hungering for freedom, and powers for a wide range of action, enthralled and encaged by circumstances, secular embarrassments, domestic trials, bodily afflictions, crushing poverty. These often tie us firmly down to some contracted spot on earth. This will always apply (2) To spiritual escapes. Without figure, the unregenerate soul is in thraldom, and the gospel alone can deliver it. Two remarks are suggested concerning its liberation. It is a liberation, First: From a miserable bondage. It was like a "bird in the snare of the fowler." The unconverted soul is a spirit in prison. It is "in chains of darkness," the darkness of ignorance, pollution, and woe. (1) It is a bondage of the man himself. You may enchain the body and leave the soul free. No iron link, no granite wall, can confine the soul. But when the soul is in bondage the man himself is in bondage. (2) It is a bondage associated with a sense of guilt. Many a prisoner in material dungeons is free from a sense of guilt, and has a blessed consciousness of innocence; but a soul in prison feels its guilt as a black threatening cloud covering its heavens. (3) It is a bondage from which God alone can deliver. Men have been delivered from material prisons by the clemency of the sovereign, by political revolutions, by their own skill and strength, and by the allconquering arm of death. But none of these can deliver a soul. God alone can snap the chains and open the prison door. It is a liberation, Secondly: Into a happy freedom. See the lark freed from the snare soaring into the infinite blue, chanting her joyous notes. of freedom, with the world as a little speck beneath her eye. She is the emblem of a freed soul. What is the freedom of the soul? The privilege to act freely?

No. The paralytic may have this, still he is a slave. The pardoned criminal who lies dying in his dungeon may have this, but still he is a slave. No, it is not in the privilege to act freely, but in the capacity and privilege to do so. The freedom of the soul consists in the freest exercise of its intellectual faculties and spiritual powers. The freedom of the soul consists in being unconstrained by any force but love for the Infinite. It is a "glorious liberty." Glorious on acof the Hero who secured it, glorious on account of the immortal blessedness it secures. "Blessed be the Lord who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth." The Almighty is here presented

III. AS TRUSTED as the Deliverer from great troubles. "Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth." This is the grandest moral result of the whole, it is that moral experience of the soul that makes heaven everywhere, trusting in the Lord; "trusting in Him who liveth for ever.' This trust is always well founded; founded First: On His past goodness. He who delivered in the past will deliver in the future. His goodness, like Himself, is unchanging. This trust is founded, Secondly: On His glorious name. "Our help is in the name of the Lord." His name is Himself. Here it is as proclaimed to Moses. "The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious," etc. "They that know thy name shall put their trust in Thee." This trust is founded, Thirdly: On His unbounded resources. "Who made heaven and earth." He who piled up the mountains of this little globe, poured forth its oceans, crowded every part of it with countless tribes of life, he who launched into immensity, and sustains and controls untold millions of globes, ten thousand times.

larger and brighter than this, He has resources we may safely depend. "Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not neither is weary ? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint."

A SONG OF DEGREES (6) THE COMMUNITY OF THE GOOD.

"THEY THAT TRUST IN THE LORD SHALL BE AS MOUNT ZION, WHICH CANNOT BE REMOVED," &c. Ps. cxxv. 1-5.

By general consent this Psalm was composed after the Babylonish captivity, and refers to the troublous times of Nehemiah. "The rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem had commenced, but the work was carried on under most discouraging circumstances. The inveterate opposition of the Samaritans has been frequently noticed. They maligned the Jewish builders and the Persian, and in concert with their heathen neighbours, they had recourse to open violence. The builders were under the necessity of working with a sword at their side, so that when the trumpet sounded, they might at once repair to the place where an attack was made, and with

flashing weapons repel their adversaries. But with all these precautions the poor and persecuted Hebrew, Colony endeavouring to build the temple of their God, and the city of their fathers, would assuredly have been destroyed, had there been no gracious interposition of heaven. Their condition may be described with singular fidelity and power in the words of the preceding Psalm. If the Lord had not been on their side, their enemies would have swallowed them up alive."

In this psalm we have the security of the good insured, and the prosperity of the good invoked.

I. The SECURITY of the good INSURED. It is of the good that the writer speaks. Who are they? "They that trust in the Lord." This is the characteristic of the good everywhere, and at all times. "Some trust

in chariots, some in horses," &c. This trust means unbounded confidence in the character and procedure of God, this is the essence of piety. The words suggest that such are-First: Firmly established. "They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever." The mount on which the temple was built stands as firmly to-day as it did when Abraham offered up Isaac on its lofty brow. No earthquake has shattered it, no storm has hurled it from its foundation; it is the everlasting mountain. Its stability is only the emblem of those who trust in God. "God is our refuge and strength." "On this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The words suggest that such are Secondly: Safely guarded. "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth even for ever." "It is said that to a traveller approaching Jerusalem the towers stand

against the sky, and seem to overtop the neighbouring hills; but any one in the city itself would perceive that the hills in every direction are higher. On the east the Mount of Olives is nearly 200 feet above the city, while an outlying ridge bends round on the north. The ground rises gently on the west, and on the south there is the Hill of Evil Counsel. If the Holy City has its surrounding mountains, the nation has a far surer defence in the Lord, for the "mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but thy kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of thy peace be removed, saith the Lord (Isaiah liv. 10; Zech. ii. 4-15)." (Prebendary Young). The words suggest that such are Thirdly: Ultimately delivered. "For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous." "Rod" here means sceptre, and the "lot of the righteous" the land of promise. The generic idea is that the power of the wicked shall not always extend to the good; one day the community of the good shall be out of the dominion of wickedness for ever and ever. "He shall bruise Satan under our feet." Though the power of the wicked-" the rod of the wicked"-may fall at times upon the good, it shall not "rest" there. In this psalm we have—

First: The

II. The PROSPERITY of the good invoked. invocation specifies the character of the good. "Do good unto those that be good, and to them that are upright in their hearts." "To be good" is to be "upright in heart," and to be "upright in heart" is to be right in our loves, our aims, and activities. The " goody are common, the good are rare. Secondly: The invocation pictures the character, and foretells the doom of the wicked. Who are the wicked? "Such as turn aside