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COMMUNION WITH GOD IN PRAISE FOR THE INCREASE OF THE EARTH

"LET the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth bring forth her increase: and God, even our own God, shall give us his blessing. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the world shall fear him."-Psalm lxvii. 5-7.

ON three former occasions I have spoken to you on the earlier verses of this psalm. The latter three I have kept for to-day, because they suit well a time when the work, in which many of us have now for some weeks been engaged, has been brought to a close. We must not, however, treat them as if they stood alone. They most truly and intimately belong to the psalm, being closely connected with the parts which we have examined before; and indeed the whole psalm is the best possible approach to the subject which is more expressly brought before us to-day. The prayer for God's mercy and blessing, and the light of His face upon us, that His way may be known upon earth, His saving health among all other nations; and the praises sung by our own

people united as one, leading to a prayer that all other nations may be led by His righteous government of all mankind to praise Him too, carry us rightly and fitly to thanksgivings for God's outward and more earthly gifts. The fifth verse is the same as the third. "Let the people praise thee, O God; yea, let all the people praise thee." It brings us back to home from the other nations far and near which the fourth verse had brought within the reach

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of our prayers. The thought of God's righteous government upon earth arose naturally from the praises which the psalmist desired to hear sung not only by his own countrymen but by the men of all countries but it was not the proper subject of his psalm. He must now return nearer home, even to the point from which he had started, that is, his own people, and the praises which he uttered on their behalf. Let the people, let the different tribes of Israel, praise thee, O God; yea, let all tribes, the whole united people, praise thee. This is the true burden of his song, the perfect end in which all partial prayers and partial thanksgivings are fulfilled.

But this high and heavenly song, the same in which angels join, is not too high for the lips of ordinary people, whose life is spent in handling the things of the earth. It takes its rise from the thought of a harvest. For what says the next verse? "Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us." The words as they stand here are true and important. God's outward blessings, as well as His inward favour, will be found upon a nation which is at one with itself,

and praises Him with all its heart, believing that He is the giver of every good thing that it enjoys. While a nation that believes only in the seed or the soil or the rain or the sunshine, which forgets that they are only the tools with which God works, and feels no thankfulness to Him for them, is sure to suffer the loss of some of them, not only as a punishment for their ungratefulness, but that they may perchance at last learn who it was that had been their hidden friend, and turn to Him with singleness of heart. Or again we may take the verse in this way: "The earth hath brought forth her increase: may God, even our own God, bless us." It would seem that the psalm was originally written on the occasion of an abundant harvest in the land of Israel. And, if this be so, it must be a good thing for us to see what thoughts and prayers could be suggested to the heart of a God-fearing Jew in old times by such an event. In any case it is good for us to see how he could keep his prayers and praises from losing their firm hold upon his own self, and how thoroughly he meant what he said in the earlier verses, since they could so easily pass into thoughts about the earth and its yield of corn. The psalm may thus be of great use to us in two respects, in teaching us the right way to pray to God and praise Him, and in teaching us the right way to think about harvests.

First, about prayer. Our prayer is too often only begging God to give us certain things that we wish for, because we know that He has the power of giving them, and we fancy that He requires to be prayed

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to a great deal before He will give them. When this is the case, our praise becomes not less hard and worthless it means only that we fear God will grudge giving us in future anything else that we wish, if we do not give Him thanks for what He has already bestowed upon us. It is not perhaps very easy to describe in words the difference between such prayer and praise and those of the psalm. But every one who will read it carefully, and who will think over the different tempers in which he has ever asked any kindness from either God or man, cannot help feeling that the difference is immense. The psalm brings us face to face with God Himself, not with His gifts. No one else put in the place of Him would be of the least avail, whatever gifts He might have to bestow. What we have before us is man and a nation of men holding close converse with the God in whose image they are all made. In such converse all created things which are not a part of man, but only given for the use of man, seem for the moment forgotten; just as, when sickness or any other great occasion brings any two of us far nearer to each other than it is scarcely possible to remain in the regular business of life, all the petty things which at other times please us or annoy us are dropped out of mind, we scarcely know how, and nothing is allowed to come between the two human spirits which wish only to take hold of and be taken hold of by the other. Just so it is in prayer and praise, in such prayer and praise as we find in this psalm. It is converse with one far far above us, and therefore

the converse takes the form of asking, and of giving thanks. But to make God's height above us an excuse for not opening our whole heart to Him and seeking to know His heart, is in fact to deny and reject the living way to Himself which He has given us in Jesus Christ His Son, the mediator of God and man. This converse with God must therefore be the first thing in all our prayers and praises. We should desire His gifts less than His love which bestows the gifts, and the gifts themselves chiefly as tokens of His love and favour. And when once we have learned to pray in this spirit, we shall pray for those things which He must chiefly desire, even more than for those things which we have been desiring ourselves. Whatever comfort and delight we have found ourselves in seeking Him for His own sake, we must wish that others also may enjoy who have not yet known Him as He truly is. Thus all our prayers, whatever it may be that we are praying for, will lose the dry and heartless character of mere begging. God and man will be in them all. Only we must not think that the mere joining on of others to ourselves is always in itself a sure mark of a true and divine prayer. That too may be put on by mere calculation: we may easily come to think that we may induce God to listen to us more readily if we pray at the same time for others. But a prayer coming from such a motive is still worth little; it has obviously nothing to do with any real love of others for their own sake, and therefore cannot spring from love of God for His own sake.