There are many productions of poets and poetesses, celebrating the grandeur of nature, and the glory of God as manifested in the works of his hands; but there are none which, even in a poetical point of view, surpass those in Job 26., 28., 38.; Isaiah 40.; Psalm 104., 19., 147., and that in the psalm before us now, which rises to the very noblest heights of Hebrew poetry, in its symmetry and grandeur. Bishop Perowne (who acknowledges his obligations to Ewald therein) has a most interesting introduction to this psalm, in which he points out the beauty of its structure, as in its grand description of a tempest it shows the storm at its height of majesty, and then in its subsidence to comparative calm. And, verily, even on this lower ground of poetic beauty, he would be by no means to be envied who could read it without a strange commingling of rapture, wonder, and awe. We seem to hear the roll of the ocean, to listen to the pealing thunder, to watch the flash of the lightning, the crashing of the trees of the forest, the heaving of the mountains, as if they were loosed from their foundations by an earthquake, Lebanon and Sirion leaping as wild creatures free from all restraint. But while it is to the descriptions of all this grandeur and majesty that some expositors chiefly call our attention, neither nature's grandeur nor majesty is the main topic of the psalm. By no means; but rather the glory of HIM whose dominion extendeth over all! In the eye of the psalmist, all the forces of nature are under one sceptre; that sceptre is wielded by one hand; that hand is moved by one heart, even that of our redeeming God. Such is the theme before us.

I. HERE POWER IN VARIED MANIFESTATIONS IS TRACED TO ONE SOURCE. There are five thoughts which are presented cumulatively.

1. Power in nature's works and wonders specially as shown in storm and tempest, lightning and thunder, earthquake and mountain wave. Note: The larger our knowledge of natural science, the more capable shall we be of discoursing with interest, delight, and profit to others on these "wonderful works of God."

2. Power in providential administration. (Ver. 10.) "The Lord sat enthroned at the flood." This word rendered "flood" is the one applied to the Deluge of Noah, and only so applied. Hence it seems to include the specific thought that over and above all merely natural disclosures of power, there is a moral enthronement, whereby natural phenomena are made subservient to moral ends. Not only is every atom kept in harness, but the collocation of atoms is subsidiary to the discipline of souls.

3. There is gracious loving-kindness towards his own people. (Ver. 11.) "His people." There are those in the world marked off from the rest by tokens known to God alone. They are his, having "made a covenant with him by sacrifice" (Psalm 50:5). And with reference to them, there is a grace marvellous in its tenderness. The same Being who can thunder most loudly can also whisper most sweetly, and can also give out blessings to his own.

(1) Strength (cf. Isaiah 40:31; 2 Corinthians 12:9; Psalm 27:14).

(2) Peace. While the fiercest storm is raging without, God can and does give us peace within; a peace which becomes richer and fuller, till it is exceedingly abundant "above all we can ask or think." It is "the peace of God, passing all understanding" (John 14:27; Philippians 4:6, 7; Romans 5:1; Ephesians 2:14).

4. He who thus rules in nature, providence, grace, is the everlasting King. (Ver. 10.) "King for ever! 'The sceptre of universal power will never drop from his hands, nor will he ever transfer it to another (Psalm 97:1). The hand that upholds all will never become weary. The eye that watches all will never droop with fatigue. The arms that clasp believers in their embrace will never relax their hold. The voice that whispers, "Peace!" will never be stilled in death. The love that enriches with blessing will never be chilled. "King for ever!"

5. He who is this everlasting King is our redeeming God. The usual term for God as the God of nature is "Elohim" (Genesis 1:1). But here we are reminded that the God who thunders in the heavens and controls the swelling seas; that he who guides the forked lightning, is "Jehovah," the "I am that I am," the Lord who has thus revealed himself to his people as their God. And the great Ruler of nature is he who exercises loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment in the earth, in order that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord.

II. SUCH THOUGHTS OF GOD MAY WELL EVOKE GRATEFUL SONG. They know not how much of gladness and inspiration they lose who cannot see God everywhere. To see law everywhere and God nowhere would be enough to crush us. To see God everywhere working by law inspires rest and joy: our "Father is at the helm." Note: Since we have such disclosures of God, we have:

1. Unity in diversity. The seemingly complicated question of" the origin of force " is settled once for all by the man who sees God. And this privilege is reserved for "the pure in heart" (Matthew 5:8).

2. Since one God is over all, natural phenomena as well as providential incident may be made fuel for the religious life. A thunderstorm may aid worship.

3. Since one Being is the Origin of all kinds of force, prayer for natural blessings and temporal mercies is perfectly reasonable; e.g. prayer for rain. It is quite true that prayer and rain lie in totally distinct spheres. But since the same Being who hears one sends the other, the spheres find their unity at his throne.

4. Since the God who governs all is One whom we know, we may read and sing of glory under all circumstances and everywhere. (Ver. 9.) "In his temple every whir of it uttereth glory; "or, "In his temple every one says, Glory!" Yes; we may triumph everywhere since our God is "King for ever!"

5. Holy awe may well combine with triumph, and loyalty with praise. For God "sits enthroned" - such is the sublime figure suggested here. And "his people" though we are by grace, his absolute sovereignty must never be forgotten by us (ver. 2); ever must we give unto the Lord "the glory due unto his Name," and "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" - in holy attire, even in the "fine linen which is the righteousness of saints" (Revelation 19:8), "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water" (Hebrews 10:22).

6. Amid all natural convulsions and national upheavings, let confidence and hope remain undisturbed. "King for ever!" Then, however gloomy the outlook of events, nothing can happen beyond the bounds of Divine control, nothing which he cannot make subservient to the inbringing of his everlasting kingdom. "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea" (Psalm 46:2). - C.

"In His temple everything saith Glory!" The temple of which the psalmist here speaks is the temple of Nature. He believed that every object in the visible universe was engaged in singing paeans of praise to its Creator — "fire and hail." Too many of us lack almost entirely this sixth sense, "the vision and the faculty divine;" we hear scarce a whisper of this great shout of praise that goes up from all creation. But in what sense does everything in Nature cry, Glory! In what sense does the material universe sing the praises of God? It does so, I doubt not, directly. For God's pleasure all things are and were created, and doubtless the incense which arises from Nature's altars, the songs which are chanted in her leafy aisles, the perfume of her flowers, the beauty of her landscapes, are as grateful to the Creator as man's acts of worship. "The trees clap their hands, and She little hills rejoice together before the Lord." But there is another sense in which natural objects praise God, and it is this we shall meditate upon; they awaken gratitude in the heart of man and thus transmute themselves into conscious praise. Man's soul is the great organ upon which Nature plays her anthems of praise; the five senses are the keys; and through the medium of this instrument every created thing in God's Temple crieth, Glory!

I. NATURE INCITES MAN TO PRAISE BY HER BEAUTY, Think of one or two of those myriad appeals to our admiration which Nature makes, and which, for the most part, go unregarded.

1. Reflect how God's glory reacheth unto the clouds. The clouds, perhaps more than all other objects in Nature, teach us the immanence of God, teach us how His presence may penetrate and transfigure even what is most commonplace and familiar. For what are clouds? When they rest on the surface of the earth they are just choking fogs and clinging mists disfiguring everything they touch. But raise them away into the purer strata of the air to which they rightly belong; let the wind churn them into flakes of snow, and the moon pierce them with its silver arrows; and the sun suffuse them with its golden ardours; let them become the womb of the lightning and the chariot of the storm — and they present such visions of glory as can be seen nowhere else. Thus God would teach us that evil is but good in its wrong place, and that the fogs and mists of earth's sins and sorrows are the substance out of which God will weave hereafter golden visions of ethereal beauty.

2. Think what praise we owe God for the loveliness of all watery forms with which He has robed and adorned the earth, and of which clouds are but a part. The brooklet seeks the river, and the river empties itself into the sea, and the sea sends aloft its multitude of clouds, and the clouds form themselves anew on the face of the earth. That which is part of a stagnant ditch to-day may be a radiant dewdrop tomorrow, and what is now a peaceful pool may anon be a part of the stormy ocean which writhes its white fingers in the shrouds of sinking ships. But whether in forms of sublimity or of tenderness, how varied is its loveliness, and how varied are the notes of praise it should educe from man. Think of it as the iceberg and the glacier; as the snow that robes the mountain, and the hoar-frost that bejewels the branches; as the foam ball upon the torrent and the dewdrop on the rose; as the cataract spanned by the rainbow, and the crystal pool, the mirror of the woods 1 And then, perceiving how beautiful these things are in themselves, and what a throb of gratitude they awaken in the heart of him who feels their beauty, you will be impelled to link the gratitude of conscious and unconscious nature together, and to cry with the psalmist, "All Thy works praise Thee, O God, and Thy saints give thanks unto Thee."

3. Whether we gaze downward at our feet, where God has covered the earth with a carpet of emerald, and embroidered it with flowers, and, lest we should weary of their colours, has decreed that they shall bloom and fade, and be succeeded by others, month by month, and season by season; or visit those mountain regions which are, as an eminent writer has said, "the great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars"; whether it be the lichen which softens the scarred ruin or the forest which clothes a mountain side which engages our attention; the insect which flutters its hour of sunshine and is gone, or the star whose light takes a thousand years to bridge the space between it and us — alike, if we have indeed ears to hear, shall we be impelled to confess that everything in God's temple crieth, "Glory!" — alike we shall declare with the psalmist, "Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy works, and I will rejoice in giving praise for the operation of Thy hands."

II. NATURE INCITES US TO PRAISE BY HER BOUNTY. The beauty of those natural objects of which I have spoken appeals to our higher nature, but our lower nature also needs ministering to. "Man shall not live by bread alone," but without bread he cannot live at all. And, therefore, Nature awakens our gratitude by her material as well as her spiritual gifts. The clouds not only delight the eye; they are, as a psalmist calls them, "the river of God," and rain plenteousness on the earth. The flowers of the field do not merely charm us by their loveliness, they yield up to us their colours and their perfumes; they serve us with their seeds and their fibres; they give us medicine to heal our sickness. The oak, the pine, the cedar, and the ash are not only types of strength and gracefulness; they yield timber for the ships and rafters for the homestead. The mountains serve not only to sanctify and delight the human heart by their sublimity, they help to make the earth habitable by purifying the air and giving birth to the rivers; without them the ground would become stagnant morass and the atmosphere would breathe pestilence. The mighty ocean, which is, in calm, as a waving veil of iridescent colours, and in storm —

The mirror where th' Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests,

is also the helper of man, bearing on its bosom the argosies of many nations, and in its depths the harvest of the sea, without which the harvest of the land would be insufficient for our needs. All nature thus ministers to us —

The whole is either our cupboard of food,

Or cabinet of pleasure,

And, moreover, nothing is too insignificant to be serviceable. Says Dr. Macmillan: "Even the hoary lichen on the dusky rock, that has drunk ill all the hues of the spectrum and made no sign, yields, when artificially treated, its hidden store of colour, and produces a violet and golden hue not unworthy of the fairest garden flower."

III. NATURE INCITES TO PRAISE BY THE MORAL QUALITIES SHE EDUCES IN MAN. This is Nature's chief glory, her highest honour, that she is the instrument by which God educates human souls and fits them for their immortal destiny, For we are placed here under the discipline of Nature, and she is a severe task-mistress, from whom nothing is to be had for the mere asking. Nature exacts laborious toil in exchange for all her gifts. She hides her pearls in the depths of the sea, her gold in the sands of the river or the crevices of the rocks; she buries the metals, man's most useful allies, and the coal to smelt those metals, deep down in the heart of the earth; she secretes her balms and her subtle essences where even the cunning chemist can scarce track them. Her most powerful forces, such as electricity, are ever the most elusive and the hardest to be subdued. Everything man extorts from Nature he must win, not only by the sweat of his brow, but by the sweat of his brain. He wrestles with her for her blessing as Jacob wrestled with the angel at Penuel, till almost he seems crippled with the strain. But the conflict proves at last that as a prince he has power with God and has prevailed; he wins the blessing, and, lo! it is not only corn and oil and wine, but rich endowments of mind and heart as well. Think about it, and you will see that almost all the highest moral qualities of our race — patience, endurance, forethought, courage, mutual helpfulness — are the outcome of the necessity to work which Nature lays upon us.

(A. M. Mackay, B. A.)