Then with a ripple and a radiance thro' me,
Kise and be manifest, 0 Morning Star ! Flow on my soul, Thou Spirit, and renew me.
Fill with Thyself, and let the rest be far.
4. When we delight in the Lord, our desire is not so much to have as to be and do. We cease to crave exclusively for temporal good, for personal and physical gratification, for the
' FhUlips Brooks: Memories of his Life, 467.
PSALM XXXVII. 4 165
supply of what we call our wants, and we crave, instead, to be what our Creator and Father wishes us to be, and to do what He wishes us to do. Delighting in the Lord does not mean ceasing to be human, ceasing to have wants and natural lawful desires for success and happiness ; it means that all these native and lawful wishes become subordinate to a higher desire still, so that, for its sake, we are willing to forgo all the rest. We may be hungry and thirsty, yet our meat and drink will be to do the will of Him who sent us here and to finish His work. We may be poor and needy, but we shall esteem the words of God and obedience to His law " better than thousands of gold and silver," or, in other words of the Psalmist, "more than our necessary food." We may be hungering for a love which is out of our reach, or sorrowing for the loss of a love that can never return, and yet find in God a love passing the love of woman. We may be toiling all day, and our very sleep may be broken by festering care, by even a holy anxiety to bring our work to completion, and yet we shall find something better and higher than success in the knowledge that we are working for God and doing our best and so earning His approval. If the greatest and supreme of all our delights is in being and in doing what God wills, nothing can frustrate His purpose to give us our heart's desire.
^ Christianity seeks not to cramp man's nature, saying to him constantly, " Thou shalt not " ; but it leads on, up to freer air and wider space, wherein the soul may disport itself. It is God we follow. Obeying God is freedom. Our souls are like closed rooms, and God is the sunlight. Every new way we find in which to obey Him we throw open a shutter. Our souls are as enclosed bays, and God is the ocean. The only barrier that can hinder free communication is disobedience. Each duty performed is the breaking down of a reef of hindrance between our souls and God, permitting the fulness of His being to flow in upon our souls. It is when we remember the greatness of the nature which God has given us that we come into a full understanding of our relations to God. At some time every man comes to realize the meaning of the life he is living; the secret sins hidden in his heart rise against him. Then we would hide ourselves from God if we could. But the only way to run from God is to run to Him. The Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity.^ ^ Phillips Brooks : Memories of his Life, 630.
The Crowning of the Year,
ibf
Literature.
Little (H. W.), Arrows for the King's Archers, 50.
Mursell (W. A.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 95.
Rylance (J. H.), in The Complete Preacher, ii. 180.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxv. (1879), No. 14Y5.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), In Mamj Keys, 265.
Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, ii. 35.
Churchman's Pulpit : Harvest Thanksgiving, Pt. 97, p. 68 (T. B.
Johnstone) ; Pt. 98, p. 81 (J. S. James). Treasury (New York), xiv. 585 (J. D. M'Caughtry).
i68
The Crowning of the Year.
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness ; And thy paths drop fatness. — Ps. Ixv. ii.
In the midst of great political convulsions, of a shaking of nations and kingdoms, Jehovah had manifested His goodness to His people by sending down a blessing upon their flocks and their fields. The folds were full of sheep, the valleys stood so thick with corn that they laughed and sang ; the garners were filled with all manner of store. Peace had been given to Zion as well as plenty. A year of blessing, temporal and spiritual, had been " crowned " by a secure provision against the drought and famine which had at one time threatened the chosen people.
I.
"Thou hast set a crown upon the year of thy goodness."
Such is the literal rendering of the text. God is represented as
setting the crown of completeness and perfection upon a long
process. In the previous verses we have a graphic picture of how
the grain is prepared. We see the plough at work, scooping out
furrows and turning up ridges by one and the same process : and
the Divine Co-operator dealing with both according to need and
capacity. The furrows are naturally receptive of the streams
which flow in abundance from those upper and invisible channels
of God which are full of water ; and what they thus receive, they
hold and convey to the roots of the young plants. The turned-up