Ver. 1.-Tlie safety of our life. "He shall keep thy soul." The term "soul" stands often in the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments for the animal life; but we use it for that spiritual being which man is, as distinguished from that bodily form which man has. Taking the first idea, it may be shown that God's care of our natural life involves and includes all due provision for the thousandfold needs of that life. The greater includes the less. The daily renewed gift of life carries with it tho gift of all the life will need day by da.y. This may be applied to the national life of Israel. The restored exiles may well gain and keep full confidence in God, seeing that he had kept their national life through such anxious 11nd imperilling times. He had kept it; they might be sure that he would keep it. And this assurance carried with it the confidence that God's defence and blessing were still upon the restored nation. If God keeps us in being, and gives us new days, then we may confidently hold him to his promise, "As thy day so shall thy strength be." He is able and willing to make "all grace abound" unto "all-sufficiency." Taking the second idea, we come upon God's continued interest in, and care for, the new life he hl\s quickened in our souls, His concern for the material life does but illustmte his care for the spiritual life (" This is the will of God, even our sanctification"). "Soul-keeping is the soul of keeping. If the soul be kept, all is kept. The preservation of the greater includes that of the less, so far as it is essential to the main design ; the kernel shall be preserved, and in order thereto the shell shall be preserved also. Our soul is kept from the dominion of sin, the iufection of error, the crush- of despondency, the puffing up of pride-kept from the world, the flesh, and the devil; kept for holier and greater things, kept in the love of God, kept unto the etern11l kingdom an,I glory." Ilut we need not miss the important fact tha.t God's soul-keeping runs along with, and works through, our own soul-keeping. "Keep thy heart with all keeping~, for out of it are the issues of life."-R. T.
Ver. 8.-The safety of our days. "The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy comic.g in." This expression is evidently borrowed from the blessing on obedienco given in Deut. xxviii. 6, "Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out." Clearly it is but a poetical way of sayin:,?, th11t the defence and guidance and benediction of Jehovah shBll rest on the godly man in all the actions and relations of his everyday life. The protection vouchsafed extends to all 11 man is and all a man does. It might seem as if the salvation of the soul from spiritual death were all we need be anxious about; but God never urges this point upon us. His salvation is not so limited. He saves the whole ma.n, and bea.rs as real a relation to man's temporal as to his spiritual needs. "With his dear Son he freely gives us all things." The true savina of a man for the life th11t now Is involves the to eal'ing of the man for the life that is como. l. THE 11 GOING OUT" OF LIFE MAY INDICATE ITS ACTIVITIES AND ENTERPRISES. We go out in the morning refreshed, vigorous, full of conscious power, and iu some peril of 192 THE BOOK OF PSALMS. [PB, CXXII, 1-9,
self-reliance. "The Lord shall preserve thy going out." Keepfog thee from whatever form of temptation and moral evil may come through the putting forth of human energy in the daily duties of life. Man's enterprise may bring• him into sit.!le.tions of bodily danger. God will keep him then. But the verJ force he puts into life may unduly magnify self; e.nd it is much more to say that God will keep him from ensnaring self. JI. THE "COMING m" OF LIFE MAY INDICATE ITS PASSIVITIES AND QUIET RELATION• SHIPS. We come in tired. We come in to rest, enjoy ; we come in to home relation• ships and quiet occupations; and we seldom suspect that there is a possible exaggerat- ing of self in our times of passivity, as truly as in our times of activity. There e.r9 luxuries, listlessnesses, selfishnesses, of our very resting-times; and we need God for our coming in, lest the self or self-indulgence should gain undue power over us.-R. T.
Vers. 1-8.-The Sour~ if help. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills," etc. J. A STRO:s'G, DEEP SENSE OF DEPENDENCE ON GOD IMPI,ANTED IN US, !I. WE YUST LIFT OURSELVES UP IN THE WHOLE rOWER OF OUR BEING TO DEAUZB GoD's NEARNESS To HELP us. He dwelt in the mountain-gronp of Zion at Jerusalem, and in the other mountains of Israel. We have been taught to realize that God is Spirit, and dwells near us, as well as in the far-off mountains and in distant worlds. But we can ~ee him only from the heights of the soul. III. THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE IS THE PROVIDENCE OF THIS WORLD. (Ver. 2.) The Being who framed man's wonderful nature would naturally provide for its great wants-the wants he he.d himself created. "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." IV. THE CREATOR WOULD NOT ONLY HAVE THE POWER, BUT THE DESIRE, ·rHE DISPOSITION, TO HELP THE CHILD OF HIS LOVE. (Vers. 3-6.) "He that keepeth thee will not slumber." God's care for us will not suffer him to sleep or become indifferent to us. V. GoD's ETERNAL OARE 18 TO KEEP THE SOUL FROM EVIL-FROM ALL BEAL EVIL. :Many calamitous, or whe.t appear calamitous, events to us are not evils in the sight of God, but, under his control, issue in our eternal good.-S.