Psalms 65:9

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it.

The Divine visitations

I. God’s visit to the earth in his providence. It is to this visit that our text immediately refers: “Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it.” It was not to cast fire upon it that the Lord came. It would not have been strange had He done that; but there is enough of fire in the composition of the globe to burn it to a coal, only the Lord waters it from His chambers, and keeps down the flames by casting showers of water upon them.

1. He visits the earth to soften its heart towards man.

2. He visits the earth to bring down the blessings upon it. 3 He visits the earth to assist it to serve man. The Lord blesseth the increase of the earth, so that one man can raise enough of corn to support scores of others, who in their turn serve him in some other way. The earth is full of His riches.

II. God’s visit to the earth in His salvation. This is the great visit to us. But for this visit it would have scarcely been worthy of the God of love to visit us in His providence.

1. He comes on this visit without being invited.

2. The earth was armed against God when He came on this visit.

3. The earth is the only place that He visits in the character of a Saviour.

4. Of all God’s visits, this is the one that cost Him most.

5. Of all the visits God has ever made, this is the one that will redound most to His glory.

III. God’s visit to the earth in judgment.

1. Although there are many things concerning this visit which have not been revealed to us, we know that He will come with terrible majesty. He will not humble Himself, neither will He be humbled by any one else “at that day.” He will be accompanied by a glorious throng. “Ten thousands of His saints.” “All the holy angels with Him.”

2. His object in coming will be to “reckon” with His servants. We know not whether He will “reckon” with the sun when giving it liberty; but I know that He will reckon with me, and that He will reckon with you.

3. The chief thing in view to be done then, will be to gather His subjects together, to glorify them openly, and to take them home with Him. He, too, will be for ever glorified in His saints. (D. Roberts, D. D.)

Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God.

The river of God

A stream whose sources are hidden in the bosom of the eternal hills, which is fed with the pure snows of heaven, a simple mountain rill first, then an impetuous torrent gathering volume as it descends foaming and eddying, and sweeping trees and rocks down in its course; then a broad river, rolling, now through wooded meadow land or sandy desert, now forced into a narrow and deep channel by jutting rocks, and leaping down in cataracts; holding its course now straight towards its goal, and now meandering and returning upon itself, seeming even to retrograde to the unobservant eye, receiving ever and again on the right hand and on the left fresh tributaries which drain the far-off hills on either side; fertilizing the pastures and corn lands, purifying and watering towns and villages, bearing on its bosom the precious merchandise of many peoples, giving life and vigour and joy to men; but with all this, whether flowing by crowded cities or desolate wastes, whether spreading into shallow marshes or imprisoned between barriers of rock, whether winding its flooded way over level plains, or rushing impetuously onward and forming a straight channel through all interposing obstacles, still pressing forward, ever forward with its growing volume of waters, with its increasing freight of treasures and of men, to the far-off distant, boundless ocean, there to lose itself and be absorbed into its kindred element. In this description I have not used a single word which might not apply to one of the great rivers of the earth, flowing from the Alps, or the Andes, or the Himalayas; yet throughout I have had before my mind, and perhaps I may have suggested to your minds, a heaven-descended river far mightier than this, rising from beneath the throne of God, flowing down, not without many vicissitudes, but still in triumphant progress and with ever-increasing volume, through the ages, till at length it shall lose itself in the ocean of eternity, when the knowledge of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Such a stream is the Church of God, the Church of the Patriarchs, the Church in Egypt, the Church of the Wilderness, the Church of the Promised Land, the Church in Babylon, the Church of the Restoration, the Church of the Dispersion, and last of all, when the fulness of time has come, the Church of Christ.

I. The continuity of the stream. The missionary spirit, like everything God-like in man, presses forward, acts for the future, hopes for the future, lives in the future, but it draws strength and refreshment from the experience, the examples, the accumulated power and wisdom of the past. Nay, just in proportion as we are animated by this reverence for the past, as we acknowledge our obligations to it, as we feel our connection with it; in short, as we realize this idea of continuity in the Church of Christ, in the same degree will the true missionary spirit--wise, zealous, humble, self-denying, enlightened, enterprising, innovating, in the best sense--because conservative in the best sense--prevail. The Church of Christ is a tree souring upward to heaven, spreading its branches far and wide, but its roots are buried far below the surface in a dark antiquity. Christian men, above all, Christian missionaries, are the heirs of all the ages.

II. The course of the river in its vicissitudes. The present time is confessedly a crisis fraught with manifold anxieties. If there are many bright gleams--and are there not many?--it is no less true that dark clouds overhang the horizon, threatening at any moment to deluge the Church of Christ. At such a crisis, what lessons does the image of the river, interpreted by the history of the past, suggest? Do they tend to dismay or to encouragement, to despair or to hope? To this question there is one clear and decisive answer. The river has its eddies and its back currents; it has its retrograde movements and its meandering channels, when it seems to recede even from its goal; it buries itself perhaps underground, or it loses itself in marshy swamps; it is hemmed in amid rocky heights, intrusive boundaries, which threaten to close in upon it and obstruct its course for ever. If we saw only one reach of the river, we should prophesy its failure in reaching its ultimate destination; but we know that despite all obstruction, despite all treacherous appearances, it must flow onward and downward and empty itself into the ocean. Whatever partial aberrations there may be, its general course is the same. This is the law of its being, and so also with the Church of God. We ought to know, and we ought to feel, independent of history, that the truth cannot perish; that the Church of God cannot fail. This is a spiritual law as the other was a physical law. It must survive, it must flow ever onward and onward till it reaches the ocean of the eternal truth.

III. How is this stream fed? What accessions does it receive? What are its tributaries? From all quarters of the heavens the streams fall into the main channels, fall direct from lofty mountain heights, draining here broad tablelands, there flowing amid barren rocks and rolling meadows and extensive plains; from the right hand and from the left they issue to swell the bulk of the rolling tide. But, as they joint the main stream, they betray their separate sources; they have their own colour, their own swiftness, and they seem almost to keep their own channel. At length the fusion is complete, they have mingled their waters in the main stream, they are lost in it; but meanwhile, and this is what I ask you specially to mark, they have communicated to it their own characteristics, their purifying or fertilizing qualities, and thus, strengthening and strengthened, giving something and receiving more, they roll down in one broad, irresistible, ever-flowing stream, bearing on their breast the natives of divers climes and the products of many soils, sweeping their rich argosies of men and treasure onwards towards the one far-off ocean which is their common goal. The tributaries of the mighty river--are we not reminded by these words of another image Under which the same truth is prefigured by psalmist and prophet, when the nations of the earth gather together from the four winds of heaven to the Holy City and pour in, each its special products, its choicest gifts as a tribute to the treasury of the God of Israel? One offers its finely woven fabrics, another its elaborately chased vessels and its rich carvings, another its costly perfume, another its ivory, its rare woods, its precious metals. Do we ask what is the counterpart to all this in the history of the Christian Church? Has not each Christian nation on its accession, as it was gathered into the fold of Christ, given some fresh cause of strength to the Church, emphasized some doctrinal truth, or developed some practical capacity, or fostered some religious sentiment, and thus contributed to the more complete understanding, or effective working, of the faith once delivered to the saints? And can we suppose that this mighty stream, this river of God, has no more great tributaries to receive, that all the literary streams which might swell and purify and fertilize its waters, have been dried up? Has the Hindoo, with his calm resignation and quiet endurance, with his quick, subtle intellect; has the Chinese, with his stubborn pertinacity and utter fearlessness of death--have these no rich offering, think you, to present at the altar, no new contribution to the fulness of the Gospel of Christ? (Bp. Lightfoot.)

Thou preparest them corn, when Thou hut so provided for it.--

Corn

The harvest-time is the most delightful of all the seasons of the year. It is the time of fulfilled hopes and realized expectations. Of all the many beautiful sights of this season, the most beautiful and interesting are the cornfields rippling in light and shade, like the waves of a sunset sea, away over valley and upland to the purple shores of the distant hills. They are the characteristic features of the season--the illuminated initials on Nature’s autumnal page, whose golden splendour is variegated here and there with wreaths of scarlet poppies, corn blue-bottles, and purple vetches. The landscape seems to exist solely for them, so prominent and important are they in it. Wherever they appear they are the pictures for which the rest of the scenery, however grand or beautiful, is but the mere frame. No one can gaze upon these golden cornfields without being influenced more or less by the pleasing associations with which they are connected. They strike their roots deep down into the soil of time; they are as old as the human race. They waved upon the earth long before the flood, under the husbandry of the “world’s grey fathers.” The sun in heaven has ripened more than six thousand of them. Progress is the law of nature, and everything else obeys it, but the harvest-field exhibits little or no change. It presents nearly the same picture in this Western clime and in these modern days as it did under the glowing skies of the East in the time of the patriarchs. We see the same old familiar scene now enacted under our eyes in every walk we take, which Ruth saw when she gleaned after her kinsman’s reapers in one of the quiet valleys of Bethlehem, or which our blessed Saviour so frequently gazed upon when wandering with His disciples in the mellow afternoon around the verdant shores of Gennesaret. The harvest-fields are the golden links that connect the ages and the zones, and associate together the most distant times and the remotest nations in one common bond of sympathy and dependence. They make of the earth one great home. But the most delightful association which the harvest recalls is that of the great world-covenant which God made with Noah and symbolized by the bow in the cloud. And now, whenever we see that gorgeous blossom of light expanding its seven-coloured petals from the dark bosom of the cloud, we know that the storm, however long-continued and violent, will not always last; that the waters of Noah will no more go over the earth; that seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, summer and winter, will never cease. Our cornfields grow and ripen securely under that covenant-arch, whose key-stone is in the heavens, and whose foundations are upon the earth. They afford to us the most striking evidence, season after season, of the integrity and stability of the covenant-promise. There may have been no harvest in Canaan, but there was corn in Egypt, though the application of this compensation was sometimes rendered difficult by natural or moral obstructions. But whether the harvest be local or general, whether we be dependent upon the produce of our own fields or upon the surplus supplies of commerce, in either case it is to the covenant faithfulness of God that we are indebted for the blessing. Corn is the special gift of God to man. All the other plants we use as food are unfit for this purpose in their natural condition, and require to have their nutritious qualities developed, and their nature and forms to a certain extent changed by a gradual process of cultivation. But it is not so with corn. It has from the very beginning been an abnormal production. God gave it to Adam, we have every reason to believe, in the same perfect state of preparation for food in which we find it at the present day. We cannot regard it as an accidental, but, on the contrary, as a striking providential circumstance, that the corn-plants were utterly unknown throughout all the geological periods. Not the slightest trace of vestige of them occurs in any of the strata of the earth, until we come to the most recent formations, contemporaneous with man. They are exclusively and characteristically plants of the human epoch; their remains are found only in deposits near the surface, which belong to the age of man. There is another proof that corn was created expressly for man’s use in the fact that it has never been found in a wild state. The primitive types from which all our other esculent plants were derived are still to be found in a state of nature in this or in other countries. The wild beet and cabbage still grow on our sea-shores; the crab-apple and the sloe, the savage parents of our luscious pippins and plums, are still found among the trees Of the wood; but where are the original types of our corn-plants? Corn has never been known as anything else than a cultivated plant. The oldest records speak of it exclusively as such. Wheat grains have been found wrapped up in the cerements of Egyptian mummies, which were old before history began, identical in every respect with the same variety which the farmer sows at the present day. Moreover, it is a universal plant. It is found everywhere. By striking adaptations of different varieties of grain, containing the same essential ingredients, to different soils and climates, Providence has furnished the indispensable food for the sustenance of the human race throughout the whole habitable globe; and all nations, and tribes, and tongues can rejoice together as one great family with the joy of harvest. Corn is the food most convenient and most suitable for man in a social state. It is only by the careful cultivation of it that a country becomes capable of permanently supporting a dense population. All other kinds of food are precarious, and cannot be stored up for any length of time; roots and fruits are soon exhausted, the produce of the chase is uncertain, and, if hard pressed, ceases to yield a supply. It is an annual plant. It cannot be propagated in any other way than by seed, and when it has yielded its harvest it dies down and rots in the ground; self-sown, it will gradually dwindle away, and at last disappear altogether. “It can only be reared permanently by being sown by man’s own hand, and in ground which man’s own hand has tilled.” (H. Macmillan, D. D.)