not only of the interest God takes in our life, but of the responsibility He Himself assumes for its eternal issues.  The Cross was no new thing.  The Cross was the putting of the Love of God, of the Blood of Christ, into the old fundamental pieties of the human heart, the realising by Jesus in Himself of the dearest truths about God.  Look up, then, and sing this Psalm of Him.  Can we lift our eyes to any of the hills without seeing His figure upon them?  Is there a human ideal, duty or hope, with which Jesus is not inseparably and for ever identified?  Is there a human experience—­the struggle of the individual heart in temptation, the pity of the multitude, the warfare against the strongholds of wickedness—­from which we can imagine Him absent?  No; it is impossible for any high outline of morality or religion to break upon the eyes of our race, it is impossible for any field of righteous battle, any floor of suffering to unroll, without the vision of Christ upon it.  He dominates our highest aspirations, and is felt by our side in our deepest sorrows.  There is no loneliness, whether of height or of depth, which He does not enter by the side of His own.

Who has warned us like Christ?  To this day He stands the great Sentinel of civilisation.  If all within the camp do not acknowledge Him, no new thing starts up in its midst, no new thing comes upon it from outside, which He does not challenge.  His judgment is still the highest, clearest, safest the world has ever known; and each new effort of service, each new movement of knowledge, is determined by its worth to His Kingdom.

Who has assumed responsibility for our life as Christ has?  Who has taken upon himself the safety and the honour, not of the little tribe for whom this Psalm was first sung, but of the whole of the children of men!  He called about Himself our weariness, He lifted our sorrow, He disposed of our sin—­as only God can call or lift or dispose.  Nothing exhausted His pity, or His confidence to deal with us; nothing ever betrayed a fault in His character, or belied the trust His people put in Him. He suffers not thy foot to be moved; He neither slumbers nor sleeps.

For all this we sing the Psalm of Christ.  We know that so long as we have our conversation among the lofty things of life, His dominating Presence grows only the more clear; and so long as we are beset by things adverse and tempting, His sympathy and His prevailing grace become the more sure.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.  He shall preserve thy soul.

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore.

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Edinburgh University Press
T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

By the same Author

THE HISTORICAL

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