Believing those words, no man need long to forget himself, to escape from himself.  He can lift up himself to God who made him, with reverence, and fear, and yet with gratitude and trust, and say—­

I, Lord, am I; and what I am—­a very poor, pitiful, sinful person.  But Thou, Lord, art Thou; and what Thou art—­happily for me, and for the whole universe—­Perfect.  Thou art what Thou oughtest to be—­Goodness itself.  And therefore Thou canst, and Thou wilt, make me what I ought to be at last, a good person.  To thee, O Lord, I can bring the burden of this undying I, which I carry with me, too often in shame and sadness, and ask Thee to help me to bear it; saying—­“Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.  Shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers:  but spare us, O Lord most Holy, O God most Mighty, Thou worthy Judge Eternal, and suffer us not, for any temptation of the world, the flesh or the devil, to fall from Thee.”  Guide me, teach me, strengthen me, till I become such a person as Thou wouldst have me be; pure and gentle, truthful and high-minded, brave and able, courteous and generous, dutiful and useful, like Thy Son Jesus Christ when He increased not only in stature, but in favour with God and man.

To which may God in His mercy bring us all!  Amen.

SERMON XVI.  THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.

PSALM CIV. 16.

   The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which He
   hath planted.

Let me say a few words this afternoon about the noble 104th Psalm, which was read this afternoon, as it is now in many churches, and most wisely and rightly, as the Harvest Psalm.  It is a fit psalm for a service in which we thank God for such harvest as He has thought best to send us, whether it be above or below the average.  But it is also a fit psalm to be thought earnestly over just now, considering the turn which men’s minds are taking more and more in these times in which it has pleased God that we should live.  For we have lost, all of us, unlearned as well as learned, the old superstitious notions about this world around us which our forefathers held for many hundred years.  No rational person now believes that witches can blight crops or cattle, or that evil spirits cause storms.  No one now believes that nymphs and fairies live in fountains or in trees; or that the spirits of the planets rule the fates of men.  That old belief is gone, for good and for evil, and it was good that it should go; for it was false:  and falsehoods can do no good, but only harm, to any man, in body and in soul alike.  It has died out quickly and strangely.  Some say that modern science has destroyed it.  I can hardly agree to that:  for it has died out—­and that almost since my own recollection and under my own eyes—­in the minds of country people, who know nothing of science.  I had rather say—­as I presume the man who wrote the