PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 244,462 words · 343 reading sections
A Prayer For Pardon And Its Plea
Scripture recognises as equally real and valid, in our relations to God, the judicial and the fatherly side of the relationship. And it declares as plainly that the wages of sin is death as it declares that God's love cannot come in its fulness and its sweetness, upon a heart that indulges in unconfessed and unrepented…
733 wordsSECTION 62A Prayer For Pardon And Its Plea
This consciousness of sin and cry for pardon lie at the foundation of vigorous practical religion. It seems to me that the differences between different types of Christianity, insipid elegance and fiery earnestness, between coldness and fervour, the difference between a sapless and a living ministry and between a forma…
682 wordsSECTION 63A Prayer For Pardon And Its Plea
Then there is another thought here, that the past of God is a plea with God for present forgiveness. 'Thy name' in Scripture means the whole revelation of the divine character, and thus the Psalmist looks back into the past, and sees there how God has, all through the ages, been plenteous in mercy and ready to forgive …
711 wordsSECTION 64A Prayer For Pardon And Its Plea
III. Lastly, note the reason for the earnest cry, 'For it is great.' That may be a reason for the pardon; more probably it is a reason for the prayer. The fact is true in regard to us all. There is no need to suppose any special heinous sin in the Psalmist's mind. I would fain press upon all consciences that listen to…
482 wordsSECTION 65God'S Guests
'One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.' --PSALM xxvii. 4. We shall do great injustice to this mystical aspiration of the Psalmist, if we degrade it to be the mere expression of a desire for unbroken residence in a material Tem…
818 wordsSECTION 66God'S Guests
The inmost meaning of this Psalmist's desire is that the consciousness of God shall be diffused throughout the whole of a man's days, instead of being coagulated here and there at points. The Australian rivers in a drought present a picture of the Christian life of far too many of us--a stagnant, stinking pool here, a …
676 wordsSECTION 67God'S Guests
That is to say, the blessedness of keeping up such a continual consciousness of touch with God is, first and foremost, the certainty of infallible protection. Oh! how it minimises all trouble and brightens all joys, and calms amidst all distractions, and steadies and sobers in all circumstances, to feel ever the hand o…
715 wordsSECTION 68'Seek Ye'--'I Will Seek'
Dear friends! if we truly wish this desire of dwelling in the house of the Lord to be fulfilled, the day's work must run in the same direction as the morning's petition, and we must, like the Psalmist, say, 'I _have desired_ it of the Lord, so I, for my part, _will seek after it_.' Then, whether or not we reach absolut…
835 wordsSECTION 69'Seek Ye'--'I Will Seek'
Next we come to that great thought that God is ever sounding out to all mankind this invitation to seek His face. By the revelation of Himself He bids us all sun ourselves in the brightness of His countenance. One of the New Testament writers, in a passage which is mistranslated in our Authorised Version, says that God…
726 wordsSECTION 70'Seek Ye'--'I Will Seek'
Make the general invitation thy very own. God summons all, because He summons each. He does not cast His invitations out at random over the heads of a crowd, as some rich man might fling coins to a mob, but He addresses every one of us singly and separately, as if there were not another soul in the universe to hear His…
684 wordsSECTION 71'Seek Ye'--'I Will Seek'
Brethren! it is heaven on earth to say, 'Thou dost call, and I answer. Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.' Yet you shut yourselves up to, and with, misery and vanity, if you so deal with God's merciful summons as some of us are dealing with it, so that He has to say, 'I called, and ye refused; I stretched out My han…
506 wordsSECTION 72The Two Guests
'His anger endureth but a moment; in His favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'--PSALM xxx. 5. A word or two of exposition is necessary in order to bring out the force of this verse. There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of it, between 'His anger' and 'His favour.' …
806 wordsSECTION 73The Two Guests
So it comes to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimise and abbreviate gladness. We can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. We cannot directly regulate our emotions, but we can regulate them, because…
885 wordsSECTION 74The Two Guests
III. Lastly, notice the conversion of the sorrow into joy. I have already explained the picturesque image of the last part of my text, which demands a little further consideration. There are two figures presented before us, one dark robed and one bright garmented. The one is the guest of the night, the other is the gu…
714 wordsSECTION 75'Be ... For Thou Art'
Only, brother! if a life is to be spent in His favour, it must be spent in His fear. And if our cares and troubles and sorrows and losses are to be transfigured hereafter, then we must keep very near Jesus Christ, who has promised to us that His joy will remain with us, and that our sorrows shall be turned into joys. I…
751 wordsSECTION 76'Be ... For Thou Art'
But the Rock is a defence in another way. If a hard-pressed fugitive is brought to a stand and can set his back against a rock, he can front his assailants, secure that no unseen foe shall creep up behind and deal a stealthy stab and that he will not be surrounded unawares. 'The God of Israel shall be your rearward,' a…
654 wordsSECTION 77'Be ... For Thou Art'
So then two things follow. If we pray after the pattern of this prayer, 'Be Thou to me what Thou art,' then a great many foolish and presumptuous wishes will be stifled in the birth, and, on the other hand, a great many feeble desires will be strengthened and made confident, and we shall be encouraged to expect great t…
666 wordsSECTION 78'Into Thy Hands'
That act of trust or flight will make it certain that God will be to us for a house of defence, a fortress to save us. Other rock-shelters may crumble. They may be carried by assault; they may be riven by earthquakes. 'The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed,' but this Rock is impregnable, and all wh…
757 wordsSECTION 79'Into Thy Hands'
We do it when we trust Him for the salvation of our souls. There are a great many good Christian people who go mourning all their days, or, at least, sometimes mourning and sometimes indifferent. The most that they venture to say is, 'But I cannot be sure.' Our grandfathers used to sing:-- ''Tis a point I long to know…
710 wordsSECTION 80'Into Thy Hands'
So Peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to God unless we back up the committing with consistent, Christlike lives. Of course it is vain. How can a man expect God to take care of him when he plunges himself into something that is contrary to God's laws? There are many pe…
938 wordsSECTION 81'Into Thy Hands'
I need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which, as I have said, is consecrated to us by our Lord's own use of it at the last. But is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind and heart by which a man commits his spirit to God in life may be his when he comes to die, and that death…
686 wordsSECTION 82Goodness Wrought And Goodness Laid Up
'Oh how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee; which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men!'--PSALM xxxi. 19. The Psalmist has been describing, with the eloquence of misery, his own desperate condition, in all manner of metaphors which he heaps together…
825 wordsSECTION 83Goodness Wrought And Goodness Laid Up
So, dear brethren! that contrast may suggest to us how quietly and peacefully we may look forward to all the unknown future; and hold up to it so as to enable us to scan its general outlines, the light of the known and experienced past. Let our trustful prayer be; 'Thou hast been my help: leave me not, neither forsake …
761 wordsSECTION 84Goodness Wrought And Goodness Laid Up
III. And so, lastly, we may turn our light in yet another direction, and take this contrast as suggesting the goodness wrought on earth, and the goodness laid up in heaven. Here we see, sometimes, the messengers coming with the one cluster of grapes on the pole. There we shall live in the vineyard. Here we drink from …
382 wordsSECTION 85Hid In Light
'Thou shall hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.'--PSALM xxxi. 20. The word rendered 'presence' is literally 'face,' and the force of this very remarkable expression of confidence is considerably marred unless that rend…
680 wordsSECTION 86Hid In Light
A thought may be suggested, although it is somewhat of a digression from the main purpose of my text, but it springs naturally out of this paradox, and may just deserve a word. Revelation is real, but revelation has its limits. That which is revealed is 'the face of God,' but we read, 'no man can see My face.' After al…
734 wordsSECTION 87Hid In Light
I said, in the beginning of these remarks, that there was here an allusion, possibly, to the Temple. All temples in ancient times were asylums. Whosoever could flee to grasp the horns of the altar, or to sit, veiled and suppliant, before the image of the god, was secure from his foes, who could not pass within the limi…
735 wordsSECTION 88Hid In Light
But the initial act of fleeing to the refuge must be continued by abiding in the refuge. It is of no use to take shelter in the light unless we abide in the light. It is of no use to go to the Temple for sanctuary unless we continue in it for sacrifice and worship. We must 'walk in the light as God is in the light.' Th…
820 wordsSECTION 89A Threefold Thought Of Sin And Forgiveness
Brethren! the Face of God must be either our dearest joy or our greatest dread. There comes a time when you and I must front it, and look into His eyes. It is for us to settle whether at that day we shall 'call upon the rocks and the hills to hide us' from it, or whether we shall say with rapture, 'Thou hast made us mo…
663 wordsSECTION 90A Threefold Thought Of Sin And Forgiveness
So, dear brethren! this was the first and the gravest aspect under which the penitent and the forgiven man in my text thought of his past, that in it, when he was wildly and eagerly rushing after the low and sensuous gratification of his worst desires, he was rebelling against, and wandering far away from, the ever-pre…
743 wordsSECTION 91A Threefold Thought Of Sin And Forgiveness
Therefore let us press to the mark where hangs the prize which whoso possesses succeeds, whatsoever other trophies may have escaped his grasp. But there is another aspect of this same thought, and that is that every piece of evil misses its own shabby mark. 'A rogue is a round-about fool.' No man ever gets, in doing w…
826 wordsSECTION 92A Threefold Thought Of Sin And Forgiveness
Men tell us that that is not possible and that it is immoral to preach a doctrine of forgiveness. O dear brethren! there is no gospel to preach that will touch a man's heart except the gospel that begins with this--God bears away, covers over, does not reckon to a man, his rebellions, his errors, his departures from th…
957 wordsSECTION 93A Threefold Thought Of Sin And Forgiveness
Then, again, my psalm goes on to speak about the blessedness of a close clinging to God in peaceful trust, which will ensure security in the midst of all trials, and a hiding-place against every storm. The Psalmist uses a magnificent figure. God is to him as some rocky island, steadfast and dry, in the midst of a wides…
395 wordsSECTION 94The Encamping Angel
'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.'--PSALM xxxiv. 7. If we accept the statement in the superscription of this psalm, it dates from one of the darkest hours in David's life. His fortunes were never lower than when he fled from Gath, the city of Goliath, to Adullam. He…
842 wordsSECTION 95The Encamping Angel
It is this lofty and mysterious Messenger, and not the hosts whom He commands, that our Psalmist sees standing ready to help, as He once stood, sword-bearing by the side of Joshua. To the warrior leader, to the warrior Psalmist, He appears, as their needs required, armoured and militant. The last of the prophets saw th…
802 wordsSECTION 96The Encamping Angel
Only remember that the eye of faith alone can see that guard, and that therefore we must labour to keep our consciousness of its reality fresh and vivid. Many a man in David's little band saw nothing but cold gray stone where David saw the flashing armour of the heavenly Warrior. To the one all the mountain blazed with…
663 wordsSECTION 97Struggling And Seeking
'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.'--PSALM xxxiv. 10. If we may trust the superscription of this psalm, it was written by David at one of the very darkest days of his wanderings, probably in the Cave of Adullam, where he had gathered around him a ba…
683 wordsSECTION 98Struggling And Seeking
In every way it is true that the little annoyances, like a grain of dust in the sensitive eye, take all the sweetness out of mere material good, and I suppose that there are no more bitterly disappointed men in this world than the perfectly 'successful men,' as the world counts them. They have been disillusionised in t…
840 wordsSECTION 99Struggling And Seeking
We shall be sure to find everything in God. Look at the grand confidence, and the utterance of a life's experience in these great words: 'Shall not want any good.' For God is everything to us, and everything else is nothing; and it is the presence of God in anything that makes it truly able to satisfy our desires. Huma…
606 wordsSECTION 100No Condemnation
'None of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.' --PSALM xxxiv. 22. These words are very inadequately represented in the translation of the Authorised Version. The Psalmist's closing declaration is something very much deeper than that they who trust in God 'shall not be desolate.' If you look at the previous claus…
744 wordsSECTION 101No Condemnation
There is a trace of both meanings, the literal and the metaphorical, in another psalm, where we read, amidst the Psalmist's rapturous heaping together of great names for God: 'My Rock, in whom I will trust.' Now keep to the literal meaning there, and you see how it flashes up the whole into beauty: 'My Rock, to whom I …
663 wordsSECTION 102No Condemnation
First of all, it suggests this, that guilt, or sin, and condemnation and punishment, are, if not absolutely identical, inseparable. To be guilty is to be condemned. That is to say, since we live, as we do, under the continual grip of an infinitely wise and all-knowing law, and in the presence of a Judge who not only se…
650 wordsSECTION 103Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
'Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. 6. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; Thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. 7. How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shado…
664 wordsSECTION 104Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
Now that 'mercy' or 'lovingkindness' of which my text thus speaks, is very nearly equivalent to the New Testament 'love'; or, perhaps, still more nearly equivalent to the New Testament 'grace.' Both the one and the other mean substantially this--active love communicating itself to creatures that are inferior and that m…
851 wordsSECTION 105Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
Take, then, these two thoughts of God's lovingkindness and of God's faithfulness and weave them together, and see what a strong cord they are to which a man may cling, and in all His weakness be sure that it will never give nor break. Mercy might be transient and arbitrary, but when you braid in 'faithfulness' along wi…
792 wordsSECTION 106Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
'Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds.' Strange that God's fixed faithfulness should be compared to the very emblems of mutation. The clouds are unstable, they whirl and melt and change. Strange to think of the unalterable faithfulness as reaching to them! May it not be that the very mutability of the mutable may be…
747 wordsSECTION 107Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
But as an aid to patience and faith hearken how the Psalmist finishes up his contemplations: 'O Lord! Thou preservest man and beast.' Very well then, all this mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, judgment, high as the heavens, deep as the ocean, firm as the hills, it is all working for this--to keep the millions of livi…
650 wordsSECTION 108Sky, Earth, And Sea: A Parable Of God
And then this last verse tells us how we can make God our own: 'They put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.' The word here rendered, and accurately rendered, 'put their trust,' has a very beautiful literal meaning. It means to flee for refuge, as the manslayer might flee into the strong city, or as Lot did out …
371 wordsSECTION 109What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
'They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures. 9. For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light.' --PSALM xxxvi. 8, 9. In the preceding verses we saw a wonderful picture of the boundless perfections of God; Hi…
678 wordsSECTION 110What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
So, though we be poor and weak creatures, we want much to make us restful. We want no less than that every appetite, desire, need, inclination shall be filled to the full; that all shall be filled to the full at once, and that by one thing; that all shall be filled to the full at once, by one thing that shall last for …
716 wordsSECTION 111What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
But, at all events, the plain teaching of the text is that the simple act of trusting beneath the shadow of God's wings brings to us an ever fresh and flowing river of gladness, of which we may drink. The whole conception of religion in the Bible is gladsome. There is no puritanical gloom about it. True, a Christian ma…
702 wordsSECTION 112What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
So, dear brethren! what a blessing it is for us to have, as we may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys! Like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we …
826 wordsSECTION 113What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
IV. Light. 'In Thy light shall we see light.' God is 'the Father of lights.' The sun and all the stars are only lights kindled by Him. It is the very crown of revelation that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' Light seems to the unscientific eye, which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous e…
684 wordsSECTION 114What Men Find Beneath The Wings Of God
All these great blessings belong to-day to those who take refuge under the shadow of His wings. But blessed as the present experience is, we have to look for the perfecting of it when we pass from the forecourt to the inner sanctuary, and in that higher house sit with Christ at His table and feast at 'the marriage supp…
301 wordsSECTION 115The Secret Of Tranquillity
'Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart 5. Commit thy way unto the Lord.... 7. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.'--PSALM xxxvii. 4, 5, 7. 'I have been young, and now am old,' says the writer of this psalm. Its whole tone speaks the ripened wisdom and autumnal …
1,014 wordsSECTION 116The Secret Of Tranquillity
If, then, our desires are, in their very exercise, a disturbance, and in their very fruition prophesy disappointment, and if that certain disappointment is irrevocable and crushing when it comes, what shall we do for rest? Dear brethren! there is but one answer--'Delight thyself in the Lord.' These eager desires, trans…
717 wordsSECTION 117The Secret Of Tranquillity
'Give what Thou canst, without Thee I am poor, And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.' The amulet that charms away disquiet lies here. Still thine eager desires, arm thyself against feverish hopes, and shivering fears, and certain disappointment, and cynical contempt of all things; make sure of fulfilled wishe…
675 wordsSECTION 118The Secret Of Tranquillity
Then the counsel of our text prescribes the submission of our _judgment_ to God, in the confidence that His wisdom will guide us. Committing our way unto the Lord does not mean shifting the trouble of patient thought about our duty off our own shoulders. It is no cowardly abnegation of the responsibility of choice whic…
717 wordsSECTION 119The Secret Of Tranquillity
III. Our text takes one more step. The secret of tranquillity is found, thirdly, in freedom from the anxiety of an unknown future. 'Best in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.' Such an addition to these previous counsels is needful, if all the sources of our disquiet are to be dealt with. The future is dim, after al…
859 wordsSECTION 120The Bitterness And Blessedness Of The Brevity Of Life
'Surely every man walketh in a vain shew.... 12. I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.' --PSALM xxxix. 6, 12. These two sayings are two different ways of putting the same thing. There is a common thought underlying both, but the associations with which that common thought is connected i…
854 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.