chosen for his inheritance. : . the lord hath looked from heaven: he hath beheld all the sons of men. : . from his habitation which he hath prepared, he hath looked upon all that dwell on the earth. : . he who hath made the hearts of every one of them: who understandeth all their works. : . the king is not saved by a great army: nor shall the giant be saved by his own great strength. : . vain is the horse for safety: neither shall he be saved by the abundance of his strength. : . behold the eyes of the lord are on them that fear him: and on them that hope in his mercy. : . to deliver their souls from death; and feed them in famine. : . our soul waiteth for the lord: for he is our helper and protector. : . for in him our heart shall rejoice: and in his holy name we have trusted. : . let thy mercy, o lord, be upon us, as we have hooped in thee. psalms chapter benedicam dominum. an exhortation to the praise, and service of god. : . for david, when he changed his countenance before achimelech, who dismissed him, and he went his way. [ kings .] : . i will belss the lord at all times, his praise shall be always in my mouth. : . in the lord shall my soul be praised: let the meek hear and rejoice. : . o magnify the lord with me; and let us extol his name together. : . i sought the lord, and he heard me; and he delivered me from all my troubles. : . come ye to him and be enlightened: and your faces shall not be confounded. : . this poor man cried, and the lord heard him: and saved him out of all his troubles. : . the angel of the lord shall encamp round about them that fear him: and shall deliver them. : . o taste, and see that the lord is sweet: blessed is the man that hopeth in him. : . fear the lord, all ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. : . the rich have wanted, and have suffered hunger: but they that seek the lord shall not be deprived of any good. : . come, children, hearken to me: i will teach you the fear of the lord. : . who is the man that desireth life: who liveth to see good days? : . keep thy tongue form evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. : . tkurn away from evil and do good: seek after peace and pursue it. : . the eyes of the lord are upon the just: and his ears unto their prayers. : . but the countenance of the lord is against them that do evil things: to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. : . the just cried, and the lord heard them: and delivered them out of all their troubles. : . the lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart: and he will save the humble of spirit. : . many are the afflictions of the just; but out of them all will the lord deliver them. : . the lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart: and he will save the humble of spirit. : . the death of the wicked is very evil: and they that hate the just shall be guilty. : . the lord will redeem the souls of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall offend. psalms chapter judica, domine, nocentes me. david, in the person of christ, prayeth against his persecutors: prophetecally foreshewing the punishments that shall fall upon them. : . for david himself. judge thou, o lord, them that wrong me: overthrow them that fight against me. : . take hold of arms and shield: and rise up to help me. : . bring out the sword, and shut up the way against them that persecute me: say to my soul: i am thy salvation. : . let them be confounded and ashamed that seek after my soul. let them be turned back and be confounded that devise evil against me. : . let them become as dust before the wind: and let the angel of the lord straiten them. : . let their way become dark and slippery; and let the angel of the lord pursue them. : . for without cause they have hidden their net for me unto destruction: without cause they have upbraided my soul. : . let the snae which he knoweth not come upon him: and let the net which he hath hidden catch him: and into that very snare let them fall. : . but my soul shall rejoice in the lord; and shall be delighted in his salvation. : . all my bones shall say: lord, who is like to thee? who deliverest the poor from the hand of them that are stronger than he; the needy and the poor from them that strip him. : . unjust witnesses rising up have asked me things i knew not. : . they repaid me evil for good: to the depriving me of my soul. : . but as for me, when they were troublesome to me, i was clothed with haircloth. i humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer shall be turned into my bosom. : . as a neighbour and as an own brother, so did i please: as one mourning and sorrowful so was i humbled. : . but they rejoiced against me, and came together: scourges were gathered together upon me, and i knew not. : . they were separated, and repented not: they tempted me, they scoffed at me with scorn: they gnashed ukpon me with their teeth. : . lord, when wilt thou look upon me? rescue thou my soul from their malice: my only one from the lions. : . i will give thanks to thee in a great church; i will praise thee in a strong people. : . let not them that are my enemies wrongfully rejoice over me: who have hated me without cause, and wink with the eyes. : . for they spoke indeed peaceably to me; and speaking in the anger of the earth they devised guile. : . and they opened their mouth wide against me; they said: well done, well done, our eyes have seen it. : . thou hast seen, o lord, be not thou silent: o lord, depart not from me. : . arise, and be attentive to my judgment: to my cause, my god, and my lord. : . judge me, o lord my god according to thy justice, and let them not rejoice over me. : . let them not say in their hearts: it is well, it is well, to our mind: neither let them say: we have swallowed him up. : . let them blush: and be ashamed to gether, who rejoice at my evils. let them be clothed with confusion and shame, who speak great things against me. : . let them rejoice and be glad, who are well pleased with my justice, and let them say always: the lord be magnified, who delights in the peace of his servant. : . and my tongue shall meditate thy justice, thy praise all the day long. psalms chapter dixit injustus. the malice of sinners, and the goodness of god. : . unto the end, for the servant of god, david himself. : . the unjust hath said within himself, that he would sin: there is no fear of god before his eyes. : . for in his sight he hath done deceitfully, that his iniquity may be found unto hatred. unto hatred... that is, hateful to god. : . the words of his mouth are iniquity and guile: he would not understand that he might do well. : . he hath devised iniquity on his bed, he hath set himself on every way that is not good: but evil he hath not hated. : . o lord, thy mercy is in heaven, and thy truth reacheth even to the clouds. : . thy justice is as the mountains of god, thy judgments are a great deep. men and beasts thou wilt preserve, o lord: : . o how hast thou multiplied thy mercy, o god! but the children of men shall put their trust under the covert of thy wings. : . they shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure. : . for with thee is the fountain of life; and in thy light we shall see light. : . extend thy mercy to them that know thee, and thy justice to them that are right in heart. : . let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. : . there the workers of iniquity are fallen, they are cast out, and could not stand. psalms chapter noli aemulari. an exhortation to despise this world; and the short prosperity of the wicked; and to trust in providence. : . be not emulous of evildoers; nor envy them that work iniquity. : . for they shall shortly wither away as grass, and as the green herbs shall quickly fall. : . trust in the lord, and do good, and dwell in the land, and thou shalt be fed with its riches. : . delight in the lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart. : . commit thy way to the lord, and trust in him, and he will do it. : . and he will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. : . be subject to the lord and pray to him. envy not the man who prospereth in his way; the man who doth unjust things. : . cease from anger, and leave rage; have no emulation to do evil. : . for evildoers shall be cut off: but they that wait upon the lord, they shall inherit the land. : . for yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: and thou shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it. : . but the meek shall inherit the land, and shall delight in abundance of peace. : . the sinner shall watch the just man: and shall gnash upon him with his teeth. : . but the lord shall laugh at him: for he foreseeth that his day shall come. : . the wicked have drawn out the sword: they have bent their bow. to cast down the poor and needy, to kill the upright of heart. : . let their sword enter into their own hearts, andlet their bow be broken. : . better is a little to the just, than the great riches of the wicked. : . for the arms of the wicked shall be broken in pieces; but the lord strengtheneth the just. : . the lord knoweth the days of the undefiled; and their inheritance shall be for ever. : . they shall not be confounded in the evil time; and in the days of famine they shall be filled: : . because the wicked shall perish. and the enemies of the lord, presently after they shall be honoured and exalted, shall come to nothing and vanish like smoke. : . the sinner shall borrow, and not pay again; but the just sheweth mercy and shall give. : . for such as bless him shall inherit the land: but such as curse him shall perish. : . with the lord shall the steps of a man be directed, and he shall like well his way. : . when he shall fall he shall not be bruised, for the lord putteth his hand under him. : . i have been young and now am old; and i have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. : . he sheweth mercy, and lendeth all the day long; and his seed shall be in blessing. : . decline from evil and do good, and dwell for ever and ever. : . for the lord loveth judgment, and will not forsake his saints: they shall be preserved for ever. the unjust shall be punished, and the seed of the wicked shall perish. : . but the just shall inherit the land, and shall dwell therein for evermore. : . the mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom: and his tongue shall speak judgment. : . the law of his god is in his heart, and his steps shall not be supplanted. : . the wicked watcheth the just man, and seeketh to put him to death, : . but the lord will not leave him in his hands; nor condemn him when he shall be judged. : . expect the lord and keep his way: and he will exalt thee to inherit the land: when the sinners shall perish thou shalt see. : . i have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted ukp like the cedars of libanus. : . and i passed by, and lo, he was not: and i sought him and his place was not found. : . keep innocence, and behold justice: for there are remnants for the peaceable man. : . but the unjust shall be destroyed to gether: the remnants of the wicked shall perish. : . but the salvation of the just is from the lord, and he is their protector in the time of trouble. : . and the lord will help them and deliver them: and he will rescue them from the wicked, and save them because they have hoped in him. psalms chapter domine, ne in furore. a prayer of a penitent for the remission of his sins. the third penitential psalm. : . a psalm for david, for a remembrance of the sabbath. for a remembrance... viz., of our miseries and sins: and to be sung on the sabbath day. : . rebuke me not, o lord, in thy indignation; nor chastise me in thy wrath. : . for thy arrows are fastened in me: and thy hand hath been strong upon me. : . there is no health in my flesh, because of thy wrath: there is no peace for my bones, because of my sins. : . for my iniquities are gone over my head: and as a heavy burden are become heavy upon me. : . my sores are putrified and corrupted, because of my foolishness. : . i am bcome miserable, and am bowed down even to the end: i walked sorrowfull all the day long. : . for my loins are filled with illusions; and there isno health in my flesh. : . i am afflicted and humbled exceedingly: i roared with the groaning of my heart. : . lord, all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hidden from thee. : . my heart is troubled, my strength hath left me, and the light of my eyes itself is not with me. : . my friends and my neighbours have drawn near, and stood against me. and they that were near me stood afar off: : . and they that sought my soul used violence. and they that sought evils to me spoke vain things, and studied deceits all the day long. : . but i, as a deaf man, heard not: and as a dumb man not opening his mouth. : . and i became as a man that heareth not: and that hath no reproofs in his mouth. : . for in thee, o lord, have i hoped: thou wilt hear me, o lord my god. : . for i said: lest at any time my enemies rejoice over me: and whilst my feet are moved, they speak great things against me. : . for i am ready for scourges: and my sorrow is continually before me. : . for i will declare my iniquity: and i will think formy sin. : . but my enemies live, and are stronger than i: and they that hate me wrongfully are ultiplied. : . they that render evil for good, have detracted me, because i followed goodness. : . for sake me not, o lord my god: do not thou depart from me. : . attend unto my help, o lord, the god of my salvation. psalms chapter dixi custodiam. a just man's peace and patience in his sufferings; considering the vanity of the world, and the providence of god. : . unto the end, for idithun himself, a canticle of david. : . i said: i will take heed to my ways: that i sin not with my tongue. i have set a guard to my mouth, when the sinner stood against me. : . i was dumb, and was humbled, and kept silence from good things: and my sorrow was renewed. : . my heart grew hot within me: and in my meditqation a fire shall flame out. : . i spoke with my tongue: o lord, make me know my end. and what is the number of my days: that i may know what is wanting to me. : . behold thou hast made my days measurable and my substance is as nothing before thee. and indeed all things are vantiy: every man living. : . surely man passeth as an image: yea, and he is disquieted in vain. he storeth up: and he knoweth not for whom he shall gather these things. : . and now what is my hope? is it not the lord? and my substance is with thee. : . deliver thou me from all my iniquities: thou hast made me a reproach to the fool. : . i was dumb, and i opened not my mouth, because thou hast done it. : . remove thy scourges from me. the strength of thy hand hath made me faint in rebukes: : . thou hast corrected man for iniquity. and thou hast made his soul to waste away like a spider: surely in vain is any man disquieted. : . hear my prayer, o lord, and my supplication: give ear to my tears. be no silent: for i am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were. : . o forgive me, that i may be refreshed, before i go hence, and be no more. psalms chapter expectans expectavi. christ's coming, and redeeming mankind. : . unto the end, a psalm for david himself. : . with expectation i have waited for the lord, and he was attentive to me. : . and he heard my prayers, and brought me out of the pit of misery and the mire of dregs. and he set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps. : . and he put a new canticle into my mouth, a song to our god. many shall see, and shall fear: and they shall hope in the lord. : . blessed is the man whose trust is in the name of the lord; and who hath not had regard to vanities, and lying follies. : . thou hast multiplied thy wonderful works, o lord my god: and in thy thoughts there is no one like to thee. i have declared and i have spoken they are multiplied above number. : . sacrifice and oblation thou didst not desire; but thou hast pierced ears for me. burnt offering and sin offering thou didst not require: : . then said i, behold i come. in the head of the book it is written of me : . that i should do thy will: o my god, i have desired it, and thy law in the midst of my heart. : . i have declared thy justice in a great church, lo, i will not restrain my lips: o lord, thou knowest it. : . i have not hid thy justice within my heart: i have declared thy truth and thy salvation. i have not concealed thy mercy and thy truth from a great council. : . withhold not thou, o lord, thy tender mercies from me: thy mercy and thy truth have always upheld me. : . for evils without number have surrounded me; my iniquities have overtaken me, and i was not able to see. they are multiplied above the hairs of my head: and my heart hath forsaken me. my iniquities... that is, the sins of all mankind, which i have taken upon me. : . be pleased, o lord, to deliver me. look down, o lord, to help me. : . let them be confounded and ashamed together, that seek after my soul to take it away. let them be turned backward and be ashamed that desire evils to me. : . let them immediately bear their confusion, that say to me: 't is well, t' is well. 't is well... the hebrew here is an interjection of insult and derision, like the vah. matt. . . : . let all that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say always: the lord be magnified. : . but i am a beggar and poor: the lord is careful for me. thou art my helper and my protector: o my god, be not slack. psalms chapter beatus qui intelligit. the happiness of him that shall believe in christ; notwithstanding the humility and poverty in which he shall come: the malice of his enemies, especially of the traitor judas. : . unto the end, a psalm for david himself. : . blessed is he that understandeth concerning the needy and the poor: the lord will deliver him in the evil day. : . the lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth: and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies. : . the lord help him on his bed of sorrow: thou hast turned all his couch in his sickness. : . i said: o lord, be thou merciful to me: heal my soul, for i have sinned against thee. : . my enemies have spoken evils against me: when shall he die and his name perish? : . and if he came in to see me, he spoke vain things: his heart gathered together iniquity to itself. he went out and spoke to the same purpose. : . all my enemies whispered together against me: they devised evils to me. : . they determined against me an unjust word: shall he that sleepeth rise again no more? : . for even the man of my peace, in whom i trusted, who ate my bread, hath greatly supplanted me. : . but thou, o lord, have mercy on me, and raise my up again: and i will requite them. : . by this i know, that thou hast had a good will for me: because my enemy shall not rejoice over me. : . but thou hast upheldme by reason of my innocence: and hast established me in thy sight for ever. : . blessed be the lord the god of israel from eternity to eternity. so be it. so be it. psalms chapter quemadmodum desiderat. the fervent desire of the just after god: hope in afflictions. : . unto the end, understanding for the sons of core. : . as the hart panteth after the fountains of water; so my soul panteth after thee, o god. : . my soul hath thirsted after the strong living god; when shall i come and appear before the face of god? : . my tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: where is thy god? : . these things i remembered, and poured out my soul in me: for i shall go over into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of god: with the voice of joy and praise; the noise of one feasting. : . why art thou sad, o my soul? and why dost thou trouble me? hope in god, for i will still give praise to him: the salvation of my countenance, : . and my god. my soul is troubled within my self: therefore will i remember thee from the land of jordan and hermoniim, from the little hill. : . deep calleth on deep, at the noise of thy flood-gates. all thy heights and thy billows have passed over me. : . in the daytime the lord hath commanded hismercy; and a canticle to him in the night. with me is prayer to the god of my life. : . i will say to god: thou art my support. why hast thou forgotten me? and why go i mourning, whilst my enemy afflicteth me? : . whilst my bones are broken, my enemies who troubleme have reproached me; whilst they say to me day be day: where is thy god? : . why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me? hope thou in god, for i will still give praise to him: the salvation of my countenance, and my god. psalms chapter judica me, deus. the prophet aspireth after the temple and altar of god. : . a psalm for david. judge me, o god, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. : . for thou art god my strrength: why hast thou cast me off? and why do i go sorrowful whilst the enemy afflicteth me? : . sent forth thy light and thy truth: they have conducted me, and brought me unto thy holy hill, and into thy tabernacles. : . and i will go in to the altar of god: to god who giveth joy to my youth. : . to thee, o god my god, i will give praise upon the harp: why art thou sad, o my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me? : . hope in god, for i will still give pralise to him: the salvation of my countenance, and my god. psalms chapter deus auribus nostris. the church commemorates former favours, and present afflictions; under which she prays for succour. : . unto the end, for the sons of core, to give understanding. : . we have heard, o god, with our ears: our fathers have declared to us, the work thou hast wrought in their days, and in the days of old. : . thy hand destroyed the gentiles, and thou plantedst them: thou didst aflict the people and cast them out. : . for they got not the possession of the land by their own sword: neither did their own arm save them. but thy right hand and thy arm, and the light of thy countenance: because thou wast pleased with them. : . thou art thyself my king andmy god, who commandest the saving of jacob. : . through thee we will push down our enemies with the horn: and through thy name we will despise them that rise up against us. : . for i will not trust in my bow: neither shall my sword save me. : . but thou hast saved us from them that afflict us: and hast put them to shame that hate us. : . in god shall we glory all the day long: and in thy name we will give praise for ever. : . but now thou hast cast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, o god, wilt not go out with our armies. : . thou hast made kus turn our back to our enemies: and they that hated us plundered for themselves. : . thou hast given us up like sheep to be eaten: thou hast scattered us among the nations. : . thou hast sold thy people for no price: and there was no reckoning in the exchange of them. : . thou hast made us a reproach to our neighbours, a scoff and derision to them that are round about us. : . thou hast made us a byword among the gentiles: a shaking of the head among the people. : . all the day long my shame is before me: and the confusion of my face hath covered me, : . at the voice of him that reproacheth and detracteth me: at the face of the enemy and persecutor. : . all these things have come upon us, yet we have not forgotten thee: and we have not done wickedly in thy covenant. : . and our heart hath not turned back: neither hast thou turned aside our steps from thy way. : . for thou hast humbled us in the place of affliction: and the shadow of death hath covered us. : . if we have forgotten the name of our god, and if we have spread forth our hands to a strange god: : . shall not god search out thesethings: for he knoweth the secrets of the heart. because for thy sake we are killed all the day long: we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. : . arise, why sleepest thou, o lord? arise, and cast us not off to the end. : . why turnest thou thy face away? and forgettest our want and our trouble? : . for our soul is humbled down to the dust: our belly cleaveth to the earth. : . arise, o lord, help us and redeem us for thy name's sake. psalms chapter eructavit cor meum. the excellence of christ's kingdom, and the endowments of his church. : . unto the end, for them that shall be changed, for the sons of core, for understanding. a canticle for the beloved. for them that shall be changed... i.e., for souls happily changed, by being converted to god.-ibid. the beloved... viz., our lord jesus christ. : . my heart hath uttered a good word: i speak my works to the king: my tongue is the pen of a scrivener that writeth swiftly. : . thou art beautiful above the sons of men: grace is poured abroad in thy lips; therefore hath god blessed thee for ever. : . gird thy sword upon thy thigh, o thou most mighty. : . with thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign. because of truth and meekness and justice: and thy right hand shall conduct thee wonderfully. : . thy arrows are sharp: under thee shall people fall, into the hearts of the king's enemies. : . thy throne, o god, is forever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a sceptre of uprightness. : . thou hast loved justice, and hated iniquity: therefore god, thy god, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. : . myrrh and stacte and cassia perfume thy garments, from the ivory houses: out of which : . the daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. the queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety. : . hearken, o daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father's house. : . and the king shall greatly desire thy beauty; for he is the lord thy god, and him they shall adore. : . and the daughters of tyre with gifts, yea, all the rich among the people, shall entreat thy countenance. : . all the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden borders, : . clothed round about with varieties. after her shall virgins be brought to the king: her neighbours shall be brought to thee. : . they shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing: they shall be brought into the temple of the king. : . instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: thou shalt make them princes over all the earth. : . they shall remember thy name throughout all generations. therefore shall people praise thee for ever; yea, for ever and ever. psalms chapter deus noster refugium. the church in persecution trusteth in the protection of god. : . unto the end, for the sons of core, for the hidden. : . our god is our refuge and strength: a helper in troubles, which have found us exceedingly. : . therefore we will not fear, when the earth shall be troubled; and the mountains shall be removed into the heart of the sea. : . their waters roared and were troubled: the mountains were troubled with his strength. : . the stream of the river maketh the city of god joyful: the most high hath sanctified his own tabernacle. : . god is in the midst thereof, it shall not be moved: god will help it in the lmorning early. : . nations were troubled, and kingdoms were bowed down: he uttered his voice, the earth trembled. : . the lord of armies is with us: the god of jacob is our protector. : . come and behold ye the works of the lord: what wonders he hath done upon earth, : . making wars to cease even to the end of the earth. he shall destroy the bow, and break the weapons: and the shield he shall burn in the fire. : . be still and see that i am god; i will be exalted among the nations, and i will be exalted in the earth. : . the lord of armies is with us: the god of jacob is our protector. psalms chapter omnes gentes, plaudite. the gentiles are invited to praise god for the establishment of the kingdom of christ. : . unto the end, for the sons of core. : . o clap your hands, all ye nations: shout unto god with the voice of joy, : . for the lord is high, terrible: a great king over all the earth. : . he hath subdued the people under jus; and the nations under our feet. : . he hath chosen for us his inheritance, the beauty of jacob which he hath love. : . god is ascended with jubilee, and the lord with the sound of trumpet. : . sing praises to our god, sing ye: sing praises to our king, sing ye. : . for god is the king of all the earth: sing ye wisely. : . god shall reign over the nations: god sitteth on his holy throne. : . the princes of the people are gathered together, with the god of abraham: for the strong gods of the earth are exceedingly exalted. psalms chapter magnus dominus. god is greatly to be praised for the establishment of his church. : . a psalm of a canticle, for the sons of core, on the second day of the week. : . great is the lord, and exceedingly to be praised in the city of our god, in his holy mountain. : . with the joy of the whole earth is mount sion founded, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king. : . in her houses shall god be known, when he shall protect her. : . for behold the kings of the earth assembled themselves: they gathered together. : . so they saw, and they wondered, they were troubled, they were moved: : . trembling took hold of them. there were pains as of a woman in labour. : . with a vehement wind thou shalt break in pieces the ships of tharsis. : . as we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of the lord of hosts, in the city of our god: god hath founded it for ever. : . we have received thy mercy, o god, in the midst of thy temple. : . according to thy name, o god, so also is thy praise kunto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of justice. : . let mount sion rejoice, and the daughters of juda be glad; because of thy judgments, o lord. : . surround sion, and encompass her: tell lye in her towers. : . set your hearts on her strength; and distribute her houses, that ye may relate it in another generation. : . for this is god, our god unto eternity, and for ever and ever: he shall rule us for evermore. psalms chapter audite haec, omnes gentes. the folly of worldlings, who live on in sin, without thinking of death or hell. : . unto the end, a psalm for the sons of core. : . hear these things, all ye nations: give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world. : . all you that are earthborn, and you sons of men: both rich and poor together. : . my mouth shall speak wisdom: and the meditation of my heart understanding. : . i will incline my ear to a parable; i will open my proposition on the psaltery. : . why shall i fear in the evil day? the iniquity of my heel shall encompass me. the iniquity of my heel... that is, the iniquity of my steps or ways: or the iniquity of my pride, with which as with the heel, i have spurned and kicked at my neighbours: or the iniquity of my heel, that is, the iniquity in which i shall be found in death. the meaning of this verse is, why should i now indulge those passions and sinful affections, or commit now those sins, which will cause me so much fear and anguish in the evil day; when the sorrows of death shall compass me, and the perils of hell shall find me? : . they that trust in their own strength, and glory in the multitude of their riches, they that trust, etc... as much as to say, let them fear that trust in their strength or riches: for they have great reason to fear: seeing no brother or other man, how much a friend soever, can by any price or labour rescue them from death. : . no brother can redeem, nor shall man redeem: he shall not give to god his ransom, : . nor the price of the redemption of his soul: and shall labour for ever, and shall labour for ever, etc... this seems to be a continuation of the foregoing sentence: as much as to say no man can by any price or ransom prolong his life, that so he may still continue to labour here, and live to the end of the world. others understand it of the eternal sorrows, and dying life of hell, which is the dreadful consequence of dying in sin. : . and shall still live unto the end. : . he shall not see destruction, when he shall see the wise dying: the senseless and the fool shall perish together: and they shall leave their riches to strangers: he shall not see destruction, etc... or, shall he not see destruction? as much as to say, however thoughtless he may be of his death, he must not expect to escape; when even the wise and the good are not exempt from dying. : . and their sepulchres shall be their houses for ever. their dwelling places to all generations: they have called their lands by their names. they have called, etc... that is, they have left their names on their graves, which alone remain of their lands. : . and man when he was in honour did not understand; he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them. : . this way of theirs is a stumblingblock to them: and afterwards they shall delight in their mouth. they shall delight in their mouth... notwithstanding the wretched way in which they walk, they shall applaud themselves with their mouths, and glory in their doings. : . they are laid in hell like sheep: death shall feed upon them. and the just shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their help shall decay in hell from their glory. in the morning... that is, in the resurrection to a new life; when the just shall judge and condemn the wicked. ibid. from their glory... that is, when their short-lived glory in this world shall be past, and be no more. : . but god will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall receive me. : . be not thou afraid, when a man shall be made rick, and when the glory of his house shall be increased. : . for when he shall die he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him. : . for in his lifetime his soul will be blessed: and he will praise thee when thou shalt do well to him. : . he shall g in to the gneerations of his fathers: and he shall never see light. : . man when he was in honour did not understand: he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them. psalms chapter deus deorum. the coming of christ: who prefers virtue and inward purity before the blood of victims. : . a psalm for asaph. the god of gods, the lord hath spoken: and he hath called the earth. from the rising of the sun, to the going down thereof: : . out of sion the loveliness of his beauty. : . god shall come manifestly: our god shall come, and shall not keep silence. a fire shall burn before him: and a mighty tempest shall be round about him. : . he shall call heraven from above, and the earth, to judge his people. : . gather ye together his saints to him: who set his covenant before sacrifices. : . and the heavens shall declare his justice: for god is judge. : . hear, o my people, and i will speak: o israel, and i will testify to thee: i am god, thy god. : . i will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices: and thy burnt offerings are always in my sight. : . i will not take calves out of thy house: nor he goats out of thy flocks. : . for all the beasts of the woods are mine: the cattle on the hills, and the oxen. : . i know all the fowls of the air: and with me is the beauty of the field. : . if i should be hungry, i would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. : . shall i eat the flesh of bullocks? or shall i drink the blood of goats? : . offer to god the sacrifice of praise: and pay thy vows to the most high. : . and call upon me in the day of trouble: i will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. : . but to the sinner god hath said: why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth? : . seeing thou hast hated discipline: and hast cast my words behind thee. : . if thou didst see a thief thou didst run with him: and with adulterers thou hast been a partaker. : . thy mouth hath abounded with evil, and thy tongue framed deceits. : . sitting thou didst speak against thy brother, and didst lay a scandal against thy mother's son: : . these things hast thou done, and i was silent. thou thoughtest unjustly that i should be like to thee: but i will reprove thee, and set before thy face. : . understand these things, you that forget god; lest he snatch you away, and there be none to deliver you. : . the sacrifice of praise shall glorify me: and there is the way by which i will shew him the salvation of god. psalms chapter miserere. the repentance and confession of david after his sin. the fourth penitential psalm. : . unto the end, a psalm of david, : . when nathan the prophet came to him, after he had sinned with bethsabee. [ kings .] : . have mercy on me, o god, according to thy great mercy. and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. : . wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. : . for i know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. : . to thee only have i sinned, and have done evil befoer thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words, and mayst overcome when thou art judged. : . for behold i was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me. : . for behold thou hast loved truth: the uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me. : . thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and i shall be cleansed: thou shalt wash me, and i shall be made whiter than snow. : . to my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness: and the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice. : . tukrn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. : . create a clean heart in me, o god: and renew a right spirit within my bowels. : . cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me. : . restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit. : . i will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted to thee. : . deliver me from blood, o god, thou god of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol thy justice. : . o lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise. : . for if thou hadst desired sacrifice, i would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted. : . a sacrifice to god is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, o god, thou wilt not despise. : . deal favourably, o lord, in thy good will with sion; that the walls of jerusalem may be built up. : . then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon thy altar. psalms chapter quid gloriaris. david condemneth the wickedness of doeg, and foretelleth his destruction. : . unto the end, understanding for david, : . when doeg the edomite came and told saul: david went to the house of achimelech. : . why dost thou glory in malice, thou that art mighty in iniquity? : . all the day long thy tongue hath devised injustice: as a sharp razor, thou hast wrought deceit. : . thou hast loved malice more than goodness: and iniquity rather than to speak righteousness. : . thou hast loved all the words of ruin, o deceitful tongue. : . therefore will god destroy thee for ever: he will pluck thee out, and remove thee from thy dwelling place: and thy root out of the land of the living. : . the just shall see and fear, and shall laugh at him, and say: : . behold the man that made not god his helper: but trusted in the abundance of his riches: and prevailed in his vanity. : . but i, as a fruitful olive tree in the house of god, have hoped in the mercy of god for ever, yea for ever and ever. : . i will praise thee for ever, because thou hast done it: and i will wait on thy name, for it is good in the sight of thy saints. psalms chapter dixit insipiens. the general corruption of man before the coming of christ. : . unto the end, for maeleth, understandings to david. the fool said in his heart: there is no god. maeleth... or machalath. a musical instrument, or a chorus of musicians, for st. jerome renders it, per chorum. : . they are corrupted, and become abominable in iniquities: there is none that doth good. : . god looked down from heaven on the children of men: to see if there were any that did understand, or did seek god. : . all have gone aside, they are become unprofitable toegther, there is none that doth good, no not one. : . shall not all the workers of iniquity know, who eat up my people as they eat bread? : . they have not called upon god: there have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear. for god hath scattered the bones of them that please men: they have been confounded, because god hath despised them. god hath scattered the bones, etc... that is, god has brought to nothing the strength of all those that seek to please men, to the prejudice of their duty to their maker. : . who will give out of sion the salvation of israel? when god shall bring back the captivity of his people, jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. psalms chapter deus, in nomine tuo. a prayer for help in destress. : . unto the end, in verses, understanding for david. : . when the en of ziph had come and said to saul: is not david hidden with us? [ kings . ] : . save me, o god, by thy name, and judge me in thy strength. : . o god, hear my lprayer: give ear to the words of my mouth. : . for strangers have rrisen up against me; and the mighty have sought after my soul: and they have not set god before their eyes. : . for behold god is my helper: and the lord is the protector of my soul. : . turn back the evils upon my enemies; and cut them off in thy truth. : . i will freely sacrifice to thee, and will give praise, o god, to thy name: because it is good: : . for thou hast delivered me out of all trouble: and my eye hath looked down upon my enemies. psalms chapter exaudi, deus. a prayer of a just man under persecution from the wicked. it agrees to christ persecuted by the jews, and betrayed by judas. : . unto the end, in verses, understanding for david. : . hear, o god, my prayer, and despise not lmy supplication: : . be attentive to me and hear me. i am grieved in my exercise; and am troubled, : . at the voice of the enemy, and at the tribulation of the sinner. for they have cast iniquities upon me: and in wrath they were troublesome to me. : . my heart is troubled within me: and the fear of death is fallen upon me. : . fear and trembling are come upon me: and darkness hath covered me. : . and i said: who will give me wings like a dove, and i will fly and be at rest? : . lo, i have gone far off flying away; and i abode in the wilderness. : . i waited for him that hath saved me from pusillanimity of spirit, and a storm. : . cast down, o lord, and divide their tongues; for i have seen iniquity and contradiction in the city. : . day and night shall iniquity surround it upon its walls: and in the midst thereof arelabour, : . and injustice. and usury and deceit have not departed from its streets. : . for if my enemy had reviled me, i would verily have borne with it. and if he that hated me had spoken great things against me, i would perhaps have hidden my self from him. : . but thou a man of one mind, my guide, and my familiar, : . who didst take sweetmeats together with me: in the house of god we walked with consent. : . let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hell. for there is wickedness in their dwellings: in the midst of them. let death, etc... this, and such like imprecations which occur in the psalms, are delivered prophetically; that is, by way of foretelling the punishments which shall fall upon the wicked from divine justice, and approving the righteous ways of god: but not by way of ill will, or uncharitable curses, which the law of god disallows. : . but i have cried to god: and the lord will save me. : . evening and morning, and at noon i will speak and declare: and he shall hear my voice. : . he shall redeem my soul in peace from them that draw near to me: for among many they were with me. among many, etc... that is, they that drew near to attack me were many in company all combined to fight against me. : . god shall hear, and the eternal shall humble them. for there is no change with them, and they have not feared god: : . he hath stretched forth his hand to repay. they have defiled his covenant, : . they are divided by the wrath of his countenance, and his heart hath drawn near. his words are smoother tha oil, and the same are darts. they are divided, etc... dispersed, scattered, and brought to nothing, by the wrath of god; who looks with indignation on their wicked and deceitful ways. : . cast thy care upon the lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall not suffer the just to waver for ever. : . but thou, o god, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction. bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but i will trust in thee, o lord. psalms chapter miserere mei, deus. a prayer of david in danger and distress. : . unto the end, for a people that is removed at a distance form the sanctuary: for david, for an inscription of a title (or pillar) when the philistines held him in geth. : . have mercy on me, o god, for man hath trodden me under foot; all the day long he hath afflicted me fighting against me. : . my enemies have trodden on me all the day long; for they are many that make war against me. : . from the height of the day i shall fear: but i will trust in thee. the height of the day... that is, even at noonday, when the sun is the highest, i am still in danger. : . in god i will praise my words, in god i have put my trust: i will not fear what flesh can do against me. my words... the words or promises god has made in my favour. : . all the day long they detested my words: all their thoughts were against me unto evil. : . they will dwell and hide themselves: they will watch my heel. as they have waited for my soul, : . for nothing shalt thou save them: in thy anger thou shalt break the people in pieces. o god, for nothing shalt thou save them... that is, since they lie in wait to ruin my soul, thou shalt for no consideration favour or assist them, but execute thy justice upon them. : . i have declared to thee my life: thou hast set me tears in thy sight, as also in thy promise. : . then shall my enemies be turned back. in what day soever i shall call upon thee, behold i know thou art my god. : . in god will i praise the word, in the lord will i praise his speech. in god have i hoped, i will not fear what man can do to me. : . in me, o god, are vows to thee, which i will lpay, praises to thee: : . because thou hast delivered my soul from death, my feet from falling: that i may please in the sight of god, in the light of the living. psalms chapter miserere mei, deus. the prophet prays in his affliction, and praises god for his delivery. : . unto the end, destroy not, for david, for an inscription of a title, when he fled from saul into the cave. [ kings .] destroy not... suffer me not to be destroyed. : . have mercy on me, o god, have mercy on me: for my soul trusteth in thee. and in the shadow of thy wings will i hope, until iniquity pass away. : . i will cry to god the most high; to god who hath done good to me. : . he hath sent from heaven and delivered me: he hath made them a reproach that trod upon me. god hath sent his mercy and his truth, : . and he hath delivered my soul from the midst of the young lions. i slept troubled. the sons ofmen, whose teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. : . be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth. : . they prepared a snare for my feet; and they bowed down my soul. they dug a pit before my face, and they are fallen into it. : . my heart is ready, o god, my heart is ready: i will sing, and rehearse a psalm. : . arise, o my glory, arise psaltery and harp: i will arise early. : . i will give praise to thee, o lord, among the people: i will sing a psalm to thee among the nations. : . for thy mercy is magnified even to the heavens: and thy truth unto the clouds. : . be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens: and thy glory above all the earth. psalms chapter si vere utique. david reproveth the wicked, and foretelleth their punishment. : . unto the end, destroy not, for david, for an inscription of a title. : . if in very deed ye speak justice: judge right things, ye sons of men. : . for in your heart you work iniquity: your hands forge injustice in the earth. : . the wicked are alienated from the womb; they have gone astray from the womb: they have spoken false things. : . their madness is according to the likeness of a serpent: like the deaf asp that stoppeth her ears: : . which will not hear the voice of the charmers; nor of the wizard that charmeth wisely. : . god shall break in pieces their teeth in their mouth: the lord shall break the grinders of the lions. : . they shall come to nothing, like water running down; he hath bent his bow till they be weakened. : . like wax that melteth they shall be taken away: fire hath fallen on them, and they shall not see the sun. : . before your thorns could know the brier; he swalloweth them up, as alive, in his wrath. before your thorns, etc... that is, before your thorns grow up, so as to become strong briers, they shall be overtaken and consumed by divine justice, swallowing them up, as it were, alive in his wrath. : . the just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge: he shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner. shall wash his hands, etc... shall applaud the justice of god, and take occasion from the consideration of the punishment of the wicked to wash and cleanse his hands from sin. : . and man shall say: if indeed there be fruit to the just: there is indeed a god that judgeth them on the earth. psalms chapter eripe me. a prayer to be delivered from the wicked, with confidence in god's help and protection. it agrees to christ and his enemies the jews. : . unto the end, destroy not, for david for an inscription of a title, when saul sent and watched his house to kill him. [ kings .] : . deliver me from my enemies, o my god; and defend me from them that rise up against me. : . deliver me from them that work iniquity, and save me from bloody men. : . for behold they have caught my soul: the mighty have rushed in upon me: : . neither is it my iniquity, nor my sin, o lord: without iniquity have i ren, and directed my steps. : . rise up thou to meet me, and behold: even thou, o lord, the god of hosts, the god of israel. attend to visit all the nations: have no mercy on all them that work iniquity. : . they shall return at everning, and shall suffer hunger like dogs: and shall go round about the city. : . behold they shall speak with their mouth, and a sword is in their lips: for who, say they, hath heard us? : . but thou, o lord, shalt laugh at them: thou shalt bring all the nations to nothing. : . i will keep my strength to thee: for thou art my protector: : . my god, his mercy shall prevent me. : . god shall let me see over my enemies: slay them not, lest at any time my people forget. scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, o lord, my protector: : . for the sin of their mouth, and the word of their lips: and let them be taken in their pride. and for their cursing and lying they shall be talked of, : . when they are consumed: when they are consumed by thy wrath, and they shall be no more. and they shall know that god will rule jacob, and all the ends of the earth. : . they shall return at evening and shall suffer hunger like dogs: and shall go round about the city. : . they shall be scattered abroad to eat, and shall murmur if they be not filled. : . but i will sing thy strength: and will extol thy mercy in the morning. for thou art become my support, and my refuge, in the day of my trouble. : . unto thee, o my helper, will i sing, for thou art god my defence: my god my mercy. psalms chapter deus, repulisti nos. after many afflictions, the church of christ shall prevail. : . unto the end, for them that shall be changed, for the inscription of a title, to david himself, for doctrine, : . when he set fire to mesopotamia of syria and sobal: and joab returned and slew of edom, in the vale of the saltpits, twelve thousand men. : . o god, thou hast cast us off, and hast destroyed us; thou hast been angry, and hast had mercy on us. : . thou hast moved the earth, and hast troubled it: heal thou the breaches thereof, for it has been moved. : . thou hast shewn thy people hard things; thou hast made us drink the wine of sorrow. : . thou hast given a warning to them that fear thee: that they may flee from before the bow: that thy beloved may be delivered. : . save me with thy right hand, and hear me. : . god hath spoken in his holy place: i will rejoice, and i will divide sichem; and will mete out the vale of tabernacles. : . galaad is mine, and manasses is mine: and ephraim is the strength of my head. juda is my king: : . moab is the pot of my hope. into edom will i stretch out my shoe: to me the foreigners are made subject. the pot of my hope... or my watering pot. that is, a vessel for meaner uses, by being reduced to serve me, even in the meanest employments. ibid. foreigners... so the philistines are called, who had no kindred with the israelites; whereas the edomites, moabites, etc., were originally of the same family. : . who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into edom? : . wilt not thou, o god, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, o god, go out with our armies? : . give us help from trouble: for vain is the salvation of man. : . through god we shall do mightily: and he shall bring to nothing them that afflict us. psalms chapter exaudi, deus. a prayer for the coming of the kingdom of christ, which shall have no end. : . unto the end, in hymns, for david. : . hear, o god, my supplication: be attentive to my prayer. : . to thee have i cried from the ends of the earth: when my heart was in anguish, thou hast exalted me on a rock. thou hast conducted me; : . for thou hast been my hope; a tower of strength against the face of the enemy. : . in thy tabernacle i shall dwell for ever: i shall be protected under the covert of thy wings. : . for thou, my god, hast heard my prayer: thou hast given an inheritance to them that fear thy name. : . thou wilt add days to the days of the king: his years even to generation and generation. : . he abideth for ever in the sight of god: his mercy and truth who shall search? : . so will i sing a psalm to thy name for ever and ever: that i may pay my vows from day to day. psalms chapter nonne deo. the prophet encourageth himself and all others to trust in god, and serve him. : . unto the end, for idithun, a psalm of david. : . shall not my soul be subject to god? for from him is my salvation. : . for he is my god and my saviour: he is my protector, i shall be moved no more. : . how long do you rush in upon a man? you all kill, as if you were thrusting down a leaning wall, and a tottering fence. : . but they have thought to cast away my price; i ran in thirst: they blessed with their mouth, but cursed with their heart. : . but be thou, o my soul, subject to god: for from him is my patience. : . for he is my god and my saviour: he is my helper, i shall not be moved. : . in god is my salvation and my glory: he is the god of my help, and my hope is in god. : . trust in him, all ye congregation of people: pour out your hearts before him. god is our helper for ever. : . but vain are the sons of men, the sons of men are liars in the balances: that by vanity they may together deceive. are liars in the balances, etc... they are so vain and light, that if they are put into the scales, they will be found to be of no weight; and to be mere lies, deceit, and vanity. or, they are liars in their balances, by weighing things by false weights, and preferring the temporal before the eternal. : . trust not in iniquity, and cover not robberies: if riches abound, set not your heart upon them. : . god hath spoken once, these two things have i heard, that power belongeth to god, : . and mercy to thee, o lord; for thou wilt render to every man according to his works. psalms chapter deus deus meus, ad te. the prophet aspireth after god. : . a psalm of david while he was in the desert of edom. : . o god, my god, to thee do i watch at break of day. for thee my soul hath thirsted; for thee my flesh, o how many ways! : . in a desert land, and where there is no way, and no water: so in the sanctuary have i come before thee, to see thy power and thy glory. : . for thy mercy is better than lives: thee my lips will praise. : . thus will i bless thee all my life long: and in thy name i will lift up my hands. : . let my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness: and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips. : . if i have remembered thee upon my bed, i will meditate on thee in the morning: : . because thou hast been my helper. and i will rejoice under the covert of thy wings: : . my soul hath stuck close to thee: thy right hand hath received me. : . but they have fought my soul in vain, they shall go into the lower parts of the earth: : . they shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes. : . but the king shall rejoice in god, all they shall be praised that swear by him: because the mouth is stopped of them that speak wicked things. psalms chapter exaudi deus orationem. a prayer in affliction, with confidence in god that he will bring to nought the machinations of persecutors. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. : . hear o god, my prayer, when i make supplication to thee: deliver my soul from the fear of the enemy. : . thou hast protected me from the assembly of the malignant; from the multitude of the workers of iniquity. : . for they have whetted their tongues like a sword; they have bent their bow a bitter thing, : . to shoot in secret the undefiled. : . they will shoot at him on a sudden, and will not fear: they are resolute in wickedness. they have talked of hiding snares; they have said: who shall see them? : . they have searched after iniquities: they have failed in their search. man shall come to a deep heart: a deep heart... that is, crafty, subtle, deep projects and designs; which nevertheless shall not succeed; for god shall be exalted in bringing them to nought by his wisdom and power. : . and god shall be exalted. the arrows of children are their wounds: the arrows of children are their wounds... that is, the wounds, stripes, or blows, they seek to inflict upon the just, are but like the weak efforts of children's arrows, which can do no execution: and their tongues, that is, their speeches against them come to nothing. : . and their tongues against them are made weak. all that saw them were troubled; : . and every man was afraid. and they declared the works of god, and understood his doings. : . the just shall rejoice in the lord, and shall hope in him: and all the upright in heart shall be praised. psalms chapter te decet. god is to be praised in his church, to which all nations shall be called. : . to the end, a psalm of david. the canticle of jeremias and ezechiel to the people of the captivity, when they began to go out. of the captivity... that is, the people of the captivity of babylon. this is not in the hebrew, but is found in the ancient translation of the septuagint. : . a hymn, o god, becometh thee in sion: and a vow shall be paid to thee in jerusalem. : . o hear my prayer: all flesh shall come to thee. : . the words of the wicked have prevailed over us: and thou wilt pardon our transgressions. : . blessed is he whom thou hast chosen and taken to thee: he shall dwell in thy courts. we shall be filled with the good things of thy house; holy is thy temple, : . wonderful in justice. hear us, o god our saviour, who art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea afar off. : . thou who preparest the mountains by thy strength, being girded with power: : . who troublest the depth of the sea, the noise of its waves. the gentiles shall be troubled, : . and they that dwell in the uttermost borders shall be afraid at thy signs: thou shalt make the outgoings of the morning and of the evening to be joyful. : . thou hast visited the earth, and hast plentifully watered it; thou hast many ways enriched it. the river of god is filled with water, thou hast prepared their food: for so is its preparation. : . fill up plentifully the streams thereof, multiply its fruits; it shall spring up and rejoice in its showers. : . thou shalt bless the crown of the year of thy goodness: and thy fields shall be filled with plenty. : . the beautiful places of the wilderness shall grow fat: and the hills shall be girded about with joy, : . the rams of the flock are clothed, and the vales shall abound with corn: they shall shout, yea they shall sing a hymn. psalms chapter jubilate deo. an invitation to praise god. : . unto the end, a canticle of a psalm of the resurrection. shout with joy to god, all the earth, : . sing ye a psalm to his name; give glory to his praise. : . say unto god, how terrible are thy works, o lord! in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee. : . let all the earth adore thee, and sing to thee: let it sing a psalm to thy name. : . come and see the works of god; who is terrible in his counsels over the sons of men. : . who turneth the sea into dry land, in the river they shall pass on foot: there shall we rejoice in him. : . who by his power ruleth for ever: his eyes behold the nations; let not them that provoke him be exalted in themselves. : . o bless our god, ye gentiles: and make the voice of his praise to be heard. : . who hath set my soul to live: and hath not suffered my feet to be moved: : . for thou, o god, hast proved us: thou hast tried us by fire, as silver is tried. : . thou hast brought us into a net, thou hast laid afflictions on our back: : . thou hast set men over our heads. we have passed through fire and water, and thou hast brought us out into a refreshment. : . i will go into thy house with burnt offerings: i will pay thee my vows, : . which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when i was in trouble. : . i will offer up to thee holocausts full of marrow, with burnt offerings of rams: i will offer to thee bullocks with goats. : . come and hear, all ye that fear god, and i will tell you what great things he hath done for my soul. : . i cried to him with my mouth: and i extolled him with my tongue. : . if i have looked at iniquity in my heart, the lord will not hear me. : . therefore hath god heard me, and hath attended to the voice of my supplication. : . blessed be god, who hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. psalms chapter deus misereatur. a prayer for the propagation of the church. : . unto the end, in hymns, a psalm of a canticle for david. : . may god have mercy on us, and bless us: may he cause the light of his countenance to shine upon us, and may he have mercy on us. : . that we may know thy way upon earth: thy salvation in all nations. : . let people confess to thee, o god: let all people give praise to thee. : . let the nations be glad and rejoice: for thou judgest the people with justice, and directest the nations upon earth. : . let the people, o god, confess to thee: let all the people give praise to thee: : . the earth hath yielded her fruit. may god, our god bless us, : . may god bless us: and all the ends of the earth fear him. psalms chapter exurgat deus. the glorious establishment of the church of the new testament, prefigured by the benefits bestowed on the people of israel. : . unto the end, a psalm of a canticle for david himself. : . let god arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face. : . as smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of god. : . and let the just feast, and rejoice before god: and be delighted with gladness. : . sing ye to god, sing a psalm to his name, make a way for him who ascendeth upon the west: the lord is his name. rejoice ye before him: but the wicked shall be troubled at his presence, who ascendeth upon the west... super occasum. st. gregory understands it of christ, who after his going down, like the sun, in the west, by his passion and death, ascended more glorious, and carried all before him. st. jerome renders it, who ascendeth, or cometh up, through the deserts. : . who is the father of orphans, and the judge of widows. god in his holy place: : . god who maketh men of one manner to dwell in a house: who bringeth out them that were bound in strength; in like manner them that provoke, that dwell in sepulchres. of one manner... that is, agreeing in faith, unanimous in love, and following the same manner of discipline. it is verified in the servants of god, living together in his house, which is the church. tim. . . ibid. them that were bound, etc... the power and mercy of god appears in his bringing out of their captivity those that were strongly bound in their sins: and in restoring to his grace those whose behaviour had been most provoking; and who by their evil habits were not only dead, but buried in their sepulchres. : . o god, when thou didst go forth in the sight of thy people, when thou didst pass through the desert: : . the earth was moved, and the heavens dropped at the presence of the god of sina, at the presence of the god of israel. : . thou shalt set aside for thy inheritance a free rain, o god: and it was weakened, but thou hast made it perfect. a free rain... the manna, which rained plentifully from heaven, in favour of god's inheritance, that is, of his people israel: which was weakened indeed under a variety of afflictions, but was made perfect by god; that is, was still supported by divine providence, and brought on to the promised land. it agrees particularly to the church of christ his true inheritance, which is plentifully watered with the free rain of heavenly grace; and through many infirmities, that is, crosses and tribulations, is made perfect, and fitted for eternal glory. : . in it shall thy animals dwell; in thy sweetness, o god, thou hast provided for the poor. in it, etc... that is, in this church, which is thy fold and thy inheritance, shall thy animals, thy sheep, dwell: where thou hast plentifully provided for them. : . the lord shall give the word to them that preach good tidings with great power. to them that preach good tidings... evangelizantibus. that is, to the preachers of the gospel; who receiving the word from the lord, shall with great power and efficacy preach throughout the world the glad tidings of a saviour, and of eternal salvation through him. : . the king of powers is of the beloved, of the beloved; and the beauty of the house shall divide spoils. the king of powers... that is, the mighty king, the lord of hosts, is of the beloved, of the beloved; that is, is on the side of christ, his most beloved son: and his beautiful house, viz., the church, in which god dwells forever, shall by her spiritual conquests divide the spoils of many nations. the hebrew (as it now stands pointed) is thus rendered, the kings of armies have fled, they have fled, and she that dwells at home (or the beauty of the house) shall divide the spoils. : . if you sleep among the midst of lots, you shall be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and the hinder parts of her back with the paleness of gold. if you sleep among the midst of lots (intermedios cleros, etc.)... viz., in such dangers and persecutions, as if your enemies were casting lots for your goods and persons: or in the midst of the lots, (intermedios terminos, as st. jerome renders it,) that is, upon the very bounds or borders of the dominions of your enemies: you shall be secure nevertheless under the divine protection; and shall be enabled to fly away, like a dove, with glittering wings and feathers shining like the palest and most precious gold; that is, with great increase of virtue, and glowing with the fervour of charity. : . when he that is in heaven appointeth kings over her, they shall be whited with snow in selmon. kings over her... that is, pastors and rulers over his church, viz., the apostles and their successors. then by their ministry shall men be made whiter than the snow which lies on the top of the high mountain selmon. : . the mountain of god is a fat mountain. a curdled mountain, a fat mountain. the mountain of god... the church, which, isa. . , is called the mountain of the house of the lord upon the top of mountains. it is here called a fat and a curdled mountain; that is to say, most fruitful, and enriched by the spiritual gifts and graces of the holy ghost. : . why suspect, ye curdled mountains? a mountain in which god is well pleased to dwell: for there the lord shall dwell unto the end. why suspect, ye curdled mountains?... why do you suppose or imagine there may be any other such curdled mountains? you are mistaken: the mountain thus favoured by god is but one; and this same he has chosen for his dwelling for ever. : . the chariot of god is attended by ten thousands; thousands of them that rejoice: the lord is among them in sina, in the holy place. the chariot of god... descending to give his law on mount sina: as also of jesus christ his son, ascending into heaven, to send from thence the holy ghost, to publish his new law, is attended with ten thousands, that is, with an innumerable multitude of joyful angels. : . thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts in men. yea for those also that do not believe, the dwelling of the lord god. led captivity captive... carrying away with thee to heaven those who before had been the captives of satan; and receiving from god the father gifts to be distributed to men; even to those who were before unbelievers. : . blessed be the lord day by day: the god of our salvation will make our journey prosperous to us. : . our god is the god of salvation: and of the lord, of the lord are the issues from death. the issues from death... the lord alone is master of the issues, by which we may escape from death. : . but god shall break the heads of his enemies: the hairy crown of them that walk on in their sins. : . the lord said: i will turn them from basan, i will turn them into the depth of the sea: i will turn them from basan, etc... i will cast out my enemies from their rich possessions, signified by basan, a fruitful country; and i will drive them into the depth of the sea: and make such a slaughter of them, that the feet of my servants may be dyed in their blood, etc. : . that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thy enemies; the tongue of thy dogs be red with the same. : . they have seen thy goings, o god, the goings of my god: of my king who is in his sanctuary. thy goings... thy ways, thy proceedings, by which thou didst formerly take possession of the promised land in favour of thy people; and shalt afterwards of the whole world, which thou shalt subdue to thy son. : . princes went before joined with singers, in the midst of young damsels playing on timbrels. princes... the apostles, the first converters of nations; attended by numbers of perfect souls, singing the divine praises, and virgins consecrated to god. : . in the churches bless ye god the lord, from the fountains of israel. from the fountains of israel... from whom both christ and his apostles sprung. by benjamin, the holy fathers on this place understand st. paul, who was of that tribe, named here a youth, because he was the last called to the apostleship. by the princes of juda, zabulon, and nephthali, we may understand the other apostles, who were of the tribe of juda; or of the tribes of zabulon, and nephthali, where our lord began to preach, matt. . , etc. : . there is benjamin a youth, in ecstasy of mind. the princes of juda are their leaders: the princes of zabulon, the princes of nephthali. : . command thy strength, o god confirm, o god, what thou hast wrought in us. command thy strength.. give orders that thy strength may be always with us. : . from thy temple in jerusalem, kings shall offer presents to thee. : . rebuke the wild beasts of the reeds, the congregation of bulls with the kine of the people; who seek to exclude them who are tried with silver. scatter thou the nations that delight in wars: rebuke the wild beasts of the reeds... or the wild beasts, which lie hid in the reeds. that is, the devils, who hide themselves in order to surprise their prey. or by wild beasts, are here understood persecutors, who, for all their attempts against the church, are but as weak reeds, which cannot prevail against them who are supported by the strength of the almighty. the same are also called the congregation of bulls (from their rage against the church) who assemble together all their kine, that is, the people their subjects, to exclude if they can, from christ and his inheritance, his constant confessors, who are like silver tried by fire. : . ambassadors shall come out of egypt: ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to god. ambassadors shall come, etc... it is a prophecy of the conversion of the gentiles, and by name of the egyptians and ethiopians. : . sing to god, ye kingdoms of the earth: sing ye to the lord: sing ye to god, : . who mounteth above the heaven of heavens, to the east. behold he will give to his voice the voice of power: to the east... from mount olivet, which is on the east side of jerusalem.-ibid. the voice of power... that is, he will make his voice to be a powerful voice: by calling from death to life, such as were dead in mortal sin: as at the last day he will by the power of his voice call all the dead from their graves. : . give ye glory to god for israel, his magnificence, and his power is in the clouds. : . god is wonderful in his saints: the god of israel is he who will give power and strength to his people. blessed be god. psalms chapter salvum me fac, deus. christ in his passion declareth the greatness of his sufferings, and the malice of his persecutors the jews; and foretelleth their reprobation. : . unto the end, for them that shall be changed; for david. for them that shall be changed... a psalm for christian converts, to remember the passion of christ. : . save me, o god: for the waters are come in even unto my soul. the waters... of afflictions and sorrows. my soul is sorrowful even unto death. matt. . . : . i stick fast in the mire of the deep and there is no sure standing. i am come into the depth of the sea, and a tempest hath overwhelmed me. : . i have laboured with crying; my jaws are become hoarse, my eyes have failed, whilst i hope in my god. : . they are multiplied above the hairs of my head, who hate me without cause. my enemies are grown strong who have wrongfully persecuted me: then did i pay that which i took not away. i pay that which i took not away... christ in his passion made restitution of what he had not taken away, by suffering the punishment due to our sins, and so repairing the injury we had done to god. : . o god, thou knowest my foolishness; and my offences are not hidden from thee: my foolishness and my offences... which my enemies impute to me: or the follies and sins of men, which i have taken upon myself. : . let not them be ashamed for me, who look for thee, o lord, the lord of hosts. let them not be confounded on my account, who seek thee, o god of israel. : . because for thy sake i have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. : . i am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother. : . for the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up: and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. : . and i covered my soul in fasting: and it was made a reproach to me. : . and i made haircloth my garment: and i became a byword to them. : . they that sat in the gate spoke against me: and they that drank wine made me their song. : . but as for me, my prayer is to thee, o lord; for the time of thy good pleasure, o god. in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. : . draw me out of the mire, that i may not stick fast: deliver me from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. : . let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep water swallow me up: and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. : . hear me, o lord, for thy mercy is kind; look upon me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. : . and turn not away thy face from thy servant: for i am in trouble, hear me speedily. : . attend to my soul, and deliver it: save me because of my enemies. : . thou knowest my reproach, and my confusion, and my shame. : . in thy sight are all they that afflict me; my heart hath expected reproach and misery. and i looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and i found none. : . and they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. : . let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumblingblock. let their table, etc... what here follows in the style of an imprecation, is a prophecy of the wretched state to which the jews should be reduced in punishment of their wilful obstinacy. : . let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always. : . pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. : . let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles. : . because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds. : . add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice. : . let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written. : . but i am poor and sorrowful: thy salvation, o god, hath set me up. : . i will praise the name of god with a canticle: and i will magnify him with praise. : . and it shall please god better than a young calf, that bringeth forth horns and hoofs. : . let the poor see and rejoice: seek ye god, and your soul shall live. : . for the lord hath heard the poor: and hath not despised his prisoners. : . let the heavens and the earth praise him; the sea, and every thing that creepeth therein. : . for god will save sion, and the cities of juda shall be built up. and they shall dwell there, and acquire it by inheritance. sion... the catholic church. the cities of juda, etc., her places of worship, which shall be established throughout the world. and there, viz., in this church of christ, shall his servants dwell, etc. : . and the seed of his servants shall possess it; and they that love his name shall dwell therein. psalms chapter deus in adjutorium. a prayer in persecution. : . unto the end, a psalm for david, to bring to remembrance that the lord saved him. : . o god, come to my assistance; o lord, make haste to help me. : . let them be confounded and ashamed that seek my soul: : . let them be turned backward, and blush for shame that desire evils to me: let them be presently turned away blushing for shame that say to me: 'tis well, 'tis well. 't is well, 't is well... euge, euge. st. jerome renders it, vah, vah! which is the voice of one insulting and deriding. some understand it as a detestation of deceitful flatterers. : . let all that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee; and let such as love thy salvation say always: the lord be magnified. : . but i am needy and poor; o god, help me. thou art my helper and my deliverer: o lord, make no delay. psalms chapter in te, domine. a prayer for perseverance. : . a psalm for david. of the sons of jonadab, and the former captives. in thee, o lord, i have hoped, let me never be put to confusion: of the sons of jonadab... the rechabites, of whom see jer. . by this addition of the seventy-two interpreters, we gather that this psalm was usually sung in the synagogue, in the person of the rechabites, and of those who were first carried away into captivity. : . deliver me in thy justice, and rescue me. incline thy ear unto me, and save me. : . be thou unto me a god, a protector, and a place of strength: that thou mayst make me safe. for thou art my firmament and my refuge. : . deliver me, o my god, out of the hand of the sinner, and out of the hand of the transgressor of the law and of the unjust. : . for thou art my patience, o lord: my hope, o lord, from my youth. : . by thee have i been confirmed from the womb: from my mother's womb thou art my protector. of thee i shall continually sing: : . i am become unto many as a wonder, but thou art a strong helper. : . let my mouth be filled with praise, that i may sing thy glory; thy greatness all the day long. : . cast me not off in the time of old age: when my strength shall fail, do not thou forsake me. : . for my enemies have spoken against me; and they that watched my soul have consulted together, : . saying: god hath forsaken him: pursue and take him, for there is none to deliver him. : . o god, be not thou far from me: o my god, make haste to my help. : . let them be confounded and come to nothing that detract my soul; let them be covered with confusion and blame that seek my hurt. : . but i will always hope; and will add to all thy praise. : . my mouth shall shew forth thy justice; thy salvation all the day long. because i have not known learning, learning... as much as to say, i build not upon human learning, but only on the power and justice of god. : . i will enter into the powers of the lord: o lord, i will be mindful of thy justice alone. : . thou hast taught me, o god, from my youth: and till now i will declare thy wonderful works. : . and unto old age and grey hairs: o god, forsake me not, until i shew forth thy arm to all the generation that is to come: thy power, : . and thy justice, o god, even to the highest great things thou hast done: o god, who is like to thee? : . how great troubles hast thou shewn me, many and grievous: and turning thou hast brought me to life, and hast brought me back again from the depths of the earth: : . thou hast multiplied thy magnificence; and turning to me thou hast comforted me. : . for i will also confess to thee thy truth with the instruments of psaltery: o god, i will sing to thee with the harp, thou holy one of israel. : . my lips shall greatly rejoice, when i shall sing to thee; and my soul which thou hast redeemed. : . yea and my tongue shall meditate on thy justice all the day; when they shall be confounded and put to shame that seek evils to me. psalms chapter deus, judicium tuum. a prophecy of the coming of christ, and of his kingdom: prefigured by solomon and his happy reign. : . a psalm on solomon. : . give to the king thy judgment, o god, and to the king's son thy justice: to judge thy people with justice, and thy poor with judgment. : . let the mountains receive peace for the people: and the hills justice. : . he shall judge the poor of the people, and he shall save the children of the poor: and he shall humble the oppressor. : . and he shall continue with the sun and before the moon, throughout all generations. : . he shall come down like rain upon the fleece; and as showers falling gently upon the earth. : . in his days shall justice spring up, and abundance of peace, till the moon be taken away. : . and he shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. : . before him the ethiopians shall fall down: and his enemies shall lick the ground. : . the kings of tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the arabians and of saba shall bring gifts: : . and all kings of the earth shall adore him: all nations shall serve him. : . for he shall deliver the poor from the mighty: and the needy that had no helper. : . he shall spare the poor and needy: and he shall save the souls of the poor. : . he shall redeem their souls from usuries and iniquity: and their names shall be honourable in his sight. : . and he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of arabia, for him they shall always adore: they shall bless him all the day. : . and there shall be a firmament on the earth on the tops of mountains, above libanus shall the fruit thereof be exalted: and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth. a firmament on the earth, etc... this may be understood of the church of christ, ever firm and visible: and of the flourishing condition of its congregation. : . let his name be blessed for evermore: his name continueth before the sun. and in him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed: all nations shall magnify him. : . blessed be the lord, the god of israel, who alone doth wonderful things. : . and blessed be the name of his majesty for ever: and the whole earth shall be filled with his majesty. so be it. so be it. : . the praises of david, the son of jesse, are ended. are ended... by this it appears that this psalm, though placed here, was in order of time the last of those which david composed. psalms chapter quam bonus israel deus. the temptation of the weak, upon seeing the prosperity of the wicked, is overcome by the consideration of the justice of god, who will quickly render to every one according to his works. : . a psalm for asaph. how good is god to israel, to them that are of a right heart! : . but my feet were almost moved; my steps had well nigh slipped. : . because i had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners. : . for there is no regard to their death, nor is there strength in their stripes. : . they are not in the labour of men: neither shall they be scourged like other men. : . therefore pride hath held them fast: they are covered with their iniquity and their wickedness. : . their iniquity hath come forth, as it were from fatness: they have passed into the affection of the heart. fatness... abundance and temporal prosperity, which hath encouraged them in their iniquity: and made them give themselves up to their irregular affections. : . they have thought and spoken wickedness: they have spoken iniquity on high. : . they have set their mouth against heaven: and their tongue hath passed through the earth. : . therefore will my people return here and full days shall be found in them. return here... or hither. the weak among the servants of god, will be apt often to return to this thought, and will be shocked when they consider the full days, that is, the long and prosperous life of the wicked; and will be tempted to make the reflections against providence which are set down in the following verses. : . and they said: how doth god know? and is there knowledge in the most high? : . behold these are sinners; and yet, abounding in the world they have obtained riches. : . and i said: then have i in vain justified my heart, and washed my hands among the innocent. : . and i have been scourged all the day; and my chastisement hath been in the mornings. : . if i said: i will speak thus; behold i should condemn the generation of thy children. if i said, etc... that is, if i should indulge such thoughts as these. : . i studied that i might know this thing, it is a labour in my sight: : . until i go into the sanctuary of god, and understand concerning their last ends. : . but indeed for deceits thou hast put it to them: when they were lifted up thou hast cast them down. thou hast put it to them... in punishment of their deceits, or for deceiving them, thou hast brought evils upon them in their last end, which, in their prosperity they never apprehended. : . how are they brought to desolation? they have suddenly ceased to be: they have perished by reason of their iniquity. : . as the dream of them that awake, o lord; so in thy city thou shalt bring their image to nothing. : . for my heart hath been inflamed, and my reins have been changed: : . and i am brought to nothing, and i knew not. : . i am become as a beast before thee: and i am always with thee. : . thou hast held me by my right hand; and by thy will thou hast conducted me, and with thy glory thou hast received me. : . for what have i in heaven? and besides thee what do i desire upon earth? : . for thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: thou art the god of my heart, and the god that is my portion for ever. : . for behold they that go far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that are disloyal to thee. : . but it is good for me to adhere to my god, to put my hope in the lord god: that i may declare all thy praises, in the gates of the daughter of sion. psalms chapter ut quid, deus. a prayer of the church under grievous persecutions. : . understanding for asaph. o god, why hast thou cast us off unto the end: why is thy wrath enkindled against the sheep of thy pasture? : . remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed from the beginning. the sceptre of thy inheritance which thou hast redeemed: mount sion in which thou hast dwelt. : . lift up thy hands against their pride unto the end; see what things the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary. : . and they that hate thee have made their boasts, in the midst of thy solemnity. they have set up their ensigns for signs, their ensigns, etc... they have fixed their colours for signs and trophies, both on the gates, and on the highest top of the temple: and they knew not, that is, they regarded not the sanctity of the place. this psalm manifestly foretells the time of the machabees, and the profanation of the temple by antiochus. : . and they knew not both in the going out and on the highest top. as with axes in a wood of trees, : . they have cut down at once the gates thereof, with axe and hatchet they have brought it down. : . they have set fire to thy sanctuary: they have defiled the dwelling place of thy name on the earth. : . they said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together: let us abolish all the festival days of god from the land. : . our signs we have not seen, there is now no prophet: and he will know us no more. : . how long, o god, shall the enemy reproach: is the adversary to provoke thy name for ever? : . why dost thou turn away thy hand: and thy right hand out of the midst of thy bosom for ever? : . but god is our king before ages: he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth. : . thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters. the sea firm... by making the waters of the red sea stand like firm walls, whilst israel passed through: and destroying the egyptians called here dragons from their cruelty, in the same waters, with their king: casting up their bodies on the shore to be stripped by the ethiopians inhabiting in those days the coast of arabia. : . thou hast broken the heads of the dragon: thou hast given him to be meat for the people of the ethiopians. : . thou hast broken up the fountains and the torrents: thou hast dried up the ethan rivers. ethan rivers... that is, rivers which run with strong streams. this was verified in jordan, jos. , and in arnon, num. . . : . thine is the day, and thine is the night: thou hast made the morning light and the sun. : . thou hast made all the borders of the earth: the summer and the spring were formed by thee. : . remember this, the enemy hath reproached the lord: and a foolish people hath provoked thy name. : . deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee: and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor. : . have regard to thy covenant: for they that are the obscure of the earth have been filled with dwellings of iniquity. the obscure of the earth... mean and ignoble wretches have been filled, that is, enriched, with houses of iniquity, that is, with our estates and possessions, which they have unjustly acquired. : . let not the humble be turned away with confusion: the poor and needy shall praise thy name. : . arise, o god, judge thy own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man hath reproached thee all the day. : . forget not the voices of thy enemies: the pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually. psalms chapter confitebimur tibi. there is a just judgment to come: therefore let the wicked take care. : . unto the end, corrupt not, a psalm of a canticle for asaph. corrupt not... it is believed to have been the beginning of some ode or hymn, to the tune of which this psalm was to be sung. st. augustine and other fathers take it to be an admonition of the spirit of god, not to faint or fail in our hope: but to persevere with constancy in good: because god will not fail in his due time to render to every man according to his works. : . we will praise thee, o god: we will praise, and we will call upon thy name. we will relate thy wondrous works: : . when i shall take a time, i will judge justices. when i shall take a time... in proper times: particularly at the last day, when the earth shall melt away at the presence of the great judge: the same who originally laid the foundations of it, and as it were established its pillars. : . the earth is melted, and all that dwell therein: i have established the pillars thereof. : . i said to the wicked: do not act wickedly: and to the sinners: lift not up the horn. : . lift not up your horn on high: speak not iniquity against god. : . for neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert hills: : . for god is the judge. one he putteth down, and another he lifteth up: : . for in the hand of the lord there is a cup of strong wine full of mixture. and he hath poured it out from this to that: but the dregs thereof are not emptied: all the sinners of the earth shall drink. : . but i will declare for ever: i will sing to the god of jacob. : . and i will break all the horns of sinners: but the horns of the just shall be exalted. psalms chapter notus in judaea. god is known in his church: and exerts his power in protecting it. it alludes to the slaughter of the assyrians, in the days of king ezechias. : . unto the end, in praises, a psalm for asaph: a canticle to the assyrians. : . in judea god is known: his name is great in israel. : . and his place is in peace: and his abode in sion: : . there hath he broken the powers of bows, the shield, the sword, and the battle. : . thou enlightenest wonderfully from the everlasting hills. : . all the foolish of heart were troubled. they have slept their sleep; and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands. : . at thy rebuke, o god of jacob, they have all slumbered that mounted on horseback. : . thou art terrible, and who shall resist thee? from that time thy wrath. from that time, etc... from the time that thy wrath shall break out. : . thou hast caused judgment to be heard from heaven: the earth trembled and was still, : . when god arose in judgment, to save all the meek of the earth. : . for the thought of man shall give praise to thee: and the remainders of the thought shall keep holiday to thee. : . vow ye, and pay to the lord your god: all you that are round about him bring presents. to him that is terrible, : . even to him who taketh away the spirit of princes: to the terrible with the kings of the earth. psalms chapter voce mea. the faithful have recourse to god in trouble of mind, with confidence in his mercy and power. : . unto the end, for idithun, a psalm of asaph. : . i cried to the lord with my voice; to god with my voice, and he gave ear to me. : . in the days of my trouble i sought god, with my hands lifted up to him in the night, and i was not deceived. my soul refused to be comforted: : . i remembered god, and was delighted, and was exercised, and my spirit swooned away. : . my eyes prevented the watches: i was troubled, and i spoke not. : . i thought upon the days of old: and i had in my mind the eternal years. : . and i meditated in the night with my own heart: and i was exercised and i swept my spirit. : . will god then cast off for ever? or will he never be more favourable again? : . or will he cut off his mercy for ever, from generation to generation? : . or will god forget to shew mercy? or will he in his anger shut up his mercies? : . and i said, now have i begun: this is the change of the right hand of the most high. : . i remembered the works of the lord: for i will be mindful of thy wonders from the beginning. : . and i will meditate on all thy works: and will be employed in thy inventions. : . thy way, o god, is in the holy place: who is the great god like our god? : . thou art the god that dost wonders. thou hast made thy power known among the nations: : . with thy arm thou hast redeemed thy people the children of jacob and of joseph. : . the waters saw thee, o god, the waters saw thee: and they were afraid, and the depths were troubled. : . great was the noise of the waters: the clouds sent out a sound. for thy arrows pass: : . the voice of thy thunder in a wheel. thy lightnings enlightened the world: the earth shook and trembled. : . thy way is in the sea, and thy paths in many waters: and thy footsteps shall not be known. : . thou hast conducted thy people like sheep, by the hand of moses and aaron. psalms chapter attendite. god's great benefits to the people of israel, notwithstanding their ingratitude. : . understanding for asaph. attend, o my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. : . i will open my mouth in parables: i will utter propositions from the beginning. propositions... deep and mysterious sayings. by this it appears that the historical facts of ancient times, commemorated in this psalm, were deep and mysterious: as being figures of great truths appertaining to the time of the new testament. : . how great things have we heard and known, and our fathers have told us. : . they have not been hidden from their children, in another generation. declaring the praises of the lord, and his powers, and his wonders which he hath done. : . and he set up a testimony in jacob: and made a law in israel. how great things he commanded our fathers, that they should make the same known to their children: : . that another generation might know them. the children that should be born and should rise up, and declare them to their children. : . that they may put their hope in god and may not forget the works of god: and may seek his commandments. : . that they may not become like their fathers, a perverse and exasperating generation. a generation that set not their heart aright: and whose spirit was not faithful to god. : . the sons of ephraim who bend and shoot with the bow: they have turned back in the day of battle. : . they kept not the covenant of god: and in his law they would not walk. : . and they forgot his benefits, and his wonders that he had shewn them. : . wonderful things did he do in the sight of their fathers, in the land of egypt, in the field of tanis. : . he divided the sea and brought them through: and he made the waters to stand as in a vessel. : . and he conducted them with a cloud by day: and all the night with a light of fire. : . he struck the rock in the wilderness: and gave them to drink, as out of the great deep. : . he brought forth water out of the rock: and made streams run down as rivers. : . and they added yet more sin against him: they provoked the most high to wrath in the place without water. : . and they tempted god in their hearts, by asking meat for their desires. : . and they spoke ill of god: they said: can god furnish a table in the wilderness? : . because he struck the rock, and the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. can he also give bread, or provide a table for his people? : . therefore the lord heard, and was angry: and a fire was kindled against jacob, and wrath came up against israel. : . because they believed not in god: and trusted not in his salvation. : . and he had commanded the clouds from above, and had opened the doors of heaven. : . and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them the bread of heaven. : . man ate the bread of angels: he sent them provisions in abundance. : . he removed the south wind from heaven: and by his power brought in the southwest wind. : . and he rained upon them flesh as dust: and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea. : . and they fell in the midst of their camp, round about their pavilions. : . so they did eat, and were filled exceedingly, and he gave them their desire: : . they were not defrauded of that which they craved. as yet their meat was in their mouth: : . and the wrath of god came upon them. and he slew the fat ones amongst them, and brought down the chosen men of israel. : . in all these things they sinned still: and they behaved not for his wondrous works. : . and their days were consumed in vanity, and their years in haste. : . when he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned, and came to him early in the morning. : . and they remembered that god was their helper: and the most high god their redeemer. : . and they loved him with their mouth: and with their tongue they lied unto him: : . but their heart was not right with him: nor were they counted faithful in his covenant. : . but he is merciful, and will forgive their sins: and will not destroy them. and many a time did he turn away his anger: and did not kindle all his wrath. : . and he remembered that they are flesh: a wind that goeth and returneth not. : . how often did they provoke him in the desert: and move him to wrath in the place without water? : . and they turned back and tempted god: and grieved the holy one of israel. : . they remembered not his hand, in the day that he redeemed them from the hand of him that afflicted them: : . how he wrought his signs in egypt, and his wonders in the field of tanis. : . and he turned their rivers into blood, and their showers that they might not drink. : . he sent amongst them divers sorts of flies, which devoured them: and frogs which destroyed them. : . and he gave up their fruits to the blast, and their labours to the locust. : . and he destroyed their vineyards with hail, and their mulberry trees with hoarfrost. : . and he gave up their cattle to the hail, and their stock to the fire. : . and he sent upon them the wrath of his indignation: indignation and wrath and trouble, which he sent by evil angels. : . he made a way for a path to his anger: he spared not their souls from death, and their cattle he shut up in death. : . and he killed all the firstborn in the land of egypt: the firstfruits of all their labour in the tabernacles of cham. : . and he took away his own people as sheep: and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. : . and he brought them out in hope and they feared not: and the sea overwhelmed their enemies. : . and he brought them into the mountain of his sanctuary: the mountain which his right hand had purchased. and he cast out the gentiles before them: and by lot divided to them their land by a line of distribution. : . and he made the tribes of israel to dwell in their tabernacles. : . yet they tempted, and provoked the most high god: and they kept not his testimonies. : . and they turned away, and kept not the covenant: even like their fathers they were turned aside as a crooked bow. : . they provoked him to anger on their hills: and moved him to jealousy with their graven things. : . god heard, and despised them, and he reduced israel exceedingly as it were to nothing. : . and he put away the tabernacle of silo, his tabernacle where he dwelt among men. : . and he delivered their strength into captivity: and their beauty into the hands of the enemy. : . and he shut up his people under the sword: and he despised his inheritance. : . fire consumed their young men: and their maidens were not lamented. : . their priests fell by the sword: and their widows did not mourn. : . and the lord was awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that hath been surfeited with wine. : . and he smote his enemies on the hinder parts: he put them to an everlasting reproach. : . and he rejected the tabernacle of joseph: and chose not the tribe of ephraim: : . but he chose the tribe of juda, mount sion which he loved. : . and he built his sanctuary as of unicorns, in the land which he founded for ever. as of unicorns... that is, firm and strong like the horn of the unicorn. this is one of the chiefest of the propositions of this psalm, foreshewing the firm establishment of the one, true, and everlasting sanctuary of god, in his church. : . and he chose his servant david, and took him from the flocks of sheep: he brought him from following the ewes great with young, : . to feed jacob his servant and israel his inheritance. : . and he fed them in the innocence of his heart: and conducted them by the skilfulness of his hands. psalms chapter deus, venerunt gentes. the church in time of persecution prayeth for relief. it seems to belong to the time of the machabees. : . a psalm for asaph. o god, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made jerusalem as a place to keep fruit. : . they have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat for the fowls of the air: the flesh of thy saints for the beasts of the earth. : . they have poured out their blood as water, round about jerusalem and there was none to bury them. : . we are become a reproach to our neighbours: a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. : . how long, o lord, wilt thou be angry for ever: shall thy zeal be kindled like a fire? : . pour out thy wrath upon the nations that have not known thee: and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. : . because they have devoured jacob; and have laid waste his place. : . remember not our former iniquities: let thy mercies speedily prevent us, for we are become exceeding poor. : . help us, o god, our saviour: and for the glory of thy name, o lord, deliver us: and forgive us our sins for thy name's sake: : . lest they should say among the gentiles: where is their god? and let him be made known among the nations before our eyes, by the revenging the blood of thy servants, which hath been shed: : . let the sighing of the prisoners come in before thee. according to the greatness of thy arm, take possession of the children of them that have been put to death. : . and render to our neighbours sevenfold in their bosom: the reproach wherewith they have reproached thee, o lord. : . but we thy people, and the sheep of thy pasture, will give thanks to thee for ever. we will shew forth thy praise, unto generation and generation. psalms chapter qui regis israel. a prayer for the church in tribulation, commemorating god's former favours. : . unto the end, for them that shall be changed, a testimony for asaph, a psalm. : . give ear, o thou that rulest israel: thou that leadest joseph like a sheep. thou that sittest upon the cherubims, shine forth : . before ephraim, benjamin, and manasses. stir up thy might, and come to save us. : . convert us, o god: and shew us thy face, and we shall be saved. : . o lord god of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy servant? : . how long wilt thou feed us with the bread of tears: and give us for our drink tears in measure? : . thou hast made us to be a contradiction to our neighbours: and our enemies have scoffed at us. : . o god of hosts, convert us: and shew thy face, and we shall be saved. : . thou hast brought a vineyard out of egypt: thou hast cast out the gentiles and planted it. : . thou wast the guide of its journey in its sight: thou plantedst the roots thereof, and it filled the land. : . the shadow of it covered the hills: and the branches thereof the cedars of god. : . it stretched forth its branches unto the sea, and its boughs unto the river. : . why hast thou broken down the hedge thereof, so that all they who pass by the way do pluck it? : . the boar out of the wood hath laid it waste: and a singular wild beast hath devoured it. : . turn again, o god of hosts, look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vineyard: : . and perfect the same which thy right hand hath planted: and upon the son of man whom thou hast confirmed for thyself. : . things set on fire and dug down shall perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. things set on fire, etc... so this vineyard of thine, almost consumed already, must perish, if thou continue thy rebukes. : . let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand: and upon the son of man whom thou hast confirmed for thyself. the man of thy right hand... christ. : . and we depart not from thee, thou shalt quicken us: and we will call upon thy name. : . o lord god of hosts, convert us and shew thy face, and we shall be saved. psalms chapter exultate deo. an invitation to a solemn praising of god. : . unto the end, for the winepresses, a psalm for asaph himself. for the winepresses, etc... torcularibus. it either signifies a musical instrument, or that this psalm was to be sung at the feast of the tabernacles after the gathering in of the vintage. : . rejoice to god our helper: sing aloud to the god of jacob. : . take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel: the pleasant psaltery with the harp. : . blow up the trumpet on the new moon, on the noted day of your solemnity. : . for it is a commandment in israel, and a judgment to the god of jacob. : . he ordained it for a testimony in joseph, when he came out of the land of egypt: he heard a tongue which he knew not. : . he removed his back from the burdens: his hands had served in baskets. : . thou calledst upon me in affliction, and i delivered thee: i heard thee in the secret place of tempest: i proved thee at the waters of contradiction. in the secret place of tempest... heb., of thunder. when thou soughtest to hide thyself from the tempest: or, when i came down to mount sina, hidden from thy eyes in a storm of thunder. : . hear, o my people, and i will testify to thee: o israel, if thou wilt hearken to me, there shall be no new god in thee: neither shalt thou adore a strange god. : . for i am the lord thy god, who brought thee out of the land of egypt: open thy mouth wide, and i will fill it. : . but my people heard not my voice: and israel hearkened not to me. : . so i let them go according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions. : . if my people had heard me: if israel had walked in my ways: : . i should soon have humbled their enemies, and laid my hand on them that troubled them. : . the enemies of the lord have lied to him: and their time shall be for ever. their time shall be forever... impenitent sinners shall suffer for ever. : . and he fed them with the fat of wheat, and filled them with honey out of the rock. psalms chapter deus stetit. an exhortation to judges and men in power. : . a psalm for asaph. god hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods. : . how long will you judge unjustly: and accept the persons of the wicked? : . judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor. : . rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner. : . they have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved. : . i have said: you are gods and all of you the sons of the most high. : . but you like men shall die: and shall fall like one of the princes. : . arise, o god, judge thou the earth: for thou shalt inherit among all the nations. psalms chapter deus, quis similis. a prayer against the enemies of god's church. : . a canticle of a psalm for asaph. : . o god, who shall be like to thee? hold not thy peace, neither be thou still, o god. : . for lo, thy enemies have made a noise: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. : . they have taken a malicious counsel against thy people, and have consulted against thy saints. : . they have said: come and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation: and let the name of israel be remembered no more. : . for they have contrived with one consent: they have made a covenant together against thee, : . the tabernacle of the edomites, and the ishmahelites: moab, and the agarens, : . gebal, and ammon and amalec: the philistines, with the inhabitants of tyre. : . yea, and the assyrian also is joined with them: they are come to the aid of the sons of lot. : . do to them as thou didst to madian and to sisara: as to jabin at the brook of cisson. : . who perished at endor: and became as dung for the earth. : . make their princes like oreb, and zeb, and zebee, and salmana. all their princes, : . who have said: let us possess the sanctuary of god for an inheritance. : . o my god, make them like a wheel; and as stubble before the wind. : . as fire which burneth the wood: and as a flame burning mountains: : . so shalt thou pursue them with thy tempest: and shalt trouble them in thy wrath. : . fill their faces with shame; and they shall seek thy name, o lord. : . let them be ashamed and troubled for ever and ever: and let them be confounded and perish. : . and let them know that the lord is thy name: thou alone art the most high over all the earth. psalms chapter quam dilecta. the soul aspireth after heaven; rejoicing in the mean time, in being in the communion of god's church upon earth. : . unto the end, for the winepresses, a psalm for the sons of core. : . how lovely are thy tabernacles, o lord of hosts! : . my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the lord. my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living god. : . for the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: thy altars, o lord of hosts, my king and my god. : . blessed are they that dwell in thy house, o lord: they shall praise thee for ever and ever. : . blessed is the man whose help is from thee: in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, etc... ascensiones in corde suo disposuit. as by steps men ascended to the temple of god situated on a hill; so the good christian ascends towards the eternal temple by certain steps of virtue disposed or ordered within the heart: and this whilst he lives as yet in the body, in this vale of tears, the place which man hath set: that is, which he hath brought himself to: being cast out of paradise for his sin. : . in the vale of tears, in the place which he hath set. : . for the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they shall go from virtue to virtue: the god of gods shall be seen in sion. : . o lord god of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, o god of jacob. : . behold, o god our protector: and look on the face of thy christ. : . for better is one day in thy courts above thousands. i have chosen to be an abject in the house of my god, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. : . for god loveth mercy and truth: the lord will give grace and glory. : . he will not deprive of good things them that walk in innocence: o lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. psalms chapter benedixisti, domine. the coming of christ, to bring peace and salvation to man. : . unto the end, for the sons of core, a psalm. : . lord, thou hast blessed thy land: thou hast turned away the captivity of jacob. : . thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people: thou hast covered all their sins. : . thou hast mitigated all thy anger: thou hast turned away from the wrath of thy indignation. : . convert us, o god our saviour: and turn off thy anger from us. : . wilt thou be angry with us for ever: or wilt thou extend thy wrath from generation to generation? : . thou wilt turn, o god, and bring us to life: and thy people shall rejoice in thee. : . shew us, o lord, thy mercy; and grant us thy salvation. : . i will hear what the lord god will speak in me: for he will speak peace unto his people: and unto his saints: and unto them that are converted to the heart. : . surely his salvation is near to them that fear him: that glory may dwell in our land. : . mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed. : . truth is sprung out of the earth: and justice hath looked down from heaven. : . for the lord will give goodness: and our earth shall yield her fruit. : . justice shall walk before him: and shall set his steps in the way. psalms chapter inclina, domine. a prayer for god's grace to assist us to the end. : . a prayer for david himself. incline thy ear, o lord, and hear me: for i am needy and poor. : . preserve my soul, for i am holy: save thy servant, o my god, that trusteth in thee. i am holy... i am by my office and profession dedicated to thy service. : . have mercy on me, o lord, for i have cried to thee all the day. : . give joy to the soul of thy servant, for to thee, o lord, i have lifted up my soul. : . for thou, o lord, art sweet and mild: and plenteous in mercy to all that call upon thee. : . give ear, o lord, to my prayer: and attend to the voice of my petition. : . i have called upon thee in the day of my trouble: because thou hast heard me. : . there is none among the gods like unto thee, o lord: and there is none according to thy works. : . all the nations thou hast made shall come and adore before thee, o lord: and they shall glorify thy name. : . for thou art great and dost wonderful things: thou art god alone. : . conduct me, o lord, in thy way, and i will walk in thy truth: let my heart rejoice that it may fear thy name. : . i will praise thee, o lord my god, with my whole heart, and i will glorify thy name for ever: : . for thy mercy is great towards me: and thou hast delivered my soul out of the lower hell. : . o god, the wicked are risen up against me, and the assembly of the mighty have sought my soul: and they have not set thee before their eyes. : . and thou, o lord, art a god of compassion, and merciful, patient, and of much mercy, and true. : . o look upon me, and have mercy on me: give thy command to thy servant, and save the son of thy handmaid. : . shew me a token for good: that they who hate me may see, and be confounded, because thou, o lord, hast helped me and hast comforted me. psalms chapter fundamenta ejus. the glory of the church of christ. : . for the sons of core, a psalm of a canticle. the foundations thereof are the holy mountains: the holy mountains... the apostles and prophets. eph. . . : . the lord loveth the gates of sion above all the tabernacles of jacob. : . glorious things are said of thee, o city of god. : . i will be mindful of rahab and of babylon knowing me. behold the foreigners, and tyre, and the people of the ethiopians, these were there. rahab... egypt, etc. to this sion, which is the church of god, many shall resort from all nations. : . shall not sion say: this man and that man is born in her? and the highest himself hath founded her. shall not sion say, etc... the meaning is, that sion, viz., the church, shall not only be able to commemorate this or that particular person of renown born in her, but also to glory in great multitudes of people and princes of her communion; who have been foretold in the writings of the prophets, and registered in the writings of the apostles. : . the lord shall tell in his writings of peoples and of princes, of them that have been in her. : . the dwelling in thee is as it were of all rejoicing. psalms chapter domine, deus salutis. a prayer of one under grievous affliction: it agrees to christ in his passion, and alludes to his death and burial. : . a canticle of a psalm for the sons of core: unto the end, for maheleth, to answer understanding of eman the ezrahite. maheleth... a musical instrument, or chorus of musicians, to answer one another.-ibid. understanding... or a psalm of instruction, composed by eman the ezrahite, or by david, in his name. : . o lord, the god of my salvation: i have cried in the day, and in the night before thee. : . let my prayer come in before thee: incline thy ear to my petition. : . for my soul is filled with evils: and my life hath drawn nigh to hell. : . i am counted among them that go down to the pit: i am become as a man without help, : . free among the dead. like the slain sleeping in the sepulchres, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. : . they have laid me in the lower pit: in the dark places, and in the shadow of death. : . thy wrath is strong over me: and all thy waves thou hast brought in upon me. : . thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me: they have set me an abomination to themselves. i was delivered up, and came not forth: : . my eyes languished through poverty. all the day i cried to thee, o lord: i stretched out my hands to thee. : . wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? or shall physicians raise to life, and give praise to thee? : . shall any one in the sepulchre declare thy mercy: and thy truth in destruction? : . shall thy wonders be known in the dark; and thy justice in the land of forgetfulness? : . but i, o lord, have cried to thee: and in the morning my prayer shall prevent thee. : . lord, why castest thou off my prayer: why turnest thou away thy face from me? : . i am poor, and in labours from my youth: and being exalted have been humbled and troubled. : . thy wrath hath come upon me: and thy terrors have troubled me. : . they have come round about me like water all the day: they have compassed me about together. : . friend and neighbour thou hast put far from me: and my acquaintance, because of misery. psalms chapter misericordias domini. the perpetuity of the church of christ, in consequence of the promise of god: which, notwithstanding, god permits her to suffer sometimes most grievous afflictions. : . of understanding, for ethan the ezrahite. : . the mercies of the lord i will sing for ever. i will shew forth thy truth with my mouth to generation and generation. : . for thou hast said: mercy shall be built up for ever in the heavens: thy truth shall be prepared in them. : . i have made a covenant with my elect: i have sworn to david my servant: : . thy seed will i settle for ever. and i will build up thy throne unto generation and generation. : . the heavens shall confess thy wonders, o lord: and thy truth in the church of the saints. : . for who in the clouds can be compared to the lord: or who among the sons of god shall be like to god? : . god, who is glorified in the assembly of the saints: great and terrible above all them that are about him. : . o lord god of hosts, who is like to thee? thou art mighty, o lord, and thy truth is round about thee. : . thou rulest the power of the sea: and appeasest the motion of the waves thereof. : . thou hast humbled the proud one, as one that is slain: with the arm of thy strength thou hast scattered thy enemies. : . thine are the heavens, and thine is the earth: the world and the fulness thereof thou hast founded: : . the north and the sea thou hast created. thabor and hermon shall rejoice in thy name: : . thy arm is with might. let thy hand be strengthened, and thy right hand exalted: : . justice and judgment are the preparation of thy throne. mercy and truth shall go before thy face: : . blessed is the people that knoweth jubilation. they shall walk, o lord, in the light of thy countenance: : . and in thy name they shall rejoice all the day, and in thy justice they shall be exalted. : . for thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy good pleasure shall our horn be exalted. : . for our protection is of the lord, and of our king the holy one of israel. : . then thou spokest in a vision to thy saints, and saidst: i have laid help upon one that is mighty, and have exalted one chosen out of my people. : . i have found david my servant: with my holy oil i have anointed him. : . for my hand shall help him: and my arm shall strengthen him. : . the enemy shall have no advantage over him: nor the son of iniquity have power to hurt him. : . and i will cut down his enemies before his face; and them that hate him i will put to flight. : . and my truth and my mercy shall be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted. : . and i will set his hand in the sea; and his right hand in the rivers. : . he shall cry out to me: thou art my father: my god, and the support of my salvation. : . and i will make him my firstborn, high above the kings of the earth. : . i will keep my mercy for him for ever: and my covenant faithful to him. : . and i will make his seed to endure for evermore: and his throne as the days of heaven. : . and if his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments: : . if they profane my justices: and keep not my commandments: : . i will visit their iniquities with a rod and their sins with stripes. : . but my mercy i will not take away from him: nor will i suffer my truth to fail. : . neither will i profane my covenant: and the words that proceed from my mouth i will not make void. : . once have i sworn by my holiness: i will not lie unto david: : . his seed shall endure for ever. : . and his throne as the sun before me: and as the moon perfect for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven. : . but thou hast rejected and despised: thou hast been angry with my anointed. : . thou hast overthrown the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his sanctuary on the earth. overthrown the covenant, etc... all this seems to relate to the time of the captivity of babylon, in which, for the sins of the people and their princes, god seemed to have set aside for a while the covenant he made with david. : . thou hast broken down all his hedges: thou hast made his strength fear. : . all that pass by the way have robbed him: he is become a reproach to his neighbours. : . thou hast set up the right hand of them that oppress him: thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. : . thou hast turned away the help of his sword; and hast not assisted him in battle. : . thou hast made his purification to cease: and thou hast cast his throne down to the ground. : . thou hast shortened the days of his time: thou hast covered him with confusion. : . how long, o lord, turnest thou away unto the end? shall thy anger burn like fire? : . remember what my substance is: for hast thou made all the children of men in vain? : . who is the man that shall live, and not see death: that shall deliver his soul from the hand of hell? : . lord, where are thy ancient mercies, according to what thou didst swear to david in thy truth? : . be mindful, o lord, of the reproach of thy servants (which i have held in my bosom) of many nations: : . wherewith thy enemies have reproached, o lord; wherewith they have reproached the change of thy anointed. : . blessed be the lord for evermore. so be it. so be it. psalms chapter domine, refugium. a prayer for the mercy of god: recounting the shortness and miseries of the days of man. : . a prayer of moses the man of god. lord, thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation. : . before the mountains were made, or the earth and the world was formed; from eternity and to eternity thou art god. : . turn not man away to be brought low: and thou hast said: be converted, o ye sons of men. turn not man away, etc... suffer him not quite to perish from thee, since thou art pleased to call upon him to be converted to thee. : . for a thousand years in thy sight are as yesterday, which is past. and as a watch in the night, : . things that are counted nothing, shall their years be. : . in the morning man shall grow up like grass; in the morning he shall flourish and pass away: in the evening he shall fall, grow dry, and wither. : . for in thy wrath we have fainted away: and are troubled in thy indignation. : . thou hast set our iniquities before thy eyes: our life in the light of thy countenance. : . for all our days are spent; and in thy wrath we have fainted away. our years shall be considered as a spider: as a spider... as frail and weak as a spider's web; and miserable withal, whilst like a spider we spend our bowels in weaving webs to catch flies. : . the days of our years in them are threescore and ten years. but if in the strong they be fourscore years: and what is more of them is labour and sorrow. for mildness is come upon us: and we shall be corrected. mildness is come upon us, etc... god's mildness corrects us; inasmuch as he deals kindly with us, in shortening the days of this miserable life; and so weaning our affections from all its transitory enjoyments, and teaching us true wisdom. : . who knoweth the power of thy anger, and for thy fear : . can number thy wrath? so make thy right hand known: and men learned in heart, in wisdom. : . return, o lord, how long? and be entreated in favour of thy servants. : . we are filled in the morning with thy mercy: and we have rejoiced, and are delighted all our days. : . we have rejoiced for the days in which thou hast humbled us: for the years in which we have seen evils. : . look upon thy servants and upon their works: and direct their children. : . and let the brightness of the lord our god be upon us: and direct thou the works of our hands over us; yea, the work of our hands do thou direct. psalms chapter qui habitat. the just is secure under the protection of god. : . the praise of a canticle for david. he that dwelleth in the aid of the most high, shall abide under the protection of the god of jacob. : . he shall say to the lord: thou art my protector, and my refuge: my god, in him will i trust. : . for he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunters: and from the sharp word. : . he will overshadow thee with his shoulders: and under his wings thou shalt trust. : . his truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night. : . of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the business that walketh about in the dark: of invasion, or of the noonday devil. : . a thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee. : . but thou shalt consider with thy eyes: and shalt see the reward of the wicked. : . because thou, o lord, art my hope: thou hast made the most high thy refuge. : . there shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling. : . for he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways. : . in their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. : . thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon. : . because he hoped in me i will deliver him: i will protect him because he hath known my name. : . he shall cry to me, and i will hear him: i am with him in tribulation, i will deliver him, and i will glorify him. : . i will fill him with length of days; and i will shew him my salvation. psalms chapter bonum est confiteri. god is to be praised for his wondrous works. : . a psalm of a canticle on the sabbath day. : . it is good to give praise to the lord: and to sing to thy name, o most high. : . to shew forth thy mercy in the morning, and thy truth in the night: : . upon an instrument of ten strings, upon the psaltery: with a canticle upon the harp. : . for thou hast given me, o lord, a delight in thy doings: and in the works of thy hands i shall rejoice. : . o lord, how great are thy works! thy thoughts are exceeding deep. : . the senseless man shall not know: nor will the fool understand these things. : . when the wicked shall spring up as grass: and all the workers of iniquity shall appear: that they may perish for ever and ever: : . but thou, o lord, art most high for evermore. : . for behold thy enemies, o lord, for behold thy enemies shall perish: and all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. : . but my horn shall be exalted like that of the unicorn: and my old age in plentiful mercy. : . my eye also hath looked down upon my enemies: and my ear shall hear of the downfall of the malignant that rise up against me. : . the just shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of libanus. : . they that are planted in the house of the lord shall flourish in the courts of the house of our god. : . they shall still increase in a fruitful old age: and shall be well treated, : . that they may shew, that the lord our god is righteous, and there is no iniquity in him. psalms chapter dominus regnavit. the glory and stability of the kingdom; that is, of the church of christ. praise in the way of a canticle, for david himself, on the day before the sabbath, when the earth was founded. : . the lord hath reigned, he is clothed with beauty: the lord is clothed with strength, and hath girded himself. for he hath established the world which shall not be moved. : . my throne is prepared from of old: thou art from everlasting. : . the floods have lifted up, o lord: the floods have lifted up their voice. the floods have lifted up their waves, : . with the noise of many waters. wonderful are the surges of the sea: wonderful is the lord on high. : . thy testimonies are become exceedingly credible: holiness becometh thy house, o lord, unto length of days. psalms chapter deus ultionum. god shall judge and punish the oppressors of his people. a psalm for david himself on the fourth day of the week. : . the lord is the god to whom revenge belongeth: the god of revenge hath acted freely. : . lift up thyself, thou that judgest the earth: render a reward to the proud. : . how long shall sinners, o lord: how long shall sinners glory? : . shall they utter, and speak iniquity: shall all speak who work injustice? : . thy people, o lord, they have brought low: and they have afflicted thy inheritance. : . they have slain the widow and the stranger: and they have murdered the fatherless. : . and they have said: the lord shall not see: neither shall the god of jacob understand. : . understand, ye senseless among the people: and, you fools, be wise at last. : . he that planted the ear, shall he not hear? or he that formed the eye, doth he not consider? : . he that chastiseth nations, shall he not rebuke: he that teacheth man knowledge? : . the lord knoweth the thoughts of men, that they are vain. : . blessed is the man whom thou shalt instruct, o lord: and shalt teach him out of thy law. : . that thou mayst give him rest from the evil days: till a pit be dug for the wicked. rest from the evil days... that thou mayst mitigate the sorrows, to which he is exposed, during the short and evil days of his mortality. : . for the lord will not cast off his people: neither will he forsake his own inheritance. : . until justice be turned into judgment: and they that are near it are all the upright in heart. until justice be turned into judgment, etc... by being put in execution; which will be agreeable to all the upright in heart. : . who shall rise up for me against the evildoers? or who shall stand with me against the workers of iniquity? : . unless the lord had been my helper, my soul had almost dwelt in hell. : . if i said: my foot is moved: thy mercy, o lord, assisted me. : . according to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul. : . doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, who framest labour in commandment? doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, etc... that is, wilt thou, o god, who art always just, admit of the seat of iniquity: that is, of injustice, or unjust judges, to have any partnership with thee? thou who framest, or makest, labour in commandment, that is, thou who obligest us to labour with all diligence to keep thy commandments. : . they will hunt after the soul of the just, and will condemn innocent blood. : . but the lord is my refuge: and my god the help of my hope. : . and he will render them their iniquity: and in their malice he will destroy them: the lord our god will destroy them. psalms chapter venite exultemus. an invitation to adore and serve god, and to hear his voice. praise of a canticle for david himself. : . come let us praise the lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to god our saviour. : . let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms. : . for the lord is a great god, and a great king above all gods. : . for in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his. : . for the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. : . come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the lord that made us. : . for he is the lord our god: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. : . to day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts: : . as in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works. : . forty years long was i offended with that generation, and i said: these always err in heart. : . and these men have not known my ways: so i swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest. psalms chapter cantate domino. an exhortation to praise god for the coming of christ and his kingdom. : . a canticle for david himself, when the house was built after the captivity. sing ye to the lord a new canticle: sing to the lord, all the earth. when the house was built, etc... alluding to that time, and then ordered to be sung: but principally relating to the building of the church of christ, after our redemption from the captivity of satan. : . sing ye to the lord and bless his name: shew forth his salvation from day to day. : . declare his glory among the gentiles: his wonders among all people. : . for the lord is great, and exceedingly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods. : . for all the gods of the gentiles are devils: but the lord made the heavens. : . praise and beauty are before him: holiness and majesty in his sanctuary. : . bring ye to the lord, o ye kindreds of the gentiles, bring ye to the lord glory and honour: : . bring to the lord glory unto his name. bring up sacrifices, and come into his courts: : . adore ye the lord in his holy court. let all the earth be moved at his presence. : . say ye among the gentiles, the lord hath reigned. for he hath corrected the world, which shall not be moved: he will judge the people with justice. : . let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, let the sea be moved, and the fulness thereof: : . the fields and all things that are in them shall be joyful. then shall all the trees of the woods rejoice : . before the face of the lord, because he cometh: because he cometh to judge the earth. he shall judge the world with justice, and the people with his truth. psalms chapter dominus regnavit. all are invited to rejoice at the glorious coming and reign of christ. : . for the same david, when his land was restored again to him. the lord hath reigned, let the earth rejoice: let many islands be glad. : . clouds and darkness are round about him: justice and judgment are the establishment of his throne. clouds and darkness... the coming of christ in the clouds with great terror and majesty to judge the world, is here prophesied. : . a fire shall go before him, and shall burn his enemies round about. : . his lightnings have shone forth to the world: the earth saw and trembled. : . the mountains melted like wax, at the presence of the lord: at the presence of the lord of all the earth. : . the heavens declared his justice: and all people saw his glory. : . let them be all confounded that adore graven things, and that glory in their idols. adore him, all you his angels: : . sion heard, and was glad. and the daughters of juda rejoiced, because of thy judgments, o lord. : . for thou art the most high lord over all the earth: thou art exalted exceedingly above all gods. : . you that love the lord, hate evil: the lord preserveth the souls of his saints, he will deliver them out of the hand of the sinner. : . light is risen to the just, and joy to the right of heart. : . rejoice, ye just, in the lord: and give praise to the remembrance of his holiness. psalms chapter cantate domino. all are again invited to praise the lord, for the victories of christ. : . a psalm for david himself. sing ye to the lord a new canticle: because he hath done wonderful things. his right hand hath wrought for him salvation, and his arm is holy. : . the lord hath made known his salvation: he hath revealed his justice in the sight of the gentiles. : . he hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of israel. all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our god. : . sing joyfully to god, all the earth; make melody, rejoice and sing. : . sing praise to the lord on the harp, on the harp, and with the voice of a psalm: : . with long trumpets, and sound of cornet. make a joyful noise before the lord our king: : . let the sea be moved and the fullness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein. : . the rivers shall clap their hands, the mountains shall rejoice together : . at the presence of the lord: because he cometh to judge the earth. he shall judge the world with justice, and the people with equity. psalms chapter dominus regnavit. the reign of the lord in sion: that is, of christ in his church. : . a psalm for david himself. the lord hath reigned, let the people be angry: he that sitteth on the cherubims: let the earth be moved. let the people be angry... though many enemies rage, and the whole earth be stirred up to oppose the reign of christ, he shall still prevail. : . the lord is great in sion, and high above all people. : . let them give praise to thy great name: for it is terrible and holy: : . and the king's honour loveth judgment. thou hast prepared directions: thou hast done judgment and justice in jacob. loveth judgment... requireth discretion.-ibid. directions... most right and just laws to direct men. : . exalt ye the lord our god, and adore his footstool, for it is holy. adore his footstool... the ark of the covenant was called, in the old testament, god's footstool: over which he was understood to sit, on his propitiatory, or mercy seat, as on a throne, between the wings of the cherubims, in the sanctuary: to which the children of israel paid a great veneration. but as this psalm evidently relates to christ, and the new testament, where the ark has no place, the holy fathers understand this text, of the worship paid by the church to the body and blood of christ in the sacred mysteries: inasmuch as the humanity of christ is, as it were, the footstool of the divinity. so st. ambrose, l. . de spiritu sancto, c. . and st. augustine upon this psalm. : . moses and aaron among his priests: and samuel among them that call upon his name. they called upon the lord, and he heard them: moses and aaron among his priests... by this it is evident, that moses also was a priest, and indeed the chief priest, inasmuch as he consecrated aaron, and offered sacrifice for him. lev. . so that his pre-eminence over aaron makes nothing for lay church headship. : . he spoke to them in the pillar of the cloud. they kept his testimonies, and the commandment which he gave them. : . thou didst hear them, o lord our god: thou wast a merciful god to them, and taking vengeance on all their inventions. all their inventions... that is, all the enterprises of their enemies against them, as in the case of core, dathan, and abiron. : . exalt ye the lord our god, and adore at his holy mountain: for the lord our god is holy. psalms chapter jubilate deo. all are invited to rejoice in god the creator of all. : . a psalm of praise. : . sing joyfully to god, all the earth: serve ye the lord with gladness. come in before his presence with exceeding great joy. : . know ye that the lord he is god: he made us, and not we ourselves. we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. : . go ye into his gates with praise, into his courts with hymns: and give glory to him. praise ye his name: : . for the lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever, and his truth to generation and generation. psalms chapter misericordiam et judicium. the prophet exhorteth all by his example, to follow mercy and justice. : . a psalm for david himself. mercy and judgment i will sing to thee, o lord: i will sing, : . and i will understand in the unspotted way, when thou shalt come to me. i walked in the innocence of my heart, in the midst of my house. i will understand, etc... that is, i will apply my mind, i will do my endeavour, to know and to follow the perfect way of thy commandments: not trusting to my own strength, but relying on thy coming to me by thy grace. : . i will not set before my eyes any unjust thing: i hated the workers of iniquities. : . the perverse heart did not cleave to me: and the malignant, that turned aside from me, i would not know. : . the man that in private detracted his neighbour, him did i persecute. with him that had a proud eye, and an unsatiable heart, i would not eat. : . my eyes were upon the faithful of the earth, to sit with me: the man that walked in the perfect way, he served me. : . he that worketh pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house: he that speaketh unjust things did not prosper before my eyes. : . in the morning i put to death all the wicked of the land: that i might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the lord. psalms chapter domine, exaudi. a prayer for one in affliction: the fifth penitential psalm. : . the prayer of the poor man, when he was anxious, and poured out his supplication before the lord. : . hear, o lord, my prayer: and let my cry come to thee. : . turn not away thy face from me: in the day when i am in trouble, incline thy ear to me. in what day soever i shall call upon thee, hear me speedily. : . for my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire. : . i am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered: because i forgot to eat my bread. : . through the voice of my groaning, my bone hath cleaved to my flesh. : . i am become like to a pelican of the wilderness: i am like a night raven in the house. a pelican, etc... i am become through grief, like birds that affect solitude and darkness. : . i have watched, and am become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop. : . all the day long my enemies reproached me: and they that praised me did swear against me. : . for i did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. : . because of thy anger and indignation: for having lifted me up thou hast thrown me down. : . my days have declined like a shadow, and i am withered like grass. : . but thou, o lord, endurest for ever: and thy memorial to all generations. : . thou shalt arise and have mercy on sion: for it is time to have mercy on it, for the time is come. : . for the stones thereof have pleased thy servants: and they shall have pity on the earth thereof. : . all the gentiles shall fear thy name, o lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. : . for the lord hath built up sion: and he shall be seen in his glory. : . he hath had regard to the prayer of the humble: and he hath not despised their petition. : . let these things be written unto another generation: and the people that shall be created shall praise the lord: : . because he hath looked forth from his high sanctuary: from heaven the lord hath looked upon the earth. : . that he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain: : . that they may declare the name of the lord in sion: and his praise in jerusalem; : . when the people assemble together, and kings, to serve the lord. : . he answered him in the way of his strength: declare unto me the fewness of my days. he answered him in the way of his strength... that is, the people, mentioned in the foregoing verse, or the penitent, in whose person this psalm is delivered, answered the lord in the way of his strength: that is, according to the best of his power and strength: or when he was in the flower of his age and strength: inquiring after the fewness of his days: to know if he should live long enough to see the happy restoration of sion, etc. : . call me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are unto generation and generation. : . in the beginning, o lord, thou foundedst the earth: and the heavens are the works of thy hands. : . they shall perish but thou remainest: and all of them shall grow old like a garment: and as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. : . but thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail. : . the children of thy servants shall continue and their seed shall be directed for ever. psalms chapter benedic, anima. thanksgiving to god for his mercies. : . for david himself. bless the lord, o my soul: and let all that is within me bless his holy name. : . bless the lord, o my soul, and never forget all he hath done for thee. : . who forgiveth all thy iniquities: who healeth all thy diseases. : . who redeemeth thy life from destruction: who crowneth thee with mercy and compassion. : . who satisfieth thy desire with good things: thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle's. : . the lord doth mercies, and judgment for all that suffer wrong. : . he hath made his ways known to moses: his wills to the children of israel. : . the lord is compassionate and merciful: longsuffering and plenteous in mercy. : . he will not always be angry: nor will he threaten for ever. : . he hath not dealt with us according to our sins: nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. : . for according to the height of the heaven above the earth: he hath strengthened his mercy towards them that fear him. : . as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our iniquities from us. : . as a father hath compassion on his children, so hath the lord compassion on them that fear him: : . for he knoweth our frame. he remembereth that we are dust: : . man's days are as grass, as the flower of the field so shall he flourish. : . for the spirit shall pass in him, and he shall not be: and he shall know his place no more. : . but the mercy of the lord is from eternity and unto eternity upon them that fear him: and his justice unto children's children, : . to such as keep his covenant, and are mindful of his commandments to do them. : . the lord hath prepared his throne in heaven: and his kingdom shall rule over all. : . bless the lord, all ye his angels: you that are mighty in strength, and execute his word, hearkening to the voice of his orders. : . bless the lord, all ye his hosts: you ministers of his that do his will. : . bless the lord, all his works: in every place of his dominion, o my soul, bless thou the lord. psalms chapter benedic, anima. god is to be praised for his mighty works, and wonderful providence. : . for david himself. bless the lord, o my soul: o lord my god, thou art exceedingly great. thou hast put on praise and beauty: : . and art clothed with light as with a garment. who stretchest out the heaven like a pavilion: : . who coverest the higher rooms thereof with water. who makest the clouds thy chariot: who walkest upon the wings of the winds. : . who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire. : . who hast founded the earth upon its own bases: it shall not be moved for ever and ever. : . the deep like a garment is its clothing: above the mountains shall the waters stand. : . at thy rebuke they shall flee: at the voice of thy thunder they shall fear. : . the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which thou hast founded for them. : . thou hast set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth. : . thou sendest forth springs in the vales: between the midst of the hills the waters shall pass. : . all the beasts of the field shall drink: the wild asses shall expect in their thirst. : . over them the birds of the air shall dwell: from the midst of the rocks they shall give forth their voices. : . thou waterest the hills from thy upper rooms: the earth shall be filled with the fruit of thy works: : . bringing forth grass for cattle, and herb for the service of men. that thou mayst bring bread out of the earth: : . and that wine may cheer the heart of man. that he may make the face cheerful with oil: and that bread may strengthen man's heart. : . the trees of the field shall be filled, and the cedars of libanus which he hath planted: : . there the sparrows shall make their nests. the highest of them is the house of the heron. : . the high hills are a refuge for the harts, the rock for the irchins. : . he hath made the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down. : . thou hast appointed darkness, and it is night: in it shall all the beasts of the woods go about: : . the young lions roaring after their prey, and seeking their meat from god. : . the sun ariseth, and they are gathered together: and they shall lie down in their dens. : . man shall go forth to his work, and to his labour until the evening. : . how great are thy works, o lord? thou hast made all things in wisdom: the earth is filled with thy riches. : . so is this great sea, which stretcheth wide its arms: there are creeping things without number: creatures little and great. : . there the ships shall go. this sea dragon which thou hast formed to play therein. : . all expect of thee that thou give them food in season. : . what thou givest to them they shall gather up: when thou openest thy hand, they shall all be filled with good. : . but if thou turnest away thy face, they shall be troubled: thou shalt take away their breath, and they shall fail, and shall return to their dust. : . thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. : . may the glory of the lord endure for ever: the lord shall rejoice in his works. : . he looketh upon the earth, and maketh it tremble: he troubleth the mountains, and they smoke. : . i will sing to the lord as long as i live: i will sing praise to my god while i have my being. : . let my speech be acceptable to him: but i will take delight in the lord. : . let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and the unjust, so that they be no more: o my soul, bless thou the lord. psalms chapter confitemini domino. a thanksgiving to god for his benefits to his people israel. alleluia. : . give glory to the lord, and call upon his name: declare his deeds among the gentiles. : . sing to him, yea sing praises to him: relate all his wondrous works. : . glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the lord. : . seek ye the lord, and be strengthened: seek his face evermore. : . remember his marvellous works which he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth. : . o ye seed of abraham his servant; ye sons of jacob his chosen. : . he is the lord our god: his judgments are in all the earth. : . he hath remembered his covenant for ever: the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. : . which he made to abraham; and his oath to isaac: : . and he appointed the same to jacob for a law, and to israel for an everlasting testament: : . saying: to thee will i give the land of chanaan, the lot of your inheritance. : . when they were but a small number: yea very few, and sojourners therein: : . and they passed from nation to nation, and from one kingdom to another people. : . he suffered no man to hurt them: and he reproved kings for their sakes. : . touch ye not my anointed: and do no evil to my prophets. : . and he called a famine upon the land: and he broke in pieces all the support of bread. : . he sent a man before them: joseph, who was sold for a slave. : . they humbled his feet in fetters: the iron pierced his soul, : . until his word came. the word of the lord inflamed him. : . the king sent, and he released him: the ruler of the people, and he set him at liberty. : . he made him master of his house, and ruler of all his possession. : . that he might instruct his princes as himself, and teach his ancients wisdom. : . and israel went into egypt: and jacob was a sojourner in the land of cham. : . and he increased his people exceedingly: and strengthened them over their enemies. : . he turned their heart to hate his people: and to deal deceitfully with his servants. he turned their heart, etc... not that god (who is never the author of sin) moved the egyptians to hate and persecute his people; but that the egyptians took occasion of hating and envying them, from the sight of the benefits which god bestowed upon them. : . he sent moses his servant: aaron the man whom he had chosen. : . he gave them power to shew them signs, and his wonders in the land of cham. : . he sent darkness, and made it obscure: and grieved not his words. grieved not his words... that is, he was not wanting to fulfil his words: or he did not grieve moses and aaron, the carriers of his words: or he did not grieve his words, that is, his sons, the children of israel, who enjoyed light whilst the egyptians were oppressed with darkness. : . he turned their waters into blood, and destroyed their fish. : . their land brought forth frogs, in the inner chambers of their kings. : . he spoke, and there came divers sorts of flies and sciniphs in all their coasts. sciniphs... see the annotation, ex. . . : . he gave them hail for rain, a burning fire in the land. : . and he destroyed their vineyards and their fig trees: and he broke in pieces the trees of their coasts. : . he spoke, and the locust came, and the bruchus, of which there was no number. bruchus... an insect of the locust kind. : . and they devoured all the grass in their land, and consumed all the fruit of their ground. : . and he slew all the firstborn in their land: the firstfruits of all their labour. : . and he brought them out with silver and gold: and there was not among their tribes one that was feeble. : . egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them lay upon them. : . he spread a cloud for their protection, and fire to give them light in the night. : . they asked, and the quail came: and he filled them with the bread of heaven. : . he opened the rock, and waters flowed: rivers ran down in the dry land. : . because he remembered his holy word, which he had spoken to his servant abraham. : . and he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness. : . and he gave them the lands of the gentiles: and they possessed the labours of the people: : . that they might observe his justifications, and seek after his law. his justifications... that is, his commandments; which here, and in many other places of the scripture, are called justifications, because the keeping of them makes man just. the protestants render it by the word statutes, in favour of their doctrine, which does not allow good works to justify. psalms chapter confitemini domino. a confession of the manifold sins and ingratitudes of the israelites. alleluia. : . give glory to the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who shall declare the powers of the lord? who shall set forth all his praises? : . blessed are they that keep judgment, and do justice at all times. : . remember us, o lord, in the favour of thy people: visit us with thy salvation. : . that we may see the good of thy chosen, that we may rejoice in the joy of thy nation: that thou mayst be praised with thy inheritance. : . we have sinned with our fathers: we have acted unjustly, we have wrought iniquity. : . our fathers understood not thy wonders in egypt: they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies: and they provoked to wrath going up to the sea, even the red sea. : . and he saved them for his own name's sake: that he might make his power known. : . and he rebuked the red sea and it was dried up: and he led them through the depths, as in a wilderness. : . and he saved them from the hand of them that hated them: and he redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. : . and the water covered them that afflicted them: there was not one of them left. : . and they believed his words: and they sang his praises. : . they had quickly done, they forgot his works: and they waited not for his counsel. : . and they coveted their desire in the desert: and they tempted god in the place without water. : . and he gave them their request: and sent fulness into their souls. : . and they provoked moses in the camp, aaron the holy one of the lord. : . the earth opened and swallowed up dathan: and covered the congregation of abiron. : . and a fire was kindled in their congregation: the flame burned the wicked. : . they made also a calf in horeb: and they adored the graven thing. : . and they changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass. : . they forgot god, who saved them, who had done great things in egypt, : . wondrous works in the land of cham: terrible things in the red sea. : . and he said that he would destroy them: had not moses his chosen stood before him in the breach: to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. : . and they set at nought the desirable land. they believed not his word, : . and they murmured in their tents: they hearkened not to the voice of the lord. : . and he lifted up his hand over them: to overthrow them in the desert; : . and to cast down their seed among the nations, and to scatter them in the countries. : . they also were initiated to beelphegor: and ate the sacrifices of the dead. initiated... that is, they dedicated, or consecrated themselves to the idol of the moabites and madianites, called beelphegor, or baal-peor. num. . .-ibid. the dead... viz., idols without life. : . and they provoked him with their inventions: and destruction was multiplied among them. : . then phinees stood up, and pacified him: and the slaughter ceased. : . and it was reputed to him unto justice, to generation and generation for evermore. : . they provoked him also at the waters of contradiction: and moses was afflicted for their sakes: : . because they exasperated his spirit. and he distinguished with his lips. he distinguished with his lips... moses, by occasion of the people's rebellion and incredulity, was guilty of distinguishing with his lips; when, instead of speaking to the rock, as god had commanded, he said to the people, with a certain hesitation in his faith, hear ye, rebellious and incredulous: can we from this rock bring out water for you? num. . . : . they did not destroy the nations of which the lord spoke unto them. : . and they were mingled among the heathens, and learned their works: : . and served their idols, and it became a stumblingblock to them. : . and they sacrificed their sons, and their daughters to devils. : . and they shed innocent blood: the blood of their sons and of their daughters which they sacrificed to the idols of chanaan. and the land was polluted with blood, : . and was defiled with their works: and they went aside after their own inventions. : . and the lord was exceedingly angry with his people: and he abhorred his inheritance. : . and he delivered them into the hands of the nations: and they that hated them had dominion over them. : . and their enemies afflicted them: and they were humbled under their hands: : . many times did he deliver them. but they provoked him with their counsel: and they were brought low by their iniquities. : . and he saw when they were in tribulation: and he heard their prayer. : . and he was mindful of his covenant: and repented according to the multitude of his mercies. : . and he gave them unto mercies, in the sight of all those that had made them captives. : . save us, o lord, our god: and gather us from among the nations: that we may give thanks to thy holy name, and may glory in thy praise. : . blessed be the lord the god of israel, from everlasting to everlasting: and let all the people say: so be it, so be it. psalms chapter confitemini domino. all are invited to give thanks to god for his perpetual providence over men.. alleluia. : . give glory to the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . let them say so that have been redeemed by the lord, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy: and gathered out of the countries. : . from the rising and from the setting of the sun, from the north and from the sea. : . they wandered in a wilderness, in a place without water: they found not the way of a city for their habitation. : . they were hungry and thirsty: their soul fainted in them. : . and they cried to the lord in their tribulation: and he delivered them out of their distresses. : . and he led them into the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. : . let the mercies of the lord give glory to him: and his wonderful works to the children of men. : . for he hath satisfied the empty soul, and hath filled the hungry soul with good things. : . such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death: bound in want and in iron. : . because they had exasperated the words of god: and provoked the counsel of the most high: : . and their heart was humbled with labours: they were weakened, and there was none to help them. : . then they cried to the lord in their affliction: and he delivered them out of their distresses. : . and he brought them out of darkness, and the shadow of death; and broke their bonds in sunder. : . let the mercies of the lord give glory to him, and his wonderful works to the children of men. : . because he hath broken gates of brass, and burst iron bars. : . he took them out of the way of their iniquity: for they were brought low for their injustices. : . their soul abhorred all manner of meat: and they drew nigh even to the gates of death. : . and they cried to the lord in their affliction: and he delivered them out of their distresses. : . he sent his word, and healed them: and delivered them from their destructions. : . let the mercies of the lord give glory to him: and his wonderful works to the children of men. : . and let them sacrifice the sacrifice of praise: and declare his works with joy. : . they that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in the great waters: : . these have seen the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep. : . he said the word, and there arose a storm of wind: and the waves thereof were lifted up. : . they mount up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths: their soul pined away with evils. : . they were troubled, and reeled like a drunken man; and all their wisdom was swallowed up. : . and they cried to the lord in their affliction: and he brought them out of their distresses. : . and he turned the storm into a breeze: and its waves were still. : . and they rejoiced because they were still: and he brought them to the haven which they wished for. : . let the mercies of the lord give glory to him, and his wonderful works to the children of men. : . and let them exalt him in the church of the people: and praise him in the chair of the ancients. : . he hath turned rivers into a wilderness: and the sources of waters into dry ground: : . a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. : . he hath turned a wilderness into pools of waters, and a dry land into water springs. : . and hath placed there the hungry; and they made a city for their habitation. : . anti they sowed fields, and planted vineyards: and they yielded fruit of birth. : . and he blessed them, and they were multiplied exceedingly: and their cattle he suffered not to decrease. : . then they were brought to be few: and they were afflicted through the trouble of evils and sorrow. : . contempt was poured forth upon their princes: and he caused them to wander where there was no passing, and out of the way. : . and he helped the poor out of poverty: and made him families like a flock of sheep. : . the just shall see, and shall rejoice, and all iniquity shall stop her mouth. : . who is wise, and will keep these things; and will understand the mercies of the lord? psalms chapter paratum cor meum. the prophet praiseth god for benefits received. : . a canticle of a psalm for david himself. : . my heart is ready, o god, my heart is ready: i will sing, and will give praise, with my glory. : . arise, my glory; arise, psaltery and harp: i will arise in the morning early. : . i will praise thee, o lord, among the people: and i will sing unto thee among the nations. : . for thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth even unto the clouds. : . be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens, and thy glory over all the earth: : . that thy beloved may be delivered. save with thy right hand and hear me. : . god hath spoken in his holiness. i will rejoice, and i will divide sichem and i will mete out the vale of tabernacles. : . galaad is mine: and manasses is mine and ephraim the protection of my head. juda is my king: : . moab the pot of my hope. over edom i will stretch out my shoe: the aliens are become my friends. : . who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into edom? : . wilt not thou, o god, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, o god, go forth with our armies? : . o grant us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man. : . through god we shall do mightily: and he will bring our enemies to nothing. psalms chapter deus, laudem meam. david in the person of christ, prayeth against his persecutors; more especially the traitor judas: foretelling and approving his just punishment for his obstinacy in sin and final impenitence. : . unto the end, a psalm for david. : . o god, be not thou silent in my praise: for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful man is opened against me. : . they have spoken against me with deceitful tongues; and they have compassed me about with words of hatred; and have fought against me without cause. : . instead of making me a return of love, they detracted me: but i gave myself to prayer. : . and they repaid me evil for good: and hatred for my love. : . set thou the sinner over him: and may the devil stand at his right hand. set thou the sinner over him, etc... give to the devil, that arch- sinner, power over him: let him enter into him, and possess him. the imprecations, contained in the thirty verses of this psalm, are opposed to the thirty pieces of silver for which judas betrayed our lord; and are to be taken as prophetic denunciations of the evils that should befall the traitor and his accomplices the jews; and not properly as curses. : . when he is judged, may he go out condemned; and may his prayer be turned to sin. : . may his days be few: and his bishopric let another take. : . may his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. : . let his children be carried about vagabonds, and beg; and let them be cast out of their dwellings. : . may the usurer search all his substance: and let strangers plunder his labours. : . may there be none to help him: nor none to pity his fatherless offspring. : . may his posterity be cut off; in one generation may his name be blotted out. : . may the iniquity of his fathers be remembered in the sight of the lord: and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. : . may they be before the lord continually, and let the memory of them perish from the earth: because he remembered not to shew mercy, : . but persecuted the poor man and the beggar; and the broken in heart, to put him to death. : . and he loved cursing, and it shall come unto him: and he would not have blessing, and it shall be far from him. and he put on cursing, like a garment: and it went in like water into his entrails, and like oil in his bones. : . may it be unto him like a garment which covereth him; and like a girdle with which he is girded continually. : . this is the work of them who detract me before the lord; and who speak evils against my soul. : . but thou, o lord, do with me for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is sweet. do thou deliver me, : . for i am poor and needy, and my heart is troubled within me. : . i am taken away like the shadow when it declineth: and i am shaken off as locusts. : . my knees are weakened through fasting: and my flesh is changed for oil. for oil... propter oleum. the meaning is, my flesh is changed, being perfectly emaciated and dried up, as having lost all its oil or fatness. : . and i am become a reproach to them: they saw me and they shaked their heads. : . help me, o lord my god; save me; according to thy mercy. : . and let them know that this is thy hand: and that thou, o lord, hast done it. : . they will curse and thou wilt bless: let them that rise up against me be confounded: but thy servant shall rejoice. : . let them that detract me be clothed with shame: and let them be covered with their confusion as with a double cloak. : . i will give great thanks to the lord with my mouth: and in the midst of many i will praise him. : . because he hath stood at the right hand of the poor, to save my soul from persecutors. psalms chapter dixit dominus. christ's exaltation and everlasting priesthood. : . a psalm for david. the lord said to my lord: sit thou at my right hand: until i make thy enemies thy footstool. : . the lord will send forth the sceptre of thy power out of sion: rule thou in the midst of thy enemies. : . with thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star i begot thee. : . the lord hath sworn, and he will not repent: thou art a priest for ever according to the order of melchisedech. : . the lord at thy right hand hath broken kings in the day of his wrath. : . he shall judge among nations, he shall fill ruins: he shall crush the heads in the land of many. : . he shall drink of the torrent in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head. psalms chapter confitebor tibi, domine. god is to be praised for his graces, and benefits to his church. alleluia. : . i will praise thee, o lord, with my whole heart; in the council of the just, and in the congregation. : . great are the works of the lord: sought out according to all his wills. : . his work is praise and magnificence: and his justice continueth for ever and ever. : . he hath made a remembrance of his wonderful works, being a merciful and gracious lord: : . he hath given food to them that fear him. he will be mindful for ever of his covenant: : . he will shew forth to his people the power of his works. : . that he may give them the inheritance of the gentiles: the works of his hands are truth and judgment. : . all his commandments are faithful: confirmed for ever and ever, made in truth and equity. : . he hath sent redemption to his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever. holy and terrible is his name: : . the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom. a good understanding to all that do it: his praise continueth for ever and ever. psalms chapter beatus vir. the good man is happy. alleluia, of the returning of aggeus and zacharias. of the returning, etc... this is in the greek and latin, but not in the hebrew. it signifies that this psalm was proper to be sung at the time of the return of the people from their captivity; to inculcate to them, how happy they might be, if they would be constant in the service of god. : . blessed is the man that feareth the lord: he shall delight exceedingly in his commandments. : . his seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the righteous shall be blessed. : . glory and wealth shall be in his house: and his justice remaineth for ever and ever. : . to the righteous a light is risen up in darkness: he is merciful, and compassionate and just. : . acceptable is the man that sheweth mercy and lendeth: he shall order his words with judgment: : . because he shall not be moved for ever. : . the just shall be in everlasting remembrance: he shall not fear the evil hearing. his heart is ready to hope in the lord: : . his heart is strengthened, he shall not be moved until he look over his enemies. : . he hath distributed, he hath given to the poor: his justice remaineth for ever and ever: his horn shall be exalted in glory. : . the wicked shall see, and shall be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth and pine away: the desire of the wicked shall perish. psalms chapter laudate, pueri. god is to be praised for his regard to the poor and humble. alleluia. : . praise the lord, ye children: praise ye the name of the lord. : . blessed be the name of the lord, from henceforth now and for ever. : . from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, the name of the lord is worthy of praise. : . the lord is high above all nations; and his glory above the heavens. : . who is as the lord our god, who dwelleth on high: and looketh down on the low things in heaven and in earth? : . raising up the needy from the earth, and lifting up the poor out of the dunghill: : . that he may place him with princes, with the princes of his people. : . who maketh a barren woman to dwell in a house, the joyful mother of children. psalms chapter in exitu israel. god hath shewn his power in delivering his people: idols are vain. the hebrews divide this into two psalms. alleluia. : . when israel went out of egypt, the house of jacob from a barbarous people: : . judea was made his sanctuary, israel his dominion. : . the sea saw and fled: jordan was turned back. : . the mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like the lambs of the flock. : . what ailed thee, o thou sea, that thou didst flee: and thou, o jordan, that thou wast turned back? : . ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye hills, like lambs of the flock? : . at the presence of the lord the earth was moved, at the presence of the god of jacob: : . who turned the rock into pools of water, and the stony hill into fountains of waters. : . not to us, o lord, not to us; but to thy name give glory. : . for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake: lest the gentiles should say: where is their god? : . but our god is in heaven: he hath done all things whatsoever he would. : . the idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men. : . they have mouths and speak not: they have eyes and see not. : . they have ears and hear not: they have noses and smell not. : . they have hands and feel not: they have feet and walk not: neither shall they cry out through their throat. : . let them that make them become like unto them: and all such as trust in them. : . the house of israel hath hoped in the lord: he is their helper and their protector. : . the house of aaron hath hoped in the lord: he is their helper and their protector. : . they that fear the lord have hoped in the lord: he is their helper and their protector. : . the lord hath been mindful of us, and hath blessed us. he hath blessed the house of israel: he hath blessed the house of aaron. : . he hath blessed all that fear the lord, both little and great. : . may the lord add blessings upon you: upon you, and upon your children. : . blessed be you of the lord, who made heaven and earth. : . the heaven of heaven is the lord's: but the earth he has given to the children of men. : . the dead shall not praise thee, o lord: nor any of them that go down to hell. : . but we that live bless the lord: from this time now and for ever. psalms chapter dilexi. the prayer of a just man in affliction, with a lively confidence in god. alleluia. : . i have loved, because the lord will hear the voice of my prayer. : . because he hath inclined his ear unto me: and in my days i will call upon him. : . the sorrows of death have compassed me: and the perils of hell have found me. i met with trouble and sorrow: : . and i called upon the name of the lord. o lord, deliver my soul. : . the lord is merciful and just, and our god sheweth mercy. : . the lord is the keeper of little ones: i was humbled, and he delivered me. : . turn, o my soul, into thy rest: for the lord hath been bountiful to thee. : . for he hath delivered my soul from death: my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. : . i will please the lord in the land of the living. psalms chapter credidi. this in the hebrew is joined with the foregoing psalm, and continues to express the faith and gratitude of the psalmist. alleluia. : . i have believed, therefore have i spoken; but i have been humbled exceedingly. : . i said in my excess: every man is a liar. : . what shall i render to the lord, for all the things that he hath rendered to me? : . i will take the chalice of salvation; and i will call upon the name of the lord. : . i will pay my vows to the lord before all his people: : . precious in the sight of the lord is the death of his saints. : . o lord, for i am thy servant: i am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid. thou hast broken my bonds: : . i will sacrifice to thee the sacrifice of praise, and i will call upon the name of the lord. : . i will pay my vows to the lord in the sight of all his people: : . in the courts of the house of the lord, in the midst of thee, o jerusalem. psalms chapter laudate dominum. all nations are called upon to praise god for his mercy and truth. alleluia. : . o praise the lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. : . for his mercy is confirmed upon us: and the truth of the lord remaineth for ever. psalms chapter confitemini domino. the psalmist praiseth god for his delivery from evils: putteth his whole trust in him; and foretelleth the coming of christ. alleluia. : . give praise to the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . let israel now say, that he is good: that his mercy endureth for ever. : . let the house of aaron now say, that his mercy endureth for ever. : . let them that fear the lord now say, that his mercy endureth for ever. : . in my trouble i called upon the lord: and the lord heard me, and enlarged me. : . the lord is my helper: i will not fear what man can do unto me. : . the lord is my helper: and i will look over my enemies. : . it is good to confide in the lord, rather than to have confidence in man. : . it is good to trust in the lord, rather than to trust in princes. : . all nations compassed me about; and, in the name of the lord i have been revenged on them. : . surrounding me they compassed me about: and in the name of the lord i have been revenged on them. : . they surrounded me like bees, and they burned like fire among thorns: and in the name of the lord i was revenged on them. : . being pushed i was overturned that i might fall: but the lord supported me. : . the lord is my strength and my praise: and he is become my salvation. : . the voice of rejoicing and of salvation is in the tabernacles of the just. : . the right hand of the lord hath wrought strength: the right hand of the lord hath exalted me: the right hand of the lord hath wrought strength. : . i shall not die, but live: and shall declare the works of the lord. : . the lord chastising hath chastised me: but he hath not delivered me over to death. : . open ye to me the gates of justice: i will go in to them, and give praise to the lord. : . this is the gate of the lord, the just shall enter into it. : . i will give glory to thee because thou hast heard me: and art become my salvation. : . the stone which the builders rejected; the same is become the head of the corner. : . this is the lord's doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes. : . this is the day which the lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein. : . o lord, save me: o lord, give good success. : . blessed be he that cometh in the name of the lord. we have blessed you out of the house of the lord. : . the lord is god, and he hath shone upon us. appoint a solemn day, with shady boughs, even to the horn of the altar. : . thou art my god, and i will praise thee: thou art my god, and i will exalt thee. i will praise thee, because thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation. : . o praise ye the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. psalms chapter beati immaculati. of the excellence of virtue consisting in the love and observance of the commandments of god. alleluia. aleph. aleph... the first eight verses of this psalm in the original begin with aleph, which is the name of the first letter of the hebrew alphabet. the second eight verses begin with beth, the name of the second letter of the hebrew alphabet; and so to the end of the whole alphabet, in all twenty-two letters, each letter having eight verses. this order is variously expounded by the holy fathers; which shews the difficulty of understanding the holy scriptures, and consequently with what humility, and submission to the church they are to be read. : . blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the lord. : . blessed are they that search his testimonies: that seek him with their whole heart. his testimonies... the commandments of god are called his testimonies, because they testify his holy will unto us. note here, that in almost every verse of this psalm (which in number are ) the word and law of god, and the love and observance of it, is perpetually inculcated, under a variety of denominations, all signifying the same thing. : . for they that work iniquity, have not walked in his ways. : . thou hast commanded thy commandments to be kept most diligently. : . o! that my ways may be directed to keep thy justifications. : . then shall i not be confounded, when i shall look into all thy commandments. : . i will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when i shall have learned the judgments of thy justice. : . i will keep thy justifications: o! do not thou utterly forsake me. beth. : . by what doth a young man correct his way? by observing thy words. : . with my whole heart have i sought after thee: let me not stray from thy commandments. : . thy words have i hidden in my heart, that i may not sin against thee. : . blessed art thou, o lord: teach me thy justifications. : . with my lips i have pronounced all the judgments of thy mouth. : . i have been delighted in the way of thy testimonies, as in all riches. : . i will meditate on thy commandments: and i will consider thy ways. : . i will think of thy justifications: i will not forget thy words. gimel. : . give bountifully to thy servant, enliven me: and i shall keep thy words. : . open thou my eyes: and i will consider the wondrous things of thy law. : . i am a sojourner on the earth: hide not thy commandments from me. : . my soul hath coveted to long for thy justifications, at all times. : . thou hast rebuked the proud: they are cursed who decline from thy commandments. : . remove from me reproach and contempt: because i have sought after thy testimonies. : . for princes sat, and spoke against me: but thy servant was employed in thy justifications. : . for thy testimonies are my meditation: and thy justifications my counsel. daleth. : . my soul hath cleaved to the pavement: quicken thou me according to thy word. : . i have declared my ways, and thou hast heard me: teach me thy justifications. : . make me to understand the way of thy justifications: and i shall be exercised in thy wondrous works. : . my soul hath slumbered through heaviness: strengthen thou me in thy words. : . remove from me the way of iniquity: and out of thy law have mercy on me. : . i have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments i have not forgotten. : . i have stuck to thy testimonies, o lord: put me not to shame. : . i have run the way of thy commandments, when thou didst enlarge my heart. he. : . set before me for a law the way of thy justifications, o lord: and i will always seek after it. : . give me understanding, and i will search thy law; and i will keep it with my whole heart. : . lead me into the path of thy commandments; for this same i have desired. : . incline my heart into thy testimonies and not to covetousness. : . turn away my eyes that they may not behold vanity: quicken me in thy way. : . establish thy word to thy servant, in thy fear. : . turn away my reproach, which i have apprehended: for thy judgments are delightful. : . behold i have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy justice. vau. : . let thy mercy also come upon me, o lord: thy salvation according to thy word. : . so shall i answer them that reproach me in any thing; that i have trusted in thy words. : . and take not thou the word of truth utterly out of my mouth: for in thy words, i have hoped exceedingly. : . so shall i always keep thy law, for ever and ever. : . and i walked at large: because i have sought after thy commandments. : . and i spoke of thy testimonies before kings: and i was not ashamed. : . i meditated also on thy commandments, which i loved. : . and i lifted up my hands to thy commandments, which i loved: and i was exercised in thy justifications. zain. : . be thou mindful of thy word to thy servant, in which thou hast given me hope. : . this hath comforted me in my humiliation: because thy word hath enlivened me. : . the proud did iniquitously altogether: but i declined not from thy law. : . i remembered, o lord, thy judgments of old: and i was comforted. : . a fainting hath taken hold of me, because of the wicked that forsake thy law. : . thy justifications were the subject of my song, in the place of my pilgrimage. : . in the night i have remembered thy name, o lord: and have kept thy law. : . this happened to me: because i sought after thy justifications. heth. : . o lord, my portion, i have said, i would keep thy law. : . i entreated thy face with all my heart: have mercy on me according to thy word. : . i have thought on my ways: and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. : . i am ready, and am not troubled: that i may keep thy commandments. : . the cords of the wicked have encompassed me: but i have not forgotten thy law. : . i rose at midnight to give praise to thee; for the judgments of thy justification. : . i am a partaker with all them that fear thee, and that keep thy commandments. : . the earth, o lord, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy justifications. teth. : . thou hast done well with thy servant, o lord, according to thy word. : . teach me goodness and discipline and knowledge; for i have believed thy commandments. : . before i was humbled i offended; therefore have i kept thy word. : . thou art good; and in thy goodness teach me thy justifications. : . the iniquity of the proud hath been multiplied over me: but i will seek thy commandments with my whole heart. : . their heart is curdled like milk: but i have meditated on thy law. : . it is good for me that thou hast humbled me, that i may learn thy justifications. : . the law of thy mouth is good to me, above thousands of gold and silver. jod. : . thy hands have made me and formed me: give me understanding, and i will learn thy commandments. : . they that fear thee shall see me, and shall be glad: because i have greatly hoped in thy words. : . i know, o lord, that thy judgments are equity: and in thy truth thou hast humbled me. : . o! let thy mercy be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant. : . let thy tender mercies come unto me, and i shall live: for thy law is my meditation. : . let the proud be ashamed, because they have done unjustly towards me: but i will be employed in thy commandments. : . let them that fear thee turn to me: and they that know thy testimonies. : . let my heart be undefiled in thy justifications, that i may not be confounded. caph. : . my soul hath fainted after thy salvation: and in thy word i have very much hoped. : . my eyes have failed for thy word, saying: when wilt thou comfort me? : . for i am become like a bottle in the frost: i have not forgotten thy justifications. : . how many are the days of thy servant: when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? : . the wicked have told me fables: but not as thy law. : . all thy statutes are truth: they have persecuted me unjustly, do thou help me. : . they had almost made an end of me upon earth: but i have not forsaken thy commandments. : . quicken thou me according to thy mercy: and i shall keep the testimonies of thy mouth. lamed. : . for ever, o lord, thy word standeth firm in heaven. : . thy truth unto all generations: thou hast founded the earth, and it continueth. : . by thy ordinance the day goeth on: for all things serve thee. : . unless thy law had been my meditation, i had then perhaps perished in my abjection. : . thy justifications i will never forget: for by them thou hast given me life. : . i am thine, save thou me: for i have sought thy justifications. : . the wicked have waited for me to destroy me: but i have understood thy testimonies. : . i have seen an end of all perfection: thy commandment is exceeding broad. mem. : . o how have i loved thy law, o lord! it is my meditation all the day. : . through thy commandment, thou hast made me wiser than my enemies: for it is ever with me. : . i have understood more than all my teachers: because thy testimonies are my meditation. : . i have had understanding above ancients: because i have sought thy commandments. : . i have restrained my feet from every evil way: that i may keep thy words. : . i have not declined from thy judgments, because thou hast set me a law. : . how sweet are thy words to my palate! more than honey to my mouth. : . by thy commandments i have had understanding: therefore have i hated every way of iniquity. nun. : . thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths. : . i have sworn and am determined to keep the judgments of thy justice. : . i have been humbled, o lord, exceedingly: quicken thou me according to thy word. : . the free offerings of my mouth make acceptable, o lord: and teach me thy judgments. : . my soul is continually in my hands: and i have not forgotten thy law. : . sinners have laid a snare for me: but i have not erred from thy precepts. : . i have purchased thy testimonies for an inheritance for ever: because they are the joy of my heart. : . i have inclined my heart to do thy justifications for ever, for the reward. samech. : . i have hated the unjust: and have loved thy law. : . thou art my helper and my protector: and in thy word i have greatly hoped. : . depart from me, ye malignant: and i will search the commandments of my god. : . uphold me according to thy word, and i shall live: and let me not be confounded in my expectation. : . help me, and i shall be saved: and i will meditate always on thy justifications. : . thou hast despised all them that fall off from thy judgments; for their thought is unjust. : . i have accounted all the sinners of the earth prevaricators: therefore have i loved thy testimonies. : . pierce thou my flesh with thy fear: for i am afraid of thy judgments. ain. : . i have done judgment and justice: give me not up to them that slander me. : . uphold thy servant unto good: let not the proud calumniate me. : . my eyes have fainted after thy salvation: and for the word of thy justice. : . deal with thy servant according to thy mercy: and teach me thy justifications. : . i am thy servant: give me understanding that i may know thy testimonies. : . it is time, o lord, to do: they have dissipated thy law. : . therefore have i loved thy commandments above gold and the topaz. : . therefore was i directed to all thy commandments: i have hated all wicked ways. phe. : . thy testimonies are wonderful: therefore my soul hath sought them. : . the declaration of thy words giveth light: and giveth understanding to little ones. : . i opened my mouth, and panted: because i longed for thy commandments. : . look thou upon me, and have mercy on me according to the judgment of them that love thy name. : . direct my steps according to thy word: and let no iniquity have dominion over me. : . redeem me from the calumnies of men: that i may keep thy commandments. : . make thy face to shine upon thy servant: and teach me thy justifications. : . my eyes have sent forth springs of water: because they have not kept thy law. sade. : . thou art just, o lord: and thy judgment is right. : . thou hast commanded justice thy testimonies: and thy truth exceedingly. : . my zeal hath made me pine away: because my enemies forgot thy words. : . thy word is exceedingly refined: and thy servant hath loved it. : . i am very young and despised; but i forget not thy justifications. : . thy justice is justice for ever: and thy law is the truth. : . trouble and anguish have found me: thy commandments are my meditation. : . thy testimonies are justice for ever: give me understanding, and i shall live. coph. : . i cried with my whole heart, hear me, o lord: i will seek thy justifications. : . i cried unto thee, save me: that i may keep thy commandments. : . i prevented the dawning of the day, and cried: because in thy words i very much hoped. : . my eyes to thee have prevented the morning: that i might meditate on thy words. : . hear thou my voice, o lord, according to thy mercy: and quicken me according to thy judgment. : . they that persecute me have drawn nigh to iniquity; but they are gone far off from thy law. : . thou art near, o lord: and all thy ways are truth. : . i have known from the beginning concerning thy testimonies: that thou hast founded them for ever. res. : . see my humiliation and deliver me for i have not forgotten thy law. : . judge my judgment and redeem me: quicken thou me for thy word's sake. : . salvation is far from sinners; because they have not sought thy justifications. : . many, o lord, are thy mercies: quicken me according to thy judgment. : . many are they that persecute me and afflict me; but i have not declined from thy testimonies. : . i beheld the transgressors, and pined away; because they kept not thy word. : . behold i have loved thy commandments, o lord; quicken me thou in thy mercy. : . the beginning of thy words is truth: all the judgments of thy justice are for ever. sin. : . princes have persecuted me without cause: and my heart hath been in awe of thy words. : . i will rejoice at thy words, as one that hath found great spoil. : . i have hated and abhorred iniquity; but i have loved thy law. : . seven times a day i have given praise to thee, for the judgments of thy justice. : . much peace have they that love thy law, and to them there is no stumbling block. : . i looked for thy salvation, o lord: and i loved thy commandments. : . my soul hath kept thy testimonies and hath loved them exceedingly. : . i have kept thy commandments and thy testimonies: because all my ways are in thy sight. tau. : . let my supplication, o lord, come near in thy sight: give me understanding according to thy word. : . let my request come in before thee; deliver thou me according to thy word. : . my lips shall utter a hymn, when thou shalt teach me thy justifications. : . my tongue shall pronounce thy word: because all thy commandments are justice. : . let thy hand be with me to save me; for i have chosen thy precepts. : . i have longed for thy salvation, o lord; and thy law is my meditation. : . my soul shall live and shall praise thee: and thy judgments shall help me. : . i have gone astray like a sheep that is lost: seek thy servant, because i have not forgotten thy commandments. psalms chapter ad dominum. a prayer in tribulation. a gradual canticle. a gradual canticle... the following psalms, in number fifteen, are called gradual psalms, or canticles, from the word gradus, signifying steps, ascensions, or degrees: either because they were appointed to be sung on the fifteen steps, by which the people ascended to the temple: or, that in the singing of them the voice was to be raised by certain steps or ascensions: or, that they were to be sung by the people returning from their captivity and ascending to jerusalem, which was seated amongst mountains. the holy fathers, in a mystical sense, understand these steps, or ascensions, of the degrees by which christians spiritually ascend to virtue and perfection; and to the true temple of god in the heavenly jerusalem. : . in my trouble i cried to the lord: and he heard me. : . o lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips, and a deceitful tongue. : . what shall be given to thee, or what shall be added to thee, to a deceitful tongue? : . the sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals that lay waste. : . woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! i have dwelt with the inhabitants of cedar: : . my soul hath been long a sojourner. : . with them that hated peace i was peaceable: when i spoke to them they fought against me without cause. psalms chapter levavi oculos. god is the keeper of his servants. a gradual canticle. : . i have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall come to me. : . my help is from the lord, who made heaven and earth. : . may he not suffer thy foot to be moved: neither let him slumber that keepeth thee. : . behold he shall neither slumber nor sleep, that keepeth israel. : . the lord is thy keeper, the lord is thy protection upon thy right hand. : . the sun shall not burn thee by day: nor the moon by night. : . the lord keepeth thee from all evil: may the lord keep thy soul. : . may the lord keep thy coming in and thy going out; from henceforth now and for ever. psalms chapter laetatus sum in his. the desire and hope of the just for the coming of the kingdom of god, and the peace of his church. : . a gradual canticle. i rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the lord. : . our feet were standing in thy courts, o jerusalem. : . jerusalem, which is built as a city, which is compact together. : . for thither did the tribes go up, the tribes of the lord: the testimony of israel, to praise the name of the lord. : . because their seats have sat in judgment, seats upon the house of david. : . pray ye for the things that are for the peace of jerusalem: and abundance for them that love thee. : . let peace be in thy strength: and abundance in thy towers. : . for the sake of my brethren, and of my neighbours, i spoke peace of thee. : . because of the house of the lord our god, i have sought good things for thee. psalms chapter ad te levavi. a prayer in affliction, with confidence in god. a gradual canticle. : . to thee have i lifted up my eyes, who dwellest in heaven. : . behold as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters, as the eyes of the handmaid are on the hands of her mistress: so are our eyes unto the lord our god, until he have mercy on us. : . have mercy on us, o lord, have mercy on us: for we are greatly filled with contempt. : . for our soul is greatly filled: we are a reproach to the rich, and contempt to the proud. psalms chapter nisi quia domini. the church giveth glory to god for her deliverance, from the hands of her enemies. : . a gradual canticle. if it had not been that the lord was with us, let israel now say: : . if it had not been that the lord was with us, when men rose up against us, : . perhaps they had swallowed us up alive. when their fury was enkindled against us, : . perhaps the waters had swallowed us up. : . our soul hath passed through a torrent: perhaps our soul had passed through a water insupportable. : . blessed be the lord, who hath not given us to be a prey to their teeth. : . our soul hath been delivered as a sparrow out of the snare of the fowlers. the snare is broken, and we are delivered. : . our help is in the name of the lord, who made heaven and earth. psalms chapter qui confidunt. the just are always under god's protection. : . a gradual canticle. they that trust in the lord shall be as mount sion: he shall not be moved for ever that dwelleth : . in jerusalem. mountains are round about it: so the lord is round about his people from henceforth now and for ever. : . for the lord will not leave the rod of sinners upon the lot of the just: that the just may not stretch forth their hands to iniquity. : . do good, o lord, to those that are good, and to the upright of heart. : . but such as turn aside into bonds, the lord shall lead out with the workers of iniquity: peace upon israel. psalms chapter in convertendo. the people of god rejoice at their delivery from captivity. : . a gradual canticle. when the lord brought back the captivity of sion, we became like men comforted. : . then was our mouth filled with gladness; and our tongue with joy. then shall they say among the gentiles: the lord hath done great things for them. : . the lord hath done great things for us: we are become joyful. : . turn again our captivity, o lord, as a stream in the south. : . they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. : . going they went and wept, casting their seeds. : . but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves. psalms chapter nisi dominus. nothing can be done without god's grace and blessing. : . a gradual canticle of solomon. unless the lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. unless the lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it. : . it is vain for you to rise before light, rise ye after you have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow. when he shall give sleep to his beloved, it is vain for you to rise before light... that is, your early rising, your labour and worldly solicitude, will be vain, that is, will avail you nothing, without the light, grace, and blessing of god. : . behold the inheritance of the lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb. : . as arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken. : . blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them; he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate. psalms chapter beati omnes. the fear of god is the way to happiness. : . a gradual canticle. blessed are all they that fear the lord: that walk in his ways. : . for thou shalt eat the labours of thy hands: blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee. : . thy wife as a fruitful vine, on the sides of thy house. thy children as olive plants, round about thy table. : . behold, thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the lord. : . may the lord bless thee out of sion: and mayst thou see the good things of jerusalem all the days of thy life. : . and mayst thou see thy children's children, peace upon israel. psalms chapter saepe expugnaverunt. the church of god is invincible: her persecutors come to nothing. : . a gradual canticle. often have they fought against me from my youth, let israel now say. : . often have they fought against me from my youth: but they could not prevail over me. : . the wicked have wrought upon my back: they have lengthened their iniquity. : . the lord who is just will cut the necks of sinners: : . let them all be confounded and turned back that hate sion. : . let them be as grass upon the tops of houses: which withereth before it be plucked up: : . who with the mower filleth not his hand: nor he that gathereth sheaves his bosom. : . and they that passed by have not said: the blessing of the lord be upon you: we have blessed you in the name of the lord. psalms chapter de profundis. a prayer of a sinner, trusting in the mercies of god. the sixth penitential psalm. : . a gradual canticle. out of the depths i have cried to thee, o lord: : . lord, hear my voice. let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. : . if thou, o lord, wilt mark iniquities: lord, who shall stand it. : . for with thee there is merciful forgiveness: and by reason of thy law, i have waited for thee, o lord. my soul hath relied on his word: : . my soul hath hoped in the lord. : . from the morning watch even until night, let israel hope in the lord. : . because with the lord there is mercy: and with him plentiful redemption. : . and he shall redeem israel from all his iniquities. psalms chapter domine, none est. the prophet's humility. : . a gradual canticle of david. lord, my heart is not exalted: nor are my eyes lofty. neither have i walked in great matters, nor in wonderful things above me. : . if i was not humbly minded, but exalted my soul: as a child that is weaned is towards his mother, so reward in my soul. : . let israel hope in the lord, from henceforth now and for ever. psalms chapter memento, domine. a prayer for the fulfilling of the promise made to david. : . a gradual canticle. o lord, remember david, and all his meekness. : . how he swore to the lord, he vowed a vow to the god of jacob: : . if i shall enter into the tabernacle of my house: if i shall go up into the bed wherein i lie: : . if i shall give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids, : . or rest to my temples: until i find out a place for the lord, a tabernacle for the god of jacob. : . behold we have heard of it in ephrata: we have found it in the fields of the wood. we have heard of it in ephrata... when i was young, and lived in bethlehem, otherwise called ephrata, i heard of god's tabernacle and ark, and had a devout desire of seeking it; and accordingly i found it at cariathiarim, the city of the woods: where it was till it was removed to jerusalem. see par. . : . we will go into his tabernacle: we will adore in the place where his feet stood. : . arise, o lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified. : . let thy priests be clothed with justice: and let thy saints rejoice. : . for thy servant david's sake, turn not away the face of thy anointed. : . the lord hath sworn truth to david, and he will not make it void: of the fruit of thy womb i will set upon thy throne. : . if thy children will keep my covenant, and these my testimonies which i shall teach them: their children also for evermore shall sit upon thy throne. : . for the lord hath chosen sion: he hath chosen it for his dwelling. : . this is my rest for ever and ever: here will i dwell, for i have chosen it. : . blessing i will bless her widow: i will satisfy her poor with bread. : . i will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall rejoice with exceeding great joy. : . there will i bring forth a horn to david: i have prepared a lamp for my anointed. : . his enemies i will clothe with confusion: but upon him shall my sanctification flourish. psalms chapter ecce quam bonum. the happiness of brotherly love and concord. : . a gradual canticle of david. behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity: : . like the precious ointment on the head, that ran down upon the beard, the beard of aaron, which ran down to the skirt of his garment: : . as the dew of hermon, which descendeth upon mount sion. for there the lord hath commanded blessing, and life for evermore. psalms chapter ecce nunc benedicite. an exhortation to praise god continually. : . a gradual canticle. behold now bless ye the lord, all ye servants of the lord: who stand in the house of the lord, in the courts of the house of our god. : . in the nights lift up your hands to the holy places, and bless ye the lord. : . may the lord out of sion bless thee, he that made heaven and earth. psalms chapter laudate nomen. an exhortation to praise god: the vanity of idols. : . alleluia. praise ye the name of the lord: o you his servants, praise the lord: : . you that stand in the house of the lord, in the courts of the house of our god. : . praise ye the lord, for the lord is good: sing ye to his name, for it is sweet. : . for the lord hath chosen jacob unto himself: israel for his own possession. : . for i have known that the lord is great, and our god is above all gods. : . whatsoever the lord pleased he hath done, in heaven, in earth, in the sea, and in all the deeps. : . he bringeth up clouds from the end of the earth: he hath made lightnings for the rain. he bringeth forth winds out of his stores: : . he slew the firstborn of egypt from man even unto beast. : . he sent forth signs and wonders in the midst of thee, o egypt: upon pharao, and upon all his servants. : . he smote many nations, and slew mighty kings: : . sehon king of the amorrhites, and og king of basan, and all the kingdoms of chanaan. : . and gave their land for an inheritance, for an inheritance to his people israel. : . thy name, o lord, is for ever: thy memorial, o lord, unto all generations. : . for the lord will judge his people, and will be entreated in favour of his servants. : . the idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of men's hands. : . they have a mouth, but they speak not: they have eyes, but they see not. : . they have ears, but they hear not: neither is there any breath in their mouths. : . let them that make them be like to them: and every one that trusteth in them. : . bless the lord, o house of israel: bless the lord, o house of aaron. : . bless the lord, o house of levi: you that fear the lord, bless the lord. : . blessed be the lord out of sion, who dwelleth in jerusalem. psalms chapter confitemini domino. god is to be praised for his wonderful works. : . alleluia. praise the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. praise the lord... by this invitation to praise the lord, thrice repeated, we profess the blessed trinity, one god in three distinct persons, the father, and the son, and the holy ghost. : . praise ye the god of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . praise ye the lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who alone doth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who made the heavens in understanding: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who established the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who made the great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . the sun to rule the day: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . the moon and the stars to rule the night: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who smote egypt with their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who brought out israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who divided the red sea into parts: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and brought out israel through the midst thereof: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and overthrew pharao and his host in the red sea: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who led his people through the desert: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and slew strong kings: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . sehon king of the amorrhites: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and og king of basan: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and he gave their land for an inheritance: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . for an inheritance to his servant israel: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . for he was mindful of us in our affliction: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . and he redeemed us from our enemies: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . give glory to the god of heaven: for his mercy endureth for ever. : . give glory to the lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever. psalms chapter super flumina. the lamentation of the people of god in their captivity in babylon. a psalm of david, for jeremias. for jeremias... for the time of jeremias, and the captivity of babylon. : . upon the rivers of babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered sion: : . on the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. : . for there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs. and they that carried us away, said: sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of sion. : . how shall we sing the song of the lord in a strange land? : . if i forget thee, o jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. : . let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if i do not remember thee: if i make not jerusalem the beginning of my joy. : . remember, o lord, the children of edom, in the day of jerusalem: who say: rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. : . o daughter of babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. : . blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock. dash thy little ones, etc... in the spiritual sense, we dash the little ones of babylon against the rock, when we mortify our passions, and stifle the first motions of them, by a speedy recourse to the rock which is christ. psalms chapter confitebor tibi. thanksgiving to god for his benefits. : . for david himself. i will praise thee, o lord, with my whole heart: for thou hast heard the words of my mouth. i will sing praise to thee in the sight of the angels: : . i will worship towards thy holy temple, and i will give glory to thy name. for thy mercy, and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy holy name above all. : . in what day soever i shall call upon thee, hear me: thou shalt multiply strength in my soul. : . may all the kings of the earth give glory to thee: for they have heard all the words of thy mouth. : . and let them sing in the ways of the lord: for great is the glory of the lord. : . for the lord is high, and looketh on the low: and the high he knoweth afar off. : . if i shall walk in the midst of tribulation, thou wilt quicken me: and thou hast stretched forth thy hand against the wrath of my enemies: and thy right hand hath saved me. : . the lord will repay for me: thy mercy, o lord, endureth for ever: o despise not the works of thy hands. psalms chapter domine, probasti. god's special providence over his servants. : . unto the end, a psalm of david. lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: : . thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up. : . thou hast understood my thoughts afar off: my path and my line thou hast searched out. : . and thou hast foreseen all my ways: for there is no speech in my tongue. there is no speech, etc... viz., unknown to thee: or when there is no speech in my tongue; yet my whole interior and my most secret thoughts are known to thee. : . behold, o lord, thou hast known all things, the last and those of old: thou hast formed me, and hast laid thy hand upon me. : . thy knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and i cannot reach to it. : . whither shall i go from thy spirit? or whither shall i flee from thy face? : if i ascend into heaven, thou art there: if i descend into hell, thou art present. : . if i take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: : . even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me. : . and i said: perhaps darkness shall cover me: and night shall be my light in my pleasures. : . but darkness shall not be dark to thee, and night shall be light all the day: the darkness thereof, and the light thereof are alike to thee. : . for thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast protected me from my mother's womb. : . i will praise thee, for thou art fearfully magnified: wonderful are thy works, and my soul knoweth right well. : . my bone is not hidden from thee, which thou hast made in secret: and my substance in the lower parts of the earth. : . thy eyes did see my imperfect being, and in thy book all shall be written: days shall be formed, and no one in them. : . but to me thy friends, o god, are made exceedingly honourable: their principality is exceedingly strengthened. : . i will number them, and they shall be multiplied above the sand, i rose up and am still with thee. : . if thou wilt kill the wicked, o god: ye men of blood, depart from me: : . because you say in thought: they shall receive thy cities in vain. because you say in thought, etc... depart from me, you wicked, who plot against the servants of god, and think to cast them out of the cities of their habitation; as if they have received them in vain, and to no purpose. : . have i not hated them, o lord, that hated thee: and pined away because of thy enemies? : . i have hated them with a perfect hatred: and they are become enemies to me. i have hated them... not with an hatred of malice, but a zeal for the observance of god's commandments; which he saw were despised by the wicked, who are to be considered enemies to god. : . prove me, o god, and know my heart: examine me, and know my paths. : . and see if there be in me the way of iniquity: and lead me in the eternal way. psalms chapter eripe me, domine. a prayer to be delivered from the wicked. : . unto the end, a psalm of david. : . deliver me, o lord, from the evil man: rescue me from the unjust man. : . who have devised iniquities in their hearts: all the day long they designed battles. : . they have sharpened their tongues like a serpent: the venom of asps is under their lips. : . keep me, o lord, from the hand of the wicked: and from unjust men deliver me. who have proposed to supplant my steps: : . the proud have hidden a net for me. and they have stretched out cords for a snare: they have laid for me a stumblingblock by the wayside. : . i said to the lord: thou art my god: hear, o lord, the voice of my supplication. : . o lord, lord, the strength of my salvation: thou hast overshadowed my head in the day of battle. : . give me not up, o lord, from my desire to the wicked: they have plotted against me; do not thou forsake me, lest they should triumph. : . the head of them compassing me about: the labour of their lips shall overwhelm them. : . burning coals shall fall upon them; thou wilt cast them down into the fire: in miseries they shall not be able to stand. : . a man full of tongue shall not be established in the earth: evil shall catch the unjust man unto destruction. : . i know that the lord will do justice to the needy, and will revenge the poor. : . but as for the just, they shall give glory to thy name: and the upright shall dwell with thy countenance. psalms chapter domine, clamavi. a prayer against sinful words, and deceitful flatterers. a psalm of david. : . i have cried to thee, o lord, hear me: hearken to my voice, when i cry to thee. : . let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight; the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice. : . set a watch, o lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips. : . incline not my heart to evil words; to make excuses in sins. with men that work iniquity: and i will not communicate with the choicest of them. : . the just man shall correct me in mercy, and shall reprove me: but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head. for my prayer shall still be against the things with which they are well pleased: let not the oil of the sinner, etc... that is, the flattery, or deceitful praise.-ibid. for my prayer, etc... so far from coveting their praises, who are never well pleased but with things that are evil; i shall continually pray to be preserved from such things as they are delighted with. : . their judges falling upon the rock have been swallowed up. they shall hear my words, for they have prevailed: their judges, etc... their rulers, or chiefs, quickly vanish and perish, like ships dashed against the rocks, and swallowed up by the waves. let them then hear my words, for they are powerful and will prevail; or, as it is in the hebrew, for they are sweet. : . as when the thickness of the earth is broken up upon the ground: our bones are scattered by the side of hell. : . but to thee, o lord, lord, are my eyes: in thee have i put my trust, take not away my soul. : . keep me from the snare, which they have laid for me, and from the stumblingblocks of them that work iniquity. : . the wicked shall fall in his net: i am alone until i pass. i am alone, etc... singularly protected by the almighty, until i pass all their nets and snares. psalms chapter voce mea. a prayer of david in extremity of danger. : . of understanding for david, a prayer when he was in the cave. [ kings .] : . i cried to the lord with my voice: with my voice i made supplication to the lord. : . in his sight i pour out my prayer, and before him i declare my trouble: : . when my spirit failed me, then thou knewest my paths. in this way wherein i walked, they have hidden a snare for me. : . i looked on my right hand, and beheld, and there was no one that would know me. flight hath failed me: and there is no one that hath regard to my soul. : . i cried to thee, o lord: i said: thou art my hope, my portion in the land of the living. : . attend to my supplication: for i am brought very low. deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than i. : . bring my soul out of prison, that i may praise thy name: the just wait for me, until thou reward me. psalms chapter domine, exaudi. the psalmist in tribulation calleth upon god for his delivery. the seventh penitential psalm. : . a psalm of david, when his son absalom pursued him. [ kings .] hear, o lord, my prayer: give ear to my supplication in thy truth: hear me in thy justice. : . and enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight no man living shall be justified. : . for the enemy hath persecuted my soul: he hath brought down my life to the earth. he hath made me to dwell in darkness as those that have been dead of old: : and my spirit is in anguish within me: my heart within me is troubled. : . i remembered the days of old, i meditated on all thy works: i meditated upon the works of thy hands. : . i stretched forth my hands to thee: my soul is as earth without water unto thee. : . hear me speedily, o lord: my spirit hath fainted away. turn not away thy face from me, lest i be like unto them that go down into the pit. : . cause me to hear thy mercy in the morning; for in thee have i hoped. make the way known to me, wherein i should walk: for i have lifted up my soul to thee. : . deliver me from my enemies, o lord, to thee have i fled: : . teach me to do thy will, for thou art my god. thy good spirit shall lead me into the right land: for thy name's sake, o lord, thou wilt quicken me in thy justice. thou wilt bring my soul out of trouble: : . and in thy mercy thou wilt destroy my enemies. and thou wilt cut off all them that afflict my soul: for i am thy servant. psalms chapter benedictus dominus. the prophet praiseth god, and prayeth to be delivered from his enemies. no worldly happiness is to be compared with that of serving god. a psalm of david against goliath. : . blessed be the lord my god, who teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war. : . my mercy, and my refuge: my support, and my deliverer: my protector, and i have hoped in him: who subdueth my people under me. : . lord, what is man, that thou art made known to him? or the son of man, that thou makest account of him? : . man is like to vanity: his days pass away like a shadow. : . lord, bow down thy heavens and descend: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. : . send forth lightning, and thou shalt scatter them: shoot out thy arrows, and thou shalt trouble them. : . put forth thy hand from on high, take me out, and deliver me from many waters: from the hand of strange children: : . whose mouth hath spoken vanity: and their right hand is the right hand of iniquity. : . to thee, o god, i will sing a new canticle: on the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings i will sing praises to thee. : . who givest salvation to kings: who hast redeemed thy servant david from the malicious sword: : . deliver me, and rescue me out of the hand of strange children; whose mouth hath spoken vanity: and their right hand is the right hand of iniquity: : . whose sons are as new plants in their youth: their daughters decked out, adorned round about after the similitude of a temple: : . their storehouses full, flowing out of this into that. their sheep fruitful in young, abounding in their goings forth: : . their oxen fat. there is no breach of wall, nor passage, nor crying out in their streets. : . they have called the people happy, that hath these things: but happy is that people whose god is the lord. psalms chapter exaltabo te, deus. a psalm of praise, to the infinite majesty of god. : . praise, for david himself. i will extol thee, o god my king: and i will bless thy name for ever; yea, for ever and ever. : . every day will i bless thee: and i will praise thy name for ever; yea, for ever and ever. : . great is the lord, and greatly to be praised: and of his greatness there is no end. : . generation and generation shall praise thy works: and they shall declare thy power. : . they shall speak of the magnificence of the glory of thy holiness: and shall tell thy wondrous works. : . and they shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and shall declare thy greatness. : . they shall publish the memory of the abundance of thy sweetness: and shall rejoice in thy justice. : . the lord is gracious and merciful: patient and plenteous in mercy. : . the lord is sweet to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. : . let all thy works, o lord, praise thee: and let thy saints bless thee. : . they shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom: and shall tell of thy power: : . to make thy might known to the sons of men: and the glory of the magnificence of thy kingdom. : . thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages: and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. the lord is faithful in all his words: and holy in all his works. : . the lord lifteth up all that fall: and setteth up all that are cast down. : . the eyes of all hope in thee, o lord: and thou givest them meat in due season. : . thou openest thy hand, and fillest with blessing every living creature. : . the lord is just in all his ways: and holy in all his works. : . the lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him: to all that call upon him in truth. : . he will do the will of them that fear him: and he will hear their prayer, and save them. : . the lord keepeth all them that love him; but all the wicked he will destroy. : . my mouth shall speak the praise of the lord: and let all flesh bless his holy name forever; yea, for ever and ever. psalms chapter lauda, anima. we are not to trust in men, but in god alone. : alleluia, of aggeus and zacharias. : . praise the lord, o my soul, in my life i will praise the lord: i will sing to my god as long as i shall be. put not your trust in princes: : . in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. : . his spirit shall go forth, and he shall return into his earth: in that day all their thoughts shall perish. : . blessed is he who hath the god of jacob for his helper, whose hope is in the lord his god: : . who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them. : . who keepeth truth for ever: who executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong: who giveth food to the hungry. the lord looseth them that are fettered: : . the lord enlighteneth the blind. the lord lifteth up them that are cast down: the lord loveth the just. : . the lord keepeth the strangers, he will support the fatherless and the widow: and the ways of sinners he will destroy. : . the lord shall reign for ever: thy god, o sion, unto generation and generation. psalms chapter laudate dominum. an exhortation to praise god for his benefits. : . alleluia. praise ye the lord, because psalm is good: to our god be joyful and comely praise. : . the lord buildeth up jerusalem: he will gather together the dispersed of israel. : . who healeth the broken of heart, and bindeth up their bruises. : . who telleth the number of the stars: and calleth them all by their names. : . great is our lord, and great is his power: and of his wisdom there is no number. : . the lord lifteth up the meek, and bringeth the wicked down even to the ground. : . sing ye to the lord with praise: sing to our god upon the harp. : . who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth. who maketh grass to grow on the mountains, and herbs for the service of men. : . who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon him. : . he shall not delight in the strength of the horse: nor take pleasure in the legs of a man. : . the lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him: and in them that hope in his mercy. psalms chapter lauda, jerusalem. the church is called upon to praise god for his peculiar graces and favours to his people. in the hebrew, this psalm is joined to the foregoing. alleluia. : . praise the lord, o jerusalem: praise thy god, o sion. : . because he hath strengthened the bolts of thy gates, he hath blessed thy children within thee. : . who hath placed peace in thy borders: and filleth thee with the fat of corn. : . who sendeth forth his speech to the earth: his word runneth swiftly. : . who giveth snow like wool: scattereth mists like ashes. : . he sendeth his crystal like morsels: who shall stand before the face of his cold? he sendeth his crystal... that is, his ice. some understand it of hail, which is, as it were, ice, divided into particles or morsels. : . he shall send out his word, and shall melt them: his wind shall blow, and the waters shall run. : . who declareth his word to jacob: his justices and his judgments to israel. : . he hath not done in like manner to every nation: and his judgments he hath not made manifest to them. alleluia. psalms chapter laudate dominum de caelis. all creatures are invited to praise their creator. alleluia. : . praise ye the lord from the heavens: praise ye him in the high places. : . praise ye him, all his angels, praise ye him, all his hosts. : . praise ye him, o sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars and light. : . praise him, ye heavens of heavens: and let all the waters that are above the heavens : . praise the name of the lord. for he spoke, and they were made: he commanded, and they were created. : . he hath established them for ever, and for ages of ages: he hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away. : . praise the lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all ye deeps: : . fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, which fulfil his word: : . mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars: : . beasts and all cattle: serpents and feathered fowls: : . kings of the earth and all people: princes and all judges of the earth: : . young men and maidens: let the old with the younger, praise the name of the lord: : . for his name alone is exalted. : . the praise of him is above heaven and earth: and he hath exalted the horn of his people. a hymn to all his saints to the children of israel, a people approaching to him. alleluia. psalms chapter cantate domino. the church is particularly bound to praise god. alleluia. : . sing ye to the lord a new canticle: let his praise be in the church of the saints. : . let israel rejoice in him that made him: and let the children of sion be joyful in their king. : . let them praise his name in choir: let them sing to him with the timbrel and the psaltery. : . for the lord is well pleased with his people: and he will exalt the meek unto salvation. : . the saints shall rejoice in glory: they shall be joyful in their beds. : . the high praises of god shall be in their mouth: and two-edged swords in their hands: : . to execute vengeance upon the nations, chastisements among the people: : . to bind their kings with fetters, and their nobles with manacles of iron. : . to execute upon them the judgment that is written: this glory is to all his saints. alleluia. psalms chapter laudate dominum in sanctis. an exhortation to praise god with all sorts of instruments. alleluia. : . praise ye the lord in his holy places: praise ye him in the firmament of his power. : . praise ye him for his mighty acts: praise ye him according to the multitude of his greatness. : . praise him with the sound of trumpet: praise him with psaltery and harp. : . praise him with timbrel and choir: praise him with strings and organs. : . praise him on high sounding cymbals: praise him on cymbals of joy: let every spirit praise the lord. alleluia. this ebook was produced by david widger with the help of derek andrew's text from january and the work of bryan taylor in november . book psalms : : blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. : : but his delight is in the law of the lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. : : and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. : : the ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. : : therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. : : for the lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. : : why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? : : the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the lord, and against his anointed, saying, : : let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. : : he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the lord shall have them in derision. : : then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. : : yet have i set my king upon my holy hill of zion. : : i will declare the decree: the lord hath said unto me, thou art my son; this day have i begotten thee. : : ask of me, and i shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. : : thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. : : be wise now therefore, o ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. : : serve the lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. : : kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. blessed are all they that put their trust in him. : : lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. : : many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in god. selah. : : but thou, o lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. : : i cried unto the lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. selah. : : i laid me down and slept; i awaked; for the lord sustained me. : : i will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. : : arise, o lord; save me, o my god: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. : : salvation belongeth unto the lord: thy blessing is upon thy people. selah. : : hear me when i call, o god of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when i was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. : : o ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? selah. : : but know that the lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the lord will hear when i call unto him. : : stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. selah. : : offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the lord. : : there be many that say, who will shew us any good? lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. : : thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. : : i will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, lord, only makest me dwell in safety. : : give ear to my words, o lord, consider my meditation. : : hearken unto the voice of my cry, my king, and my god: for unto thee will i pray. : : my voice shalt thou hear in the morning, o lord; in the morning will i direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. : : for thou art not a god that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. : : the foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. : : thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. : : but as for me, i will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will i worship toward thy holy temple. : : lead me, o lord, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face. : : for there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue. : : destroy thou them, o god; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee. : : but let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. : : for thou, lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield. : : o lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. : : have mercy upon me, o lord; for i am weak: o lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed. : : my soul is also sore vexed: but thou, o lord, how long? : : return, o lord, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies' sake. : : for in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? : : i am weary with my groaning; all the night make i my bed to swim; i water my couch with my tears. : : mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of all mine enemies. : : depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. : : the lord hath heard my supplication; the lord will receive my prayer. : : let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly. : : o lord my god, in thee do i put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me: : : lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver. : : o lord my god, if i have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands; : : if i have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, i have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:) : : let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. selah. : : arise, o lord, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. : : so shall the congregation of the people compass thee about: for their sakes therefore return thou on high. : : the lord shall judge the people: judge me, o lord, according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me. : : oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous god trieth the hearts and reins. : : my defence is of god, which saveth the upright in heart. : : god judgeth the righteous, and god is angry with the wicked every day. : : if he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. : : he hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors. : : behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. : : he made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. : : his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate. : : i will praise the lord according to his righteousness: and will sing praise to the name of the lord most high. : : o lord, our lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. : : out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. : : when i consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; : : what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? : : for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. : : thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: : : all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; : : the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. : : o lord our lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! : : i will praise thee, o lord, with my whole heart; i will shew forth all thy marvellous works. : : i will be glad and rejoice in thee: i will sing praise to thy name, o thou most high. : : when mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence. : : for thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right. : : thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever. : : o thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them. : : but the lord shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. : : and he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. : : the lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. : : and they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. : : sing praises to the lord, which dwelleth in zion: declare among the people his doings. : : when he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. : : have mercy upon me, o lord; consider my trouble which i suffer of them that hate me, thou that liftest me up from the gates of death: : : that i may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of zion: i will rejoice in thy salvation. : : the heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. : : the lord is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. higgaion. selah. : : the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget god. : : for the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever. : : arise, o lord; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight. : : put them in fear, o lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. selah. : : why standest thou afar off, o lord? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? : : the wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. : : for the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the lord abhorreth. : : the wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after god: god is not in all his thoughts. : : his ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. : : he hath said in his heart, i shall not be moved: for i shall never be in adversity. : : his mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity. : : he sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor. : : he lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. : : he croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. : : he hath said in his heart, god hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it. : : arise, o lord; o god, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. : : wherefore doth the wicked contemn god? he hath said in his heart, thou wilt not require it. : : thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless. : : break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find none. : : the lord is king for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land. : : lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: : : to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress. : : in the lord put i my trust: how say ye to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain? : : for, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart. : : if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? : : the lord is in his holy temple, the lord's throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. : : the lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. : : upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. : : for the righteous lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright. : : help, lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. : : they speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. : : the lord shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: : : who have said, with our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? : : for the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will i arise, saith the lord; i will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. : : the words of the lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. : : thou shalt keep them, o lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. : : the wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted. : : how long wilt thou forget me, o lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? : : how long shall i take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? : : consider and hear me, o lord my god: lighten mine eyes, lest i sleep the sleep of death; : : lest mine enemy say, i have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when i am moved. : : but i have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. : : i will sing unto the lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me. : : the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god. they are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. : : the lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek god. : : they are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. : : have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the lord. : : there were they in great fear: for god is in the generation of the righteous. : : ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the lord is his refuge. : : oh that the salvation of israel were come out of zion! when the lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. : : lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? : : he that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. : : he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. : : in whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the lord. he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. : : he that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. he that doeth these things shall never be moved. : : preserve me, o god: for in thee do i put my trust. : : o my soul, thou hast said unto the lord, thou art my lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee; : : but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight. : : their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will i not offer, nor take up their names into my lips. : : the lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. : : the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, i have a goodly heritage. : : i will bless the lord, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons. : : i have set the lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved. : : therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. : : for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. : : thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. : : hear the right, o lord, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips. : : let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes behold the things that are equal. : : thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; i am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. : : concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips i have kept me from the paths of the destroyer. : : hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not. : : i have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, o god: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech. : : shew thy marvellous lovingkindness, o thou that savest by thy right hand them which put their trust in thee from those that rise up against them. : : keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings, : : from the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about. : : they are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly. : : they have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth; : : like as a lion that is greedy of his prey, and as it were a young lion lurking in secret places. : : arise, o lord, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword: : : from men which are thy hand, o lord, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes. : : as for me, i will behold thy face in righteousness: i shall be satisfied, when i awake, with thy likeness. : : i will love thee, o lord, my strength. : : the lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my god, my strength, in whom i will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. : : i will call upon the lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall i be saved from mine enemies. : : the sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. : : the sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me. : : in my distress i called upon the lord, and cried unto my god: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. : : then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. : : there went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. : : he bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. : : and he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. : : he made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. : : at the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire. : : the lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire. : : yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them. : : then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, o lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. : : he sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. : : he delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong for me. : : they prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the lord was my stay. : : he brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me. : : the lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me. : : for i have kept the ways of the lord, and have not wickedly departed from my god. : : for all his judgments were before me, and i did not put away his statutes from me. : : i was also upright before him, and i kept myself from mine iniquity. : : therefore hath the lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. : : with the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright; : : with the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward. : : for thou wilt save the afflicted people; but wilt bring down high looks. : : for thou wilt light my candle: the lord my god will enlighten my darkness. : : for by thee i have run through a troop; and by my god have i leaped over a wall. : : as for god, his way is perfect: the word of the lord is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him. : : for who is god save the lord? or who is a rock save our god? : : it is god that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect. : : he maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places. : : he teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. : : thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me great. : : thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip. : : i have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did i turn again till they were consumed. : : i have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under my feet. : : for thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: thou hast subdued under me those that rose up against me. : : thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; that i might destroy them that hate me. : : they cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the lord, but he answered them not. : : then did i beat them small as the dust before the wind: i did cast them out as the dirt in the streets. : : thou hast delivered me from the strivings of the people; and thou hast made me the head of the heathen: a people whom i have not known shall serve me. : : as soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me. : : the strangers shall fade away, and be afraid out of their close places. : : the lord liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the god of my salvation be exalted. : : it is god that avengeth me, and subdueth the people under me. : : he delivereth me from mine enemies: yea, thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me: thou hast delivered me from the violent man. : : therefore will i give thanks unto thee, o lord, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name. : : great deliverance giveth he to his king; and sheweth mercy to his anointed, to david, and to his seed for evermore. : : the heavens declare the glory of god; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. : : day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. : : there is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. : : their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, : : which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. : : his going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. : : the law of the lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the lord is sure, making wise the simple. : : the statutes of the lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. : : the fear of the lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. : : more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. : : moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. : : who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. : : keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall i be upright, and i shall be innocent from the great transgression. : : let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, o lord, my strength, and my redeemer. : : the lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the god of jacob defend thee; : : send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of zion; : : remember all thy offerings, and accept thy burnt sacrifice; selah. : : grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfil all thy counsel. : : we will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our god we will set up our banners: the lord fulfil all thy petitions. : : now know i that the lord saveth his anointed; he will hear him from his holy heaven with the saving strength of his right hand. : : some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the lord our god. : : they are brought down and fallen: but we are risen, and stand upright. : : save, lord: let the king hear us when we call. : : the king shall joy in thy strength, o lord; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice! : : thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. selah. : : for thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness: thou settest a crown of pure gold on his head. : : he asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever. : : his glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him. : : for thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance. : : for the king trusteth in the lord, and through the mercy of the most high he shall not be moved. : : thine hand shall find out all thine enemies: thy right hand shall find out those that hate thee. : : thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. : : their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men. : : for they intended evil against thee: they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. : : therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them. : : be thou exalted, lord, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power. : : my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? : : o my god, i cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. : : but thou art holy, o thou that inhabitest the praises of israel. : : our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. : : they cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. : : but i am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. : : all they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, : : he trusted on the lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. : : but thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when i was upon my mother's breasts. : : i was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my god from my mother's belly. : : be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. : : many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of bashan have beset me round. : : they gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. : : i am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. : : my strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. : : for dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. : : i may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. : : they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. : : but be not thou far from me, o lord: o my strength, haste thee to help me. : : deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. : : save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. : : i will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will i praise thee. : : ye that fear the lord, praise him; all ye the seed of jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of israel. : : for he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. : : my praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: i will pay my vows before them that fear him. : : the meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. : : all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. : : for the kingdom is the lord's: and he is the governor among the nations. : : all they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. : : a seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the lord for a generation. : : they shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this. : : the lord is my shepherd; i shall not want. : : he maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. : : he restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. : : yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. : : thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. : : surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and i will dwell in the house of the lord for ever. : : the earth is the lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. : : for he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. : : who shall ascend into the hill of the lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? : : he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. : : he shall receive the blessing from the lord, and righteousness from the god of his salvation. : : this is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, o jacob. selah. : : lift up your heads, o ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in. : : who is this king of glory? the lord strong and mighty, the lord mighty in battle. : : lift up your heads, o ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in. : : who is this king of glory? the lord of hosts, he is the king of glory. selah. : : unto thee, o lord, do i lift up my soul. : : o my god, i trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. : : yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause. : : shew me thy ways, o lord; teach me thy paths. : : lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the god of my salvation; on thee do i wait all the day. : : remember, o lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old. : : remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, o lord. : : good and upright is the lord: therefore will he teach sinners in the way. : : the meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way. : : all the paths of the lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. : : for thy name's sake, o lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great. : : what man is he that feareth the lord? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. : : his soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth. : : the secret of the lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. : : mine eyes are ever toward the lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. : : turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for i am desolate and afflicted. : : the troubles of my heart are enlarged: o bring thou me out of my distresses. : : look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins. : : consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred. : : o keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for i put my trust in thee. : : let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for i wait on thee. : : redeem israel, o god, out of all his troubles. : : judge me, o lord; for i have walked in mine integrity: i have trusted also in the lord; therefore i shall not slide. : : examine me, o lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart. : : for thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and i have walked in thy truth. : : i have not sat with vain persons, neither will i go in with dissemblers. : : i have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked. : : i will wash mine hands in innocency: so will i compass thine altar, o lord: : : that i may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works. : : lord, i have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth. : : gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men: : : in whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. : : but as for me, i will walk in mine integrity: redeem me, and be merciful unto me. : : my foot standeth in an even place: in the congregations will i bless the lord. : : the lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall i fear? the lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall i be afraid? : : when the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. : : though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will i be confident. : : one thing have i desired of the lord, that will i seek after; that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the lord, and to enquire in his temple. : : for in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. : : and now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will i offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; i will sing, yea, i will sing praises unto the lord. : : hear, o lord, when i cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me. : : when thou saidst, seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, thy face, lord, will i seek. : : hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, o god of my salvation. : : when my father and my mother forsake me, then the lord will take me up. : : teach me thy way, o lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. : : deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. : : i had fainted, unless i had believed to see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living. : : wait on the lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, i say, on the lord. : : unto thee will i cry, o lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, i become like them that go down into the pit. : : hear the voice of my supplications, when i cry unto thee, when i lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle. : : draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts. : : give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavours: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert. : : because they regard not the works of the lord, nor the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up. : : blessed be the lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications. : : the lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and i am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will i praise him. : : the lord is their strength, and he is the saving strength of his anointed. : : save thy people, and bless thine inheritance: feed them also, and lift them up for ever. : : give unto the lord, o ye mighty, give unto the lord glory and strength. : : give unto the lord the glory due unto his name; worship the lord in the beauty of holiness. : : the voice of the lord is upon the waters: the god of glory thundereth: the lord is upon many waters. : : the voice of the lord is powerful; the voice of the lord is full of majesty. : : the voice of the lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the lord breaketh the cedars of lebanon. : : he maketh them also to skip like a calf; lebanon and sirion like a young unicorn. : : the voice of the lord divideth the flames of fire. : : the voice of the lord shaketh the wilderness; the lord shaketh the wilderness of kadesh. : : the voice of the lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory. : : the lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the lord sitteth king for ever. : : the lord will give strength unto his people; the lord will bless his people with peace. : : i will extol thee, o lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me. : : o lord my god, i cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me. : : o lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that i should not go down to the pit. : : sing unto the lord, o ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. : : for his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. : : and in my prosperity i said, i shall never be moved. : : lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and i was troubled. : : i cried to thee, o lord; and unto the lord i made supplication. : : what profit is there in my blood, when i go down to the pit? shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth? : : hear, o lord, and have mercy upon me: lord, be thou my helper. : : thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; : : to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. o lord my god, i will give thanks unto thee for ever. : : in thee, o lord, do i put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. : : bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. : : for thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me. : : pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength. : : into thine hand i commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, o lord god of truth. : : i have hated them that regard lying vanities: but i trust in the lord. : : i will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: for thou hast considered my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities; : : and hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room. : : have mercy upon me, o lord, for i am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly. : : for my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed. : : i was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me. : : i am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: i am like a broken vessel. : : for i have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. : : but i trusted in thee, o lord: i said, thou art my god. : : my times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. : : make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies' sake. : : let me not be ashamed, o lord; for i have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. : : let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. : : oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men! : : thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. : : blessed be the lord: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city. : : for i said in my haste, i am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when i cried unto thee. : : o love the lord, all ye his saints: for the lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. : : be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the lord. : : blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. : : blessed is the man unto whom the lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. : : when i kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. : : for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. selah. : : i acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have i not hid. i said, i will confess my transgressions unto the lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. selah. : : for this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. : : thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. selah. : : i will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: i will guide thee with mine eye. : : be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. : : many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the lord, mercy shall compass him about. : : be glad in the lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. : : rejoice in the lord, o ye righteous: for praise is comely for the upright. : : praise the lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. : : sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise. : : for the word of the lord is right; and all his works are done in truth. : : he loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the lord. : : by the word of the lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. : : he gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. : : let all the earth fear the lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. : : for he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. : : the lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. : : the counsel of the lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. : : blessed is the nation whose god is the lord; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. : : the lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men. : : from the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. : : he fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their works. : : there is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength. : : an horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength. : : behold, the eye of the lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; : : to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. : : our soul waiteth for the lord: he is our help and our shield. : : for our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. : : let thy mercy, o lord, be upon us, according as we hope in thee. : : i will bless the lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. : : my soul shall make her boast in the lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. : : o magnify the lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. : : i sought the lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. : : they looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. : : this poor man cried, and the lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. : : the angel of the lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. : : o taste and see that the lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. : : o fear the lord, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. : : the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the lord shall not want any good thing. : : come, ye children, hearken unto me: i will teach you the fear of the lord. : : what man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good? : : keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. : : depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. : : the eyes of the lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. : : the face of the lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. : : the righteous cry, and the lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles. : : the lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. : : many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the lord delivereth him out of them all. : : he keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken. : : evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. : : the lord redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate. : : plead my cause, o lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. : : take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. : : draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, i am thy salvation. : : let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. : : let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the lord chase them. : : let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the lord persecute them. : : for without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. : : let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall. : : and my soul shall be joyful in the lord: it shall rejoice in his salvation. : : all my bones shall say, lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him? : : false witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that i knew not. : : they rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul. : : but as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: i humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom. : : i behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother: i bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother. : : but in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and i knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not: : : with hypocritical mockers in feasts, they gnashed upon me with their teeth. : : lord, how long wilt thou look on? rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions. : : i will give thee thanks in the great congregation: i will praise thee among much people. : : let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me: neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause. : : for they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land. : : yea, they opened their mouth wide against me, and said, aha, aha, our eye hath seen it. : : this thou hast seen, o lord: keep not silence: o lord, be not far from me. : : stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my god and my lord. : : judge me, o lord my god, according to thy righteousness; and let them not rejoice over me. : : let them not say in their hearts, ah, so would we have it: let them not say, we have swallowed him up. : : let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me. : : let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, let the lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. : : and my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long. : : the transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of god before his eyes. : : for he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful. : : the words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he hath left off to be wise, and to do good. : : he deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil. : : thy mercy, o lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. : : thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: o lord, thou preservest man and beast. : : how excellent is thy lovingkindness, o god! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. : : they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. : : for with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light. : : o continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee; and thy righteousness to the upright in heart. : : let not the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove me. : : there are the workers of iniquity fallen: they are cast down, and shall not be able to rise. : : fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. : : for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. : : trust in the lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. : : delight thyself also in the lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. : : commit thy way unto the lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. : : and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. : : rest in the lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. : : cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. : : for evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the lord, they shall inherit the earth. : : for yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. : : but the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. : : the wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. : : the lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming. : : the wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation. : : their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken. : : a little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked. : : for the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the lord upholdeth the righteous. : : the lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. : : they shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. : : but the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. : : the wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth. : : for such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off. : : the steps of a good man are ordered by the lord: and he delighteth in his way. : : though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the lord upholdeth him with his hand. : : i have been young, and now am old; yet have i not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. : : he is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed. : : depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore. : : for the lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. : : the righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever. : : the mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment. : : the law of his god is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide. : : the wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. : : the lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. : : wait on the lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it. : : i have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. : : yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, i sought him, but he could not be found. : : mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. : : but the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off. : : but the salvation of the righteous is of the lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble. : : and the lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him. : : o lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. : : for thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. : : there is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. : : for mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me. : : my wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. : : i am troubled; i am bowed down greatly; i go mourning all the day long. : : for my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh. : : i am feeble and sore broken: i have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. : : lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. : : my heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. : : my lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off. : : they also that seek after my life lay snares for me: and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long. : : but i, as a deaf man, heard not; and i was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. : : thus i was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs. : : for in thee, o lord, do i hope: thou wilt hear, o lord my god. : : for i said, hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against me. : : for i am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me. : : for i will declare mine iniquity; i will be sorry for my sin. : : but mine enemies are lively, and they are strong: and they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied. : : they also that render evil for good are mine adversaries; because i follow the thing that good is. : : forsake me not, o lord: o my god, be not far from me. : : make haste to help me, o lord my salvation. : : i said, i will take heed to my ways, that i sin not with my tongue: i will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me. : : i was dumb with silence, i held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. : : my heart was hot within me, while i was musing the fire burned: then spake i with my tongue, : : lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that i may know how frail i am. : : behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. selah. : : surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. : : and now, lord, what wait i for? my hope is in thee. : : deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish. : : i was dumb, i opened not my mouth; because thou didst it. : : remove thy stroke away from me: i am consumed by the blow of thine hand. : : when thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. selah. : : hear my prayer, o lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for i am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. : : o spare me, that i may recover strength, before i go hence, and be no more. : : i waited patiently for the lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. : : he brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. : : and he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our god: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the lord. : : blessed is that man that maketh the lord his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. : : many, o lord my god, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if i would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. : : sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. : : then said i, lo, i come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, : : i delight to do thy will, o my god: yea, thy law is within my heart. : : i have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, i have not refrained my lips, o lord, thou knowest. : : i have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; i have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: i have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation. : : withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, o lord: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me. : : for innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that i am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me. : : be pleased, o lord, to deliver me: o lord, make haste to help me. : : let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil. : : let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that say unto me, aha, aha. : : let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: let such as love thy salvation say continually, the lord be magnified. : : but i am poor and needy; yet the lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, o my god. : : blessed is he that considereth the poor: the lord will deliver him in time of trouble. : : the lord will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. : : the lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness. : : i said, lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for i have sinned against thee. : : mine enemies speak evil of me, when shall he die, and his name perish? : : and if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity: his heart gathereth iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad, he telleth it. : : all that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt. : : an evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him: and now that he lieth he shall rise up no more. : : yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom i trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. : : but thou, o lord, be merciful unto me, and raise me up, that i may requite them. : : by this i know that thou favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me. : : and as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever. : : blessed be the lord god of israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. amen, and amen. : : as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, o god. : : my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god: when shall i come and appear before god? : : my tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, where is thy god? : : when i remember these things, i pour out my soul in me: for i had gone with the multitude, i went with them to the house of god, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. : : why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in god: for i shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. : : o my god, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will i remember thee from the land of jordan, and of the hermonites, from the hill mizar. : : deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. : : yet the lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the god of my life. : : i will say unto god my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? why go i mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? : : as with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, where is thy god? : : why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in god: for i shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my god. : : judge me, o god, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: o deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. : : for thou art the god of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go i mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? : : o send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles. : : then will i go unto the altar of god, unto god my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will i praise thee, o god my god. : : why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in god: for i shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my god. : : we have heard with our ears, o god, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old. : : how thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out. : : for they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them. : : thou art my king, o god: command deliverances for jacob. : : through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us. : : for i will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. : : but thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us. : : in god we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever. selah. : : but thou hast cast off, and put us to shame; and goest not forth with our armies. : : thou makest us to turn back from the enemy: and they which hate us spoil for themselves. : : thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat; and hast scattered us among the heathen. : : thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by their price. : : thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. : : thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people. : : my confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me, : : for the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth; by reason of the enemy and avenger. : : all this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant. : : our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way; : : though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. : : if we have forgotten the name of our god, or stretched out our hands to a strange god; : : shall not god search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart. : : yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. : : awake, why sleepest thou, o lord? arise, cast us not off for ever. : : wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression? : : for our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth. : : arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies' sake. : : my heart is inditing a good matter: i speak of the things which i have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. : : thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore god hath blessed thee for ever. : : gird thy sword upon thy thigh, o most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. : : and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. : : thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; whereby the people fall under thee. : : thy throne, o god, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. : : thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore god, thy god, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. : : all thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. : : kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of ophir. : : hearken, o daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; : : so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy lord; and worship thou him. : : and the daughter of tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour. : : the king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. : : she shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee. : : with gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king's palace. : : instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth. : : i will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever. : : god is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. : : therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; : : though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. selah. : : there is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of god, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. : : god is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: god shall help her, and that right early. : : the heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. : : the lord of hosts is with us; the god of jacob is our refuge. selah. : : come, behold the works of the lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth. : : 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. : : be still, and know that i am god: i will be exalted among the heathen, i will be exalted in the earth. : : the lord of hosts is with us; the god of jacob is our refuge. selah. : : o clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto god with the voice of triumph. : : for the lord most high is terrible; he is a great king over all the earth. : : he shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. : : he shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of jacob whom he loved. selah. : : god is gone up with a shout, the lord with the sound of a trumpet. : : sing praises to god, sing praises: sing praises unto our king, sing praises. : : for god is the king of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. : : god reigneth over the heathen: god sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. : : the princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the god of abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto god: he is greatly exalted. : : great is the lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our god, in the mountain of his holiness. : : beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king. : : god is known in her palaces for a refuge. : : for, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. : : they saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and hasted away. : : fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail. : : thou breakest the ships of tarshish with an east wind. : : as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the lord of hosts, in the city of our god: god will establish it for ever. selah. : : we have thought of thy lovingkindness, o god, in the midst of thy temple. : : according to thy name, o god, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness. : : let mount zion rejoice, let the daughters of judah be glad, because of thy judgments. : : walk about zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. : : mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following. : : for this god is our god for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death. : : hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world: : : both low and high, rich and poor, together. : : my mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. : : i will incline mine ear to a parable: i will open my dark saying upon the harp. : : wherefore should i fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about? : : they that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; : : none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to god a ransom for him: : : (for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:) : : that he should still live for ever, and not see corruption. : : for he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. : : their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. : : nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish. : : this their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings. selah. : : like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. : : but god will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. selah. : : be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased; : : for when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him. : : though while he lived he blessed his soul: and men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself. : : he shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see light. : : man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish. : : the mighty god, even the lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. : : out of zion, the perfection of beauty, god hath shined. : : our god shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. : : he shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. : : gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. : : and the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for god is judge himself. selah. : : hear, o my people, and i will speak; o israel, and i will testify against thee: i am god, even thy god. : : i will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. : : i will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. : : for every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. : : i know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. : : if i were hungry, i would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. : : will i eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? : : offer unto god thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most high: : : and call upon me in the day of trouble: i will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. : : but unto the wicked god saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? : : seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. : : when thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. : : thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. : : thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. : : these things hast thou done, and i kept silence; thou thoughtest that i was altogether such an one as thyself: but i will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. : : now consider this, ye that forget god, lest i tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. : : whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will i shew the salvation of god. : : have mercy upon me, o god, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. : : wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. : : for i acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. : : against thee, thee only, have i sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. : : behold, i was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. : : behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. : : purge me with hyssop, and i shall be clean: wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow. : : make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. : : hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. : : create in me a clean heart, o god; and renew a right spirit within me. : : cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. : : restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. : : then will i teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. : : deliver me from bloodguiltiness, o god, thou god of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. : : o lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. : : for thou desirest not sacrifice; else would i give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. : : the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, o god, thou wilt not despise. : : do good in thy good pleasure unto zion: build thou the walls of jerusalem. : : then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar. : : why boastest thou thyself in mischief, o mighty man? the goodness of god endureth continually. : : the tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. : : thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. selah. : : thou lovest all devouring words, o thou deceitful tongue. : : god shall likewise destroy thee for ever, he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living. selah. : : the righteous also shall see, and fear, and shall laugh at him: : : lo, this is the man that made not god his strength; but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness. : : but i am like a green olive tree in the house of god: i trust in the mercy of god for ever and ever. : : i will praise thee for ever, because thou hast done it: and i will wait on thy name; for it is good before thy saints. : : the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god. corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. : : god looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek god. : : every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. : : have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon god. : : there were they in great fear, where no fear was: for god hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because god hath despised them. : : oh that the salvation of israel were come out of zion! when god bringeth back the captivity of his people, jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. : : save me, o god, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength. : : hear my prayer, o god; give ear to the words of my mouth. : : for strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul: they have not set god before them. selah. : : behold, god is mine helper: the lord is with them that uphold my soul. : : he shall reward evil unto mine enemies: cut them off in thy truth. : : i will freely sacrifice unto thee: i will praise thy name, o lord; for it is good. : : for he hath delivered me out of all trouble: and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies. : : give ear to my prayer, o god; and hide not thyself from my supplication. : : attend unto me, and hear me: i mourn in my complaint, and make a noise; : : because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked: for they cast iniquity upon me, and in wrath they hate me. : : my heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. : : fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. : : and i said, oh that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away, and be at rest. : : lo, then would i wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. selah. : : i would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. : : destroy, o lord, and divide their tongues: for i have seen violence and strife in the city. : : day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it. : : wickedness is in the midst thereof: deceit and guile depart not from her streets. : : for it was not an enemy that reproached me; then i could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then i would have hid myself from him: : : but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. : : we took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of god in company. : : let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them. : : as for me, i will call upon god; and the lord shall save me. : : evening, and morning, and at noon, will i pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. : : he hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me. : : god shall hear, and afflict them, even he that abideth of old. selah. because they have no changes, therefore they fear not god. : : he hath put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him: he hath broken his covenant. : : the words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords. : : cast thy burden upon the lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. : : but thou, o god, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction: bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days; but i will trust in thee. : : be merciful unto me, o god: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me. : : mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, o thou most high. : : what time i am afraid, i will trust in thee. : : in god i will praise his word, in god i have put my trust; i will not fear what flesh can do unto me. : : every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil. : : they gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul. : : shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, o god. : : thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? : : when i cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this i know; for god is for me. : : in god will i praise his word: in the lord will i praise his word. : : in god have i put my trust: i will not be afraid what man can do unto me. : : thy vows are upon me, o god: i will render praises unto thee. : : for thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that i may walk before god in the light of the living? : : be merciful unto me, o god, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will i make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. : : i will cry unto god most high; unto god that performeth all things for me. : : he shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. selah. god shall send forth his mercy and his truth. : : my soul is among lions: and i lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. : : be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth. : : they have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. selah. : : my heart is fixed, o god, my heart is fixed: i will sing and give praise. : : awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: i myself will awake early. : : i will praise thee, o lord, among the people: i will sing unto thee among the nations. : : for thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. : : be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth. : : do ye indeed speak righteousness, o congregation? do ye judge uprightly, o ye sons of men? : : yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. : : the wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. : : their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; : : which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. : : break their teeth, o god, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, o lord. : : let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. : : as a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. : : before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath. : : the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. : : so that a man shall say, verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a god that judgeth in the earth. : : deliver me from mine enemies, o my god: defend me from them that rise up against me. : : deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. : : for, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, o lord. : : they run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold. : : thou therefore, o lord god of hosts, the god of israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. selah. : : they return at evening: they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. : : behold, they belch out with their mouth: swords are in their lips: for who, say they, doth hear? : : but thou, o lord, shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen in derision. : : because of his strength will i wait upon thee: for god is my defence. : : the god of my mercy shall prevent me: god shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies. : : slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, o lord our shield. : : for the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips let them even be taken in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak. : : consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that god ruleth in jacob unto the ends of the earth. selah. : : and at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. : : let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if they be not satisfied. : : but i will sing of thy power; yea, i will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble. : : unto thee, o my strength, will i sing: for god is my defence, and the god of my mercy. : : o god, thou hast cast us off, thou hast scattered us, thou hast been displeased; o turn thyself to us again. : : thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. : : thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. : : thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. selah. : : that thy beloved may be delivered; save with thy right hand, and hear me. : : god hath spoken in his holiness; i will rejoice, i will divide shechem, and mete out the valley of succoth. : : gilead is mine, and manasseh is mine; ephraim also is the strength of mine head; judah is my lawgiver; : : moab is my washpot; over edom will i cast out my shoe: philistia, triumph thou because of me. : : who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into edom? : : wilt not thou, o god, which hadst cast us off? and thou, o god, which didst not go out with our armies? : : give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man. : : through god we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. : : hear my cry, o god; attend unto my prayer. : : from the end of the earth will i cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than i. : : for thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy. : : i will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: i will trust in the covert of thy wings. selah. : : for thou, o god, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name. : : thou wilt prolong the king's life: and his years as many generations. : : he shall abide before god for ever: o prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him. : : so will i sing praise unto thy name for ever, that i may daily perform my vows. : : truly my soul waiteth upon god: from him cometh my salvation. : : he only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; i shall not be greatly moved. : : how long will ye imagine mischief against a man? ye shall be slain all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence. : : they only consult to cast him down from his excellency: they delight in lies: they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. selah. : : my soul, wait thou only upon god; for my expectation is from him. : : he only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; i shall not be moved. : : in god is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in god. : : trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: god is a refuge for us. selah. : : surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. : : trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. : : god hath spoken once; twice have i heard this; that power belongeth unto god. : : also unto thee, o lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work. : : o god, thou art my god; early will i seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; : : to see thy power and thy glory, so as i have seen thee in the sanctuary. : : because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. : : thus will i bless thee while i live: i will lift up my hands in thy name. : : my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: : : when i remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. : : because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will i rejoice. : : my soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. : : but those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. : : they shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes. : : but the king shall rejoice in god; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped. : : hear my voice, o god, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of the enemy. : : hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity: : : who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words: : : that they may shoot in secret at the perfect: suddenly do they shoot at him, and fear not. : : they encourage themselves in an evil matter: they commune of laying snares privily; they say, who shall see them? : : they search out iniquities; they accomplish a diligent search: both the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep. : : but god shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded. : : so they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves: all that see them shall flee away. : : and all men shall fear, and shall declare the work of god; for they shall wisely consider of his doing. : : the righteous shall be glad in the lord, and shall trust in him; and all the upright in heart shall glory. : : praise waiteth for thee, o god, in sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed. : : o thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. : : iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away. : : blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. : : by terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, o god of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea: : : which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power: : : which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people. : : they also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. : : thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of god, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. : : thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof. : : thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. : : they drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side. : : the pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing. : : make a joyful noise unto god, all ye lands: : : sing forth the honour of his name: make his praise glorious. : : say unto god, how terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee. : : all the earth shall worship thee, and shall sing unto thee; they shall sing to thy name. selah. : : come and see the works of god: he is terrible in his doing toward the children of men. : : he turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him. : : he ruleth by his power for ever; his eyes behold the nations: let not the rebellious exalt themselves. selah. : : o bless our god, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard: : : which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved. : : for thou, o god, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. : : thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction upon our loins. : : thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water: but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. : : i will go into thy house with burnt offerings: i will pay thee my vows, : : which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when i was in trouble. : : i will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; i will offer bullocks with goats. selah. : : come and hear, all ye that fear god, and i will declare what he hath done for my soul. : : i cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. : : if i regard iniquity in my heart, the lord will not hear me: : : but verily god hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer. : : blessed be god, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. : : god be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; selah. : : that thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. : : let the people praise thee, o god; let all the people praise thee. : : o let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. selah. : : let the people praise thee, o god; let all the people praise thee. : : then shall the earth yield her increase; and god, even our own god, shall bless us. : : god shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. : : let god arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him. : : as smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of god. : : but let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before god: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. : : sing unto god, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name jah, and rejoice before him. : : a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is god in his holy habitation. : : god setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. : : o god, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness; selah: : : the earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of god: even sinai itself was moved at the presence of god, the god of israel. : : thou, o god, didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, when it was weary. : : thy congregation hath dwelt therein: thou, o god, hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor. : : the lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it. : : kings of armies did flee apace: and she that tarried at home divided the spoil. : : though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. : : when the almighty scattered kings in it, it was white as snow in salmon. : : the hill of god is as the hill of bashan; an high hill as the hill of bashan. : : why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which god desireth to dwell in; yea, the lord will dwell in it for ever. : : the chariots of god are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the lord is among them, as in sinai, in the holy place. : : thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the lord god might dwell among them. : : blessed be the lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the god of our salvation. selah. : : he that is our god is the god of salvation; and unto god the lord belong the issues from death. : : but god shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such an one as goeth on still in his trespasses. : : the lord said, i will bring again from bashan, i will bring my people again from the depths of the sea: : : that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same. : : they have seen thy goings, o god; even the goings of my god, my king, in the sanctuary. : : the singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; among them were the damsels playing with timbrels. : : bless ye god in the congregations, even the lord, from the fountain of israel. : : there is little benjamin with their ruler, the princes of judah and their council, the princes of zebulun, and the princes of naphtali. : : thy god hath commanded thy strength: strengthen, o god, that which thou hast wrought for us. : : because of thy temple at jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee. : : rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver: scatter thou the people that delight in war. : : princes shall come out of egypt; ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto god. : : sing unto god, ye kingdoms of the earth; o sing praises unto the lord; selah: : : to him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice. : : ascribe ye strength unto god: his excellency is over israel, and his strength is in the clouds. : : o god, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the god of israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. blessed be god. : : save me, o god; for the waters are come in unto my soul. : : i sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: i am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. : : i am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while i wait for my god. : : they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then i restored that which i took not away. : : o god, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. : : let not them that wait on thee, o lord god of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, o god of israel. : : because for thy sake i have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. : : i am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. : : for the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. : : when i wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. : : i made sackcloth also my garment; and i became a proverb to them. : : they that sit in the gate speak against me; and i was the song of the drunkards. : : but as for me, my prayer is unto thee, o lord, in an acceptable time: o god, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. : : deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. : : let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. : : hear me, o lord; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. : : and hide not thy face from thy servant; for i am in trouble: hear me speedily. : : draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it: deliver me because of mine enemies. : : thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour: mine adversaries are all before thee. : : reproach hath broken my heart; and i am full of heaviness: and i looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but i found none. : : they gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. : : let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. : : let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins continually to shake. : : pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. : : let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents. : : for they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. : : add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness. : : let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous. : : but i am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, o god, set me up on high. : : i will praise the name of god with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. : : this also shall please the lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. : : the humble shall see this, and be glad: and your heart shall live that seek god. : : for the lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners. : : let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein. : : for god will save zion, and will build the cities of judah: that they may dwell there, and have it in possession. : : the seed also of his servants shall inherit it: and they that love his name shall dwell therein. : : make haste, o god, to deliver me; make haste to help me, o lord. : : let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt. : : let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, aha, aha. : : let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, let god be magnified. : : but i am poor and needy: make haste unto me, o god: thou art my help and my deliverer; o lord, make no tarrying. : : in thee, o lord, do i put my trust: let me never be put to confusion. : : deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me. : : be thou my strong habitation, whereunto i may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress. : : deliver me, o my god, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man. : : for thou art my hope, o lord god: thou art my trust from my youth. : : by thee have i been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee. : : i am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge. : : let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honour all the day. : : cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. : : for mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, : : saying, god hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him. : : o god, be not far from me: o my god, make haste for my help. : : let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my soul; let them be covered with reproach and dishonour that seek my hurt. : : but i will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more. : : my mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; for i know not the numbers thereof. : : i will go in the strength of the lord god: i will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. : : o god, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have i declared thy wondrous works. : : now also when i am old and greyheaded, o god, forsake me not; until i have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. : : thy righteousness also, o god, is very high, who hast done great things: o god, who is like unto thee! : : thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. : : thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side. : : i will also praise thee with the psaltery, even thy truth, o my god: unto thee will i sing with the harp, o thou holy one of israel. : : my lips shall greatly rejoice when i sing unto thee; and my soul, which thou hast redeemed. : : my tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long: for they are confounded, for they are brought unto shame, that seek my hurt. : : give the king thy judgments, o god, and thy righteousness unto the king's son. : : he shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. : : the mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. : : he shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. : : they shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. : : he shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. : : in his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. : : he shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. : : they that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust. : : the kings of tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of sheba and seba shall offer gifts. : : yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him. : : for he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. : : he shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. : : he shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight. : : and he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised. : : there shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. : : his name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed. : : blessed be the lord god, the god of israel, who only doeth wondrous things. : : and blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; amen, and amen. : : the prayers of david the son of jesse are ended. : : truly god is good to israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. : : but as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. : : for i was envious at the foolish, when i saw the prosperity of the wicked. : : for there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. : : they are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. : : therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. : : their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. : : they are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. : : they set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. : : therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. : : and they say, how doth god know? and is there knowledge in the most high? : : behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. : : verily i have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. : : for all the day long have i been plagued, and chastened every morning. : : if i say, i will speak thus; behold, i should offend against the generation of thy children. : : when i thought to know this, it was too painful for me; : : until i went into the sanctuary of god; then understood i their end. : : surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. : : how are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors. : : as a dream when one awaketh; so, o lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. : : thus my heart was grieved, and i was pricked in my reins. : : so foolish was i, and ignorant: i was as a beast before thee. : : nevertheless i am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. : : thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. : : whom have i in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that i desire beside thee. : : my flesh and my heart faileth: but god is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. : : for, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. : : but it is good for me to draw near to god: i have put my trust in the lord god, that i may declare all thy works. : : o god, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture? : : remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount zion, wherein thou hast dwelt. : : lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary. : : thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs. : : a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees. : : but now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers. : : they have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground. : : they said in their hearts, let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of god in the land. : : we see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long. : : o god, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever? : : why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? pluck it out of thy bosom. : : for god is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. : : thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. : : thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. : : thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou driedst up mighty rivers. : : the day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun. : : thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter. : : remember this, that the enemy hath reproached, o lord, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name. : : o deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever. : : have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. : : o let not the oppressed return ashamed: let the poor and needy praise thy name. : : arise, o god, plead thine own cause: remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. : : forget not the voice of thine enemies: the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually. : : unto thee, o god, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks: for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare. : : when i shall receive the congregation i will judge uprightly. : : the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: i bear up the pillars of it. selah. : : i said unto the fools, deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, lift not up the horn: : : lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck. : : for promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. : : but god is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. : : for in the hand of the lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them. : : but i will declare for ever; i will sing praises to the god of jacob. : : all the horns of the wicked also will i cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted. : : in judah is god known: his name is great in israel. : : in salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in zion. : : there brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle. selah. : : thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey. : : the stouthearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep: and none of the men of might have found their hands. : : at thy rebuke, o god of jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep. : : thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry? : : thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth feared, and was still, : : when god arose to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth. selah. : : surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. : : vow, and pay unto the lord your god: let all that be round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared. : : he shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth. : : i cried unto god with my voice, even unto god with my voice; and he gave ear unto me. : : in the day of my trouble i sought the lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted. : : i remembered god, and was troubled: i complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. selah. : : thou holdest mine eyes waking: i am so troubled that i cannot speak. : : i have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times. : : i call to remembrance my song in the night: i commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search. : : will the lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? : : is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? : : hath god forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? selah. : : and i said, this is my infirmity: but i will remember the years of the right hand of the most high. : : i will remember the works of the lord: surely i will remember thy wonders of old. : : i will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings. : : thy way, o god, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a god as our god? : : thou art the god that doest wonders: thou hast declared thy strength among the people. : : thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of jacob and joseph. selah. : : the waters saw thee, o god, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled. : : the clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad. : : the voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook. : : thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. : : thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of moses and aaron. : : give ear, o my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. : : i will open my mouth in a parable: i will utter dark sayings of old: : : which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. : : we will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. : : for he established a testimony in jacob, and appointed a law in israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: : : that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: : : that they might set their hope in god, and not forget the works of god, but keep his commandments: : : and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with god. : : the children of ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. : : they kept not the covenant of god, and refused to walk in his law; : : and forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them. : : marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of egypt, in the field of zoan. : : he divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap. : : in the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. : : he clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths. : : he brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers. : : and they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most high in the wilderness. : : and they tempted god in their heart by asking meat for their lust. : : yea, they spake against god; they said, can god furnish a table in the wilderness? : : behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people? : : therefore the lord heard this, and was wroth: so a fire was kindled against jacob, and anger also came up against israel; : : because they believed not in god, and trusted not in his salvation: : : though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, : : and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. : : man did eat angels' food: he sent them meat to the full. : : he caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by his power he brought in the south wind. : : he rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea: : : and he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations. : : so they did eat, and were well filled: for he gave them their own desire; : : they were not estranged from their lust. but while their meat was yet in their mouths, : : the wrath of god came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of israel. : : for all this they sinned still, and believed not for his wondrous works. : : therefore their days did he consume in vanity, and their years in trouble. : : when he slew them, then they sought him: and they returned and enquired early after god. : : and they remembered that god was their rock, and the high god their redeemer. : : nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues. : : for their heart was not right with him, neither were they stedfast in his covenant. : : but he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. : : for he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. : : how oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! : : yea, they turned back and tempted god, and limited the holy one of israel. : : they remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. : : how he had wrought his signs in egypt, and his wonders in the field of zoan. : : and had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink. : : he sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. : : he gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their labour unto the locust. : : he destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost. : : he gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. : : he cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them. : : he made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence; : : and smote all the firstborn in egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of ham: : : but made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. : : and he led them on safely, so that they feared not: but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. : : and he brought them to the border of his sanctuary, even to this mountain, which his right hand had purchased. : : he cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of israel to dwell in their tents. : : yet they tempted and provoked the most high god, and kept not his testimonies: : : but turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. : : for they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images. : : when god heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred israel: : : so that he forsook the tabernacle of shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; : : and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy's hand. : : he gave his people over also unto the sword; and was wroth with his inheritance. : : the fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given to marriage. : : their priests fell by the sword; and their widows made no lamentation. : : then the lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine. : : and he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a perpetual reproach. : : moreover he refused the tabernacle of joseph, and chose not the tribe of ephraim: : : but chose the tribe of judah, the mount zion which he loved. : : and he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever. : : he chose david also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds: : : from following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed jacob his people, and israel his inheritance. : : so he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. : : o god, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid jerusalem on heaps. : : the dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. : : their blood have they shed like water round about jerusalem; and there was none to bury them. : : we are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. : : how long, lord? wilt thou be angry for ever? shall thy jealousy burn like fire? : : pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. : : for they have devoured jacob, and laid waste his dwelling place. : : o remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low. : : help us, o god of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake. : : wherefore should the heathen say, where is their god? let him be known among the heathen in our sight by the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed. : : let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die; : : and render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, o lord. : : so we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever: we will shew forth thy praise to all generations. : : give ear, o shepherd of israel, thou that leadest joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. : : before ephraim and benjamin and manasseh stir up thy strength, and come and save us. : : turn us again, o god, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. : : o lord god of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? : : thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure. : : thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies laugh among themselves. : : turn us again, o god of hosts, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. : : thou hast brought a vine out of egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. : : thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. : : the hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. : : she sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. : : why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? : : the boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. : : return, we beseech thee, o god of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; : : and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. : : it is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. : : let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. : : so will not we go back from thee: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name. : : turn us again, o lord god of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved. : : sing aloud unto god our strength: make a joyful noise unto the god of jacob. : : take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. : : blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. : : for this was a statute for israel, and a law of the god of jacob. : : this he ordained in joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of egypt: where i heard a language that i understood not. : : i removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots. : : thou calledst in trouble, and i delivered thee; i answered thee in the secret place of thunder: i proved thee at the waters of meribah. selah. : : hear, o my people, and i will testify unto thee: o israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me; : : there shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god. : : i am the lord thy god, which brought thee out of the land of egypt: open thy mouth wide, and i will fill it. : : but my people would not hearken to my voice; and israel would none of me. : : so i gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. : : oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and israel had walked in my ways! : : i should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. : : the haters of the lord should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever. : : he should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should i have satisfied thee. : : god standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. : : how long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? selah. : : defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. : : deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. : : they know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. : : i have said, ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most high. : : but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. : : arise, o god, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations. : : keep not thou silence, o god: hold not thy peace, and be not still, o god. : : for, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. : : they have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones. : : they have said, come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of israel may be no more in remembrance. : : for they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee: : : the tabernacles of edom, and the ishmaelites; of moab, and the hagarenes; : : gebal, and ammon, and amalek; the philistines with the inhabitants of tyre; : : assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of lot. selah. : : do unto them as unto the midianites; as to sisera, as to jabin, at the brook of kison: : : which perished at endor: they became as dung for the earth. : : make their nobles like oreb, and like zeeb: yea, all their princes as zebah, and as zalmunna: : : who said, let us take to ourselves the houses of god in possession. : : o my god, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. : : as the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; : : so persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. : : fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, o lord. : : let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish: : : that men may know that thou, whose name alone is jehovah, art the most high over all the earth. : : how amiable are thy tabernacles, o lord of hosts! : : my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living god. : : yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, o lord of hosts, my king, and my god. : : blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. selah. : : blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. : : who passing through the valley of baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. : : they go from strength to strength, every one of them in zion appeareth before god. : : o lord god of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, o god of jacob. selah. : : behold, o god our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed. : : for a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. i had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my god, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. : : for the lord god is a sun and shield: the lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. : : o lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. : : lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of jacob. : : thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin. selah. : : thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. : : turn us, o god of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. : : wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? : : wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? : : shew us thy mercy, o lord, and grant us thy salvation. : : i will hear what god the lord will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. : : surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land. : : mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. : : truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. : : yea, the lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase. : : righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps. : : bow down thine ear, o lord, hear me: for i am poor and needy. : : preserve my soul; for i am holy: o thou my god, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. : : be merciful unto me, o lord: for i cry unto thee daily. : : rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, o lord, do i lift up my soul. : : for thou, lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. : : give ear, o lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplications. : : in the day of my trouble i will call upon thee: for thou wilt answer me. : : among the gods there is none like unto thee, o lord; neither are there any works like unto thy works. : : all nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, o lord; and shall glorify thy name. : : for thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art god alone. : : teach me thy way, o lord; i will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. : : i will praise thee, o lord my god, with all my heart: and i will glorify thy name for evermore. : : for great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. : : o god, the proud are risen against me, and the assemblies of violent men have sought after my soul; and have not set thee before them. : : but thou, o lord, art a god full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. : : o turn unto me, and have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant, and save the son of thine handmaid. : : shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed: because thou, lord, hast holpen me, and comforted me. : : his foundation is in the holy mountains. : : the lord loveth the gates of zion more than all the dwellings of jacob. : : glorious things are spoken of thee, o city of god. selah. : : i will make mention of rahab and babylon to them that know me: behold philistia, and tyre, with ethiopia; this man was born there. : : and of zion it shall be said, this and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her. : : the lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. selah. : : as well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee. : : o lord god of my salvation, i have cried day and night before thee: : : let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; : : for my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. : : i am counted with them that go down into the pit: i am as a man that hath no strength: : : free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. : : thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. : : thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. selah. : : thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: i am shut up, and i cannot come forth. : : mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: lord, i have called daily upon thee, i have stretched out my hands unto thee. : : wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? selah. : : shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? : : shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? : : but unto thee have i cried, o lord; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. : : lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me? : : i am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while i suffer thy terrors i am distracted. : : thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. : : they came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together. : : lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. : : i will sing of the mercies of the lord for ever: with my mouth will i make known thy faithfulness to all generations. : : for i have said, mercy shall be built up for ever: thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens. : : i have made a covenant with my chosen, i have sworn unto david my servant, : : thy seed will i establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. selah. : : and the heavens shall praise thy wonders, o lord: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints. : : for who in the heaven can be compared unto the lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the lord? : : god is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him. : : o lord god of hosts, who is a strong lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? : : thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. : : thou hast broken rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. : : the heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. : : the north and the south thou hast created them: tabor and hermon shall rejoice in thy name. : : thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. : : justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. : : blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, o lord, in the light of thy countenance. : : in thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. : : for thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our horn shall be exalted. : : for the lord is our defence; and the holy one of israel is our king. : : then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, i have laid help upon one that is mighty; i have exalted one chosen out of the people. : : i have found david my servant; with my holy oil have i anointed him: : : with whom my hand shall be established: mine arm also shall strengthen him. : : the enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him. : : and i will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. : : but my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted. : : i will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. : : he shall cry unto me, thou art my father, my god, and the rock of my salvation. : : also i will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. : : my mercy will i keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. : : his seed also will i make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. : : if his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; : : if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; : : then will i visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. : : nevertheless my lovingkindness will i not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. : : my covenant will i not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. : : once have i sworn by my holiness that i will not lie unto david. : : his seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. : : it shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. selah. : : but thou hast cast off and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with thine anointed. : : thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground. : : thou hast broken down all his hedges; thou hast brought his strong holds to ruin. : : all that pass by the way spoil him: he is a reproach to his neighbours. : : thou hast set up the right hand of his adversaries; thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. : : thou hast also turned the edge of his sword, and hast not made him to stand in the battle. : : thou hast made his glory to cease, and cast his throne down to the ground. : : the days of his youth hast thou shortened: thou hast covered him with shame. selah. : : how long, lord? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath burn like fire? : : remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? : : what man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? selah. : : lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest unto david in thy truth? : : remember, lord, the reproach of thy servants; how i do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the mighty people; : : wherewith thine enemies have reproached, o lord; wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed. : : blessed be the lord for evermore. amen, and amen. : : lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. : : before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art god. : : thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, return, ye children of men. : : for a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. : : thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. : : in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. : : for we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. : : thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. : : for all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. : : the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. : : who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. : : so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. : : return, o lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. : : o satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. : : make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. : : let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. : : and let the beauty of the lord our god be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. : : he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty. : : i will say of the lord, he is my refuge and my fortress: my god; in him will i trust. : : 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. : : thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; : : nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. : : 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. : : 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. : : 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. : : thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. : : because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will i deliver him: i will set him on high, because he hath known my name. : : 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 my salvation. : : it is a good thing to give thanks unto the lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, o most high: : : to shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night, : : upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the psaltery; upon the harp with a solemn sound. : : for thou, lord, hast made me glad through thy work: i will triumph in the works of thy hands. : : o lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep. : : a brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this. : : when the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever: : : but thou, lord, art most high for evermore. : : for, lo, thine enemies, o lord, for, lo, thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. : : but my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: i shall be anointed with fresh oil. : : mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. : : the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in lebanon. : : those that be planted in the house of the lord shall flourish in the courts of our god. : : they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; : : to shew that the lord is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. : : the lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. : : thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting. : : the floods have lifted up, o lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. : : the lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. : : thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh thine house, o lord, for ever. : : o lord god, to whom vengeance belongeth; o god, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself. : : lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud. : : lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph? : : how long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves? : : they break in pieces thy people, o lord, and afflict thine heritage. : : they slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless. : : yet they say, the lord shall not see, neither shall the god of jacob regard it. : : understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise? : : he that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? : : he that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know? : : the lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity. : : blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, o lord, and teachest him out of thy law; : : that thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked. : : for the lord will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance. : : but judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it. : : who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? : : unless the lord had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence. : : when i said, my foot slippeth; thy mercy, o lord, held me up. : : in the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul. : : shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? : : they gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. : : but the lord is my defence; and my god is the rock of my refuge. : : and he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the lord our god shall cut them off. : : o come, let us sing unto the lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. : : let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. : : for the lord is a great god, and a great king above all gods. : : in his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. : : the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. : : o come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the lord our maker. : : for he is our god; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. to day if ye will hear his voice, : : harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: : : when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. : : forty years long was i grieved with this generation, and said, it is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: : : unto whom i sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. : : o sing unto the lord a new song: sing unto the lord, all the earth. : : sing unto the lord, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from day to day. : : declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. : : for the lord is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods. : : for all the gods of the nations are idols: but the lord made the heavens. : : honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. : : give unto the lord, o ye kindreds of the people, give unto the lord glory and strength. : : give unto the lord the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come into his courts. : : o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth. : : say among the heathen that the lord reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously. : : let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. : : let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice : : before the lord: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth. : : the lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof. : : clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. : : a fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about. : : his lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled. : : the hills melted like wax at the presence of the lord, at the presence of the lord of the whole earth. : : the heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. : : confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods. : : zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters of judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, o lord. : : for thou, lord, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods. : : ye that love the lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked. : : light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. : : rejoice in the lord, ye righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. : : o sing unto the lord a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. : : the lord hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. : : he hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our god. : : make a joyful noise unto the lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. : : sing unto the lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. : : with trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the lord, the king. : : let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. : : let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together : : before the lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity. : : the lord reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved. : : the lord is great in zion; and he is high above all the people. : : let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy. : : the king's strength also loveth judgment; thou dost establish equity, thou executest judgment and righteousness in jacob. : : exalt ye the lord our god, and worship at his footstool; for he is holy. : : moses and aaron among his priests, and samuel among them that call upon his name; they called upon the lord, and he answered them. : : he spake unto them in the cloudy pillar: they kept his testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them. : : thou answeredst them, o lord our god: thou wast a god that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions. : : exalt the lord our god, and worship at his holy hill; for the lord our god is holy. : : make a joyful noise unto the lord, all ye lands. : : serve the lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. : : know ye that the lord he is god: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. : : enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. : : for the lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. : : i will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, o lord, will i sing. : : i will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. o when wilt thou come unto me? i will walk within my house with a perfect heart. : : i will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: i hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. : : a froward heart shall depart from me: i will not know a wicked person. : : whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will i cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not i suffer. : : mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. : : he that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. : : i will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that i may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the lord. : : hear my prayer, o lord, and let my cry come unto thee. : : hide not thy face from me in the day when i am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when i call answer me speedily. : : for my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. : : my heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that i forget to eat my bread. : : by reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. : : i am like a pelican of the wilderness: i am like an owl of the desert. : : i watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top. : : mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me are sworn against me. : : for i have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. : : because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down. : : my days are like a shadow that declineth; and i am withered like grass. : : but thou, o lord, shall endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations. : : thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. : : for thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. : : so the heathen shall fear the name of the lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. : : when the lord shall build up zion, he shall appear in his glory. : : he will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. : : this shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the lord. : : for he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the lord behold the earth; : : to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death; : : to declare the name of the lord in zion, and his praise in jerusalem; : : when the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the lord. : : he weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days. : : i said, o my god, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. : : of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. : : they shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: : : but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. : : the children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee. : : bless the lord, o my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. : : bless the lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits: : : who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; : : who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; : : who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. : : the lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. : : he made known his ways unto moses, his acts unto the children of israel. : : the lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. : : he will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. : : he hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. : : for as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. : : as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. : : like as a father pitieth his children, so the lord pitieth them that fear him. : : for he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. : : as for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. : : for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. : : but the mercy of the lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; : : to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. : : the lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all. : : bless the lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. : : bless ye the lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure. : : bless the lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the lord, o my soul. : : bless the lord, o my soul. o lord my god, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. : : who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: : : who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind: : : who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire: : : who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. : : thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. : : at thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. : : they go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. : : thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. : : he sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. : : they give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst. : : by them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. : : he watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. : : he causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; : : and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. : : the trees of the lord are full of sap; the cedars of lebanon, which he hath planted; : : where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. : : the high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies. : : he appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down. : : thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. : : the young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from god. : : the sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. : : man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. : : o lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. : : so is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. : : there go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein. : : these wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. : : that thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. : : thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. : : thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. : : the glory of the lord shall endure for ever: the lord shall rejoice in his works. : : he looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. : : i will sing unto the lord as long as i live: i will sing praise to my god while i have my being. : : my meditation of him shall be sweet: i will be glad in the lord. : : let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. bless thou the lord, o my soul. praise ye the lord. : : o give thanks unto the lord; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. : : sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. : : glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the lord. : : seek the lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore. : : remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth; : : o ye seed of abraham his servant, ye children of jacob his chosen. : : he is the lord our god: his judgments are in all the earth. : : he hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. : : which covenant he made with abraham, and his oath unto isaac; : : and confirmed the same unto jacob for a law, and to israel for an everlasting covenant: : : saying, unto thee will i give the land of canaan, the lot of your inheritance: : : when they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and strangers in it. : : when they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; : : he suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; : : saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. : : moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. : : he sent a man before them, even joseph, who was sold for a servant: : : whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: : : until the time that his word came: the word of the lord tried him. : : the king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. : : he made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance: : : to bind his princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators wisdom. : : israel also came into egypt; and jacob sojourned in the land of ham. : : and he increased his people greatly; and made them stronger than their enemies. : : he turned their heart to hate his people, to deal subtilly with his servants. : : he sent moses his servant; and aaron whom he had chosen. : : they shewed his signs among them, and wonders in the land of ham. : : he sent darkness, and made it dark; and they rebelled not against his word. : : he turned their waters into blood, and slew their fish. : : their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings. : : he spake, and there came divers sorts of flies, and lice in all their coasts. : : he gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land. : : he smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the trees of their coasts. : : he spake, and the locusts came, and caterpillers, and that without number, : : and did eat up all the herbs in their land, and devoured the fruit of their ground. : : he smote also all the firstborn in their land, the chief of all their strength. : : he brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes. : : egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them. : : he spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the night. : : the people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven. : : he opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river. : : for he remembered his holy promise, and abraham his servant. : : and he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness: : : and gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labour of the people; : : that they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. praise ye the lord. : : praise ye the lord. o give thanks unto the lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : who can utter the mighty acts of the lord? who can shew forth all his praise? : : blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times. : : remember me, o lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: o visit me with thy salvation; : : that i may see the good of thy chosen, that i may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that i may glory with thine inheritance. : : we have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. : : our fathers understood not thy wonders in egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the red sea. : : nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. : : he rebuked the red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness. : : and he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. : : and the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left. : : then believed they his words; they sang his praise. : : they soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: : : but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted god in the desert. : : and he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. : : they envied moses also in the camp, and aaron the saint of the lord. : : the earth opened and swallowed up dathan and covered the company of abiram. : : and a fire was kindled in their company; the flame burned up the wicked. : : they made a calf in horeb, and worshipped the molten image. : : thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. : : they forgat god their saviour, which had done great things in egypt; : : wondrous works in the land of ham, and terrible things by the red sea. : : therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. : : yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word: : : but murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of the lord. : : therefore he lifted up his hand against them, to overthrow them in the wilderness: : : to overthrow their seed also among the nations, and to scatter them in the lands. : : they joined themselves also unto baalpeor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. : : thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them. : : then stood up phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed. : : and that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore. : : they angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with moses for their sakes: : : because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. : : they did not destroy the nations, concerning whom the lord commanded them: : : but were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. : : and they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. : : yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, : : and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. : : thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions. : : therefore was the wrath of the lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abhorred his own inheritance. : : and he gave them into the hand of the heathen; and they that hated them ruled over them. : : their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their hand. : : many times did he deliver them; but they provoked him with their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity. : : nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry: : : and he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies. : : he made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives. : : save us, o lord our god, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise. : : blessed be the lord god of israel from everlasting to everlasting: and let all the people say, amen. praise ye the lord. : : o give thanks unto the lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : let the redeemed of the lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy; : : and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. : : they wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. : : hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. : : then they cried unto the lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. : : and he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. : : oh that men would praise the lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! : : for he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. : : such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron; : : because they rebelled against the words of god, and contemned the counsel of the most high: : : therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help. : : then they cried unto the lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. : : he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder. : : oh that men would praise the lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! : : for he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder. : : fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. : : their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. : : then they cry unto the lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. : : he sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. : : oh that men would praise the lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! : : and let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing. : : they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; : : these see the works of the lord, and his wonders in the deep. : : for he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. : : they mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. : : they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. : : then they cry unto the lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. : : he maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. : : then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. : : oh that men would praise the lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! : : let them exalt him also in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders. : : he turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground; : : a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. : : he turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings. : : and there he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they may prepare a city for habitation; : : and sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase. : : he blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease. : : again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow. : : he poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way. : : yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock. : : the righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth. : : whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the lord. : : o god, my heart is fixed; i will sing and give praise, even with my glory. : : awake, psaltery and harp: i myself will awake early. : : i will praise thee, o lord, among the people: and i will sing praises unto thee among the nations. : : for thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. : : be thou exalted, o god, above the heavens: and thy glory above all the earth; : : that thy beloved may be delivered: save with thy right hand, and answer me. : : god hath spoken in his holiness; i will rejoice, i will divide shechem, and mete out the valley of succoth. : : gilead is mine; manasseh is mine; ephraim also is the strength of mine head; judah is my lawgiver; : : moab is my washpot; over edom will i cast out my shoe; over philistia will i triumph. : : who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into edom? : : wilt not thou, o god, who hast cast us off? and wilt not thou, o god, go forth with our hosts? : : give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man. : : through god we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. : : hold not thy peace, o god of my praise; : : for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. : : they compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. : : for my love they are my adversaries: but i give myself unto prayer. : : and they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love. : : set thou a wicked man over him: and let satan stand at his right hand. : : when he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. : : let his days be few; and let another take his office. : : let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. : : let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. : : let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour. : : let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. : : let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. : : let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. : : let them be before the lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. : : because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart. : : as he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. : : as he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones. : : let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. : : let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the lord, and of them that speak evil against my soul. : : but do thou for me, o god the lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me. : : for i am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. : : i am gone like the shadow when it declineth: i am tossed up and down as the locust. : : my knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness. : : i became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads. : : help me, o lord my god: o save me according to thy mercy: : : that they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, lord, hast done it. : : let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice. : : let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle. : : i will greatly praise the lord with my mouth; yea, i will praise him among the multitude. : : for he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul. : : the lord said unto my lord, sit thou at my right hand, until i make thine enemies thy footstool. : : the lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. : : thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth. : : the lord hath sworn, and will not repent, thou art a priest for ever after the order of melchizedek. : : the lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. : : he shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries. : : he shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head. : : praise ye the lord. i will praise the lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation. : : the works of the lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. : : his work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever. : : he hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the lord is gracious and full of compassion. : : he hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant. : : he hath shewed his people the power of his works, that he may give them the heritage of the heathen. : : the works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure. : : they stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness. : : he sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name. : : the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever. : : praise ye the lord. blessed is the man that feareth the lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. : : his seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed. : : wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever. : : unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. : : a good man sheweth favour, and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion. : : surely he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. : : he shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the lord. : : his heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies. : : he hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour. : : the wicked shall see it, and be grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish. : : praise ye the lord. praise, o ye servants of the lord, praise the name of the lord. : : blessed be the name of the lord from this time forth and for evermore. : : from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the lord's name is to be praised. : : the lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens. : : who is like unto the lord our god, who dwelleth on high, : : who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth! : : he raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill; : : that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people. : : he maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. praise ye the lord. : : when israel went out of egypt, the house of jacob from a people of strange language; : : judah was his sanctuary, and israel his dominion. : : the sea saw it, and fled: jordan was driven back. : : the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. : : what ailed thee, o thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou jordan, that thou wast driven back? : : ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs? : : tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the lord, at the presence of the god of jacob; : : which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters. : : not unto us, o lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. : : wherefore should the heathen say, where is now their god? : : but our god is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. : : their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. : : they have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: : : they have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: : : they have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. : : they that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. : : o israel, trust thou in the lord: he is their help and their shield. : : o house of aaron, trust in the lord: he is their help and their shield. : : ye that fear the lord, trust in the lord: he is their help and their shield. : : the lord hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of israel; he will bless the house of aaron. : : he will bless them that fear the lord, both small and great. : : the lord shall increase you more and more, you and your children. : : ye are blessed of the lord which made heaven and earth. : : the heaven, even the heavens, are the lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. : : the dead praise not the lord, neither any that go down into silence. : : but we will bless the lord from this time forth and for evermore. praise the lord. : : i love the lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. : : because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will i call upon him as long as i live. : : the sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: i found trouble and sorrow. : : then called i upon the name of the lord; o lord, i beseech thee, deliver my soul. : : gracious is the lord, and righteous; yea, our god is merciful. : : the lord preserveth the simple: i was brought low, and he helped me. : : return unto thy rest, o my soul; for the lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. : : for thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. : : i will walk before the lord in the land of the living. : : i believed, therefore have i spoken: i was greatly afflicted: : : i said in my haste, all men are liars. : : what shall i render unto the lord for all his benefits toward me? : : i will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the lord. : : i will pay my vows unto the lord now in the presence of all his people. : : precious in the sight of the lord is the death of his saints. : : o lord, truly i am thy servant; i am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. : : i will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the lord. : : i will pay my vows unto the lord now in the presence of all his people. : : in the courts of the lord's house, in the midst of thee, o jerusalem. praise ye the lord. : : o praise the lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. : : for his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the lord endureth for ever. praise ye the lord. : : o give thanks unto the lord; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever. : : let israel now say, that his mercy endureth for ever. : : let the house of aaron now say, that his mercy endureth for ever. : : let them now that fear the lord say, that his mercy endureth for ever. : : i called upon the lord in distress: the lord answered me, and set me in a large place. : : the lord is on my side; i will not fear: what can man do unto me? : : the lord taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall i see my desire upon them that hate me. : : it is better to trust in the lord than to put confidence in man. : : it is better to trust in the lord than to put confidence in princes. : : all nations compassed me about: but in the name of the lord will i destroy them. : : they compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about: but in the name of the lord i will destroy them. : : they compassed me about like bees: they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the lord i will destroy them. : : thou hast thrust sore at me that i might fall: but the lord helped me. : : the lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation. : : the voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous: the right hand of the lord doeth valiantly. : : the right hand of the lord is exalted: the right hand of the lord doeth valiantly. : : i shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the lord. : : the lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death. : : open to me the gates of righteousness: i will go into them, and i will praise the lord: : : this gate of the lord, into which the righteous shall enter. : : i will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation. : : the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. : : this is the lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. : : this is the day which the lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. : : save now, i beseech thee, o lord: o lord, i beseech thee, send now prosperity. : : blessed be he that cometh in the name of the lord: we have blessed you out of the house of the lord. : : god is the lord, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. : : thou art my god, and i will praise thee: thou art my god, i will exalt thee. : : o give thanks unto the lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the lord. : : blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. : : they also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways. : : thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. : : o that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! : : then shall i not be ashamed, when i have respect unto all thy commandments. : : i will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when i shall have learned thy righteous judgments. : : i will keep thy statutes: o forsake me not utterly. : : wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. : : with my whole heart have i sought thee: o let me not wander from thy commandments. : : thy word have i hid in mine heart, that i might not sin against thee. : : blessed art thou, o lord: teach me thy statutes. : : with my lips have i declared all the judgments of thy mouth. : : i have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches. : : i will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. : : i will delight myself in thy statutes: i will not forget thy word. : : deal bountifully with thy servant, that i may live, and keep thy word. : : open thou mine eyes, that i may behold wondrous things out of thy law. : : i am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me. : : my soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times. : : thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments. : : remove from me reproach and contempt; for i have kept thy testimonies. : : princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. : : thy testimonies also are my delight and my counsellors. : : my soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word. : : i have declared my ways, and thou heardest me: teach me thy statutes. : : make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall i talk of thy wondrous works. : : my soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word. : : remove from me the way of lying: and grant me thy law graciously. : : i have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have i laid before me. : : i have stuck unto thy testimonies: o lord, put me not to shame. : : i will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart. : : teach me, o lord, the way of thy statutes; and i shall keep it unto the end. : : give me understanding, and i shall keep thy law; yea, i shall observe it with my whole heart. : : make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do i delight. : : incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. : : turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way. : : stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear. : : turn away my reproach which i fear: for thy judgments are good. : : behold, i have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness. : : let thy mercies come also unto me, o lord, even thy salvation, according to thy word. : : so shall i have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for i trust in thy word. : : and take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth; for i have hoped in thy judgments. : : so shall i keep thy law continually for ever and ever. : : and i will walk at liberty: for i seek thy precepts. : : i will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed. : : and i will delight myself in thy commandments, which i have loved. : : my hands also will i lift up unto thy commandments, which i have loved; and i will meditate in thy statutes. : : remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope. : : this is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me. : : the proud have had me greatly in derision: yet have i not declined from thy law. : : i remembered thy judgments of old, o lord; and have comforted myself. : : horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law. : : thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. : : i have remembered thy name, o lord, in the night, and have kept thy law. : : this i had, because i kept thy precepts. : : thou art my portion, o lord: i have said that i would keep thy words. : : i intreated thy favour with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word. : : i thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. : : i made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments. : : the bands of the wicked have robbed me: but i have not forgotten thy law. : : at midnight i will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments. : : i am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts. : : the earth, o lord, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes. : : thou hast dealt well with thy servant, o lord, according unto thy word. : : teach me good judgment and knowledge: for i have believed thy commandments. : : before i was afflicted i went astray: but now have i kept thy word. : : thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes. : : the proud have forged a lie against me: but i will keep thy precepts with my whole heart. : : their heart is as fat as grease; but i delight in thy law. : : it is good for me that i have been afflicted; that i might learn thy statutes. : : the law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver. : : thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding, that i may learn thy commandments. : : they that fear thee will be glad when they see me; because i have hoped in thy word. : : i know, o lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. : : let, i pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant. : : let thy tender mercies come unto me, that i may live: for thy law is my delight. : : let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but i will meditate in thy precepts. : : let those that fear thee turn unto me, and those that have known thy testimonies. : : let my heart be sound in thy statutes; that i be not ashamed. : : my soul fainteth for thy salvation: but i hope in thy word. : : mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, when wilt thou comfort me? : : for i am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do i not forget thy statutes. : : how many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? : : the proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law. : : all thy commandments are faithful: they persecute me wrongfully; help thou me. : : they had almost consumed me upon earth; but i forsook not thy precepts. : : quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall i keep the testimony of thy mouth. : : for ever, o lord, thy word is settled in heaven. : : thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. : : they continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants. : : unless thy law had been my delights, i should then have perished in mine affliction. : : i will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me. : : i am thine, save me: for i have sought thy precepts. : : the wicked have waited for me to destroy me: but i will consider thy testimonies. : : i have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad. : : o how i love thy law! it is my meditation all the day. : : thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. : : i have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. : : i understand more than the ancients, because i keep thy precepts. : : i have refrained my feet from every evil way, that i might keep thy word. : : i have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me. : : how sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! : : through thy precepts i get understanding: therefore i hate every false way. : : thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. : : i have sworn, and i will perform it, that i will keep thy righteous judgments. : : i am afflicted very much: quicken me, o lord, according unto thy word. : : accept, i beseech thee, the freewill offerings of my mouth, o lord, and teach me thy judgments. : : my soul is continually in my hand: yet do i not forget thy law. : : the wicked have laid a snare for me: yet i erred not from thy precepts. : : thy testimonies have i taken as an heritage for ever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart. : : i have inclined mine heart to perform thy statutes alway, even unto the end. : : i hate vain thoughts: but thy law do i love. : : thou art my hiding place and my shield: i hope in thy word. : : depart from me, ye evildoers: for i will keep the commandments of my god. : : uphold me according unto thy word, that i may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope. : : hold thou me up, and i shall be safe: and i will have respect unto thy statutes continually. : : thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit is falsehood. : : thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross: therefore i love thy testimonies. : : my flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and i am afraid of thy judgments. : : i have done judgment and justice: leave me not to mine oppressors. : : be surety for thy servant for good: let not the proud oppress me. : : mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness. : : deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy, and teach me thy statutes. : : i am thy servant; give me understanding, that i may know thy testimonies. : : it is time for thee, lord, to work: for they have made void thy law. : : therefore i love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold. : : therefore i esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and i hate every false way. : : thy testimonies are wonderful: therefore doth my soul keep them. : : the entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. : : i opened my mouth, and panted: for i longed for thy commandments. : : look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name. : : order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. : : deliver me from the oppression of man: so will i keep thy precepts. : : make thy face to shine upon thy servant; and teach me thy statutes. : : rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. : : righteous art thou, o lord, and upright are thy judgments. : : thy testimonies that thou hast commanded are righteous and very faithful. : : my zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words. : : thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it. : : i am small and despised: yet do not i forget thy precepts. : : thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. : : trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights. : : the righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and i shall live. : : i cried with my whole heart; hear me, o lord: i will keep thy statutes. : : i cried unto thee; save me, and i shall keep thy testimonies. : : i prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: i hoped in thy word. : : mine eyes prevent the night watches, that i might meditate in thy word. : : hear my voice according unto thy lovingkindness: o lord, quicken me according to thy judgment. : : they draw nigh that follow after mischief: they are far from thy law. : : thou art near, o lord; and all thy commandments are truth. : : concerning thy testimonies, i have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever. : : consider mine affliction, and deliver me: for i do not forget thy law. : : plead my cause, and deliver me: quicken me according to thy word. : : salvation is far from the wicked: for they seek not thy statutes. : : great are thy tender mercies, o lord: quicken me according to thy judgments. : : many are my persecutors and mine enemies; yet do i not decline from thy testimonies. : : i beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they kept not thy word. : : consider how i love thy precepts: quicken me, o lord, according to thy lovingkindness. : : thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. : : princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. : : i rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil. : : i hate and abhor lying: but thy law do i love. : : seven times a day do i praise thee because of thy righteous judgments. : : great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them. : : lord, i have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments. : : my soul hath kept thy testimonies; and i love them exceedingly. : : i have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee. : : let my cry come near before thee, o lord: give me understanding according to thy word. : : let my supplication come before thee: deliver me according to thy word. : : my lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy statutes. : : my tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness. : : let thine hand help me; for i have chosen thy precepts. : : i have longed for thy salvation, o lord; and thy law is my delight. : : let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy judgments help me. : : i have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for i do not forget thy commandments. : : in my distress i cried unto the lord, and he heard me. : : deliver my soul, o lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. : : what shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? : : sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper. : : woe is me, that i sojourn in mesech, that i dwell in the tents of kedar! : : my soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. : : i am for peace: but when i speak, they are for war. : : i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. : : my help cometh from the lord, which made heaven and earth. : : he will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. : : behold, he that keepeth israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. : : the lord is thy keeper: the lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. : : the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. : : the lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. : : the lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore. : : i was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the lord. : : our feet shall stand within thy gates, o jerusalem. : : jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together: : : whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the lord, unto the testimony of israel, to give thanks unto the name of the lord. : : for there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of david. : : pray for the peace of jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. : : peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. : : for my brethren and companions' sakes, i will now say, peace be within thee. : : because of the house of the lord our god i will seek thy good. : : unto thee lift i up mine eyes, o thou that dwellest in the heavens. : : behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the lord our god, until that he have mercy upon us. : : have mercy upon us, o lord, have mercy upon us: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt. : : our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud. : : if it had not been the lord who was on our side, now may israel say; : : if it had not been the lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: : : then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: : : then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: : : then the proud waters had gone over our soul. : : blessed be the lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. : : our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. : : our help is in the name of the lord, who made heaven and earth. : : they that trust in the lord shall be as mount zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. : : as the mountains are round about jerusalem, so the lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever. : : for the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity. : : do good, o lord, unto those that be good, and to them that are upright in their hearts. : : as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity: but peace shall be upon israel. : : when the lord turned again the captivity of zion, we were like them that dream. : : then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, the lord hath done great things for them. : : the lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. : : turn again our captivity, o lord, as the streams in the south. : : they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. : : he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. : : except the lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. : : it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. : : lo, children are an heritage of the lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. : : as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. : : happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. : : blessed is every one that feareth the lord; that walketh in his ways. : : for thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. : : thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. : : behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the lord. : : the lord shall bless thee out of zion: and thou shalt see the good of jerusalem all the days of thy life. : : yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon israel. : : many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may israel now say: : : many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me. : : the plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows. : : the lord is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. : : let them all be confounded and turned back that hate zion. : : let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up: : : wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. : : neither do they which go by say, the blessing of the lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the lord. : : out of the depths have i cried unto thee, o lord. : : lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. : : if thou, lord, shouldest mark iniquities, o lord, who shall stand? : : but there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. : : i wait for the lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do i hope. : : my soul waiteth for the lord more than they that watch for the morning: i say, more than they that watch for the morning. : : let israel hope in the lord: for with the lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. : : and he shall redeem israel from all his iniquities. : : lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do i exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. : : surely i have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. : : let israel hope in the lord from henceforth and for ever. : : lord, remember david, and all his afflictions: : : how he sware unto the lord, and vowed unto the mighty god of jacob; : : surely i will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; : : i will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, : : until i find out a place for the lord, an habitation for the mighty god of jacob. : : lo, we heard of it at ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood. : : we will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his footstool. : : arise, o lord, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength. : : let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy. : : for thy servant david's sake turn not away the face of thine anointed. : : the lord hath sworn in truth unto david; he will not turn from it; of the fruit of thy body will i set upon thy throne. : : if thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that i shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore. : : for the lord hath chosen zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. : : this is my rest for ever: here will i dwell; for i have desired it. : : i will abundantly bless her provision: i will satisfy her poor with bread. : : i will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy. : : there will i make the horn of david to bud: i have ordained a lamp for mine anointed. : : his enemies will i clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish. : : behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! : : it is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; : : as the dew of hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of zion: for there the lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore. : : behold, bless ye the lord, all ye servants of the lord, which by night stand in the house of the lord. : : lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the lord. : : the lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of zion. : : praise ye the lord. praise ye the name of the lord; praise him, o ye servants of the lord. : : ye that stand in the house of the lord, in the courts of the house of our god. : : praise the lord; for the lord is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant. : : for the lord hath chosen jacob unto himself, and israel for his peculiar treasure. : : for i know that the lord is great, and that our lord is above all gods. : : whatsoever the lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places. : : he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries. : : who smote the firstborn of egypt, both of man and beast. : : who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, o egypt, upon pharaoh, and upon all his servants. : : who smote great nations, and slew mighty kings; : : sihon king of the amorites, and og king of bashan, and all the kingdoms of canaan: : : and gave their land for an heritage, an heritage unto israel his people. : : thy name, o lord, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, o lord, throughout all generations. : : for the lord will judge his people, and he will repent himself concerning his servants. : : the idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. : : they have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; : : they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. : : they that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them. : : bless the lord, o house of israel: bless the lord, o house of aaron: : : bless the lord, o house of levi: ye that fear the lord, bless the lord. : : blessed be the lord out of zion, which dwelleth at jerusalem. praise ye the lord. : : o give thanks unto the lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : o give thanks unto the god of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : o give thanks to the lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : the sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : the moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him that smote egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and brought out israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : with a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him which divided the red sea into parts: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and made israel to pass through the midst of it: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : but overthrew pharaoh and his host in the red sea: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him which led his people through the wilderness: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : to him which smote great kings: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and slew famous kings: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : sihon king of the amorites: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and og the king of bashan: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and gave their land for an heritage: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : even an heritage unto israel his servant: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : who remembered us in our low estate: for his mercy endureth for ever: : : and hath redeemed us from our enemies: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : o give thanks unto the god of heaven: for his mercy endureth for ever. : : by the rivers of babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered zion. : : we hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. : : for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of zion. : : how shall we sing the lord's song in a strange land? : : if i forget thee, o jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. : : if i do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if i prefer not jerusalem above my chief joy. : : remember, o lord, the children of edom in the day of jerusalem; who said, rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. : : o daughter of babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. : : happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. : : i will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will i sing praise unto thee. : : i will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. : : in the day when i cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul. : : all the kings of the earth shall praise thee, o lord, when they hear the words of thy mouth. : : yea, they shall sing in the ways of the lord: for great is the glory of the lord. : : though the lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: but the proud he knoweth afar off. : : though i walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. : : the lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, o lord, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands. : : o lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. : : thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. : : thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. : : for there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, o lord, thou knowest it altogether. : : thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. : : such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, i cannot attain unto it. : : whither shall i go from thy spirit? or whither shall i flee from thy presence? : : if i ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if i make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. : : if i take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; : : even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. : : if i say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. : : yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. : : for thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. : : i will praise thee; for i am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. : : my substance was not hid from thee, when i was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. : : thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. : : how precious also are thy thoughts unto me, o god! how great is the sum of them! : : if i should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when i awake, i am still with thee. : : surely thou wilt slay the wicked, o god: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. : : for they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. : : do not i hate them, o lord, that hate thee? and am not i grieved with those that rise up against thee? : : i hate them with perfect hatred: i count them mine enemies. : : search me, o god, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: : : and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. : : deliver me, o lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man; : : which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually are they gathered together for war. : : they have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. selah. : : keep me, o lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my goings. : : the proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. selah. : : i said unto the lord, thou art my god: hear the voice of my supplications, o lord. : : o god the lord, the strength of my salvation, thou hast covered my head in the day of battle. : : grant not, o lord, the desires of the wicked: further not his wicked device; lest they exalt themselves. selah. : : as for the head of those that compass me about, let the mischief of their own lips cover them. : : let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again. : : let not an evil speaker be established in the earth: evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him. : : i know that the lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and the right of the poor. : : surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: the upright shall dwell in thy presence. : : lord, i cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when i cry unto thee. : : let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. : : set a watch, o lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. : : incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties. : : let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities. : : when their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. : : our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. : : but mine eyes are unto thee, o god the lord: in thee is my trust; leave not my soul destitute. : : keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity. : : let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that i withal escape. : : i cried unto the lord with my voice; with my voice unto the lord did i make my supplication. : : i poured out my complaint before him; i shewed before him my trouble. : : when my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. in the way wherein i walked have they privily laid a snare for me. : : i looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. : : i cried unto thee, o lord: i said, thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living. : : attend unto my cry; for i am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than i. : : bring my soul out of prison, that i may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me. : : hear my prayer, o lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. : : and enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. : : for the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. : : therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. : : i remember the days of old; i meditate on all thy works; i muse on the work of thy hands. : : i stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. selah. : : hear me speedily, o lord: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest i be like unto them that go down into the pit. : : cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do i trust: cause me to know the way wherein i should walk; for i lift up my soul unto thee. : : deliver me, o lord, from mine enemies: i flee unto thee to hide me. : : teach me to do thy will; for thou art my god: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. : : quicken me, o lord, for thy name's sake: for thy righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble. : : and of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for i am thy servant. : : blessed be the lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight: : : my goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom i trust; who subdueth my people under me. : : lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! : : man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away. : : bow thy heavens, o lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. : : cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them. : : send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children; : : whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood. : : i will sing a new song unto thee, o god: upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will i sing praises unto thee. : : it is he that giveth salvation unto kings: who delivereth david his servant from the hurtful sword. : : rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood: : : that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace: : : that our garners may be full, affording all manner of store: that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets: : : that our oxen may be strong to labour; that there be no breaking in, nor going out; that there be no complaining in our streets. : : happy is that people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose god is the lord. : : i will extol thee, my god, o king; and i will bless thy name for ever and ever. : : every day will i bless thee; and i will praise thy name for ever and ever. : : great is the lord, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. : : one generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. : : i will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works. : : and men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and i will declare thy greatness. : : they shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness. : : the lord is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. : : the lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. : : all thy works shall praise thee, o lord; and thy saints shall bless thee. : : they shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power; : : to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. : : thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. : : the lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down. : : the eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. : : thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. : : the lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works. : : the lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. : : he will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them. : : the lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy. : : my mouth shall speak the praise of the lord: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever. : : praise ye the lord. praise the lord, o my soul. : : while i live will i praise the lord: i will sing praises unto my god while i have any being. : : put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. : : his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. : : happy is he that hath the god of jacob for his help, whose hope is in the lord his god: : : which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: : : which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. the lord looseth the prisoners: : : the lord openeth the eyes of the blind: the lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the lord loveth the righteous: : : the lord preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down. : : the lord shall reign for ever, even thy god, o zion, unto all generations. praise ye the lord. : : praise ye the lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our god; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. : : the lord doth build up jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of israel. : : he healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. : : he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. : : great is our lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite. : : the lord lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground. : : sing unto the lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our god: : : who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. : : he giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry. : : he delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. : : the lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. : : praise the lord, o jerusalem; praise thy god, o zion. : : for he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee. : : he maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat. : : he sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth very swiftly. : : he giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes. : : he casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold? : : he sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow. : : he sheweth his word unto jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto israel. : : he hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. praise ye the lord. : : praise ye the lord. praise ye the lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights. : : praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. : : praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light. : : praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. : : let them praise the name of the lord: for he commanded, and they were created. : : he hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass. : : praise the lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps: : : fire, and hail; snow, and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling his word: : : mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars: : : beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl: : : kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth: : : both young men, and maidens; old men, and children: : : let them praise the name of the lord: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven. : : he also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of israel, a people near unto him. praise ye the lord. : : praise ye the lord. sing unto the lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. : : let israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of zion be joyful in their king. : : let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. : : for the lord taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation. : : let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. : : let the high praises of god be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; : : to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; : : to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; : : to execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. praise ye the lord. : : praise ye the lord. praise god in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. : : praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness. : : praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. : : praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. : : praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. : : let every thing that hath breath praise the lord. praise ye the lord. little books on religion edited by the rev. w. robertson nicoll, ll.d. elegantly bound in cloth, price _ s. d._ each. christ and the future life. by r.w. dale, ll.d. the seven words from the cross. by the rev. w. robertson nicoll, ll.d. the visions of a prophet. by the rev. professor marcus dods, d.d. why be a christian? addresses to young men. by the same author. the four temperaments. by the rev. alexander whyte, d.d. the upper room. by the rev. john watson, m.a., d.d. four psalms. by the rev. professor george adam smith, d.d., ll.d. gospel questions and answers. by the rev. james denney, d.d. the unity and symmetry of the bible. by the rev. john monro gibson, d.d. _hodder & stoughton_ four psalms xxiii. xxxvi. lii. cxxi. interpreted for practical use by george adam smith hodder and stoughton to m.s. and h.a.s. contents i psalm xxiii: god our shepherd ii psalm xxxvi: the greater realism iii psalm lii: religion the open air of the soul iv psalm cxxi: the ministry of the hills and all great things psalm xxiii god our shepherd the twenty-third psalm seems to break in two at the end of the fourth verse. the first four verses clearly reflect a pastoral scene; the fifth appears to carry us off, without warning, to very different associations. this, however, is only in appearance. the last two verses are as pastoral as the first four. if these show us the shepherd with his sheep upon the pasture, those follow him, shepherd still, to where in his tent he dispenses the desert's hospitality to some poor fugitive from blood. the psalm is thus a unity, even of metaphor. we shall see afterwards that it is also a spiritual unity; but at present let us summon up the landscape on which both of these features--the shepherd on his pasture and the shepherd in his tent--lie side by side, equal sacraments of the grace and shelter of our god. a syrian or an arabian pasture is very different from the narrow meadows and fenced hill-sides with which we are familiar. it is vast, and often virtually boundless. by far the greater part of it is desert--that is, land not absolutely barren, but refreshed by rain for only a few months, and through the rest of the year abandoned to the pitiless sun that sucks all life from the soil. the landscape is nearly all glare: monotonous levels or low ranges of hillocks, with as little character upon them as the waves of the sea, and shimmering in mirage under a cloudless heaven. this bewildering monotony is broken by only two exceptions. here and there the ground is cleft to a deep ravine, which gapes in black contrast to the glare, and by its sudden darkness blinds the men and sheep that enter it to the beasts of prey which have their lairs in the recesses. but there are also hollows as gentle and lovely as those ravines are terrible, where water bubbles up and runs quietly between grassy banks through the open shade of trees. on such a wilderness, it is evident that the person and character of the shepherd must mean a great deal more to the sheep than they can possibly mean in this country. with us, sheep left to themselves may be seen any day--in a field or on a hill-side with a far-travelling fence to keep them from straying. but i do not remember ever to have seen in the east a flock of sheep without a shepherd. on such a landscape as i have described he is obviously indispensable. when you meet him there, 'alone of all his reasoning kind,' armed, weather-beaten, and looking out with eyes of care upon his scattered flock, their sole provision and defence, your heart leaps up to ask: is there in all the world so dear a sacrament of life and peace as he? there is, and very near himself. as prominent a feature in the wilderness as the shepherd is the shepherd's tent. to western eyes a cluster of desert homes looks ugly enough--brown and black lumps, often cast down anyhow, with a few loutish men lolling on the trampled sand in front of the low doorways, that a man has to stoop uncomfortably to enter. but conceive coming to these a man who is fugitive--fugitive across such a wilderness. conceive a man fleeing for his life as sisera fled when he sought the tent of jael, the wife of heber the kenite. to him that space of trampled sand, with the ragged black mouths above it, mean not only food and rest, but dear life itself. there, by the golden law of the desert's hospitality, he knows that he may eat in peace, that though his enemies come up to the very door, and his table be spread as it were in their presence, he need not flinch nor stint his heart of her security. that was the landscape the psalmist saw, and it seemed to him to reflect the mingled wildness and beauty of his own life. human life was just this wilderness of terrible contrasts, where the light is so bright, but the shadows the darker and more treacherous; where the pasture is rich, but scattered in the wrinkles of vast deserts; where the paths are illusive, yet man's passion flies swift and straight to its revenge; where all is separation and disorder, yet law sweeps inexorable, and a man is hunted down to death by his blood-guiltiness. but not in anything is life more like the wilderness than in this, that it is the presence and character of one, which make all the difference to us who are its silly sheep; that it is his grace and hospitality which alone avail us when we awaken to the fact that our lives cannot be fully figured by those of sheep, for men are fugitives in need of more than food--men are fugitives with the conscience and the habit of sin relentless on their track. this is the main lesson of the psalm: the faith into which many generations of god's church have sung an ever richer experience of his guidance and his grace. we may gather it up under these three heads--they cannot be too simple: i. the lord is a shepherd; ii. the lord is my shepherd; and, iii. if that be too feeble a figure to meet the fugitive and hunted life of man, the lord is my host and my sanctuary for ever. i. _the lord is my shepherd_: or--as the greek, vibrating to the force of the original--_the lord is shepherding me; i shall not want_. this is the theme of the first four verses. every one feels that the psalm was written by a shepherd, and the first thing that is obvious is that he has made his god after his own image. there are many in our day who sneer at that kind of theology--pretty, indeed, as the pearl or the tear, but like tear or pearl a natural and partly a morbid deposit--a mere human process which, according to them, pretty well explains all religion; the result of man's instinct to see himself reflected on the cloud that bounds his view; man's honest but deluded effort to put himself in charge of the best part of himself, filling the throne of an imaginary heaven with an impossible exaggeration of his own virtues. but it is far better to hold with jesus christ than with such reasoners. jesus christ tells us that a man cannot be wrong if he argues towards god from what he finds best in himself. _if ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy spirit to them that ask him? what man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? ... likewise, i say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of god over one sinner that repenteth_. that is a true witness, and strikes amen out of every chord of our hearts. the power, so evident in nature that he needs no proof, the being so far beyond us in wisdom and in might, must also be our great superior in every quality which is more excellent than might. with thoughts more sleepless than our thoughts, as the sun is more constant than our lamps; with a heart that steadfastly cares for us, as we fitfully care for one another; more kingly than our noblest king, more fatherly than our fondest fatherhood; of deeper, truer compassion than ever mother poured upon us; whom, when a man feels that he highest thing in life is to be a shepherd, he calls his shepherd, and knows that, as the shepherd, _whose the sheep are_, shrinks not to seek one of his lost at risk of limb or life, so his god cannot be less in readiness of love or of self-sacrifice. such is the faith of strong and unselfish men all down the ages. and its strength is this, that it is no mere conclusion of logic, but the inevitable and increasing result of duty done and love kept pure--of fatherhood and motherhood and friendship fulfilled. one remembers how browning has put it in the mouth of david, when the latter has done all he can do for 'saul,' and is helpless: do i find love so full in my nature, god's ultimate gift, that i doubt his own love can compete with it? ... would i fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man; and dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? could i wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, to fill up his life, starve my own out, i would--knowing which i know that my service is perfect. oh, speak through me now! would i suffer for him that i love? so wouldst thou--so wilt thou! thus have felt and known the unselfish of all ages. it is not only from their depths, but from their topmost heights--heaven still how far!--that men cry out and say, _there is a rock higher than i!_ god is stronger than their strength, more loving than their uttermost love, and in so far as they have loved and sacrificed themselves for others, they have obtained the infallible proof, that god too lives and loves and gives himself away. nothing can shake that faith, for it rests on the best instincts of our nature, and is the crown of all faithful life. he was no hireling herdsman who wrote these verses, but one whose heart was in his work, who did justly by it, magnifying his office, and who never scamped it, else had he not dared to call his god a shepherd. and so in every relation of our own lives. while insincerity and unfaithfulness to duty mean nothing less than the loss of the clearness and sureness of our faith in god; duty nobly done, love to the uttermost, are witnesses to god's love and ceaseless care, witnesses which grow more convincing every day. the second, third and fourth verses give the details. each of them is taken directly from the shepherd's custom, and applied without interpretation to the care of man's soul by god. _he maketh me lie down_--the verb is to bring the flocks to fold or couch--_on pastures of green grass_--the young fresh grass of spring-time. _by waters of rest he refresheth me_.[ ] this last verb is difficult to render in english; the original meaning was evidently to guide the flock to drink, from which it came to have the more general force of sustaining or nourishing. _my life he restoreth_--bringeth back again from death. _he leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake_, not necessarily straight paths, but paths that fulfil the duty of paths and lead to somewhere, unlike most desert tracks which spring up, tempt your feet for a little, and then disappear. _yea, though i walk in a valley of deep darkness, i will fear no evil, for thou art with me. thy rod and thy staff_ are not synonymous, for even the shepherd of to-day, though often armed with a gun, carries two instruments of wood, his great oak club, thick enough to brain a wild beast, and his staff to lean upon or to touch his sheep, while the ancient shepherd without firearms would surely still more require both. _they will comfort me_--a very beautiful verb, the literal meaning of which is to help another, choked with grief or fear, to breathe freely, and give his heart air. [footnote : the greek reads: epi hudatos anapauseôs exethrepse me] these simple figures of the conduct of the soul by god are their own interpretation. who, from his experience, cannot read into them more than any other may help him to find? only on two points is a word required. _righteousness_ has no theological meaning. the psalmist, as the above exposition has stated, is thinking of such desert paths as have an end and goal, to which they faultlessly lead the traveller: and in god's care of man their analogy is not the experience of justification and forgiveness, but the wider assurance that he who follows the will of god walks not in vain, that in the end he arrives, for all god's paths lead onward and lead home. this thought is clinched with an expression which would not have the same force if righteousness were taken in a theological sense: _for his name's sake._ no being has the right to the name of guide or shepherd unless the paths by which he takes the flock do bring them to their pasture and rest. the other ambiguous phrase is the _vale of deep darkness_. as is well known, the letters of the word may be made to spell _shadow of death_; but the other way of taking them is the more probable. this, however, need not lead us away from the associations with which our old translation has invested them. it is not only darkness that the poet is describing, but the darkness where death lurks for the poor sheep,--the gorges, in whose deep shadows are the lairs of wild beasts, and the shepherd and his club are needed. it stands thus for every dismal and deadly passage through which the soul may pass, and, most of all, it is the valley of the shadow of death. there god is with men no less than by the waters of repose, or along the successful paths of active life. was he able to recover the soul from life's wayside weariness and hunger?--he will equally defend and keep it amid life's deadliest dangers. ii. but the psalm is not only theology. it is personal religion. whether the psalmist sang it first of the church of god as a whole, or of the individual, the church herself has sung it, through all generations, of the individual. by the natural progress of religion from the universal to the particular; by the authority of the lord jesus, who calls men singly to the father, and one by one assures them of god's providence, grace and glory; by the millions who have taken him at his word, and every man of them in the loneliness of temptation and duty and death proved his promise--we also in our turn dare to believe that this psalm is a psalm for the individual. the lord is _my_ shepherd: he maketh _me_ to lie down: he leadeth _me_: he restoreth _my_ soul. lay your attention upon the little word. ask yourself, if since it was first put upon your lips you have ever used it with anything more than the lips: if you have any right to use it: if you have ever taken any steps towards winning the right to use it. to claim god for our own, to have and enjoy him as ours, means, as christ our master said over and over again, that we give ourselves to him, and take him to our hearts. sheep do not choose their shepherd, but man has to choose--else the peace and the fulness of life which are here figured remain a dream and become no experience for him. do not say that this talk of surrender to god is unreal to you. happiness, contentment, the health and growth of the soul, depend, as men have proved over and over again, upon some simple issue, some single turning of the soul. lives are changed by a moment's listening to conscience, by a single and quiet inclination of the mind. we must submit ourselves to god. we must bring our wills under his. here and now we can do this by resolution and effort, in the strength of his spirit, which is nearer us than we know. the thing is no mystery, and not at all vague. the mistake people make about it is to seek for it in some artificial and conventional form. we have it travestied to-day under many forms--under the form of throwing open the heart to excitement in an atmosphere removed from real life as far as possible: under the form of assent to a dogma: under the form of adherence to a church. but do you summon up the most real things in your life--the duty that is a disgust: the sacrifice for others from which you shrink. summon up your besetting sin--the temptation which, for all your present peace, you know will be upon you before twenty-four hours are past. summon up these grim realities of your life,--and in face of them give yourself to god's will, put your weakness into the keeping of his grace. he is as real as they are, and the act of will by which you give yourself to him and his service will be as true and as solid an experience as the many acts of will by which you have so often yielded to them. otherwise this beautiful name, this name shepherd, must remain to you the emptiest of metaphors: this psalm only a fair song instead of the indestructible experience which both name and psalm become to him who gives himself to god. men and women, who in this christian land have grown up with this psalm in your hearts, in all the great crises of life that are ahead shall this psalm revisit us. in perplexity and doubt, in temptation and sorrow, and in death, like our mother's face shall this psalm she put upon our lips come back to us. woe to us then, if we have done nothing to help us to believe it! as when one lies sick in a foreign land, and music that is dear comes down the street and swells by him, and lifts his thoughts a little from himself, but passes over and melts into the distance, and he lies colder and more forsaken than before--so shall it be with us and this psalm. but if we do give our hearts to god and his will, if day by day of our strength we work and serve, live and suffer, with contented hearts--then i know what we shall say when the day of our darkness and loneliness comes down, whether it be of temptation, or of responsibility, or of death itself. in that day we shall lift our faces and say: _yea, though i am walking in the valley of the shadow of death i do fear no evil, for thou art with me, and thy rod and thy staff they comfort me_! iii. but some one may turn round upon all this and say: 'it is simple, it is ideal, but the real man cannot reach it out of real life. for he is not the mere sheep, turned easily by a touch of the staff. he is a man: his life is no mere search for grass, it is a being searched; it is not a following, it is a flight. not from the future do we shrink, even though death be there. the past is on our track, and hunts us down. we need more than guidance: we need grace.' this is probably what the psalmist himself felt when he did not close with the fourth verse, otherwise so natural a climax. he knew that weariness and death are not the last enemies of man. he knew that the future is never the true man's only fear. he remembered the inexorableness of the past; he remembered that blood-guiltiness, which sheep never feel, is worse to men than death. as perchance one day he lifted his eyes from his sheep and saw a fugitive from the avenger of blood crossing the plain, while his sheep scattered right and left before this wild intruder into their quiet world,--so he felt his fair and gentle thoughts within him scattered by the visitation of his past; so he felt how rudely law breaks through our pious fancies, and must be dealt with before their peace can be secure; so he felt, as every true man has felt with him, that the religion, however bright and brave, which takes no account of sin, is the religion which has not a last nor a highest word for life. consider this system of blood revenge. it was the one element of law in the lawless life of the desert. everything else in the wilderness might swerve and stray. this alone persisted and was infallible. it crossed the world; it lasted through generations. the fear of it never died down in the heart of the hunted man, nor the duty of it in the heart of the hunter. the holiest sanctions confirmed it,--the safety of society, the honour of the family, love for the dead. and yet, from this endless process, which hunted a man like conscience, a shelter was found in the custom of eastern hospitality--the 'golden piety of the wilderness,' as it has been called. every wanderer, whatever his character or his past might be, was received as the; 'guest of god'--such is the beautiful name which they still give him,--furnished with food, and kept inviolate, his host becoming responsible for his safety. that the psalmist had this custom in view, when composing the last two verses of the psalm, is plain from the phrase with which these open: _thou spreadest before me a table in the very face of mine enemies_; and perhaps also from the unusual metaphor in verse : _surely goodness and mercy shall follow,_ or _hunt, me all the days of my life._ and even if those were right (which i do not admit) who interpret the enemies and pursuers as the mere foes and persecutors of the pious, it is plain that to us using the psalm this interpretation will not suffice. how can we speak of this custom of blood-revenge and think only of our material foes? if we know ourselves, and if our conscience be quick, then of all our experiences there is but one which suits this figure of blood-revenge, when and wheresoever in the old testament it is applied to man's spiritual life. so only do the conscience and the habit of sin pursue a man. our real enemies are not our opponents, our adversities, our cares and pains. these our enemies! better comrades, better guides, better masters no man ever had. our enemies are our evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express. we know how they persist from youth unto the grave: _the sting of death is sin._ we know what they want: nothing less than our whole character and will. _simon, simon_, said christ to a soul on the edge of a great temptation, _satan hath asked you back again for himself_. yet it is the abounding message of the whole bible, of which our twenty-third psalm is but a small fragment, that for this conscience and this habit of sin god hath made provision, even as sure as those thoughts of his guidance which refresh us in the heat of life and comfort us amidst its shadows. in nature? yes: for here too the goodness of god leadeth to repentance. there is nothing which the fifth verse so readily brings to mind as the grace of the divine hospitality in nature. _thou spreadest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies_. how these words contrast the fever and uncertain battle of our life with the calmness and surety of the divine order! through the cross currents of human strife, fretted and stained, the tides of nature keep their steady course, and rise to their invariable margins. the seasons come up undisturbed by crime and war. spring creeps even into the beleaguered city; through the tents of the besiegers, across trench and scarp, among the wheels of the cannon, and over the graves of the dead, grass and wild flowers speed, spreading god's table. he sendeth his rain upon the just and the unjust. and even here the display is not merely natural, nor spread only in the sight of our physical enemies; but god's goodness leadeth to repentance, and nature is equipped even for deliverance from sin. who has come out upon a great landscape, who has looked across the sea, who has lifted his eyes to the hills and felt the winds of god blowing off their snows, who has heard earth's countless voices rising heavenwards, but has felt: what a wide place this world is for repentance! man does find in nature deliverance from himself, oblivion of his past, with peace and purity! and yet the provision, though real, is little more than temporary. the herdsmen of the desert are not obliged to furnish to their fugitive guest shelter for more than two nights with the day between. little more than two nights with the day between is the respite from conscience and habit which nature provides for the sinful heart. she is the million-fold opportunity of repentance; she is not the final or everlasting grace of god. and, therefore, whatever may have been the original intention of our psalmist, the spiritual feeling of the church has understood his last two verses to sing of that mercy and forgiveness of our god which were spoken to men by the prophets, but reached the fulness of their proclamation and proof in jesus christ. he who owned the simple trust of the first four verses, saying, 'thou art right, i am the good shepherd,' so that since he walked on earth the name is no more a mere metaphor of god, but the dearest, strongest reality which has ever visited this world of shadows--he also has been proved by men as the host and defender of all who seek his aid from the memory and the pursuit of sin. so he received them in the days of his flesh, as they drifted upon him across the wilderness of life, pressed by every evil with which it is possible for sin to harry men. to him they were all 'guests of god,' welcomed for his sake, irrespective of what their past might have been. and so, being lifted up, he still draws us to himself, and still proves himself able to come between us and our past. whatever we may flee from he keeps it away, so that, although to the last, for penitence, we may be reminded of our sins, and our enemies come again and again to the open door of memory, in him we are secure. he is our defence, and our peace is impregnable. psalm xxxvi the greater realism like the twenty-third psalm, the thirty-sixth seems to fall into two unconnected parts, but with this difference, that while both of the twenty-third are understood by us, and heartily enjoyed, of the thirty-sixth we appreciate only those verses, - , which contain an adoration of god's mercy and righteousness. verses - , a study of sin, are unintelligible in our versions, and hardly ever sung, except in routine, by a christian congregation. so sudden is the break between the two parts, and so opposite their contents, that they have been taken by some critics to be fragments of independent origin. this, however, would only raise the more difficult question: why, being born apart, and apparently so unsympathetic, were they ever wedded? to a more careful reading the psalm yields itself a unity. the sudden break from the close study of sin to the adoration of god's grace is designed, and from his rhapsody the psalmist returns to pray, in verses - , against that same evil with which he had opened his poem. indeed, it is in this, its most admirable method, more than in details, that the psalm is instructive and inspiring. the problem of israel's faith was the existence of evil in its most painful form of the successful and complacent sinner, the oppressor of good men. this problem our psalm takes, not, like other psalms, in its cruel bearing upon the people of god, but in its mysterious growth in the character of the wicked man. through four verses of vivid realism we follow the progress of sin. then, when eye and heart are full of the horror, the psalmist steps suddenly back, and lifts his gaze beyond and above his study of evil to god's own world that stretches everywhere. the effect is to put the problem into a new perspective. the black bulk which had come between the singer and his sun shrinks from his new position to a point against that universal goodness of the lord, and he conceives not only courage to pray against it, but the grace to feel it already beneath his feet. this is not an intellectual solution of the problem of evil: but it is a practical one. the psalm is a study--if we can call anything so enthusiastic a study--in proportion; the reduction of the cruel facts of experience to their relation to other facts as real but of infinite comfort and glory; the expansion, in short, of the words of verse : _in thy light we see light_. the psalmist's analysis of sin has been spoiled in translation. take our old version, or the revised one, and you will find no meaning in the first two verses, but take the rendering offered on the margin by the revisers (and approved by most scholars), and you get a meaning intelligible, profound, and true to experience: _oracle of sin hath the wicked in the midst of his heart; there is no fear of god before his eyes_. the word _oracle_ means probably secret whisper, but is elsewhere used (except in one case) of god's word to his prophets. it is the instrument of revelation. the wicked man has in him something comparable to this. sin seems as mysterious and as imperative as god's own voice to the heart of his servants. and to counteract this there is no awe of god himself. temptation in all its mystery, and with no religious awe to meet it--such is the beginning of sin. the second verse is also obscure. it seems to describe the terrible power which sin has of making men believe that though they continue to do evil they may still keep their conscience. the verse translates most readily, though not without some doubt: _for it flatters him, in his eyes, that he will discover his guilt--that he will hate it_. while sin takes from a man his healthy taste for what is good, and his power to loathe evil, it deludes him with the fancy that he still enjoys them. temptation, when we yield, is succeeded by self-delusion. the third and fourth verses follow clearly with the aggravated effects. sin ceases to flatter, and the man's habits are openly upon him. truth, common-sense and all virtue are left behind: _the words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit, he has given up thinking sensibly and doing good._ so he becomes presumptuous and obstinate. _he devises iniquity upon his bed_--which is but the hebrew for 'planning evil in cold blood'-- _he takes up his post on a way that is not good, he abhors not evil_. there we have the whole biography of sin from its first whisper in the centre of man's being, where it seems to speak with the mystery and power of god's own word, to the time when, through the corruption of every instinct and quality of virtue, it reaches the border of his being and destroys the last possibility of penitence. it is the horror of evil in the four stages of its growth: temptation, delusion, audacity, and habit ending in death. to us sin has not become any less of a mystery or a pain. temptation is as sudden and demonic. into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as god himself. it begins as early. in the heart of every little child god works, but they who next to god have most right there, the father and the mother, know that something else has had, with god, precedence of themselves. as the years go on, and the knowledge of good and evil grows, becoming ever more jealous and expert a sentinel, it still finds its watch and fence of the outside world mocked by the mysterious upburst of sin within. the whole mystery of temptation is to have sins suggested to us, and to be swept after them by a sudden enthusiasm, which sometimes feels as strong as the spirit of god ever made in us the enthusiasm for virtue. 'there are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. they carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in an instant does the work of long premeditation.'[ ] 'an inspiration of crime,' that is the _oracle of sin_. from that come the panic and the despair of temptation. the heart, which has still left in it some loyalty to god, is horrified by the ease and the surprise of evil. yet the greater horror is that this horror may be lost: that men and women do continually exchange it for a complacent and careless temper toward the besetting sin which they have once felt to be worse than death. from being panic-stricken at the rise and surge of temptation, they will (and there is no more marvellous change in all fickle man's experience) grow easy and scornful about it, time after time permitting it to overcome them, in the delusion that they may reassert themselves when they will, and put it beneath their feet. the rest is certain. falsehood becomes natural to him who was born loyal, audacity to him who grew up timid and scrupulous. the impulsive lover of good, who has fallen through the very warmth of his nature, develops into the deliberate sensualist. natures sensitive and enthusiastic grow absolutely empty of power to revolt against what is unjust or foul. a great writer once said of himself in middle life: 'i am proud and intellectual, but forced by the habits of years to like the base and dishonourable from which i formerly revolted.' little children have the seeds of all this within them; men and women are born with the inspiration which starts these mysterious and direful changes; the fatal decadence takes place in countless lives. [footnote : george eliot.] before facts so horrifying--they are _within_ as well as everywhere around us--our real need is not an intellectual explanation of why they are permitted or whence this taint in the race arose. for, supposing that we were capable of understanding this, the probability is that we might become tolerant of the facts themselves, and, perceiving that cruelty and sin had a necessary place in the universe, lose the mind to fight them. constituted as are the most of mankind, for them to discover a reason for a fact is, if not to conceive a respect for it, at least to feel a plausible excuse for their sluggishness and timidity in dealing with it. nay, the very study of sin for the purpose of acquainting ourselves with its nature, too often either intoxicates the will, or paralyses it with despair; and it is in recoil from the whole subject that we most surely recover health to fight evil in ourselves and nerve to work for the deliverance from it of others. the practical solution of our problem is to remember how much else there is in the universe, how much else that is utterly away from and opposed to sin. we must engross ourselves in that, we must exult in that. we must remember goodness, not only in the countless scattered instances about us, but in its infinite resource in the power and character of god himself. we must feel that the universe is pervaded by this: that it is the atmosphere of life, and that the whole visible framework of the world offers signals and sacraments of its real presence. we may not, we shall not, be able to reconcile this goodness with the cruel facts about us; but at least we shall have reduced these to a new proportion and perspective; we shall have disengaged our wills from the horrid influence of evil, and received a new temper for that contest, in which it is temper far more than any knowledge which overcomes. this is what our psalmist does. from the awful realism of sin he sweeps, without pause or attempt at argument, into a vision of all the goodness of god. the divine attributes spread out before him, and it takes him the largest things in nature to describe them: the personal loving-kindness and righteousness of the most high: the care of providence: the tenderness of intimate fellowship with god: the security of faith: the satisfaction of worship. he makes no claim that everything is therefore clear: still _are thy judgments the great deep_, fathomless, awful. but we receive new vigour of life as from _a fountain of life,_ and the eyes, that had been strained and blinded, _see light:_ light to work, light to fight, light to hope. mark how the rapture breaks away with the name of god: _lord, to the heavens is thy leal love! thy faithfulness to the clouds! thy righteousness is like the mountains of god, thy judgments are the great deep_. _man and beast thou preservest, o lord. how precious is thy leal love, o god! and so the children of men put their trust in the shadow of thy wings. they shall be satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and of the river of thy pleasures thou shall give them to drink. for with thee is the fountain of life, in thy light we see light_. the prayer follows, and closes with the assurance of victory as if already experienced: _continue thy leal love unto them that know thee, and thy righteousness to the upright of heart. let not the foot of pride come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. there are the workers of iniquity fallen, they are flung down and shall not be able to rise_. two remarks remain. a prevailing temper of our own literature makes the method of this psalm invaluable to us. a large and influential number of our writers have lent themselves, with ability and earnestness, to such an analysis of sin as we find in the first four verses of the psalm. the inmost lusts and passions of men's hearts are laid bare with a cool and audacious frankness, and the results are inexorably traced in all their revolting vividness of action and character. i suppose that there has not been a period, at least since the reformation, which has had the real facts of sin so nakedly and fearfully laid before it. the authors of the process call it realism. but it is not the sum of the real, nor anything like it. those studies of sin and wickedness, which our moral microscopes have laid bare, are but puddles in a universe, and the universe is not only law and order, but is pervaded by the character of its maker. god's mercy still reaches to the heavens, and his faithfulness to the clouds. we must resolutely and with 'pious obstinacy' lift our hearts to that, else we perish. i think of one very flagrant tale, in which the selfishness, the lusts and the cruelties of modern men are described with the rarest of power, and so as to reduce the reader to despair, till he realises that the author has emptied the life of which he treats of everything else, except a fair background of nature which is introduced only to exhibit the evil facts in more horrid relief. the author studies sin in a vacuum, an impossible situation. god has been left out, and the conviction of his pardon. left out are the power of man's heart to turn, the gift of penitence, the mysterious operations of the spirit, and the sense of the trustfulness and patience of god with the worst souls of men. these are not less realities than the others; they are within the knowledge of, they bless, every stratum of life in our christian land; they are the biggest realities in the world to-day. let us then meet the so-called realism of our times with this greater realism. let us tell men who exhibit sin and wickedness apart from god and from man's power of penitence, apart from love and from the realised holiness of our human race, that they are working in a vacuum, and their experiment is therefore the most un-real that can be imagined. we may not be able to eliminate the cruel facts of sin from our universe, but do not let us therefore eliminate the rest of the universe from our study of sin. let us be true to the greater realism. again, the whole psalm is on the famous keynote of the epistle to the philippians: _rejoice in the lord_. this is after all the only safe temper for tempted men. by preachers of a theology as narrow as their experience, it is often said that our guilt and native vileness, our unquestioned peril and instability, are such that no man of us can afford to be exultant in this life. but surely, just because of these, we cannot afford to be anything else. whether from the fascination or from the despair of sin, nothing saves like an ardent and enthusiastic belief in the goodness and the love of god. let us strenuously lift the heart to that. let us rejoice and exult in it, and so we shall be safe. but, withal, we must beware of taking a narrow or an abstract view of what that goodness is. the fault of many christians is that they turn to some theological definition, or to some mystical refinement of it, and their hearts are starved. we must seek the loving-kindness of god in all the breadth and open-air of common life. _lord, thou preservest man and beast_. or, as st. paul put it in that same epistle: _whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things_. it is, once more, the greater realism. but behind paul's crowd of glorious facts let us not miss the greatest reality of all, god himself. god's righteousness and love, his grace and patience toward us, become more and more of a wonder as we dwell upon them, and by force of their wonder the most real facts of our experience. _how excellent is thy loving-kindness, o god. rejoice in the lord always, and again i say unto you, rejoice_. psalm lii religion the open air of the soul with the thirty-sixth psalm we may take the fifty-second, which attacks the same problem of evil in pretty much the same temper. it is peculiar in not being addressed, like others, to god or to the psalmist's own soul, but to the wicked man himself. it is, at first at least, neither a prayer nor a meditation, but a challenge and an arraignment of character. some may be disposed to cavil at its bitterness, and to say that for christians it is too full of threats and vengeance. perhaps it is; nay, certainly it is. but there are two noble feelings in it, and two vivid pictures of character. the psalm is inspired by a brave contempt for wickedness in high places, and by a most devout trust in the love of god. and in expressing these two noble tempers, the poet analyses two characters. he analyses the character which is ruled from within by the love of self, and he gives his own experience of a character inspired from without by faith--by faith in the mercy of the living god. we christians too hastily dismiss from our own uses the so-called cursing psalms. it is unfortunate that the translators have so often tempted us to this by exaggerating the violence of the hebrew at the expense of its insight, its discrimination, and its sometimes delicate satire. if only we had a version that produced the exact colours of the original, and if we ourselves had the quick conscience and the honest wit to carry over the ideas into terms suitable to our own day--in which the selfishness of the human heart is the same old thing it ever was, though it uses milder and more subtle means,--then we should feel the touch of a power not merely of dramatic interest but of moral conviction, where we have been too much accustomed to think that we were hearing only ancient rant. so treated, psalms like the fifth, the tenth, the fourteenth, and the fifty-second, which we so often pass over, offended by their violence, become quick and powerful, the very word of god to our own times and hearts. let us take a more literal version of the psalm before us: _why glory in evil, big man? the leal love of god is all day long. thy tongue planneth mischiefs, like a razor sharp-whetted, thou worker of fraud. thou lovest evil more than good, lying than speaking the truth. thou lovest all words of voracity, tongue of deceit. god also shall tear thee down, once for all_, _cut thee out, and pluck thee from the tent, and uproot thee from off the land of the living. that the righteous may see and fear, and at him they shall laugh_. '_lo! the fellow who sets not god for his stronghold, but trusts in the mass of his wealth, is strong in his mischief_.' _but i like an olive-tree, green in god's house, i have trusted in god's leal love for ever and aye. i will praise thee for ever, that thou hast done [this], and i will wait on thy name--for 'tis good-- in face of thy saints_. the character who is challenged is easily made out, and we may recognize how natural he is and how near to ourselves. in the first verse he is called by a name expressing unusual strength or influence--a mighty man, _a hero_. the term may be used ironically, like our 'big fellow', 'big man.' but, whether this is irony or not, the man's bigness had material solidity. he was _rooted in the land of the living,_ he _had abundance of riches._ riches are no sin in themselves, as the exaggerated language of some people of the present day would lead us to imagine. rich men are not always sent to hell, nor poor men always to heaven. as st. augustine remarks with his usual cleverness: 'it was not his poverty but his piety which sent lazarus in the parable to heaven, and when he got there, he found a rich man's bosom to rest in!' riches are no sin in themselves, but, like all forms of strength, a very great and dangerous temptation. this man had yielded. prosperity was so unchanging with him that he had come to trust it, and did not feel the need of trusting anything else. he was strong enough to stand alone: so strong that he tried to stand without god. if he was like many self-centred men of our own time he probably did not admit this. but it is not profession which reveals where a man puts his trust. it is the practice and discipline of life, betraying us by a hundred commonplace ways, in spite of all the orthodoxy we boast. it is sorrow and duty and the call to self-denial. when this man's feelings got low, when he was visited by touches of melancholy--those chills sent forward from the grave to every mortal travelling thither,--when conscience made him weak and fearful, then _he made not god his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches_. with that audacity which the touch of property breeds in us, he said, 'i am sure of to-morrow,' plunged into cruel plans, _gloried in his mischief_, and was himself again. trusting in riches--we all do it, when we seek to drive away uncomfortable fears and the visitations of conscience by self-indulgence; when, instead of saying _i will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help_?--and seeking the steep and arduous consolations of duty, we look into our nearest friends' faces and whine for a sympathy that is often insincere, or lie down in some place of comfort that is stolen or unclean. no man with such habits stops there. this big man _strengthened himself in his wickedness_ and in all manner of guile and cruelty. it is a natural development. the heart which finds life in material wealth is usually certain to go farther and seek for more in the satisfaction of base and sullen appetites. we hear, it is true, a great deal about the softening influence of wealth, and moralists speak of luxury as if its bad effects were negative and it only enervated. but if riches and the habit of trusting to them, if the material comforts of life and complacency in them, only made men sleek and tame--if luxury did nothing but soften and emasculate--the world would have been far more stupid and far less cruel than it is to-day. they are not negative tempers, but very positive and aggressive ones, which the bible associates with a love of wealth, and we have but to remember history to know that the bible is right. luxury may have dulled the combative instincts in man, but it has often nursed the meanly cruel ones. the romans with the rapid growth of their wealth loved the battlefield less; but the sight of the arena, with its struggling gladiators, and beasts tearing women and children, became more of a necessity to their appetites. take two instances. titus was a rough, hardened soldier; but he wept at the horrors which his siege obliged him to inflict on jerusalem. nero was an artist, and fiddled while rome was burning. coddle your boys; you may keep them from wishing to fight their equals, but you will not cure them of torturing animals. idleness means not only sluggishness, but a morbid and criminal desire for sensation, which honest industry would have sweated out of the flesh. money often renders those who have it unconsciously impatient with the slowness of poorer men, and unconsciously insolent about their defects. everywhere, on the high places of history, and within our own humble experience, we perceive the same truth, that materialism, and the temper which trusts in wealth or in success, does not turn men into fat oxen, but into tigers. hence the frequency with which the old testament, and especially the psalms, connect an abundance of wealth with a strength of wickedness, and bracket for the same degree of doom the rich man and the violent one. our psalm is natural in adding to the clause, _trusting in the abundance of riches,_ that other about _strengthening himself in wickedness_. this is the very temper of a prosperous and pampered life: which seeks lust or cruelty not to forget itself, as a stunted and tortured nature may be forgiven for doing, but in order to work off its superfluous blood. observe, too, how much sins of the tongue are mentioned,-, lying, backbiting and the love of swallowing men's reputations whole. _thou lovest all words of voracity, thou tongue of deceit_. we are, too, apt to think that sins of speech most fiercely beset weak and puny characters: men that have no weapon but a sharp and nasty tongue. yet none use their words more recklessly than the strong, who have not been sobered by the rebuffs and uncertainties of life. power and position often make a man trifle with the truth. a big man's word carries far, and he knows it; till the temptation to be dogmatic or satirical, to snub and crush with a word, is as near to him as to a slave-driver is the fourteen-feet thong in his hand, with a line of bare black backs before him. these things are written of ourselves. in his great book on 'democracy in america,' de tocqueville pointed out, more than fifty years ago, the dangers into which the religious middle classes fall by the spread of wealth and comfort. that danger has increased, till for the _rich_ on whom christ called woe, we might well substitute the _comfortable._ at a time when a very moderate income brings within our reach nearly all the resources of civilisation, which of us does not find day by day a dozen distractions that drown for him the voice of conscience: a crowd of men to lose himself in from god and his best friends: half a dozen base comforts, in the lap of which he forgets duty and dreams only of self? comfort makes us all thoughtless, and thoughtlessness is the parent of every cruelty. the psalm makes no attempt to turn this tyrant whom it challenges; it invokes the mercy of god, not to change him, but to show how vain his boasts are, and to give heart to those whom he oppresses. god's mercy endureth for ever; but he must pass away. the righteous shall see his end, and fear and laugh: their satire will have religion in it. but though the psalm does not design this sinner's conversion, its very challenge contains an indication of the means by which he and all selfish people who are like him may be changed to nobler lives. in this respect it has a gospel for us all, which may be thus stated. there are poor invalids who ought to get their health again by seeking the open air and sunshine, but who keep between their bed and their hearthrug, cowering over their fire with the blinds pulled down;--to whom comes the wise doctor, pulls up the blinds, shows them that it is day outside, with the sun shining and the trees growing, and men walking about, and tells them that the health they are trying to get inside, and thereby only making themselves worse invalids, they will get out there. this big man was such a moral invalid, seeking strength within his own riches and qualities. and so doing he had developed the nasty indoor tempers, till it seemed pleasant and satisfactory to him to be spiteful, slanderous and false. meantime, outside the darkened windows of his selfishness, the mercy of god, in which other men gloried and grew strong, rose every day. with one sweep the psalmist tears the curtains down and lets in the sunshine. _the leal love of god is every day_. there, in that commonplace daily light: in that love which is as near you as the open air and as free as the sunshine, are the life and exultation which you seek so vainly within yourself. it was in the sunshine that the psalmist felt himself growing: _but i am like an olive-tree, green in god's house. i trust in the leal love of god for ever and aye_. this open-air figure suggests (though we have no confirmation of the fact) a tree growing in the high temple precincts, as trees to this day grow upon the haram around the great mosque in jerusalem, open to the sunshine and washed by the great rush of wind from the west. the old testament as much as the new haunts the open air for its figures of religion--a tree in full foliage, a tree planted by a river, a river brimming to its banks, the waves of a summer sea. now this is not only because there is nothing else that will reflect the freedom of god's grace and the lavish joy it brings upon the world, but still more because the bible feels the eternal truth, that to win this joy and freedom a man has got to go outside himself, outside his selfishness and other close tempers, outside his feelings and thoughts about himself, and receive the truths of religion as objective to him, taking the knowledge of god's pardon and peace as freely as he takes the sunshine of heaven, the calm of earth in summer, and the cool, strong winds from off the hills. to those old founders of our faith, religion was never man's feelings about religion: it was the love of god. god was not man's thoughts about god, but god himself in his wonderful grace and truth, objective to our hearts. therefore those ancient saints moved to the spirit as the tree rustles to the wind, and as in summer she is green and glad in the sunshine that bathes her, so they rejoiced in the lord, and in his goodness. _i will give thanks, for_ thou _hast done it_. but this getting out of self does not only bring a man into the open air, and to gladness in a god who worketh for him. it gives him the company of all good and noble men. i _will wait on thy name, for it is good, in the presence of thy saints_. what a fellowship faith and unselfishness make a man aware of! * * * * * let us turn back for a moment to the man, to whose close character this open air is offered as a contrast. is it really difficult for us to imagine him? there is not one of us who has not tried this kind of thing again and again,--and has succeeded in it with far less substance than the great man had to come and go upon. he trusted in the abundance of his riches: he lost god for the multitude of his temptations. but for us there is no such excuse. there has been no pleasure too sordid, no comfort too selfish, no profit too mean, no honour too cheap and vulgar, but we have sometimes preferred it, in seeking for happiness, to the infinite and everlasting mercy of our god. we may not be big men, and deserve to have psalms written about us; but in our own little ways we exult in our selfishness and the tempers it breeds in us just as guiltily as he did, and just as foolishly, for god's great love is as near to us, and could as easily chase these vapours from our souls, if we would but open the windows to its air. take one or two commonplace cases that do not require the great capital which this fellow put into his business of sinning, but are quite within reach of your and my very ordinary means of selfishness. you have been overreached in some business competition, or disappointed in getting a post, or foiled along some path of public service. you come home with a natural vexation in your heart: sore at being beaten and anxious about your legitimate interests. it is all right enough. but sit down at the fire for a little and brood over it. shut god out as care and anger can. forget that your bible is at your elbow. think only of your wrong, and it is wonderful how soon you will find spite rising, and envy and the cruellest hate. it is wonderful how quickly plans of revenge will form themselves in your usually slow mind, and how happy they will make you. malice is like brandy to a man's brain, and will send him back with a beaming face to the work he left with scowls. ah, _why boast thyself in mischief, o man? god's leal love is all day long!_ the bible is within reach of you. the lustre is as fresh on the promises as the rain-drops were under the glints of sun this morning. walk there with god in his own garden: all god's steps are comfort and promise to the meek who will walk with him. god is full of gentleness, and his gentleness shall make you great. _i will be as the dew unto israel_. or seek with the master the crowds of men. keep near him in the dust and the crush: watch how he endures the contradiction of sinners, how patient he is with men, how forgiving. watch most of all how he prays. bow the knee like him, and he shall lift thee up a sane and a happy man. to think of it--all that divine fellowship and solace may be ours by opening the pages of a book which lies on every table. _god's love is all the day_. let the other case be for young men and young women. for you the fresh air and sunshine are not yet shut out by the high walls of success or the thick ones of material prosperity. the dust of strife for you has not yet hidden heaven. but we all know that passion can build as solidly as wealth, and that a young heart may be as closely prisoned in a sudden temptation as an old one among the substantial accumulations of a lifetime. what is temptation? i turned to her: she built a house and thought was her swift architect, and falsehood let the curtains fall, and fancy all the tables deck'd. and so we shut the world out, soul and temptation face to face, and perfumed air and music sweet, and soft desire fill'd all the place. o brothers, in such an hour, and it comes to every one of us, think upon the vast world outside, and the walls so magically built will as magically fall. god's sunshine is there, and god's fresh air, to think upon which, with the companies of men and women who walk up and down in it and are fair, is the most sovereign charm against temptation that i know. _why glory in this evil_? put that challenge to your heart in the crisis of every evil passion. _god's mercy is all day long_. think of the love of the father: of his patience with thee, of his trust of thee; think of the love of the redeemer, who gave himself for thy life; think of the great objective truths of religion--righteousness, joy and peace in the holy ghost. or if these seem unsubstantial thoughts, that flash and fade again like clouds on the western sky at evening, come out among the flesh-and-blood proofs of them which walk our own day. frequent the pure, strong men and women who are in sight of us all, fair on every countryside, radiant in every city crowd. hearken to the greater spirits who by their songs and books come down and speak with the lowliest and most fallen. and do not forget the holy dead, nor doubt that though unseen they are with us still. _i will wait on thy name, for 'tis good, in face of thy saints._ psalm cxxi the ministry of the hills and all great things we catch the key-note of this psalm if we read the words _whence cometh my help_ not as a statement but as a question. our older version takes them as a statement; it makes the psalmist look to the hills, as if his help broke and shouted from them all like waterfalls. but with the revised version we ought to read: _i will lift mine eyes unto the mountains--from whence cometh my help?_ the psalmist looks up, not because his help is stored there, but because the sight of the hills stirs within him an intense hope. his heart is immediately full of the prayer, _whence cometh my help_? and of the answer, _my help is from the lord, that made heaven and earth_. we need not wish to fix a locality or a date to this psalm. it is enough that the singer had a mountain skyline in view, and that below in the shadows, so dark that we cannot make out their features, lay god's church and people. they were threatened, and there was neither help nor hope of help among themselves. perhaps it was one of those frequent periods in the life of israel, in which the religious institutions of the people were so abased that the psalmist could see in them no pledge nor provocation of hope. indeed, these institutions may have been altogether overthrown. there was no leader on whom god had set his seal, and the national life had nothing to raise the heart, but was full of base thoughts and paltry issues that dissipate faith, and render the interference of god an improbable thing. so the psalmist lifted his thoughts to the sacraments which god has fixed in the framework of his world. he did not identify his help with the hills--no true israelite could have done that,--but the sight of them started his hope and filled his heart with the desire to pray. this may have happened at sunrise, when, even more than at other hours, mountains fulfil the ministry of hope. below them all was in darkness; it was still night, but the peaks saw the morning, and the signal of its coming fell swiftly down their flanks. in this case the psalm is a matin-song, a character which the rest of the verses carry out. or at any other hour of the day, it may simply have been the high, clear outline of the hills which inspired the psalm--that firm step between heaven and earth, that margin of a world of possibility beyond. a prophet has said, _how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring good tidings!_ but to our psalmist the mountains spread a threshold for a divine arrival. up there god himself may be felt to be afoot. now to a pure heart and a hungry heart this is always what a mountain view effects. 'a hill-top,' says a recent writer, 'is a moral as well as a physical elevation.' he is right, or men would not have worshipped on hill-tops, nor high places have become synonymous with sacred ones. whether we climb them or gaze at them, the mountains produce in us that mingling of moral and physical emotion in which the temper of true worship consists. they seclude us from trifles, and give the mind the fellowship of greatness. they inspire patience and peace; they speak of faithfulness and guardianship. but chiefly the mountains are sacraments of hope. that high, steadfast line--how it raises the spirits, and lifts the heart from care; how early it signals the day, how near it brings heaven! to men of old its margin excited thoughts of an enchanted world beyond; its clear step between heaven and earth made easy the imagination of god descending among men. so it is here. at the sight of the hills our psalmist's hope--instead of lying asleep in confidence of a help too far away to be vivid, or dying of starvation because that help is so long of coming--leaps to her feet, all watch and welcome for an instant arrival. _whence cometh my help? my help cometh from the lord, that made heaven and earth_. this is not fancy; it is an attitude of real life. this is not a poet with a happy phrase for his idea: it is a sentry at his difficult post, challenging the signal, and welcoming the arrival, of that help which makes all the difference to life. but we may widen the application of the psalmist's words far beyond the hills. this is a big thing to which he lifts his eyes to feed his hope. god is unseen; so he betakes himself to the biggest thing he can see. and therein is a lesson which we need all across our life. for it is just because, instead of lifting our eyes to the big things around us, we busy and engross ourselves with trifles, that the practical enthusiasm which beats through this psalm is failing among us, and that we have so little faith in god's readiness to act, and to act speedily, within the circle of our own experience. trifles, however innocent or dutiful they may be, do not move within us the fundamental pieties. they reveal no stage worthy for god to act upon. they give no help to the imagination to realise him as near. a church which never lifts her eyes above her own denominational details, petty differences in doctrine or government, petty matters of ritual and posture, cannot continue to believe in the nearness of the living god. the strain on faith is too great to last. the reason recoils from admitting that god can help on such battle-fields as those on which the churches are often so busy, that he can come to help such causes as the sects, neglectful of the real interests of the world, too often stoop to champion. and so the churches insensibly get settled in far-off, abstract views of god, and are sapped of the primal and practical energies of religion. whereas it is evident that in the religious communities which lift their eyes above their low hedges to the high hills of god--to the great simple outlines of his kingdom, to the ideals and destiny which god has set before mankind--in such churches faith in his nearness to the world and in his readiness to help must always abound. to men who have an eye for the big things of earth, god will always seem to be afoot upon it. they are conscious of an arena worthy for him to descend upon, and of causes worthy for him to interfere in. it is no shock to their reason, no undue strain upon their imagination, to feel the almighty and the all-loving come down to earth, when earth has such horizons and such issues. turning to ourselves as individuals, we may ask why we have such distant notions of god, so shy a faith of his coming within the circle of our own life and work? why are our prayers so formal, so empty of the expectation of an immediate and divine answer? why is our attitude at our work so destitute of practical enthusiasm? because we, too, are not lifting our eyes to the hills. we are looking for nothing but little things, and therefore we see nowhere any threshold or field worthy of god. how can the sense that the living god is near to our life, that he is interested in it and willing to help it, survive in us, if our life be full of petty things? absorption in trifles, attention only to the meaner aspects of life, is killing more faith than is killed by aggressive unbelief. for if all a man sees of life be his own interests, if all he sees of home be its comforts, if all he sees of religion be the outlines of his own denomination, the complexion of his preacher's doctrine, the agreeableness and taste of his fellow-worshippers--to such a man god must always seem far away, for in those things there is no call upon either mind or heart to feel god near. but if, instead of limiting ourselves to trifles, we resolutely and 'with pious obstinacy' lift our eyes to the hills--whether to those great mountain-tops of history which the dawn of the new heavens has already touched, periods of faith and action that signal to our more forward but lower ages the promise of his coming; or to the great essentials of human experience that at sunrise, noon and evening remain the same through all ages; or to the ideals of truth and justice; to the possibilities of human nature about us; to the stature of the highest characters within our sight; to the bulk and sweep of the people's life; to the destinies of our own nation that still rise high above all party dust and strife--then we shall see thresholds prepared for a divine arrival, conditions upon which we can realise god acting. our hope will spring, an eager sentinel, as if she already heard upon them all the footfalls of his coming. these lines may meet the eyes of some who have lost their faith, and are sorry and weary to have lost it. whether the blame be outside yourselves, in the littleness of many of the prevailing aspects of religious life, and the crowding of our religious arenas with the pettiest of interests, or within yourselves, in your own mean and slovenly views of life, your indolence to extricate details and discriminate the large eternal issues among them--there is for you but one way back to faith. lift your eyes to the hills. let your attention haunt the spots where life rises most near to heaven, and your hearts will again become full of hopes and reasons for god being at work upon earth. let those who, still in their youth, have preserved their faith and fullness of hope, keep looking up. amid all the cynicism and the belittling of life, strenuously take the highest views of life. amid all the selfishness and impatience, which in our day consider life upon its lowest levels, and there break it up into short and selfish interests, strenuously lift your eyes and sweep with them the main outlines, summits and issues. may no man lose sight of the hills for want of looking up, till at the last he is laid upon his back,--and then must look up whether he has done so before or not--and in the evening clearness and evening quiet those great outlines stand forth before his eyes--stand forth but for a few moments and are lost for ever in the falling night. many men have bravely lifted their eyes to the hills, who have felt nothing come back upon them save a vague wonder and influence of purity. they have been struck with an awe to which they could give no name, with a health and energy which they could only ascribe to physical infection. but to this psalmist the hope and worship which the hills excited were satisfied by the revelation of a person. above earth and her hills he saw a character. there have been revelations of god more rich and brilliant than this one. but its simplicity suits the psalmist's point of view. he is looking to the hills. it is on that high line he sees his helper appearing. now we all know how a figure looks upon a skyline. we see just the outline of it--a silhouette, as it were: no details, expression, voice nor colour, but only an attitude. this is all the psalmist sees of god on that high threshold against the light--his attitude. the attitude is that of a sentinel. the lord is thy keeper--thy watchman. the figure is familiar in palestine, especially where the tents of the nomads lie. the camp or flock lies low among the tumbled hills, unable to see far, and subject, in the intricate land, to sudden surprise. but sentinels are posted on eminences round about, erect and watchful. this is the figure which the psalmist sees his help assume upon the skyline to which he has lifted his eyes. compared with other experiences of god, this outline of him may seem bare. yet if we feel the fact of it with freshness of heart and imagination, what may it not do for us? life may be hallowed by no thought more powerfully than by this, that it is watched: nor peace secured by any stronger trust than that the almighty assumes responsibility for it; nor has work ever been inspired by keener sense of honour than when we feel that god gives us freedom and safety for it. these are the fundamental pieties of the soul; and no elaborateness of doctrine can compensate for the loss of fresh convictions of their truth. _the lord is thy keeper_. if men had only not left this article out of their creeds when they added all the rest, how changed the religious life of to-day would have been!--how simple, how strenuous, how possibly heroic! _the lord is thy keeper_. what sense of proportion and what tact does the thought of those sleepless thoughts bring upon our life! how quickly it restores the instinct to discriminate between what is essential and what is not essential in faith and morals; that instinct, from the loss of which the religious world of to-day suffers so much. how hard does it make us with ourselves that his eyes are on us, yet how hopeful that he counts us worth protecting! when we realise, that not only many of the primal forces of character, but its true balance and proportion, are thus due to so simple a faith in god, we understand the insistence laid upon this by the prophets and by christ. there is no truth which the prophets press more steadily upon israel than that all their national life lies in the sight and on the care of god. the burden of many prophetic orations is no more than this--you are defended, you are understood, you are watched, by god. and in the sermon on the mount, and in that address to the disciples now given in the tenth of matthew, there is no message more clear or frequent than that god cares for us, has to be reckoned with by all our enemies, is aware of everything that befalls us, and while he relieves us from responsibility in the things that are too great for us, makes us the more to feel our responsibility for things within our power--in short, that the lord is our keeper. of course we shall be able to realise this, according as we realise life. if we have a heart for the magnitudes of life, it will not seem vain to believe that god himself should guard it. if we keep looking to the hills, god shall be very clear upon them as our keeper. but this distant view of god upon the skyline, full as it is of discipline and of peace, does not satisfy the psalmist. to him the lord is not only israel's keeper or sentinel, but the lord is also _thy shade on thy right hand: the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night._ the origin of these expressions is vague, but their application here is vivid enough. a sentinel is too far away, and is, physically, too narrow a figure to fulfil man's imagination of god. the psalmist requires something near enough to express both intimacy and shelter. so he calls god the comrade as well as the sentinel of his people; their champion as well as their watchman. the _shade upon thy right hand_ is of course the shade upon the fighting or working arm, to preserve it from exposure, and in the full freedom of its power. now it is never ideas about god, nor even aspirations after him, which in the real battle of life keep us fresh and unexhausted. ideas, and even aspirations, strain as much as they lift. they give the mind its direction, but by themselves they cannot carry it all the way. nor is the influence of a personality sufficient if that personality remain far off. reverence alone never saved any human soul in the storm of life. it is one by our side whom we need. it is by the sense of trust, of sympathy, of comradeship, of fighting together in the ranks, that our strength is thrilled and our right hand preserved in freshness. without all this between us and bare heaven, we must in the end weary and wither. twofold is the experience in which we especially need such compassion and fellowship--in the time of responsibility and in the time of temptation. these are the two great lonelinesses of life--the loneliness of the height and the loneliness of the deep--in which the heart needs to be sure of more than being remembered and watched. the loneliness of the height, when god has led us to the duty of a great decision, or given us the charge of other lives, or sent us on the quest of some truth, or lifted us to a vision and ideal. the king, the father, the thinker, the artist, all know this loneliness of the height, which no human fellow can share, no human heart fully sympathise with. then it is that, with another psalmist, the heart, exposed to the bare heaven, cries out for something higher than itself to come between the heaven and it: _what time my heart is overwhelmed do thou lead me unto the rock that is higher than i_; and god answers us by being himself _a shade upon the right hand, and the sun shall not smite by day, nor the moon by night_. and there is the loneliness of the deep, when we are plunged into the pit of our hearts to fight with terrible temptations--a conflict no other man knows about or can help us in. shall god, who sees us fighting there, and falling under the sense of our helplessness, leave us to fight alone? the lord is thy shade on thy right hand; thy comrade, fighting with thee, his presence shall keep thy heart brave and thine arm fresh. it is a truth enforced through the whole of the old testament. god is not a god far away. he descends, he comes to our side: he battles for and suffers with his own. these then are the main thoughts of this psalm. what new authority and vividness have jesus christ and his cross put into them? there are few of the psalms which the early christians more frequently employed of christ. on the lintel of an ancient house in hauran i once read the inscription: 'o jesus christ, be the shelter and defence of the home and of the whole family, and bless their incoming and outgoing.' how may we also sing this psalm of christ? by remembering the new pledges he has given us, that god's thoughts and god's heart are with us. by remembering the infinite degree, which the cross has revealed, not only of the interest god takes in our life, but of the responsibility he himself assumes for its eternal issues. the cross was no new thing. the cross was the putting of the love of god, of the blood of christ, into the old fundamental pieties of the human heart, the realising by jesus in himself of the dearest truths about god. look up, then, and sing this psalm of him. can we lift our eyes to any of the hills without seeing his figure upon them? is there a human ideal, duty or hope, with which jesus is not inseparably and for ever identified? is there a human experience--the struggle of the individual heart in temptation, the pity of the multitude, the warfare against the strongholds of wickedness--from which we can imagine him absent? no; it is impossible for any high outline of morality or religion to break upon the eyes of our race, it is impossible for any field of righteous battle, any floor of suffering to unroll, without the vision of christ upon it. he dominates our highest aspirations, and is felt by our side in our deepest sorrows. there is no loneliness, whether of height or of depth, which he does not enter by the side of his own. who has warned us like christ? to this day he stands the great sentinel of civilisation. if all within the camp do not acknowledge him, no new thing starts up in its midst, no new thing comes upon it from outside, which he does not challenge. his judgment is still the highest, clearest, safest the world has ever known; and each new effort of service, each new movement of knowledge, is determined by its worth to his kingdom. who has assumed responsibility for our life as christ has? who has taken upon himself the safety and the honour, not of the little tribe for whom this psalm was first sung, but of the whole of the children of men! he called about himself our weariness, he lifted our sorrow, he disposed of our sin--as only god can call or lift or dispose. nothing exhausted his pity, or his confidence to deal with us; nothing ever betrayed a fault in his character, or belied the trust his people put in him. _he suffers not thy foot_ _to be moved; he neither slumbers nor sleeps_. for all this we sing the psalm of christ. we know that so long as we have our conversation among the lofty things of life, his dominating presence grows only the more clear; and so long as we are beset by things adverse and tempting, his sympathy and his prevailing grace become the more sure. _the lord shall preserve thee from all evil. he shall preserve thy soul_. _the lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore._ * * * * * edinburgh university press t. and a. constable, printers to her majesty by the same author the historical geography of the holy land with six maps, specially prepared. _seventh thousand. vo, cloth_, _ s_. with new index and additions, and corrections. 'a very noteworthy contribution to the study of sacred history, based upon the three indispensable conditions of personal acquaintance with the land, a study of the explorations, discoveries, and decipherments ... and the employment of the results of biblical criticism.'--_times_. 'professor smith is well equipped at all points for this work. he is abreast of the latest findings of scripture exegesis, and of geographical survey, and of archæological exploration; and he has himself travelled widely over palestine. the value of the work is incalculably increased by the series of geographical maps, the first of the kind representing the whole lift and lie of the land by gradations of colour.'--_scotsman_. hodder & stoughton the book of isaiah vol. i.--chaps, i.--xxxix. _crown vo, cloth, s. d_. 'this is a very attractive book. mr. george adam smith has such a mastery of the scholarship of his subject that it would be sheer impertinence for most scholars, even if tolerable hebraists, to criticise his translations. all we desire is to let english readers know how very lucid, impressive, and, indeed, how vivid a study of isaiah is within their reach.... we will give an example of both aspects of this most fascinating book.'--_spectator_. vol. ii.--chaps, xl.--lxvi. _crown vo, cloth, s. d_. 'it is needless to mention the literary merits which in reviews of the first volume of this work were so abundantly recognised. this is, indeed, one of the few theological works which it is a pure pleasure to read; nor need one in the case of the present volume add the qualifying remark that the homiletical element is somewhat unduly large. the scholarship, too, is still as accurate as might be expected from mr. smith's excellent training.'--_academy_. hodder & stoughton the book of the twelve prophets %_crown vo, cloth, s. d_%. %vol.i.--amos, hosea, and micah%. %with an introduction and a sketch of prophecy in early israel.% 'the work of an interesting writer, an excellent theologian, whose previous book on isaiah showed the same qualities of fairness, historical imagination, and enthusiasm for a great subject that now appear in the handling of these precious fragments from the lesser prophets of israel. each separate prophecy calls out an appropriate literary and historical commentary written with a true sense for life and reality, and with that effort to get at the psychological and historical background which characterises all that is best in modern critical work.'--_times_. the book of the twelve prophets vol. ii. _crown vo, s. d_. completing 'the expositor's bible,' in volumes. the preaching of the old testament to the age _crown vo, cloth, s_. hodder & stoughton the psalms _in three volumes_ by alexander maclaren, d.d. _crown vo, cloth, s. d. each_. in 'the expositor's bible' series. * * * * * a biblical commentary on the psalms by professor franz delitzsch translated by the rev. david eaton, m.a. from the latest edition, and specially revised by the author. _in three volumes crown vo, each s. d_. * * * * * the psalter by joseph parker, d.d. vol. xii. in 'the people's bible.' _demy vo, s_. * * * * * hodder & stoughton expositions of holy scripture psalms by alexander maclaren, d. d., litt. d. volume i: psalms _i to xlix_ contents blessedness and praise (psalm i. , ; cl. ) a staircase of three steps (psalm v. , ) one saying from three men (psalm x. ; xvi. ; xxx. ) man's true treasure in god (psalm xvi. , ) god with us, and we with god (psalm xvi. , ) the two awakings (psalm xvii. ; lxxiii. ) secret faults (psalm xix. ) open sins (psalm xix. ) feasting on the sacrifice (psalm xxii. ) the shepherd king of israel (psalm xxiii. - ) a great question and its answer (psalm xxiv. ) the god who dwells with men (psalm xxiv. - ) guidance in judgment (psalm xxv. , ) a prayer for pardon and its plea (psalm xxv. ) god's guests (psalm xxvii. ) 'seek ye'--'i will seek' (psalm xxvii. , ) the two guests (psalm xxx. ) 'be ... for thou art' (psalm xxxi. , , r.v.) 'into thy hands' (psalm xxxi. ) goodness wrought and goodness laid up (psalm xxxi. ) hid in light (psalm xxxi. ) a threefold thought of sin and forgiveness (psalm xxxii. , ) the encamping angel (psalm xxxiv. ) struggling and seeking (psalm xxxiv. ) no condemnation (psalm xxxiv. ) sky, earth, and sea: a parable of god (psalm xxxvi. - ) what men find beneath the wings of god (psalm xxxvi. , ) the secret of tranquillity (psalm xxxvii. , , ) the bitterness and blessedness of the brevity of life (psalm xxxix. , ) two innumerable series (psalm xl. , ) thirsting for god (psalm xlii. ) the psalmist's remonstrance with his soul (psalm xliii. ) the king in his beauty (psalm xlv. - , r.v.) the portrait of the bride (psalm xlv. - , r.v.) the city and river of god (psalm xlvi. - ) the lord of hosts, the god of jacob (psalm xlvi. ) a song of deliverance (psalm xlviii. - ) two shepherds and two flocks (psalm xlix. ; rev. vii. ) blessedness and praise 'blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. . but his delight is in the law of the lord.' --psalm i. , . 'let every thing that hath breath praise the lord. praise ye the lord.'--psalm cl. . the psalter is the echo in devout hearts of the other portions of divine revelation. there are in it, indeed, further disclosures of god's mind and purposes, but its especial characteristic is--the reflection of the light of god from brightened faces and believing hearts. as we hold it to be inspired, we cannot simply say that it is man's response to god's voice. but if the rest of scripture may be called the speech of the spirit of god _to_ men, this book is the answer of the spirit of god _in_ men. these two verses which i venture to lay side by side present in a very remarkable way this characteristic. it is not by accident that they stand where they do, the first and last verses of the whole collection, enclosing all, as it were, within a golden ring, and bending round to meet each other. they are the summing up of the whole purpose and issue of god's revelation to men. the first and second psalms echo the two main portions of the old revelation--the law and the prophets. the first of them is taken up with the celebration of the blessedness and fruitful, stable being of the man who loves the law of the lord, as contrasted with the rootless and barren life of the ungodly, who is like the chaff. the second is occupied with the contemplation of the divine 'decree' by which the coming king is set in god's 'holy hill of zion,' and of the blessedness of 'all they who put their trust in him,' as contrasted with the swift destruction that shall fall on the vain imaginations of the rebellious heathen and banded kings of earth. the words of our first text, then, may well stand at the beginning of the psalter. they express the great purpose for which god has given his law. they are the witness of human experience to the substantial, though partial, accomplishment of that purpose. they rise in buoyant triumph over that which is painful and apparently opposed to it; and in spite of sorrow and sin, proclaim the blessedness of the life which is rooted in the law of the lord. the last words of the book are as significant as its first. the closing psalms are one long call to praise--they probably date from the time of the restoration under ezra and nehemiah, when, as we know, 'the service of song' was carefully re-established, and the harps which had hung silent upon the willows by the rivers of babylon woke again their ancient melodies. these psalms climb higher and higher in their rapturous call to all creatures, animate and inanimate, on earth and in heaven, to praise him. the golden waves of music and song pour out ever faster and fuller. at last we hear this invocation to every instrument of music to praise him, responded to, as we may suppose, by each, in turn as summoned, adding its tributary notes to the broadening river of harmony--until all, with gathered might of glad sound blended with the crash of many voices, unite in the final words, 'let every thing that hath breath praise the lord. praise ye the lord.' i. we have here a twofold declaration of god's great purpose in all his self-revelation, and especially in the gospel of his son. our first text may be translated as a joyful exclamation, 'oh! the blessedness of the man--whose delight is in the law of the lord.' our second is an invocation or a command. the one then expresses the purpose which god secures by his gift of the law; the other the purpose which he summons us to fulfil by the tribute of our hearts and songs--man's happiness and god's glory. his purpose is man's blessedness. that is but another way of saying, god is love. for love, as we know it, is eminently the desire for the happiness of the person on whom it is fixed. and unless the love of god be like ours, however it may transcend it, there is no revelation of him to our hearts at all. if he be love, then he 'delights in the prosperity' of his children. and that purpose runs through all his acts. for perfect love is all-pervasive, and even with us men, it rules the whole being; nor does he love at all who seeks the welfare of the heart he clings to by fits and starts, by some of his acts and not by others. when god comes forth from the unvisioned light, which is thick darkness, of his own eternal, self-adequate being, and flashes into energy in creation, providence, or grace, the law of his working and his purpose are one, in all regions. the unity of the divine acts depends on this--that all flow from one deep source, and all move to one mighty end. standing on the height to which his own declarations of his own nature lift our feebleness, we can see how the 'river of god that waters the garden' and 'parts' into many 'heads,' gushes from one fountain. one of the psalms puts what people call the 'philosophy' of creation and of providence very clearly, in accordance with this thought--that the love of god is the source, and the blessedness of man the end, of all his work: 'to him that made great lights; for his mercy endureth for ever. to him that slew mighty kings; for his mercy endureth for ever.' creation, then, is the effluence of the loving heart of god. though the sacred characters be but partially legible to us now, what he wrote, on stars and flowers, on the infinitely great and the infinitely small, on the infinitely near and the infinitely far off, with his creating hand, was the one inscription--god is love. and as in nature, so in providence. the origination, and the support, and the direction of all things, are the works and the heralds of the same love. it is printed in starry letters on the sky. it is graven on the rocks, and breathed by the flowers. it is spoken as a dark saying even by sorrow and pain. the mysteries of destructive and crushing providences have come from the same source. and he who can see with the psalmist the ever-during mercy of the lord, as the reason of creation and of judgments, has in his hands the golden key which opens all the locks in the palace chambers of the great king. he only hath penetrated to the secret of things material, and stands in the light at the centre, who understands that all comes from the one source--god's endless desire for the blessedness of his creatures. but while all god's works do thus praise him by testifying that he seeks to bless his creatures, the loftiest example of that desire is, of course, found in his revelation of himself to men's hearts and consciences, to men's spirits and wills. that mightiest act of love, beginning in the long-past generations, has culminated in him in whom 'dwelleth the whole fulness of the godhead bodily,' and in whose work is all the love--the perfect, inconceivable, patient, omnipotent love of our redeeming god. and then, remember that this is not inconsistent with or contradicted by the sterner aspects of that revelation, which cannot be denied, and ought not to be minimised or softened. _here_, on the right hand, are the flowery slopes of the mount of blessing; _there_, on the left, the barren, stern, thunder-riven, lightning-splintered pinnacles of the mount of cursing. every clear note of benediction hath its low minor of imprecation from the other side. between the two, overhung by the hopes of the one, and frowned upon and dominated by the threatenings of the other, is pitched the little camp of our human life, and the path of our pilgrimage runs in the trough of the valley between. and yet--might we not go a step farther, and say that above the parted summits stretches the one overarching blue, uniting them both, and their roots deep down below the surface interlace and twine together? that is to say, the threatenings and rebukes, the acts of retributive judgment, which are contained in the revelation of god, are no limitation nor disturbance of the clear and happy faith that all which we behold is full of blessing, and that all comes from the father's hand. they are the garb in which his love needs to array itself when it comes in contact with man's sin and man's evil. the love of god appears no less when it teaches us in grave sad tones that 'the wages of sin is death,' than when it proclaims that 'the gift of god is eternal life.' love threatens that it may never have to execute its threats. love warns that we may be wise in time. love prophesies that its sad forebodings may not be fulfilled. and love smites with lighter strokes of premonitory chastisements, that we may never need to feel the whips of scorpions. remember, too, that these sterner aspects both of law and of gospel point this lesson--that we shall very much misunderstand god's purpose if we suppose it to be blessedness for us men _anyhow_, irrespective altogether of character. some people seem to think that god loves us so much, as they would say--so little, so ignobly, as i would say--as that he only desires us to be happy. they seem to think that the divine love is tarnished unless it provides for men's felicity, whether they are god-loving and god-like or no. thus the solemn and majestic love of the father in heaven is to be brought down to a weak good nature, which only desires that the child shall cease crying and be happy, and does not mind by what means that end is reached. god's purpose _is_ blessedness; but, as this very text tells us, not blessedness anyhow, but one which will not and cannot be given by god to those who walk in the way of sinners. his love desires that we should be holy, and 'followers of god as dear children'--and the blessedness which it bestows comes from pardon and growing fellowship with him. it can no more fall on rebellious hearts than the pure crystals of the snow can lie and sparkle on the hot, black cone of a volcano. the other text that i have read sets forth another view of god's purpose. god seeks our praise. the glory of god is the end of all the divine actions. now, that is a statement which no doubt is irrefragable, and a plain deduction from the very conception of an infinite being. but it may be held in such connections, and spoken with such erroneous application, and so divorced from other truths, that instead of being what it is in the bible, good news, it shall become a curse and a lie. it may be so understood as to describe not our father in heaven, but an almighty devil! but, when the thought that god's purpose in all his acts is his own glory, is firmly united with that other, that his purpose in all his acts is our blessing, then we begin to understand how full of joy it may be for us. his glory is sought by him in the manifestation of his loving heart, mirrored in our illuminated and gladdened hearts. such a glory is not unworthy of infinite love. it has nothing in common with the ambitious and hungry greed of men for reputation or self-display. that desire is altogether ignoble and selfish when it is found in human hearts; and it would be none the less ignoble and selfish if it were magnified into infinitude, and transferred to the divine. but to say that god's glory is his great end, is surely but another way of saying that he is love. the love that seeks to bless us desires, as all love does, that it should be known for what it is, that it should be recognised in our glad hearts, and smiled back again from our brightened faces. god desires that we should know him, and so have eternal life; he desires that knowing him, we should love him, and loving should praise, and so should glorify him. he desires that there should be an interchange of love bestowing and love receiving, of gifts showered down and of praise ascending, of fire falling from the heavens and sweet incense, from grateful hearts, going up in fragrant clouds acceptable unto god. it is a sign of a fatherly heart that he '_seeketh_ such to worship him'. he desires to be glorified by our praise, because he loves us so much. he commences with an offer, he advances to a command. he gives first, and then (not till then) he comes seeking fruit from the 'trees' which are 'the planting of the lord, that he might be glorified.' his plea is not 'the vineyard belongs to me, and i have a right to its fruits,' but 'what could have been done more to my vineyard, that i have not done in it?--judge between me and my vineyard.' first, he showers down blessings; then, he looks for the revenue of praise! ii. we may also take these passages as giving us a twofold expression of the actual effects of god's revelation, especially in the gospel, even here upon earth. the one text is the joyful exclamation built upon experience and observation. the other is a call which is answered in some measure even by voices that are often dumb in unthankfulness, often broken by sobs, often murmuring in penitence. god does actually, though not completely, make men blessed here. our text sums up the experience of all the devout hearts and lives whose emotions are expressed in the psalms. he who wrote this psalm would preface the whole book by words into which the spirit of the book is distilled. it will have much to say of sorrow and pain. it will touch many a low note of wailing and of grief. there will be complaints and penitence, and sighs almost of despair before it closes. but this which he puts first is the note of the whole. so it is in our histories. they will run through many a dark and desert place. we shall have bitterness and trials in abundance, there will be many an hour of sadness caused by my own evil, and many a hard struggle with it. but high above all these mists and clouds will rise the hope that seeks the skies, and deep beneath all the surface agitations of storms and currents there will be the unmoved stillness of the central ocean of peace in our hearts. in the 'valley of weeping' we may still be 'blessed' if 'the ways' are in our hearts, and if we make of the very tears 'a well,' drawing refreshment from the very trials. with all its sorrows and pains, its fightings and fears, its tribulations in the world, and its chastenings from a father's hand, the life of a christian is a happy life, and 'the joy of the lord' remains with his servants. more than twenty centuries have passed since that psalm was written. as many stretched dim behind the psalmist as he sang. he was gathering up in one sentence the spirit of the past, and confirming it by his own life's history. and has any one that has lived since then stood up and said--'behold! i have found it otherwise. i have waited on god, and he has not heard my cry. i have served him, and that for nought. i have trusted in him, and been disappointed. i have sought his face--in vain. and i say, from my own experience, that the man who trusts in him is _not_ blessed'? not one, thank god! the history of the past, so far as this matter is concerned, may be put in one sentence 'they looked unto him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed,' and as for the present, are there not some of us who can say, 'this poor man cried, and the lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles'? brethren! make the experiment for yourselves. test this experience by your own simple affiance and living trust in jesus christ. we have the experience of all generations to encourage us. what has blessed them is enough for you and me. like the meal and the oil, which were the prophet's resource in famine, yesterday's supply does not diminish to-morrow's store. we, too, may have all that gladdened the hearts and stayed the spirits of the saints of old. 'oh! taste and see that god is good.' 'blessed is the man that trusteth in him.' so, too, god's gift produces man's praise. what is it that he desires from us? nothing but our thankful recognition and reception of his benefits. we honour god by taking the full cup of salvation which he commends to our lips, and by calling, while we drink, upon the name of the lord. our true response to his word, which is essentially a proffer of blessing to us, is to open our hearts to receive, and, receiving, to render grateful acknowledgment. the echo of love which gives and forgives, is love which accepts and thanks. we have but to lift up our empty and impure hands, opened wide to receive the gift which he lays in them--and though they be empty and impure, yet 'the lifting up of our hands' is 'as the evening sacrifice'; our sense of need stands in the place of all offerings. the stained thankfulness of our poor hearts is accepted by him who inhabits the praises of eternity, and yet delights in the praises of israel. he bends from heaven to give, and all he asks is that we should take. he only seeks our thankfulness--but he does seek it. and wherever his grace is discerned, and his love is welcomed, there praise breaks forth, as surely as streams pour from the cave of the glacier when the sun of summer melts it, or earth answers the touch of spring with flowers. and that effect is produced, notwithstanding all the complaints and sighs and tears which sometimes choke our praise. it _is_ produced even while these last; the psalms of thanksgiving are not all reserved for the end of the book. but even in those which read like the very sobs of a broken heart, there is ever present some tone of grateful acknowledgment of god's mercy. he sends us sorrow, and he wills that we should weep--but they should be tears like david's, who, at the lowest point of his fortunes, when he plaintively besought god, 'put thou my tears into thy bottle'--could say in the same breath, 'thy vows are upon me, o god: i will render praises unto thee.' god works on our souls that we may have the consciousness of sin, and he wills that we should come with broken and contrite hearts, and like the king of israel wail out our confessions and supplications--'have mercy upon me, o god! according to thy loving-kindness.' but, like him, we should even in our lowliest abasement, when our hearts are bruised, be able to say along with our contrition, 'open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.' our sorrows are never so great that they hide our mercies. the sky is never so covered with clouds that neither sun nor stars appear for many days. and in every christian heart the low tones of lamentation and confession are blended with grateful praise. so it is even in the darkest moments, whilst the blast of misfortune and misery is as a storm against the wall. but a brighter hope even for our life here rises from these words, if we think of the place which they hold in the whole book. they are the last words. whatever other notes have been sounded in its course, all ends in this. the winter's day has had its melancholy grey sky, with many a bitter dash of snow and rain--but it has stormed itself out, and at eventide, a rent in the clouds reveals the sun, and it closes in peaceful clearness of light. the note of gladness heard at the beginning, 'oh! the blessedness of the man that delights in the law of the lord,' holds on persistently, like a subdued and almost bewildered undercurrent of sweet sound amid all the movements of some colossal symphony, through tears and sobs, confession and complaint, and it springs up at the close triumphant, like the ruddy spires of a flame long smothered, and swells and broadens, and draws all the intricate harmonies into its own rushing tide. some of you remember the great musical work which has these very words for its theme. it begins with the call, 'all that hath life and breath, praise ye the lord,' and although the gladness saddens into the plaintive cry of a soul sick with hope deferred, 'will the night soon pass?' yet, ere the close, all discords are reconciled, and at last, with assurance firmer for the experience of passing sorrows, loud as the voice of many waters and sweet as harpers harping with their harps, the joyful invocation peals forth again, and all ends, as it does in a christian man's life, and as it does in this book, with 'praise ye the lord.' iii. we have here also a twofold prophecy of the perfection of heaven. whilst it is true that both of these purposes are accomplished here and now, it is also true that their accomplishment is but partial, and that therefore for their fulfilment we have to lift our eyes beyond this world of imperfect faith, of incomplete blessedness, of interrupted praise. whether the psalmist looked forward thus we do not know. but for us, the very shortcomings of our joys and of our songs are prophetic of the perfect and perpetual rapture of the one, and the perfect and perpetual music of the other. we know that he who has given us so much will not stay his hand until he has perfected that which concerns us. we know that he who has taught our dumb hearts to magnify his name will not cease till 'out of the lips of babes and sucklings, he has perfected praise.' we know that the pilgrims in whose hearts are the ways are blessed, and we are sure that a fuller blessedness must belong to those who have reached the journey's end. and so these words give us a twofold aspect of that future on which our longing hopes may well fix. it is the perfection of man's blessedness. then the joyous exclamation of our first text, which we have often had to strive hard not to disbelieve, will be no more a truth of faith but a truth of experience. here we have had to trust that it was so, even when we could scarce cleave to the confidence. there, memory will look back on our wanderings through this great wilderness, and, enlightened by the issue of them all, will speak only of mercy and goodness as our angel guides all our lives. the end will crown the work. pure unmingled consciousness of bliss will fill all hearts, and break into the old exclamation, which we had sometimes to stifle sobs ere we could speak on earth. when he says, 'come in! ye blessed of my father,' all our tears and fears, and pains and sins, will be forgotten, and we shall but have to say, in wonder and joy, 'blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee.' it is the perfection of god's praise. we may possibly venture to see in these wonderful words of our text a dim and far-off hint of a possibility that seems to be pointed at in many parts of scripture--that the blessings of christ's mighty work shall, in some measure and manner, pass through man to his dwelling-place and its creatures. dark shadows of evil--the mystery of pain and sorrow--lie over earth and all its tribes. 'we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.' and the statements of scripture which represent creation as suffering by man's sin, and participant in its degree in man's redemption, seem too emphatic and precise, as well as too frequent, and in too didactic connections, to be lightly brushed aside as poetic imagery. may it not be that man's transgression 'broke the fair music that all creatures made to their great lord, whose love their motion swayed,' and that man's restoration may, indeed, bring back all that hath life and breath to a harmonious blessedness--according to the deep and enigmatical words, which declare that 'the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of god'? be that as it may, at all events our second text opens to us the gates of the heavenly temple, and shows us there the saintly ranks and angel companies gathered in the city whose walls are salvation and its gates praise. they harmonise with that other later vision of heaven which the seer in patmos beheld, not only in setting before us worship as the glad work of all who are there, but in teaching the connection between the praises of men, and the answering hymns of angels. the harps of heaven are hushed to hear _their_ praise who can sing, 'thou hast redeemed us to god by thy blood,' and, in answer to that hymn of thanksgiving for unexampled deliverance and resorting grace, the angels around the throne break forth into new songs to the lamb that was slain--while still wider spread the broadening circles of harmonious praise, till at last 'every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them,' join in the mighty hymn of 'blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the lamb for ever and ever.' then the rapturous exclamation from human souls redeemed,--'oh! the blessedness of the men whom thou hast loved and saved,' shall be answered by choral praise from everything that hath breath. and are you dumb, my friend, in these universal bursts of praise? is that because you have not chosen to take the universal blessing which god gives? you have nothing to do but to receive the things that are freely given to you of god--the forgiveness, the cleansing, the life, that come from christ by faith. take them, and call upon the name of the lord, and can you refuse his gifts and withhold your praise? you can be eloquent in thanks to those who do you kindnesses, and in praise of those whom you admire and love, but your best friend receives none of your gratitude and none of your praise. ignoble silence and dull unthankfulness--with these you requite your saviour! 'i tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out!' a staircase of three steps 'all those that put their trust in thee ... them also that love thy name ... the righteous.'--psalm v. , . i have ventured to isolate these three clauses from their context, because, if taken in their sequence, they are very significant of the true path by which men draw nigh to god and become righteous. they are all three designations of the same people, but regarded under different aspects and at different stages. there is a distinct order in them, and whether the psalmist was fully conscious of it or not, he was anticipating and stating, with wonderful distinctness, the christian sequence--faith, love, righteousness. these three are the three flights of stairs, as it were, which lead men up to god and to perfection, or if you like to take another metaphor, meaning the same thing, they are respectively the root, the stalk, and the fruit of religion. 'they that put their trust in thee ... them also that love thy name ... the righteous.' i. so, then, the first thought here is that the foundation of all is trust. now, the word that is employed here is very significant. in its literal force it really means to 'flee to a refuge.' and that the literal signification has not altogether been lost in the spiritual and metaphorical use of it, as a term expressive of religious experience, is quite plain from many of the cases in which it occurs. let me just repeat one of them to you. 'be merciful unto me, o god, be merciful to me, for my soul trusteth in thee; yea, in the shadow of thy wings will i make my refuge.' there the picture that is in the words is distinctly before the psalmist's mind, and he is thinking not only of the act of mind and heart by which he casts himself in confidence upon god, but upon that which represents it in symbol, the act by which a man flees into some hiding-place. the psalm is said in the superscription to have been written when david hid in a cave from his persecutor. though no weight be given to that statement, it suggests the impression made by the psalm. in imagination we can see the rough sides of the cavern that sheltered him arching over the fugitive, like the wings of some great bird, and just as he has fled thither with eager feet and is safely hidden from his pursuers there, so he has betaken himself to the everlasting rock, in the cleft of which he is at rest and secure. to trust in god is neither more nor less than to flee to him for refuge, and there to be at peace. the same presence of the original metaphor, colouring the same religious thought, is found in the beautiful words with which boaz welcomes ruth, when he prays for her that the god of israel may reward her, 'under the shadow of whose wings thou hast come to trust.' so, as a man in peril runs into a hiding-place or fortress, as the chickens beneath the outspread wing of the mother bird nestle close in the warm feathers and are safe and well, the soul that trusts takes its flight straight to god, and in him reposes and is secure. now, it seems to me that such a figure as that is worth tons of theological lectures about the true nature of faith, and that it tells us, by means of a picture that says a great deal more than many a treatise, that faith is something very different from a cold-blooded act of believing in the truth of certain propositions; that it is the flight of the soul--knowing itself to be in peril, and naked, and unarmed--into the strong fortress. what is it that keeps a man safe when he thus has around him the walls of some citadel? is it himself, is it the act by which he took refuge, or is it the battlements behind which he crouches? so in faith--which is more than a process of a man's understanding, and is not merely the saying, 'yes, i believe all that is in the bible is true; at any rate, it is not for me to contradict it,' but is the running of the man, when he knows himself to be in danger, into the very arms of god--it is not the running that makes him safe, but it is the arms to which he runs. if we would only lay to heart that the very essence of religion lies in this 'flight of the lonely soul to the only god,' we should understand better than we do what he asks from us in order that he may defend us, and how blessed and certain his defence is. so let us clear our minds from the thought that anything is worth calling trust which is not thus taking refuge in god himself. now, i need not remind you, i suppose, that all this is just as true about us as it was about david, and that the emotion or the act of his will and heart which he expresses in these words of my text is neither more nor less than the christian act of faith. there is no difference except a difference of development; there is no difference between the road to god marked out in the psalms, and the road to god laid down in the gospels. the psalmist who said, 'trust ye in the lord for ever,' and the apostle who said, 'believe on the lord jesus christ, and thou shalt be saved,' were preaching identically the same doctrine. one of them could speak more fully than the other could of the person on whom trust was to be rested, but the trust itself was the same, and the person on whom it rested was the same, though his name of old was jehovah, and his name to-day is 'immanuel, god with us.' nor need i do more than point out how the context of the words that i have ventured to detach from their surroundings is instructive: 'let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice because thou defendest them.' the word for defending there continues the metaphor that lies in the word for 'trust,' for it means literally to cover over and so to protect. thus, when a man runs to god for his refuge, god 'covers his defenceless head with the shadow of his wings.' and the joy of trust is, first, that it brings round me the whole omnipotence of god for my defence, and the whole tenderness of god for my consolation, and next, that in the very exercise of trust in such defence, so fortified and vindicated by experience, there is great reward. all who thus flee into the refuge shall find refuge whither they flee, and shall be glad. ii. then the next thought of my texts, which i do not force into them, but which results, as it seems to me, distinctly from the order in which they occur in the context, is that love follows trust. 'all those that put their trust in thee--they also that love thee.' if i am to love god, i must be quite sure that god loves me. my love can never be anything else than an answer to his. it can only be secondary and derived, or i would rather say reflected and flashed back from his. and so, very significantly, the psalmist says, 'those that love thy name,' meaning by 'name,' as is always meant by it, the revealed character of god. if i am to love god, he must not hide in the darkness behind his infinity, but must come out and give me something about him that i know. the three letters g o d mean nothing, and there is no power in them to stir a man's heart. it must be the knowledge of the acts of god that brings men to love him. and there is no way of getting that knowledge but through the faith which, as i said, must precede love. for faith realises the fact that god loves. 'we have known and believed the love that god hath to us.' the first step is to grasp the great truth of the loving god, and through that truth to grasp the god that loves. and then, and not till then, does there spring up in a man's heart love towards him. but it is only the faith that is set on him who hath declared the father unto us that gives us for our very own the grasp of the facts, which facts are the only possible fuel that can kindle love in a human heart. 'we love him because he first loved us,' and we shall never know that he loves us unless we come to the knowledge through the road of faith. so john himself tells us when he says, in the words that i have already quoted, 'we have known and believed.' he puts the foundation last, 'we have known,' because 'we have believed' 'the love that god hath to us.' and so faith is the only possible means by which any of us can ever experience, as well as realise, the love that kindles ours. it is the possession of the fact of redemption for my very own and of the blessings which accompany it, and that alone, that binds a man to god in the bonds of love that cannot be broken, and that subdues and unites all vagrant emotions, affections, and desires in the mighty tide of a love that ever sets towards him. as surely as the silvery moon in the sky draws after it the heaped waters of the ocean all round the world, so god's love draws ours. they that believe contemplate, and they that believe experience the effects of that divine love, which must be experienced ere our answering love can be flashed back to heaven. students of acoustics tell us that if you have two stringed instruments in adjacent apartments, tuned to the same pitch, a note sounded on one of them will be feebly vibrated upon the other as soon as the waves of sound have reached the sensitive string. in like manner a man's heart gives off a faint, but musical, little tinkle of answering love to god when the deep note of god's love to him, struck on the chords of heaven up yonder, reaches his poor heart. love follows trust. so, brethren, if we desire to be warmed, let us get into the sunshine and abide there. if we desire to have our hearts filled with love to god, do not let us waste our time in trying to pump up artificial emotions or to persuade ourselves that we love him better than we do, but let us fix our thoughts and fasten our refuge-seeking trust on him, and then that shall kindle ours. iii. lastly, righteousness follows trust and love. the last description here of the man who begins as a believer and then advances to being a lover is _righteous_. that is the evangelical order. that is the great blessing and beauty of christianity, that it goes an altogether different way to work to make men good from that which any other system has ever dreamed of. it says, first of all, trust, and that will create love and that will ensure obedience. faith leads to righteousness because, in the very act of trusting god, i come out of myself, and going out of myself and ceasing from all self-admiration and self-dependence and self-centred life is the beginning of all good and has in it the germ of all righteousness, even as to live for self is the mother tincture out of which we can make all sins. and faith leads to righteousness in another way. open the heart and christ comes in. trust him and he fills our poor nature with 'the law of the spirit of life that was in christ jesus,' and that 'makes me free from the law of sin and death.' righteousness, meaning thereby just what irreligious men mean by it--viz. good living, plain obedience to the ordinary recognised dictates of morality, going straight--that is most surely attained when we cease from our own works and say to jesus christ, 'lord, i cannot walk in the narrow path. do thou thyself come to me and fill my heart and keep my feet.' they that trust and love are 'found in him, not having their own righteousness, but that which is of god by faith.' and love leads to righteousness because it brings the one motive into play in our hearts which turns duty into delight, toil into joy, and makes us love better to do what will please our beloved lover than anything besides. why did jesus christ say,'my yoke is easy and my burden is light'? was it because he diminished the weight of duties or laid down an easier slipshod morality than had been enjoined before? no! he intensified it all, and his commandment is far harder to flesh and blood than any commandments that were ever given. but for all that, the yoke that he lays upon our necks is, if i may so say, padded with velvet; and the burden that we have to draw behind us is laid upon wheels that will turn so easily that the load is diminished, inasmuch as for duty he substitutes himself and says to us, 'if ye love me, keep my commandments.' so, dear brethren! here is a very easily applied, and a very far-reaching test for us who call ourselves christians: does our love and does our trust culminate in practical righteousness? we are all tempted to make too much of the emotions of the religious life, and too little of its persistent, dogged obedience. we are all too apt to think that a christian is a man that believes in jesus christ. 'justification by faith alone without the works of the law' used to be the watchword of the evangelical church. it might be so held as to be either a blessed truth or a great error, and many of us make it an error instead of a blessing. on the other hand, there is only one way by which righteousness can be attained, and that is: first by faith and then by love. here are three steps: 'we have known and believed the love that god hath to us'; that is the broad, bottom step. and above it 'we love him because he first loved us,' that is the central one. and on the top of all, 'herein is our love made perfect that we keep his commandments.' they that trust are they also who love thy name, and they who trust through love are, and only they are, the righteous. one saying from three men 'the wicked hath said in his heart, i shall not be moved.' --psalm x. . 'because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved.' --psalm xvi. . 'and in my prosperity i said, i shall never be moved.' --psalm xxx. . how differently the same things sound when said by different men! here are three people giving utterance to almost the same sentiment of confidence. a wicked man says it, and it is insane presumption and defiance. a good man says it, having been lulled into false security by easy times, and it is a mistake that needs chastisement. a humble believing soul says it, and it is the expression of a certain and blessed truth. 'the wicked saith in his heart, i shall not be moved.' a good man, led astray by his prosperity, said, 'i shall not be moved,' and the last of the three put a little clause in which makes all the difference, '_because he is at my right hand_, i shall never be moved.' so, then, we have the mad arrogance of godless confidence, the mistake of a good man that needs correction, and the warranted confidence of a believing soul. i. the mad arrogance of godless confidence. the 'wicked' man, in the psalm from which our first text comes, said a good many wrong things 'in his heart.' the tacit assumptions on which a life is based, though they may never come to consciousness, and still less to utterance, are the really important things. i dare say this 'wicked man' was a good jew with his lips, and said his prayers all properly, but in his heart he had two working beliefs. one is thus expressed: 'as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. he hath said in his heart, i shall not be moved.' the other is put into words thus: 'he hath said in his heart, god hath forgotten, he hideth his face. he will never see it.' that is to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either 'there is no god,' or 'he does not care what i do, and i am safe to go on for evermore in the present fashion.' it might seem as if a man with the facts of human life before him, could not, even in the insanest arrogance, say, 'i shall not be moved, for i shall never be in adversity.' but we have an awful power--and the fact that we exercise, and choose to exercise, it is one of the strange riddles of our enigmatical existence and characters--of ignoring unwelcome facts, and going cheerily on as though we had annihilated them, because we do not reflect upon them. so this man, in the midst of a world in which there is no stay, and whilst he saw all round him the most startling and tragical instances of sudden change and complete collapse, stands quietly and says, 'ah! _i_ shall never be moved'; 'god doth not require it.' that absurdity is the basis of every life that is not a life of consecration and devotion--so far as it has a basis of conviction at all. the 'wicked' man's true faith is this, absurd as it may sound when you drag it out into clear, distinct utterance, whatever may be his professions. i wonder if there are any of us whose life can only be acquitted of being utterly unreasonable and ridiculous by the assumption, 'i shall never be moved'? have you a lease of your goods? do you think you are tenants at will or owners? which? is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all others? if there is not, what about the sanity of the man whose whole life is built upon a blunder? he is convicted of the grossest folly, unless he be assured that either there is no god, or that he does not care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of a continuance in our present state. do you say in your heart, 'i shall never be moved'? then you must be strong enough to resist every tempest that beats against you. is that so? 'i shall never be moved'--then nothing that contributes to your well-being will ever slip from your grasp, but you will be able to hold it tight. is that so? 'i shall never be moved'--then there is no grave waiting for you. is that so? unless these three assumptions be warranted, every godless man is making a hideous blunder, and his character is the sentence pronounced by the loving lips of incarnate truth on the rich man who thought that he had 'much goods laid up for many years,' and had only to be merry--'thou fool! thou fool!' if an engineer builds a bridge across a river without due calculation of the force of the winds that blow down the gorge, the bridge will be at the bottom of the stream some stormy night, and the train piled on the fragments of it in hideous ruin. and with equal certainty the end of the first utterer of this speech can be calculated, and is foretold in the psalm, 'the lord is king for ever and ever.... the godless are perished out of the land.' ii. we have in our second text the mistake of a good man who has been lulled into false confidence. the psalmist admits his error by the acknowledgment that he spoke 'in my prosperity'; or, as the word might be rendered, 'in my _security_.' this suggests to us the mistake into which even good men, lulled by the quiet continuance of peaceful days, are certain to fall, unless there be continual watchfulness exercised by them. it is a very significant fact that the word which is translated in our authorised version 'prosperity' is often rendered 'security,' meaning thereby, not safety, but a belief that i am safe. a man who is prosperous, or at ease, is sure to drop into the notion that 'to-morrow will be as this day, and much more abundant,' unless he keeps up unslumbering watchfulness against the insidious illusion of permanence. if he yields to the temptation, in his foolish security, forgetting how fragile are its foundations, and what a host of enemies surround him threatening it, then there is nothing for it but that the merciful discipline, which this psalmist goes on to tell us he had to pass through by reason of his fall, shall be brought to bear upon him. the writer gives us a page of his own autobiography. 'in my security i said, i shall never be moved.' 'lord! by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong. thou didst hide thy face.' what about the security then? what about 'i shall never be moved' then? 'i was troubled. i cried to thee, o lord!'--and then it was all right, his prayer was heard, and he was in 'security'--that is, safety--far more really when he was 'troubled' and sore beset than when he had been, as he fancied, sure of not being moved. long peace rusts the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. our lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being, tend to make us fancy that we shall go on for ever in the quiet jog-trot of settled life without any very great calamities or changes. but there was once a village at the bottom of the crater of vesuvius, and great trees, that had grown undisturbed there for a hundred years, and green pastures, and happy homes and flocks. and then, one day, a rumble and a rush, and what became of the village? it went up in smoke-clouds. the quiescence of the volcano is no sign of its extinction. and as surely as we live, so sure is it that there will come a 'to-morrow' to us all which shall _not_ be as this day. no man has any right to calculate upon anything beyond the present moment, and there is no basis whatever, either for the philosophical assertion that the order of nature is fixed, and that therefore there are no miracles, or for the practical translation of the assertion into our daily lives, that we may reasonably expect to go on as we are without changes or calamities. there is no reason capable of being put into logical shape for believing that, because the sun has risen ever since the beginning of things, it will rise to-morrow, for there will come a to-morrow when it will _not_ rise. in like manner, the longest possession of our mercies is no reason for forgetting the precarious tenure on which we hold them all. so, christian men and women! let us try to keep vivid that consciousness which is so apt to get dull, that nothing continueth in one stay, and that we _shall_ be moved, as far as the outward life and its circumstances are concerned. if we forget it, we shall need, and we shall get, the loving fatherly discipline, which my second text tells us followed the false security of this good man. the sea is kept from putrefying by storms. wine poured from vessel to vessel is purified thereby. it is an old truth and a wholesome one, to be always remembered, 'because they have no changes therefore they fear not god .' iii. lastly, we have the same thing said by another man in another key. 'because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved.' the prelude to the assertion makes all the difference. here is the warranted confidence of a simple faith. the man who clasps god's hand, and has him standing by his side, as his ally, his companion, his guide, his defence--that man does not need to fear change. for all the things which convict the arrogant or mistaken confidences of the other men as being insanity or a lapse from faith prove the confidence of the trustful soul to be the very perfection of reason and common sense. we may be confident of our power to resist anything that can come against us, if he be at our side. the man that stands with his back against an oak-tree is held firm, not because of his own strength, but because of that on which he leans. there is a beautiful story of some heathen convert who said to a missionary's wife, who had felt faint and asked that she might lean for a space on her stronger arm, 'if you love me, lean hard.' that is what god says to us, 'if you love me, lean hard.' and if you do, because he is at your right hand, you will not be moved. it is not insanity; it is not arrogance; it is simple faith, to look our enemies in the eyes, and to feel sure that they cannot touch us, 'trust in jehovah; so shall ye be established.' rest on the lord, and ye shall rest indeed. in like manner the man who has god at his right hand may be sure of the unalterable continuance of all his proper good. outward things may come or go, as it pleases him, but that which makes the life of our life will never depart from us as long as he stands there. and whilst he is there, if only our hearts are knit to him, we can say, 'my heart and my flesh faileth, but god is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. i shall not be moved. though all that can go goes, he abides; and in him i have all riches.' trust not in the uncertainty of outward good, but in the living god, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. the wicked man was defiantly arrogant, and the forgetful good man was criminally self-confident, when they each said, 'i shall not be moved.' we are only taking up the privileges that belong to us if, exercising faith in him, we venture to say, 'take what thou wilt; leave me thyself; i have enough.' and the man who says, 'because god is at my right hand, i shall not be moved,' has the right to anticipate an unbroken continuance of personal being, and an unchanged continuance of the very life of his life. that which breaks off all other lives abruptly is no breach in the continuity, either of the consciousness or of the avocations of a devout man. for, on the other side of the flood, he does what he does on this side, only more perfectly and more continually. 'he that doeth the will of god abideth for ever,' and it makes comparatively little difference to him whether his place be on this or on the other side of jordan. we 'shall not be moved,' even when we change our station from earth to heaven, and the sublime fulfilment of the warranted confidence of the trustful soul comes when the 'to-morrow' of the skies is as the 'to-day' of earth, only 'much more abundant.' man's true treasure in god 'the lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot. the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, i have a goodly heritage.'--psalm xvi. , . we read, in the law which created the priesthood in israel, that 'the lord spake unto aaron, thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them. i am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of israel' (numbers xvii. ). now there is an evident allusion to that remarkable provision in this text. the psalmist feels that in the deepest sense he has no possession amongst the men who have only possessions upon earth, but that god is the treasure which he grasps in a rapture of devotion and self-abandonment. the priest's duty is his choice. he will 'walk by faith and not by sight.' are not all christians priests? and is not the very essence and innermost secret of the religious life this--that the heart turns away from earthly things and deliberately accepts god as its supreme good, and its only portion? these first words of my text contain the essence of all true religion. the connection between the first clause and the others is closer than many readers perceive. the 'lot' which 'thou maintainest,' the 'pleasant places,' the 'goodly heritage,' all carry on the metaphor, and all refer to god as himself the portion of the heart that chooses and trusts him. 'thou maintainest my lot'--he who is our inheritance also guards our inheritance, and whosoever has taken god for his possession has a possession as sure as god can make it. 'the lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, i have a goodly heritage'--the heritage that is goodly is god himself. when a man chooses god for his portion, then, and then only, is he satisfied--'satisfied with favour, and full of the goodness of the lord.' let me try to expand and enforce these thoughts, with the hope that we may catch something of their fervour and their glow. i. the first thought, then, that comes out of the words before us is this: all true religion has its very heart in deliberately choosing god as my supreme good. 'the lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.' the two words which are translated in our version 'portion' and 'inheritance' are substantially synonymous. the latter of them is used continually in reference to the share of each individual, or family, or tribe in the partition of the land of canaan. there is a distinct allusion, therefore, to that partition in the language of our text; and the two expressions, part or 'portion,' and 'inheritance,' are substantially identical, and really mean just the same as if the single expression had stood--'the lord is my portion.' i may just notice in passing that these words are evidently alluded to in the new testament, in the epistle to the colossians, where paul speaks of god 'having made us meet for our portion of the inheritance of the saints in light.' and then the 'portion of my cup' is a somewhat strange expression. it is found in one of the other psalms, with the meaning 'fortune,' or 'destiny,' or 'sum of circumstances which make up a man's life.' there may be, of course, an allusion to the metaphor of a feast here, and god may be set forth as 'the portion of my cup,' in the sense of being the refreshment and sustenance of a man's soul. but i should rather be disposed to consider that there is merely a prolongation of the earlier metaphor, and that the same thought as is contained in the figure of the 'inheritance' is expressed here (as in common conversation it is often expressed) by the word 'cup,' namely, 'that which makes up a man's portion in this life.' it is used with such a meaning in the well-known words, 'my cup runneth over,' and in another shape in 'the cup which my father hath given me, shall i not drink it?' it is the sum of circumstances which make up a man's 'fortune.' so the double metaphor presents the one thought of god as the true possession of the devout soul. now, how do we possess god? we possess things in one fashion and persons in another. the lowest and most imperfect form of possession is that by which a man simply keeps other people off material good, and asserts the right of disposal of it as he thinks proper. a blind man may have the finest picture that ever was painted; he may call it his, that is to say, nobody else can sell it, but what good is it to him? a lunatic may own a library as big as the bodleian, but what use is it to him? does the man who collects the rents of a mountain-side, or the poet or painter to whom its cliffs and heather speak far-reaching thoughts, most truly possess it? the highest form of possession, even of things, is when they minister to our thought, to our emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth. we possess even them really, according as we know them and hold communion with them. but when we get up into the region of persons, we possess them in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathise with them, and love them. knowledge, intercourse, sympathy, affection--these are the ways by which men can possess men, and spirits, spirits. a disciple who gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. a friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess god. such ownership must be, from its very nature, reciprocal. there must be the two sides to it. and so we read in the bible, with equal frequency: the lord is the inheritance of his people, and his people are the inheritance of the lord. he possesses me, and i possess him--with reverence be it spoken--by the very same tenure; for whoso loves god has him, and whom he loves he owns. there is deep and blessed mystery involved in this wonderful prerogative, that the loving, believing heart has god for its possession and indwelling guest; and people are apt to brush such thoughts aside as mystical. but, like all true christian mysticism, it is intensely practical. we have god for ours, first, in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of him. we have no merely mystical or emotional possession of god to preach. there is a real, adequate knowledge of him in jesus christ. we know god, his character, his heart, his relations to us, his thoughts of good concerning us, sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes. i wish to ask you a plain question: do you ever think about him? there is only one way of getting god for yours, and that is by bringing him into your life by frequent meditation upon his sweetness, and upon the truths that you know about him. there is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit, that is not cognisable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about him, to begin with. all else follows that. that is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world. that is how you hold god, who dwells on the other side of the stars. there is no way to 'have' him, but through the understanding accepting him, and keeping firm hold of him. men and women that from monday morning to saturday night never think of his name--how do they possess god? and professing christians that never remember him all the day long--what absurd hypocrisy it is for them to say that god is theirs! yours, and never in your mind! when your husband, or your wife, or your child, goes away from home for a week, do you forget them as utterly as you forget god? do you have them in any sense if they never dwell in the 'study of your imagination,' and never fill your thoughts with sweetness and with light? and so again when the heart turns to him, and when all the faculties of our being, will, hope, and imagination, and all our affections and all our practical powers, when they all touch him, each in its proper fashion, then and then only can we in any reasonable and true sense be said to possess god. thought, communion, sympathy, affection, moral likeness, practical obedience, these are the way--and not by mystical raptures only--by which, in simple prose fact, it is possible for the finite to grasp the infinite, and for a man to be the _owner_ of god. now there is another consideration very necessary to be remembered, and that is that this possession of god involves, and is possible only by, a deliberate act of renunciation. the levite's example, that is glanced at in my text, is always our law. you must have no part or inheritance amongst the sons of earth if god is to be your inheritance. or, to put it into plain words, there must be a giving up of the material and the created if there is to be a possession of the divine and the heavenly. there cannot be _two_ supreme, any more than there can be two pole-stars, one in the north and the other in the south, to both of which a man can be steering. you cannot stand with 'one foot on land, and one on sea, to one thing constant never.' if you are to have god as your supreme good, you must empty your heart of earth and worldly things, or your possession of him will be all words, and imagination, and hypocrisy. brethren! i wish to bring that message to your consciences to-day. and what is this renunciation? there must be, first of all, a fixed, deliberate, intelligent conviction lying at the foundation of my life that god is best, and that he and he only is my true delight and desire. then there must be built upon that intelligent conviction that god is best, the deliberate turning away of the heart from these material treasures. then there must be the willingness to abandon the outward possession of them, if they come in between us and him. just as travellers in old days, that went out looking for treasures in the western hemisphere, were glad to empty their ships of their less precious cargo in order to load them with gold, you must get rid of the trifles, and fling these away if ever they so take up your heart that god has no room there. or rather, perhaps, if the love of god in any real measure, howsoever imperfectly, once gets into a man's soul, it will work there to expel and edge out the love and regard for earthly things. just as when the chemist collects oxygen in a vessel filled with water, as it passes into the jar it drives out the water before it; the love of god, if it come into a man's heart in any real sense, in the measure in which it comes, will deliver him from the love of the world. but between the two there is warfare so internecine and endless that they cannot co-exist: and here, to-day, it is as true as ever it was that if you want to have god for your portion and your inheritance you must be content to have no inheritance amongst your brethren, nor part amongst the sons of earth. men and women! are you ready for that renunciation? are you prepared to say, 'i know that the sweetness of thy presence is the truest sweetness that i can taste; and lo! i give up all besides and my own self'? 'o god of good, the unfathomed sea! who would not yield himself to thee?' and remember, that nothing less than these is christianity--the conviction that the world is second and not first; that god is best, love is best, truth is best, knowledge of him is best, likeness to him is best, the willingness to surrender all if it come in contest with his supreme sweetness. he that turns his back upon earth by reason of the drawing power of the glory that excelleth, is a christian. the christianity that only trusts to christ for deliverance from the punishment of sin, and so makes religion a kind of fire insurance, is a very poor affair. we need the lesson pealed into our ears as much as any generation has ever done, 'ye cannot serve god and mammon.' a man's real working religion consists in his loving god most and counting his love the sweetest of all things. ii. now let me turn to the next point that is here, viz. that this possession is as sure as god can make it. 'thou maintainest my lot.' thou art thyself both my heritage and the guardian of my heritage. he that possesses god, says the text, by implication, is lifted above all fear and chance of change. the land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the allusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen king. it was he, according to the theocratic theory of the old testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful. and so, says the psalmist allusively, in a similar manner, the divine power surrounds the man who chooses god for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him. the lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material goods, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. what we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. they _are_ mine, they _were_ yours, they _will be_ somebody else's to-morrow. whilst we have them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they are not really ours at all. the only thing that is worth calling mine is something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of my soul that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two threads hold together the tint will be there. that is how god gives us himself, and nothing can take him out of a man's soul. he, in the sweetness of his grace, bestows himself upon man, and guards his own gift in the heart, which is himself. he who dwells in god and god in him lives as in the inmost keep and citadel. the noise of battle may roar around the walls, but deep silence and peace are within. the storm may rage upon the coasts, but he who has god for his portion dwells in a quiet inland valley where tempests never come. no outer changes can touch our possession of god. they belong to another region altogether. other goods may go, but this is held by a different tenure. the life of a christian is lived in two regions: in the one his life has its roots, and its branches extend to the other. in the one there may be whirling storms and branches may toss and snap, whilst in the other, to which the roots go down, may be peace. root yourselves in god, making him your truest treasure, and nothing can rob you of your wealth. we here in this commercial community see many examples of great fortunes and great businesses melting away like yesterday's snow. and surely the certain alternations of 'booms' and bad times might preach to some of you this lesson: set not your hearts on that which can pass, but make your treasure that which no man can take from you. then, too, there is the other thought. god will help us so that no temptations shall have power to make us rob _ourselves_ of our treasure. none can take it from us but ourselves, but we are so weak and surrounded by temptations so strong that we need him to aid us if we are not to be beguiled by our own treacherous hearts into parting with our highest good. a handful of feeble jews were nothing against the gigantic might of assyria, or against the compacted strength of civilised egypt; but there they stood, on their rocky mountains, defended, not by their own strength, but by the might of a present god. and so, unfit to cope with the temptations round us as we are, if we cast ourselves upon his power and make him our supreme delight, nothing shall be able to rob us of that possession and that sweetness. and there is just one last point that i would refer to here on this matter of our stable possession of god. it is very beautiful to observe that this psalm, which, in the language of my text, rises to the very height of spiritual and, in a good sense, mystical devotion, recognising god as the one good for souls, is also one of the psalms which has the clearest utterance of the faith in immortality. just after the words of my text we read these others, in which the old testament confidence in a life beyond the grave reaches its very climax: 'thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' that connection teaches us that the measure in which a man feels his true possession of god here and now, is the measure in which his faith rises triumphant over the darkness of the grave, and grasps, with unfaltering confidence, the conviction of an immortal life. the more we know that god is our portion and our treasure, the more sure, and calmly sure, we shall be that a thing like death cannot touch a thing like that, that the mere physical fact is far too small and insignificant a fact to have any power in such a region as that; that death can no more affect a man's relation to god, whom he has learned to love and trust, than you can cut thought or feeling with a knife. the two belong to two different regions. thus we have here the old testament faith in immortality shaping itself out of the old testament enjoyment of communion with god, with a present god. and you will find the very same process of thought in that seventy-third psalm, which stands in some respects side by side with this one as attaining the height of mystical devotion, joined with a very clear utterance of the faith in immortality: 'whom have i in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that i desire beside thee! thou wilt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.' so death himself cannot touch the heritage of the man whose heritage is the lord. and his ministry is not to rob us of our treasures as he robs men of all treasures besides (for 'their glory shall not descend after them'), but to give us instead of the 'earnest of the inheritance'--the bit of turf by which we take possession of the estate--the broad land in all the amplitude of its sweep, into our perpetual possession. 'thou maintainest my lot.' neither death nor life 'shall separate us from the love of god which is in christ jesus our lord.' iii. and then the last thought here is that he who thus elects to find his treasure and delight in god is satisfied with his choice. 'the lines'--the measuring-cord by which the estate was parted off and determined--'are fallen in pleasant places; yea!'--not as our bible has it, merely 'i have a _goodly_ heritage,' putting emphasis on the fact of possession, but--'the heritage is goodly to _me_,' putting emphasis on the fact of subjective satisfaction with it. i have no time to dwell upon the thoughts that spring from these words. take them in the barest outline. no man that makes the worse choice of earth instead of god, ever, in the retrospect, said: 'i have a goodly heritage.' one of the later roman emperors, who was among the best of them, said, when he was dying: 'i have been everything, and it profits me nothing.' no creature can satisfy your whole nature. portions of it may be fed with their appropriate satisfaction, but as long as we feed on the things of earth there will always be part of our being like an unfed tiger in a menagerie, growling for its prey, whilst its fellows are satisfied for the moment. you can no more give your heart rest and blessedness by pitching worldly things into it, than they could fill up chat moss, when they made the first liverpool and manchester railway, by throwing in cartloads of earth. the bog swallowed them and was none the nearer being filled. no man who takes the world for his portion ever said, 'the lines are fallen to me in pleasant places.' for the make of your soul as plainly cries out 'god!' as a fish's fins declare that the sea is its element, or a bird's wings mark it out as meant to soar. man and god fit each other like the two halves of a tally. you will never get rest nor satisfaction, and you will never be able to look at the past with thankfulness, nor at the present with repose, nor into the future with hope, unless you can say, 'god is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.' but oh! if you do, then you have a goodly heritage, a heritage of still satisfaction, a heritage which suits, and gratifies, and expands all the powers of a man's nature, and makes him ever capable of larger and larger possession of a god who ever gives more than we can receive, that the overplus may draw us to further desire, and the further desire may more fully be satisfied. the one true, pure, abiding joy is to hold fellowship with god and to live in his love. the secret of all our unrest is the going out of our desires after earthly things. they fly forth from our hearts like noah's raven, and nowhere amid all the weltering flood can find a resting-place. the secret of satisfied repose is to set our affections thoroughly on god. then our wearied hearts, like noah's dove returning to its rest, will fold their wings and nestle fast by the throne of god. 'all the happiness of this life,' said william law, 'is but trying to quench thirst out of golden _empty_ cups.' but if we will take the lord for 'the portion of our cup,' we shall never thirst. let me beseech you to choose god in christ for your supreme good and highest portion; and having chosen, to cleave to your choice. so shall you enter on possession of good that truly shall be yours, even 'that good part, which shall not be taken away from' you. and, lastly, remember that if you would have god, you must take christ. he is the true joshua, who puts us in possession of the inheritance. he brings god to you--to your knowledge, to your love, to your will. he brings you to god, making it possible for your poor sinful souls to enter his presence by his blood; and for your spirits to possess that divine guest. 'he that hath the son, hath the father'; and if you trust your souls to him who died for you, and cling to him as your delight and your joy, you will find that both the father and the son come to you and make their home in you. through christ the son you will receive power to become sons of god, and 'if children, then heirs, heirs of god,' because 'joint heirs with christ.' god with us, and we with god 'i have set the lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved.... . in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' --psalm xvi. , . there are, unquestionably, large tracts of the old testament in which the anticipation of immortality does not appear, and there are others in which its presence may be doubtful. but here there can be no hesitation, i think, as to the meaning of these words. if we regard them carefully, we shall not only see clearly the psalmist's hope of immortal life, but shall discern the process by which he came to it, and almost his very act of grasping at it; for the first verse of our text is manifestly the foundation of the second; and the facts of the one are the basis of the hopes of the other. that is made plain by the 'therefore' which, in one of the intervening verses, links the concluding rapturous anticipations with the previous expressions. if, then, we observe that here, in these two verses which i have read, there is a very remarkable parallelism, we shall get still more strikingly the connection between the devout life here and the perfecting of the same hereafter. note how, even in our translation, the latter verse is largely an echo of the former, and how much more distinctly that is the case if we make a little variation in the rendering, which brings it closer to the original. 'i have set the lord always _before me_,' says the one,--that is the present. 'in thy _presence_ is fulness of joy,' says the other,--that is the consequent future. and the two words, which are rendered in the one case 'before me' and in the other case 'in thy presence,' are, though not identical, so precisely synonymous that we may take them as meaning the same thing. so we might render 'i have set the lord always before _my_ face': 'before _thy_ face is fulness of joy.' the other clause is, to an english reader, more obviously parallel: 'because he is at _my right hand_ i shall not be moved'--shall be steadied here. 'at _thy right_ hand are pleasures for evermore'--the steadfastness here merges into eternal delights hereafter. so then, we have two conditions set before us, and the link between them made very plain. and i gather all that i have to say about these words into two statements. first, life here may be god's presence with us, to make us steadfast. and secondly, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with god to make us glad. that is the psalmist's teaching, and i will try to enforce it. i. first, then, life here may be god's presence with us, to make us steadfast. mark the psalmist's language. 'i have set the lord always _in front of_ me--before my face.' emphasis is placed on 'set' and 'always.' god is ever by our sides, but we may be very far away from him, 'though he be not far off from every one of us,' and if we are to have him blazing, clear and unobscured above and beyond all the mists and hubbub of earth, we shall need continual effort in order to keep him in our sight. 'i have set the lord'--he permits me to put out my hand, as it were, and station him where i want him, that i may always have him in my sight, and be able to look at him and be calm and blessed. you cannot do that, if you let the world, and wealth, and business, and anxieties, and ambitions, and cares, and sorrows, and duties, and family responsibilities, jostle and hustle him out of your minds and hearts. you cannot do it if, like john bunyan's man with the muckrake, you keep your eyes always down on the straw at your feet, and never lift them to the crown above. how many men in manchester walk its streets from year's end to year's end, and never look up to the sky except to see whether they must take their umbrellas with them or not? and so all the magnificence and beauty of the daily heavens, and the nightly gemming of the empty places with perpetually burning stars, are lost to them! so, god is blazing there in front of us, but unless we set ourselves to it, we shall never see him. you have to look, by a conscious effort, over and away from the things that are 'seen and temporal' if you want to see the things that are 'unseen and eternal.' but if you disturb the whole tenor of your being by agitations and distractions and petty cares, or if you defile it by sensual and fleshly lusts, and animal propensities gratified, and poor, miserable, worldly ambitions and longings filling up your souls, then god can no more be visible before your face than the blessed sun can mirror himself in a storm-tossed sea or in a muddy puddle. the heart must be pure, and the heart must be still, and the mind must be detached from earth, and glued to heaven, and the glasses of the telescope must be sedulously cleansed from dust, if we are to be blessed with the vision of god continuously before our face. then note, still further, that if thus we have made god present with us, by realising the fact of his presence, when he comes, he comes with his hands full. 'i have set the lord always before me,' says the psalmist. and then he goes on to say, 'because he is at my right hand.' not only in front of you, then, david, to be looked at, but at your side! what for? what do we summon some one to come and stand beside us for? in order that from his presence there may come help and succour and courage and confidence. and so god comes to the right hand of the man who honestly endeavours through all the confusions and bustles of life to realise his sweet and calming presence. where he comes he comes to help; not to be a spectator, but an ally in the warfare; and whoever sets the lord before him will have the lord at his right hand. and then, note, still further, the steadfastness which god brings. i have spoken of the effort which brings god. i speak now of the steadfastness which he brings by his coming. the psalmist's anticipation is a singularly modest one. 'because he is at my right hand i shall'--what? be triumphant? no! escape sorrows? no! have my life filled with serenity? no! 'i shall not be moved.' that is the best i can hope for. to be able to stand on the spot, with steadfast convictions, with steadfast purposes, with steadfast actions--continuously in one direction; 'having overcome all, to stand'--that is as much as the best of us can desire or expect, in this poor struggling life of ours. what a profound consciousness of inward weakness and of outward antagonism there breathes in that humble and modest hope, as being the loftiest result of the presence of omnipotence for our aid: 'i shall not be moved'! when we think of our inner weakness, when we remember the fluctuations of our feelings and emotions, when we compare the ups and downs of our daily life, or when we think of the larger changes covering years, which affect all our outlooks, our thoughts, our plans; and how 'we all are changed by still degrees, all but the basis of the soul,' it is much to say, 'i shall not be moved.' and when we think of the obstacles that surround us, of the storms that dash against us, how we are swept by surges of emotion that wash away everything before their imperious onrush, or swayed by blasts of temptation that break down the strongest defences, or smitten by the shocks of change and sorrow that crush the firmest hearts, it is much to say, in the face of a world pressing upon us with the force of the wind in a cyclone, that our poor, feeble reed shall stand upright and 'not be moved' in the fiercest blast. 'what went ye out for to see?' 'a reed shaken with the wind'--that is humanity. 'behold! i have made thee an iron pillar and brazen walls, and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail'--that is weak man, stiffened into uprightness, and rooted in steadfastness by the touch of the hand of a present god. and, brother! there is nothing else that will stay a man's soul. the holdfast cannot be a part of the chain. it must be fastened to a fixed point. the anchor that is to keep the ship of your life from dragging and finding itself, when the morning breaks, a ghastly wreck upon the reef, must be outside of yourself, and the cable of it must be wrapped round the throne of god. the anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which will neither break nor drag, can only be firm when it 'enters into that within the veil.' god, and god only, can thus make us strong! so, dear friends, let us see to it that we fasten our aims and purposes, our faith and love, our submission and obedience, upon that mighty helper who will be with us and make us strong, that we may 'stand fast in the lord and in the power of his might.' ii. now, secondly, notice how, if so, life hereafter will be our presence with god, to make us glad. i have already pointed out briefly the connection between these two portions of my text, and i need only remark here that the link which holds them together is very obvious. if a man loves god, and trusts him, and 'walks with him,' after the fashion described in our former verse, then there will spring up, irrepressible and unconquerable, a conviction in that man's soul that this sweet and strong communion, which makes so much of the blessedness of life, must last after death. anything is conceivable rather than that a man who walks with god shall cease to be! rather, when he 'is not' any more 'found' among men, it is only because 'god took him.' thus the emotions and experiences of a truly devout soul are (apart from the great revelation in jesus christ which hath brought 'life and immortality to light') the best evidence and confirmation of the anticipation of immortal life. it cannot be, unless our whole intellectual faculties are to be put into utter confusion, that such an experience as that of the man who loves god, and tries to trust him, and walk before him, is destined to be brought to nothingness with the mere dissolution of this earthly frame. the greatness and the smallness, the achievements and the failures, of the religious life as we see it here, all bear upon their front the mark of imperfection, and in their imperfection prophesy and proclaim a future completion. because it is so great in itself, and because, being so great, its developments and influence are so strangely and sadly checked, the faith that knits a man to christ demands eternity for its duration, and infinitude for its perfection. thus, he that says 'i have set the lord always before me,' goes on to say, with an undeniable accuracy of inference, 'therefore thou wilt not leave my soul in the under world.' god is not going to forget the soul that clave to him, and anything is believable sooner than that. our texts not only assert this connection and base the confidence of immortality on the present experiences of the spirit that trusts in god, but also give the outline, at least, of the correspondences between the imperfections of the present and the perfectnesses of the future. and i cast this into two or three words before i close. this is the first of them. if you will turn your faces to god, amidst all the flaunting splendours and vain shows and fleeting possessions of this present, his face will dawn on you yonder. we can say but little of what is meant by such a hope as that. but only this we can say, that there will be, as yet unimaginable, new wealths of revelation of the father, and to match them, as yet unimaginable new inlets of apprehension and perception upon our parts, so that the sweetest, clearest, closest, most satisfying vision of god that has ever dawned on sad souls here, shall be but 'as in a glass darkly' compared with that face to face sight. we live away out on the far-off outskirts of the system where those great planets plough along their slow orbits, and turn their languid rotations at distances that imagination faints in contemplating, and the light and the heat and the life that reach them are infinitesimally small. we shall be shifted into the orb that is nearest the sun; and oh! what a rapture of light and life and heat will come to our amazed spirits: 'i have set the lord always before me.' twilight though the light has been, i have tried to keep it. i shall be of the sons of light close to the throne and shall see thy face. i shall be satisfied when i wake out of this sleep of life into thy likeness. then, again, if you will keep god at your right hand here, he will set you on his hereafter. keep him here for your companion, for your ally, for your advocate, to breathe strength into you by the touch of his hand, as some feeble man, leaning upon a stronger arm, may be upheld. if you will do that, then the place where the favoured servants stand will be yours; the place where trusted counsellors stand will be yours; the place where the sheep stand will be yours; the place where the shepherd sits will be yours; for he to whom it is said, 'sit thou at my right hand till i make thine enemies thy footstool,' says to us, 'where i am there shall also my servant be.' keep god by your sides, and you will be lifted to christ's place at the right hand of the majesty on high. lastly, if we let ourselves be stayed by god amidst the struggle and difficulty, we shall be gladdened by him with perpetual joys. the emphasis of the last words of my text is rather on the adjectives than on the nouns--_full_ joy, _eternal_ pleasure. and how both characteristics contradict the experiences of earth, even the gladdest, which we fain would make permanent! for i suppose that no earthly joy is either central, reaching the deepest self, or circumferential, embracing the whole being of a man, but that only god can so go into the depths of my soul as that from his throne there he can flood the whole of my nature with felicity and peace. in all other gladnesses there is always in the landscape one bit of sullen shadow somewhere or other, unparticipant of the light, while all around is blazing. and we need that he should come to make us blessed. joys here are no more lasting than they are complete. as one who only too sadly proved the truth of his own words, burning out his life before he was six-and-thirty, has said-- 'pleasures are like poppies spread, you seize the flower, its bloom is shed! or like the snowflake in the river. a moment white--then gone for ever.' oh! my friend, 'why do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' the life of faith on earth is the beginning, and only the beginning, of that life of calm and complete felicity in the heavenly places. i have shown you the ladder's foot, 'i have set the lord always before me.' the top round reaches the throne of god, and whoever begins at the bottom, and holds fast the beginning of his confidence firm unto the end, for him the great promise of the master will come true, and christ's 'joy will remain in him and his joy shall be full.' the two awakings 'i shall be satisfied, when i awake, with thy likeness.' --psalm xvii. . 'as a dream when one awaketh; so, o lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.'--psalm lxxiii. . both of these psalms are occupied with that standing puzzle to old testament worthies--the good fortune of bad men, and the bad fortune of good ones. the former recounts the personal calamities of david, its author. the latter gives us the picture of the perplexity of asaph its writer, when he 'saw the prosperity of the wicked.' and as the problem in both is substantially the same, the solution also is the same. david and asaph both point onwards to a period when this confusing distribution of earthly good shall have ceased, though the one regards that period chiefly in its bearing upon himself as the time when he shall see god and be at rest, while the other thinks of it rather with reference to the godless rich as the time of their destruction. in the details of this common expectation, also, there is a remarkable parallelism. both describe the future to which they look as an awaking, and both connect with it, though in different ways and using different words, the metaphor of an image or likeness. in the one case, the future is conceived as the psalmist's awaking, and losing all the vain show of this dreamland of life, while he is at rest in beholding the appearance, and perhaps in receiving the likeness, of the one enduring substance, god. in the other, it is thought of as god's awaking, and putting to shame the fleeting shadow of well-being with which godless men befool themselves. what this period of twofold awaking may be is a question on which good men and thoughtful students of scripture differ. without entering on the wide subject of the jewish knowledge of a future state, it may be enough for the present purpose to say that the language of both these psalms seems much too emphatic and high-pitched, to be fully satisfied by a reference to anything in this life. it certainly looks as if the great awaking which david puts in immediate contrast with the death of 'men of this world,' and which solaced his heart with the confident expectation of beholding god, of full satisfaction of all his being, and possibly even of wearing the divine likeness, pointed onwards, however dimly, to that 'within the veil.' and as for the other psalm, though the awaking of god is, no doubt, a scriptural phrase for his ending of any period of probation and indulgence by an act of judgment, yet the strong words in which the context describes this awaking, as the 'destruction' and the 'end' of the godless, make it most natural to take it as here referring to the final close of the probation of life. that conclusion appears to be strengthened by the contrast which in subsequent verses is drawn between this 'end' of the worldling, and the poet's hopes for himself of divine guidance in life, and afterwards of being taken (the same word as is used in the account of enoch's translation) by god into his presence and glory--hopes whose exuberance it is hard to confine within the limits of any changes possible for earth. the doctrine of a future state never assumed the same prominence, nor possessed the same clearness in israel as with us. there are great tracts of the old testament where it does not appear at all. this very difficulty, about the strange disproportion between character and circumstances, shows that the belief had not the same place with them as with us. but it gradually emerged into comparative distinctness. revelation is progressive, and the appropriation of revelation is progressive too. there is a history of god's self-manifestation, and there is a history of man's reception of the manifestation. it seems to me that in these two psalms, as in other places of old testament scripture, we see inspired men in the very course of being taught by god, on occasion of their earthly sorrows, the clearer hopes which alone could sustain them. they stood not where we stand, to whom christ has 'brought life and immortality to light'; but to their devout and perplexed souls, the dim regions beyond were partially opened, and though they beheld there a great darkness, they also 'saw a great light.' they saw all this solid world fade and melt, and behind its vanishing splendours they saw the glory of the god whom they loved, in the midst of which they felt that there _must_ be a place for them, where eternal realities should fill their vision, and a stable inheritance satisfy their hearts. the period, then, to which both david and asaph look, in these two verses, is the end of life. the words of both, taken in combination, open out a series of aspects of that period which carry weighty lessons, and to which we turn now. i. the first of these is that to all men the end of life is an awaking. the representation of death most widely diffused among all nations is that it is a sleep. the reasons for that emblem are easily found. we always try to veil the terror and deformity of the ugly thing by the thin robe of language. as with reverential awe, so with fear and disgust, the tendency is to wrap their objects in the folds of metaphor. men prefer not to name plainly their god or their dread, but find roundabout phrases for the one, and coaxing, flattering titles for the other. the furies and the fates of heathenism, the supernatural beings of modern superstition, must not be spoken of by their own appellations. the recoil of men's hearts from the thing is testified by the aversion of their languages to the bald name--death. and the employment of this special euphemism of sleep is a wonderful witness to our weariness of life, and to its endless toil and trouble. everywhere that has seemed to be a comforting and almost an attractive name, which has promised full rest from all the agitations of this changeful scene. the prosperous and the wretched alike have owned the fatigue of living, and been conscious of a soothing expectance which became almost a hope, as they thought of lying still at last with folded hands and shut eyes. the wearied workers have bent over their dead, and felt that they are blest in this at all events, that they rest from their labours; and as they saw them absolved from all their tasks, have sought to propitiate the power that had made this ease for them, as well as to express their sense of its merciful aspect, by calling it not death, but sleep. but that emblem, true and sweet as it is, is but half the truth. taken as the whole, as indeed men are ever tempted to take it, it is a cheerless lie. it is truth for the senses--'the foolish senses,' who 'crown' death, as 'omega,' the last, 'the lord,' because '_they_ find no _motion_ in the dead.' rest, cessation of consciousness of the outer world, and of action upon it, are set forth by the figure. but even the figure might teach us that the consciousness of life, and the vivid exercise of thought and feeling, are not denied by it. death is sleep. be it so. but does not that suggest the doubt--'in that sleep, what dreams may come?' do we not all know that, when the chains of slumber bind sense, and the disturbance of the outer world is hushed, there are faculties of our souls which work more strongly than in our waking hours? we are all poets, 'makers' in our sleep. memory and imagination open their eyes when flesh closes it. we can live through years in the dreams of a night; so swiftly can spirit move when even partially freed from 'this muddy vesture of decay.' that very phrase, then, which at first sight seems the opposite of the representation of our text, in reality is preparatory to and confirmatory of it. that very representation which has lent itself to cheerless and heathenish thoughts of death as the cessation not only of toil but of activity, is the basis of the deeper and truer representation, the truth for the spirit, that death is an awaking. if, on the one hand, we have to say, as we anticipate the approaching end of life, 'the night cometh, when no man can work'; on the other the converse is true, 'the night is far spent; the day is at hand.' we shall sleep. yes; but we shall wake too. we shall wake just because we sleep. for flesh and all its weakness, and all its disturbing strength, and craving importunities--for the outer world, and all its dissipating garish shows, and all its sullen resistance to our hand--for weariness, and fevered activity and toil against the grain of our tastes, too great for our strength, disappointing in its results, the end is blessed, calm sleep. and precisely because it is so, therefore for our true selves, for heart and mind, for powers that lie dormant in the lowest, and are not stirred into full action in the highest, souls; for all that universe of realities which encompass us undisclosed, and known only by faint murmurs which pierce through the opiate sleep of life, the end shall be an awaking. the truth which corresponds to this metaphor, and which david felt when he said, 'i shall be satisfied when i awake,' is that the spirit, because emancipated from the body, shall spring into greater intensity of action, shall put forth powers that have been held down here and shall come into contact with an order of things which here it has but indirectly known. to our true selves and to god we shall wake. here we are like men asleep in some chamber that looks towards the eastern sky. morning by morning comes the sunrise, with the tender glory of its rosy light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes are closed to it all. here and there some lighter sleeper, with thinner eyelids or face turned to the sun, is half conscious of a vague brightness, and feels the light, though he sees not the colours of the sky nor the forms of the filmy clouds. such souls are our saints and prophets, but most of us sleep on unconscious. to us all the moment comes when we shall wake and see for ourselves the bright and terrible world which we have so often forgotten, and so often been tempted to think was itself a dream. brethren, see to it that that awaking be for you the beholding of what you have loved, the finding, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, of all the objects which have been your visions of delight in the sleep of earth. this life of ours hides more than it reveals. the day shows the sky as solitary but for wandering clouds that cover its blue emptiness. but the night peoples its waste places with stars, and fills all its abysses with blazing glories. 'if light so much conceals, wherefore not life?' let us hold fast by a deeper wisdom than is born of sense; and though men, nowadays, seem to be willing to go back to the 'eternal sleep' of the most unspiritual heathenism, and to cast away all that christ has brought us concerning that world where he has been and whence he has returned, because positive science and the anatomist's scalpel preach no gospel of a future, let us try to feel as well as to believe that it is life, with all its stunted capacities and idle occupation with baseless fabrics, which is the sleep, and that for us all the end of it is--to awake. ii. the second principle contained in our text is that death is to some men the awaking of god. 'when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.' closely rendered, the former clause would read simply 'in awaking,' without any specifying of the person, which is left to be gathered from the succeeding words. but there is no doubt that the english version fills the blank correctly by referring the awaking to god. the metaphor is not infrequent in the old testament, and, like many others applying to the divine nature, is saved from any possibility of misapprehension by the very boldness of its materialism. it has a well-marked and uniform meaning. god 'awakes' when he ends an epoch of probation and long-suffering mercy by an act or period of judgment. so far, then, as the mere expression is concerned, there may be nothing more meant here than the termination by a judicial act in this life, of the transient 'prosperity of the wicked.' any divinely-sent catastrophe which casts the worldly rich man down from his slippery eminence would satisfy the words. but the emphatic context seems, as already pointed out, to require that they should be referred to that final crash which irrevocably separates him who has 'his portion in this life,' from all which he calls his 'goods.' if so, then the whole period of earthly existence is regarded as the time of god's gracious forbearance and mercy; and the time of death is set forth as the instant when sterner elements of the divine dealings start into greater prominence. life here is predominantly, though not exclusively, the field for the manifestation of patient love, not willing that any should perish. to the godless soul, immersed in material things, and blind to the light of god's wooing love, the transition to that other form of existence is likewise the transition to the field for the manifestation of the retributive energy of god's righteousness. here and now his judgment on the whole slumbers. the consequences of our deeds are inherited, indeed, in many a merciful sorrow, in many a paternal chastisement, in many a partial exemplification of the wages of sin as death. but the harvest is not fully grown nor ripened yet; it is not reaped in all its extent; the bitter bread is not baked and eaten as it will have to be. nor are men's consciences so awakened that they connect the retribution, which does befall them, with its causes in their own actions, as closely as they will do when they are removed from the excitement of life and the deceit of its dreams. 'sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.' for the long years of our stay here, god's seeking love lingers round every one of us, yearning over us, besetting us behind and before, courting us with kindnesses, lavishing on us its treasures, seeking to win our poor love. it is sometimes said that this is a state of probation. but that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. god does not set us here as on a knife edge, with abysses on either side ready to swallow us if we stumble, while he stands apart watching for our halting, and unhelpful to our tottering feebleness. he compasses us with his love and its gifts, he draws us to himself, and desires that we should stand. he offers all the help of his angels to hold us up. 'he will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber.' the judgment sleeps; the loving forbearance, the gracious aid wake. shall we not yield to his perpetual pleadings, and, moved by the mercies of god, let his conquering love thaw our cold hearts into streams of thankfulness and self-devotion? but remember, that that predominantly merciful and long-suffering character of god's present dealing affords no guarantee that there will not come a time when his slumbering judgment will stir to waking. the same chapter which tells us that 'he is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,' goes on immediately to repel the inference that therefore a period of which retribution shall be the characteristic is impossible, by the solemn declaration, '_but_ the day of the lord shall come as a thief in the night.' his character remains ever the same, the principles of his government are unalterable, but there may be variations in the prominence given in his acts, to the several principles of the one, and the various though harmonious phases of the other. the method may be changed, the purpose may remain unchanged. and the bible, which is our only source of knowledge on the subject, tells us that the method _is_ changed, in so far as to intensify the vigour of the operation of retributive justice after death, so that men who have been compassed with 'the loving-kindness of the lord,' and who die leaving worldly things, and keeping worldly hearts, will have to confront 'the terror of the lord.' the alternation of epochs of tolerance and destruction is in accordance with the workings of god's providence here and now. for though the characteristic of that providence as we see it is merciful forbearance, yet we are not left without many a premonition of the mighty final 'day of the lord.' for long years or centuries a nation or an institution goes on slowly departing from truth, forgetting the principles on which it rests, or the purposes for which it exists. patiently god pleads with the evil-doers, lavishes gifts and warnings upon them. he holds back the inevitable avenging as long as restoration is yet possible--and _his_ eye and heart see it to be possible long after men conclude that the corruption is hopeless. but at last comes a period when he says, 'i have long still holden my peace, and refrained myself, now will i destroy'; and with a crash one more hoary iniquity disappears from the earth which it has burdened so long. for sixty times sixty slow, throbbing seconds, the silent hand creeps unnoticed round the dial and then, with whirr and clang, the bell rings out, and another hour of the world's secular day is gone. the billows of the thunder-cloud slowly gather into vague form, and slowly deepen in lurid tints, and slowly roll across the fainting blue; they touch--and then the fierce flash, like the swift hand on the palace-wall of babylon, writes its message of destruction over all the heaven at once. we know enough from the history of men and nations since sodom till to-day, to recognise it as god's plan to alternate long patience and 'sudden destruction':-- 'the mills of god grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small'; and every such instance confirms the expectation of the coming of that great and terrible day of the lord, whereof all epochs of convulsion and ruin, all falls of jerusalem, and roman empires, reformations, and french revolutions, and american wars, all private and personal calamities which come from private wrong-doing, are but feeble precursors. 'when thou awakest, thou wilt despise their image.' brethren, do we use aright this goodness of god which is the characteristic of the present? are we ready for that judgment which is the mark of the future? iii. death is the annihilation of the vain show of worldly life. the word rendered _image_ is properly shadow, and hence copy or likeness, and hence image. here, however, the simpler meaning is the better. 'thou shalt despise their shadow.' the men are shadows, and all their goods are not what they are called, their 'substance,' but their _shadow_, a mere appearance, not a reality. that show of good which seems but is not, is withered up by the light of the awaking god. what he despises cannot live. so there are the two old commonplaces of moralists set forth in these grand words--the unsatisfying character of all merely external delights and possessions, and also their transitory character. they are non-substantial and non-permanent. nothing that is without a man can make him rich or restful. the treasures which are kept in coffers are not real, but only those which are kept in the soul. nothing which cannot enter into the substance of the life and character can satisfy us. that which we are makes us rich or poor, that which we own is a trifle. there is no congruity between any outward thing and man's soul, of such a kind as that satisfaction can come from its possession. 'cisterns that can hold no water,' 'that which is not bread,' 'husks that the swine did eat'--these are not exaggerated phrases for the good gifts which god gives for our delight, and which become profitless and delusive by our exclusive attachment to them. there is no need for exaggeration. these worldly possessions have a good in them, they contribute to ease and grace in life, they save from carking cares and mean anxieties, they add many a comfort and many a source of culture. but, after all, a true, lofty life may be lived with a very small modicum. there is no proportion between wealth and happiness, nor between wealth and nobleness. the fairest life that ever lived on earth was that of a poor man, and with all its beauty it moved within the limits of narrow resources. the loveliest blossoms do not grow on plants that plunge their greedy roots into the fattest soil. a little light earth in the crack of a hard rock will do. we need enough for the physical being to root itself in; we need no more. young men! especially you who are plunged into the busy life of our great commercial centres, and are tempted by everything you see, and by most that you hear, to believe that a prosperous trade and hard cash are the realities, and all else mist and dreams, fix this in your mind to begin life with--god is the reality, all else is shadow. do not make it your ambition to get _on_, but to get _up_. 'having food and raiment, let us be content.' seek for your life's delight and treasure in thought, in truth, in pure affections, in moderate desires, in a spirit set on god. these are the realities of our possessions. as for all the rest, it is sham and show. and while thus all without is unreal, it is also fleeting as the shadows of the flying clouds; and when god awakes, it disappears as they before the noonlight that clears the heavens. all things that are, are on condition of perpetual flux and change. the cloud-rack has the likeness of bastions and towers, but they are mist, not granite, and the wind is every moment sweeping away their outlines, till the phantom fortress topples into red ruin while we gaze. the tiniest stream eats out its little valley and rounds the pebble in its widening bed, rain washes down the soil, and frost cracks the cliffs above. so silently and yet mightily does the law of change work that to a meditative eye the solid earth seems almost molten and fluid, and the everlasting mountains tremble to decay. 'wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?' are we going to be such fools as to fix our hopes and efforts upon this fleeting order of things, which can give no delight more lasting than itself? even whilst we are in it, it continueth not in one stay, and we are in it for such a little while! then comes what our text calls god's awaking, and where is it all then? gone like a ghost at cockcrow. why! a drop of blood on your brain or a crumb of bread in your windpipe, and as far as you are concerned the outward heavens and earth 'pass away with a great' silence, as the impalpable shadows that sweep over some lone hillside. 'the glories of our birth and state are shadows, not substantial things; there is no armour against fate, death lays his icy hand on kings.' what an awaking to a worldly man that awaking of god will be! 'as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth, but he awaketh and his soul is empty.' he has thought he fed full, and was rich and safe, but in one moment he is dragged from it all, and finds himself a starving pauper, in an order of things for which he has made no provision. 'when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away.' let us see to it that not in utter nakedness do we go hence, but clothed with that immortal robe, and rich in those possessions that cannot be taken away from us, which they have who have lived on earth as heirs of god and joint heirs with christ. let us pierce, for the foundation of our life's house, beneath the shifting sands of time down to the rock of ages, and build there. iv. finally, death is for some men the annihilation of the vain shows in order to reveal the great reality. 'i shall be satisfied, when i awake, with thy likeness.' 'likeness' is properly 'form,' and is the same word which is employed in reference to moses, who saw 'the similitude of the lord.' if there be, as is most probable, an allusion to that ancient vision in these words, then the 'likeness' is not that conformity to the divine character which it is the goal of our hopes to possess, but the beholding of his self-manifestation. the parallelism of the verse also points to such an interpretation. if so, then, we have here the blessed confidence that when all the baseless fabric of the dream of life has faded from our opening eyes, we shall see the face of our ever-loving god. here the distracting whirl of earthly things obscures him from even the devoutest souls, and his own mighty works which reveal do also conceal. in them is the hiding as well as the showing of his power. but there the veil which draped the perfect likeness, and gave but dim hints through its heavy swathings of the outline of immortal beauty that lay beneath, shall fall away. no longer befooled by shadows, we shall possess the true substance; no longer bedazzled by shows, we shall behold the reality. and seeing god we shall be satisfied. with all lesser joys the eye is not satisfied with seeing, but to look on him will be enough. enough for mind and heart, wearied and perplexed with partial knowledge and imperfect love; enough for eager desires, which thirst, after all draughts from other streams; enough for will, chafing against lower lords and yet longing for authoritative control; enough for all my being--to see god. here we can rest after all wanderings, and say, 'i travel no further; here will i dwell for ever--_i shall be satisfied_.' and may these dim hopes not suggest to us too some presentiment of the full christian truth of assimilation dependent on vision, and of vision reciprocally dependent on likeness? 'we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is,'--words which reach a height that david but partially discerned through the mist. this much he knew, that he should in some transcendent sense behold the manifested god; and this much more, that it must be 'in righteousness' that he should gaze upon that face. the condition of beholding the holy one was holiness. we know that the condition of holiness is trust in christ. and as we reckon up the rich treasure of our immortal hopes, our faith grows bold, and pauses not even at the lofty certainty of god without us, known directly and adequately, but climbs to the higher assurance of god within us, flooding our darkness with his great light, and changing us into the perfect copies of his express image, his only-begotten son. 'i shall be satisfied, when i awake, with thy likeness,' cries the prophet psalmist. 'it is enough for the disciple that he be as his master,' responds the christian hope. brethren! take heed that the process of dissipating the vain shows of earth be begun betimes in your souls. it must either be done by faith, whose rod disenchants them into their native nothingness, and then it is blessed; or it must be done by death, whose mace smites them to dust, and then it is pure, irrevocable loss and woe. look away from, or rather look through, things that are seen to the king eternal, invisible. let your hearts seek christ, and your souls cleave to him. then death will take away nothing from you that you would care to keep, but will bring you your true joy. it will but trample to fragments the 'dome of many-coloured glass' that 'stains the white radiance of eternity.' looking forward calmly to that supreme hour, you will be able to say, 'i will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, lord, only makest me dwell in safety.' looking back upon it from beyond, and wondering to find how brief it was, and how close to him whom you love it has brought you, your now immortal lips touched by the rising sun of the heavenly morning will thankfully exclaim, 'when i awake, i am still with thee.' secret faults 'who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.' psalm xix. . the contemplation of the 'perfect law, enlightening the eyes,' sends the psalmist to his knees. he is appalled by his own shortcomings, and feels that, beside all those of which he is aware, there is a region, as yet unilluminated by that law, where evil things nestle and breed. the jewish ritual drew a broad distinction between inadvertent--whether involuntary or ignorant--and deliberate sins; providing atonement for the former, not for the latter. the word in my text rendered 'errors' is closely connected with that which in the levitical system designates the former class of transgressions; and the connection between the two clauses of the text, as well as that with the subsequent verse, distinctly shows that the 'secret faults' of the one clause are substantially synonymous with the 'errors' of the other. they are, then, not sins hidden from men, whether because they have been done quietly in a corner, and remain undetected, or because they have only been in thought, never passing into act. both of these pages are dark in every man's memory. who is there that could reveal himself to men? who is there that could bear the sight of a naked soul? but the psalmist is thinking of a still more solemn fact, that, beyond the range of conscience and consciousness, there are evils in us all. it may do us good to ponder his discovery that he had undiscovered sins, and to take for ours his prayer, 'cleanse thou me from secret faults.' i. so i ask you to look with me, briefly, first, at the solemn fact here, that there are in every man sins of which the doer is unaware. it is with our characters as with our faces. few of us are familiar with our own appearance, and most of us, if we have looked at our portraits, have felt a little shock of surprise, and been ready to say to ourselves, 'well! i did not know that i looked like that!' and the bulk even of good men are almost as much strangers to their inward physiognomy as to their outward. they see themselves in their looking-glasses every morning, although they 'go away and forget what manner of men' they were. but they do not see their true selves in the same fashion in any other mirror. it is the very characteristic of all evil that it has a strange power of deceiving a man as to its real character; like the cuttle-fish, that squirts out a cloud of ink and so escapes in the darkness and the dirt. the more a man goes wrong the less he knows it. conscience is loudest when it is least needed, and most silent when most required. then, besides that, there is a great part of every one's life which is mechanical, instinctive, and all but involuntary. habits and emotions and passing impulses very seldom come into men's consciousness, and an enormously large proportion of everybody's life is done with the minimum of attention, and is as little remembered as it is observed. then, besides that, conscience wants educating. you see that on a large scale, for instance, in the history of the slow progress which christian principle has made in leavening the world's thinkings. it took eighteen centuries to teach the church that slavery was unchristian. the church has not yet learned that war is unchristian, and it is only beginning to surmise that possibly christian principle may have something to say in social questions, and in the determination, for example, of the relations of capital and labour, and of wealth and poverty. the very same slowness of apprehension and gradual growth in the education of conscience, and in the perception of the application of christian principles to duty, applies to the individual as to the church. then, besides that, we are all biassed in our own favour, and what, when another man says it, is 'flat blasphemy,' we think, when we say it, is only 'a choleric word.' we have fine names for our own vices, and ugly ones for the very same vices in other people. david will flare up into generous and sincere indignation about the man that stole the poor man's ewe lamb, but he has not the ghost of a notion that he has been doing the very same thing himself. and so we bribe our consciences as well as neglect them, and they need to be educated. thus, down below every life there lies a great dim region of habits and impulses and fleeting emotions, into which it is the rarest thing for a man to go with a candle in his hand to see what it is like. but i can imagine a man saying, 'well, if i do not know that i am doing wrong, how can it be a sin?' in answer to that, i would say that, thank god! ignorance diminishes criminality, but ignorance does not alter the nature of the deed. take a simple illustration. here is a man who, all unconsciously to himself, is allowing worldly prosperity to sap his christian character. he does not know that the great current of his life has been turned aside, as it were, by that sluice, and is taken to drive the wheels of his mill, and that there is only a miserable little trickle coming down the river bed. is he any less guilty because he does not know? is he not the more so, because he might and would have known if he had thought and felt right? or, here is another man who has the habit of letting his temper get the better of him. he calls it 'stern adherence to principle,' or 'righteous indignation'; and he thinks himself very badly used when other people 'drive him' so often into a temper. other people know, and _he_ might know, if he would be honest with himself, that, for all his fine names, it is nothing else than passion. is he any the less guilty because of his ignorance? it is plain enough that, whilst ignorance, if it is absolute and inevitable, does diminish criminality to the vanishing point, the ignorance of our own faults which most of us display is neither absolute nor inevitable; and therefore, though it may, thank god! diminish, it does not destroy our guilt. 'she wipeth her mouth and saith, i have done no harm': was she, therefore, chaste and pure? in all our hearts there are many vermin lurking beneath the stones, and they are none the less poisonous because they live and multiply in the dark. 'i know nothing against myself, yet am i not hereby justified. but he that judgeth me is the lord.' ii. now, secondly, let me ask you to look at the special perilousness of these hidden faults. as with a blight upon a rose-tree, the little green creatures lurk on the underside of the leaves, and in all the folds of the buds, and because unseen, they increase with alarming rapidity. the very fact that we have faults in our characters, which everybody sees but ourselves, makes it certain that they will grow unchecked, and so will prove terribly perilous. the small things of life are the great things of life. for a man's character is made up of them, and of their results, striking inwards upon himself. a wine-glassful of water with one drop of mud in it may not be much obscured, but if you come to multiply it into a lakeful, you will have muddy waves that reflect no heavens, and show no gleaming stars. these secret faults are like a fungus that has grown in a wine-cask, whose presence nobody suspected. it sucks up all the generous liquor to feed its own filthiness, and when the staves are broken, there is no wine left, nothing but the foul growth. many a christian man and woman has the whole christian life arrested, and all but annihilated, by the unsuspected influence of a secret sin. i do not believe it would be exaggeration to say that, for one man who has made shipwreck of his faith and lost his peace by reason of some gross transgression, there are twenty who have fallen into the same condition by reason of the multitude of small ones. 'he that despiseth little things shall fall by little and little'; and whilst the deeds which the ten commandments rebuke are damning to a christian character, still more perilous, because unseen, and permitted to grow without check or restraint, are these unconscious sins. 'happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.' iii. notice the discipline, or practical issues, to which such considerations should lead. to begin with, they ought to take down our self-complacency, if we have any, and to make us feel that, after all, our characters are very poor things. if men praise us, let us try to remember what it will be good for us to remember, too, when we are tempted to praise ourselves--the underworld of darkness which each of us carries about within us. further, let me press upon you two practical points. this whole set of contemplations should make us practise a very rigid and close self-inspection. there will always be much that will escape our observation--we shall gradually grow to know more and more of it--but there can be no excuse for that which i fear is a terribly common characteristic of the professing christianity of this day--the all but entire absence of close inspection of one's own character and conduct. i know very well that it is not a wholesome thing for a man to be always poking in his own feelings and emotions. i know also that, in a former generation, there was far too much introspection, instead of looking to jesus christ and forgetting self. i do not believe that self-examination, directed to the discovery of reasons for trusting the sincerity of my own faith, is a good thing. but i do believe that, without the practice of careful weighing of ourselves, there will be very little growth in anything that is noble and good. the old greeks used to preach, 'know thyself.' it was a high behest, and very often a very vain-glorious one. a man's best means of knowing what he is, is to take stock of what he does. if you will put your conduct through the sieve, you will come to a pretty good understanding of your character. 'he that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls,' into which all enemies can leap unhindered, and out from which all things that will may pass. do you set guards at the gates and watch yourselves with all carefulness. then, again, i would say we must try to diminish as much as possible the mere instinctive and habitual and mechanical part of our lives, and to bring, as far as we can, every action under the conscious dominion of principle. the less we live by impulse, and the more we live by intelligent reflection, the better it will be for us. the more we can get habit on the side of goodness, the better; but the more we break up our habits, and make each individual action the result of a special volition of the spirit guided by reason and conscience, the better for us all. then, again, i would say, set yourselves to educate your consciences. they need that. one of the surest ways of making conscience more sensitive is always to consult it and always to obey it. if you neglect it, and let it prophesy to the wind, it will stop speaking before long. herod could not get a word out of christ when he 'asked him many questions' because for years he had not cared to hear his voice. and conscience, like the lord of conscience, will hold its peace after men have neglected its speech. you can pull the clapper out of the bell upon the rock, and then, though the waves may dash, there will not be a sound, and the vessel will drive straight on to the black teeth that are waiting for it. educate your conscience by obeying it, and by getting into the habit of bringing everything to its bar. and, still further, compare yourselves constantly with your model. do as the art students do in a gallery, take your poor daub right into the presence of the masterpiece, and go over it line by line and tint by tint. get near jesus christ that you may learn your duty from him, and you will find out many of the secret sins. and, lastly, let us ask god to cleanse us. my text, as translated in the revised version, says, '_clear_ thou me from secret faults.' and there is present in that word, if not exclusively, at least predominantly, the idea of a judicial acquittal, so that the thought of the first clause of this verse seems rather to be that of pronouncing guiltless, or forgiving, than that of delivering from the power of. but both, no doubt, are included in the idea, as both, in fact, come from the same source and in response to the same cry. and so we may be sure that, though our eye does not go down into the dark depths, god's eye goes, and that where he looks he looks to pardon, if we come to him through jesus christ our lord. he will deliver us from the power of these secret faults, giving to us that divine spirit which is 'the candle of the lord,' to search us, and to convince of our sins, and to drag our evil into the light; and giving us the help without which we can never overcome. the only way for us to be delivered from the dominion of our unconscious faults is to increase the depth and closeness and constancy of our communion with jesus christ; and then they will drop away from us. mosquitoes and malaria, the one unseen in their minuteness, and the other, 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness,' haunt the swamps. go up on the hilltop, and neither of them are found. so if we live more and more on the high levels, in communion with our master, there will be fewer and fewer of these unconscious sins buzzing and stinging and poisoning our lives, and more and more will his grace conquer and cleanse. they will all be manifested some day. the time comes when he shall bring to light the hidden things and darkness and the counsels of men's hearts. there will be surprises on both hands of the judge. some on the right, astonished, will say, 'lord, when saw we thee?' and some on the left, smitten to confusion and surprise, will say, 'lord, lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?' let us go to him with the prayer, 'search me, o god! and try me; and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.' open sins 'keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall i be upright, and i shall be innocent from the great transgression.'--psalm xix. . another psalmist promises to the man who dwells 'in the secret place of the most high' that' he shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh at noonday,' but shall 'tread upon the lion and adder.' these promises divide the dangers that beset us into the same two classes as our psalmist does--the one secret; the other palpable and open. the former, which, as i explained in my last sermon, are sins hidden, not from others, but from the doer, may fairly be likened to the pestilence that stalks slaying in the dark, or to the stealthy, gliding serpent, which strikes and poisons before the naked foot is aware. the other resembles the 'destruction that wasteth at noonday,' or the lion with its roar and its spring, as, disclosed from its covert, it leaps upon the prey. our present text deals with the latter of these two classes. 'presumptuous sins' does not, perhaps, convey to an ordinary reader the whole significance of the phrase, for it may be taken to define a single class of sins--namely, those of pride or insolence. what is really meant is just the opposite of 'secret sins'--all sorts of evil which, whatever may be their motives and other qualities, have this in common, that the doer, when he does them, knows them to be wrong. the psalmist gets this further glimpse into the terrible possibilities which attach even to a servant of god, and we have in our text these three things--a danger discerned, a help sought, and a daring hope cherished. i. note, then, the first of these, the dreaded and discerned danger--'presumptuous sins,' which may 'have dominion over' us, and lead us at last to a 'great transgression.' now the word which is translated 'presumptuous' literally means _that which boils or bubbles_; and it sets very picturesquely before us the movement of hot desires--the agitation of excited impulses or inclinations which hurry men into sin in spite of their consciences. it is also to be noticed that the prayer of my text, with singular pathos and lowly self-consciousness, is the prayer of 'thy servant,' who knows himself to be a servant, and who therefore knows that these glaring transgressions, done in the teeth of conscience and consciousness, are all inconsistent with his standing and his profession, but yet are perfectly possible for him. an old mediaeval mystic once said, 'there is nothing weaker than the devil stripped naked.' would it were true! for there is one thing that is weaker than a discovered devil, and that is my own heart. for we all know that sometimes, with our eyes open, and the most unmistakable consciousness that what we are doing was wrong, we have set our teeth and done it, christian men though we may profess to be, and may really be. all such conduct is inconsistent with christianity; but we are not to say, therefore, that it is incompatible with christianity. thank god! that is a very different matter. but as long as you and i have two things--viz. strong and hot desires, and weak and flabby wills--so long shall we, in this world full of combustibles, not be beyond the possibility of a dreadful conflagration being kindled by some devil-blown sparks. there are plenty of dry sticks lying about to put under the caldron of our hearts, to make them boil and bubble over! and we have, alas! but weak wills, which do not always keep the reins in their hands as they ought to do, nor coerce these lower parts of our nature into their proper subordination. fire is a good servant, but a bad master; and we are all of us too apt to let it become master, and then the whole 'course of nature' is 'set on fire of hell.' the servant of god may yet, with open eyes and obstinate disregard of his better self and of all its remonstrances, go straight into 'presumptuous sin.' another step is here taken by the psalmist. he looks shrinkingly and shudderingly into a possible depth, and he sees, going down into the abyss, a ladder with three rungs on it. the topmost one is wilful, self-conscious transgression. but that is not the lowest stage; there is another step. presumptuous sin tends to become despotic sin. 'let them not _have dominion_ over me.' a man may do a very bad thing once, and get so wholesomely frightened, and so keenly conscious of the disastrous issues, that he will never go near it again. the prodigal would not be in a hurry, you may depend upon it, to try the swine trough and the far country, and the rags, and the fever, and the famine any more. david got a lesson that he never forgot in that matter of bathsheba. the bitter fruit of his sin kept growing up all his life, and he had to eat it, and that kept him right. they tell us that broken bones are stronger at the point of fracture than they were before. and it is possible for a man's sin--if i might use a paradox which you will not misunderstand--to become the instrument of his salvation. but there is another possibility quite as probable, and very often recurring, and that is that the disease, like some other morbid states of the human frame, shall leave a tendency to recurrence. a pin-point hole in a dyke will be widened into a gap as big as a church-door in ten minutes, by the pressure of the flood behind it. and so every act which we do in contradiction of our standing as professing christians, and in the face of the protests, all unavailing, of that conscience which is only a voice, and has no power to enforce its behests, will tend to recurrence once and again. the single acts become habits, with awful rapidity. just as the separate gas jets from a multitude of minute apertures coalesce into a continuous ring of light, so deeds become habits, and get dominion over us. 'he sold himself to do evil.' he made himself a bond-slave of iniquity. it is an awful and a miserable thing to think that professing christians do often come into that position of being, by their inflamed passions and enfeebled wills, servants of the evil that they do. alas! how many of us, if we were honest with ourselves, would have to say. 'i am carnal, sold unto sin.' that is not the lowest rung of the slippery ladder. despotic sin ends in utter departure. the word translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a _great_ transgression,' literally means _rebellion_, _revolt_, or some such idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an entire casting off of allegiance to god. 'no man can serve two masters.' 'his servants ye are whom ye obey,' whomsoever ye may call your master. the psalmist feels that the end of indulged evil is going over altogether to the other camp. i suppose all of us have known instances of that sort. men in my position, with a long life of ministry behind them, can naturally remember many such instances. and this is the outline history of the suicide of a christian. first secret sin, unsuspected, because the conscience is torpid; then open sin, known to be such, but done nevertheless; then dominant sin, with an enfeebled will and power of resistance; then the abandonment of all pretence or profession of religion. the ladder goes down into the pit, but not to the bottom of the pit. and the man that is going down it has a descending impulse after he has reached the bottom step and he falls--where? the first step down is tampering with conscience. it is neither safe nor wise to do anything, howsoever small, against that voice. all the rest will come afterward, unless god restrains--'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,' and then the bitter harvest of the poisonous grain. ii. so, secondly, note the help sought. the psalmist is like a man standing on the edge of some precipice, and peeping over the brink to the profound beneath, and feeling his head beginning to swim. he clutches at the strong, steady hand of his guide, knowing that unless he is restrained, over he will go. 'keep thou back thy servant from presumptuous sins.' so, then, the first lesson we have to take is, to cherish a lowly consciousness of our own tendency to light-headedness and giddiness. 'blessed is the man that feareth always.' that fear has nothing cowardly about it. it will not abate in the least the buoyancy and bravery of our work. it will not tend to make us shirk duty because there is temptation in it, but it will make us go into all circumstances realising that without that divine help we cannot stand, and that with it we cannot fall. 'hold thou me up, and i shall be safe.' the same peter that said, 'though all should forsake thee, yet will not i,' was wiser and braver when he said, in later days, being taught by former presumption, 'pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.' let me remind you, too, that the temper which we ought to cherish is that of a confident belief in the reality of a divine support. the prayer of my text has no meaning at all, unless the actual supernatural communication by god's own holy spirit breathed into men's hearts be a simple truth. 'hold thou me up,' 'keep thou me back,' means, if it means anything, 'give me in my heart a mightier strength than mine own, which shall curb all this evil nature of mine, and bring it into conformity with thy holy will.' how is that restraining influence to be exercised? there are many ways by which god, in his providence, can fulfil the prayer. but the way above all others is by the actual operation upon heart and will and desires of a divine spirit, who uses for his weapon the word of god, revealed by jesus christ, and in the scriptures. 'the sword of the spirit is the word of god,' and god's answer to the prayer of my text is the gift to every man who seeks it of that indwelling power to sustain and to restrain. that will keep our passions down. the bubbling water is lowered in its temperature, and ceases to bubble, when cold is added to it. when god's spirit comes into a man's heart, that will deaden his desires after earth and forbidden ways. he will bring blessed higher objects for all his affections. he who has been fed on 'the hidden manna' will not be likely to hanker after the leeks and onions, however strong their smell and pungent their taste, that grew in the nile mud in egypt. he who has tasted the higher sweetnesses of god will have his heart's desires after lower delights strangely deadened and cooled. get near god, and open your hearts for the entrance of that divine spirit, and then it will not seem foolish to empty your hands of the trash that they carry in order to grasp the precious things that he gives. a bit of scrap-iron magnetised turns to the pole. my heart, touched by the spirit of god dwelling in me, will turn to him, and i shall find little sweetness in the else tempting delicacies that earth can supply. 'keep thy servant back from,' by depriving him of the taste for, 'presumptuous sins.' that spirit will strengthen our wills. for when god comes into a heart, he restores the due subordination which has been broken into discord and anarchy by sin. he dismounts the servant riding on horseback, and carrying the horse to the devil, according to the proverb, and gives the reins into the right hands. now, if the gift of god's spirit, working through the word of god, and the principles and the motives therein unfolded, and therefrom deducible, be the great means by which we are to be kept from open and conscious transgression, it follows very plainly that our task is twofold. one part of it is to see that we cultivate that spirit of lowly dependence, of self-conscious weakness, of triumphant confidence, which will issue in the perpetual prayer for god's restraint. when we enter upon tasks which may be dangerous, and into regions of temptation which cannot but be so, though they be duty, we should ever have the desire in our hearts and upon our lips that god would keep us from, and in, the evil. the other part of our duty is to make it a matter of conscience and careful cultivation, to use honestly and faithfully the power which, in response to our desires, has been granted to us. all of you, christian men and women, have access to an absolute security against every transgression; and the cause lies wholly at your own doors in each case of failure, deficiency, or transgression, for at every moment it was open to you to clasp the hand that holds you up, and at every moment, if you failed, it was because your careless fingers had relaxed their grasp. iii. lastly, observe the daring hope here cherished. 'then shall i be upright, and i shall be innocent from the great transgression.' that is the upshot of the divine answer to both the petitions which have been occupying us in these two successive sermons. it is connected with the former of them by the recurrence of the same word, which in the first petition was rendered 'cleanse'--or, more accurately, 'clear'--and in this final clause is to be rendered accurately, 'i shall be _clear_ from the great transgression.' and it obviously connects in sense with both these petitions, because, in order to be upright and clear, there must, first of all, be divine cleansing, and then divine restraint. so, then, nothing short of absolute deliverance from the power of sin in all its forms should content the servant of god. nothing short of it contents the master for the servant. nothing short of it corresponds to the power which christ puts in operation in every heart that believes in him. and nothing else should be our aim in our daily conflict with evil and growth in grace. ah! i fear me that, for an immense number of professing christians in this generation, the hope of--and, still more, the aim towards--anything approximating to entire deliverance from sin, have faded from their consciences and their lives. aim at the stars, brother! and if you do not hit them, your arrow will go higher than if it were shot along the lower levels. note that an indefinite approximation to this condition is possible. i am not going to discuss, at this stage of my discourse, controversial questions which may be involved here. it will be time enough to discuss with you whether you can be absolutely free from sin in this world when you are a great deal freer from it than you are at present. at all events, you can get far nearer to the ideal, and the ideal must always be perfect. and i lay it on your hearts, dear friends! that you have in your possession, if you are christian people, possibilities in the way of conformity to the master's will, and entire emancipation from all corruption, that you have not yet dreamed of, not to say applied to your lives. 'i pray god that he would sanctify you wholly, and that your whole body, soul, and spirit be preserved blameless unto the coming.' that daring hope will be fulfilled one day; for nothing short of it will exhaust the possibilities of christ's work or satisfy the desires of christ's heart. the gospel knows nothing of irreclaimable outcasts. to it there is but one unpardonable sin, and that is the sin of refusing the cleansing of christ's blood and the sanctifying of christ's spirit. whoever you are, whatever you are, go to god with this prayer of our text, and realise that it is answered in jesus christ, and you will not ask in vain. if you will put yourself into his hands, and let him cleanse and restrain, he will give you new powers to detect the serpents in the flowers, and new resolution to shake off the vipers into the fire. for there is nothing that god wants half so much as that we, his wandering children, should come back to him, and he will cleanse us from the filth of the swine trough and the rags of our exile, and clothe us in 'fine linen clean and white.' we may each be sinless and guiltless. we can be so in one way only. if we look to jesus christ, and live near him, he 'will be made of god unto us wisdom,' by which we shall detect our secret sins; 'righteousness,' whereby we shall be cleansed from guilt; 'sanctification,' which shall restrain us from open transgression; 'and redemption,' by which we shall be wholly delivered from evil and 'presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.' feasting on the sacrifice 'the meek shall eat and be satisfied.'--psalm xxii. . 'the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace-offering for thanksgiving shall be offered in the day of his oblation.' such was the law for israel. and the custom of sacrificial feasts, which it embodies, was common to many lands. to such a custom my text alludes; for the psalmist has just been speaking of 'paying his vows' (that is, sacrifices which he had vowed in the time of his trouble), and to partake of these he invites the meek. the sacrificial dress is only a covering for high and spiritual thoughts. in some way or other the singer of this psalm anticipates that his experiences shall be the nourishment and gladness of a wide circle; and if we observe that in the context that circle is supposed to include the whole world, and that one of the results of partaking of this sacrificial feast is 'your heart shall live for ever,' we may well say with the ethiopian eunuch, 'of whom speaketh the psalmist thus?' the early part of the psalm answers the question. jesus christ laid his hand on this wonderful psalm of desolation, despair, and deliverance when on the cross he took its first words as expressing his emotion then: 'my god! my god! why hast thou forsaken me?' whatever may be our views as to its authorship, and as to the connection between the psalmist's utterances and his own personal experiences, none to whom that voice that rang through the darkness on calvary is the voice of the son of god, can hesitate as to who it is whose very griefs and sorrows are thus the spiritual food that gives life to the whole world. from this, the true point of view, then, from which to look at the whole of this wonderful psalm, i desire to deal with the words of my text now. i. we have, first, then, the world's sacrificial feast. the jewish ritual, and that of many other nations, as i have remarked, provided for a festal meal following on, and consisting of the material of, the sacrifice. a generation which studies comparative mythology, and spares no pains to get at the meaning underlying the barbarous worship of the rudest nations, ought to be interested in the question of the ideas that formed and were expressed by that elaborate jewish ritual. in the present case, the signification is plain enough. that which, in one aspect, is a peace-offering reconciling to god, in another aspect is the nourishment and the joy of the hearts that accept it. and so the work of jesus christ has two distinct phases of application, according as we think of it as being offered to god or appropriated by men. in the one case it is our peace; in the other it is our food and our life. if we glance for a moment at the marvellous picture of suffering and desolation in the previous portion of this psalm, which sounds the very depths of both, we shall understand more touchingly what it is on which christian hearts are to feed. the desolation that spoke in 'why hast thou forsaken me?' the consciousness of rejection and reproach, of mockery and contempt, which wailed, 'all that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip; they shake the head, saying, "he trusted on the lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him"'; the physical sufferings which are the very picture of crucifixion, so as that the whole reads liker history than prophecy, in 'all my bones are out of joint; my strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws'; the actual passing into the darkness of the grave, which is expressed in 'thou hast brought me into the dust of death'; and even the minute correspondence, so inexplicable upon any hypothesis except that it is direct prophecy, which is found in 'they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture'--these be the viands, not without bitter herbs, that are laid on the table which christ spreads for us. they are parts of the sacrifice that reconciles to god. offered to him they make our peace. they are parts and elements of the food of our spirits. appropriated and partaken of by us they make our strength and our life. brethren! there is little food, there is little impulse, little strength for obedience, little gladness or peace of heart to be got from a christ who is _not_ a sacrifice. if we would know how much he may be to us, as the nourishment of our best life, and as the source of our purest and permanent gladness, we must, first of all, look upon him as the offering for the world's sin, and then as the very life and bread of our souls. the christ that feeds the world is the christ that died for the world. hence our lord himself, most eminently in one great and profound discourse, has set forth, not only that he is the bread of god which 'came down from heaven,' but that his flesh and his blood are such, and the separation between the two in the discourse, as in the memorial rite, indicates that there has come the violent separation of death, and that thereby he becomes the life of humanity. so my text, and the whole series of old testament representations in which the blessings of the kingdom are set forth as a feast, and the parables of the new testament in which a similar representation is contained, do all converge upon, and receive their deepest meaning from, that one central thought that the peace-offering for the world is the food of the world. we see, hence, the connection between these great spiritual ideas and the central act of christian worship. the lord's supper simply says by act what my text says in words. i know no difference between the rite and the parable, except that the one is addressed to the eye and the other to the ear. the rite is an acted parable; the parable is a spoken rite. and when jesus christ, in the great discourse to which i have referred, dilates at length upon the 'eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood' as being the condition of spiritual life, he is not referring to the lord's supper, but the discourse and the rite refer both to the same spiritual truth. one is a symbol; the other is a saying; and symbol and saying mean just the same thing. the saying does not refer to the symbol, but to that to which the symbol refers. it seems to me that one of the greatest dangers which now threaten evangelical christianity is the strange and almost inexplicable recrudescence of sacramentarianism in this generation to which those christian communities are contributing, however reluctantly and unconsciously, who say there is something more than commemorative symbols in the bread and wine of the lord's table. if once you admit that, it seems, in my humble judgment, that you open the door to the whole flood of evils which the history of the church declares have come with the sacramentarian hypothesis. and we must take our stand, as i believe, upon the plain, intelligible thoughts--baptism is a declaratory symbol, and nothing more; the lord's supper is a commemorative symbol, and nothing more; except that both are acts of obedience to the enjoining lord. when we stand there we can face all priestly superstitions, and say, 'jesus i know; and paul i know; but who are ye?' 'the meek shall eat and be satisfied,' and the food of the world is the suffering messiah. but what have we to say about the act expressed in the text? 'the meek shall eat.' i do not desire to dwell at any length upon the thought of the process by which this food of the world becomes ours, in this sermon. but there are two points which perhaps may be regarded as various aspects of one, on which i would like to say just a sentence or two. of course, the translation of the 'eating' of my text into spiritual reality is simply that we partake of the food of our spirits by the act of faith in jesus christ. but whilst that is so, let me put emphasis, in a sentence, upon the thought that personal appropriation, and making the world's food mine, by my own individual act, is the condition on which alone i get any good from it. it is possible to die of starvation at the door of a granary. it is possible to have a table spread with all that is needful, and yet to set one's teeth, and lock one's lips, and receive no strength and no gladness from the rich provision. 'eat' means, at any rate, incorporate with myself, take into my very own lips, masticate with my very own teeth, swallow down by my very own act, and so make part of my physical frame. and that is what we have to do with jesus christ, or he is nothing to us. 'eat'; claim your part in the universal blessing; see that it becomes yours by your own taking of it into the very depths of your heart. and then, and then only, will it become your food. and how are we to do that if, day in and day out, and week in and week out, and year in and year out, with some of us, there be scarce a thought turned to him; scarce a desire winging its way to him; scarce one moment of quiet contemplation of these great truths. we have to ruminate, we have to meditate; we have to make conscious and frequent efforts to bring before the mind, in the first place, and then before the heart and all the sensitive, emotional, and voluntary nature, the great truths on which our salvation rests. in so far as we do that we get good out of them; in so far as we fail to do it, we may call ourselves christians, and attend to religious observances, and be members of churches, and diligent in good works, and all the rest of it, but nothing passes from him to us, and we starve even whilst we call ourselves guests at his table. oh! the average christian life of this day is a strange thing; very, very little of it has the depth that comes from quiet communion with jesus christ; and very little of it has the joyful consciousness of strength that comes from habitual reception into the heart of the grace that he brings. what is the good of all your profession unless it brings you to that? if a coroner's jury were to sit upon many of us--and we are dead enough to deserve it--the verdict would be, 'died of starvation.' 'the meek shall eat,' but what about the professing christians that feed their souls upon anything, everything rather than upon the christ whom they say they trust and serve? ii. and now let me say a word, in the second place, about the rich fruition of this feast. 'the meek shall be satisfied.' 'satisfied!' who in the world is? and if we are not, why are we not? jesus christ, in the facts of his death and resurrection--for his resurrection as well as his death are included in the psalm--brings to us all that our circumstances, relationships, and inward condition can require. think of what that death, as the sacrifice for the world's sin, does. it sets all right in regard to our relation to god. it reveals to us a god of infinite love. it provides a motive, an impulse, and a pattern for all life. it abolishes death, and it gives ample scope for the loftiest and most exuberant hopes that a man can cherish. and surely these are enough to satisfy the seeking spirit. but go to the other end, and think, not of what christ's work does for us, but of what we need to have done for us. what do you and i want to be satisfied? it would take a long time to go over the catalogue; let me briefly run through some of the salient points of it. we want, for the intellect, which is the regal part of man, though it be not the highest, truth which is certain, comprehensive, and inexhaustible; the first, to provide anchorage; the second, to meet and regulate and unify all thought and life; and the last, to allow room for endless research and ceaseless progress. and in that fact that the eternal son of the eternal father took upon himself human nature, lived, died, rose, and reigns at god's right hand, i believe there lie the seeds of all truth, except the purely physical and material, which men need. everything is there; every truth about god, about man, about duty, about a future, about society; everything that the world needs is laid up in germ in that great gospel of our salvation. if a man will take it for the foundation of his beliefs and the guide of his thinkings, he will find his understanding is satisfied, because it grasps the personal truth who liveth, and is with us for ever. our hearts crave, however imperfect their love may be, a perfect love; and a perfect love means one untinged by any dash of selfishness, incapable of any variation or eclipse, all-knowing, all-pitying, all-powerful. we have made experience of precious loves that die. we know of loves that change, that grow cold, that misconstrue, that may have tears but have no hands. we know of 'loves' that are only a fine name for animal passions, and are twice cursed, cursing them that give and them that take. the happiest will admit, and the lonely will achingly feel, how we all want for satisfaction a love that cannot fail, that can help, that beareth all things, and that can do all things. we have it in jesus christ, and the cross is the pledge thereof. conscience wants pacifying, cleansing, enlightening, directing, and we get all these in the good news of one that has died for us, and that lives to be our lord. the will needs authority which is not force. and where is there an authority so constraining in its sweetness and so sweet in its constraint as in those silken bonds which are stronger than iron fetters? hope, imagination, and all other of our powers or weaknesses, our gifts or needs, are satisfied when they feed on christ. if we feed upon anything else it turns to ashes that break our teeth and make our palates gritty, and have no nourishment in them. we shall be 'for ever roaming with a hungry heart' unless we take our places at the feast on the one sacrifice for the world's peace. iii. i can say but a word as to the guests. it is 'the meek' who eat. the word translated 'meek' has a wider and deeper meaning than that. 'meek' refers, in our common language, mainly to men's demeanour to one another; but the expression here goes deeper. it means both 'afflicted' and 'lowly'--the right use of affliction being to bow men, and they that bow themselves are those who are fit to come to christ's feast. there is a very remarkable contrast between the words of my text and those that follow a verse or two afterwards. 'the meek shall eat and be satisfied,' says the text. and then close upon its heels comes, 'all those that be fat upon earth shall eat.' that is to say, the lofty and proud have to come down to the level of the lowly, and take indiscriminate places at the table with the poor and the starving, which, being turned into plain english is just this--the one thing that hinders a man from partaking of the fulness of christ's feeding grace is self-sufficiency, and the absence of a sense of need. they that 'hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled'; and they that come, knowing themselves to be poor and needy, and humbly consenting to accept a gratuitous feast of charity--they, and only they, do get the rich provisions. you are shut out because you shut yourselves out. they that do not know themselves to be hungry have no ears for the dinner-bell. they that feel the pangs of starvation and know that their own cupboards are empty, they are those who will turn to the table that is spread in the wilderness, and there find a 'feast of fat things.' and so, dear friends! when he calls, do not let us make excuses, but rather listen to that voice that says to us, 'why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not.... incline your ear unto me; hear, and your soul shall live.' the shepherd king of israel 'the lord is my shepherd: i shall not want. . he maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. . he restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. . yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. . thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. . surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and i will dwell in the house of the lord for ever.'--psalm xxiii. - . the king who had been the shepherd-boy, and had been taken from the quiet sheep-cotes to rule over israel, sings this little psalm of him who is the true shepherd and king of men. we do not know at what period of david's life it was written, but it sounds as if it were the work of his later years. there is a fulness of experience about it, and a tone of subdued, quiet confidence which speaks of a heart mellowed by years, and of a faith made sober by many a trial. a young man would not write so calmly, and a life which was just opening would not afford material for such a record of god's guardianship in all changing circumstances. if, then, we think of the psalm as the work of david's later years, is it not very beautiful to see the old king looking back with such vivid and loving remembrance to his childhood's occupation, and bringing up again to memory in his palace the green valleys, the gentle streams, the dark glens where he had led his flocks in the old days; very beautiful to see him traversing all the stormy years of warfare and rebellion, of crime and sorrow, which lay between, and finding in all god's guardian presence and gracious guidance? the faith which looks back and says, 'it is all very good,' is not less than that which looks forward and says, 'surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.' there is nothing difficult of understanding in the psalm. the train of thought is clear and obvious. the experiences which it details are common, the emotions it expresses simple and familiar. the tears that have been dried, the fears that have been dissipated, by this old song; the love and thankfulness which have found in them their best expression, prove the worth of its simple words. it lives in most of our memories. let us try to vivify it in our hearts, by pondering it for a little while together now. the psalm falls into two halves, in both of which the same general thought of god's guardian care is presented, though under different illustrations, and with some variety of detail. the first half sets him forth as a shepherd, and us as the sheep of his pasture. the second gives him as the host, and us as the guests at his table, and the dwellers in his house. first, then, consider that picture of the divine shepherd and his leading of his flock. it occupies the first four verses of the psalm. there is a double progress of thought in it. it rises, from memories of the past, and experiences of the present care of god, to hope for the future. 'the lord is my shepherd'--'i will fear no evil.' then besides this progress from what was and is, to what will be, there is another string, so to speak, on which the gems are threaded. the various methods of god's leading of his flock, or rather, we should say, the various regions into which he leads them, are described in order. these are rest, work, sorrow--and this series is so combined with the order of time already adverted to, as that the past and the present are considered as the regions of rest and of work, while the future is anticipated as having in it the valley of the shadow of death. first, god leads his sheep into rest. 'he maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.' it is the hot noontide, and the desert lies baking in the awful glare, and every stone on the hills of judaea burns the foot that touches it. but in that panting, breathless hour, here is a little green glen, with a quiet brooklet, and moist lush herb-age all along its course, and great stones that fling a black shadow over the dewy grass at their base; and there would the shepherd lead his flock, while the sunbeams, like swords,' are piercing everything beyond that hidden covert. sweet silence broods there, the sheep feed and drink, and couch in cool lairs till he calls them forth again. so god leads his children. the psalm puts the rest and refreshment _first_, as being the most marked characteristic of god's dealings. after all, it is so. the years are years of unbroken continuity of outward blessings. the reign of afflictions is ordinarily measured by days. 'weeping endures for a night.' it is a rainy climate where half the days have rain in them; and that is an unusually troubled life of which it can with any truth be affirmed that there has been as much darkness as sunshine in it. but it is not mainly of outward blessings that the psalmist is thinking. they are precious chiefly as emblems of the better spiritual gifts; and it is not an accommodation of his words, but is the appreciation of their truest spirit, when we look upon them, as the instinct of devout hearts has ever done, as expressing both god's gift of temporal mercies, and his gift of spiritual good, of which higher gift all the lower are meant to be significant and symbolic. thus regarded, the image describes the sweet rest of the soul in communion with god, in whom alone the hungry heart finds food that satisfies, and from whom alone the thirsty soul drinks draughts deep and limpid enough. this rest and refreshment has for its consequence the restoration of the soul, which includes in it both the invigoration of the natural life by the outward sort of these blessings, and the quickening and restoration of the spiritual life by the inward feeding upon god and repose in him. the soul thus restored is then led on another stage; 'he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake,'--that is to say, god guides us into work. the quiet mercies of the preceding verse are not in themselves the end of our shepherd's guidance; they are means to an end, and that is--work. life is not a fold for the sheep to lie down in, but a road for them to walk on. all our blessings of every sort are indeed given us for our delight. they will never fit us for the duties for which they are intended to prepare us, unless they first be thoroughly enjoyed. the highest good they yield is only reached through the lower one. but, then, when joy fills the heart, and life is bounding in the veins, we have to learn that these are granted, not for pleasure only, but for pleasure in order to power. we get them, not to let them pass away like waste steam puffed into empty air, but that we may use them to drive the wheels of life. the waters of happiness are not for a luxurious bath where a man may lie, till, like flax steeped too long, the very fibre be rotted out of him; a quick plunge will brace him, and he will come out refreshed for work. rest is to fit for work, work is to sweeten rest. all this is emphatically true of the spiritual life. its seasons of communion, its hours on the mount, are to prepare for the sore sad work in the plain; and he is not the wisest disciple who tries to make the mount of transfiguration the abiding place for himself and his lord. it is not well that our chief object should be to enjoy the consolations of religion; it is better to seek first to do the duties enjoined by religion. our first question should be, not, how may i enjoy god? but, how may i glorify him? 'a single eye to his glory' means that even our comfort and joy in religious exercises shall be subordinated, and (if need were) postponed, to the doing of his will. while, on the one hand, there is no more certain means of enjoying him than that of humbly seeking to walk in the ways of his commandments, on the other hand, there is nothing more evanescent in its nature than a mere emotion, even though it be that of joy in god, unless it be turned into a spring of action for god. such emotions, like photographs, vanish from the heart unless they be fixed. work for god is the way to fix them. joy in god is the strength of work for god, but work for god is the perpetuation of joy in god. here is the figurative expression of the great evangelical principle, that works of righteousness must follow, not precede, the restoration of the soul. we are justified not by works, but for works, or, as the apostle puts it in a passage which sounds like an echo of this psalm, we are 'created in christ jesus unto good works, which god hath before ordained _that we should walk in them_.' the basis of obedience is the sense of salvation. we work not _for_ the assurance of acceptance and forgiveness, but _from_ it. first the restored soul, then the paths of righteousness for _his_ name's sake who has restored me, and restored me that i may be like him. but there is yet another region through which the varied experience of the christian carries him, besides those of rest and of work. god leads his people through sorrow. 'yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil.' the 'valley of the shadow of death' does not only mean the dark approach to the dark dissolution of soul and body, but any and every gloomy valley of weeping through which we have to pass. such sunless gorges we have all to traverse at some time or other. it is striking that the psalmist puts the sorrow, which is as certainly characteristic of our lot as the rest or the work, into the future. looking back he sees none. memory has softened down all the past into one uniform tone, as the mellowing distance wraps in one solemn purple the mountains which, when close to them, have many a barren rock and gloomy rift, all behind is good. and, building on this hope, he looks forward with calmness, and feels that no evil shall befall. but it is never given to human heart to meditate of the future without some foreboding. and when 'hope enchanted smiles,' with the light of the future in her blue eyes, there is ever something awful in their depths, as if they saw some dark visions behind the beauty. some evils may come; some will probably come; one at least is sure to come. however bright may be the path, somewhere on it, perhaps just round that turning, sits the 'shadow feared of man.' so there is never hope only in any heart that wisely considers the future. but to the christian heart there may be this--the conviction that sorrow, when it comes, will not harm, because god will be with us; and the conviction that the hand which guides us into the dark valley, will guide us through it and up out of it. yes, strange as it may sound, the presence of him who sends the sorrow is the best help to bear it. the assurance that the hand which strikes is the hand which binds up, makes the stroke a blessing, sucks the poison out of the wound of sorrow, and turns the rod which smites into the staff to lean on. the second portion of this psalm gives us substantially the same thoughts under a different image. it considers god as the host, and us as the guests at his table and the dwellers in his house. in this illustration, which includes the remaining verses, we have, as before, the food and rest, the journey and the suffering. we have also, as before, memory and present experience issuing in hope. but it is all intensified. the necessity and the mercy are alike presented in brighter colours; the want is greater, the supply greater, the hope for the future on earth brighter; and, above all, while the former set of images stopped at the side of the grave, and simply refused to fear, here the vision goes on beyond the earthly end; and as the hope comes brightly out, that all the weary wanderings will end in the peace of the father's house, the absence of fear is changed into the presence of triumphant confidence, and the resignation which, at the most, simply bore to look unfaltering into the depth of the narrow house, becomes the faith which plainly sees the open gate of the everlasting home. god supplies our wants in the very midst of strife. 'thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. thou anointest my head with oil. my cup runneth over.' before, it was food and rest first, work afterwards. now it is more than work--it is conflict. and the mercy is more strikingly portrayed, as being granted not only _before toil_, but _in warfare_. life is a sore fight; but to the christian man, in spite of all the tumult, life is a festal banquet. there stand the enemies, ringing him round with cruel eyes, waiting to be let slip upon him like eager dogs round the poor beast of the chase. but for all that, here is spread a table in the wilderness, made ready by invisible hands; and the grim-eyed foe is held back in the leash till the servant of god has fed and been strengthened. this is our condition--always the foe, always the table. what sort of a meal should that be? the soldiers who eat and drink, and are drunken in the presence of the enemy, like the saxons before hastings, what will become of them? drink the cup of gladness, as men do when their foe is at their side, looking askance over the rim, and with one hand on the sword, 'ready, aye ready,' against treachery and surprise. but the presence of the danger should make the feast more enjoyable too, by the moderation it enforces, and by the contrast it affords--as to sailors on shore, or soldiers in a truce. joy may grow on the very face of danger, as a slender rose-bush flings its bright sprays and fragrant blossoms over the lip of a cataract; and that not the wild mirth of men in a pestilence, with their 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' but the simple-hearted gladness of those who have preserved the invaluable childhood gift of living in the present moment, because they know that to-morrow will bring god, whatever it brings, and not take away his care and love, whatever it takes away. this, then, is the form under which the experience of the past is presented in the second portion,--joy in conflict, rest and food even in the strife. upon that there is built a hope which transcends that in the previous portion of the psalm. as to this life, 'goodness and mercy shall follow us.' this is more than 'i will fear no evil.' that said, sorrow is not evil if god be with us. this says, sorrow is mercy. the one is hope looking mainly at outward circumstances, the other is hope learning the spirit and meaning of them all. these two angels of god--goodness and mercy--shall follow and encamp around the pilgrim. the enemies whom god held back while he feasted, may pursue, but will not overtake him. they will be distanced sooner or later; but the white wings of these messengers of the covenant will never be far away from the journeying child, and the air will often be filled with the music of their comings, and their celestial weapons will glance around him in all the fight, and their soft arms will bear him up over all the rough ways, and up higher at last to the throne. so much for the earthly future. but higher than all that rises the confidence of the closing words, 'i shall dwell in the house of the lord for ever.' this should be at once the crown of all our hopes for the future, and the one great lesson taught us by all the vicissitudes of life. the sorrows and the joys, the journeying and the rest, the temporary repose and the frequent struggles, all these should make us _sure_ that there is an end which will interpret them all, to which they all point, for which they may all prepare. we get the table in the wilderness here. it is as when the son of some great king comes back from foreign soil to his father's dominions, and is welcomed at every stage in his journey to the capital with pomp of festival, and messengers from the throne, until he enters at last his palace home, where the travel-stained robe is laid aside, and he sits down with his father at his table. god provides for us here in the presence of our enemies; it is wilderness food we get, manna from heaven, and water from the rock. we eat in haste, staff in hand, and standing round the meal. but yonder we sit down with the shepherd, the master of the house, at his table in his kingdom. we put off the pilgrim-dress, and put on the royal robe; we lay aside the sword, and clasp the palm. far off, and lost to sight, are all the enemies. we fear no change. we 'go no more out.' the sheep are led by many a way, sometimes through sweet meadows, sometimes limping along sharp-flinted, dusty highways, sometimes high up over rough, rocky mountain-passes, sometimes down through deep gorges, with no sunshine in their gloom; but they are ever being led to one place, and when the hot day is over they are gathered into one fold, and the sinking sun sees them safe, where no wolf can come, nor any robber climb up any more, but all shall rest for ever under the shepherd's eye. brethren! can you take this psalm for yours? have you returned unto christ, the shepherd and bishop of your souls? oh! let him, the shepherd of israel, and the lamb of god, one of the fold and yet the guide and defender of it, human and divine, bear you away from the dreary wilderness whither he has come seeking you. he will carry you rejoicing to the fold, if only you will trust yourselves to his gentle arm. he will restore your soul. he will lead you and keep you from all dangers, guard you from every sin, strengthen you when you come to die, and bring you to the fair plains beyond that narrow gorge of frowning rock. then this sweet psalm shall receive its highest fulfilment, for then 'they shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat, for the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and god shall wipe all tears from their eyes.' a great question and its answer 'who shall ascend into the hill of the lord? and who shall stand in his holy place?'--psalm xxiv. . the psalm from which these words are taken flashes up into new beauty, if we suppose it to have been composed in connection with the bringing of the ark into the temple, or for some similar occasion. whether it is david's or not is a matter of very small consequence. but if we look at the psalm as a whole, we can scarcely fail to see that some such occasion underlies it. so just exercise your imaginations for a moment, and think of the long procession of white-robed priests bearing the ark, and followed by the joyous multitude chanting as they ascended, 'who shall ascend into the hill of the lord, or who shall stand in his holy place?' they are bethinking themselves of the qualifications needed for that which they are now doing. they reach the gates, which we must suppose to have been closed that they might be opened, and from the half-chorus outside there peals out the summons, 'lift up your heads, o ye gates! and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in.' then from within another band of singers answers with the question, 'who is this king of glory' who thus demands entrance? and triumphantly the reply rings out, 'the lord, strong and mighty; the lord, mighty in battle.' still reluctant, the question is put again, 'who is this king of glory?' and the answer is given once more, 'the lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.' there is no reference in the second answer to 'battle.' the conflicts are over, and the dominion is established, and at the reiterated summons the ancient gates roll back on their hinges, burst as by a strong blow, and jehovah enters into his rest, he and the ark of his strength. if that is the general connection of the psalm--and i think you will admit that it adds to its beauty and dramatic force if we suppose it so--then this introductory question, sung as the procession climbed the steep, had realised what was needed for those who should get the entrance that they sought, and comes to be a very significant and important one. i deal now with the question and its answer. i. the question of questions. that question lies deep in all men's hearts, and underlies sacrifices and priesthoods and asceticisms and tortures of all sorts, and is the inner meaning of hindoos swinging with hooks in their backs, and others of them measuring the road to the temple by prostrating themselves every yard or two as they advance. these self-torturers are all asking the same question: 'who shall ascend into the hill of the lord?' it sometimes rises in the thoughts of the most degraded, and it is present always with some of the better and nobler of men. now, there are three places in the old testament where substantially the same question is asked. there is this psalm of ours; there is another psalm which is all but a duplicate, which begins with 'lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?' and there is another shape into which the question is cast by the fervent and somewhat gloomy imagination of one of the prophets, who puts it thus: 'who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?' there never was a more disastrous misapplication of scripture than the popular idea that these two last questions suggest the possibility of a creature being exposed to the torments of future punishment. they have nothing to do with that. 'who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?' if you want a commentary, remember the words, 'our god is a consuming fire.' that puts us on the right track, if we needed any putting on it, for answering this question, not in the gruesome and ghastly sense in which some people take it, but in all the grandeur of isaiah's thought. he sees god as 'the everlasting burnings.' fire is the emblem of life as well as of death; fire is the means of quickening as well as of destroying; and when we speak of him as 'the everlasting burnings' we are reminded of the bush in the desert, where his own signature was set, 'burning and not consumed.' so the question in all the three places referred to is substantially the same--and what does it indicate? it indicates the deep consciousness that men have that they need to be in that home, that for life and peace and blessedness, they must get somehow to the side of god, and be quiet there, as children in their father's house. we all know that this is true, whether our life is regulated by it or not. very deep in every man's conscience, if he will attend to its voice, there is that which says, 'you are a pilgrim and a sojourner, and homeless and desolate until you nestle beneath the outspread wings in the holy place, and are a denizen of god's house.' the question further suggests another. the universal consciousness--which is, i believe, universal--though it is overlain and stifled by many of us, and neglected and set at nought by others--is that this fellowship with god, which is indispensable to a man's peace, is impossible to a man's impurity. so the question raises the thought of the consciousness of sin which comes creeping over a man when he is sometimes feeling after god, and seems to batter him in the face, and fling him back into the outer darkness, 'how can i enter in there?' and conscience has no answer, and the world has none, and as i shall have to say presently, the answer which the old testament, as law, gives is almost as hopeless as the answer which conscience gives. but at all events that this question should rise and insist upon being answered as it does proves these three things--man's need of god, man's sense of god's purity, man's consciousness of his own sin. and what does that ascent to the hill of the lord include? all the present life, for, unless we are 'dwelling in the house of the lord all the days of our lives beholding his beauty and inquiring in his temple,' then we have little in life that is worth the having. the old arab right of claiming hospitality of the sheikh into whose tent the fugitive ran is used in scripture over and over again to express the relation in which alone it is blessed for a man to live--namely, as a guest of god's. that is peace. that is all that we require, to sit at his fireside, if i may so say, to claim the rites of hospitality, which the arab chief would not refuse to the veriest tatterdemalion, or the greatest enemy that he knew, if he came into his tent and sought it. god sits in the door of his tent, and is ready to welcome us. the ascent to the hill of the lord means more than that. it includes also the future. i suppose that when men think about another world--which i am afraid none of us think about as often as we ought to do, in order to make the best of this one--the question, in some shape or other, which this band of singers lifted up, rises to their lips, 'who shall ascend into the hill of the lord, or who shall stand in his holy place' beyond the stars? well, brethren! that is the question which concerns us all, more than anything else in the world, to have clearly and rightly answered. ii. note the answer to this great question. the psalm answers it in an instructive fashion, which we take as it stands. 'he that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' let me measure myself by the side of that requirement. 'clean hands?'--are mine clean? 'and a pure heart?'--what about mine? 'who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity'--and where have my desires and thoughts so often gone? 'nor sworn deceitfully.' these are the qualifications that our psalm dashes down in front of us when we ask the question. the other two occasions to which i have referred, where the same question is put, give substantially the same answer. it might be interesting, if one had time, or this was the place, to look at the differences in the replies, as suggesting the slight differences in the ideal of a good man as presented by the various writers, but that must be left untouched now. taking these four conditions that are laid down here, we come to this, that psalmist and prophet with one voice say that same solemn thing: 'holiness, without which no man shall see the lord.' there is no faltering in the answer, and it is an answer to which the depths of conscience say 'yes.' we all admit, when we are wise, that for communion with god on earth, and for treading the golden pavements of that city into which nothing that is unclean shall enter, absolute holiness is necessary. let no man deceive himself--that stands the irreversible, necessary condition. well, then, is anybody to go in? let us read on in our psalm. an impossible requirement is laid down, broad and stern and unmistakable. but is that all? 'he shall receive a blessing from the lord, and righteousness from the god of his salvation.' so, then, the impossible requirement is made possible as a gift to be received. and although i do not know that this psalmist, in the twilight of revelation, saw all that was involved in what he sang, he had caught a glimpse of this great thought, that what god required, god would give, and that our way to get the necessary, impossible condition realised in ourselves is to 'receive' it. 'he shall receive ... righteousness from the god of his salvation.' now, do you not see how, like some great star, trembling into the field of the telescope, and sending arrowy beams before it to announce its approach, the great central christian truth is here dawning, germinant, prophesying its full rising? and the truth is this, 'that i might be found in him, not having my own righteousness, but that which is of god through christ.' ah, brethren! impossibilities become possible when god comes and says, 'i give thee that which thou canst not have.' the old prophet asked the question, 'what doth god require of thee?' and his answer was, 'that thou shouldst do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy god.' if he had gone on to ask a better question, 'what does god give thee?' he would have said what all the new testament says, 'he gives what he commands, and he bestows before he requires.' and so in jesus christ there is the forgiveness that blots out the past, and there is the new life bestowed that will develop the righteousness far beyond our reach. and thus the question which evoked first the answer that might drive us to despair, evokes next a response that commands us to hope. but that is not all, for the psalm goes on: 'this is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face.' yes; couched in germ there lies in that last word the great truth which is expanded in the new testament, like a beech-leaf folded up in its little brown sheath through all the winter, and ready to break and give out its green plumelets as soon as the warm rains and sunshine of spring come. 'they that seek him'--'if thou seek him he will be found of thee.' the requirement of righteousness, as i have said, is not abolished by the gospel, as some people seem to think that it substitutes faith for righteousness; but it is made possible by the gospel which through faith gives righteousness. and what the psalmist meant by 'seeking' we christian people mean by 'faith.' earnest desire and confident application to him are sure to obtain righteousness. to these there will never be returned a refusing answer. 'i have never said to any of the seed of jacob, seek ye me in vain.' so, brethren! if we seek we shall receive; if we receive we shall be holy, if we are holy we shall dwell with god, in sweet and blessed communion, and be denizens of his house, and sit together in heavenly places with him all the days of our lives, and then shall pass, when 'goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our lives,' and 'dwell in the house of the lord for ever.' the god who dwells with men 'lift up your heads, o ye gates: and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in. . who is this king of glory? the lord strong and mighty, the lord mighty in battle. . lift up your heads, o ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in. . who is this king of glory? the lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.' --psalm xxiv. - . this whole psalm was probably composed at the time of the bringing of the ark into the city of zion. the former half was chanted as the procession wound its way up the hillside. it mainly consists of the answer to the question 'who shall ascend into the hill of the lord?' and describes the kind of men that dwell with god, and the way by which they obtain their purity. this second half of our psalm is probably to be thought of as being chanted when the procession had reached the summit of the hill and stood before the barred gates of the ancient jebusite city. it is mainly in answer to the question, 'who is this king of glory?' and is the description of the god that dwells with men, and the meaning of his dwelling with them. we are to conceive of a couple of half choirs, the one within, the other without the mountain hold. the advancing choir summons the gates to open in the grand words: 'lift up your heads, o ye gates! even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in.' their lofty lintels are too low for his head to pass beneath; so they have to be lifted that he may find entrance. they are 'everlasting doors,' grey with antiquity, hoary with age. they have looked down, perhaps, upon melchizedek, king of salem, as he went forth in the morning twilight of history to greet the patriarch. but in all the centuries they have never seen such a king as this king of glory, the true king of israel who now desires entrance. the answer to the summons comes from the choir within. 'who is this king of glory?' the question represents ignorance and possible hesitation, as if the pagan inhabitants of the recently conquered city knew nothing of the god of israel, and recognised no authority in his name. of course, the dramatic form of question and answer is intended to give additional force to the proclamation as by god himself of the covenant name, the proper name of israel's god, as baal was the name of the canaanite's god, 'the lord strong and mighty; the lord mighty in battle,' by whose warrior power david had conquered the city, which now was summoned to receive its conqueror. therefore the summons is again rung out, 'lift up your heads, o ye gates! and the king of glory shall come in.' and once more, to express the lingering reluctance, ignorance not yet dispelled, suspicion and unwilling surrender, the dramatic question is repeated, 'who is this king of glory?' the answer is sharp and authoritative in its brevity, and we may fancy it shouted with a full-throated burst--'the lord of hosts,' who, as captain, commands all the embattled energies of earth and heaven conceived as a disciplined army. that great name, like a charge of dynamite, bursts the gates of brass asunder, and with triumphant music the procession sweeps into the conquered city. now these great words, throbbing with the enthusiasm at once of poetry and of devotion, may, i think, teach us a great deal if we ponder them. i. notice, first, their application, their historical and original application, to the king who dwelt with israel. we must never forget that in the old testament we have to do with an incomplete and a progressive revelation, and that if we would understand its significance, we must ever endeavour to ascertain to what point in that progress the words before us belong. we are not to read into these words new testament depth and fulness of meaning; we are to take them and try to find out what they meant to david and to his people; and so we shall get a firm basis for any deeper significance which we may hereafter see in them. the thought of god, then, in these words is mainly that of a god of strong and victorious energy, a warrior-god, a conquering king, one whose word is power, who rules amidst the armies of heaven, and amidst the inhabitants of earth. a brief consideration of each expression is all which can be attempted here. 'who is this king of glory?' the first idea, then, is that of sovereign rule; the idea which had become more and more plain and clear to the national consciousness of the hebrew with the installation of monarchy amongst them. and it is very beautiful to see how david lays hold of that thought of god being himself the king of israel; and dwells so often in his psalms on the idea that he, poor, pale, earthly shadow, is but a representative and a viceroy of the true king who sits in the heavens. he takes off his crown and lays it before his throne and says: 'thou art the king of israel, the king of glory.' the old testament meaning of that word 'glory' is a great deal more definite than the ordinary religious use of it amongst us. the 'glory of god' in the old testament is, first and foremost, the supernatural light that dwelt between the cherubim and was the manifestation and symbol of the divine presence. and next it is the sum total of all the impression made upon the world by god's manifestation of himself, the light, of which the material and supernatural light between the cherubs was but the emblem; all by which god flames and flashes himself upon the trembling and thankful heart; that glory which is substantially the same as the name of the lord. and in this brightness, lustrous and dark with excess of light, this king dwells. the splendour of his regalia is the brightness that emanates from himself. he is the king of glory. next, we have the great name, 'the lord,' jehovah, which speaks of timeless, independent, unchanging, self-sufficing being. it declares that he is his own cause, his own law, his own impulse, the staple from which all the links of the chain of being depend, and not himself a link, the fontal source of all which is. we say: 'i am that which i have become; i am that which i have been made; i am that which i have inherited; i am that which circumstances and example and training have shaped me to be.' god says: 'i am that i am.' this name is also significant, not only because it proclaims absolute, independent, underived, timeless being, but because it is the covenant name, and speaks of the god who has come into fellowship with men, and has bound himself to a certain course of action for their blessing, and is thus the lord of israel, and the god, in a special manner, of his people. 'the lord mighty in battle.' a true warrior-god, who went out in no metaphorical sense, but in prose reality, fought for his people and subdued the nations under them, in order that his name might be spread and his glory be known in the earth. and then, still further, 'the lord of hosts,' the captain of all the armies of heaven and earth. in that name is the thought to which the modern world is coming so slowly by scientific paths, that all being is one ordered whole, subject to the authority of one lord. and in addition to that, the grander thought, that the unity of nature is the will of god; and that as the commander issues his orders over all the field, so he speaks and it is done. the hosts are the angels of whom it is said: 'bless the lord all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his that do his pleasure.' the hosts are the stars that fill the nightly heavens, of whom it is said, 'he bringeth out their host by number.' the hosts are all creatures that live and are; and all are the soldiers and servants of this conquering king. such is the name of the lord that dwelt with israel, the great conception that rises before this psalmist. ii. now turn to the second application of these great words, that speak to us not only of the god that dwelt in zion in outward and symbolical form, by means of a material presence which was an emblem of the true nearness of israel's god, but yet more distinctly, as i take it, of the christ that dwells with men. the devout hearts in israel felt that there was something more needed than this dwelling of jehovah within an earthly temple, and the process of revelation familiarised them with the thought that there was to be in the future a 'coming of the lord' in some special manner unknown to them. so that the whole anticipation and forward look of the old testament system is gathered into and expressed by almost its last words, which prophesy that 'the lord shall suddenly come to his temple,' and that once again this king of glory shall stand before the everlasting gates and summon them to open. and when was that fulfilled? fulfilled in a fashion that at first sight seems the greatest contrast to all this vision of grandeur, of warlike strength, of imperial power and rule with which we have been dealing; but which yet was not the contrast to these ideas so much as the highest embodiment of them. for, although at first sight it seems as if there could be no greater contrast than between the lion might of the jehovah of the old testament, and the lamb gentleness of the jesus of the new, if we look more closely we shall see that it is not a relation of contrast that exists between the two. christ is all, and more than all, that this psalm proclaimed the jehovah of the old covenant to be. let us look again from that point of view at the particulars already referred to. he is the highest manifestation of the divine rule and authority. there is no dominion like the dominion of the loving christ, a kingdom based upon suffering and wielded in gentleness, a kingdom of which the crown is a wreath of thorns, and the sceptre a rod of reed; a dominion which is all exercised for the blessing of its subjects, and which, therefore, is an everlasting dominion. there is no rule like that; no height of divine authority towers so high as the authority of him who rules us so absolutely because he gave himself for us utterly. this is the king, the prince of the kings of the earth, because this is the incarnate god who died for us. christ is the highest raying out of the divine light, or, as the epistle to the hebrews calls it, 'the effulgence of his glory.' the true glory of god lies in his love, and of that love christ is the noblest and most wondrous example. so all other beams of the divine character, bright as their light is, are but dim as compared with the sevenfold lustre of the light that shines from the gentle loving-kindness of the heart of christ. he has glorified god because he shows us that the divinest thing in god is love. for the same reason, he is the mightiest exhibition of the divine power--'the lord strong and mighty.' there is no work of god's hand, no work of god's will so great as that by which we are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of satan unto god. the cross is god's noblest revelation of power; and in him, his weakness, his surrender, his death, with all the wonderful energies that flow from that death for man's salvation, we see the divine strength made perfect in the human weakness of jesus. the gospel of christ 'is the power of god unto salvation to everyone that believeth.' _there_ is divine power in its noblest form, in the paradoxical shape of a dying man; in its noblest effect, salvation; in its widest sweep to all who believe. ''twas great to speak a world from nought, 'tis greater to redeem.' this 'strong son of god' is the arm of the lord in whom live and act the energies of omnipotence. christ is 'the lord mighty in battle.' true, he is the prince of peace, but he is also the better joshua, the victorious captain, in whom dwells the conquering divine might. through all the gentleness of his life there winds a martial strain, and it is not in vain that the evangelist who was most deeply penetrated by the sweetness of his love, is the one who most often speaks of him as overcoming, and who has preserved as his last words to his timid followers, that triumphant command, 'be of good cheer! i have overcome the world.' he has conquered for us, binding the strong man, and so he will spoil his house. sin, hell, death, the devil, law, fear, our own foolish hearts, all temptations that hover around us--they are all vanquished foes of a 'lord' that is 'mighty in battle.' and as he overcame, so shall we if we will trust him. christ is the commander and wielder of all the forces of the universe. as one said to him in the days of his flesh, 'i am a man under authority, and i say to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. so do thou speak and thy word shall be sovereign.' and so it was. he spake to diseases and they vanished. he spake to the winds and the seas and there was a great calm. he spake to demons, and murmuring, but yet obedient, they came out of their victims. he flung his word into the recesses of the grave, and lazarus came forth, fumbling with the knots on his grave-clothes, and stumbling into the light. 'he spake and it was done.' who is he, the utterance of whose will is sovereign amongst all the regions of being? 'who is the king of glory?' 'thou art the king of glory, o christ!' 'thou art the everlasting son of the father.' iii. and now, lastly, let me ask you to look, and that for a moment, at the application of these words to the christ who will dwell in our hearts. his historical manifestation here upon earth and his incarnation, which is the true dwelling of deity amongst men, are not enough. they have left something more than a memory to the world. he is as ready to abide as really within our spirits as he was to tabernacle upon earth amongst men. and the very central message of that gospel which is proclaimed to us all is this, that if we will open the gates of our hearts he will come in, in all the plenitude of his victorious power, and dwell in our hearts, their conqueror and their king. what a strange contrast, and yet what a close analogy there is between the victorious tones and martial air of this summons of my text. 'lift up your heads, o ye gates! that the king of glory may come in,' and the gentle words of the apocalypse: 'behold, i stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, i will come in to him.' but he that in the old covenant arrayed in warrior arms, summoned the rebels to surrender, is the same as he who, in the new, with the night-dews in his hair, and patience on his face, and gentleness in the touch of his hand upon the door, waits to enter in. brethren! open your hearts, 'and the king of glory shall come in.' and he will come in as a king that might seek to enter some city far away on the outposts of his kingdom, besieged by his enemies. if the king comes in, the city will be impregnable. if you open your hearts for him he will come and keep you from all your foes and give you the victory over them all. so, to every hard-pressed heart, waging an unequal contest with toils and temptations, and sorrows and sins, this great hope is given, that christ the victor will come in his power to garrison heart and mind. as of old the encouragement was given to hezekiah in his hour of peril, when the might of sennacherib insolently threatened jerusalem, so the same stirring assurances are given to each who admits christ's succours to his heart--'he shall not come into this city, for i will defend this city to save it for mine own sake' open your hearts and the conquering king will come in. and do not forget that there is another possible application of these words lying in the future, to the conquering christ who shall come again. the whole history of the past points onwards to yet a last time when 'the lord shall suddenly come to his temple,' and predicts that christ shall so come in like manner as he went up to heaven. again will the summons ring out. again will he come arrayed in flashing brightness, and the visible robes of his imperial majesty. again will he appear, mighty in battle, when 'in righteousness he shall judge and make war.' for a christian, one great memory fills the past--christ has come; and one great hope brightens the else waste future--christ will come. that hope has been far too much left to be cherished only by those who hold a particular opinion as to the chronology of unfulfilled prophecy. but it should be to every christian heart 'the blessed hope,' even the appearing of the glory of him who has come in the past. he is with and in us, in the present. he will come in the future 'in his glory, and shall sit upon the throne of his glory.' all our pardon and hope of god's love depend upon that great fact in the past, that 'the lord was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.' our purity which will fit us to dwell with god, our present blessedness, all our power for daily strife, and our companionship in daily loneliness, depend on the present fact that he dwells in our hearts by faith, the seed of all good, and the conquering antagonist of every evil. and the one light which fills the future with hope, peaceful because assured, streams from that most sure promise that he will come again, sweeping from the highest heavens, on his head the many crowns of universal monarchy, in his hand the weapons of all-conquering power, and none shall need to ask, 'who is this king of glory?' for every eye shall know him, the judge upon his throne, to be the christ of the cross. open the doors of your hearts to him, as he sues for entrance now in the meekness of his patient love, that on you may fall in that day of the coming of the king, the blessing of the servants who wait for their returning lord, that 'when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.' guidance in judgment 'good and upright is the lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way. . the meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way.'--psalm xxv. , . the psalmist prays in this psalm for three things: deliverance, guidance, and forgiveness. of these three petitions the central one is that for guidance. 'show me thy ways, o lord,' he asks in a previous verse; where he means by 'thy ways,' not god's dealings with men, but men's conduct as prescribed by god. in my text he exchanges petition for contemplation; and gazes on the character of god, in order thereby to be helped to confidence in an answer to his prayer. such alternations of petition and contemplation are the very heartbeats of devotion, now expanding in desire, now closing on its treasure in fruition. either attitude is incomplete without the other. do _our_ prayers pass into such still contemplation of the face of god? do _our_ thoughts of his character break into such confident petition? my text contains a striking view of the divine character, a grand confidence built thereupon, and a condition appended on which the fulfilment of that confidence depends. let us look at these in turn. i. first, then, we have here the psalmist's thought of god. 'good and upright is the lord.' now it is clear that the former of these two epithets is here employed, not in its widest sense of moral perfectness, or else 'upright,' which follows, would be mere tautology, but in the narrower sense, which is familiar too, to us, in our common speech, in which _good_ is tantamount to _kind_, _beneficent_, or to say all in a word, _loving_. _upright_ needs no explanation; but the point to notice is the decisiveness with which the psalmist binds together, in one thought, the two aspects of the divine nature which so many people find it hard to reconcile, and the separation of which has been the parent of unnumbered misconceptions and errors as to him and to his dealings. 'good _and_ upright, loving _and_ righteous is the lord,' says the psalmist. he puts in no qualifying word such as, loving _though_ righteous, righteous and _yet_ loving. such phrases express the general notions of the relation of these two attributes. but the psalmist employs no such expressions. he binds the two qualities together, in the feeling of their profoundest harmony. now let me remind you that neither of these two resplendent aspects of the divine nature reaches its highest beauty and supremest power, except it be associated with the other. in the spectrum analysis of that great light there are the two lines; the one purest white of righteousness, and the other tinged with a ruddier glow, the line of love. the one adorns and sets off the other. love without righteousness is flaccid, a mere gush of good-natured sentiment, impotent to confer blessing, powerless to evoke reverence. righteousness without love is as white as snow, and as cold as ice; repellent, howsoever it may excite the sentiment of awe-struck distance. but we need that the righteousness shall be loving, and that the love shall be righteous, in order that the one may be apprehended in its tenderest tenderness and the other may be adored in its loftiest loftiness. and yet we are always tempted to wrench the two apart, and to think that the operation of the one must sometimes, at all events on the outermost circumference of the spheres, impinge upon, and collide with, the operations of the other. hence you get types of religion--yes! and two types of christianity--in which the one or the other of these two harmonious attributes is emphasised to such a degree as almost to blot out the other. you get forms of religion in which the righteousness has swallowed up the love, and others in which the love has destroyed the righteousness. the effect is disastrous. in old days our fathers fell into the extreme on the one hand; and the pendulum has swung with a vengeance as far from the vertical line, to the other extreme, in these days as it ever did in the past. the religion which found its centre-point and its loftiest conception of the divine nature in the thought of his absolute righteousness made strong, if it made somewhat stern, men. and now we see renderings of the truth that god is love which degrade the lofty, noble, sovereign conception of the righteous god that loveth, into mere indulgence on the throne of the universe. and what is the consequence? all the stern teachings of scripture men recoil from, and try to explain away. the ill desert of sin, and the necessary iron nexus between sin and suffering--and as a consequence the sacrificial work of jesus christ, and the supreme glory of his mission in that he is the redeemer of mankind--are all become unfashionable to preach and unfashionable to believe. god is love. we cannot make too much of his love, unless by reason of it we make too little of his righteousness. the psalmist, in his childlike faith, saw deeper and more truly than many would-be theologians and thinkers of this day, when he proclaimed in one breath 'good _and_ upright is the lord.' let us not forget that the apostle, whose great message to the world was, as the last utterance completing the process of revelation, 'god is love,' had it also in charge to 'declare unto us that god is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' ii. and so, secondly, mark the calm confidence builded on this conception of the divine character. what a wonderful 'therefore' that is!--the logic of faith and not of sense. 'good and upright is the lord; _therefore_ will he teach sinners in the way.' the coexistence of these two aspects in the perfect divine character is for us a guarantee that he cannot leave men, however guilty they may be, to grope in the dark, or keep his lips locked in silence. the psalmist does not mean guidance as to practical advantages and worldly prosperity. that may also be looked for, in a modified degree. but what he means is guidance as to the one important thing, the sovereign conception of duty, the eternal law of right and wrong. god will not leave a man without adequate teaching as to that, just because he is loving and righteous. for what _is_ love, in its loftiest, purest, and therefore in its divine aspect? what is it except an infinite desire to impart, and that the object on which it falls shall be blessed. so because 'the lord is good, and his tender mercies are over all his works,' certainly he must desire, if one may so say, as his deepest desire, the blessedness of his creatures. he is a god whose nature and property it is to love, and his love is the infinite and ceaseless welling out of himself, in all forms of beauty and blessedness, according to the capacity and contents of his recipient creatures. he is 'the giving god,' as james in his epistle eloquently and wonderfully calls him, whose very nature it is to give. and that is only to say, in other words, 'good _is the lord_.' but then 'good _and_ upright'--that combination determines the form which his blessings shall assume, the channel in which by preference they will flow. if we had only to say, 'good is the lord,' then our happiness, as we call it, the satisfaction of our physical needs and of lower cravings, might be the adequate expression of his love. but if god be righteous, then because himself is so, it must be his deepest desire for us that we should be like him. not our happiness but our rectitude is god's end in all that he does with us. it is worth his while to make us, in the lower sense of the word, 'happy,' but the purpose of joy as of sorrow is to make us pure and righteous. we shall never come to understand the meaning of our own lives, and will always be blindly puzzling over the mysteries of the providences that beset us, until we learn that not enjoyment and not sorrow is his ultimate end concerning us, but that we may be partakers of his holiness. since he is righteous, the dearest desire of his loving heart, and that to which all his dealings with us are directed; and that, therefore, to which all our desires and efforts should be directed likewise, is to make us righteous also. 'therefore will he teach sinners in the way.' if the righteousness existed without the love it must 'come with a rod,' and the sinners who are out of the way must incontinently be crushed where they have wandered. but since righteousness is blended with love, therefore he comes, and must desire to bring all wanderers back into the paths which are his own. i need not do more than in a word remind you how strong a presumption there lies in this combination of aspects of the divine nature, in favour of an actual revelation. it seems to me that, notwithstanding all the objections that are made to a supernatural and objective revelation, there is nothing half so monstrous as it would be to believe, with the pure deist or theist, that god, being what he is, righteous and loving, had never rent his heavens to say one word to man to lead him in the paths of righteousness. i can understand atheism, and i can understand a revealing god, but not a god that dwells in the thick darkness, and is yet love and righteousness, and looks down upon this world and never puts out a finger to point the path of duty. a silent god seems to me no god but an almighty devil. revelation is the plain conclusion from the premisses that 'good and upright is the lord!' i speak not, for there is no time to do so, of the various manners in which this divine desire to bring sinners into the way fulfils itself. there are our consciences; there are his providences; there is the objective revelation of his word; there are the whispers of his spirit in men's hearts. i do not know what you believe, but i believe that god can find his way to my heart and infuse there illumination, and move affections, and make my eye clear to discern what is right. 'he that formed the eye, shall he not see?' he that formed the eye, shall he not send light to it? are we to shut out god, in obedience to the dictates of an arbitrary psychology, from access to his own creature; and to say, 'thou hast made me, and thou canst not speak to me. my soul is thine by creation, but its doors are close barred against thee; and thou canst not lay thy hand upon it?' 'good and upright is the lord, therefore will he teach sinners in the way.' iii. now notice, again, the condition on which the fulfilment of this confidence depends. 'the meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way.' the fact of our being sinful only makes it the more imperative that god should speak to us. but the condition of our hearing and profiting by the guidance is meekness. by meekness the psalmist means, i suppose, little else than what we might call docility, of which the prime element is the submission of my own will to god's. the reason why we go wrong about our duties is mainly that we do not supremely want to go right, but rather to gratify inclinations, tastes, or passions. god is speaking to us, but if we make such a riot with the yelpings of our own kennelled desires and lusts, and listen to the rattle and noise of the street and the babble of tongues, he 'can but listen at the gate, and hear the household jar within.' 'the meek will he guide in judgment; the meek will he teach his way.' some of us put our heads down like bulls charging a gate. some of us drive on full speed, and will not shut off steam though the signals are against us, and the end of that can only be one thing. some of us do not wish to know what god wishes us to do. some of us cannot bear suspense of judgment, or of decision, and are always in a hurry to be in action, and think the time lost that is spent in waiting to know what god the lord will speak. if you do not clearly see what to do, then clearly you may see that you are to do _nothing_. the ark was to go half a mile in front of the camp before the foremost files lifted a foot to follow, in order that there should be no mistake as to the road. wait till god points the path, and wish him to point it, and hush the noises that prevent your hearing his voice, and keep your wills in absolute submission; and above all, be sure that you act out your convictions, and that you have no knowledge of duty which is not expressed in your practice, and you will get all the light which you need; sometimes being taught by errors no doubt, often being left to make mistakes as to what is expedient in regard to worldly prosperity, but being infallibly guided as to the path of duty, and the path of peace and righteousness. and now, before i close, let me just remind you of the great fact which transcends the psalmist's confidence whilst it warrants it. because god is love, and god is righteousness, he cannot but speak. but this psalmist did not know how wonderfully god was going to speak by that word who has called himself the light of men; and who has said, 'he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' he 'teaches sinners in the way,' by jesus christ; for we have him for our pattern and example. we have his love for our impelling motive. we have his spirit to speak in our hearts, and to 'guide us into all truth.' and this shepherd, 'when he putteth forth his own sheep, goeth before them; and the sheep follow him and know his voice.' the psalmist's confidence, bright as it is, is but the glow of the morning twilight. the full sunshine of the transcendent fact to which god's righteous love impelled and bound him is christ, who makes us know the will of the father. but we want more than knowledge. for we all know our duty a great deal better than any of us do it. what is the use of a guide to a lame man? but our guide says to us, 'arise and walk,' and if we clasp his hand we receive strength, and 'the lame man leaps as a hart.' so, dear brethren! let us all cleave to him, the guide, the way, and the life which enables us to walk in the way. if we thus cleave, then be sure that he will lead us in the paths of righteousness, which are paths of peace. he is the way; he is the leader of the march; he gives power to walk in the light, and his one command, 'follow me,' unfolds into all duty and includes all direction, companionship, perfection, and blessedness. a prayer for pardon and its plea 'for thy name's sake, o lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.'--psalm xxv. . the context shows us that this is the prayer of a man who had long loved and served god. he says that 'on god' he 'waits all the day,' that his 'eyes are ever toward the lord,' that he has 'integrity and uprightness' which will 'preserve him, for he waits upon god,' and yet side by side with this consciousness of devotion and service there lie the profound sense of sin and of the need of pardon. the better a man is, the more clearly he sees, and the more deeply he feels, his own badness. if a shoe is all covered with mud, a splash or two more or less will make no difference, but if it be polished and clean, one speck shows. a black feather on a swan's breast is conspicuous. and so the less sin a man has the more obvious it is, and the more he has the less he generally knows it. but whilst this consciousness of transgression and cry for pardon are inseparable and permanent accompaniments of a devout life all along its course, they are the roots and beginning of all true godliness. and as a rule, the first step which a man takes to knit himself consciously to god is through the gate of recognised and repeated and confessed sin and imploring the divine mercy. i. notice, first, here the cry for pardon. 'i believe in the forgiveness of sins' hundreds of thousands of englishmen have said twice to-day. most of us, when we pray at all, push in somewhere or other the petition, 'forgive us our sins.' and how many of us understand what we mean when we ask for that? and how many of us feel that we need the thing which we seem to be requesting? let me dwell for a moment or two upon the scriptural idea of forgiveness. of course we may say that when we ask forgiveness from god we are transferring ideas and images drawn from human relations to the divine. be it so. that does not show that there is not a basis of reality and of truth in the ideas thus transferred. but there are two elements in forgiveness as we know it, both of which it seems to me to be very important that we should carry in our minds in interpreting the scriptural doctrine. there is the forgiveness known to law and practised by the lawgiver. there is the forgiveness known to love and practised by the friend, or parent, or lover. the one consists in the remission of external penalties. a criminal is forgiven, or, as we say (with an unconscious restriction of the word _forgiven_ to the deeper thing), _pardoned_, when, the remainder of his sentence being remitted, he is let out of gaol, and allowed to go about his business without any legal penalties. but there is a forgiveness deeper than that legal pardon. a parent and a child both of them know that parental pardon does not consist in the waiving of punishment. the averted look, the cold voice, the absence of signs of love are far harder to bear than so-called punishment. and the forgiveness, which belongs to love only, comes when the film between the two is swept away, and both the offended and the offender feel that there is no barrier to the free, unchecked flow of love from the heart of the aggrieved to the heart of the aggressor. we must carry both of these ideas into our thoughts of god's pardon in order to see the whole fulness of it. and perhaps we may have to add yet another illustration, drawn from another region, and which is enshrined in one of the versions of the lord's prayer, where we read, 'forgive us our _debts_.' when a debt is forgiven it is cancelled, and the payment of it no longer required. but the two elements that i have pointed out, the remission of the penalty and the uninterrupted flow of god's love, are inseparably united in the full scriptural notion of forgiveness. scripture recognises as equally real and valid, in our relations to god, the judicial and the fatherly side of the relationship. and it declares as plainly that the wages of sin is death as it declares that god's love cannot come in its fulness and its sweetness, upon a heart that indulges in unconfessed and unrepented sin. they are poor friends of men who, for the sake of smoothing away the terrible side of the gospel, minimise or hide the reality of the awful penalties which attach to every transgression and disobedience, because they thereby maim the notion of the divine forgiveness, and lull into a fatal slumber the consciences of many men. dear brethren! i have to stand here saying, 'knowing, therefore, the terrors of the lord, we persuade men.' this is sure and certain, that over and above the forcing back upon itself of the love of god by my sin, that sin by necessary consequence will work out awful results for the doer in the present and in the future. i do not wish to dwell upon that thought, only remember that god is a judge and god is the father, and that the divine forgiveness includes both of these elements, the sweeping away of the penal consequences of men's sin, wholly in the future, and to some extent in the present; and the unchecked flow of the love of god to a man's heart. there are awful words in scripture--which are not to be ruled out of it by any easy-going, optimistic, rose-water system of a mutilated christianity--there are awful words in scripture, concerning what you and i must come to if we live and die in our sins, and there would be no message of forgiveness worth the proclaiming to men, if it had nothing to say about the removal of that which a man's own unsophisticated conscience tells him is certain, the fatal and the damnable effects of his departure from god. but let us not forget that these two aspects do to a large extent coincide, when we come to remember that the worst of all the penal consequences of sin is that it separates from god, and exposes to 'the wrath of god,' a terrible expression by which the bible means the necessary disapprobation and aversion of the divine nature, being such as it is, from man's sin. experimentalists will sometimes cut off one or other of the triple rays of which sunlight is composed by passing the beam through some medium which intercepts the red, or the violet, or the yellow, as may chance. and my sin makes an atmosphere which cuts off the gentler rays of that divine nature, and lets the fiery ones of retribution come through. it is not that a sinful man, howsoever drenched overhead in the foul pool of his own unrepented iniquity, is shut out from the love of god, which lingers about him and woos him, and lavishes upon him all the gifts of which he is capable, but that he has made himself incapable of receiving the sweetest of these influences, and that so long as he continues thus, his life and his character cannot but be odious and hateful in the pure eyes of perfect love. but whilst thus there are external consequences which are swept away by forgiveness, and whilst the real hell of hells and death of deaths is the separation from god, and the misery that must necessarily ensue thereupon, there are consequences of man's sin which forgiveness is not intended to remove, and will not remove, just because god loves us. he loves us too well to take away the issues in the natural sphere, in the social sphere, the issues perhaps in bodily health, reputation, position, and the like, which flow from our transgression. 'thou wast a god that forgavest them, and thou didst inflict retribution for their inventions.' he does leave much of these outward issues unswept away by his forgiveness, and the great law stands, 'whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' and yet the pardon that you and i need, and which we can all have for the asking, flows to us unchecked and full--the great stream of the love of god, to whom we are reconciled, when we turn to him in penitent dependence on the blood and righteousness of jesus christ, our lord. this consciousness of sin and cry for pardon lie at the foundation of vigorous practical religion. it seems to me that the differences between different types of christianity, insipid elegance and fiery earnestness, between coldness and fervour, the difference between a sapless and a living ministry and between a formal and a real christianity, are very largely due to the differences in realising the fact and the gravity of the fact of transgression. the prominence which we give to that in our thoughts will largely determine our notions of ourselves, and of christ's work, and to a great extent settle what we think christianity is for, and what in itself it is. if a man has no deep consciousness of sin he will be satisfied with a very superficial kind of religion. 'every man his own redeemer' will be his motto. and not knowing the necessity for a saviour, he will not recognise that christianity is fundamentally and before anything else, a system of redemption. a moral agent? yes! a large revelation of great truth? yes! a power to make men's lives, individually and in the community, nobler and loftier? by all means. but before all these, and all these consequentially on its being a system by which sinful men, else hopeless and condemned, are delivered and set free. so, dear brethren! let me press upon you this,--unless my christianity gives large prominence to the fact of my own transgression, and is full of a penitent cry for pardon, it lacks the one thing needful, i was going to say--it lacks, at all events, that which will make it a living power blessedly ruling my heart and life. ii. note in the next place the plea for pardon. 'for thy name's sake.' the psalmist does not come with any carefully elaborated plea, grounded upon anything in himself, either on the excuses and palliations of his evil, his corrupt nature, his many temptations, and the like, or on the depth and reality of his repentance. he does not say, 'forgive me, for i weep for my evil and loathe myself.' nor does he say, 'forgive me, for i could not help doing it, or because i was tempted; or because the thing that i have done is a very little thing after all.' he comes empty-handed, and says, 'for thy name's sake, o lord!' that means, first, the great thought that god's mercy flows from the infinite depths of his own character. he is his own motive. the fountain of his forgiving love wells up of itself, drawn forth by nothing that we do, but propelled from within by the inmost nature of god. as surely as it is the property of light to radiate and of fire to spread, so surely is it his nature and property to have mercy. he forgives, says our text, because he is god, and cannot but do so. therefore our mightiest plea is to lay hold of his own strength, and to grasp the fact of the unmotived, uncompelled, unpurchased, and therefore unalterable and eternal pardoning love of god. scientists tell us that the sun is fed and kept in splendour by the constant impact of bodies from without falling in upon it, and that if that supply were to cease, the furnace of the heavens would go out. but god, who is light in himself, needs no accession of supplies from without to maintain his light, and no force of motives from without to sway his will. we do not need to seek to bend him to mercy, for he is mercy in himself. we do not need to stir his purpose into action, for it has been working from of old and 'its goings forth are from everlasting.' he is his own motive, he forgives because of what he is. so let us dig down to that deepest of all rock foundations on which to build our confidence, and be sure that, if i may use such an expression, the necessity of the divine nature compels him to pardon iniquity, transgression, and sin. then there is another thought here, that the past of god is a plea with god for present forgiveness. 'thy name' in scripture means the whole revelation of the divine character, and thus the psalmist looks back into the past, and sees there how god has, all through the ages, been plenteous in mercy and ready to forgive all that called upon him; and he pleads that past as a reason for the present and for the future. thousands of years have passed since david, if he was the psalmist, offered this prayer; and you and i can look back to the blessed old story of _his_ forgiveness, so swift, so absolute and free, which followed upon confession so lowly, and can remember that infinitely pathetic and wonderful word which puts the whole history of the resurrection and restoration of a soul into two clauses. 'david said unto nathan, i have sinned against the lord: and nathan said unto david'--finishing the sentence--'and the lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.' what he was he is; what he is he will be. 'for thy name's sake, pardon mine iniquity.' there is yet another thought that may be suggested. the divine forgiveness is in order that men may know him better. that is represented in scripture as being the great motive of the divine actions--'for the glory of thine own name.' that may be so put as to be positively atrocious, or so as to be perfectly divine and lovely. it has often been put, by hard and narrow dogmatists, in such a way as to make god simply an almighty selfishness, but it ought to be put as the bible puts it, so as to show him as an almighty love. for why does he desire that his name should be known by us but for our sakes, that the light of that great name may come to us, 'sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death,' and that, knowing him for what he is, we may have peace, and rest, and joy, and love, and purity? it is pure benevolence that makes him act, 'for the glory of his great name'; sweeping away the clouds that a darkened earth may expand and rejoice, and all the leaves unfold themselves, and every bird sing, in the restored sunshine. and there is nothing that reveals the inmost hived sweetness and honey of the name of god like the assurance of his pardon. 'there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.' oh, dear brethren! unless you know god as the god that has forgiven you, your knowledge of him is but shallow and incomplete, and you know not the deepest blessings that flow to them who find that this is life eternal to know the only true god as the all-forgiving father. note the connection between the psalmist's plea and the new testament plea. david said, 'for thy name's sake, pardon,' we say, 'for christ's sake, forgive.' are the two diverse? is the fruit diverse from the bud? is the complete noonday diverse from the blessed morning twilight? christ _is_ the name of god, the revealer of the divine heart and mind. when christian men pray 'for the sake of christ,' they are not bringing a motive, which is to move the divine love which else lies passive and inert, because god's love was the cause of christ's work not christ's work the cause of god's love, but they are expressing their own dependence on the great mediator and his work, and solemnly offering, as the ground of all their hope, that perfect sacrifice which is the medium by which forgiveness reaches men, and without which it is impossible that the government of the righteous god could exist with pardon. christ has died; christ, in dying, has borne the sins of the world; that is, yours and mine. and therefore the pardon of god comes to us through that channel, without, in the slightest degree, trenching on the awfulness of the divine holiness or weakening the sanctities of god's righteous retributive law. 'for christ's sake hath forgiven us' is the daylight which the psalmist saw as morning dawn when he cried, 'for thy name's sake, pardon mine iniquity.' iii. lastly, note the reason for the earnest cry, 'for it is great.' that may be a reason for the pardon; more probably it is a reason for the prayer. the fact is true in regard to us all. there is no need to suppose any special heinous sin in the psalmist's mind. i would fain press upon all consciences that listen to me now that these lowly words of confession are true about every one of us, whether we know it or not. for if you consider how much of self-will, how much of indifference, of alienation from, if not of antagonism against, the law of god, go to every trifling transgression, you will think twice before you call it small. and if it be small, a microscopic viper, the length of a cutting from your finger nail, has got the viper's nature in it, and its poison, and its sting, and it will grow. a very little quantity of mud held in solution in a continuously flowing river will make a tremendous delta at the mouth of it in the course of years. and however small may have been the amount of evil and deflection from god's law in that flowing river of my past life, what a filthy, foul bank of slime must be piled up down yonder at the mouth! if the fact be so, then is not that a reason for our all going to the only one who can dredge it away, and get rid of it? 'pardon me; for it is great.' that is to say, 'there is no one else who can deal with it but thyself, o lord! it is too large for me to cart away; it is too great for any inferior hand to deal with. i am so bad that i can come only to thyself to be made better.' it is blessed and wise when the consciousness of our deep transgression drives us to the only hand that can heal, to the only heart that can forgive. so, dear friends! in a blessed desperation of otherwise being unable to get rid of this burden which has grown on our backs ounce by ounce for long years, let us go to him. he and he alone can deal with it. 'against thee, thee only, have i sinned,' and to thee, thee only, will i come. only remember that, before you ask, god has given. he is 'like the dew upon the grass, that waiteth not for man.' instead of praying for pardon which is already bestowed, do you see to it that you take the pardon which god is praying you to receive. swallow the bitter pill of acknowledging your own transgression; and then one look at the crucified christ and one motion of believing desire towards him; 'and the lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.' god's guests 'one thing have i desired of the lord, that will i seek after; that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life.' --psalm xxvii. . we shall do great injustice to this mystical aspiration of the psalmist, if we degrade it to be the mere expression of a desire for unbroken residence in a material temple. he was no sickly, sentimental seeker after cloistered seclusion. he knew the necessities and duties of life far better than in a cowardly way to wish to shirk them, in order that he might loiter in the temple, idle under the pretence of worship. nor would the saying fit into the facts of the case if we gave it that low meaning, for no person had his residence in the temple. and what follows in the next verse would, on that hypothesis, be entirely inappropriate. 'in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me.' no one went into the secret place of the most high, in the visible, material structure, except the high priest once a year. but this singer expects that his abode will be there always; and that, in the time of trouble, he can find refuge there. apart altogether from any wider considerations as to the relation between form and spirit under the old covenant, i think that such observations compel us to see in these words a desire a great deal nobler and deeper than any such wish. i. let us, then, note the true meaning of this aspiration of the psalmist. its fulfilment depends not on where we are, but on what we think and feel; for every place is god's house, and what the psalmist desires is that he should be able to keep up unbroken consciousness of being in god's presence and should be always in touch with him. that seems hard, and people say, 'impossible! how can i get above my daily work, and be perpetually thinking of god and his will, and consciously realising communion with him?' but there is such a thing as having an undercurrent of consciousness running all through a man's life and mind; such a thing as having a melody sounding in our ears perpetually, 'so sweet we know not we are listening to it' until it stops, and then, by the poverty of the naked and silent atmosphere, we know how musical were the sounds that we scarcely knew that we heard, and yet did hear so well high above all the din of earth's noises. every man that has ever cherished such an aspiration as this knows the difficulties all too well. and yet, without entering upon thorny and unprofitable questions as to whether the absolute, unbroken continuity of consciousness of being in god's presence is possible for men here below, let us look at the question, which has a great deal more bearing upon our present condition--viz. whether a greater continuity of that consciousness is not possible than we attain to to-day. it does seem to me to be a foolish and miserable waste of time and temper and energy for good people to be quarrelling about whether they can come to the absolute realisation of this desire in this world, when there is not one of them who is not leagues below the possible realisation of it, and knows that he is. at all events, whether or not the line can be drawn without a break at all, the breaks might be a great deal shorter and a great deal less frequent than they are. an unbroken line of conscious communion with god is the ideal; and that is what this singer desired and worked for. how many of my feelings and thoughts to-day, or of the things that i have said or done since i woke this morning, would have been done and said and felt exactly the same, if there were not a god at all, or if it did not matter in the least whether i ever came into touch with him or not? oh, dear friends! it is no vain effort to bring our lives a little nearer that unbroken continuity of communion with him of which this text speaks. and god knows, and we each for ourselves know, how much and how sore our need is of such a union. 'one thing have i desired, that will i seek after; that i, in my study; i, in my shop; i, in my parlour, kitchen, or nursery; i, in my studio; i, in my lecture-hall--'may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life.' in our 'father's house are many mansions.' the room that we spend most of our lives in, each of us, at our tasks or our work-tables may be in our father's house, too; and it is only we that can secure that it shall be. the inmost meaning of this psalmist's desire is that the consciousness of god shall be diffused throughout the whole of a man's days, instead of being coagulated here and there at points. the australian rivers in a drought present a picture of the christian life of far too many of us--a stagnant, stinking pool here, a stretch of blinding gravel there; another little drop of water a mile away, then a long line of foul-smelling mud, and then another shallow pond. why! it ought to run in a clear stream that has a scour in it and that will take all filth off the surface. the psalmist longed to break down the distinction between sacred and secular; to consecrate work, of whatsoever sort it was. he had learned what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our religion does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of little use; and that if the field in which our religion has power to control and impel is not that of the trivialities and secularities of our ordinary life, there is no field for it at all. 'all the days of my life.' not only on wednesday nights, while tuesday and thursday are given to the world and self; not only on sundays; not for five minutes in the morning, when i am eager to get to my daily work, and less than five minutes at night, when i am half asleep, but through the long day, doing this, that, and the other thing for god and by god and with god, and making him the motive and the power of my course, and my companion to heaven. and if we have, in our lives, things over which we cannot make the sign of the cross, the sooner we get rid of them the better; and if there is anything in our daily work, or in our characters, about which we are doubtful, here is a good test: does it seem to check our continual communion with god, as a ligature round the wrist might do the continual flow of the blood, or does it help us to realise his presence? if the former, let us have no more to do with it; if the latter, let us seek to increase it. ii. and now let me say a word about the psalmist's reason for this aspiration. the word which he employs carries with it a picture which is even more vividly given us by a synonymous word employed in the same connection in some of the other psalms. 'that i may dwell in the house of the lord'--now, that is an allusion, not only, as i think, to the temple, but also to the oriental habit of giving a man who took refuge in the tent of the sheikh, guest-rites of protection and provision and friendship. the habit exists to this day, and travellers among the bedouins tell us lovely stories of how even an enemy with the blood of the closest relative of the owner of the tent on his hands, if he can once get in there and partake of the salt of the host, is safe, and the first obligation of the owner of the tent is to watch over the life of the fugitive as over his own. so the psalmist says, 'i desire to have guest-rites in thy tent; to lift up its fold, and shelter there from the heat of the desert. and although i be dark and stained with many evils and transgressions against thee, yet i come to claim the hospitality and provision and protection and friendship which the laws of the house do bestow upon a guest.' carrying out substantially the same idea, paul tells the ephesians, as if it were the very highest privilege that the gospel brought to the gentiles: 'ye are no more strangers, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and _of the household of god_'; incorporated into his family, and dwelling safely in his pavilion as their home. that is to say, the blessedness of keeping up such a continual consciousness of touch with god is, first and foremost, the certainty of infallible protection. oh! how it minimises all trouble and brightens all joys, and calms amidst all distractions, and steadies and sobers in all circumstances, to feel ever the hand of god upon us! he who goes through life, finding that, when he has trouble to meet, it throws him back on god, and that when bright mornings of joy drive away nights of weeping, these wake morning songs of praise, and are brightest because they shine with the light of a father's love, will never be unduly moved by any vicissitudes of fortune. like some inland and sheltered valley, with great mountains shutting it in, that 'heareth not the loud winds when they call' beyond the barriers that enclose it, our lives may be tranquilly free from distraction, and may be full of peace, of nobleness, and of strength, on condition of our keeping in god's house all the days of our lives. there is another blessing that will come to the dweller in god's house, and that not a small one. it is that, by the power of this one satisfied longing, driven like an iron rod through all the tortuosities of my life, there will come into it a unity which otherwise few lives are ever able to attain, and the want of which is no small cause of the misery that is great upon men. most of us seem, to our own consciousness, to live amidst endless distractions all our days, and our lives to be a heap of links parted from each other rather than a chain. but if we have that one constant thought with us, and if we are, through all the variety of occupations, true to the one purpose of serving and keeping near god, then we have a charm against the frittering away of our lives in distractions, and the misery of multiplicity; and we enter into the blessedness of unity and singleness of purpose; and our lives become, like the starry heavens in all the variety of their motions, obedient to one impulse. for unity in a life does not depend upon the monotony of its tasks, but upon the simplicity of the motive which impels to all varieties of work. so it is possible for a man harassed by multitudinous avocations, and drawn hither and thither by sometimes apparently conflicting and always bewildering, rapidly-following duties, to say, 'this one thing i do,' if all his doings are equally acts of obedience to god. iii. so, lastly, note the method by which this desire is realised. 'one thing have i desired, ... that will i seek after' there are two points to be kept in view to that end. a great many people say, 'one thing have i desired,' and fail in persistent continuousness of the desire. no man gets rights of residence in god's house for a longer time than he continues to seek for them. the most advanced of us, and those that have longest been like anna, who 'departed not from the temple,' day nor night, will certainly eject ourselves unless, like the psalmist, we use the verbs in both tenses, and say, 'one thing _have_ i desired ... that _will_ i seek after.' john bunyan saw that there was a back door to the lower regions close by the gates of the celestial city. there may be men who have long lived beneath the shadow of the sanctuary, and at the last will be found outside the gates. but the words of the text not only suggest, by the two tenses of the verbs, the continuity of the desire which is destined to be granted, but also by the two verbs themselves--desire and seek after--the necessity of uniting prayer and work. many desires are unsatisfied because conduct does not correspond to desires. many a prayer remains unanswered because its pray-ers never do anything to fulfil their prayers. i do not say they are hypocrites; certainly they are not consciously so, but i do say that there is a large measure of conventionality that means nothing, in the prayers of average christian people for more holiness and likeness to jesus christ. dear friends! if we truly wish this desire of dwelling in the house of the lord to be fulfilled, the day's work must run in the same direction as the morning's petition, and we must, like the psalmist, say, 'i _have desired_ it of the lord, so i, for my part, _will seek after it_.' then, whether or not we reach absolutely to the standard, which is none the less to be aimed at, though it seems beyond reach, we shall arrive nearer and nearer to it; and, god helping our weakness and increasing our strength, quickening us to 'desire,' and upholding us to 'seek after,' we may hope that, when the days of our life are past, we shall but remove into an upper chamber, more open to the sunrise and flooded with light; and shall go no more out, but 'dwell in the house of the lord for ever.' 'seek ye'--'i will seek' 'when thou saidst, seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, thy face, lord, will i seek. . hide not thy face far from me.' --psalm xxvii. , . we have here a report of a brief dialogue between god and a devout soul. the psalmist tells us of god's invitation and of his acceptance, and on both he builds the prayer that the face which he had been bidden to seek, and had sought, may not be hid from him. the correspondence between what god said to him and what he said to god is even more emphatically expressed in the original than in our version. in the hebrew the sentence is dislocated, at the risk of being obscure, for the sake of bringing together the two voices. it runs thus, 'my heart said to thee,' and then, instead of going on with his answer, the psalmist interjects god's invitation 'seek ye my face,' and then, side by side with that, he lays his response, 'thy face, lord, will i seek.' the completeness and swiftness of his answer could not be more vividly expressed. to hear was to obey: as soon as god's merciful call sounded, the psalmist's heart responded, like a harp-string thrilled into music by the vibration of another tuned to the same note. without hesitation, and in entire correspondence with the call, was his response. so swiftly, completely, resolutely should we respond to god's voice, and our ready 'i will' should answer his commandment, as the man at the wheel repeats the captain's orders whilst he carries them out. upon such acceptance of such an invitation we, too, may build the prayer, 'hide not thy face far from me.' now, there are three things here that i desire to look at--god's merciful call to us all; the response of the devout soul to that call; and the prayer which is built upon both. i. we have god's merciful call to us all. 'thou saidst, seek ye my face.' now, that expression, 'the face of god,' though highly metaphorical, is perfectly clear and defined in its meaning. it corresponds substantially to what the apostle paul calls, in speaking of the knowledge of god beyond the limits of revelation, 'that which may be known of god'; or, in more modern language, the side of the divine nature which is turned to man; or, in plainer words still, god, in so far as he is revealed. it means substantially the same thing as the other scriptural expression, 'the name of the lord.' both phrases draw a broad distinction between what god is, in the infinite fulness of his incomprehensible being, and what he is as revealed to man; and both imply that what is revealed is knowledge, real and valid, though it may be imperfect. this, then, being the meaning of the phrase, what is the meaning of the invitation: 'seek ye my face'? have we to search for that, as if it were something hidden, far off, lost, and only to be recovered by our effort? no: a thousand times no! for the seeking, to which god mercifully invites us, is but the turning of the direction of our desires to him, the recognition of the fact that his face is more than all else to men, the recognition that whilst there are many that say, 'who will show us any good?' and put the question impatiently, despairingly, vainly, they that turn the seeking into a prayer, and ask, 'lord! lift thou the light of thy countenance upon us,' will never ask in vain. to seek is to desire, to turn the direction of thought and will and affection to him and to take heed that the ordering of our daily lives is such as that no mist rising from them shall come between us and that brightness of light, or hide from us the vision splendid. they who seek god by desire, by the direction of thought and will and love, and by the regulation of their daily lives in accordance with that desire, are they who obey this commandment. next we come to that great thought that god is ever sounding out to all mankind this invitation to seek his face. by the revelation of himself he bids us all sun ourselves in the brightness of his countenance. one of the new testament writers, in a passage which is mistranslated in our authorised version, says that god 'calls us by his own glory and virtue.' that is to say, the very manifestation of the divine being is such that there lies in it a summons to behold him, and an attraction to himself. so fair is he, that he but needs to withdraw the veil, and men's hearts rejoice in that countenance, which is as the sun shining in his strength; 'nor know we anything more fair than is the smile upon his face.' if we see him as he really is, we cannot choose but love. by all his works he calls us to seek him, not only because the intellect demands that there shall be a personal will behind all these phenomena, but because they in themselves proclaim his name, and the proclamation of his name is the summons to behold. by the very make of our own spirits he calls us to himself. our restlessness, our yearnings, our movings about as aliens in the midst of things seen and visible, all these bid us turn to him in whom alone our capacities can be satisfied, and the hunger of our souls appeased. you remember the old story of the saracen woman who came to england seeking her lover, and passed through these foreign cities, with no word upon her tongue that could be understood of those that heard her except his name whom she sought. ah! that is how men wander through the earth, strangers in the midst of it. they cannot translate the cry of their own hearts, but it means, 'god--my soul thirsteth for thee'; and the thirst bids us seek his face. he summons us by all the providences and events of our changeful lives. our sorrows by their poignancy, our joys by their incompleteness and their transiency, alike call us to him in whom alone the sorrows can be soothed and the joys made full and remain. our duties, by their heaviness, call us to turn ourselves to him, in whom alone we can find the strength to fill the _role_ that is laid upon us, and to discharge our daily tasks. but, most of all, he summons us to himself by him who is the angel of his face, 'the effulgence of his glory, and the express image of his person.' in the face of jesus christ, 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of god' beams out upon us, as it never shone on this psalmist of old. he saw but a portion of that countenance, through a thick veil which thinned as faith gazed, but was never wholly withdrawn. the voice that he heard calling him was less penetrating and less laden with love than the voice that calls us. he caught some tones of invitation sounding in providences and prophecies, in ceremonies and in law; we hear them more full and clear from the lips of a brother. they sound to us from the cradle and the cross, and they are wafted down to us from the throne. god's merciful invitation to us poor men never has taken, nor will, nor can, take a sweeter and more attractive form than in christ's version of it: 'come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and i will give you rest.' friend! that summons comes to us; may we deal with it as the psalmist did! ii. that brings me to note, secondly, the devout soul's response to the loving call from god. i have already pointed out how beautifully and vividly the contrast between the two is expressed in our text: 'seek ye my face'--'thy face will i seek.' the psalmist takes the general invitation and converts it into an individual one, to which he responds. god's 'ye' is met by his 'i.' the psalmist makes no hesitation or delay--'_when_ thou saidst ... my heart said to thee.' the psalmist gathers himself together in a concentrated resolve of a fixed determination--'thy face _will_ i seek.' that is how we ought to respond. make the general invitation thy very own. god summons all, because he summons each. he does not cast his invitations out at random over the heads of a crowd, as some rich man might fling coins to a mob, but he addresses every one of us singly and separately, as if there were not another soul in the universe to hear his voice but our very own selves. it is for us not to lose ourselves in the crowd, since he has not lost us in it; but to appropriate, to individualise, to make our very own, the universality of his call to the world. it matters nothing to you what other men may do; it matters not to you how many others may be invited, and whether they may accept or may refuse. when that 'seek ye' comes to my heart, life or death depends on my answering, 'whatsoever others may do, as for me i will seek thy face.' we preachers that have to stand and address a multitude sound out the invitation, and it loses in power, the more there are to listen to us. if i could get you one by one, the poorest words would have more weight with you than the strongest have when spoken to a crowd. brother! god individualises us, and god speaks to thee, 'wilt thou behold my face?' answer, 'as for me, i will.' again, the psalmist 'made haste, and delayed not, but made haste' to respond to the merciful summons. ah! how many of us, in how many different ways, fall into the snare 'by-and-by'! 'not now'; and all these days, that slip away whilst we hesitate, gather themselves together to be our accusers hereafter. friend! why should you limit the blessedness that may come into your life to the fag end of it when you have got tired and satiated, or tired and disappointed with the world and its good? 'seek ye the lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.' it is poor courtesy to show to a merciful invitation from a bountiful host if i say; 'after i have looked to the oxen i have bought, and tested them, and measured the field that i have acquired; after i have drunk the sweetness of wedded life with the wife that i have married, then i will come. but, for the present, i pray thee, have me excused.' and that is what many are doing, more or less. the psalmist gathered himself together in a fixed resolve, and said, 'i _will_.' that is what we have to do. a languid seeker will not find; an earnest one will not fail to find. but if half-heartedly, now and then, when we are at leisure in the intervals of more important and pressing daily business, we spasmodically bethink ourselves, and for a little while seek for the light of god's felt presence to shine upon us, we shall not get it. but if we lay a masterful hand, as we ought to do, on these divergent desires that draw us asunder, and bind ourselves, as it were, together, by the strong cord of a resolved purpose carried out throughout our lives, then we shall certainly not seek in vain. alas! how strange and how sad is the reception which this merciful invitation receives from so many of us! some of you never hear it at all. standing in the very focus where the sounds converge, you are deaf, as if a man behind the veil of the falling water of niagara, on that rocky shelf there, should hear nothing. from every corner of the universe that voice comes; from all the providences and events of our lives that voice comes; from the life and death of jesus christ that voice comes; and not a sound reaches your ears. 'having ears, they hear not,' and some of us might take the psalmist's answer, with one sad word added, as ours--'when thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, lord, will i _not_ seek.' brethren! it is heaven on earth to say, 'thou dost call, and i answer. speak, lord, for thy servant heareth.' yet you shut yourselves up to, and with, misery and vanity, if you so deal with god's merciful summons as some of us are dealing with it, so that he has to say, 'i called, and ye refused; i stretched out my hand, and no man regarded.' iii. lastly, we have here a prayer built upon both the invitation and the acceptance. 'hide not thy face far from me.' that prayer implies that god will not contradict himself. his promises are commandments. if he bids us seek he binds himself to show. his veracity, his unchangeableness, are pledged to this, that no man who yields to his invitation will be balked of his desire. he does not hold out the gift in his hand, and then twitch it away when we put out encouraged and stimulated hands to grasp it. you have seen children flashing bright reflections from a mirror on to a wall, and delighting to direct them away to another spot, when a hand has been put out to touch them. that is not how god does. the light that he reveals is steady, and whosoever turns his face to it will be irradiated by its brightness. the prayer builds itself on the assurance that, because god will not contradict himself, therefore every heart seeking is sure to issue in a heart finding. there is only one region where that is true, brethren! there is only one tract of human experience in which the promise is always and absolutely fulfilled:--'ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find.' we hunt after all other good, and at the best we get it in part or for a time, and when possessed, it is not as bright as when it shone in the delusive colours of hope and desire. if you follow other good, and are drawn after the elusive lights that dance before you, and only show how great is the darkness, you will not reach them, but will be mired in the bog. if you follow after god's face, it will make a sunshine in the shadiest places of life here. you will be blessed because you walk all the day long in the light of his countenance, and when you pass hence it will irradiate the darkness of death, and thereafter, 'his servants shall serve him, and shall see his face,' and, seeing, shall be made like him, for 'his name shall be in their foreheads.' brethren! we have to make our choice whether we shall see his face here on earth, and so meet it hereafter as that of a long-separated and long-desired friend; or whether we shall see it first when he is on his throne, and we at his bar, and so shall have to 'call on the rocks and the hills to fall on us, and cover us from the face of him who is our judge.' the two guests 'his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'--psalm xxx. . a word or two of exposition is necessary in order to bring out the force of this verse. there is an obvious antithesis in the first part of it, between 'his anger' and 'his favour.' probably there is a similar antithesis between a 'moment' and 'life.' for, although the word rendered 'life' does not unusually mean a _lifetime_ it _may_ have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. so, then, the meaning of the first part of my text is, 'the anger lasts for a moment; the favour lasts for a lifetime.' the perpetuity of the one, and the brevity of the other, are the psalmist's thought. then, if we pass to the second part of the text, you will observe that there is there also a double antithesis. 'weeping' is set over against 'joy'; the 'night' against the 'morning.' and the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word 'joy' means, literally, 'a joyful shout,' so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. then, still further, the expression 'may endure' literally means 'may come to lodge.' so that weeping and joy are personified. two guests come; one, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for such, 'the night.' the other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. the guest of the night is weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is gladness. the two clauses, then, of my text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. the one speaks of the succession of emotions in the man; the other, of the successive aspects of the divine dealings which occasion these. the whole is a leaf out of the psalmist's own experience. the psalm commemorates his deliverance from some affliction, probably a sickness. that is long gone past; and the tears that it caused have long since dried up. but this shout of joy of his has lasted all these centuries, and is like to be immortal. well for us if we can read our life's story with the same cheery confidence as he did his, and have learned like him to discern what is the temporary and what the permanent element in our experience! i. note, first, the proportion of joy and sorrow in an ordinary life. the psalmist expresses, as i have said, the same idea in both clauses. in the former the 'anger' is contemplated not so much as an element in the divine mind, as in its manifestations in the divine dealings. i shall have a word or two, presently, to say about the scriptural conception of the 'anger' of god and its relation to the 'favour' of god; but for the present i take the two clauses as being substantially equivalent. now is it true--is it not true?--that if a man rightly regards the proportionate duration of these two diverse elements in his life, he must come to the conclusion that the one is continuous and the other is but transitory? a thunderstorm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes; and very few days have them. it must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. if we were to take the chart and prick out upon it the line of our sailing, we should find that the spaces in which the weather was tempestuous were brief and few indeed as compared with those in which it was sunny and calm. but then, man looks before and after, and has the terrible gift that by anticipation and by memory he can prolong the sadness. the proportion of solid matter needed to colour the irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. but the current carries it, and half an ounce will stain miles of the turbid stream. memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. and the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones, and it is easier to get accustomed to 'blessings,' as we call them, and to lose the poignancy of their sweetness because they become familiar, than it is to apply the same process to our sorrows, and thus to take the edge off them. the rose's prickles are felt in the flesh longer than its fragrance lives in the nostrils, or its hue in the eye. men have long memories for their pains as compared with their remembrance of their sorrows. so it comes to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimise and abbreviate gladness. we can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. we cannot directly regulate our emotions, but we can regulate them, because it is in our own power to determine which aspect of our life we shall by preference contemplate. here is a room, for instance, papered with a paper with a dark background and a light pattern on it. well, you can manoeuvre your eye about so as either to look at the black background--and then it is all black, with only a little accidental white or gilt to relieve it here and there; or you can focus your eye on the white and gold, and then that is the main thing, and the other is background. we can choose, to a large extent, what we shall conceive our lives to be; and so we can very largely modify their real character. 'there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.' they who will can surround themselves with persistent gladness, and they who will can gather about them the thick folds of an everbrooding and enveloping sorrow. courage, cheerfulness, thankfulness, buoyancy, resolution, are all closely connected with a sane estimate of the relative proportions of the bright and the dark in a human life. ii. and now consider, secondly, the inclusion of the 'moment' in the 'life.' i do not know that the psalmist thought of that when he gave utterance to my text, but whether he did it or not, it is true that the 'moment' spent in 'anger' is a part of the 'life' that is spent in the 'favour.' just as within the circle of a life lies each of its moments, the same principle of inclusion may be applied to the other contrast presented here. for as the 'moment' is a part of the 'life,' the 'danger' is a part of the love. the 'favour' holds the 'anger' within itself, for the true scriptural idea of that terrible expression and terrible fact, the 'wrath of god,' is that it is the necessary aversion of a perfectly pure and holy love from that which does not correspond to itself. so, though sometimes the two may be set against each other, yet at bottom, and in reality, they are one, and the 'anger' is but a mode in which the 'favour' manifests itself. god's love is plastic, and if thrown back upon itself, grieved and wounded and rejected, becomes the 'anger' which ignorant men sometimes seem to think it contradicts. there is no more antagonism between these two ideas when they are applied to god than when they are applied to you parents in your relations to a disobedient child. you know, and it knows, that if there were no love there would be little 'anger.' neither of you suppose that an irate parent is an unloving parent. 'if ye, being evil, know how,' in dealing with your children, to blend wrath and love, 'how much more shall your father which is in heaven' be one and the same father when his love manifests itself in chastisement and when it expands itself in blessings! thus we come to the truth which breathes uniformity and simplicity through all the various methods of the divine hand, that howsoever he changes and reverses his dealings with us, they are one and the same. you may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. the same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. it is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun's course and brings declining days and increasing cold. it is the same motion which hurls a comet close to the burning sun, and sends it wandering away out into fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. and so one uniform divine purpose, the 'favour' which uses the 'anger,' fills the life, and there are no interruptions, howsoever brief, to the steady continuous flow of his outpoured blessings. all is love and favour. anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. it takes all sorts of weathers to make a year, and all tend to the same issue, of ripened harvests and full barns. o brethren! if we understand that god means something better for us than happiness, even likeness to himself, we should understand better how our deepest sorrows and bitterest tears, and the wounds that penetrate deepest into our bleeding hearts, all come from the same motive, and are directed to the same end as their most joyful contraries. one thing the lord desires, that we may be partakers of his holiness, and so we may venture to give an even deeper meaning to the psalmist's words than he intended, and recognise that the 'moment' is an integral part of the 'life,' and the 'anger' a mode of the manifestation of the 'favour.' iii. lastly, notice the conversion of the sorrow into joy. i have already explained the picturesque image of the last part of my text, which demands a little further consideration. there are two figures presented before us, one dark robed and one bright garmented. the one is the guest of the night, the other is the guest of the morning. the verb which occurs in the first clause of the second half of my text is not repeated in the second, and so the words may be taken in two ways. they may either express how joy, the morning guest, comes, and turns out the evening visitant, or they may suggest how we took sorrow in when the night fell, to sit by the fireside, but when morning dawned--who is this, sitting in her place, smiling as we look at her? it is sorrow transfigured, and her name is changed into joy. either the substitution or the transformation may be supposed to be in the psalmist's mind. both are true. no human heart, however wounded, continues always to bleed. some gracious vegetation creeps over the wildest ruin. the roughest edges are smoothed by time. vitality asserts itself; other interests have a right to be entertained and are entertained. the recuperative powers come into play, and the pang departs and poignancy is softened. the cutting edge gets blunt on even poisoned spears by the gracious influences of time. the nightly guest, sorrow, slips away, and ere we know, another sits in her place. some of us try to fight against that merciful process and seem to think that it is a merit to continue, by half artificial means, the first moment of pain, and that it is treason to some dear remembrances to let life have its way, and to-day have its rights. that is to set ourselves against the dealings of god, and to refuse to forgive him for what his love has done for us. but the other thought seems to me to be even more beautiful, and probably to be what was in the psalmist's mind--viz. the transformation of the evil, sorrow itself, into the radiant form of joy. a prince in rags comes to a poor man's hovel, is hospitably received in the darkness, and being received and welcomed, in the morning slips off his rags and appears as he is. sorrow is joy disguised. if it be accepted, if the will submit, if the heart let itself be untwined, that its tendrils may be coiled closer round the heart of god, then the transformation is sure to come, and joy will dawn on those who have done rightly--that is, submissively and thankfully--by their sorrows. it will not be a joy like what the world calls joy--loud-voiced, boisterous, ringing with idiot laughter; but it will be pure, and deep, and sacred, and permanent. a white lily is fairer than a flaunting peony, and the joy into which sorrow accepted turns is pure and refining and good. so, brethren! remember that the richest vintages are grown on the rough slopes of the volcano, and lovely flowers blow at the glacier's edge; and all our troubles, big and little, may be converted into gladnesses if we accept them as god meant them. only they must be so accepted if they are to be thus changed. but there may be some hearts recoiling from much that i have said in this sermon, and thinking to themselves, 'ah! there are two kinds of sorrows. there are those that _can_ be cured, and there are those that _cannot_. what have you got to say to me who have to bleed from an immedicable wound till the end of my life?' well, i have to say this--look beyond earth's dim dawns to that morning when 'the sun of righteousness shall arise, to them that love his name, with healing in his wings.' if we have to carry a load on an aching back till the end, be sure that when the night, which is far spent, is over, and the day which is at hand hath broken, every raindrop will be turned into a flashing rainbow when it is smitten by the level light, and every sorrow rightly borne be represented by a special and particular joy. only, brother! if a life is to be spent in his favour, it must be spent in his fear. and if our cares and troubles and sorrows and losses are to be transfigured hereafter, then we must keep very near jesus christ, who has promised to us that his joy will remain with us, and that our sorrows shall be turned into joys. if we trust to him, the voices that have been raised in weeping will be heard in gladness, and earth's minor will be transposed by the great master of the music into the key of heaven's jubilant praise. if only 'we look not at the things seen, but at the things which are not seen,' then 'our light affliction, which is but for a moment, will work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory'; and the weight will be no burden, but will bear up those who are privileged to bear it. 'be ... for thou art' 'be thou to me a strong rock, an house of defence to save me. . for thou art my rock and my fortress.'--psalm xxxi. , (r.v.). it sounds strange logic, 'be ... for thou art,' and yet it _is_ the logic of prayer, and goes very deep, pointing out both its limits and its encouragements. the parallelism between these two clauses is even stronger in the original than in our version, for whilst the two words which designate the 'rock' are not identical, their meaning is identical, and the difference between them is insignificant; one being a rock of any shape or size, the other being a perpendicular cliff or elevated promontory. and in the other clause, 'for a house of defence to save me,' the word rendered 'defence' is the same as that which is translated in the next clause 'fortress.' so that if we were to read thus: 'be thou a strong rock to me, for a house, a fortress, for thou art my rock and my fortress,' we should get the whole force of the parallelism. of course the main idea in that of the 'rock,' and 'fortress' is only an exposition of one phase of the meaning of that metaphor. i. so let us look first at what god is. 'a rock, a fortress-house.' now, what is the force of that metaphor? stable being, as it seems to me, is the first thought in it, for there is nothing that is more absolutely the type of unchangeableness and steadfast continuance. the great cliffs rise up, and the river glides at their base--it is a type of mutability, and of the fleeting generations of men, who are as the drops and ripples in its course--it eddies round the foot of the rocks to which the old man looks up, and sees the same dints and streaks and fissures in it that he saw when he was a child. the river runs onwards, the trees that root themselves in the clefts of the rock bear their spring foliage, and drop their leaves like the generations of men, and the rock is 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' and god the unchangeable rises, if i may so say, like some majestic cliff, round the foot of which rolls for ever the tide of human life, and round which are littered the successive layers of the leaves of many summers. then besides this stable being, and the consequences of it, is the other thought which is attached to the emblem in a hundred places in scripture, and that is defence. 'his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks.' when the floods are out, and all the plain is being dissolved into mud, the dwellers on it fly to the cliffs. when the enemy's banners appear on the horizon, and the open country is being harried and burned, the peasants hurry to the defence of the hills, and, sheltered there, are safe. and so for us this name assures us that in him, whatever floods may sweep across the low levels, and whatever foes may storm over the open land and the unwalled villages, there is always the fortress up in the hills, and thither no flood can rise, and there no enemy can come. a defence and a sure abode is his who dwells in god, and thus folds over himself the warm wings that stretch on either side, and shelter him from all assault. 'lead me to the rock that is higher than i.' but the rock is a defence in another way. if a hard-pressed fugitive is brought to a stand and can set his back against a rock, he can front his assailants, secure that no unseen foe shall creep up behind and deal a stealthy stab and that he will not be surrounded unawares. 'the god of israel shall be your rearward,' and he who has 'made the most high his habitation' is sheltered from 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness,' as well as from 'the destruction that wasteth at noon-day,' and will be cleansed from 'secret faults' if he keeps up unbroken his union with god, for the 'faults' which are not recognised as faults by his partially illuminated conscience are known to god. but the rock is a defence in yet another way, for it is a sure foundation for our lives. whoso builds on god need fear no change. when the floods rise, and the winds blow, and the rain storms down, the house that is on the rock will stand. and, then, in the rock there is a spring, and round the spring there is 'the light of laughing flowers,' amidst the stern majesty of the cliff. just as the law-giver of old smote the rock, and there gushed out the stream that satisfied the thirst of the whole travelling nation, so paul would have us christians repeat the miracle by our faith. of us, too, it may be said, they drank 'of that rock that followed them, and that rock was christ.' stable being, secure defence, a fountain of refreshment and satisfaction: all these blessings lie in that great metaphor. ii. now, note our plea with god, from what he is. 'be thou to me a rock ... for thou art a rock.' is that not illogical? no, for notice that little word, 'to me'--be thou _to me_ what thou art in thyself, and hast been to all generations.' that makes all the difference. it is not merely 'be what thou art,' although that would be much, but it is 'be it to me,' and let _me_ have all which is meant in that great name. but then, beyond that, let me point out to you how this prayer suggests to us that all true prayer will keep itself within god's revelation of what he is. we take his promises, and all the elements which make up his name or manifestation of his character to the world, whether by his acts or by the utterances of this book, or by the inferences to be drawn from the life of jesus christ, the great revealer, or by what we ourselves have experienced of him. the ways by which god has revealed himself to the world define the legitimate subjects, and lay down the firm foundation, of our petitions. in all his acts god reveals himself, and if i may so say, when we truly pray, we catch these up, and send them back again to heaven, like arrows from a bow. it is only when our desires and prayers foot themselves upon god's revelation of himself, and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer of my text: 'be ... for thou art,' that we can expect to have them answered. much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon him, and no answer will come to that. we are to pray about everything; but we are to pray about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by what god has told us, in his words and acts, that he himself is. catch these up and fling them back to him, and for every utterance that he has made of himself, 'i am' so-and-so, let us go to him and say 'be thou that to me,' and then we may be sure of an answer. so then two things follow. if we pray after the pattern of this prayer, 'be thou to me what thou art,' then a great many foolish and presumptuous wishes will be stifled in the birth, and, on the other hand, a great many feeble desires will be strengthened and made confident, and we shall be encouraged to expect great things of god. have you widened your prayers, dear friend!--and i do not mean by that only your outward ones, but the habitual aspiration and expectation of your minds--have you widened these to be as wide as what god has shown us that he is? have you taken all god's revelation of himself, and translated it into petition? and do you expect him to be to you all that he has ever been to any soul of man upon earth? oh! how such a prayer as this, if we rightly understand it and feel it, puts to shame the narrowness and the poverty of our prayers, the falterings of our faith, and the absence of expectation in ourselves that we shall receive the fulness of god. god owns that plea: 'be ... what thou art.' he cannot resist that. that is what the apostle meant when he said, 'he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself.' he must be true to his character. he can never be other than he always has been. and that is what the psalmist meant when he goes on, after the words that i have taken for my text, and says, 'for thy name's sake lead me and guide me,' what is god's name? the collocation of letters by which we designate him? certainly not. the name of god is the sum total of what god has revealed himself as being. and 'for the sake of the name,' that he may be true to that which he has shown himself to be, he will always endorse this bill that you draw upon him when you present him with his own character, and say 'be to me what thou art.' iii. lastly, we have here the plea with god drawn from what we have taken him to be to us. that is somewhat different from what i have already been dwelling upon. mark the words: 'be thou to me a strong rock, for thou art _my_ rock and _my_ fortress.' what does that mean? it means that the suppliant has, by his own act of faith, taken god for his; that he has appropriated the great divine revelation, and made it his own. now it seems to me that that appropriation is, if not _the_ point, at least one of the points, in which real faith is distinguished from the sham thing which goes by that name amongst so many people. a man by faith encloses a bit of the common for his very own. when god says that he 'so loved the world that he gave his ... son,' i should say, 'he loved _me_, and gave himself for _me_.' when the great revelation is made that he is the rock of ages, my faith says: '_my_ rock and _my_ fortress.' having said that, and claimed him for mine, i can then turn round to him and say, 'be to me what i have taken thee to be.' and that faith is expressed very beautifully and strikingly in one of the old testament metaphors, which frequently goes along with this one of the rock. for instance, in a great chapter in isaiah we find the original of that phrase 'the rock of ages.' it runs thus, 'trust ye in the lord for ever, for in the lord jehovah is the _rock of ages_.' now the word for trust there literally means, to flee into a refuge, and so the true idea of faith is 'to fly for refuge,' as the epistle to the hebrews has it, 'to the hope set before us,'--that is (keeping to the metaphor), to the cleft in the rock. that act of trust or flight will make it certain that god will be to us for a house of defence, a fortress to save us. other rock-shelters may crumble. they may be carried by assault; they may be riven by earthquakes. 'the mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed,' but this rock is impregnable, and all who take refuge in it are safe for ever. and so the upshot of the whole matter is that god will be to us what we have faith to believe that he is, and our faith will be the measure of our possession of the fulness of god. if we can only say in the fulness of our hearts--and keep to the saying: 'be thou to me a rock, for thou art my rock,' then nothing shall ever hurt us; and 'dwelling in the secret place of the most high' we shall be kept in safety; our 'abode shall be the munitions of rocks, our bread shall be given us, and our water shall be made sure.' 'into thy hands' 'into thine hand i commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, o lord god of truth.'--psalm xxxi. . the first part of this verse is consecrated for ever by our lord's use of it on the cross. is it not wonderful that, at that supreme hour, he deigned to take an unknown singer's words as his words? what an honour to that old saint that jesus christ, dying, should find nothing that more fully corresponded to his inmost heart at that moment than the utterance of the psalmist long ago! how his mind must have been saturated with the old testament and with these songs of israel! and do you not think it would be better for us if ours were completely steeped in those heart-utterances of ancient devotion? but, of course, the psalmist was not thinking about his death. it was an act for his life that he expressed in these words:--'into thine hands i commit my spirit.' if you will glance over the psalm at your leisure, you will see that it is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble, surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened. he was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all sorts of enemies at that moment, not sitting comfortably, as you and i are here, but in the midst of the hurly-burly and the strife, when by a dead lift of faith he flung himself clean out of his disasters, and, if i might so say, pitched himself into the arms of god. 'into thine hands i commit my spirit,' as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so baulk the enemies of their prey. that is the figure. i. now, let me say a word as to where to lodge a soul for safe keeping. 'into thine hands'--a banker has a strong room, and a wise man sends his securities and his valuables to the bank and takes an acknowledgment, and goes to bed at night, quite sure that no harm will come to them, and that he will get them when he wants them. and that is exactly what the psalmist does here. he deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of one who will take care of it. the great hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it. it closes, and 'no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand.' now that is only a picturesque way of putting the most threadbare, bald, commonplace of religious teaching. the word faith, when it has any meaning at all in people's minds when they hear it from the pulpit, is extremely apt, i fear, to create a kind of, if not disgust, at least a revulsion of feeling, as if people said, 'ah, there he is at the old story again!' but will you freshen up your notions of what faith it means by taking that picture of my text as i have tried to expand and illuminate it a little by my metaphor? that is what is meant by 'into thy hands i commit my spirit.' there are two or three ways in which that is to be done, and one or two ways in which it is not to be done. we do it when we trust him for the salvation of our souls. there are a great many good christian people who go mourning all their days, or, at least, sometimes mourning and sometimes indifferent. the most that they venture to say is, 'but i cannot be sure.' our grandfathers used to sing:-- ''tis a point i long to know, oft it causes anxious thought.' why should it cause anxious thought? take your own personal salvation for granted, and work from that. do not work _towards_ it. if you have gone to christ and said, 'lord, i cannot save myself; save me. i am willing to be saved,' be sure that you have the salvation that you ask, and that if you have put your soul in that fashion into god's hands, any incredible thing is credible, and any impossible thing is possible, rather than that you should fail of the salvation which, in the bottom of your hearts, you desire. take the burden off your backs and put it on his. do not be for ever questioning yourselves, 'am i a saved man?' you will get sick of that soon, and you will be very apt to give up all thought about the matter at all. but take your stand on the fact, and with emancipated and buoyant hearts, and grateful ones, work from it, and because of it. and when sin rises up in your soul, and you say to yourselves, 'if i were a christian i could not have done that,' or, 'if i were a christian i could not be so-and-so'; remember that all sin is inconsistent with being a christian, but no sin is incompatible with it; and that after all the consciousness of shortcomings and failure, we have just to come back to the old point, and throw ourselves on god's love. his arms are open to clasp us round. 'into thy hands i commit my spirit.' further, the psalmist meant, by committing himself to god, trusting him in reference to daily life, and all its difficulties and duties. our act of trust is to run through everything that we undertake and everything that we have to fight with. self-will wrenches our souls out of god's hands. a man who sends his securities to the banker can get them back when he likes. and if we undertake to manage our own affairs, or fling ourselves into our work without recognition of our dependence upon him, or if we choose our work without seeking to know what his will is, that is recalling our deposit. then you _will_ get it back again, because god does not keep anybody's securities against his will--you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! self-will, self-reliance, self-determination--these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to god. and, as i say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. do not fancy that you are 'living lives of faith in the son of god,' if you are not looking to him to settle what you are to do. you cannot expect that he will watch over you, if you do not ask him where you are to go. but now there is another thing that i would suggest, this committing of ourselves to god which begins with the initial act of trust in him for the salvation of our souls, and is continued throughout life by the continual surrender of ourselves to him, is to be accompanied with corresponding work. the apostle peter's memory is evidently hovering round this verse, whether he is consciously quoting it or not, when he says, 'let them that suffer according to the will of god commit the keeping of their souls to him _in welldoing_,' which has to go along with the act of trust and dependence. there must come the continual ordering of the life in accordance with his will; for 'well-doing' does not mean merely some works of beneficence and 'charity,' of the sort that have monopolised to themselves the name in latter days, but it means the whole of righteous conduct in accordance with the will of god. so peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to god unless we back up the committing with consistent, christlike lives. of course it is vain. how can a man expect god to take care of him when he plunges himself into something that is contrary to god's laws? there are many people who say, 'god will take care of me; he will save me from the consequences.' not a bit of it--he loves us a great deal too well for that. if you take the bit between your teeth, you will be allowed to go over the precipice and be smashed to pieces. if you wish to be taken care of, keep within the prescribed limits, and consult him before you act, and do not act till you are sure of his approval. god has never promised to rescue man when he has got into trouble by his own sin. suppose a servant had embezzled his master's money through gambling, and then expected god to help him to get the money to pay back into the till. do you think that would be likely to work? and how dare you anticipate that god will keep your feet, if you are walking in ways of your own choosing? all sin takes a man out from the shelter of the divine protection, and the shape the protection has to take then is chastisement. and all sin makes it impossible for a man to exercise that trust which is the committing of his soul to god. so it has to be 'in welldoing,' and the two things are to go together. 'what god hath joined let not man put asunder.' you do not become a christian by the simple exercise of trust unless it is trust that worketh by love. but let me remind you, further, that this committing of our souls into god's hands does not mean that we are absolved from taking care of them ourselves. there is a very false kind of religious faith, which seems to think that it shuffles off all responsibility upon god. not at all; you lighten the responsibility, but you do not get rid of it. and no man has a right to say 'he will keep me, and so i may neglect diligent custody of myself.' he keeps us very largely by helping us to keep our hearts with all diligence, and to keep our feet in the way of truth. so let me now just say a word in regard to the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, god, about great things and little things. whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity. you know that when a child says, 'i do not need to mind, father will look after that,' he may be right or wrong in his estimate of his father's ability and inclination; but as long as he says it, he has no kind of trouble or anxiety, and the little face is scarred by no deep lines of care or thought. so when we turn to him and say, 'why should i the burden bear?' then there comes--i was going to say 'surging,' but 'trickling' is a better word--into my heart a settled peacefulness which nothing else can give. look at this psalm. it begins, and for the first half continues, in a very minor key. the singer was not a poet posing as in affliction, but his words were wrung out of him by anguish. 'mine eyes are consumed with grief; my life is spent with grief'; 'i am ... as a dead man out of mind'; 'i am in trouble.' and then with a quick wheel about, 'but i trusted in thee, o lord! i said, thou art my god.' and what comes of that? this--'o how great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee!' 'blessed be the lord, for he hath showed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.' and then, at the end of all, his peacefulness is so triumphant that he calls upon 'all his saints' to help him to praise. and the last words are 'be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart.' that is what you will get if you commit your soul to god. there was no change in the psalmist's circumstances. the same enemy was round about him. the same 'net was privily laid for him.' all that had seemed to him half an hour before as wellnigh desperate, continued utterly unaltered. but what _had_ altered? god had come into the place, and that altered the whole aspect of matters. instead of looking with shrinking and tremulous heart along the level of earth, where miseries were, he was looking up into the heavens, where god was; and so everything was beautiful. that will be our experience if we will commit the keeping of our souls to him in well doing. you can bring june flowers and autumn fruits into snowy january days by the exercise of this trust in god. it does not need that our circumstances should alter, but only that our attitude should alter. look up, and cast your souls into god's hands, and all that is round you, of disasters and difficulties and perplexities, will suffer transformation; and for sorrow there will come joy because there has come trust. i need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which, as i have said, is consecrated to us by our lord's own use of it at the last. but is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind and heart by which a man commits his spirit to god in life may be his when he comes to die, and that death may become a voluntary act, and the spirit may not be dragged out of us, reluctant, and as far as we can, resisting, but that we may offer it up as a libation, to use one metaphor of st. paul's, or may surrender it willingly as an act of faith? it is wonderful to think that life and death, so unlike each other, may be made absolutely identical in the spirit in which they are met. you remember how the first martyr caught up the words from the cross, and kneeling down outside the wall of jerusalem, with the blood running from the wounds that the stones had made, said, 'lord jesus! receive my spirit.' that is the way to die, and that is the way to live. one word is all that time permits about the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. 'thou hast redeemed me, lord god of truth.' the psalmist, i think, uses that word 'redeemed' here, not in its wider spiritual new testament sense, but in its frequent old testament sense, of deliverance from temporal difficulties and calamities. and what he says is, in effect, this: 'i have had experience in the past which makes me believe that thou wilt extricate me from this trouble too, because thou art the god of truth.' he thinks of what god has done, and of what god is. and peter, whom we have already found echoing this text, echoes that part of it too, for he says, 'let them commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as _unto a faithful creator_,' which is all but parallel to 'lord god of truth.' so god will continue as he has begun, and finish what he has begun. 'a faithful creator--' he made us to need what we do need, and he is not going to forget the wants that he himself has incorporated with our human nature. he is bound to help us because he made us. he is the god of truth, and he will help us. but if we take 'redeemed' in its highest sense, the psalmist, arguing from god's past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the apostle said in the triumphant words, 'whom he did foreknow, them he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son ... and whom he did predestinate them he also ... justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified.' 'thou hast redeemed me.' 'thou art the god of truth; thou wilt not lift thy hand away from thy work until thou hast made me all that thou didst bind thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.' so we can say, 'he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?' you have experiences, i have no doubt, in your past, on which you may well build confidence for the future. let each of us consult our own hearts, and our own memories. cannot _we_ say, 'thou hast been my help,' and ought we not therefore to be sure that he will not 'leave us nor forsake us' until he manifests himself as the god of our salvation? it is a blessed thing to lay ourselves in the hands of god, but the new testament tells us, 'it is a fearful thing to _fall into_ the hands of the living god.' the alternative is one that we all have to face,--either 'into thy hands i commit my spirit,' or into those hands to fall. settle which of the two is to be your fate. goodness wrought and goodness laid up 'oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!'--psalm xxxi. . the psalmist has been describing, with the eloquence of misery, his own desperate condition, in all manner of metaphors which he heaps together--'sickness,' 'captivity,' 'like a broken vessel,' 'as a dead man out of mind.' but in the depth of desolation he grasps at god's hand, and that lifts him up out of the pit. 'i trusted in thee, o lord! thou art my god.' so he struggles up on to the green earth again, and he feels the sunshine; and then he breaks out--'oh! how great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee.' so the psalm that began with such grief, ends with the ringing call, 'be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the lord.' now these great words which i have read for my text, and which derive even additional lustre from their setting, do not convey to the hasty english reader the precise force of the antithesis which lies in them. the contrast in the two clauses is between goodness laid up and goodness wrought; and that would come out a little more clearly if we transposed the last words of the text, and instead of reading, as our authorised version does, 'which thou hast wrought for them that trusted in thee before the sons of men,' read 'which thou hast wrought before the sons of men for them that trusted in thee.' so i think there are, as it were, two great masses of what the psalmist calls 'goodness'; one of them which has been plainly manifested 'before the sons of men,' the other which is 'laid up' in store. there are a great many notes in circulation, but there is far more bullion in the strong-room. much 'goodness' has been exhibited; far more lies concealed. if we take that antithesis, then, i think we may turn it in two or three directions, like a light in a man's hand; and look at it as suggesting-- i. first, the goodness already disposed--'wrought before the sons of men'; and that 'laid up,' yet to be manifested. now, that distinction just points to the old familiar but yet never-to-be-exhausted thought of the inexhaustibleness of the divine nature. that inexhaustibleness comes out most wondrously and beautifully in the fundamental manifestation of god on which the old testament revelation is built--i mean the vision given to moses prior to his call, and as the basis of his message, of the bush that burned and was not consumed. that lowly shrub flaming and not burning out was not, as has often been supposed, the symbol of israel which in the furnace of affliction was not destroyed. it meant the same as the divine name, then proclaimed; 'i am that i am,' which is but a way of saying that god's being is absolute, dependent upon none, determined by himself, infinite, and eternal, burns and is not burned up, lives and has no proclivity towards death, works and is unwearied, 'operates unspent,' is revealed and yet hidden, gives and is none the poorer. and as we look upon our daily lives, and travel back in thought, some of us over the many years which have all been crowded with instances and illustrations of divine faithfulness and favouring care, we have to grasp both these exclamations of our text, 'oh! how great is thy goodness which thou hast wrought,' how much greater 'is thy goodness which is laid up!' the table has been spread in the wilderness, and the verities of christian experience more than surpass the legends of hungry knights finding banquets prepared by unseen hands in desert places. it is as when jesus made the multitude sit down on the green grass and feast to the full, and yet abundance remained undiminished after satisfying all the hungry applicants. the bread that was broken yielded more basketfuls for to-morrow than the original quantity in the lad's hands. the fountain rises, and the whole camp, 'themselves and their children and their cattle,' slake their thirst at it, and yet it is full as ever. the goodness wrought is but the fringe and first beginnings of the mass that is laid up. all the gold that has been coined and put into circulation is as nothing compared with the wedges and ingots of massive bullion that lie in the strong room. god's riches are not like the world's wealth. you very soon get to the bottom of its purse. its 'goodness,' is very soon run dry; and nothing will yield an unintermittent stream of satisfaction and blessing to a poor soul except the 'river of the water of life that proceedeth out of the throne of god and of the lamb.' so, dear brethren! that contrast may suggest to us how quietly and peacefully we may look forward to all the unknown future; and hold up to it so as to enable us to scan its general outlines, the light of the known and experienced past. let our trustful prayer be; 'thou hast been my help: leave me not, neither forsake me, o god of my salvation!' and the answer will certainly be: 'i will not leave thee, till i have done unto thee that which i have spoken to thee of.' our memory ought to be the mother of our hope; and we should paint the future in the hues of the past. thou hast goodness 'laid up,' more than enough to match 'the goodness thou hast wrought.' god's past is the prophecy of god's future; and my past, if i understand it aright, ought to rebuke every fear and calm every anxiety. we, and only we, have the right to say, 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' that is delusion if said by any but by those that fear and trust in the inexhaustible god. ii. now let us turn our light in a somewhat different direction. the contrast here suggests the goodness that is publicly given and that which is experienced in secret. if you will notice, in the immediate neighbourhood of my text there come other words which evidently link themselves with the thought of the goodness laid up: 'thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence.' that is where also the 'goodness' is. 'thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion ... blessed be the lord! for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.' so, then, the goodness which is wrought, and which can be seen by the sons of men, dwindles in comparison with the goodness which lies in that secret place, and can only be enjoyed and possessed by those who dwell there, and whose feet are familiar with the way that leads to it. that is to say, if you wish the psalmist's thought in plain prose, all these visible blessings of ours are but pale shadows and suggestions of the real wealth that we can have only if we live in continual communion with god. the spiritual blessings of quiet minds and strength for work, the joys of communion with god, the sweetness of the hopes that are full of immortality, and all these delights and manifestations of god's inmost love and sweetness which are granted only to waiting hearts that shut themselves off from the tumultuous delights of earth as the bases of their trust or the sources of their gladness--these are fuller, better than the selectest and richest of the joys that god's world can give. god does not put his best gifts, so to speak, in the shop-windows; he keeps these in the inner chambers. he does not arrange his gifts as dishonest traders do their wares, putting the finest outside or on the top, and the less good beneath. 'thou hast kept the good wine until now.' it is they who inhabit 'the secret place of the most high,' and whose lives are filled with communion with him, realising his presence, seeking to know his will, reaching out the tendrils of their hearts to twine round him, and diligently, for his dear sake, doing the tasks of life; who taste the selected dainties from god's gracious hands. how foolish, then, to order life on the principle upon which we are all tempted to do it, and to yield to the temptation to which some of us have yielded far too much, of fancying that the best good is the good that we can touch and taste and handle and that men can see! no! no! deep down in our hearts a joy that strangers never intermeddle with nor know, a peace that passes understanding, a present christ and a heaven all but present, because christ is present--these are the good things for men, and these are the things which god does not, because he cannot, fling broadcast into the world, but which he keeps, because he must, for those that desire them, and are fit for them. 'he causeth his sun to shine, and his rain to fall on the unthankful and on the disobedient,' but the goodness laid up is better than the sunshine, and more refreshing and fertilising and cleansing than the rain, and it comes, and comes only, to them that trust him, and live near him. iii. and so, lastly, we may turn our light in yet another direction, and take this contrast as suggesting the goodness wrought on earth, and the goodness laid up in heaven. here we see, sometimes, the messengers coming with the one cluster of grapes on the pole. there we shall live in the vineyard. here we drink from the river as it flows; there we shall be at the fountain-head. here we are in the vestibule of the king's house, there we shall be in the throne room, and each chamber as we pass through it is richer and fairer than the one preceding. heaven's least goodness is more than earth's greatest blessedness. all that life to come, all its conditions and everything about it, are so strange to us, so incapable of being bodied forth or conceived by us, and the thought of eternity is, it seems to me, so overwhelmingly awful that i do not wonder at even good people finding little stimulus, or much that cheers, in the thought of passing thither. but if we do not know anything more--and we know very little more--let us be sure of this, that when god begins to compare his adjectives he does not stop till he gets to the superlative degree and that _good_ begets _better_, and the better of earth ensures the _best_ of heaven. and so out of our poor little experience here, we may gather grounds of confidence that will carry our thoughts peacefully even into the great darkness, and may say, 'what thou didst work is much, what thou hast laid up is more.' and the contrast will continue for ever and ever; for all through that strange eternity that which is wrought will be less than that which is laid up, and we shall never get to the end of god, nor to the end of his goodness. only let us take heed to the conditions--'them that fear him, them that trust in him.' if we will do these things through each moment of the experiences of a growing christian life, and at the moment of the experience of a christian death, and through the eternities of the experience of a christian heaven, jesus christ will whisper to us, 'thou shalt see greater things than these.' hid in light 'thou shall hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man; thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.'--psalm xxxi. . the word rendered 'presence' is literally 'face,' and the force of this very remarkable expression of confidence is considerably marred unless that rendering be retained. there are other analogous expressions in scripture, setting forth, under various metaphors, god's protection of them that love him. but i know not that there is any so noble and striking as this. for instance, we read of his hiding his children 'in the secret of his tabernacle,' or tent; as an arab chief might do a fugitive who had eaten of his salt, secreting him in the recesses of his tent whilst the pursuers scoured the desert in vain for their prey. again, we read of his hiding them 'beneath the shadow of his wing'; where the divine love is softened into the likeness of the maternal instinct which leads a hen to gather her chickens beneath the shelter of her own warm and outspread feathers. but the metaphor of my text is more vivid and beautiful still. 'thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face.' the light that streams from that countenance is the hiding-place for a poor man. these other metaphors may refer, perhaps, the one to the temple, and the other to the outstretched wings of the cherubim that shadowed the mercy-seat. and, if so, this metaphor carries us still more near to the central blaze of the shekinah, the glory that hovered above the mercy-seat, and glowed in the dark sanctuary, unseen but once a year by one trembling high priest, who had to bear with him blood of sacrifice, lest the sight should slay. the psalmist says, into that fierce light a man may go, and stand in it, bathed, hid, secure. 'thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face.' i. now, then, let us notice, first, this hiding-place. the 'face' of god is so strongly figurative an expression that its metaphorical character cannot but be obvious to the most cursory reader. the very frankness, and, we may say, the grossness of the image, saves it from all misconception, and as with other similar expressions in the old testament, at once suggests its meaning. we read, for example, of the 'arm,' the 'hand,' the 'finger' of god, and everybody feels that these mean his power. we read of the 'eye' of god, and everybody knows that that means his omniscience. we read of the 'ear' of god, and we all understand that that holds forth the blessed thought that he hears and answers the cry of such as be sorrowful. and, in like manner, the 'face' of god is the apprehensible part of the divine nature which turns to men, and by which he makes himself known. it is roughly equivalent to the other old and new testament expression, the 'name of the lord,' the manifested and revealed side of the divine nature. and that is the hiding-place into which men may go. we have the other expression also in scripture, 'the light of thy countenance,' and that helps us to apprehend the psalmist's meaning. 'the light of thy face' is 'secret.' what a paradox! can light conceal? look at the daily heavens--filled with blazing stars, all invisible till the night falls. the effulgence of the face is such that they that stand in it are lost and hid, like the lark in the blue sky. 'a glorious privacy of light is thine.' there is a wonderful metaphor in the new testament of a woman 'clothed with the sun,' and caught up into it from her enemies to be safe there. and that is just an expansion of the psalmist's grand paradox, 'thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy face.' light conceals when the light is so bright as to dazzle. they who are surrounded by god are lost in the glory, and safe in that seclusion, 'the secret of thy face.' a thought may be suggested, although it is somewhat of a digression from the main purpose of my text, but it springs naturally out of this paradox, and may just deserve a word. revelation is real, but revelation has its limits. that which is revealed is 'the face of god,' but we read, 'no man can see my face.' after all revelation he remains hidden. after all pouring forth of his beams he remains 'the god that dwelleth in the thick darkness,' and the light which is inaccessible is also a darkness that can be felt. apprehension is possible; comprehension is impossible. what we know of god is valid and true, but we never shall know all the depths that lie in that which we do know of him. his face is 'the secret'; and though men may malign him when they say, 'verily, thou art a god that hidest thyself, o god of israel!' and he answers them, 'i have not spoken in secret' in a dark 'place of the earth,' it still remains true that revelation has its mysteries born of the greatness of its effulgence, and that all which we know of god is 'dark with excess of light.' but that is aside from our main purpose. let me rather remind you of how the thought of the secret of god's face being the secure hiding-place of them that love him points to this truth--that that brightness of light has a repellent power which keeps far away from all intermingling with it everything that is evil. the old greek mythologies tell us that the radiant arrows of apollo shot forth from his far-reaching bow, wounded to death the monsters of the slime and unclean creatures that crawled and revelled in darkness. and the myth has a great truth in it. the light of god's face slays evil, of whatsoever kind it is; and just as the unlovely, loathsome creatures that live in the dark and find themselves at ease there writhe and wriggle in torment, and die when their shelter is taken away and they are exposed to the light beating on their soft bodies, so the light of god's face turned upon evil things smites them into nothingness. thus 'the secret of his countenance' is the shelter of all that is good. nor need i remind you how, in another aspect of the phrase, the 'light of his face,' is the expression for his favour and loving regard, and how true it is that in that favour and loving regard is the impregnable fortress into which, entering, any man is safe. i said that the expression the 'face of the lord' roughly corresponded to the other one, 'the name of the lord,' inasmuch as both meant the revealed aspect of the divine nature. you may remember how we read, 'the name of the lord is a strong tower into which the righteous runneth and is safe.' the 'light' of the face of the lord is his favour and loving regard falling upon men. and who can be harmed with that lambent light--like sunshine upon water, or upon a glittering shield--playing around him? only let us remember that for us 'the face of god' is jesus christ. he is the 'arm' of the lord; he is the 'name' of the lord; he is the 'face.' all that we know of god we know through and in him; all that we see of god we see by the shining upon us of him who is 'the eradiation of his glory and the express image of his person.' so the open secret of the 'face' of god is jesus, the hiding-place of our souls. ii. secondly, notice god's hidden ones. my text carries us back, by that word 'them,' to the previous verse, where we have a double description of those who are thus hidden in the inaccessible light of his countenance. they are 'such as fear thee,' and 'such as trust in thee.' now, that latter expression is congruous with the metaphor of my text, in so far as the words on which we are now engaged speak about a 'hiding-place,' and the word which is translated 'trust' literally means 'to flee to a refuge.' so they that flee to god for refuge are those whom god hides in the 'secret of his face.' let us think of that for a moment. i said, in the beginning of these remarks, that there was here an allusion, possibly, to the temple. all temples in ancient times were asylums. whosoever could flee to grasp the horns of the altar, or to sit, veiled and suppliant, before the image of the god, was secure from his foes, who could not pass within the limits of the temple grounds, in which strife and murder were not permissible. we too often flee to other gods and other temples for our refuges. ay! and when we get there we find that the deity whom we have invoked is only a marble image that sits deaf, dumb, motionless, whilst we cling to its unconscious skirts. as one of the saddest of our modern cynics once said, looking up at that lovely impersonation of greek beauty, the venus de milo, 'ah! she is fair; but she has no arms,' so we may say of all false refuges to which men betake themselves. the goddess is powerless to help, however beautiful the presentment of her may have seemed to our eyes. the evils from which we have fled to these false deities and shelterless sanctuaries will pursue us across the threshold; and as elijah did with the priests of baal upon carmel, will slay us at the very foot of the altar to which we have clung, and vexed with our vain prayers. there is only one shrine where there is a sanctuary, and that is the shrine above which shines 'the glory of god in the face of jesus christ'; into the brightness of which poor men may pass and therein may hide themselves. god hides us, and his hiding is effectual, in the secret of the light and splendour of his face. i said, too, that there was an allusion, as there is in all the psalms that deal with men as god's guests, to the ancient customs of hospitality, by which a man who has once entered the tent of the chief, and partaken of food there, is safe, not only from his pursuers, but from his host himself, even though that host should be the kinsman-avenger. the red-handed murderer, who has eaten the salt of the man whose duty it otherwise would have been to slay him where he stood, is safe from his vengeance. and thus they who cast themselves upon god have nothing to fear. no other hand can pluck them from the sanctuary of his tent. he himself, having admitted them to share his hospitality, cannot and will not lift a hand against them. we are safe _from_ god only when we are safe _in_ god. but remember the condition on which this security comes. 'thou shalt hide _them_ in the secret of thy face.' whom? those that flee for refuge to thee. the act of simple faith is set forth there, by which a poor man, with all his imperfections on his head, may yet venture to put his foot across the boundary line that separates the outer darkness from the beam of light that comes from god's face. 'who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?' that question does not mean, as it is often taken to mean--what mortal can endure the punishments of a future life? but, who can venture to be god's guests? and it is equivalent to the other interrogation, 'who shall ascend to the hill of the lord, or who shall stand in his holy place?' the answer is, if you go to him for refuge, knowing your danger, feeling your impurity, _you_ may walk amidst all that light softened into lambent beauty, as those hebrew children did in the furnace of fire, being at ease there, and feeling it well with themselves, and having nothing about them consumed except the bonds that bound them. remember that jesus christ is the hiding-place, and that to flee to him for refuge is the condition of security, and all they who thus, from the snares of life, from its miseries, disappointments, and burdens, from the agitation of their own hearts, from the ebullition of their own passions, from the stings of their own conscience, or from other of the ills that flesh is heir to, make their hiding-place--by the simple act of faith in jesus christ--in the light of god's face, are thereby safe for evermore. but the initial act of fleeing to the refuge must be continued by abiding in the refuge. it is of no use to take shelter in the light unless we abide in the light. it is of no use to go to the temple for sanctuary unless we continue in it for sacrifice and worship. we must 'walk in the light as god is in the light.' that is to say, the condition of being hid in god is, first of all, to take refuge in jesus christ, and then to abide in him by continual communion. 'your life is hid with christ in god.' unless we have a hidden life, deep beneath, and high above, and far beyond the life of sense, we have no right to think that the shelter of the face will be security for us. the very essence of christianity is the habitual communion of heart, mind, and will with god in christ. do you live in the light, or have you only gone there to escape what you are afraid of? do you live in the light by the continual direction of thought and heart to him, cultivating the habit of daily and hourly communion with him amidst the distractions of necessary duty, care, and changing circumstances? but not only by communion, but also by conduct, must we keep in the light. the fugitive found outside the city of refuge was fair game for the avenger, and if he strayed beyond its bounds there was a sword in his back before he knew where he was. every christian, by each sin, whether it be acted or only thought, casts himself out of the light into the darkness that rings it round, and out there he is a victim to the beasts of prey that hunt in darkness. an eclipse of the sun is not caused by any change in the sun, but by an opaque body, the offspring and satellite of the earth, coming between the earth and sun. and so, when christian men lose the light of god's face, it is not because there is any 'variableness or shadow of turning' in him, but because between him and them has come the blackness--their own offspring--of their own sin. you are not safe if you are outside the light of his countenance. these are the conditions of security. iii. lastly, note what the hidden ones find in the light. this burst of confidence in my text comes from the psalmist immediately after plaintively pouring out his soul under the pressure of afflictions. his experience may teach us the interpretation of his glad assurance. god will keep all real evil from us if we keep near him; but he will not keep the externals that men call evil from us. i do not know whether there is such a thing as filtering any poisons or malaria by means of light, but i am sure that the light of god filters our atmosphere for us. though it may leave the external form of evil it takes all the poison out of it and turns it into a harmless minister for our good. the arrows that are launched at us may be tipped with venom when they leave the bow, but if they pass through the radiant envelope of divine protection that surrounds us--and they must have passed through that if they reach us--it cleanses all the venom from the points though it leaves the sharpness there. the evil is not an evil if it has got our length; and its having touched us shows that he who lets it pass into the light where his children safely dwell, knows that it cannot harm them. but, again, we shall find if we live in continual communion with the revealed face of god, that we are elevated high above all the strife of tongues and the noise of earth. we shall 'outsoar the shadow of the night,' and be lifted to an elevation from which all the clamours of earth will sound faint and poor, like the noises of the city to the dwellers on the mountain peak. nor do we find only security there, for the word in the second clause of my text, 'thou shalt _keep_ them _secretly_,' is the same as is employed in the previous verse in reference to the treasures which god _lays up_ for them that fear him. the poor men that trust in god, and the wealth which he has to lavish upon them, are both hid, and they are hid in the same place. the 'goodness wrought before the sons of men' has not emptied the reservoir. after all expenditure the massy ingots of gold in god's storehouse are undiminished. the mercy still to come is greater than that already received. 'to-morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant.' this river broadens as we mount towards its source. brethren! the face of god must be either our dearest joy or our greatest dread. there comes a time when you and i must front it, and look into his eyes. it is for us to settle whether at that day we shall 'call upon the rocks and the hills to hide us' from it, or whether we shall say with rapture, 'thou hast made us most blessed with thy countenance'! which is it to be? it must be one or other. when he says, 'seek ye my face,' may our hearts answer, 'thy face, lord, will i seek,' that when we see it hereafter, shining as the sun in his strength, its light may not be darkness to our impure and horror-struck eyes. a threefold thought of sin and forgiveness 'blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. . blessed is the man unto whom the lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.' --psalm xxxii. , . this psalm, which has given healing to many a wounded conscience, comes from the depths of a conscience which itself has been wounded and healed. one must be very dull of hearing not to feel how it throbs with emotion, and is, in fact, a gush of rapture from a heart experiencing in its freshness the new joy of forgiveness. it matters very little who wrote it. if we accept the superscription, which many of those who usually reject these ancient jewish notes do in the present case, the psalm is david's, and it fits into some of the specific details of his great sin and penitence. but that is of very small moment. whoever wrote it, he sings because he must. the psalm begins with an exclamation, for the clause would be better translated, 'oh! the blessedness of the man.' then note the remarkable accumulation of clauses, all expressing substantially the same thing, but expressing it with a difference. the psalmist's heart is too full to be emptied by one utterance. he turns his jewel, as it were, round and round, and at each turn it reflects the light from a different angle. there are three clauses in my text, each substantially having the same meaning, but which yet present that substantially identical meaning with different shades. and that is true both in regard to the three words which are employed to describe the fact of transgression, and to the three which are employed to describe the fact of forgiveness. it is mainly to these, and the large lessons which lie in observing the shades of significance in them, that i wish to turn now. i. note the solemn picture which is here drawn of various phases of sin. there are three words employed--'transgression,' 'sin,' 'iniquity.' they all mean the same thing, but they mean it with a different association of ideas and suggestions of its foulness. let me take them in order. the word translated 'transgression' seems literally to signify separation, or rending apart, or departure, and hence comes to express the notion of apostasy and rebellion. so, then, here is this thought; all sin is a going away. from what? rather the question should be--from _whom_? all sin is a departure from god. and that is its deepest and darkest characteristic. and it is the one that needs to be most urged, for it is the one that we are most apt to forget. we are all ready enough to acknowledge faults; none of us have any hesitation in saying that we have done wrong, and have gone wrong. we are ready to recognise that we have transgressed the law; but what about the lawgiver? the personal element in every sin, great or small, is that it is a voluntary rending of a union which exists, a departure from god who is with us in the deepest recesses of our being, unless we drag ourselves away from the support of his enclosing arm, and from the illumination of his indwelling grace. so, dear brethren! this was the first and the gravest aspect under which the penitent and the forgiven man in my text thought of his past, that in it, when he was wildly and eagerly rushing after the low and sensuous gratification of his worst desires, he was rebelling against, and wandering far away from, the ever-present friend, the all-encircling support and joy, the lord, his life. you do not understand the gravity of the most trivial wrong act when you think of it as a sin against the order of nature, or against the law written on your heart, or as the breach of the constitution of your own nature, or as a crime against your fellows. you have not got to the bottom of the blackness until you see that it is flat rebellion against god himself. this is the true devilish element in all our transgression, and this element is in it all. oh! if once we do get the habit formed and continued until it becomes almost instinctive and spontaneous, of looking at each action of our lives in immediate and direct relation to god, there would come such an apocalypse as would startle some of us into salutary dread, and make us all feel that 'it is an evil and a bitter thing' (and the two characteristics must always go together), 'to depart from the living god.' the great type of all wrongdoers is in that figure of the prodigal son, and the essence of his fault was, first, that he selfishly demanded for his own his father's goods; and, second, that he went away into a far country. your sins have separated between you and god. and when you do those little acts of selfish indulgence which you do twenty times a day, without a prick of conscience, each of them, trivial as it is, like some newly-hatched poisonous serpent, a finger-length long, has in it the serpent nature, it is rebellion and separation from god. then another aspect of the same foul thing rises before the psalmist's mind. this evil which he has done, which i suppose was the sin in the matter of bathsheba, was not only rebellion against god, but it was, according to this text, in the second clause, 'a sin,' by which is meant literally _missing an aim_. so this word, in its pregnant meaning, corresponds with the signification of the ordinary new testament word for sin, which also implies error, or missing that which ought to be the goal of our lives. that is to say, whilst the former word regarded the evil deed mainly in its relation to god, this word regards it mainly in its relation to ourselves, and that which before him is rebellion, the assertion of my own individuality and my own will, and therefore in separation from his will, is, considered in reference to myself, my fatally missing the mark to which my whole energy and effort ought to be directed. all sin, big or little, is a blunder. it never hits what it aims at, and if it did, it is aiming at the wrong thing. so doubly, all transgression is folly, and the true name for the doer is 'thou fool!' for every evil misses the mark which, regard being had to the man's obvious destiny, he ought to aim at. 'man's chief end is to glorify god and to enjoy him for ever'; and whosoever in all his successes fails to realise that end is a failure through and through, in whatever smaller matters he may seem to himself and to others to succeed. he only strikes the target in the bull's eye who lets his arrows be deflected by no gusts of passion, nor aimed wrong by any obliquity of vision; but with firm hand and clear eye seeks and secures the absolute conformity of his will to the father's will, and makes god his aim and end in all things. 'thou hast created us for thyself, and only in thee can we find rest.' o brother! whatever be your aims and ends in life, take this for the surest verity, that you have fatally misunderstood the purpose of your being, and the object to which you should strain, if there is anything except god, who is the supreme desire of your heart and the goal of your life. all sin is missing the mark which god has set up for man. therefore let us press to the mark where hangs the prize which whoso possesses succeeds, whatsoever other trophies may have escaped his grasp. but there is another aspect of this same thought, and that is that every piece of evil misses its own shabby mark. 'a rogue is a round-about fool.' no man ever gets, in doing wrong, the thing he did the wrong for, or if he gets it, he gets something else along with it that takes all the sweet taste out of it. the thief secures the booty, but he gets penal servitude besides. sin tempts us with glowing tales of the delight to be found in drinking stolen waters and eating her bread in secret; but sin lies by suppression of the truth, if not by suggestions of the false, because she says never a word about the sickness and the headache that come after the debauch, nor about the poison that we drink down along with her sugared draughts. the paltering fiend keeps the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the hope. all sin, great or little, is a blunder, and missing of the mark. and lastly, yet another aspect of the ugly thing rises before the psalmist's eye. in reference to god, evil is separation and rebellion; in reference to myself, it is an error and missing of my true goal; and in reference to the straight standard and law of duty, it is, according to the last of the three words for sin in the text, 'iniquity,' or, literally, _something twisted_ or distorted. it is thus brought into contrast with the right line of the plain, straight path in which we ought to walk. we have the same metaphor in our own language. we talk about things being right and wrong, by which we mean, in the one case, parallel with the rigid law of duty, and in the other case, 'wrung,' or wavering, crooked and divergent from it. there is a standard as well as a judge, and we have not only to think of evil as being rebellion against god and separation from him, and as, for ourselves, issuing in fatal missing of the mark, but also as being divergent from the one manifest law to which we ought to be conformed. the path to god is a right line; the shortest road from earth to heaven is absolutely straight. the czar of russia, when railways were introduced into that country, was asked to determine the line between st. petersburg and moscow. he took a ruler and drew a straight line across the map, and said, 'there!' our autocrat has drawn a line as straight as the road from earth to heaven, and by the side of it are 'the crooked, wandering ways in which we live.' take these three thoughts then--as for law, divergence; as for the aim of my life, a fatal miss; as for god, my friend and my life, rebellion and separation--and you have, if not the complete physiognomy of evil, at least grave thoughts concerning it, which become all the graver when we think that they are true about us and about our deeds. ii. and so let me ask you to look secondly at the blessed picture drawn here of the removal of the sin. there are three words here for forgiveness, each of which adds its quota to the general thought. it is 'forgiven,' 'covered,' 'not imputed.' the accumulation of synonyms not only sets forth various aspects of pardon, but triumphantly celebrates the completeness and certainty of the gift. as to the first, it means literally to lift and bear away a load or burden. as to the second, it means, plainly enough, to cover over, as one might do some foul thing, that it may no longer offend the eye or smell rank to heaven. bees in their hives, when there is anything corrupt and too large for them to remove, fling a covering of wax over it, and hermetically seal it, and no foul odour comes from it. and so a man's sin is covered over and ceases to be _in evidence_, as it were before the divine eye that sees all things. he himself casts a merciful veil over it and hides it from himself. a similar idea, though with a modification in metaphor, is included in that last word, the sin is not reckoned. god does not write it down in his great book on the debit side of the man's account. and these three things, the lifting up and carrying away of the load, the covering over of the obscene and ugly thing, the non-reckoning in the account of the evil deed; these three things taken together do set forth before us the great and blessed truth that a man's transgressions may become, in so far as the divine heart and the divine dealings with him are concerned, as if nonexistent. men tell us that that is not possible and that it is immoral to preach a doctrine of forgiveness. o dear brethren! there is no gospel to preach that will touch a man's heart except the gospel that begins with this--god bears away, covers over, does not reckon to a man, his rebellions, his errors, his departures from the law of right. sin _is_ capable of forgiveness, and, blessed be god! every sin he is ready to forgive. i should be ashamed of myself to stand here, and not preach a gospel of pardon. i know not anything else that will touch consciences and draw hearts except this gospel, which i am trying in my poor way to lay upon your hearts. notice how my text includes also a glance at the condition on our part on which this absolute and utter annihilation of our wicked past is possible. that last clause of my text, 'in whose spirit there is no guile,' seems to me to refer to the frank sincerity of a confession, which does not try to tell lies to god, and, attempting to deceive him, really deceives only the self-righteous sinner. whosoever opens his heart to god, makes a clean breast of it, and without equivocation or self-deception or the palliations which self-love teaches, says, 'i have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' to that man the psalmist thinks pardon is sure to come. now remember that the very heart and centre of that jewish system was an altar, and that on that altar was sacrificed the expiatory victim. i am not going to insist upon any theory of an atonement, but i do want to urge this, that christianity is nothing, if it have not explained and taken up into itself that which was symbolised in that old ritual. the very first words from human lips which proclaimed christ's advent to man were, 'behold the lamb of god, which taketh away the sin of the world,' and amongst the last words which christ spoke upon earth, in the way of teaching his disciples, were these, 'this is my blood, shed for many for the remission of sins.' the cross of christ explains my psalm, the cross of christ answers the confidence of the psalmist, which was fed upon the shadow of the good things to come. he has died, the just for the unjust, that the sins which were laid upon him might be taken away, covered, and not reckoned to us. brethren! unless my sins are taken away by the lamb of god they remain. unless they are laid upon christ, they crush me. unless they are covered by his expiation, they lie there before the throne of god, and cry for punishment. unless his blood has wiped out the record that is against us, the black page stands for ever. and to you and me there will be said one day, in a voice which we dare not dispute, 'pay me that thou owest!' the blacker the sin the brighter the christ. i would that i could lay upon all your hearts this belief, 'the blood of jesus christ,' and nothing else, 'cleanses from all sin!' iii. i will touch in a word only upon the last thought suggested by the text, and that is the blessedness of this removal of sin. as i said, my text is really an exclamation, a gush of rapture from a heart that is tasting the fresh-drawn blessedness of pardon. and the rest of the psalm is little more than an explanation of the various aspects and phases of that blessedness. let me just run over them in the briefest possible manner. if we receive this forgiveness through jesus christ and our faith in him, then we have manifold blessedness in one. there is the blessedness of deliverance from sullen remorse and of the dreadful pangs of an accusing conscience. how vividly, and evidently as a transcript from a page in his own autobiography, the psalmist describes that condition, 'when i kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long'! when a man's heart is locked against confession he hears a tumult of accusing voices within himself, and remorse and dread creep over his heart. the pains of sullen remorse were never described more truly and more dreadfully than in this context. 'day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.' some of us may know something of that. but there is a worse state than that, and one or other of the two states belongs to us. if we have not found our way into the liberty of confession and forgiveness, we have but a choice between the pains of an awakened conscience and the desolation of a dead one. it is worse to have no voice within than to have an accusing one. it is worse to feel no pressure of a divine hand than to feel it. and they whose consciences are seared as with a hot iron have sounded the lowest depths. they are perfectly comfortable, quite happy; they say all these feelings that i am trying to suggest to you seem to them to be folly. 'they make a solitude and call it peace.' it is an awful thing when a man has come to this point, that he has got past the accusations of conscience, and can swallow down the fiercest draughts without feeling them burn. dear brethren! there is only one deliverance from an accusing conscience which does not murder the conscience, and that is that we should find our way into the peace of god which is through christ jesus and his atoning death. then, again, my psalm goes on to speak about the blessedness of a close clinging to god in peaceful trust, which will ensure security in the midst of all trials, and a hiding-place against every storm. the psalmist uses a magnificent figure. god is to him as some rocky island, steadfast and dry, in the midst of a widespread inundation; and taking refuge there in the clefts of the rock, he looks down upon the tossing, shoreless sea of troubles and sorrows that breaks upon the rocky barriers of his patmos, and stands safe and dry. only through forgiveness do we come into that close communion with god which ensures safety in all disasters. and then there follows the blessedness of a gentle guidance and of a loving obedience. 'thou shalt guide me with thine eye.' no need for force, no need for bit and bridle, no need for anything but the glance of the father, which the child delights to obey. docility, glad obedience unprompted by fear, based upon love, are the fruits of pardon through the blood of christ. and, lastly, there is the blessedness of exuberant gladness; the joy that comes from the sorrow according to god is a joy that will last. all other delights, in their nature, are perishable; all other raptures, by the very necessity of their being and of ours, die down, sometimes into vanity, always into commonplace or indifference. but the joy that springs in the pardoned heart, and is fed by closeness of communion with god, and by continual obedience to his blessed guidance, has in it nothing that can fade, nothing that can burn out, nothing that can be disturbed. the deeper the penitence the surer the rebound into gladness. the more a man goes down into the depths of his own heart and learns his own evil, the more will he, trusting in christ, rise into the serene heights of thankfulness, and live, if not in rapture, at least in the calm joy of conscious communion and unending fellowship. every tear may be crystallised into a diamond that shall flash in the light. and they, and only they, who begin in the valley of weeping, confessing their sins and imploring forgiveness through the merits and mediation of jesus christ our lord, will rise to heights of a joy that remains, and remaining, is full. the encamping angel 'the angel of the lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.'--psalm xxxiv. . if we accept the statement in the superscription of this psalm, it dates from one of the darkest hours in david's life. his fortunes were never lower than when he fled from gath, the city of goliath, to adullam. he never appears in a less noble light than when he feigned madness to avert the dangers which he might well dread there. how unlike the terror and self-degradation of the man who 'scrabbled on the doors,' and let 'the spittle run down his beard,' is the heroic and saintly constancy of this noble psalm! and yet the contrast is not so violent as to make the superscription improbable, and the tone of the whole well corresponds to what we should expect from a man delivered from some great peril, but still surrounded with dangers. there, in the safety of his retreat among the rocks, with the bit of level ground where he had fought goliath just at his feet in the valley, and gath, from which he had escaped, away down at the mouth of the glen (if conder's identification of adullam be correct), he sings his song of trust and praise; he hears the lions roar among the rocks where samson had found them in his day; he teaches his 'children,' the band of broken men who there began to gather around him, the fear of the lord; and calls upon them to help him in his praise. what a picture of the outlaw and his wild followers tamed into something like order, and lifted into something like worship, rises before us, if we follow the guidance of that old commentary contained in the superscription! the words of our text gain especial force and vividness by thus localising the psalm. not only 'the clefts of the rock' but the presence of god's angel is his defence; and round him is flung, not only the strength of the hills, but the garrison and guard of heaven. it is generally supposed that the 'angel of the lord' here is to be taken collectively, and that the meaning is--the 'bright-harnessed' hosts of these divine messengers are as an army of protectors round them who fear god. but i see no reason for departing from the simpler and certainly grander meaning which results from taking the word in its proper force of a singular. true, scripture does speak of the legions of ministering spirits, who in their chariots of fire were once seen by suddenly opened eyes 'round about' a prophet in peril, and are ever ministering to the heirs of salvation. but scripture also speaks of one, who is in an eminent sense 'the angel of the lord'; in whom, as in none other, god sets his 'name'; whose form, dimly seen, towers above even the ranks of the angels that 'excel in strength'; whose offices and attributes blend in mysterious fashion with those of god himself. there may be some little incongruity in thinking of the single person as 'encamping round about' us; but that does not seem a sufficient reason for obliterating the reference to that remarkable old testament doctrine, the retention of which seems to me to add immensely to the power of the words. remember some of the places in which the 'angel of the lord' appears, in order to appreciate more fully the grandeur of this promised protection. at that supreme moment when abraham 'took the knife to slay his son,' the voice that 'called to him out of heaven' was 'the voice of the angel of the lord.' he assumes the power of reversing a divine command. he says, 'thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from _me_,' and then pronounces a blessing, in the utterance of which one cannot distinguish his voice from the voice of jehovah. in like manner it is the angel of the lord that speaks to jacob, and says, 'i am the god of bethel.' the dying patriarch invokes in the same breath 'the god which fed me all my life long,' 'the angel which redeemed me from all evil,' to bless the boys that stand before him, with their wondering eyes gazing in awe on his blind face. it was that angel's glory that appeared to the outcast, flaming in the bush that burned unconsumed. it was he who stood before the warrior leader of israel, sword in hand, and proclaimed himself to be the captain of the lord's host, the leader of the armies of heaven, and the true leader of the armies of israel; and his commands to joshua, his lieutenant, are the commands of 'the lord.' and, to pass over other instances, isaiah correctly sums up the spirit of the whole earlier history in words which go far to lift the conception of this angel of the lord out of the region of created beings--'in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his face saved them,' it is this lofty and mysterious messenger, and not the hosts whom he commands, that our psalmist sees standing ready to help, as he once stood, sword-bearing by the side of joshua. to the warrior leader, to the warrior psalmist, he appears, as their needs required, armoured and militant. the last of the prophets saw that dim, mysterious figure, and proclaimed, 'the lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple; even the angel of the covenant, whom ye delight in'; and to his gaze it was wrapped in obscure majesty and terror of purifying flame. but for us the true messenger of the lord is his son, whom he has sent, in whom he has put his name; who is the angel of his face, in that we behold the glory of god in the face of jesus christ; who is the angel of the covenant, in that he has sealed the new and everlasting covenant with his blood; and whose own parting promise, 'lo! i am with you always,' is the highest fulfilment to us christians of that ancient confidence: 'the angel of the lord encampeth round about them that fear him.' whatever view we adopt of the significance of the first part of the text, the force and beauty of the metaphor in the second remain the same. if this psalm were indeed the work of the fugitive in his rocky hold at adullam, how appropriate the thought becomes that his little encampment has such a guard. it reminds one of the incident in jacob's life, when his timid and pacific nature was trembling at the prospect of meeting esau, and when, as he travelled along, encumbered with his pastoral wealth, and scantily provided with means of defence, 'the angels of god met him, and he named the place mahanaim,' that is, two camps--his own feeble company, mostly made up of women and children, and that heavenly host that hovered above them. david's faith sees the same defence encircling his weakness, and though sense saw no protection for him and his men but their own strong arms and their mountain fastness, his opened eyes beheld the mountain full of the chariots of fire, and the flashing of armour and light in the darkness of his cave. the vision of the divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require. david's then need was safety and protection. therefore he saw the encamping angel; even as to joshua the leader he appeared as the captain of the lord's host; and as to isaiah, in the year that the throne of judah was emptied by the death of the earthly king, was given the vision of the lord sitting on a throne, the king eternal and immortal. so to us all his grace shapes its expression according to our wants, and the same gift is protean in its power of transformation; being to one man wisdom, to another strength, to the solitary companionship, to the sorrowful consolation, to the glad sobering, to the thinker truth, to the worker practical force--to each his heart's desire, if the heart's delight be god. so manifold are the aspects of god's infinite sufficiency, that every soul, in every possible variety of circumstance, will find there just what will suit it. that armour fits every man who puts it on. that deep fountain is like some of those fabled springs which give forth whatsoever precious draught any thirsty lip asked. he takes the shape that our circumstances most need. let us see that we, on our parts, use our circumstances to help us in anticipating the shapes in which god will draw near for our help. learn, too, from this image, in which the psalmist appropriates to himself the experience of a past generation, how we ought to feed our confidence and enlarge our hopes by all god's past dealings with men. david looks back to jacob, and believes that the old fact is repeated in his own day. so every old story is true for us; though outward form may alter, inward substance remains the same. mahanaim is still the name of every place where a man who loves god pitches his tent. we may be wandering, solitary, defenceless, but we are not alone. our feeble encampment may lie open to assault, and we be all unfit to guard it, but the other camp is there too, and our enemies must force their way through it before they get at us. we are in its centre--as they put the cattle and the sick in the midst of the encampment on the prairies when they fear an assault from the indians--because we are so weak. jacob's experience may be ours: 'the lord of hosts is with us: the god of jacob is our refuge.' only remember that the eye of faith alone can see that guard, and that therefore we must labour to keep our consciousness of its reality fresh and vivid. many a man in david's little band saw nothing but cold gray stone where david saw the flashing armour of the heavenly warrior. to the one all the mountain blazed with fiery chariots, to the other it was a lone hillside, with the wind moaning among the rocks. we shall lose the joy and the strength of that divine protection unless we honestly and constantly try to keep our sense of it bright. eyes that have been gazing on earthly joys, or perhaps gloating on evil sights, cannot see the angel presence. a christian man, on a road which he cannot travel with a clear conscience, will see no angel, not even the angel with the drawn sword in his hand, that barred balaam's path among the vineyards. a man coming out of some room blazing with light cannot all at once see into the violet depths of the mighty heavens, that lie above him with all their shimmering stars. so this truth of our text is a truth of faith, and the believing eye alone beholds the angel of the lord. notice, too, that final word of deliverance. this psalm is continually recurring to that idea. the word occurs four times in it, and the thought still oftener. whether the date is rightly given, as we have assumed it to be, or not, at all events that harping upon this one phrase indicates that some season of great trial was its birth-time, when all the writer's thoughts were engrossed and his prayers summed up in the one thing--deliverance. he is quite sure that such deliverance must follow if the angel presence be there. but he knows too that the encampment of the angel of the lord will not keep away sorrows, and trial, and sharp need. so his highest hope is not of immunity from these, but of rescue out of them. and his ground of hope is that his heavenly ally cannot let him be overcome. that he will let him be troubled and put in peril he has found; that he will not let him be crushed he believes. shadowed and modest hopes are the brightest we can venture to cherish. the protection which we have is protection in, and not protection from, strife and danger. it is a filter which lets the icy cold water of sorrow drop numbing upon us, but keeps back the poison that was in it. we have to fight, but he will fight with us; to sorrow, but not alone nor without hope; to pass through many a peril, but we shall get through them. deliverance, which implies danger, need, and woe, is the best we can hope for. it is the least we are entitled to expect if we love him. it is the certain issue of his encamping round about us. always with us, he will strike for us at the best moment. the lord god is in the midst of her always; 'the lord will help her, and that right early.' so like the hunted fugitive in adullam we may lift up our confident voices even when the stress of strife and sorrow is upon us; and though gath be in sight and saul just over the hills, and we have no better refuge than a cave in a hillside; yet in prophecy built upon our consciousness that the angel of the covenant is with us now, we may antedate the deliverance that shall be, and think of it as even now accomplished. so the apostle, when within sight of the block and the headsman's axe, broke into the rapture of his last words: 'the lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me to his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. amen.' was he wrong? struggling and seeking 'the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the lord shall not want any good thing.'--psalm xxxiv. . if we may trust the superscription of this psalm, it was written by david at one of the very darkest days of his wanderings, probably in the cave of adullam, where he had gathered around him a band of outlaws, and was living, to all appearance, a life uncommonly like that of a brigand chief, in the hills. one might have pardoned him if, at such a moment, some cloud of doubt or despondency had crept over his soul. but instead of that his words are running over with gladness, and the psalm begins 'i will bless the lord at all times, and his praise shall continually be in my mouth.' similarly here he avers, even at a moment when he wanted a great deal of what the world calls 'good,' that 'they that seek the lord shall not want any good thing.' there were lions in palestine in david's time. he had had a fight with one of them, as you may remember, and his lurking place was probably not far off the scene of samson's exploits. very likely they were prowling about the rocky mouth of the cave, and he weaves their howls into his psalm: 'the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the lord shall not want any good.' so, then, here are the two thoughts--the struggle that always fails and the seeking that always finds. i. the struggle that always fails. 'the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger.' they are taken as the type of violent effort and struggle, as well as of supreme strength, but for all their teeth and claws, and lithe spring, 'they lack, and suffer hunger.' the suggestion is, that the men whose lives are one long fight to appropriate to themselves more and more of outward good, are living a kind of life that is fitter for beasts than for men. a fierce struggle for material good is the true description of the sort of life that hosts of us live. what is the meaning of all this cry that we hear about the murderous competition going on round us? what is the true character of the lives of, i am afraid, the majority of people in a city like manchester, but a fight and a struggle, a desire to have, and a failure to obtain? let us remember that that sort of existence is for the brutes, and that there is a better way of getting what is good; the only fit way for man. beasts of prey, naturalists tell us, are always lean. it is the graminivorous order that meekly and peacefully crop the pastures that are well fed and in good condition--'which things are an allegory.' 'the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger'--and that, being interpreted, just states the fact to which every man's experience, and the observation of every man that has an eye in his head, distinctly say, 'amen, it is so.' for there is no satisfaction or success ever to be won by this way of fighting and struggling and scheming and springing at the prey. for if we do not utterly fail, which is the lot of so many of us, still partial success has little power of bringing perfect satisfaction to a human spirit. one loss counterbalances any number of gains. no matter how soft is the mattress, if there is one tiny thorn sticking up through it all the softness goes for nothing. there is always a mordecai sitting at the gate when haman goes prancing through it on his white horse; and the presence of the unsympathetic and stiff-backed jew, sitting stolid at the gate, takes the gilt off the gingerbread, and embitters the enjoyment. so men count up their disappointments, and forget all their fulfilled hopes, count up their losses and forget their gains. they think less of the thousands that they have gained than of the half-crown that they were cheated of. in every way it is true that the little annoyances, like a grain of dust in the sensitive eye, take all the sweetness out of mere material good, and i suppose that there are no more bitterly disappointed men in this world than the perfectly 'successful men,' as the world counts them. they have been disillusionised in the process of acquisition. when they were young and lusted after earthly good things, these seemed to be all that they needed. when they are old, and have them, they find that they are feeding on ashes, and the grit breaks their teeth, and irritates their tongues. the 'young lions do lack' even when their roar and their spring 'have secured the prey,' and 'they suffer hunger' even when they have fed full. ay! for if the utmost possible measure of success were granted us, in any department in which the way of getting the thing is this fighting and effort, we should be as far away from being at rest as ever we were. you remember the old story of the _arabian nights_, about the wonderful palace that was built by magic, and all whose windows were set in precious stones, but there was one window that remained unadorned, and that spoiled all for the owner. his palace was full of treasures, but an enemy looked on all the wealth and suggested a previously unnoticed defect by saying, 'you have not a roc's egg.' he had never thought about getting a roc's egg, and did not know what it was. but the consciousness of something lacking had been roused, and it marred his enjoyment of what he had and drove him to set out on his travels to secure the missing thing. there is always something lacking, for our desires grow far faster than their satisfactions, and the more we have, the wider our longing reaches out, so that as the wise old book has it, 'he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.' you cannot fill a soul with the whole universe, if you do not put god in it. one of the greatest works of fiction of modern times ends, or all but ends, with a sentence something like this, 'ah! who of us has what he wanted, or having it, is satisfied?' 'the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger'--and the struggle always fails--'but they that seek the lord shall not want any good thing.' ii. the seeking which always finds. now, how do we 'seek the lord'? it is a metaphorical expression, of course, which needs to be carefully interpreted in order not to lead us into a great mistake. we do not seek him as if he had not sought us, or was hiding from us. but our search of him is search after one who is near every one of us, and who delights in nothing so much as in pouring himself into every heart and mind, and will and life, if only heart, mind, will, life, are willing to accept him. it is a short search that the child by her mother's skirts, or her father's side, has to make for mother or father. it is a shorter search that we have to make for god. we seek him by desire. do you want him? a great many of us do not. we seek him by communion, by turning our thoughts to him, amidst all the rush of daily life, and such a turning of thought to him, which is quite possible, will prevent our most earnest working upon things material from descending to the likeness of the lions' fighting for it. we seek him by desire, by communion, by obedience. and they who thus seek him find him in the act of seeking him, just as certainly as if i open my eye i see the sun, or as if i dilate my lungs the atmosphere rushes into them. for he is always seeking us. that is a beautiful word of our lord's to which we do not always attach all its value, 'the father _seeketh_ such to worship him.' why put the emphasis upon the 'such,' as if it was a definition of the only kind of acceptable worship? it is that. but we might put more emphasis upon the 'seeketh' without spoiling the logic of the sentence; and thereby we should come nearer the truth of what god's heart to us is, so that if we do seek him, we shall surely find. in this region, and in this region only, there is no search that is vain, there is no effort that is foiled, there is no desire unaccomplished, there is no failure possible. we each of us have, accurately and precisely, as much of god as we desire to have. if there is only a very little of the water of life in our vessels, it is because we did not care to possess any more. 'seek, and ye shall find.' we shall be sure to find everything in god. look at the grand confidence, and the utterance of a life's experience in these great words: 'shall not want any good.' for god is everything to us, and everything else is nothing; and it is the presence of god in anything that makes it truly able to satisfy our desires. human love, sweet and precious, dearest and best of all earthly possessions as it is, fails to fill a heart unless the love grasps god as well as the beloved dying creature. and so with regard to all other things. they are good when god is in them, and when they are ours in god. they are nought when wrenched away from him. we are sure to find everything in him, for this is the very property of that infinite divine nature that is waiting to impart itself to us, that, like water poured into a vessel, it will take the shape of the vessel into which it is poured. whatever is my need, the one god will supply it all. you remember the old rabbinical tradition which speaks a deep truth, dressed in a fanciful shape. it says that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just what he desired, whatever dainty or nutriment he most wished; that the manna became like the magic cup in the old fairy legends, out of which could be poured any precious liquor at the pleasure of the man who was to drink it. the one god is everything to us all, anything that we desire, and the thing that we need; protean in his manifestations, one in his sufficiency. with him, as well as in him, we are sure to have all that we require. 'seek ye first the kingdom ... and all these things shall be added unto you.' let us begin, dear brethren! with seeking, and then our struggling will not be violent, nor self-willed, nor will it fail. if we begin with seeking, and have god, be sure that all we need we shall get, and that what we do not get we do not need. it is hard to believe it when our vehement wishes go out to something that his serene wisdom does not send. it is hard to believe it when our bleeding hearts are being wrenched away from something around which they have clung. but it is true for all that. and he that can say, 'whom have i in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that i desire beside thee,' will find that the things which he enjoys in subordination to his one supreme good are a thousand times more precious when they are regarded as second than they ever could be when our folly tried to make them first. 'seek first the kingdom,' and be contented that the 'other things' shall be appendices, additions, over and above the one thing that is needful. now, all that is very old-fashioned, threadbare truth. dear brethren! if we believed it, and lived by it, 'the peace of god which passes understanding' would 'keep our hearts and minds.' and, instead of fighting and losing, and desiring to have and howling out because we cannot obtain, we should patiently wait before him, submissively ask, earnestly seek, immediately find, and always possess and be satisfied with, the one good for body, soul, and spirit, which is god himself. 'there be many that cry, oh! that one would show as any good.' the wise do not cry to men, but pray to god. 'lord! lift thou the light of thy countenance upon us.' no condemnation 'none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.' --psalm xxxiv. . these words are very inadequately represented in the translation of the authorised version. the psalmist's closing declaration is something very much deeper than that they who trust in god 'shall not be desolate.' if you look at the previous clause, you will see that we must expect something more than such a particular blessing as that:--'the lord redeemeth the soul of his servants.' it is a great drop from that thought, instead of being a climax, to follow it with nothing more than, 'none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.' but the revised version accurately renders the words: 'none of them that trust in him shall be _condemned_.' there we have something that is worthy to follow 'the lord redeemeth the soul of his servants,' and we have a most striking anticipation of the clearest and most evangelical teaching of the new testament. the entirely new testament tone of these words of the psalm comes out still more clearly, if we recognise that, not only in the latter, but in the former, part of the clause, we have one of the very keynotes of new testament teaching. when we read in the new testament that 'we are justified by faith,' the meaning is precisely the same as that of our text. thus, however it came about, here is this psalmist, david or another, standing away back amidst the shadows and symbols and ritualisms of that old covenant, and rising at once above all the mists, right up into the sunshine, and seeing, as clearly as we see it nineteen centuries after jesus christ, that the way to escape condemnation is simple faith. let us look at both of the parts of these great words. we consider-- i. the people that are spoken of here. 'none of them that trust in him'--i need not, i suppose, further dwell upon the absolute identity shown by this phrase between the old and the new testament conceptions; but i should like to make a remark, which i dare say i have often made before--it cannot be made too often--that, whatever be the differences between the old and the new, this is not the difference, that they present two different ways of approaching god. there are a great many differences; the conception of the divine nature is no doubt infinitely deepened, made more tender and more lofty, by the thought of the fatherhood of god. the contents of the revelation which our faith is to grasp are brought out far more definitely and articulately and fully in the new testament. but in the old, the road to god was the same as it is to-day; and from the beginning there has only been, and through all eternity there will only be, one path by which men can have access to the father, and that is by faith. 'trust' is the old testament word, 'faith' is the new. they are absolutely identical, and there would have been a flood of light--sorely needed by a great many good people--cast upon the relations between those two complementary and harmonious halves of a consistent whole, if our translators had not been influenced by their unfortunate love for varying translations of the same word, but had contented themselves with choosing one of these two words 'trust' or 'faith,' and had used that one consistently and uniformly throughout the old and new books. then we should have understood, what anybody who will open his eyes can see now, that what the new testament magnifies as 'faith' is identical with what the old testament sets forth as 'trust.' 'none of them that trust in him shall be condemned.' but there is one more remark to make on this matter, and that is that a great flood of light, and of more than light, of encouragement and of stimulus, is cast upon that saving exercise of trust by noticing the literal meaning of the word that is rightly so rendered here. all those words, especially in the old testament, that express emotions or acts of the mind, originally applied to corporeal acts or material things. i suppose that is so in all language. it is very conspicuously so in the hebrew. and the word that is here translated, rightly, 'trust,' means literally to fly to a refuge, or to betake oneself to some defence in order to get shelter there. there is a trace of both meanings, the literal and the metaphorical, in another psalm, where we read, amidst the psalmist's rapturous heaping together of great names for god: 'my rock, in whom i will trust.' now keep to the literal meaning there, and you see how it flashes up the whole into beauty: 'my rock, to whom i will flee for refuge,' and put my back against it, and stand as impregnable as it; or get myself well into the clefts of it, and then nothing can touch me. 'rock of ages! cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.' then we find the same words, with the picture of flight and the reality of faith, used with another set of associations in another psalm, which says: 'he shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.' that grates, one gets away from the metaphor too quickly; but if we preserve the literal meaning, and read, 'under his wings shalt thou flee for refuge,' we have the picture of the chicken flying to the mother-bird when kites are in the sky, and huddling close to the warm breast and the soft downy feathers, and so with the spread of the great wing being sheltered from all possibility of harm. this psalm is ascribed to david when he was in hiding. the superscription says that it is 'a psalm of david, when he changed his behaviour before abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed.' and where did he go? to the cave in the rock. and as he sat in the mouth of it, with the rude arch stretching above him, like the wings of some great bird, feeling himself absolutely safe, he said, 'none of them that take refuge in thee shall be condemned.' does not that metaphor teach us a great deal more of what faith is, and encourage us far more to exercise it, than much theological hair-splitting? what lies in the metaphor? two things, the earnest eagerness of the act of flight, and the absolute security which comes when we have reached the shadow of the great rock in a weary land. but there is one thing more that i would notice, and that is that this designation of the persons as 'them that trust in him' follows last of all in a somewhat lengthened series of designations for good people. they are these: 'the righteous'--'them that are of a broken heart'--'such as be of a contrite spirit'--'his servants,' and then, lastly, comes, as basis of all, as, so to speak, the keynote of all, 'none of them that _trust_ in him.' that is to say--righteousness, true and blessed pulverising of the obstinate insensibility of self alienated from god, true and blessed consciousness of sin, joyful surrender of self to loving and grateful submission to god's will, are all connected with or flow from that act of trust in him. and if you are trusting in him, in anything more than the mere formal, dead way in which multitudes of nominal christians in all our congregations are doing so, your trust will produce all these various fruits of righteousness, and lowliness, and joyful service. 'faith' or 'trust' is the mother of all graces and virtues, and it produces them all because it directly kindles the creative flame of an answering love to him in whom we trust. so much, then, for the first part of my remarks. consider, next-- ii. the blessing here promised. 'none of them that trust in him shall be condemned.' the word which is inadequately rendered 'desolate,' and more accurately 'condemned,' includes the following varying shades of meaning, which, although they are various, are all closely connected, as you will see--to incur guilt, to feel guilty, to be condemned, to be punished. all these four are inextricably blended together. and the fact that the one word in the old testament covers all that ground suggests some very solemn thoughts. first of all, it suggests this, that guilt, or sin, and condemnation and punishment, are, if not absolutely identical, inseparable. to be guilty is to be condemned. that is to say, since we live, as we do, under the continual grip of an infinitely wise and all-knowing law, and in the presence of a judge who not only sees us as we are, but treats us as he sees us--sin and guilt go together, as every man knows that has a conscience. and sin and guilt and condemnation and punishment go together, as every man may see in the world, and experience in himself. to be separated from god, which is the immediate effect of sin, is to pass into hell here. 'every transgression and disobedience,' not only 'shall receive its just recompense,' away out yonder, in some misty, far-off, hypothetical future, but down here to-day. all sin works automatically, and to do wrong is to be punished for doing it. then my text suggests another solemn thought, and that is that this judgment, this condemnation, is not only present, according to our lord's own great words, which perhaps are an allusion to these: 'he that believeth not is condemned already'; but it also suggests the universality of that condemnation. our psalmist says that only through trusting him can a man be taken and lifted away, as it were, from the descent of the thundercloud, and its bolt that lies above his head. 'they that trust him are not condemned,' every one else is; not 'shall be,' but is, to-day, here and now. if there is a man or woman in my audience now who is not exercising trust in god through jesus christ, on that man or woman, young or old, cultivated or uncultivated, professing christian or not, there is bound the burden of their sin, which is the crushing weight of their condemnation. so my text suggests, that the sole deliverance from this universal pressure of the condemnatory influence of universal sin lies in that fleeing for refuge to god. and then comes in the christian addition, 'to god, as manifested in jesus christ.' the psalmist did not know that. all the more wonderful is it that without the knowledge he should have risen to the great thought of our text--all the more inexplicable unless you believe that 'holy men of old spake as they were moved by the holy ghost.' wonderful it is still, but not unintelligible, if you believe that. but you and i know more than this singer did; for we can listen to the master, who says, 'he that believeth on him is not condemned'; and to the servant who echoes--and perhaps both of them are alluding to our psalm--'there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in christ jesus.' my faith, if it knits me to jesus christ, unties the bonds by which my sin is bound upon me, for it makes me to share in his spirit, in his righteousness, in his glory. and so, dear brethren! the psalmist, though he did not know it, may point us away to the truth hidden from him, but sunlight clear for us, that by simple trust we may receive the saviour through whom all our condemnation will pass away, and may be found in him having the 'righteousness which is of god by faith.' 'not condemned'--is that all? are the blessings of the gospel all to be reduced to this mere negative expression? certainly not. the psalmist could have said a great deal more, and in the previous context he does say a great deal more. but to that restrained and moderate statement of the case, which is far less than the facts of the case, 'he that trusteth is not condemned,' let us add paul's expansion, 'whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified.' sky, earth, and sea: a parable of god 'thy mercy, o lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. . thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: o lord, thou preservest man and beast. . how excellent is thy loving-kindness, o god! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.' --psalm xxxvi. - . this wonderful description of the manifold brightness of the divine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. it is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of god. without a word to break the violence of the transition, side by side with that picture, the psalmist sets before us these thoughts of the character of god. he seems to feel that that character was the only relief in the contemplation of the miserable sights of which the earth is only too full. we should go mad when we think of man's wickedness unless we could look up and see, with one quick turn of the eye, the heaven opened and the throned love that sits up there gazing on all the chaos, and working to soothe sorrow, and to purify evil. perhaps there is another reason for this dramatic and striking swiftness of contrast between the godless man and the revealed god. the true test of a life is its power to bear the light of god being suddenly let in upon it. how would yours look, my friend! if all at once a window in heaven was opened, and god glared in upon you? set your lives side by side with him. they always are side by side with him whether you know it or not; but you had better bring your 'deeds to the light that they may be made manifest' now, than to have to do it as suddenly, and a great deal more sorrowfully, when you are dragged out of the shows and illusions of time, and he meets you on the threshold of another world. would a beam of light from god, coming in upon your life, be like a light falling upon a gang of conspirators, that would make them huddle all their implements under their cloaks, and scuttle out of the way as fast as possible? or would it be like a gleam of sunshine upon the flowers, opening out their petals and wooing from them fragrance? which? but i turn from such considerations as these to the more immediate subject of my contemplations in this discourse. i have ventured to take so great words for my text, though each clause would be more than enough for many a sermon, because my aim now is a very modest one. i desire simply to give, in the briefest way, the connection and mutual relation of these wonderful words; not to attempt any adequate treatment of the great thoughts which they contain, but only to set forth the meaning and interdependence of these manifold names for the beams of the divine light, which are presented here. the chief part of our text sets before us god in the variety and boundlessness of his loving nature, and the close of it shows us man sheltering beneath god's wings. these are the two main themes for our present consideration. i. we have, first, god in the boundlessness of his loving nature. the one pure light of the divine nature is broken up, in the prism of the psalm, into various rays, which theologians call, in their hard, abstract way, divine attributes. these are 'mercy, faithfulness, righteousness.' then we have two sets of divine acts--'judgments,' and the 'preservation' of man and beast; and finally we have again 'lovingkindness,' as our version has unfortunately been misled, by its love for varying its translation, to render the same word which begins the series and is there called 'mercy.' now that 'mercy' or 'lovingkindness' of which my text thus speaks, is very nearly equivalent to the new testament 'love'; or, perhaps, still more nearly equivalent to the new testament 'grace.' both the one and the other mean substantially this--active love communicating itself to creatures that are inferior and that might have expected something else to befall them. mercy is a modification of love, inasmuch as it is love to an inferior. the hand is laid gently upon the man, because if it were laid with all its weight it would crush him. it is the stooping goodness of a king to a beggar. and mercy is likewise love in its exercise to persons that might expect something else, being guilty. as a general coming to a body of mutineers with pardon and favour upon his lips, instead of with condemnation and death; so god comes to us forgiving and blessing. all his goodness is forbearance, and his love is mercy, because of the weakness, the lowliness, and the ill desert of us on whom the love falls. now notice that this same 'quality of mercy' stands here at the beginning and at the end. all the attributes of the divine nature, all the operations of the divine hand lie within the circle of his mercy--like diamonds set in a golden ring. mercy, or love flowing out in blessings to inferior and guilty creatures, is the root and ground of all god's character; it is the foundation and impulse of all his acts. modern science reduces all modes of physical energy to one, for which it has no name but--energy. we are taught by god's own revelation of himself--and most especially by his final and perfect revelation of himself in jesus christ--to trace all forms of divine energy back to one which david calls 'mercy,' which john calls 'love.' it is last as well as first, the final upshot of all revelation. the last voice that speaks from scripture has for its special message 'god is love.' the last voice that sounds from the completed history of the world will have the same message, and the ultimate word of all revelation, the end of the whole of the majestic unfolding of god's purposes will be the proclamation to the four corners of the universe, as from the trump of the archangel, of the name of god as love. the northern and the southern poles of the great sphere are one and the same, a straight axle through the very heart of it, from which the bounding lines swell out to the equator, and towards which they converge again on the opposite side of the world. so mercy is the strong axletree, the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world of the divine perfections revolves and moves. the first and last, the alpha and omega of god, beginning and crowning and summing up all his being and his work, is his mercy, his lovingkindness. but next to mercy comes faithfulness. 'thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.' god's faithfulness is in its narrowest sense his adherence to his promises. it implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, and definite words from him pledging him to a certain line of action. 'he hath said, and shall he not do it?' 'he will not alter the thing that is gone out of his lips.' it is only a god who has actually spoken to men who can be a 'faithful god.' he will not palter with a double sense, 'keeping his word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope.' but not only his articulate promises, but also his own past actions, bind him. he is always true to these; and not only continues to do as he has done, but discharges every obligation which his past imposes on him. the ostrich was said to leave its eggs to be hatched in the sand. men bring men into positions of dependence, and then lightly shake responsibility from careless shoulders. but god accepts the cares laid upon him by his own acts, and discharges them to the last jot. he is a 'faithful creator.' creation brings obligations with it; obligations for the creature; obligations for the creator. if god makes a being, god is bound to take care of the being that he has made. if he makes a being in a given fashion, he is bound to provide for the necessities that he has created. according to the old proverb, if he makes mouths it is his business to feed them. and he recognises the obligation. his past binds him to certain conduct in his future. we can lay hold on the former manifestation, and we can plead it with him. 'thou hast been, and therefore thou must be.' 'thou hast taught me to trust in thee; vindicate and warrant my trust by thy unchangeableness.' so his word, his acts, and his own nature, bind god to bless and help. his faithfulness is the expression of his unchangeableness. 'because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself.' take, then, these two thoughts of god's lovingkindness and of god's faithfulness and weave them together, and see what a strong cord they are to which a man may cling, and in all his weakness be sure that it will never give nor break. mercy might be transient and arbitrary, but when you braid in 'faithfulness' along with it, it becomes fixed as the pillars of heaven, and immutable as the throne of god. only when we are sure of god's faithfulness can we lift up thankful voices to him, 'because his mercy endureth for ever.' a despotic monarch may be all full of tenderness at this moment, and all full of wrath and sternness the next. he may have a whim of favour to-day, and a whim of severity to-morrow, and no man can say, 'what doest thou?' but god is not a despot. he has, so to speak, 'decreed a constitution.' he has limited himself. he has marked out his path across the great wide region of possibilities of the divine action; he has buoyed out his channel on that ocean, and declared to us his purposes. so we can reckon on god, as astronomers can foretell the motions of the stars. we can plead his faithfulness along with his love, and feel that the one makes sure that the other shall be from everlasting to everlasting. the next beam of the divine brightness is righteousness. 'thy righteousness is like the great mountains.' righteousness is not to be taken here in its narrow sense of stern retribution which gives to the evildoer the punishment that he deserves. there is no thought here, whatever there may be in other places in scripture, of any opposition between mercy and righteousness, but the notion of righteousness here is a broader and greater one. it is just this, to put it into other words, that god has a law for his being to which he conforms; and that whatsoever things are fair and lovely, and good, and pure down here, those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there; that he is the archetype of all excellence, the ideal of all moral completeness: that we can know enough of him to be sure of this that what we call right he loves, and what we call right he practises. brethren! unless we have that for the very foundation of our thoughts of god, we have no foundation to rest on. unless we feel and know that 'the judge of all the earth doeth right,' and is right, and law and righteousness have their home and seat in his bosom, and are the expression of his inmost being, then i know not where our confidence can be built. unless 'thy righteousness, like the great mountains,' surrounds and guards the low plain of our lives, they will lie open to all foes. then, next, we pass from the divine character to the divine acts. mercy, faithfulness, and righteousness all converge and flow into the great river of the divine 'judgments.' by judgments are not meant merely the acts of god's punitive righteousness, the retributions that destroy evildoers, but all god's decisions and acts in regard to man. or, to put it into other and briefer words, god's judgments are the whole of the 'ways,' the methods of the divine government. so paul, alluding to this very passage when he says 'how unsearchable are thy judgments!' adds, as a parallel clause, meaning the same thing, 'and thy ways past finding out.' that includes all which men call, in a narrower sense, judgments, but it includes, too, all acts of kindness and loving gifts. god's judgments are the expressions of his thoughts, and these thoughts are thoughts of good and not of evil. but notice, in the next place, the boundlessness of all these characteristics of the divine nature. 'thy mercy is in the heavens,' towering up above the stars, and dwelling there, like some divine ether filling all space. the heavens are the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries; ever seen, never reached, bending over us always, always far above us. so the mercy of god towers above us, and stoops down towards us, rims us all about and arches over us all, sheds down its dewy benedictions by night and by day; is filled with a million stars and light-points of duty and of splendour; is near us ever to bless and succour and help, and holds us all in its blue round. 'thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds.' strange that god's fixed faithfulness should be compared to the very emblems of mutation. the clouds are unstable, they whirl and melt and change. strange to think of the unalterable faithfulness as reaching to them! may it not be that the very mutability of the mutable may be the means of manifesting the unalterable sameness of god's faithful purpose, of his unchangeable love, and of his ever consistent dealings? may not the apparent incongruity be a part of the felicity of the bold words? is it not true that earthly things, as they change their forms and melt away, leaving no track behind, phantomlike as they are, do still obey the behests of that divine faithfulness, and gather and dissolve and break in brief showers of blessing, or short, sharp crashes of storm, at the bidding of that steadfast purpose which works out one unalterable design by a thousand instruments, and changeth all things, being in itself unchanged? the thing that is eternal, even the faithfulness of god, dwells amid, and shows itself through, the things that are temporal, the flying clouds of change. again, 'thy righteousness is like the great mountains.' like these, its roots are fast and stable; like these, it stands firm for ever; like these, its summits touch the fleeting clouds of human circumstance; like these, it is a shelter and a refuge, inaccessible in its steepest peaks, but affording many a cleft in its rocks, where a man may hide and be safe. but, unlike these, it knew no beginning, and shall know no end. emblems of permanence as they are, though olivet looks down on jerusalem as it did when melchizedek was its king, and tabor and hermon stand as they did before human lips had named them, they are wearing away by winter storms and summer heats. but, as isaiah has taught us, when the earth is old, god's might and mercy are young; for 'the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee.' 'the earth shall wax old like a garment, but my righteousness shall not be abolished.' it is more stable than the mountains, and firmer than the firmest things upon earth. then, with wonderful poetical beauty and vividness of contrast, there follows upon the emblem of the great mountains of god's righteousness the emblem of the 'mighty deep' of his judgments. here towers vesuvius; there at its feet lie the waters of the bay. so the righteousness springs up like some great cliff, rising sheer from the water's edge, while its feet are laved by the sea of the divine judgments, unfathomable and shoreless. the mountains and the sea are the two grandest things in nature, and in their combination sublime; the one the home of calm and silence, the other in perpetual motion. but the mountain's roots are deeper than the depths of the sea, and though the judgments are a mighty deep, the righteousness is deeper, and is the bed of the ocean. the metaphor, of course, implies obscurity, but what sort of obscurity? the obscurity of the sea. and what sort of obscurity is that? not that which comes from mud, or anything added, but that which comes from depth. as far as a man can see down into its blue-green depths they are clear and translucent; but where the light fails and the eye fails, there comes what we call obscurity. the sea is clear, but our sight is limited. and so there is no arbitrary obscurity in god's dealings, and we know as much about them as it is possible for us to know; but we cannot see to the bottom. a man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. the higher you climb the further you will see down into the 'sea of glass mingled with fire' that lies placid before god's throne. let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down, and it is as hazardous for us to say about any deed or any revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the divine character. wait a bit; wait a bit! 'thy judgments are a great deep.' the deep will be drained off one day, and you will see the bottom of it. 'judge nothing before the time.' but as an aid to patience and faith hearken how the psalmist finishes up his contemplations: 'o lord! thou preservest man and beast.' very well then, all this mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, judgment, high as the heavens, deep as the ocean, firm as the hills, it is all working for this--to keep the millions of living creatures round about us, and ourselves, in life and well-being. the mountain is high, the deep is profound. between the mountain and the sea there is a strip of level land. god's righteousness towers above us; god's judgments go down beneath us; we can scarcely measure adequately the one or the other. but upon the level where we live there are the green fields where the cattle browse, and the birds sing, and men live and till and reap and are fed. that is to say, we all have enough in the plain, patent facts of creation and preservation of man and animal life in this world to make us quite sure of what is the principle that prevails up to the very top of the inaccessible mountains, and down to the very bottom of the unfathomable deep. what we know of him, in the blessings of his love and providence, ought to interpret for us all that is perplexing. what we understand is good and loving. let us be sure that what we do not yet understand is good and loving too. the web is of one texture throughout. the least educated ear can catch the music of the simpler melodies which run through the great composer's work. we shall one day be able to appreciate the yet fuller music of the more recondite parts, which to us at present seem only jangling and discord. it is not his melody but our ears that are at fault. but we may well accept the obscurity of the mighty deep of god's judgment, when we can see plainly that, after all, the earth is full of his mercy, and that 'the eyes of all things wait on god, and he giveth them their meat in due season.' ii. so much, then, for the great picture here of these boundless characteristics of the divine nature. now let us look for a moment at the picture of man sheltering beneath god's wings. 'how excellent is thy lovingkindness, o god! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.' god's lovingkindness, or mercy, as i explained the word might be rendered, is _precious_, for that is the true meaning of the word translated 'excellent.' we are rich when we have that for ours; we are poor without it. our true wealth is to possess god's love, and to know in thought and realise in feeling and reciprocate in affection his grace and goodness, the beauty and perfectness of his wondrous character. that man is wealthy who has god on his side; that man is a pauper who has not god for his. 'how precious is thy lovingkindness, _therefore_ the children of men put their trust.' there is only one thing that will ever win a man's heart to love god, and that is that god should love him first, and let him see it. 'we love him because he first loved us,' is the new testament teaching. is it not all adumbrated and foretold in these words: 'how precious is thy loving-kindness, o god! therefore the children of men put their trust'? we may be driven to worship after a sort by power; we may be smitten into some cold admiration, into some kind of reluctant subjection and trembling reverence, by the manifestation of divine perfections. but there is only one thing that wins a man's heart, and that is the sight of god's heart; and it is only when we know how precious his lovingkindness is that we shall be drawn towards him. and then this last verse tells us how we can make god our own: 'they put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.' the word here rendered, and accurately rendered, 'put their trust,' has a very beautiful literal meaning. it means to flee for refuge, as the manslayer might flee into the strong city, or as lot did out of sodom to the little city on the hill, or as david did into the cave from his enemies. so, with such haste, with such intensity, staying for nothing, and with the effort of your whole will and nature, flee to god. that is trust. go to him for refuge from all evil, from all harm, from your own souls, from all sin, from hell, and death, and the devil. put your trust under 'the shadow of his wings.' that is a beautiful image, drawn, probably, from the grand words of deuteronomy, where god is likened to the 'eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young,' with tenderness in her fierce eye, and protecting strength in the sweep of her mighty pinion. so god spreads the covert of his wing, strong and tender, beneath which we may all gather ourselves and nestle. and how can we do that? by the simple process of fleeing unto him, as made known to us in christ our saviour; to hide ourselves there. for let us not forget how even the tenderness of this metaphor was increased by its shape on the tender lips of the lord: 'how often would i have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings!' the old testament took the emblem of the eagle, sovereign, and strong, and fierce; the new testament took the emblem of the domestic fowl, peaceable, and gentle, and affectionate. let us flee to that christ, by humble faith with the plea on our lips-- 'cover my defenceless head with the shadow of thy wing'; and then all the godhead in its mercy, its faithfulness, its righteousness, and its judgments will be on our side; and we shall know how precious is the lovingkindness of the lord, and find in him the home and hiding-place of our hearts for ever. what men find beneath the wings of god 'they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. . for with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.' --psalm xxxvi. , . in the preceding verses we saw a wonderful picture of the boundless perfections of god; his lovingkindness, faithfulness, righteousness, and of his twofold act, the depths of his judgments and the plainness of his merciful preservation of man and beast. in these verses we have an equally wonderful picture of the blessedness of the godly, the elements of which consist in four things: satisfaction, represented under the emblem of a feast; joy, represented under the imagery of full draughts from a flowing river of delight; life, pouring from god as a fountain; light, streaming from him as source. and this picture is connected with the previous one by a very simple link. who are they who 'shall be abundantly satisfied'? the men 'who put their trust beneath the shadow of thy wings.' that is to say, the simple exercise of confidence in god is the channel through which all the fulness of divinity passes into and fills our emptiness. observe, too, that the whole of the blessings here promised are to be regarded as present and not future. 'they shall be abundantly satisfied' would be far more truly rendered in consonance with the hebrew: 'they _are_ satisfied'; and so also we should read 'thou _dost_ make them drink of the river of thy pleasures; in thy light _do_ we see light.' the psalmist is not speaking of any future blessedness, to be realised in some far-off, indefinite day to come, but of what is possible even in this cloudy and sorrowful life. my text was true on the hills of palestine, on the day when it was spoken; it may be true amongst the alleys of manchester to-day. my purpose at this time is simply to deal with the four elements in which this blessedness consists--satisfaction, joy, life, light. i. satisfaction: 'they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house.' now, i suppose, there is a double metaphor in that. there is an allusion, no doubt, to the festal meal of priests and worshippers in the temple, on occasion of the peace-offering, and there is also the simpler metaphor of god as the host at his table, at which we are guests. 'thy house' may either be, in the narrower sense, the temple; and then all life is represented as being a glad sacrificial meal in his presence, of which 'the meek shall eat and be satisfied,' or thy 'house' may be taken in a more general sense; and then all life is represented as the gathering of children round the abundant board which their father's providence spreads for them, and as glad feasting in the 'mansions' of the father's house. in either case the plain teaching of the text is, that by the might of a calm trust in god the whole mass of a man's desires are filled and satisfied. what do we want to satisfy us? it is something almost awful to think of the multiplicity, and the variety, and the imperativeness of the raging desires which every human soul carries about within it. the heart is like a nest of callow fledglings, every one of them a great, wide open, gaping beak, that ever needs to have food put into it. heart, mind, will, appetites, tastes, inclinations, weaknesses, bodily wants--the whole crowd of these are crying for their meat. the book of proverbs says there are three things that are never satisfied: the grave, the earth that is not filled with water, and the fire that never says, 'it is enough.' and we may add a fourth, the human heart, insatiable as the grave; thirsty as the sands, on which you may pour niagara, and it will drink it all up and be ready for more; fierce as the fire that licks up everything within reach and still hungers. so, though we be poor and weak creatures, we want much to make us restful. we want no less than that every appetite, desire, need, inclination shall be filled to the full; that all shall be filled to the full at once, and that by one thing; that all shall be filled to the full at once, by one thing that shall last for ever. else we shall be like men whose store of provision gives out before they are half-way across the desert. and we need that all our desires shall be filled at once by one thing that is so much greater than ourselves that we shall grow up towards it, and towards it, and towards it, and yet never be able to exhaust or surpass it. where are you going to get that? there is only one answer, dear brethren! to the question, and that is--god, and god alone is the food of the heart; god, and god alone, will satisfy your need. let us bring the full christian truth to bear upon the illustration of these words. who was it that said, 'i am the bread of life. he that cometh unto me shall never hunger'? christ will feed my mind with truth if i will accept his revelation of himself, of god, and of all things. christ will feed my heart with love if i will open my heart for the entrance of his love. christ will feed my will with blessed commands if i will submit myself to his sweet and gentle, and yet imperative, authority. christ will satisfy all my longings and desires with his own great fulness. other food palls upon man's appetite, and we wish for change; and physiologists tell us that a less wholesome and nutritious diet, if varied, is better for a man's health than a more nutritious one if uniform and monotonous. but in christ there are all constituents that are needed for the building up of the human spirit, and so we never weary of him if we only know his sweetness. after a world of hungry men have fed upon him, he remains inexhaustible as at the beginning; like the bread in his own miracles, of which the pieces that were broken and ready to be given to the eaters were more than the original stock, as it appeared when the meal began, or like the fabled feast in the norse walhalla, to which the gods sit down to-day, and to-morrow it is all there on the board, as abundant and full as ever. so if we have christ to live upon, we shall know no hunger; and 'in the days of famine we shall be satisfied.' o brethren! have you ever known what it is to feel that your hungry heart is at rest? did you ever know what it is to say, 'it is enough'? have you anything that satisfies your appetite and makes you blessed? surely, men's eager haste to get more of the world's dainties shows that there is no satisfaction at its table. why will you 'spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not,' as indians in famine eat clay which fills their stomachs, but neither stays hunger, nor ministers strength? eat and your soul shall live. ii. now, turn to the next of the elements of blessedness here--joy. 'thou makest them drink of the river of thy pleasures.' there may be a possible reference here, couched in the word 'pleasures,' to the garden of eden, with the river that watered it parting into four heads; for 'eden' is the singular of the word which is here translated 'pleasures' or 'delight.' if we take that reference, which is very questionable, there would be suggested the thought that amidst all the pain and weariness of this desert life of ours, though the gates of paradise are shut against us, they who dwell beneath the shadow of the divine wing really have a paradise blooming around them; and have flowing ever by their side, with tinkling music, the paradisaical river of delights, in which they may bathe and swim, and of which they may drink. certainly the joys of communion with god surpass any which unfallen eden could have boasted. but, at all events, the plain teaching of the text is that the simple act of trusting beneath the shadow of god's wings brings to us an ever fresh and flowing river of gladness, of which we may drink. the whole conception of religion in the bible is gladsome. there is no puritanical gloom about it. true, a christian man has sources of sadness which other men have not. there is the consciousness of his own sin, and the contest that he has daily to wage; and all things take a soberer colouring to the eye that has been accustomed to look, however dimly, upon god. many of the sources of earthly felicity are dammed up and shut off from us if we are living beneath the shadow of god's wings. life will seem to be sterner, and graver, and sadder than the lives 'that ring with idiot laughter solely,' and have no music because they have no melancholy in them. that cannot be helped. but what does it matter though two or three surface streams, which are little better than drains for sewage, be stopped up, if the 'pure river of the water of life' is turned into your hearts? surely it will be a gain if the sadness which has joy for its very foundation is yours, instead of the laughter which is only a mocking mask for a death's head, and of which it is true that even 'in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' better to be 'sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,' than to be glad on the surface, with a perpetual sorrow and unrest gnawing at the root of your life. and if it be true that the whole biblical conception of religion is of a glad thing, then, my brother! it is your duty, if you are a christian man, to be glad, whatever temptations there may be in your way to be sorrowful. it is a hard lesson, and one which is not always insisted upon. we hear a great deal about other christian duties. we do not hear so much as we ought about the christian duty of gladness. it takes a very robust faith to say, 'though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine, yet i will rejoice in the lord, i will joy in the god of my salvation,' but unless we can say it, there is an attainment of christian life yet unreached, to which we have to aspire. but be that as it may, my point is simply this--that all real and profound possession of, and communion with, god in christ will make us glad; glad with a gladness altogether unlike that of the world round about us, far deeper, far quieter, far nobler, the sister and the ally of all great things, of all pure life, of all generous and lofty thought. and where is it to be found? only in fellowship with him. 'the river of thy pleasures' may mean something yet more solemn and wonderful than pleasures of which he is the author. it may mean pleasures _which he shares_, the very delights of the divine nature itself. the more we come into fellowship with him, the more shall we share in the very joy of god himself. and what is his joy? he delights in mercy; he delights in self-communication: he is the blessed, the happy god, because he is the giving god. he delights in his love. he 'rejoices over' his penitent child 'with singing,' in that blessedness we may share; or if that be too high and mystical a thought, may we not remember who it was that said: 'these things speak i unto you that my joy may remain in you'; and who it is that will one day say to the faithful servant: 'enter thou into the joy of thy lord'? christ makes us drink of the river of his pleasures. the shepherd and the sheep drink from the same stream, and the gladness which filled the heart of the man of sorrows, and lay deeper than all his sorrows, he imparts to all them that put their trust in him. so, dear brethren! what a blessing it is for us to have, as we may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys! like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we may have a fountain of gladness within ourselves which nothing that touches the outside can cut off. we have but to lap a hasty mouthful of earthly joys as we run, but we cannot drink too full draughts of this pure river of water which makes glad the city of god. iii. we have the third element of the blessedness of the godly represented under the metaphor of life, pouring from the fountain, which is god. 'with thee is the fountain of life.' the words are true in regard to the lowest meaning of 'life'--physical existence--and they give a wonderful idea of the connection between god and all living creatures. the fountain rises, the spray on the summit catches the sunlight for a moment, and then falls into the basin, jet after jet springing up into the light, and in its turn recoiling into the darkness. the water in the fountain, the water in the spray, the water in the basin, are all one. wherever there is life there is god. the creature is bound to the creator by a mystic bond and tie of kinship, by the fact of life. the mystery of life knits all living things with god. it is a spark, wherever it burns, from the central flame. it is a drop, wherever it is found, from the great fountain. it is in man the breath of god's nostrils. it is not a gift given by a creator who dwells apart, having made living things, as a watchmaker might a watch, and then 'seeing them go.' but there is a deep mystic union between the god who has life in himself and all the living creatures who draw their life from him, which we cannot express better than by that image of our text, 'with thee is the fountain of life.' but my text speaks about a blessing belonging to the men who put their trust under the shadow of god's wing, and therefore it does not refer merely to physical existence, but to something higher than that, namely, to that life of the spirit in communion with god, which is the true and the proper sense of 'life'; the one, namely, in which the word is almost always used in the bible. there is such a thing as death in life; living men may be 'dead in trespasses and sins,' 'dead in pleasure,' dead in selfishness. the awful vision of coleridge in the _ancient mariner_, of dead men standing up and pulling at the ropes, is only a picture of the realities of life; where, as on some witches' sabbath, corpses move about and take part in the activities of this dead world. there are people full of energy in regard of worldly things, who yet are all dead to that higher region, the realities of which they have never seen, the actions of which they have never done, the emotions of which they have never felt. am i speaking to such living corpses now? there are some of my audience alive to the world, alive to animalism, alive to lust, alive to passion, alive to earth, alive perhaps to thought, alive to duty, alive to conduct of a high and noble kind, but yet dead to god, and, therefore, dead to the highest and noblest of all realities. answer for yourselves the question--do you belong to this class? there is life for you in jesus christ, who '_is_ the life.' like the great aqueducts that stretch from the hills across the roman campagna, his incarnation brings the waters of the fountain from the mountains of god into the lower levels of our nature, and the fetid alleys of our sins. the cool, sparkling treasure is carried near to every lip. if we drink, we live. if we will not, we die in our sins, and are dead whilst we live. stop the fountain, and what becomes of the stream? it fades there between its banks, and is no more. you cannot even live the animal life except that life were joined to him. if it could be broken away from god it would disappear as the clouds melt in the sky, and there would be nobody, and you would be nowhere. you cannot break yourself away from god _physically_ so completely as to annihilate yourself. you can do so _spiritually_, and some of you do it, and the consequence is that you are dead, _dead_, dead! you can be made 'alive from the dead,' if you will lay hold on jesus christ, and get his life-giving spirit into your hearts. iv. light. 'in thy light shall we see light.' god is 'the father of lights.' the sun and all the stars are only lights kindled by him. it is the very crown of revelation that 'god is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' light seems to the unscientific eye, which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous ether, to be the least material of material things. all joyous things come with it. it brings warmth and fruit, fulness and life. purity, and gladness, and knowledge have been symbolised by it in all tongues. the scripture uses light, and the sun, which is its source, as an emblem for god in his holiness, and blessedness, and omniscience. this great word here seems to point chiefly to light as knowledge. this saying is true, as the former clause was, in relation to all the light which men have. 'the inspiration of the almighty giveth him understanding.' the faculties by which men know, and all the exercise of those faculties, are his gift. it is in the measure in which god's light comes to the eye that the eye beholds. 'light' may mean not only the faculty, but the medium of vision. it is in the measure in which god's light comes, and because his light comes, that all light of reason in human nature sees the truth which is its light. god is the author of all true thoughts in all mankind. the spirit of man is a candle kindled by the lord. but as i said about life, so i say about light. the material or intellectual aspects of the word are not the main ones here. the reference is to the spiritual gift which belongs to the men 'who put their trust beneath the shadow of thy wings.' in communion with him who is the light as well as the life of men, we see a whole universe of glories, realities, and brightnesses. where other eyes see only darkness, we behold 'the king in his beauty, and the land that is very far off.' where other men see only cloudland and mists, our vision will pierce into the unseen, and there behold 'the things which are,' the only real things, of which all that the eye of sense sees are only the fleeting shadows, seen as in a dream, while these are the true, and the sight of them is sight indeed. they who see by the light of god, and see light therein, have a vision which is more than imagination, more than opinion, more than belief. it is certitude. communication with god does not bring with it superior intellectual perspicuity, but it does bring a perception of spiritual realities and relations, which, in respect of clearness and certainty, may be called sight. many of us walk in darkness, who, if we were but in communion with god, would see the lone hillside blazing with chariots and horses of fire. many of us grope in perplexity, who, if we were but hiding under the shadow of god's wings, would see the truth and walk at liberty in the light, which is knowledge and purity and joy. in communication with god, we see light upon all the paths of duty. it is wonderful how, when a man lives near god, he gets to know what he ought to do. that great light, which is christ, is like the star that hung over the magi, blazing in the heavens, and yet stooping to the lowly task of guiding three wayfaring men along a muddy road upon earth. so the highest light of god comes down to be 'a lantern for our paths and a light for our feet.' and in the same communion with god, we get light in all seasons of darkness and of sorrow. 'to the upright there ariseth light in the darkness'; and the darkest hours of earthly fortune will be like a greenland summer night, when the sun scarcely dips below the horizon, and even when it is absent, all the heaven is aglow with a calm twilight. all these great blessings belong to-day to those who take refuge under the shadow of his wings. but blessed as the present experience is, we have to look for the perfecting of it when we pass from the forecourt to the inner sanctuary, and in that higher house sit with christ at his table and feast at 'the marriage supper of the lamb.' here we drink from the river, but there we shall be carried up to the source. the life of god in the soul is here often feeble in its flow, 'a fountain sealed' and all but shut up in our hearts, but there it will pour through all our being, a fountain springing up into everlasting life. the darkness is scattered even here by beams of the true light, but here we are only in the morning twilight, and many clouds still fill the sky, and many a deep gorge lies in sunless shadow, but there the light shall be a broad universal blaze, and there shall be 'nothing hid from the heat thereof.' now, dear brethren! the sum of the whole matter is, that all this fourfold blessing of satisfaction, joy, life, light, is given to you, if you will take christ. he will feed you with the bread of god; he will give you his own joy to drink; he will be in you the life of your lives, and 'the master-light of all your seeing.' and if you will not have him, you will starve, and your lips will be cracked with thirst; and you will live a life which is death, and you will sink at last into outer darkness. is that the fate which you are going to choose? choose christ, and he will give you satisfaction, and joy, and life, and light. the secret of tranquillity 'delight thyself also in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart . commit thy way unto the lord.... . rest in the lord, and wait patiently for him.'--psalm xxxvii. , , . 'i have been young, and now am old,' says the writer of this psalm. its whole tone speaks the ripened wisdom and autumnal calm of age. the dim eyes have seen and survived so much, that it seems scarcely worth while to be agitated by what ceases so soon. he has known so many bad men blasted in all their leafy verdure, and so many languishing good men revived, that-- 'old experience doth attain to something of prophetic strain'; and is sure that 'to trust in the lord and do good' ever brings peace and happiness. life with its changes has not soured but quieted him. it does not seem to him an endless maze, nor has he learned to despise it. he has learned to see god in it all, and that has cleared its confusion, as the movements of the planets, irregular and apparently opposite, when viewed from the earth, are turned into an ordered whole, when the sun is taken for the centre. what a contrast between the bitter cynicism put into the lips of the son, and the calm cheerful godliness taught, according to our psalm, by the father! to solomon, old age is represented as bringing the melancholy creed, 'all is vanity'; david believes, 'delight thyself in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' which style of old age is the nobler? what kind of life will lead to each? these clauses, which i have ventured to isolate from their context, contain the elements which secure peace even in storms and troubles. i think that, if we consider them carefully, we shall see that there is a well-marked progress in them. they do not cover the same ground by any means; but each of the later flows from the former. nobody can 'commit his way unto the lord' who has not begun by 'delighting in the lord'; and nobody can 'rest in the lord' who has not 'committed his way to the lord.' these three precepts, then, the condensed result of the old man's lifelong experience, open up for our consideration the secret of tranquillity. let us think of them in order. i. here is the secret of tranquillity in freedom from eager, earthly desires--'delight thyself in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' the great reason why life is troubled and restless lies not without, but within. it is not our changing circumstances, but our unregulated desires, that rob us of peace. we are feverish, not because of the external temperature, but because of the state of our own blood. the very emotion of desire disturbs us; wishes make us unquiet; and when a whole heart, full of varying, sometimes contradictory longings, is boiling within a man, how can he but tremble and quiver? one desire unfulfilled is enough to banish tranquillity; but how can it survive a dozen dragging different ways? a deep lesson lies in that word _distraction_, which has come to be so closely attached to _desires_; the lesson that all eager longing tears the heart asunder. unbridled and varying wishes, then, are the worst enemies of our repose. and, still further, they destroy tranquillity by putting us at the mercy of externals. whatsoever we make necessary for our contentment, we make lord of our happiness. by our eager desires we give perishable things supreme power over us, and so intertwine our being with theirs, that the blow which destroys them lets out our life-blood. and, therefore, we are ever disturbed by apprehensions and shaken by fears. we tie ourselves to these outward possessions, as alpine travellers to their guides, and so, when they slip on the icy slopes, their fall is our death. if we were not eager to stand on the giddy top of fortune's rolling wheel, we should not heed its idle whirl; but we let our foolish hearts set our feet there, and thenceforward every lurch of the glittering instability threatens to lame or kill us. he who desires fleeting joys is sure to be restless always, and to be disappointed at the last. for, even at the best, the heart which depends for peace on the continuance of things subjected to a thousand accidents, can only know quietness by forcibly closing its eyes against the inevitable; and, even at the best, such a course must end on the whole in failure. disappointment is the law for all earthly desires; for appetite increases with indulgence, and as it increases, satisfaction decreases. the food remains the same, but its power to appease hunger diminishes. possession bring indifference. the dose that lulls into delicious dreams to-day must be doubled to-morrow, if it is to do anything; and there is soon an end of that. each of your earthly joys fills but a part of your being, and all the other ravenous longings either come shrieking at the gate of the soul's palace, like a mob yelling for bread, or are starved into silence; but either way there is disquiet. and then, if a man has fixed his happiness on anything lower than the stars, less stable than the heavens, less sufficient than god, there does come, sooner or later, a time when it passes from him, or he from it. do not venture the rich freightage of your happiness in crazy vessels. if you do, be sure that, somewhere or other, before your life is ended, the poor frail craft will strike on some black rock rising sheer from the depths, and will grind itself to chips there. if your life twines round any prop but god your strength, be sure that, some time or other, the stay to which its tendrils cling will be plucked up, and the poor vine will be lacerated, its clusters crushed, and its sap will bleed out of it. if, then, our desires are, in their very exercise, a disturbance, and in their very fruition prophesy disappointment, and if that certain disappointment is irrevocable and crushing when it comes, what shall we do for rest? dear brethren! there is but one answer--'delight thyself in the lord.' these eager desires, transfer to him; on him let the affections fix and fasten; make him the end of your longings, the food of your spirits. this is the purest, highest form of religious emotion--when we can say, 'whom have i but thee? possessing thee i desire none beside.' and this glad longing for god is the cure for all the feverish unrest of desires unfulfilled, as well as for the ague fear of loss and sorrow. quietness fills the soul which delights in the lord, and its hunger is as blessed and as peaceful as its satisfaction. think how surely rest comes with delighting in god. for that soul must needs be calm which is freed from the distraction of various desires by the one master-attraction. such a soul is still as the great river above the falls, when all the side currents and dimpling eddies and backwaters are effaced by the attraction that draws every drop in the one direction; or like the same stream as it nears its end, and, forgetting how it brawled among rocks and flowers in the mountain glens, flows with a calm and equable motion to its rest in the central sea. let the current of your being set towards god, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul. and for another reason there will be peace: because in such a case desire and fruition go together. 'he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' only do not vulgarise that great promise by making it out to mean that, if we will be good, he will give us the earthly blessings which we wish. sometimes we shall get them, and sometimes not; but our text goes far deeper than that. god himself is the heart's desire of those who delight in him; and the blessedness of longing fixed on him is that it ever fulfils itself. they who want god have him. your truest joy is in his fellowship and his grace. if, set free from creatural delights, our wills reach out towards god, as a plant growing in darkness to the light--then we shall wish for nothing contrary to him, and the wishes which run parallel to his purposes, and embrace himself as their only good, cannot be vain. the sunshine flows into the opened eye, the breath of life into the expanding lung--so surely, so immediately the fulness of god fills the waiting, wishing soul. to delight in god is to possess our delight. heart! lift up thy gates: open and raise the narrow, low portals, and the king of glory will stoop to enter. once more: desire after god will bring peace by putting all other wishes in their right place. the counsel in our text does not enjoin the extinction, but the subordination, of other needs and appetites--'seek ye _first_ the kingdom of god.' let that be the dominant desire which controls and underlies all the rest. seek for god in everything, and for everything in god. only thus will you be able to bridle those cravings which else tear the heart. the presence of the king awes the crowd into silence. when the full moon is in the nightly sky, it sweeps the heavens bare of flying cloud-rack, and all the twinkling stars are lost in the peaceful, solitary splendour. so let delight in god rise in our souls, and lesser lights pale before it--do not cease to be, but add their feebleness, unnoticed, to its radiance. the more we have our affections set on god, the more shall we enjoy, because we subordinate, his gifts. the less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. the capitalist does not think so much of the year's gains as does the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. if you have god for your 'enduring substance,' you can face all varieties of condition, and be calm, saying-- 'give what thou canst, without thee i am poor, and with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.' the amulet that charms away disquiet lies here. still thine eager desires, arm thyself against feverish hopes, and shivering fears, and certain disappointment, and cynical contempt of all things; make sure of fulfilled wishes and abiding joys. 'delight thyself in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' ii. but this is not all. the secret of tranquillity is found, secondly, in freedom from the perplexity of choosing our path. 'commit thy way unto the lord'--or, as the margin says, 'roll' it upon god; leave to him the guidance of thy life, and thou shalt be at peace on the road. this is a word for all life, not only for its great occasions. twice, or thrice, perhaps in a lifetime, a man's road leads him up to a high dividing point, a watershed as it were, whence the rain runs from the one side of the ridge to the pacific, and from the other to the atlantic. his whole future may depend on his bearing the least bit to the right hand or to the left, and all the slopes below, on either side, are wreathed in mist. powerless as he is to see before him, he has yet to choose, and his choice determines the rest of his days. certainly he needs some guidance then. but he needs it not less in the small decisions of every hour. our histories are made up of a series of trifles, in each of which a separate act of will and choice is involved. looking to the way in which character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from god to the million trifles than to the two or three decisions which, at the time of making them, we know to be weighty. depend upon it that, if we have not learned the habit of committing the daily-recurring monotonous steps to him, we shall find it very, very hard to seek his help, when we come to a fork in the road. so this is a command for all life, not only for its turning-points. what does it prescribe? first, the subordination--not the extinction--of our own _inclinations_. we must begin by ceasing from self. not that we are to cast out of consideration our own wishes. these are an element in every decision, and often are our best helps to the knowledge of our powers and of our duties. but we have to take special care that they never in themselves settle the question. they are second, not first. 'thus i will, and therefore thus i decide; my wish is enough for a reason,' is the language of a tyrant over others, but of a slave to himself. our first question is to be, not 'what should i like?' but 'what does god will, if i can by any means discover it?' wishes are to be held in subordination to him. our will is to be master of our passions, and desires, and whims, and habits, but to be servant of god. it should silence all their cries, and itself be silent, that god may speak. like the lawgiver-captain in the wilderness, it should stand still at the head of the ordered rank, ready for the march, but motionless, till the pillar lifts from above the sanctuary. yes! 'commit thy way'--unto whom? conscience? no: unto duty? no: but 'unto god'--which includes all these lower laws, and a whole universe besides. hold the will in equilibrium, that his finger may incline the balance. then the counsel of our text prescribes the submission of our _judgment_ to god, in the confidence that his wisdom will guide us. committing our way unto the lord does not mean shifting the trouble of patient thought about our duty off our own shoulders. it is no cowardly abnegation of the responsibility of choice which is here enjoined; nor is there any sanction of lazily taking the first vagrant impulse, wafted we know not whence, that rises in the mind, for the voice of god. but, just because we are to commit our way to him, we are bound to the careful exercise of the best power of our own brains, that we may discover what the will of god is. he does not reveal that will to people who do not care to know it. i suppose the precursor of all visions of him, which have calmed his servants' souls with the peace of a clearly recognised duty, has been their cry, 'lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' god counsels men who use their own wits to find out his counsel. he speaks to us through our judgments when they take all the ordinary means of ascertaining our course. the law is: do your best to find out your duty; suppress inclination, and desire to do god's will, and he will certainly tell you what it is. i, for my part, believe that the psalmist spoke a truth when he said, 'in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy steps.' only let the eye be fixed on him, and he will guide us in the way. if we chiefly desire, and with patient impartiality try, to be directed by him, we shall never want for direction. but all this is possible only if we 'delight in the lord.' nothing else will still our desires--the voice within, and the invitations without, which hinder us from hearing the directions of our guide. nothing else will so fasten up and muzzle the wild passions and lusts that a little child may lead them. to delight in him is the condition of all wise judgment. for the most part, it is not hard to discover god's will concerning us, if we supremely desire to know and do it; and such supreme desire is but the expression of this supreme delight in him. such a disposition wonderfully clears away mists and perplexities; and though there will still remain ample scope for the exercise of our best judgment, and for reliance on him to lead us, yet he whose single object is to walk in the way that god points, will seldom have to stand still in uncertainty as to what that way is. 'if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.' thus, dear brethren! these two keys--joy in god, and trust in his guidance--open for us the double doors of 'the secret place of the most high'; where all the roar of the busy world dies upon the ear, and the still small voice of the present god deepens the silence, and hushes the heart. be quiet, and you will hear him speak--delight in him, that you may be quiet. let the affections feed on him, the will wait mute before him, till his command inclines it to decision, and quickens it into action; let the desires fix upon his all-sufficiency; and then the wilderness will be no more trackless, but the ruddy blaze of the guiding pillar will brighten on the sand a path which men's hands have never made, nor human feet trodden into a road. he will 'guide us with his eye,' if our eyes be fixed on him, and be swift to discern and eager to obey the lightest glance that love can interpret. shall we be 'like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding,' and need to be pulled with bridles and beaten with whips before they know how to go; or shall we be like some trained creature that is guided by the unseen cord of docile submission, and has learned to read the duty, which is its joy, in the glance of its master's eye, or the wave of his hand? 'delight thyself in the lord: commit thy way unto him.' iii. our text takes one more step. the secret of tranquillity is found, thirdly, in freedom from the anxiety of an unknown future. 'best in the lord, and wait patiently for him.' such an addition to these previous counsels is needful, if all the sources of our disquiet are to be dealt with. the future is dim, after all our straining to see into its depths. the future is threatening, after all our efforts to prepare for its coming storms. a rolling vapour veils it all; here and there a mountain peak seems to stand out; but in a moment another swirl of the fog hides it from us. we know so little, and what we do know is so sad, that the ignorance of what may be, and the certainty of what must be, equally disturb us with hopes which melt into fears, and forebodings which consolidate into certainties. we are sure that in that future are losses, and sorrows, and death; thank god! we are sure too, that he is in it. that certainty alone, and what comes of it, makes it possible for a thoughtful man to face to-morrow without fear or tumult. the only rest from apprehensions which are but too reasonable is 'rest in the lord.' if we are sure that he will be there, and if we delight in him, then we can afford to say, 'as for all the rest, let it be as he wills, it will be well.' that thought alone, dear friends! will give calmness. what else is there, brethren! for a man fronting that vague future, from whose weltering sea such black, sharp-toothed rocks protrude? shall we bow before some stern fate, as its lord, and try to be as stern as it? shall we think of some frivolous chance, as tossing its unguided waves, and try to be as frivolous as it? shall we try to be content with an animal limitation to the present, and heighten the bright colour of the little to-day by the black background that surrounds it, saying, 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'? is it not better, happier, nobler, every way truer, to look into that perilous uncertain future, or rather to look past it to the loving father who is its lord and ours, and to wait patiently for him? confidence that the future will but evolve god's purposes, and that all these are enlisted on our side, will give peace and power. without it all is chaos, and we flying atoms in the anarchic mass; or else all is coldblooded impersonal law, and we crushed beneath its chariot-wheels. here, and here alone, is the secret of tranquillity. but remember, brethren! that the peaceful confidence of this final counsel is legitimate only when we have obeyed the other two. i have no business, for instance, to expect god to save me from the natural consequences of my own worldliness or folly. if i have taken up a course from eager desires for earthly good, or from obedience to any inclination of my own without due regard to his will, i have no right, when things begin to go awry, to turn round to god and say, 'lord! i wait upon thee to save me.' and though repentance, and forsaking of our evil ways at any point in a man's course, do ensure, through jesus christ, god's loving forgiveness, yet the evil consequences of past folly are often mercifully suffered to remain with us all our days. he who has delighted in the lord, and committed his way unto him, can venture to front whatever may be coming; and though not without much consciousness of sin and weakness, can yet cast upon god the burden of taking care of him, and claim from his faithful father the protection and the peace which he has bound himself to give. and o dear friends! what a calm will enter our souls then, solid, substantial, 'the peace of god,' gift and effluence from the 'god of peace'! how blessed then to leave all the possible to-morrow with a very quiet heart in his hands! how easy then to bear the ignorance, how possible then to face the certainties, of that solemn future! change and death can only thin away and finally remove the film that separates us from our delight. whatever comes here or yonder can but bring us blessing; for we must be glad if we have god, and if our wills are parallel with his, whose will all things serve. our way is traced by him, and runs alongside of his. it leads to himself. then rest in the lord, and 'judge nothing before the time.' we cannot criticise the great artist when we stand before his unfinished masterpiece, and see dim outlines here, a patch of crude colour there. but wait patiently for him, and so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work, which will explain the past, in honest submission of our way to god, in supreme delight in him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours. the bitterness and blessedness of the brevity of life 'surely every man walketh in a vain shew.... . i am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.' --psalm xxxix. , . these two sayings are two different ways of putting the same thing. there is a common thought underlying both, but the associations with which that common thought is connected in these two verses are distinctly different. the one is bitter and sad--a gloomy half truth. the other, out of the very same fact, draws blessedness and hope. the one may come from no higher point of view than the level of worldly experience; the other is a truth of faith. the former is at best partial, and without the other may be harmful; the latter completes, explains, and hallows it. and that this progress and variety in the thought is the key to the whole psalm is, i think, obvious to any one who will examine it with care. i cannot here enter on that task but in the hastiest fashion, by way of vindicating the connection which i trace between the two verses of our text. the psalmist begins, then, with telling how at some time recently passed--in consequence of personal calamity not very clearly defined, but apparently some bodily sickness aggravated by mental sorrow and anxiety--he was struck dumb with silence, so that he 'held his peace even from good.' in that state there rose within him many sad and miserable thoughts, which at last forced their way through his locked lips. they shape themselves into a prayer, which is more complaint than petition--and which is absorbed in the contemplation of the manifest melancholy facts of human life--'thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee.' and then, as that thought dilates and sinks deeper into his soul, he looks out upon the whole race of man--and in tones of bitterness and hopelessness, affirms that all are vanity, shadows, disquieted in vain. the blank hopelessness of such a view brings him to a standstill. it is true--but taken alone is too dreadful to think of. 'that way madness lies,'--so he breaks short off his almost despairing thoughts, and with a swift turning away of his mind from the downward gaze into blackness that was beginning to make him reel, he fixes his eyes on the throne above--'and now, lord! what wait i for? my hope is in thee.' these words form the turning-point of the psalm. after them, the former thoughts are repeated, but with what a difference--made by looking at all the blackness and sorrow, both personal and universal, in the bright light of that hope which streams upon the most lurid masses of opaque cloud, till their gloom begins to glow with an inward lustre, and softens into solemn purples and reds. he had said, 'i was dumb with silence--even from good.' but when his hope is in god, the silence changes its character and becomes resignation and submission. 'i opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.' the variety of human life and its transiency is not less plainly seen than before; but in the light of that hope it is regarded in relation to god's paternal correction, and is seen to be the consequence, not of a defect in his creative wisdom or love, but of man's sin. 'thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity.' that, to him who waits on the lord, is the reason and the alleviation of the reiterated conviction, 'every man is vanity.' not any more does he say every man 'at his best state,' or, as it might be more accurately expressed, 'even when most firmly established,'--for the man who is established in the lord is not vanity, but only the man who founds his being on the fleeting present. then, things being so, life being thus in itself and apart from god so fleeting and so sad, and yet with a hope that brightens it like sunshine through an april shower--the psalmist rises to prayer, in which that formerly expressed conviction of the brevity of life is reiterated, with the addition of two words which changes its whole aspect, 'i am a stranger _with thee_.' he is god's guest in his transient life. it is short, like the stay of a foreigner in a strange land; but he is under the care of the king of the land--therefore he need not fear nor sorrow. past generations, abraham, isaac, and jacob--whose names god 'is not ashamed' to appeal to in his own solemn designation of himself--have held the same relation, and their experience has sealed his faithful care of those who dwell with him. therefore, the sadness is soothed, and the vain and fleeting life of earth assumes a new appearance, and the most blessed and wisest issue of our consciousness of frailty and insufficiency is the fixing of our desires and hopes on him in whose house we may dwell even while we wander to and fro, and in whom our life being rooted and established shall not be vain, howsoever it may be brief. if, then, we follow the course of contemplation thus traced in the psalm, we have these three points brought before us--first, the thought of life common to both clauses; second, the gloomy, aimless hollowness which that thought breathes into life apart from god; third, the blessedness which springs from the same thought when we look at it in connection with our father in heaven. i. observe the very forcible expression which is given here to the thought of life common to both verses. 'every man walketh in a vain show.' the original is even more striking and strong. and although one does not like altering words so familiar as those of our translation, which have sacredness from association and a melancholy music in their rhythm--still it is worth while to note that the force of the expression which the psalmist employs is correctly given in the margin, 'in an image'--or 'in a shadow.' the phrase sounds singular to us, but is an instance of a common enough hebrew idiom, and is equivalent to saying--he walks in the character or likeness of a shadow, or, as we should say, he walks as a shadow. that is to say, the whole outward life and activity of every man is represented as fleeting and unsubstantial, like the reflection of a cloud which darkens leagues of the mountains' side in a moment, and ere a man can say, 'behold!' is gone again for ever. then, look at the other image employed in the other clause of our text to express the same idea, 'i am a stranger and a sojourner, as all my fathers.' the phrase has a history. in that most pathetic narrative of an old-world sorrow long since calmed and consoled, when 'abraham stood up from before his dead,' and craved a burying-place for his sarah from the sons of heth, his first plea was, 'i am a stranger and a sojourner with you.' in his lips it was no metaphor. he was a stranger, a visitor for a brief time to an alien land; he was a sojourner, having no rights of inheritance, but settled among them for a while, and though dwelling among them, not adopted into their community. he was a foreigner, not naturalised. and such is our relation to all this visible frame of things in which we dwell. it is alien to us; though we be in it, our true affinities are elsewhere; though we be in it, our stay is brief, as that of 'a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry for a night.' and there is given in the context still another metaphor setting forth the same fact in that dreary generalisation which precedes my text, 'every man at his best state'--or as the word means, 'established,'--with his roots most firmly struck in the material and visible--'is only a breath.' it appears for a moment, curling from lip and nostril into the cold morning air, and vanishes away, so thus vaporous, filmy, is the seeming solid fact of the most stable life. these have been the commonplaces of poets and rhetoricians and moralists in all time. but threadbare as the thought is, i may venture to dwell on it for a moment. i know i am only repeating what we all believe--and all forget. it is never too late to preach commonplaces, until everybody acts on them as well as admits them--and this old familiar truth has not yet got so wrought into the structure of our lives that we can afford to say no more about it. 'surely every man walketh in a shadow.' did you ever stand upon the shore on some day of that 'uncertain weather, when gloom and glory meet together,' and notice how swiftly there went, racing over miles of billows, a darkening that quenched all the play of colour in the waves, as if all suddenly the angel of the waters had spread his broad wings between sun and sea, and then how in another moment as swiftly it flits away, and with a burst the light blazes out again, and leagues of ocean flash into green and violet and blue. so fleeting, so utterly perishable are our lives for all their seeming solid permanency. 'shadows in a career, as george herbert has it--breath going out of the nostrils. we think of ourselves as ever to continue in our present posture. we are deceived by illusions. mental indolence, a secret dislike of the thought, and the impostures of sense, all conspire to make us blind to, or at least oblivious of, the plain fact which every beat of our pulses might preach, and the slow creeping hands of every parish clock confirm. how awful that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to watch it! inexorable, passionless--though hope and fear may pray, 'sun! stand thou still on gibeon; and thou moon! in the valley of ajalon,'--the tramp of the hours goes on. the poets paint them as a linked chorus of rosy forms, garlanded, and clasping hands as they dance onwards. so they may be to some of us at some moments. so they may seem as they approach; but those who come hold the hands of those who go, and that troop has no rosy light upon their limbs, their garlands are faded, the sunshine falls not upon the grey and shrouded shapes, as they steal ghostlike through the gloom--and ever and ever the bright and laughing sisters pass on into that funereal band which grows and moves away from us unceasing. alas! for many of us it bears away with it our lost treasures, our shattered hopes, our joys from which all the bright petals have dropped! alas! for many of us there is nothing but sorrow in watching how all things become 'part and parcel of the dreadful past.' and how strangely sometimes even a material association may give new emphasis to that old threadbare truth. some more permanent _thing_ may help us to feel more profoundly the shadowy fleetness of _man_. the trifles are so much more lasting than their owners. or, as 'the preacher' puts it, with such wailing pathos, 'one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever.' this material is perishable--but yet how much more enduring than we are! the pavements we walk upon, the coals in our grates--how many millenniums old are they? the pebble you kick aside with your foot--how many generations will it outlast? go into a museum and you will see hanging there, little the worse for centuries, battered shields, notched swords, and gaping helmets--aye, but what has become of the bright eyes that once flashed the light of battle through the bars, what has become of the strong hands that once gripped the hilts? 'the knights are dust,' and 'their good swords are' _not_ 'rust.' the material lasts after its owner. seed corn is found in a mummy case. the poor form beneath the painted lid is brown and hard, and more than half of it gone to pungent powder, and the man that once lived has faded utterly: but the handful of seed has its mysterious life in it, and when it is sown, in due time the green blade pushes above english soil, as it would have done under the shadow of the pyramids four thousand years ago--and its produce waves in a hundred harvest fields to-day. the money in your purses now, will some of it bear the head of a king that died half a century ago. it is bright and useful--where are all the people that in turn said they 'owned' it? other men will live in our houses, will preach from this pulpit, and sit in these pews, when you and i are far away. and other june days will come, and the old rose-trees will flower round houses where unborn men will then be living, when the present possessor is gone to nourish the roots of the roses in the graveyard! 'our days are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.' so said david on other occasions. we know, dear brethren! how true it is, whether we consider the ceaseless flux and change of things, the mystic march of the silent-footed hours, or the greater permanence which attaches to the 'things which perish,' than to our abode among them. we know it, and yet how hard it is not to yield to the inducement to act and feel as if all this painted scenery were solid rock and mountain. by our own inconsiderateness and sensuousness, we live in a lie, in a false dream of permanence, and so in a sadder sense we walk in 'a vain show,'--deluding ourselves with the conceit of durability, and refusing to see that the apparent is the shadowy, and the one enduring reality god. it is hard to get even the general conviction vivified in men's minds, hardest of all to get any man to reflect upon it as applying to himself. do not think that you have said enough to vindicate neglect of my words now, when you call them commonplace. so they are. but did you ever take that well-worn old story, and press it on your own consciousness--as a man might press a common little plant, whose juice is healing, against his dim eye-ball--by saying to yourself, 'it is true of _me_. _i_ walk as a shadow. _i_ am gliding onwards to my doom. through _my_ slack hands the golden sands are flowing, and soon _my_ hour-glass will run out, and _i_ shall have to stop and go away.' let me beseech you for one half-hour's meditation on that fact before this day closes. you will forget my words then, when with your own eyes you have looked upon that truth, and felt that it is not merely a toothless commonplace, but belongs to and works in _thy_ life, as it ebbs away silently and incessantly from _thee_. ii. let me point, in the second place, to the gloomy, aimless hollowness which that thought, apart from god, infuses into life. there is, no doubt, a double idea in the metaphor which the psalmist employs. he desires to set forth, by his image of a shadow, not only the transiency, but the unsubstantialness of life. shadow is opposed to substance, to that which is real, as well as to that which is enduring. and we may further say that the one of these characteristics is in great part the occasion of the other. because life is fleeting, therefore, in part, it is so hollow and unsatisfying. the fact that men are dragged away from their pursuits so inexorably makes these pursuits seem, to any one who cannot see beyond that fact, trivial and not worth the following. why should we fret and toil and break our hearts, 'and scorn delights, and live laborious days' for purposes which will last so short a time, and things which we shall so soon have to leave? what is all our bustle and business, when the sad light of that thought falls on it, but 'labouring for the wind'? 'were it not better to lie still?' such thoughts have at least a partial truth in them, and are difficult to meet as long as we think only of the facts and results of man's life that we can see with our eyes, and our psalm gives emphatic utterance to them. the word rendered 'walketh' in our text is not merely a synonym for passing through life, but has a very striking meaning. it is an intensive frequentative form of the word--that is, it represents the action as being repeated over and over again. for instance, it might be used to describe the restless motion of a wild beast in a cage, raging from side to side, never still, and never getting any farther for all the racing backward and forward. so here it signifies 'walketh to and fro,' and implies hurry and bustle, continuous effort, habitual unrest. it thus comes to be parallel with the stronger words which follow,--'surely they are _disquieted_ in vain'; and one reason why all this effort and agitation are purposeless and sad, is because the man who is straining his nerves and wearying his legs is but a shadow in regard to duration--'he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.' yes! if we have said all, when we have said that men pass as a fleeting shadow--if my life has no roots in the eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not pass, and a light that never perishes, if it is derived from, directed to, 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within this visible diurnal sphere, then it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion while it seems to last, and all its pursuits are folly, its hopes dreams, its substances vapours, its years a lie. for, if life be thus short, i who live it am conscious of, and possess whether i be conscious of them or no, capacities and requirements which, though they were to be annihilated to-morrow, could be satisfied while they lasted by nothing short of the absolute ideal, the all-perfect, the infinite--or, to put away abstractions, 'my soul thirsteth for god, the living god!' 'he hath put eternity in their heart,' as the book of ecclesiastes says. longings and aspirations, weaknesses and woes, the limits of creature helps and loves, the disproportion between us and the objects around us--all these facts of familiar experience do witness, alike by blank misgivings and by bright hopes, by many disappointments and by indestructible expectations surviving them all, that nothing which has a date, a beginning, or an end, can fill our souls or give us rest. can you fill up the swamps of the mississippi with any cartloads of faggots you can fling in? can you fill your souls with anything which belongs to this fleeting life? has a flying shadow an appreciable thickness, or will a million of them pressed together occupy a space in your empty, hungry heart? and so, dear brethren! i come to you with a message which may sound gloomy, and beseech you to give heed to it. no matter how you may get on in the world--though you may fulfil every dream with which you began in your youth--you will certainly find that without christ for your brother and saviour, god for your friend, and heaven for your hope, life, with all its fulness, is empty. it lasts long, too long as it sometimes seems for work, too long for hope, too long for endurance; long enough to let love die, and joys wither and fade, and companions drop away, but without god and christ, you will find it but 'as a watch in the night.' at no moment through the long weary years will it satisfy your whole being; and when the weary years are all past, they will seem to have been but as one troubled moment breaking the eternal silence. at every point _so_ profitless, and all the points making so thin and short a line! the crested waves seem heaped together as they recede from the eye till they reach the horizon, where miles of storm are seen but as a line of spray. so when a man looks back upon his life, if it have been a godless one, be sure of this, that he will have a dark and cheerless retrospect over a tossing waste, with a white rim of wandering barren foam vexed by tempest, and then, if not before, he will sadly learn how he has been living amidst shadows, and, with a nature that needs god, has wasted himself upon the world. 'o life! as futile then as frail'; 'surely,' in such a case, 'every man walketh in a vain show.' iii. but note, finally, how our other text in its significant words gives us the blessedness which springs from this same thought of life, when it is looked at in connection with god. the mere conviction of the brevity and hollowness of life is not in itself a religious or a helpful thought. its power depends upon the other ideas which are associated with it. it is susceptible of the most opposite applications, and may tend to impel conduct in exactly opposite directions. it may be the language of despair or of bright hope. it may be the bitter creed of a worn-out debauchee, who has wasted his life in hunting shadows, and is left with a cynical spirit and a barbed tongue. it may be the passionless belief of a retired student, or the fanatical faith of a religious ascetic. it may be an argument for sensuous excess, 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'; or it may be the stimulus for noble and holy living, 'i must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. the night cometh.' the other accompanying beliefs determine whether it shall be a blight or a blessing to a man. and the one addition which is needed to incline the whole weight of that conviction to the better side, and to light up all its blackness, is that little phrase in this text, 'i am a stranger _with thee_, and a sojourner.' there seems to be an allusion here to remarkable words connected with the singular jewish institution of the jubilee. you remember that by the mosaic law, there was no absolute sale of land in israel, but that every half century the whole returned to the descendants of the original occupiers. important economical and social purposes were contemplated in this arrangement, as well as the preservation of the relative position of the tribes as settled at the conquest. but the law itself assigns a purely religious purpose--the preservation of the distinct consciousness of the tenure on which the people held their territory, namely, obedience to and dependence on god. 'the land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine, for ye are _strangers and sojourners with me_.' of course, there was a special sense in which that was true with regard to israel, but david thought that the words were as true in regard to his whole relation to god, as in regard to israel's possession of its national inheritance. if we grasp these words as completing all that we have already said, how different this transient and unsubstantial life looks! you must have the light from both sides to stereoscope and make solid the flat surface picture. transient! yes--but it is passed in the presence of god. whether we know it or no, our brief days hang upon him, and we walk, all of us, in the light of his countenance. that makes the transient eternal, the shadowy substantial, the trivial heavy with solemn meaning and awful yet vast possibilities. 'in our embers is something that doth live.' if we had said all, when we say 'we are as a shadow,' it would matter very little, though even then it _would_ matter something, how we spent our shadowy days; but if these poor brief hours are spent 'in the great taskmaster's eye,'--if the shadow cast on earth proclaims a light in the heavens--if from this point there hangs an unending chain of conscious being--oh! then, with what awful solemnity is the brevity, with what tremendous magnitude is the minuteness, of our earthly days invested! 'with thee'--then i am constantly in the presence of a sovereign law and its giver; 'with thee'--then all my actions are registered and weighed yonder; 'with thee'--then 'thou, god, seest me.' brethren! it is the prismatic halo and ring of eternity round this poor glass of time that gives it all its dignity, all its meaning. the lives that are lived before god cannot be trifles. and if this relation to time be recognised and accepted and held fast by our hearts and minds, then what calm blessedness will flow into our souls! 'a stranger with thee,'--then we are the guests of the king. the lord of the land charges himself with our protection and provision; we journey under his safe conduct. it is for his honour and faithfulness that no harm shall come to us travelling in his territory, and relying on his word. like abraham with the sons of heth, we may claim the protection and help which a stranger needs. he recognises the bond and will fulfil it. we have eaten of his salt, and he will answer for our safety.--'he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye.' 'a stranger with thee,'--then we have a constant companion and an abiding presence. we may be solitary and necessarily remote from the polity of the land. we may feel amid all the visible things of earth as if foreigners. we may not have a foot of soil, not even a grave for our dead. companionships may dissolve and warm hands grow cold and their close clasp relax--what then? he is with us still. he will join us as we journey, even when our hearts are sore with loss. he will walk with us by the way, and make our chill hearts glow. he will sit with us at the table--however humble the meal, and he will not leave us when we discern him. strangers we are indeed here--but not solitary, for we are 'strangers with thee.' as in some ancestral home in which a family has lived for centuries--son after father has rested in its great chambers, and been safe behind its strong walls--so, age after age, they who love him abide in god.--'thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.' 'strangers with thee,'--then we may carry our thoughts forward to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in a land that is not ours. if even here we come into such blessed relationships with god, that fact is in itself a prophecy of a more perfect communion and a heavenly house. they who are strangers with him will one day be 'at home with the lord,' and in the light of that blessed hope the transiency of this life changes its whole aspect, loses the last trace of sadness, and becomes a solemn joy. why should we be pensive and wistful when we think how near our end is? is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? is the wanderer in far-off lands sad when he turns his face homewards? and why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? i do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he watches the hungry sea eating away this 'bank and shoal of time' upon which he stands--even though the tide has all but reached his feet--if he knows that god's strong hand will be stretched forth to him at the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him out of many waters, and place him high above the floods in that stable land where there is 'no more sea.' lives rooted in god through faith in jesus christ are not vanity. let us lay hold of him with a loving grasp--and 'we shall live also' _because_ he lives, _as_ he lives, _so long_ as he lives. the brief days of earth will be blessed while they last, and fruitful of what shall never pass. we shall have him with us while we journey, and all our journeyings will lead to rest in him. true, men walk in a vain show; true, 'the world passeth away and the lust thereof,' but, blessed be god! true, also, 'he that doeth the will of god abideth for ever.' two innumerable series 'many, o lord my god, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if i would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered ... . innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that i am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me.'--psalms xl. , . so then, there are two series of things which cannot be numbered, god's mercies, man's sins. this psalm has for its burden a cry for deliverance; but the psalmist begins where it is very hard for a struggling man to begin, but where we always should begin, with grateful remembrance of god's mercy. his wondrous dealings seem to the psalmist's thankful heart as numberless as the blades of grass which carpet the fields, or as the wavelets which glance in the moonlight and break in silver upon the sand. they come pouring out continuously, like the innumerable undulations of the ether which make upon the eyeballs the single sensation of light. he thinks not only of god's wonderful works, his realised purposes of mercy, but of 'his thoughts which are to us-ward,' the purposes, still more wonderful, of a yet greater mercy which wait to be realised. he thinks not only of god's lovingkindness to him, but his contemplations embrace god's goodness to his brethren--'thy thoughts which are to us-ward.' and as he thinks of all this 'multitude of his tender mercies,' his lips break into this rapturous exclamation of my text. but there is a wonderful change in tone, in the two halves of the psalm. the deliverance that seems so complete in the earlier part is but partial. the triumph and the trust seem both to be clouded over. a frowning mass lifts itself up against the immense mass of god's mercies. the psalmist sees himself ringed about by numberless evils, as a man tied to a stake might be by a circle of fire. 'innumerable evils have compassed me about.' his conscience tells him that the evils are deserved; they are his iniquities transformed which have come back to him in another shape, and have laid their hands upon him as a constable does upon a thief. 'mine iniquities have taken hold upon me'--they hem him in so that his vision is interrupted, the smoke from the circle of flame blinds his eyes--'i cannot see.' his roused conscience and his quivering heart conceive of them as 'more than the hairs of his head,' and so courage and confidence have ebbed away from him. 'my heart faileth me----,' and there is nothing left for him but to fling himself in his misery out of himself and on to god. now what i wish to do in this sermon is not so much to deal with these two verses separately as to draw some of the lessons from the very remarkable juxtaposition of these two innumerable things--god's tender mercies, and man's iniquity and evil. i. to begin with, let me remind you how, if we keep these two things both together in our contemplations, they suggest for us very forcibly the greatest mystery in the universe, and throw a little light upon it. the difficulty of difficulties, the one insoluble problem is----, given a good and perfect god, where does sorrow come from, and why is there any pain? men have fumbled at that knot for all the years that there have been men in the world, and they have not untied it yet. they have tried to cut it and it has resisted all their knives and all their ingenuity. and there the question stands before us, grim, insoluble, the despair of all thinkers and often the torture of our own hearts, in the hours of our personal experience. is it true that 'god's mercies are innumerable'? if it be, what is the meaning of all this that makes me writhe and weep? nobody has answered that question, and nobody ever will. only let us beware of the temptation of blinking half of the facts by reason of the clearness of our confidence or the depth of our feeling of the other half. that is always our temptation. you must have had a singularly unruffled life if there has never come to you some moment when, in the depth of your agony, you have ground your teeth together, as you said to yourself, 'is there a god then at all? and does he care for me at all? and can he help me at all? and if there is, why in the name of pity does he not?' well, my brother! when such moments come to us, and they come to us all sooner or later--and i was going to add a parenthesis, which you will think strange, and say that they come to us all sooner or later, blessed be god!--when such moments come to us, do not let the black mass hide the light one from you, but copy this psalmist, and in the energy of your faith, even though it be the extremity of your pain, grasp and grip them both; and though you have to say and to wail: 'innumerable evils have compassed me about,' be sure that you do not let that prevent you from saying, 'many, o lord my god! are thy wonderful works which are to us-ward. they are more than can be numbered.' i do not enter upon this as a mere matter of philosophical speculation. it is far too serious and important a matter to be so dealt with, in a pulpit at any rate, but i would also add in one sentence that the mere thinker, who looks at the question solely from an intellectual point of view, has need to take the lesson of my two texts, and to be sure that he keeps clear before him both halves of the facts--though they seem to be as unlike each other as the eclipsed and the uneclipsed silver half of the moon--with which he has to deal. remember, the one does not contradict the other; but let us ask ourselves if the one does not _explain_ the other. if it be that these mercies are so innumerable as my first text says, may it not be that they go deep down beneath, and include in their number, the experience that seems most opposite to them, even the sorrow that afflicts our lives? must it not be, that the innumerable sum of god's mercies has not to have subtracted from it, but has to have added to it, the sum which also at intervals appears to us innumerable, of our sorrows and our burdens? perhaps the explanation does not go to the bottom of the bottomless, but it goes a long way down towards it. 'whom the lord loveth, he chasteneth' makes a bridge across the gulf which seems to part the opposing cliffs, these two sets effect, and turn the darker into a form in which the brighter reveals itself. 'all things work together for good.' and god's innumerable mercies include the whole sum total of my sorrows. ii. so, again, notice how the blending of these two thoughts together heightens the impression of each. all artists, and all other people know the power of contrast. white never looks so white as when it is relieved against black; black never so intense as when it is relieved against white. a white flower in the twilight gleams out in spectral distinctness, paler and fairer than it looked in the blazing sunshine. so, if we take and put these two things together--the dark mass of man's miseries and the radiant brightness of god's mercies, each heightens the colour of the other. only, let me observe, as i have already suggested that, in the second of my two texts, whilst the psalmist starts from the 'innumerable evils' that have compassed him about, he passes from these to the earlier evils which he had done. it is pain that says, 'innumerable evils have compassed me about.' it is conscience that says, 'mine iniquities have taken hold upon me.' his wrong-doing has come back to him like the boomerang that the australian savage throws, which may strike its aim but returns to the hand that flung it. it has come back in the shape of a sorrow. and so 'mine iniquities have taken hold upon me' is the deepening of the earliest word of my text. therefore, i am not reading a double meaning into it, but the double meaning is in it when i see here a reference both to a man's manifold sorrows and to a man's multiplied transgressions. taking the latter into consideration, the contrast between these two heightens both of them. god's mercies never seem so fair, so wonderful, as when they are looked at in conjunction with man's sin. man's sin never seems so foul and hideous as when it is looked at close against god's mercies. you cannot estimate the conduct of one of two parties to a transaction unless you have the conduct of the other before you. you cannot understand a father's love unless you take into account the prodigal son's sullen unthankfulness, or his unthankfulness without remembering his father's love. you cannot estimate the clemency of a patient monarch unless you know the blackness and persistency of the treason of his rebellious subjects, nor their treason, except when seen in connection with his clemency. you cannot estimate the long-suffering of a friend unless you know the crimes against friendship of which his friend has been guilty, nor the blackness of his treachery without the knowledge of the other's loyalty to him. so we do not see the radiant brightness of god's loving-kindness to us until we look at it from the depth of the darkness of our own sin. the stars are seen from the bottom of the well. the loving-kindness of god becomes wonderful when we think of the sort of people on whom it has been lavished. and my evil is never apprehended in its true hideousness until i have set it black and ugly, but searched through and through, and revealed in every deformed outline, and in every hideous lineament, by the light against which i see it. you must take both in order to understand either. and not only so, but actually these two opposites, which are ever warring with one another in a duel, most merciful, patient, and long-suffering on his part--these two elements do intensify one another, not only in our estimation but in reality. for it is man's sin that has drawn out the deepest and most wonderful tenderness of the divine heart; and it is god's love partly recognised and rejected, which leads men to the darkest evil. man's sin has heightened god's love to this climax and consummation of all tenderness, that he has sent us his son. and god's love thus heightened has darkened and deepened man's sin. god's chiefest gift is his son. man's darkest sin is the rejection of christ. the clearest light makes the blackest shadow, the tenderer the love, the more criminal the apathy and selfishness which oppose it. my brother! let us put these two great things together, and learn how the sin heightens the love, and how the love aggravates the sin. iii. that leads me to another point, that the keeping of these two thoughts together should lead us all to conscious penitence. the psalmist's words are not the mere complaint of a soul in affliction, they are also the acknowledgment of a conscience repenting. the contemplation of these two numberless series should affect us all in a like manner. now there is a superficial kind of popular religion which has a great deal to say about the first of these texts; and very little or next to nothing about the second. it is a very defective kind of religion that says:--'many, o lord my god! are thy thoughts which are to us-ward,' but has never been down on its knees with the confession 'mine iniquities have taken hold upon me.' but defective as it is, it is all the religion which many people have, and i doubt not, some of my hearers have no more. i would press on you all this truth, that there is no deep personal religion without a deep consciousness of personal transgression. have you got that, my brother? have you ever had it? have you ever known what it is so to look at god's love that it smites you into tears of repentance when you think of the way you have requited him? if you have not, i do not think the sense of god's love has gone very deeply into you, notwithstanding all that you say; and sure i am that you have never got to the point where you can understand it most clearly and most deeply. the sense of sin, the consciousness of personal demerit, the feeling that i have gone against him and his loving law,--that is as important and as essential an element in all deep personal religion as the clear and thankful apprehension of the love of god. nay, more; there never has been and there never will be in a man's heart, a worthy adequate apprehension of, and response to, the wonderful love of god, except it be accompanied with a sense of sin. i, therefore, urge this upon you that, for the vigour of your own personal religion, you must keep these two things well together. beware of such a shallow, easy-going, matter-of-course, taking for granted god's infinite love, that it makes you think very little of your own sins against that love. and remember, on the other hand, that the only way, or at least by far the surest way, to learn the depth and the darkness of my own transgression is by bringing my heart under the influence of that great love of god in jesus christ. it is not preaching hell that will break a man's heart down into true repentance. it is not thundering over him with the terrors of law and trying to prick his conscience that will bring him to a deep real knowledge of his sin. these may be subordinate and auxiliary, but the real power that convinces of sin is the love of god. the one light which illuminates the dark recesses of one's own heart, and makes us feel how dark they are, and how full of creeping unclean things, is the light of the love of god that shines in jesus christ, the light that shines from the cross of calvary. oh, dear friends! if we are ever to know the greatness of god's love we must feel our personal sin which that great love has forgiven and purged away, and if we are ever to know the depth of our own evil, we must measure it by his wonderful tenderness. we must set our 'sins in the light of his countenance,' and contrast that supreme sacrifice with our own selfish loveless lives, that the contrast may subdue us to penitence and melt us to tears. iv. lastly, looking at these two numberless series together will bring into the deepest penitence a joyful confidence. there are regions of experience the very opposite of that error of which i have just been speaking. there are some of us, perhaps, who have so profound a sense of their own shortcomings and sins that the mists rising from these have blurred the sky to us and shut out the sun. some of you, perhaps, may be saying to yourselves that you cannot get hold of god's love because your sin seems to you to be so great, or may be saying to yourselves that it is impossible that you should ever get the victory over this evil of yours, because it has laid hold upon you with so tight a grasp. if there be in any heart listening to me now any inclination to doubt the infinite love of god, or the infinite possibility of cleansing from all sin, let me come with the simple word, bind these two texts together, and never so look at your own evil as to lose sight of the infinite mercy of god. it is safe to say--ay! it is blessed to say--'mine iniquities are more than the hairs of mine head,' when we can also say, 'thy thoughts to me are more than can be numbered.' there are not two innumerable series, there is only one. there is a limit and a number to my sins and to yours, but god's mercies are properly numberless. they overlap all our sins, they stretch beyond our sins in all dimensions. they go beneath them, they encompass them, and they will thin them away and cause them to disappear. my sins may be many, god's mercies are more. my sins may be inveterate, god's mercy is from everlasting. my sins may be strong, god's mercy is omnipotent. my sins may seem to 'have laid upon me,' god can rescue me from their grip. they are a film on the surface of the deep ocean of his love. my sins may be as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable, the love of god in jesus christ is like the great sea which rolls over the sands and buries them. my sins may rise mountains high, but his mercies are a great deep which will cover the mountains to their very summit. ah! my sin is enormous, god's mercy is inexhaustible. 'with thee is plenteous redemption, and he will redeem israel from all his iniquities.' thirsting for god 'my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god.'--psalm xiii. . this whole psalm reads like the sob of a wounded heart. the writer of it is shut out from the temple of his god, from the holy soil of his native land. one can see him sitting solitary yonder in the lonely wilderness (for the geographical details that occur in one part of the psalm point to his situation as being on the other side of the jordan, in the mountains of moab)--can see him sitting there with long wistful gaze yearning across the narrow valley and the rushing stream that lay between him and the land of god's chosen people, and his eye resting perhaps on the mountaintop that looked down upon jerusalem. he felt shut out from the presence of god. we need not suppose that he believed all the rest of the world to be profane and god-forsaken, except only the temple. nor need we wonder, on the other hand, that his faith did cling to form, and that he thought the sparrows beneath the eaves of the temple blessed birds! he was depressed, because he was shut out from the tokens of god's presence; and because he _was_ depressed, he shut himself out from the reality of the presence. and so he cried with a cry which never is in vain, 'my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god!' taken, then, in its original sense, the words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call religious depression. but i have ventured to take them in a wider sense than that. it is not only christian men who are cast down, whose souls 'thirst for god.' it is not only men upon earth whose souls thirst for god. all men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs. every human heart may breathe it out, if it understands itself. the longing for 'the living god' belongs to all men. thwarted, stifled, it still survives. unconscious, it is our deepest misery. recognised, yielded to, accepted, it is the foundation of our highest blessings. filled to the full, it still survives unsatiated and expectant. for all men upon earth, christian or not christian, for christians here below, whether in times of depression or in times of gladness, and for the blessed and calm spirits that in ecstasy of longing, full of fruition, stand around god's throne--it is equally true that their souls 'thirst for god, for the living god.' only with this difference, that to some the desire is misery and death, and to some the desire is life and perfect blessedness. so that the first thought i would suggest to you now is, that there is an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after god, which is what we call the state of nature; secondly, that there is an imperfect longing after god, fully satisfied, which is what we call the state of grace; and lastly, that there is a perfect longing, perfectly satisfied, which is what we call the state of glory. nature; religion upon earth; blessedness in heaven--my text is the expression, in divers senses, of them all. i. in the first place, then, there is in every man an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after god, and that is the state of nature. experience is the test of that assertion. and the most superficial examination of the facts of daily life, as well as the questioning of our own souls, will tell us that _this_ is the leading feature of them--a state of unrest. what is it that one of those deistic poets of our own land says, about 'man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest'? what is the meaning of the fact that all round about us, and we partaking of it, there is ceaseless, gigantic activity going on? the very fact that men work, the very fact of activity in the mind and life, noble as it is, and root of all that is good, and beautiful as it is, is still the testimony of nature to this fact that i by myself am full of passionate longings, of earnest desires, of unsupplied wants. 'i thirst,' is the voice of the whole world. no man is made to be satisfied from himself. for the stilling of our own hearts, for the satisfying of our own nature, for the strengthening and joy of our being, we need to go beyond ourselves, and to fix upon something external to ourselves. we are not independent. none of us can stand by himself. no man carries within him the fountain from which he can draw. if a heart is to be blessed, it must go out of the narrow circle of its own individuality; and if a man's life is to be strong and happy, he must get the foundation of his strength somewhere else than in his own soul. and, my friends! especially you young men, all that modern doctrine of self-reliance, though it has a true side to it, has also a frightfully false side. though it may he quite true that a man ought to be, in one sense, sufficient for himself, and that there is no real blessedness of which the root does not lie within the nature and heart of the man; though all that be quite true, yet, if the doctrine means (as on the lips of many a modern eloquent and powerful teacher of it, it does mean) that we can do without god, that we may be self-reliant and self-sufficient, and proudly neglectful of all the divine forces that come down into life to brighten and gladden it, it is a lie, false and fatal; and of all the falsehoods that are going about this world at present, i know not one that is varnished over with more apparent truth, that is smeared over with more of the honey that catches young, ardent, ingenuous hearts, than that half-truth, and therefore most deceptive error, which preaches independence, and self-reliance, and which _means_--a man's soul does not 'thirst for the living god.' take care of it! we are made _not_ to be independent. we are made, next, to need, not _things_, but _living beings_. 'my soul thirsteth'--for what? an abstraction, a possession, riches, a thing? no! 'my soul thirsteth for god, for _the living god_.' yes, hearts want hearts. the converse of christ's saying is equally true; he said, 'god is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit'; man has a spirit, and man must have spirit to worship, to lean upon, to live by, or all will be inefficient and unsatisfactory. oh, lay this to heart, my brother!--no _things_ can satisfy a living soul. no accumulation of dead matter can become the life of an immortal being. the two classes are separated by the whole diameter of the universe--matter and spirit, thing and person; and _you_ cannot feed yourself upon the dead husks that lie there round about you--wealth, position, honour. books, thoughts, though they are nobler than these other, are still inefficient. principles, 'causes,' emotions springing from truth, these are not enough. i want more than that, i want something to love, something to lay a hand upon, that shall return the grasp of the hand. a living man must have a living god, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. we are made to need _persons_, not _things_. then again, we need _one_ being who shall be all-sufficient. there is no greater misery than that which may ensue from the attempt to satisfy our souls by the accumulation of objects, each of them imperfect and finite, which yet we fancy, woven together, will make an adequate whole. when a heart is diverted from its one central purpose, when a life is split up in a hundred different directions and into a hundred different emotions, it is like a beam of light passed through some broken surface where it is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision, there is no perfect light. if a man is to be blessed, he must have one source to which he can go. the merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls, may find the many; but until he has bartered them all for the one, there is something lacking. not only does the understanding require to pass through the manifold, up and up in ever higher generalisations, till it reaches the one from whom all things come; but the heart requires to soar, if it would be at rest, through all the diverse regions where its love may legitimately tarry for a while, until it reaches the sole and central throne of the universe, and there it may cease its flight, and fold its weary wings, and sleep like a bird within its nest. we want a _being_, and we want _one being_ in whom shall be sphered all perfection, in whom shall abide all power and blessedness; beyond whom thought cannot pass, out of whose infinite circumference love does not need to wander; besides whose boundless treasures no other riches can be required; who is light for the understanding, power for the will, authority for the practical life, purpose for the efforts, motive for the doings, end and object for the feelings, home of the affections, light of our seeing, life of our life, the love of our heart, the one living god, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth; who is all in all, and without whom everything else is misery. 'my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god.' brother! let me ask you the question, before i pass on--the question for the sake of which i am preaching this sermon: do _you_ know that father? i know this much, that every heart here now answers an 'amen' (if it will be honest) to what i have been saying. unrest; panting, desperate thirst, deceiving itself as to where it should go; slaking itself 'at the gilded puddles that the beasts would cough at,' instead of coming to the water of life!--that is the state of man without god. that is nature. that is irreligion. the condition in which every man is that is not trusting in jesus christ, is this--thirsting for god, and not knowing _whom_ he is thirsting for, and so not getting the supply that he wants. ii. there is a conscious longing, imperfect, but answered; and that is the state of grace--the beginning of religion in a man's soul. if it be true that there are, as part of the universal human experience, however overlaid and stifled, these necessities of which i have been speaking, the very existence of the necessities affords a presumption, before all evidence, that, somehow and somewhere, they shall be supplied. there can be no deeper truth--none, i think, that ought to have more power in shaping some parts of our christian creed, than this, that god is a faithful creator; and where he makes men with longings, it is a prophecy that those longings are going to be supplied. the same ground which avails to defend doctrines that cannot be so well defended by any other argument--the same ground on which we say that there is an immortality, because men long for it and believe in it; that there is a god because men cannot get rid of the instinctive conviction that there is; that there is a retribution, because men's consciences do ask for it, and cry out for it--the very same process which may be applied to the buttressing and defending of all the grandest truths of the gospel, applies also in this practical matter. if i, made by god who knew what he was doing when he made me, am formed with these deep necessities, with these passionate longings--then it cannot but be that it is intended that they should be to me a means of leading me to him, and that there they should be satisfied. for he is 'the faithful creator,' and he remembers the conditions under which his making of us has placed us. 'he knoweth our frame,' and he remembereth what he has implanted within us. and the presumption is, of course, turned into an actual certainty when we let in the light of the gospel upon the thing. then we can say to every man that thus is yearning after a goodness dimly perceived, and does not know what it is that he wants, and we say to you now, brother! betake yourself to the cross of christ go with those wants of yours to 'the lamb of god that taketh away the sin of the world': he will interpret them to you. he will explain to you, as you do not now know, what they mean; and, better than that, he will supply them all. your souls are thirsting; and you look about, here and there, and everywhere, for springs of water. _there_ is the fountain--go to christ. your souls are thirsting for god. the unfathomed ocean of the godhead lies far beyond my lip; but here is the channel through which there flows that river of water of life. here is the manifested god, here is the granted god, here is the godhead coming into connection and union with man, his wants and his sins--the 'living god' and his living son, his everlasting word. 'he that believeth upon him shall never hunger, and he that cometh unto him shall never thirst.' god is the divine and unfathomable ocean; christ the son is the stream that brings salvation to every man's lips. all wants are supplied there. take it as a piece of the simplest prose, with no rhetorical exaggeration about it, that christ is _everything_, everything that a man can want. we are made to require, and to be restless until we possess, perfect truth--there it is! we are made to want, and to be restless until we get, perfect, infinite unchangeable love--there it is! we must have, or the burden of our own self-will will be a misery to us, a hand laid upon the springs of our conduct, authoritative and purifying, and have the blessedness of some voice to say to us, 'i bid thee, and that is enough'--there it is! we must have rest, purity, hope, gladness, life in our souls--there they all are! whatever form of human nature and character be yours, my brother!--whatever exigencies of life you may be lying under the pressure of--man or woman, adult or child, father or son, man of business or man of thought, struggling with difficulties or bright with joy--oh! believe us, the perfecting of your character may be got in the lamb of god, and without him it never can be possessed. christ is everything, and 'out of his fulness all we receive grace for grace.' not only in christ is there the perfect supply of all these necessities, but also that fulness _becomes ours_ on the simple condition of desiring it. the thirst for the living god in a man who has faith in christ jesus, is not a thirst which amounts to pain, or arises from a sense of non-possession. but in this divine region the principle of the giving is this--to desire is to have; to long for is to possess. there is no wide interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid and life-giving waters. no one ever desired the grace of god, really and truly desired it; but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it--just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied. therefore we have to preach that grand gospel that faith, simple, conscious longing, turned to christ, avails to bring down the full and perfect supply. but some christian people here may reply, 'ah! i wish it were so: what was that you were saying at the beginning of your sermon, about men having religious depression, about christians longing and not possessing?' well, i have only this to say about that matter. wherever in a heart that really believes on god in christ, there is a thirst that amounts to pain, and that has with it a sense of non-possession, that is not because christ's fulness has become shrunken; that is not because there is a change in god's law, that the measure of the desire is the measure of the reception; but it is only because, for some reason or other that belongs to the man alone, the desire is not deep, genuine, simple, but is troubled and darkened. what we ask, we get. if i am a christian, however feeble i may be, the feebleness of my faith and the feebleness of my desire may make my supplies of grace feeble; but if i am a christian, there is no such thing as an earnest longing unsatisfied, no such thing as a thirst accompanied with a pain and sense of want, except in consequence of my own transgression. and thus there _is_ a longing imperfect in this life, but fully supplied according to the measure of its intensity, a longing after 'the living god'; and that is the state of a christian man. and o my friend! that is a widely different desire from the other that i have been speaking about. it is blessed thus to say, 'my soul thirsteth for god.' it is blessed to feel the passionate wish for more light, more grace, more peace, more wisdom, more of god. that _is_ joy, that _is_ peace! is that _your_ experience in this present life? iii. lastly, there is a perfect longing perfectly satisfied; and that is heaven. we shall not there be independent, of course, of constant supplies from the great central fulness, any more than we are here. one may see in one aspect, that just as the christian life here on earth is in a very true sense a state of never thirsting any more, because we have christ, and yet in another sense is a state of continual longing and desire--so the christian and glorified life in heaven, in one view of it, is the removal of all that thirst which marked the condition of man upon earth, and in another is the perfecting of all those aspirations and desires. thirst, as longing, is eternal; thirst, as aspiration after god, is the glory of heaven; thirst, as desire for more of him, is the very condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its blessedness. that future life gives us two elements, an infinite god, and an indefinitely expansible human spirit: an infinite god to fill, and a soul to be filled, the measure and the capacity of which has no limit set to it that we can see. what will be the consequence of the contact of these two? why this, for the first thing, that always, at every moment of that blessed life, there shall be a perpetual fruition, a perpetual satisfaction, a deep and full fountain filling the whole soul with the refreshment of its waves and the music of its flow. and yet, and yet--though at every moment in heaven we shall be satisfied, filled full of god, full to overflowing in all our powers--yet the very fact that the god who dwells in us, and fills our whole natures with unsullied and perfect blessedness, is an infinite god; and that we in whom the infinite father dwells, are men with souls that can grow, and can grow for ever--will result in this, that at every moment our capacities will expand; that at every moment, therefore, the desire will grow and spring afresh; that at every moment god will be seen unveiling undreamed-of beauties, and revealing hitherto unknown heights of blessedness before us; and that the sight of that transcendent, unapproached, unapproachable, and yet attracting and transforming glory, will draw us onward as by an impulse from above, and the possession of some portion of it will bear us upward as by a power from within; and so, nearer, nearer, ever nearer to the throne of light, the centre of blessedness, the growing, and glorifying, and greatening souls of the perfectly and increasingly blessed shall 'mount up with wings as eagles.' heaven _is_ endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition--a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life! my brother! let me put two sayings of scripture side by side, 'my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god,'--'father abraham! send lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue.' there be two thirsts, one, the longing for god, which, satisfied, is heaven; one, the longing for quenching of self-lit fires, and for one drop of the lost delights of earth to cool the thirsty throat, which, unsatisfied, is hell. then hearken to the final vision on the page of scripture, 'he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of god and of the lamb.' to us it is showed, and to us the whole revelation of god converges to that last mighty call, 'let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely!' the psalmist's remonstrance with his soul 'why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in god: for i shall yet praise him, the health of my countenance, and my god.'--psalm xliii. . this verse, which closes this psalm, occurs twice in the previous one. it is a kind of refrain. obviously this little psalm, of which my text is a part, was originally united with the preceding one. that the two made one is clear to anybody that will read them, by reason of structure, and tone, and similarity of the singer's situation, and the recurrence of many phrases, and especially of these significant words of my text. the psalmist is in circumstances of trouble and sorrow. we need not enter upon them particularly, but the thing that i desire to point out is that three times does the psalmist take himself to task and question himself as to the reasonableness of the emotions that are surging in his soul, and checks these by higher considerations. thrice he does it; twice in vain, for the trouble and anxiety come rolling back upon him in spite of the moment's respite, but the third time he triumphs. i. we note, then, first, that moods and emotions should be examined and governed by a higher self. in the psalmist's case, his gloom and despondency, which could plead good reasons for their existence, had everything their own way at first, and swept over his soul like the first rush of waters which have burst their bounds. but, presently, the ruling part of his nature wakes, and brings the feebler lower soul to its tribunal, and says, in effect, 'now! now that i am here, what hast thou to say about these sorrows that thou hast been complaining about? _why_ art thou cast down, o my soul? why art thou disquieted? ... hope in god!' i shall have a word or two to say presently about the details of this remonstrance, but the main point that i make, to begin with, is just this, that however strong and reasonably occasioned by circumstances a man's emotions and feelings, either of the bright or the dark kind, may be, they are not to be indulged, unless they have passed muster and examination by that higher and better self. it is necessary to keep a very tight hand upon _all_ our feelings, whether they be the natural desires of the sensuous part of our nature, or whether they be the sentiments of sadness, or doubt, or anxiety, or perplexity, which are the natural results of outward circumstances of trial; or whether, on the contrary, they be the bright and buoyant ones which come, like angels, along with prosperous hours. but that necessity, commonplace as it is of all morals and all religion, is yet a thing which, day by day, we so forget that we need to be ever and anon reminded of it. there are hosts of people who, making profession of being christians, do not habitually put the brake on their moods and tempers, and who seem to think that it is a sufficient vindication of gloom and sadness to say that things are going badly with them in the outer world, and who act as if they supposed that no joy can be too exuberant and no elation too lofty if, on the other hand, things are going rightly. it is a miserable travesty of the christian faith to suppose that its prime purpose is anything else than to put into our hands the power of ruling ourselves because we let christ rule us. and so, dear brethren! though it be the a b c of christian teaching, suffer this word of exhortation. it is only 'milk for babes,' but it is milk that the babes are very unwilling to take. learn from this verse before us the solemn duty of rigid control, by the higher self, of the tremulous, emotional lower self which responds so completely to every change of temperature or circumstances in the world without. and remember that there should be a central heat which keeps the temperature substantially the same, whatever be the weather outside. as the wheel-house, and the steering gear, and the rudder of the ship proclaim their purpose of guidance and direction, so eloquently and unmistakably does the make of our inward selves tell us that emotions and moods and tempers are meant to be governed, often to be crushed, always to be moderated, by sovereign will and reason. in the psalmist's language, 'my soul' has to give account of its tremors and flutterings to 'me,' the ruling self, who should be lord of temperament, and control the fluctuations of feeling. ii. note that there are two ways of looking at causes of dejection and disquiet. the whole preceding parts of both the psalms, before this refrain, are an answer to the question which my text puts. 'why art thou cast down, o my soul?' 'my soul' has been talking two whole psalms, to explain why it is cast down. and after all the eloquent torrent of words to vindicate and explain its reasons for sadness--separation from the sanctuary, bitter remembrances of bright days, which the poet tells us are 'a sorrow's crown of sorrow,' taunts of enemies and the like--after all these have been said over and over again, the psalmist says to himself: 'come now, let us hear it all once more. _why_ art thou cast down? why art thou disquieted within me? thou hast been telling the reasons abundantly. speak them once again, and let us have a look at them.' there is a court of appeal in each man, which tests and tries his reasons for his moods; and these, which look very sufficient to the flesh, turn out to be very insufficient when investigated and tested by the higher spirit or self. we should 'appeal from philip drunk to philip sober.' and if a man will be honest with himself, and tell himself why he is in such a pucker of terror, or why he is in such a rapture of joy, nine times out of ten the attempt to tell the reasons will be the condemnation of the mood which they are supposed to justify. if men would only bring the causes or occasions of the tempers and feelings which they allow to direct them, to the bar of common sense, to say nothing of religious faith, half the furious boilings in their hearts would stop their ebullition. it would be like pouring cold water into a kettle on the fire. it would end its bubbling. everything has two handles. the aspect of any event depends largely on the beholder's point of view. 'there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' 'why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?' the answer is often very hard to give; the question is always very salutary to ask. iii. note that no reasons for being cast down are so strong as those for elation and calm hope. 'hope thou in god, for i shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my god.' i need not deal here with the fact that the first of the three occurrences of this refrain is, in our bible, a little different from the other two. that is probably a mistake in the text. in all three cases the words ought to stand the same. try to realise what god is to yourselves--'my god' and 'the health of my countenance.' that will stimulate sluggish feeling; that will calm disturbed emotion. he that can say 'my god!' and in that possession can repose, will not be easily moved, by the trivialities and transitorinesses of this life, to excessive disquiet, whether of the exuberant or of the woful sort. there is a wonderful calming power in realising our possession of god as our portion--not stagnating, but quieting. i am quite sure that the troubles of our lives, and the gladnesses of our lives, which often distract, would be far less operative in disturbing, if we felt more that god was ours and that we were god's. brethren! 'there is no joy but calm.' to be at rest is better than rapture. and there is no way of getting and keeping a fixed temper of still tranquillity unless we go into that deep and hidden chamber, in the secret place of the most high, where we cannot 'hear the loud winds when they call,' but dwell in security, whatever storms harass the land. 'why art thou cast down,' or lifted 'up,' and, in either case, 'disquieted'? 'hope in god,' and be at rest. iv. note that the effort to lay hold on the truth which calms is to be repeated in spite of failures. the words of our text are thrice repeated in these two psalms. in the two former instances they are followed by a fresh burst of pained feeling. a moment of tranquillity interrupts the agitation of the psalmist's soul, but is soon followed by the recurrence of 'the horrible storm' that 'begins afresh.' a tiny island of blue appears in his sky, and then the pale, ugly, grey rack drives across it once more. but the guiding self keeps the hand firm on the tiller, notwithstanding the wash of the water and the rolling of the ship, and the dominant will conquers at last, and at the third time the yielding soul obeys and is quiet, because the psalmist's will resolved that it should be quiet, and it hopes in god because he, by a dead lift of effort, lifts it up to hope. no effort at tranquillising our hearts is wholly lost; and no attempt to lay hold upon god is wholly in vain. men build a dam to keep out the sea, and the winter storms make a breach in it, but it is not washed away altogether, and next season they will not need to begin to build from quite so low down; but there will be a bit of the former left, to put the new structure upon, and so by degrees it will rise above the tide, and at last will keep it out. did you ever see a child upon a swing, or a gymnast upon a trapeze? each oscillation goes a little higher; each starts from the same lowest point, but the elevation on either side increases with each renewed effort, until at last the destined height is reached and the daring athlete leaps on to a solid platform. so we may, if i might say so, by degrees, by reiterated efforts, swing ourselves up to that steadfast floor on which we may stand high above all that breeds agitation and gloom. it is possible, in the midst of change and circumstances that excite sad emotions, anxieties, and fears--it is possible to have this calmness of hope in god. the rainbow that spans the cataract rises steadfast above the white, tortured water beneath, and persists whilst all is hurrying change below, and there are flowers on the grim black rocks by the side of the fall, whose verdure is made greener and whose brightness is made brighter, by the freshening of the spray of the waterfall. so we may be 'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,' and may bid dejected and disquieted souls to hope in god and be still. the king in his beauty 'thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into thy lips: therefore god hath blessed thee forever. . gird thy sword upon thy thigh, o mighty one, thy glory and thy majesty. . and in thy majesty ride on prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness: and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. . thine arrows are sharp; the peoples fall under thee; they are in the heart of the king's enemies. . thy throne, o god, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. . thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness: therefore god, thy god, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' --psalm xlv. - (r.v.). there is no doubt that this psalm was originally the marriage hymn of some jewish king. all attempts to settle who that was have failed, for the very obvious reason that neither the history nor the character of any of them correspond to the psalm. its language is a world too wide for the diminutive stature and stained virtues of the greatest and best of them, and it is almost ludicrous to attempt to fit its glowing sentences even to a solomon. they all look like little david in saul's armour. so, then, we must admit one of two things. either we have here a piece of poetical exaggeration far beyond the limits of poetic license, or 'a greater than solomon is here.' every jewish king, by virtue of his descent and of his office, was a living prophecy of the greatest of the sons of david, the future king of israel. and the psalmist sees the ideal person who, as he knew, was one day to be real, shining through the shadowy form of the earthly king, whose very limitations and defects, no less than his excellences and his glories, forced the devout israelite to think of the coming king in whom 'the sure mercies' promised to david should be facts at last. in plainer words, the psalm celebrates christ, not only although, but because, it had its origin and partial application in a forgotten festival at the marriage of some unknown king. it sees him in the light of the messianic hope, and so it prophesies of christ. my object is to study the features of this portrait of the king, partly in order that we may better understand the psalm, and partly in order that we may with the more reverence crown him as lord of all. i. the person of the king. the old-world ideal of a monarch put special emphasis upon two things--personal beauty and courtesy of address and speech. the psalm ascribes both of these to the king of israel, and from both of them draws the conclusion that one so richly endowed with the most eminent of royal graces is the object of the special favour of god. 'thou art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured into thy lips: therefore god hath blessed thee for ever.' here, at the very outset, we have the keynote struck of superhuman excellence; and though the reference is, on the surface, only to physical perfection, yet beneath that there lies the deeper reference to a character which spoke through the eloquent frame, and in which all possible beauties and sovereign graces were united in fullest development, in most harmonious co-operation and unstained purity. 'thou art fairer than the children of men.' put side by side with that, words which possibly refer to, and seem to contradict it. a later prophet, speaking of the same person, said: 'his visage was so marred, more than any man, and his form than the sons of men.... there is no form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.' we have to think, not of the outward form, howsoever lovely with the loveliness of meekness and transfigured with the refining patience of suffering it may have been, but of the beauty of a soul that was all radiant with a lustre of loveliness that shames the fragmentary and marred virtues of the best of us, and stands before the world for ever as the supreme type and high-water mark of the grace that is possible to a human spirit. god has lodged in men's nature the apprehension of himself, and of all that flows from him, as true, as good, as beautiful; and to these three there correspond wisdom, morality, and art. the latter, divorced from the other two, becomes earthly and devilish. this generation needs the lesson that beauty wrenched from truth and goodness, and pursued for its own sake, by artist or by poet or by _dilettante_, leads by a straight descent to ugliness and to evil, and that the only true satisfying of the deep longing for 'whatsoever things are lovely' is to be found when we turn to christ and find in him, not only wisdom that enlightens the understanding, and righteousness that fills the conscience, but beauty that satisfies the heart. he is 'altogether lovely.' nor let us forget that once on earth 'the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment did shine as the light,' as indicative of the possibilities that lay slumbering in his lowly manhood, and as prophetic of that to which we believe that the ascended christ hath now attained--viz. the body of his glory, wherein he reigns, filled with light and undecaying loveliness on the throne of the heaven. thus he is fairer in external reality now, as he is, by the confession of an admiring, though not always believing, world, fairer in inward character than the children of men. another personal characteristic is 'grace is poured into thy lips.' kingly courtesy, and kingly graciousness of word, must be the characteristic of the sovereign of men. the abundance of that bestowment is expressed by that word, 'poured.' we need only remember, 'all wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth,' or how even the rough instruments of authority were touched and diverted from their appointed purpose, and came back and said, 'never man spake like this man.' to the music of christ's words all other eloquence is harsh, poor, shallow--like the piping of a shepherd boy upon some wretched oaten straw as compared with the full thunder of the organ. words of unmingled graciousness came from his lips. that fountain never sent forth 'sweet waters and bitter.' he satisfies the canon of st. james: 'if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man.' words of wisdom, of love, of pity, of gentleness, of pardon, of bestowment, and only such, came from him. 'daughter! be of good cheer.' 'son! thy sins be forgiven thee.' 'come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden.' 'grace is poured into thy lips'; and, withal, it is the grace of a king. for his language is authoritative even when it is most tender, and regal when it is most gentle. his lips, sweet as honey and the honeycomb, are the lips of an autocrat. 'he speaks, and it is done: he commands, and it stands fast.' he says to the tempest, 'be still!' and it is quiet; and to the demons, 'come out of him!' and they disappear; and to the dead, 'come forth!' and he stumbles from the tomb. another personal characteristic is--'god hath blessed thee for ever.' by which we are to understand, not that the two preceding graces are the reasons for the divine benediction, but that the divine benediction is the cause of them; and therefore they are the signs of it. it is not that because he is lovely and gracious therefore god hath blessed him; but it is that we may know that god has blessed him, since he is lovely and gracious. these endowments are the results, not the causes; the signs or the proofs, not the reasons of the divine benediction. that is to say, the humanity so fair and unique shows by its beauty that it is the result of the continual and unique operation and benediction of a present god. we understand him when we say, 'on him rests the spirit of god without measure or interruption.' the explanation of the perfect humanity is the abiding divinity. ii. we pass from the person of the king, in the next place, to his warfare. the psalmist breaks out in a burst of invocation, calling upon the king to array himself in his weapons of warfare, and then in broken clauses vividly pictures the conflict. the invocation runs thus: 'gird on thy sword upon thy thigh, o mighty hero! gird on thy glory and thy majesty, and ride on prosperously on behalf (or, in the cause) of truth and meekness and righteousness.' the king, then, is the perfection of warrior strength as well as of beauty and gentleness--a combination of qualities that speaks of old days when kings _were_ kings, and reminds us of many a figure in ancient song, as well as of a saul and a david in jewish history. the singer calls upon him to bind on his side his glittering sword, and to put on, as his armour, 'glory and majesty.' these two words, in the usage of the psalms, belong to divinity, and they are applied to the monarch here as being the earthly representative of the divine supremacy, on whom there falls some reflection of the glory and the majesty of which he is the vice-regent and representative. thus arrayed, with his weapon by his side and glittering armour on his limbs, he is called upon to mount his chariot or his warhorse and ride forth. but for what? 'on behalf of truth, meekness, righteousness.' if he be a warrior, these are the purposes for which the true king of men must draw his sword, and these only. no vulgar ambition or cruel lust of conquest, earth-hunger, or 'glory' actuates him. nothing but the spread through the world of the gracious beauties which are his own can be the end of the king's warfare. he fights for truth; he fights--strange paradox--for meekness; he fights for righteousness. and he not only fights _for_ them, but _with_ them, for they are his own, and by _reason_ of them he 'rides prosperously,' as well as 'rides prosperously' in order to establish them. in two or three swift touches the psalmist next paints the tumult and hurry of the fight. 'thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.' there are no armies or allies, none to stand beside him. the one mighty figure of the kingly warrior stands forth, as in the assyrian sculptures of conquerors, erect and solitary in his chariot, crashing through the ranks of the enemy, and owing victory to his own strong arm alone. then follow three short, abrupt clauses, which, in their hurry and fragmentary character, reflect the confusion and swiftness of battle. 'thine arrows are sharp.... the people fall under thee.' ... 'in the heart of the king's enemies.' the psalmist sees the bright arrow on the string; it flies; he looks--the plain is strewed with prostrate forms, the king's arrow in the heart of each. put side by side with that this picture:--a rocky road; a great city shining in the morning sunlight across a narrow valley; a crowd of shouting peasants waving palm branches in their rustic hands; in the centre the meek carpenter's son, sitting upon the poor robes which alone draped the ass's colt, the tears upon his cheeks, and his lamenting heard above the hosannahs, as he looked across the glen and said, 'if thou hadst known the things that belong to thy peace!' that is the fulfilment, or part of the fulfilment, of this prophecy. the slow-pacing, peaceful beast and the meek, weeping christ are the reality of the vision which, in such strangely contrasted and yet true form, floated before the prophetic eye of this ancient singer, for christ's humiliation is his majesty, and his sharpest weapon is his all-penetrating love, and his cross is his chariot of victory and throne of dominion. but not only in his earthly life of meek suffering does christ fight as a king, but all through the ages the world-wide conflict for truth and meekness and righteousness is his conflict; and wherever that is being waged, the power which wages it is his, and the help which is done upon earth he doeth it all himself. true, he has his army, willing in the day of his power, and clad in priestly purity and armour of light, but all their strength, courage, and victory are from him; and when they fight and conquer, it is not they, but he in them who struggles and overcomes. we have a better hope than that built on 'a stream of tendency that makes for righteousness.' we know a christ crucified and crowned, who fights for it, and what he fights for will hold the field. this prophecy of our psalm is not exhausted yet. i have set side by side with it one picture--the christ on the ass's colt. put side by side with it this other. 'i beheld the heaven opened; and lo! a white horse. and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.' the psalm waits for its completion still, and shall be fulfilled on that day of the true marriage supper of the lamb, when the festivities of the marriage chamber shall be preceded by the last battle and crowning victory of the king of kings, the conqueror of the world. iii. lastly, we have the royalty of the king. 'thy throne, o god! is for ever and ever.' this is not the place nor time to enter on the discussion of the difficulties of these words. i must run the risk of appearing to state confident opinions without assigning reasons, when i venture to say that the translation in the authorised version is the natural one. i do not say that others have been adopted by reason of doctrinal prepossessions; i know nothing about that; but i do say that they are not by any means so natural a translation as that which stands before us. what it may mean is another matter; but the plain rendering of the words, i venture to assert, is what our english bible makes it--'thy throne, o god! is for ever and ever.' then it is to be remembered that, throughout the old testament, we have occasional instances of the use of that great and solemn designation in reference to persons in such place and authority as that they are representatives of god. so kings and judges and lawyers and the like are spoken of more than once. therefore there is not, in the language, translated as in our english bible, necessarily the implication of the unique divinity of the persons so addressed. but i take it that this is an instance in which the prophet was 'wiser than he knew,' and in which you and i understand him better than he understood himself, and know what god, who spoke through him, meant, whatsoever the prophet, through whom he spoke, did mean. that is to say, i take the words before us as directly referring to jesus christ, and as directly declaring the divinity of his person, and therefore the eternity of his kingdom. we live in days when that perpetual sovereignty is being questioned. in a revolutionary time like this it is well for christian people, seeing so many venerable things going, to tighten their grasp upon the conviction that, whatever goes, christ's kingdom will not go; and that, whatever may be shaken by any storms, the foundation of his throne stands fast. for our personal lives, and for the great hopes of the future beyond the grave, it is all-important that we should grasp, as an elementary conviction of our faith, the belief in the perpetual rule of that saviour whose rule is life and peace. in the great mosque of damascus, which was a christian church once, there may still be read, deeply cut in the stone, high above the pavement where now mohammedans bow, these words, 'thy kingdom, o christ! is an everlasting kingdom.' it is true, and it shall yet be known that he is for ever and ever the monarch of the world. then, again, this royalty is a royalty of righteousness. 'the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness.' his rule is no arbitrary sway, his rod is no rod of iron and tyrannical oppression, his own personal character is righteousness. righteousness is the very life-blood and animating principle of his rule. he loves righteousness, and, therefore, puts his broad shield of protection over all who love it and seek after it. he hates wickedness, and therefore he wars against it wherever it is, and seeks to draw men out of it. and thus his kingdom is the hope of the world. and, lastly, this dominion of perennial righteousness is the dominion of unparalleled gladness. 'therefore god, even thy god, hath anointed thee with the oil of joy above thy fellows.' set side by side with that the other words, 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.' and remember how, near the very darkest hour of the lord's earthly experiences, he said:--'these things have i spoken unto you that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.' christ's gladness flowed from christ's righteousness. because his pure humanity was ever in touch with god, and in conscious obedience to him, therefore, though darkness was around, there was light within. he was 'sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,' and the saddest of men was likewise the gladdest, and possessed 'the oil of joy above his fellows.' brother! that kingdom is offered to us; participation in that joy of our lord may belong to each of us. he rules that he may make us like himself, lovers of righteousness, and so, like himself, possessors of unfading joy. make him your king, let his arrow reach your heart, bow in submission to his power, take for your very life his words of graciousness, lovingly gaze upon his beauty till some reflection of it shall shine from you, fight by his side with strength drawn from him alone, own and adore him as the enthroned god-man, jesus christ, the son of god. crown him with the many crowns of supreme trust, heart-whole love, and glad obedience. so shall you be honoured to share in his warfare and triumph. so shall you have a throne close to his and eternal as it. so shall his sceptre be graciously stretched out to you to give you access with boldness to the presence-chamber of the king. so shall he give you too, 'the oil of joy for mourning,' even in the 'valley of weeping,' and the fulness of his gladness for evermore, when he sets you at his right hand. the portrait of the bride 'hearken, o daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; . so shall the king desire thy beauty: for he is thy lord; and worship thou him. . and the daughter of tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall entreat thy favour. . the king's daughter within the palace is all glorious: her clothing is inwrought with gold. . she shall be led unto the king in broidered work: the virgins, her companions, that follow her shall be brought unto thee. . with gladness and rejoicing shall they be led; they shall enter into the king's palace.'--psalm xlv. - (r.v.). the relation between god and israel is constantly represented in the old testament under the emblem of a marriage. the tenderest promises of protection and the sharpest rebukes of unfaithfulness are based upon this foundation. 'thy maker is thy husband'; or, 'i am married unto thee, saith the lord.' the emblem is transferred in the new testament to christ and his church. beginning with john the baptist's designation of him as the bridegroom, it reappears in many of our lord's sayings and parables, is frequent in the writings of the apostle paul, and reaches its height of poetic splendour and terror in that magnificent description in revelation of 'the bride, the lamb's wife,' and 'the marriage supper of the lamb.' seeing, then, the continual occurrence of this metaphor, it is unnatural and almost impossible to deny its presence in this psalm. in a former sermon i have directed attention to the earlier portion of it, which presents us, in its portraiture of the king, a shadowy and prophetic outline of jesus christ. i desire, in a similar fashion, to deal now with the latter portion, which, in its portrait of the bride, presents us with truths having their real fulfilment in the church collectively and in the individual soul. of course, inasmuch as the consort of a jewish monarch was not an incarnate prophecy as her husband was, the transference of the historical features of this wedding-song to a spiritual purpose is not so satisfactory, or easy, in the latter part as in the former. there is a thicker rind of prose fact, as it were, to cut through, and certain of the features cannot be applied to the relation between christ and his church without undue violence. but, whilst we admit that, it is also clear that the main, broad outlines of this picture do require as well as permit its higher application. therefore i turn to them to try to bring out what they teach us so eloquently and vividly of christ's gifts to, and requirements from, the souls that are wedded to him. i. now the first point is this--the all-surrendering love that must mark the bride. the language of the tenth verse is the voice of prophecy or inspiration; speaking words of fatherly counsel to the princess--'forget also thine own people and thy father's house.' historically i suppose it points to the foreign birth of the queen, who is called upon to abandon all old ties, and to give herself with wholehearted consecration to her new duties and relations. in all real wedded life, as those who have tasted it know, there comes, by sweet necessity, the subordination, in the presence of a purer and more absorbing love, brought close by a will itself ablaze with the sacred glow. therefore, while giving all due honour to other forms of christian opposition to the prevailing unbelief, i urge the cultivation of a quickened spiritual life as by far the most potent. does not history bear me out in that view? what, for instance, was it that finished the infidelity of the eighteenth century? whether had butler's _analogy_ or charles wesley's hymns, paley's _evidences_ or whitefield's sermons, most to do with it? a languid church breeds unbelief as surely as a decaying oak does fungus. in a condition of depressed vitality, the seeds of disease, which a full vigour would shake off, are fatal. raise the temperature, and you kill the insect germs. a warmer tone of spiritual life would change the atmosphere which unbelief needs for its growth. it belongs to the fauna of the glacial epoch, and when the rigours of that wintry time begin to melt, and warmer days to set in, the creatures of the ice have to retreat to arctic wildernesses, and leave a land no longer suited for their life. a diffused unbelief, such as we see around us to-day, does not really arise from the logical basis on which it seems to repose. it comes from something much deeper,--a certain habit and set of mind which gives these arguments their force. for want of a better name, we call it the spirit of the age. it is the result of very subtle and complicated forces, which i do not pretend to analyse. it spreads through society, and forms the congenial soil in which these seeds of evil, as we believe them to be, take root. does anybody suppose that the growth of popular unbelief is owing to the logical force of certain arguments? it is in the air; a wave of it is passing over us. we are in a condition in which it becomes shall drop the toys of earth as easily and naturally as a child will some trinket or plaything, when it stretches out its little hand to get a better gift from its loving mother. love will sweep the heart clean of its antagonists; and there is no real union between jesus christ and us except in the measure in which we joyfully, and not as a reluctant giving up of things that we would much rather keep if we durst, 'count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of christ jesus our lord.' have the terms of wedded life changed since my psalm was written? is there less need now than there used to be that, if we are to possess a heart, we should give a whole heart? and have the terms of christian living altered since the old days, when he said, 'whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple'? ah! i fear me that it is no uncharitable judgment to say that the bulk of so-called christians are playing at being christians, and have never penetrated into the depths either of the sweet all-sufficiency of the love which they say that they possess, or the constraining necessity that is in it for the surrender of all besides. many happy husbands and wives, if they would only treat jesus christ as they treat one another, would find out a power and a blessedness in the christian life that they know nothing about at present. 'daughter! forget thine own people and thy father's house!' ii. again, the second point here is that which directly follows--the king's love and the bride's reverence. 'so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy lord; and worship thou him.' the king is drawn, in the outgoings of his affection, by the sweet trust and perfect love which has surrendered everything for him and happily followed him from the far-off land. and then, in accordance with oriental ideas, and with his royal rank, the bride is exhorted, in the midst of the utter trust and equality born of love, to remember, 'he is thy lord, and reverence thou him.' so, then, here are two thoughts that go, as i take it, very deep into the realities of the christian life. the first is that, in simple literal fact, jesus christ is affected, in his relation to us, by the completeness of our dependence upon him, and surrender of all else for him. we do not believe that half vividly enough. we have surrounded jesus christ with a halo of mystery and of remoteness which neither lets us think of him as being really man or really god. and i press on you this as a plain fact, no piece of pulpit rhetoric, that his relation to us as christians hinges upon our surrender to him. of course, there is a love with which he pours himself out over the unworthy and the sinful--blessed be his name!--and the more sinful and the more unworthy, the deeper the tenderness and the more yearning the pity and pathos of invitation which he lavishes upon us. but that is a different thing from this other, which is that he is pleased or displeased, actually drawn to or repelled from us, in the measure of the completeness and gladness of our surrender of ourselves to him. that is what paul means when he says that he labours that 'whether present or absent he may be pleasing to christ.' and this is the highest and strongest motive that i know for all holy and noble living, that we shall bring a smile into our master's face and draw him nearer to ourselves thereby. '_so_ shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.' again, in the measure in which we live out our christianity, in whole-hearted and thorough surrender, in that measure shall we be _conscious_ of his nearness and feel his love. there are many christian people that have only religion enough to make them uncomfortable, only enough to make religion to them a system of regulations, negative and positive, the reasonableness and sweetness of which they but partially apprehend. they must not do _this_ because it is forbidden; they ought to do _that_ because it is commanded. they would much rather do the forbidden thing, and they have no wish to do the commanded thing, and so they live in twilight, and when they come beside a man who really has been walking in the light of christ's face, the language of his experience, though it be but a transcript of facts, sounds to them all unreal and fanatical. they miss the blessing that is waiting for them, just because they have not really given up themselves. if by resolute and continual opening of our hearts to christ's real love and presence, and by consequent casting off of our false and foolish self-dependence, we were to blow away the clouds that come between us and him, we should feel the sunshine. but as it is, a miserable multitude of professing christians 'walk in the darkness, and have no light,' or, at the most, but some wintry sunshine that struggles through the thick mist, and does little more than reveal the barrenness that lies around. brethren! if you want to be happy christians, be out-and-out ones; and if you would have your hands and your hearts filled with christ, empty them of the trash that they grip so closely now. then, on the other side, there is the reminder and exhortation: 'he is thy lord, worship thou him.' the beggar-maid that, in the old ballad, married the king, in all her love was filled with reverence; and the ragged, filthy souls, whom jesus christ stoops to love, and wash, and make his own, are never to forget, in the highest rapture of their joy, their lowly adoration, nor in the glad familiarity of their loving approach to him, cease to remember that the test of love is, 'keep my commandments.' there are types of emotional and sentimental religion that have a great deal more to say about love than about obedience; that are full of half wholesome apostrophes to a 'dear lord,' and almost forget the '_lord_' in the emphasis which they put on the '_dear_.' and i want you to remember this, as by no means an unnecessary caution, and of especial value in some quarters to-day, that the test of the reality of christian love is its lowliness, and that all that which indulges in heated emotion, and forgets practical service, is rotten and spurious. though the king desire her beauty, still, when he stretches out the golden sceptre, esther must come to him with lowly guise and a reverent heart. 'he is thy lord, worship thou him.' iii. the next point in this portraiture is the reflected honour and influence of the bride. there are difficulties about the translation of the th verse of our psalm with which i do not need to trouble you. we may take it for our purpose as it stands before us. 'the daughter of tyre' (representing the wealthy, outside nations) 'shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall entreat thy favour.' the bride being thus beloved by the king, thus standing by his side, those around recognise her dignity and honour, and draw near to secure her intercession. translate that out of the emblem into plain words, and it comes to this--if christian people, and communities of such, are to have influence in the world, they must be thorough-going christians. if they are, they will get hatred sometimes; but men know honest people and religious people when they see them, and such christians will win respect and be a power in the world. if christian men and christian communities are despised by outsiders, they very generally earn the contempt and deserve it, both from men and from heaven. the true evangelist is christian character. they that manifestly live with the sunshine of the lord's love on their faces, and whose hands are plainly clear from worldly and selfish graspings, will have the world recognising the fact and honouring them accordingly. 'the sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down to the soles of thy feet.' when the church has cast the world out of its heart, it will conquer the world--and not till then. iv. the next point in this picture is the fair adornment of the bride. the language is in part ambiguous; and if this were the place for commenting would require a good deal of comment. but we take it as it stands in our bible, 'the king's daughter is all glorious within'--not within her nature, but within the innermost recesses of the palace--'her clothing is of wrought gold. she shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework.' it is an easy and well-worn metaphor to talk about people's character as their dress. we speak about the 'habits' of a man, and we use that word to express both his customary manners and his costume. custom and costume, again, are the same word. so here, without any departure from the well-trodden path of scriptural emblem, we cannot but see in the glorious apparel the figure of the pure character with which the bride is clothed. the book of the revelation dresses her in the fine linen clean and white, which symbolises the lustrous radiance and snowy purity of righteousness. the psalm describes her dress as partly consisting in garments gleaming with gold, which suggests splendour and glory, and partly in robes of careful and many-coloured embroidery, which suggests the patience with which the slow needle has been worked through the stuff, and the variegated and manifold graces and beauties with which she is adorned. so, putting all the metaphors together, the true christian character, which will be ours if we really are the subjects of that divine love, will be lustrous and snowy as the snows on hermon, or as was the garment whose whiteness outshone the neighbouring snows when he was 'transfigured before them.' our characters will be splendid with a splendour far above the tawdry beauties and vulgar conspicuousness of the 'heroic' and worldly ideals, and will be endowed with a purity and harmony of colouring in richly various graces, such as no earthly looms can ever weave. we are not told here how the garment is attained. it is no part of the purpose of the psalm to tell us that, but it is part of its purpose to insist that there is no marriage between christ and the soul except that soul be pure, none except it be robed in the beauty of righteousness and the splendour of consecration, and the various gifts of an all-giving spirit. the man that came into the wedding-feast, with his dirty, every-day clothes on, was turned out as a rude insulter. but what of the queen that should come foully dressed? there would be no place for her amidst its solemnities. you will never stand at the right hand of christ, unless jour souls here are clothed in the fine linen clean and white, and over it the flashing wealth and the harmonised splendour of the gold and embroidery of christlike graces. we know how to get the garment. faith strips the rags and puts the best robe on us; and effort based upon faith enables us day by day to put off the old man with his deeds and to put on the new man. the bride 'made _herself_ ready,' and 'to her was _granted_ that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white.' v. lastly, we have the picture of the homecoming of the bride. 'she shall be brought unto the king.... with gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought; they shall enter into the king's palace.' the presence of virgin companions waiting on the bride is no more difficult to understand here than it is in christ's parable of the ten virgins. it is a characteristic of all parabolical representation to be elastic, and sometimes to duplicate its emblems for the same thing; and that is the case here. but the main point to be insisted upon is this, that, according to the perspective of scripture, the life of the christian church here on earth is, if i may so say, a betrothal in righteousness and loving-kindness; and that the betrothal waits for its consummation in that great future when the bride shall pass into the presence of the king. the whole collective body of sinful souls redeemed by his blood, and who know the sweetness of his partially received love, shall be drawn within the curtains of that upper house, and enter into a union with christ jesus ineffable, incomprehensible till experienced; and of which the closest union of loving souls on earth is but a dim shadow. 'he that is joined to the lord is one spirit'; and the reality of our union with him rises above the emblem of a marriage, as high as spirit rises above flesh. the psalm stops at the palace-gate. 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which god hath prepared for them that love him.' but there is a solemn prelude to that completed union and its deep rapture. before it there comes the last campaign of the conquering king on the white horse, who wars in righteousness. dear friends! you must choose now whether you will be of the company of the bride or of the company of the enemy. 'they that were ready went in with him unto the marriage, and the door was shut.' which side of the door do _you_ mean to be on? the city and river of god 'there is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of god, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. . god is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: god shall help her, and that right early. . the heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. . the lord of hosts is with us; the god of jacob is our refuge.'--psalm xlvi - . there are two remarkable events in the history of israel, one or other of which most probably supplied the historical basis upon which this psalm rests. one is that wonderful deliverance of the armies of jehoshaphat from the attacking forces of the bordering nations, which is recorded in the twentieth chapter of the book of chronicles. there you will find that, by a singular arrangement, the sons of korah, members of the priestly order, were not only in the van of the battle, but celebrated the victory by hymns of gladness. it is possible that this may be one of those hymns; but i think rather that the more ordinary reference is the correct one, which sees in this psalm and in the two succeeding ones, echoes of that supernatural deliverance of israel in the time of hezekiah, when 'the assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,' and sennacherib and all his army were, by the blast of the breath of his nostrils, swept into swift destruction. the reasons for that historical reference may be briefly stated. we find, for instance, a number of remarkable correspondences between these three psalms and portions of the book of the prophet isaiah, who, as we know, lived in the period of that deliverance. the comparison, for example, which is here drawn with such lofty, poetic force between the quiet river which 'makes glad the city of god,' and the tumultuous billows of the troubled sea, which shakes the mountain and moves the earth, is drawn by isaiah in regard to the assyrian invasion, when he speaks of israel refusing 'the waters of shiloah, which go softly,' and, therefore, having brought upon them the waters of the river--the power of assyria--'which shall fill the breadth of thy land, o immanuel!' notice, too, that the very same consolation which was given to isaiah, by the revelation of that significant appellation, 'immanuel, god with us,' appears in this psalm as a kind of refrain, and is the foundation of all its confident gladness, 'the lord of hosts is with us.' besides these obvious parallelisms, there are others to which i need not refer, which, taken together, seem to render it at least probable that we have in this psalm the devotional echo of the great deliverance of israel from assyria in the time of hezekiah. now, these verses are the cardinal central portion of the song. we may call them the hymn of the defence and deliverance of the city of god. we cannot expect to find in poetry the same kind of logical accuracy in the process of thought which we require in treatises; but the lofty emotion of devout song obeys laws of its own: and it is well to surrender ourselves to the flow, and to try to see with the psalmist's eyes for a moment his sources of consolation and strength. i take the four points which seem to be the main turning-points of these verses--first, the gladdening river; second, the indwelling helper; third, the conquering voice; and fourth, the alliance of ourselves by faith with the safe dwellers in the city of god. i. first, we have the gladdening river--an emblem of many great and joyous truths. the figure is occasioned by, or at all events derives much of its significance from, a geographical peculiarity of jerusalem. alone among the great cities and historical centres of the world, it stood upon no broad river. one little perennial stream, or rather rill of living water, was all which it had; but siloam was mightier and more blessed for the dwellers in the rocky fortress of the jebusites than the euphrates, nile, or tiber for the historical cities which stood upon their banks. one can see the psalmist looking over the plain eastward, and beholding in vision the mighty forces which came against them, symbolised and expressed by the breadth and depth and swiftness of the great river upon which nineveh sat as a queen, and then thinking upon the little tiny thread of living water that flowed past the base of the rock upon which the temple was perched. it seems small and unconspicuous--nothing compared to the dash of the waves and the rise of the floods of those mighty secular empires, still, 'there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of god.' its waters shall never fail, and thirst shall flee whithersoever this river comes. it is also to be remembered that the psalm is running in the track of a certain constant symbolism that pervades all scripture. from the first book of genesis down to the last chapter of revelation, you can hear the dashing of the waters of the river. 'it went out from the garden and parted into four heads.' 'thou makest them drink of the river of thy pleasures.' 'behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward,' and 'everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh.' 'he that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' 'and he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of god and of the lamb.' isaiah, who has already afforded some remarkable parallels to the words of our psalm, gives another very striking one to the image now under consideration, when he says, 'the glorious lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars.' the picture in that metaphor is of a stream lying round jerusalem, like the moated rivers which girdle some of the cities in the plains of italy, and are the defence of those who dwell enclosed in their flashing links. guided, then, by the physical peculiarity of situation which i have referred to, and by the constant meaning of scriptural symbolism, i think we must conclude that this river, 'the streams whereof make glad the city of god,' is god himself in the outflow and self-communication of his own grace to the soul. the stream is the fountain in flow. the gift of god, which is living water, is god himself, considered as the ever-imparting source of all refreshment, of all strength, of all blessedness. 'this spake he of the spirit, which they that believe should receive.' we must dwell for a moment or two still further upon these words, and mark how this metaphor, in a most simple and natural way, sets forth very grand and blessed spiritual truths with regard to this communication of god's grace to them that love him and trust him. first, i think we may see here a very beautiful suggestion of the manner, and then of the variety, and then of the effects of that communication of the divine love and grace. we have only to read the previous verses to see what i mean. 'god is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.' there you can hear the wild waves dashing round the base of the firm hills, sapping their strength, and toppling their crests down in the bubbling, yeasty foam. remember how, not only in scripture but in all poetry, the sea has been the emblem of endless unrest. its waters, those barren, wandering fields of foam, going moaning round the world with unprofitable labour, how they have been the emblem of unbridled power, of tumult and strife, and anarchy and rebellion! then mark how our text brings into sharpest contrast with all that hurly-burly of the tempest, and the dash and roar of the troubled waters, the gentle, quiet flow of the river, 'the streams whereof make glad the city of god'; the translucent little ripples purling along beds of golden pebbles, and the enamelled meadows drinking the pure stream as it steals by them. thus, says our psalm, not with noise, not with tumult, not with conspicuous and destructive energy, but in silent, secret underground communication, god's grace, god's love, his peace, his power, his almighty and gentle self flow into men's souls. quietness and confidence on our sides correspond to the quietness and serenity with which he glides into the heart. instead of all the noise of the sea you have within the quiet impartations of the voice that is still and small, wherein god dwells. the extremest power is silent. the mightiest force in all the universe is the force which has neither speech nor language. the parent of all physical force, as astronomers seem to be more and more teaching us, is the great central sun which moveth all things, which operates all physical changes, whose beams are all but omnipotent, and yet fall so quietly that they do not disturb the motes that dance in their path. thunder and lightning are child's play compared with the energy that goes to make the falling dews and quiet rains. the power of the sunshine is the root power of all force which works in material things. and so we turn, with the symbol in our hands, to the throne of god, and when he says, 'not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' we are aware of an energy, the signature of whose might is its quietness, which is omnipotent because it is gentle and silent. the seas may roar and be troubled, the tiny thread of the river is mightier than them all. and then, still further, in this first part of our text there is also set forth very distinctly the number and the variety of the gifts of god. 'the streams whereof,' literally, 'the divisions whereof,'--that is to say, going back to eastern ideas, the broad river is broken up into canals that are led off into every man's little bit of garden ground; coming down to modern ideas, the water is carried by pipes into every man's household and chamber. the stream has its divisions; listen to words that are a commentary upon the meaning of this verse, 'all these worketh that one and the selfsame spirit, dividing unto every man severally as he will'--an infinite variety, an endless diversity, according to all the petty wants of each that is supplied thereby. as you can divide water all but infinitely, and it will take the shape of every containing vessel, so into every soul according to its capacities, according to its shape, according to its needs, this great gift, this blessed presence of the god of our strength, will come. the varieties of his gifts are as much the mark of his omnipotence as the gentleness and stillness of them. and then i need only touch upon the last thought, the effects of this communicated god. 'the streams make glad'--with the gladness which comes from refreshment, with the gladness which comes from the satisfying of all thirsty desires, with the gladness which comes from the contact of the spirit with absolute completeness; of the will, with perfect authority; of the heart, with changeless love; of the understanding, with pure incarnate truth; of the conscience, with infinite peace; of the child, with the father; of my emptiness, with his fulness; of my changeableness, with his immutability; of my incompleteness, with his perfectness. they to whom this stream passes shall know no thirst; they who possess it from them it shall come. out of him 'shall flow rivers of living water.' that all-sufficient spirit not only becomes to its possessor the source of individual refreshment, and slakes his own thirst, but flows out from him for the gladdening of others. 'the least flower with a brimming cup may stand, and share its dew-drop with another near.' the city thus supplied may laugh at besieging hosts. with the deep reservoir in its central fortress, the foe may do as they list to all surface streams, its water shall be sure, and no raging thirst shall ever drive it to surrender. the river breaks from the threshold of the temple, within its walls, and when all beyond that safe enclosure is cracked and parched in the fierce heat, and no green thing can be seen in the dry and thirsty land, that stream shall 'make glad the city of our god,' and 'everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh.' 'thou shalt be as a well-watered garden, and as a river whose streams fail not.' ii. then notice, secondly, substantially the same general thought, but modified and put in plain words--the indwelling helper. 'god is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved: god shall help her, _and that_ right early,' or, as the latter clause had better be translated, as it is given in the margin of some of our bibles, 'god shall help her at the appearance of the morning.' there are two promises here: first of all, the constant presence; and second, help at the right time. whether there be actual help or no, there is always with us the potential help of god, and it flashes into energy at the moment that he knows to be the right one. the 'appearing of the morning' he determines; not you or i. therefore, we may be confident that we have god ever by our sides. not that that presence is meant to avert outward or inward trouble and trial, and painfulness and weariness; but in the midst of these, and while they last, here is the assurance, 'she shall not be moved'; and that it will not always last, here is the ground of the confidence, 'god shall help her when the morning dawns.' i need not point out to you the contrast here between the tranquillity of the city which has for its central inhabitant and governor the omnipotent god, and the tumult of all that turbulent earth. the waves of the troubled waters break everywhere,--they run over the flat plains and sweep over the mountains of secular strength and outward might, and worldly kingdoms, and human polities and earthly institutions, acting on them all either by slow corrosive action at the base, or by the tossing floods swirling against them, until they shall be lost in the ocean of time. for 'the history of the world is the judgment of the world.' when he wills the plains are covered and mountains disappear, but one rock stands fast--'the mountain of the lord's house is exalted above the top of the mountains'; and when everything is rocking and swaying in the tempests, here is fixity and tranquillity. 'she shall not be moved.' why? because of her citizens? no. because of her guards and gates? no! because of her polity? no! because of her orthodoxy? no! but because god is in her, and she is safe, and where he dwells no evil can come. 'thou carriest caesar and his fortunes.' the ship of christ carries the lord and his fortunes; and, therefore, whatsoever becomes of the other little ships in the wild dash of the tempest, this with the lord on board arrives at its desired haven--'god is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.' then, still further, that presence which is always the pledge of stability, and unmoved calm, even while causes of agitation are storming around, will, as i said, flash into energy, and be a helper and a deliverer at the right moment. and when will that right moment be? at the appearing of the morning. 'and when they arose early in the morning, they were all dead corpses'; in the hour of greatest extremity, but ere the foe has executed his purposes; not too soon for fear and faith, not too late for hope and help; when the morning dawns, when the appointed hour of deliverance, which he alone determines, has struck. 'it is not for you to know the times and seasons'; but this we may know, that he who is the lord of time will ever save at the best possible moment. he will not come so quickly as to prevent us from feeling our need; he will not tarry so long as to make us sick with hope deferred, or so long as to let the enemy fulfil his purposes of destruction. 'lord, behold! he whom thou lovest is sick. now jesus loved martha, and her sister, and lazarus. when he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.... lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again.... and he that was dead came forth.' the lord may seem to sleep on his hard wooden pillow in the stern of the little fishing boat, and even while the frail craft begins to fill may show no sign of help. but ere the waves have rolled over her, the cry of fear that yet trusts, and of trust that yet fears, wakes him who knew the need, even while he seemed to slumber, and one mighty word, as of a master to some petulant slave, 'peace! be still,' hushes the confusion, and rebukes the fear, and rewards the faith. 'the lord is in the midst of her'--that is the perennial fact. 'the lord shall help her, and that right early'--that is the 'grace for seasonable help.' iii. the psalm having set forth these broad grounds of confidence, goes on to tell the story of actual deliverance which confirms them, and of which they are indeed but the generalised expression. the condensed narrative moves to its end by a series of short crashing sentences like the ring of the destructive axe at the roots of trees. we see the whole sequence of events as by lightning flashes, which give brief glimpses and are quenched. the grand graphic words seem to pant with haste, as they record israel's deliverance. that deliverance comes from the conquering voice. 'the heathen raged' (the same word, we may note, as is found a verse or two back, 'though the waters thereof _roar_'), 'the kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice, the earth melted.' with what vigour these hurried sentences describe, first, the wild wrath and formidable movements of the foe, and then the one sovereign word which quells them all, as well as the instantaneous weakness that dissolves the seeming solid substance when the breath of his lips smites it! and where will you find a grander or loftier thought than this, that the simple word--the utterance of the pure will of god conquers all opposition, and tells at once in the sphere of material things? he speaks, and it is done. at the sound of that thunder-voice, hushed stillness and a pause of dread fall upon all the wide earth, deeper and more awe-struck than the silence of the woods with their huddling leaves, when the feebler peals roll through the sky. 'the depths are congealed in the heart of the sea'--as if you were to lay hold of niagara in its wildest plunge, and were with a word to freeze all its descending waters and stiffen them into immovableness in fetters of eternal ice. so he utters his voice, and all meaner noises are hushed. 'the lion hath roared, who shall not fear?' he speaks--no weapon, no material vehicle is needed. the point of contact between the pure divine will and the material creatures which obey its behests is ever wrapped in darkness, whether these be the settled ordinances which men call nature, or the less common which the bible calls miracle. in all alike there is, to every believer in a god at all, an incomprehensible action of the spiritual upon the material, which allows of no explanations to bridge over the gulf recognised in the broken utterances of our psalm, 'he uttered his voice: the earth melted.' how grandly, too, these last words give the impression of immediate and utter dissolution of all opposition! all the titanic brute forces are, at his voice, disintegrated, and lose their organisation and solidity. 'the hills melted like wax'; 'the mountains flowed down at thy presence.' the hardness and obstinacy is all liquefied and enfeebled, and parts with its consistency and is lost in a fluid mass. as two carbon points when the electric stream is poured upon them are gnawed to nothingness by the fierce heat, and you can see them wasting before your eyes, so the concentrated ardour of his breath falls upon the hostile evil, and lo! it is not. the psalmist is generalising the historical fact of the sudden and utter destruction of sennacherib's host into a universal law. and it _is_ a universal law--true for us as for hezekiah and the sons of korah, true for all generations. martin luther might well make this psalm the battle cry of the reformation, and we may well make our own the rugged music and dauntless hope of his rendering of these words:-- and let the prince of ill look grim as e'er he will, he harms us not a whit. for why? his doom is writ. a word shall quickly slay him.' iv. then note, finally, how the psalm shows us the act by which we enter the city of god. 'the lord of hosts is with _us_; the god of jacob is _our_ refuge.' it is not enough to lay down general truths, however true and however blessed, about the safe and sacred city of god--not enough to be theoretically convinced of the truth of the supreme governance and ever-present aid of god. we must take a further step that will lead us far beyond the regions of barren intellectual apprehension of the great truths of god's love and care. these truths are nothing to us, brethren! unless, like the psalmist here, we make them our own, and losing the burden of self in the very act of grasping them by faith, unite ourselves with the great multitude who are joined together in him, and say, 'he is _my_ god: he is _our_ refuge.' that living act of 'appropriating faith' presupposes, indeed, the presence of these truths in our understandings, but in the very act they are changed into powers in our lives. they pass into the affections and the will. they are no more empty generalities. bread nourishes, not when it is looked at, but when it is eaten. 'he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.' we feed on christ when we make him ours by faith, and each of us is sustained and blessed by him when we can say, 'my lord and my god!' mark, too, how there is here set forth the twofold ground for our calmest confidence in these two mighty names of god. 'the lord of hosts is with us.' that majestic name includes all the deepest and most blessed thoughts of god which the earlier revelation imparted. that name of 'jehovah' proclaims at once his eternal being and his covenant relation--manifesting him by its mysterious meaning as he who dwells above time, the tideless sea of absolute unchanging existence, from whom all the stream of creatural life flows forth many-coloured and transient, to whom it all returns, who, himself unchanging, changeth all things, and declaring him, by the historical associations connected with it, as having unveiled his purposes in firm words, to which men may trust, and as having entered into that solemn league with israel which underlay their whole national life. he is _the lord_ the eternal,--the covenant name. he is the lord of hosts, the 'imperator,' absolute master and commander, captain and king of all the combined forces of the universe, whether they be personal or impersonal, spiritual or material, who, in serried ranks, wait on him, and move harmonious, obedient to his will. and this eternal master of the legions of the universe is with us, weak and poor, and troubled and sinful as we are. therefore, we will not fear: what can man do unto us? again, when we say, 'the god of jacob is our refuge,' we reach back into the past, and lay hold of the mercies promised to, and received by, the long vanished generations who trusted in him and were lightened. as, by the one name, we appeal to his own being and uttered pledge, so, by the other, we appeal to his ancient deeds--past as we call them, but present with him, who lives and loves in the undivided eternity above the low fences of time. all that he has been, he is; all that he has done, he is doing. we on whom the ends of the earth are come have the same helper, the same friend that 'the world's grey fathers' had. they that go before do not prevent them that come after. the river is full still. the van of the pilgrim host did, indeed, long, long ago drink and were satisfied, but the bright waters are still as pellucid, still as near, still as refreshing, still as abundant as they ever were. nay, rather, they are fuller and more accessible to us than to patriarch and psalmist, 'god having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.' for we, brethren! have a fuller revelation of that mighty name, and a more wondrous and closer divine presence by our sides. the psalm rejoices in that 'the lord of hosts is with us'; and the choral answer of the gospel swells into loftier music, as it tells of the fulfilment of psalmists' hopes and prophets' visions in him who is called 'immanuel,' which is, being interpreted, 'god with us.' the psalm is confident in that god dwelt in zion, and our confidence has the more wondrous fact to lay hold of, that even now the word who dwelt among us makes his abode in every believing heart, and gathers them all together at last in that great city, round whose flashing foundations no tumult of ocean beats, whose gates of pearl need not be closed against any foes, with whose happy citizens 'god will dwell, and they shall be his people, and god himself shall be with them, and be their god.' the lord of hosts, the god of jacob 'the lord of hosts is with us; the god of jacob is our refuge.' --psalm xlvi. . some great deliverance, the details of which we do not know, had been wrought for israel, and this psalmist comes forth, like miriam with her choir of maidens, to hymn the victory. the psalm throbs with exultation, but no human victor's name degrades the singer's lips. there is only one conqueror whom he celebrates. the deliverance has been 'the work of the lord'; the 'desolations' that have been made on the 'earth' 'he has made.' this great refrain of the song, which i have chosen for my text, takes the experience of deliverance as a proof in act of an astounding truth, and as a hope for the future. 'the lord of hosts is with us; the god of jacob is our refuge.' there is in these words a significant duplication of idea, both in regard to the names which are given to god, and to that which he is conceived as being to us; and i desire now simply to try to bring out the force of the consolation and strength which lie in these two epithets of his, and in the double wonder of his relation to us men. i. first, then, i ask you to look at the twin thoughts of god that are here. 'the lord of hosts ... the god of jacob.' now, with regard to the former of these grand names, it may be observed that it does not occur in the earliest stages of revelation as recorded in the old testament. the first instance in which we find it is in the song of hannah in the beginning of the first book of samuel; and it re-appears in the davidic psalms and in psalms and prophecies of later date. what 'hosts' are they of which god is the lord? is that great title a mere synonym for the half-heathenish idea of the 'god of battles'? by no means. true! he is the lord of the armies of israel, but the hosts which the psalmist sees ranged in embattled array, and obedient to the command of the great captain, are far other and grander than any earthly armies. if we would understand the whole depth and magnificent sweep of the idea enshrined in this name, we cannot do better than recall one or two other scripture phrases. for instance, the account of the creation in the book of genesis is ended by, 'thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.' then, remember that, throughout the old testament, we meet constantly with the idea of the celestial bodies as being 'the hosts of heaven.' and, still further, remember how, in one of the psalms, we hear the invocation to 'all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his that do his pleasure,' 'the angels that excel in strength,' to praise and bless him. if we take account of all these and a number of similar passages, i think we shall come to this conclusion, that by that title, 'the lord of hosts,' the prophets and psalmists meant to express the universal dominion of god over the whole universe in all its battalions and sections, which they conceived of as one ranked army, obedient to the voice of the great general and ruler of them all. so the idea contained in the name is precisely parallel with that to which the heathen centurion in the gospels had come, by reflecting upon the teaching of the legion in which he himself commanded, when he said, 'i am a man under authority, having servants under me; and i say to this one, go, and he goeth; to another, come, and he cometh; to another, do this, and he doeth it--speak thou the word!' to him jesus christ was captain of the lord's hosts, and ruler of all the ordered forces of the universe. the old testament name enshrines the same idea. the universe is an ordered whole. science tells us that. modern thought emphasises it. but how cruel, relentless, crushing, that conception may be unless we grasp the further thought which is presented in this great name, and see, behind all the play of phenomena, the one will which is the only power in the universe, and sways and orders all besides! the armies of heaven and every creature in the great _cosmos_ are the servants of this lord. then we can stand before the dreadful mysteries and the all but infinite complications of this mighty whole, and say, 'these are his soldiers, and he is their captain, the lord of hosts.' next we turn, by one quick bound, from the wide sweep of that mighty name to the other, 'the god of jacob.' the one carries us out among the glories of the universe, and shows us, behind them all, the personal will of which they are the servants, and the character of which they are the expressions. the other brings us down to the tent of the solitary wanderer, and shows us that that mighty commander and emperor enters into close, living, tender, personal relations with one poor soul, and binds himself by that great covenant, which is rooted in his love alone, to be the god who cares for and keeps and blesses the man in all his wanderings. neither does the command of the mighty whole hinder the closest relation to the individual, nor does the care of the individual interfere with the direction of the whole. the single soul stands out clear and isolated, as if there were none in the universe but god and himself; and the whole fulness of the divine power, and all the tenderness of the god-heart, are lavished upon the individual, even though the armies of the skies wait upon his nod. so, if we put the two names together, we get the completion of the great idea; and whilst the one speaks to us of infinite power, of absolute supremacy, of universal rule, and so delivers us from the fear of nature, and from the blindness which sees only the material operations and not the working hand that underlies them, the other speaks to us of gentle and loving and specific care, and holds out the hope that, between man and god, there may be a bond of friendship and of mutual possession so sweet and sacred that nothing else can compare with it. the god of jacob is the lord of hosts. more wondrous still, the lord of hosts is the god of jacob. ii. note, secondly, the double wonder of our relation to this great god. there is almost a tone of glad surprise, as well as of triumphant confidence, in this refrain of our psalm, which comes twice in it, and possibly ought to have come three times--at the end of each of its sections. the emphasis is to be laid on the 'us' and the 'our,' as if that was the miracle, and the fact which startled the psalmist into the highest rapture of astonished thankfulness. 'the lord of hosts is with _us_.' what does that say? it proclaims that wondrous truth that no gulf between the mighty ruler of all and us, the insignificant little creatures that creep upon the face of this tiny planet, has any power of separating us from him. it is always hard to believe that. it is harder to-day than it was when our psalmist's heart beat high at the thought. it is hard by reason of our sense-bound blindness, by reason of our superficial way of looking at things, which only shows us the nearest, and veils with their insignificances the magnitude of the furthest. jupiter is blazing in our skies every night now; he is not one-thousandth part as great or bright as any one of the little needle-points of light, the fixed stars, that are so much further away; but he is nearer, and the intrusive brightness of the planet hides the modest glories of the distant and shrouded suns. just so it is hard for us ever to realise, and to walk in the light of the realisation of, the fact that the lord of hosts, the emperor of all things, is of a truth with each of us. it is harder to-day than ever it was; for we have learned to think rightly--or at least more rightly and approximately rightly--of the position and age of man upon this earth. the psalmist's ancient question of devout thankfulness is too often travestied to-day into a question of scoffing or of melancholy unbelief: 'when i consider the heavens, the work of thy hands; what is man? art thou mindful of him?' this psalm comes to answer that. 'the lord of hosts is with us.' true, we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. true, earth is but a pin-point amidst the universe's glories. true, we are crushed down by sorrow and by care; and in some moods it seems supremely incredible that we should be of such worth in the scale of creation as that the lord of all things should, in a deeper sense than the psalmist knew, have dwelt with us and be with us still. but bigness is not greatness, and there is nothing incredible in the belief that men, lower than the angels, and needing god more because of their sin, do receive his visitations in an altogether special sense, and that, passing by the lofty and the great that may inhabit his universe, his chariot wheels stoop to us, and that, because we are sinners, god is with us. let me remind you, dear brethren! of how this great thought of my text is heightened and transcended by the new testament teaching. we believe in one whose name is 'immanuel, _god with us_.' jesus christ has come to be with men, not only during the brief years of his earthly ministry, in corporeal reality, but to be with all who love him and trust him, in a far closer, more real, more deep, more precious, more operative presence than when he dwelt here. through all the ages christ himself is with every soul that loves him; and he will dwell beside _us_ and bless _us_ and keep _us_. god's presence means god's sympathy, god's knowledge, god's actual help, and these are ours if we will. instead of staggering at the apparent improbability that so transcendent and mighty a being should stoop from his throne, where he lords it over the universe, and enter into the narrow room of our hearts, let us rather try to rise to the rapture of the astonished psalmist when, looking upon the deliverance that had been wrought, this was the leading conviction that was written in flame upon his heart, 'the lord of hosts is with _us_.' and then the second of the wonders that are here set forth in regard to our relations to him is, 'the god of jacob is _our_ refuge.' that carries for us the great truth that, just as the distance between us and god makes no separation, and the gulf is one that is bridged over by his love, so distance in time leads to no exhaustion of the divine faithfulness and care, nor any diminution of the resources of his grace. 'the god of jacob is _our_ refuge.' the story of the past is the prophecy of the future. what god has been to any man he will be to every man, if the man will let him. there is nothing in any of these grand narratives of ancient days which is not capable of being reproduced in our lives. god drew near to jacob when he was lying on the stony ground, and showed him the ladder set upon earth, with its top in the heavens, and the bright-winged soldiers and messengers of his will ascending and descending upon it, and his own face at the top. god shows you and me that vision to-day. it was no vanishing splendour, no transient illumination, no hallucination of the man's own thoughts seeking after a helper, and the wish being father to the vision. but it was the unveiling for a moment, in supernatural fashion, of the abiding reality. 'the god of jacob is _our_ refuge'; and whatever he was to his servant of old he is to-day to you and me. we say that miracle has ceased. yes. but that which the miracle effected has not ceased; and that from which the miracle came has not ceased. the realities of a divine protection, of a divine supply, of a divine guidance, of a divine deliverance, of a divine discipline, and of a divine reward at the last, are as real to-day as when they were mediated by signs and wonders, by an open heaven and by an outstretched hand. they who went before have not emptied the treasures of the father's house, nor eaten all the bread that he spreads upon the table. god has no stepchildren, and no favourite and spoiled ones. all that the elder brethren have had, we, on whom the ends of the dispensation are come, may have just as really; and whatever god has been to the patriarch he is to us to-day. remember the experience of the man of whom our text speaks. the god of jacob manifested himself to him as being a god who would draw near to, and care for, and help, a very unworthy and poor creature. jacob was no saint at the beginning. selfishness and cunning and many a vice clung very close to his character; but for all that, god drew near to him and cared for him and guided him, and promised that he would not leave him till he had done that which he had spoken to him of. and he will do the same for us--blessed be his name!--with all our faults and weaknesses and craftiness and worldliness and sins. if he cared for that huckstering jew, as he did, even in his earlier days, he will not put us away because he finds faults in us. 'the god of jacob,' the supplanter, the trickster, 'is our refuge.' but remember how the divine presence with that man had to be, because of his faults, a presence that wrought him sorrows and forced him to undergo discipline. so it will be with us. he will not suffer sin upon us; he will pass us through the fire and the water; and do anything with us short of destroying us, in order to destroy the sin that is in us. he does not spare his rod for his child's crying, but smites with judgment, and sends us sorrows 'for our profit, that we should be partakers of his holiness.' we may write this as the explanation over most of our griefs--'the god of jacob is our refuge,' and he is disciplining us as he did him. and remember what the end of the man was. 'thy name shall no more be called jacob, but israel; for as a prince thou hast power with god, and hast prevailed.' so if we have god, who out of such a sow's ear made a silk purse, out of such a stone raised up a servant for himself, we may be sure that his purpose in all discipline will be effected on us submissive, and we shall end where his ancient servant ended, and shall be in our turn princes with god. let me recall to you also the meaning which jesus christ found in this name. he quoted 'the god of abraham and of isaac and of jacob' as being the great guarantee and proof to us of immortality. 'the god of jacob is our refuge.' if so, what can the grim and ghastly phantom of death do to us? he may smite upon the gate, but he cannot enter the fortress. the man who has knit himself to god by saying to god, 'lo! i am thine, and thou art mine,' in that communion has a proof and a pledge that nothing shall ever break it, and that death is powerless. the fact of religion--true, heartfelt religion, with its communion, its prayer, its consciousness of possessing and of being possessed, makes the idea that death ends a man's conscious existence an absurdity and an impossibility. 'the god of jacob is our refuge,' and so we may say to the storms of life, and after them to the last howling tornado of death--blow winds and crack your cheeks, and do your worst, you cannot touch me in the fortress where i dwell. the wind will hurtle around the stronghold, but within there shall be calm. dear brethren! make sure that you are in the refuge. make sure that you have fled for 'refuge to the hope set before you in the gospel.' the lord of hosts is with us,' but you may be parted from him. he is our refuge, but you may be standing outside the sanctuary, and so be exposed to all the storms. flee thither, cast yourselves on him, trust in that great saviour who has given himself for us, and who says to us, 'lo! i am with you always.' take christ for your hiding-place by simple faith in him and loving obedience born of faith, and then the experience of our psalmist will be yours. your life will not want for deliverances which will thrill your heart with thankfulness, and turn the truth of faith into a truth of experience. so you may set to your seals the great saying of our psalm, which is fresh to-day, though centuries have passed since it came glowing fiery from the lips of the ancient seer, and may take up as yours the great words in which luther has translated it for our times, the 'marseillaise' of the reformation-- 'a safe stronghold our god is still; a trusty shield and weapon; he'll help us clear from all the ill that hath us now o'ertaken.' a song of deliverance 'great is the lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our god, in the mountain of his holiness. . beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king. . god is known in her palaces for a refuge. . for, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. . they saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and hasted away. . fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail. . thou breakest the ships of tarshish with an east wind. . as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the lord of hosts, in the city of our god: god will establish it for ever. . we have thought of thy loving-kindness, o god, in the midst of thy temple. . according to thy name, o god, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness. . let mount zion rejoice, let the daughters of judah be glad, because of thy judgments. . walk about zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. . mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following. . for this god is our god for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.'--psalm xlviii. - . the enthusiastic triumph which throbs in this psalm, and the specific details of a great act of deliverance from a great peril which it contains, sufficiently indicate that it must have had some historical event as its basis. can we identify the fact which is here embalmed? the psalm gives these points--a formidable muster before jerusalem of hostile people under confederate kings, with the purpose of laying siege to the city; some mysterious check which arrests them before a sword is drawn, as if some panic fear had shot from its towers and shaken their hearts; and a flight in wild confusion from the impregnable dwelling-place of the lord of hosts. the occasion of the terror is vaguely hinted at, as if some solemn mystery brooded over it. all that is clear about it is that it was purely the work of the divine hand--'thou breakest the ships of tarshish with an east wind'; and that in this deliverance, in their own time, the levite minstrels recognised the working of the same protecting grace which, from of old, had 'commanded deliverances for jacob.' now there is one event, and only one, in jewish history, which corresponds, point for point, to these details--the crushing destruction of the assyrian army under sennacherib. there, there was the same mustering of various nations, compelled by the conqueror to march in his train, and headed by their tributary kings. there, there was the same arrest before an arrow had been shot, or a mound raised against the city. there, there was the same purely divine agency coming in to destroy the invading army. i think, then, that from the correspondence of the history with the requirements of the psalm, as well as from several similarities of expression and allusion between the latter and the prophecies of isaiah, who has recorded that destruction of the invader, we may, with considerable probability, regard this psalm as the hymn of triumph over the baffled assyrian, and the marvellous deliverance of israel by the arm of god. whatever may be thought, however, of that allocation of it to a place in the history, the great truths that it contains depend upon no such identification. they are truths for all time; gladness and consolation for all generations. let us read it over together now, if, perchance, some echo of the confidence and praise that is found in it may be called forth from our hearts! if you will look at your bibles you will find that it falls into three portions. there is the glory of zion, the deliverance of zion, and the consequent grateful praise and glad trust of zion. i. there is the glory of zion. hearken with what triumph the psalmist breaks out: 'great is the lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our god, in the mountain of his holiness. beautiful for situation (or rather elevation), the joy of the whole earth, is mount zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king.' now these words are something more than mere patriotic feeling. the jew's glory in jerusalem was a different thing altogether from the roman's pride in rome. to the devout men amongst them, of whom the writer of this psalm was one, there was one thing, and one only, that made zion glorious. it was beautiful indeed in its elevation, lifted high upon its rocky mountain. it was safe indeed, isolated from the invader by the precipitous ravines which enclosed and guarded the angle of the mountain plateau on which it stood; but _the one_ thing that gave it glory was that in _it_ god abode. the name even of that earthly zion was 'jehovah-shammah, the lord is there.' and the emphasis of these words is entirely pointed in that direction. what they celebrate concerning _him_ is not merely the general thought that the lord is great, but that the lord is _great in zion_. what they celebrate concerning _it_ is that it is his city, the mountain of his holiness, where he dwells, where he manifests himself. because there is his self-manifestation, therefore he is there greatly to be praised. and because the clear voice of his praise rings out from zion, therefore is she 'the joy of the whole earth.' the glory of zion, then, is that it is the dwelling-place of god. now, remember, that when the old testament scripture speaks about god abiding in jerusalem, it means no heathenish or material localising of the deity, nor does it imply any depriving of the rest of the earth of the sanctity of his presence. the very psalm which most distinctly embodies the thought of god's abode protests against that narrowness, for it begins, 'the earth is the lord's and the fulness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein.' the very ark which was the symbol of his presence, protests by its name against all such localising, for the name of it was 'the ark of the covenant of the god of the whole earth.' when the bible speaks of zion as the dwelling-place of god, it is but the expression of the fact that there, between the cherubim, was the visible sign of his presence--that there, in the temple, as from the centre of the whole land, he ruled, and 'out of zion, the perfection of beauty, god shone.' we are, then, not 'spiritualising,' or forcing a new testament meaning into these words, when we see in them an eternal truth. we are but following in the steps of history and prophecy, and of christ and his apostles, and of that last vision of the apocalypse. we are but distinguishing between an idea and the fact which more or less perfectly embodies it. an idea may have many garments, may transmigrate into many different material forms. the idea of the dwelling of god with men had its less perfect embodiment, has its more perfect embodiment, will have its absolutely perfect embodiment. it had its less perfect in that ancient time. it has its real but partial embodiment in this present time, when, in the midst of the whole community of believing and loving souls, which stretches wider than any society that calls itself a church, the living god abides and energises by his spirit and by his son in the souls of them that believe upon him. 'ye are come unto mount zion and unto the city of the living god.' and we wait for the time when, filling all the air with its light, there shall come down from god a perfect and permanent form of that dwelling; and that great city, the new jerusalem, 'having the glory of god,' shall appear, and he will dwell with men and be their god. but in all these stages of the embodiment of that great truth the glory of zion rests in this, that in it god abides, that from it he flames in the greatness of his manifestations, which are 'his praise in all the earth.' it is that presence which makes her fair, as it is that presence which keeps her safe. it is that light shining within her palaces--not their own opaque darkness, which streams out far into the waste night with ruddy glow of hospitable invitation. it is god in her, not anything of her own, that constitutes her 'the joy of the whole earth.' 'thy beauty was perfect, through my comeliness, which i had put upon thee, saith the lord.' zion is where hearts love and trust and follow christ. the 'city of the great king' is a permanent reality in a partial form upon earth--and that partial form is itself a prophecy of the perfection of the heavens. ii. still further, there is a second portion of this psalm which, passing beyond these introductory thoughts of the glory of zion, recounts with wonderful power and vigour the process of the deliverance of zion. it extends from the fourth to the eighth verses. mark the dramatic vigour of the description of the deliverance. there is, first, the mustering of the armies--'the kings were assembled.' some light is thrown upon that phrase by the proud boast which the prophet isaiah puts into the lips of the assyrian invader, 'are not my princes altogether kings?' the subject-monarchs of the subdued nationalities that were gathered round the tyrant's standard were used, with the wicked craft of conquerors in all ages, to bring still other lands under the same iron dominion. 'the kings were assembled'--we see them gathering their far-reaching and motley army, mustered from all corners of that gigantic empire. they advance together against the rocky fortress that towers above its girdling valleys. 'they saw it, they marvelled'--in wonder, perhaps, at its beauty, as they first catch sight of its glittering whiteness from some hill crest on their march; or, perhaps, stricken by some strange amazement, as if, basilisk-like, its beauty were deadly, and a beam from the shechinah had shot a nameless awe into their souls--'they were troubled, they hasted away.' i need not dilate on the power of this description, nor do more than notice how the abruptness of the language, huddled together, as it were, without connecting particles, conveys the impression of hurry and confusion, culminating in the rush of fugitives fleeing under the influence of panic-terror. they are like the well-known words, 'i came, i saw, i conquered,' only that here we have to do with swift defeat--they came, they saw, they were conquered. they are, in regard to vivid picturesqueness, arising from the broken construction, singularly like other words which refer to the same event in the forty-sixth psalm, 'the heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice, the earth melted.' in their scornful emphasis of triumph they remind us of isaiah's description of the end of the same invasion--'so sennacherib, king of assyria, departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at nineveh.' mark, still further, the eloquent silence as to the cause of the panic and the flight. there is no appearance of armed resistance. this is no 'battle of the warrior with garments rolled in blood,' and the shock of contending hosts. but an unseen hand smites once--'and when the morning dawned they were all dead corpses.' the impression of terror produced by such a blow is increased by the veiled allusion to it here. the silence magnifies the deliverance. if we might apply the grand words of milton to that night of fear-- 'the trumpet spake not to the armed throng, but kings sat still, with awful eye, as if they surely knew their sovereign lord was by.' the process of the deliverance is not told here, as there was no need it should be in a hymn which is not history, but the lyrical echo of what is told in history; one image explains it all--'thou breakest the ships of tarshish with an east wind.' the metaphor--one that does not need expansion here--is that of a ship like a great unwieldy galleon, caught in a tempest. however strong for fight, it is not fit for sailing. it is like some of those turret ships of ours, if they venture out from the coast and get into a storm, their very strength is their destruction, their armour wherein they trusted ensures that they shall sink. and so, this huge assailant of israel, this great 'galley with oars,' washing about there in the trough of the sea, as it were--god broke it in two with the tempest, which is his breath. you remember how on the medal that commemorated the destruction of the spanish armada--our english deliverance--there were written the words of scripture: 'god blew upon them and they were scattered.' what was there true, literally, is here true in figure. the psalmist is not thinking of any actual scattering of hostile fleets--from which jerusalem was never in danger; but is using the shipwreck of 'the ship of tarshish' as a picture of the utter, swift, god-inflicted destruction which ground that invading army to pieces, as the savage rocks and wild seas will do the strongest craft that is mangled between them. and then, mark how from this dramatic description there rises a loftier thought still. the deliverance thus described links the present with the past. 'as we have heard so have we seen in the city of the lord of hosts, in the city of our god.' yes, brethren! god's merciful manifestation for ourselves, as for those israelitish people of old, has this blessed effect, that it changes hearsay and tradition into living experience;--this blessed effect, that it teaches us, or ought to teach us, the inexhaustibleness of the divine power, the constant repetition in every age of the same works of love. taught by it, we learn that all these old narratives of his grace and help are ever new, not past and gone, but ready to be reproduced in their essential characteristics in our lives too. 'we have heard with our ears, o lord, our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days.' but is the record only a melancholy contrast with our own experience? nay, truly. 'as we have heard so have we seen.' we are ever tempted to think of the present as commonplace. the sky right above our heads is always farthest from earth. it is at the horizon behind and the horizon in front, where earth and heaven seem to blend. we think of miracles in the past, we think of a manifest presence of god in the future, but the present ever seems to our sense-bound understandings as beggared and empty of him, devoid of his light. but this verse suggests to us how, if we mark the daily dealings of that loving hand with us, we have every occasion to say, thy loving-kindness of old lives still. still, as of old, the hosts of the lord encamp round about them that fear him to deliver them. still, as of old, the voice of guidance comes from between the cherubim. still, as of old, the pillar of cloud and fire moves before us. still, as of old, angels walk with men. still, as of old, his hand is stretched forth, to bless, to feed, to guard. nothing in the past of god's dealings with men has passed away. the eternal present embraces what we call the past, present, and future. they that went before do not prevent us on whom the ends of the ages are come. the table that was spread for them is as fully furnished for the latest guests. the light, which was so magical and lustrous in the morning beauty, for us has not faded away into the light of common day. the river which flowed in these past ages has not been drunk up by the thirsty sands. the fire that once blazed so clear has not died down into grey ashes. 'the god of _jacob_ is _our_ refuge.' 'as we have heard so have we seen.' and then, still further, the deliverance here is suggested as not only linking most blessedly the present with the past, but also linking it for our confidence with all the _future_. 'god will establish it for ever.' 'old experience doth attain to something of prophetic strain.' in the strength of what that moment had taught of god and his power, the singer looks onward, and whatever may be the future he knows that the divine arm will be outstretched. god will establish zion; or, as the word might be translated, god will hold it erect, as if with a strong hand grasping some pole or banner-staff that else would totter and fall--he will keep it up, standing there firm and steadfast. it would lead us too far to discuss the bearing of such a prophecy upon the future history and restoration of israel, but the bearing of it upon the security and perpetuity of the church is unquestionable. the city is immortal because god dwells in it. for the individual and for the community, for the great society and for each of the single souls that make it up, the history of the past may seal the pledge which he gives for the future. if it had been possible to destroy the church of the living god, it had been gone long, long ago. its own weakness and sin, the ever-new corruptions of its belief and paring of its creed, the imperfections of its life and the worldliness of its heart, the abounding evils that lie around it and the actual hostility of many that look upon it and say, raze it, even to the ground, would have smitten it to the dust long since. it lives, it has lived in spite of all, and therefore it shall live. 'god will establish it for ever.' in almost every land there is some fortress or other, which the pride of the inhabitants calls 'the maiden fortress,' and whereof the legend is, that it has never been taken, and is inexpugnable by any foe. it is true about the tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of zion. the grand words of isaiah about this very assyrian invader are our answer to all fears within and foes without: 'say unto him, the virgin, the daughter of zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.... i will defend this city to save it for my own sake, and for my servant david's sake.' 'god will establish it for ever,' and the pledges of that eternal stability are the deliverances of the past and of the present. iii. then, finally, there is still another section of this psalm to be looked at for a moment, which deals with the consequent grateful praise and glad trust of zion. i must condense what few things i have to say about these closing verses. the deliverance, first of all, deepens the glad meditation on god's favour and defence. 'we have thought,' say the ransomed people, as with a sigh of rejoicing, 'we have thought of thy loving-kindness in the midst of thy temple.' the scene of the manifestation of his power is the scene of their thankfulness, and the first issue of his mercy is his servants' praise. then, the deliverance spreads his fame throughout the world. 'according to thy name, o god! so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth. thy right hand is full of righteousness.' the name of god is god's own making known of his character, and the thought of these words is double. they most beautifully express the profoundest trust in that blessed name that it only needs to be known in order to be loved. there is nothing wanted but his manifestation of himself for his praise and glory to spread. why is the psalmist so sure that according to the revelation of his character will be the revenue of his praise? because the psalmist is so sure that that character is purely, perfectly, simply good--nothing else but good and blessing--and that he cannot act but in such a way as to magnify himself. that great sea will cast up nothing on the shores of the world but pearls and precious things. he is all 'light, and in him is no darkness at all.' there needs but the shining forth in order that the light of his character shall bring gladness and joy, and the song of birds, and opening flowers wheresoever it falls. still further, there is the other truth in the words, that we misapprehend the purpose of our own deliverances, and the purpose of god's mercy to zion, if we confine these to any personal objects or lose sight of the loftier end of them all--that men may learn to know and love him. brethren! we neither rightly thank him for his gifts to us nor rightly apprehend the meaning of his dealings, unless the sweetest thought to us, even in the midst of our own personal joy for deliverance, is not 'we are saved,' but 'god is exalted.' and then, beyond that, the deliverance produces in zion, the mother city and her daughter villages, a triumph of rapture and gladness. 'let mount zion rejoice, let the daughters of judah be glad because of thy judgments.' yes, even though an hundred and four score and five thousand dead men lay there, they were to be glad. solemn and awful as is the baring of his righteous sword, it is an occasion for praise. it is right to be glad when men and systems that hinder and fight against god are swept away as with the besom of destruction. 'when the wicked perish there is shouting,' and the fitting epitaph for the oppressors to whom the surges of the red sea are shroud and gravestone is, 'sing ye to the lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.' the last verses set forth, more fully than even the preceding ones, the height and perfectness of the confidence which the manifold mercies of god ought to produce in men's hearts. the citizens who have been cooped up during the invasion, and who, in the temple, as we have seen, have been rendering the tribute of their meditation and thankful gratitude to god for his loving-kindness, are now called upon to come forth from the enclosure of the besieged city, and free from all fear of the invading army, to 'walk about zion, and go round about her and tell the towers,' and 'mark her bulwarks and palaces.' they look first at the defences, on which no trace of assault appears, and then at the palaces guarded by them, that stand shining and unharmed. the deliverance has been so complete that there is not a sign of the peril or the danger left. it is not like a city besieged, and the siege raised when the thing over which contending hosts have been quarrelling has become a ruin, but not one stone has been smitten from the walls, nor one agate chipped in the windows of the palaces. it is unharmed as well as uncaptured. thus, we may say, no matter what tempests assail us, the wind will but sweep the rotten branches out of the tree. though war should arise, nothing will be touched that belongs to thee. we have a city which cannot be moved; and the removal of the things which can be shaken but makes more manifest its impregnable security, its inexpugnable peace. as in war they will clear away the houses and the flower gardens that have been allowed to come and cluster about the walls and fill up the moat, yet the walls will stand; so in all the conflicts that befall god's church and god's truth, the calming thought ought to be ours that if anything perishes it is a sign that it is not his, but man's excrescence on his building. whatever is his will stand for ever. and then, with wonderful tenderness and beauty, the psalm in its last words drops, as one might say, in one aspect, and in another, _rises_ from its contemplations of the immortal city and the community to the thought of the individuals that make it up: 'for this god is our god for ever and ever; he will be our guide _even_ unto death.' prosaic commentators have often said that these last two words are an interpolation, that they do not fit into the strain of the psalm, and have troubled themselves to find out what meaning to attach to them, because it seemed to them so unlikely that, in a hymn that had only to do with the community, we should find this expression of individual confidence in anticipation of that most purely personal of all evils. that seems to me the very reason for holding fast by the words as being a genuine part of the psalm, because they express a truth, without which the confident hope of the psalm, grand as it is, is but poor consolation for each heart. it is not enough for passing, perishing men to say, 'never mind your own individual fate: the society, the community, will stand fast and firm.' i want something more than to know that god will establish zion for ever. what about _me_, my own individual self? and these last words answer that question. not merely the city abides, but 'he will be our guide even unto death.' and surely, if so--if his loving hand will lead the citizens of his eternal kingdom even to the edge of that great darkness--he will not lose them even in its gloom. surely there is here the veiled hope that if the city be eternal and the gates of the grave cannot prevail against _it_, the community cannot be eternal unless the individuals be immortal. such a hope is vindicated by the blessed words of a newer revelation: 'god is not ashamed to be called their god, for he hath prepared for them a city.' dear brethren! remember the last words, or all but the last words of scripture which, in their true text and reading, tell us how, instead of aliens from the commonwealth of israel, we may become fellow-citizens with the saints. 'blessed are they that wash their robes that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gate into the city!' two shepherds and two flocks 'like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them.' --psalm xlix. . 'the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them.' --rev. vii. . these two verses have a much closer parallelism in expression than appears in our authorised version. if you turn to the revised version you will find that it rightly renders the former of my texts, 'death shall be their shepherd,' and the latter, 'the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd.' the old testament psalmist and the new testament seer have fallen upon the same image to describe death and the future, but with how different a use! the one paints a grim picture, all sunless and full of shadow; the other dips his pencil in brilliant colours, and suffuses his canvas with a glow as of molten sunlight. the difference between the two is partly due to the progress of revelation and the light cast on life and immortality by christ through the gospel. but it is much more due to the fact that the two writers have different classes in view. the one is speaking of men whose portion is in this life, the other of men who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. and it is the characters of the persons concerned, much more than the degree of enlightenment possessed by the writers, that makes the difference between these two pictures. life and death and the future are what each man makes of them for himself. we shall best deal with these two pictures if we take them separately, and let the gloom of the one enhance the glory of the other. they hang side by side, like a rembrandt beside a claude or a turner, each intensifying by contrast the characteristics of the other. so let us look at the two--first, the grim picture drawn by the psalmist; second, the sunny one drawn by the seer. now, with regard to the former, i. the grim picture drawn by the psalmist. we too often forget that a psalmist is a poet, and misunderstand his spirit by treating his words as matter-of-fact prose. his imagination is at work, and our sympathetic imagination must be at work too, if we would enter into his meaning. death a shepherd--what a grim and bold inversion of a familiar metaphor! if this psalm is, as is probable, of a comparatively late date, then its author was familiar with many sweet and tender strains of early singers, in which the blessed relation between a loving god and an obedient people was set forth under that metaphor. 'the lord is _my_ shepherd' may have been ringing in his ears when he said, 'death is _their_ shepherd.' he lays hold of the familiar metaphor, and if i may so speak, turns it upside down, stripping it of all that is beautiful, tender, and gracious, and draping it in all that is harsh and terrible. and the very contrast between the sweet relation which it was originally used to express, and the opposite kind of one which he uses it to set forth, gives its tremendous force to the daring metaphor. 'death is their shepherd.' yes, but what manner of shepherd? not one that gently leads his flock, but one that stalks behind the huddled sheep, and drives them fiercely, club in hand, on a path on which they would not willingly go. the unwelcome necessity, by which men that have their portion in this world are hounded and herded out of all their sunny pastures and abundant feeding, is the thought that underlies the image. it is accentuated, if we notice that in the former clause, 'like sheep they are laid in the grave,' the word rendered in the authorised version 'laid,' and in the revised version 'appointed,' is perhaps more properly read by many, 'like sheep they are _thrust down_.' there you have the picture--the shepherd stalking behind the helpless creatures, and coercing them on an unwelcome path. now that is the first thought that i suggest, that to one type of man, death is an unwelcome necessity. it is, indeed, a necessity to us all, but necessities accepted cease to be painful; and necessities resisted--what do they become? here is a man being swept down a river, the sound of the falls is in his ears, and he grasps at anything on the bank to hold by, but in vain. that is how some of us feel when we face the thought, and will feel more when we front the reality, of that awful 'must.' 'death shall be their shepherd,' and coerce them into darkness. ask yourself the question, is the course of my life such as that the end of it cannot but be a grim necessity which i would do anything to avoid? this first text suggests not only a shepherd but a fold: 'like sheep they are thrust down to the grave.' now i am not going to enter upon what would be quite out of place here: a critical discussion of the old testament conception of a future life. that conception varies, and is not the same in all parts of the book. but i may, just in a word, say that 'the grave' is by no means the adequate rendering of the thought of the psalmist, and that 'hell' is a still more inadequate rendering of it. he does not mean either the place where the body is deposited, or a place where there is punitive retribution for the wicked, but he means a dim region, or, if i might so say, a localised condition, in which all that have passed through this life are gathered, where personality and consciousness continue, but where life is faint, stripped of all that characterises it here, shadowy, unsubstantial, and where there is inactivity, absolute cessation of all the occupations to which men were accustomed. but there may be restlessness along with inactivity; may there not? and there is no such restlessness as the restlessness of compulsory idleness. that is the main idea that is in the psalmist's mind. he knows little about retribution, he knows still less about transmutation into a glorious likeness to that which is most glorious and divine. but he conceives a great, dim, lonely land, wherein are prisoned and penned all the lives that have been foamed away vainly on earth, and are now settled into a dreary monotony and a restless idleness. as one of the other books of the old testament puts it, it is a 'land of the shadow of death, without order, and in which the light is as darkness.' i know, of course, that all that is but the imperfect presentation of partially apprehended, and partially revealed, and partially revealable truth. but what i desire to fix upon is that one dreary thought of this fold, into which the grim shepherd has driven his flock, and where they lie cribbed and huddled together in utter inactivity. carry that with you as a true, though incomplete thought. let me remind you, in the next place, with regard to this part of my subject, of the kind of men whom the grim shepherd drives into that grim fold. the psalm tells us that plainly enough. it is speaking of men who have their portion in this life, who 'trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches ... whose inward thought is that their house shall continue for ever ... who call their lands after their own names.' of every such man it says: 'when he dieth he shall carry nothing away'--none of the possessions, none of the forms of activity which were familiar to him here on earth. he will go into a state where he finds nothing which interests him, and nothing for him to do. must it not be so? if we let ourselves be absorbed and entangled by the affairs of this life, and permit our whole spirits to be bent in the direction of these transient things, what is to become of us when the things that must pass have passed, and when we come into a region where there are none of them to occupy us any more? what would some manchester men do if they were in a condition of life where they could not go on 'change on tuesdays and fridays? what would some of us do if the professions and forms of mental activity in which we have been occupied as students and scholars were swept away? 'whether there be knowledge it shall cease; whether there be tongues they shall vanish away,' and what are you going to do then, you men that have only lived for intellectual pursuits connected with this transient state? we are going to a world where there are no books, no pens nor ink, no trade, no dress, no fashion, no amusements; where there is nothing but things in which some of us have no interest, and a god who 'is not in all our thoughts.' surely we shall be 'fish out of water' there. surely we shall feel that we have been banned and banished from everything that we care about. surely men that boasted themselves in their riches, and in the multitude of their wealth, will be necessarily condemned to inactivity. life is continuous, and all on one plane. surely if a man knows that he must some day, and may any day, be summoned to the other side of the world, he would be a wise man if he got his outfit ready, and made some effort to acquire the customs and the arts of the land to which he was going. surely life here is mainly given to us that we may develop powers which will find their field of exercise yonder, and acquire characters which shall be in conformity with the conditions of that future life. surely there can be no more tragic folly than the folly of letting myself be so absorbed and entangled by this present world, as that when the transient has passed, i shall feel homeless and desolate, and have nothing that i can do or care about amidst the activities of eternity. dear friend, should _you_ feel homeless if you were taken, as you will be taken, into that world? turn now to ii. the sunny landscape drawn by the seer. note the contrast presented by the shepherds. 'death shall be their shepherd.' 'the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd.' i need not occupy your time in trying to show, what has sometimes been doubted, that the radiant picture of the apocalyptic seer is dealing with nothing in the present, but with the future condition of certain men. i would just remind you that the words in which it is couched are to a large extent a quotation from ancient prophecy, a description of the divine watchfulness over the pilgrim's return from captivity to the land of promise. but the quotation is wonderfully elevated and spiritualised in the new testament vision; for instead of reading, as the original does: 'he that hath mercy on them shall lead them,' we have here, 'the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd,' and instead of their being led merely to 'the springs of water,' here we read that he 'leads them to the fountains of the water of life.' we have to think, first, of that most striking, most significant and profound modification of the old testament words, which presents the lamb as 'the shepherd.' all christ's shepherding on earth and in heaven depends, as do all our hopes for heaven and earth, upon the fact of his sacrificial death. it is only because he is the 'lamb that was slain' that he is either the 'lamb in the midst of the throne,' or the shepherd of the flock. and we must make acquaintance with him first in the character of 'the lamb of god which taketh away the sin of the world,' before we can either follow in his footsteps as our guide, or be compassed by his protection as our shepherd. he is the lamb, and he is the shepherd--that suggests not only that the sacrificial work of jesus christ is the basis of all his work for us on earth and in heaven, but the very incongruity of making one, who bears the same nature as the flock to be the shepherd of the flock, is part of the beauty of the metaphor. it is his humanity that is our guide. it is his continual manhood, all through eternity and its glories, that makes him the shepherd of perfected souls. they follow him because he is one of themselves, and he could not be the shepherd unless he were the lamb. but then this shepherd is not only gracious, sympathetic, kin to us by participation in a common nature, and fit to be our guide because he has been our sacrifice and the propitiation of our sins, but he is the lamb 'in the midst of the throne,' wielding therefore all divine power, and standing--not as the rendering in our bible leads an english reader to suppose, on the throne, but--in the middle point between it and the ring of worshippers, and so the communicator to the outer circumference of all the blessings that dwell in the divine centre. he shall be their shepherd, not coercing, not driving by violence, but leading to the fountains of the waters of life, gently and graciously. it is not compulsory energy which he exercises upon us, either on earth or in heaven, but it is the drawing of a divine attraction, sweet to put forth and sweet to yield to. there is still another contrast. death huddled and herded his reluctant sheep into a fold where they lay inactive but struggling and restless. christ leads his flock into a pasture. he shall guide them 'to the fountains of waters of life.' i need not dwell at any length on the blessed particulars of that future, set forth here and in the context. but let me suggest them briefly. there is joyous activity. there is constant progression. he goeth before; they follow. the perfection of heaven begins at entrance into it, but it is a perfection which can be perfected, and is being perfected, through the ages of eternity, and the picture of the shepherd in front and the flock behind, is the true conception of all the progress of that future life. 'they shall follow the lamb whithersoever he goeth'--a sweet guidance, a glad following, a progressive conformity! 'in the long years liker must they grow.' further, there is the communication of life more and more abundantly. therefore there is the satisfaction of all desire, so that 'they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.' the pain of desire ceases because desire is no sooner felt than it is satisfied, the joy of desire continues, because its satisfaction enables us to desire more, and so, appetite and eating, desire and fruition, alternate in ceaseless reciprocity. to us, being every moment capable of more, more will be given; and 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' there is one point more in regard to that pasture into which the lamb leads the happy flock, and that is, the cessation of all pains and sorrows. not only shall they 'hunger no more, neither thirst any more'; but 'the sun shall not smite them, nor any heat, and god shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.' here the shepherd carried rod and staff, and sometimes had to strike the wandering sheep hard: there these are needed no more. here he had sometimes to move them out of green pastures, and away from still waters, into valleys of the shadow of death; but 'there,' as one of the prophets has it: 'they shall lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed.' but now, we must note, finally, the other kind of men whom this other shepherd leads into his pastures, 'they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.' aye! that is it. that is why he can lead them where he does lead them. strange alchemy which out of two crimsons, the crimson of our sins and the crimson of his blood, makes one white! but it is so, and the only way by which we can ever be cleansed, either with the initial cleansing of forgiveness, or with the daily cleansing of continual purifying and approximation to the divine holiness, is by our bringing the foul garment of our stained personality and character into contact with the blood which, 'shed for many,' takes away their sins, and infused into their veins, cleanses them from all sin. you have yourselves to bring about that contact. '_they_ have washed their robes.' and how did they do it? by faith in the sacrifice first, by following the example next. for it is not merely a forgiveness for the past, but a perfecting, progressive and gradual, for the future, that lies in that thought of washing their robes and making them white in the blood of the lamb. dear brethren, life here and life hereafter are continuous. they are homogeneous, on one plane though an ascending one. the differences there are great--i was going to say, and it would be true, that the resemblances are greater. as we have been, we shall be. if we take christ for our shepherd here, and follow him, though from afar and with faltering steps, amidst all the struggles and windings and rough ways of life, then and only then, will he be our shepherd, to go with us through the darkness of death, to make it no reluctant expulsion from a place in which we would fain continue to be, but a tranquil and willing following of him by the road which he has consecrated for ever, and deprived for ever of its solitude, because himself has trod it. those two possibilities are before each of us. either of them may be yours. one of them must be. look on this picture and on this; and choose--god help you to choose aright--which of the two will describe your experience. will you have christ for your shepherd, or will you have death for your shepherd? the answer to that question lies in the answer to the other--have you washed your robes, and made them white in the blood of the lamb; and are you following him? you can settle the question which lot is to be yours, and only you can settle it. see that you settle it aright, and that you settle it soon. end of vol. i. volume ii: psalms _li to cxlv_ contents david's cry for pardon (psalm li. , ) david's cry for purity (psalm li. - ) fear and faith (psalm lvi. , ) a song of deliverance (psalm lvi. , r.v.) the fixed heart (psalm lvii. ) waiting and singing (psalm lix. , ) silence to god (psalm lxii, - ) thirst and satisfaction (psalm lxiii. , , ) sin overcoming and overcome (psalm lxv. ) the burden-bearing god (psalm lxviii. , a.v. and r.v.) reasonable rapture (psalm lxxiii. , ) nearness to god the key to life's puzzle (psalm lxxiii. ) memory, hope, and effort (psalm lxxviii. ) sparrows and altars (psalm lxxxiv. ) happy pilgrims (psalm lxxxiv. - ) blessed trust (psalm lxxxiv. ) 'the bridal of the earth and sky' (psalm lxxxv. - ) a sheaf of prayer arrows (psalm lxxxvi. - ) continual sunshine (psalm lxxxix. ) the cry of the mortal to the undying (psalm xc. ) the sheltering wing (psalm xci. ) the habitation of the soul (psalm xci. , ) the answer to trust (psalm xci. ) what god will do for us (psalm xci. , ) forgiveness and retribution (psalm xcix. ) inviolable messiahs and prophets (psalm cv. , ) god's promises tests (psalm cv. ) soldier priests (psalm cx. ) god and the godly (psalms cxi. ; cxii. ) experience, resolve, and hope (psalm cxvi. , ) requiting god (psalm cxvi. , ) a cleansed way (psalm cxix. ) life hid and not hid (psalm cxix. ; xl. ) a stranger in the earth (psalm cxix. , ) 'time for thee to work' (psalm cxix. - ) submission and peace (psalm cxix. ) looking to the hills (psalm cxxi. , ) mountains round mount zion (psalm cxxv. , ) the charge of the watchers in the temple (psalm cxxxiv. - ) god's scrutiny longed for (psalm cxxxix. , ) the incense of prayer (psalm cxli. ) the prayer of prayers (psalm cxliii. ) the satisfier of all desires (psalm cxlv. , ) david's cry for pardon '... blot out my transgressions. . wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.'--psalm li. , . a whole year had elapsed between david's crime and david's penitence. it had been a year of guilty satisfaction not worth the having; of sullen hardening of heart against god and all his appeals. the thirty-second psalm tells us how _happy_ david had been during that twelvemonth, of which he says, 'my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. for day and night thy hand was heavy on me.' then came nathan with his apologue, and with that dark threatening that 'the sword should never depart from his house,' the fulfilment of which became a well-head of sorrow to the king for the rest of his days, and gave a yet deeper poignancy of anguish to the crime of his spoiled favourite absalom. the stern words had their effect. the frost that had bound his soul melted all away, and he confessed his sin, and was forgiven then and there. 'i have sinned against the lord' is the confession as recorded in the historical books; and, says nathan, 'the lord hath made to pass from thee the iniquity of thy sin.' immediately, as would appear from the narrative, that very same day, the child of bathsheba and david was smitten with fatal disease, and died in a week. and it is _after_ all these events--the threatening, the penitence, the pardon, the punishment--that he comes to god, who had so freely forgiven, and likewise so sorely smitten him, and wails out these prayers: 'blot out my transgressions, wash me from mine iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.' one almost shrinks from taking as the text of a sermon words like these, in which a broken and contrite spirit groans for deliverance, and which are, besides, hallowed by the thought of the thousands who have since found them the best expression of their sacredest emotions. but i would fain try not to lose the feeling that breathes through the words, while seeking for the thoughts which are in them, and hope that the light which they throw upon the solemn subjects of guilt and forgiveness may not be for any of us a mere cold light. i. looking then at this triad of petitions, they teach us first how david thought of his sin. you will observe the reiteration of the same earnest cry in all these clauses, and if you glance over the remainder of this psalm, you will find that he asks for the gifts of god's spirit, with a similar threefold repetition. now this characteristic of the whole psalm is worth notice in the outset. it is not a mere piece of hebrew parallelism. the requirements of poetical form but partially explain it. it is much more the earnestness of a soul that cannot be content with once asking for the blessings and then passing on, but dwells upon them with repeated supplication, not because it thinks that it shall be heard for its 'much speaking,' but because it longs for them so eagerly. and besides that, though the three clauses do express the same general idea, they express it under various modifications, and must be all taken together before we get the whole of the psalmist's thought of sin. notice again that he speaks of his evil as 'transgressions' and as 'sin,' first using the plural and then the singular. he regards it first as being broken up into a multitude of isolated acts, and then as being all gathered together into one knot, as it were, so that it is one thing. in one aspect it is 'my transgressions'--'that thing that i did about uriah, that thing that i did about bathsheba, those other things that these dragged after them.' one by one the acts of wrongdoing pass before him. but he does not stop there. they are not merely a number of deeds, but they have, deep down below, a common root from which they all came--a centre in which they all inhere. and so he says, not only 'blot out my _transgressions_,' but 'wash me from mine _iniquity_.' he does not merely generalise, but he sees and he feels what you and i have to feel, if we judge rightly of our evil actions, that we cannot take them only in their plurality as so many separate deeds, but that we must recognise them as coming from a common source, and we must lament before god not only our 'sins' but our 'sin'--not only the outward acts of transgression, but that alienation of heart from which they all come; not only sin in its manifold manifestations as it comes out in the life, but in its inward roots as it coils round our hearts. you are not to confess acts alone, but let your contrition embrace the principle from which they come. further, in all the petitions we see that the idea of his own single responsibility for the whole thing is uppermost in david's mind. it is _my_ transgression, it is _mine_ iniquity, and _my_ sin. he has not learned to say with adam of old, and with some so-called wise thinkers to-day: 'i was tempted, and i could not help it.' he does not talk about 'circumstances,' and say that they share the blame with him. he takes it all to himself. 'it was _i_ did it. true, i was tempted, but it was my soul that made the occasion a temptation. true, the circumstances led me astray, but they would not have led me astray if i had been right, and _where_ as well as _what_ i ought to be.' it is a solemn moment when that thought first rises in its revealing power to throw light into the dark places of our souls. but it is likewise a blessed moment, and without it we are scarcely aware of ourselves. conscience quickens consciousness. the sense of transgression is the first thing that gives to many a man the full sense of his own individuality. there is nothing that makes us feel how awful and incommunicable is that mysterious personality by which every one of us lives alone after all companionship, so much as the contemplation of our relations to god's law. 'every man shall bear his own burden.' 'circumstances,' yes; 'bodily organisation,' yes; 'temperament,' yes; 'the maxims of society,' 'the conventionalities of the time,' yes,--all these things have something to do with shaping our single deeds and with influencing our character; but after we have made all allowances for these influences which affect _me_, let us ask the philosophers who bring them forward as diminishing or perhaps annihilating responsibility, 'and what about that _me_ which these things influence?' after all, let me remember that the deed is _mine_, and that every one of us shall, as paul puts it, give account of _himself_ unto god. passing from that, let me point for one moment to another set of ideas that are involved in these petitions. the three words which the psalmist employs for sin give prominence to different aspects of it. 'transgression' is not the same as 'iniquity,' and 'iniquity' is not the same as 'sin.' they are not aimless, useless synonyms, but they have each a separate thought in them. the word rendered 'transgression' literally means rebellion, a breaking away from and setting oneself against lawful authority. that translated 'iniquity' literally means that which is twisted, bent. the word in the original for 'sin' literally means missing a mark, an aim. and this threefold view of sin is no discovery of david's, but is the lesson which the whole old testament system had laboured to print deep on the national consciousness. that lesson, taught by law and ceremonial, by denunciation and remonstrance, by chastisement and deliverance, the penitent king has learned. to all men's wrongdoings these descriptions apply, but most of all to his. sin is ever, and his sin especially is, rebellion, the deflection of the life from the straight line which god's law draws so clearly and firmly, and hence a missing the aim. think how profound and living is the consciousness of sin which lies in calling it _rebellion_. it is not merely, then, that we go against some abstract propriety, or break some impersonal law of nature when we do wrong, but that we rebel against a rightful sovereign. in a special sense this was true of the jew, whose nation stood under the government of a divine king, so that sin was treason, and breaches of the law acts of rebellion against god. but it is as true of us all. our theory of morals will be miserably defective, and our practice will be still more defective, unless we have learned that morality is but the garment of religion, that the definition of virtue is obedience to god, and that the true sin in sin is not the yielding to impulses that belong to our nature, but the assertion in the act of yielding, of our independence of god and of our opposition to his will. and all this has application to david's sin. he was god's viceroy and representative, and he sets to his people the example of revolt, and lifts the standard of rebellion. it is as if the ruler of a province declared war against the central authority of which he was the creature, and used against it the very magazines and weapons with which it had intrusted him. he had rebelled, and in an eminent degree, as nathan said to him, given to the enemies of god occasion to blaspheme. not less profound and suggestive is that other name for sin, that which is twisted, or bent, mine 'iniquity.' it is the same metaphor which lies in our own word 'wrong,' that which is wrung or warped from the straight line of right. to that line, drawn by god's law, our lives should run parallel, bending neither to the right hand nor to the left. but instead of the firm directness of such a line, our lives show wavering deformity, and are like the tremulous strokes in a child's copy-book. david had the pattern before him, and by its side his unsteady purpose, his passionate lust, had traced this wretched scrawl. the path on which he should have trodden was a straight course to god, unbending like one of these conquering roman roads, that will turn aside for neither mountain nor ravine, nor stream nor bog. if it had been thus straight, it would have reached its goal. journeying on that way of holiness, he would have found, and we shall find, that on it no ravenous beast shall meet us, but with songs and everlasting joy upon their lips the happy pilgrims draw ever nearer to god, obtaining joy and gladness in all the march, until at last 'sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' but instead of this he had made for himself a crooked path, and had lost his road and his peace in the mazes of wandering ways. 'the labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to come to the city.' another very solemn and terrible thought of what sin is, lies in that final word for it, which means 'missing an aim.' how strikingly that puts a truth which siren voices are constantly trying to sing us out of believing! every sin is a blunder as well as a crime. and that for two reasons, because, first, god has made us for himself, and to take anything besides for our life's end or our heart's portion is to divert ourselves from our true destiny; and because, second, that being so, every attempt to win satisfaction or delight by such a course is and must be a failure. sin misses the aim if we think of our proper destination. sin misses its own aim of happiness. a man never gets what he hoped for by doing wrong, or, if he seem to do so, he gets something more that spoils it all. he pursues after the fleeing form that seems so fair, and when he reaches her side, and lifts her veil, eager to embrace the tempter, a hideous skeleton grins and gibbers at him. the siren voices sing to you from the smiling island, and their white arms and golden harps and the flowery grass draw you from the wet boat and the weary oar; but when a man lands he sees the fair form end in a slimy fish, and she slays him and gnaws his bones. 'he knows not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.' yes! every sin is a mistake, and the epitaph for the sinner is 'thou fool!' ii. these petitions also show us, in the second place, how david thinks of forgiveness. as the words for sin expressed a threefold view of the burden from which the psalmist seeks deliverance, so the triple prayer, in like manner, sets forth that blessing under three aspects. it is not merely pardon for which he asks. he is making no sharp dogmatic distinction between forgiveness and cleansing. the two things run into each other in his prayer, as they do, thank god! in our own experience, the one being inseparable, in fact, from the other. it is absolute deliverance from the power of sin, in all forms of that power, whether as guilt or as habit, for which he cries so piteously; and his accumulative petitions are so exhaustive, not because he is coldly examining his sin, but because he is intensely feeling the manifold burden of his great evil. that first petition conceives of the divine dealing with sin as being the erasure of a writing, perhaps of an indictment. there is a special significance in the use of the word here, because it is also employed in the description of the levitical ceremonial of the ordeal, where a curse was written on a scroll and blotted out by the priest. but apart from that the metaphor is a natural and suggestive one. our sin stands written against us. the long gloomy indictment has been penned by our own hands. our past is a blurred manuscript, full of false things and bad things. we have to spread the writing before god, and ask him to remove the stained characters from its surface, that once was fair and unsoiled. ah, brethren! some people tell us that the past is irrevocable, that the thing once done can never be undone, that the life's diary written by our own hands can never be cancelled. the melancholy theory of some thinkers and teachers is summed up in the words, infinitely sad and despairing when so used, 'what i have written i have written.' thank god! we know better than that. we know who blots out the handwriting 'that is against us, nailing it to his cross.' we know that of god's great mercy our future may 'copy fair our past,' and the past may be all obliterated and removed. and as sometimes you will find in an old monkish library the fair vellum that once bore lascivious stories of ancient heathens and pagan deities turned into the manuscript in which a saint has penned his contemplations, an augustine his confessions, or a jerome his translations, so our souls may become palimpsests. the old wicked heathen characters that we have traced there may be blotted out, and covered over by the writing of that divine spirit who has said, 'i will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts.' as you run your pen through the finished pages of your last year's diaries, as you seal them up and pack them away, and begin a new page in a clean book on the first of january, so it is possible for every one of us to do with our lives. notwithstanding all the influence of habit, notwithstanding all the obstinacy of long-indulged modes of thought and action, notwithstanding all the depressing effect of frequent attempts and frequent failures, we may break ourselves off from all that is sinful in our past lives, and begin afresh, saying, 'god helping me! i will write another sort of biography for myself for the days that are to come.' we cannot erase these sad records from our past. the ink is indelible; and besides all that we have visibly written in these terrible autobiographies of ours, there is much that has sunk into the page, there is many a 'secret fault,' the record of which will need the fire of that last day to make it legible, alas for those who learn the black story of their own lives for the first time then! learn it now, my brother! and learn likewise that christ can wipe it all clean off the page, clean out of your nature, clean out of god's book. cry to him, with the psalmist, 'blot out my transgressions!' and he will calm and bless you with the ancient answer, 'i have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.' then there is another idea in the second of these prayers for forgiveness: '_wash me throughly_ from mine iniquity.' that phrase does not need any explanation, except that the word expresses the antique way of cleansing garments by treading and beating. david, then, here uses the familiar symbol of a robe, to express the 'habit' of the soul, or, as we say, the character. that robe is all splashed and stained. he cries to god to make it a robe of righteousness and a garment of purity. and mark that he thinks the method by which this will be accomplished is a protracted and probably a painful one. he is not praying for a mere declaration of pardon, he is not asking only for the one complete, instantaneous act of forgiveness, but he is asking for a process of purifying which will be long and hard. 'i am ready,' says he, in effect, 'to submit to any sort of discipline, if only i may be clean. wash me, beat me, tread me down, hammer me with mallets, dash me against stones, rub me with smarting soap and caustic nitre--do anything, anything with me, if only those foul spots melt away from the texture of my soul!' a solemn prayer, my brethren! if we pray it aright, which will be answered by many a sharp application of god's spirit, by many a sorrow, by much very painful work, both within our own souls and in our outward lives, but which will be fulfilled at last in our being clothed like our lord, in garments which shine as the light. we know, dear brethren! who has said, 'i counsel thee to buy of me white raiment, that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear.' and we know well who were the great company before the throne of god, that had 'washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.' 'though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' 'wash me throughly from mine iniquity.' the deliverance from sin is still further expressed by that third supplication, 'cleanse me from my sin.' that is the technical word for the priestly act of declaring ceremonial cleanness--the cessation of ceremonial pollution, and for the other priestly act of making, as well as declaring, clean from the stains of leprosy. and with allusion to both of these uses, the psalmist employs it here. that is to say, he thinks of his guilt not only as a blotted past record which he has written, not only as a garment spotted by the flesh which his spirit wears, but he thinks of it too as inhering in himself, as a leprosy and disease of his own personal nature. he thinks of it as being, like that, incurable, fatal, twin sister to and precursor of death; and he thinks of it as capable of being cleansed only by a sacerdotal act, only by the great high priest and by his finger being laid upon it. and we know who it was that--when the leper, whom no man in israel was allowed to touch on pain of uncleanness, came to his feet--put out his hand in triumphant consciousness of power, and touched him, and said, 'i _will_! be thou clean.' let this be thy prayer, 'cleanse me from my sin'; and christ will answer, 'thy leprosy hath departed from thee.' iii. these petitions likewise show us whence the psalmist draws his confidence for such a prayer. 'according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.' his whole hope rests upon god's own character, as revealed in the endless continuance of his acts of love. he knows the number and the greatness of his sins, and the very depth of his consciousness of sin helps him to a corresponding greatness in his apprehension of god's mercy. as he says in another of his psalms, 'innumerable evils have compassed me about; they are more than the hairs of my head.... many, o lord my god! are thy wonderful works.... they are more than can be numbered.' this is the blessedness of all true penitence, that the more profoundly it feels its own sore need and great sinfulness, in that very proportion does it recognise the yet greater mercy and all-sufficient grace of our loving god, and from the lowest depths beholds the stars in the sky, which they who dwell amid the surface-brightness of the noonday cannot discern. god's own revealed character, his faithfulness and persistency, notwithstanding all our sins, in that mode of dealing with men which has blessed all generations with his tender mercies--these were david's pleas. and for us who have the perfect love of god perfectly expressed in his son, that same plea is incalculably strengthened, for we can say, 'according to thy tender mercy in thy dear son, for the sake of christ, blot out my transgressions.' is the depth of our desire, and is the firmness of our confidence, proportioned to the increased clearness of our knowledge of the love of our god? does the cross of christ lead us to as trustful a penitence as david had, to whom meditation on god's providences and the shadows of the ancient covenant were chiefest teachers of the multitude of his tender mercies? remember further that a comparison of the narrative in the historical books seems to show, as i said, that this psalm followed nathan's declaration of the divine forgiveness, and that therefore these petitions of our text are the echo and response to that declaration. thus we see that the revelation of god's love precedes, and is the cause of, the truest penitence; that our prayer for forgiveness is properly the appropriating, or the effort to appropriate, the divine promise of forgiveness; and that the assurance of pardon, so far from making a man think lightly of his sin, is the thing that drives it home to his conscience, and first of all teaches him what it really is. as long as you are tortured with thoughts of a possible hell because of guilt, as long as you are troubled by the contemplation of consequences affecting your happiness as ensuing upon your wrongdoing, so long there is a foreign and disturbing element in even your deepest and truest penitence. but when you know that god has forgiven--when you come to see the 'multitude of thy tender mercies,' when the fear of punishment has passed out of your apprehension, then you are left with a heart at leisure from dread, to look the fact and not the consequences in the face, and to think of the moral nature, and not of the personal results, of your sin. and so one of the old prophets, with profound truth, says, 'thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy sin, when i am pacified towards thee for all thou hast done.' dear friends! the wheels of god's great mill may grind us small, without our coming to know or to hate our sin. about his chastisements, about the revelation of his wrath, that old saying is true to a great extent: 'if you bray a fool in a mortar, his folly will not depart from him.' you may smite a man down, crush him, make his bones to creep with the preaching of vengeance and of hell, and the result of it will often be, if it be anything at all, what it was in the case of that poor wretched judas, who, because he only saw wrath, flung _himself_ into despair, and was lost, not because he had betrayed christ, but because he believed that there was no forgiveness for the man that had betrayed. but love comes, and 'love is lord of all.' god's assurance, 'i have forgiven,' the assurance that we do not need to plead with him, to bribe him, to buy pardon by tears and amendment, but that it is already provided for us--the blessed vision of an all-mighty love treasured in a dying saviour, the proclamation 'god was in christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them'--oh! these are the powers that break, or rather that melt, our hearts; these are the keen weapons that wound to heal our hearts; these are the teachers that teach a 'godly sorrow that needeth not to be repented of.' think of all the patient, pitying mercy of our father, with which he has lingered about our lives, and softly knocked at the door of our hearts! think of that unspeakable gift in which are wrapped up all his tender mercies--the gift of christ who died for us all! let it smite upon your heart with a rebuke mightier than all the thunders of law or terrors of judgment. let it unveil for you not only the depths of the love of god, but the darkness of your own selfish rebellion from him. measure your crooked lives by the perfect rightness of christ's. learn how you have missed the aim which he reached, who could say, 'i delight to do thy will, o my god!' and let that same infinite love that teaches sin announce frank forgiveness and prophesy perfect purity. then, with heart fixed upon christ's cross, let your cry for pardon be the echo of the most sure promise of pardon which sounds from his dying lips; and as you gaze on him who died that we might be freed from all iniquity, ask him to blot out your transgressions, to wash you throughly from your iniquity, and to cleanse you from your sins. ask, for you cannot ask in vain; ask earnestly, for you need it sorely; ask confidently, for he has promised before you ask; but ask, for unless you do, you will not receive. ask, and the answer is sent already--'the blood of jesus christ cleanseth from all sin.' david's cry for purity '... renew a right spirit within me. . ... and take not thy holy spirit from me. . ... and uphold me with thy free spirit.' --psalm li. - . we ought to be very thankful that the bible never conceals the faults of its noblest men. david stands high among the highest of these. his words have been for ages the chosen expression for the devotions of the holiest souls; and whoever has wished to speak longings after purity, lowly trust in god, the aspirations of love, or the raptures of devotion, has found no words of his own more natural than those of the poet-king of israel. and this man sins, black, grievous sin. self-indulgent, he stays at home while his army is in the field. his moral nature, relaxed by this shrinking from duty, is tempted, and easily conquered. the sensitive poet nature, to which all delights of eye and sense appeal so strongly, is for a time too strong for the devout soul. one sin drags on another. as self-indulgence opened the door for lust, so lust, which dwells hard by hate, draws after it murder. the king is a traitor to his subjects, the soldier untrue to the chivalry of arms, the friend the betrayer of the friend. nothing can be blacker than the whole story, and the bible tells the shameful history in all its naked ugliness. many a precious lesson is contained in it. for instance, it is not innocence which makes men good. 'this is your man after god's own heart, is it?' runs the common, shallow sneer. yes; not that god thought little of his foul sin, nor that 'saints' make up for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms; not that 'righteousness' as a standard of conduct is lower than 'morality'; but that, having fallen, he learned to abhor his sin, and with deepened trust in god's mercy, and many tears, struggled out of the mire, and with unconquered resolve and strength drawn from a divine source, sought still to press towards the mark. it is not the attainment of purity, not the absence of sin, but the presence and operation, though it be partial, of an energy which is at war with all impurity, that makes a man righteous. that is a lesson worth learning. again, david was not a hypocrite because of this fall of his. all sin is inconsistent with a religious character. but it is not for us to say what sin is incompatible with a religious character. again, the worst sin is not some outburst of gross transgression, forming an exception to the ordinary tenor of a life, bad and dismal as such a sin is; but the worst and most fatal are the small continuous vices, which root underground and honeycomb the soul. many a man who thinks himself a christian, is in more danger from the daily commission, for example, of small pieces of sharp practice in his business, than ever was david at his worst. white ants pick a carcase clean sooner than a lion will. most precious of all is the lesson as to the possibility of all sin being effaced, and of the high hopes which even a man sunk in transgression has a right to cherish, as to the purity and beauty of character to which he may come. what a prayer these clauses contain to be offered by one who has so sinned! what a marvellous faith in god's pardoning love, and what a boldness of hope in his own future, they disclose! they set forth a profound ideal of a noble character; they make of that ideal a prayer; they are the prayer of a great transgressor, who is also a true penitent. in all these aspects they are very remarkable, and lead to valuable lessons. let us look at them from these points of view successively. i. observe that here is a remarkable outline of a holy character. it is to be observed that of these three gifts--a right spirit, thy holy spirit, a free spirit--the central one alone is in the original spoken of as god's; the 'thy' of the last clause of the english bible being an unnecessary supplement. and i suppose that this central petition stands in the middle, because the gift which it asks is the essential and fundamental one, from which there flow, and as it were, diverge on the right hand and on the left, the other two. god's holy spirit given to a man makes the human spirit holy, and then makes it 'right' and 'free.' look then at the petitions, not in the order in which they stand in the text, but in the order which the text indicates as the natural one. now as to that fundamental petition, 'take not thy holy spirit from me,' one thing to notice is that david regards himself as possessing that spirit. we are not to read into this psalm the fully developed new testament teaching of a personal paraclete, the spirit whom christ reveals and sends. to do that would be a gross anachronism. but we are to remember that it is an anointed king who speaks, on whose head there has been poured the oil that designated him to his office, and in its gentle flow and sweet fragrance, symbolised from of old the inspiration of a divine influence that accompanied every divine call. we are to remember, too, how it had fared with david's predecessor. saul had been chosen by god; had been for a while guided and upheld by god. but he fell into sin, and--not because he fell into it, but because he continued in it; not because he did wrong, but because he did not repent--the solemn words are recorded concerning him, that 'the spirit of the lord departed from saul, and an evil spirit from the lord troubled him.' the divine influence which came on the towering head of the son of kish, through the anointing oil that samuel poured upon his raven hair, left him, and he stood god-forsaken because he stood god-forsaking. and so david looks back from the 'horrible pit and miry clay' into which he had fallen, where, stained with blood and lust, he lies, to that sad gigantic figure, remembered so well and loved by him so truly--the great king who sinned away his soul, and bled out his life on the heights of gilboa. he sees in that blasted pine-tree, towering above the forest but dead at the top, and barked and scathed all down the sides by the lightning scars of passion, the picture of what he himself will come to, if the blessing that was laid upon his ruddy locks and his young head by the aged samuel's anointing should pass from him too as it had done from his predecessor. god had departed from saul, because saul had refused his counsel and departed from him; and saul's successor, trembling as he remembers the fate of the founder of the monarchy, and of his vanished dynasty, prays with peculiar emphasis of meaning, 'take not thy holy spirit from _me_!' that holy spirit, the spirit of god, had descended upon him when he was anointed king, but it was no mere official consecration which he had thereby received. he had been fitted for regal functions by personal cleansing and spiritual gifts. and it is the man as well as the king, the sinful man much rather than the faulty king, that here wrestles with god, and stays the heavenly visitant whom his sin has made to seem as if he would depart. what he desires most earnestly, next to that pardon which he has already sought and found, is that his spirit should be made holy by god's spirit. that is, as i have said, the central petition of his threefold prayer, from which the others come as natural consequences. and what is this 'holiness' which david so earnestly desires? without attempting any lengthened analysis of the various shades of meaning in the word, our purpose will be served if i point out that in all probability the primary idea in it is that of separation. god is holy--that is, separated by all the glory of his perfect nature from his creatures. things are holy--that is, separated from common uses, and appropriated to god's service. whatever he laid his hand on and claimed in any especial manner for his, became thereby holy, whether it were a ceremony, or a place, or a tool. men are holy when they are set apart for god's service, whether they be officially consecrated for certain offices, or have yielded themselves by an inward devotion based on love to be his. the ethical signification which is predominant in our use of the word and has made it little more than a synonym for moral purity is certainly not the original meaning, as is sufficiently clear from the fact that the word is applied to material things which could have no moral qualities, and sometimes to persons who were not pure, but who were in some sense or other set apart for god's service. but gradually that meaning becomes more and more completely attached to the word, and 'holiness' is not only separation for god, but separation from sin. that is what david longs for in this prayer; and the connection of these two meanings of the word is worth pointing out in a sermon, for the sake of the great truth which it suggests, that the basis of all rightness and righteousness in a human spirit is its conscious and glad devotion to god's service and uses. a reference to god must underlie all that is good in men, and on the other hand, that consecration to god is a delusion or a deception which does not issue in separation from evil. 'holiness' is a loftier and a truer word than 'morality,' 'virtue,' or the like; it differs from these in that it proclaims that surrender to god is the very essence of all good, while they seek to construct a standard for human conduct, and to lay a foundation for human goodness, without regard to him. hence, irreligious moralists dislike the very word, and fall back upon pale, colourless phrases rather than employ it. but these are inadequate for the purpose. man's duties can never be summed up in any expression which omits man's relation to god. how do i stand to him? do i belong to him by joyous yielding of myself to be his instrument? that, my friends! is the question, the answer to which determines everything about me. rightly answered, there will come all fruits of grace and beauty in the character as a natural consequence; 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' every virtue and every praise grow from the root of consecration to god. wrongly answered, there will come only fruits of selfishness and evil, which may simulate virtue, but the blossom shall go up in dust, and the root in stubble. do you seek purity, nobleness, strength, and beauty of soul? learn that all these inhere in and flow from the one act of giving up yourself to god, and in their truest perfection are found only in the spirit that is his. holiness considered as moral excellence is the result of holiness considered as devotion to god. and learn too that holiness in both aspects comes from the operation and indwelling in our spirits of a divine spirit, who draws away our love from self to fix it on him, which changes our blindness into sight, and makes us by degrees like himself, 'holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.' the spirit of the lord is the energy which produces all righteousness and purity in human spirits. therefore, all our desires after what is good and true should shape themselves into the desire for that spirit. our prayer should be, 'make me separate from evil, and that i may be so, claim and keep me for thine own. as thou hast done with the sabbath amongst the days, with the bare summit of the hill of the lord's house among the mountains, with israel amidst the nations, so do with me; lay thine hand upon me for thine own. let my spirit, o god! know its destination for thee, its union with thee. then being thine, it will be clean. dwell in me, that i may know myself thine. seal me with that gracious influence which is the proof that thou possessest me, and the pledge that i possess thee. "take not thy holy spirit from me."' so much for the chief of these petitions, which gives the ideal character in its deepest relations. there follow two other elements in the character, which on either side flow from the central source. the _holy_ spirit in a man will be a _right_ spirit and a _free_ spirit. consider these further thoughts in turn. 'a right spirit.' you will observe that our translators have given an alternative rendering in the margin, and as is not seldom the case, it is a better one than that adopted in the text. 'a constant or firm spirit' is the psalmist's meaning. he sees that a spirit which is conscious of its relation to god, and set free from the perturbations of sin, will be a spirit firm and settled, established and immovable in its obedience and its faith. for him, the root of all steadfastness is in consecration to god. and so this collocation of ideas opens the way for us to important considerations bearing upon the practical ordering of our natures and of our lives. for instance, there is no stability and settled persistency of righteous purpose possible for us, unless we are made strong because we lay hold on god's strength, and stand firm because we are rooted in him. without that hold-fast, we shall be swept away by storms of calamity or by gusts of passion. without that to steady us, our own boiling lusts and desires will make every fibre of our being quiver and tremble. without that armour, there will not be solidity enough in our character to bear without breaking the steady pressure of the world's weight, still less the fierce hammering of special temptation. to stand erect, and in that sense to have a right spirit--one that is upright and unbent--we must have sure footing in god, and have his energy infused into our shrinking limbs. if we are to be stable amidst earthquakes and storms, we must be built on the rock, and build rock-like upon it. build thy strength upon god. let his holy spirit be the foundation of thy life, and then thy tremulous and vagrant soul will be braced and fixed. the building will become like the foundation, and will grow into 'a tower of strength that stands four-square to every wind.' rooted in god, thou shalt be unmoved by 'the loud winds when they call'; or if still the tremulous leaves are huddled together before the blast, and the swaying branches creak and groan, the bole will stand firm and the gnarled roots will not part from their anchorage, though the storm-giant drag at them with a hundred hands. the spirit of holiness will be a firm spirit. but there is another phase of connection between these two points of the ideal character--if my spirit is to be holy and to preserve its holiness, it must be firm. that is to say, you can only get and keep purity by resistance. a man who has not learned to say 'no!'--who is not resolved that he _will_ take god's way in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery voice that woos him aside--will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies. in such a world as this, with such hearts as ours, weakness _is_ wickedness in the long run. whoever lets himself be shaped and guided by anything lower than an inflexible will, fixed in obedience to god, will in the end be shaped into a deformity and guided to wreck and ruin. dreams however rapturous, contemplations however devout, emotions however deep and sacred, make no man pure and good without hard effort, and that to a large extent in the direction of resistance. righteousness is not a mere negative idea, and scripture morality is something much deeper than prohibitions. but there is no law for us without prohibitions, and no righteousness without casting out evil that is strong in us, and fighting against evil that is attractive around us. therefore we need firmness to guard holiness, to be the hard shell in which the rich fruit matures. we need a wholesome obstinacy in the right that will neither be bribed nor coaxed nor bullied, nor anyhow persuaded out of the road in which we know that we should walk. 'add to your faith manly vigour.' learn that an indispensable requisite of holiness is prescribed in that command, 'whom resist, steadfast in the faith.' and remember that the ground of all successful resistance and the need for it are alike taught in that series of petitions, which makes a holy spirit the foundation of a constant spirit, and a constant spirit the guard of a holy spirit. then consider, for a moment, the third element in the character which david longs to possess--a _free_ spirit. he who is holy because full of god's spirit, and constant in his holiness, will likewise be 'free.' that is the same word which is in other places translated 'willing'--and the scope of the psalmist's desire is, 'let my spirit be emancipated from sin by _willing_ obedience.' this goes very deep into the heart of all true godliness. the only obedience which god accepts is that which gladly, and almost as by an instinctive inward impulse, harmonises the human will with the divine. 'lo! i come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, i delight to do thy will, and thy law is within my heart.' that is a blessed thought, that we may come to do him service not because we must, but because we like; not as serfs, but as sons; not thinking of his law as a slave-driver that cracks his whip over our heads, but as a friend that lets us know how we may please him whom it is our delight to obey. and so the psalmist prays, 'let my obedience be so willing that i had rather do what thou wilt than anything besides.' '_then_,' he thinks, 'i shall be free.' of course--for the correlative of freedom is lawful authority, and the definition of freedom is willing submission. if for us duty is joy, and all our soul's desires flow with an equable motion parallel to the will of god, then there is no sense of restraint in keeping within the limits beyond which we do not seek to go. the willing spirit sets us free, free from the 'ancient solitary reign' of the despot self, free from the mob rule of passions and appetites, free from the incubus of evil habits, free from the authority of men's voices and examples. obedience is freedom to them that have learned to love the lips that command. we are set free that we may serve: 'o lord! truly i am thy servant; thou hast loosed my bonds.' we are set free in serving: 'i will walk at liberty, for i keep thy precepts.' let a willing, free spirit uphold me. ii. observe, too, that desires for holiness should become prayers. david does not merely long for certain spiritual excellences; he goes to god for them. and his reasons for doing so are plain. if you will look at the former verses of this psalm, you will see that he had found out two things about his sin, both of which make him sure that he can only be what he should be by god's help. he had learned what his crimes were in relation to god, and he had further learned what they indicated about himself. the teaching of his bitter experience as to the former of these two matters lies in that saying which some people have thought strange. 'against _thee only_ have i sinned.' what! had he not committed a crime against human law? had he not harmed uriah and bathsheba? were not his deeds an offence to his whole kingdom? yes, he knew all that; but he felt that over and above all that was black in his deed, considered in its bearing upon men, it was still blacker when it was referred to god; and a sadder word than 'crime' or 'fault' had to be used about it. i have done wrong as against my fellows, but worse than that, i have _sinned_ against god. the notion of _sin_ implies the notion of god. sin is wilful transgression of the law of _god_. an atheist can have no conception of sin. but bring god into human affairs, and men's faults immediately assume the darker tint, and become men's sins. therefore the need of prayer if these evils are to be blotted out. if i had done crime against man only, i should not need to ask god for pardon or cleansing; but i have sinned against him, and done this evil in his sight, therefore my desires for deliverance address themselves to him, and my longings for purity must needs break into the cry of entreaty to that god with whom are forgiveness and redemption from all iniquity. and still further, looking at the one deed, he sees in it something more than an isolated act. it leads him down to its motive; that motive carries him to the state of mind in which it could have power; that state of mind, in which the motive could have power, carries him still deeper to the bias of his nature as he had received it from his parents. and thinking of how he had fallen, how upon his terraced palace roof there the eye had inflamed the heart, and the heart had yielded so quickly to the temptations of the eye, he finds no profounder explanation of the disastrous eclipse of goodness than this: 'behold! i was shapen in iniquity.' is that a confession or a palliation, do you think? is he trying to shuffle off guilt from his own shoulders? by no means, for these words are the motive for the prayer, 'purge me, and i shall be clean.' that is to say, he has learned that isolated acts of sin inhere in a common root, and that root a disposition inherited from generation to generation to which evil is familiar and easy, to which good, alas! is but too alien and unwelcome. none the less is the evil done _his_ deed. none the less has he to wail in full consciousness of his individual responsibility: 'against thee have _i_ sinned.' but the effect of this second discovery, that sin has become so intertwisted with his being that he cannot shake off the venomous beast into the fire and feel no harm, is the same as that of the former--to drive him to god, who alone can heal the nature and separate the poison from his blood. dear friends! there are some of you who are wasting your lives in paroxysms of fierce struggle with the evil that you have partially discovered in yourselves, alternating with long languor, fits of collapse and apathy, and who make no solid advance, just because you will not lay to heart these two convictions--your sin has to do with god, and your sins come from a sinful nature. because of the one fact, you must go to god for pardon; because of the other, you must go to god for cleansing. there, in your heart, like some black well-head in a dismal bog, is the source of all the swampy corruption that fills your life. you cannot stanch it, you cannot drain it, you cannot sweeten it. ask him, who is above your nature and without it, to change it by his own new life infused into your spirit. he will heal the bitter waters. he alone can. sin is against god; sin comes from an evil heart; therefore, if your longings for that ideal perfectness are ever to be fulfilled, you must make prayers of them, and cry to him who hears, 'create in me a clean heart, o god! take not thy holy spirit from me.' iii. finally, observe that prayers for perfect cleansing are permitted to the lips of the greatest sinners. such longings as these might seem audacious, when the atrocity of the crime is remembered, and by man's standard they are so. let the criminal be thankful for escape, and go hide himself, say men's pardons. but here is a man, with the evil savour of his debauchery still tainting him, daring to ask for no mere impunity, but for god's choicest gifts. think of his crime, think of its aggravations from god's mercies to him, from his official position, from his past devotion. remember that this cruel voluptuary is the sweet singer of israel, who had taught men songs of purer piety and subtler emotion than the ruder harps of older singers had ever flung from their wires. and this man, so placed, so gifted, set up on high to be the guiding light of the nation, has plunged into the filth of these sins, and quenched all his light there. when he comes back penitent, what will he dare to ask? everything that god can give to bless and gladden a soul. he asks for god's spirit, for his presence, for the joy of his salvation; to be made once again, as he had been, the instrument that shall show forth his praise, and teach transgressors god's ways. ought he to have had more humble desires? does this great boldness show that he is leaping very lightly over his sin? is he presumptuous in such prayers? god be thanked--no! but, knowing all his guilt, and broken and contrite in heart (crushed and ground to powder, as the words mean), utterly loathing himself, aware of all the darkness of his deserts, he yet cherishes unconquerable confidence in the pitying love of god, and believes that in spite of all his sin, he may yet be pure as the angels of heaven--ay, even holy as god is holy. thank god we have such an example for our heartening! lay it to heart, brethren! you cannot believe too much in god's mercy. you cannot expect too much at his hands. he is 'able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.' no sin is so great but that, coming straight from it, a repentant sinner may hope and believe that all god's love will be lavished upon him, and the richest of god's gifts be granted to his desires. even if our transgression is aggravated by a previous life of godliness, and have given the enemies great occasion to blaspheme, as david's did, yet david's penitence may in our souls lead on to david's hope, and the answer will not fail us. let no sin, however dark, however repeated, drive us to despair of ourselves, because it hides from us our loving saviour. though beaten back again and again by the surge of our passions and sins, like some poor shipwrecked sailor sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face towards the beach, where there is safety, and you will struggle through it all, and though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. he will uphold you with his spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by his forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of waters to the solid shore. so whatever thy evil behaviour, come with it all, and cast thyself before him, with whom is plenteous redemption. embrace in one act the two truths, of thine own sin and of god's infinite mercy in jesus christ. let not the one blind you to the other; let not the one lead you to a morbid despondency, which is blind to christ, nor the other to a superficial estimate of the deadliness of sin, which is blind to thine own self. let the cross teach thee what sin is, and let the dark background of thy sin bring into clear prominence the cross that bringeth salvation. know that thou art utterly black and sinful. believe that god is eternally, utterly, inconceivably, merciful. learn both, in him who is the standard by which we can estimate our sin, and the proof and medium of god's mercy. trust thyself and all thy foulness to jesus christ; and, so doing, look up from whatsoever horrible pit and miry clay thou mayest have fallen into, with this prayer, 'create in me a clean heart, o god! and renew a right spirit within me, take not thy holy spirit from me, and uphold me with thy free spirit.' then the answer shall come to you from him who ever puts the best robe upon his returning prodigals, and gives his highest gifts to sinners who repent. 'from all your filthiness will i cleanse you, a new heart also will i give you, and a new spirit will i put within you, and i will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.' fear and faith 'what time i am afraid, i will trust in thee. . ... in god i have put my trust: i will not fear.'--psalm lvi. , . it is not given to many men to add new words to the vocabulary of religious emotion. but so far as an examination of the old testament avails, i find that david was the first that ever employed the word that is here translated, _i will trust_, with a religious meaning. it is found occasionally in earlier books of the bible in different connections, never in regard to man's relations to god, until the poet-psalmist laid his hand upon it, and consecrated it for all generations to express one of the deepest relations of man to his father in heaven. and it is a favourite word of his. i find it occurs constantly in his psalms; twice as often, or nearly so, in the psalms attributed to david as in all the rest of the psalter put together; and as i shall have occasion to show you in a moment, it is in itself a most significant and poetic word. but, first of all, i ask you to notice how beautifully there comes out here the _occasion_ of trust. 'what time i am afraid, i will put my trust in thee.' this psalm is one of those belonging to the sauline persecution. if we adopt the allocation in the superscription, it was written at one of the very lowest points of david's fortunes. and there seem to be one or two of its phrases which acquire new force, if we regard the psalm as drawn forth by the perils of his wandering, hunted life. for instance--'thou tellest my wanderings,' is no mere expression of the feelings with which he regarded the changes of this early pilgrimage, but is the confidence of the fugitive that in the doublings and windings of his flight god's eye marked him. 'put thou my tears into thy _bottle_'--one of the few indispensable articles which he had to carry with him, the water-skin which hung beside him, perhaps, as he meditated. so read in the light of his probable circumstances, how pathetic and eloquent does that saying become--'what time i am afraid, i will trust in thee.' that goes deep down into the realities of life. it is when we are 'afraid' that we trust in god; not in easy times, when things are going smoothly with us. not when the sun shines, but when the tempest blows and the wind howls about his ears, a man gathers his cloak round him, and cleaves fast to his supporter. the midnight sea lies all black; but when it is cut into by the oar, or divided and churned by the paddle, it flashes up into phosphorescence, and so it is from the tumults and agitation of man's spirit that there is struck out the light of man's faith. there is the bit of flint and the steel that comes hammering against it; and it is the contact of these two that brings out the spark. the man never knew confidence who does not know how the occasion that evoked and preceded it was terror and need. 'what time i am _afraid_, i will trust.' that is no trust which is only fair weather trust. this principle--first fear, and only then, faith--applies all round the circle of our necessities, weaknesses, sorrows, and sins. there must, first of all, be the deep sense of need, of exposedness to danger, of weakness, of sorrow, and only then will there come the calmness of confidence. a victorious faith will 'rise large and slow from out the fluctuations of our souls, as from the dim and tumbling sea starts the completed moon.' and then, if so, notice how there is involved in that the other consideration, that a man's confidence is not the product of outward circumstances, but of his own fixed resolves. 'i _will_ put my trust in thee.' nature says, 'be afraid!' and the recoil from that natural fear, which comes from a discernment of threatening evil, is only possible by a strong effort of the will. foolish confidence opposes to natural fear a groundless resolve not to be afraid, as if heedlessness were security, or facts could be altered by resolving not to think about them. true faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on the divine helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. it is madness to say, 'i will not to be afraid!' it is wisdom and peace to say, 'i will trust, and not be afraid.' but it is no easy matter to fix the eye on god when threatening enemies within arm's-length compel our gaze; and there must be a fixed resolve, not indeed to coerce our emotions or to ignore our perils, but to set the lord before us, that we may not be moved. when war desolates a land, the peasants fly from their undefended huts to the shelter of the castle on the hilltop, but they cannot reach the safety of the strong walls without climbing the steep road. so when calamity darkens round us, or our sense of sin and sorrow shakes our hearts, we need effort to resolve and to carry into practice the resolution, 'i flee unto thee to hide me.' fear, then, is the occasion of faith, and faith is fear transformed by the act of our own will, calling to mind the strength of god, and betaking ourselves thereto. therefore, do not wonder if the two things lie in your hearts together, and do not say, 'i have no faith because i have some fear,' but rather feel that if there be the least spark of the former it will turn all the rest into its own bright substance. here is the stifling smoke, coming up from some newly-lighted fire of green wood, black and choking, and solid in its coils; but as the fire burns up, all the smoke-wreaths will be turned into one flaming spire, full of light and warmth. do you turn your smoke into fire, your fear into faith. do not be down-hearted if it takes a while to convert the whole of the lower and baser into the nobler and higher. faith and fear do blend, thank god! they are as oil and water in a man's soul, and the oil will float above, and quiet the waves. 'what time i am afraid'--there speak nature and the heart; 'i will trust in thee'--there speaks the better man within, lifting himself above nature and circumstances, and casting himself into the extended arms of god, who catches him and keeps him safe. then, still further, these words, or rather one portion of them, give us a bright light and a beautiful thought as to the _essence_ and inmost centre of this faith or trust. scholars tell us that the word here translated 'trust' has a graphic, pictorial meaning for its root idea. it signifies literally to cling to or hold fast anything, expressing thus both the notion of a good tight grip and of intimate union. now, is not that metaphor vivid and full of teaching as well as of impulse? 'i will trust in thee.' 'and he exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they should _cleave_ unto the lord.' we may follow out the metaphor of the word in many illustrations. for instance, here is a strong prop, and here is the trailing, lithe feebleness of the vine. gather up the leaves that are creeping all along the ground, and coil them around that support, and up they go straight towards the heavens. here is a limpet in some pond or other, left by the tide, and it has relaxed its grasp a little. touch it with your finger and it grips fast to the rock, and you will want a hammer before you can dislodge it. there is a traveller groping along some narrow broken path, where the chamois would tread cautiously, his guide in front of him. his head reels, and his limbs tremble, and he is all but over, but he grasps the strong hand of the man in front of him, or lashes himself to him by the rope, and he can walk steadily. or, take that story in the acts of the apostles, about the lame man healed by peter and john. all his life long he had been lame, and when at last healing comes, one can fancy with what a tight grasp 'the lame man held peter and john.' the timidity and helplessness of a lifetime made him hold fast, even while, walking and leaping, he tried how the unaccustomed 'feet and ankle bones' could do their work. how he would clutch the arms of his two supporters, and feel himself firm and safe only as long as he grasped them! that is faith, cleaving to christ, twining round him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its pole; holding to him by his hand, as a tottering man does by the strong hand that upholds. and there is one more application of the metaphor, which perhaps may be best brought out by referring to a passage of scripture. we find this same expression used in that wonderfully dramatic scene in the book of kings, where the supercilious messengers from the king of assyria came up and taunted the king and his people on the wall. 'what confidence is this wherein thou trustest? now, on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon egypt, on which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is pharaoh, king of egypt, unto all that trust on him,' the word of our text is employed there, and as the phrase shows, with a distinct trace of its primary sense. hezekiah was leaning upon that poor paper reed on the nile banks, that has no substance, or strength, or pith in it. a man leans upon it, and it runs into the palm of his hand, and makes an ugly festering wound. such rotten stays are all our earthly confidences. the act of trust, and the miserable issues of placing it on man, are excellently described there. the act is the same when directed to god, but how different the issues. lean all your weight on god as on some strong staff, and depend upon it that your support will never yield nor crack and no splinters will run into your palms from it. if i am to cling with my hand i must first empty my hand. fancy a man saying, 'i cannot stand unless you hold me up; but i have to hold my bank book, and this thing, and that thing, and the other thing; i cannot put them down, so i have not a hand free to lay hold with, you must do the holding.' that is what some of us are saying in effect. now the prayer, 'hold thou me up, and i shall be safe,' is a right one; but not from a man who will not put his possessions out of his hands that he may lay hold of the god who lays hold of him. 'nothing in my hand i bring.' then, of course, and only then, when we are empty-handed, shall we be free to grip and lay hold; and only then shall we be able to go on with the grand words-- 'simply to thy cross i cling,' as some half-drowned, shipwrecked sailor, flung up on the beach, clasps a point of rock, and is safe from the power of the waves that beat around him. and then one word more. these two clauses that i have put together give us not only the occasion of faith in fear, and the essence of faith in this clinging, but they also give us very beautifully the _victory_ of faith. you see with what poetic art--if we may use such words about the breathings of such a soul--he repeats the two main words of the former verse in the latter, only in inverted order--'what time i am afraid, i will trust in thee.' he is possessed by the lower emotion, and resolves to escape from its sway into the light and liberty of faith. and then the next words still keep up the contrast of faith and fear, only that now he is possessed by the more blessed mood, and determines that he will not fall back into the bondage and darkness of the baser. 'in god i have put my trust; i will not fear.' he has confidence, and in the strength of that he resolves that he will not yield to fear. if we put that thought into a more abstract form it comes to this: that the one true antagonist and triumphant rival of all fear is faith, and faith alone. there is no reason why any man should be emancipated from his fears either about this world or about the next, except in proportion as he has faith. nay, rather it is far away more rational to be afraid than not to be afraid, unless i have this faith in christ. there are plenty of reasons for dread in the dark possibilities and not less dark certainties of life. disasters, losses, partings, disappointments, sicknesses, death, may any of them come at any moment, and some of them will certainly come sooner or later. temptations lurk around us like serpents in the grass, they beset us in open ferocity like lions in our path. is it not wise to fear unless our faith has hold of that great promise, 'thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; there shall no evil befall thee'? but if we have a firm hold of god, then it is wise not to be afraid, and terror is folly and sin. for trust brings not only tranquillity, but security, and so takes away fear by taking away danger. that double operation of faith in quieting and in defending is very strikingly set forth by an old testament word, formed from the verb here employed, which means properly _confidence_, and then in one form comes to signify both _in security_ and _in safety_, secure as being free from anxiety, safe as being sheltered from peril. so, for instance, the people of that secluded little town of laish, whose peaceful existence amidst warlike neighbours is described with such singular beauty in the book of judges, are said to 'dwell _careless_, quiet, and _secure_.' the former phrase is literally 'in trust,' and the latter is 'trusting.' the idea sought to be conveyed by both seems to be that double one of quiet freedom from fear and from danger. so again, in moses' blessing, 'the beloved of the lord shall dwell _in safety_ by him,' we have the same phrase to express the same twofold benediction of shelter, by dwelling in god, from all alarm and from all attack: 'as far from danger as from fear, while love, almighty love is near.' this thought of the victory of faith over fear is very forcibly set forth in a verse from the book of proverbs, which in our version runs 'the righteous is bold as a lion.' the word rendered 'is bold' is that of our text, and would literally be 'trusts,' but obviously the metaphor requires such a translation as that of the english bible. the word that properly describes the act of faith has come to mean the courage which is the consequence of the act, just as our own word _confidence_ properly signifies trust, but has come to mean the boldness which is born of trust. so, then, the true way to become brave is to lean on god. that, and that alone, delivers from otherwise reasonable fear, and faith bears in her one hand the gift of outward safety, and in her other that of inward peace. peter is sinking in the water; the tempest runs high. he looks upon the waves, and is ready to fancy that he is going to be swallowed up immediately. his fear is reasonable if he has only the tempest and himself to draw his conclusions from. his helplessness and the scowling storm together strike out a little spark of faith, which the wind cannot blow out, nor the floods quench. like our psalmist here, when peter is afraid, he trusts. 'save, lord! or i perish.' immediately the outstretched hand of his lord grasps his, and brings him safety, while the gentle rebuke, 'o thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt?' infuses courage into his beating heart. the storm runs as high as ever, and the waves beat about his limbs, and the spray blinds his eyes. if he leaves his hold for one moment down he will go. but, as long as he clasps christ's hand, he is as safe on that heaving floor as if his feet were on a rock; and as long as he looks in christ's face and leans upon his upholding arm, he does _not_ 'see the waves boisterous,' nor tremble at all as they break around him. his fear and his danger are both gone, because he holds christ and is upheld by him. in this sense, too, as in many others, 'this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.' a song of deliverance 'for thou hast delivered my soul from death: hast thou not delivered my feet from falling? that i may walk before god in the light of the living.'--psalm lvi. (r.v.). according to the ancient jewish tradition preserved in the superscription of this psalm, it was written at the lowest ebb of david's fortunes, 'when the philistines took him in gath,' and as you may remember, he saved himself by adding the fox's hide to the lion's skin, and by pretending to be an idiot, degraded as well as delivered himself. yet immediately after, if we accept the date given by the superscription, the triumphant confidence and devout hope of this psalm animated his mind. how unlike the true man was to what he appeared to be to achish and his philistines! it is strange that the inside and the outside should correspond so badly; but yet, thank god! it is possible. we note, i. the deliverance realised by faith before it is accomplished in fact. you will observe that i have made a slight alteration in the translation of the words. in our authorised version they stand thus: 'thou hast delivered my soul from death; _wilt_ thou not deliver my feet from falling?' as if some prior deliverance was the basis upon which the psalmist rested his expectation of that which was still to come. but there is no authority in the original for that variation of tenses, and both clauses obviously refer to the same period and the same deliverance. therefore we must read: 'thou hast delivered my soul from death: _hast_ thou not delivered,' etc.; the question being equivalent to a strong affirmation, 'yea, thou hast delivered my feet from falling.' this reference of both clauses to the same period and the same delivering act, is confirmed by the quotation of these words in a very much later psalm, the th, where we read, with an addition, 'thou hast delivered my soul from death, _mine eyes from tears_, and my feet from falling.' so, then, the psalmist is so sure of the deliverance that is coming that he sings of it as past. he is still in the very thick of the trouble and the fight, and yet he says, 'it is as good as over. thou _hast_ delivered.' how does he come to that confidence? simply because his future is god; and whoever has god for his future can turn else uncertain hopes into certain confidences, and make sure of this, that however achish and his giant philistines of gath, wielding goliath's arms, spears like a weaver's beam, and brazen armour, may compass him about, in the name of the lord he will destroy them. they are all as good as dead, though they are alive and hostile at this moment. in the midst of trouble we can fling ourselves into the future, or rather draw the future into the present, and say, 'thou _hast_ delivered my soul from death.' it is safe to reckon on to-morrow when we reckon on god. we to-day have the same reasons for the same confidence; and if we will go the right way about it, we, too, may bring june's sun into november's fogs, and bask in the warmth of certain deliverance even when the chill mists of trouble enfold us. but then note, too, here, the substance of this future intervention which, to the psalmist's quiet faith, is present:--'my soul from death,' and after that he says, 'my feet from falling,' which looks very like an anticlimax and bathos. but yet, just because to deliver the feet from falling is so much smaller a thing than delivering a life from death, it comes here to be a climax and something greater. the storm passes over the man. what then? after the storm has passed, he is not only alive, but he is standing upright. it has not killed him. no, it has not even shaken him. his feet are as firm as ever they were, and just because that is a smaller thing, it is a greater thing for the deliverance to have accomplished than the other. god does not deliver by halves; he does not leave the delivered man maimed, or thrown down, though living. remember, too, the expansion of the text in the psalm to which i have already referred, one of a much later date, which by quoting these words really comments upon them. the later psalmist adds a clause. 'mine eyes from tears,' and we may follow on in the same direction, and note the three spheres in which the later poet hymns the delivering hand of god as spiritualising for us all our deeper christian experience. 'thou hast delivered my soul from death,' in that great redemption by which the son has died that we may never know either the intensest bitterness of physical death, or the true death of which it is the shadow and the emblem. 'thou hast delivered mine eyes from tears'; god wipes away tears here, even before we come to the time when he wipes away all tears from off all faces, and no eyes are delivered from tears, except eyes that have looked through tears to god. 'and my feet from falling'--redeeming grace which saves the soul; comforting grace which lightens sorrow; upholding grace which keeps us from sins--these are the elements of what god has done for us all, if our poor feeble trust has rested on him. how did david get to this confidence? why, he prayed himself into it. if you will read the psalm, you will see very clearly the process by which a man comes to that serene, triumphant trust that the battle is won even whilst it is raging around him. the previous portion of the psalm falls into two parts, on which i need only make this one remark, that in both we have first of all an obvious disquieting fact, and then a flash of victorious confidence. let me just read a word or two to you. the psalmist begins in a very minor key. 'be merciful unto me, o god! for man would swallow me up'--that is achish and his philistines. 'he fighting daily oppresseth me; mine enemies daily would swallow me up.' he reiterates the same thought with the dreary monotony of sorrow, 'for there be many that fight against me, o thou most high!' but swiftly his note changes into 'what time i am afraid i will trust in thee. in god i will praise his word'; that is to say, his promise of deliverance, 'in god i have put my trust.' he has climbed to the height, but only for a moment, for down he drops again, and begins anew the old miserable complaint. the sorrow is too clinging to be cast off at one struggle. it has been dammed out for the moment, but the flood rushes too heavily, and away goes the dam, and back pours the black water. 'every day they wrest my words; all their thoughts are against me for evil.' and he goes on longer on his depressing key this second time than he did the first, but he rises above it once more in the same fashion, and the refrain with which he had closed the first part of the psalm closes the second. 'in god will i praise his word; in the lord will i praise his word.' now he has won the height and keeps it, and breaks into a paean of victory in words of the text. that is to say, pray yourselves into confidence, and if it does not come at first, pray again. if the consolation seems to glide away, even whilst you are laying hold of it, grasp it once more, and close your fingers more tightly on it. do not be afraid of going down into the depths a second time, but be sure that you try to rise out of them at the same point as before, by grasping the assurance that in god, in his strength, and by his grace, you will be able to set your seal to the truth of his great promise. thus will you rise to this confidence which calleth things that are not as though they were, and brings the to-morrow that is sure to dawn with all its brightness and serenity into the turbulent, tempestuous, and clouded atmosphere of to-day. we shall one day escape from all that burdens, and tries, and tasks us; and until then this blessed assurance, the fruit of prayer, is like the food that the ravens brought to the prophet in the ravine, or the bread and water that the angel awoke him to partake of when he was faint in the wilderness. the true answer to david's prayer was the immediate access of confidence unshaken, though the outward answer was a long time in coming, and years lay between him and the cessation of his persecutions and troubles. so we may have brooks by the way, in quiet confidence of deliverance ere yet the deliverance comes. then note, ii. the impulse to service which deliverance brings. 'that i may walk before god in the light of the living'; that is god's purpose in all his deliverances, that we may thereby be impelled to trustful and grateful service. and david makes that purpose into a vow, for the words might almost as well be translated, 'i _will_ walk before him.' let us see to it that god's purpose is our resolve, and that we do not lose the good of any of the troubles or discipline through which he passes us; for the worst of all sorrows is a wasted sorrow. 'thou hast delivered my feet that i may walk.' what are feet for? walking. further, notice the precise force of that phrase, 'that i may walk _before god_.' it is not altogether the same as the cognate one which is used about enoch, that 'he walked _with_ god.' that expresses communion as with a friend; this, the ordering of one's life before his eye, and in the consciousness of his presence as judge and as taskmaster. so you find the expression used in almost the only other occasion where it occurs in the old testament, where god says to abraham, 'walk before me, and'--because thou dost order thy life in the consciousness that i am looking at thee--'be thou perfect.' so, to walk before god is to live even in all the distracting activities of daily life, with the clear realisation, and the continued thought burning in our minds that we are doing them all in his presence. think of what a regiment of soldiers on parade does as each file passes in front of the saluting point where the commanding officer is standing. how each man dresses up, and they pull themselves together, keeping step, sloping their rifles rightly. we are not on parade, but about business a great deal more serious than that. we are doing our fighting with the captain looking at us, and that should be a stimulus, a joy and not a terror. realise god's eye watching you, and sin, and meanness, and negligence, and selfishness, and sensuality, and lust, and passion, and all the other devils that are in you will vanish like ghosts at cockcrow. 'walk before me,' and if you feel that i am beside you, you cannot sin. 'walk before me, and be thou perfect.' notice, iii. the region in which that observance of the divine eye is to be carried on. 'in the light of the living,' says the psalmist. that seems to correspond to the first clause of his hope; just as the previous word that i have been commenting upon, 'walking before him,' corresponds to the second, where he speaks about his feet. 'thou hast delivered my soul from death.... i will walk before thee in the light of the living'--where thou dost still permit my delivered soul to be. and the phrase seems to mean the sunshine of human life contrasted with the darkness of _sheol_. the expression is varied in the th psalm, which reads 'the land of the living.' the really living are they who live in jesus, and the real light of the living is the sunshine that streams on those who thus live, because they live in him who not only pours his light upon their hearts, but, by pouring it, turns themselves into 'light in the lord.' we, too, may have the brightness of his face irradiating our faces and illuminating our paths, as with the beneficence of a better sunshine. the psalmist points us the way thus to walk in light. he vows that, because his heart is full of the great mercies of his delivering god, he will order all his active life as under the consciousness of god's eye upon him, and then it will all be lightened as by a burst of sunshine. our brightest light is the radiance from the face of god whom we try to love and serve, and the psalmist's confidence is that a life of observance of his commandments in which gratitude for deliverance is the impelling motive to continual realisation of his presence, and an accordant life, will be a bright and sunny career. you will live in the sunshine if you live before his face, and however wintry the world may be, it will be like a clear frosty day. there is no frost in the sky, it does not go above the atmosphere, and high above, in serene and wondrous blue, is the blaze of the sunshine. such a life will be a guided life. there will still remain many occasions for doubt in the region of belief, and for perplexity as to duty. there will often be need for patient and earnest thought as to both, and there will be no lack of calls for strenuous effort of our best faculties in order to apprehend what our guide means us to do, and where he would have us go, but through it all there will be the guiding hand. as the master, with perhaps a glance backwards to these words, said, 'he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' if he is in the light let us walk in the light, and to us it will be purity and knowledge and joy. the fixed heart 'my heart is fixed, o god, my heart is fixed; i will sing and give praise.'--psalm lvii. . it is easy to say such things when life goes smoothly with us. but this psalmist, whether david or another, says this, and means it, when all things are dark and frowning around him. the superscription attributes the words to david himself, fleeing from saul, and hiding in the cave. whether that be so or no, the circumstances under which the psalmist sings are obviously those of very great difficulty and oppression. but he sings himself into confidence and good cheer. in the dark he believes in the light. there are some flowers that give their perfumes after sunset and are sweetest when the night dews are falling. the true religious life is like these. a heart really based upon god, and at rest in him, never breathes forth such fragrant and strong perfume as in the darkness of sorrow. the repetition of 'my heart is fixed' adds emphasis to the expression of unalterable determination. the fixed heart is resolved to 'sing and give praise' in spite of everything that might make sobs and tears choke the song. i. note the fixed heart. the hebrew uses the metaphor of the 'heart' to cover a great deal more of the inward self than we are accustomed to do. we mainly mean thereby that in us which loves. but the old testament speaks of the 'thoughts and intents' as well as the 'affections' of the heart. and so to this psalmist his 'heart' was not only that in him which loved, but that which purposed and which thought. when he says 'my heart is fixed' he does not merely mean that he is conscious of a steadfast love, but also and rather of a fixed and settled determination, and of an abiding communion of thought between himself and god. and he not only makes this declaration as the expression of his experience for the moment, but he mortgages the future, and in so far as any man dare, he ventures to say that this temper of entire consecration, of complete communion, of fixed resolve to cleave to god, which is his present mood, will be his future whatever may wait his outward life then. the lesson from that resolve is that our religion, if it is worth anything, must be a continuous and uniformly acting force throughout our whole lives, and not merely sporadic and spasmodic, by fits and starts. the lines that a child's unsteady and untrained hand draws in its copy-book are too good a picture of the 'crooked, wandering ways in which we live,' in so far as our religion is concerned. the line should be firm and straight, uniform in breadth, unvarying in direction, like a sunbeam, homogeneous and equally tenacious like an iron rod. unless it be thus strong and uniform, it will scarcely sustain the weights that it must bear, or resist the blows that it must encounter. for a fixed heart i must have a fixed determination, and not a mere fluctuating and soon broken intention. i must have a steadfast affection, and not merely a fluttering love, that, like some butterfly, lights now on this, now on that, sweet flower, but which has a flight straight as a carrier pigeon to its cot, which shall bear me direct to god. and i must have a continuous realisation of my dependence upon god, and of god's sweet sufficiency, going with me all through the dusty day. a firm determination, a steadfast love, a constant thought, these at least are inculcated in the words of my text. 'my heart is fixed, o god! my heart is fixed.' ah, brethren! how unlike the broken, interrupted, divergent lines that we draw! our religious moments are not knit together, and touching one upon the other, but they are like the pools in the bed of a half dried up australian stream--a pond here, and a stretch of white, blistering pebbles there, and then a little drop of water, and then another reach of dryness. they should all be knit together by one continuous flow of a fixed love, desire, and thought. is our average christianity fairly represented by such words as these of my text? do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of god's revelation, and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this psalm out of him, should have poured out this resolve, which we who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings find it hard to echo with sincerity and truth? fixed hearts are rare amongst the christians of this day. ii. notice the manifold hindrances to such a uniformity of our religious life. they are formidable enough, god knows, we all know it, and i do not need to dwell upon them. there is, for example, the tendency to fluctuation which besets all our feelings, and especially our religious emotions. what would happen to a steam-engine if the stoker now piled on coals and then fell asleep by the furnace door? one moment the boiler would be ready to burst; at another moment there would be no steam to drive anything. that is the sort of alternation that goes on amongst hosts of christians to-day. their springtime and summer are followed certainly by an autumn and a bitter winter. every moment of elevation has a corresponding moment of depression. they never catch a glimpse of god and of his love brighter and more sweet than ordinary without its being followed by long weariness and depression and darkness. that is the kind of life that many of you are contented to live as christian people. but is there any necessity for such alternations? some degree of fluctuation there will always be. the very exercise of emotion tends to its extinction. varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. the vane which never points but to south is rusty and means nothing. but while there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing christians give. there is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. their frost is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. we do not now speak of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. to such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. we need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. we can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander. if we would possess the blessing of an approximately uniform religious life, we must assert the control of ourselves and use both bridle and spur. a great many religious people seem to think that 'good times' come and go, and that they can do nothing to bring or keep or banish them. but that is not so. if the fire is burning low, there is such a thing on the hearth as a poker, and coals are at hand. if we feel our faith falling asleep, are we powerless to rouse it? cannot we say 'i _will_ trust'? let us learn that the variations in our religious emotions are largely subject to our own control, and may, if we will govern ourselves, be brought far nearer to uniformity than they ordinarily are. besides the fluctuations due to our own changes of mood, there are also the distracting influences of even the duties which god lays upon us. it is hard for a man with the material task of the moment that takes all his powers, to keep a little corner of his heart clear, and to feel that god is there. it is difficult in the clatter of the mill or in the crowds on 'change, to do our work as for and in remembrance of christ. it _is_ difficult; but it is possible. distractions are made distractions by our own folly and weakness. there is nothing that it is our duty to do which an honest attempt to do from the right motive could not convert into a positive help to getting nearer god. it is for us to determine whether the tasks of life, and this intrusive external and material world, shall veil him from us, or shall reveal him to us. it is for us to determine whether we shall make our secular avocation and its trials, little and great, a means to get nearer to god, or a means to shut him out from us, and us from him. there is nothing but sin incompatible with the fixed heart, the resolved will, the continual communion, nothing incompatible though there may be much that makes it difficult to realise and preserve these. and then, of course, the trials and sorrows which strike us all make this fixed heart hard to keep. it is easy, as i said, to vow, 'i will sing and give praise,' when flesh is comfortable and prosperity is spreading its bright sky over our heads. it is harder to say it when disappointment and bitterness are in the heart, and an empty place there that aches and will never be filled. it is harder for a man to say it when, like this psalmist, his soul is 'amongst lions' and he 'lies amongst them that are set on fire.' but still, rightly taken, sorrow is the best ladder to god; and there is no such praise as comes from the lips that, if they did not praise, must sob, and that praise because they are beginning to learn that evil, as the world calls it, is the stepping-stone to the highest good. 'my heart is fixed. i will sing and give praise' may be the voice of the mourner as well as of the prosperous and happy. iii. lastly, let me say just a word as to the means by which such a uniform character may be impressed upon our religious experience. there is another psalm where this same phrase is employed with a very important and illuminating addition, in which we read, 'his heart is fixed, trusting in the lord.' that is the secret of a fixed heart--continuous faith rooted and grounded in him. this fluttering, changeful, unreliable, emotional nature of mine will be made calm and steadfast by faith, and duties done in the faith of god will bind me to him; and sorrows borne and joys accepted in the faith of god will be links in the chain that knits him to me. but then the question comes, how to get this continuous faith? brethren! i know no answer except the simple one, by continually making efforts after it, and adopting the means which christ enjoins to secure it. a man climbing a hill, though he has to look to his feet when in the slippery places, and all his energies are expended in hoisting himself upwards by every projection and crag, will do all the better if he lifts his eye often to the summit that gleams above him. so we, in our upward course, shall make the best progress when we consciously and honestly try to look beyond the things seen and temporal, even whilst we are working in the midst of them, and to keep clear before us the summit to which our faith tends. if we lived in the endeavour to realise that great white throne, and him that sits upon it, we should find it easier to say, 'my heart is fixed, o god! my heart is fixed.' but be sure of this, there will be no such uniformity of religious experience throughout our lives unless there be frequent times in them in which we go into our chambers and shut our doors about us, and hold communion with our father in secret. everything noble and great in the christian life is fed by solitude, and everything poor and mean and hypocritical and low-toned is nourished by continual absence from the secret place of the most high. there must be moments of solitary communion, if there are to be hours of strenuous service and a life of continual consecration. we need not ask ourselves the question whether the realisation of the ideal of this fixedness in its perfect completeness is possible for us here on earth or not. you and i are a long way on this side of that realisation yet, and we need not trouble ourselves about the final stages until we have got on a stage or two more. what would you think of a boy if, when he had just been taught to draw with a pencil, he said to his master, 'do you think i shall ever be able to draw as well as raphael?' his teacher would say to him, 'whether you will or not, you will be able to draw a good deal better than now, if you try.' we need not trouble ourselves with the questions that disturb some people until we are very much nearer to perfection than any of us yet are. at any rate, we can approach indefinitely to that ideal, and whether it is possible for us in this life ever to have hearts so continuously fixed as that no attraction shall draw the needle aside one point from the pole or not, it is possible for us all to have them a great deal steadier than in that wavering, fluctuating vacillation which now rules them. so let us pray the prayer, 'unite my heart to fear thy name,' make the resolve, 'my heart is fixed,' and listen obediently to the command, 'he exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the lord.' waiting and singing 'because of his strength will i wait upon thee: for god is my defence.... . unto thee, o my strength, will i sing: for god is my defence, and the god of my mercy.'--psalm lix. , . there is an obvious correspondence between these two verses even as they stand in our translation, and still more obviously in the hebrew. you observe that in the former verse the words 'because of' are a supplement inserted by our translators, because they did not exactly know what to make of the bare words as they stood. 'his strength, i will wait upon thee,' is, of course, nonsense; but a very slight alteration of a single letter, which has the sanction of several good authorities, both in manuscripts and translations, gives an appropriate and beautiful meaning, and brings the two verses into complete verbal correspondence. suppose we read, 'my strength,' instead of 'his strength.' the change is only making the limb of one letter a little shorter, and as you will perceive, we thereby get the same expressions in both verses. we may then read our two texts thus: 'upon thee, o my strength! i will wait.... unto thee, o my strength, i will sing!' they are, word for word, parallel, with the significant difference that the waiting in the one passes into song, in the other, the silent expectation breaks into music of praise. and these two words--_wait_ and _sing_--are in the hebrew the same in every letter but one, thus strengthening the impression of likeness as well as emphasising, with poetic art, that of difference. the parallel, too, obviously extends to the second half of each verse, where the reason for both the waiting and the praise is the same--'for god is my defence'--with the further eloquent variation that the song is built not only on the thought that 'god is my defence,' but also on this, that he is 'the god of my mercy.' these two parallel verses, then, are a kind of refrain, coming in at the close of each division of the psalm; and if you examine its structure and general course of thought, you will see that the first stands at the end of a picture of the psalmist's trouble and danger, and makes the transition to the second part, which is mainly a prayer for deliverance, and finishes with the refrain altered and enlarged, as i have pointed out. the heading of the psalm tells us that its date is the very beginning of saul's persecution, when 'they watched the house to kill' david, and he fled by night from the city. there is a certain correspondence between the circumstances and some part of the picture of his foes here which makes the date probable. if so, this is one of david's oldest psalms, and is interesting as showing his faith and courage, even in the first burst of danger. but whether that be so or not, we have here, at any rate, the voice of a devout soul in sore sorrow, and we may well learn the lesson of its twofold utterance. the man, overwhelmed by calamity, betakes himself to god. 'upon thee, o my strength! will i wait, for god is my defence.' then, by dint of _waiting_, although the outward circumstances keep just the same, his temper and feelings change. he began with, 'deliver me from my enemies, o lord! for they lie in wait for my soul.' he passes through 'my strength! i will wait upon thee,' and so ends with 'my strength! i will sing unto thee.' we may then throw our remarks into two groups, and deal for a few moments with these two points--the waiting on god, and the change of waiting into praise. now, with regard to the first of these--the waiting on god--i must notice that the expression here, 'i will _wait_,' is a somewhat remarkable one. it means accurately, 'i will watch thee,' and it is the word that is generally employed, not about our looking up to him, but about his looking down to us. it would describe the action of a shepherd guarding his flock; of a sentry keeping a city; of the watchers that watch for the morning, and the like. by using it, the psalmist seems as if he would say--there are two kinds of watching. there is god's watching over me, and there is my watching for god. i look up to him that he may bless; he looks down upon me that he may take care of me. as he guards me, so i stand expectant before him, as one in a besieged town, upon the ramparts there, looks eagerly out across the plain to see the coming of the long-expected succours. god 'waits to be gracious'--wonderful words, painting for us his watchfulness of fitting times and ways to bless us, and his patient attendance on our unwilling, careless spirits. we may well take a lesson from his attitude in bestowing, and on our parts, wait on him to be helped. for these two things--vigilance and patience--are the main elements in the scriptural idea of waiting on god. let me enforce each of them in a word or two. there is no waiting on god for help, and there is no help from god, without watchful expectation on our parts. if ever we fail to receive strength and defence from him, it is because we are not on the outlook for it. many a proffered succour from heaven goes past us, because we are not standing on our watch-tower to catch the far-off indications of its approach, and to fling open the gates of our heart for its entrance. he who expects no help will get none; he whose expectation does not lead him to be on the alert for its coming will get but little. how the beleaguered garrison, that knows a relieving force is on the march, strain their eyes to catch the first glint of the sunshine on their spears as they top the pass! but how unlike such tension of watchfulness is the languid anticipation and fitful look, with more of distrust than hope in it, which we turn to heaven in our need! no wonder we have so little living experience that god is our 'strength' and our 'defence,' when we so partially believe that he is, and so little expect that he will be either. the homely old proverb says, 'they that watch for providences will never want a providence to watch for,' and you may turn it the other way and say, 'they that do _not_ watch for providence will never _have_ a providence to watch for.' unless you put out your water-jars when it rains you will catch no water; if you do not watch for god coming to help you, god's watching to be gracious will be of no good at all to you. his waiting is not a substitute for ours, but because he watches therefore we should watch. we say, we expect him to comfort and help us--well, are we standing, as it were, on tiptoe, with empty hands upraised to bring them a little nearer the gifts we look for? are our 'eyes ever towards the lord'? do we pore over his gifts, scrutinising them as eagerly as a gold-seeker does the quartz in his pan, to detect every shining speck of the precious metal? do we go to our work and our daily battle with the confident expectation that he will surely come when our need is the sorest and scatter our enemies? is there any clear outlook kept by us for the help which we know must come, lest it should pass us unobserved, and like the dove from the ark, finding no footing in our hearts drowned in a flood of troubles, be fain to return to the calm refuge from which it came on its vain errand? alas, how many gentle messengers of god flutter homeless about our hearts, unrecognised and unwelcomed, because we have not been watching for them! of what avail is it that a strong hand from the beach should fling the safety-line with true aim to the wreck, if no eye on the deck is watching for it? it hangs there, useless and unseen, and then it drops into the sea, and every soul on board is drowned. it is our own fault--and very largely the fault of our want of watchfulness for the coming of god's help--if we are ever overwhelmed by the tasks, or difficulties, or sorrows of life. we wonder that we are left to fight out the battle ourselves. but are we? is it not rather, that while god's succours are hastening to our side we will not open our eyes to see, nor our hearts to receive them? if we go through the world with our hands hanging listlessly down instead of lifted to heaven, or full of the trifles and toys of this present, as so many of us do, what wonder is it if heavenly gifts of strength do not come into our grasp? that attitude of watchful expectation is vividly described for us in the graphic words of another psalm, 'my soul waiteth for the lord more than they that watch for the morning: i say, more than they that watch for the morning.' what a picture that is! think of a wakeful, sick man, tossing restless all the night on his tumbled bed, racked with pain made harder to bear by the darkness. how often his heavy eye is lifted to the window-pane, to see if the dawn has not yet begun to tint it with a grey glimmer! how he groans, 'would god it were morning!' or think of some unarmed and solitary man, benighted in the forest, and hearing the wild beasts growl and scream and bark all round, while his fire dies down, and he knows that his life depends on the morning breaking soon. with yet more eager expectation are we to look for god, whose coming is a better morning for our sick and defenceless spirits. if we are not so looking for his help, we need never be surprised that we do not get it. there is no promise and no probability that it will come to men in their sleep, who neither desire it nor wait for it. and such vigilant expectation will be accompanied with patience. there is no impatience in it, but the very opposite. 'if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.' if we know that he will surely come, then if he tarry we can wait for him. the measure of our confidence is ever the measure of our patience. being sure that he is always 'in the midst of' zion, we may be sure that at the right time he will flame out into delivering might, helping her, and that right early. so waiting means watchfulness and patience, both of which have their roots in trust. further, we have here set forth not only the nature, but also the object of this waiting. 'upon thee, o _my strength_! will i wait, for god is _my defence_.' the object to which faith is directed, and the ground on which it is based, are both set forth in these two names here applied to god. the name of the lord is strength, therefore i wait on him in the confident expectation of receiving of his power. the lord is 'my defence,' therefore i wait on him in the confident expectation of safety. the one name has respect to our condition of feebleness and inadequacy for our tasks, and points to god as infusing strength into us. the other points to our exposedness to danger and to enemies, and points to god as casting his shelter around us. the word translated 'defence' is literally 'a high fortress,' and is the same as closes the rapturous accumulation of the names of his delivering god, which the psalmist gives us when he vows to love jehovah, who has been his rock, and fortress, and deliverer; his god in whom he will trust, his buckler, and the horn of his salvation, and his _high tower_. the first name speaks of god dwelling in us, and his strength made perfect in our weakness; the second speaks of our dwelling in god, and our defencelessness sheltered in him. 'the name of the lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.' as some outnumbered army, unable to make head against its enemies in the open, flees to the shelter of some hill fortress, perched upon a crag, and taking up the drawbridge, cannot be reached by anything that has not wings, so this man, hard pressed by his foes, flees into god to hide him, and feels secure behind these strong walls. that is the god on whom we wait. the recognition of his character as thus mighty and ready to help is the only thing that will evoke our expectant confidence, and his character thus discerned is the only object which our confidence can grasp aright. trust him as what he is, and trust him because of what he is, and see to it that your faith lays hold on the living god himself, and on nothing beside. but waiting on god is not only the recognition of his character as revealed, but it involves, too, the act of laying hold on all the power and blessing of that character for myself. '_my_ strength, _my_ defence,' says the psalmist. think of what he is, and believe that he is that for _you_, else there is no true waiting on him. make god thy very own by claiming thine own portion in his might, by betaking thyself to that strong habitation. we cannot wait on god in crowds, but one by one, must say, '_my_ strength and _my_ defence.' and now turn to the second verse of our two texts: 'unto thee, o my strength! will i sing, for god is my defence and the god of my mercy.' here we catch, as it were, waiting expectation and watchfulness in the very act of passing over into possession and praise. for remember the aspect of things has not changed a bit between the first verse of our text and the last. the enemies are all round about david just as they were, 'making a noise like a dog,' as he says, and 'going round about the city.' the evil that was threatening him and making him sad remains entirely unlightened. what has altered? he has altered. and how has he altered? because his waiting on god has begun to work an inward change, and he has climbed, as it were, out of the depths of his sorrow up into the sunlight. and so it ever is, my friends! there is deliverance in spirit before there is deliverance in outward fact. if our patient waiting bring, as it certainly will bring, at the right time, an answer in the removal of danger, and the lightening of sorrow, it will bring first the better answer, 'the peace of god, which passeth all understanding,' to keep your hearts and minds. that is the highest blessing we have to seek for in our waiting on god, and that is the blessing which we get as soon as we wait on him. the outward deliverance may tarry, but ever there come before it, as heralds of its approach, the sense of a lightened burden and the calmness of a strengthened heart. it may be long before the morning breaks, but even while the darkness lasts, a faint air begins to stir among the sleeping leaves, the promise of the dawn, and the first notes of half-awakened birds prelude the full chorus that will hail the sunrise. it is beautiful, i think, to see how in the compass of this one little psalm the singer has, as it were, wrought himself clear, and sung himself out of his fears. the stream of his thought, like some mountain torrent, turbid at first, has run itself bright and sparkling. how all the tremor and agitation have gone away, just because he has kept his mind for a few minutes in the presence of the calm thought of god and his love. the first courses of his psalm, like those of some great building, are laid deep down in the darkness, but the shining summit is away up there in the sunlight, and god's glittering glory is sparklingly reflected from the highest point. whoever begins with, 'deliver me--i will wait upon thee,' will pass very quickly, even before the outward deliverance comes, into--'o my strength! unto thee will i sing!' every song of true trust, though it may begin with a minor, will end in a burst of jubilant gladness. no prayer ought ever to deal with complaints, as we know, without starting with thanksgiving, and, blessed be god, no prayer need to deal with complaints without ending with thanksgiving. so, all our cries of sorrow, and all our acknowledgments of weakness and need, and all our plaintive beseechings, should be inlaid, as it were, between two layers of brighter and gladder thought, like dull rock between two veins of gold. the prayer that begins with thankfulness, and passes on into waiting, even while in sorrow and sore need, will always end in thankfulness, and triumph, and praise. if we regard this second verse of our text as the expression of the psalmist's emotion at the moment of its utterance, then we see in it a beautiful illustration of the effect of faithful waiting to turn complaining into praise. if we regard it rather as an expression of his confidence, that 'i shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance,' we see in it an illustration of the power of patient waiting to brighten the sure hope of deliverance, and to bring summer into the heart of winter. as resolve, or as prophecy, it is equally a witness of the large reward of quiet waiting for the salvation of the lord. in either application of the words their almost precise correspondence with those of the previous verse is far more than a mere poetic ornament, or part of the artistic form of the psalm. it teaches us this happy lesson--that the song of accomplished deliverance, whether on earth, or in the final joy of heaven, will be but a sweeter, fuller repetition of the cry that went up in trouble from our waiting hearts. the object to which we shall turn with our thankfulness is he to whom we betook ourselves with our prayers. there will be the same turning of the soul to him; only instead of wistful waiting in the longing look, joy will light her lamps in our eyes, and thankfulness beam in our faces as we turn to his light. we shall look to him as of old, and name him what we used to name him when we were in weakness and warfare,--our 'strength' and our 'defence.' but how different the feelings with which the delivered soul calls him so, from those with which the sorrowful heart tried to grasp the comfort of the names. then their reality was a matter of faith, often hard to hold fast. now it is a matter of memory and experience. 'i called thee my strength when i was full of weakness; i tried to believe thou wast my defence when i was full of fear; i thought of thee as my fortress when i was ringed about with foes; i know thee now for that which i then trusted that thou wast. as i waited upon thee that thou mightest be gracious, i praise thee now that thou hast been more gracious than my hopes.' blessed are they whose loftiest expectations were less than their grateful memories and their rich experience, and who can take up in their song of praise the names by which they called on god, and feel that they knew not half their depth, their sweetness, or their power! but the praise is not merely the waiting transformed. experience has not only deepened the conception of the meaning of god's name; it has added a new name. the cry of the suppliant was to god, his strength and defence; the song of the saved is to the god who is also the god of his mercy. the experiences of life have brought out more fully the love and tender pity of god. while the troubles lasted it was hard to believe that god was strong enough to brace us against them, and to keep us safe in them; it was harder still to think of them as coming from him at all; it was hardest to feel that they came from his love. but when they are past, and their meaning is plainer, and we possess their results in the weight of glory which they have wrought out for us, we shall be able to look back on them all as the mercies of the god of our mercy, even as when a man looks down from the mountain-top upon the mists and the clouds through which he passed, and sees them all smitten by the sunshine that gleams upon them from above. that which was thick and damp as he was struggling through it, is irradiated into rosy beauty; the retrospective and downward glance confirms and surpasses all that faith dimly discerned, and found it hard to believe. whilst we are fighting here, brethren! let us say, 'i will wait for thee,' and then yonder we shall, with deeper knowledge of the love that was in all our sorrows, sing unto him who was our strength in earth's weakness, our defence in earth's dangers, and is for ever more the 'god of our mercy,' amidst the large and undeserved favours of heaven. silence to god 'truly my soul waiteth upon god.... . my soul, wait thou only upon god.' psalm lxii. , . we have here two corresponding clauses, each beginning a section of the psalm. they resemble each other even more closely than appears from the english version, for the 'truly' of the first, and the 'only' of the second clause, are the same word; and in each case it stands in the same place, namely, at the beginning. so, word for word, the two answer to each other. the difference is, that the one expresses the psalmist's patient stillness of submission, and the other is his self-encouragement to that very attitude and disposition which he has just professed to be his. in the one he speaks of, in the other to, his soul. he stirs himself up to renew and continue the faith and resignation which he has, and so he sets before us both the temper which we should have, and the effort which we should make to prolong and deepen it, if it be ours. let us look at these two points then--the expression of waiting, and the self-exhortation to waiting. 'truly my soul waiteth upon god.' it is difficult to say whether the opening word is better rendered 'truly,' as here, or 'only,' as in the other clause. either meaning is allowable and appropriate. if, with our version, we adopt the former, we may compare with this text the opening of another psalm (lxxiii.), 'truly god is good to israel,' and there, as here, we may see in that vehement affirmation a trace of the struggle through which it had been won. the psalmist bursts into song with a word, which tells us plainly enough how much had to be quieted in him before he came to that quiet waiting, just as in the other psalm he pours out first the glad, firm certainty which he had reached, and then recounts the weary seas of doubt and bewilderment through which he had waded to reach it. that one word is the record of conflict and the trophy of victory, the sign of the blessed effect of effort and struggle in a truth more firmly held, and in a submission more perfectly practised. it is as if he had said, 'yes! in spite of all its waywardness and fears, and self-willed struggles, my soul waits upon god. i have overcome these, and now there is peace within.' it is to be further observed that literally the words run, 'my soul is silence unto god.' that forcible form of expression describes the completeness of the psalmist's unmurmuring submission and quiet faith. his whole being is one great stillness, broken by no clamorous passions, by no loud-voiced desires, by no remonstrating reluctance. there is a similar phrase in another psalm (cix. ), which may help to illustrate this: 'for my love they are my adversaries, but i am prayer'--his soul is all one supplication. the enemies' wrath awakens no flush of passion on his cheek, or ripple of vengeance in his heart. he meets it all with prayer. wrapped in devotion and heedless of their rage, he is like stephen, when he kneeled down among his yelling murderers, and cried with a loud voice, 'lord! lay not this sin to their charge.' so here we have the strongest expression of the perfect consent of the whole inward nature in submission and quietness of confidence before god. that silence is first a silence of the will. the plain meaning of this phrase is resignation; and resignation is just a silent will. before the throne of the great king, his servants are to stand like those long rows of attendants we see on the walls of eastern temples, silent, with folded arms, straining their ears to hear, and bracing their muscles to execute his whispered commands, or even his gesture and his glance. a man's will should be an echo, not a voice; the echo of god, not the voice of self. it should be silent, as some sweet instrument is silent till the owner's hand touches the keys. like the boy-prophet in the hush of the sanctuary, below the quivering light of the dying lamps, we should wait till the awful voice calls, and then answer, 'speak, lord! for thy servant heareth.' do not let the loud utterances of your own wills anticipate, nor drown, the still, small voice in which god speaks. bridle impatience till he does. if you cannot hear his whisper, wait till you do. take care of running before you are sent. keep your wills in equipoise till god's hand gives the impulse and direction. such a silent will is a strong will. it is no feeble passiveness, no dead indifference, no impossible abnegation that god requires, when he requires us to put our wills in accord with his. they are not slain, but vivified, by such surrender; and the true secret of strength lies in submission. the secret of blessedness is there, too, for our sorrows come because there is discord between our circumstances and our wills, and the measure in which these are in harmony with god is the measure in which we shall feel that all things are blessings to be received with thanksgiving. but if we will take our own way, and let our own wills speak before god speaks, or otherwise than god speaks, nothing can come of that but what always has come of it--blunders, sins, misery, and manifold ruin. we must keep our _hearts_ silent too. the sweet voices of pleading affections, the loud cry of desires and instincts that roar for their food like beasts of prey, the querulous complaints of disappointed hopes, the groans and sobs of black-robed sorrows, the loud hubbub and babel, like the noise of a great city, that every man carries within, must be stifled and coerced into silence. we have to take the animal in us by the throat, and sternly say, 'lie down there and be quiet.' we have to silence tastes and inclinations. we have to stop our ears to the noises around, however sweet the songs, and to close many an avenue through which the world's music might steal in. he cannot say, 'my soul is silent unto god,' whose whole being is buzzing with vanities and noisy with the din of the market-place. unless we have something, at least, of that great stillness, our hearts will have no peace, and our religion no reality. there must be the silence of the _mind_, as well as of the heart and will. we must not have our thoughts ever occupied with other things, but must cultivate the habit of detaching them from earth, and keeping our minds still before god, that he may pour his light into them. surely if ever any generation needed the preaching--'be still and let god speak'--we need it. even religious men are so busy with spreading or defending christianity, that they have little time, and many of them less inclination, for quiet meditation and still communion with god. newspapers, and books, and practical philanthropy, and christian effort, and business, and amusement, so crowd into our lives now, that it needs some resolution and some planning to get a clear space where we can be quiet, and look at god. but the old law for a noble and devout life is not altered by reason of any new circumstances. it still remains true that a mind silently waiting before god is the condition without which such a life is impossible. as the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by his shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of god, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds still before him, whose voice commands, whose love warms, whose truth makes fair, our whole being. god speaks for the most part in such silence only. if the soul be full of tumult and jangling noises, his voice is little likely to be heard. as in some kinds of deafness, a perpetual noise in the head prevents hearing any other sounds, the rush of our own fevered blood, and the throbbing of our own nerves, hinder our catching his tones. it is the calm lake which mirrors the sun, the least catspaw wrinkling the surface wipes out all the reflected glories of the heavens. if we would mirror god our souls must be calm. if we would hear god our souls must be silence. alas, how far from this is our daily life! who among us dare to take these words as the expression of our own experience? is not the troubled sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt, a truer emblem of our restless, labouring souls than the calm lake? put your own selves by the side of this psalmist, and honestly measure the contrast. it is like the difference between some crowded market-place all full of noisy traffickers, ringing with shouts, blazing in sunshine, and the interior of the quiet cathedral that looks down on it all, where are coolness and subdued light, and silence and solitude. 'come, my people! enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee.' 'commune with your own heart and be still.' 'in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.' this man's profession of utter resignation is perhaps too high for us; but we can make his _self-exhortation_ our own. 'my soul! wait thou only upon god.' perfect as he ventures to declare his silence towards god, he yet feels that he has to stir himself up to the effort which is needed to preserve it in its purity. just because he can say, 'my soul waits,' therefore he bids his soul wait. i need not dwell upon that self-stimulating as involving the great mystery of our personality, whereby a man exalts himself above himself, and controls, and guides, and speaks to his soul. but a few words may be given to that thought illustrated here, of the necessity for conscious effort and self-encouragement, in order to the preservation of the highest religious emotion. we are sometimes apt to forget that no holy thoughts or feelings are in their own nature permanent, and the illusion that they are so, often tends to accelerate their fading. it is no wonder if we in our selectest hours of 'high communion with the living god' should feel as if that lofty experience would last by virtue of its own sweetness, and need no effort of ours to retain it. but it is not so. all emotion tends to exhaustion, as surely as a pendulum to rest, or as an eastern torrent to dry up. all our flames burn to their extinction. there is but one fire that blazes and is not consumed. action is the destruction of tissue. life reaches its term in death. joy and sorrow, and hope and fear, cannot be continuous. they must needs wear themselves out and fade into a grey uniformity like mountain summits when the sun has left them. our religious experience too will have its tides, and even those high and pure emotions and dispositions that bind us to god can only be preserved by continual effort. their existence is no guarantee of their permanence, rather is it a guarantee of their transitoriness, unless we earnestly stir up ourselves to their renewal. like the emotions kindled by lower objects, they perish while they glow, and there must be a continual recurrence to the one source of light and heat if the brilliancy is to be preserved. nor is it only from within that their continuance is menaced. outward forces are sure to tell upon them the constant wash of the sea of life undermines the cliffs and wastes the coasts. the tear and wear of external occupations is ever acting upon our religious life. travellers tell us that the constant friction of the sand on egyptian hieroglyphs removes every trace of colour, and even effaces the deep-cut characters from basalt rocks. so the unceasing attrition of multitudinous trifles will take all the bloom off your religion, and efface the name of the king cut on the tables of your hearts, if you do not counteract them by constant earnest effort. our devotion, our faith, our love are only preserved by being constantly renewed. that vigorous effort is expressed here by the very form of the phrase. the same word which began the first clause begins the second also. as in the former it represented for us, with an emphatic 'truly,' the struggle through which the psalmist had reached the height of his blessed experience, so here it represents in like manner the earnestness of the self-exhortation which he addresses to himself. he calls forth all his powers to the conflict, which is needed even by the man who has attained to that height of communion, if he would remain where he has climbed. and for us, brethren! who shrink from taking these former words upon our lips, how much greater the need to use our most strenuous efforts to quiet our souls. if the summit reached can only be held by earnest endeavour, how much more is needed to struggle up to it from the valleys below! the silence of the soul before god is no mere passiveness. it requires the intensest energy of all our being to keep all our being still and waiting upon him. so put all your strength into the task, and be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in deepest abnegation it waits hushed before god. trust no past emotions. do not wonder if they should fade even when they are brightest. do not let their evanescence tempt you to doubt their reality. but always when our hearts are fullest of his love, and our spirits stilled with the sweetest sense of his solemn presence, stir yourselves up to keep firm hold of the else passing gleam, and in your consciousness let these two words live in perpetual alternation: 'truly my soul waiteth upon god. my soul! wait thou only upon god.' thirst and satisfaction 'my soul thirsteth for thee.... . my soul shall be satisfied.... . my soul followeth hard after thee.'--psalm lxiii. , , . it is a wise advice which bids us regard rather what is said than who says it, and there are few regions in which the counsel is more salutary than at present in the study of the old testament, and especially the psalms. this authorship has become a burning question which is only too apt to shut out far more important things. whoever poured out this sweet meditation in the psalm before us, his tender longings for, and his jubilant possession of, god remain the same. it is either the work of a king in exile, or is written by some one who tries to cast himself into the mental attitude of such a person, and to reproduce his longing and his trust. it may be a question of literary interest, but it is of no sort of spiritual or religious importance whether the author is david or a singer of later date endeavouring to reproduce his emotions under certain circumstances. the three clauses which i have read, and which are so strikingly identical in form, constitute the three pivots on which the psalm revolves, the three bends in the stream of its thought and emotion. 'my soul thirsts; my soul is satisfied; my soul follows hard after thee.' the three phases of emotion follow one another so swiftly that they are all wrapped up in the brief compass of this little song. unless they in some degree express our experiences and emotions, there is little likelihood that our lives will be blessed or noble, and we have little right to call ourselves christians. let us follow the windings of the stream, and ask ourselves if we can see our own faces in its shining surface. i. the soul that knows its own needs will thirst after god. the psalmist draws the picture of himself as a thirsty man in a waterless land. that may be a literally true reproduction of his condition, if indeed the old idea is correct, that this is a work of david's; for there is no more appalling desert than that in which he wandered as an exile. it is a land of arid mountains without a blade of verdure, blazing in their ghastly whiteness under the fierce sunshine, and with gaunt ravines in which there are no pools or streams, and therefore no sweet sound of running waters, no shadow, no songs of birds, but all is hot, dusty, glaring, pitiless; and men and beasts faint, and loll out their tongues, and die for want of water. and, says the psalmist, such is life, if due regard be had to the deepest wants of a soul, notwithstanding all the abundant supplies which are spread in such rich and loving luxuriance around us--we are thirsty men in a waterless land. i need not remind you how true it is that a man is but a bundle of appetites, desires, often tyrannous, often painful, always active. but the misery of it is--the reason why man's misery is great upon him is--mainly, i suppose, that he does not know what it is that he wants; that he thirsts, but does not understand what the thirst means, nor what it is that will slake it. his animal appetites make no mistakes; he and the beasts know that when they are thirsty they have to drink, and when they are hungry they have to eat, and when they are drowsy they have to sleep. but the poor instinct of the animal that teaches it what to choose and what to avoid fails us in the higher reaches; and we are conscious of a craving, and do not find that the craving reveals to us the source from whence its satisfaction can be derived. therefore 'broken cisterns that can hold no water' are at a premium, and 'the fountain of living waters' is turned away from, though it could slake so many thirsts. like ignorant explorers in an enemy's country, we see a stream, and we do not stop to ask whether there is poison in it or not before we glue our thirsty lips to it. there is a great old promise in one of the prophets which puts this notion of the misinterpretation of our thirsts, and the mistakes as to the sources from which they can be slaked, into one beautiful metaphor which is obscured in our english version. the prophet isaiah says, according to our reading, 'the parched land shall become a pool.' the word which he uses is that almost technical one which describes the phenomenon known only in eastern lands, or at least known in them only in its superlative degree; the mirage, where the dancing currents of ascending air simulate the likeness of a cool lake, with palm-trees around it. and, says he, 'the mirage shall become a pool,' the romance shall turn into a reality, the mistakes shall be rectified, and men shall know what it is that they want, and shall get it when they know. brethren! unless we have listened to the teaching from above, unless we have consulted far more wisely and far more profoundly than many of us have ever done the meaning of our own hearts when they cry out, we too shall only be able to take for ours the plaintive cry of the half of this first utterance of the psalmist, and say despairingly, 'my soul thirsteth.' blessed are they who know where the fountain is, who know the meaning of the highest unrests in their own souls, and can go on to say with clear and true self-revelation, 'my soul thirsteth for god!' that is religion. there is a great deal more in christianity than longing, but there is no christianity worth the name without it. there is moral stimulus to activity, a pattern for conduct, and so on, in our religion, and if our religion is only this longing--well then, it is worth very little; and i fancy it is worth a good deal less if there is none of this felt need for god, and for more of god, in us. and so i come to two classes of my hearers; and to the first of them i say, dear friends! do not mistake what it is that you 'need,' and see to it that you turn the current of your longings from earth to god; and to the second of them i say, dear friends! if you have found out that god is your supreme good, see to it that you live in the good, see to it that you live in the constant attitude of longing for more of that good which alone will slake your appetite. 'the thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine,' and unless we know what it is to be drawn outwards and upwards, in strong aspirations after something--'afar from the sphere of our sorrow,' i know not why we should call ourselves christians at all. but, dear friends! let us not forget that these higher aspirations after the uncreated and personal good which is god have to be cultivated very sedulously and with great persistence, throughout all our changing lives, or they will soon die out, and leave us. there has to be the clear recognition, habitual to us, of what is our good. there has to be a continual meditation, if i may so say, upon the all-sufficiency of that divine lord and lover of our souls, and there has to be a vigilant and a continual suppression, and often excision and ejection, of other desires after transient and partial satisfactions. a man who lets all his longings go unchecked and untamed after earthly good has none left towards heaven. if you break up a river into a multitude of channels, and lead off much of it to irrigate many little gardens, there will be no force in its current, its bed will become dry, and it will never reach the great ocean where it loses its individuality and becomes part of a mightier whole. so, if we fritter away and divide up our desires among all the clamant and partial blessings of earth, then we shall but feebly long, and feebly longing, shall but faintly enjoy, the cool, clear, exhaustless gush from the fountain of life--'my soul thirsteth for god!'--in the measure in which that is true of us, and not one hairsbreadth beyond it, in spite of orthodoxy, and professions, and activities, are we christian people. ii. the soul that thirsts after god is satisfied. the psalmist, by the magic might of his desire, changes, as in a sudden transformation scene in a theatre, all the dreariness about him. one moment it is a 'dry and barren land where no water is'; the next moment a flash of verdure has come over the yellow sand, and the ghastly silence is broken by the song of merry birds. the one moment he is hungering there in the desert; the next, he sees spread before him a table in the wilderness, and his soul is 'satisfied as with marrow and with fatness,' and his mouth praises god, whom he possesses, who has come unto him swift, immediate, in full response to his cry. now, all that is but a picturesque way of putting a very plain truth, which we should all be the happier and better if we believed and lived by, that we can have as much of god as we desire, and that what we have of him will be enough. we can have as much of god as we desire. there is a quest which finds its object with absolute certainty, and which finds its object simultaneously with the quest. and these two things, the certainty and the immediateness with which the thirst of the soul after god passes into a satisfied fruition of the soul in god, are what are taught us here in our text; and what you and i, if we comply with the conditions, may have as our own blessed experience. there is one search about which it is true that it never fails to find. the certainty that the soul thirsting after god shall be satisfied with god results at once from his nearness to us, and his infinite willingness to give himself, which he is only prevented from carrying into act by our obstinate refusal to open our hearts by desire. it takes all a man's indifference to keep god out of his heart, 'for in him we live, and move, and have our being,' and that divine love, which christianity teaches us to see on the throne of the universe, is but infinite longing for self-communication. that is the definition of true love always, and they fearfully mistake its essence, and take the lower and spurious forms of it for the higher and nobler, who think of love as being what, alas! it often is, in our imperfect lives, a fierce desire to have for our very own the thing or person beloved. but that is a second-rate kind of love. god's love is an infinite desire to give himself. if only we open our hearts--and nothing opens them so wide as longing--he will pour in, as surely as the atmosphere streams in through every chink and cranny, as surely as if some great black rock that stands on the margin of the sea is blasted away, the waters will flood over the sands behind it. so unless we keep god out, by not wishing him in, in he will come. the certitude that we possess him when we desire him is as absolute. as swift as marconi's wireless message across the atlantic and its answer; so immediate is the response from heaven to the desire from earth. what a contrast that is to all our experiences! is there anything else about which we can say 'i am quite sure that if i want it i shall have it. i am quite sure that when i want it i have it'? nothing! there may be wells to which a man has to go, as the bedouin in the desert has to go, with empty water-skins, many a day's journey, and it comes to be a fight between the physical endurance of the man and the weary distance between him and the spring. many a man's bones, and many a camel's, lie on the track to the wells, who lay down gasping and black-lipped, and died before they reached them. we all know what it is to have longing desires which have cost us many an effort, and efforts and desires have both been in vain. is it not blessed to be sure that there is one whom to long for is immediately to possess? then there is the other thought here, too, that when we have god we have enough. that is not true about anything else. god forbid that one should depreciate the wise adaptation of earthly goods to human needs which runs all through every life! but all that recognised, still we come back to this, that there is nothing here, nothing except god himself, that will fill all the corners of a human heart. there is always something lacking in all other satisfactions. they address themselves to sides, and angles, and facets of our complex nature; they leave all the others unsatisfied. the table that is spread in the world, at which, if i might use so violent a figure, our various longings and capacities seat themselves as guests, always fails to provide for some of them, and whilst some, and those especially of the lower type, are feasting full, there sits by their side another guest, who finds nothing on the table to satisfy his hunger. but if my soul thirsts for god, my soul will be satisfied when i get him. the prophet isaiah modifies this figure in the great word of invitation which pealed out from him, where he says, 'ho! everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' but that figure is not enough for him, that metaphor, blessed as it is, does not exhaust the facts; and so he goes on, 'yea, come, buy wine'--and that is not enough for him, that does not exhaust the facts, therefore he adds, 'and milk.' water, wine, and milk; all forms of the draughts that slake the thirsts of humanity, are found in god himself, and he who has him needs seek nowhere besides. lastly-- iii. the soul that is satisfied with god immediately renews its quest. 'my soul followeth hard after thee.' the two things come together, longing and fruition, as i have said. fruition begets longing, and there is swift and blessed alternation, or rather co-existence of the two. joyful consciousness of possession and eager anticipation of larger bestowments are blended still more closely, if we adhere to the original meaning of the words of this last clause, than they are in our translation, for the psalm really reads, 'my soul cleaveth after thee.' in the one word 'cleaveth,' is expressed adhesion, like that of the limpet to the rock, conscious union, blessed possession; and in the other word 'after thee' is expressed the pressing onwards for more and yet more. but now contrast that with the issue of all other methods of satisfying human appetites, be they lower or be they higher. they result either in satiety or in a tyrannical, diseased appetite which increases faster than the power of satisfying it increases. the man who follows after other good than god, has at the end to say, 'i am sick, tired of it, and it has lost all power to draw me,' or he has to say, 'i ravenously long for more of it, and i cannot get any more.' 'he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.' you have to increase the dose of the narcotic, and as you increase the dose, it loses its power, and the less you can do without it the less it does for you. but to drink into the one god slakes all thirsts, and because he is infinite, and our capacity for receiving him may be indefinitely expanded; therefore, 'age cannot wither, nor custom stale his infinite variety'; but the more we have of god, the more we long for him, and the more we long for him the more we possess him. brethren! these are the possibilities of the christian life; being its possibilities they are our obligations. the psalmist's words may well be turned by us into self-examining interrogations and we may--god grant that we do!--all ask ourselves; 'do i thus thirst after god?' 'have i learned that, notwithstanding all supplies, this world without him is a waterless desert? have i experienced that whilst i call he answers, and that the water flows in as soon as i open my heart? and do i know the happy birth of fresh longings out of every fruition, and how to go further and further into the blessed land, and into my elastic heart receive more and more of the ever blessed god?' these texts of mine not only set forth the ideal for the christian life here, but they carry in themselves the foreshadowing of the life hereafter. for surely such a merely physical accident as death cannot be supposed to break this golden sequence which runs through life. surely this partial and progressive possession of an infinite good, by a nature capable of indefinitely increasing appropriation of, and approximation to it is the prophecy of its own eternal continuance. so long as the fountain springs, the thirsty lips will drink. god's servants will live till god dies. the christian life will go on, here and hereafter, till it has reached the limits of its own capacity of expansion, and has exhausted god. 'the water that i shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.' sin overcoming and overcome 'iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away.'--psalm. lxv. . there is an intended contrast in these two clauses more pointed and emphatic in the original than in our bible, between man's impotence and god's power in the face of the fact of sin. the words of the first clause might be translated, with perhaps a little increase of vividness, 'iniquities are too strong for me'; and the 'thou' of the next clause is emphatically expressed in the original, 'as for our transgressions' (which we cannot touch), '_thou_ shalt purge them away.' despair of self is the mother of confidence in god; and no man has learned the blessedness and the sweetness of god's power to cleanse, who has not learned the impotence of his own feeble attempts to overcome his transgression. the very heart of christianity is redemption. there are a great many ways of looking at christ's mission and christ's work, but i venture to say that they are all inadequate unless they start with this as the fundamental thought, and that only he who has learned by serious reflection and bitter personal experience the gravity and the hopelessness of the fact of the bondage of sin, rightly understands the meaning and the brightness of the gospel of christ. the angel voice that told us his name, and based his name upon his characteristic work, went deeper into the 'philosophy' of christianity than many a modern thinker, when it said, 'thou shalt call his name jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins.' so here we have the hopelessness and misery of man's vain struggles, and side by side with these the joyful confidence in the divine victory. we have the problem and the solution, the barrier and the overleaping of it; man's impotence and the omnipotence of god's mercy. my iniquities are too strong for me, but thou art too strong for them. as for our transgressions, of which i cannot purge the stain, with all my tears and with all my work, 'thou shalt purge them away.' note, then, these two--first, the cry of despair; second, the ringing note of confidence. i. the cry of despair. 'too strong for me,' and yet they _are_ me. me, and _not_ me; mine, and yet, somehow or other, my enemies, although my children--too strong for me, yet i give them their strength by my own cowardly and feeble compliance with their temptations; too strong for me and overmastering me, though i pride myself often on my freedom and spirit when i am yielding to them. mine iniquities are mine, and yet they are not mine; me and yet, blessed be god! they can be separated from me. the picture suggested by the words is that of some usurping power that has mastered a man, and laid its grip upon him so that all efforts to get away from the grasp are hopeless. now, i dare say, that some of you are half consciously thinking that this is a piece of ordinary pulpit exaggeration, and has no kind of application to the respectable and decent lives that most of you live, and that you are ready to say, with as much promptitude and as much falsehood as the old jews did, even whilst the roman eagles, lifted above the walls of the castle, were giving them the lie: 'we were never in bondage to any man.' you do not know or feel that anything has got hold of you which is stronger than you. well, let us see. consider for a moment. you are powerless to master your evil, considered as habits. you do not know the tyranny of the usurper until a rebellion is got up against him. as long as you are gliding with the stream you have no notion of its force. turn your boat and try to pull against it, and when the sweat-drops come on your brow, and you are sliding backwards, in spite of all your effort, you will begin to find out what a tremendous down-sucking energy there is in that quiet, silent flow. so the ready compliance of the worst part of my nature masks for me the tremendous force with which my evil tyrannises over me, and it is only when i face round and try to go the other way, that i find out what a power there is in its invisible grasp. did you ever try to cure some trivial bad habit, some trick of your fingers, for instance? you know what infinite pains and patience and time it took you to do that, and do you think that you would find it easier if you once set yourself to cure that lust, say, or that petulance, pride, passion, dishonesty, or whatsoever form of selfish living in forgetfulness of god may be your besetting sin? if you will try to pull the poison fang up, you will find how deep its roots are. it is like the yellow charlock in a field, which seems only to spread in consequence of attempts to get rid of it--as the rough rhyme says; 'one year's seeding, seven years' weeding'--and more at the end of the time than at the beginning. any honest attempt at mending character drives a man to this--'my iniquities are too strong for me.' i do not for a moment deny that there may be, and occasionally is, a magnificent force of will and persistency of purpose in efforts at self-improvement on the part of perfectly irreligious men. but, if by the occasional success of such effort, a man conquers one form of evil, that does not deliver him from evil. you have the usurping dominion deep in your nature, and what does it matter in essence which part of your being is most conspicuously under its control? it may be some animal passion, and you may conquer that. a man, for instance, when he is young, lives in the sphere of sensuous excitement; and when he gets old he turns a miser, and laughs at the pleasures that he used to get from the flesh, and thinks himself ever so much wiser. is he any better? he has changed, so to speak, the kind of sin. that is all. the devil has put a new viceroy in authority, but it is the old government, though with fresh officials. the house which is cleared of the seven devils without getting into it the all-filling and sanctifying grace of god and love of jesus christ will stand empty. nature abhors a vacuum, and so does satan, and the empty house invites the seven ill-tenants, and back they come in their diabolical completeness. so, dear friends! though you may do a great deal--thank god!--in subduing evil habits and inclinations, you cannot touch, so as to master, the central fact of sin unless you get god to help you to do it, and you have to go down on your knees before you can do that work. 'iniquities are too strong for me.' then, again, consider our utter impotence in dealing with our own evil regarded as guilt. when we do wrong, the judge within, which we call conscience, says to us two things, or perhaps three. it says first, 'that is wrong'; it says secondly, 'you have got to answer for it'; and i think it says thirdly, 'and you will be punished for it.' that is to say, there is a sense of demerit that goes side by side with our evil, as certainly as the shadow travels with the substance. and though, sometimes, when the sun goes behind a cloud, there is no shadow, and sometimes, when the light within us is darkened, conscience does not cast the black shade of demerit across the mind; yet conscience is there, though silent. when it does speak it says, 'you have done wrong, and you are answerable.' answerable to whom? to it? no! to society? no! to law? no! you can only be answerable to a person, and that is god. against him we have sinned. we do wrong; and if wrong were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because there was nothing but law that we were answerable to. we do unkind things, and if unkindness and inhumanity were all that we had to charge ourselves with, it would be because we were only answerable to one another. we do suicidal things, and if self-inflicted injury were all our definition of evil, it would be because we were only answerable to our conscience and ourselves. but we _sin_, and that means that every wrong thing, big or little, which we do, whether we think about god in the doing of it or no, is, in its deepest essence, an offence against him. the judgment of conscience carries with it the solemn looking for of future judgment. it says, 'i am only a herald: _he_ is coming.' no man feels the burden of guilt without an anticipation of judgment. what are you going to do with these two feelings? do you think that _you_ can deal with them? it is no use saying, 'i am not responsible for what i did; i inherited such-and-such tendencies; circumstances are so-and-so. i could not help it; environment, and evolution, and all the rest of it diminish, if they do not destroy, responsibility.' be it so! and yet, after all, this is left--the certainty in my own convictions that i had the power to do or not to do. that is a fundamental part of a man's consciousness. if it is a delusion, what is to be trusted, and how can we be sure of anything? so that we are responsible for our action, and can no more elude the guilt that follows sin than we can jump off our own shadow. and i want you to consider what you are going to do about your guilt. one thing you cannot do--you cannot remove it. men have tried to do so by sacrifices, and false religions. they have swung in the air by means of hooks fastened into their bodies, and i do not know what besides, and they have not managed it. you can no more get rid of your guilt by being sorry for your sin than you could bring a dead man to life again by being sorry for his murder. what is done is done. 'what i have written i have written!' nothing will ever 'wash that little lily hand white again,' as the magnificent murderess in shakespeare's great creation found out. you can forget your guilt; you can ignore it. you can adopt some of the easily-learned-by-rote and fashionable theories that will enable you to minimise it, and to laugh at us old-fashioned believers in guilt and punishment. you do not take away the rock because you blow out the lamps of the lighthouse, and you do not alter an ugly fact by ignoring it. i beseech you, as reasonable men and women, to open your eyes to these plain facts about yourselves, that you have an element of demerit and of liability to consequent evil and suffering which you are perfectly powerless to touch or to lighten in the slightest degree. consider, again, our utter impotence in regard to our evil, looked upon as a barrier between us and god. that is the force of the context here. the psalmist has just been saying, 'o thou that hearest prayer! unto thee shall all flesh come.' and then he bethinks himself how flesh compassed with infirmities can come. and he staggers back bewildered. there can be no question but that the plain dictate of common sense is, 'we know that god heareth not sinners.' my evil not only lies like a great black weight of guilt and of habit on my consciousness and on my activity, but it actually stands like a frowning cliff, barring my path and making a barrier between me and god. 'your hands are full of blood; i hate your vain oblations,' says the solemn voice through the prophet. and this stands for ever true--'the prayer of the wicked is an abomination.' there frowns the barrier. thank god! mercies come through it, howsoever close-knit and impenetrable it may seem. thank god! no sin can shut him out from us, but it can shut us out from him. and though we cannot separate god from ourselves, and he is nearer us than our consciousness and the very basis of our being, yet by a mysterious power we can separate ourselves from him. we may build up, of the black blocks of our sins flung up from the inner fires, and cemented with the bituminous mortar of our lusts and passions, a black wall between us and our father. you and i have done it. we can build it--we cannot throw it down; we can rear it--we cannot tunnel it. our iniquities are too strong for us. now notice that this great cry of despair in my text is the cry of a single soul. this is the only place in the psalm in which the singular person is used. 'iniquities are too strong for us,' is not sufficient. each man must take guilt to himself. the recognition and confession of evil must be an intensely personal and individual act. my question to you, dear friend! is, did you ever know it by experience? going apart by yourself, away from everybody else, with no companions or confederates to lighten the load of your felt evil, forgetting tempters and associates and all other people, did you ever stand, you and god, face to face, with nobody to listen to the conference? and did you ever feel in that awful presence that whether the world was full of men, or deserted and you the only survivor, would make no difference to the personal responsibility and weight and guilt of your individual sin? have you ever felt, 'against thee, thee only, have i'--solitary--'sinned,' and confessed that iniquities are 'too strong for me'? ii. now, let me say a word or two about the second clause of this great verse, the ringing cry of confident hope. the confidence is, as i said, the child of despair. you will never go into that large place of assured trust in god's effacing finger passed over all your evil until you have come through the narrow pass, where the black rocks all but bar the traveller's foot, of conscious impotence to deal with your sin. you must, first of all, dear friends! go down into the depths, and learn to have no trust in yourselves before you can rise to the heights, and rejoice in the hope of the glory and of the mercy of god. begin with 'too strong for me,' and the impotent 'me' leads on to the almighty 'thou.' then, do not forget that what was confidence on the psalmist's part is knowledge on ours. 'as for our transgressions, thou wilt purge them away.' you and i know why, and know how. jesus christ in his great work for us has vindicated the psalmist's confidence, and has laid bare for the world's faith the grounds upon which that divine power proceeds in its cleansing mercy. 'thou wilt purge them away,' said he. 'christ hath borne our sins in his own body on the tree,' says the new testament. i have spoken about our impotence in regard to our own evil, considered under three aspects. i meant to have said more about christ's work upon our sins, considered under the same three aspects. but let me just, very briefly, touch upon them. jesus christ, when trusted, will do for sin, as habit, what cannot be done without him. he will give the motive to resist, which is lacking in the majority of cases. he will give the power to resist, which is lacking in all cases. he will put a new life and spirit into our nature which will strengthen and transform our feeble wills, will elevate and glorify our earthward trailing affections, will make us love that which he loves, and aspire to that which he is, until we become, in the change from glory to glory, reflections of the image of the lord. as habit and as dominant power within us, nothing will cast out the evil that we have entertained in our hearts except the power of the life of christ jesus, in his spirit dwelling within us and making us clean. when 'a strong man keeps his house, his goods are in peace, but when a stronger than he cometh he taketh from him all his implements in which he trusteth, and divideth his spoil.' and so christ has bound the strong man, in that one great sacrifice on the cross. and now he comes to each of us, if we will trust him, and gives motives, power, pattern, hopes, which enable us to cast out the tyrant that has held dominion over us. 'if the son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.' and i tell all of you, especially you young men and women, who presumably have noble aspirations and desires, that the only way to conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil, is to let christ clothe you with his armour; and let him lay his hand on your feeble hands whilst you aim the arrows and draw the bow, as the prophet did in the old story, and then you will shoot, and not miss. christ, and christ alone, within us will make us powerful to cast out the evil. in like manner, he, and he only, deals with sin, considered as guilt. here is the living secret and centre of all christ's preciousness and power--that he died on the cross; and in his spirit, which knew the drear desolation of being forsaken by god, and in his flesh, which bore the outward consequences of sin, in death as a sinful world knows it, 'bare our sins and carried our sorrows,' so that 'by his stripes we are healed.' if you will trust yourselves to the mighty sacrifice, and with no reservation, as if you could do anything, will cast your whole weight and burden upon him, then the guilt will pass away, and the power of sin will be broken. transgressions will be buried--'covered,' as the original of my text has it--as with a great mound piled upon them, so that they shall never offend or smell rank to heaven any more, but be lost to sight for ever. christ can take away the barrier reared by sin between god and the human spirit. solid and black as it stands, his blood dropped upon it melts away. then it disappears like the black bastions of the aerial structures in the clouds before the sunshine. he hath opened for us a new and living way, that we might 'have access and confidence,' and, sinners as we are, that we might dwell for ever more at the side of our lord. so, dear brother! whilst humanity cries--and i pray that all of us may cry like the apostle, 'oh, wretched man that i am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'--faith lifts up, swift and clear, her ringing note of triumph, which i pray god or rather, which i beseech you that you will make your own, 'i thank god! i through jesus christ our lord.' the burden-bearing god 'blessed be the lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits.'--(a.v.). 'blessed be the lord, who daily beareth our burden.' --psalm lxviii. (r.v.). the difference between these two renderings seems to be remarkable, and a person ignorant of any language but our own might find it hard to understand how any one sentence was susceptible of both. but the explanation is extremely simple. the important words in the authorised version, 'with benefits,' are a supplement, having nothing to represent them in the original. the word translated '_loadeth_' in the one rendering and '_beareth_' in the other admits of both these meanings with equal ease, and is, in fact, employed in both of them in other places in scripture. it is clear, i think, that, in this case, at all events, the revision is an improvement. for the great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, 'who daily loadeth us _with benefits_,' is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, 'who daily beareth our burdens,' we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no forced addition in order to bring it out. so, then, i accept that varied form of our text as the one on which i desire to say a few words now. i. the first thing that strikes me in looking at it is the remarkable and eloquent blending of majesty and condescension. it is not without significance that the psalmist employs that name for god in this clause, which most strongly expresses the idea of supremacy and dominion. rule and dignity are the predominant ideas in the word 'lord,' as, indeed, the english reader feels in hearing it; and then, side by side with that, there lies this thought, that the highest, the ruler of all, whose absolute authority stretches over all mankind, stoops to this low and servile office, and becomes the burden-bearer for all the pilgrims who will put their trust in him. this blending together of the two ideas of dignity and condescension to lowly offices of help and furtherance is made even more emphatic if we glance back at the context of the psalm. for there is no place in scripture in which there is flashed before the mind of the singer a grander picture of the magnificence and the glory of god, than that which glitters and flames in the previous verses. we read in them of god 'riding through the heavens by his name jehovah'; of him as marching at the head of the people, through the wilderness, and of the earth quivering at his tread, and the heavens dropping at his presence. we read of zion itself being moved at the presence of the lord. we read of his word going forth so mightily as to scatter armies and their kings. we read of the chariots of god as 'twenty thousand, even thousands of angels.' all is gathered together in the great verse, 'thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive.' and then, before he has taken breath almost, the psalmist turns, with most striking and dramatic abruptness, from the contemplation, awe-struck and yet jubilant, of all that tremendous, magnificent, and earth-shaking power to this wonderful thought, 'blessed be the lord! who daily beareth our burdens.' not only does he march at the head of the congregation through the wilderness, but he comes, if i might so say, behind the caravan, amongst the carriers and the porters, and will bear anything that any of the weary pilgrims intrusts to his care. oh, dear brethren! if familiarity did not dull the glory of it, what a thought that is--a god that carries men's loads! people talk much rubbish about the 'stern old testament deity'; is there anything sweeter, greater, more heart-compelling and heart-softening, than such a thought as this? how all the majesty bows itself, and declares itself to be enlisted on our side, when we think that 'he that sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers' is the god that 'daily beareth our burdens'! and that is the tone of the old testament throughout, for you will always find braided together in the closest vital unity the representation of these two aspects of the divine nature; and if ever we hear set forth a more than ordinarily magnificent conception of his power and majesty be sure that, if you look, you will find side by side with it a more than ordinarily tender representation of his gentleness and his grace. and if we look deeper, this is not a case of contrast, it is not that there are sharply opposed to each other these two things, the gentleness and the greatness, the condescension and the magnificence, but that the former is the direct result of the latter; and it is just because he is lord, and has dominion over all, that, therefore, he bears the burdens of all. for the responsibilities of the creator are in proportion to his greatness, and he that has made man has thereby made it necessary that he should, if they will let him, be their burden-bearer and their servant. the highest must be the lowest, and just because god is high over all, blessed for ever, therefore is he the supporter and sustainer of all. so we may learn the true meaning of elevation of all sorts, and from the example of loftiest, may draw the lesson for our more insignificant varieties of height, that the higher we are, the more we are bound to stoop, and that men are then likest god, when their elevation suggests to them responsibility, and when he that is chiefest becomes the servant. ii. so, then, notice next the deep insight into the heart and ways of god here. 'he daily beareth our burdens.' if there is any meaning in this word at all, it means that he so knits himself with us as that all which touches us touches him, that he takes a share in all our pressing duties, and feels the reflection from all our sorrows and pains. we have no impassive god in the heavens, careless of mankind, nor is his settled and changeless and unshaded blessedness of such a sort as that there cannot pass across it--if i may not say a shadow, i may at least say--a ripple from men's pangs and troubles and cares. love is the identification of oneself with the beloved object. we call it sympathy, when we are speaking about the fellow feeling between man and man that is kindled of love. but there is something deeper than sympathy in that great heart, which gathers into itself all hearts, and in that great being, whose being underlies all our beings, and is the root from which we all live and grow. god, in all our afflictions, is afflicted; and in simple though profound verity, has that which is most truly represented to men, by calling it a fellow feeling with our infirmities and our sorrows. 'think not thou canst sigh a sigh, and thy maker is not nigh; think not thou canst weep a tear, and thy maker is not near.' for want of a better word, we speak of the sympathy of god: but we need something far more intimate and unwearied than we understand by that word, to express the community of feeling between all who trust him and his own infinite heart. if this bearing of our burden means anything, it gives us a deep insight, too, into his workings, as well as into his heart. for it covers over this great truth that he himself comes to us, and by the communication of his own power to us, makes us able to bear the burdens which we roll upon him. the meaning of his 'lifting our load,' in so far as that expression refers to the divine act rather than the divine heart, is that he breathes into us the strength by which we can carry the heavy task of duties, and can endure the crushing pressure of our sorrows. all the endurance of the saints is god in them bearing their burdens. notice, too, '_daily_ beareth,' or, as the hebrew has it yet more emphatically because more simply, 'day by day beareth.' he travels with us, in the greatness of his might and the long-suffering of his unwearied patience, through all our tribulation, and as he has 'borne and carried' his people 'all the days of old,' so, at each new recurrence of new weights, he is with us still. like some river that runs by the wayside and ever cheers the traveller on the dusty path with its music, and offers its waters to cool his thirsty lips, so, day by day, in the slow iteration of our lingering sorrows, and in the monotonous recurrence of our habitual duties, there is with us the ever-present help of the ancient of days, who measures out daily strength for the daily load, and never sends the one without proffering the other. iii. so, again, notice here the remarkable anticipation of the very heart of the gospel. 'the god who daily beareth our burdens,' says the psalmist. he spoke deeper things than he knew, and was wiser than he understood. for the hope that gleams in these words comes to fulfilment, in him of whom it was written in prophetic anticipation, so clear and definite that it reads like historical narrative--'he bare our grief and carried our sorrows. the chastisement of our peace was upon him. the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.' ah! it were of small avail to know a god that bore the burden of our sorrows and the load of our duties, if we did not know a god who bore the weight of our sins. for that is the real crushing weight that breaks men's hearts and bows them to the earth. so the new testament, with its message of a christ on whom is laid the whole pressure of the world's sin, is the deepest fulfilment of the great words of my text. iv. note, lastly, what we should therefore do with our burdens. first, we should cast them on god, and _let_ him carry them. he cannot unless we do. one sometimes sees a petulant and self-confident little child staggering along with some heavy burden by the parent's side, but pushing away the hand that is put out to help it to carry its load. and that is what too many of us do when god says to us, 'here, my child! let me help you, i will take the heavy end of it, and do you take the light one.' 'cast thy burden upon the lord'--and do it by faith, by simple trust in him, by making real to yourselves the fact of his divine sympathy, and his sure presence, to aid and to sustain. having thus let him carry the weight, do not you try to carry it too. as our good old hymn has it-- 'why should i the burden bear?' it is a great deal more god's affair than yours. we have, indeed, in a sense, to carry it. 'every man shall bear his own burden.' the weight of duty is not to be indolently shoved off our shoulders on to his, saying, 'let him do the work.' we have indeed to carry the weight of sorrow. there is no use in trying to deny its bitterness and its burden, and it would not be well for us that it should be less bitter and less heavy. in many lands the habit prevails, especially amongst the women, of carrying heavy loads on their heads; and all travellers tell us that the practice gives a dignity and a grace to the carriage, and a freedom and a swing to the gait, which nothing else will do. depend upon it, that so much of our burdens of work and weariness as is left to us, after we have cast them upon him, is intended to strengthen and ennoble us. but do not let there be the gnawings of anxiety. do not let there be the self-torment of aimless prognostications of evil. do not let there be the chewing of the bitter morsel of irrevocable sorrows; but fling all upon god. and remember what the master has said, and his servant has repeated: 'take no anxious care ... for your heavenly father knoweth'; 'cast your anxiety upon him, for he careth for you.' and the last advice that comes from my text is, to see that your tongues are not silent in that great hymn of praise which ought to go up to 'the lord that daily beareth our burdens.' he wants only our trust and our thanks, and is best paid by the praise of our love, and of our heaping still more upon his ever strong and ready arm. bless the lord! who beareth our burdens, and see that you give him yours to bear. listen to him who hath said, 'come unto me all ye that ... are heavy laden, and i will give you rest.' reasonable rapture 'whom have i in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that i desire besides thee. . my flesh and my heart faileth; but god is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.' --psalm lxxiii. , . we have in this psalm the record of the psalmist's struggle with the great standing difficulty of how to reconcile the unequal distribution of worldly prosperity with the wisdom and providence of god. that difficulty pressed more acutely upon men of the old dispensation than even upon us, because the very promise of that stage of revelation was that godliness brought with it outward well-being. our psalmist reaches a solution, not exactly by the same path by which the writers of the books of job and ecclesiastes find an answer to the problem. this man gives up the endeavour to solve the question by reflection and thought, and as he says, 'goes into the sanctuary of god,' gets into communion with his father in heaven, and by reason of that communion reaches a conclusion which is, at all events, an approximate solution of his difficulty, viz. the belief of a future life, 'then understood i their end.' the solemn vision of a life beyond the present, which should be the outcome and retribution of this, rises before him from out of his agitated thoughts, like the moon, pale and phantom-like, from a stormy sea. that truth, if revealed at all to the psalmist's contemporaries, certainly did not occupy the same position of clearness or of prominence as it does in our religious beliefs. but here we see a soul led up by its wrestlings to apprehend it, and as was said of a statesman, 'calling a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old.' so we get here a soul taught by god, and filled with him by communion, therefore lifted to the height of a faith in a future life, and so made able to look out upon all the perplexities and staggering mysteries of earth's mingled ill and good, if not with distinct understanding, at least with patient faith. the words of my text indicate for us the very high-water mark of religious experience, the very apex and climax of what some people would call mystical religion to which this man has climbed, because he fought with his doubts, and by god's grace was able to lay them. to him the world's uncertain ill or good becomes infinitely insignificant, because for the future he has a clear vision of a continued life with god, and because for the present he knows that to have god in his heart is all that he really needs. i. we have here, first, a necessity which, misdirected, is the source of man's misery. 'whom have i in heaven but thee? there is none upon earth that i desire besides thee.' if men would interpret the deepest voices of their own souls that is what they would all say, because, from the very make of our human nature there is not one of us, howsoever weak and sinful and small, but is great enough to be too great to be filled with anything smaller than god. our thoughts, even the thoughts of the least enlightened amongst us, go wandering through eternity; and as the writer of the book of ecclesiastes says:--'he hath set eternity in men's hearts.' we all of us need, though, alas! so few of us know that we need, a living possession of a living perfect person, for mind, for heart, for will. nothing short of the 'fulness of god' is enough for the smallest amongst us. so, because we do not believe this, because hundreds of you do not know what it is for which your souls are crying out, 'the misery of man is great upon him.' you try to fill that deep and aching void in your hearts, which is a sign of your possible nobleness, and a pledge of your possible blessedness, with all manner of minute rubbish, which can never fill up the gap that is there. cartload after cartload may be tilted into the bottomless bog, and there is no more solid ground on the surface than there was at the beginning. oh, my brother! consult thine own deepest need; listen to that voice, often stifled, often neglected, and by some of you always misunderstood, which speaks in your wills, minds, consciences, hopes, desires, hearts; and is it not this: 'my soul thirsteth for god, for the living god'? there is none in the heaven, with all its stars and angels, enough for thee but him. there is none upon earth, with all its flowers, and treasures, and loves, that will calm and still thy soul but only god. the words of my text spring from a necessity felt by every man, misdirected by a tragical majority of men, and therefore the source of restlessness and misery. ii. secondly, we see here the longing which, rightly directed and cherished, is the very spirit of religion. he, and only he, is the religious man, who can take these words of my text for the inmost words of his conscious effort and life. only in the measure in which you and i recognise that god is our sole and all-sufficient good, in that measure have we any business to call ourselves devout or christian people. that is a sharp test, is it not? is it not a valid and an accurate one? is that not what really makes a religious man, namely, the supreme admiration of, and aspiration after, and possession of god, and god alone? what a contrast that forms to our ordinary notions of what religion is! high above all creeds which are valuable as leading up to this enthusiasm of longing and rapture of possession, high above all preliminaries and preparations in the way of outward services and ceremonial or united acts of worship, which are only helps to this inward possession, rises such a thought of religion as this. you are not a christian because you believe a creed. the very death of jesus christ is a means to this end. in order that we might come into personal, rapturous, and hallowing possession of god, his very self in our hearts and spirits, jesus christ died and rose again. do not mistake the staircase for the presence-chamber. do not fancy that you are christian people because you hold certain opinions or beliefs in regard of certain doctrines. do not fancy that religion consists in either the mere outward practice of, or abstinence from, certain forms of conduct. such things are the means to, or the outcome of, this inward devotion, but the true essence of our religion is that we recognise god as our only good, and that in him we find absolute rest and perfect sufficiency. is that your religion, my brother? what a contrast these words of my text present not only to our notions of what constitutes religion, but to our practice! what is the thing that you and i crave most to have? what is the thing that we lament most of all when we lose? where do our desires go when we take the guiding hand off them, and let them run as they will? for some of us there are dearer hearts on earth than his, perhaps for some of us there are more dearly loved faces in heaven than his. taking the two extreme possible cases, and supposing at the one end of the scale a man that had everything but god, and at the other end a man that had nothing but god, do we live as if we believed that the man that had everything _minus_ god is a pauper; and the other who has god _minus_ everything is 'rich to all the intents of bliss'? let us shape our desires, aspirations, efforts, according to that certain truth. i do not need to remind you that this lofty height of conscious longing, not unblest with contemporaneous fruition, is above the height to which we habitually rise. but what i would now insist upon is only this, that whilst there will be variations, whilst there will be ups and downs, the periods in our lives when we do not consciously recognise him as our supreme and single good are the periods that drop below duty and blessedness. acknowledge the imperfections, but oh, my friends! you christian men and women, who know that these hours of high communion with a loving god are not diffused through your whole life, do not sit down contented, and say that it must be so; but confess them as being imperfections which are your own fault, and remember that just as much, and not one hairsbreadth more than, we can take these words of my text for ours, so much and no more, have we a right to call ourselves religious men and women. iii. again, we have here the blessed possession, which deadens earthly desires. that clause, 'there is none upon earth that i desire besides thee,' might, i think, be rendered more accurately 'with thee'--that is to say, 'possessing thee,'--i desire none 'upon earth.' if we thus have been longing after god, and fuller possession of him, and if in some measure, in answer to the desire, as is always the case, we have received into mind and heart and will more of his preciousness and sweetness, then that will kill the desires that otherwise would conflict with it. our great poet, speaking about a supreme earthly love, says-- 'that rich golden shaft hath killed the flock of all affections else, that lived in her.' and the same thing is true about this higher life. this new affection will deaden, and in some sense destroy, the desires that turn to lower and to earthly things. the sun when it rises quenches the brightest stars that can but fade in his light and die. and so when, in answer to our longing, god lifts the light of his countenance--a better sunrise--upon us, that new affection dims and quenches the brightness of these little, though they be lustrous points, that shed a fragmentary and manifold twinkling over the darkness of our former night. 'walk in the light,' and your heaven will be naked of all competing brightness. only remember that this supreme, and in some sense exclusive, love and longing does not destroy the sweetness of lower possessions and blessings. a new deep love in a man or a woman's heart does not make their former affections less, but more, sweet and noble and strong. and so when we get to love god best, and to love all other persons and things in him, and him in them, then they become sources of dignity and nobleness, of sweetness and strength, in our lives, which they otherwise never would be. if you want to make all your family affections, for instance, more permanent, more lofty, and more blessed, let them be all in god: 'i trust he lives in god, and there i find him worthier to be loved,' says the poet about one that had been carried into the other life. it is true about us in our relations to one another, even whilst we remain here. let god be first, and the second rises higher in the scale than when we thought it first. the more our hearts are knit to him and all other desires are subordinated to him, the more do they become precious, and powers for good in our lives. iv. and so, lastly, we have here the possession which is the pledge of perpetuity. the psalmist, in the last verse of my text, supposes an extreme, and in some sense, an impossible case. 'my flesh'--my bodily frame--'and my heart'--some portion of my immaterial being--'faileth.' the clause should probably be taken as hypothetical. 'even supposing that it has come to this,' says he, 'that i had been separated from my body, and that along with the body there had also been "consumed" (as is the meaning of the original word) some portion of my spiritual being, even then, though there were only a thin thread of personality left, enough to call "me" and no more, so to speak, i should cling with that to god, and i know that then i should have enough, for "god is the rock of my heart, and my portion for ever."' these two last words are obviously here to be taken in their widest extension. the whole context requires us to suppose that the psalmist's eye is looking across the black gorge of death to the shining table-land beyond. so here we are admitted to see faith in the future life in the very act of growth. the singer soars to that sunlit height of confidence in the endless blessedness of union with god, just because he feels so deeply the sacredness and the blessedness of his present communion with god. next to the resurrection of jesus christ the best proof of immortality lies in the present experience of communion with god. anything is more reasonable than to believe that a soul which can grasp god for its good, which can turn itself to, and be united with, an infinite being; and itself is capable of indefinite approximation towards that being, should have its course and career cut short by such a surface thing as death. if there be a god at all, anything is more reasonable than to believe that the union, formed between him and me by faith here, can ever come to an end until i have exhausted him, and drawn all his fulness into myself. this communion, by its 'very sweetness yieldeth proof that it was born for immortality.' and the psalmist here, just because to-day god is the rock of his heart, is sure that that relation must last on, through life, through death, ay! and for ever, 'when all that seems shall suffer shock.' so, my brethren! here is the choice and alternative presented before us. and i ask you which is the wise man, he who clutches at external possessions which cannot abide, or he who hungers for that indwelling god, who sinks into the very substance of his soul, and is more inseparable from him than his very body? which is the wise man, he of whom it shall one day be said, 'this night thy soul shall be required of thee,' and 'his glory shall not descend after him,' or the man who knows for what his heart hungers, and knowing it turns to god in christ, by simple faith and lowly aspiration, as his enduring treasure; and then, and therefore, can look out with a calm smile of security over all the tumbling sea of change, and beyond the dark horizon there where sight fails; and can say, 'i am persuaded that neither things present, nor things to come, nor life, nor death, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the god who is my treasure, and the life of my very self'? nearness to god the key to life's puzzle 'it is good for me to draw near to god: i have put my trust in the lord god, that i may declare all thy works.'--psalm lxxiii. . the old perplexity as to how it comes, if god is good and wise and strong, that bad men should prosper and good men should suffer, has been making the psalmist's faith reel. he does not answer the question exactly as the new testament would have done, but he does find a solution sufficient for himself in two thoughts, the transiency of that outward prosperity, and the eternal sufficiency of god. 'it was too painful for me until i went into the sanctuary, then understood i their end'; and on the other hand: 'thou art the strength of my life, and my portion for ever.' so he climbs at last to the calm height where he learns that, whatever be a man's outward prosperity, if he is separated from god he ceases to be. as the context says: 'they that are far from thee shall perish.' 'thou hast destroyed'--already, before they die--'all them that go a-whoring from thee.' and on the other hand, whatever be the outward condition, god is enough. 'it is good for me,' rich or poor harassed or at rest, afflicted or prosperous, in health or sickness, solitary or compassed about with loving friends, 'it is good for me to draw near to god'; and nothing else is good. thus the river that has had to fight its way through rocks, and has been chafed in the conflict, and has twisted its path through many a deep, dark, sunless gorge, comes out at last into the open, and flows with a broad sunlit breast, peaceable and full, into the great ocean--'it is good for me to draw near to god.' but that is not all. the psalmist goes on to tell how we are to draw near to god: 'i have put my trust in him.' and that is not all, for he further goes on to tell how, drawing near to god through faith, all these puzzles and mysteries about men's condition cease to perplex, and a beam of light falls upon the whole of them. 'i have put my trust in god, that i may declare all thy works.' there are no knots in the thread now. i. so here we have, first the truth of experience that nearness to god is the one good. of course, it is so in the psalmist's view, since he believes, as we profess to believe, that, to quote the words of another psalmist, 'with thee is the fountain of life'; and therefore that to 'draw near to thee' is to carry our little empty pitchers to that great spring that is always flowing with waters ever sweet and clear. union with god is life, in all senses of the word, according as the creature is capable of union with him. why! there is no life in a plant except god's power is vitalising it. 'consider the lilies of the field, how they grow' because god makes them grow. there is no bodily life in a man, unless he continually breathes into the nostrils the breath of life. if you stop the flow of the fountain, then all the pools are dry. there is no life intellectual in a man, except by the 'inspiration of the almighty,' from whom 'all just thoughts do proceed.' above all these forms of life the real life of a spirit is the life derived from the union with god himself, whereby he pours himself into it, and in the deepest sense of the words it is true: 'because i live ye shall live also.' 'it is good for me to draw near to god,' because, unless i do, and if i am separated from him, my true self is dead, even whilst i seem to live. all that are parted from him perish; all that are joined to him, and only they, do live what is worth calling life. cut off the sunbeam from the sun, and what becomes of it? it vanishes. separate a soul from god, and it is dead. what is all the good of the world to you if your true self is dead? and what an absurdity it is to deck a corpse with riches and pomp of various kinds! that is what the men of the world are doing, who have chained themselves to earth, and cut themselves off from god. 'for me it is good to draw near to god.' do you draw near? because if you do not, no matter what prosperity you have, you do not know anything about the true life and real good for heart and spirit. i suppose i need scarcely go on pointing out other aspects of this supreme--or more truly, this solitary--good. for instance, nothing is really good to me unless i have it within me, so as that it can never be wrenched away from me. the blessings that we cannot incorporate with the very substance of our being are only partial blessings after all; and all these things round us that do minister to our necessities, tastes, affections, and sometimes to our weaknesses, these good things fail just in this, that they stand outside us, and there is no real union between us and them. so, changes come, and we have to unclasp hands, and the footsteps that used to be planted by the side of ours cease, and our track across the sands is lonely; and losses come, and death comes, and all the glory and the good that were only externally possessed by us we leave behind us. as this psalm says: 'i considered their end ... how they are brought into desolation, as in a moment!' what is the good of a good that is not incorporated into any being? what is the good of a good about which i cannot say, with a smile of confidence, 'i know that where-ever i may go, and whatever may befall me, that can never pass from me'? there is but one good of that sort. 'i am persuaded that ... neither life nor death ... nor any other creature, shall separate us from the love of god, which is in christ jesus our lord.' 'it is good for me,' amidst the morasses and quicksands and bogs of life's uncertain and shifting ill and good, to set my feet upon the rock, and to say: 'here i stand, and my footing will never give way.' do you, brother! possess a changeless, imperishable, inwrought good like that? you may if you like. but remember, too, that in regard to this christian good, it is not only the possession of it, but the aspiration after it, that is blessed. the psalmist does not only say, 'it is good for me to be near to god,' but he says, 'it is good for me to draw near.' there is one kind of life in which the seeking is all but as blessed as the finding. there is one kind of life in which to desire is all but as full of peace, and power, and joy as to possess. therefore, another psalm, which begins by celebrating the blessedness of the men that dwell in god's house, and are 'still praising thee,' goes on to speak of the blessedness, not less blessed, of the men 'in whose heart are the ways.' they who have reached the temple are at rest, and blessed in their repose. they who are journeying towards it are in action, and blessed in their activity. 'it is good to draw near'; and the seeking after god is as far above the possession of all other good as heaven is above earth. but then, notice further, how our psalmist comes down to very plain, practical teaching. he seems to feel that he must explain what he means by drawing near to god. and here is his explanation. 'i have put my trust in the lord.' ii. the way to nearness to god is twofold. on the one hand the true path is jesus christ, on the other hand the means by which we walk upon that path is our faith. the apostle puts it all in a nutshell when he says that his prayer for the ephesian church is that 'christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,' and then, by a linked chain which we have not now to consider, leads up to the final issues of that faith in that indwelling christ--'that ye may be filled with all the fulness of god.' so to draw near and to possess that good, that only good which is god, all that is needed is--and it is needed--that we should turn with the surrender of our hearts, with the submission of our wills, with the outgoing of our affections, and with the conformity of our practical life, to jesus. seeing him, we see the father, and having him near us, we feel the touch of the divine hand, and being joined to the lord, we are separated from the vanities of life, and united to the supreme good. dear brethren! this psalmist shows us how hard it is for us to keep up that continual attitude of faith, how many difficulties there are in daily life, in the way of our continually being true to our deepest convictions, and seeking after him amidst all the distracting whirl and perplexities of our daily lives. but he shows us, too, how possible it is, even for men constituted as we are, moment by moment, day by day, task by task, to keep vivid the consciousness of our dependence upon him, and the blessed consciousness of our being beside him, and how, if we do, strength will come to us for everything. the secret of a joyous walk lies in this, 'i have set the lord always before me. because he is at my right hand i shall not be moved.' we draw near to god when we clutch christ in faith. our faith manifests itself, not merely by a lazy reliance upon what he once did, long ago, on the cross for us; but by daily, effortful revivifying of our consciousness of his presence, of our consciousness of our dependence upon him, and by the continual reference of thoughts, desires, plans, and actions to himself. keep god beside you so, and then there will follow what this psalmist reached at last, a peaceful insight into what else are full of perplexity and difficulty, the ways of god in the world. to myself, to my dear ones, to the nation, to the church, to the world, there come many perplexing riddles as to god's dealings, that cannot be solved except by getting close to him. just as a little child nestling on its mother's bosom, with its mother's arm around it, looks out with peaceful eye and a bright smile, upon everything beyond the safe nest, so they who are near to god can bear to look at difficulties and perplexities, and the mysteries of their own sorrows and of the world's miseries, and say, 'all things work together for good'; 'i have put my trust in the lord, that i may declare _all_ thy works.' stand in the sun, and all the planets move around it manifestly in order. take your place anywhere else, and there is confusion. get beside god, and look out on the world, and you will see it as he saw it when, 'behold! it was very good.' now, dear friends! my text in its first part may become the description of our death. one man holds on to the world as it is slipping away from him. i remember a story about a coast-guardsman that was flung over the cliffs once, and when they picked up his dead body, all under the nails was full of chalk that he had scraped off the cliffs in his desperate attempts to clutch at something to hold by. that is like one kind of death. but another kind may be: 'it is good for me to draw near to god.' and when we reach his side, and see all the past from the centre, and in the light of the eternal present, to which it has led, we shall be able to declare all his works, and to give thanks 'for all the way by which the lord our god hath led us' and the world 'these many years in the wilderness.' memory, hope, and effort 'that they might set their hope in god, and not forget the works of god, but keep his commandments.'--psalm lxxviii. . in its original application this verse is simply a statement of god's purpose in giving to israel the law, and such a history of deliverance. the intention was that all future generations might remember what he had done, and be encouraged by the remembrance to hope in him for the future; and by both memory and hope, be impelled to the discharge of present duty. so, then, the words may permissibly bear the application which i purpose to make of them in this sermon, re-echoing only (and aspiring to nothing more) the thoughts which the season has already, i suppose, more or less, suggested to most of us. smooth motion is imperceptible; it is the jolts that tell us that we are advancing. though every day be a new year's day, still the alteration in our dates and our calendars should set us all thinking of that continual lapse of the mysterious thing--the creature of our own minds--which we call time, and which is bearing us all so steadily and silently onwards. my text tells us how past, present, and future--memory, hope, and effort may be ennobled and blessed. in brief, it is by associating them all with god. it is as the field of his working that our past is best remembered. it is on him that our hopes may most wisely be set. it is keeping his commandments which is the consecration of the present. let us, then, take the three thoughts of our text and cast them into new year's recommendations. i. first, then, let us associate god with memory by thankful remembrance. now i suppose that there are very few of the faculties of our nature which we more seldom try to regulate by christian principles than that great power which we have of looking backwards. did you ever reflect that you are responsible for what you remember, and for how you remember it, and that you are bound to train and educate your memory, not merely in the sense of cultivating it as a means of carrying intellectual treasures, but for a religious purpose? the one thing that all parts of our nature need is god, and that is as true about our power of remembrance as it is about any other part of our being. the past is then hallowed, noble, and yields its highest results and most blessed fruits for us when we link it closely with him, and see in it not only, nor so much, the play of our own faculties, whether we blame or approve ourselves, as rather see in it the great field in which god has brought himself near to our experience, and has been regulating and shaping all that has befallen us. the one thing which will consecrate memory, deliver it from its errors and abuses, raise it to its highest and noblest power, is that it should be in touch with god, and that the past should be regarded by each of us as it is, in deed and in truth, one long record of what god has done for us. we can see his presence more clearly when we look back over a long-connected stretch of days, and when the excitement of feeling the agony or rapture have passed, than we could whilst they were hot, and life was all hurry and bustle. the men on the deck of a ship see the beauty of the city that they have left behind, better than when they were pressing through its narrow streets. and though the view of the receding houses from the far-off waters may be an illusion, our view of the past, if we see god brooding over it all, and working in it all, is no illusion. the meannesses are hidden, the narrow places are invisible, all the pain and suffering is quieted, and we are able to behold more truly than when we were in the midst of them, the bearing, the purpose, and the blessedness alike of our sorrows and of our joys. not a few of us are old enough to have had a great many mysteries of our early days cleared up. we have seen at least the beginnings of the harvest which the ploughshare of sorrow and the winter winds were preparing for us, and for the rest we can trust. brethren! remember your mercies; remember your losses; and 'for all the way by which the lord our god has led us these many years in the wilderness,' let us try to be thankful, including in our praises the darkness and the storm as well as the light and the calm. some of us are like people who, when they get better of their sicknesses, grudge the doctor's bill. we forget the mercies as soon as they are past, because we only enjoyed the sensuous sweetness of them whilst it tickled our palate, and did not think, in the enjoyment of them, whose love it was that they spoke of to us. sorrows and joys, bring them all in your thanksgivings, and 'forget not the works of god.' such a habit of cultivating the remembrance of god's hand as moving in all our past, will not, in the slightest degree, interfere with lower and yet precious exercises of that same faculty. we shall still be able to look back, and learn our limitations, mark our weaknesses, gather counsels of prudence from our failures, tame our ambitions by remembering where we broke down. and such an exercise of grateful god-recognising remembrance will deliver us from the abuses of that great power, by which so many of us turn our memories into a cause of weakness, if not of sin. there are people, and we are all tempted to be of the number, who look back upon the past and see nothing there but themselves, their own cleverness, their own success; 'burning incense to their own net, and sacrificing to their own drag.' another mood leads us to look back into the past dolefully and disappointedly, to say, 'i have broken down so often; my resolutions have all gone to water so quickly; i have tried and failed over and over again. i may as well give it all up, and accept the inevitable, and grope on as well as i can without hope of self-advancement or of victory.' never! if only we will look back to god we shall be able to look forward to a perfect self. to-morrow need never be determined by the failures that have been. we may still conquer where we have often been defeated. there is no worse use of the power of remembrance than when we use it to bind upon ourselves, as the permanent limitations of our progress, the failures and faults of the past. 'forget the things that are behind.' your old fragmentary goodness, your old foiled aspirations, your old frequent failures--cast them all behind you! and there are others to whom remembrance is mainly a gloating over old sins, and a doing again of these--ruminating upon them; bringing up the chewed food once more to be masticated. some of us gather only poisonous weeds, and carry them about in the _hortus siccus_ of our memories. alas! for the man whose memory is but the paler portraiture of past sins. some of us, i am sure, have our former evils holding us so tight in their cords that when we look back memory is defiled by the things which defiled the unforgettable past. brethren! you may find a refuge from that curse of remembrance in remembering god. and some of us, unwisely and ungratefully, live in the light of departed blessings, so as to have no hearts either for present mercies or for present duties. there is no more weakening and foolish misdirection of that great gift of remembrance than when we employ it to tear down the tender greenery with which healing time has draped the ruins; or to turn again in the wound which is beginning to heal the sharp and poisoned point of the sorrow which once pierced it. for all these abuses--the memory that gloats upon sin; the memory that is proud of success; the memory that is despondent because of failures; the memory that is tearful and broken-hearted over losses--for all these the remedy is that we should not forget the works of god, but see him everywhere filling the past. ii. again, let us live in the future by hope in him. our remembrances and our hopes are closely connected; one might almost even say that the power by which we look backwards and that by which we look forwards are one and the same. at all events, hope owes to memory the pigments with which it paints, the canvas on which it paints, and the objects which it portrays there. but in all our earthly hopes there is a feeling of uncertainty which brings alarm as well as expectation, and he whose forward vision runs only along the low levels of earth, and is fed only by experience and remembrance, will never be able to say, 'i hope with certitude, and i know that my hope shall be fulfilled.' for him 'hopes, and fears that kindle hopes,' will be 'an indistinguishable throng'; and there will be as much of pain as of pleasure in his forward glance. but if, according to my text, we set our hopes on god, then we shall have a certainty absolute. what a blessing it is to be able to look forward to a future as fixed and sure, as solid and as real, as much our possession, as the irrevocable past! the christian man's hope, if it be set on god, is not a 'may be,' but a 'will be'; and he can be as sure of to-morrow as he is of yesterday. they whose hopes are set on god have a certain hope, a sufficient one, and one that fills all the future. all other expectations are fulfilled, or disappointed, as the case may be, but are left behind and outgrown. this one only never palls, and is never accomplished, and yet is never disappointed. so if we set our hopes on him, we can face very quietly the darkness that lies ahead of us. earthly hopes are only the mirrors in which the past reflects itself, as in some king's palace you will find a lighted chamber, with a great sheet of glass at each end, which perpetuates in shining rows the lights behind the spectator. a curtain veils the future, and earthly hope can only put a mirror in front of it that reflects what has been. but the hope that is set on god draws back the curtain, and lets us see enough of a fixed, eternal future to make our lives bright and our hearts calm. the darkness remains; what of that, if 'i only know i cannot drift beyond his love and care'? set your hopes on god, and they will not be ashamed. iii. lastly, let us live in the present by strenuous obedience. after all, memory and hope are meant to fit us for work in the flying moment. both should impel us to this keeping of the commandments of god; for both yield motives which should incline us thereto. a past full of blessing demands the sacrifice of loving hearts and of earnest hands. a future so fair, so far, so certain, so sovereign, and a hope that grasps it, and brings some of its sweet fragrance into the else scentless air of the poor present, ought to impel to service, vigorous and continual. both should yield motives which make such service a delight. if my memory weakens me for present work, either because it depresses my hope of success, or because it saddens me with the remembrance of departed blessings, then it is a curse and not a good. and if i dream myself away in any future, and forget the exigencies of the imperative and swiftly-passing moment, then the faculty of hope, too, is a curse and a weakening. but both are delivered from their possible abuses, if both are made into means of helping us to fill the present with loving obedience. these two faculties are like the two wings that may lift us to god, like the two paddles, one on either side of the ship, that may drive us steadily forward, through all the surges and the tempest. they find their highest field in fitting us for the grinding tasks and the heavy burdens that the moment lays upon us. so, dear friends! we are very different in our circumstances and positions. for some of us hope's basket is nearly empty, and memory's sack is very full. for us older men the past is long, the earthly future is short. for you younger people the converse is the case. it is hope whose hands are laden with treasures for you, memory carries but a little store. your past is brief; your future is probably long. the grains of sand in some of our hour-glasses are very heaped and high in the lower half, and running very low in the upper. but whichever category we stand in, one thing remains the same for us all, and that is duty, keeping god's commandments. that is permanent, and that is the one thing worth living for. 'whether we live we live unto the lord; or whether we die we die unto the lord.' so let us front this new year, with all its hidden possibilities, with quiet, brave hearts, resolved on present duty, as those ought who have such a past to remember and such a future to hope for. it will probably be the last on earth for some of us. it will probably contain great sorrows for some of us, and great joys for others. it will probably be comparatively uneventful for others. it may make great outward changes for us, or it may leave us much as it found us. but, at all events, god will be in it, and work for him should be in it. well for us if, when its hours have slidden away into the grey past, they continue to witness to us of his love, even as, while they were wrapped in the mists of the future, they called on us to hope in him! well for us if we fill the passing moment with deeds of loving obedience! then a present of keeping his commandments will glide into a past to be thankfully remembered, and will bring us nearer to a future in which hope shall not be put to shame. to him who sees god in all the divisions and particles of his days, and makes him the object of memory, hope, and effort, past, present, and future are but successive calm ripples of that mighty river of time which bears him on the great ocean of eternity, from which the drops that make its waters rose, and to which its ceaseless flow returns. sparrows and altars 'yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, o lord of hosts, my king, and my god.'--psalm lxxxiv. . the well-known saying of the saintly rutherford, when he was silenced and exiled from his parish, echoes and expounds these words. 'when i think,' said he, 'upon the sparrows and swallows that build their nests in the kirk of anwoth, and of my dumb sabbaths, my sorrowful, bleared eyes look asquint upon christ, and present him as angry.' so sighed the presbyterian minister in his compelled idleness in a prosaic seventeenth-century scotch town, answering his heart's-brother away back in the far-off time, and in such different circumstances. the psalmist was probably a member of the levitical family of the sons of korah, who were 'doorkeepers in the house of the lord.' he knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. he was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. no doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. no doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard and understood the great charter of spiritual worship spoken first to an outcast samaritan of questionable character: 'neither in this mountain nor in jerusalem shall men worship the father.' but equally it is true that what he wanted was what the outward worship brought him, rather than the worship itself. and the psalm, which begins with 'longing' and 'fainting' for the courts of the lord, and pronouncing benedictions on 'those that dwell in thy house,' works itself clear, if i might so say, and ends with 'o lord of hosts! blessed is the man that trusteth in thee'--for he shall 'dwell in thy house,' wherever he is. so this flight of imagination in the words of my text may suggest to us two or three lessons. i. i take it first as pointing a bitter and significant contrast. 'the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself,' while i! we do not know what the psalmist's circumstances were, but if we accept the conjecture that he may have accompanied david in his flight during absalom's rebellion, we may fancy him as wandering on the uplands across jordan, and sharing the agitations, fears, and sorrows of those dark hours, and in the midst of all, as the little company hurried hither and thither for safety, thinking, with a touch of bitter envy, of the calm restfulness and serene services of the peaceful temple. but, pathetic as is the complaint, when regarded as the sigh of a minister of the sanctuary exiled from the shrine which was as his home, and from the worship which was his occupation and delight, it sounds a deeper note and one which awakens echoes in our hearts, when we hear in it, as we may, the complaint of humanity contrasting its unrest with the happier lot of lower creatures. do you remember who it was that said--and on what occasion he said it--'foxes have holes, and birds of the air have roosting-places, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head'? that saying, like our text, has a narrower and a wider application. in the former it pathetically paints the homeless christ, a wanderer in a land peculiarly 'his own,' and warns his enthusiastic would-be follower of the lot which he was so light-heartedly undertaking to share. but when jesus calls himself 'son of man,' he claims to be the realised ideal of humanity, and when, as in that saying, he contrasts the condition of 'the son of man' with that of the animal creation, we can scarcely avoid giving to the words their wider application to the same contrast between man's homelessness and the creatures' repose which we have found in the psalmist's sigh. yes! there is only one being in this world that does not fit the world that he is in, and that is man, chief and foremost of all. other beings perfectly correspond to what we now call their 'environment.' just as the soft mollusc fits every convolution of its shell, and the hard shell fits every curve of the soft mollusc, so every living thing corresponds to its place and its place to it, and with them all things go smoothly. but man, the crown of creation, is an exception to this else universal complete adaptation. 'the earth, o lord! is full of thy mercy,' but the only creature who sees and says that is the only one who has further to say, 'i am a stranger on the earth.' he and he alone is stung with restlessness and conscious of longings and needs which find no satisfaction here. that sense of homelessness may be an agony or a joy, a curse or a blessing, according to our interpretation of its meaning, and our way of stilling it. it is not a sign of inferiority, but of a higher destiny, that we alone should bear in our spirits the 'blank misgivings' of those who, amid unsatisfying surroundings, have blind feelings after 'worlds not realised,' which elude our grasp. it is no advantage over us that every fly dancing in the treacherous gleams of an april sun, and every other creature on the earth except ourselves, on whom the crown is set, is perfectly proportioned to its place, and has desire and possessions absolutely conterminous. 'the son of man hath not where to lay his head.' why must he alone wander homeless on the bleak moorland, whilst the sparrows and the swallows have their nests and their houses? why? because they _are_ sparrows and swallows, and he is man, and 'better than many sparrows.' so let us lay to heart the sure promises, the blessed hopes, the stimulating exhortations, which come from that which, at first sight, seems to be a mystery and half an arraignment of the divine wisdom, in the contrast between the restlessness of humanity and the reposeful contentment of those whom we call the lower creatures. be true to the unrest, brother! and do not mistake its meaning, nor seek to still it, until it drives you to god. ii. these words bring to us a plea which we may use, and a pledge on which we may rest. 'thine altars, o lord of hosts! my king and my god.' the psalmist pleads with god, and lays hold for his own confidence upon the fact that creatures which do not understand what the altar means, may build beside it, and those which have no notion of who the god is to whom the house is sacred, are yet cared for by him. and he thinks to himself, 'if i can say "_my_ king and _my_ god," surely he that takes care of them will not leave me uncared for.' the unrest of the soul that is capable of appropriating god is an unrest which has in it, if we understand it aright, the assurance that it shall be stilled and satisfied. he that is capable of entering into the close personal relationship with god which is expressed by that eloquent little pronoun and its reduplication with the two words, 'king' and 'god'--such a creature cannot cry for rest in vain, nor in vain grope, as a homeless wanderer, for the door of the father's house. 'doth god care for oxen; or saith he it altogether for our sakes?' 'consider the fowls of the air; your heavenly father feedeth them.' and the same argument which the apostle used in the one of these sayings, and our lord in the other, is valid and full of encouragement when applied to this matter. he that 'satisfies the desires of every living thing,' and fills full the maw of the lowest creature; and puts the worms into the gaping beak of the young ravens when they cry, is not the king to turn a deaf ear, or the back of his hand, to the man who can appeal to him with this word on his lips, 'my king and my god!' we grasp god when we say that; and all that we see of provident recognition and supply of wants in dealings with these lower creatures should encourage us to cherish calm unshakable confidence that every true desire of our souls after him is as certain to be satisfied. and so the glancing swallows around the eaves of the temple and the twittering sparrows on its pinnacles may proclaim to us, not only a contrast which is bitter, but a confidence which is sweet. we may be sure that we shall not be left uncared for amongst the many pensioners at his table, and that the deeper our wants the surer we are of their supply. our bodies may hunger in vain--bodily hunger has no tendency to bring meat; but our spirits cannot hunger in vain if they hunger after god; for that hunger is the sure precursor and infallible prophet of the coming satisfaction. these words not only may hearten us with confidence that our desires will be satisfied if they are set upon him, but they point us to the one way by which they are so. say 'my king and my god!' in the deepest recesses of a spirit conscious of his presence, of a will submitting to his authority, of emptiness expectant of his fulness; say that, and you are in the house of the lord. for it is not a question of place, it is a question of disposition and desire. this psalmist, though, when he began his song, he was far away from the temple, and though he finished it sitting on the same hillside on which he began it, when he had ended it was within the curtains of the sanctuary and wrapt about with the presence of his god. he had regained as he sang what for a moment he had lost the consciousness of when he began--viz. the presence of god with him on the lone, dreary expanse of alien soil as truly as amidst the sanctities of what was called his house. so, brethren! if we want rest, let us clasp god as ours; if we desire a home warm, safe, sheltered from every wind that blows, and inaccessible to enemies, let us, like the swallows, nestle under the eaves of the temple. let us take god for our hope. they that hold communion with him--and we can all do that wherever we are and whatever we may be doing--these, and only these, 'dwell in the house of the lord all the days of their lives.' therefore, with deepest simplicity of expression, our psalm goes on to describe, as equally recipients of blessedness, 'those that dwell in the house of the lord,' and those in 'whose heart are the ways' that lead to it, and to explain at last, as i have already pointed out, that both the dwellers in, and the pilgrims towards, that intimacy of abiding with god are included in the benediction showered on those who cling to him, 'blessed is the man that trusteth in thee!' iii. lastly, we may take this picture of the psalmist's as a warning. sparrows and swallows have very small brains. they build their nests, and they do not know whose altars they are flitting around. they pursue the insects on the wing, and they twitter their little songs; and they do not understand how all their busy, glancing, brief, trivial life is being lived beneath the shadow of the cherubim, and all but in the presence of the veiled god of the shekinah. there are too many people who live like that. we are all tempted to build our nests where we may lay our young, or dispose of ourselves or our treasures in the very sanctuary of god, with blind, crass indifference to the presence in which we move. the father's house has many mansions, and wherever we go we are in god's temple. alas! some of us have no more sense of the sanctities around us, and no more consciousness of the divine eye that looks down upon us, than if we were so many feathered sparrows flitting about the altar. let us take care, brethren! that we give our hearts to be influenced, and awed, and ennobled, and tranquillised by the sense of ever more being in the house of the lord. let us see to it that we keep in that house by continual aspiration, cherishing in our hearts the ways that lead to it; and so making all life worship, and every place what the pilgrim found the stone of bethel to be, a house of god and a gate of heaven. for everywhere, to the eye that sees the things that are, and not only the things that seem--and to the heart that feels the unseen presence of the one reality, god himself--all places are temples, and all work may be beholding his beauty and inquiring in his sanctuary; and everywhere, though our heads rest upon a stone, and there be night and solitude around us, and doubt and darkness in front of us, and danger and terror behind us, and weakness within us, as was the case with jacob, there will be the ladder with its foot at our side and its top in the heavens; and above the top of it his face, which when we see it look down upon us, makes all places and circumstances good and sweet. happy pilgrims 'blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the highways to zion. . passing through the valley of weeping they make it a place of springs; yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings. . they go from strength to strength, every one of them appeareth before god in zion.'--psalm lxxxiv. - . rightly rendered, the first words of these verses are not a calm, prosaic statement, but an emotional exclamation. the psalmist's tone would be more truly represented if we read, 'how blessed is the man,' or 'oh, the blessednesses!' for that is the literal rendering of the hebrew words, 'of the man whose strength is thee.' there are three such exclamations in this psalm, the consideration of which leads us far into the understanding of its deepest meaning. the first of them is this, 'how blessed are they that dwell in thy house!' of course the direct allusion is to actual presence in the actual temple at jerusalem. but these old psalmists, though they attached more importance to external forms than we do, were not so bound by them, even at their stage of development of the religious life, as that they conceived that no communion with god was possible apart from the form, or that the form itself was communion with god. we can see gleaming through all their words, though only gleaming through them, the same truth which jesus christ couched in the immortal phrase--the charter of the church's emancipation from all externalisms--'neither in this mountain, nor yet in jerusalem, shall men worship the father.' to 'dwell in the house of the lord' is not only to be present in bodily form in the temple--the psalmist did not think that it was _only_ that--but to possess communion with him, of which the external presence is but the symbol, the shadow, and the means. but there is another blessing. to be there is blessing, to wish to be there is no less so.--'blessed are the men in whose heart are the ways.' the joyous company that went up from every corner of the land to the feasts in jerusalem made the paths ring with their songs as they travelled, and as the prophet says about another matter, 'they went up to zion with songs and joy upon their heads,' and so the search after is only a shade less blessed--if it be even that--than the possession of communion with god. but there is a third blessedness in our psalm. 'oh! the blessedness of the man that trusteth in thee.' that includes and explains both the others. it confirms what i have said, that we do great injustice to the beauty and the spirituality of the old testament religion, if we conceive of it as slavishly tied to external forms. and it suggests the thought that in trust there lie both the previous elements, for he that trusts possesses, and he that trustingly possesses is thereby impelled as trustingly to seek for, larger gifts. so, then, i turn to this outline sketch of the happy pilgrims on the road, and desire to gather from it, as simply as may be, the stimulating thoughts which it suggests to us. i. let me ask you, then, following the words which i have read to you, to look with me, first at the blessedness of the pilgrims' spirit. 'blessed are the men in whose heart are the ways.' a singular expression, and yet a very eloquent and significant one! 'the ways' are, of course, the various roads which, from every corner of the land, lead to the temple, and the thought suggested is that the men whom the psalmist pronounces blessed, and in whose blessednesses his longing heart desires to share, are the men who are restless till they are on the path, whose eyes are ever travelling to the goal, who have a 'divine discontent' with distance from god, and who know the impulse and the sting that sends them ever travelling on the path that leads to him. on any lower level it is perfectly true that the very salt of life is aspiration after an unattained ideal; that there is nothing that so keeps a man young, strong, buoyant, and fits him for nobilities of action, as that there shall be gleaming for ever before him in the beckoning distance a horizon that moves ever as he moves. when we cease to be the slaves of unattained ideals in any department, it is time for us to die; indeed, we are dead already. there are men in every civilised country, with the gipsy strain in their blood, who never can be at rest until they are in motion, to whom a settled abode is irksome, and to whom the notion of blessedness is that they shall be out in the free plains. '_amplius_,' the dying xavier's word, '_further afield_,' is the motto of all noble life--scientist, scholar, artist, man of letters, man of affairs; all come under the same law, that unless there is something before them which has dominated their hearts, and draws their whole being towards it, their lives want salt, want nobility, want freshness, and a green scum comes over the pool. we all know that. to live is to aspire; to cease to aspire is to die. well then, looking all round our horizon there stands out one path for aspiration which is clearly blessed to tread--one path, and one path alone. for, oh brethren! there are needs in all our hearts, deep longings, terrible wounds, dreary solitudes, which can only be appeased and healed and companioned when we are pressing nearer and nearer god, that infinite and divine source of all blessedness, of all peace and good. to possess god is life; to feel after god is life, too. for that aim is sure, as we shall see, to be satisfied. that aim gives, and it is the only one which does give, adequate occupation for every power of a man's soul; that aim brings, simultaneously with its being entertained, its being satisfied; for, as i have already said, in the one act of faith there lie both these elements of blessedness--the possession of, and the seeking after, god. the religious life is distinguished from all others in two respects; one is the contemporaneousness and co-existence of desire and fruition, and the other is the impossibility that fruition shall ever be so complete and perfect as that desire shall die. and because thus all my nature may reach out its yearnings to him, and in reaching out may find that after which it feels, and yet, finding it, must feel after it all the more; therefore, high above all other delights of search, high above all other blessednesses of pilgrimage, high above all the buoyancy and concentration of aim and contempt of hindrances which pour into a soul, before which the unattained ideal burns beckoning and inviting, there stands the blessedness of the man 'in whose heart are the ways' which lead to god in zion. ii. and now notice the blessedness of the pilgrims' experience. if you use the revised version you will see the changes upon the authorised which it makes, following the stream of modern critics and commentators, and which may thus be reproduced: 'passing through the valley of weeping, they make it a _place of springs_, the rain also _covereth it with blessings_.' no doubt the poet is referring here to the actual facts of the pilgrimage to zion, no doubt, on some one of the roads, there lay a gloomy gorge, the name of which was the valley of weeping; either because it dimly commemorated some half-forgotten tragedy long ago, or, more probably, because it was arid and frowning and full of difficulty for the travellers on the march. the psalmist uses that name with a lofty imaginative freedom, which itself confirms the view that i have taken, that there is something deeper in the psalm than the mere external circumstances of the pilgrimages to the holy city. for, he says, 'passing through the valley of weeping, they make it a place of springs.' they, as it were, pour their tears into the wells, and they become sources of refreshment and fertility. but there are other kinds of moisture than tears and fountains. and so he goes on: 'the rain also' from above 'covereth it with blessings'; the blessings being, i suppose, the waving crops which the poet's imagination conceives of as springing up all over the else arid ground. irrigated thus by the pilgrims' labour, and rained upon thus by god's gift from heaven, 'the wilderness rejoices and blossoms as the rose.' now, translate that--it scarcely needs translation, i suppose, to anybody who will read the psalm with the least touch of a poetic imagination--translate that, and it just comes to this. if we have in our hearts, as our chief aim, the desire to get closer to god, then our sorrows and our tears will become sources of refreshment and fertility. ah! how different all our troubles, large and little, look when we take as our great aim in life what is god's great purpose in giving us life--viz. that we should be moulded into his likeness and enriched by the possession of himself. that takes the sting out of sorrow, and although it leaves us in no morbid condition of insensibility, it yet makes it possible for us to gather our tears into reservoirs which shall be to us the sources of many a blessing, and many a thankfulness. _he_ puts them into his bottle; we have to put them into our wells. and be sure of this, that if we understood better the meaning of life, that it was all intended to be our road to god, and if we judged of things more from that point of view, we should less frequently be brought to stand by what we call the mysteries of providence and more able to wring out of them all the rich honey which is stored in them all for us. not the least of the blessednesses of the pilgrim heart is its power of transmitting the pilgrim's tears into the pilgrim's wells. brothers! do you bring such thoughts to bear on the disappointments, anxieties, sorrows, losses that befall you, be they great or small? if you do, you will have learned, better than i can say it, how strangely grief changes its aspect when it is looked upon as the helper and servant to our progress towards god. but that is not all. if, with the pilgrims' hearts, we rightly use our sorrows, we shall not be left to find refreshment and fertilising power only in ourselves, but the benediction of the rain from heaven will come down, and the great spirit of god will fall upon our hearts, not in a flood that drowns, but broken up into a beneficent mist that falls quietly upon us, and brings with itself the assurance of fertility. and so the secret of turning the desert into abundance, and tears into blessings, lies in having the pilgrim's heart. iii. notice the blessedness of the pilgrims' advance. 'they go from strength to strength.' i do not know whether the psalmist means to use that word 'strength' in the significance which it also has in old english, of a fortified place, so that the metaphor would be that from one camp of security, one fortress to another, they journey safe always, because of their protection; or whether he means to use it rather in its plain and simple sense, according to which the significance would be that these happy pilgrims do not get worn out on the journey, as is the wont of men that set out, for instance, from some far corner of india to mecca, and come in battered and travel-stained, and half dead with their privations, but that the further they go the stronger they become; and on the road gain more vigour than they could ever have gained by ease and indulgence in their homes. but, whichever of these two meanings we may be disposed to adopt, the great thought that comes out of both of them is identical--viz. that this is one of the distinguishing joys of a christian career of pressing forward to closer communion and conformity with our lord and master, in whom god is manifested--viz. that we grow day by day in strength, and that effort does not weaken, but invigorates. and now i have to put a very plain question. is that growing strength anything like the general characteristic of us professing christians? i wonder how many people there are listening to me now that have been members of christian churches for half a century almost, but are not a bit better than they were away back in the years that they have almost forgotten? i wonder in how many of our cases there has been an arrested development, like that which you will sometimes see in deformed people, the lower limbs all but atrophied? i wonder how many of us are babes of forty years old, and from how many of our minds the very conception of continual growth, as an essential of christian life, has altogether vanished? brother! are you any further than you were ten years ago? i remember once, long ago, when i was on board a sailing ship, that we had baffling winds as we tried to run up the coast; and morning after morning for a week we used to come up on deck, and _there_ were the same windmill, and the same church-tower that we had seen last night, and the night before and the night before that. that is the sort of voyage that a great many of you christian people are making. there may be motion; there is no progress. round and round and round you go. that is not the way to get to zion. 'they go from strength to strength,' and unless you are doing that, you know little about the blessedness of the pilgrim heart. iv. lastly, note the blessedness of the pilgrims' arrival. 'every one of them in zion appeareth before god.' then there is one road on which whosoever travels is sure to reach his goal. on all others caravans get lost, overwhelmed in a sandstorm, or slain by robbers; and the bleached bones of men and camels lie there on the sand for centuries. this caravan always arrives. for no man ever wanted god who did not possess him, and the measure of our desire is the prophecy of our possession. surely it is worth while, even from the point of view of self-interest, to forsake all these lower aims in which success is absolutely problematical, or, while pursuing them as far as duty and necessity require, in and through them, as well as above and beyond them, to press towards the one aim in which failure is impossible. you cannot say about say other course--'blessed is the man that enters on it, for he is sure to reach what he desires.' other goals are elusive; the golden circlet may never drop upon your locks. but there is one path on which all that you seek you shall have, and you are on it if 'in your hearts are the _ways_.' i need not say a word about the ultimate fulfilment of this great promise of our text; how that there is not only in our psalm, gleaming through it, a reference to the communion of earth rather than to the external presence in the sanctuary, but there is also hinted, though less consciously, to the psalmist himself, yet necessarily from the nature of the case the perfecting of that earthly communion in the higher house of the lord in the heavenly zion. are all these desires, these longings, these efforts after god which make the nobleness and the blessedness of a life on earth, and which are always satisfied, and yet never satiated, to be crushed into nothingness by the accident of bodily dissolution? then, then, the darkest of all clouds is drawn over the face of god, and we are brought into a state of absolute intellectual bewilderment as to what life, futile and frail, has been for at all. no, brother! god never gives mouths but he sends meat to fill them; and he has not suffered his children to long after him, to press after him, only in order that the partial fulfilment of their desires and yearnings which is possible upon earth should be all their experience. 'he thinks he was not made to die, and thou hast made him; thou art just.' be sure that 'every one of them in zion appeareth before god.' so, brethren! let us take the pilgrim scrip and staff; and be sure of this, that the old blessed word will be fulfilled, that we shall not be lost in the wilderness, where there is no way, nor grope and search after elusive and fleeting good; but that 'the ransomed of the lord shall return and come to zion with songs, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads.' blessed trust 'o lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.' --psalm lxxxiv. . in my last sermon from the central portion of this psalm i pointed out that the psalmist thrice celebrates the blessedness of certain types of character, and that these threefold benedictions constitute, as it were, the keynotes of the portions of the psalm in which they respectively occur. they are these: 'blessed are they that dwell in thy house'; 'blessed is the man in whose heart are the ways'; and this final one, 'blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.' now, this last benediction includes, as i then remarked, both of the others; both the blessedness belonging to dwelling in, and that realised by journeying towards, the house of the lord. for trust is both fruition and longing; both aspiration and possession. but it not only includes the other two: it explains and surpasses them. for they bear, deeply stamped upon them, the impression of the imperfect stage of revelation to which the psalm belongs, and are tied to form in a manner which we ought not to be. but here the psalmist gets behind all the externals of ceremonial worship, and goes straight to the heart of spiritual religion when, for dwelling in, and journeying towards, any house of the lord, he substitutes that plain expression, 'the man that trusteth in thee.' now, the other two benedictions of which i have spoken do respectively form the centre of the first and second portions of this psalm; in each case the remainder of the section being an explanation of that central utterance. and here the case is the same; for the verses which precede this final exclamation are various phases of the experience of a man who trusts in god, and are the ground upon which his faith is pronounced 'blessed.' so i desire now to view these three preceding verses together, as being illustrations of the various blessednesses of the life of trust in god. they are not exhaustive. there are other tints and flashes of glory sleeping in the jewel which need the rays of light to impinge upon it at other angles, in order to wake them into scintillation and lustre. but there is enough in the context to warrant the psalmist's outburst into this final rapturous exclamation, and ought to be enough to make us seek to possess that life as our own. i. first, then, note here how the heart of religion always has been, and is, trust in god. this psalmist, nourished amidst the externalisms of an elaborate ceremonial, and compelled, by the stage of revelation at which he stood, to localise worship in an external temple, in a fashion that we need not do, had yet attained to the conviction that, in the desert or in the temple, god was near; that no weary pilgrimage was needed to reach his house, but that with one movement of a trusting heart the man clasped god wherever he was. and that is the living centre of all religion. i do not mean merely that our way to be sure of god is not through the understanding only, but through the outgoing of confidence in him--but i mean that the kernel of a devout life is trust in god. the bond that underlies all the blessedness of human society, the thing that makes the sweetness of the sweetest ties that can knit men together, the secret of all the happy loves of husband and wife, friend and friend, parent and child, is simple confidence. and the more utter the confidence the more tranquilly blessed is the union and the life that flow from it. transfer this, then--which is the bond of perfectness between man and man--to our relation to god, and you get to the very heart of the mystery. not by externalisms of any kind, not by the clear dry light of the understanding, but by the outgoing of the heart's confidence to god, do we come within the clasp of his arms and become recipients of his grace. trust knits to the unseen, and trust alone. that has always been the way. this psalmist is no exception to the devout souls of his time. for though, as i have said, externalisms and ritualisms filled a place then, that it is an anachronism and a retrogression that they should be supposed to fill now, still beneath all these there lay this one ancient, permanent relation, the relation of trust. from the day in which the 'father of the faithful' as he is significantly called abraham, 'believed god, and it was counted to him for righteousness,' down all through the ages of that ancient church, every man who laid a real hold upon god clasped him by the outstretched hand of faith. so the writer of the epistle to the hebrews was fully warranted in claiming all these ancient heroes, sages, and saints, as having lived by faith, and as being the foremost files in the same army in which the christians of his day marched. the prophets who cried, 'trust ye in the lord for ever, for in the lord jehovah is everlasting strength,' were saying the very same thing as the apostles who preached 'believe on the lord jesus christ, and thou shalt be saved.' the contents of the faith were expanded; the faith itself was identical. like some of those old roman roads, where to-day the wains of commerce and the chariots of ease and the toiling pedestrians pass over the lava blocks that have been worn by the tramp of legions and rutted by the wheels of their chariots, the way to god that we travel is the way on which all the saints from the beginning of time have passed in their pilgrimage. trust is, always has been, always will be, the bond that knits men with god. and trust is blessed, because the very attitude of confident dependence takes the strain off a man. to feel that i am leaning hard upon a firm prop, to devolve responsibility, to put the reins into another's hand, to give the helm into another steersman's grasp, whilst i may lie down and rest, that is blessedness, though there be a storm. in the story of frontier warfare we read how, day by day, the battalion that had been in the post of danger, and therefore of honour, was withdrawn into the centre; and another one was placed in the position that it had occupied. so, when we trust we put him in the front, and we march more quietly, more blessedly, when we are in the centre, and he has to bear the brunt of the assailing foe. christian people! have you got as far past the outsides of religion as this psalmist had? do you recognise as clearly as he did that all this outward worship, and a great deal of our theology, is but the scaffolding; and that the real building lies inside of that; and that it is of value only as being a means to an end? church membership is all very well; coming to church and chapel is all right; the outsides of worship will be necessary as long as our souls have outsides--their bodies. but you do not get into the house of the lord unless you go in through 'the door of faith,' which is opened to us all. the heart of the religious life, which makes it blessed, is trust in god. ii. and now, secondly, a life of faith is a blessed life, because it talks with god. i have already said that my text is expanded in the preceding verses. and i now turn to them to catch the various flashes of the diversely coloured blessedness of this life. the first of them is that which i have just mentioned. the psalmist has described for us the happy pilgrims passing from strength to strength, and in imagination has landed them in the temple. and then he goes on to tell us what they did and found there. the first thing that they did was to speak to him who was in the temple. 'behold! o god our shield! and look upon the face of thine anointed.' they had, as he has just said, 'every one of them appeared before god in zion.' as they looked up to him they asked him to look down upon them. 'behold! o god our shield!' 'shield' here is the designation of god himself, and is an exclamation addressed to him--'thou who art our god and shield, look down upon us!' and then comes a singular clause, about which much might be said if time permitted: 'look upon the face of thine anointed.' the use of that word 'anointed' seems to suggest that the psalm is either the outpouring of a king, or that it is spoken by some one in the train of a king, who feels that the favour bestowed upon the king will be participated in by his followers. but whilst that, if it be the explanation, might carry with it a hint as to the great truth of the mediation of jesus christ, our true king, i pass that by altogether, and fix upon the thought that here one element of the blessedness of the life of faith lies in the desire that god should look upon us. for that look means love, and that look secures protection and wise distribution of gifts. and it is life to have his eye fixed upon me, and to be conscious that he is looking at me. dear brethren! if we want a lustre to be diffused through all our days, depend upon it, the surest and the only way to secure it is that that face shall be felt to be turned toward us, 'as the sun shineth in his strength'; and then all the landscape will rejoice, and the birds will sing and the waters will flash. 'look upon me, and let me sun myself beneath thine eye'--to have that desire is blessed; and to feel that the desire is accomplished is more blessed still. dear friends! it seems to me that the ordinary christian life of this day is terribly wanting in this experience of frank, free talk with god, and that that is one reason why so many of us professing christians know so little of the blessedness of the man that trusts in god. you have religion enough to keep you from doing certain gross acts of sin; you have religion enough to make you uncomfortable in neglected duty. you have religion enough to impel you to certain acts that you suppose to be obligatory upon you. but do you know anything about the elasticity and spring of spirit in getting near god, and pouring out all your hearts to him? the life of faith is not blessed unless it is a life of frank speaking with god. iii. the life of faith is blessed, because it has fixed its desires on the true good. the psalmist goes on--'a day in thy courts is better than a thousand; i had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my god than dwell in the tents of wickedness.' 'a day in thy courts is better than a thousand.' we all know how strangely elastic time is, and have sometimes been amazed when we remembered what an infinity of joy or sorrow we had lived through in one tick of the pendulum. when men are dreaming, they pass through a long series of events in a moment's space. when we are truly awake, we live long in a short time, for life is measured, not by the length of its moments, but by the depth of its experiences. and when some new truth is flashed upon us, or some new emotion has shaken us as with an earthquake, or when some new blessing has burst into our lives, then we know how 'one day' with men may be as it is with god, in a deeper sense, 'as a thousand years,' so great is the change that it works upon us. there is nothing that will so fill life to the utmost bounds of its elastic capacity as strong trust in him. there is nothing that will make our lives so blessed. this psalmist, speaking with the voice of all them that trust in the lord, here declares his clear consciousness that the true good for the human soul is fellowship with god. but the clearest knowledge of that fact is not enough to bring the blessedness. there must be the next step--'i had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my god than dwell in the tents of wickedness'--the definite resolve that i, for my part, will act according to my conviction, and believing that the best thing in life is to have god in life, and that that will make life, as it were, an eternity of blessedness even while it is made up of fleeting days, will put my foot down and make my choice, and having made it, will stick to it. it is all very well to say that 'a day in thy courts is better than a thousand': have i _chosen_ to dwell in the courts; and do i, not only in estimate but in feeling and practice, set communion with god high above everything besides? this psalm, according to the superscription attached to it, is one 'for the sons of korah.' these sons of korah were a branch of the levitical priesthood, to whose charge was committed the keeping of the gates of the temple, and hence this phrase is especially appropriate on their lips. but passing that, let me just ask you to lay to heart, dear friends! this one plain thought, that the effect of a real life of faith will be to make us perfectly sure that the true good is in god, and fixedly determined to pursue that. and you have no right to claim the name of a believing christian, unless your faith has purged your eyes, so that you can see the hollowness of all besides, and has stiffened your will so that you can determine that, for your part, 'the lord is the strength of your heart, and your portion for ever.' the secret of blessedness lies here. 'seek ye the kingdom of god and all these things shall be added unto you.' iv. lastly, a life of faith is a life of blessedness, because it draws from god all necessary good. i must not dwell, as i had hoped to do, upon the last words preceding my text, 'the lord god is a sun and shield'--brightness and defence--'the lord will give grace and glory': 'grace,' the loving gifts which will make a man gracious and graceful; 'glory,' not any future lustre of the transfigured soul and glorified body, but the glory which belongs to the life of faith here on earth. link that thought with the preceding one. 'the lord is a sun ... the lord will give glory'; like a little bit of broken glass lying in the furrows of a ploughed field, when the sun smites down upon it, it flashes, outshining many a diamond. if a man is walking upon a road with the sun behind him, his face is dark. he wheels himself round, and it is suffused with light, as moses' face shone. 'we all, with unveiled faces beholding, are changed from glory to glory.' if we walk in the sunshine we shall shine too. if we 'walk in the light' we shall be 'light in the lord.' 'no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.' trust is inward, and the outside of trust is an upright walk; and if a man has these two, which, inasmuch as one is the root and the other is the fruit, are but one in reality, nothing that is good will be withheld from him. for how can the sun but pour its rays upon everything that lives? 'every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights.' so the life is blessed that talks with god; that has fixed its desires on him as its supreme good; that is irradiated by his light, glorified by the reflection of his brightness, and ministered to with all necessary appliances by his loving self-communication. we come back to the old word, dear friends! 'trust in the lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed.' we come back to the old message that nothing knits a man to god but faith with its child, righteousness. if trusting we love, and loving we obey, then in converse with him, in fixed desires after him, in daily and hourly reception from him of himself and his gifts, the life of earth will be full of a blessedness more real, more deep, more satisfying, more permanent, than can be found anywhere besides. who was it that said, 'i am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the father but by me'? tread that path, and you will come into the house of the lord, and will dwell there all the days of your life. 'believe in god, believe also in me.' 'the bridal of the earth and sky' 'mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. . truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. . yea, the lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase. . righteousness shall go before him, and shall set us in the way of his steps.'--psalm lxxxv. - . this is a lovely and highly imaginative picture of the reconciliation and reunion of god and man, 'the bridal of the earth and sky.' the poet-psalmist, who seems to have belonged to the times immediately after the return from the exile, in strong faith sees before him a vision of a perfectly harmonious co-operation and relation between god and man. he is not prophesying directly of messianic times. the vision hangs before him, with no definite note of time upon it. he hopes it may be fulfilled in his own day; he is sure it will, if only, as he says, his countrymen 'turn not again to folly.' at all events, it will be fulfilled in that far-off time to which the heart of every prophet turned with longing. but, more than that, there is no reason why it should not be fulfilled with every man, at any moment. it is the ideal, to use modern language, of the relations between heaven and earth. only that the psalmist believed that, as sure as there was a god in heaven, who is likewise a god working in the midst of the earth, the ideal might become, and would become, a reality. so, then, i take it, these four verses all set forth substantially the same thought, but with slightly different modifications and applications. they are a four-fold picture of how heaven and earth ought to blend and harmonise. this four-fold representation of the one thought is what i purpose to consider now. i. to begin with, then, take the first verse:--'mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' we have here _the heavenly twin-sisters, and the earthly pair that correspond_. 'mercy and truth are met together'--that is one personification; 'righteousness and peace have kissed each other' is another. it is difficult to say whether these four great qualities are here regarded as all belonging to god, or as all belonging to man, or as all common both to god and man. the first explanation is the most familiar one, but i confess that, looking at the context, where we find throughout an interpenetration and play of reciprocal action as between earth and heaven, i am disposed to think of the first pair as sisters from the heavens, and the second pair as the earthly sisters that correspond to them. mercy and truth--two radiant angels, like virgins in some solemn choric dance, linked hand in hand, issue from the sanctuary and move amongst the dim haunts of men making 'a sunshine in a shady place,' and to them there come forth, linked in a sweet embrace, another pair, righteousness and peace, whose lives depend on the lives of their elder and heavenly sisters. and so these four, the pair of heavenly origin, and the answering pair that have sprung into being at their coming upon earth;--these four, banded in perfect accord, move together, blessing and light-giving, amongst the sons of men. mercy and truth are the divine--righteousness and peace the earthly. let me dwell upon these two couples briefly. 'mercy and truth are met together' means this, that these two qualities are found braided and linked inseparably in all that god does with mankind; that these two springs are the double fountains from which the great stream of the 'river of the water of life,' the forthcoming and the manifestation of god, takes its rise. 'mercy and truth.' what are the meanings of the two words? mercy is love that stoops, love that departs from the strict lines of desert and retribution. mercy is love that is kind when justice might make it otherwise. mercy is love that condescends to that which is far beneath. thus the 'mercy' of the old testament covers almost the same ground as the 'grace' of the new testament. and truth blends with mercy; that is to say--truth in a somewhat narrower than its widest sense, meaning mainly god's fidelity to every obligation under which he has come, god's faithfulness to promise, god's fidelity to his past, god's fidelity, in his actions, to his own character, which is meant by that great word, 'he sware by _himself_!' thus the sentiment of mercy, the tender grace and gentleness of that condescending love, has impressed upon it the seal of permanence when we say: 'grace and truth, mercy and faithfulness, are met together.' no longer is love mere sentiment, which may be capricious and may be transient. we can reckon on it, we know the law of its being. the love is lifted up above the suspicion of being arbitrary, or of ever changing or fluctuating. we do not know all the limits of the orbit, but we know enough to calculate it for all practical purposes. god has committed himself to us, he has limited himself by the obligations of his own past. we have a right to turn to him, and say; 'be what thou art, and continue to be to us what thou hast been unto past ages,' and he responds to the appeal. for mercy and truth, tender, gracious, stooping, forgiving love, and inviolable faithfulness that can never be otherwise, these blend in all his works, 'that by two immutable things, wherein it was impossible for god to lie, we might have a strong consolation.' again, dear brethren! let me remind you that these two are the ideal two, which as far as god's will and wish are concerned, are the only two that would mark any of his dealings with men. when he is, if i may so say, left free to do as he would, and is not forced to his 'strange act' of punishment by my sin and yours, these, and these only, are the characteristics of his dealings. nor let us forget--'we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, _full of grace and truth_.' the psalmist's vision was fulfilled in jesus christ, in whom these sweet twin characteristics, that are linked inseparably in all the works of god, are welded together into one in the living personality of him who is all the father's grace embodied; and is 'the way and the truth and the life.' turn now to the other side of the first aspect of the union of god and man, 'mercy and truth are met together'; these are the heavenly twins. 'righteousness and peace have kissed each other'--these are the earthly sisters who sprang into being to meet them. of course i know that these words are very often applied, by way of illustration, to the great work of jesus christ upon the cross, which is supposed to have reconciled, if not contradictory, at least divergently working sides of the divine character and government. and we all know how beautifully the phrase has often been employed by eloquent preachers, and how beautifully it has been often illustrated by devout painters. but beautiful as the adaptation is, i think it is an adaptation, and not the real meaning of the words, for this reason, if for no other, that righteousness and peace are not in the old testament regarded as opposites, but as harmonious and inseparable. and so i take it that here we have distinctly the picture of what happens upon earth when mercy and truth that come down from heaven are accepted and recognised--then righteousness and peace kiss each other. or, to put away the metaphor, here are two thoughts, first that in men's experience and life righteousness and peace cannot be rent apart. the only secret of tranquillity is to be good. he who is, first of all, 'king of righteousness' is 'after that also king of salem, which is king of peace.' 'the effect of righteousness shall be peace,' as isaiah, the brother in spirit of this psalmist, says; and on the other hand, as the same prophet says, 'the wicked is like a troubled sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, saith my god, to the wicked,' but where affections are pure, and the life is worthy, where goodness is loved in the heart, and followed even imperfectly in the daily practice, there the ocean is quiet, and 'birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed wave.' the one secret of tranquillity is first to trust in the lord and then to do good. righteousness and peace kiss each other. the other thought here is that righteousness and her twin sister, peace, only come in the measure in which the mercy and the truth of god are received into thankful hearts. my brother! have you taken that mercy and that truth into your soul, and are you trying to reach peace in the only way by which any human being can ever reach it--through the path of righteousness, self-suppression, and consecration to him? ii. now, take the next phase of this union and cooperation of earth and heaven, which is given here in the th verse--'truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.' that is, to put it into other words--god responding to man's truth. notice that in this verse one member from each of the two pairs that have been spoken about in the previous verse is detached from its companion, and they are joined so as to form for a moment a new pair. truth is taken from the first couple; righteousness from the second, and a third couple is thus formed. and notice, further, that each takes the place that had belonged to the other. the heavenly truth becomes a child of earth; and the earthly righteousness ascends 'to look down from heaven.' the process of the previous verse in effect is reversed. 'truth shall spring out of the earth, righteousness shall look down from heaven'; that is to say--man's truth shall begin to grow and blossom in answer, as it were, to god's truth that came down upon it. which being translated into other words is this: where a man's heart has welcomed the mercy and the truth of god there will spring up in that heart, not only the righteousness and peace, of which the previous verse is speaking, but specifically a faithfulness not all unlike the faithfulness which it grasps. if we have a god immutable and unchangeable to build upon, let us build upon him immutability and unchangeableness. if we have a rock on which to build our confidence, let us see that the confidence which we build upon it is rocklike too. if we have a god that cannot lie, let us grasp his faithful word with an affiance that cannot falter. if we have a truth in the heavens, absolute and immutable, on which to anchor our hopes, let us see to it that our hopes, anchored thereon, are sure and steadfast. what a shame it would be that we should bring the vacillations and fluctuations of our own insincerities and changeableness to the solemn, fixed unalterableness of that divine word! we ought to be faithful, for we build upon a faithful god. and then the other side of this second picture is 'righteousness shall look down from heaven,' not in its judicial aspect merely, but as the perfect moral purity that belongs to the divine nature, which shall bend down a loving eye upon the men beneath, and mark the springings of any imperfect good and thankfulness in our hearts; joyous as the husbandman beholds the springing of his crops in the fields that he has sown. god delights when he sees the first faint flush of green which marks the springing of the good seed in the else barren hearts of men. no good, no beauty of character, no meek rapture of faith, no aspiration godwards is ever wasted and lost, for his eye rests upon it. as heaven, with its myriad stars, bends over the lowly earth, and in the midnight when no human eye beholds, sees all, so god sees the hidden confidence, the unseen 'truth' that springs to meet his faithful word. the flowers that grow in the pastures of the wilderness, or away upon the wild prairies, or that hide in the clefts of the inaccessible mountains, do not 'waste their sweetness on the desert air,' for god sees them. it may be an encouragement and quickening to us to remember that wherever the tiniest little bit of truth springs upon the earth, the loving eye--not the eye of a great taskmaster--but the eye of the brother, christ, which is the eye of god, looks down. 'wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing unto him.' iii. and then the third aspect of this ideal relation between earth and heaven, the converse of the one we have just now been speaking of, is set forth in the next verse: 'yea, the lord shall give that which is good and our land shall yield her increase.' that is to say, man is here responding to god's gift. you see that the order of things is reversed in this verse, and that it recurs to the order with which we originally started. 'the lord shall give that which is good.' in the figure that refers to all the skyey influence of dew, rain, sunshine, passing breezes, and still ripening autumn days; in the reality it refers to all the motives, powers, impulses, helps, furtherances by which he makes it possible for us to serve him and love him, and bring forth fruits of righteousness. and so the thought which has already been hinted at is here more fully developed and dwelt upon, this great truth that earthly fruitfulness is possible only by the reception of heavenly gifts. as sure as every leaf that grows is mainly water that the plant has got from the clouds, and carbon that it has got out of the atmosphere, so surely will all our good be mainly drawn from heaven and heaven's gifts. as certainly as every lump of coal that you put upon your fire contains in itself sunbeams that have been locked up for all these millenniums that have passed since it waved green in the forest, so certainly does every good deed embody in itself gifts from above. no man is pure except by impartation; and every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from the father of lights. so let us learn the lesson of absolute dependence for all purity, virtue, and righteousness on his bestowment, and come to him and ask him ever more to fill our emptiness with his own gracious fulness and to lead us to be what he commands and would have us to be. and then there is the other lesson out of this phase of the ideal relation between earth and heaven, the lesson of what we ought to do with our gifts. 'the earth yields her increase,' by laying hold of the good which the lord gives, and by means of that received good quickening all the germs. ah, dear brethren! wasted opportunities, neglected moments, uncultivated talents, gifts that are not stirred up, rain and dew and sunshine, all poured upon us and no increase--is not that the story of much of all our lives, and of the whole of some lives? are we like eastern lands where the trees have been felled, and the great irrigation works and tanks have been allowed to fall into disrepair, and so when the bountiful treasure of the rains comes, all that it does is to swell for half a day the discoloured stream that carries away some more of the arable land; and when the sunshine comes, with its swift, warm powers, all that it does is to bleach the stones and scorch the barren sand? 'the earth which _drinketh in the rain_ that cometh oft upon it, and yieldeth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth the blessing of god.' is it true about you that the earth yieldeth her increase, as it is certainly true that 'the lord giveth that which is good'? iv. and now the last thing which is here, the last phase of the fourfold representation of the ideal relation between earth and heaven is, 'righteousness shall go before him and shall set us in the way of his steps.' that is to say, god teaches man to walk in his footsteps. there is some difficulty about the meaning of the last clause of this verse, but i think that having regard to the whole context and to that idea of the interpenetration of the heavenly with the human which we have seen running through it, the reading in our english bible gives substantially, though somewhat freely, the meaning. the clause might literally be rendered 'make his footsteps for a way,' which comes to substantially the same thing as is expressed in our english bible. righteousness, god's moral perfectness, is set forth here in a twofold phase. first it is a herald going before him and preparing his path. the psalmist in these words draws tighter than ever the bond between god and man. it is not only that god sends his messengers to the world, nor only that his loving eye looks down upon it, nor only 'that he gives that which is good'; but it is that the whole heaven, as it were, lowers itself to touch earth, that god comes down to dwell and walk among men. the psalmist's mind is filled with the thought of a present god who moves amongst mankind, and has his 'footsteps' on earth. this herald righteousness prepares god's path, which is just to say that all his dealings with mankind--which, as we have seen, have mercy and faithfulness for their signature and stamp--are rooted and based in perfect rectitude. the second phase of the operation of righteousness is that that majestic herald, the divine purity which moves before him, and 'prepares in the desert a highway for the lord,'--that that very same righteousness comes and takes my feeble hand, and will lead my tottering footsteps into god's path, and teach me to walk, planting my little foot where he planted his. the highest of all thoughts of the ideal relation between earth and heaven, that of likeness between god and man, is trembling on the psalmist's lips. men may walk in god's ways--not only in ways that please him, but in ways that are like his. 'be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.' and the likeness can only be a likeness in moral qualities--a likeness in goodness, a likeness in purity, a likeness in aversion from evil, for his other attributes and characteristics are his peculiar property; and no human brow can wear the crown that he wears. but though his mercy can but, from afar off, be copied by us, the righteousness that moves before him, and engineers god's path through the wilderness of the world, will come behind him and nurselike lay hold of our feeble arms and teach us to go in the way god would have us to walk. ah, brethren! that is the crown and climax of the harmony between god and man, that his mercy and his truth, his gifts and his grace have all led us up to this: that we take his righteousness as our pattern, and try in our poor lives to reproduce its wondrous beauty. do not forget that a great deal more than the psalmist dreamed of, you christian men and women possess, in the christ 'who of god is made unto us righteousness,' in whom heaven and earth are joined for ever, in whom man and god are knit in strictest bonds of indissoluble friendship; and who, having prepared a path for god in his mighty mission and by his sacrifice on the cross, comes to us, and as the incarnate righteousness, will lead us in the paths of god, leaving us an example, that 'we should follow in his steps.' a sheaf of prayer arrows 'bow down thine ear, o lord, hear me; for i am poor and needy. . preserve my soul, for i am holy: o thou my god, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. . be merciful unto me, o lord: for i cry unto thee daily. . rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, o lord, do i lift up my soul. . for thou, lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.'--psalm lxxxvi. - . we have here a sheaf of arrows out of a good man's quiver, shot into heaven. this series of supplications is remarkable in more than one respect. they all mean substantially the same thing, but the psalmist turns the one blessing round in all sorts of ways, so great does it seem to him, and so earnest is his desire to possess it. they are almost all quotations from earlier psalms, just as our prayers are often words of scripture, hallowed by many associations, and uniting us with the men of old who cried unto god and were answered. the structure of the petitions is remarkably uniform. in each there are a prayer and a plea, and in most of them a direct invocation of god. so i have thought that, if we put them all together now, we may get some lessons as to the invocations, the petitions, and the pleas of true prayer; or, in other words, we may be taught how to lay hold of god, what to ask from him, and how to be sure of an answer. i. first, the lesson as to how to lay hold upon god. the divine names in this psalm are very frequent and significant, and the order in which they are used is evidently intentional. we have the great covenant name of jehovah set in the very first verse, and in the last verse; as if to bind the whole together with a golden circlet. and then, in addition, it appears once in each of the other two sections of the psalm, with which we have nothing to do at present. then we have, further, the name of _god_ employed in each of the sections; and further, the name of _lord_, which is not the same as _jehovah_, but implies the simple idea of superiority and authority. in each portion of the psalm, then, we see the writer laying his hand, as it were, upon these three names--'jehovah,' 'my god,' 'lord'--and in all of them finding grounds for his confidence and reasons for his cry. nothing in our prayers is often more hollow and unreal than the formal repetitions of the syllables of that divine name, often but to fill a pause in our thoughts. but to 'call upon the name of the lord' means, first and foremost, to bring before our minds the aspects of his great and infinite character, which are gathered together into the name by which we address him. so when we say 'jehovah!' 'lord!' what we ought to mean is this, that we are gazing upon that majestic, glorious thought of being, self-derived, self-motived, self-ruled, the being of him whose name can only be, 'i am that i am.' of all other creatures the name is, 'i am that i have been made,' or 'i am that i became,' but of him the name is, 'i am that i am.' nowhere outside of himself is the reason for his being, nor the law that shapes it, nor the aim to which it tends. and this infinite, changeless rock is laid for our confidence, jehovah the eternal, the self-subsisting, self-sufficing one. there is more than that thought in this wondrous name, for it not only expresses the timeless, unlimited, and changeless being of god, but also the truth that he has entered into what he deigns to call a covenant with us men. the name jehovah is the seal of that ancient covenant, of which, though the form has vanished, the essence abides for ever, and god has thereby bound himself to us by promises that cannot be abrogated. so that when we say, 'o lord!' we summon up before ourselves, and grasp as the grounds of our confidence, and we humbly present before him as the motives, if we may so call them, for his action, his own infinite being and his covenanted grace. then, further, our psalm invokes '_my_ god.' that names implies in itself, simply, the notion of power to be reverenced. but when we add to it that little word '_my_,' we rise to the wonderful thought that the creature can claim an individual relation to him, and in some profound sense a possession there. the tiny mica flake claims kindred with the alpine peak from which it fell. the poor, puny hand, that can grasp so little of the material and temporal, can grasp all of god that it needs. then, there is the other name, 'lord,' which simply expresses illimitable sovereignty, power over all circumstances, creatures, orders of being, worlds, and cycles of ages. wherever he is he rules, and therefore my prayer can be answered by him. when a child cries 'mother!' it is more than all other petitions. a dear name may be a caress when it comes from loving lips. if we are the kind of christians that we ought to be, there will be nothing sweeter to us than to whisper to ourselves, and to say to him, 'abba! father!' see to it that your calling on the name of the lord is not formal, but the true apprehension, by a believing mind and a loving heart, of the ineffable and manifold sweetnesses which are hived in his manifold names. ii. now, secondly, we have here a lesson as to what we should ask. the petitions of our text, of course, only cover a part of the whole field of prayer. the psalmist is praying in the midst of some unknown trouble, and his petitions are manifold in form, though in substance, as i have said, they may all be reduced to one. let me run over them very briefly. 'bow down thine ear and hear me.' that is not simply the invocation of the omniscience of a god, but an appeal for loving, attentive regard to the desires of his poor servant. the hearing is not merely the perception in the divine mind of what the creature desires, but it is the answer in fact, or the granting of the petition. the best illustration of what the psalmist desires here may be found in another psalm, where another psalmist tells us his experience and says, 'my cry came unto his ears, and the earth shook and trembled.' you put a spoonful of water into a hydraulic press at the one end, and you get a force that squeezes tons together at the other. here there is a poor, thin stream of the voice of a sorrowful man at the one end, and there is an earthquake at the other. that is what 'hearing' and 'bowing down the ear' means. then the prayers go on to three petitions, which may be all regarded as diverse acts of deliverance or of help. 'preserve my soul.' the word expresses the guardianship with which a garrison keeps a fortress. it is the hebrew equivalent of the word employed by paul--'the peace of god shall _keep_ your hearts and minds in christ jesus.' the thought is that of a defenceless man or thing round which some strong protection is cast. and the desire expressed by it is that in the midst of sorrow, whatever it is, the soul may be guarded from evil. then, the next petition--'save thy servant'--goes a step further, and not only asks to be kept safe in the midst of sorrows, but to be delivered out of them. and then the next petition--'be merciful unto me, o lord!'--craves that the favour which comes down to inferiors, and is bestowed upon those who might deserve something far otherwise, may manifest itself, in such acts of strengthening, or help, or deliverance, as divine wisdom may see fit. and then the last petition is--'rejoice the soul of thy servant.' the series begins with 'hearing,' passes through 'preserving,' 'saving,' showing 'mercy,' and comes at last to 'rejoice the soul' that has been so harassed and troubled. gladness is god's purpose for us all; joy we all have a right to claim from him. it is the intended issue of every sorrow, and it can only be had when we cleave to him, and pass through the troubles of life with continual dependence on and aspiration towards himself. so these are the petitions massed together, and out of them let me take two or three lessons. first, then, let us learn to make all wishes and annoyances material of prayer. this man was harassed by some trouble, the nature of which we do not know; and although the latter portion of his psalm rises into loftier regions of spiritual desire, here, in the first part of it, he is wrestling with his afflicting circumstances, whatever they were, and he has no hesitation in spreading them all out before god and asking for his delivering help. wishes that are not turned into prayers irritate, disturb, unsettle. wishes that are turned into prayers are calmed and made blessed. stanley and his men lived for weeks upon a poisonous root, which, if eaten crude, brought all manner of diseases, but, steeped in running water, had all the acrid juices washed out of it, and became wholesome food. if you steep your wishes in the stream of prayer the poison will pass out of them. some of them will be suppressed, all of them will be hallowed, and all of them will be calmed. troubles, great or small, should be turned into prayers. breath spent in sighs is wasted; turned into prayers it will swell our sails. if a man does not pray 'without ceasing,' there is room for doubt whether he ever prays at all. what would you think of a traveller who had a valuable cordial of which he only tasted a drop in the morning and another in the evening; or who had a sure staff on which to lean which he only employed at distant intervals on the weary march, and that only for a short time? let us turn all that we want into petitions, and all that annoys us let us spread before god. learn, further, that earnest reiteration is not vain repetition. 'use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking,' said the master. but the same master 'went away from them and prayed the third time, using the same words.' as long as we have not consciously received the blessing, it is no vain reiteration if we renew our prayers that it may come upon our heads. the man who asks for a thing once, and then gets up from his knees and goes away, and does not notice whether he gets the answer or not, does not pray. the man who truly desires anything from god cannot be satisfied with one languid request for it. but as the heart contracts with a sense of need, and expands with a faith in god's sufficiency, it will drive the same blood of prayer over and over again through the same veins; and life will be wholesome and strong. then learn, further, to limit wishes and petitions within the bounds of god's promises. the most of these supplications of our text may be found in other parts of scripture, as promises from god. only so far as an articulate divine word carries my faith has my faith the right to go. in the crooked alleys of venice there is a thin thread of red stone, inlaid in the pavement or wall, which guides through all the devious turnings to the piazza, in the centre, where the great church stands. as long as we have the red line of promise on our path, faith may follow it and will come to the temple. where the line stops it is presumption, and not faith, that takes up the running. god's promises are sunbeams flung down upon us. true prayer catches them on its mirror, and signals them back to god. we are emboldened to say, 'bow down thine ear!' because he has said, 'i will hear.' we are encouraged to cry, 'be merciful!' because we have our foot upon the promise that he will be; and all that we can ask of him is, 'do for us what thou hast said; be to us what thou art.' the final lesson is, leave god to settle how he answers your prayer. the psalmist prayed for preservation, for safety, for joy; but he did not venture to prescribe to god _how_ these blessings were to be ministered to him. he does not ask that the trouble may be taken away. that is as it may be; it may be better that it shall be left. but he asks that in it he shall not be allowed to sink, and that, however the waves may run high, they shall not be allowed to swamp his poor little cockle-shell of a boat. this is the true inmost essence of prayer--not that we should prescribe to him how to answer our desires, but that we should leave all that in his hands. the apostle paul said, in his last letter, with triumphant confidence, that he knew that god would 'deliver him and save him into his everlasting kingdom.' and he knew, at the same time, that his course was ended, and that there was nothing for him now but the crown. how was he 'saved into the kingdom' and 'delivered from the mouth of the lion'? the sword that struck off the wearied head that had thought so long for god's church was the instrument of the deliverance and the means of the salvation. for us it may be that a sharper sorrow may be the answer to the prayer, 'preserve thy servant.' it may be that god's 'bowing down his ear' and answering us when we cry shall be to pass us through a mill that has finer rollers, to crush still more the bruised corn. but the end and the meaning of it all will be to 'rejoice the soul of the servant' with a deeper joy at last. iii. finally, mark the lesson which we have here as to the pleas that are to be urged, or the conditions on which prayer is answered. 'i am poor and needy,' or, as perhaps the words more accurately mean, 'afflicted and poor.' the first condition is the sense of need. god's highest blessings cannot be given except to the men who know they want them. the self-righteous man cannot receive the righteousness of christ. the man who has little or no consciousness of sin is not capable of receiving pardon. god cannot put his fulness into our emptiness if we conceit ourselves to be filled and in need of nothing. we must know ourselves to be 'poor and naked and blind and miserable' ere he can make us rich, and clothe us, and enlighten our eyes, and flood our souls with his own gladness. our needs are dumb appeals to him; and in regard to all outward and lower things, they bind him to supply us, because they themselves have been created by him. he that hears the raven's croak satisfies the necessities that he has ordained in man and beast. but, for all the best blessings of his providence and of his love, the first steps towards receiving them are the knowledge that we need them and the desire that we should possess them. then the psalmist goes on to put another class of pleas derived from his relation to god. these are mainly two--'i am holy,' and 'thy servant that trusteth in thee.' now, with regard to that first word 'holy,' according to our modern understanding of the expression it by no means sets forth the psalmist's idea. it has an unpleasant smack of self-righteousness, too, which is by no means to be found in the original. but the word employed is a very remarkable and pregnant one. it really carries with it, in germ, the great teaching of the apostle john. 'we love him because he first loved us.' it means one who, being loved and favoured by god, answers the divine love with his own love. and the psalmist is not pleading any righteousness of his own, but declaring that he, touched by the divine love, answers that love, and looks up; not as if thereby he deserved the response that he seeks, but as knowing that it is impossible but that the waiting heart should thus be blessed. they who love god are sure that the answer to their desires will come fluttering down upon their heads, and fold its white wings and nestle in their hearts. christian people are a great deal too much afraid of saying, 'i love god.' they rob themselves of much peace and power thereby. we should be less chary of so saying if we thought more about god's love to us, and poked less into our own conduct. again, the psalmist brings this plea--'thy servant that trusteth in thee.' he does not say, 'i deserve to be answered because i trust,' but 'because i trust i am sure that i shall be answered'; for it is absurd to suppose that god will look down from heaven on a soul that is depending upon him, and will let that soul's confidence be put to shame. dear friend! if your heart is resting upon god, be sure of this, that anything is possible rather than that you should not get from him the blessings that you need. the psalmist gathers together all his pleas which refer to himself into two final clauses--'i cry unto thee daily,' 'i lift up my soul unto thee'--which, taken together, express the constant effort of a devout heart after communion with god. to withdraw my heart from the low levels of earth, and to bear it up into communion with god, is the sure way to get what i desire, because then god himself will be my chief desire, and 'they who seek the lord shall not want any good.' but the true and prevailing plea is not in our needs, desires, or dispositions, but in god's own character, as revealed by his words and acts, and grasped by our faith. therefore the psalmist ends by passing from thoughts of self to thoughts of god, and builds at last on the sure foundation which underlies all his other 'fors' and gives them all their force--'for thou, lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.' brethren! turn all your wishes and all your annoyances into prayers. if a wish is not fit to be prayed about, it is not fit to be cherished. if a care is too small to be made a prayer, it is too small to be made a burden. be frank with god as god is frank with you, and go to his throne, keeping back nothing of your desires or of your troubles. to carry them there will take the poison and the pain out of wasps' stings, and out of else fatal wounds. we have a name to trust to, tenderer and deeper than those which evoked the psalmist's triumphant confidence. let us see to it that, as the basis of our faith is firmer, our faith be stronger than his. we have a plea to urge, more persuasive and mighty than those which he pressed on god and gathered to his own heart. 'for christ's sake' includes all that he pled, and stretches beyond it. if we come to god through him who declares his name to us, we shall not draw near to the throne with self-willed desires, nor leave it with empty hands. 'if ye ask anything in my name, i will do it.' continual sunshine 'blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, o lord, in the light of thy countenance.'--psalm lxxxix. . the psalmist has just been setting forth, in sublime language, the glories of the divine character--god's strength, his universal sway, the justice and judgment which are the foundation of his throne, the mercy and truth which go as heralds before his face. a heathen singing of any of his gods would have gone on to describe the form and features of the god or goddess who came behind the heralds, but the psalmist remembers 'thou shalt not make unto thyself any ... likeness of god.' a sacred reverence checks his song. he veils his face in his mantle while he whom no man can see and live passes by. then he breaks into rapturous exclamations which are very prosaically and poorly represented by our version. for the text is not a mere statement, as it is made to be by reading 'blessed is the people,' but it is a burst of adoring wonder, and should be read, 'oh! the blessedness of the people that know the joyful sound.' now, the force of this exclamation is increased if we observe that the word that is rendered 'joyful sound' is the technical word for the trumpet blast at jewish feasts. the purpose of these blasts, like those of the heralds at the coronation of a king, was to proclaim the presence of god, the king of israel, in the festival, as well as to express the gladness of the worshippers. thus the psalmist, when he says, 'blessed is the people that know the joyful sound,' has no reference, as we ordinarily take him to have, to the preaching of the gospel, but to the trumpet-blasts that proclaimed the present god and throbbed with the gladness of the waiting worshippers. so that this exclamation is equivalent to 'oh! how blessed are the people who are sure that they have god with them!' and who, being sure, bow before him in loving worship. it is to be further noticed that the subsequent words of the text state the first element which it indicates of that blessedness of a devout life, 'they shall walk, o lord! in the light of thy countenance.' i. we deal first with the meaning of this phrase. of course, 'the light of thy countenance' is a very obvious and natural symbol for favour, complacency, goodwill on the part of him that is conceived of as looking on any one. we read, for instance, in reference to a much lower subject in the book of proverbs, 'in the light of the king's countenance is life, and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain.' again we have, in the levitical benediction, the phrase accompanied in the parallel clauses by what is really an explanation of it, 'the lord cause his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.' so that the simple and obvious meaning of the words, 'the light of thy countenance,' is the favour and lovingkindness of god manifested in that gracious face which he turns to his servants. as for the other chief word in the clause, 'to walk' is the equivalent throughout scripture for the conduct of the active life and daily conversation of a man, and to walk in the light is simply to have the consciousness of the divine presence and the experience of the divine lovingkindness and friendship as a road on which we travel our life's journey, or an atmosphere round us in which all our activities are done and in which we ever remain, as a diver in his bell, to keep evil and sin from us. there is only one more remark in the nature of explanation which i make, and that is that the expression here for walking is cast in the original into a form which grammarians call intensive, strengthening the simple idea expressed by the word. we may express its force if we read, 'they walk continually in the light of thy countenance.' is not that just a definition of the christian life as an unbroken realisation of the divine presence, and an unbroken experience of the lovingkindness and favour of god? is not that religion in its truest, simplest essence, in its purest expression? the people who are sure that they have their king in their midst, and who feel that he is looking down upon them with tender pity, with loving care, with nothing but friendship and sweetness in his heart, these people, says the psalmist, are blessed. so much, then, for the meaning of the word. ii. consider the possibility of such a condition being ours. can such a thing be? is it possible for a man to go through life carrying this atmosphere constantly with him? can the continuity which, as i remarked, is expressed by the original accurately rendered, be kept up through an ordinary life that has all manner of work to do, or are we only to 'hear the joyful sound,' now and then, at rare intervals, on set occasions, answering to these ancient feasts? which of the two is it to be, dear brethren? there is no need whatever why any amount of hard work, or outward occupations of the most secular character, or any amount of distractions, should break for us the continuity of that consciousness and of that experience. we may carry god with us wherever we go, if only we remember that where we cannot carry him with us we ought not to go. we may carry him with us into all the dusty roads of life; we may always walk on the sunny side of the street if we like. we may always bear our own sunshine with us. and although we are bound to be diligent in business, and some of us have had to take a heavy lift of a great deal of hard work, and much of it apparently standing in no sort of relation to our religious life, yet for all that it is possible to bend all to this one direction, and to make everything a means of bringing us nearer to god and fuller of the conscious enjoyment of his presence. and if we have not learned to do that with our daily work, then our daily work is a curse to us. if we have allowed it to become so absorbing or distracting as that it dims and darkens our sense of the divine presence, then it is time for us to see what is wrong in the method or in the amount of work which is thus darkening our consciences. i know it is hard, i know that an absolute attainment of such an ideal is perhaps beyond us, but i know that we can approach--i was going to say infinitely, but a better word is indefinitely--nearer it than any of us have ever yet done. as the psalm goes on to say in the next clause, it is possible for us to 'rejoice in his name all the day.' ay, even at your tasks, and at your counters, and in your kitchens, and in my study, it is possible for us; and if our hearts are what and where they ought to be, the possibility will be realised. earthly duty has no necessary effect of veiling the consciousness of god. nor is there any reason why our troubles, sorrows, losses, solitude should darken that sunshine. i know that that is hard, too, perhaps harder than the other. it is more difficult to have a sense of the sunshine of the divine presence shining through the clouds of disaster and sorrow than even it is to have it shining through the dust that is raised by traffic and secular occupation. but it _is_ possible. there is nothing in all the sky so grand as clouds smitten by sunshine, and the light is never so glorious as when it is flashed back from them and dyes their piled bosoms with all celestial colours. there is no experience of god's presence so blessed as that of a man who, in the midst of sorrow, has yet with him the assurance of the father's friendship and favour and love, and so can say 'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' this sunshine shines in the foulest corners, and the most thunder-laden clouds only flash back its glories in new forms. there is only one thing that breaks the continuity of that blessedness, and that is our own sin. we carry our own weather with us, whether we will or no, and we can bring winter into the middle of summer by flinging god away from us, and summer into the midst of winter by grappling him to our hearts. there is only one thing that necessarily breaks our sense of his presence, and that is that our hearts should turn away from his face. a man can work hard and yet feel that god is with him. a man can be weighed upon by many distresses and yet feel that god is with him and loves him; but a man cannot commit the least tiny sin and love it, and feel at the same time that god is with him. the heart is like a sensitive photographic plate, it registers the variations in the sunshine; and the one hindrance that makes it impossible for god's light to fall upon my soul with the assurance of friendship and the sense of sweetness, is that i should be hugging some evil to my heart. it is not the dusty highway of life nor the dark vales of weeping and of the shadow of death through which we sometimes have to pass that make it impossible for this sunlight to pour down upon us, but it is our gathering round ourselves of the poisonous mists of sin through which that light cannot pierce; or if it pierce, pierces transformed and robbed of all its beauty. iii. let me note next the blessedness which draws out the psalmist's rapturous exclamation. the same phrase is employed in one of the other psalms, which, i think, bears in its contents the confirmation of the attribution of it to david. when he was fleeing before his rebellious son, at the very lowest ebb of his fortunes, away on the uplands of moab, a discrowned king, a fugitive in danger of death at every moment, he sang a psalm in which these words occur: 'there be many that say, who will show us any good?' 'lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us'; and then follows, 'thou hast put gladness into my heart more than when their corn and wine abound.' the speech of the many, 'who will show us any good?' is contrasted with the prayer of the one, 'lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.' that is blessedness. it is the only thing that makes the heart to be at rest. it is the only thing that makes life truly worth living, the only thing that brings sweetness which has no after taint of bitterness and breeds no fear of its passing away. to have that unsetting sunshine streaming down upon my open heart, and to carry about with me whithersoever i go, like some melody from hidden singers sounding in my ears, the name and the love of my father god--that and that only, brother, is true rest and abiding blessedness. there are many other joys far more turbulent, more poignant, but they all pass. many of them leave a nauseous taste in the mouth when they are swallowed; all of them leave us the poorer for having had them and having them no more. for one who is not a christian i do not know that it _is_ 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' but for those to whom god's face is as a sun, life in all its possibilities is blessed; and there is no blessedness besides. so let us keep near him, 'walking in the light,' in our changeful days, 'as he is in the light' in his essential and unalterable being; and that light will be to us all which it is taken in scripture to symbolise--knowledge and joy and purity; and in us, too, there will be 'no darkness at all.' but there is one last word that i must say, and that is that a possible terror is intertwined with this blessedness. the next psalm to this says, with a kind of tremulous awe in the psalmist's voice: 'thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.' in that sense all of us, good and bad, lovers of god and those that are careless about him, walk all the day long in the light of his face, and he sees and marks all our else hidden evil. it needs something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a blessing to us. and what we need is offered us when we read, 'his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and i fell at his feet as dead. and he laid his hand upon me and said, fear not! i am he that liveth and was dead; and behold! i am alive for ever more.' if we put our poor trust in the eternal light that was manifest in christ, then we shall walk in the sunshine of his face on earth, and that lamp will burn for us in the darkness of the grave and lead us at last into the ever-blazing centre of the sun itself. the cry of the mortal to the undying 'let the beauty of the lord our god be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.--psalm xc. . if any reliance is to be placed upon the superscription of this psalm, it is one of the oldest, as it certainly is of the grandest, pieces of religious poetry in the world. it is said to be 'a prayer of moses, the man of god,' and whether that be historically true or no, the tone of the psalm naturally suggests the great lawgiver, whose special task it was to write deep upon the conscience of the jewish people the thought of the wages of sin as being death. hence the sombre magnificence and sad music of the psalm, which contemplates a thousand generations in succession as sliding away into the dreadful past, and sinking as beneath a flood. this thought of the fleeting years, dashed and troubled by many a sin, and by the righteous retribution of god, sent the psalmist to his knees, and he found the only refuge from it in these prayers. these two petitions of our text, the closing words of the psalm, are the cry forced from a heart that has dared to look death in the eyes, and has discovered that the world after all is a place of graves. 'let the beauty of the lord our god be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us.' there are two thoughts there--the cry of the mortal for the beauty of the eternal; and the cry of the worker in a perishable world for the perpetuity of his work. look at these two thoughts briefly. i. we have here, first, the yearning and longing cry of the mortal for the beauty of the eternal. the word translated 'beauty' in my text is, like the greek equivalent in the new testament, and like the english word 'grace,' which corresponds to them both susceptible of a double meaning. 'grace' means both _kindness_ and _loveliness_, or, as we might distinguish both graciousness and gracefulness. and that double idea is inherent in the word, as it is inherent in the attribute of god to which it refers. for that twofold meaning of the one word suggests the truth that god's lovingkindness and communicating mercy _is_ his beauty, and that the fairest thing about him, notwithstanding the splendours that surround his character, and the flashing lights that come from his many-sided glory, is that he loves and pities and gives himself. god is all fair, but the central and substantial beauty of the divine nature is that it is a stooping nature, which bows to weak and unworthy souls, and on them pours out the full abundance of its manifold gifts. so the 'beauty of the lord' means, by no quibble or quirk, but by reason of the essential loveliness of his lovingkindness, both god's loveliness and god's goodness; god's graciousness and god's gracefulness (if i may use such a word). the prayer of the psalmist that this beauty may be _upon_ us conceives of it as given to us from above and as coming floating down from heaven, like that white dove that fell upon christ's head, fair and meek, gentle and lovely, and resting on our anointed heads, like a diadem and an aureole of glory. now that communicating graciousness, with its large gifts and its resulting beauty, is the one thing that we need in view of mortality and sorrow and change and trouble. the psalm speaks about 'all our years' being 'passed away in thy wrath,' about the very inmost recesses of our secret unworthiness being turned inside out, and made to look blacker than ever when the bright sunshine of his face falls upon them. from that thought of god's wrath and omniscience the poet turns, as we must turn, to the other thought of his gentle longsuffering, of his forbearing love, of his infinite pity, of his communicating mercy. as a support in view both of our dreary and yet short years, and our certain mortality, and in the contemplation of the evils within and suffering from without, that harass us all, there is but one thing for us to do--namely, to fling ourselves into the arms of god, and in the spirit of this great petition, to ask that upon us there may fall the dewy benediction of his gentle beauty. that longing is meant to be kindled in our hearts by all the discipline of life. life is not worth living unless it does that for us; and there is no value nor meaning either in our joys or in our sorrows, unless both the one and the other send us to him. our gladness and our disappointments, our hopes fulfilled and our hopes dissipated and unanswered are but, as it were, the two wings by which, on either side, our spirits are to be lifted to god. the solemn pathos of the earlier portion of this psalm--the funeral march of generations--leads up to the prayerful confidence of these closing petitions, in which the sadness of the minor key in which it began has passed into a brighter strain. the thought of the fleeting years swept away as with a flood, and of the generations that blossom for a day and are mown down and wither when their swift night falls, is saddening and paralysing unless it suggests by contrast the thought of him who, himself unmoved, moves the rolling years, and is the dwelling-place of each succeeding generation. such contemplations are wholesome and religious only when they drive us to the eternal god, that in him we may find the stable foundation which imparts its own perpetuity to every life built upon it. we have experienced so many things in vain, and we are of the 'fools' that, being 'brayed in a mortar,' are only brayed fools after all, unless life, with its sorrows and its changes, has blown us, as with a hurricane, right into the centre of rest, and unless its sorrows and changes have taught us this as the one aspiration of our souls: 'let the beauty of the lord our god be upon us,' and then, let what may come, come, let what can pass, pass, we shall have all that we need for life and peace. and then, note further, that this gracious gentleness and long-suffering, giving mercy of god, when it comes down upon a man, makes him, too, beautiful with a reflected beauty. if the beauty of the lord our god be upon us, it will cover over our foulness and deformity. for whosoever possesses in any real fashion god's great mercy will have his spirit moulded into the likeness of that mercy. we cannot have it without reflecting it, we cannot possess it without being assimilated to it. therefore, to have the grace of god makes us both gracious and graceful. and the true refining influence for a character is that into it there shall come the gift of that endless pity and patient love, which will transfigure us into some faint likeness of itself, so that we shall walk among men, able, in some poor measure, after the manner of our master, to say, 'he that hath seen me hath seen the father.' he said it in a sense and in a measure which we cannot reach, but the assimilation to and reflection of the divine character is our aim, or ought to be, if we are christians. 'let the beauty of the lord our god be upon us,' and 'change us into the same image from glory to glory.' ii. we have here the cry of the worker in a fleeting world for the perpetuity of his work. 'establish,' or make firm, 'the work of our hands upon us, yea the work of our hands establish thou it.' the thought that everything is passing away so swiftly and inevitably, as the earlier part of the psalm suggests, might lead a man to say, 'what is the use of my doing anything? i may just as well sit down here, and let things slide, if they are all going to be swallowed up in the black bottomless gulf of forgetfulness.' the contemplation has actually produced two opposite effects, 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' is quite as fair an inference from the fact as is 'awake to righteousness and sin not,' if the fact itself only be taken into account. there is nothing religious in the clearest conviction of mortality, if it stands alone. it may be the ally of profligate and cynical sensuality quite as easily as it may be the preacher of asceticism. it may make men inactive, from their sense of the insignificant and fleeting nature of all human works, or it may stimulate to intensest effort, from the thought, 'i must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. the night cometh.' all depends on whether we link the conviction of mortality with that of eternity, and think of our perishable selves as in relationship with the unchanging god. this prayer expresses a deep longing, natural to all men, and which yet seems incompatible with the stern facts of mortality and decay. we should all like to have our work exempted from the common lot. what pathetically futile attempts to secure this are pyramids, and rock-inscriptions, and storied tombs, and posthumous memoirs, and rich men's wills! why should any of us expect that the laws of nature should be suspended for our benefit, and our work made lasting while everything beside changes like the shadows of the clouds? is there any way by which such exceptional permanence can be secured for our poor deeds? yes, certainly. let us commit them to god, praying this prayer, 'establish thou the work of our hands upon us.' our work will be established if it is his work. this prayer in our text follows another prayer (verse )--namely, 'let _thy_ work appear unto thy servants.' that is to say, my work will be perpetual when the work of my hands is god's work done through me. when you bring your wills into harmony with god's will, and so all your effort, even about the little things of daily life, is in consonance with his will, and in the line of his purpose, then your work will stand. if otherwise, it will be like some slow-moving and frail carriage going in the one direction and meeting an express train thundering in the other. when the crash comes, the opposing motion of the weaker will be stopped, reversed, and the frail thing will be smashed to atoms. so, all work which is man's and not god's will sooner or later be reduced to impotence and either annihilated or reversed, and made to run in the opposite direction. but if our work runs parallel with god's, then the rushing impetus of his work will catch up our little deeds into the swiftness of its own motion, and will carry them along with itself, as a railway train will lift straws and bits of paper that are lying by the rails, and give them motion for a while. if my will runs in the line of his, and if the work of my hands is 'thy work,' it is not in vain that we shall cry 'establish it upon us,' for it will last as long as he does. in like manner, all work will be perpetual that is done with 'the beauty of the lord our god' upon the doers of it. whosoever has that grace in his heart, whosoever is in contact with the communicating mercy of god, and has had his character in some measure refined and ennobled and beautified by possession thereof, will do work that has in it the element of perpetuity. and our work will stand if we quietly leave it in his hands. quietly do it to him, never mind about results, but look after motives. you cannot influence results, let god look after them; you can influence motives. be sure that they are right, and if they are, the work will be eternal. 'eternal? what do you mean by eternal? how can a man's work be that?' part of the answer is that it may be made permanent in its issues by being taken up into the great whole of god's working through his servants, which results at last in the establishment of his eternal kingdom. just as a drop of water that falls upon the moor finds its way into the brook, and goes down the glen and on into the river, and then into the sea, and is there, though undistinguishable, so in the great summing up of everything at the end, the tiniest deed that was done for god, though it was done far away up amongst the mountain solitudes where no eye saw, shall live and be represented, in its effects on others and in its glad issues to the doer. in the highest fashion the psalmist's cry for the perpetuity of the fleeting deeds of dying generations will be answered in that region in which his dimmer eye saw little but the sullen flood that swept away youth and strength and wisdom, but in which we can see the solid land beyond the river, and the happy company who rejoice with the joy of harvest, and bear with them the sheaves, whereof the seed was sown on this bank, in tears and fears. 'blessed are the dead that die in the lord. their works do follow them.' 'the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof, but he that doeth the will of god abideth for ever.' the sheltering wing 'he shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.' --psalm xci. . we remember the magnificent image in moses' song, of god's protection and guidance as that of the eagle who stirred up his nest, and hovered over the young with his wings, and bore them on his pinions. that passage may possibly have touched the imagination of this psalmist, when he here employs the same general metaphor, but with a distinct and significant difference in its application. in the former image the main idea is that of training and sustaining. here the main idea is that of protection and fostering. _on_ the wing and _under_ the wing suggest entirely different notions, and both need to be taken into account in order to get the many-sided beauties and promises of these great sayings. now there seems to me here to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. there is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. 'he shall cover thee with his pinions'; that is the divine act. 'under his wings shalt thou trust'; that is the human condition. 'his truth shall be thy shield and buckler'; that is the divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible. i. a word then, first, about the covering wing. now, the main idea in this image is, as i have suggested, that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are guarded. whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there. the image suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realised by those who nestle beneath that wing. but while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept prominent, as that chiefly intended by the psalmist. this psalm rings throughout with the truth that a man who dwells 'in the secret place of the most high' has absolute immunity from all sorts of evil; and there are two regions in which that immunity, secured by being under the shadow of the almighty, is exemplified here. the one is that of outward dangers, the other is that of temptation to sin and of what we may call spiritual foes. now, these two regions and departments in which the christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the divine protection, exhibit that protection as secured in two entirely different ways. the triumphant assurances of this psalm, 'there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,'--'the pestilence shall smite thousands and ten thousands beside thee, but not come nigh thee,'--seem to be entirely contradicted by experience which testifies that 'there is one event to the evil and the good,' and that, in epidemics or other widespread disasters, we all, the good and the bad, god-fearers and god-blasphemers, do fare alike, and that the conditions of exemption from physical evil are physical and not spiritual. it is of no use trying to persuade ourselves that that is not so. we shall understand god's dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart of such promises as these in this psalm far better, if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does _not_ mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going to be god's petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people. no! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. if we have felt a difficulty, as i suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent psalmist, 'my feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped,' when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of divine providence in this world, we have to come to the belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near a man sheltered beneath god's wing. the physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with his feathers. here are two partners in a business, the one a christian man, and the other is not. a common disaster overwhelms them. they become bankrupts. is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in god, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. they are both drowned. is drowning the same to the two? as their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the shell-fish at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, 'there shall no evil befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling.' for the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. it is deliverance from the evil in the evil which vindicates as no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the old theocracy of israel, but not now realised, the grand sayings of this text. the poison is all wiped off the arrow by that divine protection. it may still wound but it does not putrefy the flesh. the sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields. and so, brethren! if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, 'he shall cover thee with his feathers.' anything that has come through _them_ is manifestly not an 'evil.' 'who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?' 'if god be for us who can be against us?' not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, 'sorrows' and 'afflictions,'--these all work for our good, and protection consists, not in averting the blows, but in changing their character. then, there is another region far higher, in which this promise of my text is absolutely true--that is, in the region of spiritual defence. for no man who lies under the shadow of god, and has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that presence, is likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from god; and the defence which he gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defence which he gives against external evils. for, as the new testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any outward breastplate or armour, nor even by the divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by the indwelling christ in our hearts. his spirit within us makes us 'free from the law of sin and death,' and conquerors over all temptations. i say not a word about all the other beautiful and pathetic associations which are connected with this emblem of the covering wing, sweet and inexhaustible as it is, but i simply leave with you the two thoughts that i have dwelt upon, of the twofold manner of that divine protection. ii. and now a word, in the second place, about the flight of the shelterless to the shelter. the word which is rendered in our authorised version, 'shalt thou trust,' is, like all hebrew words for mental and spiritual emotions and actions, strongly metaphorical. it might have been better to retain its literal meaning here instead of substituting the abstract word 'trust.' that is to say, it would have been an improvement if we had read with the revised version, not, 'under his wings shalt thou trust,' but 'under his wings shalt thou take refuge.' for that is the idea which is really conveyed; and in many of the psalms, if you will remember, the same metaphor is employed. 'hide me beneath the shadow of thy wings'; 'beneath thy wings will i take refuge until calamities are overpast'; and the like. many such passages will, no doubt, occur to your memories. but what i wish to signalise is just this, that in this emblem of flying into a refuge from impending perils we get a far more vivid conception, and a far more useful one, as it seems to me, of what christian faith really is than we derive from many learned volumes and much theological hair-splitting. 'under his wings shalt thou flee for refuge.' is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? the old testament is full of the teaching--which is masked to ordinary readers, but is the same teaching as the new testament is confessedly full of--of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds men to god. if only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in old and new testament of words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the old testament about 'trusting in god' run on all fours with 'believe on the lord jesus christ and thou shalt be saved.' but just mark what comes out of that metaphor; that 'trust,' the faith which unites with god, and brings a man beneath the shadow of his wings, is nothing more or less than the flying into the refuge that is provided for us. does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? does it not speak to us of the necessity of swift flight, with all the powers of our will? is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? surely it is something a great deal more than that. a man out in the plain, with the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, behind him might believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the city of refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. there are many men who know all about the security of the refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast myself into god's arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of his wings. and unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him. the metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith. a man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. it is not the flight that is impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. not my outstretched hand, but the hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. the power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with god, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the almighty protection. so, brethren! another consideration comes out of this clause: 'under his wings shalt thou trust.' if you do not flee for refuge to that wing, it is of no use to you, however expanded it is, however soft and downy its underside, however sure its protection. you remember the passage where our lord uses the same venerable figure with modifications, and says: 'how often would i have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, _and ye would not_.' so our 'would not' thwarts christ's 'would.' flight to the refuge is the condition of being saved. how can a man get shelter by any other way than by running to the shelter? the wing is expanded; it is for us to say whether we will 'flee for refuge to the hope set before us.' iii. now, lastly, the warrant for this flight. 'his truth shall be thy shield.' now, 'truth' here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called god's truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the divine nature. and if, instead of 'truth,' we read the good old english word 'troth,' we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the psalmist meant. or if 'troth' is archaic, and conveys little meaning to us; suppose we substitute a somewhat longer word, of the same meaning, and say, 'his faithfulness shall be thy shield.' you cannot trust a god that has not given you an inkling of his character or disposition, but if he has spoken, then you 'know where to have him.' that is just what the psalmist means. how can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge, unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? and that security is provided in the great thought of god's troth. 'thy faithfulness is like the great mountains.' 'who is like unto thee, o lord! or to thy faithfulness round about thee?' that faithfulness shall be our 'shield,' not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm; but the word means the large shield, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight, and circling him around, like a wall of iron. god is 'faithful' to all the obligations under which he has come by making us. that is what one of the new testament writers tells us, when he speaks of him as 'a faithful creator.' then, if he has put desires into our hearts, be sure that somewhere there is their satisfaction; and if he has given us needs, be sure that in him there is the supply; and if he has lodged in us aspirations which make us restless, be sure that if we will turn them to him, they will be satisfied and we shall be at rest. 'god never sends mouths but he sends meat to fill them.' 'he remembers our frame,' and measures his dealings accordingly. when he made me, he bound himself to make it possible that i should be blessed for ever; and he has done it. god is faithful to his word, according to that great saying in the epistle to the hebrews, where the writer tells us that by 'god's counsel,' and 'god's oath,' 'two immutable things,' we might have 'strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.' god is faithful to his own past. the more he has done the more he will do. 'thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me.' therein we present a plea which god himself will honour. and he is faithful to his own past in a yet wider sense. for all the revelations of his love and of his grace in times that are gone, though they might be miraculous in their form, are permanent in their essence. so one of the psalmists, hundreds of years after the time that israel was led through the wilderness, sang: 'there did _we_'--of this present generation--'rejoice in him.' what has been, is, and will be, for thou art 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' we have not a god that lurks in darkness, but one that has come into the light. we have to run, not into a refuge that is built upon a 'perhaps,' but upon 'verily, verily! i say unto thee.' let us build rock upon rock, and let our faith correspond to the faithfulness of him that has promised. the habitation of the soul '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.'--psalm xci. , . it requires a good deal of piecing to make out from the hebrew the translation of our authorised version here. the simple, literal rendering of the first words of these verses is, 'surely, thou, o lord! art my refuge'; and i do not suppose that any of the expedients which have been adopted to modify that translation would have been adopted, but that these words seem to cut in two the long series of rich promises and blessings which occupy the rest of the psalm. but it is precisely this interruption of the flow of the promises which puts us on the right track for understanding the words in question, because it leads us to take them as the voice of the devout man, to whom the promises are addressed, responding to them by the expression of his own faith. the revised version is much better here than our authorised version, for it has recognised this breach of continuity of sequence in the promises, and translated as i have suggested; making the first words of my text, 'thou, o lord! art my refuge,' the voice of one singer, and 'because thou hast made the most high thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any evil come nigh thy dwelling,' the voice of another. whether or no it be that in the liturgical service of the temple this psalm was sung by two choirs which answered one another, does not matter for our purpose. whether or no we regard the first clause as the voice of the psalmist speaking to god, and the other as the same man speaking to himself, does not matter. the point is that, first, there is an exclamation of personal faith, and that then that is followed and answered, as it were, by the further promise of continual blessings. one voice says, 'thou, lord! art my refuge,' and then another voice--not god's, because that speaks in majesty at the end of the psalm--replies to that burst of confidence, 'thou hast made the lord thy habitation' (as thou hast done by this confession of faith), 'there shall no evil come nigh thy dwelling.' i. we have here the cry of the devout soul. i observed that it seems to cut in two the stream of promised blessings, and that fact is significant. the psalm begins with the deep truth that 'he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty.' then a single voice speaks, 'i will say of the lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my god, in him will i trust.' then that voice, which thus responds to the general statement of the first verse, is answered by a stream of promises. the first part of our text comes in as the second speech of the same voice, repeating substantially the same thing as it said at first. now, notice that this cry of the soul, recognising god as its asylum and home, comes in response to a revelation of god's blessing, and to large words of promise. there is no true refuge nor any peace and rest for a man unless in grasping the articulate word of god, and building his assurance upon that. anything else is not confidence, but folly; anything else is building upon sand, and not upon the rock. if i trust my own or my brother's conception of the divine nature, if i build upon any thoughts of my own, i am building upon what will yield and give. for all peaceful casting of my soul into the arms of god there must be, first, a plain stretching out of the hands of god to catch me when i drop. so the words of my text, 'thou art my refuge,' are the best answer of the devout soul to the plain words of divine promise. how abundant these are we all know, how full of manifold insight and adaptation to our circumstances and our nature we may all experience, if we care to prove them. but let us be sure that we _are_ hearkening to the voice with which he speaks through our daily circumstances as well as by the unmistakable revelation of his will and heart in jesus christ. and then let us be sure that no word of his, that comes fluttering down from the heavens, meaning a benediction and enclosing a promise, falls at our feet ungathered and unregarded, or is trodden into the dust by our careless heels. the manna lies all about us; let us see that we gather it. 'when thou saidst, seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, thy face, lord, will i seek.' when thou saidst, 'i will be thy strength and thy righteousness,' have i said, 'surely, o jehovah! thou art my refuge'? turn his promises into your creed, and whatever he has declared in the sweet thunder of his voice, loud as the voice of many waters, and melodious as 'harpers harping with their harps,' do you take for your profession of faith in the faithful promises of your god. still further, this cry of the devout soul suggests to me that our response ought to be the establishment of a close personal relation between us and god. 'thou, o lord! art my refuge.' the psalmist did not content himself with saying 'lord! thou hast been _our_ dwelling-place in all generations,' or as one of the other psalmists has it, 'god is _our_ refuge and _our_ strength.' that thought was blessed, but it was not enough for the psalmist's present need, and it is never enough for the deepest necessities of any soul. we must isolate ourselves and stand, god and we, alone together--at heart-grips--we grasping his hand, and he giving himself to us--if the promises which are sent down into the world for all who will make them theirs can become ours. they are made payable to your order; you must put your name on the back before you get the proceeds. there must be what our good old puritan forefathers used to call, in somewhat hard language, 'the appropriating act of faith,' in order that god's richest blessings may be of any use to us. put out your hand to grasp them, and say, 'mine,' not 'ours.' the thought of others as sharing in them will come afterwards, for he who has once realised the absolute isolation of the soul and has been alone with god, and in solitude has taken god's gifts as his very own, is he who will feel fellowship and brotherhood with all who are partakers of like precious faith and blessings. the 'ours' will come; but you must begin with the 'mine'--'_my_ lord and _my_ god.' 'he loved _me_, and gave himself for _me_.' just as when the israelites gathered on the banks of the red sea, and miriam and the maidens came out with songs and timbrels, though their hearts throbbed with joy, and music rang from their lips for national deliverance, their hymn made the whole deliverance the property of each, and each of the chorus sang, 'the lord is my strength and my song, he also is become my salvation,' so we must individualise the common blessing. every poor soul has a right to the whole of god, and unless a man claims all the divine nature as his, he has little chance of possessing the promised blessings. the response of the individual to the worldwide promises and revelations of the father is, 'thou, o lord! art my refuge.' further, note how this cry of the devout soul recognises god as he to whom we must go because we need a refuge. the word 'refuge' here gives the picture of some stronghold, or fortified place, in which men may find security from all sorts of dangers, invasions by surrounding foes, storm and tempest, rising flood, or anything else that threatens. only he who knows himself to be in danger bethinks himself of a refuge. it is only when we know our danger and defencelessness that god, as the refuge of our souls, becomes precious to us. so, underlying, and an essential part of, all our confidence in god, is the clear recognition of our own necessity. the sense of our own emptiness must precede our grasp of his fulness. the conviction of our own insufficiency and sinfulness must precede our casting ourselves on his mercy and righteousness. in all regions the consciousness of human want must go before the recognition of the divine supply. ii. now, note the still more abundant answer which that cry evokes. i said that the words on which i have been commenting thus far, seem to break in two the continuity of the stream of blessings and promises. but there may be observed a certain distinction of tone between those promises which precede and those which follow the cry. those that follow have a certain elevation and depth, completeness and fulness, beyond those that precede. this enhancing of the promises, following on the faithful grasp of previous promises, suggests the thought that, when god is giving, and his servant thankfully accepts and garners up his gifts, he opens his hand wider and gives more. when he pours his rain upon the unthankful and the evil, and they let the precious, fertilising drops run to waste, there comes after a while a diminution of the blessing; but they who store in patient and thankful hearts the faithful promises of god, have taken a sure way to make his gifts still larger and his promises still sweeter, and their fulfilment more faithful and precious. but now notice the remarkable language in which this answer is couched. 'thou hast made the most high thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.' did you ever notice that there are two dwelling-places spoken of in this verse? 'thou hast made the most high thy habitation'; 'there shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling.' the reference of the latter word to the former one is even more striking if you observe that, literally translated, as in the revised version, it means a particular kind of abode--namely, a tent. 'thou hast made the most high thy habitation.' the same word is employed in the th psalm: 'lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.' beside that venerable and ancient abode, that has stood fresh, strong, incorruptible, and unaffected by the lapse of millenniums, there stands the little transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are spent. we have two dwelling-places. by the body we are brought into connection with this frail, evanescent, illusory outer world, and we try to make our homes out of shifting cloud-wrack, and dream that we can compel mutability to become immutable, that we may dwell secure. but fate is too strong for us, and although we say that we will make our nest in the rocks, and shall never be moved, the home that is visible and linked with the material passes and melts as a cloud. we need a better dwelling-place than earth and that which holds to earth. we have god himself for our true home. never mind what becomes of the tent, as long as the mansion stands firm. do not let us be saddened, though we know that it is canvas, and that the walls will soon rot and must some day be folded up and borne away, if we have the rock of ages for our dwelling-place. let us abide in the eternal god by the devotion of our hearts, by the affiance of our faith, by the submission of our wills, by the aspiration of our yearnings, by the conformity of our conduct to his will. let us abide in the eternal god, that 'when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved,' we may enter into two buildings 'eternal in the heavens'--the one the spiritual body which knows no corruption, and the other the bosom of the eternal god himself. 'because thou hast made him thy habitation,' that dwelling shall suffer no evil to come near it or its tenant. still further, notice the scope of this great promise. i suppose there is some reference in the form of it to the old story of israel's exemption from the egyptian plagues, and a hint that that might be taken as a parable and prophetic picture of what will be true about every man who puts his trust in god. but the wide scope and the paradoxical completeness of the promise itself, instead of being a difficulty, point the way to its true interpretation. 'there shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling'--and yet we are smitten down by all the woes that afflict humanity. 'no evil shall befall thee'--and yet 'all the ills that flesh is heir to' are dealt out sometimes with a more liberal hand to them who abide in god than to them who dwell only in the tent upon earth. what then? is god true, or is he not? did this psalmist mean to promise the very questionable blessing of escape from all the good of the discipline of sorrow? is it true, in the unconditional sense in which it is often asserted, that 'prosperity is the blessing of the old testament, and adversity of the new'? i think not, and i am sure that this psalmist, when he said, 'there shall no evil befall thee, nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling,' was thinking exactly the same thing which paul had in his mind when he said, 'all things work together for good to them that love god, to them that are called according to his purpose.' if i make god my refuge, i shall get something a great deal better than escape from outward sorrow--namely, an amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. the bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which god will strain all the poison, though he leaves plenty of the bitterness in it; for bitterness is a tonic. the evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it, in the measure in which we make god our refuge, and 'all will be right that seems most wrong' when we recognise it to be 'his sweet will.' dear brother! the secret of exemption from every evil lies in no peculiar providence, ordering in some special manner our outward circumstances, but in the submission of our wills to that which the good hand of the lord our god sends us for our good; and in cleaving close to him as our refuge. nothing can be 'evil' which knits me more closely to god; and whatever tempest drives me to his breast, though all the four winds of the heavens strive on the surface of the sea, it will be better for me than calm weather that entices me to stray farther away from him. we shall know that some day. let us be sure of it now, and explain by it our earthly experience, even as we shall know it when we get up yonder and 'see all the way by which the lord our god has led us.' the answer to trust 'because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will i deliver him: i will set him on high, because he hath known my name.' --psalm xci. . there are two voices speaking in the earlier part of this psalm: one that of a saint who professes his reliance upon the lord, his fortress; and another which answers the former speaker, and declares that he shall be preserved by god. in this verse, which is the first of the final portion of the psalm, we have a third voice--the voice of god himself, which comes in to seal and confirm, to heighten and transcend, all the promises that have been made in his name. the first voice said of himself, '_i_ will trust'; the second voice addresses that speaker, and says, '_thou_ shalt not be afraid'; the third voice speaks of him, and not to him, and says, 'because _he_ hath set his love upon me, therefore will i deliver him.' why does this divine voice speak thus indirectly of this blessing of his servant? i think partly because it heightens the majesty of the utterance, as if god spake to the whole universe about what he meant to do for his friend who trusts him; and partly because, in that general form of speech, there is really couched an 'whosoever'; and it applies to us all. if god had said, 'because thou hast set thy love upon me, i will deliver thee,' it had not been so easy for us to put ourselves in the place of the man concerning whom this great divine voice spoke; but when he says, 'because _he_ hath set _his_ love upon me,' in the 'he' there lies 'everybody'; and the promise spoken before the universe as to his servants is spoken universally to his servants. so, then, these words seem to me to carry two thoughts: the first, what god delights to find in a man; and the second, what god delights to give to the man in whom he finds it. i. note, first, what god delights to find in man. there is, if we may reverently say so, a tone of satisfaction in the words, 'because he hath set his love upon me,' and 'because he hath known my name.' thus, then, there are two things that the great father's heart seeks, and wheresoever it finds them, in however imperfect a degree, he is glad, and lavishes upon such a one the most precious things in his possession. what are these two things? let us look at each of them. now the word rendered 'set his love' includes more than is suggested by that rendering, beautiful as it is. it implies the binding or knitting oneself to anything. now, though love be the true cement by which men are bound to god, as it is the only real bond which binds men to one another, yet the word itself covers a somewhat wider area than is covered by the notion of love. it is not my love only that i am to fasten upon god, but my whole self that i am to bind to him. god delights in us when we cling to him. there is a threefold kind of clinging, which i would urge upon you and upon myself. let us cling to him in our thoughts, hour by hour, moment by moment, amidst all the distractions of daily life. whilst there are other things that must legitimately occupy our minds, let us see to it that, ever and anon, we turn ourselves away from these, and betake ourselves, with a conscious gathering in of our souls, to him, and calm and occupy our hearts and minds with the bright and peaceful thoughts of a present god ever near us, and ever gracious to us. life is but a dreary stretch of wilderness, unless all through it there be dotted, like a chain of ponds in a desert, these moments in which the mind fixes itself upon god, and loses sorrows and sins and weakness and all other sadnesses in the calm and blessed contemplation of his sweetness and sufficiency. the very heavens are bare and lacking in highest beauty, unless there stretch across them the long lines of rosy-tinted clouds. and so across our skies let us cast a continuous chain of thoughts of god, and as we go about our daily work, let us try to have our minds ever recurring to him, like the linked pools that mirror heaven in the midst of the barren desert, and bring a reflection of life into the midst of its death. cleave and cling to god, brother! by frequent thoughts of him, diffused throughout the whole continuity of the busy day. then again, we might say, let us cleave to him by our love, which is the one bond of union, as i said, between man and god, as it is the one bond of union between man and man. 'thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,' was from the beginning the alpha, and until the end will be the omega, of all true religion; and within the sphere of that commandment lie all duty, all christianity, all blessedness, and all life. the heart that is divided is wretched; the heart that is consecrated is at rest. the love that is partial is nought; the love that is worth calling so is total and continuous. let us cling to him with our thoughts; let us cling to him with the tendrils of our hearts. let us cleave to him, still further, by the obedient contact of our wills with his, taking no commandments from men, and no overpowering impressions from circumstances, and no orders from our own fancies and inclinations and tastes and lusts, but receiving all our instructions from our father in heaven. there is no real contact between us and god, no real cleaving to him, howsoever the thought of god may be in our minds, and some kind of imperfect love to him may be supposed to be in our hearts, unless there be the absolute submission of our wills to his authority; and only in the measure in which we are able to say, what he commands i do, and what he sends i accept, and my will is in his hands to be moulded, do we really get close and keep close to our father in the heavens. he that hath brought himself into loving touch with god, and clings to him in that threefold fashion, by thought, love, and submission, he, and only he, is so joined to the lord as to be one spirit. now that is not a state to be won and kept without much vigorous, conscious effort. the nuts in a machine work loose; the knots in a rope 'come untied,' as the children say. the hand that clasps anything, by slow and imperceptible degrees, loses muscular contraction, and the grip of the fingers becomes slacker. our minds and affections and wills have that same tendency to slacken their hold of what they grasp. unless we tighten up the machine it will work loose; and unless we make conscious efforts to keep ourselves in touch with god, his hand will slip out of ours before we know that it is gone, and we shall fancy that we feel the impression of the fingers long after they have been taken away from our negligent palms. besides our own vagrancies, and the waywardness and wanderings of our poor, unreliable natures, there come in, of course, as hindrances, all the interruptions and distractions of outside things, which work in the same direction of loosening our hold on god. if the shipwrecked sailor is not to be washed off the raft he must tie himself on to it, and must see that the lashings are reliable and the knots tight; and if we do not mean to be drifted away from god without knowing it, we must make very sure work of anchor and cable, and of our own hold on both. effort is needed, continuous and conscious, lest at any time we should slide away from him. and this is what god delights to find: a mind and will that bind themselves to him. there is another thing in the text which, as i take it, is a consequence of that close union between man in his whole nature and god: 'i will set him on high because he hath known my name.' notice that the knowledge of the name comes after, and not before, the setting of the love or the fixing of the nature upon god. god's 'name' is the same thing as his self-revelation or his manifested character. then, does not every one to whom that revelation is made know his name? certainly not. the word 'know' is here used in the same deep sense in which it is employed all but uniformly in the new testament--the same sense in which it is used in the writings of the apostle john. it describes a knowledge which is a great deal more than a mere intellectual acquaintance with the facts of divine revelation. or, to put the thought into other words, this is a knowledge which comes after we have set our love upon god, a knowledge which is the child of love. we forget sometimes that it is a person, and not a system of truth, whom the bible tells us we are to know. and how do you know people? only by familiar acquaintance with them. you might read a description of a man, perfectly accurate, sufficiently full, but you would not therefore say you knew him. you might know about him, or fancy you did, but if you knew him, it would be because you had summered and wintered with him, and lived beside him, and were on terms of familiar acquaintance with him. as long as it is god and not theology, the knowledge of whom makes religion, so long it will not be the head, but the heart or spirit, that is the medium or organ by which we know him. you have to become acquainted with him and be very familiar with him--that is to say, to fix your whole self upon him--before you 'know' him; and it is only the knowledge which is born of love and familiarity that is worth calling knowledge at all. just as with our earthly relationships and acquaintances, only they who love a man or a woman know such a one right down to the very depth of their being, so the one way to know god's name is to bind myself to him with mind and heart and will, as friends cleave to one another. then i shall know him and be known of him. still further, this knowledge which god delights to find in us men, is a knowledge which is experience. there is all the difference between reading about a foreign country and going to see it with your own eyes. the man that has been there knows it; the man that has not knows about it. and only he knows god to whom the commonplaces of religion have turned into facts which he verifies by his own experiences. it is a knowledge, too, which influences life. obviously the words of my text look back to what the saint was represented as saying in an earlier portion of the psalm. why does god declare that the man has set his love upon him, and knows his name? because the saint professed this, 'i will say of the lord, he is my refuge and my fortress.' these are his name. the man knows it; he has it not only upon his lips, but in his heart, and feels that it is true, and acts accordingly. 'he is my refuge and my fortress; my god, in him will i trust.' the knowledge which god regards as knowledge of him is one based upon experience and upon familiar acquaintance, and issuing in joyful recognition of my possession of him as mine, and the outgoing of my confidence to him. these are the things that god desires and delights to find in men. ii. note, secondly, what god gives to the man in whom he finds such things. 'i will deliver him'; 'i will set him on high.' these two clauses are substantially parallel, and yet there is a difference between them, as is the nature of the parallelism of hebrew poetry, where the same ideas are repeated with a shade of modification, and the second of them somewhat surpassing the first. 'i will deliver him,' says the promise. that confirms the view that the promise in the previous verse, 'there shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling,' does not mean exemption from sorrow and trial because, if so, there would be no relevancy or blessedness in the promise of deliverance. he who needs 'deliverance' is the man who is surrounded by evils, and god's promise is not that no evil shall come to the man who trusts him, but that he shall be delivered out of the evil that does come, and that it will not be truly evil. and why is he to be delivered? 'because he has bound himself to me,' says god, 'therefore will i deliver him.' of course, if i am fastened to god, nothing that does not hurt him can hurt me. if i am knit to him as closely as this psalm contemplates, it is impossible but that out of his fulness my emptiness shall be filled, and with his rejoicing strength my weakness will be made strong. it is just the same idea as is given to us in the picture of peter upon the water, when the cold waves are up to his knees, and the coward heart says, 'i am ready to sink,' but yet, with the faith that comes with the fear, he puts out his hand and grasps christ's hand, and as soon as he does, and the two are united, he is buoyant, and rises again, and the water is beneath the soles of his feet. 'he sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters.' whoever is joined to god is lifted above all evil, and the evil that continues to eddy about him will change its character, and bear him onwards to his haven. for he who is thus knit to god in the living, pulsating bond of thought and affection and submission, will be delivered from sin. when a boy first learns to skate, he needs some one to go behind him and hold him up whilst he uses his unaccustomed limbs; and so, when we are upon the smooth, treacherous ice of this wicked world, it is by leaning on god that we are kept upright. 'he hath set himself close to me, i will deliver him,' says god. 'yea! he shall not fall, for the lord is able to make him stand.' still further, we have another great promise, which is the explanation and extension of the former, 'i will set him on high, because he hath known my name.' that is more than lifting a man up above the reach of the storms of life by means of any external deliverance. there is a better thing than that--namely, that our whole inward life be lived loftily. if it is true of us that we know his name, then our lives are 'hid with christ in god,' and far below our feet will be all the riot of earth and its noise and tumult and change. we shall live serene and uplifted lives on the mount, if we know his name and have bound ourselves to him, and the troubles and cares and changes and duties and joys of this present will be away down below us, like the lowly cottages in some poor village, seen from the mountain top, the squalor out of sight, the magnitude diminished, the noise and tumult dimmed to a mere murmur that interrupts not the sacred silence of the lofty peak where we dwell with god. 'i will set him on high because he knows my name.' then, perhaps, there is a hint in the words, as there is in subsequent words of the verse, of an elevation even higher than that, when, life ended and earth done, he shall receive into his glory those whom he hath guided by his counsel. 'i will set him on high, because he hath known my name,' says the jehovah of the old covenant. 'to him that overcometh will i grant to sit with me on my throne,' says the jesus of the new, who is the jehovah of the old. what god will do for us '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 show him my salvation.'--psalm xci. , . when considering the previous verses of this psalm, i pointed out that at its close we have god's own voice coming in to confirm and expand the promises which, in the earlier portion of it, have been made in his name to the devout heart. the words which we have now to consider cover the whole range of human life and need, and may be regarded as being a picture of the sure and blessed consequences of keeping our hearts fixed upon our father, god. he himself speaks them, and his word is true. the verses of the text fall into three portions. there are promises for the suppliant, promises for the troubled, promises for mortals. 'he shall call upon me and i will answer him'; that is for the suppliant. 'i will be with him in trouble; i will deliver him and honour him'; that is for the distressed. 'with long life will i satisfy him, and show him my salvation'; that is for the mortal. now let us look at these three. i. the promise to the suppliant. 'he will call upon me and i will answer.' we may almost regard the first of these two clauses as part of the promise. it is not merely a hebrew way of putting a supposition, 'if he calls upon me, then i will answer him,' nor merely a virtual commandment, 'call, if you expect an answer,' but itself is a part of the blessing and privilege of the devout and faithful heart. 'he shall call upon me'; the king opens the door of his chamber and beckons us within. in these great words we may see set forth both the instinct, as i may call it, of prayer, and the privilege of access to god. if a man's heart is set upon god, his very life-breath will be a cry to his father. he will experience a need which is not degraded by being likened to an instinct, for it acts as certainly as do the instincts of the lower creatures, which guide them by the straightest possible road to the surest supply of their need. any man who has learned in any measure to love god and trust him will, in the measure in which he has so learned, live in the exercise and habit of prayer; and it will be as much his instinct to cry to god in all changing circumstances as it is for the swallows to seek the sunny south when the winter comes, or the cold north when the sunny south becomes torrid and barren. so, then, 'he shall call upon me' is the characteristic of the truly god-knowing and god-loving heart, which was described in the previous verse. 'because he has clung to me in love, therefore will i deliver him; because he has known my name, therefore will i set him on high,' and because he has clung and known therefore it is certain that he will 'call upon me.' my friend! do you know anything of that instinctive appeal to god? does it come to your heart and to your lips without your setting yourself to pray, just as the thought of dear ones on earth comes stealing into our minds a hundred times a day, when we do not intend it nor know exactly how it has come? does god suggest himself to you in that fashion, and is the instinct of your hearts to call upon him? again, we see here not only the unveiling of the very deepest and most characteristic attribute of the devout soul, but also the assurance of the privilege of access. god lets us speak to him. and there is, further, a wonderful glimpse into the very essence of true prayer. 'he shall call upon me.' what for? no particular object is specified as sought. it is god whom we want, and not merely any things that even he can give. if asking for these only or mainly is our conception of what prayer is, we know little about it. true prayer is the cry of the soul for the living god, in whom is all that it needs, and out of whom is nothing that will do it good. 'he shall call upon me,' that is prayer. 'i will answer him.' yes! of course the instinct is not all on one side. if the devout heart yearns for god, god longs for the devout heart. if i might use such a metaphor, just as the ewe on one side of the hedge hears and answers the bleating of its lamb on the other, so, if my heart cries out for the living god, anything is more credible than that such a cry should not be answered. you may not get this, that, or the other blessing which you ask, for perhaps they are not blessings. you may not get what you fancy you need. we are not always good at translating our needs into words, and it is a mercy that there is some one that understands what we do want a great deal better than we do ourselves. but if below the specific petition there lies the cry of a heart that calls for the living god, then whether the specific petition be answered or dispersed into empty air will matter comparatively little. 'he shall call upon me,' and that part of his prayer 'i will answer' and come to him and be in him. is that our experience of what it is to pray, and our notion of what it is to be answered? ii. further, here we have a promise for suppliants. i take the next three clauses of the text as being all closely connected. 'i will be with him in trouble. i will deliver him and honour him'--in trouble, his presence; from trouble, his deliverance; after trouble, glorifying and refining. there are the whole theory and process of the discipline of the devout man's life. 'i will be with him in trouble.' the promise is not only that, when trials of any kind, larger or smaller, more grave or more slight, fall upon us, we shall become more conscious, if we take them rightly, of god's presence, but that all which is meant by god's presence shall really be more fully ours, and that he is, if i may say so, actually nearer us. though, of course, all words about being near or far have only a very imperfect application to our relation to him, still the gifts that are meant by his presence--that is to say, his sympathy, his help, his love--are more fully given to a man who in the darkness is groping for his father's hand, and yet not so much groping for as grasping it. he _is_ nearer us as well as _felt_ to be nearer us, if we take our sorrows rightly. the effect of sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing god closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. as long as anything troubles me, i may make it a means of bringing god closer to myself. therefore, there is no need for any sorrowful heart ever to say, 'i am solitary as well as sad.' he will always come and sit down by us, and if it be that, like poor job upon his dunghill, we are not able to bear the word of consolation, yet he will wait there till we are ready to take it. he is there all the same, though silent, and will be near all of us, if only we do not drive him away. 'he will call upon me and i will answer him'; and the beginning of the answer is the real presence of god with every troubled heart. then there follows the next stage, deliverance from trouble; 'i will _deliver_ him.' that is not the same word as is employed in the previous verse, though it is translated in the same way in our bibles. the word here means lifting up out of a pit, or dragging up out of the midst of anything that surrounds a man, and so setting him in some place of safety. is this promise always true, about people who in sorrow of any kind cast themselves upon god? do they always get deliverance from him? there are some sorrows from the pressure of which we shall never escape. some of us have to carry such. has this promise no application to the people for whom outward life can never bring an end of the sorrows and burdens that they carry? not so. he will deliver us not only by taking the burden off our backs, but by making us strong to carry it, and the sorrow, which has changed from wild and passionate weeping into calm submission, is sorrow from which we have been delivered. the serpent may still wound our heel, but if god be with us he will give us strength to press the wounded heel on the malignant head, and we can squeeze all the poison out of it. the bitterness remains; be it so, but let us be quite sure of this, that though sorrow be lifelong, that does not in the least contradict the great and faithful promise, 'i will be with him in trouble and deliver him,' for where he is _there_ is deliverance. lastly, there is the third of these promises for the troubled. 'i will honour him.' the word translated 'honour' is more correctly rendered 'glorify.' is not that the end of a trouble which has been borne in company with him; and from which, because it has been so borne, a devout heart is delivered even whilst it lasts? does not all such sorrow hallow, ennoble, refine, purify the sufferer, and make him liker his god? 'he for our profit, that we should be partakers of his holiness.' is not that god's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? when a blunt knife is ground upon a wheel, the sparks fly fast from the edge held down upon the swiftly-revolving emery disc, but that is the only way to sharpen the dull blade. friction, often very severe friction, and heat are indispensable to polish the shaft and turn the steel into a mirror that will flash back the sunshine. so when god holds us to his grindstone, it is to get a polish on the surface. 'i will deliver him and i will glorify him.' iii. last of all, we have the promise for mortals. 'with long life will i satisfy him, and show him my salvation.' i do not know whether by that first clause the psalmist meant, as people who sometimes like to make the psalmist mean as little as possible tell us that he did mean, simply 'length of days.' for my own part i do not believe that he did. he meant that, no doubt, for longevity was part of the old testament promises for this life. but 'length of days' does not 'satisfy' all old people who attain to it, and that 'satisfaction' necessarily implies something more than the prolongation of the physical life to old age. the idea contained in this promise may be illustrated by the expression which is used in reference to a select few of the old testament saints, of whom it is recorded that they died 'full of days.' that does not merely mean that they had many days, but that, whatever the number, they had as many as they wished, and departed unreluctantly, having had enough of life. they looked back, and saw that all the past had been very good, and that goodness and mercy had determined and accompanied all their days, and so they did not wish to linger longer here, but closed their eyes in peace, with no hungry, vain cravings for prolonged life. they had got all out of the world which it could give, and were contented to have done with it all. so this promise assures us that, if we are of those who, in the midst of fleeting days, lay hold on the 'ancient of days' and live by him, we shall find a table spread in the wilderness, and like travellers in an inn, having eaten enough, shall willingly obey the call to leave the meal provided on the road, and pass into the father's house, and sit at the bountiful feast there. the heart that lives near god, whether its years be few or many, will find in life all that life is capable of giving, and when the end comes will not be unwilling that it should come, nor hold on desperately to the last fag-end and fragment of life that it can keep within its clutches, but will be satisfied to have lived and be contented to die. nor is this all, for says the psalmist, 'i will show him my salvation.' that sight comes after he is satisfied with length of days here. and so i think the fair interpretation of the words, in their place in this psalm, is, that however dimly, yet certainly, here the psalmist saw something beyond. it was not a black curtain which dropped at death. he believed that, yonder, the man who here had been living near god, calling to him, realising his presence, and satisfied with the fatness of his house upon earth, would see something that would satisfy him more. 'i shall be satisfied when i awake in thy likeness.' that is satisfaction indeed, and the vision, which is possession, of that perfected salvation is the vision that makes the blessedness of heaven. so, dear friends! we, if we will, may have access to god's chamber at every moment, and may have his presence, which will make it impossible that we should ever be alone. we may have him to deliver us from all the evil that is in evil, and to turn it into good. we may have him to purge, and cleanse, and uplift, and change us into his likeness, even by the ministry of our trials. we may get out of life the last drop of the sweetness that he has put in it; and when it comes to a close, may say, 'it is enough! let thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,' and then we may go to see it better in that world where we shall all, if we attain thither, be 'satisfied' when we 'awake in his likeness.' forgiveness and retribution 'thou wast a god that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.'--psalm xcix. . when the prophet isaiah saw the great vision which called him to service, he heard from the lips of the seraphim around the throne the threefold ascription of praise: 'holy! holy! holy! lord god of hosts.' this psalm seems to be an echo of that heavenly chorus, for it is divided into three sections, each of which closes with the refrain, 'he is holy,' and each of which sets forth some one aspect or outcome of that divine holiness. in the first part the holiness of his universal dominion is celebrated; in the second, the holiness of his revelations and providences to israel, his inheritance; in the third, the holiness of his dealings with them that call upon his name, both when he forgives their sins and when he scourges for the sins that he has forgiven. two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for what i have further to say. the first is that the word 'though' in my text, which holds together the two statements that it contains, is commentary rather than translation. for the original has the simple 'and,' and the difference between the two renderings is this, that 'though' implies some real or apparent contrariety between forgiveness and taking vengeance, which makes their co-existence remarkable, whereas 'and' lays the two things down side by side. the psalmist simply declares that they are both there, and puts in no such fine distinction as is represented by the words 'though,' or 'but,' or 'yet.' to me it seems a great deal more eloquent in its simplicity and reticence that he should say, 'thou forgavest them and tookest vengeance,' than that he should say 'thou forgavest them though thou tookest vengeance.' then there is another point to be noted, viz. we must not import into that word 'vengeance,' when it is applied to divine actions, the notions which cluster round it when it is applied to ours. for in its ordinary use it means retaliation, inflicted at the bidding of personal enmity or passion. but there are no turbid elements of that sort in god. his retribution is a great deal more analogous to the unimpassioned, impersonal action of public law than it is to the 'wild justice of revenge.' when we speak of his 'vengeance' we simply mean--unless we have dropped into a degrading superstition--the just recompense of reward which divinely dogs all sin. there is one saying in scripture which puts the whole matter in its true light, 'vengeance is mine; i will repay,' saith the lord; the last clause of which interprets the first. so, then, with these elucidations, we may perhaps see a little more clearly the sequence of the psalmist's thought here--god's forgiveness, and co-existing with that, god's scourging of the sin which he forgives; and both his forgiveness and the scourging, the efflux and the manifestation of the divine holiness. now just let us look at these thoughts. here we have-- i. the adoring contemplation of the divine forgiveness. i suppose that is almost exclusively a thought due to the historical revelation, through the ages, to israel, crowned, as well as deepened, by the culmination and perfecting of the eternal revelation of god in jesus christ our lord. i suppose the conception of a forgiving god is the product of the old and of the new testament. but familiar as the word is to us, and although the thing that it means is embodied in the creed of christendom, 'i believe ... in the forgiveness of sins,' i think that a great many of us would be somewhat put to it, if we were called upon to tell definitely and clearly what we mean when we speak of the forgiveness of sins. many of us, prior to thinking about the matter, would answer 'the non-infliction or remission of penalty.' and i am far from denying that that is an element in forgiveness, although it is the lowest and the most external, in both the old testament and the new testament conception of it. but we must rise a great deal higher than that. we are entitled, by our lord's teaching, to parallel god's forgiveness and man's forgiveness; and so perhaps the best way to understand the perfect type of forgiveness is to look at the imperfect types which we see round us. what, then, do we mean by human forgiveness? it is seen in multitudes of cases where there is no question at all of penalty. two men get alienated from one another. one of them does something which the other thinks is a sin against friendship or loyalty, and he who is sinned against says, 'i forgive you.' that does not mean that he does not inflict a penalty, because there is no penalty in question. forgiveness is not a matter of conduct, then, primarily, but it is a matter of disposition, of attitude, or, to put it into a shorter word, it is a matter of the heart; and even on the lower level of the human type, we see that remission of penalty may be a part, sometimes is and sometimes is not, but is always the smallest part of it, and a derivative and secondary result of something that went before. an unconscious recognition of this attitude of mind and heart, as being the essential thing in forgiveness, brings about an instance of the process by which two words that originally mean substantially the same thing come to acquire each its special shade of meaning. what i refer to is this--when a judicial sentence on a criminal is remitted, we never hear any one speak about the criminal being 'forgiven.' we keep the word 'pardon,' in our daily conventional intercourse, for slight offences or for the judicial remission of a sentence. the king pardons a criminal; you never hear about the king 'forgiving' a criminal. and that, as i take it, is just because people have been groping after the thought that i am trying to bring out, viz. that the remission of penalty is one thing, and purging the heart of all alienation and hatred is another; and that the latter is forgiveness, whilst the former has to be content with being pardon. the highest type of forgiveness is the paternal. every one of us who remembers our childhood, and every one of us who has had children of his own, knows what paternal forgiveness is. it is not when you put away the rod that the little face brightens again and the tears cease to flow, but it is when _your_ face clears, and the child knows that there is no cloud between it and the father, or still more the mother, that forgiveness is realised. the immediate effect of our transgressions is that we, as it were, thereby drop a great, black rock into the stream of the divine love, and the channel is barred by our action; and god's forgiveness is when, as was the case in another fashion in the deluge, the floods rise above the tops of the highest hills; and as the good old hymn that has gone out of fashion nowadays, says, over sins: 'like the mountains for their size, the seas of sovereign grace arise.' when the love of god flows over the black rock, as the incoming tide does over some jagged reef, then, and not merely when the rod is put on the shelf, is forgiveness bestowed and received. but, as i have said, the remission of penalty _is_ an element in forgiveness. some people say: 'it is a very dangerous thing, in the interests of christian truth, to treat that relation of a loving father as if it expressed all that god is to men.' quite so; god is king as well as father. there are analogies, both in paternal and regal government, which help us to understand the divine dealings with us; though, of course, in regard to both we must always remember that the analogies are remote and not to be pressed too far. but even in recognising the fact that an integral part of forgiveness is remission of penalty, we come back, by another path, to the same point, that the essence of forgiveness is the uninterrupted flow of love. remission of penalty;--yes, by all means. but then the question comes, what _is_ the penalty of sin? and i suppose that the deepest answer to that is, separation from god. but if the true new testament conception of the penalty of sin is the eternal death which is the result of the rending of a man away from the source of life, then the remission of the penalty is precisely identical with the uninterrupted flow of the divine love. the mists of autumnal mornings drape the sky in gloom, and turn the blessed sun itself into a lurid ball of fire. sweep away the mists, and its rays again pour out beneficence. the man who sins, piles up, as it were, a cloud-bank between himself and god, and forgiveness, which is the remission of the penalty, is the sweeping away of the cloud-bank, and the pouring out of sunshine upon a darkened heart. so, brethren! the essence of forgiveness is that god shall love me all the same, though i sin against him. but now turn, in the next place, to ii. god's scourging of the sin which he forgives. look at the instances in our psalm, 'moses and aaron among his priests.... they called upon the lord and he answered them. thou wast a god that forgavest them, and thou tookest vengeance of their doings.' moses dies on pisgah, aaron is stripped of his priestly robes by his brother's hand and left alone amongst the clouds and the eagles, on the solitary summit of the mountain, and yet moses and aaron knew themselves forgiven the sins for which they died those lonely deaths. and these are but instances of what is universally true, that the sin which is pardoned is also 'avenged' in the sense of having retribution dealt out to it. i need not dwell upon this at any length, but let me just remind you how there are two provinces of human experience in which this is abundantly true: one, that of outward consequences, and another that of inward consequences. take, for instance, two men, boon companions, who together have wasted their substance in riotous living. one of them is converted, as we call it, becomes a christian, knows himself forgiven. the other one is not. is the one less certain to have a corrugated liver than the other? will the disease, the pauperism, the ruined position in life, the loss of reputation be any different in the cases of him who is pardoned and of him who is not? no; the two will suffer in a similar fashion, and the different attitude that the one has to the divine love from that which the other has, will not make a hair of difference as to the results that follow. the consequences are none the less divine retribution because they are the result of natural laws, and none the less penal because they are automatically inflicted. there is another department in which we see the same law working, and that is the inward consequences. a man does change his attitude to his former sins, when he knows that he is pardoned; but the results of these sins will follow all the same, whether he is forgiven or not. memory will be tarnished, habits will be formed and chain a man, capacities will be forfeited, weaknesses will ensue. the wounds may be healed, but the scars will remain, and when we consider how certainly, and as i said, divinely, such issues dog all manner of transgression, we can understand what the psalmist meant when, not thinking about a future retribution, but about the present life's experiences, he said, 'thou wast a god that forgavest them, and thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' 'the sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing,' and that will be his case whether he is forgiven, or not forgiven, by the divine love. so, dear friends! do not let us confound the two things which are so widely separated, the flow of the divine love to us irrespective of our sins, which is the true forgiveness, and the remission of the penalty, the infliction of which may itself be a part of forgiveness. 'whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,' and he will reap it whether he has sown darnel and tares and poisonous seeds, of which he is now ashamed, and for which he has received forgiveness, or whether he has not asked nor received it. only remember that if we humbly realise the great fact that god has forgiven us, we can, as they say, 'take our punishment' in an altogether different spirit and temper, and it comes to be, not judicial penalty, but paternal chastisement, the token of love, and of which we can say that 'we are judged of the lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.' lastly, my text leads us to think of-- iii. forgiveness and scourging as both issues of holy love. some people, in their narrow and altogether superficial view of christianity, would divide between the two, and say forgiveness comes from god's love, and scourging comes from his holiness. but this psalm puts the two together, just as we must put together as inseparable from each other the two conceptions of holiness and of love. now our modern notions of what is meant by the love of god are a great deal too sentimental and gushing and limp. love is degraded unless there be holiness in it. it becomes immoral good nature, much more than anything that deserves the name of love. a god who is all love, so much so that it makes no difference to him whether a man is a saint or a sinner, is not a god to be worshipped, and scarcely a god to be admired. he is lower than we, not higher. but his holy love is like a sea of glass mingled with fire; the love being shot all through, as it were, with streams of flame. this holy love underlies the forgiveness of sins. to forgive may sometimes be profoundly right; it may sometimes be profoundly immoral. a general gaol delivery simply sets the scoundrels free; a universal amnesty is a failure of justice, and a very doubtful benefit. but the forgiveness, which is the issue of holy love, is a means to an end, and the end which it has in view is that, drawn by answering love to a pardoning god, we may be drawn from the sins which alienate us from him. there is no such sure way of making a man forsake his sins as to give him the assurance that god has forgiven them. 'thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy sins, when'--i smite? no--'i am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done.' 'thou wast a god that forgavest them,' and in the very act of forgiving, didst draw them from their sins. that holy love, in like manner, underlies retribution. i have been speaking of retribution mainly as it is seen in the working of natural law. it is none the less god's act, because it is the operation of the laws which he impressed upon his creation at the beginning. you have weaving machines in your mills that whenever a thread breaks, stop dead. is it the machine or the maker that is to get the credit of that? god has set us in an order of things wherein, and has given us a nature whereby, automatically, every sin, as it were, stops the loom, and 'every transgression and disobedience receives its just recompense of reward.' but men sometimes say 'that is nature; that is not god.' god lies at the back of nature, and works through nature. although nature is not god, god is nature. therefore it is 'thou' that 'takest vengeance of their inventions.' let us, then, remember that retribution is a token of love, meant to drive us from our sins, just as forgiveness is meant to draw us from them. our psalmist had come the length of putting these two things together, forgiveness and retribution. we have reached further, and here is the new testament enlargement and deepening and explanation of the old testament thought: 'if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,' and in the very act, 'to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' 'if any man sin, we have an advocate with the father, jesus christ the righteous.' inviolable messiahs and prophets 'he reproved kings for their sakes; . saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.'--psalm cv. , . the original reference of these words is to the fathers of the jewish people--the three wandering shepherds, abraham, isaac, and jacob. the psalmist transfers to them the great titles which properly belong to a later period of jewish history. none of the three were ever in the literal sense of the word 'anointed,' but all the three had what anointing symbolised. none of them were in the literal or narrow sense of the word 'prophets'--that is to say, predicters of future events--but one of them was called a 'prophet' even in his lifetime. and they all possessed that intimacy of communion with god which imparted the power of _forth-speaking for_ him. insignificant as they were, they were bigger than the pharaohs and abimelechs and the other kinglets that strutted their little day beside them. astonished as the monarch of egypt would have been, or the king of the philistines either, if he had been told that the wandering shepherd was of far more importance for the world than he was, it was true. 'he suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.' further, as judaism, with its anointings and prophecies was a narrower system following upon a wider one, so a wider one has succeeded it; and we step into the position occupied by these patriarchs--on whose heads no anointing oil had been poured, and into whose lips no supernatural gifts of prediction had been infused. it is no arrogance, but the simplest recognition of the essential facts of the case, if we take these words of the psalmist's and transfer them bodily to the whole mass of christian people, and to each individual atom that makes up the mass. all are anointed; all are prophets; of all it is true that god suffers no man nor thing to do them wrong. and kings and dynasties and the politics of the world are all in the hands of one whose supreme purpose is that through men there may be made known to all mankind the significant tidings of his love. therefore, his church is founded upon a rock, and earth is the servant of the servants of god. i. every christian is a 'messiah.' you know that the word 'anointed' is a translation of the hebrew word 'messiah,' or of the greek word 'christ.' the meaning of the symbolic 'anointing' was simply consecration to office by the divine will, and endowment with the capacity for that office by the divine gift. in the ancient system it was mainly employed--though not, perhaps, exclusively--as a means of designating, and when received in humble dependence on god, of fitting, a man for the two great offices of king and priest. oil was an appropriate symbol. its gentle flow, its soothing, suppling effect, and in another aspect, its value as a means of invigoration and sustenance, and in yet another, as a source of light, peculiarly adapted it to be an emblem of the bestowment on a patient and trustful and submissive heart that was saying, 'lord, take me, and use me as thou wilt,' of that divine spirit by whose silent, sweet, soft-flowing, strong influences men were prepared for god's service. jesus was the christ, the messias, because that divine spirit dwelt in him without measure. if we are christians in the real sense of the word, then, however imperfectly, yet really, and by god's grace increasingly, there is such a union between us and our saviour as that into us there does flow the anointing of his spirit. there being a community of life derived from the source of life, it is no presumption to say that every christian man is a christ. the word has been used of late with unwise significations, but the truth that has been inadequately expressed by such uses is the great truth of scripture; 'he that is joined to the lord is one spirit,' and there does flow the anointing oil from the head of the high priest to the skirts of the garments. every man and woman who has any hold of jesus christ at all, in the measure of his or her hold, is drawing from him this 'unction of the holy one.' so, brethren, rise to the solemnity, the awfulness, the joyfulness of your true position, and understand that you, too, are anointed, though not for the same purposes (and in humbler and derived fashion), for which the spirit dwelt without measure upon 'the first-born among many brethren.' kings were anointed; and when that divine gift comes into a man's heart, it, and as i believe, only it, makes him lord of himself, of circumstances, of time, and of the world. 'all things are yours, and ye are christ's.' there is one real royalty--the royalty of the man who rules because he submits. every christian soul may be described as gideon's brethren were described, 'as thou art, so were they: each one resembled the children of a king,' for if christ's spirit is in the christian's spirit, the disciple will grow like his master, and it will be growingly true of us, that 'as he is, so are we in this world.' priests were anointed. and we, if we are christian people, have the prerogative of direct access to the divine presence, and need neither church nor sacraments to intervene or mediate between us and him. the true democracy of christianity lies in that word 'mine anointed.' ii. further, every christian man is a prophet. i have already said that there is no historical warrant for supposing that the gift of prophecy, in its narrower sense, was ever bestowed upon any of these patriarchs. but prediction is only one corner of the prophetic office. the word is connected with a root which means 'to boil, or bubble like a fountain,' and it expresses, not so much the theme of the utterance as its nature. the welling up, from a full heart, of god's thoughts and god's truth, that is prophecy. the patriarchs were prophets, not in the sense that they had the gift of beholding and foretelling visions of the future, and all the wonder that should be, but in the higher sense--for it is the higher as well as broader--of being bearers of a divine word, breathed into them by that anointing spirit, that it might be uttered forth by them. that sort of prophetic inspiration belongs to all christians. it is the result of the relationship between christ and christians of which we have been speaking. every one who has been anointed will be thus gifted. god's 'messiahs' will be god's prophets. if we are in touch with god, and have our hearts and whole spiritual natures drawn and kept so near him as that we are ever receiving from him of his transcendent and mysterious life, then silence will be impossible. the lips will not be able to contain themselves, but will speak forth that of which the heart is full. and thus every christian man, in the measure of his true christianity, will be a prophet of the most high. i do not need to point the lesson. a silent christian is an anomaly, a contradiction in terms, as much as black light, or dark stars. if christ is in you he will come out of you. if your hearts are full the crystal treasure will flow over the brim. it is easy to be dumb when you have nothing to say, and that is the condition of hundreds of people who fancy themselves to be, and are called by others, 'christians.' 'mine anointed' cannot help being 'my prophets.' if you are not prophets, if there never is any bubbling up of the fountain demanding utterance, ask yourselves whether there is any fountain there at all. iii. and so, lastly, every christian man, in his double capacity of anointed and prophet, is watched over by god. one is tempted to diverge into wider considerations, and speak of the relative importance of things secular and sacred (to adopt a doubtful distinction) in the history of the world, and how the former are for the sake of the latter. but i do not yield to the temptation. let me rather take the thought here as it applies to our own little lives. abraham more than once in his lifetime, though sometimes by his own fault, was brought into very perilous places. there are one or two incidents which are familiar to most of us, i dare say, in his life which are evidently referred to in the phrase 'he reproved kings for their sakes.' the principle remains in full force to-day, and god says to every thing and person, death included, 'do my prophets no harm.' they may slay; they cannot harm. if i might use a very homely metaphor, sportsmen train retriever dogs to bring their game without ruffling a feather. god trains evils and sorrows to lay hold of us, and bring us to, and lay us down at, his feet untouched. there is no real harm in so-called evil. that is the interpretation that christianity gives to such words as this of my text, not because it is forced to weaken them by the obstinate facts of life, but because it has learned to strengthen them by the understanding of what is harm and what is good; what is gain and what is loss. peter shall be delivered out of prison by the skin of his teeth when they are hammering at the scaffold on the other side of the wall, and the dawn is just beginning to show itself in the sky; whilst james shall have his head cut off. was that because god loved peter better than james? was one harmed and the other not? ah! peter's turn came all in good time. peter and his brother paul had both to bow their necks to the headsman's sword one day, although one of them said, 'who shall harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?' and the other said, when within sight of his death, 'he shall deliver me from every evil work.' were they disappointed? let us hear how paul ends the same verse: 'and shall save me into his heavenly kingdom.' ay! and he _was_ 'saved into the heavenly kingdom' when outside the walls of rome; where a gaudy church stands now, he died for his master. no harm came to him. god said to death, 'do my prophet no harm!' and death docilely did him good, and brought him to his lord. only, dear friends! let us remember that the inviolableness of the ambassador depends on his function, and not on his person; and that if we want to be kept from all evil, we must do the work for which we have been sent here. so let us understand the meaning of our difficulties and sorrows. let us set ourselves to our tasks, live up to the level of the high names which we have a right to claim, and be sure that there is no harm in the harm that befalls us; and that all evil things 'work together for good to them that love god.' god's promises tests 'until the time that his word came, the word of the lord tried him.' --psalm cv. . i do not think i shall be mistaken if i affirm that these words do not convey any very clear idea to most readers. they were spoken with reference to joseph, during the period of his imprisonment. for the understanding of them i think we must observe that there is a contrast drawn between two 'words,' 'his' (_i.e._ joseph's) and god's. if we lay firm hold of that clue, i think it will lead us into clear daylight, and it will be obvious that joseph's word, which delayed its coming, or fulfilment, was either his boyish narrative of the dreams that foreshadowed his exaltation, or less probably, his words to his fellow-prisoners in the interpretation of their dreams. in either case, the _terminus ad quem_, the point to which our attention is directed, is the period when that word came to be fulfilled, and what my text says is that during that long season of unfulfilled hope, the 'word of god,' which was revealed in joseph's dream, and was the ground on which his own 'word' rested--did what? encouraged, heartened, strengthened him? no, that unfulfilled promise might encourage or discourage him; but the psalmist fixes our thoughts on another effect which, whether it encouraged or discouraged, it certainly had, namely, that it tested him, and found out what stuff he was made of, and whether there was staying power enough in him to hold on, in unconquerable faith, to a promise made long since, communicated by no more reliable method than a dream, and of the fulfilment of which not the faintest sign had, for all these weary years, appeared. his circumstances, judged by appearances, shattered his early visions, and bade him believe them to be no more than the boyish aspirations which grown men dismiss or find melt away of themselves when life's realities wake the dreamer. we might either say that the non-fulfilment of the promise tested joseph, or that the promise, by its non-fulfilment, tested him. the psalmist chooses the latter more forcible and half paradoxical mode of speech. it proved the depth and vitality of his faith, and his ability to see things that are not as though they were. will this man be able continually through years of poverty and imprisonment to keep his eye on the light beyond, to see his star through clouds? will he despise the 'light affliction,' in the potent and immovable belief that it is 'but for a moment?' thus, for all these years the great blessed word, or the hope that was built upon it, tested joseph in the very depths of his soul. and is not that just what our anticipations, built upon god's assurances, whether they are in regard to earthly matters that seem long in coming, or whether they, as they ought to do, travel beyond the bounds of the material, to grasp _the_ hope which is _the_ promise, 'the hope of eternal life,' ought to do for us, test us and find out what sort of people we are? and they do! let us go back to the man in our text. according to some commentators, he was imprisoned for something like ten years. we do not know how long his egyptian bondage had lasted, nor how long before that his endurance of the active ill-will of his surly brothers had gone on. but at all events his chrysalis stage was very long, and one would not have wondered if he had said to himself, down in that desert pit or in that egyptian dungeon, 'ah, yes! they _were_ dreams, and _only_ dreams,' or if he had, as so many of us do, turned his back on his youthful visions, and gained the sad power of being able to smile at his old hopes and ambitions. brethren! especially you young men and women, cherish your youthful dreams. they are often the prophecies of capacities and possibilities, signs of what god means you to make yourselves. but that is apart from my subject. suppose we had clear before us, with unwavering confidence in its reality, the great promise which god has given us, do you not think that its presence would purify our souls, and give power and dignity to our lives? the promise was a test, says my text. the word which it employs to designate the manner of testing or trying, is one drawn from the smelting operations of the goldsmith, by which, heat being applied, the mass is made fluid and the dross is run off, and as the result of the trial, there flows out gold refined by fire. 'having these promises, dearly beloved! let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.' 'every man who hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.' the result of the great promise of eternal life and of the hope that it kindles is meant to be that it shall purge our spirits from meanness, from sense, from undue dependence upon the miserable trivialities of to-day, that it shall emancipate us from slavery to the moment, and lead us into the liberty of the eternities, 'while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen.' oh! if we would only see clearly and habitually before us--for we could if we would--what god's heart inclines him to do for us, and what he certainly will do for us, in the far-off future, if we will only let him, do you not think that these trifles that put us off our equanimity this morning would have been borne with a little more composure? do you not think that the things that looked so huge when we were down abreast of them would, by the laws of perspective, diminish in their proportions as we rose steadily above them, until all the hubbub in the valley was unheard on the mountain peak, and the great trees that waved their giant branches below and shut out the sky from our eyes while we were among them would dwindle to a green smear on the plain, and all the foes 'show scarce so gross as beetles,' from the height from which we look down upon them? get up beside god's promise, if you would take the true dimensions of cares and tasks, and burdens and sorrows. then, brother! you will learn the truth of the paradox, 'light ... but for a moment'; though often they all but crush the burden-bearing shoulder and seem to last through slow years. 'the word of the lord tried him,' and because it tried him, it purified him. if we give credence, as we ought to, to that word, it will purify _us_, and it will test of what contexture our faith is. the further away the object of any hope is, the more noble the cherishing of it makes a life. the trivial, short-lived anticipations which do not look beyond the end of next week are far less operative in making strong and noble characters than are those, of whatever kind they may be otherwise, which look far ahead and need years for their realisation. it is a blessing to have the mark far, far away, because that means that the arm that pulls the bow must draw more strongly, and the eye that sees the goal must gaze more intently. be thankful for the promise that cannot be fulfilled in this world because it lifts us above the low levels, and already makes us feel as if we were endowed with immortality. the word will test our patience, and it will test our willingness, though we be heirs of the kingdom, to do humble tasks. christian men in this world are sons of a king, and look forward to a royal inheritance, but in the meantime they have, as it were, to keep a little huckster's shop in a back alley. but if we adequately realised the promise of our inheritance, the meanness of our surroundings and the triviality of our occupations would not make us mean or trivial, but our souls would be 'like stars' and 'dwell apart' while we travelled 'on life's common way in cheerful godliness,' and did small duties in such a manner as to make them great. because joseph was sure that god's long-lingering word would be fulfilled, he did not mind though he had to be the lackey of his brothers, the midianites' chattel, potiphar's slave, pharaoh's prisoner, and a servant of servants in his dungeon. so with us, the measure of our willing acceptance of our present tasks, burdens, humiliations, and limitations is the measure of our firm faith in the promise that tarries. 'if we hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it,' says the apostle, though most of us would have said exactly the opposite. we generally suppose that the more ardent the hope, the more is it impatient of delay. paul had learned better. the more certain the assurance, the better we can tolerate the procrastination of its fulfilment. so, brethren! god's greatest gift to us, like all his other gifts, has in it the quality of testing us; and we can come to a pretty fair approximation to an estimate of what sort of christian people we are, by observing how we deal with god's promises of help according to our need here and of heaven hereafter. how do we deal with them? why, a sadly large number of us never think about them at all; and a large proportion of the others would a great deal rather stay working in the huckster's shop in the back alley, than go home to the king. i am quite sure that if the inmost sentiments of the bulk of professing christians about a future life were dragged into light, these would be a revelation of a faith all honeycombed with insincerity. god tests us, and it is a sharp test if we submit ourselves to it; he tests us by his promises. 'child, wilt thou believe?' is the first testing question put to us by these. 'wilt thou keep them hid in thy heart?' is the next. 'wilt thou go out towards them in desire?' is the next. 'wilt thou live worthy of them?' is the last. 'the word of the lord tried him.' so let us be thankful for the delays of love, for the wide gap between promise and realisation. it was for joseph's sake that the slow years were multiplied between the first gleam of his future and the full sunshine of his exaltation. and it is for our sakes that god in like manner protracts the period of anticipation and non-fulfilment. 'if the vision tarry, wait for it.' 'jesus loved mary and martha and lazarus their brother' very dearly. 'when he heard, therefore, that he was sick, he abode still two days'--to give time for lazarus to die--'in the same place where he was.' ay, and when each sister came to him with her most natural and yet most faithless 'lord! if thou hadst been here my brother had not died,' he only said, 'if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of god.' was not lazarus dearer, restored from the grave, than he would have been, raised from his sickbed? is not the delaying of the blessing a means of increase of the blessing? and shall not we be sure that however long 'he that shall come' may seem to tarry ere he comes, when he _has_ come they who have waited for his coming more than they that watch for the morning and have sometimes been ready to cry out: 'hath the lord forgotten? doth his promise fail for ever more?' will be ashamed of their impatient moments and will humbly and thankfully exclaim: 'he came at the very right time and did _not_ tarry.' 'until the time that his word came, the word of the lord tried him,' and the coming of that word was all the more blessed for every heavy-laden hour of hope deferred, which, by god's grace, did not make the heart sick, but prepared it for fuller possession of the blessings enhanced by the delays of love. soldier priests 'thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.'--psalm cx. . it is no part of my present purpose to establish the reference of this psalm to our lord. we have christ's own authority for that. it does not seem to be typical--that is to say, it does not appear to have had a lower application to a king of israel who was a shadow of the true monarch, but rather to refer only to the coming sovereign, whom david was helped to discern, indeed, by his own regal office, but whose office and character, as here set forth, far surpass anything belonging to him or to his dynasty. the attributes of the king, the union in his case of the royal and priestly dignities, his seat at the right hand of god, his acknowledged supremacy over the greatest jewish ruler, who here calls him 'my lord,' his eternal dominion, his conquest of many nations, and his lifting up of his head in triumphant rule that knows no end--all these characteristics seem to forbid the possibility of a double reference, and to demand the acknowledgment of a distinct and exclusive prophecy of christ. taking that for granted without more words, it strikes one as remarkable that this description of the subjects of the priest-king should be thus imbedded in the very heart of the grand portraiture of the monarch himself. it is the anticipation of the profound new testament thought of the unity of christ and his church. by simple faith a union is brought about so close and intimate that all his is theirs, and the picture of his glory is incomplete without the vision of 'the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.' therefore, between the word of god which elevates him to his right hand, and the oath of god which consecrates him a priest for ever, is this description of the army of the king. the full force of the words will, i hope, appear as we advance. for the present it will be enough to say that there are really in our text three co-ordinate clauses, all descriptive of the subjects of the monarch, regarded as a band of warriors--and that the main ideas are these:--the subjects are willing soldiers; the soldiers are priests; the priest-soldiers are as dew upon the earth. or, in other words, we have here the very heart of the christian character set forth as being willing consecration; then we have the work which christian men have to do, and the spirit in which they are to do it, expressed in that metaphor of their priestly attire; and then we have their refreshing and quickening influence upon the world. i. the subjects of the priest-king are willing soldiers. in accordance with the warlike tone of the whole psalm, our text describes the subjects as an army. that military metaphor comes out more clearly when we attach the true meaning to the words, 'in the day of thy power.' the word rendered, and rightly rendered, 'power,' has the same ambiguity which that word has in the english of the date of our translation, and for a century later, as you may find in shakespeare and milton, who both used it in the sense of 'army.' singularly enough we do not employ 'powers' in that meaning, but we do another word which means the same thing--and talk of 'forces,' meaning thereby 'troops.' by the way, what a melancholy sign it is of the predominance of that infernal military spirit, that it should have so leavened language, that the 'forces' of a nation means its soldiers, its embattled energies turned to the work of destruction. but the phrase is so used here. 'the day of thy power' is not a mere synonym for 'the time of thy might,' but means specifically 'the day of thine army,' that is, 'the day when thou dost muster thy forces and set them in array for the war.' the king is going forth to conquest. but he goes not alone. behind him come his faithful followers, all pressing on with willing hearts and high courage. then, to begin with, the warfare which he wages is one not confined to him. alone he offers the sacrifice by which he atones; but, as we shall see, we too are priests. he rules, and his servants rule with him. but ere that time comes, they are to be joined with him in the great warfare by which he wins the earth for himself. 'as captain of the lord's host am i now come.' he wins no conquests for himself; and now that he is exalted at god's right hand, he wins none by himself. we have to do his work, we have to fight his battles as good soldiers of jesus christ. by power derived from him, but wielded by ourselves; with courage inspired by him, but filling our hearts; not as though he needed us, but inasmuch as he is pleased to use us, we have to wage warfare for and to please him who hath chosen us to be soldiers. the captain of our salvation sits at the right hand of god, expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. he has bidden us to keep the field and fight the fight. from his height he watches the conflict--nay, he is with us while we wage it. so long as we strike for him, so long is it his power that teaches our hands to war. our king's flag is committed to our care; but we are not left to defend it alone. in indissoluble unity, the king and the subjects, the chief and his vassals, the captain and his soldiers, are knit together--and wheresoever his people are, in all the danger and hardships of the long struggle, there is he, to keep their heads in the day of battle, and make them more than conquerors. then, again, that warfare is shared in by all the subjects. it is a levy _en masse_--an armed nation. the whole of the people are embodied for the battle. it is not the work of a select few, but of every one who calls christ 'lord,' to be his faithful servant and soldier. whatever varieties of occupation may be set us by him, one purpose is to be kept in view and one end to be effected by them all. every christian man is bound to strive for the reduction of all human hearts under christ's dominion. the tasks may be different, but the result should be one. some of us have to toil in the trenches, some of us to guard the camp, some to lead the assault, some to stay by the stuff and keep the communications open. be it so. we are all soldiers, and he alone has to determine our work. we are responsible for the spirit of it, he for its success. again, there are no _mercenaries_ in these ranks, no pressed men. the soldiers are all volunteers. 'thy people shall be willing.' pause for a moment upon that thought. dear brethren! there are two kinds of submission and service. there is submission because you cannot help it, and there is submission because you like it. there is a sullen bowing down beneath the weight of a hand which you are too feeble to resist, and there is a glad surrender to a love which it would be a pain not to obey. some of us feel that we are shut in by immense and sovereign power which we cannot oppose. and yet, like some raging rebel in a dungeon, or some fluttering bird in a cage, we beat ourselves, all bruised and bloody, against the bars in vain attempts at liberty, alternating with fits of cowed apathy as we slink into a corner of our cell. some of us, thank god! feel that we are enclosed on every side by that mighty hand which none can resist, and from which we would not stray if we could, and we joyfully hide beneath its shelter, and gladly obey when it points. constrained obedience is no obedience. unless there be the glad surrender of the will and heart, there is no surrender at all. god does not want compulsory submission. he does not care to rule over people who are only crushed down by greater power. he does not count that those serve who sullenly acquiesce because they dare not oppose. christ seeks for no pressed men in his ranks. whosoever does not enlist joyfully is not reckoned as his. and the question comes to us, brethren!--what is my relation to that loving lord, to that redeemer king? do i submit because his love has won my heart, and it would be a pang not to serve him; or do i submit because i know him strong, and am afraid to refuse? if the former, all is well; he calls us 'not servants but friends.' if the latter, all is wrong; we are not subjects, but enemies. there is another idea involved in this description. the soldiers are not only marked by glad obedience, but that obedience rests upon the sacrifice of themselves. the word here rendered 'willing' is employed throughout the levitical law for 'freewill offerings.' and if we may venture to bring that reference in here, it carries us a step farther in this characterisation of the army. this glad submission comes from self-consecration and surrender. it is in that host as it was in the army whose heroic self-devotion was chaunted by deborah under her palm-tree, 'the people willingly offered themselves.' hence came courage, devotion, victory. with their lives in their hands they flung themselves on the foe, and nothing could stand against the onset of men who recked not of themselves. there is one grand thing even about the devilry of war--the transcendent self-abnegation with which, however poor and unworthy may be the cause, a man casts himself away, 'what time the foeman's line is broke.' the poorest, vulgarest, most animal natures rise for a moment into something like nobility, as the surge of the strong emotion lifts them to that height of heroism. life is then most glorious when it is given away for a great cause. that sacrifice is the one noble and chivalrous element which gives interest to war--the one thing that can be disentangled from its hideous associations, and can be transferred to higher regions of life. that spirit of lofty consecration and utter self-forgetfulness must be ours, if we would be christ's soldiers. our obedience will then be glad when we feel the force of, and yield to, that gentle, persuasive entreaty, 'i beseech you, brethren! by the mercies of god, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.' there is 'one sacrifice for sin for ever'--which never can be repeated, nor exhausted, nor copied. and the loving, faithful acceptance of that sacrifice of propitiation leads our hearts to the response of thank-offering, the sacrifice and surrender of ourselves to him who has given himself not only to, but for us. it cannot be recompensed, but it may be acknowledged. let us give ourselves to christ, for he has died for us. let us give ourselves to christ, for only in such surrender do we truly find ourselves. let us give ourselves to christ, for such a sacrifice makes all life fair and noble, and that altar sanctifies the gift. let us give ourselves to christ, for without such sacrifice we have no place in the host whom he leads to victory. 'thy people shall be willing offerings in the day of thy power.' still further, another remarkable idea may be connected with this word. by a natural transition, of which illustrations may be found in other languages, it comes to mean '_free_,' and also '_noble_.' as, for instance, it is used in the fifty-first psalm, 'uphold me with thy _free_ spirit'--and in the forty-seventh, 'the _princes_ of the people are gathered together.' and does not this shading of significations--willing sacrifices, free, princely--remind us of another distinctly evangelical principle, that the willing service which rests upon glad consecration raises him who renders it to true freedom and dominion? every man enlisted in his body-guard is noble. the prince's servants are every other person's master. the king's livery exempts from all other submission. as in the old saxon monarchies, the monarch's domestics were nobles, the men of christ's household are ennobled by their service. they who obey him are free from every yoke of bondage--'free indeed.' all things serve the soul that serves christ. 'he hath made us kings unto god.' ii. the soldiers are priests. that expression, 'in the beauties of holiness,' is usually read as if it belonged either to the words immediately preceding, or to those immediately following. but in either case the connection is somewhat difficult and obscure. it seems better regarded as a distinct and separate clause, adding a fresh trait to the description of the army, and what that is we need not find any difficulty in ascertaining. 'the beauties of holiness' is a frequent phrase for the sacerdotal garments, the holy festal attire of the priests of the lord. so considered, how beautifully it comes in here! the conquering king whom the psalm hymns is a priest for ever; and he is followed by an army of priests. the soldiers are gathered in the day of the muster, with high courage and willing devotion, ready to fling away their lives; but they are clad not in mail, but in priestly robes--like those who wait before the altar rather than like those who plunge into the fight--like those who compassed jericho with the ark for their standard, and the trumpets for all their weapons. we can scarcely fail to remember the words which echo these and interpret them: 'the armies which were in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean'--a strange armour against sword-cut and spear-thrust. the main purpose, then, of this part of our text seems to be to bring out the priestly character of the christian soldier--a thought which carries with it many important considerations, on which i can barely touch. mark, then, how the warfare which we have to wage is the same as the priestly service which we have to render. the conflict is with our own sin and evil; the sacrifice we have to offer is ourselves. as soldiers, we have to fight against our selfish desires and manifold imperfections; as priests, we have to lay our whole selves on his altar. the task is the same under either emblem. we have a conflict to wage in the world, and in the world we have a priestly work to do, and these are the same. we have to be god's representatives in the world, bringing him nearer to men's apprehensions and hearts by word and work. we have to bring men to god by entreaty, and by showing the path which leads to him. that priestly service for men is in effect identical with the merciful warfare which we have to wage in the world. the church militant is an army of priests. its warfare is its sacerdotal function. it fights for christ when it opposes the message of his grace and the power of his blood to its own and the world's sins--and when it intercedes in the secret place for the coming of his kingdom. does not this metaphor teach us also, what is to be our defence and our weapon in this warfare? not with garments rolled in blood, nor with brazen armour do they go forth, who follow him that conquered by dying. their uniform is the beauties of holiness, 'the fine linen clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints.' many great thoughts lie in such words, which i must pass over. but this one thing is obvious--that the great power which we christian men are to wield in our loving warfare is--_character_. purity of heart and life, transparent simple goodness, manifest in men's sight--these will arm us against dangers, and these will bring our brethren glad captives to our lord. we serve him best, and advance his kingdom most, when the habit of our souls is that righteousness with which he invests our nakedness. be like your lord, and as his soldiers you will conquer, and as his priests you will win some to his love and fear. nothing else will avail without that. without that dress no man finds a place in the ranks. the image suggests, too, the spirit in which our priestly warfare is to be waged. the one metaphor brings with it thoughts of strenuous effort, of discipline, of sworn consecration to a cause. the other brings with it thoughts of gentleness and sympathy and tenderness, of still waiting at the shrine, of communion with him who dwells between the cherubim. whilst our work demands all the courage and tension of every power which the one image presents, it is to be sedulously guarded from any tinge of wrath or heat of passion, such as mingles with conflict, and is to be prosecuted with all the pity and patience, the brotherly meekness of a true priest. 'the wrath of men worketh not the righteousness of god.' if we forget the one character in the other, we shall bring weakness into our warfare, and pollution into our sacrifice. 'the servant of the lord must not strive.' we must not be animated by mere pugnacious desire to advance our principles, nor let the heat of human eagerness give a false fervour to our words and work. we cannot scold nor dragoon men to love jesus christ. we cannot drive them into the fold with dogs and sticks. we are to be gentle, long-suffering, not doing our work with passion and self-will, but remembering that gentleness is mightiest, and that we shall best 'adorn the doctrine of god our saviour' when we go among men with the light caught in the inner sanctuary still irradiating our faces, and our hands full of blessings to bestow on our brethren. we are to be soldier-priests, strong and gentle, like the ideal of those knights of old who were both, and bore the cross on shield and helmet and sword-hilt. he, our lord, is our pattern for both; and from him we derive the strength for each. he is the captain of our salvation, and we fight beneath his banner, and by his strength. he is a merciful and faithful high priest, and he consecrates his brethren to the service of the sanctuary. to him look for your example of heroism, of fortitude, of self-forgetfulness. to him look for your example of gentle patience and dewy pity. learn in christ how possible it is to be strong and mild, to blend in fullest harmony the perfection of all that is noble, lofty, generous in the soldier's ardour of heroic devotion; and of all that is calm, still, compassionate, tender in the priest's waiting before god and mediation among men. and remember, that by faith only do we gain the power of copying that blessed example, to be like which is to be perfect--not to be like which is to fail wholly, and to prove that we have no part in his sacrifice, nor any share in his victory. iii. the final point in this description must now engage us for a few moments. the soldier-priests are as dew upon the earth. 'from the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy youth.' these words are often misunderstood, and taken to be a description of the fresh, youthful energy attributed by the psalm to the priest-king of this nation of soldier-priests. the misunderstanding, i suppose, has led to the common phrase, 'the dew of one's youth.' but the reference of the expression is to the army, not to its leader. 'youth' here is a collective noun, equivalent to 'young men.' the host of his soldier-subjects is described as a band of young warriors whom he leads, in their fresh strength and countless numbers and gleaming beauty, like the dew of the morning. there are two points in this last clause which may occupy us for a few moments--that picture of the army as a band of youthful warriors; and that lovely emblem of the dew as applied to christ's servants. as to the former--there are many other words of scripture which carry the same thought, that he who has fellowship with god, and lives in the constant reception of the supernatural life and grace which come from jesus christ, possesses the secret of perpetual youth. the world ages us, time and physical changes tell on us all, and the strength which belongs to the life of nature ebbs away, but the life eternal is subject to no laws of decay and owes nothing to the external world. so we may be ever young in heart and spirit. it is possible for a man to carry the freshness, the buoyancy, the elastic cheerfulness, the joyful hope of his earliest days, right on through the monotony of middle-aged maturity, and even into old age, unshadowed by the lonely reflection of the tombs which the setting sun casts over the path. it is possible for us to get younger as we get older, because we drink more full draughts of the fountain of life: and so to have to say at the last, 'thou hast kept the good wine until now.' 'even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. but they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength.' if we live near christ, and draw our life from him, then we may blend the hopes of youth with the experience and memory of age; be at once calm and joyous, wise and strong, preserving the blessedness of each stage of life into that which follows, and thus at last possessing the sweetness and the good of all at once. we may not only bear fruit in old age, but have blossoms, fruit, and flowers--the varying product and adornment of every stage of life, united in our characters. then, with regard to the other point in this final clause--that emblem of the dew leads to many considerations upon which i can but inadequately touch. it comes into view here, i suppose, mainly for the sake of its effect upon the earth. it is as a symbol of the refreshing which a weary world will receive from the conquests and presence of the king and his host, that the latter are likened to the glittering morning dew. another prophetic scripture gives us the same emblem when it speaks of israel being 'in the midst of many people as a dew from the lord.' such ought to be the effect of our presence. we are meant to gladden, to adorn, to refresh, this parched, prosaic world, with a freshness brought from the chambers of the sunrise. it is worth while to notice how we may discern a sequence of thought in these successive features of description in our text. it began with that inmost spirit and motive of the christian life, the submission of will and consecration of self to christ. it advanced to the function and character of his servants in the world. and now it deals finally with the influence which they are to exert by this their soldier-like obedience and priestly ministration. there is progress of thought, too, in another way. we began with a symbol that had in it something almost harsh and stern. we advanced to one in which there was a predominance of gentle and gracious thoughts and images. and now all that was severe, and all that reminded either of opposition or of effort, has melted away into this sweet emblem. instead of the 'confused noise' of the battle of the warrior, we have the silence of the dawn, and the noiseless falling of the dew amid the solitudes of the wildernesses, or the recesses of the mountains. so the highest thought of our christian influence, is that it comes with silent footfall and refreshes men's souls, like his, who will come down as 'rain upon the mown grass,' who will not strive nor cry, but in gentle omnipotence and meek persistence of love, 'will not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth.' remember other symbols by which the same general thought of christian influence upon the world is set forth with very remarkable variation. 'ye are the light of the world.'--'ye are the salt of the earth.' the light guides and gladdens; the salt preserves and purifies; the dew freshens and fertilises; the light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. but these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. we shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion as we save it from its rottenness and corruption, and we shall do either only in proportion as we bear abroad the name of christ, in whom is 'life; and the life is the light of men.' nor need we omit allusions to other associations connected with this figure. the dew, formed in the silence of the darkness while men sleep, falling as willingly on a bit of dead wood as anywhere, hanging its pearls on every poor spike of grass, and dressing everything on which it lies with strange beauty, each separate globule tiny and evanescent, but each flashing back the light, and each a perfect sphere, feeble one by one, but united, mighty to make the pastures of the wilderness rejoice--so, created in silence by an unseen influence, weak when taken singly, but strong in their myriads, glad to occupy the lowliest place, and each 'bright with something of celestial light,' christian men and women are to be in the midst of many people as a dew from the lord. brethren! that characteristic, like all else which is good, belongs to us in proportion as we keep near to christ jesus, and are filled with his fulness. all these emblems which have been occupying us now, originally belonged to him, and we receive from him the grace that makes us as he is in the world. he himself is the warrior king, the captain of the lord's host, the true joshua, whose last word ere his cross was a shout of victory, 'i have overcome the world'--whose promises from the throne seven times crown the conqueror who overcomes as he overcame. he makes us his soldiers and strengthens us for the war, if we live by faith in him. he himself is the priest--the only eternal priest of the world--who wears on his head the mitre and the diadem, and bears in his hand the sceptre and the censer; and he makes us priests, if faith in his only sacrifice and all-prevalent intercession be in our souls. he is the dew unto israel--and only by intercourse with him shall we be made gentle and refreshing, silent blessings to all the weary and the parched souls in the wilderness of the world. everything worth being or doing comes from jesus christ. heroic courage; then hold his hand, and he will strengthen your heart. glad surrender; then think of his sacrifice for us until ours to him be our answering gift. priestly power; then let him bring us nigh by his blood, that we too may be able to have compassion on the ignorant and to draw them to god. dewy purity and freshness; then open your hearts for the reception of his grace, for all the invigoration that we can impart to the world is but the communication of that refreshing wherewith we ourselves are refreshed of christ. in every aspect of our relations to the world, we draw all our fitness for all our offices from that lord, who is and gives everything that we can be or do. then let us seek by humble faith and habitual contact with him and his truth, to have our emptiness filled by his fulness, and our unfitness made ready for all service by his all-sufficiency. and let me close by reiterating what i have said already. there is a twofold manner of subjection--the spurious and the real. the involuntary is nought; the glad and cheerful surrender alone is counted submission. this psalm shows us christ surrounded by his friends who are glad to obey. but it also shows us christ ruling in the midst of his enemies. they cannot help obeying; his dominion is established over them, but they do not wish to have him to reign over them, and therefore they are enemies--even though they be subjects. which is it with you, my brother? do you serve because you love--and love because he died for you? or do you serve because you must? then, remember, constrained service is no service; and subjects without loyalty are rebel traitors. our psalm shows us christ gathering his army in array. he is calling each of us to a place there, in this day of his power, and day of his grace. take heed lest the day of his power should for you darken into that other day of which this psalm speaks--the day of his wrath, when he strikes through kings, and bruises the head over many countries. put your trust in that saviour, my friend! cleave to that sacrifice, then you will not be amongst those whom he treads down in his march to victory, but one of that happy band of priestly warriors who follow him as he goes forth 'conquering and to conquer.' god and the godly 'his righteousness endureth for ever.'--psalms cxi. ; cxii. . these two psalms are obviously intended as a pair. they are identical in number of verses and in structure, both being acrostic, that is to say, the first clause of each commences with the first letter of the hebrew alphabet, the second clause with the second, and so on. the general idea that runs through them is the likeness of the godly man to god. that resemblance comes very markedly to the surface at several points in the psalms, and pervades them traceably even where it is less conspicuous. the two corresponding clauses which i have read as my text are the first salient instances of it. but i propose to deal not only with them, but with a couple of others which occur in the course of the psalms, and will appear as i proceed. the general underlying thought is a noteworthy one. the worshipper is to be like his god. so it is in idolatry; so it should be with us. worship is, or should be, adoration of and yearning after the highest conceivable good. such an attitude must necessarily lead to imitation, and be crowned by resemblance. love makes like, and they who worship god are bound to, and certainly will, in proportion to the ardour and sincerity of their devotion, grow like him whom they adore. so i desire to look with you at the instances of this resemblance or parallelism which the psalmist emphasises. i. the first of them is that in the clauses which i have read as our starting-point, viz. god and the godly are alike in enduring righteousness. that seems a bold thing to say, especially when we remember how lofty and transcendent were the old testament conceptions of the righteousness of god. but, lofty as these were, this psalmist lifts an unpresumptuous eye to the heavens, and having said of him who dwells there, 'his righteousness endureth for ever,' is not afraid to turn to the humble worshipper on this low earth, and declare the same thing of him. our finite, frail, feeble lives may be really conformed to the image of the heavenly. the dewdrop with its little rainbow has a miniature of the great arch that spans the earth and rises into the high heavens. and so, though there are differences, deep and impassable, between anything that can be called creatural righteousness, and that which bears the same name in the heavens, the fact that it does bear the same name is a guarantee to us that there is an essential resemblance between the righteousness of god in its lustrous perfectness, and the righteousness of his child in its imperfect effort. but how can we venture to run any kind of parallelism between the eternity of the one and that of the other? god's righteousness we can understand as enduring for ever, because it is inseparable from his very being; because it is manifested unbrokenly in all the works that for ever pour out from that central source, and because it and its doings stand fast and unshaken amidst the passage of ages, and the 'wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.' but may there not be, if not an eternity, yet a perpetuity, in our reflection of the divine righteousness which shall serve to vindicate the application of the same mighty word to both? is it not possible that, unbroken amidst the stress of temptation, and running on without interruptions, there may be in our hearts and in our lives conformity to the divine will? and is it not possible that the transiencies of our earthly doings may be sublimed into perpetuity if there is in them the preserving salt of righteousness? 'the actions of the just smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.' and may it not be, too, that though this psalmist may have had no clear articulate doctrine of eternal life beyond, he may have felt, and rightly felt, that there were things that were too fair to die, and that it was inconceivable that a soul which had been, in some measure, tinged with the righteousness of god could ever be altogether a prey to the law of transiency and decay which seizes upon things material and corporeal? that which is righteous is eternal, be it manifested in the acts of the unchanging god or in the acts of a dying man, and when all else has passed away, and the elements have melted with fervent heat, 'he that doeth the will of god,' and the deeds which did it, 'shall abide for ever.' 'his righteousness endureth for ever.' now, brethren! there are two ways in which we may look at this parallelism of our text: the one is as containing a stringent requirement; the other as holding forth a mighty hope. it contains a stringent requirement. our religion does not consist in assenting to any creed. our religion is not wholly to consist of devout emotions and loving and joyous acts of communion and friendship with god. there must be more than these; these things there must be. for if a man is to be guided mainly by reason, there must, first of all, be creed; then there must be corresponding emotions. but creed and emotions are both meant to be forces which shall drive the wheels of life, and conduct is, after all, the crown of religion and the test of godliness. they that hold communion with god are bound to mould their lives into the likeness of his. 'little children, let no man deceive you,' and let not your own hearts deceive you. you are not a christian because you believe the truths of the gospel. you are not such a christian as you ought to be, if your religion is more manifest in loving trust than in practical obedience which comes from trust. 'he that doeth righteousness is righteous,' and he is to be righteous 'even as he is righteous.' if you are god's, you will be like god. apply the touchstone to your lives, and test your christianity by this simple and most stringent test. but again, we may look at the thought as holding forth a great hope. i do not wish to force upon old testament writers new testament truth. it would be an anachronism and an absurdity to make this psalmist responsible for anything like a clear evangelistic statement of the way by which a man may be made righteous. that waited for coming days, and eminently for jesus christ. but it would be quite as great a mistake to eviscerate the words of their plain implications. and when they put side by side the light and the reflection, god and the godly, it seems to me to be doing violence to their meaning for the sake of trying to make them mean less than they do, if we refuse to recognise that they have at any rate an inkling of the thought that the original and pattern of human righteousness was likewise the source of it. this at least is plain, that the psalmist thought that 'the fear of the lord' was not only, as he calls it at the close of the former of the two psalms, 'the beginning of wisdom,' but also the basis of goodness, for he begins his description of the godly with it. i believe that he felt, what is assuredly true, that no man, by his own unaided effort, can ever work out for himself a righteousness which will satisfy his own conscience, and that he must, first of all, be in touch with god, in order to receive from him that which he cannot create. ah, brethren! the 'fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints,' is woven in no earthly looms; and the lustrous light with which it glistens is such as 'no fuller on earth can white' men's characters into. another psalmist has sung of the man who can stand in the holy place, 'he shall _receive_ the blessing from the lord, even righteousness from the god of his salvation,' and our psalms hint, if they do not articulately declare, how that reception is possible for us, when they set forth waiting upon god as the condition of being made like him. we translate the psalmist's feeling after the higher truth which we know, when we desire 'that we may be found in him, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is of god by faith.' so much, then, for the first point of correspondence in these two psalms. ii. god and the godly are alike in gracious compassion. if you will turn to the two psalms for a moment, and look at the last clauses of the two fourth verses, you will see how that thought is brought out. in the former psalm we read, 'the lord is gracious and full of compassion': in the latter we find, 'he' (the upright man) 'is gracious and full of compassion, and righteous.' i need not trouble you with any remarks about certain difficulties that lie in the rendering of that latter verse. suffice it to say that they are such as to make more emphatic the intentional resemblance between the godly as there described, and god as described in the previous one. of both it is said 'gracious and full of compassion.' now that great truth of which i have been speaking, the divine righteousness, is like white alpine snow, sublime, but cold, awful and repellent, when taken by itself. our hearts need something more than a righteous god if we are ever to worship and draw near. just as the white snow on the high peak needs to be flushed with the roseate hue of the morning before it can become tender, and create longings, so the righteousness of the great white throne has to be tinged with the ruddy heart-hue of gracious compassion if men are to be moved to adore and to love. each enhances the other. 'what god hath joined together,' in himself, 'let not man put asunder'; nor talk about the stern deity of the old testament, and pit him against the compassionate father of the new. he is righteous, but the proclaimers of his righteousness in old days never forgot to blend with the righteousness the mercy; and the combination heightens the lustre of both attributes. the same combination is absolutely needful in the copy, as is emphatically set forth in our text by the addition of 'and righteous,' in the case of the man. for whilst with god the tyro attributes do lie, side by side, in perfect harmony, in us men there is always danger that the one shall trench upon the territory of the other, and that he who has cultivated the habit of looking upon sorrows and sins with compassion and tenderness shall somewhat lose the power of looking at them with righteousness. so our text, in regard to man, proclaims more emphatically than it needs to do in regard to the perfect god, that ever his highest beauty of compassion must be wedded to righteousness, and ever his truest strength of righteousness must be softened with compassion. but beyond that, note how, wherever there is the loving and childlike contemplation of god, there will be an analogy in our compassion, to his perfectness. we are transformed by beholding. the sun strikes a poor little pane of glass in a cottage miles away, and it flashes with some likeness of the sun and casts a light across the plain. the man whose face is turned godwards will have beauty pass into his face, and all that look upon him will see 'as it had been the countenance of an angel.' if we have, in any real and deep measure, received mercy we shall reflect mercy. remember the parable of the unmerciful debtor. the servant that cast himself at his lord's feet, and got the acquittal of his debt, and went out and gripped his fellow-servant by the throat, leaving the marks of his fingernails on his windpipe, with his 'pay me that thou owest!' had all the pardon cancelled, and all the debt laid upon his shoulders again. if we owe all our hope and peace to a forgiving god, how can we make anything else the law of our lives than that, having received mercy, we should show mercy? the test of your being a forgiven man is your forgivingness. there is no getting away from that plain principle, which modifies the declaration of the freedom of god's full pardon. but i would have you notice, further, as a very remarkable illustration of this correspondence between the gracious and compassionate lord and his servant, that in the verses which follow respectively the two about which i am now speaking, the same idea is wrought out in another shape. in the psalm dealing with the divine character and works we read, immediately after the declaration that he is 'gracious and full of compassion,' this--'he hath given meat to them that fear him'; and the corresponding clause in the second of our psalms is followed by this--to translate accurately--'it is well with the man who showeth favour and lendeth.' so man's open-handedness in regard to money is put down side by side with god's open-handedness in regard to giving meat unto them that fear him. and again, in the ninth verse of each psalm, we have the same thought set forth in another fashion. 'he sent redemption unto his people,' says the one; 'he hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor,' says the other. that is to say, our paltry giving may be paralleled with the unspeakable gifts which god has bestowed, if they come from a love which is like his. it does not matter though they are so small and his are so great; there is a resemblance. the tiniest crystal may be like the hugest. god gives to us the possession of things in order that we may enjoy the luxury, which is one of the elements in the blessedness of the blessed god, who is blessed because he is the giving god, the luxury of giving. poor though our bestowments must be, they are not unlike his. the little burn amongst the heather carves its tiny bed, and impels its baby ripples by the same laws which roll the waters of the amazon, and every fall that it makes over a shelf of rock a foot high is a miniature niagara. iii. so, lastly, we have still another point, not so much of resemblance as of correspondence, in the firmness of god's utterances and of the godly heart. in the first of our two psalms we read, in the seventh verse, 'all his commandments are _sure_.' in the second we read, in the corresponding verse, 'his heart is _fixed_, trusting in the lord.' the former psalm goes on, 'his commandments _stand fast_ for ever and ever; and the next psalm, in the corresponding verse, says 'his heart is _established_,' the original employing the same word in both cases, which in our version is rendered, in the one place, 'stand fast,' and in the other 'established.' so that the psalmist is thinking of a correspondence between the stability of god's utterances and the stability of the heart that clasps them in faith. his commandments are not only precepts which enjoin duty. all which god says is law, whether it be directly in the nature of guiding precept, or whether it be in the nature of revealing truth, or whether it be in the nature of promise. it is sure, reliable, utterly trustworthy. we may be certain that it will direct us aright, that it will reveal to us absolute truth, that it will hold forth no flattering and false promises. and it is 'established.' the one fixed point amidst the whirl of things is the uttered will of god. therefore, the heart that builds there builds safely. and there should be a correspondence, whether there is or no, between the faithfulness of the speaker and the faith of the hearer. a man who is doubtful about the solidity of the parapet which keeps him from toppling over into the abyss will lean gingerly upon it, until he has found out that it is firm. the man that knows how strong is the stay on which he rests ought to lean hard upon it. lean hard upon god, put all your weight upon him. you cannot put too much, you cannot lean too hard. the harder the better; the better he is pleased, and the more he breathes support and strength into us. and, brethren! if thus we build an established faith on that sure foundation, and match the unchangeableness of god in christ with the constancy of our faith in him, then, 'he that believeth shall never make haste,' and as my psalm says, 'he shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the lord.' the upshot of the whole matter is--we cannot work out for ourselves a righteousness that will satisfy our own consciences, nor secure for ourselves a strength that will give peace to our hearts, and stability to our lives, by any other means than by cleaving fast to god revealed in jesus christ. we have borne the image of the earthly long enough; let us open our hearts to god in christ. let us yield ourselves to him; let us gaze upon him with fixed eyes of love, and labour to make our own what he bestows upon us. thus living near him, we shall be bathed in his light, and show forth something of his beauty. godliness is god-likeness. it is of no use to say that we are god's children if we have none of the family likeness. 'if ye were abraham's sons ye would do the works of abraham,' said christ to the jews. if we are god's sons we shall do the works of god. 'be ye therefore perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect;' be ye merciful as your father is merciful. and if thus we here, dwelling with christ, are being conformed to the image of his son, we shall one day 'be satisfied' when we 'awake in his likeness.' experience, resolve, and hope 'thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. . i will walk before the lord in the land of the living.'--psalm cxvi. , . this is a quotation from an earlier psalm, with variations which are interesting, whether we suppose that the psalmist was quoting from memory and made them unconsciously, or whether, as is more probable, he did so, deliberately and for a purpose. the variations are these. the words in the original psalm (lvi.) according to the revised version, read, 'thou hast delivered my soul from death; hast thou not delivered my feet from falling?' the writer of this psalm felt that that did not say all, so he put in another clause: 'thou hast delivered my soul from death, _mine eyes from tears_, and my feet from falling.' it is not enough to keep a man alive and upright. god will wipe away his tears; and will often keep him from shedding them. then the original psalm goes on: 'thou hast delivered ... my feet from falling, that i may walk before god,' but the later psalmist goes a step further than his original. the first singer had seen what it is always a blessing to see--what god meant by all the varieties of his providences, viz. that the recipient might walk as in his presence; but the later poet not only discerns, but accords with, god's purpose, yields himself to the divine intention, and instead of simply saying 'that was what god meant,' he says, 'that is what i am going to do--i will walk before the lord.' there is still another variation which, however, does not alter the sense. the original psalm says, 'in the light of the living'; the other uses another word, a little more intelligible, perhaps, to an ordinary reader, and says, 'in the land of the living.' now, noting these significant variations, i would draw attention to this expression of the psalmist's acceptance of the divine purpose, and the vision that it gave him of his future. it is hard to say whether he means 'i will walk' or 'i shall walk'; whether he is expressing a hope or giving utterance to a fixed resolve. i think there is an element of both in the words. at all events, i find in them three things: a sure anticipation, a firm resolve, and a far-reaching hope. i. a sure anticipation. 'thou hast'--'i will.' the past is for this psalmist a mirror in which he sees reflected the approaching form of the veiled future. god's past is the guarantee of god's future. godless people, who get wearied of the monotony of life, begin to say before they have gone far in it, 'oh! there is nothing new. that which is to be hath already been. it is just one continual repetition of the same sort of thing.' but that is only partially true. there is only one man in the world who can truly and certainly say, 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; and that is the man who says; 'he delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.' for the continuance of things here is not guaranteed to us by the fact that they have lasted for so long. why, nobody knows whether the sun will rise to-morrow or not--whether there will be a to-morrow or not. there will come one day when the sun sets for the last time. what people call the 'uniformity of nature' affords no ground on which to build certainty as to the future. we all do it, but we have no right to do it. but when we bring god into the future, that makes all the difference. his past is the guarantee and the revelation of his future, and every person that grasps him in faith has the right to pray with assurance, 'thou hast been my helper; leave me not, neither forsake me,' and to declare triumphantly, 'the lord will perfect that which concerneth me.' so, brethren! all the past, as it is recorded for us in scripture, lives and throbs with faithful promises for us to-day. though the methods of the manifestation may alter, the essence of it remains the same. as one of the apostles says, 'whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our advantage, that we, through the encouragement ministered by the scriptures, might have hope'; and looking forward into all the future, might discern its wastes unknown, all lighted up by the one glad certainty that he that is 'the same yesterday and to-day and for ever' will be there, and we shall be beside him. what god has done, he will keep on doing. 'the lord hath delivered mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling,' and therefore 'i shall walk before the lord in the land of the living.' our experience yields fuel for our faith. we have been near death many a time; we have never fallen into it. our eyes have been wet many a time; god has dried them. our feet have been ready to fall many a time, and if at the moment when we were tottering on the edge of the precipice, we have cried to him and said, 'my feet have well-nigh slipped,' a strong hand has been held out to us. 'the lord upholdeth them that are in the act of falling,' as the old psalm, rightly rendered, has it, and if we have pushed aside his hand, and gone down, then the next clause of the same verse applies, for he 'raiseth up those that have fallen,' and are lying prostrate. as it has been, so it will be. 'thou hast been with me in six troubles,' therefore 'in the seventh thou wilt not forsake me.' we can wear out men; and we cannot argue that because a man has had long patience with some unworthy recipient of his goodness, his patience will never give out. but it is safe to argue thus about god. 'i say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven'--the two perfect numbers multiplied into each other, and the product again multiplied by one of them, to give the measureless measure of the exhaustless divine love, and the sure guarantee that to his servant 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' then, again, if we put a little different meaning into the psalmist's words (and as i said, i think both meanings lie in them), they suggest that he did not look forward into the future only with expectation, but that along with expectation there was resolve. so we have here ii. a firm resolve. 'i will walk before the lord.' what does 'walking before the lord' mean? there are two or three expressions very like each other, yet entirely different from each other, in the old and in the new testament, about this matter. we read of 'walking with god,' and of 'walking before god,' and of 'walking after god.' and whilst there is much that is common to all the expressions, they look at the same idea from different angles. 'walking with god,' communion, fellowship, and companionship are implied there. 'walking after god,' guidance, direction, and example, and our poor imitation and obedience, are most conspicuous there. and 'walking before god' means, i suppose, mainly, feeling always that we are in his presence, and have the light of his face, and the glance of his all-seeing eye, falling upon us. 'if i take the wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea, thou art there.' 'thou art acquainted with all my ways, search me, o god!' that is walking before god. to put it into colder words, it means the habitual--i do not say unbroken, but habitual--effort to feel in our conscious hearts that we are in his sight; not only that we are with him, but that we are 'naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.' and that is to be the result, says our psalm, as it is the intention, of all that god has been doing with us in his merciful providence, in his quickening, sustaining, and comforting influences in the past. he sent all these varying conditions, kept the psalmist alive, kept him from weeping, or dried his tears, kept him from falling, with the intention that he should be continually blessed in the continuous sunshine of god's presence, and should open out his heart in it and for it, like a flower when the sunbeams strike it. oh! how different life would look if we habitually took hold of all its incidents by that handle, and thought about them, not as we are accustomed to do, according to whether they tended to make us glad or sorry, to disappoint or fulfil our hopes and purposes, but looked upon them all as stages in our education, and as intended, if i might so say, to force us, when the tempests blow, close up against god; and when the sunshine came, to woo us to his side. would not all life change its aspect if we carried that thought right into it, and did not only keep it for sundays, or for the crises of our lives, but looked at all the trifles as so many magnets brought into action by him to attract us to himself? dear brother, it is not enough to recognise god's purpose, we must fall in with it, accept the intention, and co-operate with god in fulfilling it. it is a matter of purity and of piety, to say, 'thou hast delivered my soul from death, that i may walk before thee.' but there has to be something more. there have to be a firm resolve, and effort without which the firmest resolve will all come to nothing, and be one more paving-stone for the road that is 'paved with good intentions.' that firm resolve finds utterance in the not vain vow, 'i will'--in spite of all opposition and difficulties--'i will walk before the lord,' and keep ever bright in my mind the thought, 'thou god seest me.' ay! and just in the measure in which we do so shall we have joy. in some of those inhuman prisons where they go in for solitary confinement, there is a little hole somewhere in the wall--the prisoner does not know where--at which at any moment in the four-and-twenty hours the eye of the gaoler may be, and they say that the thought of that unseen eye, glaring in upon the felons, drives some of them half mad. the thought that poor hagar found to be her only comfort in the wilderness--and so christened the well after it--'thou god seest me,' must be the source of our purest joy; or it must be a ghastly dread. when he comes at last, some men will lift up their faces to the sunshine and have their faces irradiated by the light; and some will call on the rocks and the hills to cover them from his face, and prefer rather to be crushed than to be blasted by the brightness of his countenance. if we are right with god, then the gladdest of thoughts is, 'thou knowest me altogether, and thou hast beset me behind and before.' if we are right with god, 'thou hast laid thine hand upon me' will mean for us support and blessing. if we are wrong, it will mean a weight that crushes to the earth. and if we are right with him, that same thought brings with it security and companionship. ah! we do not need ever to say 'i am alone' if we are walking before god. it brings with it, of course, an armour against temptation. what mean, lustful, worldly seduction has any power when a man falls back on the thought, 'god sees me, and god is with me'? do you remember the very first instance in scripture of the use of this phrase? the lord said unto abraham, 'walk before me, and be thou perfect.' that was not only a commandment, but it was a promise, and we might as truly, for the sense of the passage, read, 'walk before me, and thou shalt be perfect.' that thought of the present god draws the teeth of all raging lions, and takes the stings out of all serpents, and paralyses and reduces to absolute nothingness every temptation. clasp god's hand, and you will not fall. iii. there is lastly here, a far-reaching hope. i do not know whether the psalmist had any notion of any land of the living except the land of earth, where men pass their natural lives. i almost think that both he and his brother, whose words he was imitating, had some glimpse of a future life of closer union, when eyes should no more weep nor feet fall. at any rate, you and i cannot help reading that hope into his words. when we read, 'i will walk before the lord in the land of the living,' we cannot but think of the true and perfect deliverance, when it shall be said, with a depth and a fulness of meaning with which it is never said here, 'thou hast delivered my soul from death,' and the black dread that towered so high, and closed the vista of all human expectation of the future, is now away back in the past, hull-down on the horizon as they say about ships scarcely visible, and no more to be feared. we cannot but think of the perfect deliverance of 'mine eyes from tears,' when 'god shall wipe away the tears from off all faces, and the rebuke of his people from off all the earth.' we cannot but think of the perfect deliverance of 'my feet from falling' when the redeemed of the lord shall stand firm, and walk at liberty on the golden pavements, and no more dread the stumbling-blocks of earth. we cannot but think of the perfect presence of god, the perfect consciousness that we are near him, when he shall 'present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.' we cannot but think of the perfect activity of that future state when we 'shall walk with him in white,' and 'follow the lamb whithersoever he goeth.' and one guarantee for all that far-reaching hope is in the tiny experiences of the present; for he who hath delivered our souls from death, our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling, is not going to expose himself to the scoff, 'this "god" began to build, and was not able to finish.' but he will complete that which he has begun, and will not stay his hand until all his children are perfectly redeemed and perfectly conscious of his perfect presence. requiting god 'what shall i render unto the lord for all his benefits toward me? . i will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the lord.'--psalm cxvi. , . there may possibly be a reference here to a part of the passover ritual. it seems to have become the custom in later times to lift high the wine cup at that feast and drink it with solemn invocation and glad thanksgiving. so we find our lord taking the cup--the 'cup of blessing' as paul calls it--and giving thanks. but as there is no record of the introduction of that addition to the original paschal celebration, we do not know but that it was later than the date of this psalm. nor is there any need to suppose such an allusion in order either to explain or to give picturesque force to the words. it is a most natural thing, as all languages show, to talk of a man's lot, either of sorrow or joy, as the cup which he has to drink; and there are numerous instances of the metaphor in the psalms, such as 'thou art the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup, thou maintainest my lot.' 'my cup runneth over.' that familiar emblem is all that is wanted here. then one other point in reference to the mere words of the text may be noticed. 'salvation' can scarcely be taken in its highest meaning here, both because the whole tone of the psalm fixes its reference to lower blessings, and because it is in the plural in the hebrew. 'the cup of salvation' expresses, by that plural form, the fulness and variety of the manifold and multiform deliverances which god had wrought and was working for the psalmist. his whole lot in life appears to him as a cup full of tender goodness, loving faithfulness, delivering grace. it runs over with divine acts of help and sustenance. as his grateful heart thinks of all god's benefits to him, he feels at once the impulse to requite and the impossibility of doing so. with a kind of glad despair he asks the question that ever springs to thankful lips, and having nothing to give, recognises the only possible return to god to be the acceptance of the brimming chalice which his goodness commends to his thirst. the great thought, then, which lies here is that we best requite god by thankfully taking what he gives. now i note to begin with--how deep that thought goes into the heart of god. why is it that we honour god most by taking, not by giving? the first answer that occurs to you, no doubt, is--because of his all-sufficiency and our emptiness. man receives all. god needs nothing. we have all to say, after all our service, 'of thine own have we given thee.' no doubt that is quite true; and rightly understood that is a strengthening and a glad truth. but is that all which can be said in explanation of this principle? surely not. 'if i were hungry i would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fulness thereof,' is a grand word, but it does not give all the truth. when paul stood on mars hill, and, within sight of the fair images of the parthenon, shattered the intellectual basis of idolatry, by proclaiming a god 'not worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all men all things,' that truth, mighty as it is, is not all. we requite god by taking rather than by giving, not merely because he needs nothing, and we have nothing which is not his. if that were all, it might be as true of an almighty tyrant, and might be so used as to forbid all worship before the gloomy presence, to give reverence and love to whom were as impertinent as the grossest offerings of savage idolaters. but the motive of his giving to us is the deepest reason why our best recompense to him is our thankful reception of his mercies. the principle of our text reposes at last on 'god is love and wishes our hearts,' and not merely on 'god has all and does not need our gifts.' take the illustration from our own love and gifts. do we not feel that all the beauty and bloom of a gift is gone if the giver hopes to receive as much again? do we not feel that it is all gone if the receiver thinks of repaying it in any coin but that of the heart? love gives because it delights in giving. it gives that it may express itself and may bless the recipient. if there be any thought of return it is only the return of love. and that is how god gives. as james puts it, he is 'the giving god,--who gives,' not as our version inadequately renders, 'liberally,' but 'simply'--that is, i suppose, with a single eye, without any ulterior view to personal advantage, from the impulse of love alone, and having no end but our good. therefore it is, because of that pure, perfect love, that he delights in no recompense, but only in the payment of a heart won to his love and melted by his mercies. therefore it is that his hand is outstretched, 'hoping for nothing again.' his almighty all-sufficiency needs nought from us, and to all heathen notions of worship and tribute puts the question: 'do ye requite the lord, o foolish people and unwise?' but his deep heart of love desires and delights in the echo of its own tones that is evoked among the rocky hardnesses of our hearts, and is glad when we take the full cup of his blessings and, as we raise it to our lips, call on the name of the lord. is not that a great and a gracious thought of our god and of his great purpose in his mercies? but now let us look for a moment at the elements which make up this requital of god in which he delights. and, first i put a very simple and obvious one, let us be sure that we recognise the real contents of our cup. it _is_ a cup of salvations, however hard it is sometimes to believe it. of how much blessing and happiness we all rob ourselves by our slowness to feel that! some of us by reason of natural temperament; some of us by reason of the pressure of anxieties, and the aching of sorrows, and the bleeding of wounds; some of us by reason of mere blindness to the true character of our present, have little joyous sense of the real brightness of our days. it seems as if joys must have passed and be seen in the transfiguring light of memory, before we can discern their fairness; and then, when their place is empty, we know that we were entertaining angels unawares. many men and women live in the gloom of a lifelong regret for the loss of some gift which, when they had it, seemed nothing very extraordinary, and could not keep them from annoyance with trifles. common sense and reasonable regard for our own happiness and religious duty unite, as they always do, in bidding us take care that we know our blessings. do not let custom blind you to them. do not let tears so fill your eyes that you cannot see the goodness of the lord. do not let thunderclouds, however heavy their lurid piles, shut out from you the blue that is in your sky. do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. do not let a hard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of god in your daily life. take full account of all the pains, all the bitter ingredients, remembering that for us weak and sinful men the bitter is needful. if still the cup seem charged with distasteful draught, remember whose lip has touched its rim, leaving its sacred kiss there, and whose hand holds it out to you while he says, 'do this in remembrance of me.' the cup which my saviour giveth me, can it be anything but a cup of salvations? then, again, another of the elements of this requital of god is--be sure that you take what god gives. there can be no greater slight and dishonour to a giver than to have his gifts neglected. you give something that has, perhaps, cost you much, or which at any rate has your heart in it, to your child, or other dear one; would it not wound you if a day or two after you found it tossing about among a heap of unregarded trifles? suppose that some of those rajahs who received presents on a royal visit to india had gone out from the durbar and flung them into the kennel, that would have been insult and disaffection, would it not? but these illustrations are trivial by the side of our treatment of the 'giving god.' surely of all the follies and crimes of our foolish and criminal race, there is none to match this--that we will not take and make our own the things that are freely given to us of god. this is the height of all madness; this is the lowest depth of all sin. he spares not his own son, the son spares not himself, the father gives up his son for us all because he loves, the son loves us, and gives himself to us and for us, and we stand with our hands folded on our breasts, will not condescend so much as to stretch them out, or hold our blessings with so slack a grasp that at any time we may let them slip through our careless fingers. he prays us with much entreaty to receive the gift, and neglect and stolid indifference are his requital. is there anything worse than that? surely scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. surely no sharper grief can be inflicted on the spirit of god than when we leave his gifts neglected and unappropriated. in the highest region of all, how many of these there are which we treat so! a saviour and his pardoning blood; a spirit and his quickening energies; that eternal life which might spring in our souls a fountain of living waters--all these are ours. are we as strong as we might be if we used the strength which we have? how comes it that with the fulness of god at our sides we are empty; that with the word of god in our hands we know so little; that with the spirit of god in our hearts we are so fleshly; that with the joy of our god for our portion we are so troubled; that with the heart of god for our hiding-place we are so defenceless? 'we have all and abound,' and yet we are poor and needy, like some infatuated beggar, in rags and wretchedness, to whom wealth had been given which he would not use. in the lower region of daily life and common mercies the same strange slowness to take what we have is found. there are very few men who really make the best of their circumstances. most of us are far less happy than we might be, if we had learned the divine art of wringing the last drop of good out of everything. after our rude attempts at smelting there is a great deal of valuable metal left in the dross, which a wiser system would extract. one wonders when one gets a glimpse of how much of the raw material of happiness goes to waste in the manufacture in all our lives. there is so little to spare, and yet so much is flung away. it needs a great deal of practical wisdom, and a great deal of strong, manly christian principle, to make the most of what god gives us. watchfulness, self-restraint, the power of suppressing anxieties and taking no thought for the morrow, and most of all, the habitual temper of fellowship with god, which is the most potent agent in the chemistry that extracts its healing virtue from everything--all these are wanted. the lesson is worth learning, lest we should wound that most tender love, and lest we should impoverish and hurt ourselves. do not complain of your thirsty lips till you are sure that you have emptied the cup of salvation which god gives. one more element of this requital of god has still to be named, the thankful recognition of him in all our feasting--'call on the name of the lord.' without this the preceding precept would be a piece of pure selfish epicureanism--and without this it would be impossible. only he who enjoys life in god enjoys it worthily. only he who enjoys life in god enjoys it at all. this is the true infusion which gives sweetness to whatever of bitter, and more of sweetness to whatever of sweet, the cup may contain, when the name of the lord is pronounced above it. the jewish father at the passover feast solemnly lifted the wine cup above his head, and drank with thanksgiving. the meal became a sacrament. so here the word rendered 'take' might be translated 'raise,' and we may be intended to have the picture as emblematical of our consecration to all our blessings by a like offering of them before god and a like invoking of the giver. christ gave us not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when he 'took the cup and gave thanks.' so common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skilfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drank in remembrance of him. if we carried that spirit with us into all our small duties, sorrows, and gladnesses, how different they would all seem! we should then drink for strength, not for drunkenness. we should not then find that god's gifts hid him from us. we should neither leave any of them unused nor so greedily grasp them that we let his hand go. nothing would be too great for us to attempt, nothing too small for us to put our strength into. there would be no discord between earthly gladness and heavenly desires, nor any repugnance at what he held to our lips. we should drink of the cup of his benefits, and all would be sweet--until we drew nearer and slaked our thirst at the river of his pleasures and the fountain-head itself. one more word. there is an old legend of an enchanted cup filled with poison, and put treacherously into a king's hand. he signed the sign of the cross and named the name of god over it, and it shivered in his grasp. do you take that name of the lord as a test. name him over many a cup of which you are eager to drink, and the glittering fragments will lie at your feet, and the poison be spilled on the ground. what you cannot lift before his pure eyes and think of him while you enjoy is not for you. friendships, schemes, plans, ambitions, amusements, speculations, studies, loves, businesses--can you call on the name of the lord while you put these cups to your lips? if not, fling them behind you--for they are full of poison which, for all its sugared sweetness, at the last will 'bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.' a cleansed way 'wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.'--psalm cxix. . there are many questions about the future with which it is natural for you young people to occupy yourselves; but i am afraid that the most of you ask more anxiously 'how shall i _make_ my way?' than 'how shall i _cleanse_ it?' it is needful carefully to ponder the questions: 'how shall i get on in the world--be happy, fortunate?' and the like, and i suppose that that is the consideration which presses with special force upon a great many of you. now i want you to think of another question: 'how shall i _cleanse_ my way?' for purity is the best thing; and to be good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other. so my object is just to try and urge upon my dear young friends before me the serious consideration for a while of this grave question of my text, and the answers which are given to it. if i can get you once to be smitten with a passion for purity, all but everything is gained. but i shall not be content if even that is the issue of my pleading with you now, for i want to have you all christians. and that is why i have asked you to listen to what i have to say to you on this occasion. i. so, first, we have here the great practical problem for life: 'wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?' or, in other words, 'how may i live a pure and a noble life?' it is a question, of course, for everybody: it is _the_ question for everybody, but it is more especially one for you young people. and i wish to urge it upon you for two or three reasons, which i very briefly specify. first, i desire to press upon you this question, because, as i have said, you are under special temptations not to ask it. there are so many other points in your future unresolved, that you are only too apt to put aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be of more pressing and immediate importance. and you have the other temptation, common to us all, but especially attending you as young people, of living without any plan of life at all. the sin and the misery of half the world are that they live from hand to mouth, knowing why they do each single action at the moment, but never looking a dozen inches beyond their noses to see where all the actions taken together tend; and so being just like weathercocks, whirled round by every wind of temptation that comes to them. if they are good or pure they are so by accident, by impulse, or because they have never been tempted. they have no definite plan or theory of life which they could put into words if anybody asked them on what principles, and for what end, and towards what objects they were living. and as everybody is tempted into such an unreflecting way of life, so you especially are tempted to it, because at your age judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the new joys that are flooding in upon you. and therefore i want you to stop and for a moment think whether you have any plan of life that bears being put into words, whether you can tell god and your own consciences what you are living for. and i urge this question upon you for another reason--because it is worth while for _you_ to ask it. for you have still the prerogative that some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your life's course is to take. the path that you are going to tread lies all unmarked out across the plain of life. you may be pretty nearly what you like. life is before you, with great blessed possibilities; it is behind some of us. all the long years which you may probably have are all plastic in your hands yet; they are moulded into a rigid shape for men like me. we have made our beds, and we must lie on them. you have your life in your own hands; therefore, i beseech you, while you have not to ask this question with the bitter meaning with which old men that have made their paths, and made them filthy, have to ask it--'how shall an _old_ man cleanse his way, and get rid of the filth?'--consider how you may secure that your way in the untrodden future shall be clean, and do not rest till you get an answer. and i press it upon you for another reason, because you have special temptations to make your ways unclean. it is a fearful ordeal that every young man and woman has to face, as he or she steps across the dividing boundary between childhood and youth, when parental authority is weakened, and the leading-strings are loosened, and the young swimmer is as it were cut away from the buoys, and has to battle with the waves alone. there are hundreds of young men in manchester, there are many of them here now, who have come up into this great city from quiet country homes where they were shielded by the safeguards of a father's and a mother's love and care, and have been flung into this place, with its every street swarming with temptation, and companions on the benches of the university, at the desks, in the warehouses, and the workshops, leading them away into evil and teaching them the devil's alphabet--young men with their evenings vacant and with no home. am i speaking to any such standing in slippery places? oh, my young friend! there is nothing in all these temptations, the fascinations of which you are beginning to find out, there is nothing in them all worth soiling your fingers for; there is nothing in them all that will pay you for the loss of your innocence. there is nothing in them all except a fair outside with poison at the core. you see the 'primrose path'; you do not see, to use shakespeare's solemn words, 'the everlasting burnings' to which it leads. and so i plead with you all, young men and women, to lay this question to heart; and i beseech you to credit me when i say to you that you have not yet touched the gravest and the most pressing problem of life unless you have asked yourselves in a serious mood of deep reflection, 'wherewithal shall i cleanse my way?' ii. so much for the first point to which i ask your attention. now, secondly, look at this answer, which tells us that we can only make our way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. 'by taking heed thereto.' that seems a very plain, simple, common-sense answer. the best made road wants looking after if it is to be kept in repair. what would become of a railway that had no surfacemen and platelayers going along the line and noticing whether anything was amiss? i remember once seeing a bit of an old roman road; the lava blocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart; there they were split by the frost, here was a great ugly gap full of mud; and the whole thing ended in a jungle. how shall a man keep his road in repair? 'by taking heed thereto.' things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. you do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that things will come to grief. and so, at first sight, my text simply seems to preach the plain truth: if you want to keep your road right, look after it. but if you look at your bibles, you will see that the word 'thereto' is a supplement, and that all that the psalmist really says is 'by taking heed.' and perhaps it is to himself rather than to his 'way' that a man is exhorted to 'take heed.' 'take heed to thyself' is the only condition of a pure and noble life. that such a condition is necessary, will appear very plain from two considerations. first, it is clear that there must be constant watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into and it is also plain, if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into it. first, it is plain if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into. it is a world a great deal fuller of inducements to do wrong than of inducements to do right; a world in which there are a great many bad things that have a deceptive appearance of pleasure; a great many circumstances in which it seems far easier to follow the worse than to follow the better course. and so, unless a man has learned the great art of saying 'no!' 'so did not i because of the fear of the lord'; he will come to rack and ruin without a doubt. there are more things round about you that will tempt you downwards than will draw you upwards, and your only security is constant watchfulness. as george herbert says:-- 'who keeps no guard upon himself is slack, and rots to nothing at the next great thaw.' and that is what will happen to you, as sure as you are living, in spite of all your good resolutions, unless you back up those resolutions with perpetual jealous watchfulness over yourselves. 'keep thy heart with all diligence.' and the same lesson is pealed out to us if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into this world all full of wickedness. we are creatures evidently made for self-government. our whole nature is like a monarchy. there are things in each of us that are never meant to rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions, desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a man, and there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended to be supreme and sovereign: the reason, the conscience, the will. there is a deal of pestilent talk which one sometimes hears, amongst young men especially, about 'following nature.' yes! i say, 'follow nature!' and nature says, 'let the man govern the animal!' and 'do not set beggars on horseback,' nor allow your passions to guide you, but keep a tight hand on them, suppress them, scourge them, rule them by your reason, by your conscience, and by your will. suppose a man were to say about a steamship, 'the structure of this vessel shows that it is meant that we should get a roaring fire up in the furnaces, and set the engines going at full speed, and let her go as she will.' would he not have left out of account that there was a steering apparatus, which was as plainly meant to guide as are the engines to drive? what are the rudder and the wheel for?--do they not imply a pilot? and is not the make of our souls as plainly suggestive of subordination and control? doth not nature itself teach you that you do not follow, but outrage, nature, when you let your passions rule, and that you only then follow nature when you bow the whole man under the dominion of the conscience, and when conscience stands waiting for the voice of god? 'unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a thing is man!' you are called upon by the very world that you have come into, and by the very sort of person that you yourself are, to exercise that perpetual watchfulness which is the only condition of cleansing your way. there must be a strong guard on the frontier, which shall examine all the thoughts and purposes and desires that would pass out, and all the temptations and seductions that would pass in; and take care that none shall pass which cannot bring the king's warrant, 'keep thy heart with diligence.' 'wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto.' iii. this constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by god's word. 'taking heed thereto, according to thy word.' the guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions from headquarters, and not choose and decide according to their own phantasy, but according to the king's orders. or to use another metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern, and the lantern and light is the word of god. that brings me to say, and only in a word or two, how inadequate for the task of regulating our own lives our own watchfulness is. conscience is the captain of the guard, and there is only one judgment in which conscience is always and infallibly right, and that is when it says, 'it is right to do right; and it is wrong to do wrong.' but when you begin to ask conscience, 'and, pray, what _is_ right and what _is_ wrong?' it is by no means invariably to be trusted; for you can educate conscience up or down to almost anything; and you can warp conscience, and you can bribe conscience, and you can stifle conscience. and so it is not enough that we should exercise the most watchful care over our course, and decide upon the right and the wrong of it by our own judgments; we may be fearfully wrong notwithstanding it all. it is not enough for a man to have a good watch in his pocket unless now and then he can get greenwich time by which he can set it, and unless that has been secured by taking an observation of the sun. and so you cannot trust to anything in yourselves for the guidance of your own way or for the determination of your duty, but you must look to that higher wisdom that has condescended to speak to us, and give us in this book the revelation of its will. men rebel against the moral law of the bible, and speak of it as if it were a restraint and a sharp taskmaster. ah, no! it is one of the greatest tokens of god's infinite love to us that he has not left us to grope our way amidst the illusions of our own judgments, and the questionable shapes of human conceptions of right and wrong, but that he has declared to us his own character for the standard of all perfection, and given us in the human life of the son of his love the all-sufficient pattern for every life. so i need not dwell at any length upon the thought that in that word of god, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in christ, who is the incarnate word, we have an all-sufficient guide. a guide of conduct must be plain--and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of christianity there is none about its morality. a guide of conduct must be decisive--and there is no faltering in the utterance of the book as to right and wrong. a guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance--and the morality of the new testament especially, and of the old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. the morality of the gospel, if i may so say, is a morality of centres, not of circumferences; of germinal principles, not of special prescriptions. a guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into men's consciences, and to work out in men's practice, _a portion_ of the morality of that book. people tell us that christianity is worn out. ah! it will not be worn out until all its moral teaching has become part of the practice of the world, and that will not be for a year or two! the men that care least about christian doctrines are foremost to admit that the sermon on the mount is the noblest code of morality that has ever been promulgated. if the world kept the commandments of the new testament, the world would be in the millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine-hundredths of all the sorrow, of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. here is the guide for you, and if you take it you will not err. my dear young friend! did you ever try to measure one day's actions by the standard of this book? let me press upon you this: cultivate the habit--the habit of bringing all that you do side by side with this light; as a scholar in some school of art will take his feeble copy, and hold it by the side of the masterpiece, and compare line for line, and tint for tint. take your life, and put it by the side of the great life, and you will begin to find out how 'according to thy word' is the only standard by which to set your lives. iv. and now i have one last thing to say. all this can only be done effectually if you are a christian. my psalm does not go to the bottom; it goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a weary business. it is no use to tell a man, 'guard yourself, guard yourself,' nor even to tell him, 'guard yourself according to god's word,' if god's word is only a _law_. the fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same, and so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. you want a power outside of you to steady you. the only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and pull at that. you get that eternal guard and fixed point by which to hold in jesus christ, the dear son of god's love, who has died for you. you want another motive to be brought to bear upon your conduct, and upon your convictions and your will mightier than any that now influence them; and you get that if you will yield yourself to the love that has come down from heaven to save you, and says to you, 'if you love me, keep my commandments.' you want for keeping yourself and cleansing your way reinforcements to your own inward vigour, and you will get these if you will trust to jesus christ, who will breathe into you the spirit of his own life, which will make you 'free from the law of sin and death.' you want, if your path is to be cleansed--the youngest of you, the most tenderly nurtured, the purest, the most innocent wants--forgiveness for a past path, which is in some measure stained and foul, as well as strength for the future, to deliver you from the dreadful influence of the habit of evil. and you get all these, dear friends! in the blood of jesus christ that cleanses from all sin. so, standing as you do in the place where two ways meet, and with your choice yet in your power, i beseech you, turn away from the broad, easy road that slopes pleasantly downwards, and choose the narrow, steep path that climbs. better rocks than mud, better the painful life of self-restraint and self-denial than the life of pleasing self. oh! choose the better portion, choose christ for your leader, your law, your lord! trust yourselves to that great sacrifice which he made on the cross, that all the past for you may be cleansed, and the future may be swept clear; and, so trusting, be sure he will be with you, to keep you and to guide you into the path which his own hand has raised above the filth of the world; the path of holiness, along which you may walk with feet and garments unstained till you come to zion, 'with songs and everlasting joy upon your heads,' and bless him there for all the way by which he led you home. life hid and not hid 'thy word have i hid in my heart.'--psalm cxix. . 'i have not hid thy righteousness in my heart.'--psalm xl. . then there are two kinds of hiding--one right and one wrong: one essential to the life of the christian, one inconsistent with it. he is a shallow christian who has no secret depths in his religion. he is a cowardly or a lazy one, at all events an unworthy one, who does not exhibit, to the utmost of his power, his religion. it is bad to have all the goods in the shop window; it is just as bad to have them all in the cellar. there are two aspects of the christian life--one between god and myself, with which no stranger intermeddles; one patent to all the world. my two texts touch these two. i. 'i have hid thy word within my heart.' there we have the word hidden, or the secret religion of the heart. now, i have often had occasion to remind you that the old testament use of the word 'heart' is much wider than our modern one, which limits it to being the seat and organ of love, affection, or emotion; whereas in the old testament the 'heart' is the very vital centre of the personal self. as the book of proverbs has it, 'out of it are the issues of life,' all the outgoings of activity of every kind, both that which we ascribe to the head, and that which we ascribe to the heart. these come, according to the old testament idea, from this central self. and so, when the psalmist says, 'i have hid thy word within my heart,' he means 'i have buried it deep in the very midst of my being, and put it down at the very roots of myself, and there incorporated it with the very substance of my soul.' now, i venture to take that expression, 'thy word,' in a somewhat wider sense than the psalmist employed it. there are three ideas conveyed by that expression in scripture; and two of them are distinctly found in this psalm. first, there is the plain, obvious one, which means by 'the word,' written revelation. the bible of the psalmist was a very small volume compared with ours. the pentateuch, and perhaps some of the historical books, possibly also one or two of the prophets--and these were about all. yet this fragmentary word he 'hid in his heart.' now, dear brethren! i wish to say a very practical thing or two, and i begin with this. if you want to be strong christian people, hide the bible in your heart. when i was a boy the practice of good christian folk was to read a daily chapter. i wonder if that is kept up. i gravely suspect it is not. there are, no doubt, a great many causes contributing to the comparative decay amongst professing christians, of bible reading and bible study. there is modern 'higher criticism,' which has a great deal to say about how and when the books were made, especially the books that composed this psalmist's bible. but i want to insist that no theories, were they ever so well established--as i take leave to say they are not--no theories about these secondary questions touch the value of scripture as a factor in the development of the christian life. whatever a man may think about these, he will be none the less alive, if he is wise, to the importance of the daily devotional study of scripture. then there is another set of reasons for the neglect of scripture, in the multiplication of other forms of literature. people have so many other books to read now, that they have not much time for reading their bibles, or if they have, they think they have not. no literature will ever take the place of the old book. why, even looked at as a mere literary product there is nothing in the world like it! and no religious literature, sermons, treatises, still less magazines and periodicals, will do for christian men what the bible will do for them. you make a tremendous mistake, for your own souls' sake, if your religious reading consists in what people have said and thought about scripture, more than in the scripture itself. why should you dip your pitchers into the reservoir, when you can take them up to where the spring comes gushing out of the hillside, pure and limpid and living? then there is the drive of our modern life which crowds out the word. get up a quarter of an hour earlier and you will have time to read your bible. it will be well worth the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice. i do not mean by reading the bible what, i am afraid, is far too common, reading a scrap of scripture as if it were a kind of charm. but i would most earnestly press upon you that muscle and fibre will distinctly atrophy and become enfeebled, if christian people neglect the first plain way of hiding the word in their heart, which is to make the utterances of scripture as if incorporated with their very being, and part of their very selves. but there is another use of the expression, 'thy word,' which is not without example in this great psalm of praise of the word. in one place in it we read, 'for ever, o lord! thy word is settled in heaven'; that is not the bible. 'thy faithfulness is unto all generations. they continue this day according to thy ordinances'; these are not the bible--'for all are thy servants.' 'unless thy law had been my delight, i should have perished in my afflictions'; i think that is not the bible either, but it is the utterance of god's will, as expressed in the psalmist's affliction. god's word comes to us in his providences and in many other ways. it is the declaration of his character and purposes, however they are declared, and the expression of his will and command, however expressed. in that wider sense of the phrase, i would say, 'hide that manifested will of god in your hearts.' let us cultivate the habit of bringing all 'the issues of life'--the streams that bubble up from that fountain in the centre of our being--into close relation to what we know to be god's will concerning us. let the thought of the will of god sit sovereign arbiter, enthroned in the very centre of our personality, ruling our will, bending it and making it yielding and conformed to his, governing our affections, regulating our passions, restraining our desires, stimulating our slothfulness, quickening our aspirations, lifting heavenwards our hopes, and bringing the whole of the activities that well up from our hearts into touch with the will of god. cast the healing branch into the very eye of the fountain, and then all the streams will partake of the cleansing. let that known will of god be as the leaven hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. a fanciful interpretation of that emblem makes the three measures to mean the triple constituents of humanity, body, soul, and spirit. we may smile at the fantastic exposition, but let us take heed to obey the exhortation. when god's will is deeply planted within, it will work quickening change on the heavy dough of our sluggish natures. it is when we bring the springs of our actions--namely, our motives, which are our true selves--into touch with his uttered will, that our deeds become conformed to it. look after the motives, and the deeds will look after themselves. 'i have hid thy word within my heart.' and now i venture upon a further application of this phrase, of which the psalmist had no notion, but which, in god's great mercy, in the progress of revelation, we can make. there is a better word of god than the bible; there is a better word of god than any will uttered in his providences and the like. there is the incarnate word of god, who 'was from the beginning with god, and was god,' and is manifested in these last times unto us. i am keeping well within the analogy of scripture teaching when i see the perfecting of revelation by the spoken word as reached in the revelation by the personal word; and when, in addition to the exhortation, to hide the scripture in your hearts, and to hide the uttered will of god, however uttered, in your hearts, i add, let us hide christ in our hearts. for he will 'dwell in our hearts by faith,' and if he is shrined within the curtains of the secret place within us, which is 'the secret place of the most high,' then, in the courts of the sanctuary, there will be a pure sacrifice and a priest clad 'in the beauties of holiness.' ii. the word not hidden, or the religion of the outward life. our second text brings into view the outer side of the devout life, that which is turned to the world. the word is to be hidden in the heart, for this very end of being then revealed in the life. for what other purpose is it to be set in the centre of our being and applied to the springs of action, than to mould action, and so to be displayed in conduct? it is not to be hid like some forgotten and unused treasure in a castle vault, but to be buried deep in a living person, that it may affect all that person's character and acts. 'there is nothing hidden, but that it should come abroad.' the deepest, sacredest, most secret christian experiences are to be operative on the outward life. a man may be caught up into the third heavens and there hear words which mortal speech cannot utter, but the incommunicable vision should tell on his patience and fortitude, and influence his christian work. nor is our manifestation of the springs of our action to be confined to conduct. however eloquent it is, it will be all the more intelligible for the commentary supplied by confession with the mouth. speech for christ is a christian obligation. 'what ye hear in the ear, that proclaim ye on the housetops.' true, there is a legitimate reticence as to the depths of personal religion, which needs very strong reasons to warrant its being broken through. peter told mark nothing of the interview which he had with christ on the resurrection morning, but he must have told the fact. we shall do well to be silent as to what passes between jesus and us in secret; but we shall not do well if, coming from our private communion with him, we do not 'find' some to whom we can say, 'we have found the messiah,' and so bring them to jesus. the word, if hid in the heart, will certainly be manifest in the life. for not only is it impossible for a man who deeply and continually realises god's will, and lives in touch with jesus christ, to prevent these experiences from visibly affecting his life and conduct, but also in the measure in which we have that conscious inward possession of the divine word and the divine christ we shall be impelled to manifest them to our fellows by every means in our power. what, then, is the inference to be drawn from the fact that there are thousands of professing christian people in manchester, who never felt the slightest touch of a necessity to make known the master whom they say they serve? they must be very shallow christians, having no depth of experience, or that experience would insist on coming out. true christian emotion is like a fire smouldering within some substance, that never rests till it burns its way to the outside. as one of the prophets puts it, 'i said i will speak no more in thy name'; he goes on to tell how his resolve of silence gave way under the pressure of the unuttered speech--'thy word shut up in my bones was like a fire, and i was weary of forbearing and i could not stay.' so it will always be. every genuine conviction demands utterance. a full heart needs the relief of speech. if you feel no need to show your allegiance and love to christ by speech as well as by life, i shrewdly suspect you have little love or allegiance to hide. further, the more we show it, the more need there is for us to cultivate the hidden element in our religion. if i were talking to ministers i should have a great deal to say about that. there are preachers who preach away their own religion. the two attitudes of mind in imparting and in receiving are wholly different; and if one is allowed to encroach upon the other, nothing but harm can come. 'as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone,'--that is the short account of the decay of personal religion in many a life outwardly diligent in christian work. if there is a proportionate cultivation of the hidden self, then the act of manifesting will tend to strengthen it. it is meant that our christian convictions and affections should grow in strength and in transforming power upon ourselves, by reason of utterance; just as when you let air in, the fire burns brighter. but it is quite possible that we may dissipate and scatter our feeble religion by talking about it; and some of us may be in danger of that. the loftier you mean to build your tower, the deeper must be the foundation that you dig. the more any of us are trying to do for jesus christ, the more need there is that we increase our secret communion with jesus christ. we may wrongly hide our religion so that it evaporates. too many professing christians put away their religion as careless housewives might do some precious perfume, and when they go to take it out, they find nothing but a rotten cork, a faint odour, and an empty flask. take care of burying your religion so deep, as dogs do bones, that you cannot find it again, or if you do discover, when you open the coffin, that it holds only a handful of dry dust. the heart has two actions. in one it opens its portals and expands to receive the inflowing blood which is the life. in the other it contracts to drive the life through the veins. for health there must be both motions; the receptiveness, in the secret 'hiding of the word in the heart'; the expulsive energy in the 'not hiding thy righteousness in my heart.' a stranger in the earth 'i am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.... . the earth, o lord, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes.' --psalm cxix. , . there is something very remarkable in the variety-in-monotony of this, the longest of the psalms. though it be the longest it is in one sense the simplest, inasmuch as there is but one thought in it, beaten out into all manner of forms and based upon all various considerations. it reminds one of the great violinist who out of one string managed to bring such music and melody. the one thought is the infinite preciousness of god's law, by which, of course, is not meant the written record of that law which lies in scripture, but the utterances of god's law in any form, by which men may receive it. you will find that that wider signification of the word 'law,' 'commandment,' 'statute,' is essential to the understanding of every portion of this psalm. and now these two petitions which i have put together base the prayer, which they both offer, in slightly varied form ('teach me thy statutes,' or 'hide not thy commandments from me,') upon two diverse considerations, which, taken in conjunction, are extremely interesting. the two facts on which the one petition rests, are like two great piers on two opposite sides of a river, each of which holds one end of the arch. 'the earth is full of thy mercy'; ay! but 'i am a stranger upon the earth.' these two things are both true, and from each of them, and still more from both of them taken together, rises up this petition. let us look then at the facts, and then at the prayer that is built upon them. take first that thought of the rejoicing earth, full of god's mercy as some cup is full of rich wine, or as the flowers in the morning are filled with dew. the bible does not look at the external world, the material universe, from a scientific point of view, nor does it look at it from a poetical point of view, but from a simply religious one. nothing that modern science has taught us to say about the world in the least affects this principle which the psalmist lays down, that it is all full of god's mercy. the thought is intended to exclude man and man's ways and all connected with him, as we shall see presently, but the psalmist looks out upon the earth and all the rest of its inhabitants, and he is sure of two things: one, that god's direct act is at work in it all, so as that every creature that lives, and everything that is, lives and is because god is there, and working there; and next, that everything about us is the object of loving thoughts of god's; and has, as it were, some reflection of god's smile cast across it like the light of flowers upon the grass. spring days with life 're-orient out of dust,' and the annual miracle beginning again all round, with the birds in the trees, that even dwellers in towns can hear singing as if their hearts would burst for very mirth and hopefulness, the blossoms beginning to push above the frosty ground, and the life breaking out of the branches that were stiff and dry all through the winter, proclaim the same truth as the psalmist was contemplating when he spoke thus. he looks all round, and everywhere sees the signature of a loving divine hand. the earth is full to brimming of thy mercy. it takes faith to see that; it takes a deeper and a firmer hold of the thought of a present god than most men have, to feel that. for the most of us, the world has got to be very empty of god now. we hear rather the creaking of the wheels of a great machine, or see the workings of a blind, impersonal force. but i believe that all that is precious and good in the growth of knowledge since the old days when this psalmist wrote may be joyfully accepted by us, and deep down below all we may see the deeper, larger truth of the living purpose and will of god himself. and i know no reason why twentieth-century men, full to the fingertips of modern scientific thought, may not say as heartily as the old psalmist said, 'the earth, o lord! is full of thy mercy.' but then there is another side to all this. amidst all this sunny play of gladness, and apocalypse of blessing, there stands one exception. hearken to the other word of my texts, 'i am a stranger upon the earth.' man is out of joint with the great whole, out of harmony with the music, the only hungry one at the feast. all other creatures are admirably adapted for the place they fill, and the place they fill is sufficient for them. but i stand here, knowing that i do not belong to this goodly fellowship, feeling that i am an exception to the rule. as colonel gardiner said, 'i looked at the dog, and i wished that _i_ was a dog.' ah! many another man has felt, why is it that whilst every creature, the motes that dance in the sunbeam, and the minutest living things, however insignificant, are all filled to the very brim of their capacity--why is it that i, the roof and crown of things, stand here, a sad and solitary stranger, having made acquaintance with grief; having learned what they know not, the burden of toil and care, cursed with forecast and anticipation, saddened by memory, torn by desires? 'we look before and after, and pine for what is not.' all other beings fit their place, and their place fits them like a glove upon a fair hand, but i stand here 'a stranger upon the earth.' and the more i feel, or at least the more i am convinced that it is full of god's mercy, the more i feel that there is something else which i need to make me, in my fashion, as really and as completely blessed as the lowest of his creatures. the psalmist tells us what that something more is: 'i am a stranger upon the earth; hide not thy commandments from me.' that is my food, that is what i need; that is the one thing that will make our souls feel at rest, that we shall have not merely a bible in our hands, but the will of god, the knowledge and the love of the will of god, in our hearts. when we can say 'i delight to do thy will, and my whole being seeks to lay itself beneath the mould of thine impressing purpose, and to be shaped accordingly'; oh! then, then the care and the toil and the sorrow and the restlessness and the sense of transiency, all change. some of them pass away altogether; those of them that survive are transfigured from darkness to glory. just as some gloomy cliff, impending over the plain, when the rising sun smites upon it, is changed into a rosy and golden glory, so the frowning peaks that look down upon us, are all transmuted and glorified, when once the light of god's recognised will falls upon them. 'all is right that seems most wrong, if it be his sweet will.' and when he has not hidden his commandments from us, but we have them in our hearts, for the joy and the strength of our lives, then, then it does not matter, though we have to say, 'foxes have holes, and birds of the air have their roosting-places,' and i only, in creation, have 'not where to lay my head.' if we have his will in our hearts, and are humbly and yet lovingly trying to do it, then toil becomes easy, and work becomes blessedness. if we have his will in our hearts, and are seeking to cleave to it, then and only then, do we cease to feel that it is sad that we should be strangers upon the earth, because then and then only can we say 'we seek for a better country, that is, a heavenly.' oh, dear friends! we shall be cursed with restlessness and 'weighed upon with sore distress'; and a fleeting world will, by its very fleetingness, be a misery to us, until we have learned to yield our wills to god, and to drink in his law as the joy and the rejoicing of our hearts. a stranger upon the earth needs the statutes of the lord, he needs no more, and then they will be as the psalmist says in another place, 'his song in the house of his pilgrimage.' but the first of our two texts suggests further to us the certainty that this petition shall not be in vain. if the thought, 'i am a stranger in the earth,' teaches us our need of god's commandments, the thought, 'the earth is full of thy mercies,' assures us that we shall get what we need. surely it is not going to be the case that we only are to be left hungry when all other creatures sit at his table and feast there. surely he who knows what each living thing requires, and opens his hand, and satisfies their desires, is not going to leave the nobler famishing of an immortal soul uncared for. surely if all through the universe besides, we see that the measure of a creature's capacity is the measure of god's gift to it, there is not going to be, there need not be, any disproportion between what we require and what we possess. surely if his ear can hear and translate, and his loving hand can open to satisfy, the croaking of the young raven when it cries, he will neither mistake nor neglect the voice of a man's heart, when it is asking what is so in accordance with his will as that he should let him know and love his statutes. it is not meant to be the case that we lie in the middle of his creation, the one exception to the universal law, like gideon's fleece, dry and dusty, while every poor bit of bush and grass round about is soaked with his dew. if 'the earth is full of thy mercy,' thou thereby hast pledged thyself that my heart shall be full of thy law and thy grace, if i desire it. and so, dear brethren! whilst the one of these twin considerations should send us to our knees, the other should hearten and wing our prayers. and if, on the one hand, we feel that to bring us up to the level of the poorest of his creatures, we need a firm grasp and a hearty love of his law deep in our spirits, on the other hand, the fact that the feeblest and the poorest of his creatures is saturated and soaked with as much of god's goodness as it can suck in, may make us quite sure that our souls will not vainly pant after him in a 'dry and thirsty land where no water is.' 'the earth, o lord! is full of thy mercy.' am i to be empty of the highest mercy, the knowledge of thy will? never! never! and so, 'say not, who shall ascend up into the heavens? say not, who shall pass over the sea to bring thy law near, that we may hear and do it? behold! the word is very nigh thee.' the law, the will of god, and the power to perform it are braided together, in inextricable union, in jesus christ himself; and the prayer of my psalm most deeply understood, turns itself all into this:--give me christ, more of the knowledge of him who is my law and thine uttered will; more of the love of him whom to love is to be at home everywhere, and to be filled with thy mercy; more of the likeness to him whom to imitate is holiness; whom to resemble is perfection. 'the earth is full of thy mercy.' 'the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.' and of that fulness can all we receive. then will we be strangers here no longer; and our hearts will be replenished with a better mercy than all the universe beside is capable of containing. 'time for thee to work' 'it is time for thee, lord, to work; for they have made void thy law. . therefore i love thy commandments above gold, yea, above fine gold. . therefore i esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and i hate every false way.' --psalm cxix. - . if much that we hear be true, a society to circulate bibles is a most irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy and money. we cannot ignore the extent and severity of the opposition to the very idea of revelation, even if we would; we should not if we could. we are told with some exaggeration--the wish being father to the thought--that the educated mind of the country has broken with christianity, a statement which is equally remarkable for its accuracy and for its modesty. but it has a basis of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the literary and so-called cultivated classes. there is no need to spend time in referring at length to facts which are only too familiar to most of us. every sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted in the crusade. periodicals that lie on all our tables, works of imagination that your daughters read, newspapers that go everywhere, are full of it. poetry, forgetting her lineage and her sweetness, strains _her_ voice in rhapsodies of hostility. science, leaping the hedge beyond which _she_ at all events is a trespasser,--or in finer language, 'prolonging its gaze backwards beyond the boundary of experimental evidence,' or in still plainer terms, _guessing_, affirms that she discerns in matter the promise and potency of every form of life; or presently, in a devouter mood, looking on the budding glories of the spring, declines to _profess_ the creed of atheism. learned criticism demonstrates the impossibility of supernatural religion. the leader of an influential school leaves behind him a voice hollow and sad, as from the great darkness, in which we seem to hear the echoes of a life baffled in the attempt to harmonise the logical and the spiritual elements of a large soul: 'there may be a god. the evidence is insufficient for proof. it only amounts to one of the lower degrees of probability. he may have given a revelation of his will. there are grounds sufficient to remove all antecedent improbability. the question is wholly one of evidence; but the evidence required has not been, and cannot be, forthcoming. there is room to hope for a future life, but there is no assurance whatever. therefore cultivate in the region of the imagination merely those hopes which can never become certainties, for they are infinitely precious to mankind.' ah, brethren! do we not hear in these dreary words the cry of the immortal hunger of the soul for god, for the living god? the concessions they make to christian apologists are noteworthy, but that unconscious confession of need is the most noteworthy. surely, as the eye prophesies light, so the longing of the soul and the capacity for forming such ideals are the token that he is for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn. and how blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that call themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to find refuge in the green fields of the imagination from the choking dust of the logical arena, the old faithful words: 'this is the record, that god hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in his son'! but my object in referring to these forms of opinion was merely to prepare the way for my subsequent observations; i have no intention of dealing with any of them by way of criticism or refutation. this is not the place nor the audience, nor am i the person, for that task. but i have thought that it might not be inappropriate to this occasion if i were to ask you to consider with me, from these words, the attitude of mind and heart to god's word which becomes the christian in times of opposition. the psalmist was surrounded, as would appear, by widespread defection from god's law. but instead of trembling as if the sun were about to expire, he turns himself to god, and in fellowship with him sees in all the antagonism but the premonition that he is about to act for the vindication of his own work. that confidence finds expression in the sublime invocation of our text. then with another movement of thought, the contemplation of the departures makes him tighten his own hold on the law of the lord, and the contempt of the gainsayers quickens his love: '_therefore_ i love,' etc. and as must needs be the case, that love is the measure of his abhorrence of the opposite; and because god's commandments are so dear to him, therefore he recoils with healthy hatred from false ways. so, i think, we have a fourfold representation here of our true attitude in the face of existing antagonism--calm confidence in god's work for his law; earnest prayer, which secures the forthputting of the divine energy; an increased intensity of cleaving to the word; and a decisive opposition to the ways which make it void. i ask your attention to some remarks on each of these in their order. so, then, we have-- i. calm confidence that times of antagonism evoke god's work for his word. now i dare say that some of you feel that is not the first thought that should be excited by the opposition around us. 'we have no sort of doubt,' you may say, 'that god will take care of his own word, if there be such a thing; but the question that presses is, have we it in this book? answer that for us, and we will thank you; but platitudes about god watching over his truth are naught. the first thing to do is to meet these arguments and establish the origin of scripture. then it will follow of itself that it will not perish.' but i take leave to think we, as christians, arc not bound to revise the foundation belief of our lives at the call of every new antagonist. life is too short for that. there is too much work waiting, to suspend our activity till we have answered each denier. we do not hold our faith in the word of god, as the winners at a match do their cups and belts, on condition of wrestling for them with any challenger. it is a perfectly legitimate position to say, we hold a ground of certitude, from which none of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. 'we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is the christ.' the scriptures which we have received, not without knowledge of the grounds on which controversialists defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own witness. the light is its own proof. we have the experience of christ and his law. he has saved our souls, he has changed our lives. we know in whom we have believed, and we are neither irrational nor obstinate when we avow that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on the issue of any debate. we decline to dig up the piles of the bridge that carries us over the abyss because voices tell us that it is rotten. it is shorter and perfectly reasonable to answer, 'rotten, did you say? well, we have tried it, and it bears'; which, being translated into less simple language, is just the assertion of certitude built on facts and experience which leaves no place for doubt. all the opposition will be broken into spray against that rock bulwark: 'thy words were found, and i did eat them, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart.' so i venture to think that, speaking to christian men and women, i have a right to speak on the basis of our common belief, and to encourage them to cherish it notwithstanding gainsayers. i am not counselling stolid indifference to the course of modern thought, nor desertion of the duty of defence. we are not to say, 'god will interfere; i need do nothing.' but the task of controversy is not for all christians, nor the duty of following the flow of opinion. there is plenty of more profitable work than that for most of us. the temper which our text enjoins _is_ for us all; and this calm confidence, that at the right time god will work for his word, is its first element. this confidence rests upon our belief in a divine providence that governs the world, and on the observed laws of its working. it is ever his method to send his succour _after_ the evil has been developed, and _before_ it has triumphed. had it come sooner, the priceless benefits of struggle, the new perceptions won in controversy of the many-sided meaning and value of his truth, the vigour from conflict, the wholesome sense of our weakness, had all been lost. had it come later, it had come too late. so he times his help, in order that we may derive the greatest possible benefit from both the trial and the aid. we have all been dealt with so in our personal histories, whereof the very motto might be, 'when i said my foot slippeth, thy mercy, o lord! held me up.' the same law works on the wider platform. the enemy shall be allowed to pass through the breadth of the land, to spread dread and sorrow through village and hamlet, to draw his ranks round jerusalem, as a man closes his hand on some insect he would crush. _to-morrow_, and the assault will be made; but _to-night_ 'the angel of the lord went forth and smote the camp; and when they arose in the morning,' expecting to hear the wild war-cry of the conquerors as they stormed across the undefended walls, 'they were all dead corpses.' then, as it would appear, a psalmist, moved by that mighty victory, cast it into words, which remain for all generations the law of the divine aid, and imply all that i am urging now: 'the lord is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; the lord shall help her at the dawning of the morning.' true, we are no judges of the time. our impatience is ever outrunning his calm deliberation. an illusion besets us all that _our_ conflicts with unbelief are the severest the world has ever seen; and there is a great deal of exaggeration on both sides at present as to the real extent and importance of existing antagonism to god's revelation. a widespread literature provides so many--i would not say empty--spaces for any voice to reverberate in, that both the shouters and the listeners are apt to fancy the assailants are an army, when they are only a handful, armed mainly with trumpets and pitchers. there have been darker days of antagonism than these. 'he that believeth shall not make haste.' this confidence in the punctual wisdom of his working involves the other belief, that if he does not 'work,' it is because the time is not yet ripe; the negations and contradictions have still an office to fulfil, and no hurt that cannot be repaired has been done to the faith of the church or the power of the word. nor can we forecast the manner of his working. he can call forth from the solitary sheepfolds the defenders of his word, as has ever been his wont, raising the man when the hour had come, even as he sent his son in the fulness of time. he can lead science on to deeper truth; he can quicken his church into new life; he can guide the spirit of the age. we believe that the history of the world is the unfolding of his will, and the course of opinion guided in its channel by the voice which the depths have obeyed from of old. therefore we wait for his working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence or confession; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting he will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow will say, 'peace! be still.' then they who had not cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that passeth away will rejoice as they sing, 'lo! this is our god; we have waited for him, and he will save us.' this confidence is confirmed by the history of all the past assaults on scripture. the whole history of the origin, collection, preservation, transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the bible involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care. among all the remarkable things about the book, nothing is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has happened. when we think of the gaps and losses in ancient literature, and the long stormy centuries that lie between us and its earlier pages, we can faintly estimate the chances against their preservation. it is strange that the jewish race should have so jealously preserved books which certainly did not flatter national pride, which put a mortifying explanation on national disasters, which painted them and their fathers in dark colours, which proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed a spirit they never caught. it is stranger still, that in the long years of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the people subserved the same end, and that stiff pedantry and laborious trifling--the poorest form of intellectual activity--should have guarded the letter of the word, as the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some fair island of the southern sea. when one thinks of the great gulf of language between the old and new testaments, of the variety of authors, periods, subjects, literary form, the animosities of christian and jew, it _is_ strange that we have the book here _one_, and that all these parts should blend into unity, unless the source and theme were one, and one hand had shaped each, and cared for the gathering together of all. it has been demonstrated over and over again to have no pretensions to be a divine revelation; and yet here it is, believed by millions, and rooted so firmly in european language and thought, that no revolution short of a return to barbarism can abolish it. it has been proved to be a careless, unauthenticated collection of works of different periods, styles, and schools of thought, having no unity but what is given by the bookbinder: and lo! here it is still, not disintegrated, much less dissolved. each age brings its own destructive criticism to play on it, confessing thereby that its predecessors have effected nothing; for as the bible says about sacrifices, so we may say about assaults on scripture, 'if they had done their work, would they not have ceased to be offered?' and the effect of the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is as transient as the boom of their report and the puff of their smoke. why, who knows anything about the world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made good men's hearts tremble for the ark of god? you may find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great libraries. but if their names had not occurred in the pages of christian apologists, flies in amber, nobody in this generation would ever have heard of them. and still more conspicuously is it so with earlier examples of the same kind. their work is as hopelessly dead as they. and the book seems none the worse for all the shot--like the rock that a ship fired at all night, taking it for an enemy, and could not provoke to answer nor succeed in sinking. surely some dim suspicion of the hopelessness of the attempt might creep into the hearts of men who know what _has_ been. surely the signal failure and swift fading away of all former efforts to dethrone the bible might lead to the question, 'does it not lay its deep foundations in the heart of man and the purpose of god, too deep to be reached by the short tools of mere criticism, too massive to be overthrown by all the weight of materialistic science?' it is with the bible as it was with the apostle, on whose hand, as he crouched over the newly-lit flame, the viper fastened, 'and he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.' the barbarous people, who changed their minds after they had looked a great while and saw no harm come to him, were not altogether wrong, and might teach a lesson to some modern wise men, that, among the other facts which they deal with, they should try to estimate this fact of the continued existence and influence of scripture, and the failure thus far of all attempts to shake its throne or break the sweet influences of its bands. brethren! we, at all events, should learn the lesson of historical experience. the gospel and the book which is its record, have met with eager, eloquent, learned antagonists before to-day, and they have passed. little more than a generation has sufficed to sweep them to oblivion. so it will be again. the forms of opinion, the tendencies of thought, which now seem to some of its enemies so certain to conquer, will follow these forgotten precursors into the dim land. may we not see them--these ancient discrowned kings that ruled over men and rebelled against christ, these beliefs that no man now believes--rising from their shadowy thrones in the underworld to meet the now living and ruling unbelief, when it, too, shall have gone down to them; 'all they shall speak and say unto thee, art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?' yes, each in its turn 'becomes but a noise' when he 'passes the time appointed'--the time when god arises to do his act and vindicate his word. ii. we have here, secondly, earnest prayer which brings that divine energy. the confidence that god _will_ work underlies and gives energy to the prayer that god _would_ work. the belief that a given thing is in the line of the divine purpose is not a reason for saying, 'we need not pray; god means to do it,' but is a reason for saying on the contrary, 'god means to do it; let us pray for it.' and this prayer, based upon the confidence that it is his will, is the best service that any of us can render to the gospel in troublous times. i shall have a word to say presently on the _sort_ of outflow of the divine energy which we should principally expect and desire; but let me first remind you, very briefly, how the prayers of christian men do condition--i had almost said regulate--that outflow. i need not put this matter on its abstract and metaphysical side. two facts are enough for my present purpose--one, a truth of faith, that the actual power wherewith god works for his word remains ever the same; one, a truth of observation and experience, that there are variations in the intensity of its operations and effects in the world. wherefore? surely because of the variations in the human recipients and organs of the power. here at one end is the great fountain, ever brimming. draw from it ever so much, it sinks not one hair's-breadth in its pure basin. here, on the other side, is an intermittent flow, sometimes in scanty driblets, sometimes in painful drops, sometimes more full and free on the pastures of the wilderness. wherefore these jerks and spasms? it must be something stopping the pipe. yes, of course. god's might is ever the same, but our capacity of receiving and transmitting that might varies, and with it varies the energy with which that unchanging power is exerted in the world. our faith, our earnestness of desire, our ardour and confidence of prayer, our faithfulness of stewardship and strenuousness of use, measure the amount of the unmeasured grace which we can receive. so long as our vessels are brought, the golden oil does not cease to flow. when they are full, it stays. the principle of the variation in actual manifestation of the unvarying might of god is found in the lord's words: 'according to your faith be it unto you.' so, then, we may expect periods of quickened energy in the forth-putting of the divine power. and these will correspond to, and be consequent on, the faithful prayers of christian men. see to it, brethren! that you keep the channels clear, that the flow may continue full and increase. let no mud and ooze of the world, no big blocks of sin nor subtler accumulations of small negligences, choke them again. above all, by simple, earnest prayer keep your hearts, as it were, wide open to the sun, and his light will shine on you, and his grace fructify through you, and his spirit will work in you mightily. the tenor of these remarks presupposes a point on which i wish to make one or two observations now, viz. that the manner of the divine working which we should most earnestly desire in a time of diffused unbelief is the elevation of christian souls to a higher spiritual life. i do not wish to exclude other things, but i believe that the true antidote to a widespread scepticism is a quickened church. we may indeed desire that in other ways the enemy should be met. we ought to pray that god would work by sending forth defenders of the truth, by establishing his church in the firm faith of disputed verities, and by all the multitude of ways in which he can sway the thoughts and tendencies of men. but i honestly confess that i, for my part, attach but secondary importance to controversial defences of the faith. no doubt they have their office; they may confirm a waverer, they may establish a believer, they may show onlookers that the christian position is tenable; they may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent a heresy from spreading and from descending to another generation. but oftenest they are barren of result, and where they do their work, it is not to be forgotten that there may remain as true a making void of god's law by an evil heart of unbelief as by an understanding cased in the mail of denial. you may hammer ice on an anvil, or bray it in a mortar. what then? it is pounded ice still, except for the little portion melted by heat of percussion, and it will soon all congeal again. melt it in the sun, and it flows down in sweet water, which mirrors that light which loosed its bonds of cold. so hammer away at unbelief with your logical sledge-hammers, and you will change its shape, perhaps; but it is none the less unbelief because you have ground it to powder. it is a mightier agent that must melt it--the fire of god's affection, of all lower, howsoever tender, loves that once filled the whole heart. such surrender is not pain but gladness, inasmuch as the deeper well that has been sunk dries the surface springs, and gathers all their waters into itself. the new treasure that has filled the heart compels, by glad compulsion, the surrender or, at least, the subordination, of all former affections to the constraint of all-mastering love. the same thing is true in regard to the union of the soul with christ. the description of the bride's abandonment of former duties and ties may be transferred, without the change of a word, to our relations to him. if love to him has really come into our hearts, it will master all our yearnings and tendencies and affections, and we shall feel that we cannot but yield up everything besides, by reason of the sovereign power of this new affection. christ demands from us (if i may use the word 'demand' for the beseeching of love), for his sake, and for our sakes, the entire surrender of ourselves to him. and that new affection will deal with the old loves, just as the new buds upon the beech-trees in the spring deal with the old leaves that still hang withered on some of the branches. it will push them from their hold, and they will drop. if a river should be turned into some dark cave where unclean beasts have herded and littered for years, the bright waters would sweep out on their bosom all the filth and rottenness. so, when the love of christ comes surging and flashing into a heart, it will bear out on its broad surface all conflicting and subordinate inclinations, with the passions and lusts that used to rule and befoul the spirit. christ demands complete surrender, and, if we are christians, that absolute abandonment will not be a pain nor unwelcome. we epidemic. that is a doctrine which one influential school of modern disbelievers, at all events, cannot but admit. what then? why this--that to change the opinions you must change the atmosphere; or, in other words, the true antagonist of a diffused scepticism is a quickened christian life. brethren! if we had been what we ought, would such an environment have ever been possible as that which produces this modern unbelief? even now, depend upon it, we shall do more for christ by catching and exhibiting more of his spirit than by many arguments--more by words of prayer to god than by words of reasoning to men. a higher tone of spiritual life would prove that the gospel was mighty to mould and ennoble character. if our own souls were gleaming with the glory of god, men would believe that we had met more than the shadow of our own personality in the secret place. if the fire of faith were bright in us, it would communicate itself to others, for nothing is so contagious as earnestness. if we believed, and therefore spoke, the accent of conviction in our tones would carry them deep into some hearts. if we would trust christ's cross to stand firm without our stays, and arguing less about it, would seldomer try to _prop_ it, and oftener to _point_ to it, it would draw men to itself. when the power and reality of scripture as the revelation of god are questioned, the best answer in the long-run will be a church which can adduce itself as the witness, and can say to the gainsayers, 'why, herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes!' brethren! do you see to it that your life be thus a witness that you have heard his voice; and make it your contribution to the warfare of this day, if you do not bear a weapon, that you lift your hands and heart to god. moses on the mount helped the struggling ranks below in their hand-to-hand combat with amalek. hezekiah's prayer, when he spread the letter of the invader before the lord, was more to the purpose than all his munitions of war. let your voice rise to heaven like a fountain, and blessings will fall on earth. 'arise, o lord! plead thine own cause. the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually.' iii. we have here, thirdly, as the fitting attitude in times of widespread unbelief, a love to god's word made more fervid by antagonism. there may be a question what reason for the psalmist's love is pointed at in this 'therefore.' we shall hardly be satisfied with the slovenly and not very reverent explanation, that the word is introduced, without any particular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter proper to this section; nor does it seem enough to suppose a mere general reference to the excellences of the law of the lord, which are the theme of the whole psalm. such an interpretation blunts the sharp edge of the thought, and has nothing in its favour but the general want of connection between the separate verses. there are, however, one or two other instances where a thought is pursued through more than one verse, and the usual mere juxtaposition gives place to an interlocking, so that the construction is not unexampled. it is most natural to take the plain meaning of the words, and to suppose that when the psalmist said, 'they have made void thy law, therefore i love thy commandments,' he meant, 'the prevailing opposition is the reason why i, for my part, grasp thy law more strongly.' the hostility of others evokes my warmer love. the thought, so understood, is definite, true, and important, and so i venture to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson for the day. and here i would first observe that i desire not to be understood as urging the substitution of feeling for reason, nor as trying to enlist passion in a crusade against the opponent's logic. still less do i desire to counsel the exaggeration of opinions because they are denied--that besetting danger of all controversy. but surely the emotions have a place and an office, if not indeed in the search for, and the submission to, the truth of god, yet in the defence and adherence to that truth when found. the heart may not be the organ for the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has a part to play even there; but the tenacity with which i cleave to truth, when apprehended, is far more an affair of the will than of the understanding--it is the heart's love steadying the mind, and holding it fixed to the rock. and love has also a place in the defence of the truth. it gives weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. it makes arguments to be wrought in fire rather than in frost. it lights the enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence that will not weary, the fervour that often goes farther to sway other minds than the sharpest dialectics of a passionless understanding. there _are_ causes in which an unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence; and this is one of them. the word of the living god which has saved our souls and brought to us all that makes our natures rich and strong, and all that peoples the great darkness with fair hopes solid as certainties, demands and deserves fervour in its soldiers, and loyal love in its subjects. and while it is weakness to over-emphasise our beliefs _merely_ because they are denied, and one of the saddest issues of controversy, that both sides are apt to be hurried into exaggerated statements which calmer thoughts would repudiate; on the other hand, there _is_ a legitimate prominence which ought to be given to a truth _precisely_ because it is denied. the time to underline and accentuate strongly our convictions is, when society is slipping away from them, provided it be done without petulance, passion, or the falsehood of extremes. if ever there was a period when such general considerations as these had a practical application, this is the time. would that all such as my voice now reaches would take these grand words for theirs: 'they make void thy law, therefore i love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold!' such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the natural instinct of loyal and chivalrous love. if your mother's name were defiled, would not your heart bound to her defence? when a prince is a dethroned exile, his throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents 'though his back be at the wall' and common souls become heroes because their devotion has been heightened to sublimity of self-sacrifice by a nation's rebellion. and when so many voices are proclaiming that god has never spoken to men, that our thoughts of his book are dreams, and its long empire over men's spirits a waning tyranny, does cool indifference become us? will not fervour be sobriety, and the glowing emotion of our whole nature our reasonable service? such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the fitting end and main blessing of the controversy which is being waged. we never fully hold our treasures till we have grasped them hard, lest they should be plucked from us. no truth is established till it has been denied and has survived. antagonism to the word of god should have, and will have, to those who use it rightly, a blessing in its train, in bringing out yet more of the preciousness and manifoldness, the all-sufficiency and the universality of the book. 'the more 'tis shook, the more it shines.' the fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence in the inexpugnable solidity of that tower of strength that stands four square to every wind that blows. 'the word of the lord is tried, therefore thy servant loveth it.' such increase of attachment to the word of god because of gainsayers, is the instinct of self-preservation. the sight of so many making void the law makes a man bethink himself of what his own standing is. we, as they, are the children of the age. the tendencies to which they have yielded operate on us too, and our only strength is, 'hold thou me up, and i shall be safe!' the present condition of opinion remands us all to our foundations, and should teach us that nothing but firm adherence to god revealed in his word, and to the word which reveals god, will prevent us, too, from drifting away to shoreless, solitary seas of doubt, barren as the foam, and changeful as the crumbling, restless wave. such strength of affection in the presence of diffused doubt is not to be won without an effort. all our churches afford us but too many examples of men and women who have lost the warmth of their first love, if not their love itself, for no better reason than because so many others have lost it. the effect of popular unbelief stretches far beyond those who are directly affected by its arguments, or avowedly adopt its conclusions. it is hard to hold by a creed which so many influential voices tell you it is a sign of folly and of being behind the age to believe. the consciousness that christian truth is denied, makes some of you falter in its profession, and fancy that it is less certain simply because it is gainsaid. the mist wraps you in its folds, and it is difficult to keep warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are above it all the same. 'because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.' therefore, brethren! do you consciously endeavour that the tempest shall make you tighten your hold on christ and his word. he appeals to us, too, with that most pathetic question, in which yearning for our love and sorrow over the departed disciples blend so wondrously, as if he cast himself on our loyalty: 'will ye also go away?' let us answer, not with the self-confidence that was so signally put to shame, 'though all should forsake thee, yet will not i'; but with the resolve that draws its firmness from his fulness and from our knowledge of the power of his truth, 'lord! to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.' iv. and lastly, we have here, as the final trait in the temper which becomes such times, healthy opposition to the ways which make void the word of the lord. that is the psalmist's last movement of feeling, and you see that it comes second, not first, in the order of his emotions. it is the consequence of his love, the recoil of his heart from the practices and theories which contradicted god's law. now, far be it from me to say a word which should fan the embers of the _odium theologicum_ into a blaze against either men or opinions. but there is a truth involved which seems to be in danger of being forgotten at present, and that to the detriment of large interests as well as of the forgetters. the correlative of a hearty love for any principle or belief is--we may as well use the obnoxious word--a healthy hatred for its denial and contradiction. they are but two aspects of one thing, like that pillar of old which, in its single substance, was a cloud and darkness to the foes, and gave light by night to the friends of him who dwelt in it. nay, they are but two names for the very same thing viewed in the very same motion, which is love as it yearns towards and cleaves to its treasure; and hatred, as by the identical same act it recoils and withdraws from the opposite: 'he will hold to the one, and therefore and therein despise the other.' much popular teaching as to christian truth seems to me to ignore this plain principle, and to be working harm, especially among our younger cultivated men and women, whom it charms by an appearance of liberality, which in their view, contrasts very favourably with the narrowness of us sectarians. i am free to admit that in our zeal about small matters (and in a certain 'provincialism,' so to speak, which characterised the type of english christianity till within a recent period) we needed, and still need, the lesson, and i will thankfully accept the rebuke that reminds me of what i ever tend to forget, that the golden rod, wherewith the divine builder measures from jewel to jewel in the walls of the new jerusalem, takes in wider spaces than we have meted with our lines. but that is a very different matter from the tone which vitiates and weakens so much modern adherence to christ's gospel and christ's church. the old principle, 'in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty,' made no attempt to determine what belonged to these two classes, and in practice their bounds may often have been wrongly set, so as to include many of the latter among the former; but it at all events recognised the distinction as the basis of its next clause, 'in all things, charity.' but nowadays, to listen to some liberal teachers, one would think that nothing was necessary, except the great sacred principle, that nothing is necessary; and that charity could not exist, unless that distinction were effaced. i pray you, and if i may venture so far, i would especially pray my younger hearers, to take note, that however fair this way of looking at varying forms of christian opinion may be, it really reposes on a basis which they will surely think twice before accepting, the denial that there is such a thing as intellectual certitude in religion which can be cast into definite propositions. if there be any truth at all, to confess _it_ is to deny its opposite, to cleave to _this_ is to reject that, to love the one is to hate the other. i fear--i know--that there are many minds among us who began with simply catching this tone of tolerance, and who have been insensibly borne along to an enfeebled belief that there is such a thing as religious truth at all, and that the truth lies in the word of god. dear friends! let me beseech you to take heed lest, while you are only conscious of your hearts expanding with the genial glow of liberality, by little and little you lose your power of discerning between things that differ, your sense of the worth of the scripture as the depository of divine truth, and from your slack hand the hem of the vesture in which its healing should fall away. as broad a liberality as you please within the limits that are laid down by the very nature of the case. 'these things are written that ye might believe that jesus is the christ, the son of god, and that believing, ye might have life through his name.' wheresoever that record is accepted, that divine name confessed, that faith exercised, and that life possessed, there, with all diversities, own a brother. wheresover these things are not, loyalty to your lord demands that the strength of your love for his word should be manifested in the strength of your recoil from that which makes it void. 'i love thy commandments, and i hate every false way.' i am much mistaken if times are not rapidly coming on us when a decisive election of his side will be forced on every man. the old antagonists will be face to face once more. compromises and hesitations will not serve. the country between the opposing forces will be stripped of every spot that might serve as cover for neutrals. on the one side a mighty host, its right the pharisees of ecclesiasticism and ritual, with their banner of authority, making void the law of god by their tradition; its left, and never far away from their opposites on the right with whom they are strangely leagued, working into each other's hands, the sadducees denying angel and spirit, with their war-cry of unfettered freedom and scientific evidence; and in the centre, far rolling, innumerable, the dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and self, making void the law by their sheer godlessness. and on the other side, 'he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called the word of god, and they that were with him were called, and chosen, and faithful.' the issue is certain from of old. do you see to it that you are of those who were valiant for the truth upon the earth. let not the contradiction of many move you from your faith; let it lift your eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help. let it open your desires in prayer to him who keeps his own word, that it may keep his church and bless the world. let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm, which is calm sobriety, your love for that word. let it make decisive your rejection of all that opposes. driftwood may float with the stream; the ship that holds to her anchor swings the other way. send that word far and wide. it is its own best evidence. it will correct all the misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement the inadequate defences of its friends. amid all the changes of attacks that have their day and cease to be, amid all the changes of our representations of its endless fulness, it will live. schools of thought that assail and defend it pass, but it abides. of both enemy and friend it is true, 'the grass withereth, and the flower thereof passeth away.' how antique and ineffectual the pages of the past generations of either are, compared with the ever-fresh youth of the bible, which, like the angels, is the youngest and is the oldest of books. the world can never lose it; and notwithstanding all assaults, we may rest upon _his_ assurance, whose command is prophecy, when he says, 'write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.' submission and peace 'great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing shall offend them.' psalm cxix. . the marginal note says 'they shall have no stumbling block.' we do great injustice to this psalm--so exuberant in its praises of 'the law of the lord'--if we suppose that that expression means nothing more than the mosaic or jewish revelation. it does mean that, of course, but the psalm itself shows that the writer uses the expression and its various synonyms as including a great deal more than any one method by which god's will is made known to man. for he speaks, for instance, in one part of the psalm of god's 'word,' as being settled for ever in the heavens, and of the heavens and earth as continuing to this day, 'according to thine ordinances.' so we are warranted in giving to the thought of our text the wider extension of taking the divine 'law' to include not only that directory of conduct contained in scripture, but the expressed will of god, involving duties for us, in whatever way it is made known. the love of that uttered will, the psalmist declares, will always bring peace. such an understanding of the text does not exclude the narrower reference, which is often taken to be the only thought in the psalmist's mind, nor does it obliterate the distinction between the written law of god and the disclosures of his will which we collect by the exercise of our faculties on events around and facts within us. but it widens the horizon of our contemplations, and bases the promised peace on its true foundation, the submission of the human to the divine will. let us then consider how true love to the will of god, however it is made known to us, either in the book or in our consciousness, or in daily providences, or by other people's hints, is the talisman that brings to us, in all circumstances, and in every part of our nature, a tranquillity which nothing can disturb. of course, by 'love' here is meant, not only delight in the expression of, but the submission of the whole being to, god's will; and we love the law only when, and because, we love the lawgiver. i. thus loving the law of god, not only with delight in the vehicle of its expression, but with inward submission to its behests, we shall have, first of all, the peacefulness of a restful heart. such a heart has found an adequate and worthy object for the outgoings of its affections. base things loved always disturb. noble things loved always tranquillise. and he to whom his judgment declares that the best of all things is god's manifested will, and whose affections and emotions and actions follow the dictate of his judgment, has a love which grasps whatsoever things are noble and fair and of good report, and is lifted to a level corresponding with the loftiness of its objects. for our hearts are like the creatures in some river, of which they tell us that they change their colour according to the hue of the bed of the stream in which they float and of the food of which they partake. the heart that lives on the will of god will be calm and steadfast, and ennobled into reposeful tranquillity like that which it grasps and grapples. little boats which are made fast to the sides of a ship rise and fall with the tide, as does that to which they are attached. and our hearts, if they be roped to the fleeting, the visible, the creatural, the finite, partake of the fluctuations, and finally are involved in the destruction, of that which they have made their supreme good. and contrariwise, they who love that which is eternal shine with a light thrown by reflection from the object of their love, and 'he that doeth the will of god abideth for ever,' like the will which he doeth. 'great peace'--the peace of a restful heart--'have they that love thy law.' ii. then again, such love brings the calm of a submitted will. brethren! it is not sorrow that troubles us so much as resistance to sorrow. it is not pain that lacerates; it cuts, and cuts clean when we keep ourselves still and let it do its merciful ministry upon us. but it is the plunging and struggling under the knife that makes the wounds jagged and hard to heal. the man who bows his will to the supreme, in quiet acceptance of that which he sends, is never disturbed. resistance distracts and agitates; acquiescence brings a great calm. submission is peace. and when we have learned to bend our wills, and let god break them, if that be his will, in order to bend them, then 'nothing shall by any means hurt us'; and nothing shall by any means trouble us. if you were ever on board a sailing-ship you know the difference between its motion when it is beating up against the wind and when it is running before it. in the one case all is agitation and uneasiness, in the other all is smooth and frictionless and delicious. so, when we go with the great stream, in not ignoble surrender, then we go quietly. it is god's great intention, in all that befalls us in this life, to bring our wills into conformity with his. blessed is the ministry of sorrow and of pain and of loss, if it does that for us, and disastrous and accursed is the ministry of joy and success if it does not. there is no joy but calm, and there is no calm but in--not the annihilation, but--the intensest activity of will, in the act of submitting to that higher will, which is discerned to be 'good,' and is gratefully taken as 'acceptable,' and will one day be seen to have been 'perfect.' the joy and peace of a submitted will are the secret of all true tranquillity. iii. then again, there comes by such a love the peace of an obedient life. when once we have taken it (and faithfully adhere to the choice) as our supreme desire to do god's will, we are delivered from almost all the things that distract and disturb us. away go all the storms of passion, and we are no more at the mercy of vagrant inclinations. we are no longer agitated by having to consult our own desires, and seeking to find in them compass and guide for our lives--a hopeless attempt! all these sources of agitation are dried up, and the man who has only this desire, to do his duty because god has made it such, has an ever powerful charm, which makes him tranquil whatever befalls. and as thus we may be delivered from all the agitations and cross-currents of conflicting wishes, inclinations, aims, which otherwise would make a jumble and a chaos of our lives, so, on the other hand, if for us the supreme desire is to obey god, then we are delivered from the other great enemy to tranquillity--namely, anxious forecasting of possible consequences of our actions, which robs so many of us of so many quiet days. 'i do the little i can do,' said faber, 'and leave the rest with thee,' and that will bring peace. instead of wondering what is to come of this step and that, whether our plans will turn out as we hope, and so being at the mercy of contingencies impossible to be forecasted, we cast all upon him and say, 'i have nothing to do with the far end of my actions. thou givest them a body as it has pleased thee. i have to do with this end of my actions--their motive; and i will make that right, and then it is thy business to make the rest right.' and so, 'great peace have they which love thy law.' an obedient life not only delivers us from the distractions of miscellaneous desires, and from the anxiety of unforeseen results, but it contributes to tranquillity in another way. the thing that makes us most uneasy is either sin done or duty neglected. either of these, however small it may appear, is like a horse-hair upon the sheets of a bed, or a little wrinkle in that on which a man lies, disturbing all his repose. no man is really at rest unless his conscience is clear. 'the wicked is like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.' but if the uttered will of the lord is our supreme object, then in this direction, too, tranquillity is ours. iv. lastly, such a love gives the peace of freedom from temptations. 'nothing shall offend them.' 'there shall be no stumbling-block to them.' the higher love casts out the lower. it is well, when, by reinforcing conscience by considerations of duty, or even sometimes by the lower thoughts of consequences, a man is able to pass by a temptation which appeals to him, and conquers the inclination to go wrong. but it is far better--and it is possible--to be lifted up into such a region as that the temptation does not appeal to him any more. to take a very homely illustration, whether is it better for a man to steel himself, and walk past the door of a public-house, though the fumes appeal to his sense, and stir his inclinations; or to go past, and never know any attraction to enter? which is best, to overcome our temptations, or to live away up in the high regions to which the malaria of the swamps never climbs, and where no disease-germs can ever reach? that elevation is possible for us, if only we keep in close touch with god, and love the law because our hearts are knit to the law-giver. 'there shall be no occasion of stumbling in him,' as the apostle john varies the expression of my text. within, there will be no traitors to surrender the camp to the enemy without. so paul in the letter to the philippians attributes to 'the peace of god which passeth understanding' a military function, and says that it will 'garrison the heart and mind,' and keep them 'in christ jesus,' which is but the christian way of saying, 'great peace have they which love thy law; and there is no occasion of stumbling in them.' looking to the hills 'i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. . my help cometh from the lord, which made heaven and earth.' --psalm cxxi. , . the so-called 'songs of degrees,' of which this psalm is one, are usually, and with great probability, attributed to the times of the exile. if that be so, we get an appropriate background and setting for the expressions and emotions of this psalm. we see the exile, wearied with the monotony of the long-stretching, flat plains of babylonia, summoning up before his mind the distant hills where his home was. we see him wondering how he will be able ever to reach that place where his desires are set; and we see him settling down, in hopeful assurance that his effort is not in vain, since his help comes from the lord. 'i will lift up my eyes unto the hills'; away out yonder westwards, across the sands, lie the lofty summits of my fatherland that draws me to itself. then comes a turn of thought, most natural to a mind passionately yearning after a great hope, the very greatness of which makes it hard to keep constant. for the second clause of my text cannot possibly be, as it is translated in our authorised version, an affirmation, but must be taken as the revised version correctly gives it, a question: 'i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. from whence cometh my help?' how am i to get there? and then comes the final turn of thought: 'my help cometh from the lord, which made heaven and earth.' so then, there are three things here--the look of longing, the question of weakness, the assurance of faith. i. the look of longing. 'i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills'--a resolution, and a resolution born of intense longing. now the hills that the psalmist is thinking about were visible from no part of that long-extended plain where he dwelt; and he might have looked till he wore his eyes out, ere he could have seen them on the horizon of sense. but although they were unseen, they were visible to the heart that longed for them. he directs his desires further than the vision of his eyeballs can go. just as his possible contemporary, daniel, when he prayed, opened his window towards the jerusalem that was so far away; and just as mohammedans still, in every part of the world, when they pray, turn their faces to the _kaabah_ at mecca, the sacred place to which their prayers are directed; and just as many jews still, north, east, south or west though they be, face jerusalem when they offer their supplications--so this psalmist in babylon, wearied and sick of the low levels that stretched endlessly and monotonously round about him, says, 'i will look at the things that i cannot see, and lift up my eyes above these lownesses about me, to the loftinesses that sense cannot behold, but which i know to be lying serene and solid beyond the narrowing horizon before me.' there was the look of longing, and the longing which made non-vision into a look; and there was the effort to divert his attention from the things around him to the things afar off; and there was the realisation, by reason of the effort, of these distant but most certain realities. now this psalmist's home-sickness, if i may so call it, had nothing at all religious about it. it was simply that he wanted to get to his own country--his own, though he had been born in exile; and there was nothing more devout or spiritual or refining about his longing than there is about the wish to return to his native country that any foreigner in a distant land feels. but when we take these words, as we all ought to do, as the motto of our lives, we must necessarily attach the loftiest religious meaning to them. and here start up the plain, simple, but tight-gripping and stimulating questions, 'do i see the unseen? does that far-off, dim land assume substance and reality to me? do i walk in the light of it raying out to me through earth's darkness? do i dwell contented with never a glimpse of it?' it comes to be a very sharp question with us professing christians, whether the horizon of our inward being is limited by, and coterminous with, the horizon of our senses, or whether, far beyond the narrow limits to which these can reach, our spirits' desire stretches boundless. are, to us, the things unseen the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and the phantoms? the apocalyptic seer, in his rocky patmos, was told that he was to be shown 'the things which _are_'; and what was it that he saw? a set of what people call unreal and symbolic visions. 'the things which are,' the world would have said, 'are the rocks that you are standing on, and the sea that is dashing upon them, and all the solid-seeming roman world, and the power that has got you in its grip. these are the realities, and these things that you think you see, these are the dreams.' but it is exactly the other way. the world and all that is about us, manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles--these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. we see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. 'i will lift up my eyes' from the mud-flats where i live to the hills that i cannot see, and, seeing them, i shall be blessed. further, do we know anything of that longing that the psalmist had? he was perfectly comfortable in babylon. there was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. the jews there were materially quite as well off, and many of them a great deal better off, than ever they had been in their narrow little strip of mountain land, shut in between the desert and the sea. but for all that, fat, wealthy babylon was not palestine. so amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains, the psalmist longed for the mountains, though the mountains are often bare of green things. it was that longing that led to his looking to the hills. do we know anything of that longing which makes us 'that are in this tabernacle to groan, being burdened'? 'absent from the lord,' and 'present in the body,' we should not be at ease, nor at home. unless our christianity throws us out of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very little. and unless we know something of that immortal longing to be nearer to god, and fuller of christ, and emancipated from sense, and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet to learn what the meaning of 'walking not after the flesh but after the spirit' really is. further, do we make any effort like that of this psalmist, who encourages and stimulates himself by that strong 'i _will_ lift up my eyes'? you will not do it unless you make a dead lift of effort. it is a great deal easier for a man to look at what is at his feet than to crane his neck gazing at the stars. and so, unless we take up and persevere in maintaining a habitual attitude of stirring up and lifting up ourselves, gravitation will be too much for us, and down will go the head, and down the eyes; and down will go the desires, and we shall be like men that live in some mountainous country, who never lift their gaze to the solemn white summits that travellers come across half europe to see. christian men and women too often walk beneath the very peaks of the mountains of god, and rarely lift their vision there. they perhaps do so for an hour and a half on a sunday morning, or an hour on a wednesday evening, when there is no other engagement, or for a minute or two in the morning before they hurry down to breakfast, or a minute or two at night when they are dead beat and unfit for anything. for the rest of the time, _there_ are the mountains and _here_ is the saint, and he seldom or never turns his head to look at them! is that the sort of christianity that is likely to be a power in the world, or a blessing to its possessor? ii further, notice the question of weakness. 'from whence cometh my help?' the loftier our ideal, the more painful ought to be our conviction of incapacity to reach it. the christian man's one security is in feeling his peril, and the condition of his strength is his acknowledgment and vivid consciousness always of his weakness. the exile in babylon had a dreary desert, peopled by wild arab tribes hostile to him, stretching between his present home and that where he desired to be, and it would be difficult for him to get away from the dominion that held him captive, unless by consent of the power of whom he was the vassal. so the more the thought of the mountains of israel drew the psalmist, the more there came into his mind the thought, 'how am i to be made able to reach that blessed soil?' and surely, if _we_ saw, with anything like a worthy apprehension and vision, the greatness of that blessedness that lies yonder for christian souls, we should feel far more deeply than we do the impossibility, as far as we are concerned, of our ever reaching it. the sense of our own weakness and the consciousness of the perils upon the path ought ever to be present with us all. brethren! if, on the one hand, we have to cultivate, for a healthy, vital christianity, a vision of the mountains of god, on the other hand we have to try to deepen in ourselves the wholesome sense of our own impotence, and the conviction that the dangers on the road are far too great for us to deal with. 'blessed is the man that feareth always.' 'pride goeth before destruction.' remember the franco-german war, and how the french prime minister said that they were going into it 'with a light heart,' and how some of the troops went out of paris in railway carriages labelled 'for berlin'; and when they reached the frontier they were doubled up and crushed in a month. unless we, when we set ourselves to this warfare, feel the formidableness of the enemy and recognise the weakness of our own arms, there is nothing but defeat for us. iii. finally, notice the assurance of faith. the psalmist asks himself, 'from whence cometh my help?' and then the better self answers the questioning, timid self: 'my help cometh from the lord, which made heaven and earth.' there will be no reception of the divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the divine help. god cannot help me before i am brought to despair of any other help. it is only when a man says, 'there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, o god!' that god comes to help. there is a story in the book of chronicles, about one battle in which judah engaged, of a very singular kind. the first step in the campaign was that the king of judah gathered all his people together, and prayed to god, and said, 'we know not what we shall do. we have no strength against this great multitude that cometh against us, but our eyes are unto thee.' then a prophet came and assured him of victory, and next day they arrayed the battle. it was set in this strange fashion: in the forefront were put the priests and levites, with their instruments of music, and not soldiers with spears and bows, and they marched out to battle with this song, 'the lord is gracious and merciful. his mercy endureth for ever.' then, without the stroke of sword or thrust of spear, god fought for them and scattered their foes. 'which things are an allegory.' if we recognise our helplessness, god is our help. if we conceit ourselves to be strong, we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, omnipotence pours itself into us. we read once that jesus christ healed 'them that had need of healing.' why does the evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, 'healed the sick'? because he would emphasise, i suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help. if, then, we desire that god should be 'the strength of our hearts, and our portion for ever,' the coming of his help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say, 'we have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us,' will ever hear from him the blessed assurance, 'the lord will fight for you.' 'stand still, and see the salvation of the lord!' so, brethren! the assurance of faith follows the consciousness of weakness, and both together will lead, and nothing else will lead, to the realisation of the vision of faith, and bring us at last, weak as we are, to the hills where the weary and foot-sore flock 'shall lie down in a good fold, and on fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of israel.' mountains round mount zion 'they that trust in the lord shall be as mount zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. . as the mountains are round about jerusalem, so the lord is round about his people from henceforth, even for ever.'--psalm cxxv. , . the so-called 'songs of degrees,' of which this psalm is one, are probably a pilgrim's song-book, and possibly date from the period of the restoration of israel from the babylonish captivity. in any case, this little psalm looks very much like a record of the impression that was made on the pilgrim, as he first topped the crest of the hill from which he looked on jerusalem. two peculiarities of its topographical position are both taken here as symbols of spiritual realities, for the singularity of the situation of the city is that it stands on a mountain and is girdled by mountains. there is a tongue of land or peninsula cut off from the surrounding country by deep ravines, on which are perched the buildings of the city, while across the valley on the eastern side is olivet, and, on the south, another hill, the so-called 'hill of evil counsel'; but upon the west and north sides there are no conspicuous summits, though the ground rises. thus, really, though not apparently, there lie all round the city encircling defences of mountains. similarly, says the psalmist, set and steadfast as on a mountain, and compassed about by a protection, like the bastions of the everlasting hills, are they whose trust is in the lord. faith, then, gives inward stability, and faith secures an encircling defence. but, more than that, notice that the mountains encompass a mountain. faith, in some measure, makes the protected like the protector. and then, beyond that, notice the two 'for evers.' zion cannot be moved, it 'abideth for ever,' and 'the lord is about his people from henceforth and for ever.' to trust in god gives the transitory creature a kind of share in the uncreated eternity of that in which he trusts. now these are four thoughts worth carrying away with us. i. the simple act of trust in god brings inward stability. the word here that is rightly translated 'trust,' like most expressions in the old testament for religious emotion, has a distinctly metaphorical colouring about it. it literally means to 'hang upon' something, and so, beautifully, it tells us what faith is--just hanging upon god. whoever has laid his tremulous hand on a fixed something, partakes, in the measure in which he does grasp it, of the fixity of that on which he lays hold; so 'they that trust in the lord shall be as mount zion,' that stands there summer and winter, day and night, year out and year in, with its strong buttresses and its immovable mass, the very emblem of solidity and stability. ay! and this is true about these tremulous hearts of ours. there is one way to make them stable, and only one; and that is that they shall be fastened, as it were, to that which is stable, and so be steadfast because they hold by what is steadfast. there is no other means by which any heart can be made immovable, except in so far as it may be moved by holy impulses and sweet drawings of love and loftinesses of aspiration towards god; there is no other means by which a heart, with all its inward perturbations and all its outward sources of agitation, can be made calm and still, except by living, deep, continual fellowship with him who is the eternal calm, and from whose stable being we mutable men can derive serenity which is a faint likeness of his immutability. 'we which have believed do enter into rest.' how can i still these hot desires of mine, this self-asserting will, all these various passions and emotions which sweep through my soul, and which must not be made mute and dead--or else there will come corruption and stagnation--but must be made so to move as that in their very motion shall be rest? how can i do that? by one way, and one only. live in fellowship with god, and that will quiet perturbations within and tumults without. the foot of the master on the midnight stormy sea will smooth the waves which the moonbeams have not power to still, but only to reveal their heavings. 'they that trust in the lord shall be like mount zion, which cannot be moved,' and yet is not torpid in its immobility, but full of fertility and of beauty wedded to its steadfastness. in like manner, the only way by which not only the inward storms can be quieted, but the outward assaults of perturbing circumstances, disasters, changes, difficult duties, and the like, can ever be received with tranquillity is, that they should be received in quiet faith. and, in like manner, the only way by which men can be made steadfast and immovable in brave, pertinacious adherence to the simple law of right, whatsoever temptations may try to draw them aside, and whatsoever frowns may gather upon the face of affairs so as to frighten them from the path of rectitude--the only way by which they can conquer evil, so as not to be hurried into forbidden paths, is this same making sure of their hold upon god, and carrying with them day by day, and moment by moment, into all the little difficulties and small temptations that would lead to trivial faults, the one solemn thought that bids all these back into their lairs--god is near me and i am with him. oh, brethren! if we could live in touch with him and, as this great word for 'trust' suggests, be fastened to him, as a man, swinging from a cliff over the crawling sea, fathoms below him, clutches the rope that is his safety--then we should live in tranquillity, and be steadfast, immovable. they say that in the great church of st. peter there is only one temperature in summer and winter; that the fiercest heat may be pouring down in the colonnades, or the sharpest frost may have silenced the tinkling fall of the fountains in the piazza; but within the great portal the thermometer stands the same. thus, if we live in the temple, and keep inside its doors, the thermometer in our hearts will be fixed; and the anemometer--the measurer of the wind--will point to calm all the year round. 'they that trust in the lord shall be as mount zion, which cannot be moved.' ii. again, this same attitude of realising the divine presence, will, and help, will bring around us encircling defences. i have already said that one peculiarity of the topography of the sacred city is that, at first sight, the metaphor of my text seems to break down, for nobody, looking at the situation of the city with uninstructed eye, would say that it was compassed all around with mountains. on two sides it manifestly is; on two sides it apparently is not, though the land rises on the north and west till it is higher than the tops of the houses. we may not be fanciful in taking that as a parable. 'as the mountains are round about jerusalem, so the lord is round about his people'--a very real defence, but a defence that it takes an instructed eye to see; no obvious protection, palpable to the vulgar touch, and manifest to the sensuous eye, but something a great deal better than that--a real protection, through which we may be sure that nothing which is evil can ever pass. whatsoever does get over the encircling mountains, and reaches us, we may be sure, is not an evil but a very real good. only we have to interpret the protection on the principles of faith, and not on those of sense. when, then, there come down upon us--as there do upon us all, thank god!--dark days, and sad days, and solitary days, and losses and bitternesses of a thousand kinds, do not let us falter in the belief that if we have our hearts set on god, nothing has come to us but what he has let through. our sorrows are his angels, though their faces are dark, and though they bear a sword that flames and turns every way. it is hard to believe; it is certainly true, and if we could carry the confidence of it as a continual possession into our ordinary lives, they would be very different from what they are to-day. iii. and then, remember the other thing that i said. my text suggests that-- simple trust in god, in some measure, assimilates the protected to the protector. the mountains girdle a mountain, and so my trust opens my heart to the entrance into my heart of something akin to god. as the apostle peter, in his brave way, is not afraid to say, it makes us 'partakers of the divine nature.' the immovableness of the trustful man is not all unlike the calmness of the trusted god; and the steadfastness of the one is a reflex of the unchangeableness of the other. we have not understood the meaning of faith, nor have we risen to the experience of its best effects upon ourselves, unless we understand that its great blessing and fruit, and the purpose for which we are commanded to cherish it, is that thereby we may become like him in whom we trust. 'they that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.' that is the key to the degradations that inhere in idolatrous worship, and that principle is true about all worship--as the god so is every one that trusteth in it. 'as the mountains are round about mount zion,' god is round about the people that are becoming godlike. iv. mark further the significant repetition of the same expression in reference to the stability of the man protected and the continuance of the protection. both are 'for ever'. that is to say, if it is true that god is round about me, and that, in some humble measure, my heart has been opening to be calmed and steadied by the influx of his own life, then his 'for ever' is my 'for ever,' and it cannot be that he should live and i should die. the guarantee of the eternal being of the trustful soul is the experience to-day of the reality of the divine protection. and thus we may face everything--life, death, whatsoever may come, assured that nothing touches the continuity and the perpetuity of the union between the trusting soul and the trusted god. 'the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my lovingkindness shall not depart from thee; nor shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the lord.' the earthquake comes. it shatters a continent and changes the face of nature; makes valleys where there were mountains, and mountains where there were vales, and open seas where there were fertile plains and covers everything with ruin and with rubbish. but there emerge from the cloudy and chaotic confusion the city perched on the hill and its encompassing heights. 'the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof, but he that doeth the will of god abideth for ever.' the charge of the watchers in the temple 'behold, bless ye the lord, all ye servants of the lord, which by night stand in the house of the lord. . lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the lord. . the lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of zion.'--psalm cxxxiv. this psalm, the shortest but one in the whole psalter, will be more intelligible if we observe that in the first part of it more than one person is addressed, and in the last verse a single person. it begins with 'bless _ye_ the lord'; and the latter words are, 'the lord bless _thee_.' no doubt, when used in the temple service, the first part was chanted by one half of the choir, and the other part by the other. who are the persons addressed in the first portion? the answer stands plain in the psalm itself. they are, 'all ye servants of the lord, which by night stand in the house of the lord.' that is to say, the priests or levites whose charge it was to patrol the temple through the hours of night and darkness, to see that all was safe and right there, and to do such other priestly and ministerial work as was needful; they are called upon to 'lift up their hands in'--or rather _towards_--'the sanctuary, and to bless the lord.' the charge is given to these watching priests, these nightly warders, by some single person--we know not whom. perhaps by the high priest, perhaps by the captain of their band. they listen to the exhortation to praise, and answer, in the last words of this little psalm, by invoking a blessing on the head of the unnamed speaker who gave the charge. so we have in this antiphonal choral psalm a little snatch of musical ritual falling into two parts--the charge to the watchers and the answering invocation. we may find a good deal of practical teaching in it. let us look, then, at this choral charge and the response to it. the charge to the watchers. we do not know what the office of these watchers was, but in the second temple, to the period of which this psalm may possibly belong, their duties were carefully defined, and rabbinical literature has preserved a minute account of the work of the nightly patrol. according to the authorities, two hundred and forty priests and levites were the nightly guard, distributed over twenty-one stations. the captain of the guard visited these stations throughout the night with flaming torches before him, and saluted each with 'peace be unto thee.' if he found the sentinel asleep he beat him with his staff, and had authority to burn his cloak (which the drowsy guard had rolled up for a pillow). we all remember who warned his disciples to watch, lest coming suddenly he should find them asleep. we may remember, too, the blessing pronounced in the apocalypse on 'him who watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked.' shortly before daybreak the captain of the guard came, as the talmud says: 'all times were not equal. sometimes he came at cockcrow, or near it, before or after it. he went to one of the posts where the priests were stationed, and opened a wicket which led into the court. here the priests, who marched behind him torch in hand, divided into two companies which went one to the east, and one to the west, carefully ascertaining that all was well. when they met each company reported "it is peace." then the duties of the watch were ended, and the priests who were to prepare for the daily sacrifice entered on their tasks.' our psalm may be the chant and answering chant with which the nightly charge was given over to the watchers, or it may be, as some commentators suppose, 'the call and counter-call with which the watchers greeted each other when they met.' figure then, to yourselves, the band of white-robed priests gathered in the court of the temple, their flashing torches touching pillar and angle with strange light, the city sunk in silence and sleep, and ere they part to their posts the chant rung in their ears:--'bless ye the lord, all ye servants of the lord which by night stand in the house of the lord! lift up your hands to the sanctuary, and bless the lord!' notice, then, that the priests' duty is to praise. it is because they are the servants of the lord that, therefore, it is their business to bless the lord. it is because they stand in the house of the lord that it is theirs to bless the lord. they who are gathered into his house, they who hold communion with him, they who can feel that the gate of the father's dwelling, like the gate of the father's heart, is always open to them, they who have been called in from their wanderings in a homeless wilderness, and given a place and a name in his house better than of sons and daughters, have been so blessed in order that, filled with thanksgiving for such an entrance into god's dwelling and of such an adoption into his family, their silent lips may be filled with thanksgiving and their redeemed hands be uplifted in praise. so for us christians. we are servants of the lord--his priests. that we 'stand in the house of the lord' expresses not only the fact of our great privilege of confiding approach to him and communion with him, whereby we may ever abide in the very holy of holies and be in the secret place of the most high, even while we are busy in the world, but it also points to our duty of ministering; for the word 'stand' is employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their office, and is almost equivalent to 'serve.' 'to bless the lord,' then, is the work to which we are especially called. if we are made a 'royal priesthood,' it is that we 'should show forth the praises of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.' the purpose of that full horn of plenty, charged with blessings which god has emptied upon our heads, is that our dumb lips may be touched into thankfulness, because our selfish hearts have been wooed and charmed into love and life. the rabbis had a saying that there were two sorts of angels: the angels that served, and the angels that praised; of which, according to their teaching, the latter were the higher in degree. it was only a half-truth, for true service is praise. but whatever the form in which praise may come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the most trivial duties, whether we 'lift up our hands in the sanctuary, and bless the lord' with them, or whether we turn our hands to the tools of our daily occupation and handle them for his sake, alike we maybe praising him. and the thing for us to remember is that the place where we, if we are christians, stand, and the character which we, if we are christians, sustain, bind us to live blessing and praising him whilst we live. 'behold!'--as if he would point to all the crowded list of god's great mercies--'bless ye the lord, all ye servants of the lord that ... stand in the house of the lord.' and then there is another point that comes out of this charge to the watchers, viz. the necessity of strenuously trying to unite together service of god and communion with god. these priests might have said--'when we go our rounds through the empty and echoing corridors of the dark temple, we perform the charge which god gave us; and it needs not that we pray. we are working for him and doing the work which he appointed us; and that is better than all external ritual.' but this unknown speaker who charges them knew better than that. the priests' service under the old covenant was very unspiritual service. their work was sometimes very repulsive and always purely external work, which might be done without one trace of religion or devotion in it. and so the speaker here warns them, as it were, against the temptation which besets all men that are concerned in the outward service of the house of god, to confound the mere outward service with inward devotion. the charge bids us remember that the more sedulously our hands and thoughts are employed about the externals of religious duties, the more must we see to it that our inmost spirits are baptized into fellowship with god. it is not enough to patrol the temple courts unless we 'lift up our hands to the sanctuary,' and with our hearts 'bless the lord.' and all we who in any degree and any department are officially or semi-officially connected with the work of the christian church have very earnestly and especially to lay this to heart. we ministers, deacons, sunday-school teachers, tract distributors, have much need to take care that we do not confound watching in the courts of the temple with lifting up our own hands and hearts to our father that is in heaven; and remember that the more outward work we do, the more inward life we ought to have. the higher the stem of the tree grows and the broader its branches spread the deeper must strike and the wider must extend its underground roots, if it is not to be blown over and become a withered ruin. and so all you christian men and women! will you take the plain lesson that is here? all ye that stand ready for service, and doing service, all 'ye that stand in the house of the lord, behold' your peril and your duty--and 'bless ye the lord,' and remember that the more work the more prayer to keep it from rotting; the more effort the more communion; and that at the end we shall discover with alarm, and with shame confess 'i kept others' vineyards and my own vineyard have i not kept'; unless, like our master, we prepare for a day of work and toil in the temple by a night of quiet communion with our father on the mountainside. and then there is another lesson here which i only touch, and that is that all times are times for blessing god. 'ye who _by night_ stand in the house of the lord, bless the lord': so though no sacrifice was smoking on the altar, and no choral songs went up from the company of praising priests in the ritual service; and although the nightfall had silenced the worship and scattered the worshippers, yet some low murmur of praise would be echoing through the empty halls all the night long, and the voice of thanksgiving and of blessing would blend with the clank of the priests' feet on the marble pavements as they went their patrolling rounds; and their torches would send up a smoke not less acceptable than the wreathing columns of the incense that had filled the day. and so as in some convents you will find a monk kneeling on the steps of the altar at each hour of the four-and-twenty, adoring the sacrament exposed upon it, so (but in inmost reality and not in a mere vulgar outside form that means nothing) in the christian heart there should be a perpetual adoration and a continual praise--a prayer without ceasing. what is it that comes first of all into your minds when you wake in the middle of the night? yesterday's business, to-morrow's vanities, or god's present love and your dependence upon him? in the night of sorrow, too, do our songs go up, and do we hear and obey the charge which commands not only perpetual adoration, but bids us fill the night with music and with praise? well for us if it be, anticipating the time when 'they rest not day nor night saying, holy! holy! holy!' now, that is the priests' charge. look for a moment at the answering blessing: 'the lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of zion.' 'thee?' whom? him who gave the solemn charge. their obedience to it is implied in the blessing which the priests invoke on the head of the unnamed speaker. so they express their joyful consent to his charge, and their desires for his welfare whose clear voice has summoned them to their high duty and privilege. they obey, and their first prayer is a prayer for him. may we venture to draw from this interchange of counsel and benediction a simple lesson as to the best form in which mutual goodwill and friendship may express itself? it is by the interchange of stimulus to god's service and praise, and of grateful prayer. he is my best friend who stirs me up to make my whole life a strong sweet song of thanksgiving to god for all his numberless mercies to me. even if the exhortation becomes rebuke, faithful are such wounds. it is but a shallow affection which can be eloquent on other subjects of common interests, but is dumb on this, the deepest of all; which can counsel wisely and rebuke gently in regard to other matters, but has never a word to say to its dearest concerning duty to the god of all mercies. and the true response to any loving exhortation to bless god, or any religious impulse which we receive from one another, is to invoke god's blessing on faithful lips that have given us counsel. this is the best recompense to christian teachers. if any poor words of ours have come to any of your hearts with power for conviction, or instruction, or encouragement, let your response be, i beseech you, 'the lord that hath made heaven and earth bless _thee_.' we need your prayers. we are weak, often sad, often discouraged. we are tempted ever to handle god's truth professionally, instead of living on it for ourselves. we are tempted to think that our work is in vain, and to lose heart because we do not see the spiritual results which we would fain reap. and in many an hour of languor and despondency, when the wheels of life turn heavily and the sky seems very far away, and our message seems to have lost its grandeur and certainty to ourselves, and our handling of it looks as if it had been one long failure, then we need and may be helped by the voice of cheer coming through the night from those whom we have tried to counsel: 'the lord that made heaven and earth bless thee.' but observe, further, the two kinds of blessing which answer to one another--god's blessing of man, and man's blessing of god. the one is communicative, the other receptive and responsive. the one is the great stream which pours itself over the precipice; the other is the basin into which it falls and the showers of spray which rise from its surface, rainbowed in the sunshine, as the cataract of divine mercies comes down upon it. god blesses us when he gives. we bless god when we thankfully take, and praise the giver. god's blessing then, must ever come first. 'we love him because he first loved us.' ours is but the echo of his, but the acknowledgment of the divine act, which must precede our recognition of it as the dawn must come in order that the birds may wake to sing. our highest service is to take the gifts of god, and with glad hearts to praise the giver. our blessings are but words. god's blessings are realities. we wish good to one another when we bless each other. but he does good to men when he blesses them. our wishes may be deep and warm, but, alas! how ineffectual. they flutter round the heads of those whom we would bless, but how seldom do they actually rest upon their brows. but god's blessings are powers. they never miss their mark. whom he blesses are blessed indeed. that experience of the ineffectual emptiness of blessings from the most loving hearts gives point to the emphatic designation here of 'the lord which made heaven and earth,' a formula which is common in this connection. it brings before the eye of faith the mighty name, and the mighty work of him in whose blessing we shall be rich. he is the lord, the eternal and the covenant king. he has made heaven and earth. if he who lives above all limitations of time, the source of life, who has the fulness of life in himself, he who has revealed himself to israel and bound himself to fulfil his covenant with all who plead it, he whose sovereign effortless power willed and spake into being the azure deeps of heaven with all its stars, and the solid earth with its tribes--if he, with such infinite resources to bestow on us as we need, if he blesses us, it will be with no vain wishes nor with the invoking of the goodwill of a higher power, but with the veritable communication of good, and we shall be blessed indeed. observe, too, the channel through which god's blessings come--'out of zion.' for the jew, the fulness of divine glory dwelt between the cherubim, and the richest of the divine blessings were bestowed on the waiting worshippers there, and no doubt it is still true that god dwells in zion, and blesses men from thence. the new testament analogue to the old testament temple is no outward building. that would be absurd confusing of the very nature of type and antitype. a material type must have a spiritual fulfilment. a rite cannot correspond to a rite, nor a building to a building. but the correspondence in christianity to the temple where god dwelt, and from which he scattered his blessings is twofold--one proper and original, the other secondary and derived. in the true sense, jesus christ is the temple. in him god dwelt; in him, man meets god; in him was the place of revelation; in him the place of sacrifice. 'in this place is one greater than the temple,' and the abiding of jehovah above the mercy-seat was but a material symbol, shadowing and foretelling the true indwelling of all the fulness of the godhead bodily in that true tabernacle which the lord hath pitched and not man. so the great fountain of all possible good and benediction which was opened for the believing jew in 'zion,' is opened for us in jesus christ who stood in the very court of the temple, and called in tones of clear, loud invitation: 'if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink.' we may each pass through the rent veil into the holiest of all, and there, laying our hand on jesus, touch god, and opening our empty palm extended to him, can receive from him all the blessing that we need. there is another application of the temple symbol in the new testament--a derivative and secondary one--to the church, that is, to the aggregate of believers. in it god dwells through christ. receiving his spirit, instinct with his life, it is his body, and as in his earthly life 'he spake of the temple of his "literal" body,' so now that church becomes the temple of god, being builded through the ages. in that zion all god's best blessings are possessed and stored, that the church may, by faithful service, impart them to the world. whosoever desires to possess these blessings must enter thither--not by any ceremonial act, or outward profession, but by becoming one of those who put their whole heart's confidence in jesus christ. within that sacred enclosure we receive whatever divine love and power can give. if we are knit to christ by our faith, we share in proportion to our faith in all the wealth of blessing with which god has blessed him. we possess christ and in him all. the ancient benediction, which came from the lips of the priestly watchers, and rang through the empty corridors of the darkened temple, asked for much: 'the lord who made heaven and earth bless thee out of zion.' but the apostolic assurance sounds a yet deeper and more wonderful note of confidence when it proclaims that already, however to ourselves we may seem sad and needy, and however little we may have counted our treasures or made them our own, 'god hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in christ jesus.' god's scrutiny longed for 'search me, o god, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; . and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'--psalm cxxxix. , . this psalm begins with perhaps the grandest contemplation of the divine omniscience that was ever put into words. it is easy to pour out platitudes upon such a subject, but the psalmist does not content himself with generalities. he gathers all the rays, as it were, into one burning point, and focusses them upon himself: 'oh, lord! thou hast searched _me_, and known _me_.' all the more remarkable, then, is it that the psalm should end with asking god to do what it began with declaring that he does. he knows us each, altogether; whether we like it or not, whether we try to hinder it or not, whether we remember it or not. singular, therefore, is it to find this prayer as the very climax of all the psalmist's contemplation. it is more than the 'searching' which was spoken of at the beginning, which is desired at the end. it is a process which has for its issue the cleansing of all the evil that is beheld. the prayer of the text is in fact the yearning of the devout soul for purity. i simply wish to consider the series of petitions here, in the hope that we may catch something of their spirit, and that some faint echo of them may sound in our desires. my purpose, then, will be best accomplished if i follow the words of the text, and look at these petitions in the order in which they stand. i. note then, first, the longing for the searching of god's eye. now, the word which is here rendered 'search' is a very emphatic and picturesque one. it means to dig deep. god is prayed, as it were, to make a cutting into the man, and lay bare his inmost nature, as men do in a railway cutting, layer after layer, going ever deeper down till the bed-rock is reached. 'search me'--dig into me, bring the deep-lying parts to light--'and know my heart'; the centre of my personality, my inmost self. that is the prayer, not of fancied fitness to stand investigation, but of lowly acknowledgment. in other words, it is really a form of confession. 'search me. i know thou wilt find evil, but still--search me!' it seems to me that there are two main ideas in this petition, on each of which i touch briefly. one is, that it is a glad recognition of a fact which is very terrible to many hearts. the conception of god as 'knowing me altogether,' down to the very roots of my being, is either the most blessed or the most unwelcome thought, according to my conception of what his heart to me is. if i think of him, as so many of us do, as simply the 'austere man' who 'gathers where he did not straw,' and 'reaps where he did not sow'; if my thought of god is mainly that of an investigator and a judge, with pure eyes and rigid judgment, then i shall be more ignorant of myself, and more confident in myself, than the most of men are when they bethink themselves, if i do not feel that i shrink up like a sensitive plant's leaf when a finger touches it, and would fain curl myself together, and hide from his eye something that i know lurks and poisons at the centre of my being. the gaoler's eye at the slit in the wall of the solitary prisoner's cell is a constant terror to the man who knows that it may be upon him at every moment, and does not know where the eyehole is, or when the merciless eye may be at it, but if we love one another we do not shrink from opening out our inward baseness to each other. we can venture to tell those that are dear to us as our own hearts the things that lie in our own hearts and make them black and ugly in all eyes but love's; or if we cannot venture to do it wholly, at all events we do it more fully, and more willingly, and with more of something that is almost pleasure in the very act of confession, in proportion as we are bound by the sacred ties of love to the recipient of the confession. there is a joy, and a blessedness deeper than joy, in discovering ourselves, even our unworthy selves, when we know that the eye that looks is a loving eye. if, then, we have rightly conceived of our relation to him, that infinite lover of all our hearts, who looks, 'with other eyes than ours, and makes allowance for us all,' there will be a certain blessedness, almost like joy, in turning ourselves inside out before him; and in feeling that every corner of our hearts lies naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. 'search me, o god!' is the voice of confident love, which is sure of the love that contemplates the sinner. and for us christian people, to whom all these attributes of deity are gathered together and brought very near our hearts and our experiences in the person of our brother christ, the thought of such knowledge of us becomes still more blessed. just as the apostle who was conscious of many sins, could say to his master, not in petulance, but in deeply-moved confidence, 'thou knowest all things! why dost thou ask me questions? thou knowest all things; thou knowest, notwithstanding my denials, that i love thee,' so may we turn to jesus christ, who knows what is in men, and who knows each man, and may be sure that the eye which looks upon our unworthiness pities our sinfulness, and is ready to bear it all away. there is a deeper gladness in pouring out our hearts to our loving lord than in locking them in sullen silence, with the vain conceit that we thereby hide ourselves from him. make a clean breast of your evil, and you will find that the act has in it a blessedness all unique and poignant. 'pour out your hearts before him, o ye people! god is a refuge for us.' this prayer is also an expression of absolute willingness to submit to the searching process. god is represented in my text as searching the secrets of a man's heart, not that god may know, but that the man may know. by his spirit he will come into the innermost corners of our nature, if this prayer is a real expression of our desire, and there the illumination of his presence will flash light into all the dark places of our experience and of our natures. we cannot afford to be in ignorance of these. pestilence breathes in the unventilated, unlighted, uncleansed recesses of a neglected nature. it is only on condition of the light of god's convincing spirit being cast into every part of our being that we shall be able to overcome and annihilate the creeping swarms of microscopic sins that are there, minute but mighty in their myriads to destroy a man's soul. 'search me' is the expression of a penitence that knows itself to be full of evil, that does not know all the evil of which it is full, that needs enlightenment, that desires deliverance, that is sure of the love that looks, and that so spreads itself, as a bleacher spreads some piece of stained cloth in the gracious sunshine and sprinkles it with the pure water of heaven that all the stains may melt away. it is useless to ask god to search us if we lock our hearts against his searching. the mere natural exercise, if i may so say, of the divine attribute of omniscience we cannot hinder. he knows us thereby altogether, whether we like it or not; but the 'searching' of my text is one which he cannot put in force without our consent. we have to confess our sins unto the lord ere this kind of divine scrutiny can be brought to bear. by his natural omniscience, he knows them altogether, but the seeing which is preparatory to destroying them depends on our willingness to submit ourselves to the often painful process by which he drags our sins to light. do you want him to come and search your hearts, and tell you in your spirits what he has found there? do you desire to know your hidden evil? then keep close to him, and tell him what the sin is which you know to be sin; and ask him to show you what the sins are which, as yet, you have not grown up to the height of understanding and acknowledging. ii. next, there follows the longing for the divine testing of our thoughts. now you will have observed, i suppose, that in the second clause of my text, 'try me, and know my thoughts' the result of the investigation is somewhat different from that of the previous clause. the 'searching' issued in a divine knowledge of the heart; the 'trying,' or testing, issues in a divine knowledge of the thoughts. the distinction between these two, in the biblical use of the expressions, is not precisely the same as in our modern popular speech. we are accustomed to talk of the heart as being the seat of emotions, affections, feelings, whereas we relegate thoughts to the head. but scripture does not quite take that metaphorical view. in it the heart is the centre of personal being, and out of it there come, not only emotions and loves, but 'thoughts and intents.' the difference, then, between these two, 'heart' and 'thoughts' is this, the one is the workshop and the other is the product. the heart is the place where the thoughts are elaborated. so you see the process of the psalmist's prayer is from the centre a little outwards, first the inmost self, and then the 'thoughts,' meaning thereby the whole web of activities, both intellectual and emotional, of which the heart, in his sense of the word, is the seat and source. in like manner as the field of investigation is somewhat shifted in the second petition, so the manner of investigation is correspondingly different. 'search' is the divine scrutiny of the inner man by the eye; 'test' is the trial as metals are tried and proved by the fiery furnace. so, then, the innermost man is searched by the divine knowledge, and the thoughts which the innermost man produces are tested by the divine providence. and our second petition is for a trial by facts, by external agencies, of the true nature and character of the purposes, desires, designs, intentions, as well as of the affections and loves and joys. that is to say, this second prayer submits absolutely to any discipline, fiery and fierce and bitter, by which the true character of a man's activities may be made clear to himself. oh! it is a prayer easily offered; hard to stand by. it is a prayer often answered in ways that drive us almost to despair. it means, 'do anything with me, put me into any seven-fold heated furnace of sorrow, do anything that will melt my hardness, and run off my dross, which thy great ladle will then skim away, that the surface may be clear, and the substance without alloy.' do you pray that prayer, brother! knowing all that it means, and being willing to take the answer, in forms that may rack your heart, and sadden your whole lives? if you are wise, you will. better to go crippled into life than, 'having two hands or two feet, to be cast into hell fire'! better to be saved though maimed, than to be entire and lost. 'try me.' it is an awful prayer. let us not offer it lightly, or unadvisedly; but if we are wise let it be our inmost desire. and when the answer comes, and sorrows fall, do not let us murmur, do not let us kick, do not let us wonder, but let us say, 'thou art a god that hearest prayer,' and 'i will glorify god in the fires.' then 'the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, shall be found unto praise and honour and glory.' iii. the next petition of my text is a longing for the casting out of evil. 'see if there be any wicked way in me.' now, that _if_ is not the 'if' of doubt whether any such 'ways' are in the man, but it is the 'if' of consciousness that there are such, though what they are he may not clearly discern. and so, it is the 'if' of humility--knowing that he is not justified because he knows nothing against himself--and not the 'if' of presumption. i have only time to observe here, in a word or two, what would well deserve more expanded treatment, and that is, the very striking and significant expression here employed for this evil way that the psalmist desires to be detected, that it may be cast out. the word rendered 'wicked'--or more properly, wickedness--is literally 'forced labour,' which was, in old times, and still is in some countries, laid upon the inhabitants at the command of authority; and then, because forced labour is grievous labour, it comes to mean sorrow. so the 'way of wickedness' that the psalmist feels is in him is the way of compulsory service, and the way that leads to sorrow. that is to say, all sin is slavery, and all sin leads to a bitter and a bad end, and its fruit is death. and so, because the man feels that his better self is in bondage, and shudderingly apprehends that the courses which he pursues can only end in bitterness and misery, he turns to god and asks him that he would enlighten him as to what these fatal courses are. 'see if there be any way of wickedness in me,' because he is quite sure that the evil which god sees, god will help him to overcome. ah, friends! we all have such ways deeply lodged within us, and we do not always know that we have; but if we will turn ourselves to him, he will prevent our 'condemning ourselves in things that we allow' and increasing the sensitiveness of our consciences, he will teach us that many things that we did not know to be wrong are harmful. as soon as we learn that they are, he will help us to cast them out. god has nothing to do with our evil but to fight against it. be sure of this, that whatsoever evil in us he thus searches and shows us. he does so in order to fling it from us. he goes down into the cellars of our hearts, with the candle of his spirit in his hand, in order that he may lay hold of all the explosives there, and having drenched them so that they shall not catch fire, may cast them clean out so that they may not blow us to destruction. iv. the last petition of my text is for guidance in 'the everlasting way.' the 'ways of wickedness' are in us; the 'way everlasting' we need to be led into. that is to say, naturally we incline to evil; it must be the divine hand and the divine spirit that lead our feet in the paths of righteousness. when we ask him to 'guide us in the way everlasting,' we ask that we may know what is duty, and that we may incline to do it. and he answers it by the gift of his divine spirit, by the quickening of our consciences, by bringing nearer to our hearts the great example who has left us his footsteps as a legacy that we may tread in them. whosoever walks in christ's footsteps is walking in 'the way everlasting,' for that path is rightly so named which leads to eternal blessedness. it is everlasting, too, inasmuch as nothing of human effort or work abides except that which is in conformity with the will of god, and inasmuch as it, and it alone, is not broken short off by death, but runs, borne upon one mighty arch that spans the gorge, clean across the black abyss, and continues straight on in the same course, only with a swifter upward gradient, through all the ages of eternity. the man who here has lived for god will live yonder as he has lived here, only more completely and more joyously for ever. 'a highway shall be there, and a way, and the ransomed of the lord shall return and come to zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads.' the incense of prayer 'let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.'--psalm cxli. . the place which this psalm occupies in the psalter, very near its end, makes it probable that it is considerably later in date than the prior portions of the collection. but the psalmist, who here penetrates to the inmost meaning of the symbolic sacrificial worship of the old testament, was not helped to his clear-sightedness by his date, but by his devotion. for throughout the old testament you find side by side these two trends of thought--a scrupulous carefulness for the observance of all the requirements of ritual worship, and a clear-eyed recognition that it was all external and symbolical and prophetic. who was it that said 'obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams'? samuel, away back in the times when many scholars tell us that the loftier conceptions of worship had not yet emerged. similar utterances are scattered throughout the old testament, and the prominence given to the more spiritual side depends not on the speaker's date but on his disposition and devotion. so here this psalmist, because his soul was filled with true longings after god, passes clear through the externals and says, 'here am i with no incense, but i have brought my prayer. i am empty-handed, but because my hands are empty, i lift them up to thee; and thou dost accept them, as if they were--yea, rather than if they were--filled with the most elaborate and costly sacrifices.' so here are two thoughts suggested, which sound mere commonplace, but if we realised them, in our religious life, that life would be revolutionised; first, the incense of prayer; second, the sacrifice of the empty-handed. let us look at these two points. i. the incense of prayer. 'let my prayer come before thee as incense.' now, that symbol of incense is thus used in many places in scripture. i need only remind you of one or two instances. you remember how, when the father of john the baptist went into the holy place, as was his priestly duty at the time of the offering of the evening oblation, the whole multitude were in the outer court praying; he in the inner court, presenting the symbolical worship, and they, without, offering the real. then, if we turn to the grand imagery of the book of the revelation, where we find the heavenly temple opened up to our reverent gaze, we read that the elders, the representatives of redeemed humanity, have 'golden bowls full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints.' so there is no fancifulness in interpreting the incense of the ancient ritual as meaning simply the prayers of devout hearts. of course there has been a great deal of nonsense talked about the symbolical signification of these old testament rites, and there is need for sober sense to put the rein upon a vivid imagination in interpreting these; still clear utterances of scripture as well as this verse itself remove all need for hesitation to accept this meaning of the symbol. now, let me remind you of the place which the altar of incense occupied. the temple was divided into three courts, the outer court, the holy place, and the holiest of all. the altar of incense stood in the second of these, the holy place; the altar of burnt offering stood in the court without. it was not until that altar, with its expiatory sacrifice, had been passed, that one could enter into the holy place, where the altar of incense stood. there were three pieces of furniture in that place, the altar of incense, the golden candlestick, and the table of the shewbread. of these three, the altar of incense stood in the centre. twice a day the incense was kindled upon it by a priest, by means of live coals brought from the altar of burnt offering in the outer court, and, thus kindled, the wreaths of fragrant smoke ascended on high. all day long the incense smouldered upon the altar; twice a day it was kindled into a bright flame. now, if we take these things with us, we can understand a little more of the depth and beauty of this prayer, and see how much it tells us of what we, as the priests of the most high god--which we are, if we are christian people at all--ought to have in our censers. i need not dwell upon the careful and sedulous preparation from pure spices which went to the making of the incense. so we have to prepare ourselves by sedulous purity if there is to be any life or power in our devotions. but i pass from that, and ask you to think of the lovely picture of true devoutness given in that inflamed incense, wreathing in coils of fragrance up to the heavens. prayer is more than petition. it is the going up of the whole soul towards god. brother! do you know anything of that instinctive and spontaneous rising up of desire and aspiration and faith and love, up and up and up, until they reach him? do you realise that just in the measure in which we set our minds as well as our affections, and our affections as well as our minds, on the things which are above, just to that extent, and not one hairsbreadth further, have we the right to call ourselves christians at all? i fear me that for the great mass of christian professors the great bulk of their lives creeps along the low levels like the mists in winter, that hug the marshes instead of rising, swirling up like an incense cloud, impelled by nothing but the fire in the censer up and up towards god. let us each ask the question for himself, is my prayer '_directed_'--as is the true meaning of the hebrew word--'before thee as incense'? remember, too, that the incense lay dead, unfragrant, and with no capacity of soaring, till it was kindled; that is to say, unless there is a flame in my heart there will be no rising of my aspirations to god. cold prayers do not go up more than a foot or two above the ground; they have no power to soar. there must be the inflaming before there can be the mounting of the aspiration. you cannot get a balloon to go up unless the gas within it is warmer than the atmosphere round it. it is because we are habitually such tepid christians that we are so tongue-tied in prayer. where was the incense kindled from? from coals brought from the altar of burnt offering in the outer court; that is to say, light the fire in your heart with a coal brought from christ's sacrifice, and then it will flame; and only then will love well upwards and desires be set on the things above. the beginning of christian fervour lies in the habitual realising as a fact of the great love which 'loved me and gave itself for me.' there is no patent way of getting a vivid christian experience except the old way of clinging close to jesus christ the saviour; and in order to do that, we have to think about him, as well as to feel about him, a great deal more than i fear the most of us do. further, does not this lovely symbol of my text suggest to us a glorious thought, the acceptableness even of our poor prayers, if they come from hearts inflamed with love because of christ's great redeeming love? the psalmist, thinking humbly of himself and of the worth of anything that he can bring, says, 'let my prayer come before thee as incense,' an 'odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to god'; yes, even our prayers will be sweet to him if they are prayers of true aspiration and mounting faith, leaping from a kindled heart, kindled at the great flame of christ's love. were you ever in a roman catholic cathedral? did you ever see there the little boys that carry the censers, swinging them backwards and forwards every now and then, and by means of the silver chains lifting the covers? what is that for? because the incense would go out unless the air was let into it. so a constant effort is needed in order to keep the incense of our prayers alight. we have to swing the censer to get rid of the things that make our hearts cold; we have to stir the fire, and only so shall we keep up our devotion. remember the incense burned all day long on the altar; though perhaps but smouldering, like the banked-up fires in the furnaces of a steamer that lies at anchor, still the glow was there; and twice a day there came the priest with his pan full of fresh glowing coals from the altar in the outer court, and kindled it up into a flame once more. which things are thus far an allegory that our devotion is to be diffused throughout our lives in a lambent glow, and if it is, it will have to be fed by special acts of worship day by day. you hear people talk of not caring about times and seasons of prayer, and of the beauty of making all life a prayer. amen! i say so too. but depend upon it that there will never be devotion diffused through life unless there is devotion concentrated at points in the life. there must be reservoirs as well as pipes in order to supply the water through the whole city. so the incense is perpetually to be heaped on the altar of incense, but also it is to be stirred to a fragrant blaze and fed, morning and evening, by fresh coals from the altar. ii. now let me say a word about the other thought here--the sacrifice of the empty-handed. 'the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.' in accordance with the genius of hebrew poetry the same general idea is repeated in the second member of the parallelism, but with modifications. what is implied in likening the uplifted empty hands to the evening sacrifice? first, it is a confession of impotent emptiness, a lifting up of expectant hands to be filled with the gift from god. and, says this psalmist, 'because i bring nothing in my hand, thou dost accept me, as if i came laden with offerings.' that is just a picturesque way of putting a familiar, threadbare truth, which, threadbare as it is, needs to be laid to heart a great deal more by us, that our true worship and truest honour of god lies not in giving but in taking. 'he is not worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing that he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.' that one truth, paul felt on mars hill, was sure enough to make all the temples and statues by which he was surrounded crumble into nothingness. but it does not merely destroy idolatry. it cuts up by the root much of what we call christian worship. how many people worship because they think they ought? how many people talk about christian worship as being a duty--'our duty we have now performed'? how many have never had a glimpse of this thought, that god wills us to draw near to him, not because it pleases him but because it blesses us, and that we are to worship, not in order that we may bring anything, either the sacrifices of bulls and goats, or the more refined ones that we bring nowadays, but in order that, bringing our emptiness into touch with his infinite fulness, as much of that fulness as we need to make us full, and as much of that blessedness as we need to make us blessed, may pass into our lives. oh! if we understand 'the giving god,' as james calls him in his letter; and if we had learned the old lesson of that fiftieth psalm, 'if i were hungry i would not tell thee.... will i eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats? he that offereth praise glorifieth me, and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will i show the salvation of god'--if we had learned that, and laid it to heart, and applied it to our own worship and our lives, mountains of misconception would be lifted away from many hearts. in our service we do not need to bring any merit of our own. this great principle destroys not only the gross externalities of heathen sacrifice, and the notion that worship is a duty, but it destroys the other notion of our having to bring anything to deserve god's gifts. and so it is an encouragement to us when we feel ourselves to be what we are, and what we should always feel ourselves to be, empty-handed, coming to him not only with hearts that aspire like incense, but with petitions that confess our need, and cast ourselves upon his grace. see that you desire what god wishes to give; see that you go to him for what he does give. see that you give to him the only thing that he does wish, or that it lies in your power to give, and that is yourself. nothing in my hand i bring, simply to thy cross i cling. 'let the lifting of my hands be as the evening sacrifice'; as the psalmist has it in another place, 'what shall i render to the lord for all his benefits?'--it is not a question of rendering, but 'i will _take_ the cup of salvation.' taking is our truest worship, and the lifting up of empty, expectant hands is, in god's sight, as the evening sacrifice. the prayer of prayers 'teach me to do thy will; for thou art my god! thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.'--psalm cxliii. . these two clauses mean substantially the same thing. the psalmist's longings are expressed in the first of them in plain words, and in the second in a figure. 'to do god's will' is to be in 'the land of uprightness.' that phrase, in its literal application, means a stretch of level country, and hence is naturally employed as an emblem of a moral or religious condition. a life of obedience to the will of god is likened to some far stretching plain, easy to traverse, broken by no barren mountains or frowning cliffs, but basking, peaceful and fruitful, beneath the smile of god. into such a garden of the lord the psalmist prays to be led. in each case his prayer is based upon a motive or plea. 'thou art my god'; his faith apprehends a personal bond between him and god, and feels that that bond obliges god to teach him his will. if we adopt the reading in our bibles of our second clause a still deeper and more wonderful plea is presented there. 'thy spirit is good,' and therefore the trusting spirit has a right to ask to be made good likewise. the relation of the believing spirit to god not only obliges god to teach it his will, but to make it partaker of his own image and conformed to his own purity. so high on wings of faith and desire soared this man, who, at the beginning of his psalm, was crushed to the dust by enemies and by dangers. so high we may rise by like means. i. notice, then, first, the supreme desire of the devout soul. we do not know who wrote this psalm. the superscription says that it was david's, and although its place in the psalter seems to suggest another author, the peculiar fervour and closeness of intimacy with god which breathes through it are like the davidic psalms, and seem to confirm the superscription. if so, it will naturally fall into its place with the others which were pressed from his heart by the rebellion of absalom. but be that as it may, whosoever wrote the psalm, was a man in extremest misery and peril, and as he says of himself, 'persecuted,' 'overwhelmed,' 'desolate.' the tempest blows him to the throne of god, and when he is there, what does he ask? deliverance? scarcely. in one clause, and again at the end, as if by a kind of after-thought, he asks for the removal of the calamities. but the main burden of his prayer is for a closer knowledge of god, the sound of his lovingkindness in his inward ear, light to show him the way wherein he should walk, and the sweet sunshine of god's face upon his heart. there is a better thing to ask than exemption from sorrows, even grace to bear them rightly. the supreme desire of the devout soul is practical conformity to the will of god. for the prayer of our text is not 'teach me to _know_ thy will.' the psalmist, indeed, has asked _that_ in a previous clause--'cause me to know the way wherein i should walk.' but knowledge is not all that we need, and the gulf between knowledge and practice is so deep that after we have prayed that we may be caused to know the way, and have received the answer, there still remains the need for god's help that knowledge may become life, and that all which we understand we may do. to such practical conformity to the will of god all other aspects of religion are meant to be subservient. christianity is a revelation of truth, but to accept it as such is not enough. christianity brings to me exemption from punishment, escape from hell, deliverance from condemnation and guilt, and by some of us, that is apt to be regarded as the whole gospel; but pardon is only a means to an end. christianity brings to us the possibility of indulgence in sweet and blessed emotions, and a fervour of feeling which to experience is the ante-past of heaven, and for some of us, all our religion goes off in vaporous emotion; but feeling alone is not christianity. our religion brings to us sweet and gracious consolations, but it is a poor affair if we only use it as an anodyne and a comfort. our christianity brings to us glorious hopes that flash lustre into the darkness, and make the solitude of the grave companionship, and the end of earth the beginning of life, but it is a poor affair if the mightiest operation of our religion be relegated to a future, and flung on to the close. all these things, the truth which the gospel brings, the pardon and peace of conscience which it ensures, the joyful emotion which it sets loose from the ice of indifference, the sweet consolations with which it pillows the weary head and bandages the bleeding heart, and the great hopes which flash light into glazing eyes, and make the end glorious with the rays of a beginning, and the western heaven bright with the promise of a new day--all these things are but subservient means to this highest purpose, that we should do the will of god, and be conformed to his image. they whose religion has not reached that apex have yet to understand its highest meaning. the river of the water of life that proceeds from the throne of god and the lamb is not sent merely to refresh thirsty lips, and to bring music into the silence of a waterless desert, but it is sent to drive the wheels of life. action, not thought, is the end of god's revelation, and the perfecting of man. but, then, let us remember that we shall most imperfectly apprehend the whole sweep and blessedness of this great supreme aim of the devout soul, if we regard this doing of god's will as merely the external act of obedience to an external command. simple doing is not enough; the deed must be the fruit of love. the aim of the christian life is not obedience to a law that is recognised as authoritative, but joyful moulding of ourselves after a law that is felt to be sweet and loving. 'i delight to do thy will, yea! thy law is within my heart.' only when thus the will yields itself in loving and glad conformity to the will of god is true obedience possible for us. brother! is that your christianity? do you desire, more than anything besides, that what he wills you should will, and that his law should be stamped upon your hearts, and all your rebellious desires and purposes should be brought into a sweet captivity which is freedom, and an obedience to christ which is kingship over the universe and yourselves? ii. note, secondly, the divine teaching and touch which are required for this conformity. the psalmist betakes himself to prayer, because he knows that of himself he cannot bring his will into this attitude of harmonious submission. and his prayer for 'teaching' is deepened in the second clause of our text into a petition, which is substantially the same in meaning, but yet sets the felt need and the coveted help in a still more striking light, in its cry for the touch of god's good spirit to guide, as by a hand grasping the psalmist's hand, into the paths of obedience. we may learn from this prayer, then, that practical conformity to god's will can never be attained by our own efforts. remember all the hindrances that rise between us and it; these wild passions of ours, this obstinate gravitating of tastes and desires towards earth, these animal necessities, these spiritual perversities, which make up so much of us all--how can we coerce these into submission? our better selves sit within like some prisoned king, surrounded and 'fooled by the rebel powers' of his revolted subjects; and our best recourse is to send an embassy to the over-lord, the sovereign king, praying him to come to our help. we cannot will to will as god wills, but we can turn ourselves to him, and ask him to put the power within us which shall subdue the evil, conquer the rebels, and make us masters of our own else anarchic and troubled spirits. for all honest attempts to make the will of god our wills, the one secret of success is confident and continual appeal to him. a man must have gone a very little way, very superficially and perfunctorily, on the path of seeking to make himself what he ought to be, unless he has found out that he cannot do it, and unless he has found out that there is only one way to do it, and that is to go to god and say, 'o lord! i am baffled and beaten. i put the reins into thy hand; do thou inspire and direct and sanctify.' that practical conformity to the will of god requires divine teaching, but yet that teaching must be no outward thing. it is not enough that we should have communicated to us, as from without, the clearest knowledge of what we ought to be. there must be more than that. our psalmist's prayer was a prophecy. he said, 'teach me to do thy will.' and he thought, no doubt, of an inward teaching which should mould his nature as well as enlighten it; of the communication of impulses as well as of conceptions; of something which should make him love the divine will, as well as of something which should make him know it. you and i have jesus christ for our teacher, the answer to the psalm. his teaching is inward and deep and real, and answers to all the necessities of the case. we have his example to stand as our perfect law. if we want to know what is god's will, we have only to turn to that life; and however different from ours his may have been in its outward circumstances, and however fragmentary and brief its records in the gospels may sometimes seem to us, yet in these little booklets, telling of the quiet life of the carpenter's son, there is guidance for every man and woman in all circumstances, however complicated, and we do not need anything more to teach us what god's will is than the life of jesus christ. his teaching goes deeper than example. he comes into our hearts, he moulds our wills. his teaching is by inward impulses and communications of desire and power to do, as well as of light to know. a law has been given which can give life. as the modeller will take a piece of wax into his hand, and by warmth and manipulation make it soft and pliable, so jesus christ, if we let him, will take our hard hearts into his hands, and by gentle, loving, subtle touches, will shape them into the pattern of his own perfect beauty, and will mould all their vagrant inclinations and aberrant distortions into 'one immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.' 'the _grace of god_ that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men _teaching_ that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,' controlling ourselves, 'righteously,' fulfilling all our obligations to our fellows, 'and godly,' referring everything to him, 'in this present world.' that practical conformity to the divine will requires, still further, the operation of the divine spirit as our guide. 'thy spirit is good lead me into the land of uprightness.' there is only one power that can draw us out of the far-off land of rebellious disobedience, where the prodigals and the swine's husks and the famine and the rags are, into the 'land of uprightness,' and that is, the communicated spirit of god, which is given to all them that desire him, and will lead them in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. it is he that works in us, the willing and the doing, according to his own good pleasure. 'he shall guide you,' said the master, 'into all truth'--not merely into its knowledge, but into its performance, not merely into truth of conception, but into truth of practice, which is righteousness, and the fulfilling of the law. iii. lastly, note the divine guarantee that this practical conformity shall be ours. the psalmist pleads with god a double motive--his relation to us and his own perfectness, 'thou art my god; therefore teach me.' 'thy spirit is good; therefore lead me into the land of uprightness.' i can but glance for a moment at these two pleas of the prayer. note, then, first, god's personal relation to the devout soul, as the guarantee that that soul shall be taught, not merely to know, but also to do his will. if he be 'my god,' there can be no deeper desire in his heart, than that his will should be my will. and this he desires, not from any masterfulness or love of dominion, but only from love to us. if he be my god, and therefore longing to have me obedient, he will not withhold what is needed to make me so. god is no hard taskmaster who sets us to make bricks without straw. whatsoever he commands he gives, and his commandments are always second and his gifts first. he bestows himself and then he says, 'for the love's sake, do my will.' be sure that the sacred bond which knits us to him is regarded by him, the faithful creator, as an obligation which he recognises and respects and will discharge. we have a right to go to him and to say to him, 'thou art my god; and thou wilt not be what thou art, nor do what thou hast pledged thyself to do, unless thou makest me to know and to do thy will.' and on the other hand, if we have taken him for ours, and have the bond knit from our side as well as from his, then the fact of our faith gives us a claim on him which he is sure to honour. the soul that can say, 'i have taken thee for mine,' has a hold on god which god is only too glad to recognise and to vindicate. and whoever, humbly trusting to that great father in the heavens, feels that he belongs to god, and that god belongs to him, is warranted in praying, 'teach me, and make me, to do thy will,' and in being confident of an answer. and there is the other plea with him and guarantee for us, drawn from god's own moral character and perfectness. the last clause of my text may either be read as our bible has it, 'thy spirit is good; lead me,' or 'let thy good spirit lead me.' in either case the goodness of the divine spirit is the plea on which the prayer is grounded. the goodness here referred to is, as i take it, not merely beneficence and kindliness, but rather goodness in its broader and loftier sense of perfect moral purity. so that the thought just comes to this--we have the right to expect that we shall be made participant of the divine nature for so sweet, so deep, so tender is the tie that knits a devout soul to god, that nothing short of conformity to the perfect purity of god can satisfy the aspirations of the creature, or discharge the obligations of the creator. it is a daring thought. the psalmist's desire was a prophecy. the new testament vindicates and fulfils it when it says 'we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.' since he now dwells in 'the land of uprightness,' who once dwelt among us in this weary world of confusion and of sin, then we one day shall be with him. christ's heart cannot be satisfied, christ's cross cannot be rewarded, the divine nature cannot be at rest, the purpose of redemption cannot be accomplished, until all who have trusted in christ be partakers of divine purity, and all the wanderers be led by devious and yet by right paths, by crooked and yet by straight ways, by places rough and yet smooth, into 'the land of uprightness.' where and what he is, there and that shall also his servants be. my brother! if to do the will of god is to dwell in the land of uprightness, disobedience is to dwell in a dry and thirsty land, barren and dreary, horrid with frowning rocks and jagged cliffs, where every stone cuts the feet and every step is a blunder, and all the paths end at last on the edge of an abyss, and crumble into nothingness beneath the despairing foot that treads them. do you see to it that you walk in ways of righteousness which are paths of peace; and look for all the help you need, with assured faith, to him who shall 'guide us by his counsel and afterwards receive us to his glory.' the satisfier of all desires 'thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing ... . he will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them.'--psalm cxlv. , . you observe the recurrence, in these two verses, of the one emphatic word 'desire.' its repetition evidently shows that the psalmist wishes to run a parallel between god's dealings in two regions. the same beneficence works in both. here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world. it is the same teaching to which our lord has given immortal and inimitable utterance, when he says, 'your heavenly father feedeth them.' and so we are entitled to look on all the wonders of creation, and to find in them buttresses which may support the edifice of our faith, and to believe that wherever there is a mouth god sends food to fill it. 'thou openest thine hand'--that is all--'and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' but to fulfil the desires of them who are not only 'living things,' but 'who fear' him, is it such a simple task? sometimes more is wanted than an open hand before that can be accomplished. so, looking not only at the words i have read, but at the whole of their setting, which is influenced by the thought of this parallelism, we see here two sets of pensioners, two kinds of wants, two forms of appeal, two processes of satisfaction. i. two kinds of pensioners. 'every living thing--' life makes a claim on god, and whatever desires arise in the living creature by reason of its life, god would be untrue to himself, a cruel parent, an unnatural father, if he did not satisfy them. we do not half enough realise the fact that the condescension of creation lies not only in the act of creating, but in the willing acceptance by the creator of the bonds under which he thereby lays himself; obliging himself to see to the creatures that he has chosen to make. and so, as one of the new testament writers puts it, in his simple way, with a profound truth, 'he is a faithful creator'; and wherever there is a creature that he has made to need anything, he has thereby said, 'as i live, that creature shall have what it needs.' then, take the other class, 'them that fear him'; or as they are described in the context--by contrast with 'the wicked who are destroyed'--'the righteous.' that is to say, whilst, because we are living things, like the bee and the worm, we have a claim on god precisely parallel with theirs for what we may need by reason of his gift, which we never asked for, his gift of life, we shall have a similar but higher claim on him if we are 'they that fear him' with that loving reverence which has no torment in it, and that love him with that reverential affection which has no presumption in it, and whose love and fear coalesce in making them long to be righteous like the object of their love, to be holy like the object of their fear. and just as the fact of physical life binds god to care for it, and to give all that is needed for its health, growth, blessedness, so the fact of man's having in his heart the faintest tremor of reverential dread, the feeblest aspiration of outgoing affection, the most faltering desire after purity of life and conduct, binds god to answer these according to the man's need. of all incredibilities in the world, there is nothing more incredible, because there is nothing more contrary to the very depths of the divine nature, than that desires, longings, expectations, which are the direct result of the love and fear of god, and the hunger and thirst after righteousness, should not be answered. now that is a very wide principle, and i do not believe that it is trusted enough by many. it comes to this--wherever you find in people a confidence which grows with their love of god, be sure that there is, somewhere or other in the universe of things, that which answers it. take a case. if there was not a word in the new testament about jesus christ's resurrection, the fact that just in proportion as men grow in devotion, in love of god, in fear of him, in longing to be good and to appear like him, in that same proportion does their conviction that there must be a life beyond the grave become firm and certain--that fact would be enough to make any one who believed in god sure that the hope thus rooted in love to him, and fed by everything that draws us nearer to him, could not be a delusion, nor be destined to be left unfulfilled. and we might go round the whole circle of dim religious aspirations and desires, and find in all of them illustrations of the principle so profoundly and so simply put in our psalm, that the same love which, in the realm of the physical world, binds itself to satisfy the life which it imparts, is at work in the higher regions, and will 'fulfil the desires of them that fear him.' ii. again, there are two sets of needs. the first of them is very easily disposed of. 'the eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their meat.' that is all. feed the beast, and give it the other things necessary for its physical existence, and there is no more to be done. but there is more wanted for the desires of the men that love and fear god. these are glanced at in the context, 'he also will hear their cry, and will save them'; 'the lord preserveth all them that love him.' that is to say, there are deeper needs in our hearts and lives than any that are known amongst the lower creatures. evils, dangers inward and outward, sorrows, disappointments, losses of all sorts shadow our lives, in a fashion which the happy, careless life of field and forest knows nothing about. give them their meat, and they curl themselves up and lie down to sleep, satisfied. man longs for something more and needs something more. 'he will save them.' now, i do not suppose that 'save' here is employed in its full new testament sense, but it approximates to that sense. and, further, there are other aspects of our needs set forth in the context, on which i briefly touch. do not let us vulgarise such a saying as this of my text, 'he will fulfil the desire of them that fear him,' as if it only meant that if a man fears god he may set his longing upon any outward thing, and be sure to get it. there is nothing so poor, so unworthy as that promised in scripture. for one thing, it is not true; for another, it would not be good if it were. the way to spoil children is not the way to perfect saints; and to give them what they want because they want it, is the sure way to spoil children of all ages. we may be quite certain that our heavenly father is not going to do that. the promise here means something far nobler and loftier. the fact of creation binds god to supply all the wants which spring from life. the fact of our loving and fearing him binds him to supply all the wants which spring from our love and fear. and it is these desires which the psalmist is thinking of. what is the object of desire to a man who loves god? god. what is the object of desire to a man who fears him? god. what is the object of desire to a righteous man? righteousness. and these are the desires which god is sure to fulfil to us. therefore, there is only one region in which it is safe and wise to cherish longings, and it is the region of the spiritual life where god imparts himself. everywhere else there will be disappointments--thank him for them. nowhere else is it absolutely true that he will 'fulfil the desires of them that fear him.' but in this region it is. whatever any of us desire to have of god, we are sure to get. we open our mouths and he fills them. in the christian life desire is the measure of possession, and to long is to have. and there is nowhere else where it is absolutely, unconditionally, and universally true that to wish is to possess, and to ask is to have. oh! then, is it not a foolish thing for us to worry and torture and sweat, in order to win for ourselves for a little while the uncertain possession of incomplete bliss? would it not be wiser, instead of letting the current of our desires dribble itself away through a thousand channels in the sand and get lost, to gather it all into one great stream which is sure to find its way to the broad ocean? 'delight thyself in the lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart,' for these will then be after himself, and himself only. iii. further, there are here two forms of appeal. 'the eyes of all wait upon thee.' that is beautiful! the dumb look of the unconscious creature, like that of a dog looking up in its master's face for a crust, makes appeal to god, and he answers that. but a dumb, unconscious look is not for us. 'he also will hear their cry.' put your wish into words if you want it answered; not for his information, but for your strengthening. 'your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things before ye ask him.' what then? why should i ask him? because the asking will clear your thoughts about your desires. it will be a very good test of them. there are many things that we all wish, which i am afraid we should not much like to put into our prayers, not because of any foolish notion that they are too small to find a place there, but because of an uncomfortable suspicion that perhaps they are not the kind of things that we ought to wish. and if we cannot make the desire into a cry, the sooner we make it dead as well as dumb the better for ourselves. the cry will serve, too, as a stimulus to the wishes which are put into words. silent prayer is well, but there is a wonderful power on ourselves--it may be due to our weakness, but still it exists--in the articulate and audible utterance of our petitions to god. i would fain that all of us were more in the habit of putting into distinct words that we ourselves can hear, the wishes that we cherish. i am sure our prayers would be more sincere, less wandering, more earnest and real, if they were spoken, as well as felt, prayers. let us remember, dear brethren! that the condition of our getting the higher gifts is not only that we should love and fear, and in the silence of our own hearts should wish for, but that we should definitely ask for, them. not only desire, but 'their cry,' brings the answer. iv. and now one last word. note the two processes of satisfying. 'thou openest thine hand.' that is enough. but god cannot satisfy our deepest desires by any such short and easy method. there is a great deal more to be done by him before the aspirations of love and fear and longing for righteousness can be fulfilled. he has to breathe himself into us. lower creatures have enough when they have the meat that drops from his hand. they know and care nothing for the hand that feeds. but god's best gifts cannot be separated from himself. they are himself, and in order to 'satisfy the desires of them that fear him' there is no way possible, even to him, but the impartation of himself to the waiting heart. that is a mystery deep and blessed. oh, that we may all know, by our own living experience, what it is to have not only the gifts which drop from his hands, but the gifts which cannot be parted from him, the giver! he has to discipline us for his highest gifts, in order that we may receive them. and sometimes he has to do that, as i have no doubt he has done it with many of us, by withholding or withdrawing the satisfaction of some of our lower desires, and so emptying our hearts and turning the current of our wishes from earth to heaven. if you are going to pour precious wine into a chalice, you begin by emptying out the less valuable liquid that may be in it. so god often empties us, in order that he may fill us, and takes away the creatures in order that we may long for the creator. not only has he to give us himself, and to discipline us in order to receive him, but he has to put all his gifts which meet our deepest desires into a great storehouse. he does not open his hand and give us peace and righteousness, and growing knowledge of himself, and closer union, and the other blessings of the christian life, but he gives us jesus christ. we are to find all these blessings in him, and it depends upon us whether we find them or not, and how much of them we find. you will always find as much in christ as you want, but you may not find nearly as much in him as you could; and you will never find as much in him as there is. god sends his son, and in that one gift, like a box 'wherein sweets compacted lie,' are all the gifts that even his hand can bestow, or our desires require. so be sure that you have what you have, and that you suck out of the rose of sharon all the honey that lies deep in its calyx. expand your desires to the width of christ's great mercies; for the measure of our wishes is the limit of our possession. he has laid up the supply of all our need in the storehouse, which is christ; and he has given us the key. let us see to it that we enter in. 'ye have not because ye ask not.' 'to him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.' end of vol. ii. the psalms of david imitated in the language of the new testament and applied to the christian state and worship by i. watts d.d. luke xxiv. all things must be fulfilled which were written in the _psalms_ concerning me. heb. xi. , . david, samuel, and the prophets -- that they without us should not be made perfect. transcriber's note. there are significant differences in the numerous reprints of isaac watts' "psalms." the first generation of this project gutenberg file was from an printing by c. corrall of charing cross, london. the index and the table of first lines have been omitted for the following reasons: . they refer to page numbers that are here expunged; and . in this electronic version key words, etc., can be easily located via searches. separate numbers have been added to psalms that have more than one part or version, for example: psalm : ; psalm : ; etc. the life of isaac watts, d.d. by dr. johnson. from his lives of the most eminent english poets. the poems of dr. watts were by my recommendation inserted in the late collection; the readers of which are to impute to me whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in the perusal of blackmore, watts, pomfret, and yealden. isaac watts was born july , , at southampton, where his father of the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, though common report makes him a shoe-maker. he appears, from the narrative of dr. gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate. isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy; and began, we are told, to learn latin when he was four years old, i suppose at home. he was afterwards taught latin, greek, and hebrew, by mr. pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the freeschool at southampton, to whom the gratitude of his scholar afterwards inscribed a latin ode. his proficiency at school was so conspicuous, that a subscription was proposed for his support at the university; but he declared his resolution to take his lot with the dissenters. such he was, as every christian church would rejoice to have adopted. he therefore repaired in to an academy taught by mr. rowe, where he had for his companions and fellow-students mr. hughes the poet, and dr. horte, afterwards archbishop of tuam. some latin essays, supposed to have been written as exercises at this academy, shew a degree of knowledge, both philosophical and theological, such as very few attain by a much longer course of study. he was, as he hints in his miscellanies, a maker of verses from fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid attention to latin poetry. his verses to his brother, in the _glyconic_ measure, written when he was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant. some of his other odes are deformed by the pindaric folly then prevailing, and are written with such neglect of all metrical rules as is without example among the ancients; but his diction, though perhaps not always exactly pure, has such copiousness and splendour, as shews that he was but at a very little distance from excellence. his method of study was to impress the contents of his books upon his memory by abridging them, and by interleaving them, to amplify one system with supplements from another. with the congregation of his tutor mr. rowe, who were, i believe, independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year. at the age of twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in study and devotion at the house of his father, who treated him with great tenderness; and had the happiness, indulged to few parents, of living to see his son eminent for literature and venerable for piety. he was then entertained by sir john hartopp five years, as domestic tutor to his son: and in that time particularly devoted himself to the study of the holy scriptures; and being chosen assistant to dr. chauncey, preached the first time on the birth-day that completed his twenty-fourth year; probably considering that as the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on a new period of existence. in about three years he succeeded dr. chauncey; but soon after his entrance on his charge, he was seized by a dangerous illness, which sunk him to such weakness, that the congregation thought an assistant necessary, and appointed mr. price. his health then returned gradually, and he performed his duty, till ( ) he was seized by a fever of such violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon him, he never perfectly recovered. this calamitous state made the compassion of his friends necessary, and drew upon him the attention of sir thomas abney, who received him into his house; where with a constancy of friendship and uniformity of conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-six years with all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and all the attention that respect could dictate. sir thomas died about eight years afterwards; but he continued with the lady and her daughters to the end of his life. the lady died about a year after him. a coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits, deserves a particular memorial; and i will not withhold from the reader dr. gibbons's representation, to which regard is to be paid as to the narrative of one who writes what he knows, and what is known likewise to multitudes besides. "our next observation shall be made upon that remarkably kind providence which brought the doctor into sir thomas abney's family, and continued him there till his death, a period of no less than thirty-six years. in the midst of his sacred labours for the glory of god, and good of his generation he is seized with a most violent and threatening fever, which leaves him oppressed with great weakness, and puts a stop at least to his public services for four years. in this distressing season, doubly so to his active and pious spirit, he is invited to sir thomas abney's family, nor ever removes from it till he had finished his days. here he enjoyed the uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest friendship. here, without any care of his own, he had everything which could contribute to the enjoyment of life, and favour the unwearied pursuits of his studies. here he dwelt in a family, which, for piety, order, harmony, and every virtue, was an house of god. here he had the privilege of a country recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading lawn, the flowery garden, and other advantages to sooth his mind and aid his restoration to health; to yield him, whenever he chose them, most grateful intervals from his laborious studies, and enable him to return to them with redoubled vigour and delight. had it not been for this most happy event, he might as to outward view, have feebly, it may be painfully, dragged on through many more years of languor and inability for public service, and even for profitable study, or perhaps might have sunk into his grave under the overwhelming load of infirmities, in the midst of his days; and thus the church and world would have been deprived of those many excellent sermons and works which he drew up and published during his long residence in this family. in a few years after his coming hither, sir thomas abney dies; but his amiable consort survives, who shows the doctor the same respect and friendship as before, and most happily for him and great numbers besides; for, as her riches were great her generosity and munificence were in full proportion; her thread of life was drawn out to a great age, even beyond that of the doctor's; and thus this excellent man, through her kindness, and that of her daughter, the present mrs. elizabeth abney, who in a like degree esteemed and honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and felicities he experienced at his first entrance into this family, till his days were numbered and finished, and, like a shock of corn in its season, he ascended into the regions of perfect and immortal life and joy." if this quotation has appeared long, let it be considered, that it comprises an account of six-and-thirty years, and those the years of dr. watts. from the time of his reception into this family, his life was no otherwise diversified than by successive publications. the series of his works i am not able to deduce; their number, and their variety, show the intenseness of his industry, and the extent of his capacity. he was one of the first authors that taught the dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. he shewed them, that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction. he continued to the end of his life the teacher of a congregation, and no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. in the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. i once mentioned the reputation which mr. foster had gained by his proper delivery to my friend dr. hawkesworth, who told me, that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to dr. watts. such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory sermons; but having adjusted the heads, and sketched out some particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers. he did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did not see how they could enforce it. at the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression. to stated and public instruction, he added familiar visits and personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of religion. by his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but by his established and habitual practice, he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. his tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the poor. to the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue, though the whole was not a hundred a year; and for children, he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. every man, acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. a voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach. as his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry continual, his writings are very numerous, and his subjects various. with his theological works i am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. it was not only in his book but in his mind that _orthodoxy_ was _united_ with _charity_. of his philosophical pieces, his logic has been received into the universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation: if he owes part of it to le clerc, it must he considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodize or illustrate a system, pretends to be its author. in his metaphysical disquisitions, it was observed by the late learned dr. dyer, that he confounded the idea of _space_ with that of _empty space_, and did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter being extended, could not be without space. few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his _improvement of the mind_, of which the radical principles may indeed be found in _locke's conduct of the understanding_, but they are so expanded and ramified by watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. whoever has the care of instructing others, may be charged with deficience in his duty if this book is not recommended. i have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his other productions: but the truth is, that whatever he took in hand was, by his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology. as piety predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works: under his direction it may be truly said, _theologiae philosophia ancillatur_, philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction; it is difficult to read a page without learning, or at least wishing to be better. the attention is caught by indirect instruction, and he that sat down only to reason, is on a sudden compelled to pray. it was therefore with great propriety that, in , he received from edinburgh and aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. academical honours would have more value, if they were always bestowed with equal judgement. he continued many years to study and to preach, and to do good by his instruction and example: till at last the infirmities of age disabled him from the more laborious part of his ministerial functions, and being no longer capable of public duty, he offered to remit the salary appendant to it; but his congregation would not accept the resignation. by degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him to his chamber and his bed; where he was worn gradually away without pain, till he expired, nov. , , in the seventy-fifth year of his age. few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments of laborious piety. he has provided instruction for all ages, from those who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of malbranche and locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the stars. his character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity and diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance; for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank in any single denomination of literary dignity; yet perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits. as a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood high among the authors with whom he is now associated. for his judgement was exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his imagination, as the _dacian battle_ proves, was vigorous and active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be supplied. his ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. the paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. it is sufficient for watts to have done better than others what no man has done well. his poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected from the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of value as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or less favourable to invention. he writes too often without regular measures, and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. he is particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. his lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour? he is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed by his verses, or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his reverence to god. preface. the following extract from the doctor's preface, as it contains the plan of his version of the psalms, may be found useful: "i come therefore to explain my own design, which is this, to accommodate the book of psalms to christian worship. and in order to do this, it is necessary to divest david and asaph, &c. of every other character but that of a psalmist and a saint, and to make them always speak the common sense, and language of a christian. "attempting the work with this view, i have entirely omitted several whole psalms, and large pieces of many others; and have chosen out of all of them, such parts only as might easily and naturally be accommodated to the various occasions of the christian life, or at least might afford us some beautiful allusion to christian affairs. these i have copied and explained in the general style of the gospel; nor have i confined my expressions to any particular party or opinion; that in words prepared for public worship, and for the lips of multitudes, there might not be a syllable offensive to sincere christians, whose judgments may differ in the lesser matters of religion. "where the psalmist uses sharp invectives against his personal enemies, i have endeavoured to turn the edge of them against our spiritual adversaries, sin, satan, and temptation. where the flights of his faith and love are sublime, i have often sunk the expressions within the reach of an ordinary christian: where the words imply some peculiar wants or distresses, joys, or blessings, i have used words of greater latitude and comprehension, suited to the general circumstances of men. "where the original runs in the form of prophecy concerning christ and his salvation, i have given an historical turn to the sense: there is no necessity that we should always sing in the obscure and doubtful style of prediction, when the things foretold are brought into open light by a full accomplishment. where the writers of the new testament have cited or alluded to any part the psalms, i have often indulged the liberty of paraphrase, according to the words of christ, or his apostles. and surely this may be esteemed the word of god still, though borrowed from several parts of the holy scripture. where the psalmist describes religion by the fear of god, i have often joined faith and love to it. where he speaks of the pardon of sin, through the mercies of god, i have added the merits of a saviour. where he talks of sacrificing goats or bullocks, i rather chuse to mention the sacrifice of christ, the lamb of god. when he attends the ark with shouting into zion, i sing the ascension of my saviour into heaven, or his presence in his church on earth. where he promises abundance of wealth, honour, and long life, i have changed some of these typical blessings for grace, glory, and life eternal, which are brought to light by the gospel, and promised in the new testament. and i am fully satisfied, that more honor is done to our blessed saviour, by speaking his name, his graces, and actions, in his own language, according to the brighter discoveries he hath now made, than by going back again to the jewish forms of worship, and the language of types and figures." of chusing or finding the psalm. by consulting the index at the end, any one may find hymns very proper for many occasions of the christian life and worship; though no copy of david's psalter can provide for all, as i have shewn in the preface to the large edition. or, if he remembers the first line of any psalm, the table of the first lines will direct where to find it. [note: the index and the table of first lines are omitted from this project gutenberg electronic version.] of singing in course. if any shall think it best to sing the psalms in order in churches or families, it may be done with profit, provided those psalms be omitted that refer to special occurrences of nations, churches, or single christians. of dividing the psalms. if the psalm be too long for the time or custom of singing, there are pauses in many of them at which you may properly rest; or you may leave out those verses which are inclued with crotchets [ ], without disturbing the sense: or, in some places you may begin to sing at the pause. the psalms of david, in metre. psalm : . common metre, the way and end of the righteous and the wicked. blest is the man who shuns the place where sinners love to meet; who fears to tread their wicked ways, and hates the scoffer's seat: but in the statutes of the lord has plac'd his chief delight; by day he reads or hears the word, and meditates by night. [he like a plant of generous kind, by living waters set, safe from the storms and blasting wind, enjoys a peaceful state.] green as the leaf and ever fair shall his profession shine, while fruits of holiness appear like clusters on the vine. not so the impious and unjust; what vain designs they form! their hopes are blown away like dust, or chaff before the storm. sinners in judgment shall not stand amongst the sons of grace, when christ the judge, at his right hand, appoints his saints a place. his eye beholds the path they tread, his heart approves it well; but crooked ways of sinners lead down to the gates of hell. psalm : . s. m. the saint happy, the sinner miserable. the man is ever blest who shuns the sinner's ways, among their counsels never stands, nor takes the scorner's place; but makes the law of god his study and delight, amidst the labours of the day, and watches of the night. he like a tree shall thrive, with waters near the root: fresh as the leaf his name shall live, his works are heavenly fruit. not so th' ungodly race, they no such blessings find; their hopes shall flee like empty chaff before the driving wind. how will they bear to stand before that judgment-seat, where all the saints at christ's right hand in full assembly meet? he knows, and he approves the way the righteous go; but sinners and their works shall meet a dreadful overthrow. psalm : . l. m. the difference between the righteous and the wicked. happy the man whose cautious feet shun the broad way that sinners go, who hates the place where atheists meet, and fears to talk as scoffers do. he loves t' employ his morning light amongst the statutes of the lord: and spends the wakeful hours at night, with pleasure pondering o'er the word. he like a plant by gentle streams, shall flourish in immortal green; and heaven will shine with kindest beams on every work his hands begin. but sinners find their counsels crost; as chaff before the tempest flies, so shall their hopes be blown and lost, when the last trumpet shakes the skies. in vain the rebel seeks to stand in judgment with the pious race; the dreadful judge with stern command divides him to a different place. "straight is the way my saints have trod, "i blest the path and drew it plain; "but you would choose the crooked road, "and down it leads to endless pain. psalm : . s. m. translated according to the divine pattern, acts iv. &c. christ dying, rising, interceding, and reigning. [maker and sovereign lord of heaven, and earth, and seas, thy providence confirms thy word, and answers thy decrees. the things so long foretold by david are fulfill'd, when jews and gentiles join to slay jesus, thine holy child.] why did the gentiles rage, and jews with one accord bend all their counsels to destroy th' anointed of the lord? rulers and kings agree to form a vain design; against the lord their powers unite, against his christ they join. the lord derides their rage, and will support his throne; he that hath rais'd him from the dead hath own'd him for his son. pause. now he's ascended high, and asks to rule the earth; the merit of his blood be pleads, and pleads his heavenly birth. he asks, and god bestows a large inheritance; far as the world's remotest ends his kingdom shall advance. the nations that rebel must feel his iron rod; he'll vindicate those honours well which he receiv'd from god. [be wise, ye rulers, now, and worship at his throne; with trembling joy, ye people, bow to god's exalted son. if once his wrath arise, ye perish on the place; then blessed is the soul that flies for refuge to his grace.] psalm : . c. m. the same. why did the nations join to slay the lord's anointed son? why did they cast his laws away, and tread his gospel down? the lord that sits above the skies, derides their rage below, he speaks with vengeance in his eyes, and strikes their spirits thro'. "i call him my eternal son, "and raise him from the dead; "i make my holy hill his throne, "and wide his kingdom spread. "ask me, my son, and then enjoy "the utmost heathen lands: "thy rod of iron shall destroy "the rebel that withstands." be wise, ye rulers of the earth, obey th' anointed lord, adore the king of heavenly birth, and tremble at his word. with humble love address his throne, for if he frown ye die; those are secure, and those alone, who on his grace rely. psalm : . l. m. christ's death, resurrection, and ascension. why did the jews proclaim their rage? the romans why their swords employ? against the lord their powers engage his dear anointed to destroy? "come, let us break his bands," they say, "this man shall never give us laws ;" and thus they cast his yoke away, and nail'd the monarch to the cross. but god, who high in glory reigns, laughs at their pride, their rage controls; he'll vex their hearts with inward pains, and speak in thunder to their souls. "i will maintain the king i made "on zion's everlasting hill, "my hand shall bring him from the dead, "and he shall stand your sovereign still." [his wondrous rising from the earth makes his eternal godhead known! the lord declares his heavenly birth, "this day have i begot my son. "ascend, my son, to my right hand, "there thou shalt ask, and i bestow "the utmost bounds of heathen lands; "to thee the northern isles shall bow."] but nations that resist his grace shall fall beneath his iron stroke; his rod shall crush his foes with ease as potters' earthen work is broke. pause. now, ye that sit on earthly thrones, be wise, and serve the lord, the lamb; at his feet submit your crowns, rejoice and tremble at his name. with humble love address the son, lest he grow angry and ye die; his wrath will burn to worlds unknown if ye provoke his jealousy. his storms shall drive you quick to hell: he is a god, and ye but dust: happy the souls that know him well, and make his grace their only trust. psalm : . c. m. doubts and fears supprest; or, god our defence from sin and satan. my god, how many are my fears! how fast my foes increase! conspiring my eternal death, they break my present peace. the lying tempter would persuade there's no relief in heaven; and all my swelling sins appear too big to be forgiven. but thou, my glory and my strength, shalt on the tempter tread, shalt silence all my threatening guilt, and raise my drooping head. [i cry'd, and from his holy hill he bow'd a listening ear, i call'd my father, and my god, and he subdu'd my fear. he shed soft slumbers on mine eyes, in spite of all my foes; i woke, and wonder'd at the grace that guarded my repose.] what though the hosts of death and hell all arm'd against me stood, terrors no more shall shake my soul, my refuge is my god. arise, o lord, fulfil thy grace, while i thy glory sing: my god has broke the serpent's teeth, and death has lost his sting. salvation to the lord belongs, his arm alone can save; blessings attend thy people here, and reach beyond the grave. psalm : . . l. m. a morning psalm. o lord, how many are my foes, in this weak state of flesh and blood! my peace they daily discompose, but my defence and hope is god. tir'd with the burdens of the day, to thee i rais'd an evening cry; thou heardst when i began to pray, and thine almighty help was nigh. supported by thine heavenly aid, i laid me down and slept secure; not death should make my heart afraid, tho' i should wake and rise no more. but god sustain'd me all the night; salvation doth to god belong; he rais'd my head to see the light, and make his praise my morning song. psalm : . . l. m. hearing prayer; or, god our portion, and christ our hope. o god of grace and righteousness, hear and attend when i complain; thou hast enlarg'd me in distress, bow down a gracious ear again. ye sons of men, in vain ye try to turn my glory into shame; how long will scoffers love to lie, and dare reproach my saviour's name! know that the lord divides his saints from all the tribes of men beside; he hears the cry of penitents for the dear sake of christ that dy'd. when our obedient hands have done a thousand works of righteousness, we put our trust in god alone, and glory in his pardoning grace. let the unthinking many say, "who will bestow some earthly good?" but, lord, thy light and love we pray, our souls desire this heavenly food. then shall my cheerful powers rejoice at grace and favour so divine; nor will i change my happy choice for all their corn and all their wine. psalm : . . c. m. an evening psalm. lord, thou wilt hear me when i pray i am for ever thine: i fear before thee all the day, nor would i dare to sin. and while i rest my weary head from cares and business free, 'tis sweet conversing on my bed with my own heart and thee. i pay this evening sacrifice; and when my work is done, great god, my faith and hope relies upon thy grace alone. thus with my thoughts compos'd to peace i'll give mine eyes to sleep; thy hand in safety keeps my days, and will my slumbers keep. psalm . for the lord's day morning. lord, in the morning thou shalt hear my voice ascending high; to thee will i direct my prayer, to thee lift up mine eye; up to the hills where christ is gone to plead for all his saints, presenting at his father's throne our songs and our complaints. thou art a god before whose sight the wicked shall not stand; sinners shall ne'er be thy delight, nor dwell at thy right hand. but to thy house will i resort, to taste thy mercies there; i will frequent thine holy court, and worship in thy fear. o may thy spirit guide my feet in ways of righteousness! make every path of duty straight and plain before my face. pause. my watchful enemies combine to tempt my feet astray; they flatter with a base design to make my soul their prey. lord, crush the serpent in the dust, and all his plots destroy; while those that in thy mercy trust for ever shout for joy. the men that love and fear thy name shall see their hopes fulfill'd; the mighty god will compass them with favour as a shield. psalm : . c. m. complaint in sickness; or, diseases healed. in anger, lord, rebuke me not, withdraw the dreadful storm; nor let thy fury grow so hot against a feeble worm. my soul's bow'd down with heavy cares, my flesh with pain oppress'd; my couch is witness to my tears, my tears forbid my rest. sorrow and pain wear out my days; i waste the night with cries, counting the minutes as they pass, till the slow morning rise. shall i be still tormented more? mine eye consum'd with grief? how long, my god, how long before thine hand afford relief? he hears when dust and ashes speak, he pities all our groans, he saves us for his mercy's sake and heals our broken bones. the virtue of his sovereign word restores our fainting breath; for silent graves praise not the lord, nor is he known in death. psalm : . l. m. temptations in sickness overcome. lord, i can suffer thy rebukes, when thou with kindness dost chastise but thy fierce wrath i cannot bear, o let it not against me rise! pity my languishing estate, and ease the sorrows that i feel; the wounds thine heavy hand hath made, o let thy gentler touches heal. see how i pass my weary days in sighs and groans; and when 'tis night my bed is water'd with my tears; my grief consumes and dims my sight. look how the powers of nature mourn! how long, almighty god, how long? when shall thine hour of grace return? when shall i make thy grace my song? i feel my flesh so near the grave, my thoughts are tempted to despair; but graves can never praise the lord, for all is dust and silence there. depart, ye tempters, from my soul, and all despairing thoughts depart; my god, who hears my humble moan, will ease my flesh, and cheer my heart. psalm . god's care of his people and punishment of persecutors. my trust is in my heavenly friend, my hope in thee, my god; rise and my helpless life defend from those that seek my blood. with insolence and fury they my soul in pieces tear, as hungry lions rend the prey when no deliverer's near. if i had e'er provok'd them first, or once abus'd my foe, then let him tread my life to dust, and lay mine honour low. if there be malice found in me, i know thy piercing eyes; i should not dare appeal to thee, nor ask my god to rise. arise, my god, lift up thy hand, their pride and power control; awake to judgment and command deliverance for my soul. pause. [let sinners and their wicked rage be humbled to the dust; shall not the god of truth engage to vindicate the just? he knows the heart, he tries the reins, he will defend th' upright: his sharpest arrows he ordains against the sons of spite. for me their malice digg'd a pit, but there themselves are cast; my god makes all their mischief light on their own heads at last.] that cruel persecuting race must feel his dreadful sword; awake, my soul, and praise the grace and justice of the lord. psalm : . s. m. god's sovereignty and goodness; and man's dominion over the creatures. o lord, our heavenly king, thy name is all divine; thy glories round the earth are spread, and o'er the heavens they shine. when to thy works on high i raise my wondering eyes, and see the moon complete in light adorn the darksome skies: when i survey the stars, and all their shining forms, lord, what is man, that worthless thing, akin to dust and worms? lord, what is worthless man, that thou shouldst love him so? next to thine angels he is plac'd, and lord of all below. thine honours crown his head, while beasts like slaves obey, and birds that cut the air with wings, and fish that cleave the sea. how rich thy bounties are! and wondrous are thy ways: of dust and worms thy power can frame a monument of praise. [out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou canst draw surprising honours to thy name, and strike the world with awe.] o lord, our heavenly king, thy name is all divine: thy glories round the earth are spread, and o'er the heavens they shine. psalm : . c. m. christ's condescension and glorification; or, god made man. o lord, our lord, how wondrous great is thine exalted name! the glories of thy heavenly state let men and babes proclaim. when i behold thy works on high, the moon that rules the night, and stars that well adorn the sky, those moving worlds of light; lord, what is man, or all his race, who dwells so far below, that thou shouldst visit him with grace, and love his nature so? that thine eternal son should bear to take a mortal form, made lower than his angels are, to save a dying worm! [yet while he liv'd on earth unknown, and men would not adore, th' obedient seas and fishes own his godhead and his power. the waves lay spread beneath his feet; and fish, at his command, bring their large shoals to peter's net, bring tribute to his hand. these lesser glories of the son shone thro' the fleshly cloud; now we behold him on his throne, and men confess him god.] let him be crown'd with majesty, who bow'd his head to death; and be his honours sounded high, by all things that have breath. jesus, our lord, how wondrous great is thine exalted name! the glories of thy heavenly state let the whole earth proclaim. psalm : . . paraphrased. first part. l. m. the hosanna of the children; or, infants praising god. almighty ruler of the skies, thro' the wide earth thy name is spread, and thine eternal glories rise o'er all the heavens thy hands have made. to thee the voices of the young a monument of honour raise; and babes, with uninstructed tongue, declare the wonders of thy praise. thy power assists their tender age to bring proud rebels to the ground, to still the bold blasphemer's rage, and all their policies confound. children amidst thy temple throng to see their great redeemer's face; the son of david is their song, and young hosannas fill the place. the frowning scribes and angry priests in vain their impious cavils bring; revenge sits silent in their breasts, while jewish babes proclaim their king. psalm : . &c. paraphrased. second part. l. m. adam and christ, lords of the old and the new creation. lord, what was man, when made at first, adam the offspring of the dust, that thou shouldst set him and his race but just below an angel's place? that thou shouldst raise his nature so and make him lord of all below; make every beast and bird submit, and lay the fishes at his feet? but o, what brighter glories wait to crown the second adam's state! what honours shall thy son adorn who condescended to be born! see him below his angels made, see him in dust amongst the dead, to save a ruin'd world from sin; but he shall reign with power divine. the world to come, redeem'd from all the miseries that attend the fall, new made, and glorious, shall submit at our exalted saviour's feet. psalm : . first part. wrath and mercy from the judgment-seat. with my whole heart i'll raise my song, thy wonders i'll proclaim; thou sov'reign judge of right and wrong wilt put my foes to shame. i'll sing thy majesty and grace; my god prepares his throne to judge the world in righteousness and make his vengeance known. then shall the lord a refuge prove for all the poor opprest, to save the people of his love, and give the weary rest. the men, that know thy name will trust in thy abundant grace; for thou hast ne'er forsook the just, who humbly seek thy face. sing praises to the righteous lord, who dwells on zion's hill, who executes his threatening word, and doth his grace fulfil. psalm : . . second part. the wisdom and equity of providence. when the great judge, supreme and just, shall once inquire for blood, the humble souls, that mourn in dust, shall find a faithful god. he from the dreadful gates of death does his own children raise: in zion's gates, with cheerful breath, they sing their father's praise. his foes shall fail with heedless feet into the pit they made; and sinners perish in the net that their own hands had spread. thus by thy judgments, mighty god! are thy deep counsels known; when men of mischief are destroy'd, the snare must be their own. pause. the wicked shall sink down to hell; thy wrath devour the lands that dare forget thee, or rebel against thy known commands. tho' saints to sore distress are brought, and wait and long complain, their cries shall not be still forgot, nor shall their hopes be vain. [rise, great redeemer, from thy seat, to judge and save the poor; let nations tremble at thy feet, and man prevail no more. thy thunder shall affright the proud, and put their hearts to pain, make them confess that thou art god, and they but feeble men.] psalm . prayer heard, and saints saved; or, pride, atheism, and oppression punished. for a humiliation day. why doth the lord stand off so far, and why conceal his face, when great calamities appear, and times of deep distress? lord, shall the wicked still deride thy justice and thy pow'r? shall they advance their heads in pride, and still thy saints devour? they put thy judgments from their sight, and then insult the poor; they boast in their exalted height that they shall fall no more. arise, o god, lift up thine hand, attend our humble cry; no enemy shall dare to stand when god ascends on high. pause. why do the men of malice rage, and say with foolish pride, "the god of heaven will ne'er engage to fight on zion's side?" but thou for ever art our lord; and pow'rful is thine hand, as when the heathens felt thy sword, and perish'd from thy land. thou wilt prepare our hearts to pray, and cause thine ear to hear; he hearkens what his children say, and puts the world in fear. proud tyrants shall no more oppress, no more despise the just; and mighty sinners shall confess they are but earth and dust. psalm . god loves the righteous and hates the wicked. my refuge is the god of love; why do my foes insult and cry, "fly like a timorous trembling dove, "to distant woods or mountains fly"? if government be all destroy'd (that firm foundation of our peace) and violence make justice void, where shall the righteous seek redress? the lord in heaven has fix'd his throne, his eye surveys the world below; to him all mortal things are known, his eyelids search our spirits thro'. if he afflicts his saints so far to prove their love, and try their grace, what may the bold transgressors fear? his very soul abhors their ways. on impious wretches he shall rain tempests of brimstone, fire, and death, such as he kindled on the plain of sodom with his angry breath. the righteous lord loves righteous souls, whose thoughts and actions are sincere; and with a gracious eye beholds the men that his own image bear. psalm : . l. m. the saint's safety and hope in evil times; or, sins of the tongue complained of, viz, blasphemy, falsehood, &c. lord, if thou dost not soon appear, virtue and truth will fly away; a faithful man, amongst us here, will scarce be found if thou delay. the whole discourse, when neighbours meet, is fill'd with trifles loose and vain; their lips are flattery and deceit, and their proud language is profane. but lips, that with deceit abound, shall not maintain their triumph long; the god of vengeance will confound the flattering and blaspheming tongue. "yet shall our words be free," they cry, "our tongue shall be controll'd by none: "where is the lord will ask us why? "or say, our lips are not our own?" the lord who sees the poor opprest, and hears th' oppressor's haughty strain, will rise to give his children rest, nor shall they trust his word in vain. thy word, o lord, tho' often try'd, void of deceit shall still appear not silver, seven times purify'd from dross and mixture, shines so clear. thy grace shall in the darkest hour defend the holy soul from harm; tho' when the vilest men have power on every side will sinners swarm. psalm : . c. m. complaint of a general corruption of manners; or, the promise and signs of christ's coming to judgment. help, lord, for men of virtue fail, religion loses ground, the sons of violence prevail, and treacheries abound. their oaths and promises they break, yet act the flatterer's part; with fair deceitful lips they speak, and with a double heart. if we reprove some hateful lie, how is their fury stirr'd! "are not our lips our own" they cry, "and who shall be our lord?" scoffers appear on every side, where a vile race of men is rais'd to seats of power and pride, and bears the sword in vain. pause. lord, when iniquities abound, and blasphemy grows bold, when faith is hardly to be found, and love is waxing cold, is not thy chariot hastening on? hast thou not given this sign? may we not trust and live upon a promise so divine? "yes," saith the lord, "now will i rise, "and make oppressors flee; "i shall appear to their surprise, "and set my servants free." thy word, like silver seven times try'd, thro' ages shall endure; the men that in thy truth confide, shall find thy promise sure. psalm : . l. m. pleading with god under desertion; or, hope, in darkness. how long, lord, shall i complain like one that seeks his god in vain? canst thou thy face for ever hide? and i still pray and be deny'd? shall i for ever be forgot as one whom thou regardest not? still shall my soul thine absence mourn? and still despair of thy return? how long shall my poor troubled breast be with these anxious thoughts opprest? and satan, my malicious foe, rejoice to see me sunk so low. hear, lord, and grant me quick relief, before my death conclude my grief; if thou withhold thy heavenly light, i sleep in everlasting night. how will the powers of darkness boast, if but one praying soul be lost! but i have trusted in thy grace, and shall again behold thy face. whate'er my fears or foes suggest, thou art my hope, my joy, my rest; my heart shall feel thy love, and raise my cheerful voice to songs of praise. psalm : . c. m. complaint under temptations of the devil. how long wilt thou conceal thy face? my god, how long delay? when shall i feel those heavenly rays that chase my fears away? how long shall my poor labouring soul wrestle and toil in vain? thy word can all my foes control, and ease my raging pain. see how the prince of darkness tries all his malicious arts, he spreads a mist around my eyes, and throws his fiery darts. be thou my sun and thou my shield, my soul in safety keep; make haste before mine eyes are seal'd in death's eternal sleep. how would the tempter boast aloud if i become his prey! behold the sons of hell grow proud at thy so long delay. but they shall fly at thy rebuke, and satan hide his head; he knows the terrors of thy look and hears thy voice with dread. thou wilt display that sovereign grace, where all my hopes have hung; i shall employ my lips in praise, and victory shall be sung. psalm : . first part. by nature all men are sinners. fools in their hearts believe and say, "that all religion's vain, "there is no god that reigns on high, "or minds th' affairs of men." from thoughts so dreadful and profane corrupt discourse proceeds; and in their impious hands are found abominable deeds. the lord, from his celestial throne look'd down on things below, to find the man that sought his grace, or did his justice know. by nature all are gone astray, their practice all the same; there's none that fears his maker's hand, there's none that loves his name. their tongues are us'd to speak deceit, their slanders never cease; how swift to mischief are their feet, nor knew the paths of peace. such seeds of sin (that bitter root) in every heart are found; nor can they bear diviner fruit, till grace refine the ground. psalm : . second part. the folly of persecutors. are sinners now so senseless grown that they thy saints devour? and never worship at thy throne, nor fear thine awful power? great god appear to their surprise, reveal thy dreadful name; let them no more thy wrath despise, nor turn our hope to shame. dost thou not dwell among the just? and yet our foes deride, that we should make thy name our trust; great god, confound their pride. o that the joyful day were come to finish our distress! when god shall bring his children home, our songs shall never cease. psalm : . c. m. characters of a saint; or, a citizen of zion; or, the qualifications of a christian. who shall inhabit in thy hill, o god of holiness? whom will the lord admit to dwell so near his throne of grace? the man that walks in pious ways, and works with righteous hands; that trusts his maker's promises, and follows his commands. he speaks the meaning of his heart, nor slanders with his tongue; will scarce believe an ill report, nor do his neighbour wrong. the wealthy sinner he contemns, loves all that fear the lord: and tho' to his own hurt he swears, still he performs his word. his hands disdain a golden bribe, and never gripe the poor; this man shall dwell with god on earth, and find his heaven secure. psalm : . l. m. religion and justice, goodness and truth; or, duties to god and man; or, the qualifications of a christian. who shall ascend thy heavenly place, great god, and dwell before thy face? the man that minds religion now, and humbly walks with god below: whose hands are pure, whose heart is clean, whose lips still speak the thing they mean; no slanders dwell upon his tongue; he hates to do his neighbour wrong. [scarce will he trust an ill report, nor vents it to his neighbour's hurt: sinners of state he can despise, but saints are honour'd in his eyes.] [firm to his word he ever stood, and always makes his promise good; nor dares to change the thing he swears, whatever pain or loss he bears.] [he never deals in bribing gold, and mourns that justice should be sold: while others gripe and grind the poor, sweet charity attends his door.] [he loves his enemies, and prays for those that curse him to his face; and doth to all men still the same that he would hope or wish from them.] yet when his holiest works are done, his soul depends on grace alone; this is the man thy face shall see, and dwell for ever lord, with thee. psalm : . first part. l. m. confession of our poverty, and saints the best company; or, good works profit men, not god. preserve me, lord, in time of need for succour to thy throne i flee, but have no merits there to plead; my goodness cannot reach to thee. oft have my heart and tongue confest how empty and how poor i am; my praise can never make thee blest, nor add new glories to thy name. yet, lord, thy saints on earth may reap some profit by the good we do; these are the company i keep, these are the choicest friends i know. let others choose the sons of mirth to give a relish to their wine, i love the men of heavenly birth, whose thoughts and language are divine. psalm : . second part. l. m. christ's all-sufficiency. how fast their guilt and sorrows rise who haste to seek some idol god! i will not taste their sacrifice, their offerings of forbidden blood. my god provides a richer cup, and nobler food to live upon; he for my life has offer'd up jesus, his best beloved son. his love is my perpetual feast; by day his counsels guide me right; and be his name for ever blest, who gives me sweet advice by night. i set him still before mine eyes; at my right hand he stands prepar'd to keep my soul from all surprise, and be my everlasting guard. psalm : . third part. l. m. courage in death, and hope of the resurrection. when god is nigh, my faith is strong, his arm is my almighty prop: be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, my dying flesh shall rest in hope. tho' in the dust i lay my head, yet, gracious god, thou wilt not leave my soul for ever with the dead, nor lose thy children in the grave. my flesh shall thy first call obey, shake off the dust, and rise on high; then shalt thou lead the wondrous way, up to thy throne above the sky. there streams of endless pleasure flow; and full discoveries of thy grace (which we but tasted here below) spread heavenly joys thro' all the place. psalm : . first part. c. m. support and counsel from god without merit. save me, o lord, from every foe; in thee my trust i place, tho' all the good that i can do can ne'er deserve thy grace. yet if my god prolong my breath the saints may profit by't; the saints, the glory of the earth, the men of my delight. let heathens to their idols haste, and worship wood or stone; but my delightful lot is cast where the true god is known. his hand provides my constant food, he fills my daily cup; much am i pleas'd with present good, but more rejoice in hope. god is my portion and my joy, his counsels are my light; he gives me sweet advice by day, and gentle hints by night. my soul would all her thoughts approve to his all-seeing eye; not death, nor hell my hope shall move, while such a friend is nigh. psalm : . second part. c. m. the death and resurrection of christ. i set the lord before my face, "he bears my courage up; "my heart, and tongue, their joys express, "my flesh shall rest in hope. "my spirit, lord, thou wilt not leave "where souls departed are; "nor quit my body to the grave "to see corruption there. "thou wilt reveal the path of life, "and raise me to thy throne; "thy courts immortal pleasure give, "thy presence joys unknown." [thus in the name of christ, the lord, the holy david sung, and providence fulfils the word of his prophetic tongue. jesus, whom every saint adores, was crucify'd and slain; behold the tomb its prey restores, behold, he lives again! when shall my feet arise and stand on heaven's eternal hills? there sits the son at god's right hand, and there the father smiles.] psalm : . &c. s. m. portion of saints and sinners; or, hope and despair in death. arise, my gracious god, and make the wicked flee; they are but thy chastising rod to drive thy saints to thee. behold the sinner dies, his haughty words are vain; here in this life his pleasure lies, and all beyond is pain. then let his pride advance, and boast of all his store: the lord is my inheritance, my soul can wish no more. i shall behold the face of my forgiving god, and stand complete in righteousness, wash'd in my saviour's blood. there's a new heaven begun, when i awake from death, drest in the likeness of thy son, and draw immortal breath. psalm : . l. m. the sinner's portion, and saint's hope; or, the heaven of separate souls, and the resurrection. lord, i am thine; but thou wilt prove my faith, my patience, and my love; when men of spite against me join, they are the sword, the hand is thine. their hope and portion lies below; 'tis all the happiness they know, 'tis all they seek; they take their shares, and leave the rest among their heirs. what sinners value, i resign; lord, 'tis enough that thou art mine; i shall behold thy blissful face, and stand complete in righteousness. this life's a dream, an empty show; but the bright world to which i go hath joys substantial and sincere; when shall i wake, and find me there? o glorious hour! o blest abode! i shall be near and like my god! and flesh and sin no more control the sacred pleasures of the soul. my flesh shall slumber in the ground, till the last trumpet's joyful sound; then burst the chains with sweet surprise, and in my saviour's image rise. psalm : . - - . first part. l. m. deliverance from despair; or, temptations overcome. thee will i love, o lord, my strength, my rock, my tower, my high defence, thy mighty arm shall be my trust, for i have found salvation thence. death, and the terrors of the grave stood round me with their dismal shade; while floods of high temptations rose, and made my sinking soul afraid. i saw the opening gates of hell, with endless pains and sorrows there, which none but they that feel can tell, while i was hurried to despair. in my distress i call'd 'my god,' when i could scarce believe him mine; he bow'd his ear to my complaint, then did his grace appear divine. [with speed he flew to my relief, as on a cherub's wing he rode; awful and bright as lightning shone the face of my deliverer, god. temptations fled at his rebuke, the blast of his almighty breath; he sent salvation from on high, and drew me from the deeps of death.] great were my fears, my foes were great, much was their strength, and more their rage; but christ, my lord, is conqueror still, in all the wars that devils wage. my song for ever shall record that terrible, that joyful hour; and give the glory to the lord due to his mercy and his power. psalm : . - . second part. l. m. sincerity proved and rewarded. lord, thou hast seen my soul sincere, hast made thy truth and love appear; before mine eyes i set thy laws, and thou hast own'd my righteous cause. since i have learnt thy holy ways, i've walk'd upright before thy face; or if my feet did e'er depart, 'twas never with a wicked heart. what sore temptations broke my rest! what wars and strugglings in my breast! but thro' thy grace that reigns within, i guard against my darling sin: that sin which close besets me still, that works and strives against my will; when shall thy spirit's sovereign power destroy it that it rise no more? [with an impartial hand, the lord deals out to mortals their reward; the kind and faithful souls shall find a god as faithful, and as kind. the just and pure shall ever say, thou art more pure, more just than they; and men that love revenge shall know, god hath an arm of vengeance too.] psalm : . . d part. l. m. rejoicing in god; or, salvation and triumph. just are thy ways, and true thy word, great rock of my secure abode; who is a god beside the lord? or where's a refuge like our god? 'tis he that girds me with his might, gives me his holy sword to wield; and while with sin and hell i fight, spreads his salvation for my shield. he lives (and blessed be my rock!) the god of my salvation lives, the dark designs of hell are broke; sweet is the peace my father gives. before the scoffers of the age, i will exalt my father's name, nor tremble at their mighty rage, but meet reproach and bear the shame. to david and his royal seed thy grace for ever shall extend; thy love to saints in christ their head knows not a limit, nor an end. psalm : . first part. c. m. victory and triumph over temporal enemies. we love thee, lord, and we adore, now is thine arm reveal'd; thou art our strength, our heavenly tower, our bulwark and our shield. we fly to our eternal rock, and find a sure defence; his holy name our lips invoke, and draw salvation thence. when god, our leader, shines in arms, what mortal heart can bear the thunder of his loud alarms? the lightning of his spear? he rides upon the winged wind, and angels in array in millions wait to know his mind, and swift as flames obey. he speaks, and at his fierce rebuke, whole armies are dismay'd; his voice, his frown, his angry look strikes all their courage dead. he forms our generals for the field, with all their dreadful skill; gives them his awful sword to wield, and makes their hearts of steel. [he arms our captains to the fight, tho' there his name's forgot: he girded cyrus with his might, but cyrus knew him not. oft has the lord whole nations blest for his own church's sake: the powers that give his people rest, shall of his care partake.] psalm : . second part. c. m. the conqueror's song. to thine almighty arm we owe the triumphs of the day thy terrors, lord, confound the foe, and melt their strength away. 'tis by thine aid our troops prevail, and break united powers, or burn their boasted fleets, or scale the proudest of their towers. how have we chas'd them thro' the field, and trod them to the ground, while thy salvation was our shield, but they no shelter found! in vain to idol-saints they cry, and perish in their blood; where is a rock so great, so high, so powerful as our god? the rock of israel ever lives, his name be ever blest; 'tis his own arm the victory gives, and gives his people rest. on kings that reign as david did, he pours his blessings down; secures their honours to their seed, and well supports the crown. psalm : . first part. s. m. the book of nature and scripture. for a lord's-day morning. behold the lofty sky declares its maker god, and all his starry works on high proclaim his power abroad. the darkness and the light still keep their course the same; while night to day, and day to night divinely teach his name. in every different land their general voice is known they shew the wonders of his hand, and orders of his throne. ye british lands, rejoice, here he reveals his word, we are not left to nature's voice to bid us know the lord. his statutes and commands are set before our eyes; he puts his gospel in our hands, where our salvation lies. his laws are just and pure, his truth without deceit, his promises for ever sure, and his rewards are great. [not honey to the taste affords so much delight, nor gold that has the furnace past so much allures the sight. while of thy works i sing, thy glory to proclaim, accept the praise, my god, my king, in my redeemer's name.] psalm : . second part. s. m. god's word most excellent; or, sincerity and watchfulness. for a lord's-day morning. behold the morning sun begins his glorious way; his beams thro' all the nations run, and life and light convey. but where the gospel comes, it spreads diviner light, it calls dead sinners from their tombs, and gives the blind their sight. how perfect is thy word! and all thy judgments just! for ever sure thy promise, lord, and men securely trust. my gracious god, how plain are thy directions given! o! may i never read in vain, but find the path to heaven! pause. i hear thy word with love, and i would fain obey; send thy good spirit from above to guide me, lest i stray. o who can ever find the errors of his ways? yet, with a bold presumptuous mind, i would not dare transgress. warn me of every sin, forgive my secret faults, and cleanse this guilty soul of mine, whose crimes exceed my thoughts. while with my heart and tongue i spread thy praise abroad, accept the worship and the song, my saviour and my god. psalm : . l. m. the books of nature and of scripture compared; or, the glory and success of the gospel. the heavens declare thy glory, lord, in every star thy wisdom shines; but when our eyes behold thy word we read thy name in fairer lines. the rolling sun, the changing light, and nights and days thy power confess; but the blest volume thou hast writ reveals thy justice and thy grace. sun, moon, and stars convey thy praise round the whole earth, and never stand; so when thy truth begun its race, it touch'd and glanc'd on every land. nor shall thy spreading gospel rest, till thro' the world thy truth has run; till christ has all the nations blest, that see the light, or feel the sun. great sun of righteousness, arise, bless the dark world with heavenly light; thy gospel makes the simple wise, thy laws are pure, thy judgments right. thy noblest wonders here we view in souls renew'd and sins forgiven: lord, cleanse my sins, my soul renew, and make thy word my guide to heaven. psalm : . to the tune of the th psalm. the book of nature and scripture. great god, the heaven's well-order'd frame declares the glories of thy name; there thy rich works of wonder shine: a thousand starry beauties there, a thousand radiant marks appear of boundless power and skill divine. from night to day, from day to night, the dawning and the dying light lectures of heavenly wisdom read; with silent eloquence they raise our thoughts to our creator's praise, and neither sound nor language need. yet their divine instructions run far as the journies of the sun, and every nation knows their voice; the sun, like some young bridegroom drest, breaks from the chambers of the east, rolls round, and makes the earth rejoice. where'er he spreads his beams abroad, he smiles and speaks his maker god; all nature joins to shew thy praise: thus god, in every creature shines; fair is the book of nature's lines, but fairer is thy book of grace. pause. i love the volumes of thy word; what light and joy those leaves afford to souls benighted and distrest! thy precepts guide my doubtful way, thy fear forbids my feet to stray; thy promise leads my heart to rest. from the discoveries of thy law the perfect rules of life i draw, these are my study and delight: not honey so invites the taste, nor gold, that hath the furnace past, appears so pleasing to the sight. thy threatenings wake my slumbering eyes, and warn me where my danger lies; but 'tis thy blessed gospel, lord, that makes my guilty conscience clean, converts my soul, subdues my sin, and gives a free but large reward. who knows the errors of his thoughts? my god, forgive my secret faults, and from presumptuous sins restrain; accept my poor attempts of praise that i have read thy book of grace, and book of nature, not in vain. psalm . prayer and hope of victory. for a day of prayer in time of war. now may the god of power and grace attend his people's humble cry! jehovah hears when israel prays, and brings deliverance from on high. the name of jacob's god defends better than shields or brazen walls; he from his sanctuary sends succour and strength, when zion calls. well he remembers all our sighs, his love exceeds our best deserts, his love accepts the sacrifice of humble groans and broken hearts. in his salvation is our hope, and, in the name of israel's god, our troops shall lift their banners up, our navies spread their flags abroad. some trust in horses train'd for war, and some of chariots make their boast; our surest expectations are from thee, the lord of heavenly hosts. [o! may the memory of thy name inspire our armies for the fight! our foes shall fall and die with shame, or quit the field with shameful flight.] now save us, lord, from slavish fear; now let our hopes be firm and strong, till the salvation shall appear, and joy and triumph raise the song. psalm : . c. m. our king is the care of heaven. the king, o lord, with songs of praise, shall in thy strength rejoice; and, blest with thy salvation, raise to heaven his cheerful voice. thy sure defence, thro' nations round, has spread his glorious name; and his successful actions crown'd with majesty and fame. then let the king on god alone for timely aid rely; his mercy shall support the throne, and all our wants supply. but, righteous lord, his stubborn foes shall feel thy dreadful hand thy vengeful arm shall find out those that hate his mild command. when thou against them dost engage, thy just but dreadful doom shall, like a fiery oven's rage, their hopes and them consume. thus, lord, thy wondrous power declare, and thus exalt thy fame; whilst we glad songs of praise prepare for thine almighty name. psalm : . - . l. m. christ exalted to the kingdom. david rejoic'd in god his strength, rais'd to the throne by special grace; but christ, the son, appears at length, fulfils the triumph and the praise. how great is the messiah's joy in the salvation of thy hand! lord, thou hast rais'd his kingdom high, and given the world to his command. thy goodness grants whate'er he will, nor doth the least request withhold; blessings of love prevent him still, and crowns of glory, not of gold. honour and majesty divine around his sacred temples shine; blest with the favour of thy face, and length of everlasting days. thy hand shall find out all his foes; and as a fiery oven glows with raging heat and living coals, so shall thy wrath devour their souls. psalm : . - . first part. c. m, the sufferings and death of christ. "why has my god my soul forsook, "nor will a smile afford?" (thus david once in anguish spoke, and thus our dying lord.) tho' 'tis thy chief delight to dwell among thy praising saints, yet thou canst hear a groan as well, and pity our complaints. our fathers trusted in thy name, and great deliverance found; but i'm a worm, despis'd of men, and trodden to the ground. shaking the head they pass me by, and laugh my soul to scorn; "in vain he trusts in god" they cry, "neglected and forlorn." but thou art he who form'd my flesh by thine almighty word, and since i hung upon the breast, my hope is in the lord. why will my father hide his face, when foes stand threatening round, in the dark hour of deep distress, and not an helper found? pause. behold thy darling left among the cruel and the proud, as bulls of bashan fierce and strong, as lions roaring loud. from earth and hell my sorrows meet to multiply the smart; they nail my hands, they pierce my feet and try to vex my heart. yet if thy sovereign hand let loose the rage of earth and hell, why will my heavenly father bruise the son he loves so well? my god, if possible it be, withhold this bitter cup; but i resign my will to thee, and drink the sorrows up. my heart dissolves with pangs unknown in groans i waste my breath; thy heavy hand has brought me down low as the dust of death. father, i give my spirit up; and trust it in thy hand; my dying flesh shall rest in hope, and rise at thy command. psalm : . - . d part. c. m. christ's sufferings and kingdom. "now from the roaring lion's rage, "o lord, protect thy son; "nor leave thy darling to engage, "the powers of hell alone." thus did our suffering saviour pray, with mighty cries and tears; god heard him in that dreadful day, and chas'd away his fears. great was the victory of his death, his throne exalted high; and all the kindreds of the earth shall worship or shall die. a numerous offspring must arise from his expiring groans; they shall be reckon'd in his eyes for daughters and for sons. the meek and humble soul shall see his table richly spread; and all that seek the lord shall be with joys immortal fed. the isles shall know the righteousness of our incarnate god; and nations yet unborn profess salvation in his blood. psalm : . l. m. christ's sufferings and exaltation. now let our mournful songs record the dying sorrows of our lord; when he complain'd in tears and blood as one forsaken of his god. the jews beheld him thus forlorn, and shake their heads, and laugh in scorn; "he rescu'd others from the grave, "now let him try himself to save. "this is the man did once pretend "god was his father and his friend; "if god the blessed lov'd him so, "why doth he fail to help him now?" barbarous people! cruel priests! how they stood round like savage beasts! like lions gaping to devour, when god had left him in their power. they wound his head, his hands, his feet, till streams of blood each other meet; by lot his garments they divide and mock the pangs in which he dy'd. but god, his father, heard his cry: rais'd from the dead he reigns on high. the nations learn his righteousness, and humble sinners taste his grace. psalm : . l. m. god our shepherd. my shepherd is the living lord; now shall my wants be well supply'd his providence and holy word become my safety and my guide. in pastures where salvation grows he makes me feed, he makes me rest; there living water gently flows, and all the food's divinely blest. my wandering feet his ways mistake, but he restores my soul to peace, and leads me for his mercy's sake, in the fair paths of righteousness. tho' i walk thro' the gloomy vale, where death and all its terrors are, my heart and hope shall never fail, for god my shepherd's with me there. amidst the darkness and the deeps thou art my comfort, thou my stay; thy staff supports my feeble steps, thy rod directs my doubtful way. the sons of earth and sons of hell gaze at thy goodness and repine to see my table spread so well with living bread and cheerful wine. [how i rejoice when on my head thy spirit condescends to rest! 'tis a divine anointing shed like oil of gladness at a feast. surely the mercies of the lord attend his household all their days; there will i dwell to hear his word, to seek his face, and sing his praise.] psalm : . c. m. the same. . my shepherd will supply my need, jehovah is his name; in pastures fresh he makes me feed beside the living stream. he brings my wandering spirit back, when i forsake his ways; and leads me for his mercy's sake, in paths of truth and grace. when i walk thro' the shades of death, thy presence is my stay; a word of thy supporting breath drives all my fears away. thy hand, in spite of all my foes, doth still my table spread; my cup with blessings overflows, thine oil anoints my head. the sure provisions of my god attend me all my days; o may thy house be mine abode, and all my work be praise! there would i find a settled rest, (while others go and come) no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home. psalm : . s. m. the same. the lord my shepherd is, i shall be well supply'd; since he is mine, and i am his, what can i want beside? he leads me to the place where heavenly pasture grows, where living waters gently pass, and full salvation flows. if e'er i go astray, he doth my soul reclaim, and guides me in his own right way, for his most holy name. while he affords his aid, i cannot yield to fear; tho' i should walk thro' death's dark shade my shepherd's with me there. in spite of all my foes, thou dost my table spread, my cup with blessings overflows, and joy exalts my head. the bounties of thy love shall crown my following days; nor from thy house will i remove, nor cease to speak thy praise. psalm : . c. m. dwelling with god. the earth for ever is the lord's, with adam's numerous race; he rais'd its arches o'er the floods, and built it on the seas. but who among the sons of men may visit thine abode? he that has hands from mischief clean, whose heart is right with god. this is the man may rise, and take the blessings of his grace; this is the lot of those that seek the god of jacob's face. now let our soul's immortal powers to meet the lord prepare, lift up their everlasting doors, the king of glory's near. the king of glory! who can tell the wonders of his might! he rules the nations; but to dwell with saints is his delight. psalm : . l. m. saints dwell in heaven; or, christ's ascension. this spacious earth is all the lord's, and men, and worms, and beasts, and birds: he rais'd the building on the seas, and gave it for their dwelling-place. but there's a brighter world on high, thy palace, lord, above the sky: who shall ascend that blest abode, and dwell so near his maker god? he that abhors and fears to sin, whose heart is pure whose hands are clean, him shall the lord the saviour bless, and clothe his soul with righteousness. these are the men, the pious race that seek the god of jacob's face; these shall enjoy the blissful sight, and dwell in everlasting light. pause. rejoice, ye shining worlds on high, behold the king of glory nigh! who can this king of glory be? the mighty lord, the saviour's he. ye heavenly gates, your leaves display to make the lord the saviour way: laden with spoils from earth and hell, the conqueror comes with god to dwell. rais'd from the dead he goes before, he opens heaven's eternal door, to give his saints a blest abode near their redeemer, and their god. psalm : . - . first part. waiting for pardon and direction. i lift my soul to god, my trust is in his name; let not my foes that seek my blood still triumph in my shame. sin and the powers of hell persuade me to despair; lord, make me know thy covenant well, that i may 'scape the snare. from the first dawning light till the dark evening rise, for thy salvation, lord, i wait with ever-longing eyes. remember all thy grace, and lead me in thy truth; forgive the sins of riper days, and follies of my youth. the lord is just and kind, the meek shall learn his ways; and every humble sinner find the methods of his grace. for his own goodness' sake he saves my soul from shame; he pardons (tho' my guilt be great) thro' my redeemer's name. psalm : . . second part. divine instruction. where shall the man be found that fears t' offend his god, that loves the gospel's joyful sound, and trembles at the rod? the lord shall make him know the secrets of his heart, the wonders of his covenant show, and all his love impart. the dealings of his hand are truth and mercy still with such as to his covenant stand, and love to do his will. their souls shall dwell at ease before their maker's face, their seed shall taste the promises, in their extensive grace. psalm : . - . third part. distress of soul; or, backsliding and desertion. mine eyes and my desire are ever to the lord; i love to plead his promises, and rest upon his word. turn, turn thee to my soul, bring thy salvation near: when will thy hand release my feet out of the deadly snare? when shall the sovereign grace of my forgiving god restore me from those dangerous ways my wandering feet have trod? the tumult of my thoughts doth but enlarge my woe; my spirit languishes, my heart is desolate and low. with every morning light my sorrow new begins; look on my anguish and my pain, and pardon all my sins. pause. behold the hosts of hell how cruel is their hate! against my life they rise, and join their fury with deceit. o keep my soul from death, nor put my hope to shame, for i have plac'd my only trust in my redeemer's name. with humble faith i wait to see thy face again; of israel it shall ne'er be said, "he sought the lord in vain." psalm . self-examination; or, evidences of grace. judge me, o lord, and prove my ways, and try my reins, and try my heart; my faith upon thy promise stays, nor from thy law my feet depart. i hate to walk, i hate to sit, with men of vanity and lies; the scoffer and the hypocrite are the abhorrence of mine eyes. amongst thy saints will i appear, with hands well wash'd in innocence; but when i stand before thy bar, the blood of christ is my defence. i love thy habitation, lord, the temple where thine honours dwell; there shall i hear thine holy word, and there thy works of wonder tell. let not my soul be join'd at last with men of treachery and blood, since i my days on earth have past among the saints, and near my god. psalm : . - . first part. the church is our delight and safety. the lord of glory is my light, and my salvation too; god is my strength, nor will i fear what all my foes can do. one privilege my heart desires; o grant me an abode among the churches of thy saints, the temples of my god! there shall i offer my requests, and see thy beauty still, shall hear thy messages of love, and there enquire thy will. when troubles rise, and storms appear, there may his children hide: god has a strong pavilion where he makes my soul abide. now shall my head be lifted high above my foes around, and songs of joy and victory within thy temple sound. psalm : . . second part. prayer and hope. soon as i heard my father say, "ye children, seek my grace;" my heart reply'd without delay, "i'll seek my father's face." let not thy face be hid from me, nor frown my soul away; god of my life, i fly to thee in a distressing day. should friends and kindred near and dear leave me to want, or die, my god would make my life his care and all my need supply. my fainting flesh had dy'd with grief, had not my soul believ'd to see thy grace provide relief, nor was my hope deceiv'd. wait on the lord, ye trembling saints, and keep your courage up; he'll raise your spirit when it faints, and far exceed your hope. psalm . l. m. storm and thunder. give to the lord, ye sons of fame, give to the lord renown and power, ascribe due honours to his name, and his eternal might adore. the lord proclaims his power aloud over the ocean and the land; his voice divides the watery cloud, and lightnings blaze at his command. he speaks, and tempest, hail, and wind, lay the wide forests bare around; the fearful hart, and frighted hind, leap at the terror of the sound. to lebanon he turns his voice, and, lo, the stately cedars break; the mountains tremble at the noise, the vallies roar, the deserts quake. the lord sits sovereign on the flood, the thunderer reigns for ever king; but makes his church his blest abode, where we his awful glories sing. in gentler language there the lord the counsels of his grace imparts; amidst the raging storm his word speaks peace and courage to our hearts. psalm : . first part. sickness healed, and sorrow removed. i will extol thee, lord, on high, at thy command, diseases fly; who but a god can speak and save from the dark borders of the grave? sing to the lord, ye saints of his, and tell how large his goodness is; let all your powers rejoice and bless, while you record his holiness. his anger but a moment stays his love is life and length of days; tho' grief and tears the night employ, the morning-star restores the joy. psalm : . . second part. health, sickness, and recovery. firm was my health, my day was bright, and i presum'd 'twould ne'er be night; fondly i said within my heart, "pleasure and peace shall ne'er depart." but i forgot thine arm was strong, which made my mountain stand so long; soon as thy face began to hide, my health was gone, my comforts dy'd. i cry'd aloud to thee, my god, "what canst thou profit by my blood? "deep in the dust can i declare "thy truth, or sing thy goodness there? "hear me, o god of grace," i said, "and bring me from among the dead:" thy word rebuk'd the pains i felt, thy pardoning love remov'd my guilt. my groans, and tears, and forms of woe, are turn'd to joy and praises now; i throw my sackcloth on the ground, and ease and gladness gird me round. my tongue, the glory of my frame, shall ne'er be silent of thy name thy praise shall sound thro' earth and heaven, for sickness heal'd, and sins forgiven. psalm : . - . first part. deliverance from death. into thine hand, god of truth, my spirit i commit; thou hast redeem'd my soul from death, and sav'd me from the pit. the passions of my hope and fear maintain'd a doubtful strife, while sorrow, pain, and sin conspir'd to take away my life. "my times are in thine hand," i cry'd, "tho' i draw near the dust ;" thou art the refuge where i hide, the god in whom i trust. o make thy reconciled face upon thy servant shine, and save me for thy mercy's sake, for i'm entirely thine. pause. ['twas in my haste, my spirit said, "i must despair and die, "i am cut off before thine eyes;" but thou hast heard me cry.] thy goodness how divinely free! how wondrous is thy grace to those that fear thy majesty, and trust thy promises! o love the lord, all ye his saints, and sing his praises loud; he'll bend his ear to your complaints, and recompense the proud. psalm : . - - . second part. deliverance from slander and reproach. my heart rejoices in thy name, my god, my help, my trust; thou hast preserv'd my face from shame, mine honour from the dust. "my life is spent with grief," i cry'd, "my years consum'd in groans, "my strength decays, mine eyes are dry'd, "and sorrow wastes my bones." among mine enemies my name was a mere proverb grown, while to my neighbours i became forgotten and unknown. slander and fear on every side, seiz'd and beset me round; i to the throne of grace apply'd, and speedy rescue found. pause. how great deliverance thou hast wrought before the sons of men! the lying lips to silence brought, and made their boastings vain! thy children, from the strife of tongues, shall thy pavilion hide, guard them from infamy and wrongs, and crush the sons of pride. within thy secret presence, lord, let me for ever dwell; no fenced city, wall'd and barr'd, secures a saint so well. psalm : . s. m. forgiveness of sins upon confession. o blessed souls are they whose sins are cover'd o'er! divinely blest, to whom the lord imputes their guilt no more. they mourn their follies past, and keep their hearts with care; their lips and lives without deceit, shall prove their faith sincere. while i conceal'd my guilt i felt the festering wound, till i confess'd my sins to thee, and ready pardon found. let sinners learn to pray, let saints keep near the throne; our help in times of deep distress, is found in god alone. psalm : . first part. l. m. free pardon and sincere obedience; or, confession and forgiveness. happy the man to whom his god no more imputes his sin, but wash'd in the redeemer's blood, hath made his garments clean! happy, beyond expression, he whose debts are thus discharg'd; and from the guilty bondage free, he feels his soul enlarg'd. his spirit hates deceit and lies, his words are all sincere; he guards his heart, he guards his eyes, to keep his conscience clear. while i my inward guilt supprest, no quiet could i find; thy wrath lay burning in my breast, and rack'd my tortur'd mind. then i confess'd my troubled thoughts, my secret sins reveal'd; thy pardoning grace forgave my faults, thy grace my pardon seal'd. this shall invite thy saints to pray, when, like a raging flood, temptations rise, our strength and stay is a forgiving god. psalm : . l. m. repentance and free pardon; or, justification and sanctification. blest is the man, for ever blest, whose guilt is pardon'd by his god, whose sins with sorrow are confess'd, and cover'd with his saviour's blood. blest is the man to whom the lord imputes not his iniquities, he pleads no merit of reward, and not on works, but grace relies. from guile his heart and lips are free, his humble joy, his holy fear, with deep repentance well agree, and join to prove his faith sincere. how glorious is that righteousness that hides and cancels all his sins! while a bright evidence of grace thro' his whole life appears and shines. psalm : . second part. l. m. a guilty conscience eased by confession and pardon. while i keep silence, and conceal my heavy guilt within my heart, what torments doth my conscience feel! what agonies of inward smart! i spread my sins before the lord, and all my secret faults confess; thy gospel speaks a pard'ning word thine holy spirit seals the grace. for this shall every humble soul make swift addresses to thy seat; when floods of huge temptations roll, there shall they find a blest retreat. how safe beneath thy wings i lie, when days grow dark, and storms appear! and when i walk, thy watchful eye shall guide me safe from every snare. psalm : . first part. c. m. works of creation and providence. rejoice, ye righteous, in the lord, this work belongs to you: sing of his name, his ways, his word, how holy, just, and true! his mercy and his righteousness let heaven and earth proclaim; his works of nature and of grace reveal his wondrous name. his wisdom and almighty word the heavenly arches spread; and by the spirit of the lord their shining hosts were made. he bid the liquid waters flow to their appointed deep; the flowing seas their limits know, and their own station keep. ye tenants of the spacious earth, with fear before him stand; he spake, and nature took its birth, and rests on his command. he scorns the angry nations' rage, and breaks their vain designs; his counsel stands thro' every age, and in full glory shines. psalm : . second part. c. m. creatures vain, and god all-sufficient. blest is the nation where the lord hath fix'd his gracious throne; where he reveals his heavenly word, and calls their tribes his own. his eye, with infinite survey, does the whole world behold; he form'd us all of equal clay, and knows our feeble mould. kings are not rescu'd by the force of armies from the grave; nor speed nor courage of an horse can the bold rider save, vain is the strength of beasts or men to hope for safety thence; but holy souls from god obtain a strong and sure defence. god is their fear, and god their trust, when plagues or famine spread, his watchful eye secures the just amongst ten thousand dead. lord, let our hearts in thee rejoice, and bless us from thy throne; for we have made thy word our choice, and trust thy grace alone. psalm : . first part. as the th psalm. works of creation and providence. ye holy souls, in god rejoice, your maker's praise becomes your voice; great is your theme, your songs be new: sing of his name, his word, his ways, his works of nature and of grace, how wise and holy, just and true. justice and truth he ever loves, and the whole earth his goodness proves, his word the heavenly arches spread; how wide they shine from north to south! and by the spirit of his mouth were all the starry armies made. he gathers the wide-flowing seas, those watery treasures know their place, in the vast storehouse of the deep: he spake, and gave all nature birth; and fires, and seas, and heaven, and earth, his everlasting orders keep. let mortals tremble and adore a god of such resistless power, nor dare indulge their feeble rage: vain are your thoughts, and weak your hands; but his eternal counsel stands, and rules the world from age to age. psalm : . second part. as the th psalm. creatures vain, and god all-sufficient. o happy nation, where the lord reveals the treasure of his word, and builds his church his earthly throne! his eye the heathen world surveys, he form'd their hearts, he knows their ways; but god their maker is unknown. let kings rely upon their host, and of his strength the champion boast; in vain they boast, in vain rely; in vain we trust the brutal force, or speed, or courage of an horse, to guard his rider, or to fly. the eye of thy compassion, lord, doth more secure defence afford when death or dangers threatening stand; thy watchful eye preserves the just, who make thy name their fear and trust, when wars or famine waste the land. in sickness or the bloody field, thou our physician, thou our shield, send us salvation from thy throne; we wait to see thy goodness shine; let us rejoice in help divine, for all our hope is god alone. psalm : . first part. l. m. god's care of the saints; or, deliverance by prayer. lord, i will bless thee all my days, thy praise shall dwell upon my tongue; my soul shall glory in thy grace, while saints rejoice to hear the song. come, magnify the lord with me, come, let us all exalt his name; i sought th' eternal god, and he has not expos'd my hope to shame. i told him all my secret grief, my secret groaning reach'd his ears; he gave my inward pains relief, and calm'd the tumult of my fears. to him the poor lift up their eyes, their faces feel the heavenly shine; a beam of mercy from the skies fills them with light and joy divine. his holy angels pitch their tents around the men that serve the lord; o fear and love him, all his saints, taste of his grace and trust his word. the wild young lions, pinch'd with pain and hunger, roar thro' all the wood; but none shall seek the lord in vain, nor want supplies of real good. psalm : . - . second part. l. m. religious education; or, instructions of piety. children in years and knowledge young, your parents' hope, your parents' joy, attend the counsels of my tongue, let pious thoughts your minds employ. if you desire a length of days, and peace to crown your mortal state, restrain your feet from impious ways, your lips from slander and deceit. the eyes of god regard his saints, his ears are open to their cries; he sets his frowning face against the sons of violence and lies. to humble souls and broken hearts god with his grace is ever nigh; pardon and hope his love imparts when men in deep contrition lie. he tell their tears, he counts their groans, his son redeems their souls from death; his spirit heals their broken bones, they in his praise employ their breath. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. prayer and praise for eminent deliverance. i'll bless the lord from day to day; how good are all his ways! ye humble souls that use to pray, come, help my lips to praise. sing to the honour of his name, how a poor sufferer cry'd, nor was his hope expos'd to shame, nor was his suit deny'd. when threatening sorrows round me stood, and endless fears arose, like the loud billows of a flood, redoubling all my woes; i told the lord my sore distress with heavy groans and tears, he gave my sharpest torments ease, and silenc'd all my fears. pause. [o sinners, come and taste his love, come, learn his pleasant ways, and let your own experience prove the sweetness of his grace. he bids his angels pitch their tents round where his children dwell what ills their heavenly care prevents no earthly tongue can tell.] [o love the lord, ye saints of his; his eye regards the just; how richly blest their portion is who make the lord their trust! young lions pinch'd with hunger roar, and famish in the wood; but god supplies his holy poor with every needful good.] psalm : . - . second part. c. m. exhortations to peace and holiness. come, children, learn to fear the lord; and that your days be long, let not a false or spiteful word be found upon your tongue. depart from mischief, practise love, pursue the works of peace; so shall the lord your ways approve, and set your souls at ease. his eyes awake to guard the just, his ears attend their cry; when broken spirits dwell in dust, the god of grace is nigh. what tho' the sorrows here they taste are sharp and tedious too, the lord, who saves them all at last, is their supporter now. evil shall smite the wicked dead; but god secures his own, prevents the mischief when they slide, or heals the broken bone. when desolation like a flood, o'er the proud sinner rolls, saints find a refuge in their god, for he redeem'd their souls. psalm : . - . first part. prayer and faith of persecuted saints; or, imprecations mixed with charity. now plead my cause, almighty god, with all the sons of strife; and fight against the men of blood, who fight against my life. draw out thy spear and stop their way, lift thine avenging rod; but to my soul in mercy say, "i am thy saviour god." they plant their snares to catch my feet, and nets of mischief spread; plunge the destroyers in the pit that their own hands have made. let fogs and darkness hide their way, and slippery be their ground; thy wrath shall make their lives a prey, and all their rage confound. they fly like chaff before the wind, before thine angry breath; the angel of the lord behind pursues them down to death. they love the road that leads to hell; then let the rebels die whose malice is implacable against the lord on high. but if thou hast a chosen few amongst that impious race, divide them from the bloody crew by thy surprising grace. then will i raise my tuneful voice to make thy wonders known; in their salvation i'll rejoice, and bless thee for my own. psalm : . - . second part. love to enemies; or, the love of christ to sinners typified in david. behold the love, the generous love that holy david shows; hark, how his sounding bowels move to his afflicted foes! when they are sick his soul complains, and seems to feel the smart; the spirit of the gospel reigns, and melts his pious heart. how did his flowing tears condole as for a brother dead! and fasting mortify'd his soul, while for their life he pray'd. they groan'd; and curs'd him on their bed, yet still he pleads and mourns; and double blessings on his head the righteous god returns. o glorious type of heavenly grace! thus christ the lord appears; while sinners curse, the saviour prays, and pities them with tears. he, the true david, israel's king, blest and belov'd of god, to save us rebels dead in sin, paid his own dearest blood. psalm : . - . l. m. the perfections and providence of god; or, general providence and special grace. high in the heavens, eternal god, thy goodness in full glory shines; thy truth shall break thro' every cloud that veils and darkens thy designs. for ever firm thy justice stands, as mountains their foundations keep; wise are the wonders of thy hands; thy judgments are a mighty deep. thy providence is kind and large, both man and beast thy bounty share; the whole creation is thy charge, but saints are thy peculiar care. my god! how excellent thy grace, whence all our hope and comfort springs! the sons of adam in distress fly to the shadow of thy wings. from the provisions of thy house we shall be fed with sweet repast; there mercy like a river flows, and brings salvation to our taste. life, like a fountain rich and free springs from the presence of the lord; and in thy light our souls shall see the glories promis'd in thy word. psalm : . c. m. practical atheism exposed; or, the being and attributes of god asserted. while men grow bold in wicked ways! and yet a god they own, my heart within me often says, "their thoughts believe there's none." their thoughts and ways at once declare (whate'er their lips profess) god hath no wrath for them to fear, nor will they seek his grace. what strange self-flattery blinds their eyes! but there's an hastening hour when they shall see with sore surprise the terrors of thy power. thy justice shall maintain its throne, tho' mountains melt away; thy judgments are a world unknown, a deep unfathom'd sea. above the heavens' created rounds, thy mercies, lord, extend; thy truth outlives the narrow bounds, where time and nature end. safety to man thy goodness brings, nor overlooks the beast; beneath the shadow of thy wings thy children choose to rest. [from thee, when creature-streams run low, and mortal comforts die, perpetual springs of life shall flow, and raise our pleasures high. tho' all created light decay, and death close up our eyes thy presence makes eternal day where clouds can never rise.] psalm : . - . s. m. the wickedness of man, and the majesty of god; or. practical atheism exposed. when man grows bold in sin my heart within me cries, "he hath no faith of god within, nor fear before his eyes." [he walks awhile conceal'd in a self-flattering dream, till his dark crimes at once reveal'd expose his hateful name.] his heart is false and foul, his words are smooth and fair; wisdom is banish'd from his soul, and leaves no goodness there. he plots upon his bed new mischiefs to fulfil; he sets his heart, and hand, and head, to practise all that's ill. but there's a dreadful god, tho' men renounce his fear; his justice hid behind the cloud shall one great day appear. his truth transcends the sky; in heaven his mercies dwell; deep as the sea his judgments lie, his anger burns to hell. how excellent his love, whence all our safety springs! o never let my soul remove from underneath his wings. psalm : . - . first part. the cure of envy, fretfulness, and unbelief; or, the rewards of the righteous, and the wicked; or, the world's hatred, and the saint's patience. why should i vex my soul and fret to see the wicked rise? or envy sinners waxing great, by violence and lies. as flowery grass cut down at noon, before the evening fades so shall their glories vanish soon in everlasting shades. then let me make the lord my trust, and practise all that's good; so shall i dwell among the just, and he'll provide me food. i to my god my ways commit, and cheerful wait his will; thy hand, which guides my doubtful feet, shall my desires fulfil. mine innocence shalt thou display, and make thy judgments known, fair as the light of dawning day, and glorious as the noon. the meek at last the earth possess, and are the heirs of heav'n; true riches with abundant peace, to humble souls are given. pause. rest in the lord and keep his way, nor let your anger rise, tho' providence should long delay to punish haughty vice. let sinners join to break your peace, and plot, and rage, and foam; the lord derides them, for he sees their day of vengeance come. they have drawn out the threatening sword, have bent the murderous bow, to slay the men that fear the lord, and bring the righteous low. my god shall break their bows, and burn their persecuting darts, shall their own swords against them turn, and pain surprise their hearts. psalm : . - . second part. charity to the poor; or, religion in words and deeds. why do the wealthy wicked boast, and grow profanely bold? the meanest portion of the just excels the sinner's gold. the wicked borrows of his friends, but ne'er designs to pay; the saint is merciful and lends, nor turns the poor away. his alms with liberal heart he gives amongst the sons of need; his memory to long ages lives, and blessed is his seed. his lips abhor to talk profane, to slander or defraud; his ready tongue declares to men what he has learn'd of god. the law and gospel of the lord deep in his heart abide; led by the spirit and the word, his feet shall never slide. when sinners fall, the righteous stand, preserv'd from every snare; they shall possess the promis'd land, and dwell for ever there. psalm : . - . third part. the way and end of the righteous and the wicked. my god, the steps of pious men are order'd by thy will; tho' they should fall, they rise again, thy hand supports them still. the lord delights to see their ways, their virtue he approves; he'll ne'er deprive them of his grace, nor leave the men he loves. the heavenly heritage is theirs, their portion and their home; he feeds them now, and makes them heirs of blessings long to come. wait on the lord, ye sons of men, nor fear when tyrants frown; ye shall confess their pride was vain, when justice casts them down. pause. the haughty sinner have i seen, nor fearing man nor god, like a tall bay-tree fair and green, spreading his arms abroad. and lo! he vanish'd from the ground, destroy'd by hands unseen: nor root, nor branch, nor leaf was found where all that pride had been. but mark the man of righteousness, his several steps attend; true pleasure runs thro' all his ways, and peaceful is his end. psalm . guilt of conscience and relief; or, repentance, and prayer for pardon and health. amidst thy wrath remember love, restore thy servant, lord; nor let a father's chastening prove like an avenger's sword. thine arrows stick within my heart, my flesh is sorely prest; between the sorrow and the smart my spirit finds no rest. my sins a heavy load appear, and o'er my head are gone; too heavy they for me to bear, too hard for me t' atone. my thoughts are like a troubled sea, my head still bending down; and i go mourning all the day beneath my father's frown. lord, i am weak, and broken sore, none of my powers are whole; the inward anguish makes me roar, the anguish of my soul. all my desire to thee is known, thine eye counts every tear, and every sigh, and every groan is notic'd by thine ear. thou art my god, my only hope; my god will hear my cry; my god will bear my spirit up when satan bids me die. [my foot is ever apt to slide, my foes rejoice to see't; they raise their pleasure and their pride when they supplant my feet. but i'll confess my guilt to thee, and grieve for all my sin, i'll mourn how weak my graces be, and beg support divine. my god, forgive my follies past, and be for ever nigh; o lord of my salvation, haste, before thy servant die.] psalm : . . first part. watchfulness over the tongue; or, prudence and zeal. thus i resolv'd before the lord, "now will i watch my tongue, "lest i let slip one sinful word, "or do my neighbour wrong." and if i'm e'er constrain'd to stay with men of lives profane i'll set a double guard that day, nor let my talk be vain. i'll scarce allow my lips to speak the pious thoughts i feel, lest scoffers should th' occasion take to mock my holy zeal. yet if some proper hour appear, i'll not be overaw'd, but let the scoffing sinners hear that i can speak for god. psalm : . - . second part. the vanity of man as mortal. teach me the measure of my days, thou maker of my frame; i would survey life's narrow space, and learn' how frail i am. a span is all that we can boast, an inch or two of time; man is but vanity and dust in all his flower and prime. see the vain race of mortals move like shadows o'er the plain; they rage and strive, desire and love, but all the noise is vain. some walk in honour's gaudy show, some dig for golden ore, they toil for heirs, they know not who, and straight are seen no more. what should i wish or wait for then from creatures, earth and dust? they make our expectations vain, and disappoint our trust. now i forbid my carnal hope, my fond desires recall; i give my mortal interest up, and make my god my all. psalm : . - . third part. sick-bed devotion; or, pleading without repining. god of my life, look gently down, behold the pains i feel; but i am dumb before thy throne, nor dare dispute thy will. diseases are thy servants, lord, they come at thy command; i'll not attempt a murmuring word against thy chastening hand. yet i may plead with humble cries, remove thy sharp rebukes; my strength consumes, my spirit dies thro' thy repeated strokes. crush'd as a moth beneath thy hand, we moulder to the dust; our feeble powers can ne'er withstand, and all our beauty's lost. [this mortal life decays apace, how soon the bubble's broke! adam and all his numerous race are vanity and smoke.] i'm but a sojourner below, as all my fathers were, may i be well prepar'd to go when i the summons hear. but if my life be spar'd awhile, before my last remove, thy praise shall be my business still, and i'll declare thy love. psalm : . . first part. c. m. a song of deliverance from great distress. i waited patient for the lord, he bow'd to hear my cry; he saw me resting on his word, and brought salvation nigh. he rais'd me from a horrid pit where mourning long i lay, and from my bonds releas'd my feet, deep bonds of miry clay. firm on a rock he made me stand, and taught my cheerful tongue to praise the wonders of his hand, in a new thankful song. i'll spread his works of grace abroad; the saints with joy shall hear, and sinners learn to make my god their only hope and fear. how many are thy thoughts of love! thy mercies, lord, how great! we have not words nor hours enough their numbers to repeat. when i'm afflicted, poor and low, and light and peace depart, my god beholds my heavy woe, and bears me on his heart. psalm : . - . second part. c. m. the incarnation and sacrifice of christ. thus saith the lord, "your work is vain, "give your burnt offerings o'er, "in dying goats and bullocks slain "my soul delights no more." then spake the saviour, "lo, i'm here, "my god, to do thy will; "'whate'er thy sacred books declare, "thy servant shall fulfil. "thy law is ever in my sight, "i keep it near my heart; "mine ears are open'd with delight "to what thy lips impart." and see the bless'd redeemer comes, th' eternal son appears, and at th' appointed time assumes the body god prepares. much he reveal'd his father's grace, and much his truth he shew'd, and preach'd the way of righteousness, where great assemblies stood. his father's honour touch'd his heart, he pity'd sinners' cries, and, to fulfil a saviour's part, was made a sacrifice, pause. no blood of beasts on altars shed could wash the conscience clean, but the rich sacrifice he paid atones for all our sin. then was the great salvation spread, and satan's kingdom shook; thus by the woman's promis'd seed the serpent's head was broke. psalm : . - . l. m. christ our sacrifice. the wonders, lord, thy love has wrought, exceed our praise, surmount our thought; should i attempt the long detail, my speech would faint, my numbers fail. no blood of beasts on altars spilt, can cleanse the souls of men from guilt, but thou hast set before our eyes an all-sufficient sacrifice. lo! thine eternal son appears, to thy designs he bows his ears, assumes a body, well prepar'd, and well performs a work so hard. "behold, i come," (the saviour cries, with love and duty in his eyes) "i come to bear the heavy load "of sins, and do thy will, my god. "'tis written in thy great decree, "'tis in thy book foretold of me, "i must fulfil the saviour's part, "and, lo! thy law is in my heart! "i'll magnify thy holy law, "and rebels to obedience draw, "'when on my cross i'm lifted high, "or to my crown above the sky. "the spirit shall descend, and show "what thou hast done, and what i do; "the wond'ring world shall learn thy grace, "thy wisdom and thy righteousness." psalm . . charity to the poor; or, pity to the afflicted. blest is the man whose bowels move, and melt with pity to the poor, whose soul, by sympathising love, feels what his fellow-saints endure. his heart contrives for their relief more good than his own hands can do; he, in the time of general grief, shall find the lord has bowels too. his soul shall live secure on earth, with secret blessings on his head, when drought, and pestilence, and dearth around him multiply their dead. or if he languish on his couch, god will pronounce his sins forgiv'n, will save him with a healing touch, or take his willing soul to heaven. psalm : . - . first part. desertion and hope; or, complaint of absence from public worship. with earnest longings of the mind, my god, to thee i look; so pants the hunted hart to find and taste the cooling brook. when shall i see thy courts of grace, and meet my god again? so long an absence from thy face my heart endures with pain. temptations vex my weary soul, and tears are my repast; the foe insults without control, "and where's your god at last?" 'tis with a mournful pleasure now i think on ancient days; then to thy house did numbers go, and all our work was praise. but why, my soul, sunk down so far beneath this heavy load? why do my thoughts indulge despair, and sin against my god? hope in the lord, whose mighty hand can all thy woes remove; for i shall yet before him stand, and sing restoring love. psalm : . - . second part. melancholy thoughts reproved; or, hope in afflictions. my spirit sinks within me, lord, but i will call thy name to mind, and times of past distress record, when i have found my god was kind. huge troubles, with tumultuous noise, swell like a sea, and round me spread; thy water-spouts drown all my joys, and rising waves roll o'er my head. yet will the lord command his love, when i address his throne by day, nor in the night his grace remove; the night shall hear me sing and pray. i'll cast myself before his feet, and say "my god, my heavenly rock, "why doth thy love so long forget "the soul that groans beneath thy stroke?" i'll chide my heart that sinks so low, why should my soul indulge her grief? hope in the lord, and praise him too, he is my rest, my sure relief. thy light and truth shall guide me still, thy word shall my best thoughts employ, and lead me to thine heavenly hill, my god, my most exceeding joy. psalm . - . the church's complaint in persecution. lord, we have heard thy works of old, thy works of power and grace, when to our ears our fathers told the wonders of their days: how thou didst build thy churches here, and make thy gospel known; amongst them did thine arm appear, thy light and glory shone. in god they boasted all the day, and in a cheerful throng did thousands meet to praise and pray, and grace was all their song. but now our souls are seiz'd with shame, confusion fills our face, to hear the enemy blaspheme, and fools reproach thy grace. yet have we not forgot our god, nor falsely dealt with heaven, nor have our steps declin'd the road of duty thou hast given. tho' dragons all around us roar with their destructive breath, and thine own hand has bruis'd us sore hard by the gates of death. pause. we are expos'd all day to die as martyrs for thy cause, as sheep for slaughter bound we lie by sharp and bloody laws. awake, arise, almighty lord, why sleeps thy wonted grace? why should we look like men abhorr'd, or banish'd from thy face? wilt thou for ever cast us off and still neglect our cries? for ever hide thine heavenly love from our afflicted eyes? down to the dust our soul is bow'd, and dies upon the ground; rise for our help, rebuke the proud, and all their powers confound. redeem us from perpetual shame, our saviour and our god; we plead the honours of thy name, the merits of thy blood. psalm : . s. m. the glory of christ; the success of the gospel; and the gentile church. my saviour and my king, thy beauties are divine; thy lips with blessings overflow, and every grace is thine. now make thy glory known, gird on thy dreadful sword, and ride in majesty to spread the conquests of thy word. strike thro' thy stubborn foes, or melt their hearts t'obey, while justice, meekness, grace, and truth, attend thy glorious way. thy laws, o god, are right; thy throne shall ever end; and thy victorious gospel proves a sceptre in thy hand. [thy father and thy god hath without measure shed his spirit, like a joyful oil, t'anoint thy sacred head.] [behold, at thy right hand the gentile church is seen, like a fair bride in rich attire, and princes guard the queen.] fair bride, receive his love, forget thy father's house; forsake thy gods, thy idol gods, and pay thy lord thy vows. o let thy god and king thy sweetest thoughts employ; thy children shall his honours sing in palaces of joy. psalm : . c. m. the personal glories and government of christ. i'll speak the honours of my king, his form divinely fair; none of the sons of mortal race may with the lord compare. sweet is thy speech and heavenly grace upon thy lips is shed; thy god, with blessings infinite, hath crown'd thy sacred head. gird on thy sword, victorious prince, ride with majestic sway; thy terrors shall strike thro' thy foes, and make the world obey. thy throne, o god, for ever stands; thy word of grace shall prove a peaceful sceptre in thy hands, to rule the saints by love. justice and truth attend thee still but mercy is thy choice; and god, thy god, thy soul shall fill with most peculiar joys. psalm : . first part. l. m. the glory of christ, and power of his gospel. now be my heart inspir'd to sing the glories of my saviour-king, jesus the lord; how heavenly fair his form! how 'bright his beauties are! o'er all the sons of human race he shines with a superior grace, love from his lips divinely flows, and blessings all his state compose. dress thee in arms, most mighty lord, gird on the terror of thy sword, in majesty and glory ride with truth and meekness at thy side. thine anger, like a pointed dart, shall pierce the foes of stubborn heart; or words of mercy kind and sweet shall melt the rebels at thy feet. thy throne, o god, for ever stands, grace is the sceptre in thy hands; thy laws and works are just and right, justice and grace are thy delight. god, thine own god, has richly shed his oil of gladness on thy head, and with his sacred spirit blest his first-born son above the rest. psalm : . second part. l. m. christ and his church; or, the mystical marriage. the king of saints, how fair his face, adorn'd with majesty and grace! he comes with blessings from above, and wins the nations to his love. at his right hand our eyes behold the queen array'd in purest gold; the world admires her heavenly dress, her robe of joy and righteousness. he forms her beauties like his own; he calls and seats her near his throne: fair stranger, let thine heart forget the idols of thy native state. so shall the king the more rejoice in thee, the favourite of his choice; let him be lov'd and yet ador'd, for he's thy maker and thy lord. o happy hour, when thou shalt rise to his fair palace in the skies, and all thy sons (a numerous train) each like a prince in glory reign! let endless honours crown his head; let every age his praises spread; while we with cheerful songs approve the condescensions of his love. psalm : . first part. the church's safety and triumph among national desolations. god is the refuge of his saints, when storms of sharp distress invade; ere we can offer our complaints behold him present with his aid. let mountains from their seats be hurl'd down to the deep, and buried there; convulsions shake the solid world, our faith shall never yield to fear. loud may the troubled ocean roar, in sacred peace our souls abide, while every nation, every shore, trembles, and dreads the swelling tide. there is a stream whose gentle flow supplies the city of our god; life, love, and joy still gliding thro', and watering our divine abode. that sacred stream, thine holy word, that all our raging fear controls: sweet peace thy promises afford, and give new strength to fainting souls. sion enjoys her monarch's love, secure against a threatening hour; nor can her firm foundations move, built on his truth, and arm'd with pow'r. psalm : . second part. god fights for his church. let sion in her king rejoice, tho' tyrants rage and kingdoms rise; he utters his almighty voice, the nations melt, the tumult dies. the lord of old for jacob fought, and jacob's god is still our aid; behold the works his hand has wrought, what desolations he has made! from sea to sea, thro' all the shores, he makes the noise of battle cease; when from on high his thunder roars, he awes the trembling world to peace. he breaks the bow, he cuts the spear, chariots he burns with heavenly flame; keep silence all the earth, and hear the sound and glory of his name. "be still, and learn that i am god, "i'll be exalted o'er the lands, "i will be known and fear'd abroad, "but still my throne in sion stands." o lord of hosts, almighty king, while we so near thy presence dwell, our faith shall sit secure, and sing defiance to the gates of hell. psalm . christ ascending and reigning. o for a shout of sacred joy to god the sovereign king! let every land their tongues employ, and hymns of triumph sing. jesus our god ascends on high, his heavenly guards around attend him rising thro' the sky, with trumpet's joyful sound. while angels shout and praise their king, let mortals learn their strains; let all the earth his honour sing; o'er all the earth he reigns. rehearse his praise with awe profound, let knowledge lead the song, nor mock him with a solemn sound upon a thoughtless tongue. in israel stood his ancient throne, he lov'd that chosen race; but now he calls the world his own, and heathens taste his grace. the british islands are the lord's, there abraham's god is known, while powers and princes, shields and swords, submit before his throne. psalm : . - . first part. the church is the honour and safety of a nation. [great is the lord our god, and let his praise be great; he makes his churches his abode, his most delightful seat. these temples of his grace, how beautiful they stand! the honours of our native place, and bulwarks of our land.] in sion god is known a refuge in distress; how bright has his salvation shone thro' all her palaces! when kings against her join'd, and saw the lord was there, in wild confusion of the mind they fled with hasty tear. when navies tall and proud attempt to spoil our peace, he sends his tempests roaring loud, and sinks them in the seas. oft have our fathers told, our eyes have often seen, how well our god secures the fold where his own sheep have been. in every new distress we'll to his house repair. we'll think upon his wondrous grace, and seek deliverance there. psalm : . - . second part. the beauty of the church; or, gospel worship and order. far as thy name is known the world declares thy praise; thy saints, o lord, before thy throne their songs of honour raise. with joy let judah stand on sion's chosen hill, proclaim the wonders of thy hand, and counsels of thy will. let strangers walk around the city where we dwell, compass and view thine holy ground, and mark the building well. the orders of thy house, the worship of thy court, the cheerful songs, the solemn vows; and make a fair report. how decent and how wise! how glorious to behold! beyond the pomp that charms the eyes, and rites adorn'd with gold. the god we worship now will guide us till we die, will be our god while here below, and ours above the sky. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. pride and death; or, the vanity of life and riches. why doth the man of riches grow to insolence and pride, to see his wealth and honours flow with every rising tide? [why doth he treat the poor with scorn, made of the self-same clay, and boast as tho' his flesh was born of better dust than they?] not all his treasures can procure his soul a short reprieve, redeem from death one guilty hour, or make his brother live. [life is a blessing can't be sold, the ransom is too high; justice will ne'er be brib'd with gold that man may never die.] he sees the brutish and the wise, the timorous and the brave, quit their possessions, close their eyes, and hasten to the grave. yet 'tis his inward thought and pride,-- "my house shall ever stand; "and that my name may long abide, "i'll give it to my land." vain are his thoughts, his hopes are lost, how soon his memory dies! his name is written in the dust where his own carcase lies. pause. this is the folly of their way; and yet their sons, as vain, approve the words their fathers say, and act their works again. men void of wisdom and of grace, if honour raise them high. live like the beast, a thoughtless race, and like the beast they die. laid in the grave like silly sheep, death feeds upon them there, till the last trumpet break their sleep in terror and despair. psalm : . . second part. c. m. death and the resurrection. ye sons of pride, that hate the just, and trample on the poor, when death has brought you down to dust, your pomp shall rise no more, the last great day shall change the scene; when will that hour appear? when shall the just revive, and reign o'er all that scorn'd them here? god will my naked soul receive, when sep'rate from the flesh; and break the prison of the grave to raise my bones afresh. heaven is my everlasting home, th' inheritance is sure; let men of pride their rage resume, but i'll repine no more. psalm : . l. m. the rich sinner's death, and the saint's resurrection. why do the proud insult the poor, and boast the large estates they have? how vain are riches to secure their haughty owners from the grave! they can't redeem one hour from death, with all the wealth in which they trust; nor give a dying brother breath, when god commands him down to dust. there the dark earth and dismal shade shall clasp their naked bodies round; that flesh, so delicately fed, lies cold, and moulders in the ground. like thoughtless sheep the sinner dies, laid in the grave for worms to eat; the saints shall in the morning rise, and find th' oppressor at their feet. his honours perish in the dust, and pomp and beauty, birth and blood: that glorious day exalts the just to full dominion o'er the proud. my saviour shall my life restore, and raise me from my dark abode; my flesh and soul shall part no more, but dwell for ever near my god. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. the last judgment; or, the saints rewarded. the lord, the judge, before his throne, bids the whole earth draw nigh, the nations near the rising sun, and near the western sky. no more shall bold blasphemers say, "judgment will ne'er begin," no more abuse his long delay to impudence and sin. thron'd on a cloud our god shall come, bright flames prepare his way, thunder and darkness, fire and storm, lead on the dreadful day. heaven from above his call shall hear, attending angels come, and earth and hell shall know and fear his justice and their doom. "but gather all my saints," he cries, "that made their peace with god, "by the redeemer's sacrifice, "and seal'd it with his blood. "their faith and works brought forth to light "shall make the world confess "my sentence of reward is right, "and heaven adore my grace." psalm : . . second part. c. m. obedience is better than sacrifice. thus saith the lord, "the spacious fields "and flocks and herds are mine "o'er all the cattle of the hills "i claim a right divine. "i ask no sheep for sacrifice, "nor bullocks burnt with fire; "to hope and love, to pray and praise, "is all that i require. "call upon me when trouble's near, "my hand shall set thee free; "then shall thy thankful lips declare "the honour due to me. "the man that offers humble praise, "he glorifies me best; "and those that tread my holy ways "shall my salvation taste." psalm : . . d part. c. m. the judgement of hypocrites. when christ to judgment shall descend and saints surround their lord, he calls the nations to attend, and hear his awful word. "not for the want of bullocks slain "will i the world reprove; "altars and rites and forms are vain, "without the fire of love. "and what have hypocrites to do "to bring their sacrifice? "they call my statutes just and true, "but deal in theft and lies. "could you expect to 'scape my sight, "and sin without control? "but i shall bring your crimes to light, "with anguish in your soul." consider, ye that slight the lord, before his wrath appear; if once you fall beneath his sword, there's no deliverer there. psalm : . l. m. hypocrisy exposed. the lord, the judge, his churches warns, let hypocrites attend and fear, who place their hope in rites and forms, but make not faith nor love their care. vile wretches dare rehearse his name with lips of falsehood and deceit; a friend or brother they defame, and soothe and flatter those they hate. they watch to do their neighbours wrong; yet dare to seek their maker's face; they take his covenant on their tongue, but break his laws, abuse his grace. to heaven they lift their hands unclean, defil'd with lust, defil'd with blood; by night they practise every sin, by day their mouths draw near to god. and while his judgments long delay, they grow secure and sin the more; they think he sleeps as well as they, and put far off the dreadful hour. o dreadful hour! when god draws near, and sets their crimes before their eyes! his wrath their guilty souls shall tear, and no deliverer dare to rise. psalm : . to a new tune. the last judgment. the lord the sovereign sends his summons forth, calls the south nations, and awakes the north; from east to west the sounding orders spread thro' distant worlds and regions of the dead: no more shall atheists mock his long delay; his vengeance sleeps no more: behold the day! behold the judge descends; his guards are nigh; tempest and fire attend him down the sky: heaven, earth and hell draw near; let all things come to hear his justice and the sinners doom: but gather first my saints (the judge commands) bring them, ye angels, from their distant lands. behold! my covenant stands for ever good, seal'd by the eternal sacrifice in blood, and sign'd with all their names; the greek, the jew, that paid the ancient worship or the new. there's no distinction here: come spread their thrones, and near me seat my favorites and my sons. i their almighty saviour and their god, i am their judge: ye heavens, proclaim abroad my just eternal sentence, and declare those awful truths that sinners dread to hear: sinners in zion, tremble and retire; i doom the painted hypocrite to fire. not for the want of goats or bullocks slain do i condemn thee; bulls and goats are vain without the flames of love: in vain the store of brutal offerings that were mine before; mine are the tamer beasts and savage breed, flocks, herds, and fields, and forests where they feed. if i were hungry would i ask thee food? when did i thirst, or drink thy bullocks blood? can i be flatter'd with thy cringing bows, thy solemn chatterings and fantastic vows? are my eyes charm'd thy vestments to behold, glaring in gems, and gay in woven gold? unthinking wretch! how couldst thou hope to please a god, a spirit, with such toys as these? while with my grace and statutes on thy tongue, thou lov'st deceit, and dost thy brother wrong; in vain to pious forms thy zeal pretends, thieves and adulterers are thy chosen friends. silent i waited with lone-suffering love, but didst thou hope that i should ne'er reprove? and cherish such an impious thought within, that god the righteous would indulge thy sin? behold my terrors now: my thunders roll, and thy own crimes affright thy guilty soul. sinners, awake betimes; ye fools, be wise; awake, before this dreadful morning rise; change your vain thoughts, your crooked works amend, fly to the saviour, make the judge your friend; lest like a lion his last vengeance tear your trembling souls, and no deliverer near. psalm : . to the old proper tune. the last judgment. the god of glory sends his summons forth, calls the south nations, and awakes the north; from east to west the sov'reign orders spread, thro' distant worlds, and regions of the dead: the trumpet sounds; hell trembles; heaven rejoices; lift up your heads, ye saints, with cheerful voices. no more shall atheists mock his long delay; his vengeance sleeps no more; behold the day; behold the judge descends; his guards are nigh; tempests and fire attend him down the sky. when god appears, all nature shall adore him; while sinners tremble, saints rejoice before him, "heaven, earth, and hell, draw near; let all things come "to hear my justice and the sinner's doom; "but gather first my saints," the judge commands, "bring them, ye angels from their distant lands:" when christ returns, wake every cheerful passion, and shout, ye saints; he comes for your salvation. "behold my covenant stands for ever good, "seal'd by th' eternal sacrifice in blood, "and sign'd with all their names, the greek, the jew, "that paid the ancient worship or the new." there's no distinction here: join all your voices, and raise your heads, ye saints, for heaven rejoices. "here (saith the lord) ye angels, spread their thrones: "and near me seat my favorites and my sons: "come, my redeem'd, possess the joys prepar'd "ere time began! 'tis your divine reward:" when christ returns, wake every cheerful passion, and shout, ye saints; he comes for your salvation. pause the first. "i am the saviour, i th' almighty god, "i am the judge: ye heavens, proclaim abroad "my just eternal sentence, and declare "those awful truths that sinners dread to hear," when god appears all nature shall adore him; while sinners tremble, saints rejoice before him. "stand forth, thou bold blasphemer and profane, "now feel my wrath, nor call my threatenings vain, "thou hypocrite, once drest in saint's attire, "i doom the painted hypocrite to fire." judgment proceeds; hell trembles; heaven rejoices; lift up your heads, ye saints, with cheerful voices. "not for the want of goats or bullocks slain "do i condemn thee; bulls and goats are vain "without the flames of love; in vain the store "of brutal offerings that were mine before:" earth is the lord's; all nature shall adore him; while sinners tremble, saints rejoice before him. "if i were hungry, would i ask thee food? "when did i thirst, or drink thy bullocks blood? "mine are the tamer beasts and savage breed, "flocks, herds, and fields, and forests where they feed:" all is the lord's; he rules the wide creation: gives sinners vengeance, and the saints salvation. "can i be flatter'd with thy cringing bows, "thy solemn chatterings and fantastic vows? "are my eyes charm'd thy vestments to behold, "glaring in gems, and gay in woven gold?" god is the judge of hearts; no fair disguises can screen the guilty when his vengeance rises. pause the second. "unthinking wretch! how couldst thou hope to please "a god, a spirit with such toys as these! "while with my grace and statutes on thy tongue, "thou lov'st deceit, and dost thy brother wrong!" judgment proceeds; hell trembles; heaven rejoices: lift up your heads, ye saints, with cheerful voices. "in vain to pious forms thy zeal pretends, "thieves and adulterers are thy chosen friends; "while the false flatterer at my altar waits, "his harden'd soul divine instruction hates." god is the judge of hearts; no fair disguises can screen the guilty when his vengeance rises. "silent i waited with long suffering love; "but didst thou hope that i should ne'er reprove? "and cherish such an impious thought within, "that the all-holy would indulge thy sin?" see, god appears; all nature joins t' adore him; judgment proceeds, and sinners fall before him. "behold my terrors now; my thunders roll, "and thy own crimes affright thy guilty soul; "now like a lion shall my vengeance tear "thy bleeding heart, and no deliverer near:" judgment concludes; hell trembles; heaven rejoices; lift up your heads, ye saints, with cheerful voices.. epiphonema. sinners, awake betimes; ye fools, be wise; awake before this dreadful morning rise: change your vain thoughts, your crooked works amend, fly to the saviour, make the judge your friend: then join the saints: wake every cheerful passion; when christ returns, he comes for your salvation. psalm : . first part. l. m. a penitent pleading for pardon. shew pity, lord, o lord, forgive, let a repenting rebel live: are not thy mercies large and free? may not a sinner trust in thee? my crimes are great, but not surpass the power and glory of thy grace; great god, thy nature hath no bound, so let thy pardoning love be found. o wash my soul from every sin, and make my guilty conscience clean; here on my heart the burden lies, and past offences pain my eyes. my lips with shame my sins confess against thy law, against thy grace: lord, should thy judgment grow severe, i am condemn'd, but thou art clear. should sudden vengeance seize my breath, i must pronounce thee just in death; and if my soul were sent to hell, thy righteous law approves it well. yet save a trembling sinner, lord, whose hope, still hovering round thy word, would light on some sweet promise there, some sure support against despair. psalms : . second part. l. m. original and actual sin confessed. lord, i am vile, conceiv'd in sin; and born unholy and unclean; sprung from the man whose guilty fall corrupts the race, and taints us all. soon as we draw our infant-breath, the seeds of sin grow up for death; thy law demands a perfect heart, but we're defil'd in every part. [great god, create my heart anew, and form my spirit pure and true: o make me wise betimes to spy my danger, and my remedy.] behold i fall before thy face; my only refuge is thy grace: no outward forms can make me clean; the leprosy lies deep within. no bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast, nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest, nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea, can wash the dismal stain away. jesus, my god, thy blood alone hath power sufficient to atone; thy blood can make me white as snow; no jewish types could cleanse me so. while guilt disturbs and breaks my peace, nor flesh, nor soul hath rest or ease; lord, let me hear thy pardoning voice, and make my broken bones rejoice. psalm : . third part. l. m. the backslider restored; or, repentance and faith in the blood of christ. o thou that hear'st when sinners cry, tho' all my crimes before thee lie, behold them not with angry look, but blot their memory from thy book. create my nature pure within, and form my soul averse to sin; let thy good spirit ne'er depart, nor hide thy presence from my heart. i cannot live without thy light, cast out and banish'd from thy sight: thine holy joys, my god, restore, and guard me that i fall no more. tho' i have griev'd thy spirit, lord, his help and comfort still afford: and let a wretch come near thy throne to plead the merits of thy son. a broken heart, my god, my king, is all the sacrifice i bring; the god of grace will ne'er despise a broken heart for sacrifice. my soul lies humbled in the dust, and owns thy dreadful sentence just; look down, o lord, with pitying eye, and save the soul condemn'd to die. then will i teach the world thy ways; sinners shall learn thy sovereign grace; i'll lead them to my saviour's blood, and they shall praise a pardoning god. o may thy love inspire my tongue! salvation shall be all my song; and all my powers shall join to bless the lord, my strength and righteousness. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. original and actual sin confessed and pardoned. lord, i would spread my sore distress and guilt before thine eyes; against thy laws, against thy grace, how high my crimes arise. shouldst thou condemn my soul to hell, and crush my flesh to dust, heaven would approve thy vengeance well, and earth must own it just. i from the stock of adam came, unholy and unclean; all my original is shame, and all my nature sin. born in a world of guilt, i drew contagion with my breath; and, as my days advanc'd, i grew a juster prey for death. cleanse me, o lord, and cheer my soul with thy forgiving love; o, make my broken spirit whole, and bid my pains remove. let not thy spirit quite depart, nor drive me from thy face; create anew my vicious heart, and fill it with thy grace. then will i make thy mercy known before the sons of men; backsliders shall address thy throne, and turn to god again. psalm : . - . second part. c. m. repentance and faith in the blood of christ. o god of mercy! hear my call, my loads of guilt remove; break down this separating wall that bars me from thy love. give me the presence of thy grace, then my rejoicing tongue shall speak aloud thy righteousness, and make thy praise my song. no blood of goats, nor heifers slain, for sin could e'er atone; the death of christ shall still remain sufficient and alone. a soul opprest with sin's desert, my god will ne'er despise; a humble groan, a broken heart is our best sacrifice. psalm . - . victory and deliverance from persecution. are all the foes of sion fools, who thus devour her saints? do they not know her saviour rules, and pities her complaints? they shall be seiz'd with sad surprise; for god's revenging arm scatters the bones of them that rise to do his children harm. in vain the sons of satan boast of armies in array: when god has first despis'd their host, they fall an easy prey. o for a word from sion's king her captives to restore! jacob with all his tribes shall sing, and judah weep no more. psalm : . - - . c. m. support for the afflicted and tempted soul. o god, my refuge, hear my cries, behold my flowing tears, for earth and hell my hurt devise, and triumph in my fears. their rage is levell'd at my life, my soul with guilt they load, and fill my thoughts with inward strife to shake my hope in god. with inward pain my heart-strings sound, i groan with every breath; horror and fear beset me round amongst the shades of death, o were i like a feather'd dove, and innocence had wings, i'd fly, and make a long remove, from all these restless things. let me to some wild desert go, and find a peaceful home, where storms of malice never blow, temptations never come. vain hopes, and vain inventions all to 'scape the rage of hell! the mighty god on whom i call can save me here as well. pause. by morning light i'll seek his face, at noon repeat my cry, the night shall hear me ask his grace, nor will he long deny. god shall preserve my soul from fear, or shield me when afraid; ten thousand angels must appear if he command their aid. i cast my burdens on the lord, the lord sustains them all; my courage rests upon his word that saints shall never fall. my highest hopes shall not be vain, my lips shall spread his praise; while cruel and deceitful men scarce live out half their days. psalm : . - . s. m. dangerous prosperity; or, daily devotions encouraged. let sinners take their course, and choose the road to death; but in the worship of my god i'll spend my daily breath. my thoughts address his throne when morning brings the light; i seek his blessing every noon, and pay my vows at night. thou wilt regard my cries, o my eternal god, while sinners perish in surprise beneath thine angry rod. because they dwell at ease, and no sad changes feel, they neither fear nor trust thy name, nor learn to do thy will. but i with all my cares will call upon the lord, i'll cast my burdens on his arm, and rest upon his word, his arm shall well sustain the children of his love; the ground on which their safety stands no earthly power can move. psalm . deliverance from oppression and falsehood; or, god's care of his people, in answer to faith and prayer. thou, whose justice reigns on high, and makes th' oppressor cease, behold how envious sinners try to vex and break my peace! the sons of violence and lies join to devour me, lord; but as my hourly dangers rise, my refuge is thy word. in god most holy, just, and true, i have repos'd my trust; nor will i fear what flesh can do, the offspring of the dust. they wrest my words to mischief still, charge me with unknown faults; mischief doth all their councils fill, and malice all their thoughts. shall they escape without thy frown? must their devices stand? o cast the haughty sinner down, and let him know thy hand! pause. god counts the sorrows of his saints, their groans affect his ears; thou hast a book for my complaints, a bottle for my tears. when to thy throne i raise my cry the wicked fear and flee; so swift is prayer to reach the sky, so near is god to me. in thee, most holy, just, and true, i have repos'd my trust; nor will i fear what man can do, the offspring of the dust. thy solemn vows are on me, lord, thou shalt receive my praise; i'll sing, "how faithful is thy word, "how righteous all thy ways!" thou hast secur'd my soul from death; o set thy prisoner free, that heart and hand, and life and breath may be employ'd for thee. psalm . praise for protection, grace, and truth. my god, in whom are all the springs of boundless love and grace unknown, hide me beneath thy spreading wings till the dark cloud is overblown. up to the heavens i send my cry, the lord will my desires perform; he sends his angel from the sky, and saves me from the threatening storm. be thou exalted, o my god, above the heavens where angels dwell: thy power on earth be known abroad, and land to land thy wonders tell. my heart is fix'd; my song shall raise immortal honours to thy name; awake, my tongue, to sound his praise, my tongue, the glory of my frame. high o'er the earth his mercy reigns, and reaches to the utmost sky; his truth to endless years remains, when lower worlds dissolve and die. be thou exalted, o my god, above the heavens where angels dwell; thy power on earth be known abroad, and land to land thy wonders tell. psalm . as the th psalm. warning to magistrates. judges, who rule the world by laws, will ye despise the righteous cause, when th' injur'd poor before you stands? dare ye condemn the righteous poor, and let rich sinners 'scape secure, while gold and greatness bribe your hands? have ye forgot, or never knew, that god will judge the judges too? high in the heavens his justice reigns? yet you invade the rights of god, and send your bold decrees abroad, to bind the conscience in your chains. a poison'd arrow is your tongue, the arrow sharp, the poison strong, and death attends where'er it wounds: you hear no counsels, cries or tears; so the deaf adder stops her ears against the power of charming sounds. break out their teeth, eternal god, those teeth of lions dy'd in blood; and crush the serpents in the dust: as empty chaff when whirlwinds rise, before the sweeping tempest flies, so let their hopes and names be lost. th' almighty thunders from the sky, their grandeur melts, their titles die, as hills of snow dissolve and run, or snails that perish in their slime, or births that come before their time, vain births, that never see the sun. thus shall the vengeance of the lord safety and joy to saints afford; and all that hear shall join and say, "sure there's a god that rules on high, "a god that hears his children cry, "and will their sufferings well repay." psalm . - - . on a day of humiliation for disappointments in war. lord, hast thou cast the nation off? must we for ever mourn? wilt thou indulge immortal wrath? shall mercy ne'er return? the terror of one frown of thine melts all our strength away; like men that totter drunk with wine, we tremble in dismay. great britain shakes beneath thy stroke, and dreads thy threatening hand; o heal the island thou hast broke, confirm the wavering land. lift up a banner in the field, for those that fear thy name; save thy beloved with thy shield, and put our foes to shame. go with our armies to the fight, like a confederate god; in vain confederate powers unite against thy lifted rod. our troops shall gain a wide renown by thine assisting hand; 'tis god that treads the mighty down, and makes the feeble stand. psalm . - . safety in god. when overwhelm'd with grief my heart within me dies, helpless and far from all relief to heaven i lift mine eyes. o lead me to the rock that's high above my head, and make the covert of thy wings my shelter and my shade. within thy presence, lord, for ever i'll abide; thou art the tower of my defence, the refuge where i hide. thou givest me the lot of those that fear thy name; if endless life be their reward, i shall possess the same. psalm . - . no trust in the creatures; or, faith in divine grace and power. my spirit looks to god alone; my rock and refuge is his throne; in all my fears, in all my straits, my soul on his salvation waits. trust him, ye saints, in all your ways, pour out your hearts before his face: when helpers fail, and foes invade, god is our all-sufficient aid. false are the men of high degree, the baser sort are vanity; laid in the balance both appear light as a puff of empty air. make not increasing gold your trust, nor set your heart on glittering dust; why will you grasp the fleeting smoke; and not believe what god hath spoke? once has his awful voice declar'd, once and again my ears have heard, "all power is his eternal due; "he must be fear'd and trusted too." for sovereign power reigns not alone, grace is a partner of the throne: thy grace and justice, mighty lord, shall well divide our last reward. psalm : . . first part. c. m. the morning of a lord's day. early, my god, without delay i haste to seek thy face; my thirsty spirit faints away, without thy cheering grace. so pilgrims on the scorching sand, beneath a burning sky, long for a cooling stream at hand, and they must drink or die. i've seen thy glory and thy power thro' all thy temple shine; my god, repeat that heavenly hour, that vision so divine. not all the blessings of a feast can please my soul so well, as when thy richer grace i taste, and in thy presence dwell. not life itself with all her joys, can my best passions move, or raise so high my cheerful voice as thy forgiving love. thus till my last expiring day i'll bless my god and king; thus will i lift my hands to pray, and tune my lips to sing. psalm : . - . second part. midnight thoughts recollected. 'twas in the watches of the night i thought upon thy power, i kept thy lovely face in sight amidst the darkest hour. my flesh lay resting on my bed, my soul arose on high; "my god, my life, my hope," i said, "bring thy salvation nigh." my spirit labours up thine hill, and climbs the heavenly road; but thy right hand upholds me still, while i pursue my god. thy mercy stretches o'er my head the shadow of thy wings; my heart rejoices in thine aid, my tongue awakes and sings. but the destroyers of my peace shall fret and rage in vain; the tempter shall for ever cease, and all my sins be slain. thy sword shall give my foes to death, and send them down to dwell in the dark caverns of the earth, or to the deeps of hell. psalm : . l. m. longing after god; or, the love of god better than life. great god, indulge my humble claim thou art my hope, my joy, my rest; the glories that compose thy name stand all engag'd to make me blest. thou great and good, thou just and wise, thou art my father and my god; and i am thine by sacred ties; thy son, thy servant bought with blood. with heart, and eyes and lifted hands, for thee i long, to thee i look, as travellers in thirsty lands pant for the cooling water-brook. with early feet i love t' appear among thy saints and seek thy face; oft have i seen thy glory there, and felt the power of sovereign grace. not fruits nor wines that tempt our taste, not all the joys our senses know, could make me so divinely blest or raise my cheerful passions so. my life itself without thy love no taste of pleasure could afford; 'twould but a tiresome burden prove, if i were banish'd from the lord. amidst the wakeful hours of night, when busy cares afflict my head one thought of thee gives new delight, and adds refreshment to my bed. i'll lift my hands, i'll raise my voice, while i have breath to pray or praise; this work shall make my heart rejoice, and spend the remnant of my days. psalm : . s. m. seeking god. my god, permit my tongue this joy, to call thee mine, and let my early cries prevail to taste thy love divine. my thirsty fainting soul thy mercy doth implore; not travellers in desert lands can pant for water more. within thy churches, lord, i long to find my place, thy power and glory to behold, and feel thy quickening grace. for life without thy love no relish can afford; no joy can be compar'd to this, to serve and please the lord. to thee i'll lift my hands, and praise thee while i live; not the rich dainties of a feast such food or pleasure give. in wakeful hours at night i call my god to mind; i think how wise thy counsels are, and all thy dealings kind. since thou hast been my help, to thee my spirit flies, and on thy watchful providence my cheerful hope relies. the shadow of thy wings my soul in safety keeps; i follow where my father leads, and he supports my steps. psalm : . - . first part. l. m. public prayer and praise. the praise of sion waits for thee, my god; and praise becomes thy house; there shall thy saints thy glory see, and there perform their public vows. o thou, whose mercy bends the skies to save when humble sinners pray, all lands to thee shall lift their eyes and islands of the northern sea. against my will my sins prevail, but grace shall purge away their stain; the blood of christ will never fail to wash my garments white again. blest is the man whom thou shalt choose, and give him kind access to thee, give him a place within thy house, to taste thy love divinely free. pause. let babel fear when sion prays; babel, prepare for long distress when sion's god himself arrays in terror, and in righteousness. with dreadful glory god fulfils what his afflicted saints request; and with almighty wrath reveals his love to give his churches rest. then shall the flocking nations run to sion's hill, and own their lord; the rising and the setting sun shall see their saviour's name ador'd. psalm : . - . second part. l. m. divine providence in air, earth, and sea; or, the god of nature and grace. the god of our salvation hears the groans of sion mix'd with tears; yet when he comes with kind designs, thro' all the way his terror shines. on him the race of man depends, far as the earth's remotest ends, where the creator's name is known by nature's feeble light alone. sailors, that travel o'er the flood, address their frighted souls to god; when tempests rage and billows roar at dreadful distance from the shore. he bids the noisy tempest cease; he calms the raging crowd to peace, when a tumultuous nation raves wild as the winds, and loud as waves. whole kingdoms shaken by the storm he settles in a peaceful form; mountains establish'd by his hand, firm on their old foundations stand. behold his ensigns sweep the sky, new comets blaze and lightnings fly, the heathen lands, with swift surprise, from the bright horrors turn their eyes. at his command the morning-ray smiles in the east, and leads the day; he guides the sun's declining wheels over the tops of western hills. seasons and times obey his voice; the evening and the morn rejoice to see the earth made soft with showers, laden with fruit and drest in flowers. 'tis from his watery stores on high he gives the thirsty ground supply; he walks upon the clouds, and thence doth his enriching drops dispense. the desert grows a fruitful field, abundant food the vallies yield; the vallies shout with cheerful voice, and neighb'ring hills repeat their joys. the pastures smile in green array; there lambs and larger cattle play; the larger cattle and the lamb each in his language speaks thy name. thy works pronounce thy power divine, o'er every field thy glories shine; thro' every month thy gifts appear; great god! thy goodness crowns the year. psalm : . first part. c. m. a prayer-hearing god, and the gentiles called. praise waits in sion, lord, for thee; there shall our vows be paid: thou hast an ear when sinners pray, all flesh shall seek thine aid. lord, our iniquities prevail, but pardoning grace is thine, and thou wilt grant us power and skill to conquer every sin. bless'd are the men whom thou wilt choose to bring them near thy face, give them a dwelling in thine house to feast upon thy grace. in answering what thy church requests thy truth and terror shine, and works of dreadful righteousness fulfil thy kind design. thus shall the wondering nations see the lord is good and just; and distant islands fly to thee, and make thy name their trust. they dread thy glittering tokens, lord, when signs in heaven appear; but they shall learn thy holy word, and love as well as fear. psalm : . second part. c. m. the providence of god in air, earth, and sea; or, the blessing of rain. 'tis by thy strength the mountains stand, god of eternal power; the sea grows calm at thy command, and tempests cease to roar. thy morning light and evening shade successive comforts bring; thy plenteous fruits make harvest glad, thy flowers adorn the spring. seasons and times, and moons and hours, heaven, earth, and air are thine; when clouds distil in fruitful showers, the author is divine. those wandering cisterns in the sky, borne by the winds around, with watery treasures well supply the furrows of the ground. the thirsty ridges drink their fill, and ranks of corn appear; thy ways abound with blessings still, thy goodness crowns the year. psalm : . third part. c. m. the blessing: of the spring; or, god gives rain. a psalm for the husbandman. good is the lord, the heavenly king, who makes the earth his care, visits the pastures every spring, and bids the grass appear. the clouds, like rivers rais'd on high, pour out, at thy command, their watery blessings from the sky, to cheer the thirsty land. the soften'd ridges of the field permit the corn to spring; the vallies rich provision yield, and the poor labourers sing. the little hills on every side rejoice at falling showers; the meadows, drest in all their pride, perfume the air with flowers. the barren clods, refresh'd with rain, promise a joyful crop; the parching grounds look green again, and raise the reaper's hope. the various months thy goodness crowns; how bounteous are thy ways; the bleating flocks spread o'er the downs, and shepherds shout thy praise. psalm : . first part. governing power and goodness; or, our graces tried by afflictions. sing, all ye nations, to the lord, sing with a joyful noise; with melody of sound record his honours, and your joys. say to the power that shakes the sky, "how terrible art thou! "sinners before thy presence fly, "or at thy feet they bow." [come, see the wonders of our god, how glorious are his ways: in moses' hand he puts his rod, and cleaves the frighted seas. he made the ebbing channel dry, while israel pass'd the flood; there did the church begin their joy, and triumph in their god.] he rules by his resistless might: will rebel mortals dare provoke th' eternal to the fight, and tempt that dreadful war? o bless our god and never cease; ye saints, fulfil his praise; he keeps our life, maintains our peace, and guides our doubtful ways. lord, thou hast prov'd our suffering souls, to make our graces shine; so silver bears the burning coals the metal to refine. thro' watery deeps and fiery ways we march at thy command, led to possess the promis'd place by thine unerring hand. psalm : . - . second part. praise to god for hearing prayer. now shall my solemn vows be paid to that almighty power, that heard the long requests i made in my distressful hour. my lips and cheerful heart prepare to make his mercies known; come, ye that fear my god, and hear the wonders he has done. when on my head huge sorrows fell, i sought his heavenly aid, he sav'd my sinking soul from hell, and death's eternal shade. if sin lay cover'd in my heart, while prayer employ'd my tongue, the lord had shewn me no regard, nor i his praises sung. but god, (his name be ever blest) hath set my spirit free, nor turn'd from him my poor request, nor turn'd his heart from me. psalm . the nation's prosperity and the church's increase. shine, mighty god, on britain shine with beams of heavenly grace; reveal thy power thro' all our coasts, and shew thy smiling face. [amidst our isle, exalted high, do thou our glory stand, and like a wall of guardian fire surround the favourite land.] when shall thy name, from shore to shore, sound all the earth abroad, and distant nations know and love their saviour and their god? sing to the lord, ye distant lands, sing loud with solemn voice; while british tongues exalt his praise, and british hearts rejoice. he the great lord, the sovereign judge, that sits enthron'd above, wisely commands the worlds he made in justice and in love. earth shall obey her maker's will, and yield a full increase; our god will crown his chosen isle with fruitfulness and peace. god the redeemer scatters round his choicest favours here, while the creation's utmost bound shall see, adore, and fear. psalm : . - - . first part. the vengeance and compassion of god. let god arise in all his might, and put the troops of hell to flight, as smoke that sought to cloud the skies before the rising tempest flies. [he comes array'd in burning flames; justice and vengeance are his names: behold his fainting foes expire like melting wax before the fire.] he rides and thunders thro' the sky; his name jehovah sounds on high: sing to his name, ye sons of grace; ye saints, rejoice before his face. the widow and the fatherless fly to his aid in sharp distress; in him the poor and helpless find a judge that's just, a father kind. he breaks the captive's heavy chain, and prisoners see the light again; but rebels that dispute his will, shall dwell in chains and darkness still. pause. kingdoms and thrones to god belong; crown him, ye nations, in your song; his wondrous names and powers rehearse; his honours shall enrich your verse. he shakes the heavens with loud alarms; how terrible is god in arms! in israel are his mercies known, israel is his peculiar throne. proclaim him king, pronounce him blest! he's your defence, your joy, your rest: when terrors rise and nations faint, god is the strength of every saint. psalm : . . second part. christ's ascension, and the gift of the spirit. lord, when thou didst ascend on high, ten thousand angels fill'd the sky; those heavenly guards around thee wait, like chariots that attend thy state. not sinai's mountain could appear more glorious when the lord was there; while he pronounc'd his dreadful law, and struck the chosen tribes with awe. how bright the triumph none can tell, when the rebellious powers of hell that thousand souls had captive made, were all in chains like captives led. rais'd by his father to the throne, he sent the promis'd spirit down, with gifts and grace for rebel men, that god might dwell on earth again. psalm : . - . third part. praise for temporal blessings; or, common and special mercies. we bless the lord, the just, the good, who fills our hearts with joy and food; who pours his blessings from the skies, and loads our days with rich supplies. he sends the sun his circuit round, to cheer the fruits, to warm the ground; he bids the clouds with plenteous rain refresh the thirsty earth again. 'tis to his care we owe our breath, and all our near escapes from death; safety and health to god belong; he heals the weak, and guards the strong. he makes the saint and sinner prove the common blessings of his love; but the wide difference that remains, is endless joy, or endless pains. the lord, that bruis'd the serpent's head, on all the serpent's seed shall tread; the stubborn sinner's hope confound, and smite him with a lasting wound. but his right hand his saints shall raise from the deep earth, or deeper seas, and bring them to his courts above, there shall they taste his special love. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. the sufferings of christ for our salvation. "save me, o god, the swelling floods "break in upon my soul: "i sink, and sorrows o'er my head "like mighty waters roll. "i cry till all my voice be gone, "in tears i waste the day: "my god behold my longing eyes, "and shorten thy delay. "they hate my soul without a cause, "and still their number grows "more than the hairs around my head, "and mighty are my foes. "'twas then i paid that dreadful debt "that men could never pay, "and gave those honours to thy law "which sinners took away." thus in the great messiah's name, the royal prophet mourns; thus he awakes our hearts to grief, and gives us joy by turns. "now shall the saints rejoice and find "salvation in my name: "for i have borne their heavy load of sorrow, pain, and shame. "grief, like a garment, cloth'd me round, "and sackcloth was my dress, "while i procur'd for naked souls "a robe of righteousness. "amongst my brethren and the jews "i like a stranger stood, "and bore their vile reproach to bring "the gentiles near to god. "i came in sinful mortals' stead, "to do my father's will; "yet when i cleans'd my father's house "they scandaliz'd my zeal. "my fasting and my holy groans "were made the drunkard's song; "but god, from his celestial throne, "heard my complaining tongue. "he sav'd me from the dreadful deep, "nor let my soul be drown'd; "he rais'd and fix'd my sinking feet "on well establish'd ground. "'twas in a most accepted hour "my prayer arose on high, "and for my sake my god shall hear "the dying sinner's cry." psalm : . - . d part. c. m. the passion and exaltation of christ. now let our lips with holy fear and mournful pleasure sing the sufferings of our great high-priest, the sorrows of our king. he sinks in floods of deep distress: how high the waters rise! while to his heavenly father's ear he sends perpetual cries. "hear me, o lord, and save thy son, "nor hide thy shining face; "why should thy favorite look like one "forsaken of thy grace? "with rage they persecute the man "that groans beneath thy wound, "while for a sacrifice i pour "my life upon the ground. "they tread my honour to the dust, "and laugh when i complain "their sharp insulting slanders add "fresh anguish to my pain. "all my reproach is known to thee, "the scandal and the shame; "reproach has broke my bleeding heart, "and lies defil'd my name. "i look'd for pity, but in vain; "my kindred are my grief! "i ask my friends for comfort round, "but meet with no relief. "with vinegar they mock my thirst; "they give me gall for food; "and sporting with my dying groans, "they triumph in my blood. "shine into my distressed soul, "let thy compassion save; "and tho' my flesh sink down to death, "redeem it from the grave. "i shall arise to praise thy name, "shall reign in worlds unknown; "and thy salvation, o my god, "shall seat me on thy throne." psalm : . third part. c. m. christ's obedience and death; or, god glorified and sinners saved. father, i sing thy wondrous grace, i bless my saviour's name, he bought salvation for the poor, and bore the sinner's shame. his deep distress has rais'd us high, his duty and his zeal fulfill'd the law which mortals broke, and finish'd all thy will. his dying groans, his living songs shall better please my god than harp or trumpet's solemn sound, than goats' or bullocks' blood. this shall his humble followers see, and set their hearts at rest; they by his death draw near to thee, and live for ever blest. let heaven, and all that dwell on high, to god their voices raise, while lands and seas assist the sky, and join t' advance the praise. zion is thine, most holy god; thy son shall bless her gates; and glory purchas'd by his blood for thine own israel waits. psalm : . first part. l. m. christ's passion, and sinners' salvation. deep in our hearts let us record the deeper sorrows of our lord; behold the rising billows roll to overwhelm his holy soul. in long complaints he spends his breath, while hosts of hell, and powers of death, and all the sons of malice join to execute their curst design. yet, gracious god, thy power and love has made the curse a blessing prove; those dreadful sufferings of thy son aton'd for sins which we had done. the pangs of our expiring lord the honours of thy law restor'd; his sorrows made thy justice known, and paid for follies not his own. o for his sake our guilt forgive, and let the mourning sinner live; the lord will hear us in his name, nor shall our hope be turn'd to shame. psalm : . &c. second part. l. m. christ's sufferings and zeal. 'twas for thy sake, eternal god, thy son sustain'd that heavy load of base reproach and sore disgrace, and shame defil'd his sacred face. the jews, his brethren and his kin, abus'd the man that check'd their sin: while he fulfill'd thy holy laws, they hate him, but without a cause. ["my father's house, said he, was made "a place for worship, not for trade;" then scattering all their gold and brass, he scourg'd the merchants from the place.] [zeal for the temple of his god consum'd his life, expos'd his blood: reproaches at thy glory thrown he felt, and mourn'd them as his own.] [his friends forsook, his followers fled, while foes and arms surround his head; they curse him with a slanderous tongue, and the false judge maintains the wrong.] his life they load with hateful lies, and charge his lips with blasphemies; they nail him to the shameful tree: there hung the man that dy'd for me. [wretches with hearts as hard as stones, insult his piety and groans; gall was the food they gave him there, and mock'd his thirst with vinegar.] but god beheld; and from his throne marks out the men that hate his son; the hand that rais'd him from the dead shall pour the vengeance on their head. psalm : . - . first part. the aged saint's reflection and hope. my god, my everlasting hope, i live upon thy truth; thine hands have held my childhood up, and strengthen'd all my youth. my flesh was fashion'd by thy power, with all these limbs of mine; and from my mother's painful hour i've been entirely thine. still has my life new wonders seen repeated every year; behold my days that yet remain, i trust them to thy care. cast me not off when strength declines, when hoary hairs arise; and round me let thy glories shine whene'er thy servant dies. then in the history of my age, when men review my days, they'll read thy love in every page, in every line thy praise. psalm : . . d part. christ our strength and righteousness. my saviour, my almighty friend, when i begin thy praise, where will the growing numbers end, the numbers of thy grace? thou art my everlasting trust, thy goodness i adore; and since i knew thy graces first i speak thy glories more. my feet shall travel all the length of the celestial road, and march with courage in thy strength to see my father god. when i am fill'd with sore distress for some surprising sin, i'll plead thy perfect righteousness, and mention none but thine. how will my lips rejoice to tell the victories of my king! my soul redeem'd from sin and hell shall thy salvation sing. [my tongue shall all the day proclaim my saviour and my god; his death has brought my foes to shame, and drown'd them in his blood. awake, awake my tuneful powers; with this delightful song i'll entertain the darkest hours, nor think the season long.] psalm : . - . third part. the aged christian's prayer and song; or, old age, death, and the resurrection. god of my childhood and my youth, the guide of all my days, i have declar'd thy heavenly truth, and told thy wondrous ways. wilt thou forsake my hoary hairs, and leave my fainting heart? who shall sustain my sinking years if god my strength depart? let me thy power and truth proclaim to the surviving age, and leave a savour of thy name when i shall quit the stage. the land of silence and of death attends my next remove; o may these poor remains of breath teach the wide world thy love. pause. thy righteousness is deep and high, unsearchable thy deeds; thy glory spreads beyond the sky, and all my praise exceeds. oft have i heard thy threatenings roar, and oft endur'd the grief; but when thy hand has press'd me sore, thy grace was my relief. by long experience have i known thy sovereign power to save; at thy command i venture down securely to the grave. when i lie buried deep in dust, my flesh shall be thy care these withering limbs with thee i trust to raise them strong and fair. psalm : . first part. the kingdom of christ. great god, whose universal sway the known and unknown worlds obey, now give the kingdom to thy son, extend his power, exalt his throne. thy sceptre well becomes his hands, all heaven submits to his commands; his justice shall avenge the poor, and pride and rage prevail no more. with power he vindicates the just, and treads th' oppressor in the dust; his worship and his fear shall last till hours and years and time be past. as rain on meadows newly mown so shall he send his influence down; his grace on fainting souls distils like heavenly dew on thirsty hills. the heathen lands that lie beneath the shades of overspreading death, revive at his first dawning light, and deserts blossom at the sight. the saints shall flourish in his days, drest in the robes of joy and praise; peace like a river from his throne shall flow to nations yet unknown. psalm : . second part. christ's kingdom among the gentiles. jesus shall reign where'er the sun does his successive journies run; his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more. [behold the islands with their kings, and europe her best tribute brings; from north to south the princes meet to pay their homage at his feet. there persia glorious to behold, there india shines in eastern gold: and barbarous nations at his word submit, and bow, and own their lord.] for him shall endless prayer be made and princes throng to crown his head; his name like sweet perfume shall rise with every morning sacrifice. people and realms of every tongue dwell on his love with sweetest song: and infant voices shall proclaim their early blessings on his name. blessings abound where'er he reigns, the prisoner leaps to lose his chains, the weary find eternal rest, and all the sons of want are blest. [where he displays his healing power, death and the curse are known no more; in him the tribes of adam boast more blessings than their father lost. let every creature rise, and bring peculiar honours to our king; angels descend with songs again, and earth repeat the long amen.] psalm : . first part. c. m. afflicted saints happy, and prosperous sinners cursed. now i'm convinc'd the lord is kind to men of heart sincere, yet once my foolish thoughts repin'd and border'd on despair. i griev'd to see the wicked thrive, and spoke with angry breath, "how pleasant and profane they live! "how peaceful is their death! "with well-fed flesh and haughty eyes "they lay their fears to sleep; "against the heavens their slanders rise, "while saints in silence weep. "in vain i lift my hands to pray, "and cleanse my heart in vain, "for i am chasten'd all the day, "the night renews my pain.' yet while my tongue indulg'd complaints, i felt my heart reprove; "sure i shall thus offend thy saints, "and grieve the men i love." but still i found my doubts too hard, the conflict too severe, till i retir'd to search thy word, and learn thy secrets there. there, as in some prophetic glass, i saw the sinner's feet high mounted on a slippery place, beside a fiery pit. i heard the wretch profanely boast, till at thy frown he fell; his honours in a dream were lost, and he awakes in hell. lord, what an envious fool i was! how like a thoughtless beast! thus to suspect thy promis'd grace, and think the wicked blest. yet i was kept from full despair, upheld by power unknown; that blessed hand that broke the snare shall guide me to thy throne. psalm : . - . second part. god our portion here and hereafter. god my supporter and my hope, my help for ever near, thine arm of mercy held me up when sinking in despair. thy counsels, lord, shall guide my feet thro' this dark wilderness; thine hand conduct me near thy seat to dwell before thy face. were i in heaven without my god, 'twould be no joy to me; and whilst this earth is my abode, i long for none but thee. what if the springs of life were broke, and flesh and heart should faint! god is my soul's eternal rock, the strength of every saint. behold the sinners that remove far from thy presence die; not all the idol gods they love can save them when they cry. but to draw near to thee, my god, shall be my sweet employ; my tongue shall sound thy works abroad, and tell the world my joy. psalm : . - . l. m. the prosperity of sinners cursed. lord, what a thoughtless wretch was i, to mourn, and murmur, and repine to see the wicked plac'd on high, in pride and robes of honour shine! but o their end, their dreadful end! thy sanctuary taught me so: on slippery rocks i see them stand, and fiery billows roll below. now let them boast how tall they rise, i'll never envy them again; there they may stand with haughty eyes, till they plunge deep in endless pain. their fancy'd joys, how fast they flee! just like a dream when man awakes; their songs of softest harmony are but a preface to their plagues. now i esteem their mirth and wine too dear to purchase with my blood; lord, 'tis enough that thou art mine, my life, my portion, and my god. psalm : . s. m. the mystery of providence unfolded. sure there's a righteous god, nor is religion vain, tho' men of vice may boast aloud, and men of grace complain. i saw the wicked rise, and felt my heart repine, while haughty fools with scornful eyes in robes of honour shine. [pamper'd with wanton ease, their flesh looks full and fair, their wealth rolls in like flowing seas, and grows without their care. free from the plagues and pains that pious souls endure, thro' all their life oppression reigns and racks the humble poor. their impious tongues blaspheme the everlasting god; their malice blasts the good man's name, and spreads their lies abroad. but i with flowing tears indulge my doubts to rise "is there a god that sees or hears "the things below the skies?"] the tumults of my thought held me in hard suspense, till to thy house my feet were brought to learn thy justice thence. thy word with light and power did my mistakes attend; i view'd the sinners' life before, but here i learnt their end. on what a slippery steep the thoughtless wretches go; and o that dreadful fiery deep that waits their fall below. lord, at thy feet i bow, my thoughts no more repine; i call my god my portion now, and all my powers are thine. psalm . the church pleading with god under sore persecutions. will god for ever cast us off? his wrath for ever smoke against the people of his love, his little chosen flock? think of the tribes so dearly bought with their redeemer's blood; nor let thy sion be forgot, where once thy glory stood. lift up thy feet and march in haste, aloud our ruin calls; see what a wide and fearful waste is made within thy walls. where once thy churches pray'd and sang thy foes profanely roar; over thy gates their ensigns hang, sad tokens of their power. how are the seats of worship broke! they tear the buildings down, and he that deals the heaviest stroke procures the chief renown. with flames they threaten to destroy thy children in their nest; "come let us burn at once (they cry) the temple and the priest." and still to heighten our distress thy presence is withdrawn; thy wonted signs of power and grace, thy power and grace are gone. no prophet speaks to calm our woes, but all the seers mourn; there's not a soul amongst us knows the time of thy return. pause. how long, eternal god, how long shall men of pride blaspheme? shall saints be made their endless song, and bear immortal shame? canst thou for ever sit and hear thine holy name profan'd? and still thy jealousy forbear, and still withhold thine hand? what strange deliverance hast thou shown in ages long before! and now no other god we own, no other god adore. thou didst divide the raging sea by thy resistless might, to make thy tribes a wondrous way, and then secure their flight. is not the world of nature thine, the darkness and the day? didst thou not bid the morning shine, and mark the sun his way? hath not thy power form'd every coast, and set the earth its bounds, with summer's heat and winter's frost, in their perpetual rounds? and shall the sons of earth and dust that sacred power blaspheme? will not thy hand that form'd them first avenge thine injur'd name? think on the covenant thou hast made, and all thy words of love; nor let the birds of prey invade and vex thy mourning dove. our foes would triumph in our blood, and make our hope their jest; plead thy own cause, almighty god! and give thy children rest. psalm . power and government from god alone. applied to the glorious revolution by king william, or the happy accession of king george to the throne. to thee, most holy, and most high, to thee, we bring our thankful praise; thy works declare thy name is nigh, thy works of wonder and of grace. britain was doom'd to be a slave, her frame dissolv'd, her fears were great; when god a new supporter gave to bear the pillars of the state. he from thy hand receiv'd his crown, and sware to rule by wholesome laws his foot shall tread th' oppressor down, his arm defend the righteous cause. let haughty sinners sink their pride, nor lift so high their scornful head; but lay their foolish thoughts aside, and own the king that god hath made. such honours never come by chance, nor do the winds promotion blow; 'tis god the judge doth one advance, 'tis god that lays another low. no vain pretence to royal birth shall fix a tyrant on the throne: god the great sovereign of the earth will rise and make his justice known. [his hand holds out the dreadful cup of vengeance, mix'd with various plagues, to make the wicked drink them up, wring out and taste the bitter dregs. now shall the lord exalt the just, and while he tramples on the proud, and lays their glory in the dust, my lips shall sing his praise aloud.] psalm . israel saved, and the assyrians destroyed; or, god's vengeance against his enemies proceeds from his church. in judah god of old was known; his name in israel great; in salem stood his holy throne, and sion was his seat. among the praises of his saints his dwelling there he chose; there he receiv'd their just complaints against their haughty foes. from sion went his dreadful word, and broke the threatening spear; the bow, the arrows, and the sword, and crush'd th' assyrian war. what are the earth's wide kingdoms else but mighty hills of prey? the hill on which jehovah dwells is glorious more than they. 'twas sion's king that stopt the breath of captains and their bands: the men of might slept fast in death, and never found their hands. at thy rebuke, o jacob's god, both horse and chariot fell; who knows the terrors of thy rod? thy vengeance who can tell? what power can stand before thy sight when once thy wrath appears? when heaven shines round with dreadful light, the earth lies still and fears. when god in his own sovereign ways comes down to save th' opprest, the wrath of man shall work his praise, and he'll restrain the rest. [vow to the lord, and tribute bring, ye princes, fear his frown: his terror shakes the proudest king, and cuts an army down. the thunder of his sharp rebuke our haughty foes shall feel: for jacob's god hath not forsook, but dwells in sion still.] psalm : . first part. melancholy assaulting, and hope prevailing. to god i cry'd with mournful voice, i sought his gracious ear, in the sad day when troubles rose, and fill'd the night with fear. sad were my days, and dark my nights, my soul refus'd relief; i thought on god the just and wise, but thoughts increas'd my grief. still i complain'd, and still opprest, my heart began to break; my god, thy wrath forbid my rest, and kept my eyes awake. my overwhelming sorrows grew till i could speak no more; then i within myself withdrew, and call'd thy judgments o'er. i call'd back years and ancient times, when i beheld thy face; my spirit search'd for secret crimes that might withhold thy grace. i call'd thy mercies to my mind which i enjoy'd before; and will the lord no more be kind? his face appear no more? will he for ever cast me off? his promise ever fail? has he forgot his tender love? shall anger still prevail? but i forbid this hopeless thought, this dark despairing frame, rememb'ring what thy hand hath wrought, thy hand is still the same. i'll think again of all thy ways, and talk thy wonders o'er; thy wonders of recovering grace, when flesh could hope no more. grace dwells with justice on the throne; and men that love thy word have in thy sanctuary known the counsels of the lord. psalm : . second part. comfort derived from ancient providences; or, israel delivered from egypt, and brought to canaan. "how awful is thy chastening rod!" (may thine own children say) "the great, the wise, the dreadful god! "how holy is his way!" i'll meditate his works of old; the king that reigns above; i'll hear his ancient wonders told, and learn to trust his love. long did the house of joseph lie with egypt's yoke opprest: long he delay'd to hear their cry, nor gave his people rest. the sons of good old jacob seem'd abandon'd to their foes; but his almighty arm redeem'd the nation that he chose. israel, his people, and his sheep, must follow where he calls; he bid them venture thro' the deep, and made the waves their walls. the waters saw thee, mighty god! the waters saw thee come; backward they fled, and frighted stood, to make thine armies room. strange was thy journey thro' the sea, thy footsteps, lord, unknown, terrors attend the wondrous way that brings thy mercies down. [thy voice with terror in the sound thro' clouds and darkness broke; all heaven in lightning shone around, and earth with thunder shook. thine arrows thro' the skies were hurl'd; how glorious is the lord! surprise and trembling seiz'd the world, and his own saints ador'd. he gave them water from the rock; and safe by moses' hand thro' a dry desert led his flock home to the promis'd land.] psalm : . first part. providence of god recorded; or, pious education and instruction of children. let children hear the mighty deeds, which god perform'd of old, which in our younger years we saw, and which our fathers told. he bids us make his glories known, his works of power and grace; and we'll convey his wonders down thro' every rising race. our lips shall tell them to our sons, and they again to theirs, that generations yet unborn may teach them to their heirs. thus shall they learn in god alone their hope securely stands, that they may ne'er forget his works, but practise his commands. psalm : . second part. israel's rebellion and punishment; or, the sins and chastisements of god's people. what a stiff rebellious house was jacob's ancient race! false to their own most solemn vows, and to their maker's grace. they broke the covenant of his love, and did his laws despise, forgot the works he wrought to prove his power before their eyes. they saw the plagues on egypt light, from his revenging hand: what dreadful tokens of his might spread o'er the stubborn land! they saw him cleave the mighty sea, and march'd in safety thro', with watery walls to guard their way, till they had 'scap'd the foe. a wondrous pillar mark'd the road, compos'd of shade and light; by day it prov'd a sheltering cloud, a leading fire by night. he from the rock their thirst supply'd; the gushing waters fell, and ran in rivers by their side, a constant miracle. yet they provok'd the lord most high, and dar'd distrust his hand; "can he with bread our host supply "amidst this desert land?" the lord with indignation heard, and caus'd his wrath to flame his terrors ever stand prepar'd to vindicate his name. psalm : . third part. the punishment of luxury and intemperance; or, chastisement and salvation. when israel sins, the lord reproves, and fills their hearts with dread; yet he forgives the men he loves, and sends them heavenly bread. he fed them with a liberal hand, and made his treasures known; he gave the midnight clouds command to pour provision down. the manna, like a morning shower, lay thick around their feet; the corn of heaven, so light, so pure, as tho' 'twere angels' meat. but they in murmuring language said, "manna is all our feast; "we loathe this light, this airy bread; "we must have flesh to taste." "ye shall have flesh to please your lust;" the lord in wrath reply'd, and sent them quails like sand or dust, heap'd up from side to side. he gave them all their own desire; and greedy as they fed, his vengeance burnt with secret fire, and smote the rebels dead. when some were slain, the rest return'd, and sought the lord with tears; under the rod they fear'd and mourn'd, but soon forgot their fears. oft he chastis'd and still forgave, till by his gracious hand the nation he resolv'd to save, possess'd the promis'd land. psalm : . &c. fourth part. backsliding and forgiveness; or, sin punished, and saints saved. great god, how oft did israel prove by turns thine anger and thy love! there in a glass our hearts may see how fickle and how false they be. how soon the faithless jews forgot the dreadful wonders god had wrought! then they provoke him to his face, nor fear his power, nor trust his grace. the lord consum'd their years in pain, and made their travels long and vain; a tedious march thro' unknown ways wore out their strength and spent their days. oft when they saw their brethren slain, they mourn'd and sought the lord again; call'd him the rock of their abode, their high redeemer and their god. their prayers and vows before him rise as flattering words or solemn lies, while their rebellious tempers prove false to his covenant and his love. yet did his sovereign grace forgive the men who not deserv'd to live; his anger oft away he turn'd, or else with gentle flame it burn'd. he saw their flesh was weak and frail, he saw temptation still prevail the god of abraham lov'd them still, and led them to his holy hill. psalm . the church's prayer under affliction; or, the vineyard of god wasted. great shepherd of thine israel, who didst between the cherubs dwell, and led the tribes, thy chosen sheep, safe thro' the desert and the deep. thy church is in the desert now, shine from on high and guide us thro'; turn us to thee, thy love restore, we shall be sav'd, and sigh no more. great god, whom heavenly hosts obey, how long shall we lament and pray, and wait in vain thy kind return? how long shall thy fierce anger burn? instead of wine and cheerful bread, thy saints with their own tears are fed; turn us to thee, thy love restore, we shall be sav'd, and sigh no more. pause i. hast thou not planted with thy hands a lovely vine in heathen lands? did not thy power defend it round, and heavenly dews enrich the ground? how did the spreading branches shoot, and bless the nations with the fruit! but now, dear lord, look down and see thy mourning vine, that lovely tree. why is its beauty thus defac'd? why hast thou laid her fences waste? strangers and foes against her join, and every beast devours the vine. return, almighty god, return, nor let thy bleeding vineyard mourn; turn us to thee, thy love restore, we shall be sav'd, and sigh no more. pause ii. lord, when this vine in canaan grew thou wast its strength and glory too; attack'd in vain by all its foes, till the fair branch of promise rose; fair branch, ordain'd of old to shoot from david's stock, from jacob's root; himself a noble vine, and we the lesser branches of the tree. 'tis thy own son, and he shall stand girt with thy strength at thy right hand; thy first-born son, adorn'd and blest with power and grace above the rest. o! for his sake attend our cry, shine on thy churches lest they die; turn us to thee, thy love restore, we shall be sav'd, and sigh no more. psalm . . the warnings of god to his people; or, spiritual blessings and punishments. sing to the lord aloud, and make a joyful noise; god is our strength, our saviour god; let israel hear his voice. "from vile idolatry "preserve my worship clean; "i am the lord who set thee free "from slavery and sin. "stretch thy desires abroad, "and i'll supply them well "but if ye will refuse your god, "if israel will rebel, "i'll leave them," saith the lord, "to their own lusts a prey, "and let them run the dangerous road, "'tis their own chosen way. "yet o! that all my saints "would hearken to my voice! "soon i would ease their sore complaints, "and bid their hearts rejoice. "while i destroy their foes, "i'd richly feed my flock, "and they should taste the stream that flows "from their eternal rock." psalm . god the supreme governor; or, magistrates warned. among th' assemblies of the great, a greater ruler takes his seat; the god of heaven, as judge, surveys those gods on earth and all their ways. why will ye then frame wicked laws? or why support th' unrighteous cause? when will ye once defend the poor, that sinners vex the saints no more? they know not, lord, nor will they know, dark are the ways in which they go; their name of earthly gods is vain, for they shall fall and die like men. arise, o lord, and let thy son possess his universal throne, and rule the nations with his rod; he is our judge, and he our god. psalm . a complaint against persecutors. and will the god of grace perpetual silence keep? the god of justice hold his peace, and let his vengeance sleep? behold what cursed snares the men of mischief spread; the men that hate thy saints and thee lift up their threatening head. against thy hidden ones their counsels they employ, and malice with her watchful eye, pursues them to destroy. the noble and the base into thy pastures leap; the lion and the stupid ass conspire to vex thy sheep. "come, let us join," they cry, "to root them from the ground, "till not the name of saints remain, "nor memory shall be found." awake, almighty god, and call thy wrath to mind; give them like forests to the fire, or stubble to the wind. convince their madness, lord, and make them seek thy name or else their stubborn rage confound, that they may die in shame. then shall the nations know that glorious dreadful word, jehovah is thy name alone, and thou the sovereign lord. psalm : . first part. l. m. the pleasure of public worship. how pleasant, how divinely fair, o lord of hosts, thy dwellings are! with long desire my spirit faints to meet th' assemblies of thy saints. my flesh would rest in thine abode, my panting heart cries out for god; my god! my king! why should i be so far from all my joys and thee? the sparrow chuses where to rest, and for her young provides her nest: but will my god to sparrows grant that pleasure which his children want? blest are the saints who sit on high, around thy throne of majesty; thy brightest glories shine above, and all their work is praise and love. blest are the souls that find a place within the temple of thy grace; there they behold thy gentler rays, and seek thy face, and learn thy praise. blest are the men whose hearts are set to find the way to sion's gate; god is their strength, and thro' the road they lean upon their helper god. cheerful they walk with growing strength, till all shall meet in heaven at length, till all before thy face appear, and join in nobler worship there. psalm : . second part. l. m. god and his church; or, grace and glory. great god, attend, while sion sings the joy that from thy presence springs to spend one day with thee on earth exceeds a thousand days of mirth. might i enjoy the meanest place within thine house, o god of grace, not tents of ease, nor thrones of power, should tempt my feet to leave thy door. god is our sun, he makes our day; god is our shield, he guards our way from all th' assaults of hell and sin, from foes without, and foes within. all needful grace will god bestow, and crown that grace with glory too: he gives us all things, and withholds no real good from upright souls. o god, our king, whose sovereign sway the glorious hosts of heaven obey, and devils at thy presence flee, blest is the man that trusts in thee. psalm : . . paraphrased. c. m. delight in ordinances of worship; or, god present in his churches. my soul, how lovely is the place to which thy god resorts! 'tis heaven to see his smiling face, tho' in his earthly courts. there the great monarch of the skies his saving power displays, and light breaks in upon our eyes with kind and quickening rays. with his rich gifts the heavenly dove descends and fills the place, while christ reveals his wondrous love, and sheds abroad his grace. there, mighty god, thy words declare the secrets of thy will; and still we seek thy mercy there, and sing thy praises still. pause. my heart and flesh cry out for thee, while far from thine abode: when shall i tread thy courts, and see my saviour and my god? the sparrow builds herself a nest, and suffers no remove; o make me like the sparrows, blest, to dwell but where i love. to sit one day beneath thine eye, and hear thy gracious voice, exceeds a whole eternity employ'd in carnal joys. lord, at thy threshold i would wait, while jesus is within, rather than fill a throne of state, or live in tents of sin. could i command the spacious land, and the more boundless sea, for one blest hour at thy right hand i'd give them both away. psalm : . as the th psalm. longing for the house of god. lord of the worlds above, how pleasant and how fair the dwellings of thy love, thy earthly temples are! to thine abode my heart aspires, with warm desires to see my god. the sparrow, for her young, with pleasure seeks her nest; and wandering swallows long to find their wonted rest: my spirit faints with equal zeal to rise and dwell among thy saints. o happy souls that pray where god appoints to hear! o happy men that pay their constant service there! they praise thee still; and happy they that love the way to zion's hill. they go from strength to strength, thro' this dark vale of tears, till each arrives at length, till each in heaven appears: o glorious seat, when god our king shall thither bring our willing feet! pause. to spend one sacred day where god and saints abide, affords diviner joy than thousand days beside; where god resorts, i love it more to keep the door than shine in courts. god is our sun and shield, our light and our defence with gifts his hands are fill'd, we draw our blessings thence; he shall bestow on jacob's race peculiar grace and glory too. the lord his people loves; his hand no good withholds from those his heart approves, from pure and pious souls: thrice happy he, o god of hosts, whose spirit trusts alone in thee. psalm : . - . first part. waiting for an answer to prayer; or, deliverance begun and completed. lord, thou hast call'd thy grace to mind, thou hast revers'd our heavy doom: so god forgave when israel sinn'd, and brought his wandering captives home. thou hast begun to set us free, and made thy fiercest wrath abate; now let our hearts be turn'd to thee, and thy salvation be complete. revive our dying graces, lord, and let thy saints in thee rejoice; make known thy truth, fulfil thy word, we wait for praise to tune our voice. we wait to hear what god will say; he'll speak, and give his people peace; but let them run no more astray, lest his returning wrath increase. psalm : . &c. second part. salvation by christ. salvation is for ever nigh the souls that fear and trust the lord; and grace descending from on high, fresh hopes of glory shall afford. mercy and truth on earth are met, since christ the lord came down from heaven; by his obedience, so complete, justice is pleas'd, and peace is given. now truth and honour shall abound, religion dwell on earth again, and heavenly influence bless the ground in our redeemer's gentle reign. his righteousness is gone before to give us free access to god; our wandering feet shall stray no more, but mark his steps and keep the road. psalm . - . a general song of praise to god. among the princes, earthly gods, there's none hath power divine; nor is their nature, mighty lord, nor are their works like thine. the nations thou hast made shall bring their offerings round thy throne; for thou alone dost wondrous things, for thou art god alone. lord, i would walk with holy feet; teach me thine heavenly ways, and my poor scatter'd thoughts unite in god my father's praise. great is thy mercy, and my tongue shall those sweet wonders tell, how by thy grace my sinking soul rose from the deeps of hell. psalm . the church the birth-place of the saints; or, jews and gentiles united in the christian church. god in his earthly temple lays foundations for his heavenly praise: he likes the tents of jacob well, but still in zion loves to dwell. his mercy visits every house that pay their night and morning vows; but makes a more delightful stay where churches meet to praise and pray. what glories were describ'd of old! what wonders are of zion told! thou city of our god below, thy fame shall tyre and egypt know. egypt and tyre, and greek and jew, shall there begin their lives anew: angels and men shall join to sing the hill where living waters spring. . when god makes up his last account of natives in his holy mount, 'twill be an honour to appear as one new-born or nourish'd there. psalm : . first part. l. m. the covenant made with christ; or, the true david. for ever shall my song record the truth and mercy of the lord; mercy and truth for ever stand, like heaven, establish'd by his hand. thus to his son he sware, and said, "with thee my covenant first is made; "in thee shall dying sinners live, "glory and grace are thine to give. "be thou my prophet, thou my priest; "thy children shall be ever blest; "thou art my chosen king; thy throne "shall stand eternal like my own. "there's none of all my sons above, "so much my image or my love; "celestial powers thy subjects are, "then what can earth to thee compare? "david, my servant, whom i chose "to guard my flock, to crush my foes, "and rais'd him to the jewish throne, "was but a shadow of my son." now let the church rejoice and sing jesus her saviour and her king: angels his heavenly wonders show, and saints declare his works below. psalm : . first part. c. m. the faithfulness of god. my never-ceasing songs shall show the mercies of the lord, and make succeeding ages know how faithful is his word. the sacred truths his lips pronounce shall firm as heaven endure; and if he speak a promise once, th' eternal grace is sure. how long the race of david held the promis'd jewish throne! but there's a nobler covenant seal'd to david's greater son. his seed for ever shall possess a throne above the skies; the meanest subject of his grace shall to that glory rise. lord god of hosts, thy wondrous ways are sung by saints above; and saints on earth their honours raise to thine unchanging love. psalm : . &c. second part. the power and majesty of god; or, reverential worship. with reverence let the saints appear and bow before the lord, his high commands with reverence hear, and tremble at his word. how terrible thy glories be! how bright thine armies shine! where is the power that vies with thee? or truth compar'd to thine? the northern pole and southern rest on thy supporting hand; darkness and day from east to west move round at thy command. thy words the raging wind control, and rule the boisterous deep; thou mak'st the sleeping billows roll, the rolling billows sleep. heaven, earth, and air, and sea are thine, and the dark world of hell: how did thine arm in vengeance shine when egypt durst rebel! justice and judgment are thy throne, yet wondrous is thy grace; while truth and mercy join'd in one invite us near thy face. psalm : . &c. third part. a blessed gospel. blest are the souls that hear and know the gospel's joyful sound; peace shall attend the path they go, and light their steps surround. their joy shall bear their spirits up thro' their redeemer's name; his righteousness exalts their hope, nor satan dares condemn. the lord, our glory and defence, strength and salvation gives; israel, thy king for ever reigns, thy god for ever lives. psalm : . &c. fourth part. christ's mediatorial kingdom; or, his divine and human nature. hear what the lord in vision said, and made his mercy known: "sinners, behold your help is laid "on my almighty son. "behold the man my wisdom chose "among your mortal race; "his head my holy oil o'erflows, "the spirit of my grace. "high shall he reign on david's throne, "my people's better king; "my arm shall beat his rivals down, "and still new subjects bring. "my truth shall guard him in his way, "with mercy by his side, "while, in my name thro' earth and sea "he shall in triumph ride. "me for his father and his god "he shall for ever own, "call me his rock, his high abode; "and i'll support my son. "my first-born son array'd in grace "at my right-hand shall sit; "beneath him angels know their place, "and monarchs at his feet. "my covenant stands for ever fast, "my promises are strong; "firm as the heavens his throne shall last, "his seed endure as long." psalm : . &c. fifth part. the covenant of grace unchangeable; or, afflictions without rejection. "yet (saith the lord) if david's race, "the children of my son, "should break my laws, abuse my grace, "and tempt mine anger down; "their sins i'll visit with the rod, "and make their folly smart; "but i'll not cease to be their god, "nor from my truth depart. "my covenant i will ne'er revoke, "but keep my grace in mind; "and what eternal love hath spoke "eternal truth shall bind. "once have i sworn (i need no more) "and pledg'd my holiness "to seal the sacred promise sure "to david and his race. "the sun shall see his offspring rise "and spread from sea to sea, "long as he travels round the skies "to give the nations day. "sure as the moon that rules the night "his kingdom shall endure, "till the fix'd laws of shade and light "shall be observ'd no more." psalm : . &c. sixth part. mortality and hope. a funeral psalm. remember, lord, our mortal state, how frail our life, how short the date! where is the man that draws his breath safe from disease, secure from death? lord, while we see whole nations die, our flesh and sense repine and cry, "must death for ever rage and reign? "or hast thou made mankind in vain? "where is thy promise to the just? "are not thy servants turn'd to dust?" but faith forbids these mournful sighs, and sees the sleeping dust arise. that glorious hour, that dreadful day wipes the reproach of saints away, and clears the honour of thy word; awake our souls, and bless the lord. psalm : . &c. last part. as the th psalm. life, death, and the resurrection. think, mighty god, on feeble man, how few his hours, how short his span! short from the cradle to the grave: who can secure his vital breath against the bold demands of death, with skill to fly, or power to save? lord, shall it be for ever said, "the race of man was only made "for sickness, sorrow, and the dust?" are not thy servants day by day sent to their graves, and turn'd to clay? lord, where's thy kindness to the just? hast thou not promis'd to thy son and all his seed a heavenly crown? but flesh and sense indulge despair; for ever blessed be the lord, that faith can read his holy word, and find a resurrection there. for ever blessed be the lord, who gives his saints a long reward for all their toil, reproach and pain; let all below and all above join to proclaim thy wondrous love, and each repeat their loud amen. psalm : . l. m. man mortal, and god eternal. a mournful song at a funeral. thro' every age, eternal god, thou art our rest, our safe abode; high was thy throne ere heaven was made, or earth thy humble footstool laid. long hadst thou reign'd ere time began, or dust was fashion'd to a man; and long thy kingdom shall endure when earth and time shall be no more. but man, weak man, is born to die, made up of guilt and vanity; thy dreadful sentence, lord, was just, "return, ye sinners, to your dust." [a thousand of our years amount scarce to a day in thine account; like yesterday's departed light, or the last watch of ending night.] pause. death like an overflowing stream sweeps us away; our life's a dream; an empty tale; a morning flower cut down and wither'd in an hour. [our age to seventy years is set; how short the term! how frail the state! and if to eighty we arrive, we rather sigh and groan than live. but o how oft thy wrath appears, and cuts off our expected years! thy wrath awakes our humble dread; we fear the power that strikes us dead.] teach us, o lord, how frail is man; and kindly lengthen out our span, till a wise care of piety fit us to die, and dwell with thee. psalm : . - . first part. c. m. man frail, and god eternal. our god, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home. under the shadow of thy throne thy saints have dwelt secure; sufficient is thine arm alone, and our defence is sure. before the hills in order stood, or earth receiv'd her frame, from everlasting thou art god, to endless years the same. thy word commands our flesh to dust, "return, ye sons of men:" all nations rose from earth at first, and turn to earth again. a thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone; short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun. [the busy tribes of flesh and blood, with all their lives and cares, are carried downwards by thy flood, and lost in following years. time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day. like flowery fields the nations stand pleas'd with the morning light; the flowers beneath the mower's hand lie withering ere 'tis night.] our god, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home. psalm : . . d part. c. m. infirmities and mortality the effect of sin; or, life, old age, and preparation for death. lord, if thine eyes survey our faults, and justice grow severe, thy dreadful wrath exceeds our thoughts, and burns beyond our fear. thine anger turns our frame to dust; by one offence to thee adam with all his sons have lost their immortality. life like a vain amusement flies, a fable or a song; by swift degrees our nature dies, nor can our joys be long. 'tis but a few whose days amount to threescore years and ten, and all beyond that short account is sorrow, toil, and pain. [our vitals with laborious strife bear up the crazy load, and drag those poor remains of life along the tiresome road.] almighty god, reveal thy love, and not thy wrath alone; o let our sweet experience prove the mercies of thy throne! our souls would learn the heavenly art t' improve the hours we have, that we may act the wiser part, and live beyond the grave. psalm : . &c. third part. c. m. breathing after heaven. return, o god of love, return; earth is a tiresome place: how long shall we thy children mourn our absence from thy face! let heaven succeed our painful years, let sin and sorrow cease, and in proportion to our tears so make our joys increase. thy wonders to thy servants show, make thy own work complete, then shall our souls thy glory know, and own thy love was great. then shall we shine before thy throne in all thy beauty, lord; and the poor service we have done meet a divine reward. psalm : . . s. m. the frailty and shortness of life. lord what a feeble piece is this our mortal frame! our life how poor a trifle 'tis, that scarce deserves the name! alas the brittle clay that built our body first! and every month, and every day 'tis mouldering back to dust. our moments fly apace, nor will our minutes stay; just like a flood our hasty days are sweeping us away. well if our days must fly, we'll keep their end in sight, we'll spend them all in wisdom's way, and let them speed their flight. they'll waft us sooner o'er this life's tempestuous sea: soon we shall reach the peaceful shore of blest eternity. psalm : . - . first part. safety in public diseases and dangers. he that hath made his refuge god, shall find a most secure abode, shall walk all day beneath his shade, and there at night shall rest his head. then will i say, "my god, thy power "shall be my fortress and my tower; "i that am form'd of feeble dust "make thine almighty arm my trust." thrice happy man! thy maker's care shall keep thee from the fowler's snare, satan, the fowler, who betrays unguarded souls a thousand ways. just as a hen protects her brood from birds of prey that seek their blood, under her feathers, so the lord makes his own arm his people's guard. if burning beams of noon conspire to dart a pestilential fire, god is their life; his wings are spread to shield them with an healthful shade. if vapours with malignant breath rise thick and scatter midnight death, israel is safe; the poison'd air grows pure if israel's god be there. pause. what though a thousand at thy side, at thy right hand ten thousand dy'd, thy god his chosen people saves amongst the dead, amidst the graves. so when he sent his angel down to make his wrath in egypt known, and slew their sons, his careful eye pass'd all the doors of jacob by. but if the fire, or plague, or sword, receive commission from the lord to strike his saints among the rest, their very pains and deaths are blest. the sword, the pestilence or fire shall but fulfil their best desire, from sins and sorrows set them free, and bring thy children, lord, to thee. psalm : . - . second part. protection from death, guard of angels, victory and deliverance. ye sons of men, a feeble race, expos'd to every snare, come make the lord your dwelling-place, and try and trust his care. no ill shall enter where you dwell; or if the plague come nigh, and sweep the wicked down to hell, 'twill raise his saints on high. he'll give his angels charge to keep your feet in all their ways; to watch your pillow while you sleep, and guard your happy days. their hands shall bear you, lest you fall and dash against the stones: are they not servants at his call, and sent t' attend his sons? adders and lions ye shall tread; the tempter's wiles defeat; he that hath broke the serpent's head puts him beneath your feet. "because on me they set their love "i'll save them," saith the lord; "i'll bear their joyful souls above "destruction and the sword. "my grace shall answer when they call; "in trouble i'll be nigh; "my power shall help them when they fall, "and raise them when they die. "those that on earth my name have known, "i'll honour them in heaven; "there my salvation shall be shown, "and endless life be given." psalm : . first part. a psalm for the lord's day. sweet is the work, my god my king, to praise thy name, give thanks and sing, to shew thy love by morning light, and talk of all thy truth at night. sweet is the day of sacred rest, no mortal cares shall seize my breast; o may my heart in tune be found like david's harp of solemn sound! my heart shall triumph in my lord, and bless his works, and bless his word; thy works of grace, how bright they shine! how deep thy counsels! how divine! fools never raise their thoughts so high; like brutes they live, like brutes they die; like grass they flourish, till thy breath blast them in everlasting death. but i shall share a glorious part when grace hath well refin'd my heart, and fresh supplies of joy are shed like holy oil, to cheer my head. sin, (my worst enemy before) shall vex my eyes and ears no more; my inward foes shall all be slain, nor satan break my peace again. then shall i see, and hear, and know, all i desir'd or wish'd below; and every power find sweet employ in that eternal world of joy. psalm : . &c. second part. the church is the garden of god. lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand in gardens planted by thine hand; let me within thy courts be seen like a young cedar fresh and green. there grow thy saints in faith and love, blest with thine influence from above; not lebanon with all its trees yields such a comely sight as these. the plants of grace shall ever live; (nature decays but grace must thrive) time, that doth all things else impair, still makes them flourish strong and fair. laden with fruits of age, they shew the lord is holy, just, and true; none that attend his gates shall find a god unfaithful or unkind. psalm : . st metre. as th psalm. the eternal and sovereign god. jehovah reigns; he dwells in light, girded with majesty and might: the world created by his hands still on its first foundation stands. but ere this spacious world was made, or had its first foundations laid, thy throne eternal ages stood, thyself the ever-living god. like floods the angry nations rise and aim their rage against the skies; vain floods that aim their rage so high! at thy rebuke the billows die. for ever shall thy throne endure; thy promise stands for ever sure; and everlasting holiness becomes the dwellings of thy grace. psalm : . d m. as the old th psalm. the same. the lord of glory reigns; he reigns on high; his robes of state are strength and majesty: this wide creation rose at his command, built by his word, and 'stablish'd by his hand: long stood his throne ere he began creation, and his own godhead is the firm foundation. god is th' eternal king: thy foes in vain raise their rebellions to confound thy reign: in vain the storms, in vain the floods arise, and roar and toss their waves against the skies; foaming at heaven, they rage with wild commotion, but heaven's high arches scorn the swelling ocean. ye tempests, rage no more; ye floods, be still; and the mad world submissive to his will: built on his truth, his church must ever stand; firm are his promises, and strong his hand: see his own sons, when they appear before him, bow at his footstool, and with fear adore him. psalm : . d m. as the old d psalm. the same. the lord jehovah reigns and royal state maintains, his head with awful glories crown'd; array'd in robes of light, begirt with sovereign might, and rays of majesty around. upheld by thy commands the world securely stands; and skies and stars obey thy word: thy throne was fix'd on high before the starry sky; eternal is thy kingdom, lord. in vain the noisy crowd, like billows fierce and loud, against thine empire rage and roar; in vain, with angry spite, the surly nations fight, and dash like waves against the shore. let floods and nations rage, and all their powers engage, let swelling tides assault the sky; the terrors of thy frown shall beat their madness down; thy throne for ever stands on high. thy promises are true, thy grace is ever new; there fix'd thy church shall ne'er remove: thy saints with holy fear shall in thy courts appear, and sing thine everlasting love. repeat the fourth stanza to complete the old tune. psalm : . - . first part. saints chastised, and sinners destroyed; or, instructive afflictions. god, to whom revenge belongs, proclaim thy truth aloud let sovereign power redress our wrongs, let justice smite the proud. they say, "the lord nor sees nor hears;" when will the fools be wise! can he be deaf who form'd their ears? or blind, who made their eyes? he knows their impious thoughts are vain, and they shall feel his power; his wrath shall pierce their souls with pain in some surprising hour. but if thy saints deserve rebuke, thou hast a gentler rod; thy providences and thy book shall make them know their god. blest is the man thy hands chastise, and to his duty draw; thy scourges make thy children wise when they forget thy law. but god will ne'er cast off his saints, nor his own promise break; he pardons his inheritance for their redeemer's sake. psalm : . - . second part. god our support and comfort; or, deliverance from temptation and persecution. who will arise and plead my right against my numerous foes, while earth and hell their force unite, and all my hopes oppose? had not the lord, my rock, my help, sustain'd my fainting head, my life had now in silence dwelt, my soul amongst the dead. "alas! my sliding feet," i cry'd; thy promise was my prop; thy grace stood constant by my side, thy spirit bore me up. while multitudes of mournful thoughts within my bosom roll, thy boundless love forgives my faults, thy comforts cheer my soul. powers of iniquity may rise, and frame pernicious laws; but god, my refuge, rules the skies, he will defend my cause. let malice vent her rage aloud, let bold blasphemers scoff; the lord our god shall judge the proud, and cut the sinners off. psalm : . c. m. a psalm before prayer. sing to the lord jehovah's name, and in his strength rejoice; when his salvation is our theme, exalted be our voice. with thanks approach his awful sight, and psalms of honour sing; the lord's a god of boundless might, the whole creation's king. let princes hear, let angels know, how mean their natures seem, those gods on high, and gods below, when once compar'd with him. earth with its caverns dark and deep lies in his spacious hand, he fix'd the seas what bounds to keep, and where the hills must stand. come, and with humble souls adore, come, kneel before his face; o may the creatures of his power be children of his grace! now is the time: he bends his ear, and waits for your request; come, lest he rouse his wrath and swear "ye shall not see my rest." psalm : . s. m. a psalm before sermon. come, sound his praise abroad, and hymns of glory sing; jehovah is the sovereign god, the universal king. he form'd the deeps unknown; he gave the seas their bound; the watery worlds are all his own, and all the solid ground. come, worship at his throne, come bow before the lord: we are his works and not our own; he form'd us by his word. to-day attend his voice, nor dare provoke his rod; come like the people of his choice, and own your gracious god. but if your ears refuse the language of his grace, and hearts grow hard, like stubborn jews, that unbelieving race; the lord in vengeance drest will lift his hand and swear, "you that despise my promis'd rest, "shall have no portion there." psalm : . - . l. m. canaan lost through unbelief; or, a warning to delaying sinners. come, let our voices join to raise a sacred song of solemn praise; god is a sovereign king; rehearse his honours in exalted verse. come, let our souls address the lord, who fram'd our natures with his word; he is our shepherd; we the sheep his mercy chose, his pastures keep. come, let us hear his voice to-day, the counsels of his love obey; nor let our harden'd hearts renew the sins and plagues that israel knew. israel, that saw his works of grace, yet tempt their maker to his face; a faithless unbelieving brood that tir'd the patience of their god. thus saith the lord, "how false they prove; "forget my power, abuse my love; "since they despise my rest, i swear, "their feet shall never enter there." [look back my soul, with holy dread, and view those ancient rebels dead; attend the offer'd grace to-day, nor lose the blessing by delay. seize the kind promise while it waits, and march to zion's heavenly gates; believe, and take the promis'd rest; obey, and be for ever blest.] psalm : . - . &c. c. m. christ's first and second coming. sing to the lord, ye distant lands, ye tribes of every tongue; his new discover'd grace demands a new and nobler song. say to the nations, jesus reigns, god's own almighty son; his power the sinking world sustains, and grace surrounds his throne. let heaven proclaim the joyful day, joy thro' the earth be seen; let cities shine in bright array, and fields in cheerful green. let an unusual joy surprise the islands of the sea; ye mountains, sink, ye vallies, rise, prepare the lord his way. behold he comes, he comes to bless the nations as their god; to shew the world his righteousness, and send his truth abroad. but when his voice shall raise the dead, and bid the world draw near, how will the guilty nations dread to see their judge appear! psalm : . as the th psalm. the god of the gentiles. let all the earth their voices raise to sing the choicest psalm of praise, to sing and bless jehovah's name: his glory let the heathens know, his wonders to the nations show, and all his saving works proclaim. the heathens know thy glory, lord; the wondering nations read thy word, in britain is jehovah known: our worship shall no more be paid to gods which mortal hands have made; our maker is our god alone. he fram'd the globe, he built the sky, he made the shining worlds on high, and reigns complete in glory there: his beams are majesty and light; his beauties how divinely bright! his temple how divinely fair! come the great day, the glorious hour, when earth shall feel his saving power, and barbarous nations fear his name; then shall the race of man confess the beauty of his holiness, and in his courts his grace proclaim. psalm : . - . first part. christ reigning in heaven, and coming to judgment. he reigns; the lord, the saviour reigns; praise him in evangelic strains; let the whole earth in songs rejoice, and distant islands join their voice. deep are his counsels and unknown; but grace and truth support his throne: tho' gloomy clouds his ways surround, justice is their eternal ground. in robes of judgment, lo! he comes, shakes the wide earth, and cleaves the tombs; before him burns devouring fire, the mountains melt, the seas retire. his enemies, with sore dismay, fly from the sight, and shun the day; then lift your heads, ye saints, on high, and sing, for your redemption's nigh. psalm : . - . second part. christ's incarnation. the lord is come, the heavens proclaim his birth; the nations learn his name; an unknown star directs the road of eastern sages to their god. all ye bright armies of the skies, go, worship where the saviour lies: angels and kings before him bow, those gods on high, and gods below. let idols totter to the ground, and their own worshippers confound; but judah shout, but zion sing, and earth confess her sovereign king. psalm : . third part. grace and glory. th' almighty reigns exalted high o'er all the earth, o'er all the sky, tho' clouds and darkness veil his feet, his dwelling is the mercy-seat. o ye that love his holy name, hate every work of sin and shame; he guards the souls of all his friends, and from the snares of hell defends. immortal light and joys unknown are for the saints in darkness sown; those glorious seeds shall spring and rise, and the bright harvest bless our eyes. rejoice, ye righteous, and record the sacred honours of the lord; none but the soul that feels his grace can triumph in his holiness. psalm : . - . c. m. christ's incarnation, and the last judgment. ye islands of the northern sea, rejoice, the saviour reigns; his word like fire, prepares his way, and mountains melt to plains. his presence sinks the proudest hills, and makes the vallies rise the humble soul enjoys his smiles, the haughty sinner dies. the heavens his rightful power proclaim the idol-gods around fill their own worshippers with shame, and totter to the ground. adoring angels at his birth make the redeemer known; thus shall he come to judge the earth, and angels guard his throne. his foes shall tremble at his sight, and hills and seas retire his children take their unknown flight, and leave the world in fire. the seeds of joy and glory sown for saints in darkness here shall rise and spring in worlds unknown, and a rich harvest bear. psalm : . first part. praise for the gospel. to our almighty maker, god, new honours be address'd; his great salvation shines abroad, and makes the nations blest. he spake the word to abraham first, his truth fulfils the grace: the gentiles make his name their trust, and learn his righteousness. let the whole earth his love proclaim with all her different tongues; and spread the honours of his name in melody and songs. psalm : . second part. the messiah's coming and kingdom. joy to the world; the lord is come; let earth receive her king; let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing. joy to the earth, the saviour reigns; let men their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy. no more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. he rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness, and wonders of his love. psalm : . first part. christ's kingdom and majesty. the god jehovah reigns, let all the nations fear, let sinners tremble at his throne, and saints be humble there. jesus the saviour reigns, let earth adore its lord; bright cherubs his attendants stand, swift to fulfil his word. in zion is his throne, his honours are divine; his church shall make his wonders known, for there his glories shine. how holy is his name! how terrible his praise! justice, and truth, and judgment join in all his works of grace. psalm : . second part. a holy god worshipped with reverence. exalt the lord our god, and worship at his feet; his nature is all holiness, and mercy is his seat. when israel was his church, when aaron was his priest, when moses cry'd, when samuel pray'd, he gave his people rest. oft he forgave their sins, nor would destroy their race; and oft he made his vengeance known, when they abus'd his grace. exalt the lord our god, whose grace is still time same; still he's a god of holiness, and jealous for his name. psalm : . st m. a plain translation. praise to our creator. ye nations round the earth rejoice before the lord, your sovereign king; serve him with cheerful heart and voice, with all your tongues his glory sing. the lord is god; 'tis he alone doth life, and breath, and being give: we are his work, and not our own; the sheep that on his pastures live. enter his gates with songs of joy, with praises to his courts repair, and make it your divine employ to pay your thanks and honours there. the lord is good, the lord is kind; great is his grace, his mercy sure; and the whole race of man shall find his truth from age to age endure. psalm : . d m. a paraphrase. sing to the lord with joyful voice; let every land his name adore; the british isles shall send the noise across the ocean to the shore. nations, attend before his throne with solemn fear, with sacred joy; know that the lord is god alone; he can create, and he destroy. his sovereign power, without our aid, made us of clay, and form'd us men; and when like wandering sheep we stray'd, he brought us to his fold again. we are his people, we his care, our souls and all our mortal frame: what lasting honours shall we rear, almighty maker, to thy name! we'll crowd thy gates with thankful songs, high as the heavens our voices raise; and earth with her ten thousand tongues shall fill thy courts with sounding praise. wide as the world is thy command, vast as eternity thy love; firm as a rock thy truth must stand when rolling years shall cease to move. psalm : . l. m. the magistrate's psalm. mercy and judgment are my song; and since they both to thee belong, my gracious god, my righteous king, to thee my songs and vows i bring. if i am rais'd to bear the sword, i'll take my counsels from thy word; thy justice and thy heavenly grace shall be the pattern of my ways. let wisdom all my actions guide, and let my god with me reside; no wicked thing shall dwell with me, which may provoke thy jealousy. no sons of slander, rage and strife shall be companions of my life; the haughty look, the heart of pride within my doors shall ne'er abide. [i'll search the land, and raise the just to posts of honour, wealth and trust: the men that work thy holy will, shall be my friends and favourites still.] in vain shall sinners hope to rise by flattering or malicious lies; and while the innocent i guard, the bold offender shan't be spar'd. the impious crew (that factious band) shall hide their heads, or quit the land; and all that break the public rest, where i have power shall be supprest. psalm : . c. m. a psalm for a master of a family. of justice and of grace i sing, and pay my god my vows; thy grace and justice, heavenly king, teach me to rule my house. now to my tent, o god, repair, and make thy servant wise; i'll suffer nothing near me there that shall offend thine eyes. the man that doth his neighbour wrong, by falsehood or by force; the scornful eye, the slanderous tongue, i'll thrust them from my doors. i'll seek the faithful and the just and will their help enjoy; these are the friends that i shall trust, the servants i'll employ. the wretch that deals in sly deceit, i'll not endure a night; the liar's tongue i ever hate, and banish from my sight. i'll purge my family around, and make the wicked flee; so shall my house be ever found a dwelling fit for thee. psalm : . - . first part. a prayer of the afflicted. hear me, o god, nor hide thy face, but answer lest i die; hast thou not built a throne of grace to hear when sinners cry? my days are wasted like the smoke dissolving in the air; my strength is dry'd, my heart is broke, and sinking in despair. my spirits flag like withering grass burnt with excessive heat; in secret groans my minutes pass, and i forget to eat. as on some lonely building's top the sparrow tells her moan, far from the tents of joy and hope i sit and grieve alone. my soul is like a wilderness, where beasts of midnight howl; there the sad raven finds her place, and there the screaming owl. dark dismal thoughts and boding fears dwell in my troubled breast; while sharp reproaches wound my ears, nor give my spirit rest. my cup is mingled with my woes, and tears are my repast; my daily bread like ashes grows unpleasant to my taste. sense can afford no real joy to souls that feel thy frown; lord, 'twas thy hand advanc'd me high, thy hand hath cast me down. my looks like wither'd leaves appear, and life's declining light grows faint as evening shadows are, that vanish into night. but thou for ever art the same, o my eternal god: ages to come shall know thy name, and spread thy works abroad. thou wilt arise and shew thy face, nor will my lord delay beyond th' appointed hour of grace, that long expected day. he hears his saints, he knows their cry, and by mysterious ways redeems the prisoners doom'd to die, and fills their tongues with praise. psalm : . - . second part. prayer heard and zion restored. let zion and her sons rejoice, behold the promis'd hour; her god hath heard her mourning voice, and comes t' exalt his power. her dust and ruins that remain are precious in our eyes; those ruins shall be built again, and all that dust shall rise. the lord will raise jerusalem, and stand in glory there; nations shall bow before has name, and kings attend with fear. he sits a sovereign on his throne, with pity in his eyes; he hears the dying prisoners groan, and sees their sighs arise. he frees the souls condemn'd to death, and when his saints complain, it shan't be said 'that praying breath 'was ever spent in vain.' this shall be known when we are dead, and left on long record, that ages yet unborn may read, and trust, and praise the lord. psalm : . - . third part. man's mortality and christ's eternity; or, saints die, but christ and the church live. it is the lord our saviour's hand weakens our strength amidst the race; disease and death at his command arrest us, and cut short our days. spare us, o lord, aloud we pray, nor let our sun go down at noon: thy years are one eternal day, and must thy children die so soon? yet in the midst of death and grief this thought our sorrow shall assuage, "our father and our saviour live; "christ is the same thro' every age." 'twas he this earth's foundation laid; heaven is the building of his hand: this earth grows old, these heavens shall fade, and all be chang'd at his command. the starry curtains of the sky like garments shall be laid aside; but still thy throne stands firm and high; thy church for ever must abide. before thy face thy church shall live, and on thy throne thy children reign; this dying world shall they survive, and the dead saints be rais'd again. psalm : . - . first part. l. m. blessing god for his goodness to soul and body. bless, o my soul, the living god, call home thy thoughts that rove abroad; let all the powers within me join in work and worship so divine. bless, o my soul, the god of grace; his favours claim thy highest praise; why should the wonders he hath wrought be lost in silence and forgot? 'tis he, my soul, that sent his son to die for crimes which thou hast done; he owns the ransom; and forgives the hourly follies of our lives. the vices of the mind he heals, and cures the pains that nature feels; redeems the soul from hell, and saves our wasting life from threat'ning graves. our youth decay'd his power repairs; his mercy crowns our growing years; he satisfies our mouth with good, and fills our hopes with heavenly food. he sees th' oppressor and th' opprest, and often gives the sufferers rest; but will his justice more display in the last great rewarding day. [his power he shew'd by moses' hands, and gave to israel his commands; but sent his truth and mercy down to all the nations by his son. let the whole earth his power confess, let the whole earth adore his grace; the gentile with the jew shall join in work and worship so divine.] psalm : . - . second part. l. m. god's gentle chastisement; or, his tender mercy to his people. . the lord, how wondrous are his ways: how firm his truth how large his grace; he takes his mercy for his throne, and thence he makes his glories known. not half so high his power hath spread the starry heavens above our head, as his rich love exceeds our praise, exceeds the highest hopes we raise. not half so far hath nature plac'd the rising morning from the west, as his forgiving grace removes the daily guilt of those he loves. how slowly doth his wrath arise! on swifter wings salvation flies; and if he lets his anger burn, how soon his frowns to pity turn! amidst his wrath compassion shines; his strokes are lighter than our sins; and while his rod corrects his saints, his ear indulges their complaints. so fathers their young sons chastise, with gentle hand and melting eyes; the children weep beneath the smart, and move the pity of their heart. pause. the mighty god, the wise, and just, knows that our frame is feeble dust; and will no heavy loads impose beyond the strength that he bestows. he knows how soon our nature dies, blasted by every wind that flies; like grass we spring, and die as soon, or morning flowers that fade at noon. but his eternal love is sure to all the saints, and shall endure: from age to age his truth shall reign, nor children's children hope in vain. psalm : . - . first part, s. m. praise for spiritual and temporal mercies. o bless the lord, my soul; let all within me join, and aid my tongue to bless his name, whose favours are divine. o bless the lord, my soul; nor let his mercies lie forgotten in unthankfulness, and without praises die. 'tis he forgives thy sins, 'tis he relieves thy pain, 'tis he that heals thy sicknesses, and makes thee young again. he crowns thy life with love, when ransom'd from the grave; he that redeem'd my soul from hell hath sovereign power to save. he fills the poor with good; he gives the sufferers rest; the lord hath judgments for the proud, and justice for th' opprest. his wondrous works and ways he made by moses known; but sent the world his truth and grace by his beloved son. psalm : . - . second part. s. m. abounding compassion of god; or, mercy in the midst of judgment. my soul, repeat his praise whose mercies are so great, whose anger is so slow to rise, so ready to abate. god will not always chide; and when his strokes are felt, his strokes are fewer than our crimes, and lighter than our guilt. high as the heavens are rais'd above the ground we tread, so far the riches of his grace our highest thoughts exceed. his power subdues our sins; and his forgiving love, far as the east is from the west, doth all our guilt remove. the pity of the lord to those that fear his name, is such as tender parents feel; he knows our feeble frame. he knows we are but dust, scatter'd with every breath; his anger, like a rising wind, can send us swift to death. our days are as the grass, or like the morning flower; if one sharp blast sweep o'er the field, it withers in an hour. but thy compassions, lord, to endless years endure; and children's children ever find thy words of promise sure. psalm : . - . third part. s. m. god's universal dominion; or, angels praise the lord. the lord, the sovereign king, hath fix'd his throne on high; o'er all the heavenly world he rules, and all beneath the sky. ye angels great in might, and swift to do his will, bless ye the lord, whose voice ye hear, whose pleasure ye fulfil. let the bright hosts who wait the orders of their king, and guard his churches when they pray, join in the praise they sing. while all his wondrous works, thro' his vast kingdoms shew their maker's glory, thou, my soul, shalt sing his graces too. psalm . the glory of god in creation and providence. my soul, thy great creator praise; when cloth'd in his celestial rays he in full majesty appears, and, like a robe, his glory wears. note, this psalm may be sung to the tune of the old th or th psalm, by adding the two following lines to every stanza, viz. great is the lord; what tongue can frame an equal honour to his name? otherwise it must be sung as the th psalm. the heavens are for his curtains spread, th' unfathom'd deep he makes his bed; clouds are his chariot, when he flies on winged storms across the skies. angels, whom his own breath inspires, his ministers are flaming fires; and swift as thought their armies move to bear his vengeance, or his love. the world's foundations by his hand are pois'd, and shall for ever stand; he binds the ocean in his chain, lest it should drown the earth again. when earth was cover'd with the flood, which high above the mountains stood, he thunder'd, and the ocean fled, confin'd to its appointed bed. the swelling billows know their bound, and in their channels walk their round; yet thence convey'd by secret veins, they spring on hills, and drench the plains. he bids the crystal fountains flow, and cheer the vallies as they go; tame heifers there their thirst allay, and for the stream wild asses bray. from pleasant trees which shade the brink the lark and linnet light to drink; their songs the lark and linnet raise; and chide our silence in his praise. pause i. god from his cloudy cistern, pours on the parch'd earth enriching showers; the grove, the garden, and the field a thousand joyful blessings yield. he makes the grassy food arise, and gives the cattle large supplies; with herbs for man of various power, to nourish nature, or to cure. what noble fruit the vines produce! the olive yields a shining juice; our hearts are cheer'd with gen'rous wine, with inward joy our faces shine. o bless his name ye britons, fed with nature's chief supporter, bread; while bread your vital strength imparts, serve him with vigour in your hearts. pause ii. behold the stately cedar stands, rais'd in the forest by his hands: birds to the boughs for shelter fly and build their nests secure on high. to craggy hills ascends the goat; and at the airy mountain's foot the feebler creatures make their cell; he gives them wisdom where to dwell. he sets the sun his circling race, appoints the moon to change her face; and when thick darkness veils the day, calls out wild beasts to hunt their prey. fierce lions lead their young abroad, and roaring ask their meat from god; but when the morning beams arise, the savage beast to covert flies. then man to daily labour goes; the night was made for his repose: sleep is thy gift; that sweet relief from tiresome toil and wasting grief. how strange thy works! how great thy skill! and every land thy riches fill: thy wisdom round the world we see, this spacious earth is full of thee. nor less thy glories in the deep, where fish in millions swim and creep, with wondrous motions, swift or slow, still wandering in the paths below. there ships divide their watery way, and flocks of scaly monsters play; there dwells the huge leviathan, and foams and sports in spite of man. pause iii. vast are thy works, almighty lord, all nature rests upon thy word, and the whole race of creatures stands, waiting their portion from thy hands. while each receives his different food, their cheerful looks pronounce it good; eagles and bears, and whales and worms, rejoice and praise in different forms. but when thy face is hid, they mourn, and dying to their dust return; both man and beast their souls resign, life, breath, and spirit, all is thine. yet thou canst breathe on dust again, and fill the world with beasts and men; a word of thy creating breath repairs the wastes of time and death. his works, the wonders of his might, are honour'd with his own delight: how awful are his glorious ways! the lord is dreadful in his praise. the earth stands trembling at thy stroke, and at thy touch the mountains smoke; yet humble souls may see thy face, and tell their wants to sovereign grace. in thee my hopes and wishes meet, and make my meditations sweet: thy praises shall my breath employ, till it expire in endless joy. while haughty sinners die accurst, their glory bury'd with their dust, i, to my god, my heavenly king, immortal hallelujahs sing. psalm . abridged. god's conduct of israel, and the plagues of egypt. give thanks to god, invoke his name, and tell the world his grace; sound thro' the earth his deeds of fame, that all may seek his face. his covenant, which he kept in mind for numerous ages past, to numerous ages yet behind, in equal force shall last. he sware to abraham and his seed, and made the blessing sure: gentiles the ancient promise read, and find his truths endure. "thy seed shall make all nations blest," (said the almighty voice) "and canaan's land shall be their rest, "the type of heavenly joys." [how large the grant! how rich the grace! to give them canaan's land, when they were strangers in the place, a little feeble band! like pilgrims thro' the countries round securely they remov'd; and haughty kings that on them frown'd, severely he reprov'd. "touch mine anointed, and my arm "shall soon revenge the wrong: "the man that does my prophets harm shall know their god is strong." then let the world forbear its rage, nor put the church in fear: israel must live thro' every age, and be th' almighty's care.] pause i. when pharaoh dar'd to vex the saints, and thus provok'd their god, moses was sent at their complaints, arm'd with his dreadful rod. he call'd for darkness; darkness came like an o'erwhelming flood; he turn'd each lake and every stream to lakes and streams of blood. he gave the sign, and noisome flies thro' the whole country spread; and frogs, in croaking armies, rise about the monarch's bed. thro' fields, and towns, and palaces, the tenfold vengeance flew; locusts in swarms devour'd their trees, and hail their cattle slew. then by an angel's midnight stroke, the flower of egypt dy'd; the strength of every house was broke, their glory and their pride. now let the world forbear its rage, nor put the church in fear; israel must live thro' every age, and be th' almighty's care. pause ii. thus were the tribes from bondage brought, and left the hated ground; each some egyptian spoils had got, and not one feeble found. the lord himself chose out their way, and mark'd their journies right, gave them a leading cloud by day, a fiery guide by night. they thirst; and waters from the rock in rich abundance flow, and following still the course they took, ran all the desert thro'. o wondrous stream o blessed type of ever-flowing grace! so christ our rock maintains our life thro' all this wilderness. thus guarded by th' almighty hand the chosen tribes possest canaan the rich, the promis'd land, and there enjoy'd their rest. then let the world forbear its rage, the church renounce her fear; israel must live thro' every age, and be th' almighty's care. psalm : . - . first part. praise to god; or, communion with saints. to god, the great, the ever blest, let songs of honour be addrest: his mercy firm for ever stands; give him the thanks his love demands. who knows the wonders of thy ways? who shall fulfil thy boundless praise? blest are the souls that fear thee still, and pay their duty to thy will. remember what thy mercy did for jacob's race, thy chosen seed; and with the same salvation bless the meanest suppliant of thy grace. o may i see thy tribes rejoice, and aid their triumphs with my voice! this is my glory, lord, to be join'd to thy saints, and near to thee. psalm : . - - . d part. israel punished and pardoned; or, god's unchangeable love. god of eternal love, how fickle are our ways! and yet how oft did israel prove thy constancy of grace! they saw thy wonders wrought, and then thy praise they sung; but soon thy works of power forgot, and murmur'd with their tongue. now they believe his word, while rocks with rivers flow; now with their lusts provoke the lord, and he reduc'd them low. yet when they mourn'd their faults, he hearken'd to their groans, brought his own covenant to his thoughts, and call'd them still his sons. their names were in his book, he sav'd them from their foes; oft he chastis'd, but ne'er forsook the people that he chose. let israel bless the lord, who lov'd their ancient race; and christians join the solemn word amen, to all the praise. psalm : . first part. israel led to canaan, and christians to heaven. give thanks to god; he reigns above, kind are his thoughts, his name is love; his mercy ages past have known, and ages long to come shall own. let the redeemed of the lord the wonders of his grace record; israel, the nation whom he chose, and rescu'd from their mighty foes. [when god's almighty arm had broke their fetters and th' egyptian yoke, they trac'd the desert, wandering round a wild and solitary ground. there they could find no leading road, nor city for a fix'd abode; nor food, nor fountain to assuage their burning thirst, or hunger's rage.] in their distress to god they cry'd, god was their saviour and their guide; he led their march far wandering round, 'twas the right path to canaan's ground. thus when our first release we gain from sin's old yoke, and satan's chain, we have this desert world to pass, a dangerous and a tiresome place. he feeds and clothes us all the way, he guides our footsteps lest we stray, he guards us with a powerful hand and brings us to the heavenly land. o let the saints with joy record the truth and goodness of the lord! how great his works! how kind his ways! let every tongue pronounce his praise. psalm : . second part. correction for sin, and release by prayer. from age to age exalt his name, god and his grace are still the same; he fills the hungry soul with food, and feeds the poor with every good. but if their hearts rebel and rise against the god that rules the skies, if they reject his heavenly word, and slight the counsels of the lord, he'll bring their spirits to the ground, and no deliverer shall be found; laden with grief they waste their breath in darkness and the shades of death, then to the lord they raise their cries, he makes the dawning light arise, and scatters all that dismal shade, that hung so heavy round their head. he cuts the bars of brass in two, and lets the smiling prisoners thro'; takes off the load of guilt and grief, and gives the labouring soul relief. o may the sons of men record the wondrous goodness of the lord! how great his works! how kind his ways! let every tongue pronounce his praise. psalm : . third part. intemperance punished and pardoned; or, a psalm for the glutton and the drunkard. vain man, on foolish pleasures bent, prepares for his own punishment; what pains, what loathsome maladies from luxury and lust arise! the drunkard feels his vitals waste, yet drowns his health to please his taste; till all his active powers are lost, and fainting life draws near the dust. the glutton groans and loathes to eat, his soul abhors delicious meat; nature, with heavy loads opprest, would yield to death to be releas'd. then how the frighted sinners fly to god for help with earnest cry! he hears their groans, prolongs their breath, and saves them from approaching death, no med'cines could effect the cure so quick, so easy, or so sure: the deadly sentence god repeals, he sends his sovereign word, and heals, o may the sons of men record the wondrous goodness of the lord! and let their thankful offerings prove how they adore their maker's love. psalm : . fourth part. l. m. deliverance from storms, and shipwreck; or, the seaman's song. would you behold the works of god, his wonders in the world abroad, go with the mariners, and trace the unknown regions of the seas. they leave their native shores behind, and seize the favour of the wind, till god command, and tempests rise that heave the ocean to the skies. now to the heavens they mount amain, now sink to dreadful deeps again; what strange affrights young sailors feel, and like a staggering drunkard reel! when land is far, and death is nigh, lost to all hope, to god they cry; his mercy hears the loud address, and sends salvation in distress. he bids the winds their wrath assuage; the furious waves forget their rage; 'tis calm; and sailors smile to see the haven where they wish'd to be. o may the sons of men record the wondrous goodness of the lord! let them their private offerings bring, and in the church his glory sing. psalm : . fourth part. c. m. the mariner's psalm. thy works of glory, mighty lord, thy wonders in the deeps, the sons of courage shall record who trade in floating ships. at thy command the winds arise, and swell the towering waves; the men astonish'd mount the skies and sink in gaping graves. [again they climb the watery hills, and plunge in deeps again; each like a tottering drunkard reels, and finds his courage vain. frighted to hear the tempest roar, they pant with fluttering breath, and, hopeless of the distant shore, expect immediate death.] then to the lord they raise their cries, he hears the loud request, and orders silence thro' the skies, and lays the floods to rest. sailors rejoice to lose their fears, and see the storm allay'd: now to their eyes the port appears; there let their vows be paid. 'tis god that brings them safe to land; let stupid mortals know that waves are under his command, and all the winds that blow, o that the sons of men would praise the goodness of the lord! and those that see thy wondrous ways, thy wondrous love record. psalm : . last part. colonies planted; or, nations blest and punished. a psalm for new england. when god, provok'd with daring crimes, scourges the madness of the times, he turns their fields to barren sand, and dries the rivers from the land. his word can raise the springs again, and make the wither'd mountains green, send showery blessings from the skies, and harvests in the desert rise. [where nothing dwelt but beasts of prey, or men as fierce and wild as they; he bids th' opprest and poor repair, and builds them towns and cities there. they sow the fields, and trees they plant, whose yearly fruit supplies their want: their race grows up from fruitful stocks, their wealth increases with their flocks. thus they are blest; but if they sin, he lets the heathen nations in, a savage crew invades their lands, their princes die by barbarous hands. their captive sons, expos'd to scorn, wander unpity'd and forlorn; the country lies unfenc'd, untill'd, and desolation spreads the field. yet if the humbled nation mourns, again his dreadful hand he turns; again he makes their cities thrive, and bids the dying churches live.] the righteous, with a joyful sense, admire the works of providence; and tongues of atheists shall no more blaspheme the god that saints adore. how few, with pious care, record the wondrous dealings of the lord! but wise observers still shall find the lord is holy, just, and kind. psalm . - . love to enemies, from the example of christ. god of my mercy and my praise, thy glory is my song; the sinners speak against thy grace with a blaspheming tongue. when in the form of mortal man thy son on earth was found, with cruel slanders, false and vain, they compass'd him around. their miseries his compassion move, their peace he still pursu'd; they render hatred for his love, and evil for his good. their malice rag'd without a cause, yet, with his dying breath, he pray'd for murderers on his cross, and blest his foes in death. lord, shall thy bright example shine in vain before my eyes? give me a soul a-kin to thine to love mine enemies. the lord shall on my side engage, and, in my saviour's name, i shall defeat their pride and rage who slander and condemn. psalm : . first part. christ exalted, and multitudes converted; or, the success of the gospel. thus the eternal father spake to christ the son, "ascend and sit "at my right hand, till i shall make "thy foes submissive at thy feet. "from zion shall thy word proceed, "thy word, the sceptre in thy hand, "shall make the hearts of rebels bleed, "and bow their wills to thy command. "that day shall shew thy power is great, "when saints shall flock with willing minds, "and sinners crowd thy temple gate, "where holiness in beauty shines." o blessed power! glorious day! what a large victory shall ensue! and converts, who thy grace obey, exceed the drops of morning dew. psalm : . second part. the kingdom and priesthood of christ. thus the great lord of earth and sea spake to his son, and thus he swore; "eternal shall thy priesthood be, "and change from hand to hand no more. "aaron and all his sons must die; "but everlasting life is thine, "to save for ever those that fly "for refuge from the wrath divine. "by me melchisedek was made "on earth a king and priest at once; "and thou, my heavenly priest, shalt plead, "and thou, my king, shalt rule my sons." jesus the priest ascends his throne, while counsels of eternal peace, between the father and the son, proceed with honour and success. thro' the whole earth his reign shall spread, and crush the powers that dare rebel; then shall he judge the rising dead, and send the guilty world to hell. tho' while he treads his glorious way, he drink the cup of tears and blood, the sufferings of that dreadful day shall but advance him near to god. psalm : . c. m. christ's kingdom and priesthood. jesus, our lord, ascend thy throne, and near the father sit; in zion shall thy power be known, and make thy foes submit. what wonders shall thy gospel do! thy converts shall surpass the numerous drops of morning dew, and own thy sovereign grace. god hath pronounc'd a firm decree, nor changes what he swore; "eternal shall thy priesthood be, "when aaron is no more. "melchisedek, that wondrous priest, "that king of high degree, "that holy man who abr'am blest, "was but a type of thee." jesus our priest for ever lives to plead for us above; jesus our king for ever gives the blessings of his love. god shall exalt his glorious head, and his high throne maintain, shall strike the powers and princes dead who dare oppose his reign. psalm : . first part. the wisdom of god in his works. songs of immortal praise belong to my almighty god; he has my heart, and he my tongue to spread his name abroad. how great the works his hand has wrought! how glorious in our sight! and men in every age have sought his wonders with delight. how most exact is nature's frame! how wise th' eternal mind! his counsels never change the scheme that his first thoughts design'd. when he redeem'd his chosen son, he fix'd his covenant sure: the orders that his lips pronounce to endless years endure. nature and time, and earth and skies, thy heavenly skill proclaim: what shall we do to make us wise, but learn to read thy name? to fear thy power, to trust thy grace is our divinest skill; and he's the wisest of our race, that best obeys thy will. psalm : . second part. the perfections of god. great is the lord; his works of might demand our noblest songs; let his assembled saints unite their harmony of tongues. great is the mercy of the lord, he gives his children food; and ever mindful of his word, he makes his promise good. his son, the great redeemer, came to seal his covenant sure: holy and reverend is his name, his ways are just and pure. they that would grow divinely wise must with his fear begin; our fairest proof of knowledge lies in hating every sin. psalm : . as the th psalm. the blessings of the liberal man. that man is blest who stands in awe of god, and loves his sacred law: his seed on earth shall be renown'd; his house the seat of wealth shall be, an inexhausted treasury, and with successive honours crown'd. his liberal favours he extends, to some he gives, to others lends; a generous pity fills his mind: yet what his charity impairs he saves by prudence in affairs, and thus he's just to all mankind. his hands, while they his alms bestow'd, his glory's future harvest sow'd; the sweet remembrance of the just, like a green root, revives and bears a train of blessings for his heirs, when dying nature sleeps in dust. beset with threatening dangers round, unmov'd shall he maintain his ground; his conscience holds his courage up: the soul that's fill'd with virtue's light, shines brightest in affliction's night, and sees in darkness beams of hope. pause. [ill tidings never can surprise his heart that fix'd on god relies, tho' waves and tempests roar around: safe on the rock he sits, and sees the shipwreck of his enemies, and all their hope and glory drown'd. the wicked shall his triumph see, and gnash their teeth in agony to find their expectations crost: they and their envy, pride and spite, sink down to everlasting night, and all their names in darkness lost.] psalm : . l. m. the blessings of the pious and charitable. thrice happy man who fears the lord, loves his commands, and trusts his word; honour and peace his days attend, and blessings to his seed descend. compassion dwells upon his mind, to works of mercy still inclin'd: he lends the poor some present aid, or gives them, not to be repaid. when times grow dark, and tidings spread that fill his neighbours round with dread, his heart is arm'd against the fear, for god with all his power is there. his soul, well fix'd upon the lord, draws heavenly courage from his word; amidst the darkness light shall rise, to cheer his heart, and bless his eyes. he hath dispers'd his alms abroad, his works are still before his god; his name on earth shall long remain, while envious sinners fret in vain. psalm : . c. m, liberality rewarded. happy is he that fears the lord, and follows his commands, who lends the poor without reward, or gives with liberal hands. as pity dwells within his breast to all the sons of need; so god shall answer his request with blessings on his seed, no evil tidings shall surprise his well-establish'd mind; his soul to god his refuge flies, and leaves his fears behind. in times of general distress, some beams of light shall shine to shew the world his righteousness, and give him peace divine. his works of piety and love remain before the lord; honour on earth and joys above shall be his sure reward. psalm : . proper time. the majesty and condescension of god. ye that delight to serve the lord, the honours of his name record, his sacred name for ever bless: where'er the circling sun displays his rising beams, or setting rays, let lands and seas his power confess. not time, nor nature's narrow rounds, can give his vast dominion bounds, the heavens are far below his height: let no created greatness dare with our eternal god compare, arm'd with his uncreated might. he bows his glorious head to view what the bright hosts of angels do, and bends his care to mortal things; his sovereign hand exalts the poor, he takes the needy from the door, and makes them company for kings. when childless families despair, he sends the blessings of an heir to rescue their expiring name: the mother with a thankful voice proclaims his praises and her joys: let every age advance his fame. psalm : . l. m. god sovereign and gracious. ye servants of th' almighty king, in every age his praises sing; where'er the sun shall rise or set, the nations shall his praise repeat. above the earth, beyond the sky, stands his high throne of majesty: nor time, nor place, his power restrain, nor bound his universal reign. which of the sons of adam dare, or angels, with their god compare? his glories how divinely bright, who dwells in uncreated light! behold his love: he stoops to view what saints above and angels do; and condescends yet more to know the mean affairs of men below. from dust and cottages obscure his grace exalts the humble poor; gives them the honour of his sons, and fits them for their heavenly thrones. [a word of his creating voice can make the barren house rejoice: tho' sarah's ninety years were past, the promis'd seed is born at last. with joy the mother views her son, and tells the wonders god has done: faith may grow strong when sense despairs, if nature fails, the promise bears.] psalm . miracles attending israel's journey. when israel, freed from pharaoh's hand, left the proud tyrant and his land, the tribes with cheerful homage own their king, and judah was his throne. across the deep their journey lay; the deep divides to make them way: jordan beheld their march, and fled with backward current to his head. the mountains shook like frighted sheep, like lambs the little hillocks leap; not sinai on her base could stand, conscious of sovereign power at hand. what power could make the deep divide? make jordan backward roll his tide? why did ye leap, ye little hills? and whence the fright that sinai feels? let every mountain, every flood, retire and know th' approaching god, the king of israel: see him here; tremble, thou earth, adore and fear. he thunders, and all nature mourns, the rock to standing pools he turns; flints spring with fountains at his word, and fires and seas confess the lord. psalm : . first metre. the true god our refuge; or, idolatry reproved. not to ourselves, who are but dust, not to ourselves is glory due, eternal god, thou only just, thou only gracious, wise, and true. shine forth in all thy dreadful name; why should a heathen's haughty tongue insult us, and to raise our shame say, "where's the god you've serv'd so long?" the god we serve maintains his throne above the clouds, beyond the skies, thro' all the earth his will is done, he knows our groans, he hears our cries. but the vain idols they adore are senseless shapes of stone and wood; at best a mass of glittering ore, a silver saint, or golden god. [with eyes, and ears they carve their head, deaf are their ears, their eyes are blind; in vain are costly offerings made, and vows are scatter'd in the wind. their feet were never made to move, nor hands to save when mortals pray; mortals that pay them fear or love seem to be blind and deaf as they.] o israel, make the lord thy hope, thy help, thy refuge, and thy rest; the lord shall build thy ruins up, and bless the people and the priest. the dead no more can speak thy praise, they dwell in silence and the grave; but we shall live to sing thy grace, and tell the world thy power to save. psalm : . second metre. as the new tune of the th psalm. popish idolatry reproved. a psalm for the th of november. not to our names, thou only just and true, not to our worthless names is glory due; thy power and grace, thy truth and justice claim immortal honours to thy sovereign name: shine thro' the earth from heaven, thy blest abode, nor let the heathens say, "and where's your god?" heaven is thine higher court; there stands thy throne, and thro' the lower worlds thy will is done: our god fram'd all this earth, these heavens he spread, but fools adore the gods their hands have made: the kneeling crowd, with looks devout, behold their silver saviours, and their saints of gold. [vain are those artful shapes of eyes and ears; the molten image neither sees nor hears: their hands are helpless, nor their feet can move, they have no speech, nor thought, nor power, nor love; yet sottish mortals make their long complaints to their deaf idols, and their moveless saints. the rich have statues well adorn'd with gold; the poor, content with gods of coarser mould, with tools of iron carve the senseless stock, lopt from a tree, or broken from a rock: people and priest drive on the solemn trade, and trust the gods that saws and hammers made.] be heaven and earth amaz'd! 'tis hard to say which is more stupid, or their gods or they: o israel, trust the lord, he hears and sees, he knows thy sorrows, and restores thy peace: his worship does a thousand comforts yield, he is thy help, and he thy heavenly shield. o britain, trust the lord: thy foes in vain attempt thy ruin, and oppose his reign; had they prevail'd, darkness had clos'd our days, and death and silence had forbid his praise; but we are sav'd, and live: let songs arise, and britain bless the god that built the skies. psalm : . first part. recovery from sickness. i love the lord; he heard my cries, and pity'd every groan: long as i live, when troubles rise, i'll hasten to his throne. i love the lord; he bow'd his ear, and chas'd my griefs away; o let my heart no more despair, while i have breath to pray! my flesh declin'd, my spirits fell, and i drew near the dead, while inward pangs, and fears of hell perplex'd my wakeful head. "my god," i cry'd "thy servant save, "thou ever good and just; "thy power can rescue from the grave, "thy power is all my trust." the lord beheld me sore distrest, he bid my pains remove: return, my soul, to god thy rest, for thou hast known his love. my god hath sav'd my soul from death, and dry'd my failing tears; now to his praise i'll spend my breath, and my remaining years. psalm : . &c. second part. vows made in trouble paid in the church; or, public thanks for private deliverance. what shall i render to my god for all his kindness shown? my feet shall visit thine abode, my songs address thy throne. among the saints that fill thine house, my offerings shall be paid; there shall my zeal perform the vows my soul in anguish made. how much is mercy thy delight, thou ever blessed god! how dear thy servants in thy sight! how precious is their blood! how happy all thy servants are! how great thy grace to me! my life which thou hast made thy care, lord, i devote to thee. now i am thine, for ever thine, nor shall my purpose move; thy hand hath loos'd my bonds of pain, and bound me with thy love. here in thy courts i leave my vow, and thy rich grace record; witness, ye saints, who hear me now, if i forsake the lord. psalm : . c. m. praise to god from all nations. o all ye nations, praise the lord, each with a different tongue; in every language learn his word, and let his name be sung. his mercy reigns thro' every land; proclaim his grace abroad; for ever firm his truth shall stand, praise ye the faithful god. psalm : . l. m. from all that dwell below the skies, let the creator's praise arise! let the redeemer's name be sung thro' every land, by every tongue. eternal are thy mercies, lord; eternal truth attends thy word: thy praise shall sound from shore to shore, till suns shall rise and set no more. psalm : . s. m. thy name, almighty lord, shall sound thro' distant lands; great is thy grace, and sure thy word, thy truth for ever stands. far be thine honour spread, and long thy praise endure, till morning light and evening shade shall be exchang'd no more. psalm : . - . first part. deliverance from a tumult. the lord appears my helper now, nor is my faith afraid what all the sons of earth can do, since heaven affords its aid. 'tis safer, lord, to hope in thee, and have my god my friend, than trust in men of high degree, and on their truth depend. like bees my foes beset me round, a large and angry swarm; but i shall all their rage confound by thine almighty arm. 'tis thro' the lord my heart is strong, in him my lips rejoice; while his salvation is my song, how cheerful is my voice! like angry bees they girt me round; when god appears they fly: so burning thorns, with crackling sound, make a fierce blaze and die. joy to the saints and peace belongs; the lord protects their days: let israel tune immortal songs to his almighty grace. psalm : . - . second part. public praise for deliverance from death. lord, thou hast heard thy servant cry, and rescu'd from the grave; now shall he live: (and none can die if god resolve to save.) thy praise, more constant than before, shall fill his daily breath; thy hand that hath chastis'd him sore, defends him still from death. open the gates of zion now, for we shall worship there, the house where all the righteous go thy mercy to declare. among th' assemblies of thy saints our thankful voice we raise! there we have told thee our complaints, and there we speak thy praise. psalm : . . third part. christ the foundation of his church. behold the sure foundation-stone which god in zion lays to build our heavenly hopes upon, and his eternal praise. chosen of god, to sinners dear, and saints adore the name, they trust their whole salvation here, nor shall they suffer shame. the foolish builders, scribe and priest, reject it with disdain; yet on this rock the church shall rest, and envy rage in vain. what tho' the gates of hell withstood, yet must this building rise: 'tis thy own work, almighty god, and wondrous in our eyes. psalm : . . fourth part. hosanna; the lord's day; or, christ's resurrection and our salvation. this is the day the lord hath made, he calls the hours his own; let heaven rejoice, let earth be glad, and praise surround the throne. to-day he rose and left the dead, and satan's empire fell; to-day the saints his triumphs spread, and all his wonders tell. hosanna to th' anointed king, to david's holy son: help us, o lord; descend and bring salvation from the throne. blest be the lord, who comes to men with messages of grace; who comes in god his father's name to save our sinful race. hosanna in the highest strains the church on earth can raise; the highest heavens, in which he reigns, shall give him nobler praise. psalm : . - . s. m. an hosanna for the lord's day; or, a new song of salvation by christ. see what a living-stone the builders did refuse; yet god hath built his church thereon in spite of envious jews. the scribe and angry priest reject thine only son; yet on this rock shall zion rest, as the chief corner-stone. the work, o lord, is thine, and wondrous in our eyes; this day declares it all divine, this day did jesus rise. this is the glorious day that our redeemer made; let us rejoice, and sing, and pray, let all the church be glad. hosanna to the king of david's royal blood: bless him, ye saints; he comes to bring salvation from your god. we bless thine holy word, which all this grace displays; and offer on thine altar, lord, our sacrifice of praise. psalm : . - . l. m. an hosanna for the lord's day; or, a new song of salvation by christ. lo! what a glorious corner-stone the jewish builders did refuse; but god hath built his church thereon, in spite of envy and the jews. great god, the work is all divine, the joy and wonder of our eyes; this is the day that proves it thine, the day that saw our saviour rise. sinners rejoice, and saints be glad: hosanna, let his name be blest: a thousand honours on his head, with peace, and light, and glory, rest. in god's own name he comes to bring salvation to our dying race: let the whole church address their king with hearts of joy, and songs of praise. psalm . i have collected and disposed the most useful verses of this psalm under eighteen different heads, and formed a divine song upon each of them. but the verses are much transposed to attain some degree of connection. in some places, among the words "law," "commands," "judgments," "testimonies," i have used "gospel," "word," "grace," "truth," "promises," &c. as more agreeable to the language of the new testament, and the common language of christians, and it equally answers the design of the psalmist, which was to recommend the holy scripture. psalm : . first part. the blessedness of saints, and misery of sinners. ver. . blest are the undefil'd in heart, whose ways are right and clean; who never from thy law depart, but fly front every sin. blest are the men that keep thy word, and practise thy commands; with their whole heart they seek the lord, and serve thee with their hands. ver. . great is their peace who love thy law; how firm their souls abide! nor can a bold temptation draw their steady feet aside. ver. . then shall my heart have inward joy, and keep my face from shame, when all thy statutes i obey, and honour all thy name. ver. . but haughty sinners god will hate, the proud shall die accurst; the sons of falsehood and deceit are trodden to the dust. ver. . vile as the dross the wicked are; and those that leave thy ways shall see salvation from afar, but never taste thy grace. psalm : . second part. secret devotion and spiritual mindedness; or, constant converse with god. ver. . to thee, before the dawning light, my gracious god, i pray; i meditate thy name by night, and keep thy law by day. ver. . my spirit faints to see thy grace, thy promise bears me up; and while salvation long delays, thy word supports my hope. ver. . seven times a day i lift my hands, and pay my thanks to thee; thy righteous providence demands repeated praise from me. ver. . when midnight darkness veils the skies, i call thy works to mind; my thoughts in warm devotion rise, and sweet acceptance find. psalm : . third part. profession: of sincerity, repentance, and obedience. ver. . thou art my portion, o my god; soon as i know thy way, my heart makes haste t' obey thy word, and suffers no delay. ver. . i choose the path of heavenly truth, and glory in my choice: not all the riches of the earth could make me so rejoice. the testimonies of thy grace i set before my eyes; thence i derive my daily strength, and there my comfort lies. ver. . if once i wander from thy path, i think upon my ways, then turn my feet to thy commands, and trust thy pardoning grace. ver. . now i am thine, for ever thine, o save thy servant, lord; thou art my shield, my hiding-place, my hope is in thy word. ver. . thou hast inclin'd this heart of mine, thy statutes to fulfil; and thus till mortal life shall end would i perform thy will. psalm : . fourth part. instruction from scripture. ver. . how shall the young secure their hearts, and guard their lives from sin? thy word the choicest rules imparts to keep the conscience clean. ver. . when once it enters to the mind, it spreads such light abroad, the meanest souls instruction find, and raise their thoughts to god. ver. . 'tis like the sun, a heavenly light, that guides us all the day; and thro' the dangers of the night, a lamp to lead our way. ver. . the men that keep thy law with care, and meditate thy word, grow wiser than their teachers are, and better know the lord. ver. . thy precepts make me truly wise: i hate the sinner's road; i hate my own vain thoughts that rise, but love thy law, my god. ver. . [the starry heavens thy rule obey, the earth maintains her place; and these thy servants night and day thy skill and power express! but still thy law and gospel, lord, have lessons more divine; not earth stands firmer than thy word, nor stars so nobly shine.] ver. . thy word is everlasting truth; how pure is every page! that holy book shall guide our youth, and well support our age. psalm : . fifth part. delight in scripture; or, the word of god dwelling in us. ver. . o how i love thy holy law! 'tis daily my delight; and thence my meditations draw divine advice by night. ver. . my waking eyes prevent the day to meditate thy word; my soul with longing melts away to hear thy gospel, lord. ver. . how doth thy word my heart engage! how well employ my tongue! and, in my tiresome pilgrimage, yields me a heavenly song. ver. . am i a stranger, or at home, 'tis my perpetual feast; not honey dropping from the comb so much allures the taste. ver. . no treasures so enrich the mind; nor shall thy word be sold for loads of silver well refin'd, nor heaps of choicest gold. ver. . when nature sinks, and spirits droop, thy promises of grace are pillars to support my hope, and there i write thy praise. psalm : . sixth part. holiness and comfort from the word. ver. . lord, i esteem thy judgments right, and all thy statutes just; thence i maintain a constant fight with every flattering lust. ver. . thy precepts often i survey; i keep thy law in sight, thro' all the business of the day, to form my actions right. ver. . my heart in midnight silence cries, "how sweet thy comforts be!" my thoughts in holy wonder rise, and bring their thanks to thee. ver. . and when my spirit drinks her fill at some good word of thine, not mighty men that share the spoil have joys compar'd to mine. psalm : . seventh part. imperfection of nature, and perfection of scripture. ver. . paraphrased. let all the heathen writers join to form one perfect book, great god, if once compar'd with thine, how mean their writings look! not the most perfect rules they gave could shew one sin forgiven, nor lead a step beyond the grave; but thine conduct to heaven. i've seen an end of what we call perfection here below; how short the powers of nature fall, and can no farther go! yet men would fain be just with god by works their hands have wrought; but thy commands, exceeding broad, extend to every thought. in vain we boast perfection here, while sin defiles our frame, and sinks our virtues down so far, they scarce deserve the name. our faith and love, and every grace, fall far below thy word; but perfect truth and righteousness dwell only with the lord. psalm : . eighth part. the word of god is the saint's portion; or, the excellency and variety of scripture. ver. . paraphrased. lord, i have made thy word my choice, my lasting heritage; there shall my noblest powers rejoice, my warmest thoughts engage. i'll read the histories of thy love, and keep thy laws in sight, while thro' the promises i rove, with ever fresh delight. 'tis a broad land of wealth unknown where springs of life arise, seeds of immortal bliss are sown, and hidden glory lies. the best relief that mourners have, it makes our sorrows blest; our fairest hope beyond the grave, and our eternal rest. psalm : . ninth part. desire of knowledge; or, the teachings of the spirit with the word. ver. . thy mercies fill the earth, o lord, how good thy works appear! open mine eyes to read thy word, and see thy wonders there. ver. . my heart was fashion'd by thy hand, my service is thy due: o make thy servant understand the duties he must do. ver. . since i'm a stranger here below, let not thy path be hid; but mark the road my feet should go, and be my constant guide. ver. . when i confess'd my wandering ways, thou heardst my soul complain; grant me the teachings of thy grace, or i shall stray again. ver. . if god to me his statutes shew, and heavenly truth impart, his work for ever i'll pursue, his laws shall rule my heart. ver. . this was my comfort when i bore variety of grief; it made me learn thy word the more, and fly to that relief. ver. . [in vain the proud deride me now; i'll ne'er forget thy law, nor let that blessed gospel go whence all my hopes i draw. ver. . when i have learn'd my father's will i'll teach the world his ways; my thankful lips inspir'd with zeal shall loud pronounce his praise.] psalm : . tenth part. pleading the promises. ver. . behold thy waiting servant, lord, devoted to thy fear; remember and confirm thy word, for all my hopes are there. ver. . hast thou not writ salvation down, and promis'd quickening grace? doth not my heart address thy throne? and yet thy love delays. ver. . mine eyes for thy salvation fail; o bear thy servant up; nor let the scoffing lips prevail, who dare reproach my hope. ver. . didst thou not raise my faith, o lord? then let thy truth appear: saints shall rejoice in my reward, and trust as well as fear. psalm : . eleventh part. breathing after holiness. ver. . o that the lord would guide my ways to keep his statutes still! o that my god would grant me grace to know and do his will! ver. . o send thy spirit down to write thy law upon my heart! nor let my tongue indulge deceit, nor act the liar's part. ver. . from vanity turn off my eyes: let no corrupt design, nor covetous desires arise within this soul of mine. ver. . order my footsteps by thy word, and make my heart sincere, let sin have no dominion, lord, but keep my conscience clear. ver. . my soul hath gone too far astray, my feet too often slip; yet since i've not forgot thy way, restore thy wandering sheep. ver. . make me to walk in thy commands, 'tis a delightful road; nor let my head, or heart, or hands, offend against my god. psalm : . twelfth part. breathing after comfort and deliverance. ver. . my god, consider my distress, let mercy plead my cause; tho' i have sinn'd against thy grace, i can't forget thy laws. ver. . forbid, forbid the sharp reproach which i so justly fear; uphold my life, uphold my hopes, nor let my shame appear. ver. . be thou a surety, lord, for me, nor let the proud oppress; but make thy waiting servant see the shinings of thy face. ver. . my eyes with expectation fail, my heart within me cries, "when will the lord his truth fulfil, "and make my comforts rise?" ver. . look down upon my sorrows, lord, and shew thy grace the same as thou art ever wont t' afford to those that love thy name. psalm : . thirteenth part. holy fear, and tenderness of conscience. ver. . with my whole heart i've sought thy face, o let me never stray from thy commands, o god of grace, nor tread the sinner's way. ver. . thy word i've hid within my heart to keep my conscience clean, and be an everlasting guard from every rising sin. ver. . i'm a companion of the saints who fear and love the lord; my sorrows rise, my nature faints, when men transgress thy word. ver. . while sinners do thy gospel wrong, my spirit stands in awe; my soul abhors a lying tongue, but loves thy righteous law. ver. . my heart with sacred reverence hears the threatenings of thy word: my flesh with holy trembling fears the judgments of the lord. ver. . my god, i long, i hope, i wait for thy salvation still; while thy whole law is my delight, and i obey thy will. psalm : . fourteenth part. benefit of afflictions, and support under them. ver. . consider all my sorrows, lord, and thy deliverance send; my soul for thy salvation faints, when will my troubles end? ver. . yet i have found, 'tis good for me to bear my father's rod; afflictions make me learn thy law, and live upon my god. ver. . this is the comfort i enjoy when new distress begins, i read thy word, i run thy way, and hate my former sins. ver. . had not thy word been my delight when earthly joys were fled, my soul opprest with sorrow's weight had sunk amongst the dead. ver. . i know thy judgments, lord, are right, tho' they may seem severe; the sharpest sufferings i endure flow from thy faithful care. ver. . before i knew thy chastening rod my feet were apt to stray; but now i learn to keep thy word, nor wander from thy way. psalm : . fifteenth part. holy resolutions. ver. . that thy statutes every hour might dwell upon my mind! thence i derive a quickening power, and daily peace i find. ver. . to meditate thy precepts, lord, shall be my sweet employ; my soul shall ne'er forget thy word, thy word is all my joy. ver. . how would i run in thy commands, if thou my heart discharge from sin and satan's hateful chains, and set my feet at large! ver. . my lips with courage shall declare thy statutes and thy name; i'll speak thy word, tho' kings should hear nor yield to sinful shame. ver. . let bands of persecutors rise to rob me of my right, let pride and malice forge their lies, thy law is my delight. ver. . depart from me, ye wicked race, whose hands and hearts are ill; i love my god, i love his ways, and must obey his will. psalm : . sixteenth part. prayer for quickening grace. ver. . my soul lies cleaving to the dust; lord, give me life divine; from vain desires and every lust turn off these eyes of mine. i need the influence of thy grace to speed me in thy way, lest i should loiter in my race, or turn my feet astray. ver. . when sore afflictions press me down, i need thy quickening powers; thy word that i have rested on shall help my heaviest hours. ver. . are not thy mercies sovereign still? and thou a faithful god? wilt thou not grant me warmer zeal to run the heavenly road? ver. . does not my heart thy precepts love, and long to see thy face? and yet how slow my spirits move without enlivening grace! ver. . then shall i love thy gospel more, and ne'er forget thy word, when i have felt its quickening power to draw me near the lord. psalm : . seventeenth part. courage and perseverance under persecution; or, grace shining in difficulties and trials. ver. . when pain and anguish seize me, lord, all my support is from thy word: my soul dissolves for heaviness, uphold me with thy strengthening grace. ver. . the proud have fram'd their scoffs and lies, they watch my feet with envious eyes, and tempt my soul to snares and sin, yet thy commands i ne'er decline. ver. . they hate me, lord, without a cause, they hate to see me love thy laws: but i will trust and fear thy name, till pride and malice die with shame. psalm : . last part. sanctified afflictions; or, delight in the word of god. ver. . father, i bless thy gentle hand; how kind was thy chastising rod, that forc'd my conscience to a stand, and brought my wandering soul to god! foolish and vain i went astray ere i had felt thy scourges, lord, i left my guide, and lost my way; but now i love and keep thy word. ver. . 'tis good for me to wear the yoke, for pride is apt to rise and swell; 'tis good to bear my father's stroke, that i might learn his statutes well. ver. . the law that issues from thy mouth shall raise my cheerful passions more than all the treasures of the south, or western hills of golden ore. ver. . thy hands have made my mortal frame, thy spirit form'd my soul within; teach me to know thy wondrous name, and guard me safe from death and sin. ver. . then all that love and fear the lord at my salvation shall rejoice; for i have hoped in thy word, and made thy grace my only choice. psalm . complaint of quarrelsome neighbours; or, a devout wish for peace. thou god of love, thou ever blest, pity my suffering state; when wilt thou set my soul at rest from lips that love deceit? hard lot of mine! my days are cast among the sons of strife, whose never-ceasing brawlings waste my golden hours of life. o might i fly to change my place, how would i chuse to dwell in some wide lonesome wilderness, and leave these gates of hell. peace is the blessing that i seek, how lovely are its charms; i am for peace; but when i speak, they all declare for arms. new passions still their souls engage, and keep their malice strong: what shall be done to curb thy rage, o thou devouring tongue! should burning arrows smite thee thro', strict justice would approve; but i had rather spare my foe, and melt his heart with love. psalm : . l. m. divine protection. up to the hills i lift mine eyes, th' eternal hills beyond the skies; thence all her help my soul derives; there my almighty refuge lives. he lives, the everlasting god, that built the world, that spread the flood; the heavens with all their hosts he made, and the dark regions of the dead. he guides our feet, he guards our way; his morning-smiles bless all the day; he spreads the evening veil, and keeps the silent hours while israel sleeps. israel, a name divinely blest, may rise secure, securely rest; thy holy guardian's wakeful eyes admit no slumber nor surprise. no sun shall smite thy head by day, nor the pale moon with sickly ray shall blast thy couch; no baleful star dart his malignant fire so far. should earth and hell with malice burn, still thou shalt go and still return safe in the lord his heavenly care defends thy life from every snare. on thee foul spirits have no power; and in thy last departing hour angels, that trace the airy road, shall bear thee homeward to thy god. psalm : . c. m. preservation by day and night. to heaven i lift my waiting eyes, there all my hopes are laid: the lord that built the earth and skies is my perpetual aid. their feet shall never slide to fall whom he designs to keep; his ear attends the softest call, his eyes can never sleep. he will sustain our weakest powers with his almighty arm, and watch our most unguarded hours against surprising harm. israel, rejoice and rest secure, thy keeper is the lord; his wakeful eyes employ his power for thine eternal guard. nor scorching sun, nor sickly moon, shall have his leave to smite; he shields thy head from burning noon, from blasting damps at night. he guards thy soul, he keeps thy breath where thickest dangers come; go and return, secure from death, till god commands thee home. psalm : . as the th psalm. god our preserver. upward i lift mine eyes, from god is all my aid; the god that built the skies, and earth and nature made: god is the tow'r to which i fly: his grace is nigh in every hour. my feet shall never slide and fall in fatal snares, since god, my guard and guide, defends me from my fears: those wakeful eyes that never sleep shall israel keep when dangers rise. no burning heats by day, nor blasts of evening air, shall take my health away, if god be with me there. thou art my sun, and thou my shade, to guard my head by night or noon. hast thou not given thy word to save my soul from death? and i can trust my lord to keep my mortal breath; i'll go and come, nor fear to die, till from on high thou call me home. psalm : . going to church. how did my heart rejoice to hear my friends devoutly say, "in zion let us all appear, "and keep the solemn day!" i love her gates, i love the road: the church adorn'd with grace stands like a palace built for god, to shew his milder face. up to her courts with joys unknown the holy tribes repair; the son of david holds his throne, and sits in judgment there. he hears our praises and complaints; and while his awful voice divides the sinners from the saints, we tremble and rejoice. peace be within this sacred place, and joy a constant guest! with holy gifts, and heavenly grace be her attendants blest! my soul shall pray for zion still, while life or breath remains; there my best friends, my kindred dwell, there god my saviour reigns. psalm : . proper tune. going to church. how pleas'd and blest was i to hear the people cry, "come, let us seek our god to-day!" yes, with a cheerful zeal, we haste to zion's hill, and there our vows and honours pay. zion, thrice happy place, adorn'd with wondrous grace, and walls of strength embrace thee round; in thee our tribes appear to pray, and praise, and hear the sacred gospel's joyful sound. there david's greater son has fix'd his royal throne, he sits for grace and judgment there; he bids the saint be glad, he makes the sinner sad, and humble souls rejoice with fear. may peace attend thy gate, and joy within thee wait to bless the soul of every guest! the man that seeks thy peace, and wishes thine increase, a thousand blessings on him rest! my tongue repeats her vows "peace to this sacred house!" for there my friends and kindred dwell; and since my glorious god makes thee his blest abode, my soul shall ever love thee well. repeat the fourth stanza to complete the tune. psalm . pleading with submission. o thou whose grace and justice reign enthron'd above the skies, to thee our hearts would tell their pain, to thee we lift our eyes. as servants watch their master's hand, and fear the angry stroke; or maids before their mistress stand, and wait a peaceful look; so for our sins we justly feel thy discipline, o god; yet wait the gracious moment still, till thou remove thy rod. those that in wealth and pleasure live our daily groans deride, and thy delays of mercy give fresh courage to their pride. our foes insult us, but our hope in thy compassion lies; this thought shall bear our spirits up, that god will not despise. psalm . a song for the fifth of november. had not the lord, may israel say, had not the lord maintain'd our side, when men to make our lives a prey, rose like the swelling of the tide; the swelling tide had stopt our breath, so fiercely did the waters roll, we had been swallow'd deep in death; proud waters had o'erwhelm'd our soul. we leap for joy, we shout and sing, who just escap'd the fatal stroke; so flies the bird with cheerful wing, when once the fowler's snare is broke. for ever blessed be the lord, who broke the fowler's cursed snare, who sav'd us from the murdering sword, and made our lives and souls his care. our help is in jehovah's name, who form'd the earth and built the skies; he that upholds that wondrous frame guards his own church with watchful eyes. psalm : . c. m. the saint's trial and safely. unshaken as the sacred hill, and firm as mountains be, firm as a rock the soul shall rest that leans, o lord, on thee. not walls nor hills could guard so well old salem's happy ground, as those eternal arms of love that every saint surround. while tyrants are a smarting scourge to drive them near to god, divine compassion does allay the fury of the rod. deal gently, lord, with souls sincere, and lead them safely on to the bright gates of paradise, where christ their lord is gone. but if we trace those crooked ways that the old serpent drew, the wrath that drove him first to hell shall smite his followers too. psalm : . s. m. the saints' trial and safety; or, moderated afflictions. firm and unmov'd are they that rest their souls on god; firm as the mount where david dwelt or where the ark abode. as mountains stood to guard the city's sacred ground, so god and his almighty love embrace his saints around. what tho' the father's rod drop a chastising stroke, yet, lest it wound their souls too deep, its fury shall be broke. deal gently, lord, with those whose faith and pious fear, whose hope, and love, and every grace proclaim their hearts sincere. nor shall the tyrant's rage too long oppress the saint; the god of israel will support his children lest they faint. but if our slavish fear will chuse the road to hell, we must expect our portion there where bolder sinners dwell. psalm : . l. m. surprising deliverance. when god restor'd our captive state, joy was our song, and grace our theme; the grace beyond our hopes so great, that joy appear'd a painted dream. the scoffer owns thy hand, and pays unwilling honours to thy name; while we with pleasure shout thy praise, with cheerful notes thy love proclaim. when we review our dismal fears, 'twas hard to think they'd vanish so; with god we left our flowing tears, he makes our joys like rivers flow. the man that in his furrow'd field his scatter'd seed with sadness leaves, will shout to see the harvest yield a welcome load of joyful sheaves. psalm : . c. m. the joy of a remarkable conversion; or, melancholy removed. when god reveal'd his gracious name, and chang'd my mournful state, my rapture seem'd a pleasing dream, the grace appear'd so great. the world beheld the glorious change, and did thy hand confess; my tongue broke out in unknown strains, and sung surprising grace: "great is the work," my neighbours cry'd, and own'd the power divine; "great is the work," my heart reply'd, "and be the glory thine." the lord can clear the darkest skies, can give us day for night, make drops of sacred sorrow rise to rivers of delight. let those that sow in sadness wait till the fair harvest come, they shall confess their sheaves are great, and shout the blessings home. tho' seed lie bury'd long in dust, it shan't deceive their hope; the precious grain can ne'er be lost, for grace insures the crop. psalm : . l. m. the blessing of god on the business and comforts of life. if god succeed not, all the cost and pains to build the house are lost: if god the city will not keep, the watchful guards as well may sleep. what if you rise before the sun, and work and toil when day is done, careful and sparing eat your bread, to shun that poverty you dread; 'tis all in vain, till god hath blest; he can make rich, yet give us rest: children and friends are blessings too, if god our sovereign make them so. happy the man to whom he sends obedient children, faithful friends: how sweet our daily comforts prove when they are season'd with his love! psalm : . c. m. god all in all. if god to build the house deny, the builders work in vain; and towns, without his wakeful eye, an useless watch maintain. before the morning beams arise, your painful work renew, and till the stars ascend the skies your tiresome toil pursue. short be your sleep, and coarse your fare; in vain, till god has blest; but if his smiles attend your care, you shall have food and rest. nor children, relatives, nor friends shall real blessings prove, nor all the earthly joys he sends, if sent without his love. psalm . family blessings. o happy man, whose soul is fill'd with zeal and reverend awe; his lips to god their honours yield, his life adorns the law. a careful providence shall stand and ever guard thy head, shall on the labours of thy hand its kindly blessings shed. [thy wife shall be a fruitful vine; thy children round thy board, each like a plant of honour shine, and learn to fear the lord.] the lord shall thy best hopes fulfil for months and years to come; the lord who dwells on zion's hill, shall send thee blessings home. this is the man whose happy eyes shall see his house increase, shall see the sinking church arise, then leave the world in peace. psalm . persecutors punished. up from my youth, may israel say, have i been nurs'd in tears; my griefs were constant as the day, and tedious as the years. up from my youth i bore the rage of all the sons of strife; oft they assail'd my riper age, but not destroy'd my life. their cruel plough had torn my flesh with furrows long and deep, hourly they vex my wounds afresh, nor let my sorrows sleep. the lord grew angry on his throne, and with impartial eye measur'd the mischiefs they had done then let his arrows fly. how was their insolence surpris'd to hear his thunders roll! and all the foes of zion seiz'd with horror to the soul. thus shall the men that hate the saints be blasted from the sky; their glory fades, their courage faints, and all their projects die. [what tho' they flourish tall and fair, they have no root beneath; their growth shall perish in despair, and lie despis'd in death.] [so corn that on the house-top stands no hope of harvest gives; the reaper ne'er shall fill his hands, nor binder fold the sheaves. it springs and withers on the place: no traveller bestows a word of blessing on the grass, nor minds it as he goes.] psalm : . c. m. pardoning grace. out of the deeps of long distress, the borders of despair, i sent my cries to seek thy grace, my groans to move thine ear. great god, should thy severer eye, and thine impartial hand, mark and revenge iniquity, no mortal flesh could stand. but there are pardons with my god for crimes of high degree; thy son has bought them with his blood to draw us near to thee. [i wait for thy salvation, lord, with strong desires i wait; my soul, invited by thy word, stands watching at thy gate.] [just as the guards that keep the night long for the morning skies, watch the first beams of breaking light, and meet them with their eyes; so waits my soul to see thy grace, and more intent than they, meets the first openings of thy face, and finds a brighter day.] [then in the lord let israel trust, let israel seek his face; the lord is good as well as just, and plenteous is his grace. there's full redemption at his throne for sinners long enslav'd; the great redeemer is his son, and israel shall be sav'd.] psalm : . l. m. pardoning grace. from deep distress and troubled thoughts, to thee, my god, i rais'd my cries; if thou severely mark our faults, no flesh can stand before thine eyes. but thou hast built thy throne of grace, free to dispense thy pardons there, that sinners may approach thy face, and hope and love, as well as fear. as the benighted pilgrims wait, and long, and wish for breaking day, so waits my soul before thy gate; when will my god his face display? my trust is fix'd upon thy word, nor shall i trust thy word in vain: let mourning souls address the lord, and find relief from all their pain. great is his love, and large his grace, thro' the redemption of his son: he turns our feet from sinful ways, and pardons what our hands have done. psalm . humility and submission. is there ambition in my heart? search, gracious god, and see; or do i act a haughty part? lord, i appeal to thee. i charge my thoughts, be humble still, and all my carriage mild, content, my father, with thy will, and quiet as a child. the patient soul, the lowly mind shall have a large reward: let saints in sorrow lie resign'd, and trust a faithful lord. psalm : . - . l. m. at the settlement of a church; or, the ordination of a minister. where shall we go to seek and find an habitation for our god, a dwelling for th' eternal mind amongst the sons of flesh and blood? the god of jacob chose the hill of zion for his ancient rest; and zion is his dwelling still, his church is with his presence blest. here will i fix my gracious throne, and reign for ever, saith the lord; here shall my power, and love be known, and blessings shall attend my word. here will i meet the hungry poor, and fill their souls with living bread; sinners that wait before my door, with sweet provision shall be fed. girded with truth and cloth'd with grace, my priests, my ministers shall shine: not aaron, in his costly dress, made an appearance so divine. the saints, unable to contain their inward joys shall shout and sing; the son of david here shall reign, and zion triumph in her king. [jesus shall see a numerous seed born here, t' uphold his glorious name; his crown shall flourish on his head, while all his foes are cloth'd with shame!] psalm : . - . c. m. a church established. [no sleep nor slumber to his eyes good david would afford, till he had found below the skies a dwelling for the lord. the lord in zion plac'd his name, his ark was settled there; to zion the whole nation came, to worship thrice a year. but we have no such lengths to go, nor wander far abroad; where'er thy saints assemble now, there is a house for god.] pause. arise, o king of grace, arise, and enter to thy rest! lo! thy church waits, with longing eyes, thus to be own'd and blest. enter with all thy glorious train, thy spirit and thy word; all that the ark did once contain could no such grace afford. here, mighty god, accept our vows, here let thy praise be spread; bless the provisions of thy house, and fill thy poor with bread. here let the son of david reign, let god's anointed shine; justice and truth his court maintain, with love and power divine. here let him hold a lasting throne; and as his kingdom grows, fresh honours shall adorn his crown, and shame confound his foes. psalm : . c. m. brotherly love. lo! what an entertaining sight are brethren that agree, brethren, whose cheerful hearts unite in bands of piety! when streams of love from christ the spring descend to every soul, and heavenly peace, with balmy wing, shades and bedews the whole; 'tis like the oil divinely sweet, on aaron's reverend head, the trickling drops perfum'd his feet, and o'er his garments spread. 'tis pleasant as the morning dews that fall on zion's hill, where god his mildest glory shews, and makes his grace distil. psalm : . s. m. communion of saints; or, love and worship in a family. blest are the sons of peace, whose hearts and hopes are one, whose kind designs to serve and please thro' all their actions run. blest is the pious house where seat and friendship meet, their songs of praise, their mingled vows make their communion sweet. thus when on aaron's head they pour'd the rich perfume, the oil thro' all his raiment spread, and pleasure fill'd the room. thus on the heavenly hills the saints are blest above, where joy like morning dew distils, and all the air is love. psalm : . as the nd psalm. the blessings of friendship. how pleasant 'tis to see kindred and friends agree, each in their proper station move, and each fulfil their part with sympathizing heart, in all the cares of life and love! 'tis like the ointment shed on aaron's sacred head, divinely rich, divinely sweet; the oil, thro' all the room, diffus'd a choice perfume, ran thro' his robes, and blest his feet. like fruitful showers of rain, that water all the plain, descending from the neighbouring hills; such streams of pleasure roll thro' every friendly soul, where love like heavenly dew distils. repeat the first stanza to complete the tune. psalm . daily and nightly devotion. ye that obey th' immortal king, attend his holy place, bow to the glories of his power, and bless his wondrous grace; lift up your hands by morning-light, and send your souls on high; raise your admiring thoughts by night above the starry sky. the god of zion cheers our hearts with rays of quickening grace; the god that spread the heavens abroad, and rules the swelling seas. psalm : . - . first part. l. m. the church is god's house and care. praise ye the lord, exalt his name, while in his holy courts ye wait, ye saints, that to his house belong, or stand attending at his gate. praise ye the lord; the lord is good; to praise his name is sweet employ; israel he chose of old, and still his church is his peculiar joy. the lord himself will judge his saints; he treats his servants as his friends; and when he hears their sore complaints, repents the sorrows that he sends. thro' every age the lord declares his name and breaks th' oppressor's rod; he gives his suffering servants rest, and will be known th' almighty god. bless ye the lord, who taste his love, people and priests exalt his name: amongst his saints he ever dwells; his church is his jerusalem. psalm : . - . second part. l. m. the works of creation, providence, redemption of israel, and destruction of enemies. great is the lord, exalted high above all powers and every throne; whate'er he please in earth or sea, or heaven, or hell, his hand hath done. at his command the vapours rise, the lightnings flash, the thunders roar; he pours the rain, he brings the wind, and tempest from his airy store. 'twas he those dreadful tokens sent, o egypt thro' thy stubborn land; when all thy first-born beasts and men fell dead by his avenging hand. what mighty nations, mighty kings, he slew, and their whole country gave to israel, whom his hand redeem'd, no more to be proud pharaoh's slave! his power the same, the same his grace, that saves us from the hosts of hell; and heaven he gives us to possess, whence those apostate angels fell. psalm : . c. m. praise due to god, not to idols. awake, ye saints; to praise your king, your sweetest passions raise, your pious pleasure, while you sing, increasing with the praise. great is the lord; and works unknown are his divine employ; but still his saints are near his throne, his treasure and his joy. heaven, earth, and sea, confess his hand; he bids the vapours rise; lightning and storm at his command sweep thro' the sounding skies. all power, that gods or kings have claim'd is found with him alone; but heathen gods should ne'er be nam'd where our jehovah's known. which of the stocks or stones they trust can give them showers of rain? in vain they worship glittering dust, and pray to gold in vain. [their gods have tongues that cannot talk, such as their makers gave: their feet were ne'er design'd to walk, nor hands have power to save. blind are their eyes, their ears are deaf, nor hear when mortals pray; mortals, that wait for their relief, are blind, and deaf as they.] o britain, know thy living god, serve him with faith and fear; he makes thy churches his abode, and claims thine honours there. psalm : . c. m. god's wonders of creation, providence, redemption of israel, and salvation of his people. give thanks to god the sovereign lord; his mercies still endure! and be the king of kings ador'd; his truth is ever sure. what wonders hath his wisdom done! how mighty is his hand! heaven, earth, and sea, he fram'd alone: how wide is his command! the sun supplies the day with light; how bright his counsels shine! the moon and stars adorn the night; his works are all divine! [he struck the sons of egypt dead; how dreadful is his rod! and thence with joy his people led: how gracious is our god! he cleft the swelling sea in two; his arm is great in might, and gave the tribes a passage thro'; his power and grace unite. but pharaoh's army there he drown'd; how glorious are his ways! and brought his saints thro' desert ground; eternal be his praise. great monarchs fell beneath his hand, victorious is his sword; while israel took the promis'd land; and faithful is his word.] he saw the nations dead in sin; he felt his pity move: how sad the state the world was in! how boundless was his love! he sent to save us from our woe; his goodness never fails; from death, and hell, and every foe; and still his grace prevails. give thanks to god the heavenly king; his mercies still endure! let the whole earth his praises sing; his truth is ever sure. psalm : . as the th psalm. god's wonders of creation, providence, redemption of israel, and salvation of his people. give thanks to god most high, the universal lord; the sovereign king of kings; and be his grace ador'd. his power and grace are still the same; and let his name have endless praise. how mighty is his hand! what wonders hath he done! he form'd the earth and seas, and spread the heavens alone. thy mercy, lord, shall still endure; and ever sure abides thy word. his wisdom fram'd the sun to crown the day with light; the moon and twinkling stars to cheer the darksome night. his power and grace are still the same; and let his name have endless praise. [he smote the first-born sons, the flower of egypt, dead: and thence his chosen tribes with joy and glory led. thy mercy, lord, shall still endure; and ever sure abides thy word. his power and lifted rod cleft the red-sea in two: and for his people made a wondrous passage thro'. his power and grace are still the same; and let his name have endless praise. but cruel pharaoh there with all his host he drown'd; and brought his israel safe thro' a long desert ground. thy mercy, lord, shall still endure; and ever sure abides thy word. pause. the kings of canaan fell beneath his dreadful hand: while his own servants took possession of their land. his power and grace are still the same; and let his name have endless praise.] he saw the nations lie all perishing in sin, and pity'd the sad state the ruin'd world was in. thy mercy, lord, shall still endure; and ever sure abides thy word. he sent his only son to save us from our woe, from satan sin and death, and every hurtful foe. his power and grace are still the same; and let his name have endless praise. give thanks aloud to god, to god the heavenly king; and let the spacious earth his works and glories sing. thy mercy, lord, shall still endure; and ever sure abides thy word. psalm : . abridged. l. m. god's wonders of creation, providence, redemption and salvation. give to our god immortal praise; mercy and truth are all his ways: 'wonders of grace to god belong, 'repeat his mercies in your song.' give to the lord of lords renown, the king of kings with glory crown: 'his mercies ever shall endure, 'when' lords and kings are known 'no more.' he built the earth, he spread the sky, and fix'd the starry lights on high; 'wonders of grace to god belong, 'repeat his mercies in your song.' he fills the sun with morning light, he bids the moon direct the night: 'his mercies ever shall endure, 'when' suns and moons shall shine 'no more.' the jews he freed from pharaoh's hand, and brought them to the promis'd land; 'wonders of grace to god belong, 'repeat his mercies in your song.' he saw the gentiles dead in sin, and felt his pity work within: 'his mercies ever shall endure, 'when' death and sin shall reign 'no more.' he sent his son with power to save from guilt, and darkness, and the grave: 'wonders of grace to god belong, 'repeat his mercies in your song.' thro' this vain world he guides our feet, and leads us to his heavenly seat: 'his mercies ever shall endure, 'when' this vain world shall be 'no more.' psalm . restoring and preserving grace. [with all my powers of heart and tongue i'll praise my maker in my song: angels shall hear the notes i raise, approve the song, and join the praise. angels that make thy church their care shall witness my devotions there, while holy zeal directs my eyes to thy fair temple in the skies.] i'll sing thy truth and mercy, lord, i'll sing the wonders of thy word; not all thy works and names below so much thy power and glory show. to god i cry'd when troubles rose; he heard me, and subdu'd my foes, he did my rising fears control, and strength diffus'd thro' all my soul. the god of heaven maintains his state, frowns on the proud and scorns the great; but from his throne descends to see the sons of humble poverty. amidst a thousand snares i stand upheld and guarded by thy hand; thy words my fainting soul revive, and keep my dying faith alive. grace will complete what grace begins, to save from sorrows or from sins; the work that wisdom undertakes eternal mercy ne'er forsakes. psalm : . first part. l. m. the all-seeing god. lord, thou hast search'd and seen me thro'; thine eye commands with piercing view my rising and my resting hours, my heart and flesh with all their powers. my thoughts, before they are my own, are to my god distinctly known; he knows the words i mean to speak ere from my opening lips they break. within thy circling power i stand; on every side i find thy hand: awake, asleep, at home, abroad, i am surrounded still with god. amazing knowledge, vast and great! what large extent! what lofty height! my soul, with all the powers i boast, is in the boundless prospect lost. "o may these thoughts possess my breast, "where'er i rove where'er i rest! "nor let my weaker passions dare "consent to sin, for god is there." pause i. could i so false, so faithless prove, to quit thy service and thy love, where, lord, could i thy presence shun, or from thy dreadful glory run? if up to heaven i take my flight, 'tis there thou dwell'st enthron'd in light; or dive to hell, there vengeance reigns, and satan groans beneath thy chains. if mounted on a morning ray, i fly beyond the western sea, thy swifter hand would first arrive, and there arrest thy fugitive. or should i try to shun thy sight beneath the spreading veil of night, one glance of thine, one piercing ray, would kindle darkness into day. "o may these thoughts possess my breast, "where'er i rove, where'er i rest! "nor let my weaker passions dare "consent to sin, for god is there." pause ii. the veil of night is no disguise, no screen from thy all-searching eyes; thy hand can seize thy foes as soon, thro' midnight shades as blazing noon. midnight and noon in this agree, great god, they're both alike to thee: not death can hide what god will spy, and hell lies naked to his eye. "o may these thoughts possess my breast, "where'er i rove where'er i rest! "nor let my weaker passions dare "consent to sin, for god is there." psalm : . second part. l. m. the wonderful formation of man. 'twas from thy hand, my god, i came, a work of such a curious frame; in me thy fearful wonders shine, and each proclaims thy skill divine. thine eyes did all my limbs survey, which yet in dark confusion lay; thou saw'st the daily growth they took, form'd by the model of thy book. by thee my growing parts were nam'd, and what thy sovereign counsels fram'd, (the breathing lungs, the beating heart) was copy'd with unerring art. at last, to shew my maker's name, god stamp'd his image on my frame, and in some unknown moment join'd the finish'd members to the mind. there the young seeds of thought began and all the passions of the man: great god, our infant nature pays immortal tribute to thy praise. pause. lord, since in my advancing age i've acted on life's busy stage, thy thoughts of love to me surmount the power of numbers to recount. i could survey the ocean o'er, and count each sand that makes the shore, before my swiftest thoughts could trace the numerous wonders of thy grace. these on my heart are still impress'd, with these i give my eyes to rest; and at my waking hour i find god and his love possess my mind. psalm : . third part. l. m. sincerity professed, and grace tried; or, the heart- searching of god. my god, what inward grief i feel when impious men transgress thy will! i mourn to hear their lips profane take thy tremendous name in vain. does not my soul detest and hate the sons of malice and deceit? those that oppose thy laws and thee i count them enemies to me. lord, search my soul, try every thought; tho' my own heart accuse me not of walking in a false disguise, i beg the trial of thine eyes. doth secret mischief lurk within? do i indulge some unknown sin? o turn my feet whene'er i stray, and lead me in thy perfect way. psalm : . first part. c. m. god is every where. in all my vast concerns with thee in vain my soul would try to shun thy presence, lord, or flee the notice of thine eye. thy all-surrounding sight surveys my rising and my rest, my public walks, my private ways, and secrets of my breast. my thoughts lie open to the lord before they're form'd within: and ere my lips pronounce the word, he knows the sense i mean. o wondrous knowledge, deep and high! where can a creature hide? within thy circling arms i lie, beset on every side. so let thy grace surround me still, and like a bulwark prove, to guard my soul from every ill, secur'd by sovereign love. pause. lord, where shall guilty souls retire, forgotten and unknown? in hell they meet thy dreadful fire, in heaven thy glorious throne. should i suppress my vital breath to 'scape the wrath divine, thy voice would break the bars of death, and make the grave resign. if wing'd with beams of morning light, i fly beyond the west, thy hand, which must support my flight, would soon betray my rest. if o'er my sins i think to draw the curtains of the night, those flaming eyes that guard thy law would turn the shades to light. the beams of noon, the midnight hour, are both alike to thee: o may i ne'er provoke that power from which i cannot flee! psalm : . second part. c. m. the wisdom of god in the formation of man. when i with pleasing wonder stand, and all my frame survey, lord, 'tis thy work; i own thy hand thus built my humble clay. thy hand my heart and reins possest where unborn nature grew, thy wisdom all my features trac'd, and all my members drew. thine eye with nicest care survey'd the growth of every part; till the whole scheme thy thoughts had laid was copied by thy art. heaven, earth, and sea, and fire, and wind, shew me thy wondrous skill; but i review myself, and find diviner wonders still. thy awful glories round me shine, my flesh proclaims thy praise; lord, to thy works of nature join thy miracles of grace. psalm : . . third part. c. m. the mercies of god innumerable. an evening psalm. lord, when i count thy mercies o'er, they strike me with surprise; not all the sands that spread the shore to equal numbers rise. my flesh with fear and wonder stands, the product of thy skill, and hourly blessings from thy hands, thy thoughts of love reveal. these on my heart by night i keep; how kind, how dear to me! o may the hour that ends my sleep still find my thoughts with thee. psalm . - . watchfulness, and brotherly reproof. a morning or evening psalm. my god, accept my early vows, like morning incense in thine house, and let my nightly worship rise sweet as the evening sacrifice. watch o'er my lips, and guard them, lord, from every rash and heedless word; nor let my feet incline to tread the guilty path where sinners lead. o may the righteous, when i stray, smite, and reprove my wandering way! their gentle words, like ointment shed, shall never bruise, but cheer my head. when i behold them prest with grief, i'll cry to heaven for their relief; and by my warm petitions prove how much i prize their faithful love. psalm . god is the hope of the helpless. to god i made my sorrows known, from god i sought relief; in long complaints before his throne i pour'd out all my grief. my soul was overwhelm'd with woes, my heart began to break; my god, who all my burdens knows, he knows the way i take. on every side i cast mine eye, and found my helpers gone, while friends and strangers pass'd me by neglected or unknown. then did i raise a louder cry, and call'd thy mercy near, "thou art my portion when i die, "be thou my refuge here." lord, i am brought exceeding low, now let thine ear attend, and make my foes who vex me know i've an almighty friend. from my sad prison set me free, then shall i praise thy name, and holy men shall join with me thy kindness to proclaim. psalm . complaint of heavy afflictions in mind and body. my righteous judge, my gracious god, hear when i spread my hands abroad and cry for succour from thy throne, o make thy truth and mercy known. let judgment not against me pass; behold thy servant pleads thy grace: should justice call us to thy bar, no man alive is guiltless there. look down in pity, lord, and see the mighty woes that burden me; down to the dust my life is brought, like one long bury'd and forgot. i dwell in darkness and unseen, my heart is desolate within; my thoughts in musing silence trace the ancient wonders of thy grace. thence i derive a glimpse of hope to bear my sinking spirits up; i stretch my hands to god again, and thirst like parched lands for rain. for thee i thirst, i pray, i mourn; when will thy smiling face return? shall all my joys on earth remove? and god for ever hide his love? my god, thy long delay to save will sink thy prisoner to the grave; my heart grows faint, and dim mine eye; make haste to help before i die. the night is witness to my tears, distressing pains, distressing fears; o might i hear thy morning voice, how would my weary'd powers rejoice! in thee i trust, to thee i sigh, and lift my heavy soul on high, for thee sit waiting all the day, and wear the tiresome hours away. break off my fetters, lord, and show which is the path my feet should go; if snares and foes beset the road, i flee to hide me near my god. teach me to do thy holy will, and lead me to thy heavenly hill; let the good spirit of thy love conduct me to thy courts above. then shall my soul no more complain, the tempter then shall rage in vain; and flesh that was my foe before, shall never vex my spirit more. psalm : . . first part. assistance and victory in the spiritual warfare. for ever blessed be the lord, my saviour and my shield; he sends his spirit with his word to arm me for the field. when sin and hell their force unite, he makes my soul his care, instructs me to the heavenly fight, and guards me thro' the war. a friend and helper so divine doth my weak courage raise; he makes the glorious victory mine, and his shall be the praise. psalm : . . second part. the vanity of man, and condescension of god. lord, what is man, poor feeble man, born of the earth at first! his life a shadow, light and vain, still hasting to the dust. o what is feeble dying man or any of his race, that god should make it his concern to visit him with grace! that god who darts his lightnings down, who shakes the worlds above, and mountains tremble at his frown, how wondrous is his love. psalm : . - . third part. grace above riches; or, the happy nation. happy the city, where their sons like pillars round a palace set, and daughters bright as polish'd stones give strength and beauty to the state. happy the country, where the sheep, cattle, and corn, have large increase; where men securely work or sleep, nor sons of plunder break the peace. happy the nation thus endow'd, but more divinely blest are those on whom the all-sufficient god himself with all his grace bestows. psalm : . l. m. the greatness of god. my god, my king, thy various praise shall fill the remnant of my days; thy grace employ my humble tongue till death and glory raise the song. the wings of every hour shall bear some thankful tribute to thine ear; and every setting sun shall see new works of duty done for thee. thy truth and justice i'll proclaim; thy bounty flows, an endless stream, thy mercy swift, thine anger slow, but dreadful to the stubborn foe. thy works with sovereign glory shine, and speak thy majesty divine; let britain round her shores proclaim the sound and honour of thy name. let distant times and nations raise the long succession of thy praise; and unborn ages make my song the joy and labour of their tongue. but who can speak thy wondrous deeds? thy greatness all our thoughts exceeds! vast and unsearchable thy ways! vast and immortal be thy praise! psalm : . - - . first part. the greatness of god. long as i live i'll bless thy name, my king, my god of love; my work and joy shall be the same in the bright world above. great is the lord, his power unknown, and let his praise be great: i'll sing the honours of thy throne, thy works of grace repeat. thy grace shall dwell upon my tongue; and while my lips rejoice, the men that hear my sacred song shall join their cheerful voice. fathers to sons shall teach thy name, and children learn thy ways; ages to come thy truth proclaim, and nations sound thy praise. thy glorious deeds of ancient date shall thro' the world be known; thine arm of power, thy heavenly state, with public splendor shown. the world is manag'd by thy hands, thy saints are rul'd by love; and thine eternal kingdom stands, tho' rocks and hills remove. psalm : . &c. second part. the goodness of god. sweet is the memory of thy grace, my god, my heavenly king; let age to age thy righteousness in sounds of glory sing. god reigns on high, but not confines his goodness to the skies; thro' the whole earth his bounty shines, and every want supplies. with longing eyes thy creatures wait on thee for daily food, thy liberal hand provides their meat and fills their mouths with good. how kind are thy compassions, lord! how slow thine anger moves! but soon he sends his pardoning word to cheer the souls he loves. creatures, with all their endless race, thy power and praise proclaim; but saints that taste thy richer grace delight to bless thy name. psalm : . &c. third part. mercy to sufferers; or, god hearing prayer. let every tongue thy goodness speak, thou sovereign lord of all; thy strengthening hands uphold the weak, and raise the poor that fall. when sorrow bows the spirit down, or virtue lies distrest beneath some proud oppressor's frown, thou giv'st the mourners rest. the lord supports our tottering days, and guides our giddy youth; holy and just are all his ways, and all his words are truth. he knows the pains his servants feel, he hears his children cry, and their best wishes to fulfil his grace is ever nigh. his mercy never shall remove from men of heart sincere; he saves the souls whose humble love is join'd with holy fear. [his stubborn foes his sword shall slay, and pierce their hearts with pain; but none that serve the lord shall say, "they sought his aid in vain."] [my lips shall dwell upon his praise, and spread his fame abroad; let all the sons of adam raise the honours of their god.] psalm : . l. m. praise to god for his goodness and truth. praise ye the lord, my heart shall join in work so pleasant, so divine, now, while the flesh is mine abode, and when my soul ascends to god. praise shall employ my noblest powers, while immortality endures; my days of praise shall ne'er be past, while life and thought and being last. why should i make a man my trust? princes must die and turn to dust; their breath departs, their pomp and power and thoughts, all vanish in an hour. happy the man whose hopes rely on israel's god: he made the sky, and earth and seas with all their train, and none shall find his promise vain. his truth for ever stands secure; he saves th' opprest, he feeds the poor; he sends the labouring conscience peace, and grants the prisoner sweet release. the lord hath eyes to give the blind; the lord supports the sinking mind; he helps the stranger in distress, the widow and the fatherless. he loves his saints, he knows them well, but turns the wicked down to hell: thy god, o zion, ever reigns; praise him in everlasting strains. psalm : . as the th psalm. praise to god for his goodness and truth. i'll praise my maker with my breath; and when my voice is lost in death praise shall employ my nobler powers: my days of praise shall ne'er he past while life and thought and being last, or immortality endures. why should i make a man my trust? princes must die and turn to dust; vain is the help of flesh and blood: their breath departs, their pomp and power, and thoughts all vanish in an hour, nor can they make their promise good. happy the man whose hopes rely on israel's god: he made the sky, and earth and seas with all their train; his truth for ever stands secure; he saves th' opprest, he feeds the poor, and none shall find his promise vain. the lord hath eyes to give the blind; the lord supports the sinking mind; he sends the labouring conscience peace: he helps the stranger in distress, the widow and the fatherless, and grants the prisoner sweet release. he loves his saints; he knows them well, but turns the wicked down to hell; thy god, o zion, ever reigns: let every tongue, let every age, in this exalted work engage; praise him in everlasting strains. i'll praise him while he lends me breath, and when my voice is lost in death praise shall employ my nobler powers: my days of praise shall ne'er be past while life and thought and being last, or immortality endures. psalm : . first part. the divine nature, providence and grace. praise ye the lord; 'tis good to raise our hearts and voices in his praise; his nature and his works invite to make this duty our delight. the lord builds up jerusalem, and gathers nations to his name: his mercy melts the stubborn soul, and makes the broken spirit whole. he form'd the stars, those heavenly flames, he counts their numbers, calls their names: his wisdom's vast, and knows no bound, a deep where all our thoughts are drown'd. great is our lord, and great his might; and all his glories infinite: he crowns the meek, rewards the just, and treads the wicked to the dust. pause. sing to the lord, exalt him high, who spreads his cloud all round the sky, there he prepares the fruitful rain, nor lets the drops descend in vain. he makes the grass the hills adorn, and clothes the smiling fields with corn, the beasts with food his hands supply, and the young ravens when they cry. what is the creature's skill or force, the sprightly man, the warlike horse, the nimble wit, the active limb? all are too mean delights for him. but saints are lovely in his sight; he views his children with delight: he sees their hope, he knows their fear, and looks and loves his image there. psalm : . second part. summer and winter. a song for great britain. o britain, praise thy mighty god, and make his honours known abroad, he bid the ocean round thee flow; not bars of brass could guard thee so. thy children are secure and blest; thy shores have peace, thy cities rest; he feeds thy sons with finest wheat, and adds his blessing to their meat. thy changing season he ordains, thine early and thy later rains: his flakes of snow like wool he sends, and thus the springing corn defends. with hoary frost he strews the ground; his hail descends with clattering sound: where is the man so vainly bold that dares defy his dreadful cold? he bids the southern breezes blow, the ice dissolves, the waters flow; but he hath nobler works and ways to call the britons to his praise. to all the isle his laws are shown, his gospel thro' the nation known; he hath not thus reveal'd his word to every land: praise ye the lord. psalm : . - - . c. m. the seasons of the year. with songs and honours sounding loud address the lord on high; over the heavens he spreads his cloud, and waters veil the sky. he sends his showers of blessing down to cheer the plains below; he makes the grass the mountains crown, and corn in vallies grow. he gives the grazing ox his meat, he hears the ravens cry; but man, who tastes his finest wheat, should raise his honours high. his steady counsels change the face of the declining year; he bids the sun cut short his race, and wintry days appear. his hoary frost, his fleecy snow descend and clothe the ground; the liquid streams forbear to flow, in icy fetters bound. when from his dreadful stores on high he pours the rattling hail, the wretch that dares this god defy shall find his courage fail. he sends his word and melts the snow, the fields no longer mourn; he calls the warmer gales to blow, and bids the spring return. the changing wind, the flying cloud, obey his mighty word: with songs and honours sounding loud, praise ye the sovereign lord. psalm : . p. m. praise to god from all creatures. ye tribes of adam, join with heaven, and earth, and seas, and offer notes divine to your creator's praise: ye holy throng of angels bright, in worlds of light, begin the song. thou sun with dazzling rays, and moon that rules the night, shine to your maker's praise, with stars of twinkling light: his power declare, ye floods on high, and clouds that fly in empty air. the shining worlds above in glorious order stand, or in swift courses move by his supreme command: he spake the word, and all their frame from nothing came to praise the lord. he mov'd their mighty wheels in unknown ages past, and each his word fulfils while time and nature last: in different ways his works proclaim his wondrous name, and speak his praise. pause. let all the earth-born race, and monsters of the deep, the fish that cleave the seas, or in their bosom sleep, from sea and shore their tribute pay, and still display their maker's power. ye vapours, hail, and snow, praise ye th' almighty lord, and stormy winds that blow to execute his word: when lightnings shine, or thunders roar, let earth adore his hand divine. ye mountains near the skies, with lofty cedars there, and trees of humbler size, that fruit in plenty bear; beasts wild and tame, birds, flies, and worms, in various forms exalt his name. ye kings and judges, fear the lord, the sovereign king; and while you rule us here, his heavenly honours sing: nor let the dream of power and state make you forget his power supreme. virgins, and youths, engage to sound his praise divine, while infancy and age their feebler voices join: wide as he reigns his name be sung by every tongue in endless strains. let all the nations fear the god that rules above; he brings his people near, and makes them taste his love: while earth and sky attempt his praise, his saints shall raise his honours high. psalm : . paraphrased. l. m. universal praise to god. loud hallelujahs to the lord, from distant worlds where creatures dwell: let heaven begin the solemn word, and sound it dreadful down to hell. note. this psalm may be sung to the tune of the old th or th psalm, if these two lines be added to every stanza, viz. each of his works his name displays, but they can ne'er fulfil the praise. otherwise it must be sung to the usual tunes of the long metre. the lord! how absolute he reigns! let every angel bend the knee; sing of his love in heavenly strains, and speak how fierce his terrors be. high on a throne his glories dwell, an awful throne of shining bliss: fly thro' the world, o sun, and tell how dark thy beams compar'd to his. awake, ye tempests, and his fame in sounds of dreadful praise declare; and the sweet whisper of his name fill every gentler breeze of air. let clouds, and winds, and waves agree to join their praise with blazing fire; let the firm earth, and rolling sea, in this eternal song conspire. ye flowery plains, proclaim his skill; vallies, lie low before his eye; and let his praise from every hill rise tuneful to the neighbouring sky. ye stubborn oaks, and stately pines, bend your high branches and adore: praise him, ye beasts, in different strains; the lamb must bleat, the lion roar. birds, ye must make his praise your theme, nature demands a song from you; while the dumb fish that cut the stream leap up, and mean his praises too. mortals, can you refrain your tongue, when nature all around you sings? o for a shout from old and young, from humble swains, and lofty kings! wide as his vast dominion lies make the creator's name be known; loud as his thunder shout his praise, and sound it lofty as his throne. jehovah! 'tis a glorious word, o may it dwell on every tongue! but saints who best have known the lord are bound to raise the noblest song. speak of the wonders of that love which gabriel plays on every chord: from all below and all above, loud hallelujahs to the lord! psalm : . s. m. universal praise. let every creature join to praise th' eternal god; ye heavenly hosts, the song begin, and sound his name abroad. thou sun with golden beams, and moon with paler rays; ye starry lights, ye twinkling flames, shine to your maker's praise. he built those worlds above, and fix'd their wondrous frame; by his command they stand or move, and ever speak his name. ye vapours, when ye rise, or fall in showers, or snow, ye thunders, murmuring round the skies, his power and glory show. wind, hail, and flashing fire, agree to praise the lord, when ye in dreadful storms conspire to execute his word. by all his works above his honours be exprest; but saints that taste his saving love should sing his praises best. pause i. let earth and ocean know they owe their maker praise; praise him, ye watery worlds below, and monsters of the seas. from mountains near the sky let his high praise resound, from humble shrubs and cedars high, and vales and fields around. ye lions of the wood, and tamer beasts that graze, ye live upon his daily food, and he expects your praise. ye birds of lofty wing, on high his praises bear; or sit on flowery boughs, and sing your maker's glory there. ye creeping ants and worms, his various wisdom show, and flies, in all your shining swarms, praise him that drest you so. by all the earth-born race his honours be exprest; but saints that know his heavenly grace should learn to praise him best. pause ii. monarchs of wide command, praise ye th' eternal king; judges, adore that sovereign hand whence all your honours spring. let vigorous youth engage to sound his praises high; while growing babes, and withering age, their feebler voices try. united zeal be shown, his wondrous fame to raise; god is the lord: his name alone deserves our endless praise. let nature join with art, and all pronounce him blest; but saints that dwell so near his heart, should sing his praises best. psalm . praise god, all his saints; or, the saints judging the world. all ye that love the lord, rejoice, and let your songs be new; amidst the church with cheerful voice his later wonders shew. the jews, the people of his grace, shall their redeemer sing; and gentile nations join the praise, while zion owns her king. the lord takes pleasure in the just, whom sinners treat with scorn; the meek that lie despis'd in dust salvation shall adorn. saints should be joyful in their king, ev'n on a dying bed; and like the souls in glory sing, for god shall raise the dead. then his high praise shall fill their tongues, their hands shall wield the sword; and vengeance shall attend their songs, the vengeance of the lord. when christ his judgment-seat ascends, and bids the world appear, thrones are prepar'd for all his friends, who humbly lov'd him here. then shall they rule with iron rod nations that dar'd rebel; and join the sentence of their god on tyrants doom'd to hell. the royal sinners bound in chains new triumphs shall afford; such honour for the saints remains: praise ye, and love the lord. psalm . . a song of praise. in god's own house pronounce his praise, his grace he there reveals; to heaven your joy and wonder raise, for there his glory dwells. let all your sacred passions move, while you rehearse his deeds; but the great work of saving love your highest praise exceeds. all that have motion, life, and breath, proclaim your maker blest; yet when my voice expires in death, my soul shall praise him best. doxology. the christian doxology. long metre. to god the father, god the son, and god the spirit, three in one, be honour, praise, and glory given, by all on earth, and all in heaven. common metre. let god the father, and the son, and spirit be ador'd, where there are works to make him known, or saints to love the lord. common metre. where the tune includes two stanzas. the god of mercy be ador'd, who calls our souls from death, who saves by his redeeming word, and new-creating breath. to praise the father and the son and spirit all divine, the one in three, and three in one, let saints and angels join. short metre. ye angels round the throne, and saints that dwell below, worship the father, love the son, and bless the spirit too. as the th psalm. now to the great and sacred three, the father, son, and spirit be eternal praise and glory given, thro' all the worlds where god is known, by all the angels near the throne, and all the saints in earth and heaven. as the th psalm. to god the father's throne perpetual honours raise, glory to god the son, to god the spirit praise: with all our powers, eternal king, thy name we sing, while faith adores. from www.ebible.org with slight reformatting by martin ward. book psalms : blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; : but his delight is in yahweh's law. on his law he meditates day and night. : he will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. whatever he does shall prosper. : the wicked are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. : therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. : for yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish. : why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing? : the kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against yahweh, and against his anointed,{the word "anointed" is the same as the word for "messiah" or "christ"} saying, : "let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us." : he who sits in the heavens will laugh. the lord will have them in derision. : then he will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath: : "yet i have set my king on my holy hill of zion." : i will tell of the decree. yahweh said to me, "you are my son. today i have become your father. : ask of me, and i will give the nations for your inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. : you shall break them with a rod of iron. you shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." : now therefore be wise, you kings. be instructed, you judges of the earth. : serve yahweh with fear, and rejoice with trembling. : give sincere homage{or, kiss the son}, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. blessed are all those who take refuge in him. : <<a psalm by david, when he fled from absalom his son.>> yahweh, how my adversaries have increased! many are those who rise up against me. : many there are who say of my soul, "there is no help for him in god." selah. : but you, yahweh, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. : i cry to yahweh with my voice, and he answers me out of his holy hill. selah. : i laid myself down and slept. i awakened; for yahweh sustains me. : i will not be afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me on every side. : arise, yahweh! save me, my god! for you have struck all of my enemies on the cheek bone. you have broken the teeth of the wicked. : salvation belongs to yahweh. your blessing be on your people. selah. : <<for the chief musician; on stringed instruments. a psalm by david.>> answer me when i call, god of my righteousness. give me relief from my distress. have mercy on me, and hear my prayer. : you sons of men, how long shall my glory be turned into dishonor? will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood? selah. : but know that yahweh has set apart for himself him who is godly: yahweh will hear when i call to him. : stand in awe, and don't sin. search your own heart on your bed, and be still. selah. : offer the sacrifices of righteousness. put your trust in yahweh. : many say, "who will show us any good?" yahweh, let the light of your face shine on us. : you have put gladness in my heart, more than when their grain and their new wine are increased. : in peace i will both lay myself down and sleep, for you, yahweh alone, make me live in safety. : <<for the chief musician, with the flutes. a psalm by david.>> give ear to my words, yahweh. consider my meditation. : listen to the voice of my cry, my king and my god; for to you do i pray. : yahweh, in the morning you shall hear my voice. in the morning i will lay my requests before you, and will watch expectantly. : for you are not a god who has pleasure in wickedness. evil can't live with you. : the arrogant shall not stand in your sight. you hate all workers of iniquity. : you will destroy those who speak lies. yahweh abhors the blood-thirsty and deceitful man. : but as for me, in the abundance of your loving kindness i will come into your house. i will bow toward your holy temple in reverence of you. : lead me, yahweh, in your righteousness because of my enemies. make your way straight before my face. : for there is no faithfulness in their mouth. their heart is destruction. their throat is an open tomb. they flatter with their tongue. : hold them guilty, god. let them fall by their own counsels; thrust them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you. : but let all those who take refuge in you rejoice, let them always shout for joy, because you defend them. let them also who love your name be joyful in you. : for you will bless the righteous. yahweh, you will surround him with favor as with a shield. : <<for the chief musician; on stringed instruments, upon the eight-stringed lyre. a psalm by david.>> yahweh, don't rebuke me in your anger, neither discipline me in your wrath. : have mercy on me, yahweh, for i am faint. yahweh, heal me, for my bones are troubled. : my soul is also in great anguish. but you, yahweh--how long? : return, yahweh. deliver my soul, and save me for your loving kindness' sake. : for in death there is no memory of you. in sheol, who shall give you thanks? : i am weary with my groaning. every night i flood my bed. i drench my couch with my tears. : my eye wastes away because of grief. it grows old because of all my adversaries. : depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for yahweh has heard the voice of my weeping. : yahweh has heard my supplication. yahweh accepts my prayer. : may all my enemies be ashamed and dismayed. they shall turn back, they shall be disgraced suddenly. : <<a meditation by david, which he sang to yahweh, concerning the words of cush, the benjamite.>> yahweh, my god, i take refuge in you. save me from all those who pursue me, and deliver me, : lest they tear apart my soul like a lion, ripping it in pieces, while there is none to deliver. : yahweh, my god, if i have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, : if i have rewarded evil to him who was at peace with me (yes, if i have delivered him who without cause was my adversary), : let the enemy pursue my soul, and overtake it; yes, let him tread my life down to the earth, and lay my glory in the dust. selah. : arise, yahweh, in your anger. lift up yourself against the rage of my adversaries. awake for me. you have commanded judgment. : let the congregation of the peoples surround you. rule over them on high. : yahweh administers judgment to the peoples. judge me, yahweh, according to my righteousness, and to my integrity that is in me. : oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous; their minds and hearts are searched by the righteous god. : my shield is with god, who saves the upright in heart. : god is a righteous judge, yes, a god who has indignation every day. : if a man doesn't relent, he will sharpen his sword; he has bent and strung his bow. : he has also prepared for himself the instruments of death. he makes ready his flaming arrows. : behold, he travails with iniquity. yes, he has conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. : he has dug a hole, and has fallen into the pit which he made. : the trouble he causes shall return to his own head. his violence shall come down on the crown of his own head. : i will give thanks to yahweh according to his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of yahweh most high. : <<for the chief musician; on an instrument of gath. a psalm by david.>> yahweh, our lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, who has set your glory above the heavens! : from the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, because of your adversaries, that you might silence the enemy and the avenger. : when i consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; : what is man, that you think of him? what is the son of man, that you care for him? : for you have made him a little lower than god,{hebrew: elohim} and crowned him with glory and honor. : you make him ruler over the works of your hands. you have put all things under his feet: : all sheep and oxen, yes, and the animals of the field, : the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea, and whatever passes through the paths of the seas. : yahweh, our lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! : <<for the chief musician. set to "the death of the son." a psalm by david.>> i will give thanks to yahweh with my whole heart. i will tell of all your marvelous works. : i will be glad and rejoice in you. i will sing praise to your name, o most high. : when my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish in your presence. : for you have maintained my just cause. you sit on the throne judging righteously. : you have rebuked the nations. you have destroyed the wicked. you have blotted out their name forever and ever. : the enemy is overtaken by endless ruin. the very memory of the cities which you have overthrown has perished. : but yahweh reigns forever. he has prepared his throne for judgment. : he will judge the world in righteousness. he will administer judgment to the peoples in uprightness. : yahweh will also be a high tower for the oppressed; a high tower in times of trouble. : those who know your name will put their trust in you, for you, yahweh, have not forsaken those who seek you. : sing praises to yahweh, who dwells in zion, and declare among the people what he has done. : for he who avenges blood remembers them. he doesn't forget the cry of the afflicted. : have mercy on me, yahweh. see my affliction by those who hate me, and lift me up from the gates of death; : that i may show forth all your praise. in the gates of the daughter of zion, i will rejoice in your salvation. : the nations have sunk down in the pit that they made. in the net which they hid, their own foot is taken. : yahweh has made himself known. he has executed judgment. the wicked is snared by the work of his own hands. meditation. selah. : the wicked shall be turned back to sheol, even all the nations that forget god. : for the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever. : arise, yahweh! don't let man prevail. let the nations be judged in your sight. : put them in fear, yahweh. let the nations know that they are only men. selah. : why do you stand far off, yahweh? why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? : in arrogance, the wicked hunt down the weak. they are caught in the schemes that they devise. : for the wicked boasts of his heart's cravings. he blesses the greedy, and condemns yahweh. : the wicked, in the pride of his face, has no room in his thoughts for god. : his ways are prosperous at all times. he is haughty, and your laws are far from his sight. as for all his adversaries, he sneers at them. : he says in his heart, "i shall not be shaken. for generations i shall have no trouble." : his mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression. under his tongue is mischief and iniquity. : he lies in wait near the villages. from ambushes, he murders the innocent. his eyes are secretly set against the helpless. : he lurks in secret as a lion in his ambush. he lies in wait to catch the helpless. he catches the helpless, when he draws him in his net. : the helpless are crushed. they collapse. they fall under his strength. : he says in his heart, "god has forgotten. he hides his face. he will never see it." : arise, yahweh! god, lift up your hand! don't forget the helpless. : why does the wicked person condemn god, and say in his heart, "god won't call me into account?" : but you do see trouble and grief. you consider it to take it into your hand. you help the victim and the fatherless. : break the arm of the wicked. as for the evil man, seek out his wickedness until you find none. : yahweh is king forever and ever! the nations will perish out of his land. : yahweh, you have heard the desire of the humble. you will prepare their heart. you will cause your ear to hear, : to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that man who is of the earth may terrify no more. : <<for the chief musician. by david.>> in yahweh, i take refuge. how can you say to my soul, "flee as a bird to your mountain!" : for, behold, the wicked bend their bows. they set their arrows on the strings, that they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. : if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? : yahweh is in his holy temple. yahweh is on his throne in heaven. his eyes observe. his eyes examine the children of men. : yahweh examines the righteous, but the wicked and him who loves violence his soul hates. : on the wicked he will rain blazing coals; fire, sulfur, and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. : for yahweh is righteous. he loves righteousness. the upright shall see his face. : <<for the chief musician; upon an eight-stringed lyre. a psalm of david.>> help, yahweh; for the godly man ceases. for the faithful fail from among the children of men. : everyone lies to his neighbor. they speak with flattering lips, and with a double heart. : may yahweh cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that boasts, : who have said, "with our tongue we will prevail. our lips are our own. who is lord over us?" : "because of the oppression of the weak and because of the groaning of the needy, i will now arise," says yahweh; "i will set him in safety from those who malign him." : the words of yahweh are flawless words, as silver refined in a clay furnace, purified seven times. : you will keep them, yahweh. you will preserve them from this generation forever. : the wicked walk on every side, when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> how long, yahweh? will you forget me forever? how long will you hide your face from me? : how long shall i take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? how long shall my enemy triumph over me? : behold, and answer me, yahweh, my god. give light to my eyes, lest i sleep in death; : lest my enemy say, "i have prevailed against him;" lest my adversaries rejoice when i fall. : but i trust in your loving kindness. my heart rejoices in your salvation. : i will sing to yahweh, because he has been good to me. : <<for the chief musician. by david.>> the fool has said in his heart, "there is no god." they are corrupt. they have done abominable works. there is none who does good. : yahweh looked down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who did understand, who did seek after god. : they have all gone aside. they have together become corrupt. there is none who does good, no, not one. : have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don't call on yahweh? : there they were in great fear, for god is in the generation of the righteous. : you frustrate the plan of the poor, because yahweh is his refuge. : oh that the salvation of israel would come out of zion! when yahweh restores the fortunes of his people, then jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. : <<a psalm by david.>> yahweh, who shall dwell in your sanctuary? who shall live on your holy hill? : he who walks blamelessly does what is right, and speaks truth in his heart; : he who doesn't slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his friend, nor casts slurs against his fellow man; : in whose eyes a vile man is despised, but who honors those who fear yahweh; he who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and doesn't change; : he who doesn't lend out his money for usury, nor take a bribe against the innocent. he who does these things shall never be shaken. : <<a poem by david.>> preserve me, god, for in you do i take refuge. : my soul, you have said to yahweh, "you are my lord. apart from you i have no good thing." : as for the saints who are in the earth, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. : their sorrows shall be multiplied who give gifts to another god. their drink offerings of blood i will not offer, nor take their names on my lips. : yahweh assigned my portion and my cup. you made my lot secure. : the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. yes, i have a good inheritance. : i will bless yahweh, who has given me counsel. yes, my heart instructs me in the night seasons. : i have set yahweh always before me. because he is at my right hand, i shall not be moved. : therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices. my body shall also dwell in safety. : for you will not leave my soul in sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption. : you will show me the path of life. in your presence is fullness of joy. in your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. : <<a prayer by david.>> hear, yahweh, my righteous plea; give ear to my prayer, that doesn't go out of deceitful lips. : let my sentence come forth from your presence. let your eyes look on equity. : you have proved my heart. you have visited me in the night. you have tried me, and found nothing. i have resolved that my mouth shall not disobey. : as for the works of men, by the word of your lips, i have kept myself from the ways of the violent. : my steps have held fast to your paths. my feet have not slipped. : i have called on you, for you will answer me, god. turn your ear to me. hear my speech. : show your marvelous loving kindness, you who save those who take refuge by your right hand from their enemies. : keep me as the apple of your eye. hide me under the shadow of your wings, : from the wicked who oppress me, my deadly enemies, who surround me. : they close up their callous hearts. with their mouth they speak proudly. : they have now surrounded us in our steps. they set their eyes to cast us down to the earth. : he is like a lion that is greedy of his prey, as it were a young lion lurking in secret places. : arise, yahweh, confront him. cast him down. deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword; : from men by your hand, yahweh, from men of the world, whose portion is in this life. you fill the belly of your cherished ones. your sons have plenty, and they store up wealth for their children. : as for me, i shall see your face in righteousness. i shall be satisfied, when i awake, with seeing your form. : <<for the chief musician. by david the servant of yahweh, who spoke to yahweh the words of this song in the day that yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of saul. he said,>> i love you, yahweh, my strength. : yahweh is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my god, my rock, in whom i take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower. : i call on yahweh, who is worthy to be praised; and i am saved from my enemies. : the cords of death surrounded me. the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. : the cords of sheol were around me. the snares of death came on me. : in my distress i called on yahweh, and cried to my god. he heard my voice out of his temple. my cry before him came into his ears. : then the earth shook and trembled. the foundations also of the mountains quaked and were shaken, because he was angry. : smoke went out of his nostrils. consuming fire came out of his mouth. coals were kindled by it. : he bowed the heavens also, and came down. thick darkness was under his feet. : he rode on a cherub, and flew. yes, he soared on the wings of the wind. : he made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion around him, darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies. : at the brightness before him his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire. : yahweh also thundered in the sky. the most high uttered his voice: hailstones and coals of fire. : he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; yes, great lightning bolts, and routed them. : then the channels of waters appeared. the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, yahweh, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. : he sent from on high. he took me. he drew me out of many waters. : he delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me; for they were too mighty for me. : they came on me in the day of my calamity, but yahweh was my support. : he brought me forth also into a large place. he delivered me, because he delighted in me. : yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness. according to the cleanness of my hands has he recompensed me. : for i have kept the ways of yahweh, and have not wickedly departed from my god. : for all his ordinances were before me. i didn't put away his statutes from me. : i was also blameless with him. i kept myself from my iniquity. : therefore yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight. : with the merciful you will show yourself merciful. with the perfect man, you will show yourself perfect. : with the pure, you will show yourself pure. with the crooked you will show yourself shrewd. : for you will save the afflicted people, but the haughty eyes you will bring down. : for you will light my lamp, yahweh. my god will light up my darkness. : for by you, i advance through a troop. by my god, i leap over a wall. : as for god, his way is perfect. the word of yahweh is tried. he is a shield to all those who take refuge in him. : for who is god, except yahweh? who is a rock, besides our god, : the god who arms me with strength, and makes my way perfect? : he makes my feet like deer's feet, and sets me on my high places. : he teaches my hands to war, so that my arms bend a bow of bronze. : you have also given me the shield of your salvation. your right hand sustains me. your gentleness has made me great. : you have enlarged my steps under me, my feet have not slipped. : i will pursue my enemies, and overtake them. neither will i turn again until they are consumed. : i will strike them through, so that they will not be able to rise. they shall fall under my feet. : for you have girded me with strength to the battle. you have subdued under me those who rose up against me. : you have also made my enemies turn their backs to me, that i might cut off those who hate me. : they cried, but there was none to save; even to yahweh, but he didn't answer them. : then i beat them small as the dust before the wind. i cast them out as the mire of the streets. : you have delivered me from the strivings of the people. you have made me the head of the nations. a people whom i have not known shall serve me. : as soon as they hear of me they shall obey me. the foreigners shall submit themselves to me. : the foreigners shall fade away, and shall come trembling out of their close places. : yahweh lives; and blessed be my rock. exalted be the god of my salvation, : even the god who executes vengeance for me, and subdues peoples under me. : he rescues me from my enemies. yes, you lift me up above those who rise up against me. you deliver me from the violent man. : therefore i will give thanks to you, yahweh, among the nations, and will sing praises to your name. : he gives great deliverance to his king, and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to david and to his seed, forevermore. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> the heavens declare the glory of god. the expanse shows his handiwork. : day after day they pour forth speech, and night after night they display knowledge. : there is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. : their voice has gone out through all the earth, their words to the end of the world. in them he has set a tent for the sun, : which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a strong man rejoicing to run his course. : his going forth is from the end of the heavens, his circuit to its ends; there is nothing hidden from its heat. : yahweh's law is perfect, restoring the soul. yahweh's testimony is sure, making wise the simple. : yahweh's precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. yahweh's commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes. : the fear of yahweh is clean, enduring forever. yahweh's ordinances are true, and righteous altogether. : more to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the extract of the honeycomb. : moreover by them is your servant warned. in keeping them there is great reward. : who can discern his errors? forgive me from hidden errors. : keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. let them not have dominion over me. then i will be upright. i will be blameless and innocent of great transgression. : let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, yahweh, my rock, and my redeemer. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> may yahweh answer you in the day of trouble. may the name of the god of jacob set you up on high, : send you help from the sanctuary, grant you support from zion, : remember all your offerings, and accept your burnt sacrifice. selah. : may he grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill all your counsel. : we will triumph in your salvation. in the name of our god, we will set up our banners. may yahweh grant all your requests. : now i know that yahweh saves his anointed. he will answer him from his holy heaven, with the saving strength of his right hand. : some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust the name of yahweh our god. : they are bowed down and fallen, but we rise up, and stand upright. : save, yahweh! let the king answer us when we call! : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> the king rejoices in your strength, yahweh! how greatly he rejoices in your salvation! : you have given him his heart's desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. selah. : for you meet him with the blessings of goodness. you set a crown of fine gold on his head. : he asked life of you, you gave it to him, even length of days forever and ever. : his glory is great in your salvation. you lay honor and majesty on him. : for you make him most blessed forever. you make him glad with joy in your presence. : for the king trusts in yahweh. through the loving kindness of the most high, he shall not be moved. : your hand will find out all of your enemies. your right hand will find out those who hate you. : you will make them as a fiery furnace in the time of your anger. yahweh will swallow them up in his wrath. the fire shall devour them. : you will destroy their descendants from the earth, their posterity from among the children of men. : for they intended evil against you. they plotted evil against you which cannot succeed. : for you will make them turn their back, when you aim drawn bows at their face. : be exalted, yahweh, in your strength, so we will sing and praise your power. : <<for the chief musician; set to "the doe of the morning." a psalm by david.>> my god, my god, why have you forsaken me? why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? : my god, i cry in the daytime, but you don't answer; in the night season, and am not silent. : but you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of israel. : our fathers trusted in you. they trusted, and you delivered them. : they cried to you, and were delivered. they trusted in you, and were not disappointed. : but i am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. : all those who see me mock me. they insult me with their lips. they shake their heads, saying, : "he trusts in yahweh; let him deliver him. let him rescue him, since he delights in him." : but you brought me out of the womb. you made me trust at my mother's breasts. : i was thrown on you from my mother's womb. you are my god since my mother bore me. : don't be far from me, for trouble is near. for there is none to help. : many bulls have surrounded me. strong bulls of bashan have encircled me. : they open their mouths wide against me, lions tearing prey and roaring. : i am poured out like water. all my bones are out of joint. my heart is like wax; it is melted within me. : my strength is dried up like a potsherd. my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. you have brought me into the dust of death. : for dogs have surrounded me. a company of evil-doers have enclosed me. like a lion, they pin my hands and feet.{or, they have pierced my hands and feet. (dss)} : i can count all of my bones. they look and stare at me. : they divide my garments among them. they cast lots for my clothing. : but don't be far off, yahweh. you are my help: hurry to help me. : deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. : save me from the lion's mouth! yes, from the horns of the wild oxen, you have answered me. : i will declare your name to my brothers. in the midst of the assembly, i will praise you. : you who fear yahweh, praise him! all you descendants of jacob, glorify him! stand in awe of him, all you descendants of israel! : for he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard. : of you comes my praise in the great assembly. i will pay my vows before those who fear him. : the humble shall eat and be satisfied. they shall praise yahweh who seek after him. let your hearts live forever. : all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to yahweh. all the relatives of the nations shall worship before you. : for the kingdom is yahweh's. he is the ruler over the nations. : all the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. all those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even he who can't keep his soul alive. : posterity shall serve him. future generations shall be told about the lord. : they shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it. : <<a psalm by david.>> yahweh is my shepherd: i shall lack nothing. : he makes me lie down in green pastures. he leads me beside still waters. : he restores my soul. he guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. : even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil, for you are with me. your rod and your staff, they comfort me. : you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. you anoint my head with oil. my cup runs over. : surely goodness and loving kindness shall follow me all the days of my life, and i will dwell in yahweh's house forever. : <<a psalm by david.>> the earth is yahweh's, with its fullness; the world, and those who dwell therein. : for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the floods. : who may ascend to yahweh's hill? who may stand in his holy place? : he who has clean hands and a pure heart; who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully. : he shall receive a blessing from yahweh, righteousness from the god of his salvation. : this is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face-- even jacob. selah. : lift up your heads, you gates! be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory will come in. : who is the king of glory? yahweh strong and mighty, yahweh mighty in battle. : lift up your heads, you gates; yes, lift them up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory will come in. : who is this king of glory? yahweh of armies is the king of glory! selah. : <<by david.>> to you, yahweh, do i lift up my soul. : my god, i have trusted in you. don't let me be shamed. don't let my enemies triumph over me. : yes, no one who waits for you shall be shamed. they shall be shamed who deal treacherously without cause. : show me your ways, yahweh. teach me your paths. : guide me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the god of my salvation, i wait for you all day long. : yahweh, remember your tender mercies and your loving kindness, for they are from old times. : don't remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. remember me according to your loving kindness, for your goodness' sake, yahweh. : good and upright is yahweh, therefore he will instruct sinners in the way. : he will guide the humble in justice. he will teach the humble his way. : all the paths of yahweh are loving kindness and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. : for your name's sake, yahweh, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. : what man is he who fears yahweh? he shall instruct him in the way that he shall choose. : his soul shall dwell at ease. his seed shall inherit the land. : the friendship of yahweh is with those who fear him. he will show them his covenant. : my eyes are ever on yahweh, for he will pluck my feet out of the net. : turn to me, and have mercy on me, for i am desolate and afflicted. : the troubles of my heart are enlarged. oh bring me out of my distresses. : consider my affliction and my travail. forgive all my sins. : consider my enemies, for they are many. they hate me with cruel hatred. : oh keep my soul, and deliver me. let me not be disappointed, for i take refuge in you. : let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for i wait for you. : redeem israel, god, out all of his troubles. : <<by david.>> judge me, yahweh, for i have walked in my integrity. i have trusted also in yahweh without wavering. : examine me, yahweh, and prove me. try my heart and my mind. : for your loving kindness is before my eyes. i have walked in your truth. : i have not sat with deceitful men, neither will i go in with hypocrites. : i hate the assembly of evil-doers, and will not sit with the wicked. : i will wash my hands in innocence, so i will go about your altar, yahweh; : that i may make the voice of thanksgiving to be heard, and tell of all your wondrous works. : yahweh, i love the habitation of your house, the place where your glory dwells. : don't gather my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men; : in whose hands is wickedness, their right hand is full of bribes. : but as for me, i will walk in my integrity. redeem me, and be merciful to me. : my foot stands in an even place. in the congregations i will bless yahweh. : <<by david.>> yahweh is my light and my salvation. whom shall i fear? yahweh is the strength of my life. of whom shall i be afraid? : when evil-doers came at me to eat up my flesh, even my adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell. : though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. though war should rise against me, even then i will be confident. : one thing i have asked of yahweh, that i will seek after, that i may dwell in the house of yahweh all the days of my life, to see yahweh's beauty, and to inquire in his temple. : for in the day of trouble he will keep me secretly in his pavilion. in the covert of his tent he will hide me. he will lift me up on a rock. : now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me. i will offer sacrifices of joy in his tent. i will sing, yes, i will sing praises to yahweh. : hear, yahweh, when i cry with my voice. have mercy also on me, and answer me. : when you said, "seek my face," my heart said to you, "i will seek your face, yahweh." : don't hide your face from me. don't put your servant away in anger. you have been my help. don't abandon me, neither forsake me, god of my salvation. : when my father and my mother forsake me, then yahweh will take me up. : teach me your way, yahweh. lead me in a straight path, because of my enemies. : don't deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me, such as breathe out cruelty. : i am still confident of this: i will see the goodness of yahweh in the land of the living. : wait for yahweh. be strong, and let your heart take courage. yes, wait for yahweh. : <<by david.>> to you, yahweh, i call. my rock, don't be deaf to me; lest, if you are silent to me, i would become like those who go down into the pit. : hear the voice of my petitions, when i cry to you, when i lift up my hands toward your most holy place. : don't draw me away with the wicked, with the workers of iniquity who speak peace with their neighbors, but mischief is in their hearts. : give them according to their work, and according to the wickedness of their doings. give them according to the operation of their hands. bring back on them what they deserve. : because they don't regard the works of yahweh, nor the operation of his hands, he will break them down and not build them up. : blessed be yahweh, because he has heard the voice of my petitions. : yahweh is my strength and my shield. my heart has trusted in him, and i am helped. therefore my heart greatly rejoices. with my song i will thank him. : yahweh is their strength. he is a stronghold of salvation to his anointed. : save your people, and bless your inheritance. be their shepherd also, and bear them up forever. : <<a psalm by david.>> ascribe to yahweh, you sons of the mighty, ascribe to yahweh glory and strength. : ascribe to yahweh the glory due to his name. worship yahweh in holy array. : yahweh's voice is on the waters. the god of glory thunders, even yahweh on many waters. : yahweh's voice is powerful. yahweh's voice is full of majesty. : the voice of yahweh breaks the cedars. yes, yahweh breaks in pieces the cedars of lebanon. : he makes them also to skip like a calf; lebanon and sirion like a young, wild ox. : yahweh's voice strikes with flashes of lightning. : yahweh's voice shakes the wilderness. yahweh shakes the wilderness of kadesh. : yahweh's voice makes the deer calve, and strips the forests bare. in his temple everything says, "glory!" : yahweh sat enthroned at the flood. yes, yahweh sits as king forever. : yahweh will give strength to his people. yahweh will bless his people with peace. : <<a psalm. a song for the dedication of the temple. by david.>> i will extol you, yahweh, for you have raised me up, and have not made my foes to rejoice over me. : yahweh my god, i cried to you, and you have healed me. : yahweh, you have brought up my soul from sheol. you have kept me alive, that i should not go down to the pit. : sing praise to yahweh, you saints of his. give thanks to his holy name. : for his anger is but for a moment. his favor is for a lifetime. weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning. : as for me, i said in my prosperity, "i shall never be moved." : you, yahweh, when you favored me, made my mountain stand strong; but when you hid your face, i was troubled. : i cried to you, yahweh. to yahweh i made supplication: : "what profit is there in my destruction, if i go down to the pit? shall the dust praise you? shall it declare your truth? : hear, yahweh, and have mercy on me. yahweh, be my helper." : you have turned my mourning into dancing for me. you have removed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness, : to the end that my heart may sing praise to you, and not be silent. yahweh my god, i will give thanks to you forever! : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> in you, yahweh, i take refuge. let me never be disappointed. deliver me in your righteousness. : bow down your ear to me. deliver me speedily. be to me a strong rock, a house of defense to save me. : for you are my rock and my fortress, therefore for your name's sake lead me and guide me. : pluck me out of the net that they have laid secretly for me, for you are my stronghold. : into your hand i commend my spirit. you redeem me, yahweh, god of truth. : i hate those who regard lying vanities, but i trust in yahweh. : i will be glad and rejoice in your loving kindness, for you have seen my affliction. you have known my soul in adversities. : you have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. you have set my feet in a large place. : have mercy on me, yahweh, for i am in distress. my eye, my soul, and my body waste away with grief. : for my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing. my strength fails because of my iniquity. my bones are wasted away. : because of all my adversaries i have become utterly contemptible to my neighbors, a fear to my acquaintances. those who saw me on the street fled from me. : i am forgotten from their hearts like a dead man. i am like broken pottery. : for i have heard the slander of many, terror on every side, while they conspire together against me, they plot to take away my life. : but i trust in you, yahweh. i said, "you are my god." : my times are in your hand. deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me. : make your face to shine on your servant. save me in your loving kindness. : let me not be disappointed, yahweh, for i have called on you. let the wicked be disappointed. let them be silent in sheol. : let the lying lips be mute, which speak against the righteous insolently, with pride and contempt. : oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have worked for those who take refuge in you, before the sons of men! : in the shelter of your presence you will hide them from the plotting of man. you will keep them secretly in a dwelling away from the strife of tongues. : praise be to yahweh, for he has shown me his marvelous loving kindness in a strong city. : as for me, i said in my haste, "i am cut off from before your eyes." nevertheless you heard the voice of my petitions when i cried to you. : oh love yahweh, all you his saints! yahweh preserves the faithful, and fully recompenses him who behaves arrogantly. : be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in yahweh. : <<by david. a contemplative psalm.>> blessed is he whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is covered. : blessed is the man to whom yahweh doesn't impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit. : when i kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. : for day and night your hand was heavy on me. my strength was sapped in the heat of summer. selah. : i acknowledged my sin to you. i didn't hide my iniquity. i said, i will confess my transgressions to yahweh, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. selah. : for this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found. surely when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach to him. : you are my hiding place. you will preserve me from trouble. you will surround me with songs of deliverance. selah. : i will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go. i will counsel you with my eye on you. : don't be like the horse, or like the mule, which have no understanding, who are controlled by bit and bridle, or else they will not come near to you. : many sorrows come to the wicked, but loving kindness shall surround him who trusts in yahweh. : be glad in yahweh, and rejoice, you righteous! shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart! : rejoice in yahweh, you righteous! praise is fitting for the upright. : give thanks to yahweh with the lyre. sing praises to him with the harp of ten strings. : sing to him a new song. play skillfully with a shout of joy! : for the word of yahweh is right. all his work is done in faithfulness. : he loves righteousness and justice. the earth is full of the loving kindness of yahweh. : by yahweh's word, the heavens were made; all their army by the breath of his mouth. : he gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. he lays up the deeps in storehouses. : let all the earth fear yahweh. let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. : for he spoke, and it was done. he commanded, and it stood firm. : yahweh brings the counsel of the nations to nothing. he makes the thoughts of the peoples to be of no effect. : the counsel of yahweh stands fast forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. : blessed is the nation whose god is yahweh, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance. : yahweh looks from heaven. he sees all the sons of men. : from the place of his habitation he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, : he who fashions all of their hearts; and he considers all of their works. : there is no king saved by the multitude of an army. a mighty man is not delivered by great strength. : a horse is a vain thing for safety, neither does he deliver any by his great power. : behold, yahweh's eye is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his loving kindness; : to deliver their soul from death, to keep them alive in famine. : our soul has waited for yahweh. he is our help and our shield. : for our heart rejoices in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. : let your loving kindness be on us, yahweh, since we have hoped in you. {} : <<by david; when he pretended to be insane before abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.psalm is an acrostic poem, with each verse starting with a letter of the alphabet (ordered from alef to tav).>> i will bless yahweh at all times. his praise will always be in my mouth. : my soul shall boast in yahweh. the humble shall hear of it, and be glad. : oh magnify yahweh with me. let us exalt his name together. : i sought yahweh, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. : they looked to him, and were radiant. their faces shall never be covered with shame. : this poor man cried, and yahweh heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. : the angel of yahweh encamps round about those who fear him, and delivers them. : oh taste and see that yahweh is good. blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. : oh fear yahweh, you his saints, for there is no lack with those who fear him. : the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but those who seek yahweh shall not lack any good thing. : come, you children, listen to me. i will teach you the fear of yahweh. : who is someone who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good? : keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking lies. : depart from evil, and do good. seek peace, and pursue it. : yahweh's eyes are toward the righteous. his ears listen to their cry. : yahweh's face is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. : the righteous cry, and yahweh hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. : yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit. : many are the afflictions of the righteous, but yahweh delivers him out of them all. : he protects all of his bones. not one of them is broken. : evil shall kill the wicked. those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. : yahweh redeems the soul of his servants. none of those who take refuge in him shall be condemned. : <<by david.>> contend, yahweh, with those who contend with me. fight against those who fight against me. : take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help. : brandish the spear and block those who pursue me. tell my soul, "i am your salvation." : let those who seek after my soul be disappointed and brought to dishonor. let those who plot my ruin be turned back and confounded. : let them be as chaff before the wind, yahweh's angel driving them on. : let their way be dark and slippery, yahweh's angel pursuing them. : for without cause they have hidden their net in a pit for me. without cause they have dug a pit for my soul. : let destruction come on him unawares. let his net that he has hidden catch himself. let him fall into that destruction. : my soul shall be joyful in yahweh. it shall rejoice in his salvation. : all my bones shall say, "yahweh, who is like you, who delivers the poor from him who is too strong for him; yes, the poor and the needy from him who robs him?" : unrighteous witnesses rise up. they ask me about things that i don't know about. : they reward me evil for good, to the bereaving of my soul. : but as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. i afflicted my soul with fasting. my prayer returned into my own bosom. : i behaved myself as though it had been my friend or my brother. i bowed down mourning, as one who mourns his mother. : but in my adversity, they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together. the attackers gathered themselves together against me, and i didn't know it. they tore at me, and didn't cease. : like the profane mockers in feasts, they gnashed their teeth at me. : lord, how long will you look on? rescue my soul from their destruction, my precious life from the lions. : i will give you thanks in the great assembly. i will praise you among many people. : don't let those who are my enemies wrongfully rejoice over me; neither let those who hate me without a cause wink their eyes. : for they don't speak peace, but they devise deceitful words against those who are quiet in the land. : yes, they opened their mouth wide against me. they said, "aha! aha! our eye has seen it!" : you have seen it, yahweh. don't keep silent. lord, don't be far from me. : wake up! rise up to defend me, my god! my lord, contend for me! : vindicate me, yahweh my god, according to your righteousness. don't let them gloat over me. : don't let them say in their heart, "aha! that's the way we want it!" don't let them say, "we have swallowed him up!" : let them be disappointed and confounded together who rejoice at my calamity. let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me. : let them shout for joy and be glad, who favor my righteous cause. yes, let them say continually, "yahweh be magnified, who has pleasure in the prosperity of his servant!" : my tongue shall talk about your righteousness and about your praise all day long. : <<for the chief musician. by david, the servant of yahweh.>> an oracle is within my heart about the disobedience of the wicked: "there is no fear of god before his eyes." : for he flatters himself in his own eyes, too much to detect and hate his sin. : the words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. he has ceased to be wise and to do good. : he plots iniquity on his bed. he sets himself in a way that is not good. he doesn't abhor evil. : your loving kindness, yahweh, is in the heavens. your faithfulness reaches to the skies. : your righteousness is like the mountains of god. your judgments are like a great deep. yahweh, you preserve man and animal. : how precious is your loving kindness, god! the children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings. : they shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house. you will make them drink of the river of your pleasures. : for with you is the spring of life. in your light shall we see light. : oh continue your loving kindness to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. : don't let the foot of pride come against me. don't let the hand of the wicked drive me away. : there the workers of iniquity are fallen. they are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise. : <<by david.>> don't fret because of evil-doers, neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness. : for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither like the green herb. : trust in yahweh, and do good. dwell in the land, and enjoy safe pasture. : also delight yourself in yahweh, and he will give you the desires of your heart. : commit your way to yahweh. trust also in him, and he will do this: : he will make your righteousness go forth as the light, and your justice as the noon day sun. : rest in yahweh, and wait patiently for him. don't fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who makes wicked plots happen. : cease from anger, and forsake wrath. don't fret, it leads only to evildoing. : for evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for yahweh shall inherit the land. : for yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more. yes, though you look for his place, he isn't there. : but the humble shall inherit the land, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. : the wicked plots against the just, and gnashes at him with his teeth. : the lord will laugh at him, for he sees that his day is coming. : the wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, to kill those who are upright in the way. : their sword shall enter into their own heart. their bows shall be broken. : better is a little that the righteous has, than the abundance of many wicked. : for the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but yahweh upholds the righteous. : yahweh knows the days of the perfect. their inheritance shall be forever. : they shall not be disappointed in the time of evil. in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. : but the wicked shall perish. the enemies of yahweh shall be like the beauty of the fields. they will vanish-- vanish like smoke. : the wicked borrow, and don't pay back, but the righteous give generously. : for such as are blessed by him shall inherit the land. those who are cursed by him shall be cut off. : a man's goings are established by yahweh. he delights in his way. : though he stumble, he shall not fall, for yahweh holds him up with his hand. : i have been young, and now am old, yet i have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his children begging for bread. : all day long he deals graciously, and lends. his seed is blessed. : depart from evil, and do good. live securely forever. : for yahweh loves justice, and doesn't forsake his saints. they are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off. : the righteous shall inherit the land, and live in it forever. : the mouth of the righteous talks of wisdom. his tongue speaks justice. : the law of his god is in his heart. none of his steps shall slide. : the wicked watches the righteous, and seeks to kill him. : yahweh will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. : wait for yahweh, and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land. when the wicked are cut off, you shall see it. : i have seen the wicked in great power, spreading himself like a green tree in its native soil. : but he passed away, and behold, he was not. yes, i sought him, but he could not be found. : mark the perfect man, and see the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. : as for transgressors, they shall be destroyed together. the future of the wicked shall be cut off. : but the salvation of the righteous is from yahweh. he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. : yahweh helps them, and rescues them. he rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they have taken refuge in him. : <<a psalm by david, for a memorial.>> yahweh, don't rebuke me in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure. : for your arrows have pierced me, your hand presses hard on me. : there is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin. : for my iniquities have gone over my head. as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. : my wounds are loathsome and corrupt, because of my foolishness. : i am pained and bowed down greatly. i go mourning all day long. : for my waist is filled with burning. there is no soundness in my flesh. : i am faint and severely bruised. i have groaned by reason of the anguish of my heart. : lord, all my desire is before you. my groaning is not hidden from you. : my heart throbs. my strength fails me. as for the light of my eyes, it has also left me. : my lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. my kinsmen stand far away. : they also who seek after my life lay snares. those who seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and meditate deceits all day long. : but i, as a deaf man, don't hear. i am as a mute man who doesn't open his mouth. : yes, i am as a man who doesn't hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs. : for in you, yahweh, do i hope. you will answer, lord my god. : for i said, "don't let them gloat over me, or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips." : for i am ready to fall. my pain is continually before me. : for i will declare my iniquity. i will be sorry for my sin. : but my enemies are vigorous and many. those who hate me without reason are numerous. : they who also render evil for good are adversaries to me, because i follow what is good. : don't forsake me, yahweh. my god, don't be far from me. : hurry to help me, lord, my salvation. : <<for the chief musician. for jeduthun. a psalm by david.>> i said, "i will watch my ways, so that i don't sin with my tongue. i will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me." : i was mute with silence. i held my peace, even from good. my sorrow was stirred. : my heart was hot within me. while i meditated, the fire burned: i spoke with my tongue: : "yahweh, show me my end, what is the measure of my days. let me know how frail i am. : behold, you have made my days handbreadths. my lifetime is as nothing before you. surely every man stands as a breath." selah. : "surely every man walks like a shadow. surely they busy themselves in vain. he heaps up, and doesn't know who shall gather. : now, lord, what do i wait for? my hope is in you. : deliver me from all my transgressions. don't make me the reproach of the foolish. : i was mute. i didn't open my mouth, because you did it. : remove your scourge away from me. i am overcome by the blow of your hand. : when you rebuke and correct man for iniquity, you consume his wealth like a moth. surely every man is but a breath." selah. : "hear my prayer, yahweh, and give ear to my cry. don't be silent at my tears. for i am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were. : oh spare me, that i may recover strength, before i go away, and exist no more." : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> i waited patiently for yahweh. he turned to me, and heard my cry. : he brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. he set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. : he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our god. many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in yahweh. : blessed is the man who makes yahweh his trust, and doesn't respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. : many, yahweh, my god, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. they can't be declared back to you. if i would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. : sacrifice and offering you didn't desire. you have opened my ears. you have not required burnt offering and sin offering. : then i said, "behold, i have come. it is written about me in the book in the scroll. : i delight to do your will, my god. yes, your law is within my heart." : i have proclaimed glad news of righteousness in the great assembly. behold, i will not seal my lips, yahweh, you know. : i have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. i have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. i have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly. : don't withhold your tender mercies from me, yahweh. let your loving kindness and your truth continually preserve me. : for innumerable evils have surrounded me. my iniquities have overtaken me, so that i am not able to look up. they are more than the hairs of my head. my heart has failed me. : be pleased, yahweh, to deliver me. hurry to help me, yahweh. : let them be disappointed and confounded together who seek after my soul to destroy it. let them be turned backward and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. : let them be desolate by reason of their shame that tell me, "aha! aha!" : let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. let such as love your salvation say continually, "let yahweh be exalted!" : but i am poor and needy. may the lord think about me. you are my help and my deliverer. don't delay, my god. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> blessed is he who considers the poor. yahweh will deliver him in the day of evil. : yahweh will preserve him, and keep him alive. he shall be blessed on the earth, and he will not surrender him to the will of his enemies. : yahweh will sustain him on his sickbed, and restore him from his bed of illness. : i said, "yahweh, have mercy on me! heal me, for i have sinned against you." : my enemies speak evil against me: "when will he die, and his name perish?" : if he comes to see me, he speaks falsehood. his heart gathers iniquity to itself. when he goes abroad, he tells it. : all who hate me whisper together against me. they imagine the worst for me. : "an evil disease," they say, "has afflicted him. now that he lies he shall rise up no more." : yes, my own familiar friend, in whom i trusted, who ate bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me. : but you, yahweh, have mercy on me, and raise me up, that i may repay them. : by this i know that you delight in me, because my enemy doesn't triumph over me. : as for me, you uphold me in my integrity, and set me in your presence forever. : blessed be yahweh, the god of israel, from everlasting and to everlasting! amen and amen. : <<for the chief musician. a contemplation by the sons of korah.>> as the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, god. : my soul thirsts for god, for the living god. when shall i come and appear before god? : my tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, "where is your god?" : these things i remember, and pour out my soul within me, how i used to go with the crowd, and led them to the house of god, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day. : why are you in despair, my soul? why are you disturbed within me? hope in god! for i shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence. : my god, my soul is in despair within me. therefore i remember you from the land of the jordan, the heights of hermon, from the hill mizar. : deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. all your waves and your billows have swept over me. : yahweh will command his loving kindness in the daytime. in the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the god of my life. : i will ask god, my rock, "why have you forgotten me? why do i go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" : as with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, "where is your god?" : why are you in despair, my soul? why are you disturbed within me? hope in god! for i shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my god. : vindicate me, god, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. oh, deliver me from deceitful and wicked men. : for you are the god of my strength. why have you rejected me? why do i go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? : oh, send out your light and your truth. let them lead me. let them bring me to your holy hill, to your tents. : then i will go to the altar of god, to god, my exceeding joy. i will praise you on the harp, god, my god. : why are you in despair, my soul? why are you disturbed within me? hope in god! for i shall still praise him: my savior, my helper, and my god. : <<for the chief musician. by the sons of korah. a contemplative psalm.>> we have heard with our ears, god; our fathers have told us, what work you did in their days, in the days of old. : you drove out the nations with your hand, but you planted them. you afflicted the peoples, but you spread them abroad. : for they didn't get the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, because you were favorable to them. : you are my king, god. command victories for jacob! : through you, will we push down our adversaries. through your name, will we tread them under who rise up against us. : for i will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. : but you have saved us from our adversaries, and have shamed those who hate us. : in god we have made our boast all day long, we will give thanks to your name forever. selah. : but now you rejected us, and brought us to dishonor, and don't go out with our armies. : you make us turn back from the adversary. those who hate us take spoil for themselves. : you have made us like sheep for food, and have scattered us among the nations. : you sell your people for nothing, and have gained nothing from their sale. : you make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and a derision to those who are around us. : you make us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples. : all day long my dishonor is before me, and shame covers my face, : at the taunt of one who reproaches and verbally abuses, because of the enemy and the avenger. : all this has come on us, yet have we not forgotten you, neither have we been false to your covenant. : our heart has not turned back, neither have our steps strayed from your path, : though you have crushed us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with the shadow of death. : if we have forgotten the name of our god, or spread forth our hands to a strange god; : won't god search this out? for he knows the secrets of the heart. : yes, for your sake we are killed all day long. we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter. : wake up! why do you sleep, lord? arise! don't reject us forever. : why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression? : for our soul is bowed down to the dust. our body cleaves to the earth. : rise up to help us. redeem us for your loving kindness' sake. : <<for the chief musician. set to "the lilies." a contemplation by the sons of korah. a wedding song.>> my heart overflows with a noble theme. i recite my verses for the king. my tongue is like the pen of a skillful writer. : you are the most excellent of the sons of men. grace has anointed your lips, therefore god has blessed you forever. : gird your sword on your thigh, mighty one: your splendor and your majesty. : in your majesty ride on victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness. let your right hand display awesome deeds. : your arrows are sharp. the nations fall under you, with arrows in the heart of the king's enemies. : your throne, god, is forever and ever. a scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. : you have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness. therefore god, your god, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. : all your garments smell like myrrh, aloes, and cassia. out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made you glad. : kings' daughters are among your honorable women. at your right hand the queen stands in gold of ophir. : listen, daughter, consider, and turn your ear. forget your own people, and also your father's house. : so the king will desire your beauty, honor him, for he is your lord. : the daughter of tyre comes with a gift. the rich among the people entreat your favor. : the princess inside is all glorious. her clothing is interwoven with gold. : she shall be led to the king in embroidered work. the virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to you. : with gladness and rejoicing they shall be led. they shall enter into the king's palace. : your sons will take the place of your fathers. you shall make them princes in all the earth. : i will make your name to be remembered in all generations. therefore the peoples shall give you thanks forever and ever. {} : <<for the chief musician. by the sons of korah. according to alamoth.alamoth is a musical term.>> god is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. : therefore we won't be afraid, though the earth changes, though the mountains are shaken into the heart of the seas; : though the waters of it roar and are troubled, though the mountains tremble with their swelling. selah. : there is a river, the streams of which make the city of god glad, the holy place of the tents of the most high. : god is in her midst. she shall not be moved. god will help her at dawn. : the nations raged. the kingdoms were moved. he lifted his voice, and the earth melted. : yahweh of armies is with us. the god of jacob is our refuge. selah. : come, see yahweh's works, what desolations he has made in the earth. : he makes wars cease to the end of the earth. he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear. he burns the chariots in the fire. : "be still, and know that i am god. i will be exalted among the nations. i will be exalted in the earth." : yahweh of armies is with us. the god of jacob is our refuge. selah. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by the sons of korah.>> oh clap your hands, all you nations. shout to god with the voice of triumph! : for yahweh most high is awesome. he is a great king over all the earth. : he subdues nations under us, and peoples under our feet. : he chooses our inheritance for us, the glory of jacob whom he loved. selah. : god has gone up with a shout, yahweh with the sound of a trumpet. : sing praise to god, sing praises. sing praises to our king, sing praises. : for god is the king of all the earth. sing praises with understanding. : god reigns over the nations. god sits on his holy throne. : the princes of the peoples are gathered together, the people of the god of abraham. for the shields of the earth belong to god. he is greatly exalted! : <<a song. a psalm by the sons of korah.>> great is yahweh, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our god, in his holy mountain. : beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount zion, on the north sides, the city of the great king. : god has shown himself in her citadels as a refuge. : for, behold, the kings assembled themselves, they passed by together. : they saw it, then they were amazed. they were dismayed. they hurried away. : trembling took hold of them there, pain, as of a woman in travail. : with the east wind, you break the ships of tarshish. : as we have heard, so we have seen, in the city of yahweh of armies, in the city of our god. god will establish it forever. selah. : we have thought about your loving kindness, god, in the midst of your temple. : as is your name, god, so is your praise to the ends of the earth. your right hand is full of righteousness. : let mount zion be glad! let the daughters of judah rejoice, because of your judgments. : walk about zion, and go around her. number its towers. : mark well her bulwarks. consider her palaces, that you may tell it to the next generation. : for this god is our god forever and ever. he will be our guide even to death. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by the sons of korah.>> hear this, all you peoples. listen, all you inhabitants of the world, : both low and high, rich and poor together. : my mouth will speak words of wisdom. my heart shall utter understanding. : i will incline my ear to a proverb. i will open my riddle on the harp. : why should i fear in the days of evil, when iniquity at my heels surrounds me? : those who trust in their wealth, and boast in the multitude of their riches-- : none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give god a ransom for him. : for the redemption of their life is costly, no payment is ever enough, : that he should live on forever, that he should not see corruption. : for he sees that wise men die; likewise the fool and the senseless perish, and leave their wealth to others. : their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. they name their lands after themselves. : but man, despite his riches, doesn't endure. he is like the animals that perish. : this is the destiny of those who are foolish, and of those who approve their sayings. selah. : they are appointed as a flock for sheol. death shall be their shepherd. the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. their beauty shall decay in sheol, far from their mansion. : but god will redeem my soul from the power of sheol, for he will receive me. selah. : don't be afraid when a man is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased. : for when he dies he shall carry nothing away. his glory shall not descend after him. : though while he lived he blessed his soul--and men praise you when you do well for yourself-- : he shall go to the generation of his fathers. they shall never see the light. : a man who has riches without understanding, is like the animals that perish. : <<a psalm by asaph.>> the mighty one, god, yahweh, speaks, and calls the earth from sunrise to sunset. : out of zion, the perfection of beauty, god shines forth. : our god comes, and does not keep silent. a fire devours before him. it is very stormy around him. : he calls to the heavens above, to the earth, that he may judge his people: : "gather my saints together to me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." : the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for god himself is judge. selah. : "hear, my people, and i will speak; israel, and i will testify against you. i am god, your god. : i don't rebuke you for your sacrifices. your burnt offerings are continually before me. : i have no need for a bull from your stall, nor male goats from your pens. : for every animal of the forest is mine, and the livestock on a thousand hills. : i know all the birds of the mountains. the wild animals of the field are mine. : if i were hungry, i would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. : will i eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? : offer to god the sacrifice of thanksgiving. pay your vows to the most high. : call on me in the day of trouble. i will deliver you, and you will honor me." : but to the wicked god says, "what right do you have to declare my statutes, that you have taken my covenant on your lips, : seeing you hate instruction, and throw my words behind you? : when you saw a thief, you consented with him, and have participated with adulterers. : "you give your mouth to evil. your tongue frames deceit. : you sit and speak against your brother. you slander your own mother's son. : you have done these things, and i kept silent. you thought that the i was just like you. i will rebuke you, and accuse you in front of your eyes. : "now consider this, you who forget god, lest i tear you into pieces, and there be none to deliver. : whoever offers the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifies me, and prepares his way so that i will show god's salvation to him." : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david, when nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to bathsheba.>> have mercy on me, god, according to your loving kindness. according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. : wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. cleanse me from my sin. : for i know my transgressions. my sin is constantly before me. : against you, and you only, have i sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight; that you may be proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. : behold, i was brought forth in iniquity. in sin my mother conceived me. : behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. : purify me with hyssop, and i will be clean. wash me, and i will be whiter than snow. : let me hear joy and gladness, that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. : hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquities. : create in me a clean heart, o god. renew a right spirit within me. : don't throw me from your presence, and don't take your holy spirit from me. : restore to me the joy of your salvation. uphold me with a willing spirit. : then i will teach transgressors your ways. sinners shall be converted to you. : deliver me from bloodguiltiness, o god, the god of my salvation. my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. : lord, open my lips. my mouth shall declare your praise. : for you don't delight in sacrifice, or else i would give it. you have no pleasure in burnt offering. : the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit. a broken and contrite heart, o god, you will not despise. : do well in your good pleasure to zion. build the walls of jerusalem. : then you will delight in the sacrifices of righteousness, in burnt offerings and in whole burnt offerings. then they will offer bulls on your altar. : <<for the chief musician. a contemplation by david, when doeg the edomite came and told saul, "david has come to abimelech's house.">> why do you boast of mischief, mighty man? god's loving kindness endures continually. : your tongue plots destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. : you love evil more than good, lying rather than speaking the truth. selah. : you love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue. : god will likewise destroy you forever. he will take you up, and pluck you out of your tent, and root you out of the land of the living. selah. : the righteous also will see it, and fear, and laugh at him, saying, : "behold, this is the man who didn't make god his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness." : but as for me, i am like a green olive tree in god's house. i trust in god's loving kindness forever and ever. : i will give you thanks forever, because you have done it. i will hope in your name, for it is good, in the presence of your saints. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "mahalath." a contemplation by david.>> the fool has said in his heart, "there is no god." they are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity. there is no one who does good. : god looks down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there are any who understood, who seek after god. : every one of them has gone back. they have become filthy together. there is no one who does good, no, not one. : have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and don't call on god? : there they were in great fear, where no fear was, for god has scattered the bones of him who encamps against you. you have put them to shame, because god has rejected them. : oh that the salvation of israel would come out of zion! when god brings back his people from captivity, then jacob shall rejoice, and israel shall be glad. : <<for the chief musician. on stringed instruments. a contemplation by david, when the ziphites came and said to saul, "isn't david hiding himself among us?">> save me, god, by your name. vindicate me in your might. : hear my prayer, god. listen to the words of my mouth. : for strangers have risen up against me. violent men have sought after my soul. they haven't set god before them. selah. : behold, god is my helper. the lord is the one who sustains my soul. : he will repay the evil to my enemies. destroy them in your truth. : with a free will offering, i will sacrifice to you. i will give thanks to your name, yahweh, for it is good. : for he has delivered me out of all trouble. my eye has seen triumph over my enemies. : <<for the chief musician. on stringed instruments. a contemplation by david.>> listen to my prayer, god. don't hide yourself from my supplication. : attend to me, and answer me. i am restless in my complaint, and moan, : because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. for they bring suffering on me. in anger they hold a grudge against me. : my heart is severely pained within me. the terrors of death have fallen on me. : fearfulness and trembling have come on me. horror has overwhelmed me. : i said, "oh that i had wings like a dove! then i would fly away, and be at rest. : behold, then i would wander far off. i would lodge in the wilderness." selah. : "i would hurry to a shelter from the stormy wind and storm." : confuse them, lord, and confound their language, for i have seen violence and strife in the city. : day and night they prowl around on its walls. malice and abuse are also within her. : destructive forces are within her. threats and lies don't depart from her streets. : for it was not an enemy who insulted me, then i could have endured it. neither was it he who hated me who raised himself up against me, then i would have hid myself from him. : but it was you, a man like me, my companion, and my familiar friend. : we took sweet fellowship together. we walked in god's house with company. : let death come suddenly on them. let them go down alive into sheol. for wickedness is in their dwelling, in the midst of them. : as for me, i will call on god. yahweh will save me. : evening, morning, and at noon, i will cry out in distress. he will hear my voice. : he has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, although there are many who oppose me. : god, who is enthroned forever, will hear, and answer them. selah. they never change, who don't fear god. : he raises his hands against his friends. he has violated his covenant. : his mouth was smooth as butter, but his heart was war. his words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. : cast your burden on yahweh, and he will sustain you. he will never allow the righteous to be moved. : but you, god, will bring them down into the pit of destruction. bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, but i will trust in you. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "silent dove in distant lands." a poem by david, when the philistines seized him in gath.>> be merciful to me, god, for man wants to swallow me up. all day long, he attacks and oppresses me. : my enemies want to swallow me up all day long, for they are many who fight proudly against me. : when i am afraid, i will put my trust in you. : in god, i praise his word. in god, i put my trust. i will not be afraid. what can flesh do to me? : all day long they twist my words. all their thoughts are against me for evil. : they conspire and lurk, watching my steps, they are eager to take my life. : shall they escape by iniquity? in anger cast down the peoples, god. : you number my wanderings. you put my tears into your bottle. aren't they in your book? : then my enemies shall turn back in the day that i call. i know this, that god is for me. : in god, i will praise his word. in yahweh, i will praise his word. : i have put my trust in god. i will not be afraid. what can man do to me? : your vows are on me, god. i will give thank offerings to you. : for you have delivered my soul from death, and prevented my feet from falling, that i may walk before god in the light of the living. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "do not destroy." a poem by david, when he fled from saul, in the cave.>> be merciful to me, god, be merciful to me, for my soul takes refuge in you. yes, in the shadow of your wings, i will take refuge, until disaster has passed. : i cry out to god most high, to god who accomplishes my requests for me. : he will send from heaven, and save me, he rebukes the one who is pursuing me. selah. god will send out his loving kindness and his truth. : my soul is among lions. i lie among those who are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. : be exalted, god, above the heavens! let your glory be above all the earth! : they have prepared a net for my steps. my soul is bowed down. they dig a pit before me. they fall into the midst of it themselves. selah. : my heart is steadfast, god, my heart is steadfast. i will sing, yes, i will sing praises. : wake up, my glory! wake up, psaltery and harp! i will wake up the dawn. : i will give thanks to you, lord, among the peoples. i will sing praises to you among the nations. : for your great loving kindness reaches to the heavens, and your truth to the skies. : be exalted, god, above the heavens. let your glory be over all the earth. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "do not destroy." a poem by david.>> do you indeed speak righteousness, silent ones? do you judge blamelessly, you sons of men? : no, in your heart you plot injustice. you measure out the violence of your hands in the earth. : the wicked go astray from the womb. they are wayward as soon as they are born, speaking lies. : their poison is like the poison of a snake; like a deaf cobra that stops its ear, : which doesn't listen to the voice of charmers, no matter how skillful the charmer may be. : break their teeth, god, in their mouth. break out the great teeth of the young lions, yahweh. : let them vanish as water that flows away. when they draw the bow, let their arrows be made blunt. : let them be like a snail which melts and passes away, like the stillborn child, who has not seen the sun. : before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, he will sweep away the green and the burning alike. : the righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked; : so that men shall say, "most certainly there is a reward for the righteous. most certainly there is a god who judges the earth." : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "do not destroy." a poem by david, when saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him.>> deliver me from my enemies, my god. set me on high from those who rise up against me. : deliver me from the workers of iniquity. save me from the bloodthirsty men. : for, behold, they lie in wait for my soul. the mighty gather themselves together against me, not for my disobedience, nor for my sin, yahweh. : i have done no wrong, yet they are ready to attack me. rise up, behold, and help me! : you, yahweh god of armies, the god of israel, rouse yourself to punish the nations. show no mercy to the wicked traitors. selah. : they return at evening, howling like dogs, and prowl around the city. : behold, they spew with their mouth. swords are in their lips, "for," they say, "who hears us?" : but you, yahweh, laugh at them. you scoff at all the nations. : oh, my strength, i watch for you, for god is my high tower. : my god will go before me with his loving kindness. god will let me look at my enemies in triumph. : don't kill them, or my people may forget. scatter them by your power, and bring them down, lord our shield. : for the sin of their mouth, and the words of their lips, let them be caught in their pride, for the curses and lies which they utter. : consume them in wrath. consume them, and they will be no more. let them know that god rules in jacob, to the ends of the earth. selah. : at evening let them return. let them howl like a dog, and go around the city. : they shall wander up and down for food, and wait all night if they aren't satisfied. : but i will sing of your strength. yes, i will sing aloud of your loving kindness in the morning. for you have been my high tower, a refuge in the day of my distress. : to you, my strength, i will sing praises. for god is my high tower, the god of my mercy. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "the lily of the covenant." a teaching poem by david, when he fought with aram naharaim and with aram zobah, and joab returned, and killed twelve thousand of edom in the valley of salt.>> god, you have rejected us. you have broken us down. you have been angry. restore us, again. : you have made the land tremble. you have torn it. mend its fractures, for it quakes. : you have shown your people hard things. you have made us drink the wine that makes us stagger. : you have given a banner to those who fear you, that it may be displayed because of the truth. selah. : so that your beloved may be delivered, save with your right hand, and answer us. : god has spoken from his sanctuary: "i will triumph. i will divide shechem, and measure out the valley of succoth. : gilead is mine, and manasseh is mine. ephraim also is the defense of my head. judah is my scepter. : moab is my wash basin. i will throw my shoe on edom. i shout in triumph over philistia." : who will bring me into the strong city? who has led me to edom? : haven't you, god, rejected us? you don't go out with our armies, god. : give us help against the adversary, for the help of man is vain. : through god we shall do valiantly, for it is he who will tread down our adversaries. : <<for the chief musician. for a stringed instrument. by david.>> hear my cry, god. listen to my prayer. : from the end of the earth, i will call to you, when my heart is overwhelmed. lead me to the rock that is higher than i. : for you have been a refuge for me, a strong tower from the enemy. : i will dwell in your tent forever. i will take refuge in the shelter of your wings. selah. : for you, god, have heard my vows. you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. : you will prolong the king's life; his years shall be for generations. : he shall be enthroned in god's presence forever. appoint your loving kindness and truth, that they may preserve him. : so i will sing praise to your name forever, that i may fulfill my vows daily. : <<for the chief musician. to jeduthan. a psalm by david.>> my soul rests in god alone. my salvation is from him. : he alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress--i will never be greatly shaken. : how long will you assault a man, would all of you throw him down, like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? : they fully intend to throw him down from his lofty place. they delight in lies. they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. selah. : my soul, wait in silence for god alone, for my expectation is from him. : he alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. i will not be shaken. : with god is my salvation and my honor. the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in god. : trust in him at all times, you people. pour out your heart before him. god is a refuge for us. selah. : surely men of low degree are just a breath, and men of high degree are a lie. in the balances they will go up. they are together lighter than a breath. : don't trust in oppression. don't become vain in robbery. if riches increase, don't set your heart on them. : god has spoken once; twice i have heard this, that power belongs to god. : also to you, lord, belongs loving kindness, for you reward every man according to his work. : <<a psalm by david, when he was in the desert of judah.>> god, you are my god. i will earnestly seek you. my soul thirsts for you. my flesh longs for you, in a dry and weary land, where there is no water. : so i have seen you in the sanctuary, watching your power and your glory. : because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you. : so i will bless you while i live. i will lift up my hands in your name. : my soul shall be satisfied as with the richest food. my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips, : when i remember you on my bed, and think about you in the night watches. : for you have been my help. i will rejoice in the shadow of your wings. : my soul stays close to you. your right hand holds me up. : but those who seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. : they shall be given over to the power of the sword. they shall be jackal food. : but the king shall rejoice in god. everyone who swears by him will praise him, for the mouth of those who speak lies shall be silenced. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> hear my voice, god, in my complaint. preserve my life from fear of the enemy. : hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from the noisy crowd of the ones doing evil; : who sharpen their tongue like a sword, and aim their arrows, deadly words, : to shoot innocent men from ambushes. they shoot at him suddenly and fearlessly. : they encourage themselves in evil plans. they talk about laying snares secretly. they say, "who will see them?" : they plot injustice, saying, "we have made a perfect plan!" surely man's mind and heart are cunning. : but god will shoot at them. they will be suddenly struck down with an arrow. : their own tongues shall ruin them. all who see them will shake their heads. : all mankind shall be afraid. they shall declare the work of god, and shall wisely ponder what he has done. : the righteous shall be glad in yahweh, and shall take refuge in him. all the upright in heart shall praise him! : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david. a song.>> praise waits for you, god, in zion. to you shall vows be performed. : you who hear prayer, to you all men will come. : sins overwhelmed me, but you atoned for our transgressions. : blessed is one whom you choose, and cause to come near, that he may live in your courts. we will be filled with the goodness of your house, your holy temple. : by awesome deeds of righteousness, you answer us, god of our salvation. you who are the hope of all the ends of the earth, of those who are far away on the sea; : who by his power forms the mountains, having armed yourself with strength; : who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations. : they also who dwell in far-away places are afraid at your wonders. you call the morning's dawn and the evening with songs of joy. : you visit the earth, and water it. you greatly enrich it. the river of god is full of water. you provide them grain, for so you have ordained it. : you drench its furrows. you level its ridges. you soften it with showers. you bless it with a crop. : you crown the year with your bounty. your carts overflow with abundance. : the wilderness grasslands overflow. the hills are clothed with gladness. : the pastures are covered with flocks. the valleys also are clothed with grain. they shout for joy! they also sing. : <<for the chief musician. a song. a psalm.>> make a joyful shout to god, all the earth! : sing to the glory of his name! offer glory and praise! : tell god, "how awesome are your deeds! through the greatness of your power, your enemies submit themselves to you. : all the earth will worship you, and will sing to you; they will sing to your name." selah. : come, and see god's deeds--awesome work on behalf of the children of men. : he turned the sea into dry land. they went through the river on foot. there, we rejoiced in him. : he rules by his might forever. his eyes watch the nations. don't let the rebellious rise up against him. selah. : praise our god, you peoples! make the sound of his praise heard, : who preserves our life among the living, and doesn't allow our feet to be moved. : for you, god, have tested us. you have refined us, as silver is refined. : you brought us into prison. you laid a burden on our backs. : you allowed men to ride over our heads. we went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance. : i will come into your temple with burnt offerings. i will pay my vows to you, : which my lips promised, and my mouth spoke, when i was in distress. : i will offer to you burnt offerings of fat animals, with the offering of rams, i will offer bulls with goats. selah. : come, and hear, all you who fear god. i will declare what he has done for my soul. : i cried to him with my mouth. he was extolled with my tongue. : if i cherished sin in my heart, the lord wouldn't have listened. : but most certainly, god has listened. he has heard the voice of my prayer. : blessed be god, who has not turned away my prayer, nor his loving kindness from me. : <<for the chief musician. with stringed instruments. a psalm. a song.>> may god be merciful to us, bless us, and cause his face to shine on us. selah. : that your way may be known on earth, and your salvation among all nations, : let the peoples praise you, god. let all the peoples praise you. : oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with equity, and govern the nations on earth. selah. : let the peoples praise you, god. let all the peoples praise you. : the earth has yielded its increase. god, even our own god, will bless us. : god will bless us. all the ends of the earth shall fear him. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david. a song.>> let god arise! let his enemies be scattered! let them who hate him also flee before him. : as smoke is driven away, so drive them away. as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of god. : but let the righteous be glad. let them rejoice before god. yes, let them rejoice with gladness. : sing to god! sing praises to his name! extol him who rides on the clouds: to yah, his name! rejoice before him! : a father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, is god in his holy habitation. : god sets the lonely in families. he brings out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land. : god, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wilderness... selah. : the earth trembled. the sky also poured down rain at the presence of the god of sinai--at the presence of god, the god of israel. : you, god, sent a plentiful rain. you confirmed your inheritance, when it was weary. : your congregation lived therein. you, god, prepared your goodness for the poor. : the lord announced the word. the ones who proclaim it are a great company. : "kings of armies flee! they flee!" she who waits at home divides the spoil, : while you sleep among the campfires, the wings of a dove sheathed with silver, her feathers with shining gold. : when the almighty scattered kings in her, it snowed on zalmon. : the mountains of bashan are majestic mountains. the mountains of bashan are rugged. : why do you look in envy, you rugged mountains, at the mountain where god chooses to reign? yes, yahweh will dwell there forever. : the chariots of god are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands. the lord is among them, from sinai, into the sanctuary. : you have ascended on high. you have led away captives. you have received gifts among men, yes, among the rebellious also, that yah god might dwell there. : blessed be the lord, who daily bears our burdens, even the god who is our salvation. selah. : god is to us a god of deliverance. to yahweh, the lord, belongs escape from death. : but god will strike through the head of his enemies, the hairy scalp of such a one as still continues in his guiltiness. : the lord said, "i will bring you again from bashan, i will bring you again from the depths of the sea; : that you may crush them, dipping your foot in blood, that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from your enemies." : they have seen your processions, god, even the processions of my god, my king, into the sanctuary. : the singers went before, the minstrels followed after, in the midst of the ladies playing with tambourines, : "bless god in the congregations, even the lord in the assembly of israel!" : there is little benjamin, their ruler, the princes of judah, their council, the princes of zebulun, and the princes of naphtali. : your god has commanded your strength. strengthen, god, that which you have done for us. : because of your temple at jerusalem, kings shall bring presents to you. : rebuke the wild animal of the reeds, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the peoples. being humbled, may it bring bars of silver. scatter the nations that delight in war. : princes shall come out of egypt. ethiopia shall hurry to stretch out her hands to god. : sing to god, you kingdoms of the earth! sing praises to the lord! selah. : to him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which are of old; behold, he utters his voice, a mighty voice. : ascribe strength to god! his excellency is over israel, his strength is in the skies. : you are awesome, god, in your sanctuaries. the god of israel gives strength and power to his people. praise be to god! : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "lilies." by david.>> save me, god, for the waters have come up to my neck! : i sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold. i have come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. : i am weary with my crying. my throat is dry. my eyes fail, looking for my god. : those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. those who want to cut me off, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. i have to restore what i didn't take away. : god, you know my foolishness. my sins aren't hidden from you. : don't let those who wait for you be shamed through me, lord yahweh of armies. don't let those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, god of israel. : because for your sake, i have borne reproach. shame has covered my face. : i have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's children. : for the zeal of your house consumes me. the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. : when i wept and i fasted, that was to my reproach. : when i made sackcloth my clothing, i became a byword to them. : those who sit in the gate talk about me. i am the song of the drunkards. : but as for me, my prayer is to you, yahweh, in an acceptable time. god, in the abundance of your loving kindness, answer me in the truth of your salvation. : deliver me out of the mire, and don't let me sink. let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters. : don't let the flood waters overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up. don't let the pit shut its mouth on me. : answer me, yahweh, for your loving kindness is good. according to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me. : don't hide your face from your servant, for i am in distress. answer me speedily! : draw near to my soul, and redeem it. ransom me because of my enemies. : you know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. my adversaries are all before you. : reproach has broken my heart, and i am full of heaviness. i looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but i found none. : they also gave me gall for my food. in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. : let their table before them become a snare. may it become a retribution and a trap. : let their eyes be darkened, so that they can't see. let their backs be continually bent. : pour out your indignation on them. let the fierceness of your anger overtake them. : let their habitation be desolate. let no one dwell in their tents. : for they persecute him whom you have wounded. they tell of the sorrow of those whom you have hurt. : charge them with crime upon crime. don't let them come into your righteousness. : let them be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written with the righteous. : but i am in pain and distress. let your salvation, god, protect me. : i will praise the name of god with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. : it will please yahweh better than an ox, or a bull that has horns and hoofs. : the humble have seen it, and are glad. you who seek after god, let your heart live. : for yahweh hears the needy, and doesn't despise his captive people. : let heaven and earth praise him; the seas, and everything that moves therein! : for god will save zion, and build the cities of judah. they shall settle there, and own it. : the children also of his servants shall inherit it. those who love his name shall dwell therein. : <<for the chief musician. by david. a reminder.>> hurry, god, to deliver me. come quickly to help me, yahweh. : let them be disappointed and confounded who seek my soul. let those who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace. : let them be turned because of their shame who say, "aha! aha!" : let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. let those who love your salvation continually say, "let god be exalted!" : but i am poor and needy. come to me quickly, god. you are my help and my deliverer. yahweh, don't delay. : in you, yahweh, i take refuge. never let me be disappointed. : deliver me in your righteousness, and rescue me. turn your ear to me, and save me. : be to me a rock of refuge to which i may always go. give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. : rescue me, my god, from the hand of the wicked, from the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man. : for you are my hope, lord yahweh; my confidence from my youth. : i have relied on you from the womb. you are he who took me out of my mother's womb. i will always praise you. : i am a marvel to many, but you are my strong refuge. : my mouth shall be filled with your praise, with your honor all the day. : don't reject me in my old age. don't forsake me when my strength fails. : for my enemies talk about me. those who watch for my soul conspire together, : saying, "god has forsaken him. pursue and take him, for no one will rescue him." : god, don't be far from me. my god, hurry to help me. : let my accusers be disappointed and consumed. let them be covered with disgrace and scorn who want to harm me. : but i will always hope, and will add to all of your praise. : my mouth will tell about your righteousness, and of your salvation all day, though i don't know its full measure. : i will come with the mighty acts of the lord yahweh. i will make mention of your righteousness, even of yours alone. : god, you have taught me from my youth. until now, i have declared your wondrous works. : yes, even when i am old and gray-haired, god, don't forsake me, until i have declared your strength to the next generation, your might to everyone who is to come. : your righteousness also, god, reaches to the heavens; you have done great things. god, who is like you? : you, who have shown us many and bitter troubles, you will let me live. you will bring us up again from the depths of the earth. : increase my honor, and comfort me again. : i will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my god. i sing praises to you with the lyre, holy one of israel. : my lips shall shout for joy! my soul, which you have redeemed, sings praises to you! : my tongue will also talk about your righteousness all day long, for they are disappointed, and they are confounded, who want to harm me. : <<by solomon.>> god, give the king your justice; your righteousness to the royal son. : he will judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. : the mountains shall bring prosperity to the people. the hills bring the fruit of righteousness. : he will judge the poor of the people. he will save the children of the needy, and will break the oppressor in pieces. : they shall fear you while the sun endures; and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. : he will come down like rain on the mown grass, as showers that water the earth. : in his days, the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon is no more. : he shall have dominion also from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth. : those who dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him. his enemies shall lick the dust. : the kings of tarshish and of the islands will bring tribute. the kings of sheba and seba shall offer gifts. : yes, all kings shall fall down before him. all nations shall serve him. : for he will deliver the needy when he cries; the poor, who has no helper. : he will have pity on the poor and needy. he will save the souls of the needy. : he will redeem their soul from oppression and violence. their blood will be precious in his sight. : they shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of sheba. men shall pray for him continually. they shall bless him all day long. : there shall be abundance of grain throughout the land. its fruit sways like lebanon. let it flourish, thriving like the grass of the field. : his name endures forever. his name continues as long as the sun. men shall be blessed by him. all nations will call him blessed. : praise be to yahweh god, the god of israel, who alone does marvelous deeds. : blessed be his glorious name forever! let the whole earth be filled with his glory! amen and amen. : this ends the prayers by david, the son of jesse. : <<a psalm by asaph.>> surely god is good to israel, to those who are pure in heart. : but as for me, my feet were almost gone. my steps had nearly slipped. : for i was envious of the arrogant, when i saw the prosperity of the wicked. : for there are no struggles in their death, but their strength is firm. : they are free from burdens of men, neither are they plagued like other men. : therefore pride is like a chain around their neck. violence covers them like a garment. : their eyes bulge with fat. their minds pass the limits of conceit. : they scoff and speak with malice. in arrogance, they threaten oppression. : they have set their mouth in the heavens. their tongue walks through the earth. : therefore their people return to them, and they drink up waters of abundance. : they say, "how does god know? is there knowledge in the most high?" : behold, these are the wicked. being always at ease, they increase in riches. : surely in vain i have cleansed my heart, and washed my hands in innocence, : for all day long have i been plagued, and punished every morning. : if i had said, "i will speak thus;" behold, i would have betrayed the generation of your children. : when i tried to understand this, it was too painful for me; : until i entered god's sanctuary, and considered their latter end. : surely you set them in slippery places. you throw them down to destruction. : how they are suddenly destroyed! they are completely swept away with terrors. : as a dream when one wakes up, so, lord, when you awake, you will despise their fantasies. : for my soul was grieved. i was embittered in my heart. : i was so senseless and ignorant. i was a brute beast before you. : nevertheless, i am continually with you. you have held my right hand. : you will guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. : who do i have in heaven? there is no one on earth who i desire besides you. : my flesh and my heart fails, but god is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. : for, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. you have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you. : but it is good for me to come close to god. i have made the lord yahweh my refuge, that i may tell of all your works. : <<a contemplation by asaph.>> god, why have you rejected us forever? why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? : remember your congregation, which you purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your inheritance; mount zion, in which you have lived. : lift up your feet to the perpetual ruins, all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary. : your adversaries have roared in the midst of your assembly. they have set up their standards as signs. : they behaved like men wielding axes, cutting through a thicket of trees. : now they break all its carved work down with hatchet and hammers. : they have burned your sanctuary to the ground. they have profaned the dwelling place of your name. : they said in their heart, "we will crush them completely." they have burned up all the places in the land where god was worshiped. : we see no miraculous signs. there is no longer any prophet, neither is there among us anyone who knows how long. : how long, god, shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme your name forever? : why do you draw back your hand, even your right hand? take it out of your pocket and consume them! : yet god is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. : you divided the sea by your strength. you broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. : you broke the heads of leviathan in pieces. you gave him as food to people and desert creatures. : you opened up spring and stream. you dried up mighty rivers. : the day is yours, the night is also yours. you have prepared the light and the sun. : you have set all the boundaries of the earth. you have made summer and winter. : remember this, that the enemy has mocked you, yahweh. foolish people have blasphemed your name. : don't deliver the soul of your dove to wild beasts. don't forget the life of your poor forever. : honor your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the earth. : don't let the oppressed return ashamed. let the poor and needy praise your name. : arise, god! plead your own cause. remember how the foolish man mocks you all day. : don't forget the voice of your adversaries. the tumult of those who rise up against you ascends continually. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "do not destroy." a psalm by asaph. a song.>> we give thanks to you, god. we give thanks, for your name is near. men tell about your wondrous works. : when i choose the appointed time, i will judge blamelessly. : the earth and all its inhabitants quake. i firmly hold its pillars. selah. : i said to the arrogant, "don't boast!" i said to the wicked, "don't lift up the horn. : don't lift up your horn on high. don't speak with a stiff neck." : for neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south, comes exaltation. : but god is the judge. he puts down one, and lifts up another. : for in the hand of yahweh there is a cup, full of foaming wine mixed with spices. he pours it out. indeed the wicked of the earth drink and drink it to its very dregs. : but i will declare this forever: i will sing praises to the god of jacob. : i will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up. : <<for the chief musician. on stringed instruments. a psalm by asaph. a song.>> in judah, god is known. his name is great in israel. : his tent is also in salem; his dwelling place in zion. : there he broke the flaming arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the weapons of war. selah. : glorious are you, and excellent, more than mountains of game. : valiant men lie plundered, they have slept their last sleep. none of the men of war can lift their hands. : at your rebuke, god of jacob, both chariot and horse are cast into a deep sleep. : you, even you, are to be feared. who can stand in your sight when you are angry? : you pronounced judgment from heaven. the earth feared, and was silent, : when god arose to judgment, to save all the afflicted ones of the earth. selah. : surely the wrath of man praises you. the survivors of your wrath are restrained. : make vows to yahweh your god, and fulfill them! let all of his neighbors bring presents to him who is to be feared. : he will cut off the spirit of princes. he is feared by the kings of the earth. : <<for the chief musician. to jeduthun. a psalm by asaph.>> my cry goes to god! indeed, i cry to god for help, and for him to listen to me. : in the day of my trouble i sought the lord. my hand was stretched out in the night, and didn't get tired. my soul refused to be comforted. : i remember god, and i groan. i complain, and my spirit is overwhelmed. selah. : you hold my eyelids open. i am so troubled that i can't speak. : i have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times. : i remember my song in the night. i consider in my own heart; my spirit diligently inquires: : "will the lord reject us forever? will he be favorable no more? : has his loving kindness vanished forever? does his promise fail for generations? : has god forgotten to be gracious? has he, in anger, withheld his compassion?" selah. : then i thought, "i will appeal to this: the years of the right hand of the most high." : i will remember yah's deeds; for i will remember your wonders of old. : i will also meditate on all your work, and consider your doings. : your way, god, is in the sanctuary. what god is great like god? : you are the god who does wonders. you have made your strength known among the peoples. : you have redeemed your people with your arm, the sons of jacob and joseph. selah. : the waters saw you, god. the waters saw you, and they writhed. the depths also convulsed. : the clouds poured out water. the skies resounded with thunder. your arrows also flashed around. : the voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind. the lightnings lit up the world. the earth trembled and shook. : your way was through the sea; your paths through the great waters. your footsteps were not known. : you led your people like a flock, by the hand of moses and aaron. : <<a contemplation by asaph.>> hear my teaching, my people. turn your ears to the words of my mouth. : i will open my mouth in a parable. i will utter dark sayings of old, : which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. : we will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of yahweh, his strength, and his wondrous works that he has done. : for he established a testimony in jacob, and appointed a teaching in israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; : that the generation to come might know, even the children who should be born; who should arise and tell their children, : that they might set their hope in god, and not forget the works of god, but keep his commandments, : and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn't make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with god. : the children of ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. : they didn't keep god's covenant, and refused to walk in his law. : they forgot his doings, his wondrous works that he had shown them. : he did marvelous things in the sight of their fathers, in the land of egypt, in the field of zoan. : he split the sea, and caused them to pass through. he made the waters stand as a heap. : in the daytime he also led them with a cloud, and all night with a light of fire. : he split rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as out of the depths. : he brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers. : yet they still went on to sin against him, to rebel against the most high in the desert. : they tempted god in their heart by asking food according to their desire. : yes, they spoke against god. they said, "can god prepare a table in the wilderness? : behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams overflowed. can he give bread also? will he provide flesh for his people?" : therefore yahweh heard, and was angry. a fire was kindled against jacob, anger also went up against israel, : because they didn't believe in god, and didn't trust in his salvation. : yet he commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven. : he rained down manna on them to eat, and gave them food from the sky. : man ate the bread of angels. he sent them food to the full. : he caused the east wind to blow in the sky. by his power he guided the south wind. : he rained also flesh on them as the dust; winged birds as the sand of the seas. : he let them fall in the midst of their camp, around their habitations. : so they ate, and were well filled. he gave them their own desire. : they didn't turn from their cravings. their food was yet in their mouths, : when the anger of god went up against them, killed some of the fattest of them, and struck down the young men of israel. : for all this they still sinned, and didn't believe in his wondrous works. : therefore he consumed their days in vanity, and their years in terror. : when he killed them, then they inquired after him. they returned and sought god earnestly. : they remembered that god was their rock, the most high god, their redeemer. : but they flattered him with their mouth, and lied to him with their tongue. : for their heart was not right with him, neither were they faithful in his covenant. : but he, being merciful, forgave iniquity, and didn't destroy them. yes, many times he turned his anger away, and didn't stir up all his wrath. : he remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes away, and doesn't come again. : how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness, and grieved him in the desert! : they turned again and tempted god, and provoked the holy one of israel. : they didn't remember his hand, nor the day when he redeemed them from the adversary; : how he set his signs in egypt, his wonders in the field of zoan, : he turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that they could not drink. : he sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. : he gave also their increase to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust. : he destroyed their vines with hail, their sycamore fig trees with frost. : he gave over their livestock also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. : he threw on them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, and a band of angels of evil. : he made a path for his anger. he didn't spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence, : and struck all the firstborn in egypt, the chief of their strength in the tents of ham. : but he led forth his own people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. : he led them safely, so that they weren't afraid, but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. : he brought them to the border of his sanctuary, to this mountain, which his right hand had taken. : he also drove out the nations before them, allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of israel to dwell in their tents. : yet they tempted and rebelled against the most high god, and didn't keep his testimonies; : but turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers. they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. : for they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their engraved images. : when god heard this, he was angry, and greatly abhorred israel; : so that he forsook the tent of shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; : and delivered his strength into captivity, his glory into the adversary's hand. : he also gave his people over to the sword, and was angry with his inheritance. : fire devoured their young men. their virgins had no wedding song. : their priests fell by the sword, and their widows couldn't weep. : then the lord awakened as one out of sleep, like a mighty man who shouts by reason of wine. : he struck his adversaries backward. he put them to a perpetual reproach. : moreover he rejected the tent of joseph, and didn't choose the tribe of ephraim, : but chose the tribe of judah, mount zion which he loved. : he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth which he has established forever. : he also chose david his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; : from following the ewes that have their young, he brought him to be the shepherd of jacob, his people, and israel, his inheritance. : so he was their shepherd according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. : <<a psalm by asaph.>> god, the nations have come into your inheritance. they have defiled your holy temple. they have laid jerusalem in heaps. : they have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth. : their blood they have shed like water around jerusalem. there was no one to bury them. : we have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and derision to those who are around us. : how long, yahweh? will you be angry forever? will your jealousy burn like fire? : pour out your wrath on the nations that don't know you; on the kingdoms that don't call on your name; : for they have devoured jacob, and destroyed his homeland. : don't hold the iniquities of our forefathers against us. let your tender mercies speedily meet us, for we are in desperate need. : help us, god of our salvation, for the glory of your name. deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name's sake. : why should the nations say, "where is their god?" let it be known among the nations, before our eyes, that vengeance for your servants' blood is being poured out. : let the sighing of the prisoner come before you. according to the greatness of your power, preserve those who are sentenced to death. : pay back to our neighbors seven times into their bosom their reproach with which they have reproached you, lord. : so we, your people and sheep of your pasture, will give you thanks forever. we will praise you forever, to all generations. : <<for the chief musician. to the tune of "the lilies of the covenant." a psalm by asaph.>> hear us, shepherd of israel, you who lead joseph like a flock, you who sit above the cherubim, shine forth. : before ephraim and benjamin and manasseh, stir up your might! come to save us! : turn us again, god. cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. : yahweh god of armies, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people? : you have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in large measure. : you make us a source of contention to our neighbors. our enemies laugh among themselves. : turn us again, god of armies. cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. : you brought a vine out of egypt. you drove out the nations, and planted it. : you cleared the ground for it. it took deep root, and filled the land. : the mountains were covered with its shadow. its boughs were like god's cedars. : it sent out its branches to the sea, its shoots to the river. : why have you broken down its walls, so that all those who pass by the way pluck it? : the boar out of the wood ravages it. the wild animals of the field feed on it. : turn again, we beg you, god of armies. look down from heaven, and see, and visit this vine, : the stock which your right hand planted, the branch that you made strong for yourself. : it's burned with fire. it's cut down. they perish at your rebuke. : let your hand be on the man of your right hand, on the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. : so we will not turn away from you. revive us, and we will call on your name. : turn us again, yahweh god of armies. cause your face to shine, and we will be saved. : <<for the chief musician. on an instrument of gath. by asaph.>> sing aloud to god, our strength! make a joyful shout to the god of jacob! : raise a song, and bring here the tambourine, the pleasant lyre with the harp. : blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day. : for it is a statute for israel, an ordinance of the god of jacob. : he appointed it in joseph for a testimony, when he went out over the land of egypt, i heard a language that i didn't know. : "i removed his shoulder from the burden. his hands were freed from the basket. : you called in trouble, and i delivered you. i answered you in the secret place of thunder. i tested you at the waters of meribah." selah. : "hear, my people, and i will testify to you, israel, if you would listen to me! : there shall be no strange god in you, neither shall you worship any foreign god. : i am yahweh, your god, who brought you up out of the land of egypt. open your mouth wide, and i will fill it. : but my people didn't listen to my voice. israel desired none of me. : so i let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels. : oh that my people would listen to me, that israel would walk in my ways! : i would soon subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their adversaries. : the haters of yahweh would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever. : but he would have also fed them with the finest of the wheat. i will satisfy you with honey out of the rock." : <<a psalm by asaph.>> god presides in the great assembly. he judges among the gods. : "how long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked?" selah. : "defend the weak, the poor, and the fatherless. maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. : rescue the weak and needy. deliver them out of the hand of the wicked." : they don't know, neither do they understand. they walk back and forth in darkness. all the foundations of the earth are shaken. : i said, "you are gods, all of you are sons of the most high. : nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like one of the rulers." : arise, god, judge the earth, for you inherit all of the nations. : <<a song. a psalm by asaph.>> god, don't keep silent. don't keep silent, and don't be still, god. : for, behold, your enemies are stirred up. those who hate you have lifted up their heads. : they conspire with cunning against your people. they plot against your cherished ones. : "come," they say, "and let's destroy them as a nation, that the name of israel may be remembered no more." : for they have conspired together with one mind. they form an alliance against you. : the tents of edom and the ishmaelites; moab, and the hagrites; : gebal, ammon, and amalek; philistia with the inhabitants of tyre; : assyria also is joined with them. they have helped the children of lot. selah. : do to them as you did to midian, as to sisera, as to jabin, at the river kishon; : who perished at endor, who became as dung for the earth. : make their nobles like oreb and zeeb; yes, all their princes like zebah and zalmunna; : who said, "let us take possession of god's pasturelands." : my god, make them like tumbleweed; like chaff before the wind. : as the fire that burns the forest, as the flame that sets the mountains on fire, : so pursue them with your tempest, and terrify them with your storm. : fill their faces with confusion, that they may seek your name, yahweh. : let them be disappointed and dismayed forever. yes, let them be confounded and perish; : that they may know that you alone, whose name is yahweh, are the most high over all the earth. : <<for the chief musician. on an instrument of gath. a psalm by the sons of korah.>> how lovely are your dwellings, yahweh of armies! : my soul longs, and even faints for the courts of yahweh. my heart and my flesh cry out for the living god. : yes, the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young, near your altars, yahweh of armies, my king, and my god. : blessed are those who dwell in your house. they are always praising you. selah. : blessed are those whose strength is in you; who have set their hearts on a pilgrimage. : passing through the valley of weeping, they make it a place of springs. yes, the autumn rain covers it with blessings. : they go from strength to strength. everyone of them appears before god in zion. : yahweh, god of armies, hear my prayer. listen, god of jacob. selah. : behold, god our shield, look at the face of your anointed. : for a day in your courts is better than a thousand. i would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my god, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. : for yahweh god is a sun and a shield. yahweh will give grace and glory. he withholds no good thing from those who walk blamelessly. : yahweh of armies, blessed is the man who trusts in you. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by the sons of korah.>> yahweh, you have been favorable to your land. you have restored the fortunes of jacob. : you have forgiven the iniquity of your people. you have covered all their sin. selah. : you have taken away all your wrath. you have turned from the fierceness of your anger. : turn us, god of our salvation, and cause your indignation toward us to cease. : will you be angry with us forever? will you draw out your anger to all generations? : won't you revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? : show us your loving kindness, yahweh. grant us your salvation. : i will hear what god, yahweh, will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, his saints; but let them not turn again to folly. : surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. : mercy and truth meet together. righteousness and peace have kissed each other. : truth springs out of the earth. righteousness has looked down from heaven. : yes, yahweh will give that which is good. our land will yield its increase. : righteousness goes before him, and prepares the way for his steps. : <<a prayer by david.>> hear, yahweh, and answer me, for i am poor and needy. : preserve my soul, for i am godly. you, my god, save your servant who trusts in you. : be merciful to me, lord, for i call to you all day long. : bring joy to the soul of your servant, for to you, lord, do i lift up my soul. : for you, lord, are good, and ready to forgive; abundant in loving kindness to all those who call on you. : hear, yahweh, my prayer. listen to the voice of my petitions. : in the day of my trouble i will call on you, for you will answer me. : there is no one like you among the gods, lord, nor any deeds like your deeds. : all nations you have made will come and worship before you, lord. they shall glorify your name. : for you are great, and do wondrous things. you are god alone. : teach me your way, yahweh. i will walk in your truth. make my heart undivided to fear your name. : i will praise you, lord my god, with my whole heart. i will glorify your name forevermore. : for your loving kindness is great toward me. you have delivered my soul from the lowest sheol. : god, the proud have risen up against me. a company of violent men have sought after my soul, and they don't hold regard for you before them. : but you, lord, are a merciful and gracious god, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth. : turn to me, and have mercy on me! give your strength to your servant. save the son of your handmaid. : show me a sign of your goodness, that those who hate me may see it, and be shamed, because you, yahweh, have helped me, and comforted me. : <<a psalm by the sons of korah; a song.>> his foundation is in the holy mountains. : yahweh loves the gates of zion more than all the dwellings of jacob. : glorious things are spoken about you, city of god. selah. : i will record rahab{rahab is a reference to egypt.} and babylon among those who acknowledge me. behold, philistia, tyre, and also ethiopia: "this one was born there." : yes, of zion it will be said, "this one and that one was born in her;" the most high himself will establish her. : yahweh will count, when he writes up the peoples, "this one was born there." selah. : those who sing as well as those who dance say, "all my springs are in you." : <<a song. a psalm by the sons of korah. for the chief musician. to the tune of "the suffering of affliction." a contemplation by heman, the ezrahite.>> yahweh, the god of my salvation, i have cried day and night before you. : let my prayer enter into your presence. turn your ear to my cry. : for my soul is full of troubles. my life draws near to sheol. : i am counted among those who go down into the pit. i am like a man who has no help, : set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. they are cut off from your hand. : you have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. : your wrath lies heavily on me. you have afflicted me with all your waves. selah. : you have taken my friends from me. you have made me an abomination to them. i am confined, and i can't escape. : my eyes are dim from grief. i have called on you daily, yahweh. i have spread out my hands to you. : do you show wonders to the dead? do the dead rise up and praise you? selah. : is your loving kindness declared in the grave? or your faithfulness in destruction? : are your wonders made known in the dark? or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? : but to you, yahweh, i have cried. in the morning, my prayer comes before you. : yahweh, why do you reject my soul? why do you hide your face from me? : i am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. while i suffer your terrors, i am distracted. : your fierce wrath has gone over me. your terrors have cut me off. : they came around me like water all day long. they completely engulfed me. : you have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness. : <<a contemplation by ethan, the ezrahite.>> i will sing of the loving kindness of yahweh forever. with my mouth, i will make known your faithfulness to all generations. : i indeed declare, "love stands firm forever. you established the heavens. your faithfulness is in them." : "i have made a covenant with my chosen one, i have sworn to david, my servant, : 'i will establish your seed forever, and build up your throne to all generations.'" selah. : the heavens will praise your wonders, yahweh; your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. : for who in the skies can be compared to yahweh? who among the sons of the heavenly beings is like yahweh, : a very awesome god in the council of the holy ones, to be feared above all those who are around him? : yahweh, god of armies, who is a mighty one, like you? yah, your faithfulness is around you. : you rule the pride of the sea. when its waves rise up, you calm them. : you have broken rahab in pieces, like one of the slain. you have scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. : the heavens are yours. the earth also is yours; the world and its fullness. you have founded them. : the north and the south, you have created them. tabor and hermon rejoice in your name. : you have a mighty arm. your hand is strong, and your right hand is exalted. : righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. loving kindness and truth go before your face. : blessed are the people who learn to acclaim you. they walk in the light of your presence, yahweh. : in your name they rejoice all day. in your righteousness, they are exalted. : for you are the glory of their strength. in your favor, our horn will be exalted. : for our shield belongs to yahweh; our king to the holy one of israel. : then you spoke in vision to your saints, and said, "i have bestowed strength on the warrior. i have exalted a young man from the people. : i have found david, my servant. i have anointed him with my holy oil, : with whom my hand shall be established. my arm will also strengthen him. : no enemy will tax him. no wicked man will oppress him. : i will beat down his adversaries before him, and strike those who hate him. : but my faithfulness and my loving kindness will be with him. in my name, his horn will be exalted. : i will set his hand also on the sea, and his right hand on the rivers. : he will call to me, 'you are my father, my god, and the rock of my salvation!' : i will also appoint him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. : i will keep my loving kindness for him forevermore. my covenant will stand firm with him. : i will also make his seed endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. : if his children forsake my law, and don't walk in my ordinances; : if they break my statutes, and don't keep my commandments; : then i will punish their sin with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. : but i will not completely take my loving kindness from him, nor allow my faithfulness to fail. : i will not break my covenant, nor alter what my lips have uttered. : once have i sworn by my holiness, i will not lie to david. : his seed will endure forever, his throne like the sun before me. : it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky." selah. : but you have rejected and spurned. you have been angry with your anointed. : you have renounced the covenant of your servant. you have defiled his crown in the dust. : you have broken down all his hedges. you have brought his strongholds to ruin. : all who pass by the way rob him. he has become a reproach to his neighbors. : you have exalted the right hand of his adversaries. you have made all of his enemies rejoice. : yes, you turn back the edge of his sword, and haven't supported him in battle. : you have ended his splendor, and thrown his throne down to the ground. : you have shortened the days of his youth. you have covered him with shame. selah. : how long, yahweh? will you hide yourself forever? will your wrath burn like fire? : remember how short my time is! for what vanity have you created all the children of men! : what man is he who shall live and not see death, who shall deliver his soul from the power of sheol? selah. : lord, where are your former loving kindnesses, which you swore to david in your faithfulness? : remember, lord, the reproach of your servants, how i bear in my heart the taunts of all the mighty peoples, : with which your enemies have mocked, yahweh, with which they have mocked the footsteps of your anointed one. : blessed be yahweh forevermore. amen, and amen. : <<a prayer by moses, the man of god.>> lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations. : before the mountains were brought forth, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are god. : you turn man to destruction, saying, "return, you children of men." : for a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night. : you sweep them away as they sleep. in the morning they sprout like new grass. : in the morning it sprouts and springs up. by evening, it is withered and dry. : for we are consumed in your anger. we are troubled in your wrath. : you have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. : for all our days have passed away in your wrath. we bring our years to an end as a sigh. : the days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away. : who knows the power of your anger, your wrath according to the fear that is due to you? : so teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. : relent, yahweh! how long? have compassion on your servants! : satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. : make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. : let your work appear to your servants; your glory to their children. : let the favor of the lord our god be on us; establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands. : he who dwells in the secret place of the most high will rest in the shadow of the almighty. : i will say of yahweh, "he is my refuge and my fortress; my god, in whom i trust." : for he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly pestilence. : he will cover you with his feathers. under his wings you will take refuge. his faithfulness is your shield and rampart. : you shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day; : nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that wastes at noonday. : a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you. : you will only look with your eyes, and see the recompense of the wicked. : because you have made yahweh your refuge, and the most high your dwelling place, : no evil shall happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling. : for he will give his angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways. : they will bear you up in their hands, so that you won't dash your foot against a stone. : you will tread on the lion and cobra. you will trample the young lion and the serpent underfoot. : "because he has set his love on me, therefore i will deliver him. i will set him on high, because he has known my name. : he will call on me, and i will answer him. i will be with him in trouble. i will deliver him, and honor him. : i will satisfy him with long life, and show him my salvation." : <<a psalm. a song for the sabbath day.>> it is a good thing to give thanks to yahweh, to sing praises to your name, most high; : to proclaim your loving kindness in the morning, and your faithfulness every night, : with the ten-stringed lute, with the harp, and with the melody of the lyre. : for you, yahweh, have made me glad through your work. i will triumph in the works of your hands. : how great are your works, yahweh! your thoughts are very deep. : a senseless man doesn't know, neither does a fool understand this: : though the wicked spring up as the grass, and all the evil-doers flourish, they will be destroyed forever. : but you, yahweh, are on high forevermore. : for, behold, your enemies, yahweh, for, behold, your enemies shall perish. all the evil-doers will be scattered. : but you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox. i am anointed with fresh oil. : my eye has also seen my enemies. my ears have heard of the wicked enemies who rise up against me. : the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. he will grow like a cedar in lebanon. : they are planted in yahweh's house. they will flourish in our god's courts. : they will still bring forth fruit in old age. they will be full of sap and green, : to show that yahweh is upright. he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. : yahweh reigns! he is clothed with majesty! yahweh is armed with strength. the world also is established. it can't be moved. : your throne is established from long ago. you are from everlasting. : the floods have lifted up, yahweh, the floods have lifted up their voice. the floods lift up their waves. : above the voices of many waters, the mighty breakers of the sea, yahweh on high is mighty. : your statutes stand firm. holiness adorns your house, yahweh, forevermore. : yahweh, you god to whom vengeance belongs, you god to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth. : rise up, you judge of the earth. pay back the proud what they deserve. : yahweh, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? : they pour out arrogant words. all the evil-doers boast. : they break your people in pieces, yahweh, and afflict your heritage. : they kill the widow and the alien, and murder the fatherless. : they say, "yah will not see, neither will jacob's god consider." : consider, you senseless among the people; you fools, when will you be wise? : he who implanted the ear, won't he hear? he who formed the eye, won't he see? : he who disciplines the nations, won't he punish? he who teaches man knows. : yahweh knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile. : blessed is the man whom you discipline, yah, and teach out of your law; : that you may give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit is dug for the wicked. : for yahweh won't reject his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance. : for judgment will return to righteousness. all the upright in heart shall follow it. : who will rise up for me against the wicked? who will stand up for me against the evil-doers? : unless yahweh had been my help, my soul would have soon lived in silence. : when i said, "my foot is slipping!" your loving kindness, yahweh, held me up. : in the multitude of my thoughts within me, your comforts delight my soul. : shall the throne of wickedness have fellowship with you, which brings about mischief by statute? : they gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood. : but yahweh has been my high tower, my god, the rock of my refuge. : he has brought on them their own iniquity, and will cut them off in their own wickedness. yahweh, our god, will cut them off. : oh come, let's sing to yahweh. let's shout aloud to the rock of our salvation! : let's come before his presence with thanksgiving. let's extol him with songs! : for yahweh is a great god, a great king above all gods. : in his hand are the deep places of the earth. the heights of the mountains are also his. : the sea is his, and he made it. his hands formed the dry land. : oh come, let's worship and bow down. let's kneel before yahweh, our maker, : for he is our god. we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep in his care. today, oh that you would hear his voice! : don't harden your heart, as at meribah, as in the day of massah in the wilderness, : when your fathers tempted me, tested me, and saw my work. : forty long years i was grieved with that generation, and said, "it is a people that errs in their heart. they have not known my ways." : therefore i swore in my wrath, "they won't enter into my rest." : sing to yahweh a new song! sing to yahweh, all the earth. : sing to yahweh! bless his name! proclaim his salvation from day to day! : declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples. : for great is yahweh, and greatly to be praised! he is to be feared above all gods. : for all the gods of the peoples are idols, but yahweh made the heavens. : honor and majesty are before him. strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. : ascribe to yahweh, you families of nations, ascribe to yahweh glory and strength. : ascribe to yahweh the glory due to his name. bring an offering, and come into his courts. : worship yahweh in holy array. tremble before him, all the earth. : say among the nations, "yahweh reigns." the world is also established. it can't be moved. he will judge the peoples with equity. : let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice. let the sea roar, and its fullness! : let the field and all that is in it exult! then all the trees of the woods shall sing for joy : before yahweh; for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. he will judge the world with righteousness, the peoples with his truth. : yahweh reigns! let the earth rejoice! let the multitude of islands be glad! : clouds and darkness are around him. righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. : a fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries on every side. : his lightning lights up the world. the earth sees, and trembles. : the mountains melt like wax at the presence of yahweh, at the presence of the lord of the whole earth. : the heavens declare his righteousness. all the peoples have seen his glory. : let all them be shamed who serve engraved images, who boast in their idols. worship him, all you gods! : zion heard and was glad. the daughters of judah rejoiced, because of your judgments, yahweh. : for you, yahweh, are most high above all the earth. you are exalted far above all gods. : you who love yahweh, hate evil. he preserves the souls of his saints. he delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. : light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. : be glad in yahweh, you righteous people! give thanks to his holy name. : <<a psalm.>> sing to yahweh a new song, for he has done marvelous things! his right hand, and his holy arm, have worked salvation for him. : yahweh has made known his salvation. he has openly shown his righteousness in the sight of the nations. : he has remembered his loving kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of israel. all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our god. : make a joyful noise to yahweh, all the earth! burst out and sing for joy, yes, sing praises! : sing praises to yahweh with the harp, with the harp and the voice of melody. : with trumpets and sound of the ram's horn, make a joyful noise before the king, yahweh. : let the sea roar with its fullness; the world, and those who dwell therein. : let the rivers clap their hands. let the mountains sing for joy together. : let them sing before yahweh, for he comes to judge the earth. he will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity. : yahweh reigns! let the peoples tremble. he sits enthroned among the cherubim. let the earth be moved. : yahweh is great in zion. he is high above all the peoples. : let them praise your great and awesome name. he is holy! : the king's strength also loves justice. you do establish equity. you execute justice and righteousness in jacob. : exalt yahweh our god. worship at his footstool. he is holy! : moses and aaron were among his priests, samuel among those who call on his name; they called on yahweh, and he answered them. : he spoke to them in the pillar of cloud. they kept his testimonies, the statute that he gave them. : you answered them, yahweh our god. you are a god who forgave them, although you took vengeance for their doings. : exalt yahweh, our god. worship at his holy hill, for yahweh, our god, is holy! : <<a psalm of thanksgiving.>> shout for joy to yahweh, all you lands! : serve yahweh with gladness. come before his presence with singing. : know that yahweh, he is god. it is he who has made us, and we are his. we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. : enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. give thanks to him, and bless his name. : for yahweh is good. his loving kindness endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations. : <<a psalm by david.>> i will sing of loving kindness and justice. to you, yahweh, i will sing praises. : i will be careful to live a blameless life. when will you come to me? i will walk within my house with a blameless heart. : i will set no vile thing before my eyes. i hate the deeds of faithless men. they will not cling to me. : a perverse heart will be far from me. i will have nothing to do with evil. : i will silence whoever secretly slanders his neighbor. i won't tolerate one who is haughty and conceited. : my eyes will be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me. he who walks in a perfect way, he will serve me. : he who practices deceit won't dwell within my house. he who speaks falsehood won't be established before my eyes. : morning by morning, i will destroy all the wicked of the land; to cut off all the workers of iniquity from yahweh's city. : <<a prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before yahweh.>> hear my prayer, yahweh! let my cry come to you. : don't hide your face from me in the day of my distress. turn your ear to me. answer me quickly in the day when i call. : for my days consume away like smoke. my bones are burned as a firebrand. : my heart is blighted like grass, and withered, for i forget to eat my bread. : by reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones stick to my skin. : i am like a pelican of the wilderness. i have become as an owl of the waste places. : i watch, and have become like a sparrow that is alone on the housetop. : my enemies reproach me all day. those who are mad at me use my name as a curse. : for i have eaten ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with tears, : because of your indignation and your wrath, for you have taken me up, and thrown me away. : my days are like a long shadow. i have withered like grass. : but you, yahweh, will abide forever; your renown endures to all generations. : you will arise and have mercy on zion; for it is time to have pity on her. yes, the set time has come. : for your servants take pleasure in her stones, and have pity on her dust. : so the nations will fear the name of yahweh; all the kings of the earth your glory. : for yahweh has built up zion. he has appeared in his glory. : he has responded to the prayer of the destitute, and has not despised their prayer. : this will be written for the generation to come. a people which will be created will praise yah. : for he has looked down from the height of his sanctuary. from heaven, yahweh saw the earth; : to hear the groans of the prisoner; to free those who are condemned to death; : that men may declare the name of yahweh in zion, and his praise in jerusalem; : when the peoples are gathered together, the kingdoms, to serve yahweh. : he weakened my strength along the course. he shortened my days. : i said, "my god, don't take me away in the midst of my days. your years are throughout all generations. : of old, you laid the foundation of the earth. the heavens are the work of your hands. : they will perish, but you will endure. yes, all of them will wear out like a garment. you will change them like a cloak, and they will be changed. : but you are the same. your years will have no end. : the children of your servants will continue. their seed will be established before you." : <<by david.>> praise yahweh, my soul! all that is within me, praise his holy name! : praise yahweh, my soul, and don't forget all his benefits; : who forgives all your sins; who heals all your diseases; : who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies; : who satisfies your desire with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. : yahweh executes righteous acts, and justice for all who are oppressed. : he made known his ways to moses, his deeds to the children of israel. : yahweh is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness. : he will not always accuse; neither will he stay angry forever. : he has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us for our iniquities. : for as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his loving kindness toward those who fear him. : as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. : like a father has compassion on his children, so yahweh has compassion on those who fear him. : for he knows how we are made. he remembers that we are dust. : as for man, his days are like grass. as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. : for the wind passes over it, and it is gone. its place remembers it no more. : but yahweh's loving kindness is from everlasting to everlasting with those who fear him, his righteousness to children's children; : to those who keep his covenant, to those who remember to obey his precepts. : yahweh has established his throne in the heavens. his kingdom rules over all. : praise yahweh, you angels of his, who are mighty in strength, who fulfill his word, obeying the voice of his word. : praise yahweh, all you armies of his, you servants of his, who do his pleasure. : praise yahweh, all you works of his, in all places of his dominion. praise yahweh, my soul! : bless yahweh, my soul. yahweh, my god, you are very great. you are clothed with honor and majesty. : he covers himself with light as with a garment. he stretches out the heavens like a curtain. : he lays the beams of his chambers in the waters. he makes the clouds his chariot. he walks on the wings of the wind. : he makes his messengers{or, angels} winds; his servants flames of fire. : he laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be moved forever. : you covered it with the deep as with a cloak. the waters stood above the mountains. : at your rebuke they fled. at the voice of your thunder they hurried away. : the mountains rose, the valleys sank down, to the place which you had assigned to them. : you have set a boundary that they may not pass over; that they don't turn again to cover the earth. : he sends forth springs into the valleys. they run among the mountains. : they give drink to every animal of the field. the wild donkeys quench their thirst. : the birds of the sky nest by them. they sing among the branches. : he waters the mountains from his chambers. the earth is filled with the fruit of your works. : he causes the grass to grow for the livestock, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food out of the earth: : wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face to shine, and bread that strengthens man's heart. : yahweh's trees are well watered, the cedars of lebanon, which he has planted; : where the birds make their nests. the stork makes its home in the fir trees. : the high mountains are for the wild goats. the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers. : he appointed the moon for seasons. the sun knows when to set. : you make darkness, and it is night, in which all the animals of the forest prowl. : the young lions roar after their prey, and seek their food from god. : the sun rises, and they steal away, and lay down in their dens. : man goes forth to his work, to his labor until the evening. : yahweh, how many are your works! in wisdom have you made them all. the earth is full of your riches. : there is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals. : there the ships go, and leviathan, whom you formed to play there. : these all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season. : you give to them; they gather. you open your hand; they are satisfied with good. : you hide your face: they are troubled; you take away their breath: they die, and return to the dust. : you send forth your spirit: they are created. you renew the face of the ground. : let the glory of yahweh endure forever. let yahweh rejoice in his works. : he looks at the earth, and it trembles. he touches the mountains, and they smoke. : i will sing to yahweh as long as i live. i will sing praise to my god while i have any being. : let your meditation be sweet to him. i will rejoice in yahweh. : let sinners be consumed out of the earth. let the wicked be no more. bless yahweh, my soul. praise yah! : give thanks to yahweh! call on his name! make his doings known among the peoples. : sing to him, sing praises to him! tell of all his marvelous works. : glory in his holy name. let the heart of those who seek yahweh rejoice. : seek yahweh and his strength. seek his face forever more. : remember his marvelous works that he has done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth, : you seed of abraham, his servant, you children of jacob, his chosen ones. : he is yahweh, our god. his judgments are in all the earth. : he has remembered his covenant forever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations, : the covenant which he made with abraham, his oath to isaac, : and confirmed the same to jacob for a statute; to israel for an everlasting covenant, : saying, "to you i will give the land of canaan, the lot of your inheritance;" : when they were but a few men in number, yes, very few, and foreigners in it. : they went about from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people. : he allowed no one to do them wrong. yes, he reproved kings for their sakes, : "don't touch my anointed ones! do my prophets no harm!" : he called for a famine on the land. he destroyed the food supplies. : he sent a man before them. joseph was sold for a slave. : they bruised his feet with shackles. his neck was locked in irons, : until the time that his word happened, and yahweh's word proved him true. : the king sent and freed him; even the ruler of peoples, and let him go free. : he made him lord of his house, and ruler of all of his possessions; : to discipline his princes at his pleasure, and to teach his elders wisdom. : israel also came into egypt. jacob sojourned in the land of ham. : he increased his people greatly, and made them stronger than their adversaries. : he turned their heart to hate his people, to conspire against his servants. : he sent moses, his servant, and aaron, whom he had chosen. : they performed miracles among them, and wonders in the land of ham. : he sent darkness, and made it dark. they didn't rebel against his words. : he turned their waters into blood, and killed their fish. : their land swarmed with frogs, even in the chambers of their kings. : he spoke, and swarms of flies came, and lice in all their borders. : he gave them hail for rain, with lightning in their land. : he struck their vines and also their fig trees, and shattered the trees of their country. : he spoke, and the locusts came, and the grasshoppers, without number, : ate up every plant in their land; and ate up the fruit of their ground. : he struck also all the firstborn in their land, the first fruits of all their manhood. : he brought them forth with silver and gold. there was not one feeble person among his tribes. : egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them had fallen on them. : he spread a cloud for a covering, fire to give light in the night. : they asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of the sky. : he opened the rock, and waters gushed out. they ran as a river in the dry places. : for he remembered his holy word, and abraham, his servant. : he brought forth his people with joy, his chosen with singing. : he gave them the lands of the nations. they took the labor of the peoples in possession, : that they might keep his statutes, and observe his laws. praise yah! : praise yahweh! give thanks to yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. : who can utter the mighty acts of yahweh, or fully declare all his praise? : blessed are those who keep justice. blessed is one who does what is right at all times. : remember me, yahweh, with the favor that you show to your people. visit me with your salvation, : that i may see the prosperity of your chosen, that i may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that i may glory with your inheritance. : we have sinned with our fathers. we have committed iniquity. we have done wickedly. : our fathers didn't understand your wonders in egypt. they didn't remember the multitude of your loving kindnesses, but were rebellious at the sea, even at the red sea{or, sea of reeds}. : nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power known. : he rebuked the red sea{or, sea of reeds} also, and it was dried up; so he led them through the depths, as through a desert. : he saved them from the hand of him who hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. : the waters covered their adversaries. there was not one of them left. : then they believed his words. they sang his praise. : they soon forgot his works. they didn't wait for his counsel, : but gave in to craving in the desert, and tested god in the wasteland. : he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul. : they envied moses also in the camp, and aaron, yahweh's saint. : the earth opened and swallowed up dathan, and covered the company of abiram. : a fire was kindled in their company. the flame burned up the wicked. : they made a calf in horeb, and worshiped a molten image. : thus they exchanged their glory for an image of a bull that eats grass. : they forgot god, their savior, who had done great things in egypt, : wondrous works in the land of ham, and awesome things by the red sea{or, sea of reeds}. : therefore he said that he would destroy them, had moses, his chosen, not stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, so that he wouldn't destroy them. : yes, they despised the pleasant land. they didn't believe his word, : but murmured in their tents, and didn't listen to yahweh's voice. : therefore he swore to them that he would overthrow them in the wilderness, : that he would overthrow their seed among the nations, and scatter them in the lands. : they joined themselves also to baal peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. : thus they provoked him to anger with their deeds. the plague broke in on them. : then phinehas stood up, and executed judgment, so the plague was stopped. : that was credited to him for righteousness, for all generations to come. : they angered him also at the waters of meribah, so that moses was troubled for their sakes; : because they were rebellious against his spirit, he spoke rashly with his lips. : they didn't destroy the peoples, as yahweh commanded them, : but mixed themselves with the nations, and learned their works. : they served their idols, which became a snare to them. : yes, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. : they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of canaan. the land was polluted with blood. : thus were they defiled with their works, and prostituted themselves in their deeds. : therefore yahweh burned with anger against his people. he abhorred his inheritance. : he gave them into the hand of the nations. those who hated them ruled over them. : their enemies also oppressed them. they were brought into subjection under their hand. : many times he delivered them, but they were rebellious in their counsel, and were brought low in their iniquity. : nevertheless he regarded their distress, when he heard their cry. : he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. : he made them also to be pitied by all those who carried them captive. : save us, yahweh, our god, gather us from among the nations, to give thanks to your holy name, to triumph in your praise! : blessed be yahweh, the god of israel, from everlasting even to everlasting! let all the people say, "amen." praise yah! : give thanks to yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. : let the redeemed by yahweh say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary, : and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. : they wandered in the wilderness in a desert way. they found no city to live in. : hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. : then they cried to yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses, : he led them also by a straight way, that they might go to a city to live in. : let them praise yahweh for his loving kindness, for his wonderful works to the children of men! : for he satisfies the longing soul. he fills the hungry soul with good. : some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron, : because they rebelled against the words of god, and condemned the counsel of the most high. : therefore he brought down their heart with labor. they fell down, and there was none to help. : then they cried to yahweh in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. : he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their bonds in sunder. : let them praise yahweh for his loving kindness, for his wonderful works to the children of men! : for he has broken the gates of brass, and cut through bars of iron. : fools are afflicted because of their disobedience, and because of their iniquities. : their soul abhors all kinds of food. they draw near to the gates of death. : then they cry to yahweh in their trouble, he saves them out of their distresses. : he sends his word, and heals them, and delivers them from their graves. : let them praise yahweh for his loving kindness, for his wonderful works to the children of men! : let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with singing. : those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business in great waters; : these see yahweh's works, and his wonders in the deep. : for he commands, and raises the stormy wind, which lifts up its waves. : they mount up to the sky; they go down again to the depths. their soul melts away because of trouble. : they reel back and forth, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. : then they cry to yahweh in their trouble, and he brings them out of their distress. : he makes the storm a calm, so that its waves are still. : then they are glad because it is calm, so he brings them to their desired haven. : let them praise yahweh for his loving kindness, for his wonderful works for the children of men! : let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, and praise him in the seat of the elders. : he turns rivers into a desert, water springs into a thirsty ground, : and a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it. : he turns a desert into a pool of water, and a dry land into water springs. : there he makes the hungry live, that they may prepare a city to live in, : sow fields, plant vineyards, and reap the fruits of increase. : he blesses them also, so that they are multiplied greatly. he doesn't allow their livestock to decrease. : again, they are diminished and bowed down through oppression, trouble, and sorrow. : he pours contempt on princes, and causes them to wander in a trackless waste. : yet he lifts the needy out of their affliction, and increases their families like a flock. : the upright will see it, and be glad. all the wicked will shut their mouths. : whoever is wise will pay attention to these things. they will consider the loving kindnesses of yahweh. : <<a song. a psalm by david.>> my heart is steadfast, god. i will sing and i will make music with my soul. : wake up, harp and lyre! i will wake up the dawn. : i will give thanks to you, yahweh, among the nations. i will sing praises to you among the peoples. : for your loving kindness is great above the heavens. your faithfulness reaches to the skies. : be exalted, god, above the heavens! let your glory be over all the earth. : that your beloved may be delivered, save with your right hand, and answer us. : god has spoken from his sanctuary: "in triumph, i will divide shechem, and measure out the valley of succoth. : gilead is mine. manasseh is mine. ephraim also is my helmet. judah is my scepter. : moab is my wash pot. i will toss my sandal on edom. i will shout over philistia." : who will bring me into the fortified city? who has led me to edom? : haven't you rejected us, god? you don't go forth, god, with our armies. : give us help against the enemy, for the help of man is vain. : through god, we will do valiantly. for it is he who will tread down our enemies. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> god of my praise, don't remain silent, : for they have opened the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit against me. they have spoken to me with a lying tongue. : they have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. : in return for my love, they are my adversaries; but i am in prayer. : they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love. : set a wicked man over him. let an adversary stand at his right hand. : when he is judged, let him come forth guilty. let his prayer be turned into sin. : let his days be few. let another take his office. : let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. : let his children be wandering beggars. let them be sought from their ruins. : let the creditor seize all that he has. let strangers plunder the fruit of his labor. : let there be none to extend kindness to him, neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless children. : let his posterity be cut off. in the generation following let their name be blotted out. : let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered by yahweh. don't let the sin of his mother be blotted out. : let them be before yahweh continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth; : because he didn't remember to show kindness, but persecuted the poor and needy man, the broken in heart, to kill them. : yes, he loved cursing, and it came to him. he didn't delight in blessing, and it was far from him. : he clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment. it came into his inward parts like water, like oil into his bones. : let it be to him as the clothing with which he covers himself, for the belt that is always around him. : this is the reward of my adversaries from yahweh, of those who speak evil against my soul. : but deal with me, yahweh the lord, for your name's sake, because your loving kindness is good, deliver me; : for i am poor and needy. my heart is wounded within me. : i fade away like an evening shadow. i am shaken off like a locust. : my knees are weak through fasting. my body is thin and lacks fat. : i have also become a reproach to them. when they see me, they shake their head. : help me, yahweh, my god. save me according to your loving kindness; : that they may know that this is your hand; that you, yahweh, have done it. : they may curse, but you bless. when they arise, they will be shamed, but your servant shall rejoice. : let my adversaries be clothed with dishonor. let them cover themselves with their own shame as with a robe. : i will give great thanks to yahweh with my mouth. yes, i will praise him among the multitude. : for he will stand at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul. : <<a psalm by david.>> yahweh says to my lord, "sit at my right hand, until i make your enemies your footstool for your feet." : yahweh will send forth the rod of your strength out of zion. rule in the midst of your enemies. : your people offer themselves willingly in the day of your power, in holy array. out of the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth. : yahweh has sworn, and will not change his mind: "you are a priest forever in the order of melchizedek." : the lord is at your right hand. he will crush kings in the day of his wrath. : he will judge among the nations. he will heap up dead bodies. he will crush the ruler of the whole earth. : he will drink of the brook in the way; therefore he will lift up his head. : praise yah!{psalm is an acrostic poem, with each verse after the initial "praise yah!" starting with a letter of the alphabet (ordered from alef to tav).} i will give thanks to yahweh with my whole heart, in the council of the upright, and in the congregation. : yahweh's works are great, pondered by all those who delight in them. : his work is honor and majesty. his righteousness endures forever. : he has caused his wonderful works to be remembered. yahweh is gracious and merciful. : he has given food to those who fear him. he always remembers his covenant. : he has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations. : the works of his hands are truth and justice. all his precepts are sure. : they are established forever and ever. they are done in truth and uprightness. : he has sent redemption to his people. he has ordained his covenant forever. his name is holy and awesome! : the fear of yahweh is the beginning of wisdom. all those who do his work have a good understanding. his praise endures forever! : praise yah!{psalm is an acrostic poem, with each verse after the initial "praise yah!" starting with a letter of the alphabet (ordered from alef to tav).} blessed is the man who fears yahweh, who delights greatly in his commandments. : his seed will be mighty in the land. the generation of the upright will be blessed. : wealth and riches are in his house. his righteousness endures forever. : light dawns in the darkness for the upright, gracious, merciful, and righteous. : it is well with the man who deals graciously and lends. he will maintain his cause in judgment. : for he will never be shaken. the righteous will be remembered forever. : he will not be afraid of evil news. his heart is steadfast, trusting in yahweh. : his heart is established. he will not be afraid in the end when he sees his adversaries. : he has dispersed, he has given to the poor. his righteousness endures forever. his horn will be exalted with honor. : the wicked will see it, and be grieved. he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away. the desire of the wicked will perish. : praise yah! praise, you servants of yahweh, praise the name of yahweh. : blessed be the name of yahweh, from this time forth and forevermore. : from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, yahweh's name is to be praised. : yahweh is high above all nations, his glory above the heavens. : who is like yahweh, our god, who has his seat on high, : who stoops down to see in heaven and in the earth? : he raises up the poor out of the dust. lifts up the needy from the ash heap; : that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people. : he settles the barren woman in her home, as a joyful mother of children. praise yah! : when israel went forth out of egypt, the house of jacob from a people of foreign language; : judah became his sanctuary, israel his dominion. : the sea saw it, and fled. the jordan was driven back. : the mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs. : what was it, you sea, that you fled? you jordan, that you turned back? : you mountains, that you skipped like rams; you little hills, like lambs? : tremble, you earth, at the presence of the lord, at the presence of the god of jacob, : who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of waters. : not to us, yahweh, not to us, but to your name give glory, for your loving kindness, and for your truth's sake. : why should the nations say, "where is their god, now?" : but our god is in the heavens. he does whatever he pleases. : their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. : they have mouths, but they don't speak. they have eyes, but they don't see. : they have ears, but they don't hear. they have noses, but they don't smell. : they have hands, but they don't feel. they have feet, but they don't walk, neither do they speak through their throat. : those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them. : israel, trust in yahweh! he is their help and their shield. : house of aaron, trust in yahweh! he is their help and their shield. : you who fear yahweh, trust in yahweh! he is their help and their shield. : yahweh remembers us. he will bless us. he will bless the house of israel. he will bless the house of aaron. : he will bless those who fear yahweh, both small and great. : may yahweh increase you more and more, you and your children. : blessed are you by yahweh, who made heaven and earth. : the heavens are the heavens of yahweh; but the earth has he given to the children of men. : the dead don't praise yah, neither any who go down into silence; : but we will bless yah, from this time forth and forevermore. praise yah! : i love yahweh, because he listens to my voice, and my cries for mercy. : because he has turned his ear to me, therefore i will call on him as long as i live. : the cords of death surrounded me, the pains of sheol got a hold of me. i found trouble and sorrow. : then called i on the name of yahweh: "yahweh, i beg you, deliver my soul." : gracious is yahweh, and righteous; yes, our god is merciful. : yahweh preserves the simple. i was brought low, and he saved me. : return to your rest, my soul, for yahweh has dealt bountifully with you. : for you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. : i will walk before yahweh in the land of the living. : i believed, therefore i said, "i was greatly afflicted." : i said in my haste, "all men are liars." : what will i give to yahweh for all his benefits toward me? : i will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of yahweh. : i will pay my vows to yahweh, yes, in the presence of all his people. : precious in the sight of yahweh is the death of his saints. : yahweh, truly i am your servant. i am your servant, the son of your handmaid. you have freed me from my chains. : i will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call on the name of yahweh. : i will pay my vows to yahweh, yes, in the presence of all his people, : in the courts of yahweh's house, in the midst of you, jerusalem. praise yah! : praise yahweh, all you nations! extol him, all you peoples! : for his loving kindness is great toward us. yahweh's faithfulness endures forever. praise yah! : give thanks to yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. : let israel now say that his loving kindness endures forever. : let the house of aaron now say that his loving kindness endures forever. : now let those who fear yahweh say that his loving kindness endures forever. : out of my distress, i called on yah. yah answered me with freedom. : yahweh is on my side. i will not be afraid. what can man do to me? : yahweh is on my side among those who help me. therefore i will look in triumph at those who hate me. : it is better to take refuge in yahweh, than to put confidence in man. : it is better to take refuge in yahweh, than to put confidence in princes. : all the nations surrounded me, but in the name of yahweh, i cut them off. : they surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me. in the name of yahweh i indeed cut them off. : they surrounded me like bees. they are quenched like the burning thorns. in the name of yahweh i cut them off. : you pushed me back hard, to make me fall, but yahweh helped me. : yah is my strength and song. he has become my salvation. : the voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous. "the right hand of yahweh does valiantly. : the right hand of yahweh is exalted! the right hand of yahweh does valiantly!" : i will not die, but live, and declare yah's works. : yah has punished me severely, but he has not given me over to death. : open to me the gates of righteousness. i will enter into them. i will give thanks to yah. : this is the gate of yahweh; the righteous will enter into it. : i will give thanks to you, for you have answered me, and have become my salvation. : the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. : this is yahweh's doing. it is marvelous in our eyes. : this is the day that yahweh has made. we will rejoice and be glad in it! : save us now, we beg you, yahweh! yahweh, we beg you, send prosperity now. : blessed is he who comes in the name of yahweh! we have blessed you out of the house of yahweh. : yahweh is god, and he has given us light. bind the sacrifice with cords, even to the horns of the altar. : you are my god, and i will give thanks to you. you are my god, i will exalt you. : oh give thanks to yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. : <<aleph>> blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to yahweh's law. : blessed are those who keep his statutes, who seek him with their whole heart. : yes, they do nothing wrong. they walk in his ways. : you have commanded your precepts, that we should fully obey them. : oh that my ways were steadfast to obey your statutes! : then i wouldn't be disappointed, when i consider all of your commandments. : i will give thanks to you with uprightness of heart, when i learn your righteous judgments. : i will observe your statutes. don't utterly forsake me. : how can a young man keep his way pure? by living according to your word. : with my whole heart, i have sought you. don't let me wander from your commandments. : i have hidden your word in my heart, that i might not sin against you. : blessed are you, yahweh. teach me your statutes. : with my lips, i have declared all the ordinances of your mouth. : i have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all riches. : i will meditate on your precepts, and consider your ways. : i will delight myself in your statutes. i will not forget your word. : do good to your servant. i will live and i will obey your word. : open my eyes, that i may see wondrous things out of your law. : i am a stranger on the earth. don't hide your commandments from me. : my soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times. : you have rebuked the proud who are cursed, who wander from your commandments. : take reproach and contempt away from me, for i have kept your statutes. : though princes sit and slander me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. : indeed your statutes are my delight, and my counselors. : my soul is laid low in the dust. revive me according to your word! : i declared my ways, and you answered me. teach me your statutes. : let me understand the teaching of your precepts! then i will meditate on your wondrous works. : my soul is weary with sorrow: strengthen me according to your word. : keep me from the way of deceit. grant me your law graciously! : i have chosen the way of truth. i have set your ordinances before me. : i cling to your statutes, yahweh. don't let me be disappointed. : i run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free. : teach me, yahweh, the way of your statutes. i will keep them to the end. : give me understanding, and i will keep your law. yes, i will obey it with my whole heart. : direct me in the path of your commandments, for i delight in them. : turn my heart toward your statutes, not toward selfish gain. : turn my eyes away from looking at worthless things. revive me in your ways. : fulfill your promise to your servant, that you may be feared. : take away my disgrace that i dread, for your ordinances are good. : behold, i long for your precepts! revive me in your righteousness. : let your loving kindness also come to me, yahweh, your salvation, according to your word. : so i will have an answer for him who reproaches me, for i trust in your word. : don't snatch the word of truth out of my mouth, for i put my hope in your ordinances. : so i will obey your law continually, forever and ever. : i will walk in liberty, for i have sought your precepts. : i will also speak of your statutes before kings, and will not be disappointed. : i will delight myself in your commandments, because i love them. : i reach out my hands for your commandments, which i love. i will meditate on your statutes. : remember your word to your servant, because you gave me hope. : this is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has revived me. : the arrogant mock me excessively, but i don't swerve from your law. : i remember your ordinances of old, yahweh, and have comforted myself. : indignation has taken hold on me, because of the wicked who forsake your law. : your statutes have been my songs, in the house where i live. : i have remembered your name, yahweh, in the night, and i obey your law. : this is my way, that i keep your precepts. : yahweh is my portion. i promised to obey your words. : i sought your favor with my whole heart. be merciful to me according to your word. : i considered my ways, and turned my steps to your statutes. : i will hurry, and not delay, to obey your commandments. : the ropes of the wicked bind me, but i won't forget your law. : at midnight i will rise to give thanks to you, because of your righteous ordinances. : i am a friend of all those who fear you, of those who observe your precepts. : the earth is full of your loving kindness, yahweh. teach me your statutes. : do good to your servant, according to your word, yahweh. : teach me good judgment and knowledge, for i believe in your commandments. : before i was afflicted, i went astray; but now i observe your word. : you are good, and do good. teach me your statutes. : the proud have smeared a lie upon me. with my whole heart, i will keep your precepts. : their heart is as callous as the fat, but i delight in your law. : it is good for me that i have been afflicted, that i may learn your statutes. : the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of pieces of gold and silver. : your hands have made me and formed me. give me understanding, that i may learn your commandments. : those who fear you will see me and be glad, because i have put my hope in your word. : yahweh, i know that your judgments are righteous, that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. : please let your loving kindness be for my comfort, according to your word to your servant. : let your tender mercies come to me, that i may live; for your law is my delight. : let the proud be disappointed, for they have overthrown me wrongfully. i will meditate on your precepts. : let those who fear you turn to me. they will know your statutes. : let my heart be blameless toward your decrees, that i may not be disappointed. : my soul faints for your salvation. i hope in your word. : my eyes fail for your word. i say, "when will you comfort me?" : for i have become like a wineskin in the smoke. i don't forget your statutes. : how many are the days of your servant? when will you execute judgment on those who persecute me? : the proud have dug pits for me, contrary to your law. : all of your commandments are faithful. they persecute me wrongfully. help me! : they had almost wiped me from the earth, but i didn't forsake your precepts. : preserve my life according to your loving kindness, so i will obey the statutes of your mouth. : yahweh, your word is settled in heaven forever. : your faithfulness is to all generations. you have established the earth, and it remains. : your laws remain to this day, for all things serve you. : unless your law had been my delight, i would have perished in my affliction. : i will never forget your precepts, for with them, you have revived me. : i am yours. save me, for i have sought your precepts. : the wicked have waited for me, to destroy me. i will consider your statutes. : i have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commands are boundless. : how i love your law! it is my meditation all day. : your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for your commandments are always with me. : i have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. : i understand more than the aged, because i have kept your precepts. : i have kept my feet from every evil way, that i might observe your word. : i have not turned aside from your ordinances, for you have taught me. : how sweet are your promises to my taste, more than honey to my mouth! : through your precepts, i get understanding; therefore i hate every false way. : your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path. : i have sworn, and have confirmed it, that i will obey your righteous ordinances. : i am afflicted very much. revive me, yahweh, according to your word. : accept, i beg you, the willing offerings of my mouth. yahweh, teach me your ordinances. : my soul is continually in my hand, yet i won't forget your law. : the wicked have laid a snare for me, yet i haven't gone astray from your precepts. : i have taken your testimonies as a heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. : i have set my heart to perform your statutes forever, even to the end. : i hate double-minded men, but i love your law. : you are my hiding place and my shield. i hope in your word. : depart from me, you evildoers, that i may keep the commandments of my god. : uphold me according to your word, that i may live. let me not be ashamed of my hope. : hold me up, and i will be safe, and will have respect for your statutes continually. : you reject all those who stray from your statutes, for their deceit is in vain. : you put away all the wicked of the earth like dross. therefore i love your testimonies. : my flesh trembles for fear of you. i am afraid of your judgments. : i have done what is just and righteous. don't leave me to my oppressors. : ensure your servant's well-being. don't let the proud oppress me. : my eyes fail looking for your salvation, for your righteous word. : deal with your servant according to your loving kindness. teach me your statutes. : i am your servant. give me understanding, that i may know your testimonies. : it is time to act, yahweh, for they break your law. : therefore i love your commandments more than gold, yes, more than pure gold. : therefore i consider all of your precepts to be right. i hate every false way. : your testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul keeps them. : the entrance of your words gives light. it gives understanding to the simple. : i opened my mouth wide and panted, for i longed for your commandments. : turn to me, and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name. : establish my footsteps in your word. don't let any iniquity have dominion over me. : redeem me from the oppression of man, so i will observe your precepts. : make your face shine on your servant. teach me your statutes. : streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don't observe your law. : you are righteous, yahweh. your judgments are upright. : you have commanded your statutes in righteousness. they are fully trustworthy. : my zeal wears me out, because my enemies ignore your words. : your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them. : i am small and despised. i don't forget your precepts. : your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. your law is truth. : trouble and anguish have taken hold of me. your commandments are my delight. : your testimonies are righteous forever. give me understanding, that i may live. : i have called with my whole heart. answer me, yahweh! i will keep your statutes. : i have called to you. save me! i will obey your statutes. : i rise before dawn and cry for help. i put my hope in your words. : my eyes stay open through the night watches, that i might meditate on your word. : hear my voice according to your loving kindness. revive me, yahweh, according to your ordinances. : they draw near who follow after wickedness. they are far from your law. : you are near, yahweh. all your commandments are truth. : of old i have known from your testimonies, that you have founded them forever. : consider my affliction, and deliver me, for i don't forget your law. : plead my cause, and redeem me! revive me according to your promise. : salvation is far from the wicked, for they don't seek your statutes. : great are your tender mercies, yahweh. revive me according to your ordinances. : many are my persecutors and my adversaries. i haven't swerved from your testimonies. : i look at the faithless with loathing, because they don't observe your word. : consider how i love your precepts. revive me, yahweh, according to your loving kindness. : all of your words are truth. every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever. : princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words. : i rejoice at your word, as one who finds great spoil. : i hate and abhor falsehood. i love your law. : seven times a day, i praise you, because of your righteous ordinances. : those who love your law have great peace. nothing causes them to stumble. : i have hoped for your salvation, yahweh. i have done your commandments. : my soul has observed your testimonies. i love them exceedingly. : i have obeyed your precepts and your testimonies, for all my ways are before you. : let my cry come before you, yahweh. give me understanding according to your word. : let my supplication come before you. deliver me according to your word. : let my lips utter praise, for you teach me your statutes. : let my tongue sing of your word, for all your commandments are righteousness. : let your hand be ready to help me, for i have chosen your precepts. : i have longed for your salvation, yahweh. your law is my delight. : let my soul live, that i may praise you. let your ordinances help me. : i have gone astray like a lost sheep. seek your servant, for i don't forget your commandments. : <<a song of ascents.>> in my distress, i cried to yahweh. he answered me. : deliver my soul, yahweh, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. : what will be given to you, and what will be done more to you, you deceitful tongue? : sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper. : woe is me, that i live in meshech, that i dwell among the tents of kedar! : my soul has had her dwelling too long with him who hates peace. : i am for peace, but when i speak, they are for war. : <<a song of ascents.>> i will lift up my eyes to the hills. where does my help come from? : my help comes from yahweh, who made heaven and earth. : he will not allow your foot to be moved. he who keeps you will not slumber. : behold, he who keeps israel will neither slumber nor sleep. : yahweh is your keeper. yahweh is your shade on your right hand. : the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. : yahweh will keep you from all evil. he will keep your soul. : yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth, and forevermore. : <<a song of ascents. by david.>> i was glad when they said to me, "let's go to yahweh's house!" : our feet are standing within your gates, jerusalem; : jerusalem, that is built as a city that is compact together; : where the tribes go up, even yah's tribes, according to an ordinance for israel, to give thanks to the name of yahweh. : for there are set thrones for judgment, the thrones of david's house. : pray for the peace of jerusalem. those who love you will prosper. : peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces. : for my brothers' and companions' sakes, i will now say, "peace be within you." : for the sake of the house of yahweh our god, i will seek your good. : <<a song of ascents.>> to you i do lift up my eyes, you who sit in the heavens. : behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress; so our eyes look to yahweh, our god, until he has mercy on us. : have mercy on us, yahweh, have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt. : our soul is exceedingly filled with the scoffing of those who are at ease, with the contempt of the proud. : <<a song of ascents. by david.>> if it had not been yahweh who was on our side, let israel now say, : if it had not been yahweh who was on our side, when men rose up against us; : then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us; : then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul; : then the proud waters would have gone over our soul. : blessed be yahweh, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth. : our soul has escaped like a bird out of the fowler's snare. the snare is broken, and we have escaped. : our help is in the name of yahweh, who made heaven and earth. : <<a song of ascents.>> those who trust in yahweh are as mount zion, which can't be moved, but remains forever. : as the mountains surround jerusalem, so yahweh surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore. : for the scepter of wickedness won't remain over the allotment of the righteous; so that the righteous won't use their hands to do evil. : do good, yahweh, to those who are good, to those who are upright in their hearts. : but as for those who turn aside to their crooked ways, yahweh will lead them away with the workers of iniquity. peace be on israel. : <<a song of ascents.>> when yahweh brought back those who returned to zion, we were like those who dream. : then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. then they said among the nations, "yahweh has done great things for them." : yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad. : restore our fortunes again, yahweh, like the streams in the negev. : those who sow in tears will reap in joy. : he who goes out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, will certainly come again with joy, carrying his sheaves. : <<a song of ascents. by solomon.>> unless yahweh builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. unless yahweh watches over the city, the watchman guards it in vain. : it is vain for you to rise up early, to stay up late, eating the bread of toil; for he gives sleep to his loved ones. : behold, children are a heritage of yahweh. the fruit of the womb is his reward. : as arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of youth. : happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. they won't be disappointed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. : <<a song of ascents.>> blessed is everyone who fears yahweh, who walks in his ways. : for you will eat the labor of your hands. you will be happy, and it will be well with you. : your wife will be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of your house; your children like olive plants, around your table. : behold, thus is the man blessed who fears yahweh. : may yahweh bless you out of zion, and may you see the good of jerusalem all the days of your life. : yes, may you see your children's children. peace be upon israel. : <<a song of ascents.>> many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. let israel now say, : many times they have afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me. : the plowers plowed on my back. they made their furrows long. : yahweh is righteous. he has cut apart the cords of the wicked. : let them be disappointed and turned backward, all those who hate zion. : let them be as the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up; : with which the reaper doesn't fill his hand, nor he who binds sheaves, his bosom. : neither do those who go by say, "the blessing of yahweh be on you. we bless you in the name of yahweh." : <<a song of ascents.>> out of the depths i have cried to you, yahweh. : lord, hear my voice. let your ears be attentive to the voice of my petitions. : if you, yah, kept a record of sins, lord, who could stand? : but there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. : i wait for yahweh. my soul waits. i hope in his word. : my soul longs for the lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning. : israel, hope in yahweh, for with yahweh there is loving kindness. with him is abundant redemption. : he will redeem israel from all their sins. : <<a song of ascents. by david.>> yahweh, my heart isn't haughty, nor my eyes lofty; nor do i concern myself with great matters, or things too wonderful for me. : surely i have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. : israel, hope in yahweh, from this time forth and forevermore. : <<a song of ascents.>> yahweh, remember david and all his affliction, : how he swore to yahweh, and vowed to the mighty one of jacob: : "surely i will not come into the structure of my house, nor go up into my bed; : i will not give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids; : until i find out a place for yahweh, a dwelling for the mighty one of jacob." : behold, we heard of it in ephrathah. we found it in the field of jaar: : "we will go into his dwelling place. we will worship at his footstool. : arise, yahweh, into your resting place; you, and the ark of your strength. : let your priest be clothed with righteousness. let your saints shout for joy!" : for your servant david's sake, don't turn away the face of your anointed one. : yahweh has sworn to david in truth. he will not turn from it: "i will set the fruit of your body on your throne. : if your children will keep my covenant, my testimony that i will teach them, their children also will sit on your throne forevermore." : for yahweh has chosen zion. he has desired it for his habitation. : "this is my resting place forever. here i will live, for i have desired it. : i will abundantly bless her provision. i will satisfy her poor with bread. : her priests i will also clothe with salvation. her saints will shout aloud for joy. : there i will make the horn of david to bud. i have ordained a lamp for my anointed. : i will clothe his enemies with shame, but on himself, his crown will be resplendent." : <<a song of ascents. by david.>> see how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity! : it is like the precious oil on the head, that ran down on the beard, even aaron's beard; that came down on the edge of his robes; : like the dew of hermon, that comes down on the hills of zion: for there yahweh gives the blessing, even life forevermore. : <<a song of ascents.>> look! praise yahweh, all you servants of yahweh, who stand by night in yahweh's house! : lift up your hands in the sanctuary. praise yahweh! : may yahweh bless you from zion; even he who made heaven and earth. : praise yah! praise the name of yahweh! praise him, you servants of yahweh, : you who stand in the house of yahweh, in the courts of our god's house. : praise yah, for yahweh is good. sing praises to his name, for that is pleasant. : for yah has chosen jacob for himself; israel for his own possession. : for i know that yahweh is great, that our lord is above all gods. : whatever yahweh pleased, that he has done, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps; : who causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth; who makes lightnings with the rain; who brings forth the wind out of his treasuries; : who struck the firstborn of egypt, both of man and animal; : who sent signs and wonders into the midst of you, egypt, on pharaoh, and on all his servants; : who struck many nations, and killed mighty kings, : sihon king of the amorites, og king of bashan, and all the kingdoms of canaan, : and gave their land for a heritage, a heritage to israel, his people. : your name, yahweh, endures forever; your renown, yahweh, throughout all generations. : for yahweh will judge his people, and have compassion on his servants. : the idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. : they have mouths, but they can't speak. they have eyes, but they can't see. : they have ears, but they can't hear; neither is there any breath in their mouths. : those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them. : house of israel, praise yahweh! house of aaron, praise yahweh! : house of levi, praise yahweh! you who fear yahweh, praise yahweh! : blessed be yahweh from zion, who dwells at jerusalem. praise yah! : give thanks to yahweh, for he is good; for his loving kindness endures forever. : give thanks to the god of gods; for his loving kindness endures forever. : give thanks to the lord of lords; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who alone does great wonders; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who by understanding made the heavens; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who spread out the earth above the waters; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who made the great lights; for his loving kindness endures forever: : the sun to rule by day; for his loving kindness endures forever; : the moon and stars to rule by night; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who struck down the egyptian firstborn; for his loving kindness endures forever; : and brought out israel from among them; for his loving kindness endures forever; : with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who divided the red sea{or, sea of reeds} apart; for his loving kindness endures forever; : and made israel to pass through the midst of it; for his loving kindness endures forever; : but overthrew pharaoh and his army in the red sea{or, sea of reeds}; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who led his people through the wilderness; for his loving kindness endures forever: : to him who struck great kings; for his loving kindness endures forever; : and killed mighty kings; for his loving kindness endures forever: : sihon king of the amorites; for his loving kindness endures forever; : og king of bashan; for his loving kindness endures forever; : and gave their land as an inheritance; for his loving kindness endures forever; : even a heritage to israel his servant; for his loving kindness endures forever: : who remembered us in our low estate; for his loving kindness endures forever; : and has delivered us from our adversaries; for his loving kindness endures forever: : who gives food to every creature; for his loving kindness endures forever. : oh give thanks to the god of heaven; for his loving kindness endures forever. : by the rivers of babylon, there we sat down. yes, we wept, when we remembered zion. : on the willows in the midst of it, we hung up our harps. : for there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. those who tormented us demanded songs of joy: "sing us one of the songs of zion!" : how can we sing yahweh's song in a foreign land? : if i forget you, jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. : let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if i don't remember you; if i don't prefer jerusalem above my chief joy. : remember, yahweh, against the children of edom, the day of jerusalem; who said, "raze it! raze it even to its foundation!" : daughter of babylon, doomed to destruction, he will be happy who rewards you, as you have served us. : happy shall he be, who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock. : <<by david.>> i will give you thanks with my whole heart. before the gods, i will sing praises to you. : i will bow down toward your holy temple, and give thanks to your name for your loving kindness and for your truth; for you have exalted your name and your word above all. : in the day that i called, you answered me. you encouraged me with strength in my soul. : all the kings of the earth will give you thanks, yahweh, for they have heard the words of your mouth. : yes, they will sing of the ways of yahweh; for great is yahweh's glory. : for though yahweh is high, yet he looks after the lowly; but the proud, he knows from afar. : though i walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. you will stretch forth your hand against the wrath of my enemies. your right hand will save me. : yahweh will fulfill that which concerns me; your loving kindness, yahweh, endures forever. don't forsake the works of your own hands. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me. : you know my sitting down and my rising up. you perceive my thoughts from afar. : you search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. : for there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, yahweh, you know it altogether. : you hem me in behind and before. you laid your hand on me. : this knowledge is beyond me. it's lofty. i can't attain it. : where could i go from your spirit? or where could i flee from your presence? : if i ascend up into heaven, you are there. if i make my bed in sheol, behold, you are there! : if i take the wings of the dawn, and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea; : even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me. : if i say, "surely the darkness will overwhelm me; the light around me will be night;" : even the darkness doesn't hide from you, but the night shines as the day. the darkness is like light to you. : for you formed my inmost being. you knit me together in my mother's womb. : i will give thanks to you, for i am fearfully and wonderfully made. your works are wonderful. my soul knows that very well. : my frame wasn't hidden from you, when i was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth. : your eyes saw my body. in your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them. : how precious to me are your thoughts, god! how vast is the sum of them! : if i would count them, they are more in number than the sand. when i wake up, i am still with you. : if only you, god, would kill the wicked. get away from me, you bloodthirsty men! : for they speak against you wickedly. your enemies take your name in vain. : yahweh, don't i hate those who hate you? am i not grieved with those who rise up against you? : i hate them with perfect hatred. they have become my enemies. : search me, god, and know my heart. try me, and know my thoughts. : see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. : <<for the chief musician. a psalm by david.>> deliver me, yahweh, from the evil man. preserve me from the violent man; : those who devise mischief in their hearts. they continually gather themselves together for war. : they have sharpened their tongues like a serpent. viper's poison is under their lips. selah. : yahweh, keep me from the hands of the wicked. preserve me from the violent men who have determined to trip my feet. : the proud have hidden a snare for me, they have spread the cords of a net by the path. they have set traps for me. selah. : i said to yahweh, "you are my god." listen to the cry of my petitions, yahweh. : yahweh, the lord, the strength of my salvation, you have covered my head in the day of battle. : yahweh, don't grant the desires of the wicked. don't let their evil plans succeed, or they will become proud. selah. : as for the head of those who surround me, let the mischief of their own lips cover them. : let burning coals fall on them. let them be thrown into the fire, into miry pits, from where they never rise. : an evil speaker won't be established in the earth. evil will hunt the violent man to overthrow him. : i know that yahweh will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the needy. : surely the righteous will give thanks to your name. the upright will dwell in your presence. : <<a psalm by david.>> yahweh, i have called on you. come to me quickly! listen to my voice when i call to you. : let my prayer be set before you like incense; the lifting up of my hands like the evening sacrifice. : set a watch, yahweh, before my mouth. keep the door of my lips. : don't incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who work iniquity. don't let me eat of their delicacies. : let the righteous strike me, it is kindness; let him reprove me, it is like oil on the head; don't let my head refuse it; yet my prayer is always against evil deeds. : their judges are thrown down by the sides of the rock. they will hear my words, for they are well spoken. : "as when one plows and breaks up the earth, our bones are scattered at the mouth of sheol." : for my eyes are on you, yahweh, the lord. in you, i take refuge. don't leave my soul destitute. : keep me from the snare which they have laid for me, from the traps of the workers of iniquity. : let the wicked fall together into their own nets, while i pass by. : <<a contemplation by david, when he was in the cave. a prayer.>> i cry with my voice to yahweh. with my voice, i ask yahweh for mercy. : i pour out my complaint before him. i tell him my troubles. : when my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my path. in the way in which i walk, they have hidden a snare for me. : look on my right, and see; for there is no one who is concerned for me. refuge has fled from me. no one cares for my soul. : i cried to you, yahweh. i said, "you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." : listen to my cry, for i am in desperate need. deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than me. : bring my soul out of prison, that i may give thanks to your name. the righteous will surround me, for you will be good to me. : <<a psalm by david.>> hear my prayer, yahweh. listen to my petitions. in your faithfulness and righteousness, relieve me. : don't enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous. : for the enemy pursues my soul. he has struck my life down to the ground. he has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead. : therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. my heart within me is desolate. : i remember the days of old. i meditate on all your doings. i contemplate the work of your hands. : i spread forth my hands to you. my soul thirsts for you, like a parched land. selah. : hurry to answer me, yahweh. my spirit fails. don't hide your face from me, so that i don't become like those who go down into the pit. : cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning, for i trust in you. cause me to know the way in which i should walk, for i lift up my soul to you. : deliver me, yahweh, from my enemies. i flee to you to hide me. : teach me to do your will, for you are my god. your spirit is good. lead me in the land of uprightness. : revive me, yahweh, for your name's sake. in your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble. : in your loving kindness, cut off my enemies, and destroy all those who afflict my soul, for i am your servant. : <<by david.>> blessed be yahweh, my rock, who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to battle: : my loving kindness, my fortress, my high tower, my deliverer, my shield, and he in whom i take refuge; who subdues my people under me. : yahweh, what is man, that you care for him? or the son of man, that you think of him? : man is like a breath. his days are like a shadow that passes away. : part your heavens, yahweh, and come down. touch the mountains, and they will smoke. : throw out lightning, and scatter them. send out your arrows, and rout them. : stretch out your hand from above, rescue me, and deliver me out of great waters, out of the hands of foreigners; : whose mouths speak deceit, whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. : i will sing a new song to you, god. on a ten-stringed lyre, i will sing praises to you. : you are he who gives salvation to kings, who rescues david, his servant, from the deadly sword. : rescue me, and deliver me out of the hands of foreigners, whose mouths speak deceit, whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. : then our sons will be like well-nurtured plants, our daughters like pillars carved to adorn a palace. : our barns are full, filled with all kinds of provision. our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields. : our oxen will pull heavy loads. there is no breaking in, and no going away, and no outcry in our streets. : happy are the people who are in such a situation. happy are the people whose god is yahweh. {} : <<a praise psalm by david.this is an acrostic psalm, with every verse (including the second half of verse ) starting with a consecutive letter of the hebrew alphabet.>> i will exalt you, my god, the king. i will praise your name forever and ever. : every day i will praise you. i will extol your name forever and ever. : great is yahweh, and greatly to be praised! his greatness is unsearchable. : one generation will commend your works to another, and will declare your mighty acts. : of the glorious majesty of your honor, of your wondrous works, i will meditate. : men will speak of the might of your awesome acts. i will declare your greatness. : they will utter the memory of your great goodness, and will sing of your righteousness. : yahweh is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great loving kindness. : yahweh is good to all. his tender mercies are over all his works. : all your works will give thanks to you, yahweh. your saints will extol you. : they will speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk about your power; : to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, the glory of the majesty of his kingdom. : your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. your dominion endures throughout all generations. yahweh is faithful in all his words, and loving in all his deeds.{some manuscripts omit these last two lines.} : yahweh upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down. : the eyes of all wait for you. you give them their food in due season. : you open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. : yahweh is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works. : yahweh is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. : he will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. he also will hear their cry, and will save them. : yahweh preserves all those who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. : my mouth will speak the praise of yahweh. let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. : praise yah! praise yahweh, my soul. : while i live, i will praise yahweh. i will sing praises to my god as long as i exist. : don't put your trust in princes, each a son of man in whom there is no help. : his spirit departs, and he returns to the earth. in that very day, his thoughts perish. : happy is he who has the god of jacob for his help, whose hope is in yahweh, his god: : who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps truth forever; : who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. yahweh frees the prisoners. : yahweh opens the eyes of the blind. yahweh raises up those who are bowed down. yahweh loves the righteous. : yahweh preserves the foreigners. he upholds the fatherless and widow, but the way of the wicked he turns upside down. : yahweh will reign forever; your god, o zion, to all generations. praise yah! : praise yah, for it is good to sing praises to our god; for it is pleasant and fitting to praise him. : yahweh builds up jerusalem. he gathers together the outcasts of israel. : he heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds. : he counts the number of the stars. he calls them all by their names. : great is our lord, and mighty in power. his understanding is infinite. : yahweh upholds the humble. he brings the wicked down to the ground. : sing to yahweh with thanksgiving. sing praises on the harp to our god, : who covers the sky with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who makes grass grow on the mountains. : he provides food for the livestock, and for the young ravens when they call. : he doesn't delight in the strength of the horse. he takes no pleasure in the legs of a man. : yahweh takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his loving kindness. : praise yahweh, jerusalem! praise your god, zion! : for he has strengthened the bars of your gates. he has blessed your children within you. : he makes peace in your borders. he fills you with the finest of the wheat. : he sends out his commandment to the earth. his word runs very swiftly. : he gives snow like wool, and scatters frost like ashes. : he hurls down his hail like pebbles. who can stand before his cold? : he sends out his word, and melts them. he causes his wind to blow, and the waters flow. : he shows his word to jacob; his statutes and his ordinances to israel. : he has not done this for just any nation. they don't know his ordinances. praise yah! : praise yah! praise yahweh from the heavens! praise him in the heights! : praise him, all his angels! praise him, all his army! : praise him, sun and moon! praise him, all you shining stars! : praise him, you heavens of heavens, you waters that are above the heavens. : let them praise the name of yahweh, for he commanded, and they were created. : he has also established them forever and ever. he has made a decree which will not pass away. : praise yahweh from the earth, you great sea creatures, and all depths! : lightning and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling his word; : mountains and all hills; fruit trees and all cedars; : wild animals and all livestock; small creatures and flying birds; : kings of the earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth; : both young men and maidens; old men and children: : let them praise the name of yahweh, for his name alone is exalted. his glory is above the earth and the heavens. : he has lifted up the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of israel, a people near to him. praise yah! : praise yahweh! sing to yahweh a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints. : let israel rejoice in him who made them. let the children of zion be joyful in their king. : let them praise his name in the dance! let them sing praises to him with tambourine and harp! : for yahweh takes pleasure in his people. he crowns the humble with salvation. : let the saints rejoice in honor. let them sing for joy on their beds. : may the high praises of god be in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hand; : to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; : to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; : to execute on them the written judgment. all his saints have this honor. praise yah! : praise yah! praise god in his sanctuary! praise him in his heavens for his acts of power! : praise him for his mighty acts! praise him according to his excellent greatness! : praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! praise him with harp and lyre! : praise him with tambourine and dancing! praise him with stringed instruments and flute! : praise him with loud cymbals! praise him with resounding cymbals! : let everything that has breath praise yah! praise yah! the threshold grace _meditations in the psalms_ by percy c. ainsworth author of 'the pilgrim church.' 'the blessed life,' etc. prefatory note during his brief ministry mr. ainsworth published a series of meditations in the columns of the _methodist times_, which are here reprinted by the kind permission of the editor, dr. scott lidgett. the rare interest aroused by the previous publication of mr. ainsworth's sermons encourages the hope that the present volume may find a place in the devotional literature to which many turn in the quiet hour. a.k.s. contents i. the threshold grace ii. the habit of faith iii. the one thing desirable iv. eyes and feet v. the safeguarded soul vi. a plea for tears vii. deliverance with honour viii. petition and communion ix. haunted hours x. the wings of the dove xi. a new song i. the threshold grace the lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore. ps. cxxi, . going out and coming in. that is a picture of life. beneath this old hebrew phrase there lurks a symbolism that covers our whole experience. but let us just now look at the most literal, and by no means the least true, interpretation of these words. one of the great dividing-lines in human life is the threshold-line. on one side of this line a man has his 'world within the world,' the sanctuary of love, the sheltered place of peace, the scene of life's most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations. and on the other side lies the larger life of mankind wherein also a man must take his place and do his work. life is spent in crossing this threshold-line, going out to the many and coming in to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in to take the right to rest. and over us all every hour there watches the almighty love. the division-lines in the life of man have nothing that corresponds to them in the love of god. we may be here or there, but he is everywhere. _the lord shall keep thy going out._ life has always needed that promise. there is a pledge of help for men as they fare forth to the world's work. it was much for the folk of an early time to say that as they went forth the lord went with them, but it is more for men to say and know that same thing to-day. the _going out_ has come to mean more age after age, generation after generation. it was a simpler thing once than it is now. 'thy going out'--the shepherd to his flocks, the farmer to his field, the merchant to his merchandise. there are still flocks and fields and markets, but where are the leisure, grace, and simplicity of life for him who has any share in the world's work? men go out to-day to face a life shadowed by vast industrial, commercial, and social problems. life has grown complicated, involved, hard to understand, difficult to deal with. tension, conflict, subtlety, surprise, and amid it all, or over it all, a vast brooding weariness that ever and again turns the heart sick. oh the pains and the perils of the going out! there are elements of danger in modern life that threaten all the world's toilers, whatever their work may be and wherever they may have to do it. there is the danger that always lurks in _things_--a warped judgement, a confused reckoning, a narrowed outlook. it is so easily possible for a man to be at close grips with the world and yet to be ever more and more out of touch with its realities. the danger in the places where men toil is not that god is denied with a vociferous atheism; it is that he is ignored by an unvoiced indifference. it is not the babel of the market-place that men need to fear; it is its silence. if we say that we live only as we love, that we are strong only as we are pure, that we are successful only as we become just and good, the world into which we go forth does not deny these things--but it ignores them. and thus the real battle of life is not the toil for bread. it is fought by all who would keep alive and fresh in their hearts the truth that man doth not live by bread alone. for no man is this going out easy, for some it is at times terrible, for all it means a need that only this promise avails to meet--'the lord shall keep thy going out.' he shall fence thee about with the ministry of his spirit, and give thee grace to know, everywhere and always, that thou art in this world to live for his kingdom of love and truth and to grow a soul. _the lord, shall keep ... thy coming in._ it might seem to some that once a man was safely across the threshold of his home he might stand in less need of this promise of help. but experience says otherwise. the world has little respect for any man's threshold. it is capable of many a bold and shameless intrusion. the things that harass a man as he earns his tread sometimes haunt him as he eats it. no home is safe unless faith be the doorkeeper. 'in peace will i both lay me down and sleep, for thou, lord, alone makest me to dwell in safety.' the singer of that song knew that, as in the moil of the world, so also in the shelter of the place he named his dwelling-place, peace and safety were not of his making, but of god's giving. sometimes there is a problem and a pain waiting for a man across his own threshold. many a man can more easily look upon the difficulties and perils of the outer world than he can come in and look into the pain-lined face of his little child. if we cannot face alone the hostilities on one side of our threshold we cannot face alone the intimacies on the other side of it. after all, life is whole and continuous. whatever the changes in the setting of life, there is no respite from living. and that means there is no leisure from duty, no rest from the service of obedience, no cessation in the working of all those forces by means of which, or in spite of which, life is ever being fashioned and fulfilled. and now let us free our minds from the literalism of this promise and get a glimpse of its deeper application to our lives. the threshold of the home does not draw the truest division-line in life between the outward and the inward. life is made up of thought and action, of the manifest things and the hidden things. 'thy going out.' that is, our life as it is manifest to others, as it has points of contact with the world about us. we must go out. we must take up some attitude toward all other life. we must add our word to the long human story and our touch to the fashioning of the world. we need the pledge of divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. 'and thy coming in'--into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. did we say uninvaded? not so. in that inner room of life there sits regret with her pale face, and shame with dust on her forehead, and memory with tears in her eyes. it is a pitiable thing at times, is this our coming in. more than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in. 'the lord shall keep ... thy coming in.' that means help for every lonely, impotent, inward hour of life. look at the last word of this promise--'for evermore.' going out and coming in for evermore. i do not know how these words were interpreted when very literal meanings were attached to the parabolic words about the streets of gold and the endless song. but they present no difficulty to us. indeed, they confirm that view of the future which is ever taking firmer hold of men's minds, and which is based on the growing sense of the continuity of life. to offer a man an eternity of music-laden rest is to offer him a poor thing. he would rather have his going out and his coming in. yes, and he shall have them. all that is purest and best in them shall remain. hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of living and wider visions of life; still come in to greater and ever greater thoughts of god. ii. the habit of faith trust in him at all times, ye people. pour out your heart before him. god is a refuge for us. ps. lxii. . here the psalmist strikes the great note of faith as it should be struck. he sets it ringing alike through the hours and the years. _trust in him at all times._ faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. it is the constant factor in life's spiritual reckonings. it is the ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. it is always in the high and lasting fitness of things. there are words that belong to hours or even moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. but faith is not such a word. it stands for something inclusive and imperial. it is one of the few timeless words in earth's vocabulary. for the deep roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the whole sweep of things spiritual. so the 'all times' trust is not for one moment to be regarded as some supreme degree of faith unto which one here and there may attain and which the rest can well afford to look upon as a counsel of perfection. this exhortation to trust in god at all times concerns first of all the _nature_ of faith and not the _measure_ of it. all real faith has the note of the eternal in it. it can meet the present because it is not of the present. we have grown familiar with the phrase, 'the man of the moment.' but who is this man? sometimes he is very literally a man of the moment--an opportunist, a gambler with the hours, a follower of the main chance. the moment makes him, and passing away unmakes him. but the true man of the moment is the man to whom the moment is but one throb in the pulse of eternity. for him the moment does not stand out in splendid isolation. it is set in its place between that which hath been and that which shall be. and its true significance is not something abiding in it, but something running through it. so is it in this great matter of faith. only the faith that can trust at all times can trust at any time. the moment that faith heeds the dictation of circumstance it ceases to be faith and becomes calculation. all faith is transcendent. it is independent of the conditions in which it has to live. it is not snared in the strange web of the tentative and the experimental. he that has for one moment felt the power of faith has got beyond the dominion of time. _trust in him at all times._ that is the only real escape from confusion and contradiction in the judgements we are compelled to pass upon life. times change so suddenly and inexplicably. the hours seem to be at strife with each other. we live in the midst of a perpetual conflict between our yesterdays and our to-days. there is no simple, obvious sequence in the message of experience. the days will not dovetail into each other. life is compact of much that is impossible of true adjustment at the hands of any time-born philosophy. and in all this seeming confusion there lies the necessity for faith. herein it wins its victory. we are to trust god not because we cannot trace him, but that by trusting him we may ever be more able to trace him and to see that he has a way through all these winding and crossing paths. faith does more than hold a man's hand in the darkness; it leads him into the light. it is the secret of coherence and harmony. it does not make experience merely bearable, it makes it luminous and instructive. it takes the separate or the tangled strands of human experience and weaves them into one strong cable of help and hope. _trust in him at all times._ then faith at its best is a habit. indeed, religion at its best is a habit, too! we are sometimes too ready to discount the worth of the habitual in our religious life. we put a premium on self-consciousness. we reduce the life of faith to a series of acts of faith of varying difficulty and import, but each detached from the rest and individually apprehended of the soul. surely this is all wrong. in our physical life we are least conscious of those functions that are most vital and continuous, and the more perfectly they do their work the less we think about them. the analogy is incomplete and must be drawn with care. but when you have conceded that faith has to be acquired, that it has to be learned, there is still this much in the analogy. if faith is a long and hard lesson, the value of the lesson to us is not the effort with which we learn it, but the ease with which we apply it. the measure of conscious effort in our faith is the measure of our faith's weakness. when faith has become a spontaneity of our character, when it turns to god instinctively, when it does its work with the involuntariness of habit, then it has become strong. _pour out your heart before him._ how this singer understood the office and privilege of the 'all times' trust! he knew that there is a fullness of heart that is ill to bear. true, in more than one simple way the full heart can find some slight relief. there is work. the full heart can go out and do something. there is a brother's trouble in which a man may partly forget his own. there is sympathy. surely few are so lonely that they cannot find any one ready to offer the gift of the listening ear, any one willing to share with them all of pain and burden that can be shared. ah! but what of that which cannot be shared? what of the sorrow that has no language, and the shame and confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend's mind? so often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another's ear. there are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. and there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. if my brother hath joy, am i to cloud it with my grief? if he hath sorrow, am i to add my sorrow unto his? when our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in the hour of sorrow or shame, the heart has still a burden for which this world finds no relief. but there is another fellowship. there is god our father. there is the ear of heaven. we may be girt with silence among our fellows, but in looking up the heart finds freedom. in his presence the voice of confession can break through the gag of shame, and the pent-up tide of trouble can let itself break upon the heart of eternal love. _god is a refuge for us._ that is the great discovery of faith. that is the merciful word that comes to be written so plainly in the life that has formed the habit of faith. god our refuge. it may be that to some the word 'refuge' suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. but the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. a thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. and you cannot find it easily if it be not at hand. the peasant built his cottage under the shadow of his lord's castle walls. in the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. 'trust in him at all times.' build your house under the walls of the eternal help. live in the presence. find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. trust in him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you into the innermost safety. iii. the one thing desirable one thing have i desired of the lord, that will i seek after; that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the lord, and to inquire in his temple. ps. xxvii. . _i have desired ... i will seek._ amid the things that are seen, desire and quest are nearly always linked closely together. the man who desires money seeks after money. the desire of the world is often disappointed, but it is rarely supine. it is dynamic. it leads men. true, it leads them astray; but that is a reflection on its wisdom and not on its effectiveness. among what we rightly call the lower things men do not play with their desires, they obey them. but amid the unseen realities of life it is often quite otherwise. in the religious life desire is sometimes strangely ineffective. it is static, if that be not a contradiction in terms. in many a life-story it stands written: one thing have i desired of the lord, that will i dream of, that will i hope for, that will i wait for. many things help to explain this attitude, and, explaining it, they condemn it also. we allow our surroundings to pass judgement on our longings. we bring the eternal to the bar of the hour, and postpone the verdict. or it may be in the worldliness of our hearts we admit the false plea of urgency and the false claim of authority made by our outward life. and perhaps more commonly the soul lacks the courage of its desires. it costs little to follow a desire that goes but a little way, and that on the level of familiar effort and within sight of familiar things. it is another thing to hear the call of the mountains and to feel the fascination of some far and glittering peak. that is a call to perilous and painful effort. and yet again, high desire sometimes leaves life where it found it because the heart attaches an intrinsic value to vision. it is something to have _seen_ the alpine heights of possibility. yes, it is something, but what is it? it is a golden hour to the man who sets out to the climb; it is an hour of shame and judgement, hereafter to be manifest, to the man who clings to the comforts of the valley. _one thing have i desired._ when a man speaks thus unto us, we have a right to ponder his words with care. we naturally become profoundly interested, expectant, and, to the limit of our powers, critical. if a man has seen one thing that he can call simply and finally the desire of his heart, it ought to be worth looking at. we expect something large, lofty, inclusive. and we find this: '_that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the lord, and to inquire in his temple._' let us examine this desire, and, first of all, we must free our minds from mere literalism. if we do not, we shall find in this desire many things that are not in it, and miss everything that is in it. this is not the longing for a cloistered life, the confession of one who is weary of this heavy world, doubtful of its promises and afraid of its powers. 'the house of the lord' is not a place, but a state, not an edifice, but an attitude. it is a fair and unseen dwelling-place builded by the hands of god to be the home, here and hereafter, of all the hearts that purely love and worship him. we read of one who, a day's march from his father's house, lay down and slept; and in his sleep god spake to him, and lo, out in a wild and lonely place, jacob said, 'this is none other but the house of god.' for every one to whom the voice of god has come, and who has listened to that voice and believed in its message, the mountains and valleys of this fair world, the breath of every morning and the hush of every evening, are instinct with a presence. wordsworth dwelt in the house of the lord all the days of his life. and if the wonder and beauty of the earth lift up our hearts unto our god in praise and worship, we dwell there also. yes, but this world is a world of men. in city or on hillside the great persistent fact for us, the real setting of our life, is not nature, but humanity. life is not a peaceful vision of earthly beauty. our experience is not a dreamy pastoral. there are shamed and broken lives. the world is full of greed and hate and warfare and sorrow. nature at its best cannot by itself build for us a temple that humanity at its worst, or even at something less than its worst, cannot pull down about our ears. for the psalmist, probably david himself, the temple was symbolic of all heavenly realities. it stood for the holiness and the nearness and the mercy of god, and for the sacredness and the possibility of human life. in the light and power and perfect assurance of these things he desired to dwell all the days of his life. for us there is the life and word of one greater than the temple. jesus of nazareth dwelt in the house of the lord. between him and god the father there was perfect union. and no one ever saw the worth of human life as jesus saw it. and no one ever measured the sacred values of humanity as he measured them. and now, in the perfect mercy of god, there is no man but may dwell in the house of god alway and feel life's sacredness amidst a thousand desecrations, and know its preciousness amidst all that seeks to obscure, defile, and cheapen it. _to behold the beauty of the lord._ it is only in the house of the lord, the unseen fane of reverence, trust, and communion, that a man can learn what beauty is, and where to look for it. out in the world beauty is held to be a sporadic thing. it is like a flower growing where no one expected a blossom. it is an unrelated and unexplained surprise. it is a green oasis in the desert of unlovely and unpromising things. but for the dweller in the house of the lord beauty is not on this wise. said one such dweller, 'the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.' he looked across the leagues of burning sand and saw the loveliness of carmel by the sea, and of sharon where the lilies grow. to the artist beauty is an incident, to the saint beauty is a law of life. it is the thing that is to be. it is the positive purpose, throbbing and yearning and struggling in the whole universe. when it emerges and men behold it, they behold the face of truth; and if it emerges not, it is still there, the fundamental fact and the vital issue of human life. to dwell in the divine presence by faith and obedience; to live so near to god that you can see all about yourself and every human soul the real means of life, and straight before you the real end of life; to know that though so often the worst is man's dark choice, yet ever the best is his true heritage; and to learn to interpret the whole of life in the terms of god's saving purpose,--this is to behold the beauty of the lord. _and to inquire in his temple._ the psalmist desired for himself an inward attitude before god that should not only reveal unto him the eternal fitness of all god's ways and the eternal grace of all his purposes, but should also put him in the way of solving the various problems that arise to try the wisdom and strength of men's lives. sometimes the first court of appeal in life, and always the last, is the temple court. when all the world is dumb, a voice speaks to them that worship. reverential love never loses its bearings. in this world we need personal and social guidance, and there must be many times when both shall be wanting unless we have learned to carry the burden of our ignorance to the feet of the eternal wisdom. and perhaps a man can desire no better thing for himself than that the reverence and devotion of his life should be such as to make the appeal to god's perfect arbitrament an easy thing. iv. eyes and feet mine eyes are ever toward the lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. ps. xxv. . in any man's life a great deal depends upon outlook. in some ways we recognize this fact. we do not by choice live in a house whose windows front a blank wall. a little patch of green grass, a tree, a peep of sky, or even the traffic of a busy street--anything rather than a blank wall. that is a sound instinct, but it ought to go deeper than it sometimes does. this outlook and aspect question is important when you are building a house, but it is vastly more important when you are building a character. the soul has eyes. the deadliest monotony is that of a dull soul. life is a poor affair for any man who looks out upon the blind walls of earthly circumstance and necessity, and cannot see from his soul's dwelling-place the pink flush of the dawn that men call hope, and who has no garden where he may grow the blossoms of faith and sweet memory, the fair flowers of holy human trusts and fellowships. only the divinity of life can deliver us from the monotony of living. 'mine eyes are ever toward the lord.' this man has an infinite outlook. it matters not whether he looked out through palace windows or lived in the meanest house in jerusalem's city. it is the eye that makes the view. this man had a fairer prospect than ever man had who looked seaward from carmel or across the valleys from the steeps of libanus. it was his soul that claimed the prospect. from the window of the little house of life he saw the light of god lying on the everlasting hills. that is the real deliverance from the monotony of things. the man who is weary of life is the man who has not seen it. the man who is tied to his desk sometimes thinks everything would be right if only he could travel. but many a man has done the grand tour and come back no better contented. you cannot fool your soul with mont blanc or even the himalayas. so many thousand feet, did you say?--but what is that to infinity! the cure for the fretful soul is not to go _round_ the world; it is to get _beyond_ it. _mine eyes are ever toward the lord._ that is the view we want. we gaze contemptuously on the little one-story lodge just inside the park gates, and fail to get a glimpse of the magnificent mansion, with its wealth of adornment and treasure, that lies a mile among the trees. no wonder that men grow discontented or contemptuous when they mistake the porch for the house. if a man would understand himself and discover his resources and put his hand on all life's highest uses, he must look out and up unto his god. then he comes to know that sunrise and sunset, and the beauty of the earth, and child-life and old age, and duty and sorrow, and all else that life holds, are linked to the larger life of an eternal world. that is the true foresight. they called him a far-seeing man. how did he get that name? well, he made a fortune. he managed to make use of the ebb and flow of the market, and never once got stranded. he was shrewd and did some good guessing, and now, forsooth, they say he is 'very far-seeing.' but he has not opened his bible for years, and the fountains of sympathy are dried up in his soul. he can see as far into the money column as most men, but the financial vista is not very satisfying for those who see it best. the gospel of st. john is a sealed book to him, and that is in god's handwriting and opens the gates of heaven. far-seeing? why, the man is in a tiny cell, and he is going blind. 'mine eyes are ever toward the lord.' that is the far-sighted man. he can see an ever larger life opening out before him. he can see the glory of the eternal righteousness beneath his daily duties and the wonder of eternal love in the daily fellowships and fulfilments of the brotherhood. this is measuring life by the heavenly measurement. this is the vision we need day by day and at the end of the days. for interest in some things must wane, and life must become less responsive to all that lies about it, and many an earthly link is broken and many an earthly window is darkened, and the old faces and old ways pass, and the thing the old man cherishes is trodden under foot by the impetuous tread of a new generation, and desire fails. then it is well with him whose eyes have already caught glimpses of 'the king in his beauty,' and 'the land that is very far off.' but think for a moment of the present value of the divine outlook upon life. it brings guidance and deliverance. set side by side the two expressions 'eyes unto the lord,' and 'feet out of the net.' life is more than a vision; it is a pilgrimage. we see the far white peaks whereon rests the glory of life, but reaching them is not a matter of eyes, but of feet. here, maybe, the real problem of godly living presents itself to us. here our christian idealism lays a burden on us. it is possible to see distances that would take days to traverse. even so we can see heights of spiritual possibility that we shall not reach while the light holds good unless we foot it bravely. and it is not an easy journey. there are so many snares set for the pilgrims of faith and hope. there are subtle silken nets woven of soft-spun deceits and filmy threads of sin; and there are coarse strong nets fashioned by the strong hands of passion and evil desire. there are nets of doubt and pain and weakness. but think of the man whose eyes were ever towards the lord. he came through all right. he always does. he always will. he looked steadily upward to his god. when we get into the net we yield to the natural tendency to look down at our feet. we try to discover how the net is made. we delude ourselves with the idea that if only we take time we shall be able to extricate ourselves; but it always means getting further entangled. it is a waste of time to study the net. life is ever weaving for us snares too intricate for us to unravel and too strong for us to break. god alone understands how they are made and how they may be broken. he does not take us round the net or over it, but he does not leave us fast by the feet in the midst of it. he always brings a man out on the heavenward side of the earthly difficulty. look upward and you are bound to go forward. v. the safeguarded soul the lord shall keep thee from all evil; he shall keep thy soul. ps. cxxi. . one of the great offices of religion is to help men to begin at the beginning. if you wish to straighten out a tangle of string, you know that it is worth your while to look patiently for one of the ends. if you make an aimless dash at it the result is confusion worse confounded, and by-and-by the tangle is thrown down in despair, its worst knots made by the hands that tried in a haphazard way to simplify it. life is that tangle; and religion, if it does not loosen all the knots and straighten all the twists, at least shows us where the two ends are. they are with god and the soul. god deals with a man's soul. we cannot explain the facts of our experience or the fashion of our circumstance save in as far as we can see these things reflected in our character. the true spiritual philosophy of life begins its inquiry in the soul, and works outward into all the puzzling mass of life's details. and the foundation of such a philosophy is not experience, but faith. it is true that experience often confirms faith, but faith interprets experience. experience asks more questions than it can answer. it collects more facts than it can explain. it admits of many different constructions being put upon it. it puts us first of all into touch with the problem of life rather than the solution. if the gentle, patient words of the saint are the utterance of one who has suffered, so also are the bitter protests of the disappointed worldling. the fashion of the experience may be the same in each case. it is faith that makes the lesson different. it is a want of faith that makes us expect the lower in life to explain the higher, the outward to shed light upon the inward. we pluck with foolish, aimless fingers at this strange tangle of human life. we judge god's way with us as far as we can see it, and we think we have got to the end of it. we draw our shallow conclusions. faith teaches us that god's way with us is a longer and a deeper way, and the end of that way is down in the depths of our spirit, hidden in the love of our character. it is not here and now. it is in what we shall be if god have his will with us. all the true definitions of things are written in the soul. it was here that the psalmist found his definition of evil. 'the lord shall keep thee from all evil; he shall keep thy soul.' then evil is something that threatens the soul. it is not material, but spiritual. it is not in our circumstances themselves, but in their effect upon the inward life. the same outward conditions of life may be good or evil according to their influence on our character. good and evil are not qualities of things. they have no meaning apart from the soul. the world says that health and wealth are good, and that sickness and poverty are evil. if that were true the line that separates the healthy from the sick, the rich from the poor, would also separate the happy from the miserable. but we find joy and sorrow on both sides of that line. we are drawn to look deeper than this for our definition of good and evil. we have to make the soul the final arbiter amid these conflicting voices. here we must find the true definition of evil. the first question we ask when we hear of a house having been burnt down is this: 'was there any loss of life?' all else lies on a vastly lower plane of interest and importance. so must we learn to distinguish between the house of circumstance, or the house of the body, and the soul that dwells in it. the only real loss is the 'loss of life,' the loss of any of these inner things that go to make the soul's strength and treasure. the man who has lost everything except faith and hope has, maybe, lost nothing at all. there are some among the pilgrims of faith to-day who would never have been found there had not god cast upon their shoulders the ragged cloak of poverty; and if you know anything about that band of pilgrims you will know that the man who outstrips his companions is often a man who is lame on both his feet. o sceptic world, this is the final answer to your scepticism, an answer none the less true because you cannot receive it: _the lord keepeth the souls of his saints._ have you not seen men thinning out a great tree, cutting off some of its noblest branches and marring its splendid symmetry? and very likely you have felt it was a great shame to do so. but that work of maiming and spoiling meant light and sunshine and air in a close and darkened room. it meant health to the dwellers in the house over which the tree had cast its shadow. it is much to have tall and stately trees in the garden of life. but by-and-by that great oak of vigour begins to darken the windows of faith, and god lops some of the branches. we call it suffering, but it means more light. or it may be that those firs of lordly ambition have grown taller than the roof-tree, and god sends forth his storm-wind to lay them low. we call it failure, but it means a better view of the stars. ah, yes, we are over-anxious about the trees in the garden. god cares most of all that the light of his truth and the warmth of his love and the breath of his spirit shall reach and fill every room in the house of life. _he shall keep thy soul._ that is a promise that can fold us in divine comfort and peace, and that can do something towards interpreting for us every coil of difficulty, every hour of pain. but if this is to be so, we must ourselves be true to the view of life the promise gives us. we must think of the soul as god thinks of it. we live in a world where souls are cheap. they are bought and sold day by day. it is strange beyond all understanding that the only thing many a man is not afraid of losing is the one thing that is really worth anything to him--his soul. sometimes the lusts of the world drag down our heart's desire, and we have to confess with shame to moments in our experience when we have not been at all concerned with what became of our soul so long as the desire of the hour was fulfilled or satisfied. we need to seek day by day that the masterful and abiding desires of our heart may be set upon undying good, and that our aspiration may never fold its wings and rest on anything lower than the highest. this shall not make dreamers of us. it shall stand us in good stead in the thick of the world. the man who gets 'the best of the bargain' is always the man who is most honest; for the most precious thing that a man stands to win or lose in any deal is the cleanness of his soul. the man who gets the best of the argument is always the man who is most truthful; for a quiet conscience is better than a silenced opponent. the man who gets the best of life is the man who keeps the honour of his soul; for jesus said: 'what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' so then, amid the manifold uncertainties of human life and the ever-changing forms and complexions of human experience, one thing is pledged beyond all doubt to every man who seeks the will of god and the promise for the safeguarding of his soul. he may write this at the top of every page in the book of life. he may take it for his light in dark days, his comfort in sad days, his treasure in empty days. he may have it on his lips in the hour of battle and in his heart in the day of disappointment. he may meet his temptations with it, interpret his sufferings with it, build his ideal with it. and it shall come to pass that he shall learn to look with untroubled eyes upon the outward things of life, nor fear the touch of its thousand grasping hands, knowing that his soul is in the hands of one who can keep it safe in all the world's despite, even god himself. vi. a plea for tears they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. ps. cxxvi. , . it is almost impossible to recall the joys and sorrows of life without having some thought of their compensative relation. we set our bright days against our dark days. we weigh our successes against our failures. when the hour through which we are living is whispering a bitter message, we recall the kindlier messages of other hours and say that we have much for which we ought to be thankful. and such a deliberate handling of experience, such a quiet adjustment of memories, is not without its uses. any view of life that will save a man from whining is worth taking. any reckoning that will prevent a man from indulging in self-pity--that subtlety of selfishness--is worth making. there is, moreover, something very simple and obvious in this way of thinking and judging. to make one kind of experience deal with another kind, to set the days and the hours in battle array--or shall we say to arrange a tourney where some gaily-caparisoned and well-mounted yesterday is set to tilt with a black-visored and silent to-day--is a way of dealing with life which seems to have much to commend it. but it has at the best serious limitations, and at the worst it may issue in a tragedy. the wrong knight may be unhorsed. the award may go to him of the black plume. pitting one experience against another has gone to the making of many a cynic and not a few despairing souls. the compensative interpretation of joy and sorrow may bring an answer of peace to a man's soul, or it may not. but in this matter we are dealing with things in which we cannot afford to risk an equivocal or a despairing answer. we must win in every encounter. it is not an hour's joy, but a life's outlook that is at stake. no hour's fight was ever worth fighting if it was fought for the sake of the hour. the moments are ever challenging the eternal, the swift and busy hours fling their gauntlets at the feet of the ageless things. the real battle of life is never between yesterday and to-day; it is always between to-day and the forever. to isolate an experience is to misinterpret it. we may even completely classify experiences, and yet completely misunderstand experience. to understand life at all we must get beyond the incidental and the alternating. life is not a series of events charged with elements of contrast, contradiction, or surprise. it is a deep, coherent, and unfaltering process. and one feels that it was something more than the chance of the moment that led the singer of old to weave the tears and the rejoicings of men's lives into a figure of speech that stands for unity of process, even the figure of the harvest. _they that sow in tears shall reap in joy._ the sweep of golden grain is not some arbitrary compensation for the life of the seed cast so lavishly into the ground, and biding the test of darkness and cold. it is the very seed itself fulfilled of all its being. even so it is with the sorrows of these hearts of ours and the joy unto which god bringeth us. he does not fling us a few glad hours to atone for the hours wherein we have suffered adversity. there is a deep sense in which the joys of life are its ripened sorrows. _they that sow in tears.... he that goeth forth and weepeth._ these are not the few who have been haunted by apparent failure, or beset with outwardly painful conditions of service. they are not those who have walked in the shadow of a lost leader, or toiled in the grey loneliness of a lost comrade or of a brother proved untrue. for apparent failure, outward difficulty and loneliness, often as we may have to face them, are, after all, only the accidents of godward toil. and if the bearer of seed for god's great harvest should go forth to find no experience of these things, still, if he is to do any real work in the fields of the lord, he must go forth weeping. he must sow in tears. let a man be utterly faithful and sincere, let him open his heart without reserve to the two great claims of the ideal and sympathy, and he shall come to know that he has not found the hidden meaning of daily service, nor learned how he can best perform that service, until he has tasted the sorrow at the heart of it. the tears that are the pledge of harvest are not called to the eyes by ridicule or opposition. they are not the tears of disappointment, vexation, or impotence. they are tears that dim the eyes of them that see visions, and gather in the heart of them that dream dreams. to see the glory of god in the face of jesus christ and the blindness of the world's heart to that glory; to see unveiled the beauty that should be, and, unveiled too, the shame that is; to have a spiritual nature that thrills at the touch of the perfect love and life, and responds to every note of pain borne in upon it from the murmurous trouble of the world,--this is to have inward fitness for the high work of the kingdom. yes, and it is the pledge that this work shall be done. there is such a thing as artistic grief. there is the vain and languorous pity of aestheticism. its robe of sympathy is wrapped about itself and bejewelled with its own tears. and it never goes forth. you never meet it in 'the darkness of the terrible streets.' _he that goeth forth and weepeth._ it is his tears that cause him to go forth. it is his sorrow that will not let him rest. true pity is a mighty motive. when the real abiding pathos of life has gripped a man's heart, you will find him afield doing the work of the lord. you will not see his tears. there will be a smile in his eyes and, maybe, a song on his lips. for the sorrow and the joy of service dwell side by side in a man's life. indeed, they often seem to him to be but one thing. it were a mistake to refer the whole meaning of the words about a man's coming 'again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him' to some far day when the reapers of god shall gather the last great harvest of the world. through his tears the sower sees the harvest. through all his life there rings many a sweet prophetic echo of the harvest home. _he that goeth forth and weepeth._ no man ever wept like that and went not forth, but some go forth who have not wept. and they go forth to certain failure. they mishandle life, and with good intent do harm. but that is not the worst thing to be said about these toilers without tears. it is not that they touch life so unskilfully, but they touch so little of it. it is only through his tears that a man sees what his work is and where it lies. tearless eyes are purblind. we have yet much to learn about the real needs of the world. so many try very earnestly to deal with situations they have never yet really seen. for the uplifting of men and for the great social task of this our day we need ideas, and enthusiasm, and all sorts of resource; but most of all, and first of all, we need vision. and the man who goes farthest, and sees most, and does most, is 'he that goeth forth and weepeth.' vii. deliverance with honour 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 show him my salvation. ps. xci. , . _he shall call upon me._ he shall need me. he shall not be able to live without me. as the years pass over his head he shall learn that there is one need woven into human life larger and deeper and more abiding than any other need--and that need is god. thus doth divinity prophesy concerning humanity. thus doth infinite foresight predict a man's need. we peer in our purblind fashion into the future and try to anticipate our needs. we fence ourselves in with all sorts of fancied securities, and then we comfort ourselves with the shrewdness and completeness of our forecasting and provision-making. and sometimes it is just folly with a grave face. 'he shall call upon me.' a man has learned nothing until he has learned that he needs god. and we take a long time over that lesson. it has sometimes to be beaten into us--written in conscience and heart by the finger of pain. how the little storehouse of life has to be almost stripped of its treasures, how our faith in the things of the hour has to be played with and mocked, ere we call upon god in heaven to fill us with abiding treasure and fold us in eternal love. _he shall call upon me, and, i will answer him._ but i have called, says one, and he has not answered. i called upon him when my little child was sick unto death, and, spite my calling, the little white soul fluttered noiselessly into the great beyond. my friend, you call that tiny green mound in the churchyard god's silence. some day you will call it god's answer. our prayers are sometimes torn out of our hearts by the pain of the moment. god's answers come forth from the unerring quiet of eternity. 'he shall call upon me.' 'he shall ask me to help him, but he does not know how he can be helped. he is hedged about by a thousand limitations of thought. his life is full of distortions. he cannot distinguish between a blessing and a curse. i cannot heed the dictations of his prayers, but i will answer him.' this is the voice of him to whom the ravelled complexities of men's minds are simplicity itself; who dwells beyond the brief bewilderments and mistaken desirings and false ideals of men's hearts. oh these divine answers! how they confuse us! it is their perfection that bewilders us; it is their completeness that carries them beyond our comprehension. there is the stamp of the local and the temporary on all our asking. the answer that comes is wider than life and longer than time, and fashioned after a completeness whereof we do not even dream. _i will be with him in trouble._ trouble is that in life which becomes to us a gospel of tears, a ministry of futility. this is because we have grasped the humanity of the word and missed the divinity of it. we are always doing that. always gathering the meaning of the moments and missing the meaning of the years. always smarting under the sharp discipline and missing the merciful design: 'with him in trouble.' that helps me to believe in my religion. trouble is the test of the creeds. a fig for the orthodoxy that cannot interpret tears! write vanity upon the religion that is of no avail in the house of sorrow. when the earthly song falls on silence we are disposed to call it a pitiable silence. not so. let us say a divinely opportune silence, for when the many voices grow dumb the one voice speaks: 'i will be with him in trouble,' and the man who has lost the everything that is nothing only to find the one thing that is all knows what that promise means. _i will deliver him._ what a masterful, availing, victorious presence is this! how this promise goes out beyond our human ministries of consolation! how often the most we can do is to walk by our brother's side whilst he bears a burden we cannot share! how often the earthly sympathy is just a communion of sad hearts--one weak hand holding another! 'i will deliver him.' that is not merely sympathy, it is victory. the divine love does not merely condole, it delivers. you cannot add anything to this promise. it is complete. the time of the deliverance is there, the manner of it is there, the whole ministry of help is there. you say you cannot find anything about time and manner. you can only find the bare promise of deliverance. my friend, there are no bare promises in the lips of the heavenly father. in the mighty, merciful leisure of omnipotence, in the perfect fitness of things, in a way wiser than his thinking and better than his hoping and larger than his prayer, 'i will deliver him.' _and honour him._ it will be no scanty, obscure, uncertain deliverance. there shall be light in it, glory in it. the world battles with its troubles and seems sometimes to be successful, until we see how those troubles have shaken its spirit and twisted its temper; and see, too, how much of the beautiful and the strong and the sweet has been lost in the fight. 'i will deliver him' with an abundant and an honourable deliverance--he shall come forth from his tribulations more noble, tender, and self-possessed. hereafter there shall be given him the honour of one whom the stress of life has driven into the arms of god. oh how we miss this ministry of ennoblement! we reap a harvest of insignificance from the seeds of sorrow sown in our hearts. we let our cares dishonour us. the little cares rasp and fret and sting the manliness and the womanliness and the godlikeness out of us. and the great cares crush us earthward till there is scarcely a sweet word left in our lips or a noble thought in our heart. a man cannot save his _soul_ in the day of trouble. he cannot by himself make good the wear and tear of anxieties and griefs. he can hold his head high and hide his secret deep, but he cannot keep his life sweet. only christ can teach a man how to find the nameless dignity of the crown of thorns. the kingship of suffering is a secret in the keeping of faith and love. if a man accepts this deliverance of his god folded in flashes of understanding, ministries of explanation, revivals of faith, and gifts of endurance, he shall find the honour that is to be won among life's hard and bitter things. _with long life will i satisfy him, and show him my salvation._ we have seen a grey-headed libertine, and we have missed from among the clean-hearted and the faithful some brave young life that was giving itself vigorously to the holy service. but perhaps we have had the grace not to challenge the utter faithfulness of god. the measure of life is not written on a registrar's certificates of birth and death. there is something here that lies beyond dates and documents. life here and hereafter is one, and death is but an event in it. who lives to god lives long, be his years many or few. it is reasonable to expect some relationship between godliness and longevity. but we are nearer the truth when we see how that faith and prayer discover and secure the eternal values of fleeting days. _and show him my salvation._ that is the whole text summed up in one phrase. that is the life of the godly man gathered into the compass of the divine promise. for every one who goes the way of faith and obedience, life in every phase of it, life here and hereafter, means but one thing and holds but one thing, and that is _the salvation of the lord_. viii. petition and communion hear me speedily, o lord.... cause me to hear ... for i lift up my soul unto thee. ps. cxliii. , . you will notice that the first verse begins 'hear me,' and the second begins 'cause me to hear'; and the second is greater than the first. let us look, then, at these two attitudes of a man in his hour of prayer. _hear me._ the psalmist began, where all men must begin, with himself. he had something to utter in the hearing of the almighty. he had something to lay before his god--a story, a confession, a plea. his heart was full, and must outpour itself into the ear of heaven. 'hear me speedily, o lord.' we have all prayed thus. we have all faced some situation that struck a note of urgency in our life, and all your soul has come to our lips in this one cry that went up to the father, 'hear me.' a sudden pain, a surprise of sorrow, a few moments of misty uncertainty in the face of decisions that had to be made at once, times when life has tried to rush us from our established position and to bear us we know not where--and our soul has reached out after god as simply and naturally as a man grasps at some fixed thing when he is falling. there are times, too, when prayer is an indefinable relief. we all know something about the relief of speech. we must speak to somebody. our need is not, first of all, either advice or practical help. we want a hearing. we want some one to listen and sympathize. we want to share our pain. that is what 'hear me' sometimes means. whatever thou shalt see fit to do for me, at least listen to my cry. let me unburden my soul. let me get this weight of silence off my heart. this fashion of relief is part of the true office of prayer. herein lies the reasonableness of telling our story in the ear of one who knows that story better than we do. we need not inform the all-knowing, but we must commune with the all-pitiful. we make our life known unto god that we may make it bearable unto ourselves. but let us look at the attitude of mind and heart revealed in this second position, _cause me to hear_. now we are coming to the larger truth about prayer, and the deeper spirit of it. prayer is not merely claiming a hearing; it is giving a hearing. it is not only speaking to god; it is listening to god. and as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are the words we hear greater than the words we speak. let us not forget this. let us not pauperize ourselves by our very importunity. maybe we are vociferous when god is but waiting for a silence to fall in his earthly temples that he may have speech with his children. we talk about 'prevailing prayer,' and there is a great truth in the phrase. all prayer does not prevail. there is that among men which passes for prayer but has no spiritual grip, no assurance, no masterful patience, no fine desperation. there is a place for all these things, and a need for them, in the life of prayer. we need the courage of a great faith and the earnestness that is born of necessity. we need to be able to lift up our faces toward heaven in the swelling joys and the startling perils of these mortal hours and cry, 'hear me,' knowing that god does hear us and that the outcrying of every praying heart rings clear and strong in the courts of the heavenly king. but we need something more; we need a very great deal more than this, if we are to enter into the true meaning of prevailing prayer. the final triumph of prayer is not ours; it is god's. when we are upon our knees before him, it is he, and not we, that must prevail. this is the true victory of faith and prayer, when the father writes his purpose more clearly in our minds, lays his commandment more inwardly upon our hearts. we do not get one faint glimpse into the meaning of that mysterious conflict at peniel until we see that the necessity for the conflict lay in the heart of jacob and not in the heart of god. the man who wrestled with the angel and prevailed passes before us in the glow of the sunrise weary and halt, with a changed name and a changed heart. so must it be with us; so shall it be, if ever we know what it is to prevail in prayer. importunity must not become a blind and uninspired clamouring for the thing we desire. such an attitude may easily set us beyond the possibility of receiving that which god knows we need. we must not forget that our poor little plea for help and blessing does not exhaust the possibilities of prayer. our words go upward to god's throne twisted by our imperfect thinking, narrowed by our outlook, sterilized by the doubts of our hearts, and we do not know what is good for us. his word comes downward into our lives laden with the quiet certainty of the eternal, wide as the vision of him who seeth all, deep as the wisdom of him who knoweth all. so, however much it may be to say 'hear me,' it is vastly more to say 'cause me to hear.' however much i have to tell him, he has more to tell me. this view of prayer will help to clear up for us some of the difficulties that have troubled many minds. we hear people speak of unanswered prayer; but there is no such thing, and in the nature of things there cannot be. i do not mean by that, that to every prayer there will come a response some day. to every prayer there is a response now. in our confused and mechanical conception of the god to whom we pray, we separate between his hearing and his answering. we identify the answer to prayer with the granting of a petition. but prayer is more than petition. it is not our many requests, it is an attitude of spirit. we grant readily that our words are the least important part of our prayers. but very often the petitions we frame and utter are no part of our prayers at all. they are not prayer, yet uttering them we may pray a prayer that shall be heard and answered, for every man who truly desires in prayer the help of god for his life receives that help there and then, though the terms in which he describes his need may be wholly wide of the truth as god knows it. so the real answer to prayer is god's response to man's spiritual attitude, and that response is as complete and continuous as the attitude will allow it to be. the end of prayer is not to win concessions from almighty power, but to have communion with almighty love. 'cause me to hear'; make a reverent, responsive, receptive silence in my heart, take me out beyond my pleadings into the limitless visions and the fathomless satisfactions of communion with thyself. speak to me. that is true prayer. in the quietness of life, when the flowers have shut their eye, and a stainless breadth of sky bends above the hill of strife, then, my god, my chiefest good, breathe upon my lonelihood: let the shining silence be filled with thee, my god, with thee. ix. haunted hours wherefore should i fear in the days of evil, when iniquity at my heels compasseth me about? ps. xlix. . iniquity _at my heels_. temptation is very often indirect. it is compact of wiles and subtleties and stratagems. it is adept at taking cover. it does not make a frontal attack unless the obvious state of the soul's defences justifies such a method of attempting a conquest. the stronger a man is, the more subtle and difficult are the ways of sin, as it seeks to enter and to master his life. there are many temptations that never face us, and never give us a chance of facing them. they follow us. we can hear their light footfall and their soft whisperings, but the moment we turn round upon them they vanish. if they disappeared for good, they would be the easiest to deal with of all the ill things that beset our lives. but they do not. the moment we relax our bold, stern search for the face of the enemy, there the evil thing is again--the light footfall and the soft voice. it is terrible work fighting a suggestion. there are the thoughts that a man will not cherish and cannot slay. they may never enter the programme of his life, but there they are, haunting him, waiting, so to speak, at the back of his brain, till he gets used to them. when he seeks to grapple with these enemies his hands close on emptiness. one straight blow, one decisive denial, one stern rebuke, one defiant confession of faith will not suffice for these things. they compass a man's heels. he cannot trample them down. the fashion of the evils that compass us determines the form of the fight we wage with them. preparations that might amply suffice the city in the day when an army with banners comes against it are no good at all if a plague has to be fought. so there is a way we have to take with 'the iniquity at our heels.' it calls for much patience and much prayer. if we cannot prevent sin from following us, we can at least prevent ourselves from turning and following it. a man can always choose his path if he cannot at every moment determine his company. and as a man goes onward and upward steadfastly toward the city of light, the evil things fall off and drop behind, and god shall bring him where no evil thing dare follow, and where no ravenous beast shall stalk its prey. the battle with sin is not an incident in the christian life; it is the abiding condition of it. while there are some temptations that we have to slay, there are others we have to outgrow. they are overcome, not by any one supreme assertion of the will, but by the patient cultivation of all the loftiest and most wholesome and delicate and intensely spiritual modes of feeling and of being. again, let me suggest that iniquity at our heels is sometimes an old sin in a new form. you remember the difficulty that hiawatha had in hunting down pau-puk keewis. that mischievous magician assumed the form of a beaver, then that of a bird, then that of a serpent; and though each in turn was slain, the magician escaped and mocked his pursuer. surely a parable of our strife with sin. we smite it in one form and it comes to life in another. one day a man is angry--clenched fingers and hot words. he conquers his anger; but the next day there is a spirit of bitterness rankling in his heart, and maybe a tinge of regret that he did not say and do more when his heart was hot within him and fire was on his lips. the sin he faced and fought yesterday has become iniquity at his heels. having failed to knock him down, it tries to trip him up. maybe many waste their energies trying to deal with the _forms_ of sin, and never grapple with the _fact_ of sin. hence the evil things that compass men's souls about with their dread ministries of suggestion, and flutter on unhallowed wings in the wake of life. the sin that confronts us reveals to us our need of strength, but the sin that dogs our steps has, maybe, a deeper lesson to teach us--even our need of heart-deep holiness. good resolution will do much to clear the path ahead, but only purity of character can rid us of the persistent haunting peril of the sin that plucks at the skirt of life. the deliverance god offers to the struggling soul covers not only the hour of actual grappling with the foe, but all the hours when it is the stealth and not the strength of evil that we most have cause to fear. _iniquity at my heels._ these words remind us that sin is not done with after it is committed. god forgives sin, but he does not obliterate all its consequences, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. a man may have the light of the city of god flashing in his face, and a whole host of shameful memories and bitter regrets crowding at his heels. we do not know what sin is till we turn our backs on it. then we find its tenacity and its entanglement. what would we not give if only we could leave some things behind us! what would we not do if only we could put a space between ourselves and our past! the fetters of evil habit may be broken, but their marks are upon us, and the feet that bore the fetters go more slowly for them many days. the hands that have been used to grasping and holding do not open without an effort, even though the heart has at last learned that it is more blessed to give than to receive. yes, and our sins come to life again in the lives of others. the light word that ought to have been a grave word and that shook another's good resolution, the cool word that ought to have been a warm word and that chilled a pure enthusiasm--we cannot have done with these things. parents sometimes live to see their sins of indulgence or of neglect blighting the lives of those to whom they owed a debt of firmness and kindness. it is iniquity at the heels. these passages of carelessness and unfaithfulness haunt men, be their repentance never so bitter and their amendment never so sincere and successful. but all this is for discipline and not for despair. it casts us back upon god's mercy. it keeps the shadow of the cross upon all our path. it has something to do with the making of 'a humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart.' the memory of the irreparable is a sorrow of the saints. saint, did i say? with your remembered faces, dear men and women whom i sought and slew! ah, when we mingle in the heavenly places, how will i weep to stephen and to you! only let us not be afraid nor wholly cast down. rather let us say, 'wherefore should i fear when the iniquity at my heels compasseth me about?' by the grace of god the hours of the soul's sad memory and of clinging regrets shall mean unto us a ministry of humility and a passion of prayer. and through them god shall give us glimpses of the gateway of that life where regret and shame and sorrow fall back unable to enter. there is a place whither the iniquity at a man's heels can no longer follow him, and where in the perfect life the soul, at last, is able to forget. x. the wings of the dove and i said, oh that i had wings like a dove! then would i fly away, and be at rest.... i would haste me to a shelter from the stormy wind and tempest. ps. lv. , . these words are the transcript of a mood. the writer is not unfolding to us any of the deep persistent longings of his spirit; he is telling us of a thought that shadowed his soul for an hour. let us look into this mood of his. it is not his in any unique or even peculiar sense. in moods, as in manners, history is wont to repeat itself. the writer of this poem has voiced one of the great common experiences of humanity. but let us be quite clear as to what that experience really is. let us not be misled by the music and the seeming unworldliness of these words about winged flight from a world of trouble and strife. the psalmist was not looking heavenward, but earthward, when this plea for wings broke from his heart. he was moved to speak as he did, not by the surpassing charm of a heavenly vision, but by the dark unrest of the earthly outlook. the emphatic note here is that of departure, not of destination. it is necessary to remind ourselves that this is so, for these words have become the classic of the home-sick soul. they have been used to voice the farthest and most truly divine desires of the human heart. and by virtue of such use they have gathered a meaning which was not theirs at the beginning. at that meaning we will presently look, but let us first of all look at this longing as it stands in the psalm and as it represents an experience that is threaded through the history of humanity. _oh that i had wings ... then would i fly away._ here the idea of fleeing away suggests itself as a possible solution of life; and whenever it comes to a man like this it is a source of weakness. it is not a desire to find the joys of heaven; it is a desire to escape the pains of earth. there is no vista, no wistful distance, no long, alluring prospect. the soul is hemmed in by its enemies, crushed down by its burdens, beset on all sides by the frets of the earthly lot; and there comes a vague desire to be out of it all. it is not aspiration, it is evasion. it is not response to the ideal, it is recoil from the actual. it is not the spell of that which shall be that is upon the soul, but the irksomeness or the dreadfulness of that which is. this is a mood that awaits us all. no man faces life as it should be faced, but some can hardly be said to face it at all. their face is ever turned towards a seductive vision of quietness. the solution of life for them is not in a fight, but in a retreat. of course we know there is no going back, and no easy deliverance from the burden and the battle, but in the thick of any fight there is a great difference between the man who wants victory and the man who merely wants a cessation of hostilities. this plea for wings does not necessarily betoken 'a desire to depart.' it rather indicates a desire to remain under more favourable and comfortable conditions. such a mood is not the highest and the healthiest experience of the soul. it is rather something against which we must fight relentlessly. very often the longing for wings results only in lagging footsteps. picturing to ourselves the luxury of laying life down will not help us to face the duty of taking life up. the secret of enervation is found not in the poverty of our resources, but in the cowardliness and selfishness of our attitude towards life. the battle is half won when we have looked the enemy in the face. the burden is the better borne as we stoop under the full weight of it. _oh that i had wings like a dove!_ that is a short-sighted and a selfish desire. supposing you had wings, what would you do? fly away from the moil of the world and find rest and shelter for yourself? is that the best and noblest thing to desire to do? after all, we know other and loftier moods than this. we know that staying is better than going when there is so much to stay for. we know that working is better than resting when there is so much to do. we have something better to think about than a quiet lodgement in the wilderness, we who live in a world where the strength of our hands and the warmth of our hearts count for something. to give your tired brother a lift is a vastly more profitable occupation than sitting at the roadside and wishing you could fly. man, you ought to be glad that you can walk--in a world where there are so many cripples that want help. _oh that i had wings!... then would i fly away._ that desire has never taken any one to heaven, but it has made them less useful upon earth. the breath of this desire is able to blight the flowers of social service. no one would be foolish enough to indict suburbanism as a mode of life. the day must surely come when few or none will dwell in the smoke-grimed heart of the city. but in as far as a man seeks the fairest suburb open to him in order that he may see little of, and think little of, 'the darkness of the terrible streets,' then the very life that restores health to his body shall sow seeds of disease in his soul. there is only one way to rest, and that lies right through the heart of the world's work and pain. rest is not for those who flee away from life's difficulties, but for those who face them. 'take my yoke ... and ye shall find rest.' it were not well for our own sakes that we had wings. it were not well for us to be able to avoid the burden-bearing and the tale of tired days, for god has hidden the secret of our rest in the heart of our toiling. they who come unto the city of god come there not by the easy flight of a dove, but by the long, slow pilgrimage of unselfishness. yet there is a beauty and a fitness in this longing. it is expressive of more than the weariness of a world-worn spirit, or the thinly disguised selfishness of one who fears to pay the price of life. when the long working-day of life is wearing away its last hours and verging towards the great stillness, the voices of time fall but faintly on the ear, the adorations and ideals and fashions and enthusiasms of the world come to mean little to a man who in his day has followed them as eagerly as any, and the heart within him asks only for rest. god, if there be none beside thee dwelling in the light, take me out of the world and hide me somewhere behind the night. when, like simeon the seer with the christ-child in his arms, a man feels that for him life has said its last word and shown its last wonder and uttered its last benediction, the desire for rest is a pure and spiritually normal thing; it is just the soul's gaze turned upward where beyond these toils god waiteth us above, to give to hand and heart the spoils of labour and of love. and maybe this mood of which we are thinking may have a not unworthy place in a strenuous life. as a tired woman pauses amid her tasks and looks out of her cottage window to take into her heart the quiet beauty of the woods where she knows the ground is fair with lilies, so do we find ourselves looking out of life's small casement and thinking upon the fresh, free, 'outdoor' life the soul will some day live. and such a mood as this is surely a sign of the soul's growth, a testimony of its responsiveness to the divine touch, a sudden sense of its splendid destiny borne in upon it among the grey and narrow circumstances of its service. oh that i had a dove's swift, silver wings, i said, so i might straightway leave behind this strife of tongues, this tramp of feet, and find a world that knows no struggles and no stings, where all about the soul soft silence flings her filmy garment, and the vexèd mind grows quiet as there floats upon the wind the soothing slumber-song of dreamless things. and lo! there answered me a voice and said, man, thou hast hands and heart, take back thy prayer; covet life's weariness, go forth and share the common suffering and the toil for bread. look not on rest, although her face be fair, and her white hands shall smooth thy narrow bed. xi. a new song o sing unto the lord a new song. ps. xcvi. . time and again in the psalter we find this appeal for a new song. first of all, and most obviously, the appeal concerns the contents of the song. it reminds us of the duty of making our grateful acknowledgement of god's goodness to us expand with our growing experience of that goodness. it is, if, one may so phrase it, a reminder to us that our praise needs bringing up to date. a hymn considerably later in date than this psalm exhorts us to 'count' our 'blessings,' and to 'name them one by one.' this exhortation to attempt the impossible is perhaps more worthy of being heeded than the form in which it is presented to us might lead some to suppose. there is no getting away from the simple fact that a man's thankfulness has a real and proportionate relationship to the things for which he has cause to be thankful. if in our daily life the phrase 'the goodness of god' is to have a deepening and cumulative significance, it must be informed and vitalized continually by an alert and responsive recognition of the forms in which that goodness is ever freshly manifested to us. whilst the roots of the tree of praise lie deep beneath the surface, and wind their thousand ways into dim places where memory itself cannot follow them, yet surely the leaves of the tree are fresher and greener for rain that even now has left its reviving touch upon them, and for the sunshine that is even now stirring the life in all their veins. the figure is imperfect. we are not trees. we do not respond automatically to all the gracious and cheering ministries of the eternal goodness in our lives. we may easily overlook many a good gift of our god. and though in our forgetfulness and unthankfulness we profit by the sunlight and the dew and by each tender thought of god for his creatures, yet the full and perpetual profit of all good things is for each of us bound up with the power to see them, the wisdom to appraise them, the mindfulness that holds them fast, and the heart that sings out its thanksgiving for them. 'o sing unto the lord a new song.' bring this day's life into the song. bring the gift that has come to thee this very hour into the song. look about thee. see if there be but one more flower springing at the path-side. see if the bud of yesterday has but unfolded another leaf. behold the loaf on thy table, feel the warmth of thy hearth, yea, feel the very life within thee that woke again and stirred itself with the morning light, and say these gifts are like unto the gifts of yesterday, but they are not yesterday's gifts. yesterday's bread is broken, and yesterday's fire is dead, and yesterday's strength is spent. o god, thy mercies are new every morning! so shall a new song break from the heart. it is quite possible, in taking what we believe to be a broad view of life, to overlook many of the things that go to make life. too much generalizing makes for a barren heart. the specific has a vital place in the ministry of praise. it is true that the highest flights of praise always carry the soul beyond any conscious reckoning with the details of its experience. tabulation is not the keystone of the arch of thanksgiving. but to behold the specific goodness of god in each day's life, to review the hours and to say to one's own soul, thus and thus hath my god been mindful of me, is perhaps the surest and the simplest way to deepen and vitalize the habit of praise in our life, and to set the new notes ringing in our psalm of thanksgiving. but in this appeal for a new song of praise to god there is something more than a recognition of new blessings. the new song is not merely the response to new mercies and the tuneful celebration of recent good. if there is to be ever a new note in the song, there must be ever a new note in the singer's heart. and this cometh not by observation, but by inspiration. you may change the words of the song and it may still be the old song. you may sing the same words and it may yet be a new song. for as is the singer, so is the song. _o sing unto the lord a new song._ that is a plea for a deeper and a wider life. it is a plea that sounds the depth of the heart and takes the measure of the soul. the new song comes not of a truer enumeration of life's blessings, but of a truer understanding of the blessedness of life itself. the key to such understanding is character. when by the grace of the clean heart and the enlightened and responsive spirit a man can get beneath the events of each day's life and commune with that eternal law of love to which each one of those events bears some relation--or had we not better say commune with the eternal father by whom that law exists?--then is his song of praise ever new. it is something to catch a glimpse of the mercy of god, and to think and feel as one has not thought or felt before about some part of life's daily good. but it is vastly more to learn to interpret the whole of life in the terms of the goodness of god. the saint sings where the worldling sighs. and if we find in that song only the apotheosis of courage and resignation, we have neither found the source of the song nor the message of it. the new song comes not from the thrill of peril faced and defied, nor from the victorious acceptance of hard and bitter things. it comes from that deep life of the soul in god, a life beyond the threat of peril and beyond the touch of pain. it finds its deepest and freshest notes not in contemplating the new gains and good of any day, but in a growing sense of the timeless gain and eternal good of every day. and if all this be so, it surely follows that the service of praise is not something unto which we may pass by one effort of the will or that depends upon the stimulus of outward experience. it is conditioned rather by our character, and by our power to see the unveiled face of life reflecting always the light of perfect love. and it is to produce in us the right character and the true insight that god disciplines us all our days. it is to set a new song in our hearts. said a professor of music at leipzig of a girl whom he had trained for some years and who was the pride of the conservatoire, 'if only some one would marry her and ill-treat her and break her heart she would be the finest singer in europe.' he missed something in the song, and knew it could never come there save from the heart of the singer. trouble always strikes a new note in life, and often the deepest note that is ever struck. but, be our experience joyous or sorrowful, the true end of it must ever be to deepen our own hearts that there may be in us ever a more catholic recognition of, and response to, the eternal love. the human soul is not a mere repository of experiences. memory is not the true guardian of life's treasure. that treasure is invested in character. in the moral world we _have_ what we _are_. so we may recall that which we have never possessed, and may possess that which we can never recall. and it is out of that which we have _become_ by god's grace, rather than out of that which we have received of that grace, that the new song comes. so, as day by day we pray for the grace of new thanksgiving, we are seeking something more than a new power to behold what good things each day brings us, a readier way of reckoning the wealth of the passing hours. we are seeking for a larger life in god, and for a spirit able, as it were, to secrete from every experience its hidden meed of everlasting blessing. for if the heart grow purer, the will stronger, the vision clearer, the judgement truer--indeed, if there come to the soul each day some increase of life--it shall surely find its way into living praise. and a living song is always a new song.