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Sermon II.
ON THE JOY OF FREQUENT PUBLIC WORSHIP.
Ps. lxxxiv. 1–4—O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of Hosts! My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young: even thy altars, Lord of hosts, my King, and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will he alway praising thee.
David—in his noble youth, at which time, more entirely we must fear than later in his life, he was "a man after God's own heart"—David, while he was wandering an outcast in the wilderness of the Holy Land, is thought to have written this beautiful Psalm, expressing his "desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord."
Now why, you might ask, should David so wish for that?
Might he not, as I said last Sunday, have prayed and worshipped God in the mighty solitudes of Nature? Was not the earth and sky a nobler temple than any which the art of man could build? Is there not a "voice"
