blossom into a hope full of immortality. Precious,' says the Psalmist, in the sight of Jehovah is the death of His Saints!' Could anyone expect extinction, annihilation, who felt the Love of God, shed abroad in his heart,' in the midst of the failing of Nature? But for us this prayer is equally suitable and has a deeper meaning. The 'glorious Gospel of the Blessed God' has shown us a Father in Heaven. But, while we have thus learned that we are sons, have we not, most of us, alas! learned also that we have been prodigal sons, disobedient, rebellious, forsaking our Father's house and slighting His Love? Yes! the strong light, which the teachings of Jesus have thrown on the Law of God, revealing its deep spiritual requirements, -and not his words only, but his life and his death,-have given us a standard which must, if it is realized, introduce penitence into our lives, not as a mere outward form or occasional service, or as a kind of composition for our offences, but as the spirit of our daily life-as the true temper of those who see their own baseness, selfishness, and coldness, in the light of God's pardoning, paternal Love.

This repentance-a continual daily turning to God-will make the last, the inevitably remorseful last, look at life, from the dying pillow, less bitter, less intolerable, even for those who will have much in themselves, in their own course, to regret. But, if deferred till then, with what anguish will it come? Yes! penitence is needful-not to propitiate our angry God-not as the attitude of a slave, who crouches creeping to avert the uplifted lash,—but because it is the right, the truly human, feeling for those who see their own inward faults and the transgressions of their lives. And but little indeed does anyone know of the comfort and relief of such repentance, who would dream of putting it off till all opportunity was over of obeying the gracious words-Go, and sin no more!'

Nor in any other respect can a godly ending be made to a life which has been without God. Those who have crushed out their higher aspirations, and lived a mere careless worldly life, without a thought of the Unseen Hand which was guiding them, without a reference to the Will of the Lord of their conscience, without any desire to be conformed to the image of His Son,-will have little power or

courage to grasp that Unseen Hand, and rest their souls upon it, when the senses are failing. Faith, affiance, trust, in the Unseen is not a single act: it is a habit of soul, generated by many acts, by constant acting. The life of the righteous' is a life of faith. Without faith, without a belief in, a trust in, God, how can the soul stand upright in the midst of life's storms, or stand firm against its' manifold temptations?' Even when explicit faith may have. been lost or overshadowed for a time, what is every act of virtuous self-denial, but a homage to the Unseen?

The righteous' then-the faithful-are blessed in their death,' with the same blessedness which they enjoyed in their lifetime. There is no other possible. Infinite as is the Mercy of our God, and Great as is His Power, He cannot make the Past not to have been: and, remember, we are making it now that which it will be for ever!

Some there are, who indulge their fancies in picturing the other world, at least the entrance of it,-grouping their lost ones on the shore of the dark river, with companies of angels, and many attending circumstances, which tempt those, who are impatient of unrealities, to turn away from the whole as a childish dream. But let us bear with the weakness to which these images afford a consolation. It is at least true that the faithful soul is not alone. It is one of a vast company, who are marching on at God's command, and following him, who has gone before, and entered in, as we believe, within the veil, the Captain of our Salvation.

XVI.

THE DUTY OF PRAISING GOD.

PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST PETER'S, MARITZBURG, ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 22, 1866.

Ps. CVII. 8.

'O THAT MEN WOULD PRAISE JEHOVAH FOR HIS GOODNESS, AND FOR HIS WONDERFUL WORKS TO THE CHILDREN OF MEN.'

THE text sets before us three subjects for consideration. this morning,

(i) That God is Good,

(ii) That His Goodness is active and flowing out in 'wonderful works' towards men,

(iii) That it is our duty—the duty of all men—to praise Him.

O that men would praise Jehovah for His Goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men.'

These are the thoughts which filled the old Hebrew Psalmist's heart, between two and three thousand years ago, when he wrote these words. Who he was we know not: there is not even a superscription to the Psalm, ascribing it to David, or Asaph, as in the case of so many others. And, if there were, it would prove nothing; for there is not the slightest dependance to be placed on these superscriptions or titles, which are only the guesses of men, who lived in a later age, and made the collection of Psalms which we now possess, as to the probable or possible authorship of them and in most cases their conjectures are known to be erroneous. Our Prayer-book indeed calls them all the Psalms of David:' and this is another instance of the prevalence down even to our own times of traditionary views, which have long been rejected as mistaken by all persons of any learning, acquainted with the

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real facts of the case. Some, in fact, of these Psalms, which are here called the Psalms of David,' refer distinctly to the time of the Babylonish Captivity, and were therefore written after this event. Thus, for instance, the 74th Psalm refers in v.2 to 'Mount Zion,' in which 'Jehovah dwelt,' and therefore could not have been composed before the time of David, when Mount Zion was first captured from the Jebusites, and made the site of David's Tabernacle,Jehovah's dwelling-place,' as it was afterwards of Solomon's Temple. But in the verses following the Psalmist describes the destruction of the Sanctuary:'Lift up Thy feet unto the perpetual desolations,

Even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the Sanctuary:
Thine enemies roar in the midst of Thy congregations;

They set up their ensigns for signs.

A man was famous according as he had lifted up

Axes upon the thick trees.

And now the carved work thereof at once

They break down with axes and hammers.

They have cast fire into thy Sanctuary,

They have defiled the dwelling-place of Thy Name to the Ground.' And, in fact, it is certain, that very many of the Psalms were written after the Captivity, and that comparatively but few of them were written by David himself.

But what matters it who wrote these words? They express the thoughts of a living man like ourselves in that far-off age, of one who had infirmities like ours, who had to struggle, no doubt, with temptations and trials from within and from without, just as we have,-of one who had the same Divine helper supporting him all along in his conflict with evil, as we have now, the same Divine Teacher lightening his eyes and quickening his heart.

(i) And so our brother felt in his inmost soul that God was Good-he would have 'men praise Jehovah for His Goodness.'

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To say that God is Good' seems to us, perhaps, the merest truism. And many indeed suppose that our very word for the Supreme Being-I mean the word 'God'expresses the Good One'-though this derivation of the word is by no means certain, and is most probably not correct. We know at all events that the earliest ideas of God were not connected with thoughts of His Goodness. The name 'Elohim' in the ancient Hebrew records-the most ancient archives of the faith of living men-implies

the Strong or Mighty One-or rather, perhaps, the Being to be feared and dreaded; and the plural form of this Hebrew word expresses the highest degree of this attribute. Neither did the later name Jehovah-the 'Living One'-full as it is of awful meaning, express any moral attribute whatever. With the Psalmists and Prophets of old, then, it was no ordinary utterance-it was the expression in words of a revelation from Heaven to their hearts -when they said that God is Good ''Jehovah is Gracious'

'Jehovah is loving unto every man, and His tender mercies are over all His works.'

Not, perhaps, in some momentary flash of inspiration did such thoughts come to them, but as the result of life-long experience and observation-of deep meditation upon the ways and works of God-even as we read at the end of the Psalm before us

Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and he shall understand the Loving-kindness of Jehovah.' Yet still they were a revelation to their minds of the Divine Character. They were the fruits-the rich reward

of pious prayerful lives, during which they walked with God, and gained from that blessed communion more clear views of their relationship to the Father of spirits. And, what they gained in this way, they have handed on to us, and we enter from our very childhood upon the full enjoyment, not only of these portions of our great inheritance, but of that still clearer and fuller revelation of our Father's Love which is made to us in the Gospel of Christ, and of which our Lord said

'Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.’

Let us inquire, however, a little more closely into the meaning of our words when we speak of the Goodness of God, of Him who created the Heavens and the Earth. And here it must first be said that this is indeed a subject on which we cannot arrive at certainty by means of Science. Those Heavens and this Earth do not contain the answer to our question,-What is the moral character of Him by whose Will and Wisdom they exist, for whose 'pleasure they are, and were created?' How, then, shall we attain