68}

And again:

As for me, I will behold Thy presence in righteousness:
And when I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.
(Ps. xvii. 16.)

So again, in that profoundly spiritual Psalm, the 73rd, the writer
turns from the puzzles of the moral order and the misgivings of his own
heart, and seeks refuge in the abiding fact of his personal fellowship
with God. He finds _there_ the assurance not only that the wicked will
pass away "like a dream when one awaketh," but that the righteous is
undying:

My flesh and my heart faileth:
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

Such Psalms as these find their full meaning only in the light of
Easter. The Resurrection of Christ was no mere portent or isolated
miracle; it was strictly in line with all that man had risen up to in
his highest spiritual intuitions in the past. It is true, in a much
fuller sense than that of accomplishing a mere prediction, that Christ
"rose again, according to the Scriptures."

This essential immortality of the righteous, through his union with
God, is implied throughout {69} the Easter Psalms, especially in the
118th (part of "the Egyptian Hallel"), words which must have been
recited by the Lord and His Apostles at the Passover Supper, in the
very imminence of the Passion.

The voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous: ...
I shall not die, but live:
And declare the works of the Lord.

Ascension Day completes the triumph of man raised to immortality
through his union with God in Christ. It inaugurates the
accomplishment of man's ideal, in the eternal mediatorial reign of
Christ as the Head of the human race. The appointed Psalms are again
most suggestive. The 8th sings triumphantly of the supremacy of man
over all the works of God, man crowned "with glory and worship." The
15th and the 24th describe the moral perfections which are the
condition of this exaltation:

Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle:
Or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill?
Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life:
And doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth
from his heart.
* * * * *

{70}

Whoso doeth these things:
Shall never fall.
(xv.)

The 21st and the 108th look back to the promises to David and to the
typical character of his wars and victories. They shew that these
events were part and parcel