October 28

1 LORD, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.

2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou are God.

3 Thou tarnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men

4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

5 Thou carried them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep in the morning they are like graze which groweth up

6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth

7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

9 For all our days are passed away in thy

wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told.

10 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 so on cut off, and we fly away.

11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repeat thee concerning thy servants.

14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may re-occur and be glad all our days.

15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children

17 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.

This grand old Psalm is assigned to Moses. It was probably written by him near the close of the forty years during which Israel sojourned in the wilderness. Many generations of mourners have listened to this Psalm when standing around the open grave. It sings of the frailty of man, and the shortness of life, contrasting therewith the eternity of God, and founding thereon earnest appeals for compassion.

"If man be ephemeral, God is eternal."—James Hamilton.

"The everlastingness of which Moses speaks is to be referred not only to the essence of God, but also to His providence, by which He governs the world. He intends not merely that He is, but that He is God."—John Calvin.

"Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." "Yes; he was casting in his mind how God had been the refuge of Jacob and Isaac, of Abraham, Noah, and all the patriarchs. Moses could take a retrospect of above a thousand years, which had all confirmed the truth. I can do more. At this point of time I can look back to the days of Moses and Joshua and David, and descending thence to the days of the Son of God upon earth, and of Paul and Peter, and all the saints of the Church down to the present hour; and what a thousand years avouched to Moses, three thousand now avouch to me; the Lord is the dwelling-place of those that trust in Him from generation to generation. Yes; and to Him who was the refuge of a Moses and an Abraham, I too in the day of trouble can lift my hands. Delightful thought! That great Being who, during the lapse of three thousand years, amidst the countless changes of the universe, has to this day remained unchanged, is my God."—Augustus F. Tholuck.

Closet Promise.—Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.—Psalm xc. 1.

We are like to Him with whom there is no past or future, with whom a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, when we do our work in the great present, leaving both past and future to Him to whom they are ever present, and fearing nothing, because He is in our future as much as He is in our past, as much as, and far more than, we can feel Him to be in our present. Partakers thus of the divine nature, resting in that perfect All-in-all in whom our nature is eternal too, we walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in. —G. MacDonald.