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Matthew 19:17, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Psalm 37:27, "Depart from evil, and do good." In these and other passages where mention is made of doing, the Scriptures always speak of a faithful doing, a doing inspired by faith. "Do this and thou shalt live," means: First have faith in Christ, and Christ will enable you to do and to live.
I could but cry out in the words of the Psalm, "They that go down to the sea in ships, these men see the works of the Lord in the deep. For at His word the storms rise, the winds blow, and lift up the waves; then do they mount to the sky, and from thence go down to the deep. My soul faints, I reel to and fro, and am at my wit's end: then the Lord brings me out of all my fears."
He does not deny, but rather grants, a primary reference of the psalm to a son of David, for David was a king, and his son would be a king. But he also sees in the psalm a prophecy that this son of David would be a king whom David would call Lord. His searching examination propounds to the unbelieving Jews the question, "What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?"
Bax suddenly turned the page and read a psalm. Though he read it with no change of voice the mood was broken. "Be merciful unto me, O God," he read, "for man goeth about to devour me: he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . . They daily mistake my words: all that they imagine is to do me evil.
I can remember the time when I could not enter into the Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, nor in things too high for me"; nor sing the verse, "I would be treated as a child, and guided where I go." Now it is, I hope, different.
What is your favourite psalm and hymn? Mr. James Taylor of Castle Street has several large-type libraries in his catalogue. Mr. Taylor might start a much worse paying speculation than a large-type library for the river-side; or, some select booklets for deathbeds. The series might well open with "The Ninetieth Psalm" in letters an inch deep.
The prisoner! He had been a prisoner. All the world would know of it, but would not know that he was innocent. How could he bear it? It was a crushing agony. Then there came to him the words of the psalm sung on Sunday, "My times are in thy hand, Why should I doubt or fear? My Father's hand will never cause His child a needless tear."
The psalm: "O Lord, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth; Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth," was composed by Moses for the tribe of Gad; for Elijah, a member of this tribe, was to destroy the foundations of the heathens, and to wreak upon them the vengeance of the Lord.
Only a very few of us are able to appraise the real importance of music in the advancement of human civilization, nor is this unusual, since most of us have but to go back but a very few generations to encounter our blessed Puritan and Quaker ancestors to whom all music, barring the lugubrious Psalm singing, was the inspiration of the devil.
Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech.