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: — The ancients, in their building arrangements, did just the opposite of what we do. We construct our houses with the garden in front or behind. They build them with the garden inside. And so when you entered the porch you found yourself in a court, with the rooms all round. In the houses of the wealthy this court was laid out with wonderful taste, adorned with shrubs and trees, with fountains and fishponds, and elegant statuary. In some instances it was paved with coloured marbles, shadowed by olive and acacia trees, and surrounded by a piazza, whoso entablature rested on columns or pilasters (called by the Greeks caryatides), which were commonly carved after the figure of a woman dressed in long robes. Now, I think I catch the idea in my mind of the sacred poet. Two objects in that central court specially arrest his eye; the one being the young but sturdy trees that grow up so vigorous within the enclosure, and the other the polished pillars or pilasters that stand so gracefully around; and to his mind they are respectively the suggestive emblems of the sons and daughters of a pious and prosperous household. For young men David desired —

I. A HEALTHFUL FRAME; a strong, robust, vigorous physique. It has been said that, as righteousness is the health of the soul, so health is the righteousness of the body. You who have a sound and well-disciplined body, with the appetite and elasticity that go along with it — even though you cannot boast of more than a mediocrity of talent, and are unpossessed of wit and imagination — will outstrip, in the race for real happiness and usefulness, those nervous and morbid creatures whose only compensation is the occasional gleam of a fitful and spasmodic genius.

II. A SOLID CHARACTER. The figure in the text is tropical, and certainly the writer had in his mind's eye some such tall and stately species of growth as he refers to by name in another psalm, where he says, "The righteous shall flourish as a palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." "Character," says Foster, "should retain the upright vigour of manliness; nor let itself be bent and fixed in any specific form. It should be like an upright elastic tree, which, though it may accommodate itself a little to the wind, never loses its spring and self-dependent vigour." I have often seen mere youths whose dignity of bearing was like a coat of mail to them, and to others was a perpetual sermon. "Under whose preaching were you converted?" said one young man to another. "Under no one's preaching," was the reply, "but under my cousin's practising." Ah! a consistent life, whose manifest aim is not the pursuit of pleasure, but the performance of duty, is mightier in its testimony than all the eloquence of the pulpit. In like manner you may be lifted above the common level, notwithstanding all the natural difficulties which would keep you down; aye, these very difficulties may be ultimately the means of your elevation.

III. A HIDDEN LIFE. Doubtless, what chiefly struck the eye of the psalmist as he looked on those young trees was their exuberant vitality. Whence the height of their stems, the extension of their branches, the greenness of their foliage, the fulness of their bloom? There was a life within, which, springing from the root, made itself felt to the remotest leaf and fibre. Under the warm and genial influence of a tropical climate, sheltered within the enclosure, yet open to the light and rain and dew, those trees were no doubt pictures of full luxuriant life. That life came from God. It is equally so in the spiritual domain. Each of you needs that which no human power can communicate, and without which the fairest religious profession is only a painted corpse. personal and saving religion is no development from within, no product of moral evolution; it is something whose germ must be imparted to you by the Holy Spirit; and without which germ you are, in the sight of God, absolutely dead.

(J. T. Davidson, D. D.)

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KJV: Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood:

WEB: Rescue me, and deliver me out of the hands of foreigners, whose mouths speak deceit, whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.