the mind to fight them.  Constituted as are the most of mankind, for them to discover a reason for a fact is, if not to conceive a respect for it, at least to feel a plausible excuse for their sluggishness and timidity in dealing with it.  Nay, the very study of sin for the purpose of acquainting ourselves with its nature, too often either intoxicates the will, or paralyses it with despair; and it is in recoil from the whole subject that we most surely recover health to fight evil in ourselves and nerve to work for the deliverance from it of others.  The practical solution of our problem is to remember how much else there is in the Universe, how much else that is utterly away from and opposed to sin.  We must engross ourselves in that, we must exult in that.  We must remember goodness, not only in the countless scattered instances about us, but in its infinite resource in the Power and Character of God Himself.  We must feel that the Universe is pervaded by this:  that it is the atmosphere of life, and that the whole visible framework of the world offers signals and sacraments of its real presence.  We may not, we shall not, be able to reconcile this goodness with the cruel facts about us; but at least we shall have reduced these to a new proportion and perspective; we shall have disengaged our wills from the horrid influence of evil, and received a new temper for that contest, in which it is temper far more than any knowledge which overcomes.

This is what our Psalmist does.  From the awful realism of Sin he sweeps, without pause or attempt at argument, into a vision of all the goodness of God.  The Divine Attributes spread out before him, and it takes him the largest things in nature to describe them:  the personal loving-kindness and righteousness of the Most High:  the care of Providence:  the tenderness of intimate fellowship with God:  the security of faith:  the satisfaction of worship.  He makes no claim that everything is therefore clear:  still are Thy judgments the Great Deep, fathomless, awful.  But we receive new vigour of life as from a fountain of life, and the eyes, that had been strained and blinded, see light: light to work, light to fight, light to hope.  Mark how the rapture breaks away with the name of God: 

  LORD, to the heavens is Thy leal
    love! 
  Thy faithfulness to the clouds! 
  Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God,
  Thy judgments are the Great Deep.

  Man and beast thou preservest, O LORD. 
  How precious is Thy leal love, O God! 
  And so the children of men put their
    trust in the shadow of Thy wings. 
  They shall be satisfied with the fatness of Thy house;
  And of the river of Thy pleasures
    Thou shall give them to drink. 
  For with Thee is the fountain of life,
  In Thy light we see light.

The prayer follows, and closes with the assurance of victory as if already experienced: