the peculiarity of the Jew, that he had no earthly, visible king. Jehovah unseen yet ever present, w_as to the nation of Israel, all, and more tha•1 all, that human kings were to the nations around them. But this high view of thu Divine Kincrship0 Israel proved unable to maintain. It is that spiritual theocracy which the Lord Jesus camP, to restore. I. 'l'HE K1NG-FIOURE FOR GOD DECLARES HIS AUGUST POWER. Take the Eastern, rather th1rn Western, idea. of the king. In the East kings are regarded as the embodi- ment of all kinds of power. At first they were chosen because of bodily size and strength, as was king Saul. Notions of Divine power were connected with them. So Israel's God was thought of as the Omnipotent, All-controlling One. II. 'l'HE KING-FIGURE FOR GoD DECLARES ms .ABIDING PRESENCE. A king absent from his kingdom is inconceivable. If he is away, some one must take bis place. Su God as King is with his people. III. THE KING-FIGUHE FOB GoD DECLARES HIS GBA.CIOUB PURPOSE. For a kin~ ought to be the " father of bis people;" supremely concerned for their highest well- being. And bod reigns with a view to securing righteousness, which is, for man, the supreme blessing.-H. T.
Ver. 1.-The completeness of Divine Creation. "The world also is established, that it cannot be moved." It is a remarkable illustration of the mistakes made in explaini,ig the poetical figures of God's Word, that Calvin appealed to this passage as proving tba t the earth is motionlesH, which it is not. What tbe psalmist rejoices in is the com- pleteness of the Divine creation. It needed no one to put to it a finishing toud. Man's handiwork always needs finishing off. We may illustrate by the complicated machine which man may make. However complete it may be, no one thinks of its going alone, without any supervision and attention; and no one thinks of doubting its completeness because it receives such attention. Yet men so often persist that if God's creation is perfect, it must be independent; it must need no attention and no repair, even if self-willed men do interfere with it. J. COMPLETENESS MEANS THAT THE THINGS lllA.DE A.BE PERFECT .AND SUFFICIENT. We may not think that God made all he could make. What he made was relative to the particular moral beings he designed. They were to be beings with five senses, and creation was to be fitted to those five senses. Of everything God made it was declared that it was good, not necessarily the best possible to God's thought, but the best possible for God's purpose. Show that man, in all the ages, has never of himself been able to improve a single thing God has made. He has only improved things by bringing out the latent possibilities God put in the things. As with developed flower,, roses, etc. II. COMPLETENESS MEANS THAT THE LAWS RULING THE RELATIONS OF THDi'GS ARE ONCE FOB ALL FIXED A.ND DEFINED. Much is made of the fixity and certainty of the "laws of nature." 'l'oo much cannot be made of it. "The law of the Lord," in creation," is perfect." But in every set of laws it will be found that law qualifies, and limits, and even crosses, law in actual working. It is so with the laws of nature. And the best perfection is seen in the fact that tbe laws will work with each other harmoniously. Illustrate how the laws of life and of death work into each other throughout creation. IIL COMPLETENESS MEANS THAT A LIVING WILL PRESIDES OVER .ALL THINGS AND THE WORKING OF ALL LA ws. Nothing can be moved, in the sense of being changed; but everything is within the Divine adfustment, and the confidence of the psalmist arises from the conviction of the actual present Divine rule.-R. T.
Ver. 2.-The distinction between God and God's handiwork. "Thou art from ever- lasting." Thou wast before the world was. He was. He made the earth, an,i all that thereiu is. "In the beginning God." His name is the "I am." "'l'he first and foundation-stone of the great temple of revealed truth is a declaration which grasps all space, all being, all time, and bids us see before them, above them, and altogether independent of them-One lonely, infinite Being, having life in himself. When there was no heaven and no earth, in the silent dark eternities, in the beginning, there was God. The first chapter of Genesis is evideutly "designed to impress on us that the woriLl was TIIE BOOK OF :PSALMS. [PB. xom.1-6.
not created by chaoce, by self-generation, by impersonal powers or nature or by rnnny agC'nt~ Rcting C'ith<>r in harmony or in antagonism. God is distinct fro~ 1111 that he has made." Bif'hop Wordsworth says, on Gen. i. 1, " The declaration of this verse opposes the Pantheist, who say,:, 'The world is God;' the Peripatetics who BR\' • 'l.'he ,~orld exist,s from c!crnity ; ' the Stoics, who say, 'The wm:ld was m;de by F;te and Necessity; the Epicureans, who say, 'It arose from a fortmtons conconrse of atoms• 1 Lhe Persians and Mirnichroans, who say, 'It arose from the anta.,.onism of two riv~l powers; ' the Gnostics, who sn.y, 'It was mn.de by angels, or e~anations of reons; ' Hermogenes, who says, 'It was made out of matter co-eternal with God ; ' and the modern notion, that it arose out of the spontaneous agency and evolution of self- de'l'eloping powers." The distinction between a man and the machine be makes is cl<>ar enough; but the complication of thought, in relation to God, arises from the fact that he makes the material of which be makes the machine of creation. Illustrate the distinction along the following lines. J. CREATION HAD A BEGTh"1\'1NGj TIIB CREATOR HAD NONE. Il. CREATION JS A MATERIAL THING j THE CREATOR JS A BPIRITUAT, BEING, III. CREATION, AS WE KNOW IT, MAY BE ONE OF MANY CREATIONS j THE CREATOR, AS WE KNOW HlM, IS THE ORIGINATOR OF THEM ALL. IV. CREATION IS SUllJECT TO CHANGE; THE CREATOR IS UNCHANGEABLE. V. CREATION RAS BUT A TEMPORARY EXISTENCE j THE CREATOR JS ETERNAL. "From everlasting to everlasting thou art God ; " " Of thy years there is no endina " (2 Pet. iii. 10).-R. T. "