Psalm 65:8 They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at your tokens: you make the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. Nature is here conceived of as rejoicing before her God, and uttering her joy, in glad and grateful song, praising Him whose power sustains her, and whose wisdom guides. It is not strange, if the psalmist found song in nature at all, that he should have found it in the phenomena of the day's dawn and decline, "The breezy call of incense-breathing morn," and "the balmy sigh which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear"; for of all that is impressive, inspiring and suggestive of high thought in nature's scenic effects, surely it is the phenomena of morn and even; and whatever else is such in itself the light of opening and closing day gives it most transcendent revelation. Thus should it be with man. Our best performance, our highest reaches of thought, and our noblest forms of expression should be divine worship, and the song of our life be evermore a psalm of praise to God. The text conveys a hint also as to the seasons for prayer. This song of dawning and declining day is nature's matin and vesper service of worship to her God. That which is a sentiment in nature's heart, all day and all the night, attains the tuneful gladness of a song at morn and even. Thus should it be with man. When morning calls him from the realm of slumber to the world of conscious life, and the activities of the day are about to begin, he should make his first business worship. Before he opens the door to the world and gives it audience he should open the window that looks heavenward, and himself seek audience with his God, nor let the world's cares and toils descend again upon him until he has refreshed himself by communion with the Father of lights. Each new dawn lights man to a new life, which should be hallowed in its inception by prayer and praise. And so when the daylight hours have sped, and the day's toils are over, in the still hour "when hopes and memories meet and join, and in the light of suns gone down we wait the unveiling of the quiet stars, those suns which shine upon us from afar," the human spirit should again uplift itself to God, and the day close, even as it began, with prayer and praise. But the text has yet deeper suggestiveness. Morning and evening may fitly represent the beginnings and ends of things, and in this construction what great truths the text brings to our thought. It is in the beginnings and ends of things that we see most of God. "He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." His presence pervades even as His power sustains all things. He fills all time as all space. But we recognize Him most in the inception and culmination of fact and event. In the intermediate stages we see more of law and less of God. We trace a development in which we note the play of finite agencies, and the factorship of finite force and will. But in the beginnings and ends of things the finite is less apparent, and the infinite absorbs the view. Thus "He maketh the outgoings of the morning and evening to sing." Creation as it sprang from the forming hand of God and stood in its unsullied beauty, unstained by human sin, was "very good." And not less so shall be that new creation, the new heavens and the new earth, which shall appear when the first heaven and the first earth are done away. At creation's dawn "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Nor shall creation's evening song be wanting; for o'er the final consummation ten thousand times ten thousand tongues, untuned when the creation was being celebrated, shall blend in song with those who raised the earlier strain. (J. W. Earnshaw.) Parallel Verses KJV: They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. |
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