I. THE DIVINE OMNISCIENCE (vers. 1-6). The poet multiplies expressions to indicate how complete is God's knowledge of him. Whether he be at rest or in motion, in every posture and state, God knows him. Not only his outward acts, but the thoughts from which they spring are at once discerned. Nothing can escape Jehovah's eye, for He is behind and before, i.e. on all sides of man, and His hand is upon him to restrain and control. The strophe closes with a frank confession of the writer's impotence and awe. He cannot comprehend it, which is not strange, for how is the finite to comprehend the infinite? But he knows it and bows in reverence before the sublime truth.

II. THE DIVINE OMNIPRESENCE (vers. 7-12). God is everywhere; not only above all as transcendent, but also through all and in all as immanent in nature. This thought is expanded and enforced by its application to all measures of space. Were man to scale the azure vault overhead, it would only confront him with the Divine personality; were he to sound unimaginable depths in the other direction, the result would be the same. H a man mounted on wings, not those of the sun (Malachi 4:2), nor of the wind (Psalm 18:10), but of the dawn, and pursued the farthest flight westward, if he should fly with the same swiftness as the first rays of the morning shoot from one end of the heavens to the other, still he would not get beyond the Divine presence. Beyond the sea, and far out of the sight of man, God's hand would lead him, and God's right hand grasp him.

III. OMNIPOTENCE IN THE CREATION OF MAN (vers. 13-18). The singer revolves in mind the secret processes of man's birth and development, and gratitude overflows into praise. He sees how he has been made to differ from the inferior creation in constitution and destiny. It is a fearful distinction (Genesis 28:17). Any signal manifestation of Jehovah's presence, however favourable, inspires awe. The consideration of this single ease leads to the general statement that all God's works are marvellous, a statement which the writer reaffirms as from an experimental conviction of its truth. In the next verse the curious growth and unfolding of the embryo is referred to. It goes on in secret, as far from human vision as if it were deep down in some subterraneous cavern, but God sees it and directs the mysterious and complicated tissue, as if it were a piece of delicate embroidery. Even in its most rudimental form, invisible to any other ken, it is still open to His eyes, and He determines all its subsequent development, recording in His book the days to come, i.e. the various events and vicissitudes of life, even before one of them existed. Struck by this view of God's omniscience as embracing the beginning, the unfolding and the completion of all things, the singer bursts out into a recognition of its value. To him God's thoughts, i.e. His plans and purposes as displayed in these miracles of creation, are precious beyond measure. Nor are they few or slight, but amount to a vast sum, more numerous than the sands of the sea. They are ever before David as an object of adoring wonder, not by day only, but by night; not merely in the watches of the night, but even in his sleep. His meditations are continuous. His communion is unbroken.

IV. THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION (vers. 19-24). The greater any man's nearness to God, the more intense is his abhorrence of the impiety which disowns or despises the living God. Nor does such a feeling indicate malevolence. "When a foul crime has been perpetrated, tender-hearted Christian women who would not harm a hair of the enemy's head, but would rather feed him, will express keen resentment, and will be disquieted in mind till they hear that the perpetrator has been convicted and duly punished." The conclusion of the strophe is striking. The poet returns to the opening words of the psalm, and prays for a new experience of Jehovah's searching scrutiny, that he may not be given over to self-conceit. The petition is a proof of humility. Although he had averred so strongly his aversion to the wicked, he prays that this may be no mere outward separation. The All-seeing Eye may detect in him some way that leads to sin and sorrow, though he is unconscious of it. Hence he entreats God to see and disclose it, and then taking his hand to lead him in a way which, unlike the way of the wicked (Psalm 1:6), does not perish, but ends in everlasting life.

(T. W. Chambers, D. D.)

1. By His presence.

2. By His power or agency.

3. In the immensity of space.

4. In highest heaven.

5. In hell.

6. We cannot get away from God's presence.

7. Human inspection is very limited. But God's eye penetrates the darkest abode, the deepest cell, the obscurest corner, the blackest night.

8. Men only see what a man says and does; God sees all that a man is. "To Him all hearts are open, all desires known." God knows us, not relatively, but personally.

9. Specially with His people. "Where are you going?" said Collins, the infidel, to a poor but pious man. "To church, sir," was the reply "What to do there?" "To worship God." "And can you tell me," said the infidel, "whether your God is a great or a little God?" "He is both, sir." "How can He be both?" "He is so great that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, and so little that He can dwell in my heart."

II. LESSONS.

1. If God is omniscient and omnipresent, then the moral character of His creatures is unveiled to His gaze, and clearly and distinctly known to Him.

2. If God is omniscient and omnipresent, then the final judgment will be a time of full and complete revelation, as well as a time of righteous retribution (Ecclesiastes 11:14; Revelation 20:12). Will the disclosures of that day fill us with joy, or cover us with shame?

3. The importance of an interest in Christ.

4. Try to cherish an abiding sense of God's presence.

5. Pray at all times and in all places.

6. Be comforted in every time of trouble.

(H. Woodcock.)

I. IS THERE AN ALL-SEEING GOD? If not, whence our own existence? Whence our expectations of reward for doing right, of punishment for wrong-doing? Whence the material universe? Whence the original plan, stupendous beyond conception, more minute than the most powerful microscope can reveal, which must have preceded the first act of creation? Whence the march and trend of history, always revealing "a power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and which sweeps away opposition like dust before the oncoming storm? Who conceived the character of Christ, in an age overlaid and penetrated through and through with error? Whose works of grace, in that same earth, have steadily built up a kingdom of love, of peace, of righteousness? If there is a creator of the universe, He must also be its sustainer: He cannot press material forces into service and go and leave them, as we do a windmill to draw water, for all force depends upon Him for its existence. He who superintends all must be all-seeing, and He who presides over all history must take cognizance of every event.

II. WHAT CONCERN HAS OUR LIFE, HERE AND HEREAFTER, WITH THE OMNISCIENCE OF GOD?

1. That exquisite pleasure in sin, which comes from its fancied concealment, is utter folly.

2. God is patient with wrong and sin, because He sees the end from the beginning.

3. Patience under trial and strength in adversity thrive under the all-seeing eye.

4. The friends of God are glad in the sure hope of being more and more consciously under His eye.

5. Corresponding judgments await those who, shrinking from that all-seeing eye, with a repugnance predominant and increasing, must abide its searchings for ever.

6. How priceless the blood of Calvary, in which the saints have "washed their robes and made them white"!

(Monday Club Sermons.)

I. THE ALL-SEEING ONE.

1. He sees the whole of an object. At best we can only see the outside of a thing, the curve, the angle, the colour.

2. He sees the whole of every object. How few are the objects we see even thus externally and partially! Some are too small and some too distant. But He sees all, His eye takes in the immeasurable universe.

3. He sees the whole of everything at the same time.

II. THE ALL-PRESENT ONE.

1. He is present everywhere, in the entirety of Himself.

2. He is present in all things, yet distinct from all things.Practically, this subject serves three important purposes.

1. To refute some popular errors of human life.

(1)There is the error that supposes that formal worship can be of any real worth. "God is a Spirit," etc.

(2)There is the error that imagines that death will make some fundamental alteration in their relation to God.

2. To reprove some prevalent impieties in human conduct.

(1)Atheism.

(2)Indifferentism.

3. To reveal the supreme interest of human life. Cultivate a loving affection for Him.

(Homilist.)

I. GOD.

1. His omniscience.

(1)He knows our actions, ways, words, thoughts.

(2)His knowledge of us is entire, complete.

2. His omnipresence. He is in —

(1)Heaven.

(2)Unseen world.

(3)Everywhere.

(4)In the dark as well as the light.

3. His omnipotence (vers. 13-16).

4. The separate, personal thinking of God toward every one of us.

(1)Innumerable.

(2)Constant.

II. OURSELVES. Our relation toward such a God should be —

1. That of adoring and constantly thoughtful reverence (vers. 17, 18).

2. That of siding with Him against evil (vers. 19-22).

3. That of welcoming the Divine searching (vers. 23, 24). Said Milton, speaking of his travels abroad when a young man: "I again take God to witness that in all places where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God."

4. That of a prayerful seeking of the Divine guidance (ver. 24).

(W. Hoyt, D. D.)

I. GOD ACCURATELY AND EXHAUSTIVELY KNOWS ALL THAT MAN KNOWS OF HIMSELF. He may be an uncommonly thoughtful person, and little of what is done within his soul may escape his notice; nay, we will make the extreme supposition that he arrests every thought as it rises, and looks at it; that he analyzes every sentiment as it swells his heart; that he scrutinizes every purpose as it determines his will; even if he should have such a thorough and profound self-knowledge as this, God knows him equally profoundly and equally thoroughly. Nay, more, this process of self-inspection may go on indefinitely, and the man grow more and more thoughtful, and obtain an everlastingly augmenting knowledge of what he is and what he does, so that it shall seem to him that he is penetrating so deeply into those dim and shadowy regions of consciousness where the external life takes its very first start, and then he may be sure that God understands the thought that is afar off, and deep down, and that at this lowest range and plane in his experience he besets him behind and before.

II. GOD ACCURATELY AND EXHAUSTIVELY KNOWS ALL THAT MAN MIGHT, BUT DOES NOT, KNOW OF HIMSELF. Though the transgressor is ignorant of much of his sin, because, at the time of its commission, he sins blindly as well as wilfully, and unreflectingly as well as freely; and though the transgressor has forgotten much of that small amount of sin, of which he was conscious, and by which he was pained, at the time of its perpetration; though, on the side of man, the powers of self-inspection and memory have accomplished so little towards this preservation of man's sin, yet God knows it all, and remembers it all. He compasseth man's path, and his lying down, and is acquainted with all his ways. And here let us look upon the bright as well as the dark side of this subject. For if God's exhaustive knowledge of the human heart waken dread in one of its aspects, it starts infinite hope in another. If that Being has gone down into these depths of human depravity, and seen it with a more abhorring glance than could ever shoot from a finite eye, and yet has returned with a cordial offer to forgive it all, and a hearty proffer to cleanse it all away, then we can lift up the eye in adoration and in hope. The worst has been seen, and that too by the holiest of beings, and yet eternal glory is offered to us! It is perfectly plain from the elevated central point of view where we now stand, and in the focal light in which we now see, that no man can be justified before God upon the ground of personal character; for that character, when subjected to God's exhaustive scrutiny, withers and shrinks away. Before the Searcher of hearts all mankind must appeal to mere and sovereign mercy. Justice, in this reference, is out of the question. Now, in this condition of things, God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. The simple question, then, which meets us is, Wilt thou know thyself here, and now, that thou mayest accept and feel God's pity; or wilt thou keep within the screen, and not know thyself until beyond the grave, and then feel God's judicial wrath? The self-knowledge, remember, must come in the one way or the other. It is a simple question of time; a simple question whether it shall come here in this world, where the blood of Christ "freely" flows, or in the future world, where "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin."

(W. G. T. Shedd, D. D.)

(Archbishop Temple.)

(Weekly Pulpit.)

I. GOD RULES AND GOVERNS MEN. But this could not be without such knowledge. And so at times He governs men's secret projects.

1. By discovering them, making them known to others.

2. By preventing them.

3. By turning them to other ends than men purposed (Isaiah 7:7; Genesis 45:5).

II. HE GIVES LAWS TO REGULATE THEM.

III. HE WILL JUDGE THEM.

1. He does so in this life where He often gives foretaste of the future (Deuteronomy 29:18),

2. In the day of judgment (Luke 12:2).

IV. HE IS OMNISCIENT AND OMNIPRESENT (Proverbs 15:3; Hebrews 4:13). Then —

1. Presumptuous sin is atheism.

2. Let secret sinners be afraid.Such are those who sin in thought and desire only. God judges such, for they are the roots of sin. Spiritual wickedness is worst wickedness. And they are the product of the man himself, as his actions sometimes are not. And there are secret sins not only thought, but acted, only concealed from men (2 Samuel 12:12; Habakkuk 2:11; Genesis 4:10). God will judge them.

3. Let sincere-hearted Christians be comforted. The same sun-rising and break of day that terrifies the robber is a comfort to the honest traveller. Thou that, art sincere, God sees that sincerity in thee that others cannot discern; perhaps thou canst not fully discern it thyself. And He will exalt thee.

(R. South, D. D.)

II. THAT RECORD MAY BE PRESENTED TO OUR CONDEMNATION. Men are making efforts to recover the secrets of another's brain. It is hard to conceive what the possibility means, as suggested by the results of rapid photography in the vitascope. It is not position that is presented, but action; even the change of face with change of thought. It is the publication of a partial set of records. Who could risk the scrutiny of their whole lives with such publicity?

III. BUT THAT RECORD CAN BE BLOTTED OUT. A photographer can remove the sensitive salts in a bath. The picture then has no existence and cannot be exhibited; But we cannot trust our forgetfulness to do this, nor man's charity. But God in mercy has provided a cleansing flood.

(W. J. Gregory.)

(H. Macmillan, D. D.)

I. But, as we look more closely at the subject, CERTAIN FEATURES OF THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH IS POSSESSED BY THE DIVINE MIND stand out before us more distinctly. They show how that knowledge differs from knowledge as it exists in ourselves, and they enable us to understand how the knowledge which belongs to God, as God, is knowledge of an extent and of a kind which makes it certain that when seated on the throne of judgment the Holy Judge of all the earth does right.

1. And first of all, then, so far as we know, all, or nearly all, of our knowledge is acquired, and most of it is acquired at very considerable cost of time and labour. Now, nothing corresponding to this can hold good of the mind of God. God does not acquire His knowledge; He ever possessed it. Acquisition implies ignorance to begin with; it implies a limited prospect which is gradually enlarged by effort; it implies dependence upon intermediate sources of knowledge, upon books, teachers, the testimony of others, evidence, experiment. All this is inadmissible in conceiving of the Divine Mind which never could have been ignorant, never dependent upon anything or any person external to itself for obtaining information. Man may be very — nay, utterly ignorant — not, indeed, without grave loss, but certainly without forfeiting his manhood. In man, knowledge, however important, is yet an accident of his life: it is conceivably separated from it. In God, on the other hand, knowledge is not a separable accident, a dispensable attribute of His existence. As God, He cannot but know, and know on an infinite scale. In God, as St. finely says, to know is the same thing as to exist. There can be in Him no progress from a lower to a higher plane of knowledge, still less from ignorance to knowledge. In Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge have ever been exactly what they are. Now, consider how this bears on the duties of a judge. A human judge, whatever his knowledge of the statute book, whatever his experience of proceedings in the courts, is dependent upon the evidence which is brought before him, when charging the jury or when forming his own judgment. If the evidence is confused or imperfect, if it is perjured or untrustworthy, still it is all he has to go upon; he must do the best he can with it; he has no means of arriving at a bound at the truth of the facts independently of that which is deposed to before him. Alas! however excellent his intentions, however absolute his integrity, he cannot escape a liability — the human liability — to make mistakes. In the Divine Judge this liability does not exist, because His knowledge of facts, not being acquired by weighing evidence, is ever and immediately present to His mind. He sees everything — men, events, characters — at a glance, and as they are.

2. And as human knowledge is acquired, so it is liable to decompose in our minds. It is less easily acquired than it is forgotten. Here, again, we must see that nothing corresponding to this process, so familiar in the experience of the human mind, is even imaginable in the mind of God. It knows "no variableness, neither shadow of turning." All that is, all that might have been and is not, all that might yet be, whether it is to be or is not to be, is eternally present to it, and it could not forfeit its hold upon any part of this, to us, inconceivably vast field of knowledge without ceasing to be itself. And here, again, the Divine Judge must differ from any human judge. No human judge can prudently trust his memory even to retain what is brought before him in a case that lasts but a few hours; he can only trust his notes. Memory, he knows, is treacherous; it gives way just when we need it most; it refuses to recall a date, a name, a figure, a fact, unimportant generally, but of critical importance then and now Its impotence is, so we think, as capricious as are its good services. In the Awful Mind above and around us nothing like this is possible, because it does not ever, as we do, look back upon any fact as upon something past; it is always in contact with all facts, whether, from our point of view, they be past or present or future, as eternally present to it.

3. And, once more, human knowledge is very limited. "We know in part." As the generations of men who devote themselves to the work of marshalling and increasing the stock of human knowledge succeed each other, each generation is largely occupied in showing how defective was the knowledge of those who immediately preceded it, while it knows that in turn it, too, will be exposed to a like criticism on the part of its successors. So far are we men from possessing the field of universal knowledge that a man never entirely masters any single subject. In the Divine Mind, on the contrary, we cannot conceive partial knowledge of any subject whatever. God knows all, because He is everywhere. The Omnipresent cannot but be also omniscient. What need is there to say that the knowledge of the human judge is, I will not say partial, but very limited indeed? Were it otherwise, how superfluous would be the machinery which now justice adopts in order to achieve its ends. How different with the Divine Judge! He can gain nothing from any external source of knowledge, and nothing can intercept or divert His all-surveying, all-penetrating, all-comprehending intelligence.

II. OF THIS KNOWLEDGE POSSESSED BY GOD THERE ARE SOME FEATURES WHICH, FROM THEIR BEARING ON LIFE AND CONDUCT, DESERVE SPECIAL ATTENTION.

1. Thus God knows not only what is known to the world, or to our relations about each one of us; He knows that which each of us only knows about himself. His eye surveys our secret thoughts and words and ways. He has sometimes revealed this knowledge through the mouth of an inspired servant, as when Elisha discovered his double-dealing with Naaman to the astonished Gehazi, or when St. Peter proclaimed their crime and its punishment to the terrified Ananias and Sapphira.

2. He knows, too, the exact measure of our individual responsibility for the corporate acts of the societies to which we belong — the Church, the nation, the parish, the family.

3. And, once more, He knows what each one of us would be in other circumstances than those with which He has surrounded us. He knows this because He sees our inmost dispositions, and sees us as we are. Yes, in thinking of the judgment we have to think not only of the power, not only of the goodness of the Judge, but of His limitless knowledge, that awful attribute of a knowledge which searches us out in the depths of our being, which plays upon us, around us, within us, every moment of our lives with a penetrating scrutiny that nothing can elude; that knowledge before which the night is as the day, and the future as the present, and the possible as the actual, and the secret things of darkness as the most ordinary facts of daylight; that knowledge which nothing can impair, nothing can disturb, nothing can exaggerate or discolour; the calm, majestic, resistless outlook of the Eternal Mind will become real to us — real to you and to me — as never before in our experience. There are two resolutions which the thought of that meeting should surely suggest. The first resolution, if we can, to know something really about ourselves before we die, to dwell no longer, if hitherto we have so dwelt, on the surface of life, to see ourselves with eyes not of our friends, not of our own self-love, but, so far as may be, as the holy angels see us, as He sees us who is the Lord of angels, our Maker and our Judge. Each day some few minutes should surely be spent in the regular and fruitful practice of self-examination. And the second resolution is to fly for refuge to that one Friend who can make a true knowledge of self bearable to each of us. We can dare to be true not only because our Redeemer and our God is Himself the Faithful and the True, but because He is the All-merciful, because, if we so will, He has searched us out and known us even here, that at the last great day He may make us trophies not of His awful justice, but of His redeeming grace.

(Canon Liddon.)

I. LAY DOWN SOME POSITIONS.

1. God is intimately and essentially in all parts and places of the world. One of the heathen, being asked to give a description of what God was, tells us most admirably, "God is a sphere, whose centre is every-where, and whose circumference is nowhere": a raised apprehension of the Divine nature in a heathen! And another, being demanded what God was, made answer, that "God is an Infinite Point"; than which nothing can be said more (almost) or truer, to declare this omnipresence of God. It is reported of Heraclitus the philosopher, when his friend came to visit him, being in an old rotten hovel, "Come in, come in," saith he, "for God is here." God is in the meanest cottage as well as in the stateliest palace; for God is everywhere present and sees all things.

2. God is not only present in the world, but He is infinitely existent also without the world, and beyond all things but Himself (1 Kings 8:27; Isaiah 66:1, 2).

3. As God exists everywhere, so all and whole God exists everywhere, because God is indivisible.

II. RATIONAL DEMONSTRATIONS.

1. God is present everywhere.

(1)From His unchangeableness.

(2)From His preservation of all things in their beings.

2. But God exists not only in the world, but infinitely beyond the world also.

(1)From the infiniteness of His nature and essence.

(2)From the infiniteness of His perfections.

(3)From His almighty power.

(4)From His eternity.

III. ANSWER SOME OBJECTIONS.

1. These places which speak of going to, and departing from, places, seem to oppose God's ubiquity, because motion is inconsistent with God's omnipresence (Genesis 18:21; Habakkuk 3:3). I answer: These and the like Scriptures are not to be taken literally, but as accommodate to cur capacity and conception, even as parents, when they speak to their little children, will sometimes lisp and babble in their language; so God oftentimes condescends to us in speaking our language for the declaring of those things which are far above cur reach.

2. The Scripture tells us that hereafter in heaven we shall see God as He is: but is not that impossible? I answer, Such Scriptures are not to be understood as if the capacities of angels, much less of men, are, or ever shall be, wide and capacious enough to contain the infinite greatness of God. No, His omnipresence is not comprehended by angels themselves, nor shall be by man for ever; but it must be understood comparatively. Our vision and sight of God here is but through a glass darkly; but in heaven it shall be with so much more brightness and clearness that, in comparison of the obscure and glimmering way whereby we know God here, it may be called a seeing of Him face to face, and knowing Him as we are known by Him.

3. It may seem no small disparagement to God to be everywhere present. What! for the glorious majesty of God to be present in such vile and filthy places as are here upon earth? To this I answer —(1) God doth not think it any disparagement to Him, nor think it unworthy of Him, to know and make all these which we call vile and filthy places; why, then, should we think it unworthy of Him to be present there?(2) God is a Spirit, and is not capable of any pollution or defilement from any vile or filthy things. The sunbeams are no more tainted by shining on a dunghill than they are by shining on a bed of spices.(3) The vilest things that are have still a being that is good in their own kind, and as well pleasing to God as those things which we put a greater value and esteem upon.(4) It reflects no more dishonour upon God to be present with the vilest creatures than to be present with the noblest and highest, because the angels are at an infinite distance from God. There is a greater disproportion between God and the angels than there is between the vilest worm and an angel; all are at an infinite distance to His glory and majesty.

IV. APPLICATION.

1. Is God thus infinitely present everywhere, and thus in and with all His creatures, then what an encouragement is here unto prayer. The voice in prayer is necessary —(1) As it is that which God requires should be employed in His service, for this is the great end why our tongues were given to us, that by them we might bless and serve God (James 3:9).(2) When in private it may be a help and means to raise up our own affections and devotions, then the voice is requisite, keeping it still within the bounds of decency or privacy.(3) In our joining also with others, it is a help likewise to raise and quicken their affections; otherwise, were it not for these three reasons, the voice is no more necessary to make known our wants to God than it is to make them known to our own hearts; for God is always in us and with us, and knows what we have need of before we ask it.

2. As the consideration of God's omnipresence should encourage us in prayer, as knowing that God certainly hears us, so it should affect us with a holy awe and reverence of God in all our prayers and duties, and in the whole course of our lives and conversations. Certainly it is an excellent meditation to prepare our hearts to duty, and to compose them in duty, to be much pondering the omnipresence of God, to think that I am with God, He is present in the room with me, even in the congregation with me, and likewise in my closet, and in all my converse and dealings in the world. How can it be possible for that man to be frothy and vain that keeps this thought alive in his heart?

(Bishop Hopkins.)

I. THE IMPORTANT TRUTH WHICH IS HERE SET FORTH.

II. THE STRIKING AND EMPHATIC MANNER IN WHICH THIS GREAT TRUTH IS HERE PRESENTED (ver. 7).

III. THE EFFECTS WHICH THE CONTEMPLATION OF THIS SUBLIME THEME SHOULD PRODUCE.

1. Let the believer draw from it the consolation which it is so peculiarly adapted to impart. "Fear not, for I am with you."

2. The omnipresence of God is adapted also to admonish.

3. This subject is full of terror to the ungodly.

(Expository Outlines.)

I. THE SPIRIT AND PRESENCE WHICH NO MAN CAN ESCAPE. It is a bit of his own story. He had not always found peace and joy in the overshadowing of Divine love. There had been a load upon his conscience, and torturing guilt in his heart. He had endeavoured to run away from the wrath which his sin had provoked, from the unsleeping justice which pursued him, from the witness of God in his own reproaching conscience. He had tried to silence the rebuking voice, to quiet the disturbing fears, to forget his own thoughts and hide himself from himself. And the effort had been vain, impotent, impossible. Everywhere he heard the still small voice, and felt the Unseen Presence. Everywhere God makes Himself felt by men, in kindness, if possible, and if not, then in wrath. Men must believe in Him; they cannot help it. Kill their religion a hundred times, and it has a hundred resurrections. It is in all men. It is the fire which never goes quite out. Atheism is never more than a wave on the sea of humanity, which rises, falls, and quickly disappears. God will not let Himself be denied and forgotten. He speaks in too many voices for that; through nature and conscience, sins, penalties, and guilty terrors; through life's changes, uncertainties, sorrows, and misfortunes; through pain, and death, and human gladness, and human mystery; through returning seasons and unerring laws; through the works of righteousness and the wages of iniquity, He is ever about us. His presence is in every heart, and He laughs at the folly which thinks to escape Him.

II. REST AND CONFIDENCE AND JOY WHICH HIS SPIRIT AND PRESENCE GIVE to those who recognize Him every-where, and walk in His light and love. If a man aspires after goodness, he will wish to be always near the one Source of goodness. If he is making a brave fight against his sins, he will always want to feel the mighty hand upon him from which alone comes victory; and if he is worn and worried with the dark problems and mysteries of life, nothing will satisfy him but the thought that Divine light and wisdom are moving and working in all that darkness. Get to feel that His light and wisdom are everywhere, that His love, pity, and forbearance are everywhere, that His providential care is everywhere, that His ear is everywhere open to your prayers, and His mercy is everywhere on the wing to bring you answers, and then your remotest thought will be how you can escape Him. Your every-day cry will be, "Come nearer, make Thyself felt. Compass me about, hold me fast." It is the all-pervading presence of God that makes life bearable to him, and the one thing which makes the Christian life possible. If God were not in your place of business your hearts would grow hard as nails. If God were not in your homes your sweetest affections would become stale and sour. If God were not in your places of temptation you would never enter them without falling. If the Spirit of God did not visit you in the thronging streets and the giddy world you would degenerate into coarse worldliness. If He were not everywhere, painting Himself afresh on your hearts and minds, you would lose all sense of His beauty. If He were absent from your scenes of sorrow, if you did not feel His hand holding yours in hours of pain, and by the death-bed side, you would be overcome with fear or die of heart-break. We live because He lives everywhere. We hope because He revives His promises in us everywhere.

(J. O. Greenhough, M. A.)

I. By the SAGE The philosopher has asked a thousand times, is God everywhere? Or is there a district in immensity where He is not? Taking the language as his question, he assumes —

1. That He has a "presence," a personal existence: that He is as distinct from the universe as the musician from his music, as the painter from his pictures, as the soul from the body.

2. That His presence is detected as far as his observations extend. He discovers Him far up as the most powerful telescope can reach, and down in the most infinitesimal forms of life: and he concludes that He is present where the eye has never reached, and where the imagination has never travelled.

II. By the SINNER. In the mouth of the sinner this language means —

1. Thy presence is an evil. His presence makes the hell of the damned. The rays of His effulgent purity are the flames in which corrupt spirits burn and writhe.

2. Escape from Thy presence is an impossibility.

III. By the SAINT. In the impossibility of escape I rejoice; for "In Thy presence there is fulness of joy," etc.

(Homilist.)

II. GOD IN THE YET UNTRODDEN WAYS OF HUMAN HISTORY. The ninth verse gives us an image of the psalmist, standing by the sea-shore, watching as the rising sun broadens the horizon, and brings into view an islet here and there, which, by catching the sight, serves but to lengthen still more the indefinite expanse beyond. The fancy is suggested, half of longing, half of dread, what would it be to fly until he reached the point where now the farthest ray is resting, to gaze upon a sea still shoreless, or to land in an unknown region and find himself a solitary there? But he is not daunted by the vision; one presence would still be with him. Vast as the world may be, it is contained within the vaster God; his fancy cannot wander where he would be unguarded and unled. He still could worship; he still could rest. How wonderfully history confirms faith. The lands towards which the psalmist strained his wondering vision have come at length into the record of civilization. Even while he was musing God was preparing the countries in which, in due time, the Gospel was to develop, and the races by whom it should be spread. Could he now take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, he would find God here, revealed in the progress of Christendom, and the force of Western civilization. When Christ sent the apostles on their untrodden way He gave them a blank page on which to write their history. He did not reveal to them "the times and the seasons"; He only assured them that wherever they went He was with them. All was obscure except their faith that, as seed will grow, and leaven will spread, so the kingdom of God should advance. The presence of God in human history meant the reign of Christ in human history; where have the faithful gone and not found their God?

III. GOD IN THE PERPLEXITIES OF OUR EXPERIENCE. Most men probably look on spiritual conflict at first as a necessary evil; something which it were well if we could avoid, but which, since we cannot avoid it, we must go through with what heart we may; and they look to God to keep, and, in due time, to deliver them. But when, in the review of their struggles, they perceive what progress they have made by reason of it; how it has enriched their character, not only strengthening their piety, but also enlarging its scope and adding to their graces; when they find what a wise and benignant influence it has enabled them to exercise; what power of comfort it has given them, they begin to see that the conflict itself was of Divine appointment, and to cherish a larger, nobler view of God's purpose and of man's discipline. They perceive that the obscurity, equally with the clearness, of a spiritual experience is ordained of God.

(A. Mackennal, D. D.)

(A. P. Peabody, D. D.)

(R. Venting.)

(G. Matheson, D. D.)

"Along the illuminated shade,

Darkening and lone, their way they made."If, I say, you were bound to traverse the sepulchral vaults, and all the gloomy dungeons of Hades, yet you need not fear, for "underneath are the everlasting arms."

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE EAST AND THE WEST IS ONE OF THE MOST VIVID WHICH STRIKES THE MIND OF MAN. Of the great geographical impressions left on the most casual observer, none is deeper than that which is produced when a child of the Western civilization sets foot on the shores of the Eastern world. And so in history, two distinct streams of human interest have followed always the race of Shem and the race of Japhet; and the turning-points, the critical moments of their history, have been when the two streams have crossed each other and met — as on a few great occasions — in conflict or in union." It is the very image which is presented to us in the splendid vision of the evangelical prophet in Isaiah 60:8, 9. "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?" They are the "isles"; that is, the isles, and coasts, and promontories, and creeks, and bays of the Mediterranean and Atlantic shores. "The isles shall wait for Him, and the ships of Tarshish first." Tarshish — that is, the West — with all its vessels of war and its vessels of merchandise. The ships of Tarshish first, and of Venetia, and Carthage, and Spain — these first brought the shores of Cornwall, the name of Britain, within the range of the old civilized world. All these, with their energy and activity, were to build up the walls and pour their wealth through the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. And so, in fact, it has been. Christianity, born in the East, has become the religion of the West even more than the religion of the East. Only by travelling from its early home has it grown to its full stature. The more it has adapted itself to the wants of the new-born nation which it embraces, the more it has resembled the first teaching and character of its Founder and of its followers. Judaism, as a supreme religion, expired when its local sanctuary was destroyed. Mohammedanism, after its first burst of conquest, withdrew itself almost entirely within the limits of the East. But Christianity has found not only its shelter and refuge, but its throne and home, in countries which, humanly speaking, it could hardly have been expected to reach at all. The Christian religion rose on the "wings of the morning"; but it has remained in the "uttermost parts of the sea," because the hand of God was with it, and the right hand of God was upholding it.

II. CONSIDER WHAT WERE THE PECULIAR POINTS OF CHRISTIANITY WHICH HAVE ENABLED IT TO COMBINE THESE TWO WORLDS OF THOUGHT, EACH SO DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER. In its full development, in its earliest and most authentic representation, we see gathered the completion of those gifts and graces which East and West possesses separately, and which each of us is bound, in his measure, to appropriate and imitate. And, first, observe, on the one hand, in the Gospel history, the awe, the reverence, the profound resignation to the Divine will, the calm, untroubled repose which are the very qualities which the Eastern religions possessed, at a time when, to the West, they were almost wholly unknown, and which, even now, are more remarkably exhibited in Eastern nations than amongst ourselves. Christ has taught us how to be reverential, and serious, and composed. He has taught as no less how to be active, and stirring, and manly, and courageous. The activity of the West has been incorporated into Christianity, because it belongs to the original character and genius of its Founder, no less than its awe and its reverence. Again, in every Eastern religion, even in that which Moses proclaimed from Mount Sinai, there was darkness, a mystery, a veil, as the apostle expressed it — a veil on the prophet's face, a veil on the people's heart-a blind submission to absolute authority. There was darkness around the throne of God; there was darkness within the Temple wall; there was in the Holy of Holies a darkness never broken. To a great extent this darkness and exclusiveness must prevail always, till the time comes when we shall see no longer through a glass darkly. This we have in Christianity, in common with all the East; but yet, so far as the veil can be withdrawn, it has been withdrawn by Jesus Christ and by His true disciples. He is the Light of the world. In Him we behold the open face, the glory of the Father. Again; there was in all Eastern religions, whether we look Godward or manward, a sternness and separation from the common feelings and interests of mankind. We see it, as regards man, in the hardness and harshness of the Eastern laws. We see it, as regards God, in the profound prostration of the soul of man, displayed first in the peculiarities of Jewish worship, and to this day in the prayers of devout Mussulmans. And this, also, enters in its measure into the life of Christ and the life of Christendom. The invisible, eternal, irreproachable Deity, the sublime elevation of the Founder of our religion above all the turmoils of earthly passion and of local prejudice — that is the link of Christianity with the East. And, on the other hand, there was another side of the truth which, until Christ appeared, had been hardly revealed at all to the children of the older covenant. In Christ we see how the Divine Word could become flesh, and yet the Father of all remain invisible and inconceivable. In Christ we see not merely, as in the Levitical system of Christianity, man sacrificing his choicest gifts to God; but God, if one may so say, sacrificing His own dear Son for the good of man.

III. WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM THIS? Surely, the mere statement of the fact is an almost constraining proof that the religion which thus unites both divisions of the human race, was, indeed, of an origin above them both; that the light which thus shines on both sides, so to speak, of the image of humanity is, indeed, the light that lighteth every man. There is no monopoly, no sameness, no one-sidedness, no narrowness here. The variety, the complexity, the diversity, the breadth of the character of Christ and of His religion is, indeed, an expression of the universal omnipresence of God. It is for us to bear in mind that this many-sidedness of Christianity is a constant encouragement to hold fast those particles of it we already possess, and to reach forward to whatever elements of it are still beyond us. Say not that Christianity has been exhausted; say not that the hopes of Christianity have failed, nor yet that they have been entirely fulfilled. In our Father's house are many mansions. In one or other of its many mansions each wandering soul may at last find its place, here or hereafter.

(Dean Stanley.)

(John Pulsforal, D. D.)

I. HE CREATED MAN, WHO IS A WONDER TO MAN'S SELF (vers. 13, 14).

II. HE CREATED MAN, WHO COMES BY THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION (vers. 15, 16). The oak is not less a Divine creation because it came out of the acorn, nor the acorn a less Divine production because it is composed of various substances of the earth: and man is not less the creation of God because he came by a process of evolution.

III. HE CREATED MAN, WHO APPEARS BY A DIVINE PLAN (ver. 16). Everything in the universe, from the smallest to the largest, is constructed on a fixed and unalterable type. In truth, the whole creation existed in His mind in archetype millions of years before it took its present form. "In Thy book," metaphorically, God is represented as having written a "book"; it is the book of an architect, full of plans. There are the plans of worlds and systems that have all been and are no more. The plans of all that now exist, and the plans of all that are yet to appear.

1. Because God works by method, we should study all His works as revelations of Himself.

2. Conformity to His methods should be the supreme aim of all our activities. Whatever we do out of keeping with His plans will come to ruin, and involve us in distress.

IV. HE CREATED MAN, WHO IS CAPABLE OF APPRECIATING HIS THOUGHTS (vers. 17,18). God's thoughts are indeed absolutely "precious." They are original, all comprehensive without succession, infinitely beneficent, immutable, and essentially holy.

(Homilist.)

I. THE EXPRESSIVE DECLARATION — "I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

1. The wonders and mysteries of the human frame are little thought of, or understood, by the children of men; yet surely we may say, "The finger of God is here." Our body is a congeries of wonders from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. The different parts are so finely, delicately, and exquisitely made that it seems as if the least thing must disjoint, disorder, or derange them. Our life is an affair of beauty, symmetry, utility, and of mystery. The configuration and the construction, the composition and the articulation, the perforations, the compressions, the expansions, the attrition, the compensation, the exhaustion, the restoration, the secretion, and the excretions of the body all prove it to be "fearfully made." The mouth, the eye, the ear, the head, the brain, and the lungs, with the heart contracting four thousand times in an hour, and sending out with unerring accuracy at every contraction one ounce of blood, are all proof of the fact. The varied apparatus for breathing, for nourishing the system, for moving the limbs, for the reception of aliment, and for the ejection el waste, all demonstrate the truth of the text. The varied secretions of the system, and the gastric juice, all of them being different in consistency, in colour, in taste, in smell, and in their uses in the animal economy; some of them thick, others transparent, some bitter and others sweet, all adapted either to cleanse, to lubricate, to defend, to digest, or to nourish, are so many confirmations of the statement that we are "fearfully made."

2. The language of the text also applies to the soul. Man is not only an animal, but also a spirit. That spirit is in the body, but not of it. So different from it, it yet influences it, and is influenced by it. It is lodged in it for "an appointed time," and then to leave it, to be again reunited indissolubly to it, and there to abide for ever. This is the most wonderful part of man; it is mind, spirit, soul; the breath of God "breathed into his nostrils, and man become a living soul." The first man, Adam, was made a living soul. Mentally, he is fearfully and wonderfully made. As a spirit he possesses the power to think, to learn, to know; he is capable of intermeddling with all wisdom, of receiving continuous supplies of wisdom and knowledge. What a power is this! It allies us to angels, to Deity! Do we value sufficiently our mental endowment? Are we careful to improve our power of reflection? Do we act as thinking beings — as creatures who must go wrong unless we exercise our minds in relation to the past, the present, and the future?

3. Socially; we are "fearfully and wonderfully made." We are linked one to another, all the world round, and from generation to generation. We are ever being brought under the influence of others, and in our turn influence those around us. We may forget it, may doubt it, or deny it, and neglect it, yet it is so; all through our existence, in childhood, youth, manhood, or old age. This influence is being ever exerted, wherever we are, whatever we do, wherever we go — at home, abroad, in quiet or in active life. Oh! how it becomes us to be guarded, lest our being shall be a curse to any immortal spirit instead of a blessing; lest we lead them astray, and cause them suffering here and hereafter; or lest it be thus with ourselves! Let us indeed "watch and pray, lest we lead or fall into temptation."

4. Morally, man is "fearfully and wonderfully made." These natures of ours are distinguished by a moral sense, as well as by a mental power and a social influence. We are gifted with a sense of right and wrong, of which we can never be divested to all eternity. We can understand the difference; can choose the evil and reject the good; or we are at liberty to choose the good and repudiate the evil. The choice is our own act; the praise, the blame our own. We may be driven to choose between conflicting duties; never obliged to choose between criminal acts, or to act criminally at all. We may be virtuous or vicious; range ourselves on the side of heaven or hell; walk with the wise, or choose to be the companions of fools. Do we regard aright this fearful responsibility? Do we live as if thus distinguished from the rest of the terrene creation?

II. A BECOMING RESOLUTION. "I will praise Thee." Let us not forget that we have much to praise God for. He is our Maker, He has blessed us with existence, and it will not be His fault if that blessing be turned into a curse. He it is that has so long held our souls in life. He has rightly framed us. He has endowed us with reason, He has favoured us with health, He has provided for our comfort, and supplied our ever-recurring necessities. We should praise Him for His marvellous wisdom, skill, power, and benevolence in thus building our "house of clay"; and endowing us with such mental powers, and for putting us into such social relations with each other, and in blessing us with such astounding spiritual possibilities for time and eternity; fully meeting and providing for the wants of our fallen spiritual natures as He has done also for the physical. We should praise Him for opening up to us through Jesus Christ His Son all the stores of Divine wisdom and knowledge, and giving us through Him free and constant access, "the fulness of the Godhead," "the unsearchable riches," the riches of His grace, the treasures of His love, and the immensity and eternity of His love.

(Thomas Lord.)

I. THE PROGRESS OF MAN'S NATURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE FROM ITS FIRST PRINCIPLES TO MATURITY.

II. PRACTICAL LESSONS.

1. Here, then, you will find, if you have hearts to perceive, overwhelming proofs of the power, the providence, the wisdom, and the goodness of God.

2. If God has made these wonderful provisions for the formation and growth, the perfection and happiness of man; if He has endowed him with talents for comprehending the excellence of the work and the glory of its Maker, with a principle of self-action, deliberation, and choice of measures, man is bound to employ his parts and properties of body and mind with a special regard to God's glory, as the main end and purpose of His own creation.

3. The formation, increase, and maturity of our bodily parts and intellectual faculties, the provisions that are made for their sustenance and development, and the wondrous processes by which they attain to their measure of perfection are strong presumptions of the truth of what the Scriptures teach us of the resurrection of the body: and may be considered as a pledge and assurance that this portion of God's counsels and prophecies will be fulfilled.

(Bishop Bethell.)

2. We are fearfully made, as our frame demonstrates the power, wisdom, and presence of God. Such a wonderful composition as man could not be the effect of chance. It must be the work of an infinite, independent, all-wise Creator. And God demands, "will ye not tremble at My presence? Ye have a revolting and a rebellious heart." But we need not go out of ourselves. Shall we not tremble at His presence, when we see Him around us, and feel Him within us? He is not far from every one of us. Shall not His excellency make us afraid? Let us fear, love, and obey Him. This is our whole duty.

3. We are fearfully made, as the Creator has impressed upon us evident marks of our immortality and accountableness. In the present state we find ourselves capable of progress and improvement: but we never rise to the perfection to which, in a longer space, we might attain. Must there not, then, be another state in which we may reach the perfection of which our nature is capable, but which is unattainable here?

4. In respect of our frailty. Such is the tenderness of our frame, that in this rough and dangerous world in which we live, we are always exposed to casualties and wounds, diseases and death. It may, therefore, with much propriety be said, "we are fearfully made." Let religion possess our hearts, and peace will attend our path, and hope will brighten our prospect. We may take pleasure in infirmities, for the power of Christ will rest upon us. For us to live will be Christ, and to die will be gain.

(J. Lathrop, D. D.)

(R. G. A. Bennets, B. A.)

(E. B. Pusey, D. D.)

I. HOW PRECIOUS TO ME ARE MY THOUGHTS OF THEE. The Jew associated the thought of God with everything. To him the grand things of nature were full of God. The mountains were the "hills of God"; the winds were the "breathings of God; the thunder was the "voice of God." The saints of God, in all the ages, have found one Being who is in everything, who is the life of everything, but they have found that they could enter into personal relations with Him.

1. Our thoughts of God are started by the history of His dealings with our fathers through the long ages.

2. By our studies of His handiwork.

3. Our best thoughts are started by our own personal experiences of His gracious dealings. For our lives have been so full of God. That seems to us now to be the supreme charm of them.

4. Our thoughts take on some new forms since we have had the helps and suggestions of our saving relations with the Lord Jesus.

II. HOW PRECIOUS TO ME ARE THY THOUGHTS OF ME. It is a joy unspeakable to be assured that God is thinking about us, and is even enjoying His thoughts about us. Nothing can be more delightful than to feel that by our loving obediences, our sweet spirit of submission, and our devoted services to others, we are starting happy thoughts in the mind of God. We forget that as He "takes pleasure in His people," we must be giving Him pleasure. There can be little comparison between God's thoughts of us and our thoughts of God. We can get to know something of the thoughts of God, and fill our souls with the richest consolations, as we read His mind and heart. The smile on His face shines through the veil of nature, and we can tell what He is thinking that makes Him smile. His whisperings are heard in the sighing of the evening breeze, and the tender tones tell us what love-thoughts are cherished in His heart. Have we made enough of the signs which help us to read the thoughts of God? His thoughts take shape as "exceeding great and precious promises." When we are cherishing loving thoughts concerning some earthly friend, we find that we cannot satisfy ourselves without devising and bestowing some gift. And it is just the same with God. He could not satisfy Himself with merely cherishing loving thoughts about us. He must do something for us. He must give something to us. He must give Himself to us in some gift. And what shall it bey It shall be His most cherished possession, His dearest and best, His only-begotten and well-beloved Son. That is indeed an unspeakably precious gift. Cannot we read the thoughts of God by the help of that gift? How the Father-heart of God must have yearned over His lost children! "How precious are Thy thoughts." We are wrapped about with God's loving thoughts, and they keep us warmed and cheered.

(Robert Tuck, B. A.)

I. THOUGHTS OF MERCY.

1. That mercy is free — free as yon arch of heaven above our heads; free as the sunlight that shines upon all and everywhere.

2. That mercy is full. It never asks how many or how black are our sins.

3. That mercy is exhaustless. If I may say so, it has no superlative. Whatever in all the past ages of the Church He has done for any soul He can exceed that.

4. That mercy is ready.

5. That mercy gets glory to itself out of the very sins which it forgives.

II. THOUGHTS OF LOVE. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust. He tempers the trial, and brings good out of it. And He is always doing this all our lives through.

III. THOUGHTS OF GLORY. To fit us to mingle in the society of heaven is God's purpose — a purpose which He keeps steadily in view in all His providential dealings with us.

(A. C. Price.)

I. THEY ARE PRECIOUS. "How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God;" costly, highly valuable. Who shall measure the value of God's thoughts to man? What currency could express their preciousness? For His thoughts are not vagrant like ours, going a-wool-gathering hither and yon, without direction or purpose. Every one becomes a creation, a star, a living creature, a cataract, a gleaming cliff, a beautiful human soul.

II. THE SUM OF THEM IS GREAT. Great in their totality. The summary of them is beyond us. If we consider them in their generic outline they are great. We may fathom one little fact in God's world, a single thought, bug how can the human mind take in the whole outline? Who knows the mind of God? What can we do with our finite minds to compass divinity? How vain and weak is man face to face with the Author of all life. How humble and reverent it should make us when we consider the works of His hands and our own feeble undertakings. "How great is the sum of them."

III. THEY ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE. David felt as Milton after him, that he was only picking up shells on the shore of that vast ocean he must sail so soon. How wonderful is life, in its minute forms. What delicate beauty. What exquisite harmony. What undeviating law runs through all life.

(G. F. Humphreys.)

I. LOVING. He thought of us when we were plunged in hopeless ruin, and His great heart of pity went out, after us. But with what complacent love He thinks of those who heed His calls and are loyal to His leadership!

II. CONSTANT. He never forgets. Husbands and wives think of each other often and tenderly when separated. So the fond mother and her darling child. But their thoughts are interrupted by necessary attention to other matters. By the very limitations of their own nature they cannot hold their minds incessantly upon one person, however dear. Not so with God. Great events do not divert Him. He may have worlds to create and govern, but He is not so absorbed in them as to forget us. No exigency can arise for which He is not fully prepared. Nothing can fake Him by surprise.

III. PERSONAL. God does not think of us in a crowd, as forming indefinite parts of a great mass-meeting. He singles us out and thinks of us individually — as if there were no other person in the universe. We are compelled to divide our thoughts and loving attentions between the different ones that come into the charmed circle of our friendship. But God thinks of me as really, as definitely, as personally as He does of the seraph nearest the throne.

IV. HELPFUL. We may think of a person, but have no disposition to help him. But God has a disposition to help and the ability to help, and He lives and thinks of us on purpose to help. The outgoings of His loving heart are benedictions upon our heads and benefactions upon our daily pathway.

(H. Johnson, D. D.)

I. GOD'S THOUGHTS OF US.

1. That the infinite Jehovah thinks of us is absolutely certain. I know that the notion of some men is that the world is like a watch, and that God has done with it as we do with our watches — that, is, wound it up, put, it under His pillow, and gone to sleep. But it is not so; for in this great world-watch — to keep up the figure — God is present with every wheel and every cog of every wheel; there is no action in it apart from His present putting forth of power to make it move. Now, as God thinks and must think of the whole material universe which He has created, much more does He think of men, and most of all of us who are His chosen people. God must think of us; the blood would not flow in our veins, nor would the breath make our lungs to heave, nor would our various bodily processes go on without the perpetual exercise of His power. God must think of us especially in all the higher departments of our being, for they would speedily come to nothing apart from His constant care.

2. God's thoughts of us must be very numerous. One or two thoughts would not suffice for our many needs; if He only thought of us now and then, what should we do in the meantime? But He thinks of us constantly.

3. His thoughts of us are very tender. He looks upon His people as a father upon a child. How often He has screened us from trouble! How frequently He has prepared us for a trial, so that, when it came, it did not crush us! How often He has rescued us out of sore perils! How often He has visited us in the night, and given us songs amid our sorrow!

4. Very wise.

5. Very practical. His thoughts are really His acts, for with Him to will is to do.

II. OUR THOUGHTS UPON GOD'S THOUGHTS.

1. There is no other thought that can for a moment be compared with it.

2. How delightful it is to he thought upon by God.

3. How consoling.

4. The thoughts of God often move the souls of Christians, strengthening them in faith, arousing them to love, bestirring them to zeal.

III. OUR THOUGHTS UPON GOD HIMSELF.

1. They bring us near to God.

2. They help to keep us near to God.

3. They help to restore to us God's presence if for a while we have lest it. "When I awake" — that means, "I have been asleep, and so have lost the consciousness of God's presence." Have you never known what it is, at night, to be quite sorry to go to sleep because you have been so full of holy joy that you were afraid you might lose it while you were unconscious? "When I awake, I am still with Thee." I think it means also, "When I wake up from any temporary lethargy into which I may have fallen, I am still with Thee." We all get into that state sometimes; sleeping, though our heart is awake. We wish to be more brisk, more lively; but we cannot stir ourselves up. We have fallen into a kind of stupor. What a blessing it is to be roused out of it, possibly by a severe affliction, perhaps by an earnest discourse! Then the awakened one says, "Now I have come back to Thee, my God. There was a something within me that could not forget Thee, even for a while, though it lay still and dormant."

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. They must be DISCOVERED.

1. There must be a revelation of them.

(1)in the material world.

(2)Events of history.

(3)Bible.

2. There must be a capacity to interpret the revelation. That is the distinction of man.

3. The capacity must be rightly employed. We must study the revelation. What is the scientist in quest of with his lenses, retorts, laboratories? The thoughts of God in nature. What is the Biblical critic in search of in investigating the meaning of Scripture? The thoughts of God in the Bible.

II. They must be COMPARED. We get the impression that one fabric is more precious than another, one stone more precious than another, one life more precious than another by comparison. Thus we are to get the impression of God's thoughts by comparing them with ours. They are —

1. Absolutely original. All human thoughts are derived.

2. Comprehensive — taking in the whole of a thing, and the whole of everything.

3. Unsuccessive.

4. Infinitely useful.

5. Everlasting.

6. Essentially holy. Thus His thoughts are not as our thoughts.

III. They must be APPROPRIATED. As light is precious only to the man who sees, food only to the man who participates, beauty only to the man who admires, so God's thoughts are only precious to the man who appropriate them.

(Homilist.)

I. Thoughts, in order to be precious, must be GOOD. — morally good — good in themselves, and good in their influence on those who embrace them, pure and purifying. Millions on earth, and millions more in heaven, can bear testimony that God's thoughts have elevated the mind, given to the heart quickening impulses towards virtue, and kindled aspirations after God and purity.

II. Thoughts to be precious must be TRUE — great intellects sometimes waste their energies on the untrue and unreal. They live in an ideal world, a creation of their own fancy, and by their writings allure many into the same world of dreams and allegory. You must give the intellect reality, substance, truth, in order to satisfy its deeper cravings. In the Bible we have a volume of God's thoughts, and they are all true. Some portions have been written in poetry, but it is not the poetry of fiction or fancy, but the poetry of truth, eternal truth.

III. Thoughts are sometimes precious because of their ORIGINALITY. It is truly refreshing to come in contact with a great mind, who conducts you into loftier mental altitudes than usual, opens out landscapes of thought where the mind may revel with a transport of joy over thoughts which are fresh, noble, and pure. In the Bible we have a volume of God's thoughts, many of them original, belonging exclusively to God. They were hidden in the bosom of God before the beginning of creation, and God only could make them known to the intelligent universe.

IV. Thoughts, in order to be precious, must be BENEVOLENTLY RELATED TO ME. The Bible assures me that God's thoughts are benevolent and merciful. The Gospel is the out-breathing of the great Father's love towards His rebel children, the yearnings of His heart over His prodigal family, the advertisement of His anxiety to see His alienated creatures return, and of His willingness to forgive and forget their infinite wrong.

V. Thoughts, in order to be precious, must be PRACTICABLE. The scheme which the Gospel reveals is not hypothetical; it is not the offer of a boon on conditions which are impossible. It is gloriously possible. It is the proclamation of an all-sufficient remedy, that redemption is effected, that it is free for all, that every difficulty has been removed, every claim met, and that now nothing is wanting on the part of man but an open heart to receive and welcome the gift Divine. This is God's thought, and it is precious.

(R. Roberts.)

(R. Roberts.)

I. HIS DISPOSITION.

1. It is the care and endeavour of a good man when he awakes to be still with God.(1) The time.(a) When not asleep, and so hindered by the necessities of nature. A godly man is careful to be with God in every performance and in every condition, both in regard to —(i.) Habitual inclination. He is always with God in disposition and affection; and —(ii.) Actual application. He is careful still to repair to God, and to draw near to Him, whensoever he can.(b) As soon as I awake.

2. In what respects a Christian, when he is awake, may be said to be with God.(1) By meditation.(a) Our thoughts are precious things, being the immediate issue of our souls, and are not to be lightly bestowed by us, especially our first, thoughts. And on whom can we better bestow them than on Him that helps us to them, and without whom we are not sufficient of ourselves so much as to think (2 Corinthians 3:5)?(b) This is to be understood especially of such thoughts as are settled and deliberate and composed — such thoughts as a man sets himself to with intention, and suffers to abide in him; these are for the most part suitable and agreeable to the frame of his heart. Now, because a godly man has his heart full of heaven, and God, and goodness, and the graces of the Spirit, therefore are such things as these very often and early in his thoughts.(2) By communion. Look at friends when they meet in a morning, they have their mutual greeting between them — a loving and friendly salute one of another: even so is it with its due proportions betwixt God and the soul, the soul speaking to Him, and He returning upon it by way of reciprocation.

(a)Confession of sin.

(b)Petition and supplication.

(c)Praise and acknowledgment.(3) By action and the businesses which are done by us; when we "awake to righteousness and sin net."

3. The ground and equity of it.(1) Our waking thoughts are our first thoughts, and the first of everything is of right God's.(2) Our waking thoughts are freshest thoughts; that is, the nimblest and quickest, and most active, and fullest of life. As God deserves the first, so He deserves the best.(3) Our waking thoughts are our quietest, and freest from commotion: that is the fittest time and season for converse with God, wherein we have least distraction and perplexities and troubles from the world.(4) Our waking thoughts are our purest and freest from pollution: these things are the fittest for God, which are most like to Himself.

II. HIS PRIVILEGE.

1. It secures from dangers (Psalm 26:1; Psalm 3:5; Psalm 4:8; Psalm 91:5; Psalm 23:4).

2. It quickens to duty; keeps the heart in a holy frame and temper all the day after.

3. It prevents from sin and temptation — at least the prevalencies of it.

III. HOW WE MAY ATTAIN TO THIS BLESSED CONDITION.

1. Walk with God in the day. The duties of religion are linked together, and come off more easily in the conjunctive performance of each other. Thus reading and hearing, and meditation and communion of saints, conscionably and religiously performed, do so much the better dispose to more immediate communion with God; and the actions of the day have their impressions and reflections upon the night.

2. Lie down with God in the evening. That which we think of last we shall be ready to think of first; and as we conclude the foregoing day, so we are likely to begin the following. Therefore it should be our care, as much as may be, to have God and the things of God in our thoughts when we set ourselves to rest. This is the happiness of a Christian that is careful to lie down with God, that he finds his work still as he left it, and is in the same disposition when he rises as he was at night when he laid to rest. As a man that winds up his watch over night, he finds it going the next morning; so is it also as I may say with a Christian that winds up his heart. This is a good observation to be remembered, especially in the evening before the Sabbath.

3. Observe God in the morning. A man that would be with God when he wakes must observe how God is with him. We shall find sometimes that God Himself doth awaken us, and does desire communion with us (Isaiah 50:4).

(T. Horton, D. D.)

I. IT MAY BE SO USED AS TO IMPART, IN SOME SORT AT LEAST, A SPIRITUAL TONE TO THE ENTIRE DAY. Busy men are wont to complain, "In crowded street and busy mart the mind cannot get itself fixed on higher things." Much, however, can be done, and in this way. When that light — so sweet, so pleasant for the eyes to behold — looks in upon us, and the tasks and duties of the day begin to marshal themselves before us, let the mind be imbued with the Christian temper — let it be pitched, so to speak, in a Christian key; and though God through the day may not be "in all our thoughts," He will not be far from every one of them.

II. A DAY BEGUN IN THIS FASHION ACQUIRES A CERTAIN PRACTICAL STEADINESS. You have noticed, I am sure, how a day entered upon without thought, without prayer, has invariably turned out a very confused and unsatisfactory thing. There are more battles to fight than those which are won and lost on fields of blood; and the bravest, steadiest soldiers are not the men who have leaped from their beds and rushed into action. They are the men whose heads have been cleared and cooled, and whose mental and spiritual nerves have been braced by meditation and prayer.

III. THIS KIND OF PRAYERFUL FORETHOUGHT GIVES A CERTAIN DESIRABLE SPECIALITY TO THE DAY. We cannot, it is true, make every day a feast-day, but we can redeem our days from a spiritless sameness. Is my work monotonous? (and whose work is always teeming with freshness of interest?) let me redeem it from being anything like drudgery by baking it up every day as a new trust. Is it uncongenial? (and whose work is always to his taste?) let me place it day by day on the highest grounds. Oh, how often would many of us turn from the incumbent disagreeable, if we did not carry it to a loftier tribunal than any our personal feelings can furnish.

(J. Thew.)

(S. Charnock.)

I. Here is a fact in relation to the MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. That fact is the ultimate ruin of the wicked. "Surely Thou wilt slay the wicked, O God." The wicked will ultimately be ruined.

1. This fact agrees with the dictates of conscience. The consciences of mankind the world over proclaim it.

2. This fact agrees with the principle of moral causation. Sin brings ruin, every act of transgression carries with it its penalty, and tends to death.

3. This fact agrees with the declaration of the Bible, "Be sure your sins will find you out." "He that soweth to the flesh," etc.

II. Here is a fact in the EXPERIENCE OF PIOUS MEN. "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee?" Whether these words breathe piety or not, they suggest a fact in the experience of all godly men. It is this — antipathy to the character that is opposed to God.

1. The fact is a necessity. From the laws of our mental constitution it is impossible for us go love those who hate the object we most love. Love makes the twain one, hence it is impossible for a man truly to love God and not hate that which is opposed to Him.

2. This fact is an excellence. It is morally right and grand to see the godly man rising up in indignation against all that is opposed to the character and will of God.

(Homilist.)

1. That a perfect hatred of evil proceeds from love. A perfect hatred will be an expression of a tremendous love. It cannot be perfect if it does not proceed from love, as nothing can be right without love. The great hatreds of sin among prophets, reformers and martyrs have always been characterized by this pure flame and passion of love for man. All thought of self was consumed in their intense sense of justice. Because they loved the people, because they loved their city, because they loved their country, they faced the evil, they defied the wrong, they gave their lives in grand protest of their death against the sin of the world. So was it superlatively with the Christ. Because God so loved the world, the Son of His love came from heaven to live a life of daily protest against all its suffering and shame. This, then, is one note and test of any hatred of evil, by which we may search our conduct and purify our passion of righteousness: Does our sense of wrong proceed from love? Does our rebuke of any evil express love?

2. It will be an orderly hatred. Anger, which is to be condemned, is an outburst of feeling, a tumult of words, a violence of deed; but no sign of our disorder of passion ever appeared in the Christ's condemnation of sin. His wrath against human wrong was as orderly as His love of the Father. It was the pure calm of a soul at white heat. Herein, then, lies another test for us to use in searching our hearts. Are our judgments outbursts of feeling, or are they revealings of the moral order of our lives? If mere outbreakings of passion, they may belong to the whole company of the powers of confusion in the disorder of our world's sin; but if really Christlike, there will be in them both the restraint and the power of the moral order of Christ's life against the sin of the world,

3. It is a working hatred. This follows both from the motive of it, which is love, and from the orderliness which is always distinctive of the law of love. Christ's hatred of sin was a working hatred. He did more self-exhausting work in His three years of life for men and against their sins than any human soul before or since has ever endured. Right hero is the difference too often between us and our Christ. We speak the momentary word of right and do no more. He spoke the word of eternal right, and put the love of His life behind it. We feel the evil and pass on; He felt the sin, and did not pass by on the other side. We express our feeling of moral indignation, and leave the poor world to right itself; He spoke the words of eternal life, and gave Himself to be crucified that the wrong world might be made right.

4. It is a sacrificial hatred of sin. The psalmist had not comprehended this diviner element of it. His Messiah was the Lord coming to judgment, not to bear the cross. But the true Messiah, when He came, was the suffering Son of God. He bore our sins; He suffered in our stead. What is the mightiest protest against wrong ever witnessed in this or any possible world? What but the Cross of Christ. Wherein lies the Divinest condemnation of sin to the eternal ages? In the sufferings of Christ, the just for the unjust. What is the satisfaction of the law by which sin is condemned with a perfect condemnation? Oh, not in punishment, though eternal punishment were its due; but in the infinite pathos of the suffering for it of the Son of God's love. Thus we come in the end to the same characteristic of perfect hatred which we found at the beginning and motive of it; it ends as it began, in love. It ends in forgiveness, as it began in condemnation; both forgiveness and condemnation being part and process of the same eternal love of God in Christ. We might say with equal truth, God so loved the world, or God so hated the sin of the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. For our God is one God, and in loving righteousness and hating iniquity He is the same God over all, blessed for ever.

(Newman Smyth, D. D.)

I. MAN REQUESTING DIVINE SCRUTINY.

1. Reverence manifested. "O God." He realized God's presence, and his soul was filled with awe.

2. Thorough investigation invoked. "Search me," etc. Not that God was to thus obtain information unknown to Him before; but the asker, penetrated with a sense of sinfulness, desires God to search his heart, that the heart — with all its tendencies, passions, evils — may become known to himself through God's inquest.

II. MAN DESIRING DIVINE DISCIPLINE.

1. Severe testing. "Try me."

2. Moral discrimination. "Know my thoughts," etc.

III. MAN IMPLORING DIVINE LEADERSHIP.

1. Spiritual ignorance confessed.

2. Divine condescension besought.

3. Perpetual guidance implored.

(M. Braithwaite.)

I. TO KNOW HEARTS BELONGETH ONLY TO THE LORD. This is an attribute distinctively His own, not shared in any measure with any created being.

1. God's knowledge of the heart differs from that which man or angel has in this, that it is immediate. God knows, — as it were, sees, — the very spirit, and its every act and state. Man knows only certain outer signs which the spirit makes, from which he infers its thoughts and feelings.

2. The knowledge of God, and of God alone, is unintermittent and all-piercing. It alone is eternal in duration of exercise, and it alone is able to compass the infinite relations even of one spirit. And to be the Searcher of hearts is to have an incessant and all-piercing glance into the inner being and most extended relations, not only of one spirit, but of all spirits, human and angelic. To form, therefore, a truthful estimate of the moral character of any one soul, the Searcher of hearts must know the attitude it would assume if brought into the presence of each creature, and also the attitude it would assume to every manifestation of His own infinite nature.

II. HE KNOWS THE HEART NECESSARILY: He cannot but know it.

1. Then to Him are known all the dark mysteries of iniquity which men carry about locked up in their breasts. You yourself may sometimes forget it; He never does; and He intends with a changeless purpose to discover you to the whole world in due time, to put you to open shame, and bring you to condign punishment. Struggle no more in the fruitless labour to conceal your sin. In shame and sorrow of deep repentance hasten to make confession to the Searcher of hearts; to make confession not only of your black secret, but of all the ills with which your life is filled. Cast yourself upon His mercy. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin."

2. Then all hypocritical profession of the faith is vain. You may be wickedly deceiving yourselves as well as your fellow-men, like the young man in the Gospel ready to say of the commandments, "All these have I kept from my youth up," and in truth very near the kingdom of heaven; but the Lord marks with unerring certainty that beloved lust, that precious thing of earth, reserved, which you will not give up for Christ. And it, no matter how trivial, no matter how godlike, digs a gulf fathomless and bridgeless between you and life.

3. The Lord searcheth the heart; and, if so, "the Lord knoweth them that are His." With this truth Paul comforted himself and Timothy amid the desponding thoughts with which the apostasy of certain flaming professors in the Church of Ephesus was crushing them. With this truth, too, comfort yourself, O child of God, amid the painful doubts which the humble heart is so ready to entertain of its own sincerity and steadfastness.

(James Hamilton, M. A.)

I. INTREPIDITY. Here is a man determined to explore all the recesses of his own heart. Did Bonaparte, did Nelson, did Wellington ever propose to do this? Were all the renowned heroes of antiquity present I would ask them all if they ever had courage to enter into their own hearts. If you stood upon some eminence and saw all the ravenous and venomous creatures that ever lived collected before you, it would not require such courage to combat them as to combat with your own heart. Every sin is a devil.

II. INTEGRITY. He wished to know all his sins, that he might be delivered from them.

III. WISDOM.

1. He prefers his prayer to God Himself. God is the only Being in the universe that knows Himself — that peruses Himself in His own light. In the same light He sees all other beings; and hence it follows that, if other beings see themselves truly, it must be in the light of God.

2. He begins with his principles: his desire is to have these tried by a competent Judge, and to have everything that is evil removed from them. This is an evidence of his wisdom. The heart and its thoughts must be made right before the actions of the life can be right.

IV. EARNEST DESIRE. "Lead me in the way everlasting."

1. The way Thou hast marked out for salvation.

2. The way of Thy law, in all the purity and spirituality of its requirements.

(W. Howels.)

1. God searches a man by His Holy Spirit. Here is a man who feels he is all right. A few inconsistencies, perhaps, and a few inaccuracies; but upon the whole he is in tolerably good condition. The Holy Spirit seizes him. Why now does he tremble? Why now that grief-struck look? Why now can he not sleep at nights? The Holy Spirit has come upon him. He finds there are inhabitants in his soul that he never dreamed of. The reptiles begin to uncoil and to hiss at him. The man says, "Can it be that I have been carrying such a nature as this forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years?" And he immediately begins to apologize, and he reviews the better points of his character. He says, "I don't owe a man a dollar." God says by His Holy Spirit, "You have robbed me of your whole lifetime." The man says, "I am not arrogant, I don't take on airs." The Holy Spirit says, "You are too proud to kneel." The man says, "I am moral." The Holy Spirit says, "You have had many an unclean thought." The man rouses up. He says, "I must get away from this; I must get into the fresh air. I must go to business." The Holy Spirit says, "You cannot go to business; this is the mightiest of all businesses — the business of the soul." Then all the past sins of the man's life come before him troop by troop. From that point many repent and live. From that point many turn back and die.

2. God searches a man by prosperity. He was amiable, he was kind, he was generous, he was useful, while he was in ordinary circumstances; but by sudden inheritance, or by the opening of railroad communication with his land, or by some stroke of commercial genius, he gets a fortune. God is going to search that man by his prosperities; He is going to see whether he will be as humble in the big house as he was in the small one; He is going to give him enlarged resources, and see whether his charities will keep pace with those resources. When he was worth so much he gave so much. He is worth twice as much now. Does he double his charities? God says, "I will explore that man, I will try that man, I will search that man." Fifteen years ago the man said, "What good I would do if I only had the means!" He has the means now. What does he do? Of every dollar we make God demands a certain percentage. If we keep it back, it is at our peril. The old story of the miser who died in his money-chest, because the lid accidentally fell down and fastened him in, was a type of ten thousand men in our day who are in their own money-vault finding their sepulchre. Whatever be the style of your prosperity, by every dollar Shall you make, by every house that you own, by every commercial success that you achieve, God is searching you through and through.

3. God explores a man by adversity. Some of you are going through that process now. You say, "How beautiful it is when a man's fortunes fail to see him throw himself back on spiritual resources." Yes, it is very beautiful, but it is hard to do. There are many people who suppose they have Christian faith, when it is only confidence in government securities. They think they have Christian joy, when it is only She exhilaration that comes from worldly successes. God, after a while, sweeps His hand across the estate, and it is all gone. The man first scolds the banks. He says they are not clever; they ought to have allowed him a discount. Then he scolds the Congress, because it imposed a tariff. Then he scolds the gold-gamblers, because they excited the markets. He does not understand that all the time God has him personally in the crucible.

4. God explores us often through the persecutions of the world. How we admire all those pictures which represent the sufferings of Christi Why? Because we admire patience, and we admire it although we may have but very little of it ourselves. And we sit down on the Sabbath, and we study patience, and we say, "Give us patience. What a beautiful grace it is — patience!" and on Monday morning a man calls you a liar, and you knock him down! That is all the patience you have. How little we understand how to bless those who curse us. It is the general rule — an eye for an eye,. grudge for grudge.

5. God sometimes explores us by sickness. From other misfortunes we can run away, but flat on our backs, pain in the head, in the heart, in the limbs, we cannot run away. No school, however well endowed, however supplied with faithful instructors and professors, can so well teach you as the school of a sick-bed. People wonder at the piety of Edward Payson, and Richard Baxter, and Robert Hall. How did they get to be so good? It was sanctified sickness.

6. God tries us with bereavement. He searches a man by taking away his loved ones. An author describes a mother who had lost her children, saying to Death, "Why did you steal my flowers?" Death said, "I didn't steal them; I am no thief; I transplanted them." "Well," said the mother, "why did you wrench them away so violently?" And Death said, "They would never be wrenched away but that you held on to them so violently." Oh! how hard it is when our friends go away from us to realize that they are not stolen, not wrenched, but transplanted, promoted, irradiated, emparadised. But unless you have had bereavement you do not know what a bad heart you have. We do not know how much rebellion of soul we possess until God comes and takes some of our loved ones away.

(T. De Witt Talmage.)

I. LET US ASK THE LORD TO SEARCH OUR PRINCIPLES. Our government have now appointed officers to see that ships which are outward-bound are not deeper in the water than the "load-line" of safety. Now, like a ship, every man has a load-line; and he says within himself, "Beyond that line I will not go." Nevertheless, many men do go beyond their lead-line, and founder in the sea of vice. Every man draws the line somewhere; and, alas! it is generally as far off the standard directed by Christ as it can possibly be. Men make "load-lines" for themselves, and say, "I am all right on this side the line." But what does the Bible say about it? Is your line in the correct place for the salvation of your soul? A thief will steal, and draw his line, saying, "I will not hurt or murder anybody." Most men draw a line of conduct somewhere, and say, "I am all right so long as I do not pass beyond that line." How important to pray this prayer, "Search me, O God!"

II. LET US ASK OF GOD TO SEARCH OUR PROFESSION. You may say, "Ah, I have got you there; I make no profession." Don't you? Why, you must be a rogue indeed if you make no profession of honesty or gratitude. What, have you never told anybody you were thankful to God for having created you? Are you not thankful to Jesus for having died for you? Christianity means honesty, virtue, truth, gratitude to God, and helpfulness to our neighbour; and do you make no profession of these? Well, if you don't I should not like to meet you in a lonely road at night. Of course you make professions. You profess to be honest, upright, and lovable. Now, let us ask God to search our professions. Do we act accordingly?

III. WE ALSO SHOULD ASK GOD TO SEARCH OUR LIVES. We often fall and wander from the way. The text goes on to say, "and see if there be any wicked way in me." But we need not say "if"; we know full well that there is much wickedness in us. It may be the Lord will show us that we need to be more resolute. O brothers, be decided to give up sin. Rouse yourselves! It is all nonsense for you to complain clay after day, saying, "I cannot help myself!" Have you not the power of God to help you?

IV. WE OUGHT TO ASK GOD TO SEARCH OUR CHARACTER. Do you remember reading of the Californian mine swindle? Some men went into the interior and plastered pieces of silver upon the rocks. Then they got up a grand Mining Co. Limited, and people believed them. Engineers saw the silver on the rocks and then reported favourably of it: it was all a sham. But it is not so in your case. You are not barren rock. There is a streak of gold in every man. If it were not so Christ would not have told us to preach the Gospel to every creature. God has given you the power of noble manhood, and you shall not be disappointed if you press towards it. If you strive for the manhood that thinks nobly, speaks truthfully, and lives virtuously, you shall attain it.

V. ASK GOD TO SEARCH YOUR SOUL. Is it pardoned?

(W. Birch.)

I. TRUE RELIGION HAS ITS SEAT IS THE HEART. The man of real godliness has not only "a name to live," but he lives. There is a consistency in his character. The Gospel not only enlightens his understanding, but shines into his heart; not only delights his imagination, but captivates his affections. It makes his conscience tender, his thoughts humble, peaceful, holy.

II. HENCE THE TRULY RELIGIOUS MAN IS ANXIOUS TO KNOW THE REAL STATE OF HIS HEART. True, he may find this self-examination painful and humiliating, but this makes no matter to him. He feels that he has the salvation of an immortal soul at stake, and he is not to lose that soul for the sake of being kept easy in his follies and proud in his sins.

III. THE SINCERE CHRISTIAN IS NOT CONSCIOUS OF HAVING WITHIN HIS HEART ANY ONE CHERISHED SIN, It is one thing to have iniquity entering the breast, and another thing to harbour it and have it reigning there. St. Paul felt a sinful "law in his members," but he felt it as "warring against the law of his mind," as opposed to the habitual frame of his soul, to that holy and heavenly principle which made him "delight in the law of God after the inward man," and enabled him to "walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Every Christian also feels the same warfare within. Sin tempts and harasses him, and sometimes brings him into captivity, but it cannot hold him in bondage; it cannot make him quietly submit to its hated laws. We soon see the prisoner struggling with his vile oppressor, and bursting its bonds. Trampling his lusts underneath his feet, we hear him exclaim, "I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord."

IV. YET HE OFTEN SUSPECTS HIMSELF OF SOME UNDETECTED INIQUITY. The best of our actions, the brightest of our graces, the most holy of our dispositions, the most fervent of our prayers, and the most ardent of our praises, are blended with so much that is evil that we despair of separating the one from the other, and are often ready to faint with disquietude and fear."

V. IS THE MIDST OF HIS PERPLEXITIES THE SINCERE CHRISTIAN HAS A FIRM AND LIVELY BELIEF THAT GOD KNOWS HIS HEART. Like David, he knows that "the Lord searcheth the hearts," and "understandeth the thoughts," and "compasseth the path," and is "acquainted with the ways" of the children of men; and, like David, he is willing to be searched, and prays to be tried by this omniscient God.

VI. HE APPLIES TO GOD FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND INSTRUCTION, He can show us wherein we are right in our judgment of ourselves, and wherein we are wrong; what there is to be brought low in us, and what to be raised up; what we must endeavour to get rid of, and what to obtain. Laying open our hearts, He can discover to us the sin which is lurking there, and, like a worm at the root, secretly marring our comforts and withering our graces; and, shining on the work of His own hands, He can make visible to us the wails of that spiritual temple which He has begun to raise up for Himself within our souls.

VII. HE WHO SEEKS INSTRUCTION OF GOD MUST BE WILLING TO SUBMIT HIMSELF TO GOD'S GUIDANCE. We often pray for instruction without being mindful of the necessity of this submission. Our supplications are sincere, but we know not what we ask. We forget that the Saviour employs various methods of showing His children their hearts. Affliction, frequent and severe affliction, is the school into which prayer often brings a man, and in which he first learns to know himself and his God. It is in the furnace that the gold is proved and distinguished from the secret dross. But the path of tribulation is not the only path which we must be content to enter. If we wish our prayers to be answered, we must be prepared to walk in "the way everlasting." And what is this way? It is that way of access to the Father in which the patriarchs and prophets, the glorious company of the apostles and the noble army of martyrs drew near to Him — the way of reconciliation through the blood of His Son. It is that highway which is called in the Scriptures "the way of holiness."

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

I. THE BLESSEDNESS OF GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LOYALTY. This is the subject suggested by the context. David is declaring that he has neither sympathy nor part with the wicked. "Do not I hate them," etc. He appeals to God whether this is not so. "Search too," etc. Am I not right in affirming my love for Thee? Is not my heart set upon my God? Are not all my thoughts for Thine honour? The consciousness of sin, rather than that of righteousness, is the distinguishing mark of Christian experience; nor will this contrast between Jewish and Christian piety seem strange to those who compare the Gospel with the law. The sanctity of Jesus makes all our righteousness appear as filthy rags. The love of God is far more searching than the precepts of the stony table; the heart that might have been unmelted at the demands of law is broken by the claims of affection. The loyalty that might pass unreproved, did we but think of what we are bidden, proves but poor as an expression of our gratitude, our response to God's affection. The Hebrew saint contrasted himself with the sinner; Christians, searched by the Spirit of holiness and love, rank themselves among transgressors. We have to bewail many a failure, many an imperfection, but a loyal-hearted Christian should be true to himself and declare his devotion too. At least the heart is firm in its allegiance; whatever your folly and your weakness, you mean, with all sincerity, to serve God. Now, it is an immense comfort to us to be able to rest on God's perfect knowledge of our loyalty to Him. He knows the heart that is set on serving Him; He can distinguish between ignorance and ill-intent; He is not misled by the result; He sees integrity of purpose, and marks the desire to hold true to Him; and He will bring out the righteousness of His servants, making it clear as the light. He will also correct the hidden faultiness (ver. 24).

II. THE BLESSEDNESS OF GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF OUR STRUGGLES. One of the reasons why we should not judge our fellows is that we do not know the men. We see the temptation yielded to; we know not the many temptations that have been resisted, how hard was the struggle to resist. The compassionate God takes account of all this; and hence, for the returning sinner, it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. Signs of feeble piety, too, we can mark. God knows all that makes even that feeble piety a very victory of faith. We note the uncertainty of temper, we hear the captious phrase; only one eye takes note of the depression and bitterness of soul out of which this is wrung. How hard is the ignorance of the world; how hard, too, the inconsideration of the Church! God does not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. Here, too, mark — the refuge of the struggling spirit is not in self-sufficiency, not in self-justification. It is a perilous thing to balance our failures with our temptations. We are not the proper judges of ourselves; our leniency would be our undoing. We need not only to be searched but also to be purged, and He is at once compassionate and firm. "Search me, O God, and know my heart" — see it all; what is pitiful as well as what is evil — try me, and know my thoughts: and see," etc.

III. THE BLESSEDNESS OF GOD'S THOROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF OUR SINS. You know how frank confession becomes when all motive to concealment is gone. A wise parent who has detected his child in a fault which must be taken notice of will at once tell the little one he knows all. With fatherly sensitiveness for a child's conscience, he will remove the motive for concealment, that the confession may be full. God's perfect knowledge of our sins takes away the motive, because it removes the possibility, of concealment. He who has feeble conceptions of God's searching vision will be full of evasions; he will be full of self-deceit. The complete conviction of transgression follows, and does not precede, the feeling that God knows it all; for honesty in our dealings with ourselves we need to be searched of God. The Gospel offers immediate cleansing to the conscience; and its cleansing virtue lies very much in the fact that it brings so near to the sinner the God who has searched him, and who knows him altogether. It begins by speaking to us of our sins, with most considerate sympathy our Father shows Himself aware of all the pollution we would confess. The Cross of Christ supplies us with the self-condemnation we require, and with the condemnation speaks of tenderness and pardon.

IV. THE POWER WHICH OUR EVERY GOOD RESOLVE DERIVES FROM THE FACT THAT WE CAN MAKE IT KNOWN TO GOD. Such things crave an utterance; we are more faithful because we are pledged. But we may not speak of them to men: lest we become vain; lest after failure put us to shame; lest our good resolutions evaporate in mere talk. There is sweetness, too, and force in our uttering our love to God, our devotedness to Him. Of these things, also, we may not speak to our fellows, yet they must be breathed into some ear. We can ask our God to mark them, and we are confirmed in them by the fact that they have been noted of Him.

V. THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE FACT THAT HE WHO KNOWS US THOROUGHLY IS OUR HELPER AND OUR LEADER. A map is something for the traveller, but children-travellers as we are, we want the guide and controller of our way with us. "See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." There is one way, and only one, to blessedness and goodness. God's way is the same and everlasting. Why, then, are we wanderers? Why are we not always making progress therein? Alas! there are ill ways within us; it is our way to be indolent, wilful, to run after deceitful pleasures, to stray in folly, to sit down in sloth: and our leader knows it; and He will search these out and bring us past our perils. God will help us; that is our confidence and joy. We shall go on, well and truly on, for we have One above to lead us.

(A. Mackennal, D. D.)

I. THE LONGING FOR THE DIVINE SEARCH. There used to be a contrivance in some prisons, where solitary confinement was the rule, by which somewhere or other in the wall there was a little hole at which, at any moment, the eye of the jailor might be glued. And men have gone mad because they sat there and felt that they were never free from possible inspection. To a great many of us, "Thou God seest me" is as unwelcome as the consciousness of the little hole in the wall and the jailor's eye was to the criminal. We think of God as an inspector, a spy, a jailor; and we shrink and shut up all the petals of our hearts that He may not see what is there. Adam and Eve concealed themselves in the garden; and their sons and daughters are made cowards by their consciences, so that "Thou God seest me" is an unwelcome thought to very many of us. But it may be made a welcome one. If we are quite sure that the Eye that looks upon us is the Eye of a loving Father we shall not shrink from it, but turn to Him, and say, "There must be wisdom with Thee; Thou lookest with other and clearer eyes than ours, and Thou shalt look me through and through." But we have here not only the thought of welcome, but I think there is suggested, too, that of helping God in His search by frank confession. A man that says truly, "Search me, and know my heart," will not be unwilling to go to God and make a clean breast of it, and tell all that he knows of his weakness and his sin.

II. THE LONGING FOR THE DISCOVERY OF HIDDEN SIN, "I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified," said the apostle; "but He that judgeth me is the Lord." Similarly the psalmist does not know what there may be lying, lurking and skulking in the depths of his heart; wherefore he refers himself to God, and asks that He will come and dig into its depths. That suspicion of unrecognized evil in myself is one that we should always carry with us. By arrangement of mirrors a man can see his outward form all round. But you cannot do like that with your souls. The difficulty is that the inspector and the inspected and the instrument of inspection are all one and the same, as if star and astronomer and telescope were one. So no wonder that we make — as every autobiography that ever was written shows that men make — huge mistakes in estimating what we are. There are secret faults in us all. And so the psalmist said, "Lord, I see a bit of myself, but it is only a little bit; and there must be, deep down, many things that I have not detected yet. See, then, if there be any wicked way in me." This prayer for the discovery of the hidden evil is based also on the confidence that God can and will cast out from us all the evil that He discovers in us, and the search for which the devout heart is eager is a search with a view to a purpose — viz. the ejection of the detected evil. There is another thing to be remarked about this prayer for the detection of undiscovered evil, and that is that one way of answering the prayer is by making us more quick to see the hidden sin. The thought that He is searching my heart will make my conscience more sensitive. And one of His ways of answering the petition is to open my eyes that I may behold the unsuspected evil in myself.

III. THE LONGING FOR A DIVINE LEADING UNTO THE EVERLASTING WAY. Into that way we shall be led if we have spread our hearts out before God, and loyally helped Him in His search, and welcomed the blessed light of His face. He will lead us, partly by Providence's pointing our course, partly by ejecting the evil, partly by giving to us new aims, aspirations, and desires; partly by strengthening our feet to run in the paths of holiness which He has before prepared that we should walk in them. The end of the Divine search is the Divine cleansing. God looks upon us in order that He may lead us into the way of peace.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

I. WHAT IS IMPLIED.

1. That he had searched and tried himself.

2. That his own searching was ineffectual, or at least not perfectly satisfactory.

3. A firm belief of God's omniscience.

II. THE SPRINGS OF THIS DESIRE.

1. We are liable to be mistaken in the ideas we entertain as to our state.

2. Such mistakes are very dangerous. The house built upon the sand not only falls, but falls when it is too late to build another.

3. If God do not search us in a way of mercy, He will do it in a way of wrath, either in this world or the next.

(B. Beddome, M. A.)

1. It does not imply that the psalmist thought himself entirely free from sin. He knew there was much sin in him, and committed by him: and hence his pathetic lamentations (Psalm 38, and 51.).

2. He hoped that sin was not predominant.

3. Though sin did not reign, yet he was afraid that more sin remained in him than he was aware of.

4. What of this nature he was ignorant of, he desires to be taught (Job 13:23).

II. "AND LEAD ME IN THE WAY EVERLASTING."

1. The object he had in view.

(1)The way of acceptance with God, Christ (John 14:6).

(2)The way of sound doctrine.

(3)The way of instituted worship.

(4)The way of holiness and obedience.

2. The desire.

(1)Need of guidance.

(2)A- sense of his need.

(3)He entertained high and exalted thoughts of God, as every way capable of the work he here assigns to Him

(B. Beddome, M. A.)

I. From the FORMALIST, who will take no notice of the state of his heart in religion. Many, like the Jews of old, go to the sanctuary of God, and sit as His people sit, and hear as they hear, but "their hearts are far from Him." This is no sweeping charge, for if their hearts were "right with God" they would worship Him at home as well as in their sanctuary, and in the sanctuary by sacraments as well as by prayer or praise. It is, therefore, a good sign when the claims of all duties are seriously weighed, and the state of the heart towards and in them is chiefly regarded.

II. From the RECKLESS — those who dare not search their heart before God; they are afraid of its whispers, and conscious that. a full disclosure of its secrets even to itself would be almost as humiliating as the exposure of them to others. Thus the matter will not bear thinking of, and therefore appearances are kept up at all hazards.

III. From the INCONSISTENT, or those who are unwilling to be led out of every "wicked way." It is the grand characteristic of "faith unfeigned" that it is willing to be kept back from all sin and to be led in the way everlasting. "Examine yourselves, therefore, whether ye be in the faith, prove yourselves," etc.

(Robert Philip, D. D.)

(R. Venting.)

I. WHILE NO ONE CAN READ THE THOUGHT OF ANOTHER, HE CANNOT UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY THE PROCESSES AND CHARACTER OF HIS OWN. The most occult of all sciences is that which concerns itself with questions how we perceive any truth, or receive any impression, or think at all. No object to which you can turn your attention is so full of perplexity as the attention itself that you pay. Whence arise these thoughts, that are drawing their trains perpetually through the mind? What are the laws that govern their intricate and disturbed order? How far are they involuntary and beyond our strongest efforts of control? What sets them in such opposition to one another, and often to our own wish? What makes them so easy and so intractable; so clear and confused; so rapid and slow; bewildered with dreams and delirium, and true and radiant as the light? We have little to answer to questions like these. There is One that knoweth. "Search me, O God, and know my heart."

II. BUT, IMPENETRABLE AS ARE THE THOUGHTS OF MAN, HE IS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEM to an extent which it is serious to consider, and which he does not consider enough. There is a proverb that "thoughts pass toll-free." And it is a truth that would be worth the mentioning, where a just liberty is brought into question; where either a political or a religious tyranny has set up the barriers of its proscription against the rights of the mind. It would show that no "receipts of custom," and no iron hindrances can stop the progress of the understanding, which moves on with the confidence of an invisible being, and stays no question. But it is a proverb very ill applied when it gives licence to every roving imagination; when it pretends to hide us from the heavenly inspection; when it encourages the heart to grow libertine; when it denies that we are amenable in this secret region to Him from whom nothing is concealed. What are worldly thoughts but worldliness itself; and corrupt ones but corruptness of mind; and proud ones but haughtiness of heart? Who shall say, then, that thoughts cost nothing?

1. They may cost us our liberty; that very freedom which they profess to enjoy in the greatest perfection. They have their habits, like everything else in man, and may be brought slavishly under the dominion of them. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts," is a striking example in the prophet of that figure of speech which reserves for the final word the most emphatic expression. For long after the foot and the hand, and the will itself, are withdrawn from iniquity, these subtle agents may be about their usual work of evil suggestions. They may refuse to retire, haunt with their empty shades the spots where they once stimulated to action, and torment the conscience that they can no longer betray.

2. They may cost us our reason. And what a price to pay for their mismanagement is that I They may be so ardent as to grow wild; or brood upon one point till they have no sight nor power for any other, and the healthy mind shall lose all its soundness.

3. They may cost the innocence of the mind, as well as its sanity; — they alone, though confined ever so closely within the breast. Man does not always judge so, for he is satisfied if the claims he makes are answered. He looks but at the outward appearance. But there is One who looks deeper than that, and to that One the great account is due. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Only they can. The heart is the eye that is made to gaze towards Him; and if that be clouded, the whole heaven is hid, however circumspectly the steps may be directed along the earth. No need of any purpose to do mischief. No need of any perpetrated guilt. Where the thoughts are base, the soul is polluted; where they will acknowledge no discipline, it is nigh to be undone.

III. We make of great account the climate in which we live; and the air and the weather are unfailing topics everywhere. Why will we not make of still greater THAT INWARD TEMPERATURE AND BREATH OF THE SPIRIT BY WHICH WE ARE CONTINUALLY SURROUNDED; — that can carry sunny remembrances through rainy days, and need not mind much the troubles that are abroad and the east wind, since they themselves are "at rest and quiet"? We esteem it of high consequence what house we occupy, and what its accommodations are, — where it is situated, and how it fronts. But the house of his own thoughts is the true dwelling of man. Let it receive none but worthy guests. Let it face the sky where the light is the longest. Let it be built for the ages to come.

(N. L. Frothingham.)

I. THE TRUE CHRISTIAN MAY PLAINLY BE KNOWN FROM ALL OTHERS by three things: —

1. He does really rejoice in all the attributes of God. He adores His justice, loves His mercy, confides in His power, bows to His wisdom, is glad that He knows all things.

2. tie is anxious to know the worst of his case. He is candid with himself. He greatly desires that his aims, his heart, and his motives should be right. He fears the treachery of his own heart.

3. He hates all sin, wars against it, loathes it, and never will be satisfied till he is rid of it. He would not follow any wicked way. He would do nothing contrary to the law of God.

II. THAT WE MAY DEAL ARIGHT WITH OUR SECRET SINS, let us —

1. Think much of the all-seeing purity of God. His holiness is a flaming fire.

2. Often compare our acts, and words, and hearts with the perfect law of God. The commandments are spiritual. If you have wrong views of the law you cannot have right views of sin, and so you may lose your soul.

3. Hide no sin from your own eyes, and refuse not to confess it before God.

4. Be careful not to subject your principles to needless trial. "We cannot hinder the birds from flying over our heads, but we must not let them light and build nests in our hair."

5. Set a double guard against those sins to which you are very liable. Are you easily made angry? Then avoid men who are apt to provoke you. Are you inclined to undue sadness? Then study the promises and seek the society of cheerful Christians. Are you fond of high living? Rather shun than seek convivial gatherings.

6. Remember that there is no danger of your hating sin too much, or of your being too watchful against it.

7. Cease to hew out broken cisterns which can hold no water. Cease to rely on human wisdom, power, or goodness. Cast your care on Him who careth for you. Often commit your soul to Christ.

8. When you have done your best, remember that you may be mistaken. Earnestly offer the prayer, "Search me," etc.

(W. S. Plumer, D. D.)

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

I. A REMARKABLE ATTRIBUTE OF THE RIGHT WAY — IT IS "THE WAY EVERLASTING."

1. It is most certain that the way of many men cannot be everlasting.(1) The way of the sinful is not so. I hope with regard to some that their way will last but for a very little time, for it is the way of evil. May they soon turn from it! May their road be so hedged up by God's providence and grace that they may be compelled to take another road.(2) The way of the merely moral man is not a way everlasting.(3) The way of the purposeless and dilettante is not everlasting.(4) The way even of some religious people is not the way everlasting. The hypocrite, the Pharisee, etc.

2. The right way — the way of faith in God and of a life that flows out of faith in God — the way indeed which Jesus trod, is the way everlasting —(1) Because it is a way which was mapped out upon everlasting principles. Truth will never die; the stars will grow dim, the sun will pale his glory, but truth will be ever young. Integrity, uprightness, honesty, love, goodness, these are all imperishable.(2) Because no circumstances can by any possibility necessitate any change in it.(3) Because such a way even death itself shall not terminate.

II. THE CONFESSION. This remarkable confession and prayer should suggest two Things — ignorance and impotence. When we say, "Lead me," if it is a blind man, it means ignorance; he cannot see the way, and therefore he needs to be led, though he may be strong enough to walk if he only knew the way. "Lead me, Lord," also signifies impotence if it be judged of as the child's case; he needs to be led in another sense, because he has not strength enough in his little feet to go without the help of his mother's hand.

1. Our want of knowledge.

(1)Imperfect judgment.

(2)Vitiated affections.

(3)Wrong influences.

2. Our want of strength. We need to ask of God to give us will, which is the real power.

III. THE PRAYER. How comprehensive it is!

1. Because of its object — the whole man, his intellect, emotions, tongue, actions.

2. Its modes. God leads by the law, by the life of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, by ministers, by good books, etc.

3. Its issues. "The way everlasting" — a holy life, a happy death, and a heaven to crown it all.

4. The persons who may fitly use it. Who is there whom it would not suit?

( C. H. Spurgeon.).