Twenty-Five Village Sermons | Page 2

that we think about this earth, and the things in it, in a
very different way from those old Jews? They thought it a fit and
proper thing to talk about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and fishes,
in the presence of Almighty God, and we do not think it fit and proper.

We read this psalm when it comes in the Church-service as a matter of
course, mainly because we do not believe that God is here among us.
We should not be so ready to read it if we thought that Almighty God
was so near us.
That is a great difference between us and the old Jews. Whether it
shews that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannot tell;
perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, 'It is not
respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly things in His
presence;' perhaps some of them thought themselves spiritual and
pure-minded for looking down on this psalm, and on David for writing
it. Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in all ages, and will
have them. But the man who wrote this psalm had no such thoughts. He
said himself, in this same psalm, that his words would please God. Nay,
he is not speaking and preaching ABOUT God in this psalm, as I am
now in my sermon, but he is doing more; he is speaking TO God--a
much more solemn thing if you will think of it. He says, "O Lord my
God, THOU art become exceeding glorious. Thou deckest Thyself with
light as with a garment. All the beasts wait on Thee; when Thou givest
them meat they gather it. Thou renewest the face of the earth." When
he turns and speaks of God as "He," saying, "He appointed the moon,"
and so on, he cannot help going back to God, and pouring out his
wonder, and delight, and awe, to God Himself, as we would sooner
speak TO any one we love and honour than merely speak ABOUT
them. He cannot take his mind off God. And just at the last, when he
does turn and speak to himself, it is to say, "Praise thou the Lord, O my
soul, praise the Lord," as if rebuking and stirring up himself for being
too cold-hearted and slow, for not admiring and honouring enough the
infinite wisdom, and power, and love, and glorious majesty of God,
which to him shines out in every hedge-side bird and every blade of
grass. Truly I said that man had a very different way of looking at
God's earth from what we have!
Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need not look
far to see. It was this,--David looked on the earth as God's earth; we
look on it as man's earth, or nobody's earth. We know that we are here,
with trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us. And we know that

we did not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they
will go on just as they went on before we were born,--each tree, and
flower, and animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more. The earth
is here, and we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why
we are on it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to
David the earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it
spoke to him of God who made it. By seeing what this earth is like, he
saw what God who made it is like: and we see no such thing. The
earth?--we can eat the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by
farming it, and ploughing and digging it; and that is all most men know
about it. But David knew something more--something which made him
feel himself very weak, and yet very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and
yet honoured with glorious knowledge from God,--something which
made him feel that he belonged to this world, and must not forget it or
neglect it, that this earth was his lesson-book--this earth was his
work-field; and yet those same thoughts which shewed him how he was
made for the land round him, and the land round him was made for him,
shewed him also that he belonged to another world--a spirit- world;
shewed him that when this world passed away, he should live for ever;
shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had an immortal soul
too; shewed him that though his home and business were here on earth,
yet that, for that very reason, his home and business were in heaven,
with God who made the