yet restored to either (2 Sam. ix. 4-20). xxx.iv. 0; xxxv. 10, etc.). Thou e.rt my Yet the Lord thinketh upon me. '.rhe " poor Help and my Deliverer; me.ke no tarrying, and needy" o.re those whom God especially 0 my God (comp. ver. 18, and the comment considol'B (sec P:;s, ix. 18: x. 12, 17, 18; I ad loo.}, HOMILE'l'ICS. Ver. 8.-The s011g learned iii, tribulation. "He hath put a new song," etc. Trouble impoverishes the children of this world, but enriches the children of God. .As St. Paul says, if our hope in Christ were an illusion, Christians would be of all men most pitiable; just as one who has been left heir to an immense fortune, and then by dis- covery of a later will loses all, is far poorer than be was before. Dut, as our hope is no illusion, but "a living hope," resting on a living Saviour, and the word of the livin" God, this life is immensely the richer for it. The '' new song" of which the text speaks is one to learn which the heart mu~t be tutored in the school of trouble. L .A SONG OF DELIVERANCE. .An ungodly heart, emerging from trouble, has the sense of relief, escape, not deliverance. Like a shipwrecked man, swimming for his life, heaved by a high wave on shore; not like sinking Peter, caught in the hand of Jesus, treading the waves at his Saviour's side. 'l'he difference is immense. Was it worth while for the mariner to be shipwrecked, half-drowned, and lose his all, for the plea.sure of standing again on dry ground? Certainly not. He has lost much, gained nothing. But was it worth while for Peter to go through that terrible experience? Had the night been twice as dark, the storm twice as fierce, had he sunk to the very bottom, it would have been a small price to pay for the joy of feeling himself grasped and lifted up in the Saviour's band; the triumph of walking on the raging waters at his side (see Ps. xxxiv. 4-6, 17). IL .A SONG OF FORGIVENESS, The deliverance celebrated was not from mere calamity, but from guilt and its terrible consequences (see ver. 12). This is taking the psalm as uttering David's own experience. But the contrast is so startling, even violent, between the tra.nqnil thankfulness, sense of rectitude, and spiritual insight of vers. 4-10, and the awful sense of sin in ver. 12, that it seems very hard to recon- cile, except by understanding that the Spirit of prophecy here made David the mouth- piece of an obedience, excelling and superseding sacrifice, only realized in Christ; and of that appalling, overwhelming view and sense of the terrific nature and amount of human guilt, which only he could have who "knew no sin," but "was made sin for us." III. .A SONG OF PRAISE, Deliverance is sweetest, most joyful, in the exercise of God's love, power, care; the answer to prayer; the fulfilment of promise. Forgive- ness of sin is, of all God's good gifts, that which most reveals his love in compassion for the unworthy and disobedient, and in the provision of atonement. " Herein is love" (1 John iv. 9, 10; Rom. v. 8). IV. A SONG OF DEEPENED EXPERIENCE; enriched spiritual life; wiser, stronger, humbler faith. When tribulation bas wrought patience (Rom. v. 3, 4); when "onr extremity has been God's opportunity," and his presence has grown more real, his promises more precious and full of comfort; when we have learned to pray a.s never before, and prayer has been answered; when we have been made to feel our own utter weakness, and our Saviour's strength has been perfected in us ;-then the very trial which threatened to confound and uproot our faith becomes the school in which we learn to trust Goel and know him, and therefore to praise him, as never before (l Pet. i. 7). So we gain some foretaste of the "new song" sung before tb11 throne (Rev. v. 9, 10).
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vere. 1-10.-Out of the pit and on the 1·ock: a song of praise. The title of the psalm indicates tbt il is one of David's: against that no adequate argument has ?een raised. 1 Therefore, as David's we regard it. We are ea.lied on to a. treatment of it in 1 Bee Dr. Moll's introduction to this psalm in Scho.lf's Lange. PB. XL.1-17.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 81:i