HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver.1.-Jn praise of praise. 'fhi.s psalm carries on and gloriously sustains the great Hallel of adoring gratitude and glad thanksgiving with which the Book of Psalma ends. This first verse contains a threefold laudation of the Lord's praise. L BECAUSE "IT IS GOOD." And this i.e most true, 1. In reference to God. For it ministers pleasure to him. Do not the experiences of many a parent.ii heart bear witness to this truth? Are not we delighted with the loving utterances of our children, by which they testify their heart's affection towards us? It may be but the prattle of childish lips, or the lispings of such as are hardly more than babes, but it is deli"'htful all the same; and our children's affection, when it has become older and mor~ thoughful,-what would our homes be without it? And right sure are 'Ve that our poor praise delights the Lord to whom it is rcnder~d; he ~ecognizee in it that response to hie own love, for which all love, and emphatically his, cannot but crave. .And it is good in hie sight, further, because it wins him glory from men, II. BECAUBE "IT IS PLEASANT." Ill, BECAUSE "IT IS COMELY,"-8, 0, Ver. 1.-77ui pleasantness of praise. When the poet Carpani inquired of hie friend Haydn how it happened that his church music was always so cheerful, the great com- poser made the following reply : " I cannot mako it otherwise; I write according to the tbouuht I feel. When I think upon God, lllY heart is so full of joy that the notes dan~ and leap, as it were, from my pen, and since God has given me a cheerful heart. it will be pardoned me that I praiso him with a cheerful spirit." Religious life and relations are often wrongly toned through the influence of the strange sentiment that what is acceptable to God must be a strain and trial to us. 'Jhis strange sentiment rests on the mistaken idea that matter itself io evil, and, as man is material, his work is, at every cost, to master and crush the material element. '!'his is at the root of Hinduis'I1 and Buddhism; it iuspires the hermit; it fills nunneries and monastcrie3; and it explaius the bodily austerities of l!:oo,1 men, such as Henry MarLyn, who walked about rs. CXLVII, 1-20.J 'l'HE IlOOK OF PS.ALMS. 4.03
with pebbles in his shoes, ns if to make himself miserable and so make himseJr acceptable to God. This notion is far more widespread, and far more mischievous, than is usually recognized, Constantly we find good people suspecting themselves of insincerity, or quite sure tha.t something dreadful is going to happen, if they find themselves happy, and really enjoying their religious duties and exercises. J; To FEEL TIIE PLEASANTNESS OF PRAISE IS A l'IGN OF ClIEnISTIING RIGHT THOUGHTS OF Goo. What he recognizes is the. good of his creatures, and that includes their l,appiness. And this characteristic of God is in no way affected by the fact that man has sinned. God is still anxious for his happiness, and helps him out of the bondage of sin that he may be happy. Long faces, miserable tones, depressing anticipations, and exaggeralecl and constant wailings about sin, do not honour or please God. He wants even his ~inful children to find and feel the pleasantness of the JJraise they offe- to him. It is comely to enjoy our religion. I!, 'J.'o FEEL THE PLEASANTNEOS OF PRAISE IS A SIGN OF CilEBISIIINO RIGIIT TIIOUOHTS CONCEBNJ~G OURSELVES, Thero are times when a man ought to cherish a due sense of his sinfulness and sia, but to be always wailing over it nourishes formality and insiuceiity. A man is a sinner, but he is a child of God nevertheless, and does well to remember his sonship oftener than his sin.-R. T. Ver. 3.-God's help for the suffering ones. "It takes a brave soul to bear all this so grandly," snid a tender-hearted doctor, stooping over his suffering patient. She lifted her heavy eyelids, and, looking into the doctor's face, replied," It is not the brave soul at all; God does it all for me." "He. healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." The second clause of this sentence may but repeat the first with a slight variety, according to the Hebrew fashion of composition which we have had several times to observe. But we may meditatively recognize a distinction between the clauses, referring the first to tho heart-sphere, and the second to the bodily. I. MAN'S BUFFEBINGS BELO.,G TO TWO SPHERES, .Answering to man as a dual being. He i, a spirit. He ha, a body. So he hl\S the possibility of suffering in the spirit that he is, and in the body that he has. Bodily wounds bring before us the whole sphere of sufferings which relate to the bodily organization and relations. It may be true that bodily pain directly affects the spirit, but it is equally true, if more subtle, tha.t pain in the ~pirit affects the body. Still we can keep the two separate in thought. What an accumulation and V9.riety of pains and woes can affect the human body I How tempted we are to think that these are the supreme woes I They are not. The broken heart is the woe of woes. 'l'he difitresses of the ~pirit are the supreme distresses. Afflict a mnn's bcdy, and body-sphere, even ns Job was nfllicte,l, the runn does not know what suffering is until he suffers in his soul. 'l'his is impressively seen on Calvary, where wns tho very height of bodily woe. There we see the transcendent woe of thti suffering soul. II. Goo's HELP BELONGS TO TilE TWO SPHERES. " Who forgiveth all our iniquities, and healelh ail our diseases;" "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." This is no less true, because for his heolings in the bodily sphere God uses agencies that we can recognize. He uses agencies also for his hcaliugs in the ~pirit-sphere, though they often are such as we cannot recognize. Even when we are willing to pray to God for the healing of our bodily pains, we are mournfully unwilling-or it may be we do not think it right-to seek God's help in our suffering_ mental and spiritual states. God for our woes of feeling we all but very imperfectly realizo.-R. T. Ver. 6.-Tlk, L<11'd's ways with the meek. Thi11 term often means" the afflicted." Thie word "meek" has several distinct meanings as used in the Word of God, but its root-idea seems to be "lowly feeling about ourselves." 'l'his associates with both "humility" and "disinterestedness." Sometimes the bad side of the word comes into view, and it expresses the feeling of the crushed man, who has become heartless, spiritless, who is broken down, who has wholly lost his energy; who, like David in his timo of distress, wails out bis faithless fear, "I shall now perish one day by tho hand of Saul I'' '!'here is something of that heartlessnc~s and hopelessness iu<licated in tliis tcx t. 404 THE DOOK OF PS.ALMS. [rs. OXl,VII. l-.20.