me.' The top round reaches the throne of God, and whoever begins at the
bottom, and holds fast the beginning of his confidence firm unto the
end, for him the great promise of the Master will come true, and
Christ's 'joy will remain in him and his joy shall be full.'




THE TWO AWAKINGS


'I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.'
--PSALM xvii. 15.

'As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when Thou awakest, Thou
shalt despise their image.'--PSALM lxxiii. 20.

Both of these Psalms are occupied with that standing puzzle to Old
Testament worthies--the good fortune of bad men, and the bad fortune of
good ones. The former recounts the personal calamities of David, its
author. The latter gives us the picture of the perplexity of Asaph its
writer, when he 'saw the prosperity of the wicked.'

And as the problem in both is substantially the same, the solution also
is the same. David and Asaph both point onwards to a period when this
confusing distribution of earthly good shall have ceased, though the one
regards that period chiefly in its bearing upon himself as the time when
he shall see God and be at rest, while the other thinks of it rather
with reference to the godless rich as the time of their destruction.