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This verse, slightly altered in form though not in sense, occupies a prominent place in the Church Litany. It is not a prayer at all: it does not form one of that long series of supplications of which the Litany consists. The origin of the Litany is very interesting. It is a most perfect and beautiful sample of a large class of devotions which in earlier ages abounded in the Church, and which seem to have taken their rise in those dark and anxious days which accompanied and followed upon the break-up of the Roman Empire. There, "battle, murder and sudden death"; "plague, pestilence and famine," and all the calamities attendant on what seemed to be the entire collapse of social order, were common things. Hence, when the misery of the people seemed likely to bring in its train the withdrawal of such small blessings as they had, and even, in some cases, the fierce ungodliness of despair; then it was that, in their agony, holy souls turned towards God and sought to enkindle the souls around them by the sharp, prominate ejaculations, such as men might spontaneously utter amid the ruins of a falling world. Our Litany was drafted at the time of the Reformation from earlier compositions of this kind, and it maintains its supplicatory character throughout with a simple and emphatic exception. Between the two solemn adjurations to God to "arise and help," there comes in the verse of the psalm, "O God, we have heard with our ears, and our fathers," etc. It is an appeal, if we may reverently say so, to the historic consistency of God. It is an act of acknowledgment and praise, and we find the reason for its occurrence in the Litany in the drift and history of the psalm from which it is taken. This psalm was written, probably, at a time and under circumstances not unlike those which some centuries later created the Litanies of the Christian Church. It probably belongs to those dark times which immediately preceded the great and final catastrophe of the Babylonish Captivity. We live over those times, as nowhere else in Holy Scripture, in the pages of Jeremiah. Everything was pointing to some coming disaster: there was failure abroad, there was misery at home. At such times the hearts of thoughtful and religious men turned back upon the past of Israel and upon all that God had done for Israel. Was He not the same God? Was not Israel the same people? Would He be, could He be, inconsistent with Himself? Surely it was enough to remind Him of His mercies in the past to be certain that the future would in some way not be unprovided for. "O God, we have heard with our ears," etc. Now, since human history is a record of the way and will of God, we may explain why it is that so large a portion of the Bible is made up of history. It has a distinctly religious use as showing how God works and what He is. There are two main reasons which practically make history so precious at all times, and especially in times of public or private anxiety, and the first is, that it takes us out of the present, takes us out of ourselves. We are taken out of the clouded and fluctuating present, and how can we better learn than from experience, if the judgment be undisturbed? It is also a record of the unalterable character of human nature, and it places us face to face with the infinite and eternal God. "I am Jehovah, and change not." Now, to apply this, there are three departments of human life in which this recurrence to the past is of great religious value.

I. THE FAMILY. Every family has its traditions as well as its hopes. We see it in the families of the wealthy and powerful, amid nobles and princes. To be the descendant from great and illustrious families is to inherit a past of which every educated man feels the magnificence and the power. And it is not less true of the humble and undistinguished lives which belong to most of us. When a boy is told that some generations ago one of his ancestors did something noble and generous; when he is told that, but for the misconduct of such and such a member of the family, he and his would be in a very different position now; and when he is bidden imitate that which was noble, and shun that which was bad in them who went before him, he is brought in this way under the play of very powerful motives, and which cannot but have much influence over him. They are part of the predestined discipline, depend upon it, to which God subjects him, and a very valuable part too.

II. THERE IS OUR COUNTRY. And here we have to remember that God shapes the destiny of every nation as surely as He did that of Judah and Israel. It should be part of every young Englishman's education to trace God's hand in the annals of his country until he can with sincerity and fervour exclaim, "O God, we have heard with our ears," etc. And then there is —

III. THE GREAT AND SACRED HOME OF SOULS — THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST. And all this has to do with personal religion, for it is the religious use of history which enables us better to do our duty in home, in nation and in the Church, and it makes history itself full of interest and encouragement.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: {To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, Maschil.} We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.

WEB: We have heard with our ears, God; our fathers have told us, what work you did in their days, in the days of old.