Psalms 65

7. The Divine judgment is now painted as if actually fulfilling itself before the very eyes of the Psalmist. Hence the verbs are in the past tense, by which a certain dramatic effect is produced, which is lost when they are rendered in the future. So vividly is the Divine judgment anticipated, that it is as if already accomplished. P. — But God has shot them—with an arrow—suddenly—the wounds are theirs. By an abrupt but beautiful transition he describes the tables as completely turned upon the enemy, as they are about to shoot an arrow suddenly at the righteous, God shoots an arrow suddenly at them. The wounds which they intended to inflict on others have become their own. When they thought to strike others they were struck themselves. A.

8. Their own tongue against them. It is written that “every idle word shall be brought into judgment.” Light words weigh heavy in God’s balances. They are punished; “their own tongue shall be against them.” Better a mountain should fall on us than our

own guilty tongue in the day of judgment! Do we boast—do we revile—do we insult—do we jeer at holy things or godly people with an unbridled tongue? Then God will make it a rod to scourge us with. The tongue is called the glory of man in the Psalms, “Awake my glory.” It was the glory of his tongue to praise his God. But when the tongue is debased to vile uses and purposes, then it becomes our shame and disgrace, and not our glory. T. M.

9. Shall wisely consider of his doing. The judgments of God are frequently so clear and manifest that men cannot misread them, and if they have any thought at all, they must extract the true teaching from them. S.

10. The Divine deed, patent to all, of judicial retribution, becomes a blessing to humanity. Passed on from mouth to mouth it becomes a warning. For the righteous in particular it becomes a consoling and joyous confirmation of faith. The righteous rejoices in his God, who by judging and redeeming in this fashion makes history the history of redemption; with so much the more confidence he hides himself in Him; and all the upright glory in God, who looks into the heart, and in deeds acknowledges those whose heart is conformed to Him. D.

1. PRAISE waiteth for thee, O God, in Zion: And unto thee shall the vow be performed. 2 O thou that hearest prayer, Unto thee shall all flesh come. 3 Iniquities prevail against me: As for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away [forgive them. Am. Com.]. 4 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, The holy place of thy temple. 5 By terrible things thou wilt answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation;

Thou that art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, And of them that are afar off upon the sea: 6 Which by his strength setteth fast the moun- tains; Being girded about with might. 7 Which stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, And the tumult of the peoples. 8 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. 9 Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it, Thou greatly enrichest it; The river of God is full of water:

Thou providest them corn, when thou hast so prepared the earth. 10 Thou waterest her furrows abundantly Thou settlest the ridges thereof : Thou makest it soft with showers ; Thou blessest the springing thereof. 11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness ;

WE can hardly doubt that this Psalm was composed on the occasion of an abundant harvest, and was intended to be sung as a hymn of thanksgiving by the whole congregation gathered before God in Zion. From the allusions in vs. 7, 8 it would seem that the time was one of great political convulsions, of a shaking of nations and kingdoms, in the midst of which God had manifested His goodness to His people. The Psalm connects together these two great concurrent instances of God’s protecting care and love. He had given peace to Zion when her enemies were raging around her. He had crowned her with the year of His goodness when drought and famine seemed to threaten. “The Hearer of prayer” had heard the petitions of His people, when they met to confess their sins and to make known their need before Him; and now it was but fitting that they should gather again within His courts, there to thank Him for His mercy, and to show forth all His praise. This twofold character of the Psalm is best explained by referring it to the time immediately subsequent to the destruction of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem. An abundant harvest, it had been promised (Isa. 37: 30), should follow that event; and the fields so lately trampled beneath the feet of the invader seemed now, with their waving crops, to sing and shout for joy. The title of the Psalm assigns it to David; but it is impossible to read it, and not to feel that it bears every evidence of a later date. So strong indeed is this evidence that even Delitzsch, who is usually a strenuous supporter of the inscriptions, abandons the tradition here, and, with Ewald, thinks that the Psalm was written about the time of Sennacherib’s overthrow (i.e., about 712 n.c.).

The Psalm consists of three strophes: The opening is an expression of the thoughts and feelings with which the congregation may fitly approach God, now that they come to thank Him for His goodness (vs. 1-4). Then follows the celebration of the mighty acts of Jehovah, both in the world of nature and also among the nations, so that His name is known and acknowledged to the ends of the earth (vs. 5-8).

And thy paths drop fatness. 12 They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness : And the hills are girded with joy. 13 The pastures are clothed with flocks ; The valleys also are covered over with corn ; They shout for joy, they also sing.

Lastly, the special thanksgiving which is called forth by the refreshing rain which God has sent, and the rich and glorious harvest which is already waving and ripening before their eyes (vs. 9-13).

The difference between the first and last strophe in the mode of expression is striking. In the first, there is a certain abruptness. The thoughts follow one another, not indeed altogether without order, but without anything like formal cohesion. In the last, on the other hand, the language flows with the thoughts. The bright harvest-scene is before the eyes of the inspired singer. He stands looking on the fields white already to the harvest, and his soul within him rejoices in their glorious promise. The poet and the world without him are at one accord. The fulness of joy in his heart, as he sees how his God has poured blessing upon the land, passes as it were by a contagion of sunny gladness into the inanimate creation, and the very corn-fields seem to him to shout together, yea to sing for joy. P.

The Psalm loses none of its rare beauty by reason of our uncertainty as to its original adaptation. We may take its sweet words and apply them to very many of the varied scenes of ever shifting human life; for when is God other or less than the Infinite Fountain of all blessings! C.

1-4. In these verses, while the meaning of the separate sentences is clear, it is not equally easy to trace the line of thought. I believe it to be this: In Zion God is known, there He is praised and worshipped. He is the hearer of prayer; that is His very character, and therefore all flesh comes to Him. All who feel their weakness, all who need help and grace, seek it at His hand. It is true that they who thus come come with the burden of sin upon them; their iniquities rise up in all their strength and might, and would thrust them away from the presence of the Holy One. But He Himself, in the plenitude of His mercy, covers those iniquities, will not look upon them, and so suffers sinners to approach Him. And how blessed are they who, reconciled and pardoned, are thus suffered to draw nigh. Of that blessedness may we ourselves be partakers, may we be filled and satisfied therewith. P.

1. According to our Hebrew text, the word translated “waiteth” is a noun, used often in the sense of silence; here, of silent trust. “To Thee, O God, belong silent trust and grateful praise; these become Thee and Thou art worthy to receive them from Thy worshippers in Zion.” “To Thee let the vow be performed.” C.—This is a song of joyful thank giving for great prosperity, and the vow the singers are performing is that bringing an offering from the fruits of the earth with loud and cheerful praise. De Witt.

2. Hearer of prayer, up to Thee shall all flesh come. Thou who habitually hearest prayer. This is mentioned as one of the Divine characters or attributes. Up to Thee, even to Thee, implying actual arrival, and therefore a stronger expression than unto Thee. All flesh is here used in its narrower sense of all mankind. To Thee they shall come, i.e., must come, for the supply of their necessities, the forgiveness of their sins, and, in short, for every good and perfect gift, both temporal and spiritual. A.

Thou that hearest prayer. This is Thy name, Thy nature, Thy glory. God not only has heard, but is now hearing prayer, and always must hear prayer, since He is an immutable being, and never changes in His attributes. Every right and sincere prayer is as surely heard as it is offered. S.—He never rejects any that deserves the name of prayer, how weak, how unworthy soever the petitioner be. “Thou art plentious in mercy to all that call upon Thee;” “A rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” This must be believed as certainly as we believe that God is. As sure as God is the true God, so sure is it that none who sought Him diligently departed from Him without a reward. You may as well doubt that He is God, as doubt that He will hear prayer. Clarkson.

If God be not merely an infinite Intelligence, but a moral Being, a mighty Heart, so that justice and mercy and tenderness are attributes of His character, then to appeal to Him in virtue of these attributes is assuredly to appeal to Him to some purpose. If an omnipresent Intelligence is a sufficient guarantee of His being able to hear us; an interest such as justice and mercy imply toward creatures dependent upon Him for life and its continuance, is a guarantee of His willingness to do so. It is on this ground that God is said to hear prayer in Holy Scripture. That He should do so follows from the reality of His nature as God. H. P. L.

Therefore, because Thou art a God hearing prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come; justly does every man’s praise wait for Thee, because every man’s prayer waits on Thee, when he is in want or distress, whatever he does at other times. H.—Unto God, so well known as the Hearer of prayer, let all the needy come! And their prayer having been answered, let them come yet again with their grateful thank-offering! C.

Prayer is a term of great latitude, involving the whole compass of our intercourse with God. Paul represents it to include our adoration of His perfections; our acknowledgment of the wisdom of His dispensations, and of our obligations for His benefits, providential and spiritual; the avowal of our entire dependence on Him, and of our absolute subjection to Him; the declaration of our faith in Him; the expression of our devotedness to Him; the confession of our own unworthiness, infirmities, and sins; the petition for the supply of our wants, and for the pardon of our offences, for success in our distress, for a blessing on our undertakings, for the direction of our conduct and the success of our affairs. H. More.

An argument for the reasonableness of prayer is based on the unchangeable character of God. It is precisely because God’s character is unchangeable that His purposes are flexible. It is because He is a just God that He is a Saviour—i.e., that He adapts His providence to the changing characters with which it has to deal. He treats differently those who treat Him differently, and this precisely because He is in Himself the same and changes not. If God does not grant every prayer, it is because He knows what is good for us far too well to do so. We must offer all our prayers for temporal blessings with due submission to God’s better wisdom. “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” Only one prayer needs no such qualification; the prayer for that Holy Spirit which, in the Christian doctrine, is the direct influence of the Deity on the spirits He has created, bestowing on them the highest wisdom, purifying them even as He, the fountain of purity, is pure. C. P. Reichel.

3. Words of iniquities are too strong for me; (as for) our transgressions, Thou wilt expiate them, or forgive them for the sake of an atonement. A.—Iniquities prevail. “Are too strong for me.” It is the remembrance of this which brings up before the mind the one great obstacle to approach to God; the next line telling us how that obstacle is removed. Calvin well explains: “Although our iniquities, as they deserve repulse, would cast us far from Thy sight, yet because Thou showest Thyself ready to be reconciled, they will not prevent the course of our prayers.” P.

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. So here we have the hopelessness and misery of man’s vain struggles, and side by side 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. A. M.

As for our transgressions, Thou shalt purge them away. In the Hebrew it is, Thou shalt hide them. It alludes to the mercy-seat, which was covered with the wings of the cherubim; so are the sins of the godly, when repented of, covered with the wings of mercy and favor. Thomas Watson.—The pronoun is emphatic, as though to express the conviction that God and God alone could do this. P.

4. Happy (he whom) Thou wilt choose and bring (him) near, i.e., admit him to Thy presence and to intimate communion with Thee (so that) he shall inhabit Thy courts; we shall be sated, satisfied or filled, with the good, i.e., the pleasure, the enjoyment, of Thy house, the holy (place) Thy temple, or Thy holy temple, Thy sanctuary, an expression used both of the tabernacle and the temple properly so called. The privilege described is not merely that of public worship at the place of God’s appointment, but of residence in His family and participation in the privileges of His household. A.

He satisfied. For all that God’s grace offers us we can give no better thanks than that we hunger and thirst after it, and that the poor empty soul be satisfied therewith. D.—What can be wanting in the house of Him who made everything, who is the master of everything, who will be all unto all, in whom is an inexhaustible treasure of good. Of Him is said “Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things.” Bellarmine.

We are chosen of God, and this alone is blessedness. Then He works graciously in us and attracts us powerfully; this also is blessedness. Furthermore, we by His Divine drawings are made nigh by the blood of His Son, and brought near by His Spirit into intimate fellowship; so that we have access with boldness; here also is unrivalled blessedness. To crown all, we approach as chosen and accepted ones, to become dwellers in the Divine household; this is heaped-up blessedness, vast beyond conception. Such is the portion of every man whom God has chosen and caused to approach unto Him, though once his iniquities prevailed against him. S.

5. The Psalmist now approaches more nearly to his main subject; and first, he declares God’s wonders on behalf of His people. P.

Beautifully is He said to be “the confidence of all the ends of the earth”—worthy to be trusted by people of every nation, every clime under the whole heavens! C.—The meaning is that God is the most certain help and defence of men, whether He be acknowledged by them and trusted in or not. Venema.—Here, as in v. 2, it is the claim of God to be thus recognized and trusted in which is asserted. God is the hearer of the prayers of all. He is the only object of trust, even though all do not pray to Him or trust in Him. As Luther well says: “One may run over the wide world, even to its utmost extremity, yet Thou art the only foundation on which the trust of a man’s heart can rest.” P.

6,7. In the world of nature and of men He proves Himself to be the one girt about with power, to whom everything must be submissive. He, the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of the world, He it is that establishes the mountains and stills the roaring of the ocean. D.—Is not the evidence of ease on the very front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not “There has been a great effort here,” but “There has been a great power here”? It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of Divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things. Ruskin.

It is true, in the strict sense, that God stills the raging of the seas; but it is also true that He subdues the commotion of human societies and states, of which the sea is a natural and common emblem. Hence he adds in express terms, the tumult of nations. A.—Human society owes its preservation to the continued power of God; evil passions would secure its instant dissolution; envy, ambition, and cruelty would create anarchy to morrow, if God did not prevent Glory be unto God who maintains the fabric of social order, and checks the wicked, who would fain overthrow all things. S.

8. Outgoings of morning and evening rejoice. Outgoings, the places where morning and evening have their birth, the east and west; the meaning being that all created things break forth into songs of joy before God.

P.—As God scatters the light of the morning and draws the curtains of the evening, so He does both in favor to man and gives occasion to us to rejoice in both; so that, how contrary soever light and darkness are to each other, and how inviolable soever the partition between them, both are equally welcome to the world in their season; it is hard to say which is more welcome to us, the light of the morning which befriends the business of the day, or the shadows of the evening which befriend the repose of the night. H.

God has given a peculiar beauty and brightness to the lights of evening and morning. We never feel so deeply as at these times the beauty of the world which He has made our home. The softened lights, the longer shadows, heighten all the colors of nature, make all distances vaster, and all outlines less sharp and distinct, and so beget a sense of freedom in which we feel true pleasure. And it is the daily life and care of God in the world that makes the joy. He is the sun whose beams of blessing enlighten and warm our hearts. His great, infinite presence behind and below all created life comes up into it and mingles, unseen and often unrecognized, with the life of nature and the experience of our souls. To the child of God, faithful to his duties, believing in God’s love, hoping for heaven, the outgoings of the morning and evening rejoice—of the morning because it opens with new tokens of his Father’s love; of the evening, if for no other reason, because “a day’s march nearer home” is done. W. R. Brooks.

There is, indeed, a softening, gentle, meditative mood to which the sights and sounds of nature win the thoughtful mind; and how grateful, how healing, how redeeming, from fretfulness and care, how preparatory for better things, are the sweet natural influences of a morning or evening landscape even on our mortal frame! It is a power prelusive to the great harmony, and awakening attention; many analogies will be suggested, many thoughts excited, many fancies and feelings stirred. But the grand meaning, the utterance of Deity, the inward sense of His eternal power and Godhead, the perception of the Omnipresent, yet personal Intelligence, the sight and sense of all that God unquestionably means His creatures to behold in nature! the soul must be awake, indeed, for that, alive to God for that, and then how blessed! For when this grandeur of sensibility to Him, and this power of communion with Him, is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven. Earth is no more a prison, but a province of freedom, loveliness, and light, as one of the mansions of our Father’s house, where we may walk with God, and prepare to be translated. How near we are to Him, in every part of His creation, when alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord! G. B. C.

The happiness of life is the happiness of its separate days. We too often pray and care for our whole life, earnestly intending and desiring that as a whole it may be good and true, but overlook each single day, as if one life had to be lived at once and not by days. It should be our study and care to make each day, this day, a perfect day. A day is a life, and the record of this day and every other is preserved in the book of God. And life is a day; of it the evening cometh and also the morning. If the evening of life is to rejoice, the day must be spent in the faithful service of God. Then after the evening the morning of the next life shall open with a brightness and beauty such as never shone on earth, and with song such as this world never heard. W. R. Brooks.

9. With this verse begins the special subject of thanksgiving, the thanksgiving for the harvest. P.—God is represented in this and the following verses as actively engaged in tilling the soil for the sustenance of His great family. In this the supply of water is the first consideration, and the clouds are mentioned here by a term familiar in Oriental cultivation. The whole conception of a most successful process of agriculture on a vast scale, carried on methodically by the wisdom and power of God, is very grand. De Witt.

Spring follows winter, and ushers in summer, according to an appointed order. This fact teaches the continuous control and government of God. God seems to come with the coming in of each of the seasons. As Maker, and Life-giver, and Father, “Thou visitest the earth and waterest it.” S. Martin.—The Holy Spirit makes use of a homely word when, in describing the fertilizing, genial rain, He terms it a visiting of the earth. When a visit is made by rich and affectionate friends, they do not come empty, but bring with them a blessing or good gift to testify their favor and love. Thus, although God is over all, and fills heaven and earth, He does not at all times leave traces or marks of His presence. But when in time of drought He gives a gracious, fertilizing shower, it is as if He paid us a visit, and brought along with Him a great blessing, that we might mark His love and goodness. Arndt.

He who created us had to contrive for our support, and to contrive variety of foods and flavors; and so He bade the earth bring forth the vast varieties of its products in vegetable and animal life. Man’s life could have been maintained with corn alone, had the earth produced nothing else; but certainly man’s life would have been a very different and a very dreary thing had it been so. He who created us had also to provide for the support of our thinking, our intellectual and spiritual life, and to contrive to give us variety of thought, variety of moods and feelings. One thought eternally repeated might keep a man’s mind alive. One mood, one feeling, prolonged, might keep the soul from annihilation. But surely life thus prolonged through years and centuries would be a dreary life. One of the Divine contrivances to give us variety of thought, a continual succession of new thoughts and frequent changes, of our moods of feeling, is in the influence God has given to the outer world upon our minds and hearts. God created this great nature around us, filled it with His own presence and power and wisdom, set it in perpetual motion and busy change, that our spirits might be set thinking and studying by it, that our feelings might be awakened, our sentiments touched, and our souls instructed by the influence of the world upon us. W. R. Brooks.

River of God. Fountain of God is here His inexhaustible storehouse of blessing, and more especially the fulness of the heavenly waters, out of which He sends down the fructifying rain. D.—The brook of God, not as the Chaldean and others “the clouds,” but rather “the rain.” It is the heavenly stream as opposed to earthly streams; called a brook or channel with reference to the irrigation of the land by means of such. It is full of water, whereas the wells which men dig, the channels which they cut, dry up and cease to flow. P.

Thou providest corn. The corn-plants are utterly unknown throughout all the geological periods. Not the slightest trace or vestige of them occurs in any of the strata of the earth until we come to the most recent formations, contemporaneous with man. The testimony of geology, therefore, confirms unequivocally the testimony of Revelation, and shows that corn was not only specially created for man’s use, but also got ready specially for the appointed hour of his appearance on earth. Macmillan.

God, by providing rain for the earth, prepares corn for man. As for the earth, out of it comes bread (Job 28: 5), for out of it comes corn; but every grain of corn that comes out of it God

Himself prepared; and therefore He provides rain for the earth that thereby He may prepare corn for man, under whose feet He has put the rest of the creatures, and for whose use He has fitted them. When we consider that the yearly produce of the corn is not only an operation of the same power that raises the dead, but an instance of that power not much unlike it, and that the constant benefit we have from it is an instance of that goodness which endures forever, we have reason to think that it is no less than a God that prepares corn for us. Corn and cattle are the two staple commodities with which the husbandman, who deals immediately in the fruits of the earth, is enriched; and both are owing to the Divine goodness in watering the earth. To this it is owing that the pastures are clothed with flocks (v. 13). H.—Blessed be the Great Householder; He does not suffer the harvest to fail, He supplies the teeming myriads of earth with bread enough from year to year. Even thus does He vouchsafe heavenly food to His redeemed ones: “He hath given meat unto them that fear Him; He is ever mindful of His covenant.” S.

9-11. Our harvest-homes are times of rejoicing too. Would that our tillers and reapers of the soil were wont to refer all to God as the Psalmist did. “Thou waterest the earth, Thou greatly enrichest it, Thou preparest the corn, Thou waterest the ridges, Thou settlest the furrows, Thou makest it soft with showers, Thou blessest the springing thereof, Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness.” Not one word of man, of man’s skill or of man’s labor, not one thought of self. Bouchier.—The farmer does nothing more to it than break up the ground, and plough, and sow, and then lets it lie. But God must be always attending to it with rain and heat, and must do everything to make it grow and prosper, while the farmer lies at home and sleeps. Luther.

11. Thou crownest the year.** A full and plentiful harvest is the crown of the year; and this springs from the unmerited goodness of God. This is the diadem of the earth. “Thou encirclet,” as with a diadem. A most elegant expression to show the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, producing the seasons, and giving a sufficiency of light and heat alternately, to all places on the surface of the globe, by its north and south declination (amounting to 23° 28’ at the solstices) on each side of the equator. A more beautiful image could not have been chosen: and the very appearance of the space, termed the zodiac on a celestial globe, shows with what propriety the idea of a circle or diadem was conceived by this inimitable poet. A. Clarke. — Thy paths drop fatness. The obvious meaning of this strong but beautiful figure is, that wherever He appears His movements are attended by a rich and fertilizing influence. Fatness is as usual a figure for rich food, and that for general abundance. A.

12. The pastures of the wilderness.

The wilderness does not mean a bare desert, as the word “pastures” shows; it is merely contrasted with the cultivated arable land. P. — It was in part the land that was fit for pasture but not for cultivation. Such was the greater part of the Sinaitic peninsula, and of the country between the Jordan and the Phrat. M.

12,13. At the overflowing goodness of God nothing was mute. The dumb flocks broke forth in grateful melody, and even the green herbage on which they revelled itself had a tongue in praise of Him whose pencil gave it its color, and whose breath imparted to it its perfume. It was not enough for God to furnish the fruits necessary for the support of man. He adorned the earth with flowers of every form and hue and fragrance. It is full of His gratuitous love, of superadded grace. The lines of beauty and of utility intermingle and run into each other. B. B. E.

God reveals Himself as omnipotent at the return of every spring, and uses His might for the bestowal of blessings. The goodness of God crowns the year as a diadem does the brow. Men find out His goings by the blessings of His paths. The jocund flocks clothe the pastures; the very hills are girded with joy and gladness. Shall these rejoicings of nature find no echo in the human heart? Let men vie with nature in thanksgivings; let their rejoicings swell into praise and happy harvest-songs. Tholuck.

High above the poetic beauty of this exquisite Psalm is the moral beauty of the sentiment which sees God Himself and not Nature only, nor her so-called “laws,” in the rains, the green pastures, and the valleys covered over with corn. It is God who visits the earth; it is the river of God which bears along the copious waters: “Thou makest it soft with showers;” Thou blessest the springing up of its vegetable growths; it is Thy paths—Thine own very footsteps over our fields—that distil fatness and abundance; it is unto Thee most appropriately that pastures and valleys shout the chorus of praise and sing for joy! Everything is full of

God; His hand and His footsteps everywhere. There is no chill of a heartless and godless philosophy, falsely so-called, on the heart of this inspired poet; his glowing soul is warmed by the felt presence of an active, energizing God whose handiwork and whose blessed footsteps he sees in everything that grows and in every agency that makes growth and beauty and fruitfulness on the face of this fair world.

By a very interesting but logical process Isaac Taylor infers from this Psalm the general culture, the tastes, and the piety of the Hebrew people of David’s time. The data given are the Psalm itself; the fact that it was sung in the public worship of the sanctuary before and by the assembled thousands of Israel—sung manifestly with spirit and enthusiasm; with intelligence therefore, and with some adequate conception of its sentiments. Now, could a people in whose national literature such a Psalm has a prominent place—nay more, in whose liturgy, in whose stated worship it has its cherished place; on whose annual thanksgiving festival, the great feast of the tabernacles, we may suppose it formed the centre and culminating point of their enthusiasm—could a people so trained, capable of being charmed by the poetry of such a song and of being lifted heavenward and Godward by its Divine sympathies and its recognition of an ever-present God, be only a “horde of rude and ignorant barbarians?” C.

Worship of God will never be healthy and many-sided if it excludes the view of the outer world. Look at the Book of Psalms. Deep, manifold, and awful is the tragedy of human life there, and glorious are the bursts of melody and hope that sweep across it; but through all struggle, and agony, and shouts of triumph, there come the scent of flowers, and of pines, and of mown grass, the singing of birds, the lowing of cattle, the roar of the sea, and the murmur of the stream. So in the house of God and in worship heaven and earth are brought together. J. Leckie.

In the season of freshness and growth, and of exuberant life, we are impressed by the profusion and affluence of those provisions which the God of Nature has made for the well-being of His creatures. Bread enough and to spare is inscribed all over our Father’s house. What an infinity of blossoms, above all that are needed! what an infinity of fruits, above all that ever will be used! Light is not meted out like an artificial illumination, so much consumption for so many who use it; it is poured all over the earth with illimitable profusion—over the rocks and woods, where no man liveth; all over the sea, where no man roameth. Who can measure the waters? There is no fear that man ever will exhaust their abundance. The springs are full and flowing among the rocks; the brooks running through the meadows; the large rivers rolling their magnificence to the sea; the great lakes lifting up their reservoirs of abundance; and the dew and the rain defying and baffling all powers of computation. The concave of the skies, how vast!—large enough for a canopy over all the earth. And the air which is treasured within it, for the sustenance of life, is not barely sufficient for so many, and for so long; it seems to laugh at the idea of stint or measurement. With wings laden with perfume, it flies away to kiss the hills, fan the tree-tops, and play with the ocean—encircling the globe, and coming back, as if it could not possibly exhaust its exuberant strength and life. The works of God are distinguished by this abundance, this immense profusion, this infinity. William Adams.

For nearly three thousand years, since the royal poet looked over the plains of Judea covered with the bounty of God, and broke forth into his magnificent hymn of praise, has the earth rolled on in her course, and the hand of God has blessed her, and all her children, with seed-time and harvest, with joy and abundance. The very steadfastness of the Almighty’s liberality, flowing like a mighty ocean through the infinite vast of the universe, makes His creatures forget to wonder at its wonderfulness, to feel true thankfulness at its immeasurable goodness. The sun rises and sets so surely; the seasons run on amid all their changes with such inimitable truth, that we take as a matter of course that, which is amazing beyond all stretch of imagination, and good beyond the widest expansion of the noblest human heart. God feeds His family of countless myriads swarming over the surface of all countless worlds, and none know need but through the follies of themselves, or the cruelty of their fellows. God pours His light from innumerable suns on innumerable rejoicing planets; He waters them everywhere in the fittest moment; He ripens the food of globes and of nations, and gives them fair weather to garner it. And from age to age, amid His endless creatures of endless forms and powers, in the beauty and the sunshine, and the magnificence of nature, He seems to sing throughout creation the glorious song of His own Divine joy, in the immortality of His youth, in the omnipotence of His nature, in the eternity of His patience, and the abounding boundlessness of His love. W. Howitt.