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preceded our birth, and ages will succeed our death, yet we cannot shut our eyes to the
fact that a wise and merciful Providence was at work on our behalf before we have our
being and birth, which supplies us with the argument that the same gracious Providence
can and will provide for us during that second period of silence called death, and bring us
to something even more wonderful than our birth into this world.
To show that these thoughts may be rightly adduced from the subject-matter of this
Psalm we give the following features:
T r u s t.
(1)
YOUTH.--"Thou are my trust from my youth" (5).
"O God, Thou hast taught me from my youth" (17).
(2)
OLD AGE.--"Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my
strength faileth" (9).
"Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not" (18).
H o p e.
(1)
BIRTH.--"By thee have I been holden up from the womb: Thou art He that took
me out of my mother's bowels" (6).
(2)
RESURRECTION.--"Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt
quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the
earth" (20).
This association of "trust" (operating during the days of our present life), with "hope"
(which operates beyond our present experience even to the day of "quickening again",
when death shall be swallowed up of victory), contains a word of comfort for the present
day. So the believer, as he trusts in the Lord Who has watched over him from youth to
old age, can sing,
"His love in times past,
Forbids me to think;
He'll leave me at last
In trouble to sink."
"Each fresh Ebenezer
He brings to review
Confirms His good pleasure
To help me right through."