Psalms 39

22. Though pressed down with iniquities on his conscience, yet he had salvation in view, and the Lord of his salvation as his hope. O Lord, my salvation. Legal convictions only fill the soul with terror, drive it from God, and leave it in despair. Convictions from the Spirit, the Comforter, lead the soul to Christ; and the faith, hope and cry of the soul will be after the help and salvation of Jesus only; for He is “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” W. Mason.—He who has the Lord on his side has salvation in present possession. Faith foresees the blessed issue of all her pleas, and in this verse begins to ascribe to God the glory of the expected mercy. We shall not be left of the Lord. A sense of sin shall melt into the joy of salvation; grief shall lead on to gratitude, and gratitude to joy unspeakable and full of glory. S.

The Christian praises God for His justice, and yet fears Him for His mercy. He is so ashamed as that he dares not open his mouth before God; and yet he comes with boldness to God and asks Him anything he needs. He is so humble as to acknowledge himself to deserve nothing but evil; and yet believes that God means him all good. He is one that fears always, yet is as bold as a lion. He is often sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; many times complaining, yet always giving of thanks. He is the most lowly minded, yet the greatest aspirer; most contented, yet ever craving. Bacon.

Every new man is two men; every believer in Christ is what he was, and not what he was: the old nature and the new nature exist at the same time in each regenerate individual. The old nature the apostle calls a man, because it is a complete manhood after the image of fallen Adam; it was the desires, the judgment, the mind, the thoughts, the language, and the action of man, as he is in his rebellious estate. He calls it the “old man” because it is as old as Eden’s first transgression; it is as old as we are; it is the nature born with us, the natural depravity, the fleshly mind which we inherited from our parents. Every Christian finds this old man still troubling him. He has a new nature which was implanted in him, as through the Spirit’s sacred working he was led to hate sin and believe in Jesus to his soul’s salvation. It is the heavenly offspring of the new birth, the pure and holy result of regeneration. That new nature cannot sin, it is as pure as the God from whom it came, and like the spark which seeks the sun, it aspires always after the holy God from whom it came; its longings and its tendencies are always toward holiness and God, and it utterly hates and loathes that which is evil; so that finding itself brought into contact with the old nature, it sighs and cries, as the apostle tells us, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Hence a warfare is set up within the believer’s bosom; the new life struggles against the old death. The enmity is irreconcilable and lifelong. S.

1. 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. 2 I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; And my sorrow was stirred. 3 My heart was hot within me; While I was musing the fire kindled: Then spake I with my tongue:

4. LORD, make me to know mine end, And the measure of my days, what it is; Let me know how frail I am. 5 Behold, thou hast made my days as hand-breadths; And mine age is as nothing before thee: Surely every man at his best estate is altogether vanity [Hebrew, a breath]. [Selah

6. 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.

7. And now, LORD, what wait I for ? My hope is in thee. 8 Deliver me from all my transgressions : Make me not the reproach of the foolish. 9 I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; Because thou didst it. 10 Remove thy stroke away from me : I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.

THE Psalm consists of two parts : David’s silence to men and his speech to God ; and both of them are set with such sweet notes of music, though they be sad, that they deserve well to be committed to the chief musician. Leighton. —“The most beautiful,” says Ewald, “of all elegies in the Psalter.” It is the sorrowful complaint of a heart not yet subdued to a perfect resignation, but jealous with a godly jealousy lest it should bring dishonor upon its God, and longing for light from heaven to scatter its doubts. The holy singer had long pent up his feelings ; and though busy thoughts were stirring within him, he would not give them utterance. And he feared lest, while telling his perplexities, some word might drop from his lips which would give the wicked an occasion to speak evil against his God. And when at last, unable to repress his strong emotion, he speaks, it is to God and not to man. It is as one who feels how hopeless the problem of life is, except as seen in the light of God. It is with the deep conviction of personal frailty (v. 6) and sinfulness (v. 9), as well as of the frailty and sinfulness of all men. It is with the touching sadness of one who cannot be comforted. And yet the weeping eye is raised to heaven, and amid all his grief and perplexity, notwithstanding all that is so dark and cheerless in the world, pilgrim and stranger as he is, the Psalmist can still say, “My hope is in Thee” (v. 7). P.

1. That I sin not with my tongue. Man’s mouth will hold a world full of sin ; for there is not any sin forbidden in the law or Gospel which is not spoken by the tongue, as well as thought in the heart or done in the life. Reyner. —How important it is that we should seek to order our speech aright, seeing that our words are the outcoming of our inmost heart, the revelation of the deepest, most hidden things which are there. How important, too, seeing that words reach so far and exercise so vast an influence. They have sometimes

11. 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

12. 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, A sojourner, as all my fathers were. 13 O spare me, that I may recover strength, Before I go hence, and be no more.

been called “winged,” and so they are, travelling far and fast by paths of their own. Consider the strict judgment and account to which God will call us for our use of this talent of speech. “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned ;” and from other sayings of Christ our Lord it is to be feared that many a light word, as it seems now, will prove heavy enough at the day of judgment ; many a word lightly spoken now will have to be heavily accounted for then. Trench.

2. I held my peace, even from good—that is, I forbore to speak what I might well and lawfully enough have spoken, lest some unseemly word might suddenly slip from me ; or lest mine enemies should misconstrue anything I spake. A. Jackson. —We do so easily exceed in our words, that it is better sometimes to be wholly silent than to speak that which is good ; for our good borders so near upon evil, and so easy is the transition from the one to the other, that though we begin to speak of God and good things with a good intention, yet how quickly run we into another channel ; passion and self having stolen in turn us quite from the first design of our speech. L. —It is a great art in the Christian life to learn to be silent. Under oppositions, rebukes, injuries, still to be silent. It is better to say nothing than to say it in an excited or angry manner, even if the occasion should seem to justify a degree of anger. By remaining silent, the mind is enabled to collect itself, and to call upon God in secret aspirations of prayer. And thus you will speak to the honor of your holy profession, as well as to the good of those who have injured you, when you speak from God. Upham.

3. The Psalmist here expresses a simple fact in the actual working of the human soul. It is that the fire of feeling is fed and maintained by reflection upon the objects or truths by which it has been kindled. “While I was musing the

fire kindled." Emotion, desire, or passion is awakened by objects in the world around us, by events in providence, by the course of circumstances amid which we are placed, and by truths of nature or revelation read and apprehended by the mind; and as feeling is thus excited, it is fed and made to burn simply by giving the mind fixedly to the contemplation of the things that have kindled it. B.

The fire of God’s truth and love lay like embers in his heart. By meditation he drew those embers together and fanned them into a flame. So should we do when our hearts are dark and cold. We know enough to make us wise and happy. Our failure is in not pondering what we know. Interior.—It is impossible that the affections should be kept constant to an object which gives no employment to the understanding. The energies of the intellect, increase of insight, and enlarging views are necessary to keep alive the substantial faith in the heart. They are the appointed fuel to the sacred fire. Coleridge.—It is the musing after which the fire begins to burn—the burning of our hearts within us as the words of wisdom enter the listening ear. Attention to sacred things is the method of the soul’s feeding on them. Through this it makes its approaches, its acquaintance with them, and through this dwells with them in a sort of heavenly conversation. H. H.

As meditation opens the understanding and presents truth to the mind, so it raised the affections. Knowledge without meditation to warm the affections is like the glancing of a beam upon a wave—it fills it with a little clarity, but it doth not heal it; so, when there are many motions of truth in the brain, if meditation doth not apply them to the heart, and fix them upon the soul, the affections have no warmth by them. Slight visions make shallow impressions. He that with a careless eye looks upon a piece of embroidery does not see the curiousness of the work, and therefore doth not admire it. So when we with a running eye look upon the truths of the Gospel, no wonder our affections are not raised toward them. David, speaking concerning his meditation, says, “While I was musing, the fire burned, my heart was hot within me.” ‘Tis musing makes this fire to burn. Salter.—Our hearts and affections should answer our thoughts, as the echo the voice and the wax the character in the seal. If our meditations do not better our hearts, they do nothing. While they swim in the mind, as light things floating on the waters, they are unprofitable; but when they sink down into the affections, as heavy and weighty things, making suitable and real impressions there, then they attain their end. Our design in meditation must be rather to cleanse our hearts than to clear our heads. “While I was musing the fire burned.” We strike fire by meditation to kindle our affections. This application of the thoughts to the heart is like the natural heat, which digests the food and turns it into good nourishment. Swinnock.

Meditation hath a double benefit in it, it pours in and pours out; first it pours good thoughts into the mind, and then it pours out those thoughts again into prayer; meditation first furnisheth with matter to pray and then it furnisheth with a heart to pray. “I was musing,” said David, and the very next words are a prayer, “Lord, make me to know mine end.” Prayer is the child of meditation. It was an excellent saying of Bernard: “Lord, I will never come away from Thee without Thee.” Let this be a Christian’s resolution, not to leave off his meditations of God till he find something of God in him; some moving of the soul after God. T. Watson.—In prayer, better that our heart be without words than our words without heart. H.

4. “Make me rightly to know and estimate the shortness and uncertainty of human life, that so, instead of suffering myself to be perplexed with all that I see around me, I may cast myself the more entirely upon Thee,” as indeed follows: “And now, Lord, what wait I for?” P.

5. My days. Man’s life is styled days because it is not conferred upon us by wholesale, by months and years, but by retail of days, hours, minutes, moments; so acquainting us with the brevity thereof, we may learn to depend upon God’s bounty for the loan of our life, employ it for His glory, and every day prepare for the Bridegroom, Christ. Lagfelde.—My days an handbreadth. That is one of the shortest measures. We need not long lines to measure our lives by; each one carries a measure about with him, his own hand; that is the longest and fullest measure. It is not so much as a span; that might possibly have been the measure of old age in the infancy of the world, but now it is contracted to a handbreadth, and that is the longest. But how many fall short of that! Many attain not to a fingerbreadth; multitudes pass from the womb to the grave; and how many end their course within the compass of childhood! Leighton.

Whether we drop in infancy from the cradle to the grave, or are cut off in youth; whether we attain to manhood, or even to old age; still we soon arrive at the boundary, we soon reach the end of our course, and often without passing through its intermediate stages. “Behold, Thou hast made my days as an handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before Thee!” The stream of human existence is rapid and impetuous; its waves follow each other in quick succession, and many are ungulfed almost as soon as they appear. Early in infancy the stream glides away like a summer brook, and leaves the fond parent mournfully to recall the pleasure he received in contemplating its unsullied purity and its playful meanders. Of those who set out with us in this journey of life, how many have disappeared from our side! what changes have taken place in the circle of our connections since we began our course! how few can we now number of those with whom, in the earlier period of our lives, “we took sweet counsel!” Every year makes great changes. Many friends in whom we delighted have finished their course; they have passed through the gate that opens into the invisible world; they have completed their probation, and appeared at the tribunal of Infinite Majesty; they have done with the converse of mortals, and have seen and heard things which it is impossible to utter; they have forever finished their course. R. Hall.

Remember that our days do not come to us in a multitude, but in regulated succession, and with a largely educating variety. Though they come in succession, they make a unity, and they will make a beautiful and well-ordered unity if we live them all with God and for men. God is our home, and from that home in God what can our outlook be, even in the saddest days, but one of restful hope, quiet expectation, calm dependence on the exhaustless love of our Father in heaven, who has promised that “as our days, so shall our strength be”? J. Clifford.—Life is so short, we must seek for wisdom to make the most of it. No more is required than that every man should do his best with the hours entrusted to his care. The thought of life’s shortness should lead us to value time more highly. Our short life on earth should be a life of work, for we shall have all eternity to rest in. Learn to value time, first, because you have the work your “hand finds” to accomplish; and, secondly, because you have to “work out your own salvation.” The great lesson which the frailty and shortness of life should teach us is the importance of preparing for the eternity beyond. W. S. Randall.

His best estate is altogether van-

ity. You have man here lifted up and cast down again: lifted up man at his best estate, and from that thrown down to nothing, even in that estate he is altogether vanity. What is that? It is, as the word signifies, an earthly vapor, and it is generally used to signify things of the least and meanest use, the most empty, airy things. So idols are oft called by that name; they are nothing in respect of what is attributed to them by the children of men; and such a thing is man, he seems to be something, and is indeed nothing. Leighton.

Selah is mentioned seventy-four times in the Scripture, whereof seventy-one in the Book of Psalms, and thrice in the prophet Habakkuk, which is written psalm-wise; and it is placed in the end of a Psalm or verse. It indicates a little pause, stop, or stay. It did instruct them to meditate seriously upon those themes where “Selah” was engraven, as containing matter worthy of singular observation, meditation, and remembrance. Lvyfelde.

6. Only in an image does a man walk; only (for) a breath do they make a noise; he hoards up and he knows not who will gather them. So short and transient is man’s life, that what he does and what befalls him seems to be not so much a reality as a show, a picture, an ideal scene, in which he walks about, as one of the imaginary actors. For a breath, i.e., the time spent in a single respiration, an instant, a moment. Or as a breath, i.e., something intangible and momentary. Or as vanity, vainly, in vain, without use or effect. A.

The apostle says (1 Cor. 7: 31), “The fashion of this world passeth away,” the outward form and show of things, that which appears as the substance of this life, its possessions, enjoyments, interests, are changing, fleeting, and disappearing with every moment. The form, the fashion of the world, like a splendid pageant is unreal, illusive, continues but a little time. It passes off like the shifting scenes of the stage, with its gay masked actors of the hour. Briefly but exactly is the apostle’s thought here expressed by the Psalmist, “Surely man walketh in a vain show.” B.—Life is but a passing pageant. This alone is sure, that nothing is sure. All around us shadows mock us; we walk among them, and too many live for them as if the mocking images were substantial; acting their borrowed parts with zeal fit only to be spent on realities, and lost upon the phantoms of this passing scene. S.

It is a dreaming and distracted world, that spend their days and cares for nothing; and are as serious in following a feather, and in the pursuit of that which they confess is vanity, and dying in their hands, as if, indeed, they knew it to be true felicity. Like a stage-play, where all things seem to be what they are not, and all parties seem to do what they do not, and depart, and are all disrobed and unmasked; such is the life of the most of this world, who spend their days in a serious jesting and in a busy doing of nothing. Baxter.—Will a man find fittest preparation for calmness, and nobleness, and purity in the everlasting kingdom by giving all his actual energies and all his time in this world to these earthly, transient things? Can he be in the highest sense really succeeding by comporting himself like a settled and permanent proprietor, or like one who has hope that in time he will come into secure possession, in a place and scene where nothing is fixed, where nothing is sure, and where all the wisest and all the noblest have said, “We are strangers”? Raleigh.

Surely they are disquieted in vain.

Men fret, and fume, and worry, and all for mere nothing. They are shadows pursuing shadows, while death pursues them. He who toils and contrives and wearies himself for gold, for fame, for rank, even if he wins his desire, finds at the end his labor lost; for like the treasure of the miser’s dream, it all vanishes when the man awakes in the world of reality. Read well this text, and then listen to the clamor of the market and the exchange, the din of the city streets, and remember that all this noise (for so the word means), this breach of quiet, is made about unsubstantial, fleeting vanities. Broken rest, anxious fear, overworked brain, failing mind—these are steps in the process of disquieting with many, and all for riches, which a man must leave so soon. He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. Many work for others all unknown to them. Especially does this verse refer to those all-gathering muckrakes, who in due time are succeeded by all-scattering forks, which scatter riches as profusely as their sires gathered them parsimoniously. S.—Heaping up riches is the great foolishness and disease, especially of old age, that the less way a man has to go he makes the greater provision for it. But for what end dost thou take all this pains? If for thyself a little sober care will do thy turn, if thy desires be sober; and if not so, thy diligence were better bestowed in impairing and diminishing of these desires, and that is the easier way a great deal. And if it be for others, why dost thou take a certain unease to thyself for the uncertain ease of others? And who these are thou dost not know; maybe such as thou never intended them for. L.

It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that while men are young and have no money to spend, they are fond of spending; but as they get older, richer, and have little further use of money, then they are prone to hoard it. Thus when expediency would suggest the need of money for the many rainy days of the probable long future before him man is careless so to make it; but when, as common-sense must tell him, he is soon to die and leave his wealth, then he is anxious to hoard it. S. R.—Many covetous men take a great deal of pleasure in ruminating upon their wealth, and in recounting what they have; but they have a great deal of tormenting care and fear about it, and if they had not, it is very hard to understand where the reasonable pleasure and happiness lies of having things to no end. It is, at the best, as if it were worth the while for men to take pains to dig silver out of the earth, for no other purpose but to melt it down and stamp it, and bury it there again. Tillotson.—What can be more miserable than for a man to toil and labor his whole life, and to have no power to enjoy any fruit of his labors? to bear like an ass a golden burden all the day, and, without any further use of it, at night to have it taken away, reserving nothing to himself but a galled conscience? Downname.

Christ’s teaching about wealth (Luke 16: 19) is not communist or socialist. He recognizes fully the right of individual possession; but He emphatically asserts that possession is stewardship, and that we hold money, as we do everything, in trust for those who lack and need it. The belief and practice of that would revolutionize society, and we should have no more rich men dying in the odor of sanctity, and renowned for their liberality to the cause of God and men, while leaving behind them millions. Our modern Christianity is far too chary in giving full weight and prominence to our Lord’s plain and reiterated teachings to that effect. It needs to be preached more emphatically, and to be burned into men’s consciences. A. M.

7. And now.** He turns away with a sense of relief from the sad contemplation of man’s fleeting, transitory life, to fix the eye of his heart on Him who abideth ever. We seem almost to hear the deep sigh with which the words are uttered. It is remarkable that even here it is on God Himself, not on a life to come, that his hope sustains itself. “Although not expressly assured of a future life of blessedness, his faith, even in the midst of death, lays hold on Jehovah as the living one, and as the God of the living. It is just this which, as Hengstenberg also here observes, is so heroic in the Old Testament faith, that in the midst of the riddles of the present, and in view of a future, losing itself in a night of gloom, it casts itself absolutely and without hesitation into the arms of God” (Delitzsch). P.

My hope is in Thee. Does this imply hope in a state after death? If not, the state of mind is one very hard to understand. The one thing David is sure of is that his life here is a mere nothing, a shadow, an empty sound; the hope must therefore have another object. The Psalmist does not openly declare what it was. He was not moved to reveal it; but here, as in numberless other passages, he leaves no alternative but utter disappointment, unless the hope in death is realized hereafter. Cook.

In Thee. Sweet is it that our hope should rest in Him who is never shaken; should abide in Him who never changeth; should bind us to Him who can hold us fast to Himself, who alone is the full contentment of the soul; should, as it were, enter into Him; since “in Him is our being,” who is love. Pusey.—Verily, the heavenly instructed soul knows that all is of God by Jesus Christ; and therefore God alone is his hope. His hope is not in his graces, his feelings, his frames, his comforts, but in the God of all grace; not in the streams, but in the fountain; not in what he has received, but in the infinite fulness which is treasured up in Christ. W. Mason.

8. Deliver me.** The first thing David prays for is deliverance from the sin to which he attributes all his misery. He includes inward assurance of forgiveness, cleansing from the guilt, and deliverance from the power and penalty of sin. Cook.

9. I was dumb.** This clearly refers to the resolve and conduct described in vs. 1, 2. He thus reiterates before God how careful he had been to avoid giving offence by any hasty word; alleges the reason for this, because he felt that his suffering was God’s doing; and urges it as a motive with God in the entreaty which follows. P.

Because Thou didst it. A great deal is gained when the sorrow or the mystery has been traced up to God. God did it; then I know that infinite wisdom did it. God did it; then I know that infinite power did it. God did it, and therefore I know that infinite love did it. The fact, indeed, reduces us to silence; but let us be sure that we understand the meaning ing of the hand that is laid for the time over our mouth. It need not mean that God is rebuking our inquiry, or forbidding us to pursue it. It cannot mean that God is tantalizing us. It need not even mean that He intends to deny us a solution. It may mean that He is putting us in the way of a solution. Often, in the presence of our sorrows or our hard questions, we are like this Psalmist—our heart hot within us, our mind in a ferment of wild questionings. The bestselling for God to do with us then is to silence us, and to set us pondering this naked truth: God did it! We may think, perhaps, His reducing us to silence is an arbitrary refusal to enlighten us; but we may possibly discover, after we have been silent awhile, that a better and ampler explanation lies in the words: “Thou didst it!” . . . No man ever reasoned himself into submission under God’s stroke or into restfulness amid His mysteries. The child’s way is the only way, going direct to Him who did it, and resting in silence on His Divine heart. And how this truth gathers power when we go to this text, taking Christ with us! How it kindles under His touch! God did it; and I look up into that face of unspeakable love, with its thorn-marked brow, and say, “Thou didst it.” I am in sorrow; the sorrow is driven home by a pierced hand: Thou didst it; but the pierced hand tells me of the loving heart behind the hand; and if love hath done it let me be silent and content. Vincent.

God is training up His children here. This is the true character of His dealings with them. It is training for the kingdom; it is education for eternity. It is the discipline of love. Every step of it is kindness. There is no wrath nor vengeance in any part of the process. The discipline of the school may be stern; but that of the family is love. We are sure of this; and the consolation which it affords is unutterable. There will be no needless suffering. Were this but kept in mind, there would be fewer hard thoughts of God among men, even when His strokes are most severe. H. Bonar.—So let us be dumb, dumb not from despair, but from faith; dumb not like a wretch weary with calling for help that does not come, but dumb like a child sitting at its mother’s feet, looking up into her face and watching her doings, understanding none of them as yet, but certain that they all are done in love. C. Kingsley.

There is too much noise around us, and we cannot hear the voice of God as long as all is well with us and we have the enjoyment of life. Every affliction is a wilderness in which a man is in solitude and stillness so that he understands better the Word of God. When human voices are silent, the voice of God begins to speak. Tholuck. — Patience will not have had its perfect work in any case until the afflicted soul is prepared to make no reservation, to claim no direction, but to give up all into the hands of the most wise, most righteous and merciful God. Murmuring may for a time prevail, yet the Great Physician, who applies the painful remedy, cannot be baffled, and triumphs to His own glory and the unspeakable benefit of the believer’s soul. Happy is he who, like David, can look back upon chastisements and say, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it.” J. W. A.

Resignation, with a kind of spiritual alchemy, transmuteth every sorrow and grief into a blessing. She makes the bitter waters of Marah delicious; she sings with heavenly music and melodious voice her songs in the night; she overcomes all by subjection to all; and though noiselessly treading the path of meekness, she moves on with calm, majestic order, in company with all creatures, and all worlds, that obey Jehovah’s bidding. Abasing herself, she riseth to high exaltation; submissive, she conquers; sorrowing, she rejoiceth; dying, she liveth; consumed by fiery trials, she ascendeth from the ashes of her affliction to a nobler and better life. Jabez Burns.

10. Remove Thy stroke from me.** It is quite consistent with resignation to pray or the removal of a trial. David was fully acquiescent in the Divine will, and yet found it in his heart to pray for deliverance; indeed, it was while he was rebellious that he was prayerless about his trial, and only when he became unmissive did he plead for mercy. S.

11. Like a moth.** The moths of the East are very large and beautiful, but short-lived. After a few showers these splendid insects may be seen fluttering in every breeze, but the dry weather and their numerous enemies soon consign them to the common lot. Thus the beauty of man consumes away like that of this gay rover, dressed in his robes of purple, and scarlet, and green. Kitto. —

Surely every man is vanity. He is as Trapp wittily says “a curious picture of nothing.” He is unsubstantial as his own breath, a vapor which appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away. Selah. Well may this truth bring us to a pause. S.

12. Lord, hold not Thy peace at my tears.** He that does not willingly afflict and grieve the children of men, much less His own children, will not hold His peace at their tears, but will either speak deliverance for them (and if He speak, it is done), or in the meantime speak comfort to them, and make them to hear joy and gladness. H. — A stranger, or passing guest; a sojourner and not a native.

As all my fathers. As the patriarchs had been in the land which was theirs only by promise, he himself, he felt, and all men were on the earth what Abraham was in the land of promise; he could not call one foot of it his own. P. — The stranger is one who is merely a guest for a season, the sojourner one who lives as a client, under the protection and patronage of a prince or noble; neither has any right nor settled footing in the land. The earth is not the home of man. An image which is at once humbling and suggestive of a sure hope. Cook.

The mere conviction of the brevity and hollowness of life is not in itself a religious or a helpful thought. The connection in which it is held determines 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.” 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.” 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 recognized 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 honor and faithfulness that no harm shall come to us travelling in His territory, and relying on His Word. “A stranger with Thee”—then we have a constant companion and an abiding presence. Companionships may dissolve and warm hands grow cold and their close clasp relax—what then? He is with us still.