CHAPTER II. PSALM CXVI. THE very opening of this Psalm is in the spirit of a noble faith. "I am well pleased: that the Lord, hath heard the voice of my prayer; that he hath inclined his ear unto me: therefore will I call upon him as long as I live." Your safety is, doubtless, felt to be an answer to prayer. How salutary this feeling! The Mother, who is thus convinced that the Almighty is always present to hear and answer prayer, must surely reap the benefit of this conviction; not only in a firmer reliance on the Divine goodness, but in an added watchfulness, lest the duty of prayer be neglected, and He who answereth prayer be forgotten. Or shall He hearken, and we cease our supplications? Shall He graciously incline his ear-what an affecting indication of his fatherly love, and anxious care that we should ask, because He is then ready to give!—shall He incline his ear, and our tongues keep silence? How gloriously does faith strengthen under this view of the Divine favour! What, though as you hang over your helpless smiling infant, there sometimes arises, in long train, the prospect of anxious watchings, unceasing care, sorrow, and sickness, and other adversity to which flesh is heir, and of which he may in after life have his share-you are not cast down in spirit. Faith interposes. You believe in a God who heareth and answereth prayer-you believe in a God who delighteth to be inquired of by his servants, when difficulties perplex and trials threaten them--you be lieve in an ever present God, who often sends trouble that we may the more earnestly seek Him in our distress, and receive the promise made to the prayerful soul; "Call upon me in the time of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."—You further believe in a God who ordereth all things well, with reference to our highest, our eternal advantage, though perhaps He bringeth the promised deliverance by a way of which we thought not; even by a way which the eagle's eye hath not seen, nor the wit of man descried. Well pleased that the Lord hath thus heard your voice, you wisely resolve with St. Paul, to pray alway. "Because my recovery is of God's undeserved mercy; because I owe to him my life; because He heard and answered my supplications; therefore it shall not satisfy my soul to praise Him only for recent blessing, and afterwards neglect his holy name, or be indifferent to the honour due unto it. As long as I live will I call upon Him; yea, as long as I have any being, I will sing praises unto my God." One may well indeed imagine the overflowing gratitude of your heart, as you pour forth its inmost thoughts, and delight to acknowledge the Lord as your God. "Behold me, whom lately the sorrows of death compassed, now walking before the Lord in the land of the living. Behold! not only is renewed life given to me, but still dearer ties to life have been vouchsafed. Share with me my joy, that a child is born to me. O my God! I thank Thee! I thank Thee that I now live. The grave might, ere this, have been my resting place, and sorrow and mourning might have shadowed these hours of gladness. Whereas new life and health are the portion of child and mother. When in anguish of soul and with a troubled spirit I cried unto Thee, Thou didst relieve my distress; Thou didst hear my prayer; Thou didst recompense me of thy grace and mercy. Return then unto thy rest, O my soul. Bless the Lord who hath rewarded thee 1. Snatched from peril, let me live in my season of safety, as in that hour of peril I vowed to live-let me live to God! Let me live not for time, but for eternity. Besides, if ever holiness were my highest duty, and my highest interest, specially is it so now. Now, another immortal soul, even this my precious infant, is given to my charge. And vain will be my devoted love for this dear one-vain my care for its temporal comforts, unless I provide, by God's help, for its spiritual and eternal welfare: vain my anxiety for its well doing on earth, unless I train it for happiness in heaven. O what added motive have I here, for a truly religious life on my own part; that my example may not be wanting to enforce my precepts ! And can I doubt that the God who hath given me this treasure, will also give me in answer to prayer, grace to apply it to his glory? Surely I will call upon that God as long as I live "." 1 Psalm cxvi. 7. In this and many other passages of Holy Writ, the word "reward," implies no meritorious return, but a gracious answer of mercy from a God of love and compassion. 2 The learned and venerable Bishop Hall* has left on record very striking and encouraging testimony to the value of this maternal care. With vast and varied learning, with deep and unaffected piety, with perfect love and charity toward all men, he yet experienced great and heavy afflictions. Many a time and oft under these circumstances, when the darkest trials clouded his old age, did * Bishop Hall was born in 1574; and died in 1656. With reflections like these, your heart will warm; and as the spark of gratitude kindles into a flame of holy joy and heavenly confidence, you will go on your way, a happy mother, in the strength of the Lord. Thus solemnly you have pledged yourself to a holy life-"walking before the Lord." The expression beautifully pictures a Christian course. Is his eye ever over you? does that eye never slumber, never sleep? What circumspection you exercise to avoid all things which you know would offend Him! What fearlessness do you feel of those evils, which his preventing providence and grace will either ward off, or remove! To Him are all hearts open? You allow no thought to enter there of which you would fear his he bless the memory of his mother, who had trained him in his heavenly-mindedness during infancy and youth. Speaking of her excellences and his undiminished debt of gratitude to her, he thus in his old age expressed his admiration of her character, both as a teacher and a pattern." Never any lips have read to me such feeling lectures of piety: neither have I known any soul, that more accurately practised them, than her own. How often have I blessed the memory of those divine passages of experimental divinity, which I have heard from her mouth."-And he adds, with a depth of feeling and touching tenderness worthy the son of such a mother,-"I can hardly take off my pen from so exemplary a subject: her life and death were saintlike." Thus this patient Christian sufferer, when aged and desolate and in prison, appears to have felt, in its fullest extent, the sure blessing of those early lessons of piety which a tender mother had instilled into him. Say, was she not blessed in her deed? Who knoweth, then, but that thus in after years, if the prospect which now, perhaps, seems all bright before your child, be overcast with cares and sorrows, and amid the changes and chances of life his days may set in darkness,-it may be with you and your child as with this pious son and his saint-like teacher !—the son sustained in his affliction by the faith first instilled into him by his mother! judgment. Are no secrets hid from Him? how peacefully do you repose in a happy consciousness of having no cherished sin to conceal from Him, and in a firm conviction that not one lowly humbling thought of your heart is passed over unnoticed by Him; but that the inmost whisperings of contrition under a sense of infirmity, the most secret confessions of lowliness, under a sense of unworthiness-all are known to Him, and from Him shall not lose their reward. But to keep such a course of life in a world of trial like this; to hold a course undeviating from the straight and narrow way which leadeth to heaven; a course of wisdom, courage, and patience; to hold it, with unswerving rectitude before man, and unsullied purity before God-all this is so far beyond man's strength; so opposed to the conflicting interests of the world, and to the natural bias of the heart; that the wisest and the best have ever found the task too arduous for their own unassisted powers to execute. So is it with yourself. In the fulness of your gratitude, you made the vow. In the calm season of your joy you would fain pay that vow. Remember, therefore, now the source whence then you looked for strength to fulfil your resolutions, and bring the same to good effect-even Jesus, the Crucified! Faith in Him was then all your trust, all your hope. Be it so now. Then your resolve was worthy of you-" I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vow, now in the presence of all God's people ; in the courts of the Lord's house, even in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem!" O now, remember this; and as often as the cup of blessing, the cup of the Lord, with all the means of grace, afforded by the Holy Com |