' B. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 15.
PSALM cxxii. 1 75
the wife counting the weary days in the hills of Ithaca ; the dog leaping up in his master's face and dying of joy; the aged servants recognizing their long-lost chief as he treads once more his father's threshold. To any man worthy of the name, the thoughts of mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, are among the most inspiring, the most purifying, the most elevating of all the motives which God has given us to steady our steps, and guide our consciences, and nerve us for duty, through all the changes and chances of this mortal life. Happy, thrice happy, is he or she who keeps this sanctuary pure and undefiled. False to his country, and false to the true interests and the holy progress of mortals, is he or she who undermines or betrays it. Not charity only, but all the virtues of which charity is the bond begin and end at Home.^
2. The Psalmist was glad because he approached God as a son and not as a slave. We delight in the services of the House of God when we realize that the Great God Himself is pleased with the spiritual sacrifice, the offering of prayer and praise and thanksgiving and intercession which we bring. We must remember that our God is a Father, and " Father " is the name whereby He especially manifests Himself to us. A King He is of course ; a Judge too, a Eevealer, a Saviour, even a Friend ; but, beyond and above all. He is a Father. And when we really grasp the idea of His Fatherhood, it is not so difficult for us to under- stand the feelings with which He regards the approaches of His children to His sacred presence.
^ I can imagine a monarch seated on high, on his throne, looking coldly down upon his subjects, and receiving with little or no emotion but that of a gratified pride, and of a resolve to have his due, the presents which they pour out profusely at his feet. But if the monarch were also a father the circumstances would be radically altered, and I should expect the feeblest offering, if it were but really made in love, to find favour in his eyes; just as I expect that whilst the great Sovereign of the universe listens with complacency to the glorious hymns and anthems of the hosts of heaven. He finds perhaps a sweeter music in the lispings of a little child, or in the broken utterances of a penitent sinner just turning from his sin, and scarcely able at present to believe that he will be accepted, or in the worship of such people as we are, offering our sacrifice sincerely, offering it * A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, 111.
^6 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD
in the name of Jesus Christ, but yet paiufully conscious of the imperfection with which we realize unseen and eternal things, and of the wandering thoughts which so frequently drag our souls down from the heights of spiritual contemplation to engage them with the veriest trifles of the passing moment.^
^ When upon the battle-field we receive our dying comrade's last message to his wife, when we pass in the rude hospital from one sufferer to another, when with a few we have to sacrifice life without one single hope of being saved, that we may keep a post for the safety of an army: we do not speak then of a God of ideas, of an impersonal Essence of Love and Truth, but of a living, loving Friend, who will be a Father to the widow, who stands, as if in human form, and speaks in human voice to the wounded who is torn with pain, to the doomed who dies, unknown, for duty. In such hours the Idealist worships the personal Fatherhood of God. Go to the poor mechanic who has worked all his life in a city garret, and talk of the God who is infinite Life in Nature ; go to men at some great crisis, when their work has broken up, when their heart is broken, and speak of the pitiless action of Force, and the hard fighter with the real ills of poverty, or the tortured man, will mock at your consolation. "When I ask bread," he will say, " you give me a stone." But tell them of a personal Father who loves and pities them, who chastens because He loves, whose tenderness goes hand in hand with justice, who sits with them at the bench, and bears, through sympathy, their poverty : who knows their suffering, and will not leave them or forsake them in the hour of their bitter need ; who is human to them with a higher, tenderer humanity than any they can get on earth, and I know their eyes will light with hope, their spirits take a Divine courage, their patience grow so beautiful that all around will see that there is a higher Power there than earthly gratitude.2
3. In true worship, reverence and intelligent interest must be joined to enthusiasm. Indeed we cannot have worship without reverence. Keverence is the very essence of true religion, and therefore wherever reverence is wanting there can be no true worship. The belief of the Gospel, which implies the possession by us of Jesus as our Saviour from sin and death, should make us glad — glad with a great, deep joy of which the world knows nothing. But a happy or glad heart is not opposed to, or incon- sistent with, a devout and reverent spirit ; and however great may