and the love of God. Let us strenuously lift the heart to that. Let us
rejoice and exult in it, and so we shall be safe. But, withal, we must
beware of taking a narrow or an abstract view of what that goodness is.
The fault of many Christians is that they turn to some theological
definition, or to some mystical refinement of it, and their hearts are
starved. We must seek the loving-kindness of God in all the breadth and
open-air of common life. _Lord, Thou preservest man and beast_. Or, as
St. Paul put it in that same Epistle: _Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on
these things_. It is, once more, the Greater Realism. But behind Paul's
crowd of glorious facts let us not miss the greatest Reality of all, God
Himself. God's righteousness and love, His grace and patience toward us,
become more and more of a wonder as we dwell upon them, and by force of
their wonder the most real facts of our experience. _How excellent is Thy
loving-kindness, O God. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say unto
you, Rejoice_.




PSALM LII

RELIGION THE OPEN
AIR OF THE SOUL


With the thirty-sixth Psalm we may take the fifty-second, which attacks
the same problem of evil in pretty much the same temper. It is peculiar in