---

In these verses (13-17) the psalm seems to take now a brighter turn. There is a mention of teaching, of a service of praise, of a sacrifice, as if the poor, crushed spiritual life were gaining strength again. Just as when a man is recovering from a serious illness, the very fact of his becoming impatient is a good sign. So here David is becoming impatient, as it were, of his low condition; he is thinking of work, he is making plans. David's pardon, David's restoration, shall be the great ground of hope and conversion for generations of penitents. It is a grand idea to utilize faults. God can do it. We have read of the painter who, in his rage and disappointment at not being able to represent the foam on the mouth of a Fury, threw his sponge at the picture, and so produced without design the effect for which he had laboured. But God can take our very faults and beautify them, as an architect seizes upon an uneven site as the opportunity for fresh picturesqueness of detail to his building. So that it has been said, the three great doctors of the Catholic Church are David the murderer, St. Peter the denier, and St. Paul the persecutor.

I. WE ALL HOPE TO DO SOMETHING MORE THAN SAVE OUR OWN SOULS. We are here for this very purpose, to train ourselves that we may help others. It is a great fact that the key which unlocks the mysteries of God is, in many senses, a moral one (John 7:17). It is only too possible to wish some doctrines not to be true; it is perfectly impossible to understand many of them from the outside. And, therefore, let this Lent be, for all of us, the very foundation of our teaching power. "Then shall I teach." It is thus we learn sympathy. Ah, here is a poor soul going through all which I have gone through. "I, too, was a stranger in the land of Egypt." It is thus we acquire tenderness (Titus 3:3). It is thus that we acquire spiritual might (1 John 4:7). Do we yet know how God loves us?

II. PENITENCE IS OUR PREPARATION FOR THE LIFE OF SERVICE IN THE SANCTUARY. Our people do not come to church; or, they are cold and indifferent spectators if they do come. Why is it? Sometimes, if we must speak the truth, services are terribly perfunctory, cold and slovenly. We clergy are in constant danger of deterioration. What a call upon us there is to live always in an atmosphere of prayer, if we know that we may he summoned at any moment to a death-bed, there to come close to the very opening gates of Paradise, or to administer the Viaticum to the traveller now almost departing. Is not all this something to be prepared for?

III. AFTER ALL, THERE IS NOTHING MORE POWERFUL THAN THE LIFE OF SACRIFICE. Just the troubled spirit, ruffled, freshened as it were every day by the breath from on high. Where the heart is sensitive to every heavenly influence; where the broken heart is full of affection towards God, while it always remembers the past; where the contrite heart is softened, bruised, pulverized into good receptive soil. May we not learn here, too, to offer a sacrifice like this? Have we learned yet to sacrifice inclination? It bakes a long time to do this. Pere Lacordaire tells us how, in spite of all his austerities, practised with a view of subduing the will, he took a long time before he could overcome his irritation at such a simple thing as being interrupted. Can we give up inclination deliberately?

(Canon Newbolt.)

---

---

KJV: Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

WEB: Do well in your good pleasure to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem.