October 11

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saving, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 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.

7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, raise it, turn to the foundation thereof.

8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destricted; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

This plaintive ode is one of the most charming compositions in the whole Book of Psalms. "It is a fruit of the Captivity in Babylon, and often has it furnished expression for sorrows which else had been unutterable." "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Is it not true that, in many senses, we are like the Jewish exiles? "The feelings of the present life are often adverse to praise. The exiles in Babylon could not sing

(613)

because they were in heaviness. God's hand was heavy upon them. He had a controversy with them for their sins. Now the feelings of many of us are in like manner adverse to the Lord's song. Some of us are in great sorrow. We have lost a friend; we are in anxiety about one who is all to us; we know not which way to turn for to-morrow's bread or for this day's comfort. How can we sing the Lord's song?

"And there is another kind of sorrow, still more fatal, if it be possible, to the lively exercise of adoration. And that is, a weight and burden of unforgiven sin. Songs may be heard from the prison-cell of Philippi; songs may be heard from the calm death-bed, or by the open grave; but songs cannot be drawn forth from the soul on which the load of God's displeasure, real or imagined, is lying, or which is still powerless to apprehend the grace and the life for sinners which is in Christ Jesus. That, we imagine, was the difficulty which pressed upon the exile Israelite; that certainly is an impediment now, in many, to the outburst of Christian praise."—C. J. Vaughan.

Closet Promise.—Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness. — Psalm cxii. 4.

The dark hath many dear svalis, The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain thou not, my heart, for these Bank in the current of the will. —Sidney Lanier.