propose to you another means of testing my claim to be your Messiah and Saviour. Practise the precepts of the religion I teach you, and you shall soon have revealed to you the secret whether it be of God. Do his will, and you shall know of the doctrine. In obeying the precept, all else shall become plain." I knew, and admitted to the communion of the church, a gentleman who acted upon this saying of the Saviour. He admired, as perfect, the preceptive portions of the Bible; but stumbled at some of its peculiar doctrines. He determined, therefore, to ascertain what effect obeying the precepts would have toward dissipating his difficulties in regard to the doctrines of our religion. He, therefore, at once endeavoured to live in every respect as he would have lived if he had been a Christian; reading, praying, attending public worship, and making the moral code of the Bible his only rule of action. So obeying the precept, in less than a twelve months' time the secret of the Lord was revealed to him, the truth of all the doctrines of God's covenant of redeeming mercy in Christ, was made plain to his understanding and grateful to his heart. Here is a cure for scepticism within the reach of every man! His mind may be filled with difficulties in regard to everything else in the Bible, in regard to its history, its miracles, its prophecies, and doctrines; still, if he will endeavour honestly and perseveringly, to practise its precepts, live according to its moral code, his difficulties will vanish one by one, till none remain. And the man who will not test the truth of our religion in this way, cannot honestly say that he desires to be satisfied of its truth and connection with his own destiny.

VERSE 15. Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.

David realizes that there is a deliverance for him in only one direction, and in that direction he keeps his eyes continually turned toward the Lord, fully believing that he would pluck his feet out of the net which his enemies had spread for them.

VERSE 16. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.

Here again he feels like one alone in the earth, desolate and afflicted. Still his faith fails not, but finds utterance in the words, "Turn thee unto me, O Lord, and have mercy upon me."

VERSE 17. The troubles of my heart are enlarged; O bring thou me out of my distresses.

How like a child pleading with his father! The Psalmist knows that nothing else goes so quickly to the heart of a parent as the sorrows of a child, and he believes the same of Him whom he has chosen as the portion of his soul.

VERSE 18. Look upon my affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.

Still the child's cry to his parent, appealing to his pity. Here, however, he prays for the removal of the remote and efficient, if not the immediate, cause of all troubles-his sins. "Forgive all my sins." When trouble comes on us we cannot bethink us too soon of our sins. If they are pardoned, the troubles they brought on us will depart with them, or, if the troubles still remain, can be easily borne. The sweet sense of sins forgiven renders the heaviest afflictions light.

VERSE 19. Consider mine enemies, for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred.

It is strange that obeying the truth should make a

man enemies. But oftentimes the closer a man walks with God, the more numerous, and the more violent his enemies are. Under such circumstances, an appeal to the God of truth to defend us, cannot be made in vain.

VERSE 20. O keep my soul, and deliver me; let me not be ashamed; for I put my trust in thee.

That we have put our trust in him is an argument that can never fail to engage the Almighty on our side. His word has passed, that no one trusting in him shall ever be confounded. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but his word of promise-never. VERSE 21. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I

wait on thee.

David here prays that however unjustly men may treat him, he may not be betrayed into any sin against them. In this aspiration he is encouraged, because he waits on God, waits for him to deliver him in his own time and way.

VERSE 22. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.

If David wrote this psalm, as some suppose, during Absalom's rebellion—a visitation upon the father, for his grievous sins in the matter of Uriah-this prayer, "Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles," forms a most appropriate conclusion. To the truly generous and godly heart, there is no other thought so painful as the thought that its sins have brought trouble upon others. This was David's case. His sins had brought trouble on the nation, and he reckons his own sorrows as nothing, when compared with the sorrows of so many innocent suf ferers. Hence the earnestness with which he prays God to redeem Israel out of all the troubles in which his sins had involved them. Alas, how many

of us pervert others, especially in our youth, for whose restoration to purity and peace we would afterwards give worlds, if we had them to give. May God, through his infinite mercy in Christ, give us all grace so to live that we neither ruin ourselves nor others.

LECTURE ON PSALM XXVI.

Ar first sight no two psalms could be more antagonistic to each other in their teaching, than the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth. Nevertheless they harmonize entirely. Each presents a view of religious experience familiar to the mind of the believer. When the believer thinks of his sins, even those of infirmity, his cry for deliverance will be the cry of the twenty-fifth psalm, a cry based altogether upon the mercy of God. When, however, he is unjustly treated by his fellow-man, and thinks of his covenant-relation to God, and of the many great and precious promises God has made to those serving him, the believer's cry will then be the cry of the twenty-sixth psalm-a cry to God for deliverance based upon the fact of his being His servant, obeying him from the heart. The juxtaposition of these two psalms was not without design. The believer may utter the cry of both in the same breath, just according as he thinks of God as dispensing mercy to the guilty, or as rewarding obedience. "The contents of the one psalm," says another, "supple

ment those of the other. In the one psalm, the suffering righteous man is directed to seek refuge in the Divine compassion, which secures forgiveness for manifold sins of infirmity: in the other, again, he is led, from a consideration of the Divine righteousness, which must make a distinction between the righteous and the wicked, to entertain the firm hope of deliverance. We have, therefore, before us a pair of psalms, which point to the compassion and righteousness of God, as the two foundations on which the Lord's people may rest a confident hope of deliverance. The two are connected, as it were, by a bridge; the idea which occupied a subordinate position near the conclusion of the one psalm, being brought prominently forward, and having the first place assigned to it in the other:" viz. the idea that innocency, integrity, and trust in God, can never fail to secure his favour and protection. This is the thought of our psalm, and the thought to which David gives utterance in the words,

VERSE 1. Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord; therefore I shall not slide.

If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God, and may appeal to him to vindicate the cause we have in hand. This was David's case. Driven into exile by the persecutions of Saul, and charged with plotting against his throne and life, he here appeals to the Searcher of hearts to vindicate his innocence. David's "Judge me, O Lord,” is not a call upon God to judge him for the sins that he may have committed against Him, his God, but to judge him for the sins he was charged with having committed against Saul, his king. It would be mad