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THE KING’S BUSINESS
heard thè pebbles sing, and the waves chant God’s glories? Or have you never risen from your couch, and thrown up the win dow of your chamber, and listened there? Listened to what? Silence—save now and then a murmuring sound, which seems sweet music then. And have you not fancied that you heard the harp of God playing in heaven? Did you not conceive, that yon stars, that those eyes of God, looking down on you, were also mouths of song—that every star was singing God’s glory, singing as it shone, its mighty Maker, and His lawful, well-deserved praise? Night hath its songs. We need not much poetry in our spirit, to catch thq song of night, and hear the spheres as they chant praises which are loud to the heart, though they be silent to the ear—the praises of the mighty God, who bears up the unpillared arch of heaven, and moves the stars in their courses . . . REMEMBER THE PAST If we are going to sing of the things of yesterday, let us begin with what God did for us in past times. My beloved brethren, you will find it a sweet subject for song at times, to begin to sing of electing love and covenanted mercies. When thou thy self art low, it is well to sing of the foun tain-head of mercy; of that blessed decree wherein thou wast ordained to eternal life, and of that glorious Man who understood thy redemption; of that solemn covenant, signed, and sealed, and ratified, in all things ordered well; of that everlasting love which, ere the hoary mountains were begot ten, or ere the aged hills were children, chose thee, loved thee firmly, loved thee fast, loved thee well, loved thee eternally. I tell thee, believer, if thou canst go back to the years of eternity; if thou canst in thy mind run back to that period, or ere the' everlasting hills were fashioned, or the fountains of the great deep scooped out, and if thou canst see thy God inscribing thy name in His eternal book; if thou canst see in His loving heart eternal thoughts of love to thee, thou wilt find this a charming means of giving thee songs
in.,the night. No songs like those that are dictated by meditations on discriminating mercy. Some, indeed, cannot sing of elec tion : the Lord open their mouths a little wider! Some there are that are afraid of the very term; but we only despise men who are afraid of what they believe, afraid of what God has taught them in His Bible. No, in our darker hours it is our joy to sing: “Sons we are through God’s election, Who in Jesus Christ believe; By eternal destination, Sovereign grace we now receive, Lord, thy grace, Shall both grace and glory give.” Think, Christian, of the yesterday, I say, and thou wilt get a song in the night. But if thou hast not a voice tuned to so high a key as that, let me suggest some other mercies thou mayest sing o f; and they are the mercies thou hast experienced. What! man, canst thou not sing a little of that blessed hour when Jesus’met thee; when, a blind slave, thou wast sporting with death, and He saw thee, and said: “Come, poor slave, come with me” ? Canst thou not sing of that rapturous moment when He snapped thy fetters, dashed thy chains to the earth, and said: “I am the Breaker; I came to break thy chains, and set thee free?” What though thou art ever sa gloomy now, canst thou forget that happy morning, when in the house of God thy voice was loud, almost as a seraph’s voice, in praise? for thou couldst sing: “I am forgiven; I am forgiven:”
“A monument of grace, A sinner saved by blood.”
Go back, man; sing of that moment, and then thou wilt have a song in the night. Or if thou hast almost forgotten that, then sure thou hast some precious milestone along the road of life that is not quite grown over with moss, on which thou canst read some happy inspiration of His mercy
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