of claiming hospitality of the Sheikh into whose tent the fugitive ran
is used in Scripture over and over again to express the relation in
which alone it is blessed for a man to live--namely, as a guest of
God's. That is peace. That is all that we require, to sit at His
fireside, if I may so say, to claim the rites of hospitality, which the
Arab chief would not refuse to the veriest tatterdemalion, or the
greatest enemy that he knew, if he came into his tent and sought it. God
sits in the door of His tent, and is ready to welcome us.

The ascent to the hill of the Lord means more than that. It includes
also the future. I suppose that when men think about another
world--which I am afraid none of us think about as often as we ought to
do, in order to make the best of this one--the question, in some shape
or other, which this band of singers lifted up, rises to their lips,
'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His
Holy Place' beyond the stars? Well, brethren! that is the question which
concerns us all, more than anything else in the world, to have clearly
and rightly answered.

II. Note the answer to this great question.

The psalm answers it in an instructive fashion, which we take as it
stands. 'He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' Let me measure
myself by the side of that requirement. 'Clean hands?'--are mine clean?
'And a pure heart?'--what about mine? 'Who hath not lifted up his soul
unto vanity'--and where have my desires and thoughts so often gone? 'Nor
sworn deceitfully.' These are the qualifications that our psalm dashes
down in front of us when we ask the question.

The other two occasions to which I have referred, where the same