Dnt what a morn! advance had been made when men could discern God's working in ordinary providences, and no longer needed miracles of astonishment I To the restored exiles common providences became signs of direct workin"0 on their behalf. And they were right in so thinking. God was making things work together to work out the fulfilment of his promise. III. Goo's PRESENCE AND POWEn AilE THE GLORIES OF THE CHURCH TO-DAY, But we have risen above the reach of the restored exiles. 'l'o us God is present and working -not in miraculous act, not specially even in providential orderings, but in the spilitual indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Then we-maybe reminded that there are con- ditions of this abiding in us, and that jealousy of our supreme possession is our fitting attitude of mind and feeling.-R. T. Vers. 3, 4.-Nature made to serve Gorfs purposes. These verses are poetical repre- sentations of three actual facts which are recorded in the history of God's people. We may see facts in their bare, bald nakedness, or we may see them with the colour on them which poetical genius can put. It may be disputed whether bald history or suggestive poetry is really the truer to nature, just as it may be disputed whether the realistic or the idealistic picture is the truer to life. If nature is to suggest thoughts to men, then men only see Nature aright when they know what she says as well as what she is. 'l'he poet tells us what Nature says. In these verses we are made to understand that the sea felt God working in it, and yielded to his touch. Jordan felt God working in it, and stopped its flowing. Sinai felt God working in it, and responded with a trembling of reverence and holy joy. The response of Nature is a lesson for man. God would work in his higher powers and his higher spheres; and his response should be more prompt than the hurrying waves, more complete than the check of the river's flowing, and more joyous than the trembling and dances of the divinely honoured hills. The psalmist was the moral teacher of his times, and had a definite purpose before him in thus recalling the most impressive events of the national history. His point may be thus briefly stated: Nature does respond to God and serve his purposes, -and man should. I. NATURE DOES IlESPONJ) TO Goo AND BEBVE HIS PURPOSES. This may be illus- trated from the usual and the unusual. Pagans peopled the woods and streams and hills with fairies; Wordsworth poetically conceived of Nature as a living being. Religion finds God working out his thought e,erywhere, and everything responsive to his use. Nature is not God; it is distinct from him. But it is so kin with him that, unhindered, bis thought finds expression in it. And so responsive is Nature to God, that it readily yields itself to the unusual, to the miraculous, when these are necessary to God's purposes. Seas will part, rivers will stop, mountaius will tremble, in response to him. "The earth is the Lord's, aud the fulness thereof." II. MAN SHOULD RESPOND TO Goo AND SERVE IlIS PURPOSES. He should, because he is a part of Nature, and ought to be in Larmony with her. Dut mnn is a higher being than any thing or being in Nature-a being with a will, a being made in God's image. It is his willing response, it is his loving and obedient outworking of the Divine purposes, that God nsks of restored exiles and of us.-R. T.
Ver. 8.-Tlie natural and the supernatural. "Which turned the rock into a pool or water, the flint into a fountain of waters" (Revised Version). W ollaston tells us tlll\t "on the north-eastern face of Mount Sinai (Jebel Sufsafeh), in the Wmly Shubeib, is a protruding maR~ of rock, about fifty feet in din.meter, much water- and weather-worn, and presenting a smooth and striking appearance. It forms a part of the solid granite cliff which rises twelve hundred feet above it. In the lower part of this protuberance is a fissure of a semicircular, or rather horse-shoe, shape, about four feet long and four inches wide. Out of this fissure, inside which a small shrub is growing, runs a perpetual stream of the purest spring water, clear as crystal, and of delicious coolness and flavour, which, according to the testimony of the Arabs, has never been known to fail. The water thus flowing out or the very heart of the living rock of Sinai is received into an artificial basin, thence it descends to II succession of small and rudely constructed terraces, where the Uedouins cultivated a few fruit trees and vege- tables, nnd is ultimately absorbed in the gravrlly hollow at the b:1se of the mountain." 60 'l'iIE BOOK OF PSALMS. [PS, OX[V, 1-8,