VILLAGE SERMONS.

SERMON I.

GOD'S WORLD.

"O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches."-Ps. civ. 24.

WHEN we read such psalms as the one from which this verse is taken, we cannot help, if we consider, feeling at once a great difference between them and any hymns or religious poetry which is commonly written or read in these days. The hymns which are most liked now, and the psalms which people most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those which speak, or seem to speak, about God's dealings with people's own souls, while such psalms as this are overlooked. People do not care really about psalms of this kind when they find them in the Bible, and they do not expect or wish nowadays any one to write poetry like them. For these psalms of which I speak praise and honour God, not

This

for what He has done to our souls, but for what He has done and is doing in the world around us. very 104th psalm, for instance, speaks entirely about things which we hardly care or even think proper to mention in church now. It speaks of this earth entirely, and the things on it. Of the light, the clouds, and wind-of hills and valleys, and the springs on the hill-sides-of wild beasts and birdsof grass and corn, and wine and oil-of the sun and moon, night and day-the great sea, the ships, and the fishes, and all the wonderful and nameless creatures which people the waters-the very birds' nests in the high trees, and the rabbits burrowing among the rocks—nothing on the earth but this psalm thinks it worth mentioning. And all this, which one would expect to find only in a book of natural history, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written to be sung in the temple at Jerusalem, before the throne of the living God and His Glory which used to be seen in that temple,-inspired, as we all believe, by God's Spirit,-God's own word, in short: that is worth thinking of. Surely the man who wrote this must have thought very differently about this world, with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from what we think. Suppose, now, that we had been old Jews in the temple, standing before the holy house, and that we believed, as the Jews believed, that there was only one thin wall and one curtain of linen between us and the glory of the living God,

that unspeakable brightness and majesty which no one could look at for fear of instant death, except the high-priest in fear and trembling once a year— that inside that small holy house, He, God Almighty, appeared visibly—God who made heaven and earth. Suppose we had been there in the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to be singing about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us? We should not have liked it-we should have been terrified, thinking perhaps about our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt inside. We should have wished to say or sing something spiritual, as we call it; at all events, something very different from the 104th psalm about woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts. We do not like the thought of such a thing: it seems almost irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be talking of such things in His presence. Now does this show us that we think about this earth, and the things in it, in a very different way from those old Jews? They thought it a fit and proper thing to talk about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and fishes, in the presence of Almighty God, and we do not think it fit and proper. We read this psalm when it comes in the Church-service as a matter of course, mainly because we do not believe that God is here among us. We should not be so ready to read it if we thought that Almighty God was so

near us.

That is a great difference between us and the old Jews. Whether it shows that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannot tell; perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, “It is not respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly things in His presence;" perhaps. some of them thought themselves spiritual and pureminded for looking down on this psalm, and on David for writing it. Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in all ages, and will have them. But the man who wrote this psalm had no such thoughts. He said himself, in this same psalm, that his words would please God. Nay, he is not speaking and preaching about God in this psalm, as I am now in my sermon, but he is doing more; he is speaking to God-a much more solemn thing if you will think of it. He says, "O Lord my God, Thou art become exceeding glorious. Thou deckest Thyself with light as with a garment. All the beasts wait on Thee; when Thou givest them meat they gather it. Thou renewest the face of the earth." When he turns and speaks of God as "He," saying, "He appointed the moon," and so on, he cannot help going back to God, and pouring out his wonder, and delight, and awe, to God Himself, as we would sooner speak to any one we love and honour than merely speak about them. He cannot take his mind off God. And just at the last, when he does turn and speak to himself, it is to say,

"Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord," as if rebuking and stirring up himself for being too cold-hearted and slow, for not admiring and honouring enough the infinite wisdom, and power, and love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him shines out in every hedge-side bird and every blade of grass. Truly I said that man had a very different way of looking at God's earth from what we have!

Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need not look far to see. It was this,David looked on the earth as God's earth; we look on it as man's earth, or nobody's earth. We know that we are here, with trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us. And we know that we did not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they will go on just as they went on before we were born,-each tree, and flower, and animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more. The earth is here, and we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why we are on it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to David the earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to him of God who made it. By seeing what this earth is like: he saw what God who made it is like; and we see no such thing. The earth?-we can eat the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, and ploughing and digging it; and that is all most men know about it,