for, whatever it be, it lies open already to His all-seeing eye. With Him let us take refuge, all of us, every day, from sin and sorrow, from fear and doubt; that so, strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, and having Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, we may be able to comprehend, more and more, that love which passeth knowledge, and may be filled with all the fulness of God.

SERMON IV.

THE PSALMS.

PSALM lxxiv. 3.

LIFT UP THY FEET UNTO THE PERPETUAL DESOLATIONS; EVEN ALL THAT THE ENEMY HATH DONE WICKEDLY IN THE SANCTUARY,

CONSIDERING how constantly the Psalms are in use in the services of our Church, few things can be more important than that we should rightly understand their meaning, and the nature of their application to ourselves. A large portion of our public worship is in danger of becoming either a formal or even an injurious service, if we have no right comprehension of the principles which should guide us in making the language of the Psalms our own.

There are many difficulties in the way of rightly applying to ourselves the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and drawing from them the lessons which in these later days of the world, and under this widely different dispensation, the wisdom of God designed them to teach. These difficulties, in

the case of the Psalms, are practically increased by the demand which they seem to make upon us for a more hearty and deep entering into their spirit than other Books require. When we take upon our lips the language of the Psalms in our public worship,-language so often of prayer, of confession, of praise, of thanksgiving,-it is manifest that we do in some sense profess not only to read it for instruction, like the historical or prophetical Scriptures, as the words of another, but even to adopt it as our own, and to address the expressions of it to God. Yet, when we attempt honestly to do so, we are baffled again and again by the contrast between its spirit and our own; between the lowliness of humiliation, the deep hatred of sin, the entire devotion to God, and earnest longings for His favour and presence, which it expresses, and the coldness of our own real feelings in all these respects; the coldness and indifference, if not dislike and aversion, with which we think of God's holiness and of His love. This is one difficulty.

But another arises from a different cause. The language of the Psalms, while it is so deeply spiritual that it shames and almost confounds our own feelings towards God, is, moreover, cast throughout in a mould entirely Jewish; it speaks of a ritual which has now passed away, of a sanctuary long

since desolate, of enemies scarcely known to us even by their names. It laments calamities from which we, in their original form, are not suffering; it asks for deliverances which, in their first meaning, we need not.

And then, once more, the expressions which we find so often in this Book of earnest and almost keen hostility,-prayers for the discomfiture and overthrow of enemies,-blessings upon those who should retaliate upon others injuries done to the nation or religion or sometimes even the person of the Psalmist; these are such as we know the Gospel of Christ forbids our employing towards man,—such as we know that no injury, no oppression, could justify us in using in their obvious sense for ourselves; and it is no easy matter to determine what meaning, or whether any definite meaning, can by us be assigned to them.

Now of all these difficulties, but more especially of those last mentioned, the Psalm before us, to which I beg you to refer, affords a strong example. Taken in its first sense, in that sense in which the Psalmist appears to have composed it, it seems and is inappropriate to ourselves. And yet I know no better illustration of the real meaning of the Psalms to us, than this one affords. Let us examine it in more detail and let us then apply to others that

principle of interpretation which brings out from this so true and so important a result.

The different verses of this Psalm will be found to fall naturally into three divisions. It contains, first, a complaint; secondly, a prayer; and thirdly, several pleas for that prayer; several arguments, so to speak, by which the prayer is recommended and enforced.

First, then, the writer of this Psalm utters in the presence of God a sorrowful lamentation, an earnest complaint. There can be little question that it was composed during the captivity of Judah; when the sinful and for the time rejected people by the waters of Babylon sat down and wept while they remembered Zion. Why, he asks, had God thus prolonged their sorrows? Their sanctuary burnt with fire, the dwelling-place of God amongst them defiled and laid in ruins,-His enemies breaking down the carved work of His temple, and roaring, like beasts of prey, in the midst of His congregations; it seemed as if indeed He had cast them off for ever, as if the present desolations of Jerusalem were designed to be perpetual. The predicted termination of the captivity was not yet, it should seem, interpreted to them; though written in the pages of inspiration, it was not yet unfolded; Daniel had not yet understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the