Psalms 27:8

When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

A sweet echo

One of the sweetest marvels of nature is “the echo.” It is nature’s poetry that charms and captivates the mind. Standing, some years back, on a lone mountain side, with giant peaks towering up above on every side, I broke the intense silence with a shout. There was a moment’s pause, and then those silent mountains found tongue. From side to side a very artillery was maintained. Echo awoke echo, and a second only gave birth to a third. But there is another echo--that of the heart; the soul’s response to the call of God. We have such in the text. Let us consider--

I. the call.

1. It is one we often find it very difficult to hear. For the world is not as a silent glen, or lone mountain side, but a very Babel of confused noises.

2. Still it is not impossible to hear it. The ear rightly attuned will hear it, clear as a silver bell, ringing out its note above the surrounding din of business and common cares.

3. But some have never yet heard it, and those who do, hear it in different degrees. There are some persons naturally calm and contemplative, that “dwell with Mary at the Master’s feet,” and who seem ever to hear it; but there are others, anxious to hear it, but the very clatter of their preparations fill the ear to the exclusion of the Saviour’s Word.

4. It comes to us by different instrumentalities. By His Word. The means of grace--the Sabbath especially. The Mercy Seat. The manifold goodness of God in His providence. By trials. By the influence of the Spirit.

II. the echo.

1. It is one of the heart. “My heart said,” etc. You may read the Word, utter the prayer, keep the Sabbath, and yet there be no heart in it. Like a waxwork figure moved by machinery, you may nod, and smile, and lift up your hands, and yet not have one iota of life. Let us ask how has it been with us in the past?

2. Now let me give some closing counsels. Be ever listening to hear the voice. When you hear it give the echo at once. “When Thou saidst, Seek ye,” etc., “My heart said,” etc. When the voice says to you, “Pray,” pray at once. Rest assured you shall, if you seek the Lord’s face, never be disappointed. “I have never said to the seeking seed of Jacob, Seek ye My face in vain.” (A. G. Brown.)

The voice and the echo

I. the reference.

1. How brief it is. Though a text of but four syllables, it is in itself a Bible; so much is in it, and this much so good. Plainly faith does not require the complete revelation of the Bible to warrant and sustain its exercise. In general, it is not a long passage, but a short) sentence, like the point of an arrow striking the mark, or the edge of a sword cutting through and through by a single blow, that does it.

2. How precise it is. It admits no vagueness, no ambiguity, no uncertainty.

3. How affectionate it is. What condescension, benignity, loving-kindness.

II. the response.

1. How practical it is. It does what is required--readily, hopefully.

2. How simple it is. Voice answering to voice, heart echoing to heart.

3. How cordial it is.

III. the connection between them.

1. The reference elicits the response.

2. The response fulfils the reference. (E. A. Thomson.)

The Divine call and the human response

I. the divine call. It suggests to us--

1. The spiritual condition of unsaved men. They are estranged from God. They have built up between themselves and their Creator an icy cold barrier of heartless indifference, or else an almost impregnable wall of dearly loved sins. This separation is the fruitful cause of all possible misery and destitution, for there is no hell of woe that can give greater pain to human spirits than the consciousness of their apostacy from God.

2. The condescending grace of God in His dealings with unsaved men. He speaks to them, makes gracious overtures, and sends them a message, tender with sympathy, rich in mercy, and pregnant in the promise and potency of a pure and vigorous spiritual life. S. The nature of true religion. It is the heart of man coming back to God.

II. the human response.

1. Personal. In some things men move in masses without any realization of individual responsibility. It is not so with this momentous question. There is no rest for the sin-troubled heart until it personally turns to God. Personal submission is needed to put our hearts into a right condition for receiving Divine grace. Personal faith brings to our hearts the saving and sanctifying influence of the Spirit. And personal love to the Divine Father is the only guarantee that our peace is made with Him.

2. Prompt. Procrastination is full of danger, it is not only the thief of time, but also the rock of peril upon which many good-intentioned souls have struck and perished. The Ancients taught a solemn truth when they represented Time as an old man with wings on his shoulders, a scythe and hour-glass in his hands, and on his wrinkled forehead one lock of hair, all bald behind, and therefore offering no hope to us when it is past. Let us then seize time by the forelock.

3. Explicit. Men will do anything rather than make an uncompromising surrender. They will turn over a new leaf, sign the pledge, attend the sanctuary, and even take the sacrament. All these are good and right in their place, but they are no substitute for salvation, they cannot set the heart at peace. Any one who tries to make them a compound between God and his own conscience will fail.

4. Sincere. It came from the heart. It is related of a Greek musician that his touch was so delicate and his ear so quick that he would often play a tune on his harp that only his own ear could catch. Whether fact or fable, this incident illustrates God’s intercourse with men’s hearts. You hear the preacher, but he does not hear your response to his appeal. God always hears it. He is speaking to you now, and His ear is close to your heart, listening to what it will say. (W. Wheeler.)

A call and a response

We have here a report of a brief dialogue between God and a devout soul. The psalmist tails us of God’s invitation and of his acceptance, and on both he builds the prayer that the face which he had been bidden to seek, and had sought, may not be hid from him.

I. God’s merciful call to us all. “Seek ye My face.” Have we to search for that as if it were something hidden, far off, lost, and only to be recovered by our effort? No! a thousand times. For the seeking to which God mercifully admits us is but the turning of the direction of our desires to Him, the recognition of the fact that His face is more than all else to men, the recognition that whilst there are many that say, “Who will show us any good?” and ask the question impatiently, despairingly, vainly, they that turn the seeking into a prayer, and ask, “Lord I lift Thou the light of Thy countenance upon us,” will never ask in vain. By the very make of our own spirits He calls us to Himself. You remember the old story of the Saracen woman who came to England seeking her lover, and passed through these foreign cities with no word upon her tongue that could be understood of those that heard her except the name that she sought. Ah! That is how men wander through the earth, strangers in the midst of it. They cannot translate the cry of their own hearts, but it means, “God--my soul thirsteth for Thee”: and the thirst bids us seek His face. He summons us by all the providences and events of our changeful lives. Our sorrows, by their poignancy, our joys, by their incompleteness and their transiency alike, callus to Him in whom alone the sorrows can be soothed and the joys made full and remain. Our duties, by their heaviness, call us to turn ourselves to Him, in whom alone we can find the strength to fill the role that is laid upon us, and to discharge our daily tasks. But, most of all, He summons us to Himself by Him who is the angel of His face, “the effulgence of His glory, and the express image of His person.”

II. the devout soul’s response. The psalmist takes the general invitation and converts it into an individual one, to which he responds. God’s “ye” is met by his “I.” The psalmist makes no hesitation or delay--“When Thou saidst. .. my heart said to Thee.” The psalmist gathers himself together in a concentrated resolve of a fixed determination--“Thy face will I seek.” That is how we ought to respond. Make the general invitation thy very own. God summons all, because He summons each. Again, the psalmist “made haste, and delayed not, but made haste” to respond to the merciful summons. Ah! how many of us, in how many different ways, fall into the snare “by and by “I” not now”; and all these days that slip away whilst we hesitate gather themselves together to be our accusers hereafter. It is poor courtesy to show to a merciful invitation from a bountiful host to say, “After I have looked to the oxen I have bought, and tested them, and measured the field that I have acquired; after I have drunk the sweetness of wedded life with the wife that I have married, then I will come. But, for the present, I pray thee, have me excused.” And that is what we all are doing, more or less. The psalmist gathered himself together in a fixed resolve, and said, “I will!” That is what we have to do. A languid seeker will not find; an earnest one will not fail to find.

III. A prayer built upon both the invitation and the acceptance. “Hide not Thy face far from me.” That prayer implies that God will not contradict Himself. His promises are commandments. If He bids us seek He binds Himself to show. His veracity, His unchangeableness, are pledged to this, that no man who yields to His invitation will be baulked of his desire. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The accepted call

I. God’s call. “Seek ye My face.”

1. It teaches that peace with God is not a human device, but a Divine revelation. “Thou saidst.” True religion originates with God.

2. Indicates what religion is. “Seek ye My face,”--not My Church, or Book, or ministers, but Me.

3. It implies estrangement. “Seek.”

4. That estrangement may cease.

II. man’s reply. “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

1. Personal. “I.”

2. Prompt. “When Thou saidst.”

3. Emphatic. “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

4. Thorough. Reply, almost an echo of call. David practically said, “I mean just what God means.”

5. It came from right place. “My heart said.” Lips lie, heart never. (T. Kelly.)

The call and the response

I. the call that comes to you--“Seek ye My face.” Many reasons urge you to ‘listen to this call. Amongst the chief is--

1. The character and condescension of the Saviour from whom the call comes.

2. The Divine love that prompts 2:8. It is the assurance of blessing--Divine, precious, abundant, everlasting. How poor is the mirth of the prodigal, how soon it all fades I There is no blessing for such until they come back to God.

II. the response.

1. It is a true response. It is the very echo of the call, like the echo of a trumpet amid mountains.

2. It is personal.

3. Hearty.

4. Immediate.

5. Decided--“Thy face will I seek.”

Conclusion--

1. What if you do not seek God?

2. What if you do? (J. P. Chown.)

The echo

Ready response to God’s call is--

1. The natural duty of man.

2. But is nevertheless the work of the Holy Spirit.

3. And is an evidence of election unto salvation. Now concerning this spirit of response to God--

I. its too frequent absence. In so many and for so long, though at times it has been disturbed. For Christ stands at the door, and knocks. Beware of resisting God.

II. its cultivation. It should be our constant spirit, prompt to obey whenever God calls. See call of apostles (Luke 5:1). See, too, the personality of David’s reply, and hearty likewise. And there was full resolve in it. Such echo of God’s word is very sweet, like the echo of music amongst the hills.

III. its special outlet. The seeking of God’s face. God is over calling us to this. Let our days be more filled up with this blessed work.

IV. its reward, The margin reads--“My heart said unto Thee, Let my face seek Thy face.” It means that the reward of such seeking is blessed communion with God, the joy of Eden restored to us. Our first parents had communion with God, which they lost by sin; but it is now more than restored to us in grace. (C. H, Spurgeon.)

Seeking the face of God

There appears to be a good deal of autobiography in this psalm, David in his backward glance fixes on two objects. The past as illumined by God’s favour, and the past as his own wherein he strove to love and serve God. And from both he draws encouragement to hope that God will be the same, and he humbly resolves that He will be,

I. God’s voice to the heart--“Seek ye My face,” The expression is of course figurative. But the most spiritual conception of God is reached, not by a pedantic scrupulosity in avoiding material representations, but by an unhesitating use of these, and the remembrance that they are representations. The unsubstantial abstraction of the metaphysical God, described only in terms as far removed as may be from human analogies, for fear of being guilty of “anthropomorphism,” never helped or gladdened any human soul. It is but a bit of mist through which you can see the stars shining. But the God whom we need and can know and love, comes to us in descriptions Cast in the mould of humanity, and loses none of His purely Spiritual essence thereby. “The face of the Lord” means the same as “the name of the Lord,” and both mean the manifested character of God. If these things be true, then we may learn what it is to “seek His face.” We do not need long and painful search, as for something lost in dim darkness, in order to find the sun. We do not need to seek the sun with lanterns, nor to grope after God if haply we may find Him. A man need only come out of his dark hiding-place to find it. If he will but turn his face to the light, the glory will brighten his features and make glad his eyes. And, in like manner, to seek God’s face is no long, dubious search, nor is He hard to be found. Endeavour, then, to keep vivid the consciousness of that face as looking always in on you, like the solemn frescoes of the Christ which Angelico painted on the walls of his convent cells, “that each poor brother might feel his Master ever with him.” Make Him your companion, and then, though you may feel the awe of the thought, “Thou hast set our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance,” you will find a joy deeper than the awe, and learn the blessedness of those, sinful though they may be, who walk in the full brightness of that face.

II. the heart’s echo to the voice of God. “My heart said unto Thee, Thy face,” etc. Immediate, as the thunder to the lightning, the answer follows the invitation. And it needs to be so. If we delay the response it is apt never to be made at all. The first notes of the Divine voice have more persuasive power than after the heart has become familiar with them, even as the first song of the thrush in spring, that breaks the long wintry silence, has a sweetness all its own. The echo answers as soon as the mother-voice ceases. But too many of us hesitate and delay. The only safety, the only peace lies in prompt obedience and in an immediate answer. There is also brought out here very plainly the complete correspondence between the Divine command and the devout man’s resolve. Word for word the invitation is repeated in the answer. Like the sailor at the tiller, he answers his captain’s directions by repeating them. “Port,” says the officer. “Port it is,” says the steersman. “Seek ye My face.” “Thy face will I seek.” The correspondence in words means the correspondence in action and the thorough-going obedience. How unlike the half-and-half seeking, the languid search, as of people listlessly looking-for something which they do not much expect to find, and do not much care whether they find or no, which characterizes so many so-called Christians! They are seekers after God, are they? Yes, with less eagerness than they would seek for a sovereign if it had fallen from their fingers into the mud. Note, too, the firm and decisive resolution shining through the very brevity of the words. In the original the brevity--three words only--is yet more marked. Fixed resolves need short professions. A Spartan brevity, as of a man with his lips tightly linked together, is fitting for such purposes. Waverers and the feeble willed try to brace themselves up by talking, making a fence of words around them. But if we are quite resolved, we shall, for the most part, say little about it. What a contrast is this clear resolve to the indecisions and hesitations so common amongst us! The ship heads now one way and now another, and that not because we are wisely tacking--that is to say, seeking to reach one point by widely-varying courses--but because our hand is so weak on the helm that we drift, wherever the wash of the waves and the buffets of the wind carry us. Further, we have in this heart’s echo to the voice of God the conversion of a general invitation into a personal resolution. The call is, “Seek ye.” The answer is, “I will seek.” That is what we have all to do with God’s words. He sows His invitations broadcast; we have to make them our own. He sends out His mercy for a world; we have to claim each our portion. He issues His commands to all; I have to make them the law for my life. The stream flows deep and broad from the throne of God, and parts into four heads, the number expressive of universal diffusion throughout the world; but I have to bring it into my own garden by my own trench, and to carry it to my own lip in my own cup.

III. the heart’s cry to God founded on both the divine voice and the human echo.

“Hide not Thy face far from me” is clearly a prayer built upon both these elements in the past. Both give me the right to pray thus, and are pledges of the answer. As to the former, “Thou saidst, Seek ye My face.” You may have exactly as much of God as you want and desire. Then “seek His face evermore,” and your life will be bright because you will walk in the light of His countenance always. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Face to face with God

The law of creation and of salvation are one, one thing. Both are a process of generation--regeneration. The sun’s face and the earth’s face must be brought together, in full relationship, and then creation is inevitable. So God’s Spirit and man’s spirit being brought face to face, the new creation of the soul is inevitable. The sun says to the planets, “Children”--for they are all children of the sun--“seek ye my face.” The planets reply, “We will; thy face will we seek. We are cold, dreary, bloomless, barren, we will seek thy face.” And forthwith they climb, and climb, a six months’ climb from January to June, to the zenith, to the meeting face to face. What then? All that summer and harvest means follows. It is a parable of the soul’s salvation. But it is only a parable: infinitely greater and more glorious is the summer which results from the direct relationship of the spirit-face of God and the spirit-face of man; the all-giving face of an infinite Creator, Lord, Father, Saviour, and the receiving faces of His sons and daughters. The most god-like centre of all the glory of God is His own human face. It creates all faces, the angels; for the face of an angel is one that has been so long receiving God’s glory that it has become lovely. The face of God is “the express image” of His personality. Your face is not your person, but I see what sort of person you are by your face. Face to face relationship means the exchange of personal thought and feeling, friendship, closest intimacy. All the beauty in the universe comes from the light of God’s face. The face of God, the personal face of the personal God, is the meaning of the universe and man. The power that comes from that we call Christ. And He is in every heart. So that the dear mother in the interior of Africa when she was first told about Christ, said, “Oh, that is the name that I have seen in my dreams, one that loves me and comes to me; the beautiful man of the heavens.” And God says, “Seek ye My face” at the time that our heart is most disposed to hear it. In your sorrow; at death. (J. Pulsford.)

An invitation and reply

We are told here that God spoke to the psalmist and what was his reply, but we have no intimation as to the mode of intercourse: whether God spoke through providential dealings, or through the ordinances of the Church, or by His Spirit. And it does not matter. If there be various methods in and through which God is wont to make Himself audible to the human soul, we may take any or all of them as employed to syllable the words, “Seek ye My face.” As to the mode in which the psalmist replied, nothing need be said in explanation of that; the reply itself is the all important thing. It is a conversation between God and the soul, very brief and with no kind of variety, but full of instruction nevertheless. We will, therefore, endeavour to sift this conversation; not only examining the precise meaning of what God directs and man promises, but searching out, also what may be more incidentally but not less decisively taught. Now observe--

I. that in the reply man does little more than repeat the words of God. God says, “Seek ye My face”; man replies, “Thy face, Lord,” etc. Now the disposition thus distinctly marked is one the want of which is at the root of half the practical unbelief and miserable inconsistencies by which the visible Church is deformed. Men acknowledge the Divine authority of the Scriptures, but hesitate and cavil as to obeying them. What could be more inconsistent and unreasonable? If God speaks and men know and confess it, then what else is there for them but to obey? Nevertheless they do not obey. Even professedly religious men do not. They object, and deliberate, and find excuse; they do anything but obey. Now it is the very opposite of this which we find here. There falls upon the ear--no matter how--a message which David feels to be from God. It is not a message about which there can be no room for question as to its meaning and the manner in which it should be obeyed. But the observable and admirable thing is, that David did not wait to deliberate, but instantly made his resolution upon hearing God’s injunction.

II. observe that God addresses us in plural number, but man’s reply is in the singular. “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Now the individualizing God’s Word, the taking it individually to oneself, as though designed for oneself, and spoken to oneself--this is very closely connected with the whole practice and the whole comfort of religion. For example, the human race is addressed in Scripture as “fallen and depraved”--far gone from original righteousness, inclined only to iniquity and that too continually. Well, so long as you speak to a man as a man, merely as being one of a sinful kind, one whose sinfulness, like the colour of his skin, he has in common with millions around him, he will generally quite complacently meet the accusation. It will hardly touch him. He may confess to the fact, but give in his confession with a smile. When, however, you try to single him out from the mass; when you speak to him like Nathan to David--“Thou art the man!” then he is full of indignation and resentment, and with Hazael of old is ready to exclaim--“Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?” Yet, till a man thus separates himself, takes himself out of the mass--feels and confesses without any regard to his being one of a multitude, “I have gone astray, like a lost sheep,” till then he has nothing of that feeling of being a sinner that will lead to genuine repentance. Oh! it is so easy to join in a general confession; the hard thing is to make the confession individual. And so with the precepts of Scripture. When they are delivered in the plural they can be listened to with great composure. But make the precept individual and personal, then what shrinking there is, what aversion, what refusal! Reduce therefore piety to a personality. The call may be general--“Seek ye”; the answer must be individual--“I will!” No being content with the confession of masses and multitudes! Alone thou must stand in judgment; alone thou must take thy resolution. When Thou saidst, “Seek ye My face,” O Lord, it may have been to the millions that Thy voice was addressed; it may have been by millions that that mighty voice was” heard; but I paused not to know whether these millions would keep silence; whether they would join in one vast refusal, or in one vast consent; at once--on the instant--whatever the millions might determine to do, my heart said unto Thee, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

III. what is it to seek God’s face? The more ordinary signification of the phrase, “the face of God,” is the love and favour of God--“Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant.” “Cause Thy face to shine and we shall be saved.” How much, then, is implied in this simple bidding--“Seek ye My face”! God would have us come back to Himself. Manifold are the methods by which God thus addresses us. But how often His message is heard and refused, and how terrible if this refusal be persisted in! But if obeyed, then how blessed are we! (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The successful seeker

In the former verse David prays, “Hear, O Lord,” etc. Now this verse is a ground of that prayer, for God had said to him, “Seek My face,” and he had replied, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Note--

I. God’s command.

1. God shows Himself to His understanding creature. But why should God bid men seek Him? Because He would have men worship Him, and in order to this God must show him how He will be served. It may be objected that everything proclaims this, to seek God. Though God had not spoken, nor His Word, every creature hath a voice to say, “Seek God.” All His benefits have that voice to say, “Seek God.” Everything hath a voice. We know God’s nature somewhat in the creature, that He is a powerful, a wise, a just God. We see it by the works of creation and providence; but if we should know His nature, and not His will towards us--His commanding will, what He will have us do; and His promising will, what He will do for us--except we have a ground for this from God, the knowledge of His nature is but a confused knowledge; it serves but to make us inexcusable, as in Romans 1:19 it is proved at large. It is too confused to be the ground of obedience, unless the will of God be discovered before; therefore we must know the mind of God.

2. God is willing to be known. God delights not to hide Himself. God stands not upon state, as some emperors do that think their presence diminisheth respect. God is no such God, but He may be searched into. Man, if any weakness be discovered, we can soon search into the depth of his excellency; but with God it is clean otherwise. The more we know of Him, the more we shall admire Him. None admire Him more than the blessed angels, that see most of Him, and the blessed spirits that have communion with Him. Therefore He hides not Himself, nay, He desires to be known; and all those that have His Spirit desire to make Him known.

3. God’s goodness is a communicative, spreading goodness. Two things make us very like God, that much concern this point: to do things freely of ourselves, and to do them far. To communicate goodness, and to communicate it far to many. The greater the fire is, the further it burns; the greater the love is, the further it extends and communicates itself. There are none more like God than those that communicate what good they have to others, and communicate it as far and remote as they can to extend it to many.

4. The ground of all obedience, of all holy intercourse with God, is a spirit of application. Applying the truths of God, though generally spoken, to ourselves in particular, if we do not--as indeed it is the fault of the times to hear the Word of God loosely--we care not so much to hear the Word of God, as to hear the gifts of men. We desire to hear fine things, to increase notions. We delight in them, and to hear some empty creature, to fasten upon a story or some phrases by the bye. Alas I you come here to hear duties and comforts, if you be good, and sentences against you, if you be naught. We speak God’s threatenings to you that will wound you to hell, except you pull them out by repentance. It is another manner of matter to hear than it is took for. “Take heed how you hear,” saith Christ (Luke 8:18). So we had need, for the Word that we hear now shall judge us at the latter day. Thereupon we should labour for a spirit of application, to make a right use of it as we should. For if we do not, we dishonour God and His bounty and give joy to the devil, for the devil rejoiceth when he seeth what excellent things are laid open in the Church of God, in the ministry, what sweet promises and comforts, but here is nobody to take them and lay hold on them; like a table that is richly furnished, and there is nobody comes and takes it. It makes the devil sport, it rejoiceth the enemy of mankind when we lose so great advantage, that we will not apply those blessed truths and make them our own.

II. the obedience to the command. “Thy face, Lord,” etc. I will seek by Thy strength and grace. And this obedience was--

1. Present, at once.

2. Pliable, that of a ready, obedient heart.

3. Perfect and sincere.

4. Openly professed, as Joshua 24:15.

5. Continued, and--

6. Suitable, answerable to the command.

Faith will see light at a little crevice. When it sees an encouragement once, a command, it will soon answer: and when it sees a promise, half a promise, it will welcome it. It is an obedient thing, “the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26). It believes, and upon believing, it goes to God. As the servants of the king of Assyria, they catch the Word presently, “Thy servant Benhadad” (1 Kings 20:32); so faith, it catcheth the Word. (R. Sibbea.)

The answering heart

I. the Lord’s invitation. An invitation--

1. Supremely beneficent.

2. Graciously merciful.

3. Infinitely condescending.

II. the believer’s reply,

1. A wise resolve.

2. A blessed heritage.

3. An eternal privilege In heaven they see His face.

III. THE given opportunity--“When Thou saidst.” This opportunity is--

1. Universal. To all who hear the Gospel.

2. Continuous. From life till death.

3. Varied. Bible, conscience, providence.

4. Unsolicited. God makes the first approach. (Homilist.)

Kind words should awaken kind echoes

Walking one day in the Queen’s Park, Edinburgh, I heard the music of a military band. I could not see the musicians, but the great rocks above me echoed the music, note for note, and one could have thought that the players themselves were hidden there. Now if granite rocks render sweet echoes to sweet music, how much more should our souls respond to the sweet calls of our Saviour’s voice and say, “When Thou saidst unto me, ‘Seek ye My face,’ my heart said unto Thee, ‘Thy face, Lord, will I seek.’” (R. Brewin.)