recalling the manifold interests, the pleasures and even the pains, the successful and even the unsuccessful endeavours of a long and active career; and if this delight be mingled with pride, it is surely no unworthy pride. Nor is it only of himself that the old man thinks in his partial or complete retirement. Who takes such a kindly interest as he in the young beginner? who so much helps and influences his juniors as he does by his mature experience and mellowed character? and who supplies so much light and safety to friends in council, for, as Victor Hugo says

In the young man's eye a flame may burn,

But in the old man's eye one seeth light.

Doubtless we owe this in large measure to Christ's glorious victory over death, which liberates the old man from depressing anxiety, and converts his soon-expected Good-bye into a peaceful Good-night. Listen to Mary Carpenter, the model Christian philanthropist of our own day. "I was very happy to see you," she writes to a friend, growing old like herself, "so bright and serene at the age which, in the olden time, before our blessed Lord came, was 'labour and sorrow.' But even in the psalmist's time the idea that old age must be "labour and sorrow was below the standard of the highest knowledge, and marks an involuntary sinking to the level of heathenism. The Greeks and Romans, as we know, feared old age, and thought life hardly worth living when youth had fled. But some at least of the Israelites, with a deeper sense of the value of character, seem to have thought differently. At any rate, among the Proverbs, which represent, as we may suppose, the general feeling of thoughtful men, we find these sayingsThe glory of young men is their strength,

And again

And the beauty of old men is the hoary head.-Prov. xx. 29, R.V.

The hoary head is a crown of glory;

It shall be found in the way of righteousness.-Prov. xvi. 31, R.V. It is only in the darkest period of Israel's history, at the close of the oppressive Persian rule, that we find a so-called wise man proclaiming this miserable sentence, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Eccles. i. 2), and libelling the years of old age as "the evil days," and the years "when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them" (Eccles. xii. 1). We may and should thank God that the Bible gives so deterrent a picture of scepticism as that in the Book of Ecclesiastes; but certainly we cannot approve, however much we may pity, its melancholy author.

Nor can the pessimistic statement even of the holy psalmist be fully endorsed. Blame him, indeed, we must not, we cannot. Like Job, he claims our pity; but how can we pity him till we understand his circumstances? Briefly, then, his case is this: He holds in his mind two inconsistent ideas-one, an old idea, that calamity is a proof of God's displeasure; and another, a comparatively new one, that God is eternal and unchangeable; and such is the bitterness of Israel's present calamity that, for the moment, he forgets that the new idea was specially revealed to the later Jewish

Church; nay more, he even allows his estimate of the human lot to be coloured by his despondent view of the fortunes of Israel. He speaks amiss, and yet not wholly amiss. For it is perfectly true that what St. John calls the " pride of life" (1 John ii. 16) is by its very nature transitory, and that whether or no there is any other human possession which endures, the longest human life is soon over, and is but a drop compared to God's eternity. Holding so much truth as our psalmist does, it is impossible that he should not at last escape from his morbid mood, and suck the hidden sweetness of the thought of God. But the time is not yet; he is still at a low spiritual level. All that he can say at present is,

Who knoweth the power of thine anger,

And thy wrath according to thy fear? (ver. 11.)

That is, Who, in spite of providential reminders, is conscious of the Divine displeasure against sinners in the degree which the "fear of God" (i.e., religious reverence) requires? Take this view by itself, and it may appear even to a Christian a wise and true saying. But in the context it must, I fear, be regarded as one of those half-truths which hinder the right development of the spiritual life. Is it really all that the psalmist can infer from the sad calamities of the time that, in spite of all that has been done for religion, the national sins are so many and great that an extraordinary chastisement has become necessary? "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" Shall we love God in prosperity, and fear Him in adversity? Have we not heard that "whom Jehovah loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth "?1 Yes; not only is this expressly taught by a great Hebrew moralist, but the same book which says, "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field," opens with the command, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God." Bitter indeed must have been the calamity which could so shake the faith of the psalmist. Let us, therefore, never be too sure of ourselves, but pray that God will not lead us into too strong a temptation!

The twelfth verse is difficult to understand if we insist on connecting it with the eleventh. But the truth is that the psalmist has no skill in linking thought to thought. Just as ver. 10 connects itself with ver. 4 rather than with the preceding description, so ver. 12 belongs to ver. 10. It has no special reference to the depressed fortunes of Israel, but is equally true of all men, whether prosperous or the reverse.

To number our days--that teach us,

That we may take home wisdom to our heart (ver. 12).

That is, teach us to realize the shortness of life that we may gain true, practical wisdom.

The psalmist's idea is that, however dark the times may be, the demands of duty are as imperative as ever. Indeed, the only hope for a brightening of the national fortunes consists in each man's doing the duty that lies nearest

1 Prov. v. 12.

to him with all his might. For on the one hand "God hateth all workers of iniquity," and on the other, "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." Wholesome doctrine this, whether preached by the psalmist or by Carlyle, and the necessary substratum of grander and more sublime truths!

But will any of the thoughts which have occurred to the psalmist of late raise him out of his despondency, and enable him, like Milton when he had lost his sight, "still (to) bear up, and steer right onward"? Certainly not, at least if we are right in taking him as the representative of a class. Wholesome, indeed, was the doctrine of ver. 12, but how many men can do their duty thoroughly or maintain their courage under difficulties without some better cheer than this? I would not undervalue a moral earnestness which springs from the fear of God and a sense of the shortness of life. Would that there were far more of it! Still, it remains true that the grandest deeds of heroism are not inspired by fear, but by love, and by a sense not merely of this life's shortness, but of another life's everlastingness. The psalmist is feeling his way, as it were, to a sense of God's love, and of the eternal destiny of the soul, but he does not quite reach it. Let us follow him step by step, and mark the methods of the Spirit of revelation. In the thirteenth verse we find another case of the loving reverence with which the psalmists lingered on the words of Scripture. The words of ver. 13—

Return, Jehovah, how long?-
And relent over thy servants,

are an allusion to the so-called Song of Moses, appended to Deuteronomy, which contains this passage :—

For Jehovah will judge his people,

And relent over his servants,

When he seeth that their power is gone (Deut. xxxii. 36).

That song, which is very much like Jeremiah's writings, was composed very
possibly in the reign of Josiah in full view of the troubles of the Babylonian
invasion. The holy man who wrote it left this for a legacy to his suffering
people, that the fulfilment of the covenant-promises might, indeed, be
postponed, but that "when Israel's power was gone," Jehovah would take
pity on His people, and execute judgment upon their enemies. One may, I
think, be surprised that the psalmist waited so long before having recourse
to this article of his faith. He is something like Christian in Doubting
Castle, who entirely forgot that he had in his bosom a key that would unlock
the dungeon gate. Some of the psalmists use their potent key at once,
and their depression gives place almost directly to jubilant-gladness.
in the thirteenth psalm we read in ver. 1-

How long, Jehovah, wilt thou forget me for ever?
How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?

and then in ver. 4

Look hither, and hear me, Jehovah, my God,
Lighten mine eyes, that I sleep not in death.

Thus

and at last in vers. 6, 7—

But as for me, I trust in thy lovingkindness,

Let my heart rejoice in thy salvation;

I will sing unto Jehovah, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

Our psalmist, however, passes through the valley of the shadow of death before he plucks up heart to cry "How long?" Still, as soon as he begins to pray in the right manner, not for himself alone, but for the Church, he makes rapid progress towards peace of mind. Prayer based upon the Divine covenant is sure of an answer. That the psalmist's prayer is so based is clear from the expression "thy servants" in ver. 13, and still more from the 14th verse

O satisfy us in the morning with thy lovingkindness,
So shall we rejoice and be glad all our days.

To see the full force of this we must understand what "lovingkindness means in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not at all the same as 'mercy" or "compassion." Compassion" is the stirring of natural emotion at the sight of pain or sorrow. "Lovingkindness" is the mutual affection, translating itself in kind offices, which binds together the parties to a covenant. One of the many imperfections in the Authorized and Revised Versions (corrected, however, by the American Company of Revisers) is the frequent substitution of the word "mercy" for the word "lovingkindness." When we appeal to God as the Creator of the universe, who made, and can, if He will, destroy us, we invoke Him in the name of His mercy, imagining Him, since He made us in His own image, unable to look unmoved upon misery. When, on the other hand, we take a more intensely moral view of God, as One who is bound to us, as we are to Him, by a covenant-by an historically attested covenant-then we invoke Him by His lovingkindness, because this word implies that God for moral ends has been pleased to enter into a contract or covenant with His Church. This latter is the form of invocation adopted in these closing verses. The recent bitter calamities of

Israel are but as a dark and stormy night. Soon the brilliant Eastern sun will reappear, and the psalmist hastens its return with the prayer, satisfy us in the morning with thy lovingkindness." See how much is implied in this brief petition. "Satisfy us in thy lovingkindness." So then, after all, Jehovah is a God of love-is, and always has been so. Alas! that a doctrine which experience had proved to be an illusion should have stood so long between the psalmist and his God. How happy he would have been in the midst of trouble if he could have believed that God was only waiting to be gracious. Now, however, he knows that the bitterest calamity works for good to Jehovah's people, and that God in His lovingkindness makes up to His afflicted ones for His seeming harshness. the idea implied in the next petition of the psalmist (ver. 15)

Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

And the years wherein we have seen evil.

This is

Observe that he has not yet got so far as another psalmist who gratefully declares that—

His anger endureth but for a moment,

His favour for a lifetime.1

The years wherein he has seen evil pass before his eye in a long and dreary procession, and the boon for which he craves is that God will compensate him by a future proportionately glorious, according to that promise in the Second Isaiah," For your shame ye shall have double (glory).”2 That Jehovah can once more even seem to be angry with Israel does not enter his head. For him, at any rate, Jehovah is indeed the Eternal One, the same from everlasting to everlasting.

And now, for the first time since Israel's affliction began the psalmist can hope to work cheerfully. To do great deeds it is by no means enough to be strong and clever. There are two still more important requisites—the love of God and the hope of immortality. The first, as we have seen, the psalmist is beginning to recover. But what of the second? Can he be said to be gaining or regaining this? Yes, certainly, but not in the sense in which we commonly use the word "immortality." The Bible refers to two kinds of immortality that of the Church and that of the individual. It is the immortality of the Church of which our Lord spoke when He said that "the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it," and of which a psalmist was in doubt when, speaking in the character of personified Israel, he complained :I am counted with them that go down into the pit;

I am as a man that hath no help;

Cast off among the dead,

Like the slain that lie in the grave,

Whom thou rememberest no more,

And they are cut off from thy hand (Ps. lxxxviii. 4, 5).

It is this immortality in which the author of the 90th psalm clearly believed. Could we have met him after his prayer had been granted, we should have heard him singing

Jehovah, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades,

Thou hast recalled me to life from those that have gone down to the pit (Ps. xxx. 3). As long as Jehovah seemed angry with Israel, life was scarcely "worth living." Now that brighter thoughts have visited the psalmist, he can begin again to enjoy life. Henceforth he can disregard the thought of death, because his interest is wholly absorbed in the progress of the Church.

Let thy work (he says) be shown unto thy servants,
And thy majesty unto their children.

"Thy work?" what does this phrase mean? Jehovah's work is twofoldit is partly for the Church, partly in the Church. It is for the Church, when God interposes to execute judgment on some oppressive empire, the Babylonian, it may be, or the Persian. This explanation is supported by the use of the phrase of the 92nd psalm (see ver. 5, and cf. ver. 8). It is in the Church when God raises up great reformers like Ezra and Nehemiah, and grants success to their arduous efforts to reorganize the Church-nation.