So, too, God's gift produces man's praise.

What is it that He desires from us? Nothing but our thankful recognition
and reception of His benefits. We honour God by taking the full cup of
salvation which He commends to our lips, and by calling, while we drink,
upon the name of the Lord. Our true response to His Word, which is
essentially a proffer of blessing to us, is to open our hearts to
receive, and, receiving, to render grateful acknowledgment. The echo of
love which gives and forgives, is love which accepts and thanks. We have
but to lift up our empty and impure hands, opened wide to receive the
gift which He lays in them--and though they be empty and impure, yet
'the lifting up of our hands' is 'as the evening sacrifice'; our sense
of need stands in the place of all offerings. The stained thankfulness
of our poor hearts is accepted by Him who inhabits the praises of
eternity, and yet delights in the praises of Israel. He bends from
heaven to give, and all He asks is that we should take. He only seeks
our thankfulness--but He does seek it. And wherever His grace is
discerned, and His love is welcomed, there praise breaks forth, as
surely as streams pour from the cave of the glacier when the sun of
summer melts it, or earth answers the touch of spring with flowers.

And that effect is produced, notwithstanding all the complaints and
sighs and tears which sometimes choke our praise. It _is_ produced even
while these last; the psalms of thanksgiving are not all reserved for
the end of the book. But even in those which read like the very sobs of
a broken heart, there is ever present some tone of grateful
acknowledgment of God's mercy. He sends us sorrow, and He wills that we
should weep--but they should be tears like David's, who, at the lowest
point of his fortunes, when he plaintively besought God, 'Put Thou my