Psalms 42:2

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

Thirst satisfied

Let us, that we may realize this thirst of the soul, dwell upon the contrast. There are at least four forms of attraction presented to the soul.

I. That of natural beauty. You find a delight as you gaze upon nature. But you are not satisfied.

II. Nor are you, either, with all the forms of men’s ceaseless activity, in which art, genius, or political achievement have expressed themselves--none of these things will ever, can ever, satisfy the soul.

III. Pure intellect, also, notwithstanding the power of delight there is in it, has its limits in this respect. It does not satisfy. Then there is--

IV. The region of the affections, where suns are always glorious, and sunsets only speak of brighter dawn. We have all known it in friend, sweetheart, wife, child, which have called forth the dear expressions of that strong heart that beats in Englishmen. But these dear ones pass away, and we find, as life goes on, that after all in the world of the affections, that old, strange law that pervades one branch of the contrast prevails: affection can stimulate, it can support, it can console, it can delight, it can lead to delirium at moments, but it does not satisfy. And because we are born for eternity, not for a moment, therefore, never, only by the satisfaction of the moral instincts, can this thirst be assuaged. The Ten Commandments, and especially the Gospel, are for this end. Accept a personal Christ, God in Christ, and so may you quench your otherwise unquenchable thirst. (Canon Knox Little.)

God the object of religion

There is scarcely in the Psalter a more touching psalm than this. The writer is probably an exile of the early Assyrian period. He thinks of the blessed past when he worshipped in the Temple, and had his share in “the voice of joy and praise.” But now the cruel heathen taunt him with the insulting question, “Where is thy God?” Hence, he yearns for the presence of God. He is like the thirsty stag panting after the distant water brooks; his inmost being is “athirst for God; yea, even for the living God.” What a strange phrase, the living God. It points to deities who are not alive. The Hebrews thus distinguish the true God from the false gods of the heathen (Psalms 96:5). Heathenism, according to Scripture, is a lie, and the psalmist’s soul thirsted for the living God. And still the soul of man is restless for God. Again and again the human heart has protested against all endeavours to crush the noblest of its aspirations. It wants net pleasures which may degrade, nor philosophies which may disappoint, but “the living God.” And now let us see how this thirst has been dealt with by the great speculative systems which more particularly challenge attention in the present day. And--

I. Materialism. This stands high in the world of thought. It bids us believe only what we can see and smell and taste and touch. It does not concern itself with the origin of the universe, “if it ever had one,” or with what happens to living beings after death. Chemistry can account for all things. Man’s intelligence is as the mass of his brain: this thought is “but the expression of molecular changes in the physical matter of his life, and is impossible without phosphorus; his consciousness is only a property of matter: his virtue, the result of a current of electricity, and it and vice are “products in the same sense as are sugar and vitriol.” Science, it is said, does not need such an hypothesis as God, who does not exist apart from the mind and imagination of man.

2. But where is there anything in all this to satisfy the thirst for God of which in his highest moments man is so conscious? How can that which is purely physical touch the sense which appreciates a moral world? It is a merit of Auguste Comte to have recognized the necessity of some answer; and he tells us that it is our privilege and our business to love, reverence, and worship “a Being, immense and eternal--Humanity.” Not, mark you, a sinless and Divine representative of the race, such as we Christians adore Jesus. Not even an idealized abstraction, which, in the pure realms of thought, might conceivably be separated from the weaknesses inseparable from humanity. But men know man too well to worship him. All history shows that materialism cannot silence the religious yearnings of the soul of man. Robespierre tried, but failed, as all such endeavours must. A nation of Atheists is yet to be discovered. Man is ever feeling after God.

II. Deism: this likewise fails because it reduces God to a mere force: and--

III. Pantheism also, because if God be in everything He is in human crimes as well as in human virtues. To assert God’s presence in His works is one thing; to identify Him with them is another. His omnipresence is a necessary attribute of His Deity; while if He could be identified with nature He would cease to be. If the mystery of life, which attests God’s presence in the natural world, was ever felt in all its awe and its beauty by any human soul, it was felt by the great Augustine. Witness the often quoted passage of the Confessions in which he tells us why nature was in his eyes so beautiful, by telling us how nature had led him up to God. “I asked the earth, and it said: ‘I am not He’; and all that is upon it made the same confession. I asked the sea and the depths, and the creeping things that have life, and they answered: ‘We are not thy God; look thou above us.’ I asked the breezes and the gales; and the whole air, with its inhabitants, said to me: ‘Anaximenes is in error, I am not God.’ I asked the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars: ‘We too,’ said they, ‘are not the God whom thou seekest.’ And I said to all the creatures that surrounded the doors of my fleshly senses, ‘Ye have said to me of my God that ye are not He; tell me somewhat of Him.’ And with a great voice, they exclaimed, ‘He made us.’. .. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” What could He do more in order to convince us that He is not merely a Force or an Intelligence, but a Heart? At the feet of Him who could say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” we understand, and rest upon the certainty, that God is moral as well as intellectual “light, and that in Him is no darkness at all.” When a man’s hold upon this creed is gone, his thoughts fall back, at best, upon the more rudimentary and less adequate ideas of the Godhead; the darker mysteries of the world’s history present themselves with more painful force; and the mind tends inevitably, in the last resort, either to Deism or to Pantheism; to a Deism which just permits God to create, and then dismisses Him from His creation; or to a Pantheism which identifies Him with all the moral evil in the universe, and ends by propagating the worship of new Baals and Ashteroths. But God being really alive, His existence is a fact with which no other fact that the human mind can come to recognize will possibly compare. For nothing that can occupy our thoughts can really compare with it in point of absorbing and momentous-import. Beyond everything else, it must have imperious claims upon the time and thought and working power of every human being who has ever felt, in any serious degree, the unspeakable solemnity of life and death. (Canon Liddon.)

The thirst after God

It has been often said that the Psalms are out of place in our common daily service. Numbers come to church, at least on Sundays, whose minds cannot be especially devout. Yet language is provided for their use which expressed the most fervent longings of the most devout men. Such language may meet, now and then, the aspirations of the private suppliant. Even he must often find the Psalms far above the measure of his thoughts, so high that he cannot attain to them. How, then, can we offer them month after month to an ordinary English congregation, as if they could possibly speak what it was feeling? Complaints of this kind are never to be lightly dismissed. They indicate a sense of the sacredness of words, which we should honour in others and Cry by all means to cultivate in ourselves. Others will say that only believers should use such words: they are false of all others. The unbeliever will only thirst for some portion that will make him forget God. But do not those who call themselves believers know that that estrangement from God, which they know so well how to describe, was once their own experience, and they are liable to its repetition? The feeling, the thirst after God, may then co-exist with another feeling of the very opposite kind. Then deadly enemies dwell very near to each other, and carry on their conflict within him. Do they give themselves credit for anything but being aware of the strife, and knowing where the strength is which may make the better side victorious? If they are calling themselves believers upon some other ground, in some other sense than this, I should wholly dispute the claim which they put forward to be in sympathy with those who trusted in God and thirsted for Him in other days. But if this is the nature and character of their belief, then I do not see how they can possibly exclude any from participation in these prayers and hymns; how they can find fault with the Church for adopting them Into her worship, and giving them, with the most utter indiscrimination, to all her children. In so far as we are occupied with our own special interests, in so far the psalm is alien to us. But where the minister is in union with his congregation, and the members feel that they have relations with each other; it is then that David’s harp gives out its music, and we in this distant land and age can accompany it. It has been the solace of many on sick-beds, because they are longing for fellowship with the Church of God.

I. When he says, as here, “My soul is athirst,” he describes no rare or peculiar state of feeling. It is as common as the thirst of the body. All men have it because they are men. For all seek happiness, though they know not what they mean.

II. The psalmist said, “My soul is athirst for God.” He knew that all men in the nations round him were pursuing gods. Pleasure was a god, wealth was a god, fame was a god. Just what the Jew had been taught was that the Lord his God was one Lord. He was not to pursue a god of pleasure or wealth or fame, nor any work of his own hands or conception of his own mind. For he was made in the image of the God, who was not far from him. Often it seemed as if there were no such God, and the Israelite was met with the taunt, “Where is thy God?” He does not pretend that he is not disturbed by these taunts. All he can do is to ask that if He is, He will reveal Himself. And that he does ask courageously. “I will say unto the God of my strength, Why hast Thou forgotten me? Why go I thus heavily, while the enemy oppresseth me?” And then he was able to say to his vexed soul, “O put thy trust in ,God, for I will yet thank Him, which is the help of my countenance and my God.” What a baptism of fire was this! What a loss of all the privileges of an Israelite, that he might find the ground upon which Israel was standing! For thus he learnt that the thirst for God is the thirst of man. The thirst for happiness means this, ends in this. The thirst of his soul could not be satisfied with anything but Him who both kindles and satisfies the thirst of all human souls.

III. “even for the living God”--so the psalmist goes on. It is no idle addition to the former words. The gods of the heathen were dead gods. They were unable to perform any of the acts of men; could neither see nor feel nor walk. There is a thirst of the soul to create something in its likeness; but the first and deepest thirst is to find in what likeness it is itself created: whence all its living powers are derived. Here, too, the psalmist is, in the strictest sense, the man. The heart and flesh of all human beings, whether they know it or not, are crying out for the living God. And they do give a thousand indications everywhere, that they cannot be contented with dead gods, or with any religious notions and forms which try to put themselves in the place of a living God.

IV. “when shall I come and appear before God?”--so the psalmist ends. It is a bold petition. Should it not rather have been, “O God, prepare me for the day when I must appear before Thee”? So we modify such words. But they uttered them in their plain and simple meaning. It meant, not that they thought there was less need than we think there is, of preparation for meeting God, but that they felt they could not prepare themselves, and that God Himself was preparing them. They held that He prepared them for His appearing by teaching them to hope for it. Oh! why not say to the cities of England, as the prophets of old said to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God”? Why not answer the calumny that we worship a tyrant on the throne of heaven by saying: “This Jesus, the deliverer of captives, the opener of sight to the blind, the friend of the poor, is He in whom we see the Father. For such a Being we know that there is an infinite thirst in your souls, because we have it in our own, and we are even such as you are. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

The religious faculty

I. Its reality. “My soul thirsteth for God.” Do human beings desire God in that intense way? We are all acquainted with some physical sensations of that intensity. We have all felt thirst, or at least we can imagine thirst, which is almost delirious in its desire for water. But is there anything in the human mind in connection with God that is as intense as that? I dare say most of us have had feelings to some fellow-creature that this would hardly be too strong to describe. The absence or the loss of somebody has made us sick with desire, almost sick unto death, whereas the return or the presence of the same person has made us indescribably happy. But are there any feelings in the human heart towards God comparable to these? Is there in human nature a thirst for God to be compared with the thirst for knowledge or the thirst for beauty? Open a book like St. Augustine’s “Confessions,” or “The Imitation of Christ,” and on every page you will find it.

II. Its universality. Wherever men are found they are religious beings. Religion is an element of human life everywhere, and everywhere it is an ideal and a refining element. In fact it is now generally acknowledged that the blossom and flower of every civilization is its religion, and even the most sceptical of men will now sometimes allow that the rational satisfaction of man’s religious nature is, and always will be, the greatest desideratum of the human race.

III. Its manifestations.

1. It is often an intellectual thirst, a thirst for an explanation of the tangle and mystery of existence. You have a classical illustration of that in the Book of Job, where the hero, blinded with the whirl and confusion of things, cries out for a sight of Him who rides upon the storm.

2. Still oftener, perhaps, the thirst for God is a thirst of the heart. All men, especially all women, know in some degree what it is to wish to be loved, to be thought about and cared for. These sentiments, as a rule, find their satisfaction in the domestic affections, and sometimes these are so satisfying as to fill up the whole desire. But this satisfaction is not conceded to all; and from some who have had it, it is taken away; and I rather think that all sometimes feel that they require love larger, more sympathetic, more intelligent and enduring than any human love. In fact it is only the love of God that can thoroughly satisfy the heart.

3. The thirst for God is still oftener, and more conspicuously, a thirst of the conscience. The conscience, although generally a very quiet element in our nature, may become a very clamorous one. It cries out for deliverance from guilt. It cries out for deliverance from temptation and sin. And the reason why Christianity has been such a consolation to mankind is because it has so thoroughly answered. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Under the lashes of conscience, man cries out, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But Christianity answers, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

IV. Its culture. The religions faculty requires constant exercise, if there is to be any comprehensiveness and certainty of religious experience. Are you cultivating your religious faculty, or are you neglecting it, and allowing it to atrophy?

1. The first thing that is needed for the culture of the religious faculty is the careful observance of the Sabbath. The cessation from toil, the preaching of the Gospel, the atmosphere of peace, the influence of united worship, tend to call the religious nature out, encouraging it to revel in its native element.

2. The other opportunity for this kind of culture is prayer. That brings the religious nature nearer to its object than anything else. I remember, when a boy, hearing some one say, “backsliding always begins at the closet door.” (J. Stalker, D. D.)

Wanting God

This psalm is one of those said to be composed for, or by, the Sons of Korach. They are known to have been a family of Levites, whose inheritance lay in the wild country, on the eastern side of Jordan.

I. What did this Levite find that he wanted? Man is a composite being, body, mind, and soul. Presently we discover that body and mind are but the agents of the soul, which is the real self; and the soul’s cry is for God, the living God. This Levite thought that he wanted Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the sacrifices, and the feasts, and the music. But a self-revealing time came, and he found that his soul was really craving for God. His love was athirst for God. Its natural dependence was athirst for God. But the point of the self-discovery is put into the expression, “for the living God.” It was no mere rain-pool, still and stagnant, round which he saw those gazelles gathering. It was the fresh, living stream. As they drank, it flowed fast, cool and refreshing. They were living waters. He found he could satisfy his cravings with no mere knowledge of God, no mere teachings about God. He craved for personal contact. He wanted personal relations. To be sure that God lived, in the sense of being active, interested, really concerned in his concerns.

II. When did this Levite find out that he wanted God? It was not brought home to him while engaged in the Temple services. In some sense God’s service stood in front of God. It came to him when he was away from his usual scones, and when he was placed in unusual circumstances. Everything around him was suggestive of peaceful, religious meditation. It was all so wild, so free, so open. It was all so quiet. The routine of life prevents our troubling about the thirsting of the soul, but the routine of life never allays the thirst.

III. How this Levite responded to the awakened thirst for God. That thirst drove him to the hill-top. It always urges a man to seek loneliness, privacy, the silences of nature. The quenchings of the thirst come in the soul-communion with God, in openness to God, in conscious kindness with God, in holy joy in Him. And then awakens a new and intenser interest in all the means of peace. God waits to meet our thirst. “He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with good.” (Robert Tuck, B. A.)

Thirsting for God

Taken in its original sense, the words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call religious depression. But I venture to take them in a wider sense than that. It is not only Christian men who are east down, whoso souls “thirst for God.” It is not only men upon earth whose souls thirst for God. All men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs.

I. There is in every man an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God, and that is the state of nature. Experience is the test of that principle. And the most superficial examination of the facts of daily life, as well as the questioning of our own souls, will tell us that this is the leading feature of them--a state of unrest.

II. There is A conscious longing, imperfect, but answered; and that is the state of grace--the beginning of religion in a man’s soul. If it be true that there are, as part of the universal human experience, however overlaid and stifled, these necessities, the very existence of the necessities affords a presumption, before all evidence, that, somehow and somewhere, they shall be supplied. If I, made by God who knew what He was doing when He made me, am formed with these deep necessities, with these passionate longings,--then it cannot but be that it is intended that they should be to me a means of leading me to Him, and that there they should be satisfied.

III. There is a perfect longing perfectly satisfied; and that is heaven. We shall not there be independent, of course, of constant supplies from the great central Fulness, any more than we are here. Thirst, as longing, is eternal; thirst, as aspiration after God, is the glory of heaven; thirst, as desire for more of Him, is the very condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its blessedness. Let me put two sayings of Scripture side by side, “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God”--“Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue.” There be two thirsts, one, the longing for God, which, satisfied, is heaven; one, the longing for cessation of the self-lit fires, and for one drop of the lost delights of earth to cool the thirsty throat, which, unsatisfied, is hell. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The soul’s need and God’s nature

Men like Homer and Dante in secular literature, men like the psalmists in the Bible, take a single image, choose a forcible metaphor, and by their use of these, teach some bold scheme of human life and character, or unveil some hidden fact of human destiny. Now such a scheme of human character, involving at least a hint of human destiny, with abundant and fruitful consequences, is to be found in the text.

I. A characteristic need of the soul. We all sufficiently know what is meant by “the soul.” What, then, are its necessities?

1. The desire to know. See the curiosity of the child, so keen, so active, so simple, that you and I, in the enervating languor of later life, might well wish we had it back again. What is that desire to know concerned about? Surely the enigma of our being, of the world, of that which is around us, in us, so beautiful, so strange, so startling, yet so real; surely the meaning of this extraordinary, this self-contradictory life--the explanation of this changing scene. It is a clamorous cry which comes from, which proclaims abroad, a need of man.

2. But close upon the heels of curiosity there treads an eager thrilling sense of aspiration, not unmixed with awe. Who has not stood upon the hills at sunset and longed with a vague, wild, passionate longing to pass beyond the bounding clouds.

3. And how, as years go on, we are conscious of the passion of regret which rises as we gaze behind, athwart the receding years? Why is it that, in spite of all our reasoning, we still persist in clothing those early days of earliest childhood with a life which is not all their own? That field, that flower, that corner of the street, that dear old house, that well-known room--how much gladder, sweeter, better, as we say, than such things, such places howl Why is it, this sweet, this sad regret? You will agree with me, whatever else it may be, at least it is a clamorous cry. And all these cries of the creature--this curiosity, so strong, so keen--this awful aspiration, soaring beyond the stars--and this regret so deep, so passionate--they gather up in one wild wail of need. Oh, cynic though you be, careless though you be--nay, indifferent or hostile though you be to serious thought--tell me what need finds utterance in their voices? Is it not the same, the world-wide, world-old thought of the poor Judaean exile on the wild Abarim hills?--“My soul is athirst for God, for the living God.” Ah! this eager, unsatisfied humanity, what cries it for but Him!

II. Can that cry be answered? IS it heard? does any answer come? I am told in Revelation that there is a God, supreme in power, of essential spotless holiness, the Absolute of Perfection, the Changeless in Beauty, comprehending thus in Himself, it would seem, all imagined or imaginable objects of the desiring mind. Is not that enough? Strange creatures that we are, it is not. You and I want to know, nearer, more precisely His nature and His character. For you and I are each possessors of a mysterious gift. We want to know, and till we know we cannot rest. That gift is the mystery of life, and it makes the little lad whom you and I met wandering half-clothed and ill-fed and uncared-for an object of more arresting interest than the savage mystery of the wild Atlantic. “Is there a further cry?” I think there is. If there be one thing with which you surely must be, with which I certainly am impressed, it is our own, our astonishing individuality. To each, every truth of the Christian creed has its own abiding import thence. “What matters it to me”--so every one of you may say--“if though all in this congregation each find the satisfaction of his wants, I yet miss mine?” Whatever be the special facts of your life and mine, we are all met, the paths of all are traversed, by one ghastly spectre, and that spectre is our individual sin. Sin! You have your own, not mine, not another’s. Does one sin hold me down? Then the longing of my better self is to be delivered. Who can do it? Who? I ask who? I open the pages of the Gospel story, and straight I come across Jesus Christ. A startling figure! An unrivalled picture! None other like that in history. Julius Caesar? They wrote a powerful monograph about him the other day, and at the close drew a parallel between him and Christ. It is difficult surely for any one to avoid disliking in it the bad taste, even should he not shrink from it as a kind of blasphemy. The conqueror of Gaul was indeed a striking figure. But how unlike that other! “Athirst for God.” If so, thank God the Father for His love, for indeed He loves you; honour the bleeding wounds whence flowed the precious blood; praise the eternal Spirit, through whom the sacrifice was offered, and by whom you are sanctified. Yes, glory be to the God who was, and is, and is to come, who hath loved us with eternal love, who gives us--the way-worn, the weary--peace in believing. (Canon Knox Little.)

From man to God

Contrast this with a passage in Miss Martineau’s autobiography, where she tells us that, having got rid of the last remnants of her old beliefs, she felt as if a weight were removed: to use her own figure, as the faded rose recovers its freshness when relieved of the pressure of the atmosphere by being placed under the bell glass of an air-pump, so did her spirits open out when no longer oppressed by the overshadowing presence of a higher Power. With all thought of God gone, she could breathe freely, and find herself at home in the vast universe. The contrast is striking, suggestive, affecting. In the one case, yearning for God; in the other, relief through being able to say, “There is no God.” Can it be, then, that the modern Atheists are shaking off a nightmare, and that the psalmist’s thirst for God was simply a disease incidental to the childhood of the human race? Our answer is that whatever difficulties may lie on the Theistic side, those on the Atheistic are immeasurably greater. Let us begin with a definition. We mean by God, no misty abstraction, no attenuated personality, but the Will which purposes and performs, the Fountain and Administrator of law; also the Love within which all life is embraced. He is the God with whom Enoch walked, of whom David sang, before whom Elijah stood. Now we remark--

I. Moments of atheism are known by most men. Who has not neared that bottomless gulf and breathed the malaria which hangs over it? But this was temporary, a passing phase, which we met and mastered. The clouds broke, the light of morning dawned. Now, which condition was the state of health? That of Atheism or Faith? In the one did we feel as she did whose sad words we have quoted; or was it in the other that we felt that soundness and sanity were come to us again? Can, then, that which acts thus healthfully be nothing but a baneful poison? The Truth which seems so essential to the soul’s health, has it no basis in reality? Is it a lie? And, if so, are lies so medicable? Who can believe it?

II. Moments of moral weakness--these, too, we all have known. But experience says that, in the very greatest emergency, let the thought of God come in, and virtue in her utmost peril is secure. Can that thought, then, be false? Or it may be duty distresses us. Failure takes the heart out of us. But the assurance, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” heartens us again. But if there be no God, this belief is a falsehood. True, we are greatly blessed by this belief in mind, in heart, in spirit, and yet, on the Atheistic creed, we owe all to a cheat. And we may ask, What is virtue when it is not fed from this root? How apt it is to degenerate into a cold calculation of profit and loss, and to have for soul Pride instead of Self-surrender. Only belief in the living God can give to it its real beauty and charm. Whence, without such belief, could come the light and warmth under whose quickening influence its blossoms open, and its fruit grows mellow? Does virtue, indeed, owe all her choicest comeliness to the arctic darkness of a lie? And what would become of duty to our fellows were faith in the living God gone? What would become of charity and all her tender ministries? who will promise her continuance in well-doing in spite of ingratitude, and scorn and persecution? Is, then, that which does preserve her and make her such a blessing due to some strange delusion only?

III. Moments of inspiration. For there are times when we are uplifted beyond ourselves, and reverence and trust and love kindle into a consuming fire. Would that such moments were oftener and more abiding. But whenever they come they are always associated with God. Are we, then, duped during these seasons of exalted enjoyment? Are we believing a lie? A harmonious life, also, such as those live “with whom abide the melodies of the everlasting chimes,” seems impossible without vigorous belief in God. The just live by faith. But what if that be false?

IV. There are moments of trial and calamity. At such times have we not been saved by trust in Him who is “a very present help in trouble”? Is this, too, a dream? Was there no heart to respond, no hand to bind up?” Nothing”--so says one” but the infinite Pity is sufficient for the infinite Pathos of human life.” But is there no such Pity? It is the age of Pessimism, and men are asking, “Is life worth living?” But who are they who ask? Not the poor, decent, hard-working, God-fearing man, but lounging cynics at West End Clubs. No, we believe in God the Father. If that be dream, let me dream. (Thomas G. Rose.)

When shall I come and appear before God?--

Appearing before God. Appearance before God here and hereafter

These words express--

I. Firm belief in the especial presence of god in the ordinances of public worship. We are always in God’s sight, but He is especially near in the sanctuary. These ordinances have this for their great end, to bring us near God. And Christians have found it so. Therefore--

1. Guard against hypocrisy in worship. God is there. We are careful how we appear there to our fellow-men. Be so in regard to God.

2. Our hope of good in worship must have the presence of God with us. Of. 2 Samuel 14:32.

3. What thanks are due to the Lord Jesus Christ who hath made way for our appearance before God.

4. What a blessing to have many houses of God in one nation.

II. An earnest longing after divine ordinances.

1. How little of this there is amongst man.

2. How well it is to have such desire.

3. What unhappy clogs these fleshly, sinful bodies are to the mind. But there is a blessed assembly of better worshippers above. Awake our faith and desire to join them. (Isaac Watts, D. D.)

Appearance before God hereafter

There are two such appearances.

I. At the judgment. At the moment of death our souls appear before God for judgment.

1. Let the sinner therefore consider that, though he may be willing to come to the sanctuary now, then it is under terrible constraint.

2. Here they appear in disguise, as saints; there openly as sinners.

3. They must take notice of God then, though they do not now.

4. There God will be on the throne of judgment; here He is on the throne of grace.

5. Here is frequent appearance, there but once, and is for ever driven from His presence. Let the sinner then examine himself as to his state now.

II. In glory in heaven. What a difference for the Christian between then and now.

1. Now he is one of a mixed assembly, then all will be holy.

2. Now he is among a few who worship God, but then amongst millions.

3. Now we worship for preparation, there for enjoyment.

4. Now, imperfectly; there, with complete worship.

5. Now, with many discouragements; then, with everlasting consolations. May we never be missing there. (Isaac Watte, D. D.)