The psalmist here, as ever, cannot think of God without blessing him, nor without the fervent desire to be acceptable before him, nor finally without the wish that the wicked may as evil spots be consumed from the face of God's creation. This psalm declares God's glorious universal power in nature; and, in the nineteenth psalm, nature is conceived as praising him in the speech of silence, feeling the awe of creature in presence of creator:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

And the work of his hands doth the firmament declare :

Day unto day poureth forth speech;

And night unto night revealeth knowledge.
There is no speech and there are no words,
Their voice is not heard.'

From Jehovah's glory in nature this nineteenth psalm turns naturally to contemplation of Jehovah's righteousness. His law is perfect. Indeed the thought Jehovah's of Jehovah's righteousness is never absent from Infinity of the Psalter; where it is not expressed, it is Righteousassumed; righteousness and holiness are inherLove. ent in his power; as with the prophets, it is ever the dual-unity, the power of right

ness and

eousness:

Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of thy throne;

Loving-kindness and truth go to meet thy face.'

The loving-kindness of God, his deliverances and compassionate care, are brought near and applied to the chosen people in such a psalm as the seventy-eighth, which shall teach Israel all that her God has done for her; in such a psalm as the one hundred and sixth, which

1 Psalms xix, 1-3; cf. xciii. Other Psalms express the veritable fear of nature before God. See cxiv; civ; xcvii.

shall bring home to Israel her iniquitous backslidings; or in such a psalm as the one hundred and fifth, which shall tell Israel his great deeds that she may know how to praise him. The eighteenth psalm shows Jehovah's care of David, a devoted servant among his people; the one hundred and thirty-ninth tells Jehovah's intimate, spiritual, loving and forgiving support of man, the universal individual, a preserving care which besets him behind and before, from which he cannot escape if he would:

Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I climb up into heaven, thou art there,

If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,

If I take the wings of the morning,

If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me.

And should I say, Only let darkness cover me,

And the light about me be night;

Even darkness cannot be too dark for thee,

But the night is light as the day;

The darkness and light [to thee] are both alike.'

Such psalms as the twenty-third, and phrase after phrase throughout the Psalter, bring home God's love to every human heart, till the heart sings:

Thy loving-kindness is better than life,"

and feels how God's love covers all his creation:

Thou makest the outgoings of the morning to sing for joy.'

And in the Psalter, as in the prophets, Jehovah's love is a love that yearns until it redeems.

From such delineations of Jehovah's character, one turns to the ninetieth psalm where the psalmist thinks

1 cxxxix, 7-12.

lxiii.

3 lxv.

upon God's infinitude in contrast with man's frailty and sin, and muses on what thought of God and man such contrast should inspire:

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,

Or ever thou gavest birth to the earth and the world,
Yea, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Thou turnest frail man to dust.

A thousand years in thy sight

Are but as yesterday when it passeth,

And as a watch in the night.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

Our secret (sins) in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath,
We have spent our years as a thought.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger,

And thy wrath, according to the fear that is due unto thee?

-the fear which is due to the infinite holy God! The psalmist can only say,

So teach us to number our days

That we may gain a heart of wisdom;

and then humbly pray that Jehovah will turn again his loving-kindness towards his servants.' For Jehovah cares for the afflicted, he is the father of the fatherless; high as the heavens is his loving-kindness, his righteousness like mountains, his judgments are a great deep.'

Yea, Jehovah is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent; in many ways the psalmist thinks these thoughts, Jehovah knows the ways of man, and his thoughts before they are uttered; and with intense realization of Jeho

vah's knowledge and power surrounding him, surrounding me, the psalmist voices the universal sense of man:

O Jehovah, thou hast searched me and known (me)
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising,
Thou understandest my thought afar off.

For before a word is yet on my tongue,
Lo, O Jehovah! thou knowest it altogether.
Behind and before hast thou beset me,
And laid thine hand upon me.

The psalmist marvels at the inscrutable completeness of the knowledge which Jehovah has of him:

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

It is too high, I cannot attain unto it.

God's spirit follows him everywhere, sustains him in light and darkness. Then comes the wondering thought that God formed him in his mother's womb, and for himself, God's marvellous work, the psalmist renders the creature's awe-struck praise:

I will give thanks unto thee for that I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Wonderful are thy works,

And my soul knoweth [it] right well!

Far, far above him is any adequate understanding of the infinite ways of God; yet what can be so dear to him as thoughts of his creator, encompasser, upholder?

And how precious unto me are thy thoughts, O God!
How great is the sum of them!

If I would tell them they are more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with thee.'

1 cxxxix.

of Self

before God.

But what shall the psalmist-every man that has such thoughts of God—think of himself? What is man? Short his life, his only strength, his only hold, The Sense is God. But he is sinful, sin-consumed; not only weak save in God's strength, but filled with corroding sin, the principle of death.' The ninetieth psalm sets forth the eternal majesty of God contrasted with the passing frailty of man. Other psalms, like the thirty-ninth, dwell rather on man's nothingness before God. But man's weakness is always to be considered with reference to its most palpable element, that which keeps him from the source of life-his sins. All men are sinful, most of them are wicked; the best of them are conceived and brought forth in sin; who can ever perceive his errors and the faults veiled in the frailties of his nature? Before Jehovah can no living man be righteous. What man does not need Jehovah's continual forgiveness? Evil shall slay the wicked", fools without contrition or consciousness of God; but who is it that shall not sometime be overtaken by his iniquities?' And God must punish the sinner, bring him low, take from him to the extent of his sinfulness; that is Jehovah's purifying wrath of love. The sinner feels Jehovah's indignation and the too heavy burden of his own iniquities. He must desire in contrition to give up that sinful part of him, his sin and all its fruits, hide nothing from Jehovah. So shall he be delivered from his sin, redeemed, restored,—all of which is declared in the thirty-second psalm :

Blessed is he whose transgression is taken away, whose sin is covered;

Blessed is the man to whom Jehovah reckoneth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile.

For while I kept silence my bones waxed old

Through my roaring all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me;