Hast pleasure in uprightness. It is a characteristic of David that he makes constant appeal to his conscious integrity and expects to gain Divine acceptance for his sincerity and uprightness. But this, conflicts with the Christian notion that a man cannot be accepted for anything in himself, and so it needs consideration and explanation. We have often to notice how certain words get a stiff, rigid, and limited meaning fixed upon them, through their use in the expression of theological opinions and creeds. Illustration may be taken from the terms grace, law, faith, justify, eternal. Joubert says, "The trick of personifying words is a fatal source of mischief in theology." The words "integrity," "righteousness," have suffered at the hands of theologians, and their larger and more comprehensive meanings are almost lost sight of. David can stand before God, and appeal to his personal righteousness, and ask to be judged by his integrity. Our Lord implies that a man may have a righteousness, when he says, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees," etc. The words will not stiffen into one rigid meaning. Sometimes they mean right-heartedness, sincerity, and show us a man at heart centred on God and virtue. At other times they refer to that renewed state into which we are brought by the regenerations of the Holy Ghost. Illustrate the first of these two meanings from David's career. This great impression had been left on him from his own experiences, and to it he gives utterance as life closes: "I know that thou hast pleasure in uprightness. Throughout his career - save in halting moments - David was right at heart. We have a way of speaking of men as being good at bottom." If we say that as any excuse for men's sins, we are miserably and shamefully wrong. If we say it with due recognition of human frailty, with fitting discernment of life as the conflict of the human will over the disabilities that surround the man, then it may be a true and worthy expression. Many men around us - yes, even we ourselves - are, like David, "good at bottom." The "desire of our soul is to the Divine Name." We are pilgrims, indeed, who have come in at the gate, and right by the cross, even if men or angels do find us wandering out of the way into By-path meadows, and sleeping in arbours, and losing our rolls. David's example permits us to realize and rejoice in our conscious integrity; not proudly, in any way of self-confidence or self-conceit, but humbly, in a thankful recognition of "grace abounding" to usward. David's sincerity and integrity come out when we compare him with King Saul. Saul failed altogether, and fell away from God, because his sins were sins of will; neither his heart nor his life were right with God. David stumbled, but he did not utterly fall; because, in his case, the will was only forced to consent to sin, and it sprang back to God as soon as the force of bodily passion that held it down was removed. David only failed in the body-sphere; Saul failed in both the body and the soul spheres. It would have been better indeed if, like Samuel, heart and life had both shown, throughout his career, the harmony of goodness; but God and man recognize the acceptableness of sincerity of heart, even if qualified by some failings of life. But, from the Christian standpoint, it should be earnestly pressed that sincerity, which is acceptable to God, is properly one of the after-signs of Divine renewal; and that we all need to be made right - converted, regenerated - ere we can be set right and kept right, and dare ask God to search and see whether we are sincerely and wholly his. - R.T.

? — The course to be taken for this purpose lies —

I. IN THE PRACTICE OF SOME THINGS.

1. Get new hearts, and get them daily more and more renewed. A heart thoroughly sanctified is to the ordinances like tinder, which soon takes fire and is apt to keep it till it be forced out; whereas a carnal, unmortified heart is like green wood, which is not soon kindled and will soon go out, if it be not well looked to. Holiness makes the soul both receptive and retentive of holy impressions.

2. Labour to be much affected with the ordinances while you are employed in them. If the ordinances pierce no further than the surface of the soul, the efficacy of them is not likely to continue. Prepare your hearts before you draw near to God. The heart is prepared when it is made —(a) Tender (Jeremiah 4:3; Hosea 10:12). That which can make no impression at all upon a flint will sink deeply into softened wax.(b) Sensible; apprehensive of your spiritual wants and necessities.(c) Open. A quick sense of your spiritual condition will open your hearts. Desire opens the heart (Matthew 5:6; Psalm 107:9). We come to the ordinances too like the Egyptian dog, which laps a little as he runs by the side of Nilus, but stays not to drink. Christ invites us to eat and drink abundantly (Song of Solomon 5:1).

3. Mind the ordinances after you use them. Be much in meditation. Much of heaven and holiness is engraved on these ordinances; and the seal is, as it were, set upon the heart, while you are under them; but after-consideration lays more weight on it and impresseth it deeper. The heart takes fire at the mind (Psalm 39:3).

4. Let the efficacy of the ordinances be pursued presently into act (Psalm 119:60). When the blossoms of a fruit-tree are once knit, though the flourish thereof be gone, and you see nothing but the bare rudiment of the expected fruit, yet you think it more secured from the injury of frosts and winds than if it were still in the flower. Good motions, when they are once reduced into act, are thereby, as it were, knit, and brought to more consistency.

5. You must take much pains with your hearts if you would have them retain the virtue and efficacy of the ordinances. "The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting" (Proverbs 12:27). He loseth all his former labour because he will not take a little more pains.

6. Comply with the Spirit of God.

7. Be frequent in the use of ordinances. Good impressions do most usually wear off in the intervals of holy duties. It is observed that places under the line are not so hot as some climates at a further distance from it; and this reason is given for it: Those under the equinoctial, though they have the sun more vertical, and the beams, falling more perpendicularly, cause a more intense heat; yet the nights being of equal length with the days, the coolness of those long nights doth more allay the heat than where the nights are shorter. Long intermissions of holy duties are like long nights: you may find them by experience to be great coolers. Elijah in the wilderness had to eat more than once to be strengthened for his journey (1 Kings 19:6-8).

8. Look up to God for the continuance of this influence.

II. IN THE AVOIDANCE OF OTHER THINGS.

1. Take heed that you perform not your duties negligently (Jeremiah 48:10; Malachi 1:8, 14; Jeremiah 30:21; Deuteronomy 32:46, 47).

2. Beware of the world. Meddle not with it more than needs must. Carry yourself amongst worldly objects and employments as though you were amongst cheats and thieves: they have the art to pick your hearts slily. When your hearts are warmed with holy duties, you should be as cautious and wary how you venture into the world as you are of going into the frosty air when you are all in a sweat. What is kindled by the Word or prayer requires as much care to keep it in as to keep a candle in when you would carry it through the open air in a rainy, blustering night. The further you are above the world, the longer may you retain any spiritual impressions. Geographers write of some mountains whose tops are above the middle region of the air; and there lines and figures being drawn in the dust have been found, say they, in the same form and order, untouched, undefaced, a long time after; and the reason is because they are above those winds and showers and storms, which soon wear out and efface any such draughts in this lower region. The lower your minds and hearts and conversations are, the less will anything that is heavenly and spiritual abide upon them.

3. Take heed of any inordinacy in affection, inclination, or design. The ministry of John the Baptist had some influence on Herod (Mark 6:20); but sensuality being predominant, those better inclinations were quite overpowered.

4. Rest not in the best performance of any duty, nor in any assistances you find therein, though they be special and more than ordinary. It is observed that some professors have had the foulest falls, after they have been most elevated in holy employments. We are apt to take the most dangerous colds when we are in the greatest heats.

5. Make not the ordinances your end, but use them as the means to attain it. Application: If the efficacy of thy ordinances abide not in you, you cannot be fruitful under them; at least you cannot "bring forth fruit to perfection."

(David Clarkson, B. D.)