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The Psalmist exchanges petition for contemplation; and gazes on the character of God, in order thereby to be helped to confidence in an answer to his prayer. Such alternations of petition and contemplation are the very heartbeats of devotion, now expanding in desire, and now closing on its treasure in fruition. Either attitude is incomplete without the other. Do our prayers pass into such still contemplation of the face of God?

I. THE PSALMIST'S THOUGHT OF GOD. "Good and upright." God equals here, kind, beneficent. He binds the two quantities together in the feeling of their profoundest harmony. Neither of these reaches its highest beauty and supremest power except it be associated with the other. In the spectrum analysis of that great light there are the two lines; the one purest white of righteousness, and the other tinged with a ruddier glow, the line of love. We are always tempted to wrench the two apart. Hence you get types of religion in which one or the other is emphasised to such a degree as almost to blot out the other. God is love. We cannot make too much of His love, unless by reason of it we make too little of His righteousness.

II. THE CALM CONFIDENCE BUILDED ON THIS CONCEPTION OF THE DIVINE CHARACTER. What a wonderful "therefore" that is! — the logic of faith, not of sense. The co-existence of these two aspects in the perfect Divine character is for us a guarantee that He cannot leave men, however guilty they may be, to grope in the dark, or keep His lips locked in silence. The Psalmist does not mean guidance as to practical advantages and worldly prosperity. He means guidance as to the one important thing, the sovereign conception of duty, the eternal law of right and wrong. What is love, in its loftiest, purest, and therefore in its Divine aspect? What, except an infinite desire to impart, and that the object on which it falls shall be blessed. God is the "giving" God. Not our happiness, but our rectitude, is God's end in all that He does for us. Since righteousness is blended with love, therefore He comes, and must desire to bring all wanderers back into the paths which are His own. God can find His way to my heart, and infuse there illumination, and pure affections, and make my eye clear to discern what is right.

III. THE CONDITION ON WHICH THE FULFILMENT OF THIS CONFIDENCE DEPENDS. "The meek WILL HE GUIDE," etc. The condition of our hearing and profiting, by the guidance is meekness; or what we might call docility, of which the prime element is the submission of our own wills to God's. The reason why we go wrong about our duties is mainly that we do not supremely want to go right, but rather to gratify inclinations, tastes, or passions. Some of us do not wish to know what God wishes us to do. Some of us cannot bear suspense of judgment, or of decision, and are always in a hurry to be in action, and think the time lost that is spent in waiting to know what God the Lord will speak. If you do not clearly see what to do, then clearly you may see that you are to do nothing. Wait till God points the path, and wish Him to point it, and hush the noises that prevent your hearing His voice, and keep your wills in absolute submission; and, above all, he sure that you act out your convictions, and have no knowledge of duty which is not represented in your practice, and you will get all the light which you need: sometimes being taught by errors, no doubt, often being left to make mistakes as to what is expedient in regard to worldly prosperity, but being infallibly guided as to the path of duty and the path of peace and righteousness.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

WEB: Good and upright is Yahweh, therefore he will instruct sinners in the way.