the crowding of our religious arenas with the pettiest of interests, or
within yourselves, in your own mean and slovenly views of life, your
indolence to extricate details and discriminate the large eternal issues
among them--there is for you but one way back to faith. Lift your eyes to
the hills. Let your attention haunt the spots where life rises most near to
heaven, and your hearts will again become full of hopes and reasons for God
being at work upon earth.

Let those who, still in their youth, have preserved their faith and
fullness of hope, keep looking up. Amid all the cynicism and the
belittling of life, strenuously take the highest views of life. Amid all
the selfishness and impatience, which in our day consider life upon its
lowest levels, and there break it up into short and selfish interests,
strenuously lift your eyes and sweep with them the main outlines, summits
and issues. May no man lose sight of the hills for want of looking up,
till at the last he is laid upon his back,--and then must look up whether
he has done so before or not--and in the evening clearness and evening
quiet those great outlines stand forth before his eyes--stand forth but
for a few moments and are lost for ever in the falling night.

Many men have bravely lifted their eyes to the hills, who have felt nothing
come back upon them save a vague wonder and influence of purity. They have
been struck with an awe to which they could give no name, with a health and
energy which they could only ascribe to physical infection. But to this
Psalmist the hope and worship which the hills excited were satisfied by the
revelation of a Person. Above earth and her hills he saw a Character.

There have been revelations of God more rich and brilliant than this one.
But its simplicity suits the Psalmist's point of view. He is looking to the
hills. It is on that high line he sees his Helper appearing. Now we all