still the characteristic turning away from self
and personal humiliation to the thought of the dishonour done to God
Himself. For to the faithful the honour of God is dearer than their
own liberty or life.

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name:
O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for Thy Name's sake.

The 83rd belongs perhaps to an earlier age. It seems to recall the
great confederacy of the nations against Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx.).
The Psalmist cries out to God against the {91} gathering hordes who
have no interest in common, except their mutual hatred of Israel and
Israel's God. It is a sorry catalogue: Edomites, Ishmaelites,
Moabites, Hagarens; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistines, Tyrians,
Assyrians:

"All the warring hosts of error
Sworn against her, move as one."

But the hot indignation which prays that this rabble of malice and
mischief may be swept like the stubble before the whirlwind, consumed
like the dry grass before the mountain fires, is yet tempered with a
higher thought. Defeat may lead to conversion and to a better mind:

Make their faces ashamed, O Lord:
That they may seek Thy Name.

Once again, the 102nd Psalm breathes out the pathetic appeal of the
exile, or the lonely, friendless watcher over the desolations of the
holy city. His heart is "smitten down and withered like grass"; he has
"eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled his drink with weeping."
But his fasting and tears are not for himself; there is the eternal
background of hope; God is unchanging; future generations {92} will
know again the happiness of worship and service--his sorrow is for Zion:

Thy servants think upon her stones:
And it pitieth them to see her in the dust.

Do not experiences and prayers like these come home to Christians with
a curious sense of familiarity? Is not this tragedy of faith repeated
in every age? In every Christian generation it has been "given" to the
Beast to war against the saints and overcome them (Rev. xiii. 7). His
undying malice has too often been seconded by the impotence, the lack
of unity, the fear of truth and its consequences, which have marred the
Christian defence.

We find eloquent illustrations of this unceasing, heart-sickening
warfare in such moments of history as that in the fourth century, when
"the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian";[3] in the
seventh and eighth, when the armies of Isla