Tupholrae). Church Times, May 6, 1910 (H. S. Holland). Literary Churchman, xxxii. 316 (J. L. Spencer).
9*<
The DAY'S Work.
Man gfoeth forth unto his work
And to his labour until the evening. — Ps. civ. 23.
The psalm from which the text is taken is one of the most com- plete and impressive pictures of the universe to be found in ancient literature, and it breathes the very spirit of the Hebrew race. It has been called the Psalm of the Cosmos. It moves through all creation, and begins and ends with praise. Like all the highest reaches of the human imagination, it lays hold of the inner and deeper truth of things, and suggests much more than literary description can convey. He was not a man of knowledge in the modern sense, this Hebrew poet, although the wide sweep of his thought seems to speak of some contact with foreign culture ; but he was at home in that knowledge of God which is Eternal Life. No careful reader of the psalm will fail to see that it follows mainly the order and sequence of the story of the beginnings of things with which our Bible opens — a story which in its groupings of the creative action into progressive stages dimly anticipates our modern idea of development : yet the psalm is no mere copy of that story. The story of Genesis is the record of a past and finished creation : the psalm is a picture of a con- tinuous, ever-proceeding creation — a kind of prophecy of the genesis of science. All the work of the ancient record we see going on before our eyes : the wondrous week of Divine activity is every week, and its six great days are repeated in all the days. In the psalm, as in the Book of Genesis, we see life moving on in the same ordered and stately way to the same goal ; rising up in slow and steady grandeur to man, and in man reaching its summit and crown. The going forth of man is the highest point in the vast, ascending movement — the end or goal of life on its material side. In this psalm, until we reach this verse, God is represented as working alone, causing the grass to grow and giving to the
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320 THE DAY'S WORK
wild beasts their food ; but man goeth forth — goeth forth a self- conscious, self-acting being, a distinct person, a sovereign soul with power to shape the course of his own life and activity. And this going forth of man is not only the summing-up and end of a creation, but the beginning of a new creation. However closely he may be allied to what is beneath him, he belongs to another order. Because he thinks and wills and loves, he is kindred to the Infinite Mind and Will and Heart — kindred to God ; not only a creature formed and sustained by the Creator's power, but a son of God, and therefore more to God than vast worlds and blazing suns.
^ In the Psalms, Alexander von Humboldt recognized an epitome of scientific progress, a summary of the laws which govern the universe. "A single Psalm, the 104th," he writes, " may be said to present a picture of the entire Cosmos. We are astonished to see, within the compass of a poem of such small dimension, the universe, the heavens and the earth, thus drawn with a few grand strokes." ^
^ In the 104th Psalm the inspired poet gives us a magnificent picture of the movement and march of a living world. The clouds roll on like the swift chariots of God; the winds are winged creatures ; the springs of water run among the hills ; the grass is growing, the sap circling through the cedars, the birds building their nests among the branches; the moon keeps her seasons ; the sun rises and sets , the beasts of the forest creep forth in search of their food ; the ships are sailing upon the great and wide sea. And of man, set in the midst of this vast, busy scene, the Psalmist says, " Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening." There is a beauty and pathos in these words which makes them smite upon the heart like the fingers of a skilled player upon his instrument, a beauty and pathos which is due essentially to their truthfulness to human experience, turning them, all simple as they are, into the solemn refrain of the Psalm of Life.^
^ R. E. Pro there. The Psalms in Human Life, 315. J. C. Lambert, The Christian Workman, 18.
PSALM CIV. 23 321
I.
WoEK AS A Law of Man's Life.
1. To the vast majority of men and women work is a law, first of all, in the sense that it is a positive necessity of their daily existence. We must eat to live, and we must work to eat ; that is what the law comes to in its ultimate physical form.
^ In one of his poems Arthur Hugh Clough gives us a realistic picture of morning in the city : —
Labourers settling Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of
slumber ; Humble market-carts coming in, bringing in not only Flowers, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers ; soon after. Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters Up at the windows, or down letting in the air by the doorway.