"The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord God of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee."

THIS psalm, of which the two last verses are here given as the text for the subject of your consideration, is a beautiful chapter in the Scriptures of truth, expressing the saint's hopes, trials, experience, and faith. The psalmist sets heaven before him in that rapture of his soul, when he cries out, "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!" This is the house of his soul, the glorious abode of the great King, the city of the living God, of which the holy places made with hands are figures of the true, even heaven itself, where all the just men made perfect are in glory, having entered into their rest. To this the psalmist is travelling onward in faith. He confesses that he is a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, and so declares plainly that he is seeking a city. He then expresses his extreme desire and ardent longing to be at his journey's end: "My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." Soul and body, "heart and flesh," spirit and understanding, reason and affections, all converge to one point of hope, even for "the tabernacles of the Lord of hosts."

He then (verse 4) remembers his brethren in the faith who have shaken off the dust of their feet before him, who have thrown off this mortal shell, and put on immortality, and have taken their places as kings and priests for ever in the courts of Jehovah : "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, they will be still praising thee." Their task

S

is an eternity of joyous admiration of all the glorious secrets of the heavenly house, but which, for mortal eyes, are now behind the veil. These they see and comprehend; and, in the full intelligence of all God's counsels of love and wisdom, they praise what they see for ever and ever.

The psalmist then descends to a remembrance of the church militant-to his brother pilgrims, who are on the road with him towards the heavenly Zion: "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them,* who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well: the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength: every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.”

He knows, by experience, the weakness, and trials, and tribulations of the household of faith; but then, knowing also that their strength is not in themselves, but in God-the God of all grace, he calls them "blessed" and their blessedness is in things present and in things to come. In things present, "they go from strength to strength;" in things future, “they appear before God;" and not only so, but they ALL appear in Zion before God—“ every one of them;"† not one is lost, or can be lost. Zion is their appointed home, and thither they will surely come, sooner or later; and when once there, they never again shall depart thence to all eternity.

And so, having, verse 10, once more broken out into a rapture at the prospect of the joys of heaven, one day of which he declares is worth a thousand of the highest earthly joys, he concludes by explaining the ground of his faith. Jehovah Elohim is a sun and shield: Jehovah "will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly."

Let us, then, who hope that we too are on the journey through the valley of Baca, consider these grounds of the psalmist's faith, that we may compare ours with his, and ascertain if we have the same wishes,

*“In whose heart are the ways of them." This verse is faultily translated in our authorised version. The original is very short and obscure, and may be literally translated thus: "The blessings of a man: the ways are in their heart:" the meaning of which seems to be this," Blessings such as man can receive are for those in whose heart are the ways," i. e., the ways leading to Zion-the road to Jehovah's temple. The Septuagint approaches the true translation nearly : "The going-up [the avaßaris, the journey to Zion] is fixed in their heart;" in other words, it is their settled purpose to journey thither. "In whose heart are the ways of them" gives no intelligible sense, and is made out by conjecture merely."

+ Without detracting from the argument here attempted to be built on this interesting and beautiful Psalm, or at all to question the confidence of the humble believer in Jesus, it is right for us to state that the words, “every one," do not appear in the original, but are supplied in our translation.-ED.

the same prospects, and the same ground of confidence that he had, and so "neither faint nor be weary in our minds."

The main doctrine, then, which we would deduce from this psalm is, that Jehovah, who gives grace, crowns that grace with glory; that those persons are blessed in time, and for eternity, whose strength is in God; and that they who are so blessed shall ultimately be victorious, and receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away, whatever may be their trials, or hinderances, or errors on the road: "They shall go on from strength to strength, and every one of them shall appear in Zion before God."

Grace is the unmerited favour and love of God to those who could have no claim to his favour, and could urge no plea for his compassion. It is the manifestation of the sovereign will of God, who doeth all things after the counsel of his own will, and whose hand of power works in a manner, and for reasons that we cannot comprehend. The proof of grace is in the gift of the Holy Spirit, imparted to the elect through Jesus Christ, for the glory of the Father. Conversion is a proof of grace, and conversion is by the Holy Spirit. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one born of God." They that are born of God are converted; they that are converted are in the regeneration; but why this wind has blown upon them, and made their dry bones live, whilst others continue dead in trespasses and in sins; why they have repented, and fled for refuge to the hope set before them in the Gospel; why they have beheld the sinfulness of sin, and have felt the load of guilt removed; why they have believed with the heart unto righteousness, and have, through the Spirit, called Jesus "Lord," whilst others have been well pleased with the state of nature, and have remained perfectly satisfied in the midst of condemnation and a godless life, can only be explained by reference to the sovereign will of God, which may be expressed in one word-grace.

One other explanation is, indeed, often attempted,-nay, we may say, is always attempted by the natural man, by a reference to the merits of the holy people. The meritorious conduct of the elect is supposed to be the cause of their election; and because they have ceased to be sinful, and have kept themselves from evil, therefore, it is said, they receive their due reward. But this is a system wholly inadmissible within the precincts of Christianity. There is no merit in a Christian a heathen may talk of his merit, but a Christian cannot. There is no holiness but through an union with Christ, who is the

Lord our righteousness; and there is no ceasing from sin but through a free-grace pardon. "All good works done before grace received partake of the nature of sin." There is no keeping oneself from sin, but through the continuance of that grace which first sent the wind to blow the breath of the new life; and there is no receiving of a reward at last for merit; for after we have done work well, we are but unprofitable servants—" we have only done that which it was our duty to do."

If the merit of man procures the grace of God, then the word "grace" must be erased from the New Testament: if by our works of righteousness we become acceptable to God, then must "the adoption of children," flowing from the predestination of our heavenly Father, never be mentioned any more, (Eph. i. 5,) and the apostle Paul must be excluded from the church of Christ as a false teacher and heretic. No; the doctrine of justifying faith closes the door for ever against all the merit of man, and opens it wide to the glorious day-spring of the sovereign grace of God: "For to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness;" Rom. iv. 4. "For not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life," Tit. iii.

Grace, then, is the manifestation of the favour of God, visible to man by the signs of regeneration, and proceeding onwards to its last stage-glory. It is not a selection of meritorious persons, but of those whom Jehovah chooses to appear before him in Zion. It is not an election of men and women, strong in their virtues and in their good resolutions; "for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly," Rom. v. 6. It is not favour shown to those who have kept the law of God, and have abstained from evil; for the law, we are expressly told, is of no use to bring in righteousness, "through the weakness of the flesh;" Rom. viii. 2; and "if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law," Gal. iii. 21.

These high doctrines of the mystery of grace elicited from the evangelist John an expression of wonder at the dealings of God to sinful men: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." For, had the

Almighty God manifested his love to those who first loved him, it would have been in accordance with that reciprocity of feeling to which we are accustomed, and which is very generally the foundation of earthly friendship, and a mutual liking and attachment. But it is not so in the love of God; those whom he designs as objects of his grace show neither liking nor attachment to him; they very frequently are in high and visible enmity against him, exceedingly estranged from him, and violently opposed to him, even in the judgment of man; and therefore Paul reminds us that "when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son," Rom. v. 10. And, indeed, it is this state of enmity or discrepance which has, in all times, been the distinguishing mark of the servants of God before he turned them to repentance, and instructed them in the ways of contrition and holiness, Jer. xxxi. 19. They were either careless and indifferent, or exceedingly rebellious, and abominably polluted: in either case they were not with him, and he that is not with God is against him, Matt. xii. 30. But where grace is very precious, and where the recipients of such unmerited favour do highly extol the bounty of the giver, and love him for his gifts, there the state of enmity has been most conspicuous; the manifest impossibility of naming merit in these cases, compels them to ascribe all to the grace of God. And, indeed, our blessed Saviour himself remarked that a free forgiveness of many sins produces a large degree of reciprocal love: "but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little," Matt. vii. 47.

And possibly it was with a view to this recognised principle in the human heart that Paul was selected as the most efficient minister of the Gospel, and the largest expositor of its spiritual mysteries, that he who had gone so far in enmity against Jehovah and his anointed; who had imbrued his hands in the blood of the saints, and had compelled them to blaspheme, might, by a striking conversion in the very midst of his enemies, be not only an undeniable instance of God's free grace to all spectators, but might himself be so forcibly convinced of the operations of the Divine favour in his behalf, as continually to revert to those doctrines of election which are the primal elements of Christian truth. At any rate, his conversion in the midst of his sins, when it was impossible for any one to hint at any thing like merit in his case, produced this effect; for we know how frequently he alludes to his own conversion with wonder and gratitude, and how he makes it a text for a precious exposition of the doctrines of grace. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. Howbeit, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might