to abound in little services; try to do good to others; be true to the Duty that you know. That must be right, whatever else is uncertain. And by all the laws of the human heart, by the word of God, you shall not be left to doubt. Do that much of the will of God which is plain to you, "You shall know of the doc trine, whether it be of God." PSALM xlii. 1-3. IX. [Preached March 30, 1851.] RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION. "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" THE value of the public reading of the Psalms is, that they express for us indirectly those deeper feelings which there would be a sense of indelicacy in expressing directly. Example of Joseph: asking after his father, and blessing his brothers, as it were under the personality of another. There are feelings of which we do not speak to cach other; they are too sacred and too delicate. Such are most of our feelings to God. If we do speak of them, they lose their fragrance, become coarse; nay, there is even a sense of indelicacy and exposure. Now, the Psalms afford precisely the right relief for this feeling. Wrapped up in the forms of poetry (metaphor, &c.), that which might seem exaggerated is ex cused by those who do not feel it; while they who do can read them, applying them, without the suspicion of uttering their own feelings. Hence their soothing power; and hence, while other portions of Scripture may become obsolete, they remain the most precious parts of the Old Testament. For the heart of man is the same in all ages. This forty-second Psalm contains the utterance of a sorrow of which men rarely speak. There is a grief worse than lack of bread or loss of friends; man in former times called it spiritual desertion. But at times the utterances of this solitary grief are, as it were, overheard, as in this Psalm. Read verses 6-7. And in a more august agony, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I. Causes of David's despondency. 1. Causes of David's despondency. 1. The thirst for God. "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?" There is a desire in the human heart best described as the cravings of infinitude. We are so made that nothing which has limits satisfies. -- Hence the sense of freedom and relief which comes from all that suggests the idea of boundlessness, — the deep sky, the dark night, the endless circle, the illimit able ocean. Hence, too, our dissatisfaction with all that is or can be done. There never was the beauty yet, than which we could not conceive something more beauti ful. None so good as to be faultless in our eyes. No deed done by us, but we feel we have it in us to do a better. The heavens are not clean in our sight; and the angels are charged with folly. Therefore, to never rest is the price paid for our greatness. Could we rest, we must become smaller in soul. Whoever is satisfied with what he does has reached his culminating point-he will progress no more. Man's destiny is to be not dissatisfied, but for ever unsatisfied. -- Infinite goodness, a beauty beyond what eye hath seen or heart imagined, a justice which shall have no flaw, and a righteousness which shall have no blemish, - to crave for that, is to be "athirst for God." 2. The temporary loss of the sense of God's personality. "My soul is athirst for the living God." Let us search our own experience. What we want is, we shall find, not infinitude, but a boundless One, not to feel that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose name is Love. For else, if in this world of order there be no One in whose bosom that order is centred, and of whose Being it is the expression,-in this world of manifold contrivance, no Personal Affection which gave to the skies their trembling tenderness, and to the snow its purity, then order, affection, contrivance, wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the dreary universe alone. Foremost in the declaration of this truth was the Jewish religion. It proclaimed not, "Let us meditate on the Adorable light, it shall guide our intel lects," which is the most sacred verse of the Hindoo Sacred books, but "Thus saith the Lord, I am that I am." In that word, I am, is declared Personality; and it contains, too, in the expression Thus saith, the real idea of a Revelation, namely, the voluntary approaca of the Creator to the creature. Accordingly, these Jewish Psalms are remarkable for that personal tenderness towards God, those out bursts of passionate, individual attachment which are in every page. A person asking and giving heart for heart, inspiring love, because feeling it, that was the Israelite's Jehovah. Now, distinguish this from the God of the philoso pher, and the God of the mere theologian. The God of the mere theologian is scarcely a living God. He did live; but for some eighteen hundred years we are credibly informed that no trace of His life has been seen. The canon is closed. The proofs that He was are in the things that He has made, and the books of men to whom He spake; but He inspires and works wonders no more. According to the theologians, He gives us proofs of design instead of God --doctrines instead of the life indeed. Different, too, from the God of the philosopher. The tendency of philosophy has been to throw back the personal Being further and still further from the time when every branch and stream was believed a living Power, to the period when "principles " were substituted for this belief; then "Laws;" and the philosopher's God is a law into which all other laws are resolvable. Quite differently to this speaks the Bible of God. Not as a law; but as the Life of all that is; the Being who feels and is felt,-is loved and loves again; feels my heart throb into His; counts the hairs of my head; feeds the ravens, and clothes the lilies; hears my |