Psalms 117

In the third place, the life of the sainted dead is a life of wide and holy and happy fellowships. They are all with each other, because they are all with Christ. They constitute a great, compact, and blessed community from which all sin and discord are excluded. For them the battle has forever ended, and eternal felicity has begun. Who can picture the happy surprises, the joyful greetings, the earnest conferences, the jubilant songs, the resounding hallelujahs, the praises and the prayers of that innumerable host, among whom the Christ walks as King, and whose own name He has written on their foreheads? O Paradise of God! how my heart doth long and beat for thee!

But your poor heart cries out: “Am I, then, forgotten in this flood of joy?” Forgotten? No! a thousand times, No! They know you are coming, though they know not when; and at every knock upon the death portals they wonder whether you have come. They know you are coming, nor will you need to wait for them long when your heart has ceased its beating, and your surprises under their loving guidance will be a new joy to them. They know you are coming, coming from toil and tears to rest and gladness; from loneliness and heartaches to blessed fellowships and a Divine guidance. Your coming will increase their blessedness. For they are not perfect without us. On Thanksgiving day, in many of our homes, the children and grandchildren come from near and far to renew the greetings of the early time. Each new arrival is greeted with a shout, with hurrying feet, and hearty grasp, and joyful tears, and merry laughter, and uncounted kisses. But only when the last guest has been welcomed, and has exchanged his dusty garments for the robe of feasting is the grace spoken and the meal begun, while the homestead rocks upon the waves of joy! We shall all wait for each other. So the apostle declared, when he said that at the sounding of the trumpet we shall all be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, and to be forever with Him. Together shall we mount from Paradise to the City of God; for Paradise is only the vestibule where the increasing host is rapidly marshalling to enter at last in solid ranks, with radiant faces, and unfurled banners, and shouts that rend the skies, the city of pearly gates and of golden streets. The final coronation is one for which they that have preceded us shall wait, until we all shall have joined them, when God’s work on earth shall have been done, and time shall be no more. There is to be a last death-bed, as once there was a first. And when the last grave shall have been filled, while the bereaved perchance stand about it in chastened grief and hope, the great and eternal transfiguration shall chase away the night forever.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus! Behrends.

1. O PRAISE the LORD, all ye nations; Laud him, all ye peoples. 2 For his mercy is great toward us; And the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.

Praise Jehovah, all ye peoples, Laud Him, all ye nations! For His grace is mighty over us, And Jehovah’s truth endureth for ever, Hallelujah.

D.

THIS, the shortest of all the Psalms, is a hallelujah addressed to the heathen world. In many Hebrew Mss. it is made the close of Psalm 116 or the commencement of Psalm 118.

But precisely in its brevity it is one of the grandest witnesses to the might with which, in the midst of the Old Testament, the universal calling of the religion of revelation is under-

mining the national barriers. The call is based upon the might of Jehovah’s grace, which proves itself mighty over Israel, i.e., superabundantly covering human sin and weakness by its intensity and fulness; it is also based upon His truth, in virtue of which history even on into eternity issues in the verifying of His promises. Grace and truth are the two Divine powers which are one day to reveal and disclose themselves fully in Israel, and are from thence to conquer the whole world. D.