good, or cares to make earthly passion its confidence. It seeks to God; it waits for Him; it puts all its cause into His hands, knowing that He will establish right and will destroy wrong; and that when He destroys wrong, and makes wickedness to perish, they who have loved malice and trusted in wickedness shall perish utterly and miserably, with the wickedness and the malice which they made their Punishment shall then bind those in misery whom guilt now binds from good works.

own.

This Psalm has no title in the Hebrew. In the LXX. and the Vulgate it is inscribed, "A Psalm of David for the fourth day of the week." In this respect it resembles the preceding Psalm. It is not impossible but that it may have been solemnly used on that day.

Morning Prayer.

TO BE SAID DAILY IN THE ORDER FOR MORNING PRAYER.

PSALM XCV. Venite, exultemus Domino.

1. O COME let us sing unto the Lord let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.

2. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and shew ourselves glad in Him with psalms.

'Let us sing unto the Lord' this is the Christian soul invited to do unceasingly. The prophets of the older dispensation-the saints of the new covenant

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-the choirs of the temple on Mount Moriah-the assembly of the heavenly Sion-the angels above in heaven-the Holy Ghost within us—our brethren in the Church-yea, all the creatures of God, with one accord from the beginning to the end, call us day by day to come, bid us day by day to sing unto the Lord God Almighty. Not with fear, but with joy, let us approach Him Who is the rock of our salvation, Who refreshes us with His streams of grace in the desert of the world. Let us come into His presence not by constraint, but willingly, to thank Him for His benefits;-let our gratitude, if it were possible, outrun and be beforehand with His love. And let us shew our hope, and joy, and gladness, not dully and coldly, but with all the glowing, hallowing words and all the melody of voice our mouths can raise. The Seraphim 'rest not day nor night' in their infinite chant of adoration; the Church below should bring at least her part of daily psalms and daily praise. 3. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.

LXX. Because God is a great Lord,

And a great King over all the gods;

Because the Lord will not reject His people.

4. In His hand are all the corners of the earth and the strength of the hills is His also.

5. The sea is His, and He made it and His hands prepared the dry land.

And why should we come, and why should we

sing? Because He is great above all. He alone is God, and there is none but Him; He is the King eternal, immortal, invisible,' and all other influences, authorities, and powers are but servants unto Him, and exist by His will. The idols of the heathen, the things that men set up for themselves to worship, are emptiness and nothing. It is the Lord Who made the heavens that alone is God. The bounds of the earth are distant, but they are all within His hand; the earth is in the hands of the Father and of the Son. The valleys and the deep places of the earth, like the spirits of the humble and the lowly, are in His safeguard, and are possessed by Him; the mountains are strong, but their strength is His, and they have it from Him; emblems they be, as they tower up into heaven, of the angels and archangels who dwell for ever in His presence. The sea, with its ceaseless ebb and flow, its tempests and its treacherous calms, imaging to us this troublesome world and its waves, is His; He made it, and it is compelled to own His laws. And the dry land, barren and fruitless as the hearts of men, He created, and has prepared to bring forth fruit unto His glory.

6. O come, let us worship and fall down: and kneel before the Lord our Maker.

Therefore does the invitation ring again through our ears and hearts from all things on earth and from all things in heaven, from things seen and things unseen, not only to sing each day unto our God in praise, but to worship Him each day in reverence

and awe-to fall down and kneel before that mighty God Who made all things, and us children of men among them-to 'glorify Him in our body and our spirit, which are God's.'

7. For He is the Lord our God and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.

And why should we come, and why should we worship and fall down? Because He is not only a great God, but He is our God; He is not only the Creator of the earth, and of the hills, of the sea, and of the land, but He is the Redeemer of us miserable sinners. He took our flesh and came down to seek and save us, as a good and loving Shepherd, weak and wandering sheep as we ever are. He feeds us, He rules us. We are not only the sheep of His pasture, and the people of His hand, but the people themselves are His sheep; and His sheep, for whom He laid down His life, are His people. He calleth us His people, which were not His people: He hath brought us wandering sheep into the one fold under the one Shepherd. Well does it become His people, whom He has created, to sing unto their Lord, and to rejoice in this their salvation ;-well does it become His sheep, whom He has sought and saved, to worship, and fall down, and kneel before their incarnate Lord, at once their Maker and their Saviour!

8. To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts: as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness;

Heb. Harden not your hearts as Meribah,

As the day of Massah in the wilderness.

9. When your fathers tempted Me : proved Me, and saw My works.

But each day brings its daily warning, as it brings its duty of daily praise and daily prayer. Each day, and above all to-day, cries to us, Harden not your heart. He Who to-day promises forgiveness to the penitent, promises no to-morrow to him who puts off his repentance. The Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your bearts as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness.' He saith to us by the voice of His minister, as He said before by the voice of His Psalmist, 'Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; while it is said, To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.' The murmuring of Israel in Rephidim, when the water was brought wondrously from the rock, is a lesson for all the days of time. It was for an enduring warning that Moses 'called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not?'