een the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a green tree....
Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not."

May we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him
calling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed though
it were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many storms
nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging
home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God:
"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man
is peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset,
all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his
songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive
with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until
the jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes
in.

One strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books
that prophesy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less
than his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying
eyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to
be a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence,
and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe
the world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens.
He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fitting
that this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains,
as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them
in twain.

And then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for His
praise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse's son hangs untouched above his
grave. But for him death was God's last, best answer to his prayer, "O
Lord, open Thou my lips;" and as that cold but most loving hand
unclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the
choirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving
breaking from his immortal lips, "Thou hast put a new song into my
mouth," whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and
pain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and
left to be the solace and treasure of all generations!

INDEX.

PSALM PAGE

iii.