ath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods." It is
very noteworthy that such a thought should precede the declaration of
His special dwelling in Zion. It guards that belief from the abuses to
which it was of course liable--the superstitions, the narrowness, the
contempt of all the rest of the world as God-deserted, which are its
perversion in sensuous natures. If Israel came to fancy that God
belonged to them, and that there was only one sacred place in all the
world, it was not for want of clear utterances to the contrary, which
became more emphatic with each fresh step in the development of the
specializing system under which they lived. The very ground of their
peculiar relation to God had been declared, in the hour of constituting
it to be--"all the earth is Mine" (Exod. xix. 5). So now, when the
symbol of His presence is to have a local habitation in the centre of
the national life, the psalmist lays for the foundation of his song the
great truth, that the Divine presence is concentrated in Israel, but not
confined there, and concentrated in order that it may be diffused. The
glory that lights the bare top of Zion lies on all the hills; and He who
dwells between the cherubim dwells in all the world, which His continual
presence fills with its fulness, and upholds above the floods.

Then, as they climb, a single voice perhaps chants the solemn question,
"Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in the place
of His holiness?"

And the full-toned answer portrays the men who shall dwell with God, in
words which begin indeed with stringent demands for absolute purity, but
wonderfully change in tone as they advance, into gracious assurances,
and the clearest vision that the moral nature which fits for God's
presence is God's gift. "The clean-handed, and pure-hearted, who has not
lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully;" there is the
eternal law which nothing can ever alter, that to abide with God a man
must be like God--the law of the new covenant as of the old, "Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." But this requirement,
impossible of fulfilment, is not all. If it were, the climbing
procession might stop. But up and up they rise, and once again the song
bursts forth in deeper and more hopeful words, "He shall _receive_ the
blessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
Then that righteousness, which he who honestly attempts to