calm of earth in summer, and the cool, strong winds from off the hills.  To those old founders of our faith, religion was never man’s feelings about religion:  it was the love of God.  God was not man’s thoughts about God, but God Himself in His wonderful grace and truth, objective to our hearts.  Therefore those ancient saints moved to the Spirit as the tree rustles to the wind, and as in summer she is green and glad in the sunshine that bathes her, so they rejoiced in the Lord, and in His goodness. I will give thanks, for THOU hast done it.

But this getting out of self does not only bring a man into the open air, and to gladness in a God who worketh for him.  It gives him the company of all good and noble men.  I will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the presence of Thy saints.  What a fellowship faith and unselfishness make a man aware of!

* * * * *

Let us turn back for a moment to the man, to whose close character this open air is offered as a contrast.  Is it really difficult for us to imagine him?  There is not one of us who has not tried this kind of thing again and again,—­and has succeeded in it with far less substance than the great man had to come and go upon.  He trusted in the abundance of his riches:  he lost God for the multitude of his temptations.  But for us there is no such excuse.  There has been no pleasure too sordid, no comfort too selfish, no profit too mean, no honour too cheap and vulgar, but we have sometimes preferred it, in seeking for happiness, to the infinite and everlasting mercy of our God.  We may not be big men, and deserve to have psalms written about us; but in our own little ways we exult in our selfishness and the tempers it breeds in us just as guiltily as he did, and just as foolishly, for God’s great love is as near to us, and could as easily chase these vapours from our souls, if we would but open the windows to its air.

Take one or two commonplace cases that do not require the great capital which this fellow put into his business of sinning, but are quite within reach of your and my very ordinary means of selfishness.

You have been overreached in some business competition, or disappointed in getting a post, or foiled along some path of public service.  You come home with a natural vexation in your heart:  sore at being beaten and anxious about your legitimate interests.  It is all right enough.  But sit down at the fire for a little and brood over it.  Shut God out as care and anger can.  Forget that your Bible is at your elbow.  Think only of your wrong, and it is wonderful how soon you will find spite rising, and envy and the cruellest hate.  It is wonderful how quickly plans of revenge will form themselves in your usually slow mind, and how happy they will make you.  Malice is like brandy to a man’s brain, and will send him back with a beaming face to the work he left with scowls.  Ah, why boast