My soul is athirst for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the presence of God?—­Psalm xlii., 2.

The verse, dear friends, which I have read to you for a text is one of those verses which justify in the highest degree the action of the Christian Church in selecting the Hebrew Psalter as, in fact, her prayer-book.  There are many passages, as you will feel with me, in the Hebrew psalter that express in a very high degree the wants of the human soul; but perhaps there is no passage more telling, more touching, more searching, more expressive than that solemn and that exalted sentiment which is spoken in the text, “My soul is athirst for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the presence of God?” The passage is a justification, then, of the action of the Christian Church.  People sometimes ask why in the daily service, why on Sundays, you rehearse the Psalms, which have about them so much that is incomprehensible, so much that requires explanation; why there are those tremendous denunciations of enemies, why there are those prayers that seem at first sight to touch wants that we modern people scarcely know; but if you want a real justification and a handy answer you may fall back upon the general texture of the psalter as exprest by such solemn words as those of the text.  If you would find any document, any volume that will speak your thoughts best about and towards eternity, you cannot select a better than the Hebrew psalter, for the general tone and temper of its teaching is the cry of the soul for God.

And then there is another thought upon the threshold of such a subject that demands our attention.  This verse of the text, being a sort of example or representative verse of the psalter, expresses to us—­does it not?—­the attitude and the mission of the Christian Church.  The attitude.  For what is the position, dear friends, of the Christian Church?  What are the struggles of Christian souls except, in the midst of a world that is quite complicated with difficulties, in the midst of a world that is overwhelmed with sorrow, in the midst of a time of severe temptation, to constantly rise and gaze high above the thought of evil, and gaze towards the sun of brightness, and cry for God?  And what is the mission of the Christian Church?  Is it not to help men and women in their struggle and their sorrow to forget at least at times their pettinesses and degradation to rise to better standards and loftier ideals, and cry for God?  And if that be the mission of the Christian Church, then I hold—­and that is my point this morning—­that that is the justification of such noble efforts as have been made in your church to enable so great, so sinful a city as London to have at least moments of relaxation from its world-wide weariness, moments of pause in the pursuit of its sin, and to call it back from that which is overpowering tho transient—­to ask it to pass them in the ministrations of religion.