more we wonderfully find joy and peace. O how plentiful is thy goodness which thon hast laid up for them that fear thee! thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the provoking of men.[1] Thou wilt show me the path of life, in thy precence is the fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.[2] More and more this dwelling on the joy and peace from righteousness, and on the power which makes for righteousness, becomes a man's consolation and refuge. Thou art my hiding-place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble; if my delight had not been in thy law, I should have perished in my trouble.[3] In the day of my trouble I sought the Eternal; a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat![4] O lead me to the rock that is higher than I![5] The name of the Eternal is as a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.[6] And the more we experience this shelter, the more we come to feel that it is protecting even to tenderness. Like as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Eternal merciful unto them that fear him.[7] Nay, every other support, we at last find, every other attachment may fail us; this alone fails not. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee![8]
All this, we say, rests originally upon the simple but solid experience: 'Conduct brings happiness,' or, 'Righteousness tendeth to life.'[9] And, by making it again rest there, we bring out in a new but most real and sure way its truth and its power.
For it has not always continued to rest there, and in popular religion now, as we manifestly see, it rests there no
