November 19

1 I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.

2 Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem

3 Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together:

4 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.

5 For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.

6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces

8 For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.

9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.

This Psalm seems to have been written for the use of the Israelites, when they went up to Jerusalem, after the ark was removed thither, to celebrate their sacred feasts, and to have communion with God and with their brethren. Their journey would often be inconvenient, wearisome, and expensive: but the holy joy and benefit, which thence accrued, would amply repay them.

It has been a favorite song in all ages of the Church. Jerusalem was typical both of the church of true believers, and of the heavenly state.

"What that church was, the Christian church militant upon earth now is, and demandeth in like manner the prayers of all Christian people, for its peace and welfare in a troublesome and contentious world. Its increase here below is, in reality, the increase of Jerusalem above, of which it is a part, and ought to be a resemblance."—Bp. Horac.

"The servants of God should exhort others, and be glad to be exhorted themselves, to attend on His ordinances. Indeed those who love His name and seek His salvation, will 'rejoice when it is said unto them, Let us go into the house of the Lord;' and the pleasure and profit, which they derive from 'the means of grace,' will make the zealous believer disregard inconvenience and fatigue in resorting thither."—Thomas Scott.

Closet Promise.—Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.—Rev. iii. 12.

None the place ordained refuseth, They are one, and they are all,

Living stones the Builder chooseth For the courses of His wall. Jean Ingelow.

Slowly, through all the universe, that temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God's likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your terrible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being, and give yourself to God, and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. . . . Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely ways;—there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple. Oh, if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to lie a part forever, what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the Master wills.—Phillips Brooks.