loved reader, can save you or me. Moreover, there is but one place in the universe where that blood has flowed, consequently but one place in the universe where you can be safe-and that is upon Calvary-sin-atoning, wrath-averting Calvary. There only is there any safety for you from the storm of final wrath. But standing upon that mount, dyed in blood that flowed from Immanuel's veins, you, and all standing there with you, will escape unscathed a storm that will sweep away the whole word beside, and never end!

LECTURE ON PSALM XXX.

THE title of this psalm reads, "A psalm and song of the dedication of the house of David." This is evidently an incorrect reading. It should read, "A psalm of David: a song of the dedication of the house." The house at whose dedication this song was sung, was not any house of David's, but Mount Moriah, the piece of ground divinely selected as the place whereon the temple, the house of God, should be subsequently built. Of this ground David himself says, having erected thereon only an altar unto the Lord, "This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt-offering for Israel.” 1 Chron. xxii. 1. It was an open space, yet David speaks of it as the house of the Lord God. Jacob, too, in speaking of a place-though it had no covering but the skies-where God had made special manifestation of his character to him, says of it,

"This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Gen. xxviii. 17. The history of our psalm will, however, make it plain to every one, at the consecration of what house this song was sung. Its history is recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of the second book of Samuel; also in the twenty-first chapter of the first book of Chronicles, and the first verse of the twenty-second chapter. David had fallen into a state of great spiritual declension during the long prosperity with which he had been blessed. He had, in a great measure, forgotten that the Lord was his strength, and was looking to the multitude of his people as his great reliance and defence. He had evidently become proud and vainglorious in spirit, and, being in this mood, Satan was permitted, in order to punish him for his own sin and his people for theirs, (see 2 Sam. xxiv. 1,) to move him to take the census of his people, in order to ascertain his military strength, how many soldiers he could upon an emergency bring into the field. This was distrusting the power of Him who is able to save by few as well as by many, and was, besides, virtually rejecting him as being specially the God and protector of Israel. No sooner, therefore, had the census been taken, than David was made conscious of his sin; his heart smote him for what he had done, and the prophet Gad was sent to give him, in the name of God, the choice of one of three modes of being punished; three years' famine; three months' flight before his enemies; or, three days' pestilence. David chose the pestilence, saying, "Let me now fall into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. Having made this choice, the

pestilence prevailed throughout all the coasts of Israel, and seventy thousand had already perished, when "God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it; and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord stood over the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem; then David and the elders of Israel, being clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed: but as for these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, O Lord my God, be on me, and on my father's house: but not on thy people, that they should be plagued. Then the angel of the Lord commanded the prophet to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the Lord in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, on Mount Moriah. And David

builded there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, and called upon the Lord; and the Lord answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt-offering. And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof. And when David saw that the Lord had answered him in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there;" and said, "This is the house of the Lord God; and this is the altar of burnt-offering for Israel." Such is the history of the psalm now before us: a

history which explains the title as referring to the selection and consecration of the ground upon which the temple was subsequently built, and gives us also a key to the better understanding of the whole. The pestilence having been so suddenly stayed, and he himself spared, after the sword of the destroying angel was stretched out over him, David could well open the psalm as he does,

VERSE 1. I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.

It certainly becomes us to exalt God when he exalts us, and to let our songs of praise and thanksgiving to him, be proportionate to the greatness of his mercies to us. This is what David does here. His theme is the mercy of God, not following but arresting wrath. Just now the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noon-day, was doing its worst. Its work, however, is now ended, and his people, whom his pride and vainglory had caused to be so sorely visited, rejoice in the salvation of the Lord. He had grieved over them as a father grieves over the sufferings of children, of whose sufferings he himself had been the guilty cause. What language then can adequately express the greatness of his gratitude when the Divine wrath was in an instant turned both from himself and them; God, at the same moment, putting an end to the rejoicing of his enemies, and the sorrows of himself and friends. David's enemies had hoped to have seen him and his kingdom utterly consumed: but behold, though brought so low, they have risen and stand upright! So shall it ever be with all, however grievously they have sinned, who sincerely repent them of their sins.

VERSE 2. O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.

David still speaks of the Lord as his God, though he had sinned so against him. It is well for us when our sins do not drive us away from God in despair, but only send us back to him in haste, with importunate cries for mercy. "Thou hast healed me." We have no evidence that David had been touched by the power of the pestilence. The healing, then, of which he here speaks, must have been the healing of the wounds inflicted upon his soul by sin. Sin diseases the soul, and infuses spiritual sickness into its every faculty. This sin-sickness of the soul, in David's case, God healed when he forgave him the sin that had induced it. God is the soul's physician, as well as its lawgiver and Judge; and where he pardons sin as a crime, he cures the soul of it as a disease, and restores it to spiritual health.

VERSE 3. O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. So great were David's sorrow and remorse at the recollection of his misconduct, and grief at the sight of the evil it had brought upon his people, that it seemed to him that he could not bear up under them, that he must die. His words are like those of the Saviour, when he began to taste, in all its bitterness, the cup of our sins: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Matt. xxvi. 38. So David felt here: he felt as if he could not survive the weight of grief pressing upon his soul; he seemed to himself to be descending into the grave. Nevertheless, the Lord sustained him, and kept him alive. Nor did he keep him simply alive, but brought him up from the pit's yawning mouth, full of joy and gladness. When