"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home!

"Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark!

"For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar."

" God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee. . . . To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.”

Psalm lxiii. 2.

"That I may know him, and the power of his

resurrection.”

Phil. iii. 10.

"To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.”

46

"That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection.”

HERE are two men separated by centuries, -the psalmist of the old dispensation and the apostle of the new dispensation, uttering the deepest desire of their hearts. In both of them we find that there is an earnest and ardent longing to see, to know, the power of God. In both of them there is the recognition of a place, a way, in which that power is manifested and in which it may be discerned; in both of them there is the confident expectation that the knowledge of that power, when it is attained, will be potent in its spiritual effect upon their lives.

Now we may be quite sure that the thing for which David and Paul longed so ardently is something which we also ought to desire, and pray for, and seek after. If they needed

it, we need it. If it was possible for them to find it, it is possible for us. If it was good for them, it will be good for us. Let us think about it for a little while; for it is only by thinking about great and good things that we come to love them, and it is only by loving them that we come to long for them, and it is only by longing for them that we are impelled to seek after them, and it is only by seeking after them that they become ours and we enter into vital experience of their beauty and blessedness.

Is not this the reason why our lives often seem so narrow and poor and weak, why they have such a sense of limitation and constriction in them, why their interests seem so trivial, their possibilities so small, their results so feeble, why we often appear to ourselves barren in thought and dry in feeling, empty of hope and bankrupt in power? Is it not because we think so much of the things that are petty and narrow and barren and transient, and so little of the things that are great and fruitful and glorious and eternal? These dry and thirsty lives of ours, these dull, stale, flat, and unprofitable lives of ours, these paltry lives, whose fault is it that