The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 2 — Section 80

"'These are thy works, Parent of good," eto. II. TSE StrlDdEB. OF GoD's PROVIDENCE. How many are enjoying this I God's caily gifts of life, health, and joy are lavished upon them. They bask in the sunshine of his love. Everything bids them rejoice. But forget not the Giver of your joy-him who made the summer. That holy memory will be to you like the string attached to the child's kite, which is soaring away up in the blue heavens to the child's exuberant delight. But let that string be broken which now steadies and sustains it, not hindering but aiding it in its upward way through the sunlit air, and then you know that at once it will come tumbling ignominiously to the ground. So if we let ourselves forget our God, and we be in thought and affection separated from him, then our poor joy, like that child's kite, will soon fall to the ground, and our gladness will soon be at an end. It is the remembrance," Thou hast made summer," which does not hinder but help our joy, steadying and sustaining it as did that cord the child's toy. Let us not forget this. And we would bid you remember God, because, else, the summer of God's providence, like the natural summer, is apt to breed many forms of evil life, like those many creeping, noisome, and miserably destructive insects, etc., which the summer sun calls forth, and which in our fields and gardens we are ever seeking to be rid of. How full the Bible is of records of the ill that the summer of God's providence bae occasioned to many unwatchful and God-forgetting souls I Remember, too, that such seasons let that live which is not really strong, and which th1: first frost of winter will epeedily kill. So is it easy, when no trial or persecution arises because of Christ, to appear as if we were really his. But when they do arise, what then? Ill. THE BUMMER OF Gon'e GBACE. 1. This may be in us-is so when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. It is very delightful; is independent of every other summer; comes by degrees; is the result of conflict; unlike the natural summer, it never ends, though it may be interrupted. And: 2. It is above us, waiting for us in the future world. 'l'here is the" land of pure delight." The lovely scenes of earth are reminders of it. It is the true, real, most blessed, because unending, s•1mmer of the soul.-B. C. PB, LXXIV, 1-23,] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 89