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"Where are Thy old lovingkindnesses?" As he sings Ethan looks around him, and his eye rests on a scene of degradation and ruin. He suffers as a patriot; he suffers as a religious man; he suffers as the descendants of the old Roman families suffered where they beheld Alaric and his hosts sacking the eternal city; as the countrymen of Frederick the Great suffered when the French entered Berlin after Jena; as in their turn the conquerors of Jena and Austerlitz suffered when the Allies entered Paris. These are the tragical incidents of history, and the house of David and its adherents were, it might have seemed, experiencing one of those great reverses by which the compensating justice that rules the world so often balances an overwhelming pre-eminence. But, then, in the case of the house of David, much more was at stake than the civil fortunes of the country. Bound up with, and behind the patriotic feeling was the religious and the theocratic one. Ethan's pain is in its kind, though not in its degree, that of Jeremiah in the greater catastrophe in a later century; it is that of the sorrowing Christians, who, as an Arab chronicler describes, saw their religion sink into ruins before the hosts of Islam; it is that of the Romanized Britons, who beheld in our own Saxon forefathers, yet pagan, the implacable enemies, not merely of their civilization, but of their faith. The throne of David was in the dust; David's grandson was a subject of the Egyptian king; the military defences of the country had been stormed by Egyptian forces; unprotected populations were pillaged by hordes of Suakims and Ethiopians who wandered at will over the sacred soil, carrying wherever they went desolation and ruin. The edge of the king's sword was turned; no resistance to the foes attempted in the open field; the unhappy monarch himself had been subjected to treatment which degraded him, and the psalmist apprehends that the days of his youth would be shortened by the ruin and dishonour which had thus overtaken the man who five short years before had ascended the mightiest throne in Western Asia, and who in his day impersonated the best hopes not merely of the children of Abraham. but of the human race. Here, then, was the psalmist's difficulty. What had become of the lovingkindness of God? what of His faithfulness? what of His power? Ethan, in his report of the promise, has, in fact, answered his own difficulty. The covenant with David was not an absolute covenant. It depended upon conditions — conditions which were summed up in fidelity to Him who had done so much for it. Ethan himself states this supreme condition in the words of the Divine Author of the covenant (vers. 30-32). The promise, however, continued thus (vers. 33-35). The lovingkindness of God, overclouded for the moment, was not withdrawn, the punishment of the race of David was not its final extinction. Among Rehoboam's descendants were good and powerful kings not unworthy of their high and sacred ancestry, and when at last continued disobedience to the terms of the covenant led to the destruction of the monarchy in Zedekiah and to the ruin of the sacred city, the covenant still remained. Of the race of David one at last was born who should reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of whose kingdom there should be no end. Ethan's cry has often been raised by pious men in bad days of Christendom. Over and over again Rehoboam has appeared in Christendom. The foolish lover of spiritual absolutism, the divisions which its pretensions render well nigh inevitable, and then the triumphs of the world over a weakened and divided Church — all these have been repeated once and again, and then goes up the cry, "Lord, where are Thy old lovingkindnesses?" and the answer is, "They are where they were." "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." Now, as always, the promises of God to His people are largely conditioned. If the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church, much short of this may happen as a consequence of the unfaithfulness of her members or her ministers. God makes His work dependent for its complete success on the loyal co-operation of human wills. He accepts the semblance of defeat and failure rather than suspend the terms on which His gifts are given. But His promise all the while is sure; it is we who forget the conditions on which it is made, and Ethan's question is often answered in another connection. Every child, as you know, is taught in the Catechism to say that "In my baptism I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." Now, this statement appeals to a mass of Scriptural testimony which is summarized by the statement of St. Paul that as many that have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. The covenant which God makes at its baptism with every Christian soul, is, indeed, a bountiful and magnificent gift, too great to be believed in if it were not the consequence and application of a gift which is still greater; for "God so loved the world," etc. But here comes in the sad contrast between this account of baptism and the actual lives of thousands, nay of millions, of the baptized. "Look," men exclaim, "at baptized Christendom. Look at the millions whom you have taught to say that they are made members of Christ in their baptism." Certainly Christendom is at first sight a libel on and an apparent contradiction to the highest gifts and promises of Christ, and yet in saying that do we not forget that those gifts and promises like the covenant with David are always conditioned? The grace of God whether given in baptism or at any other time, though it is promised for ever to the collective Church, is not a gift which is bestowed on any one of us irrespective of our method of receiving and treasuring it. The promises that none shall pluck those whom the Father has given to His Christ out of His hand, and that the predestined are called, and the called justified, and the justified glorified, are all of them accompanied by tacit conditions expressed elsewhere that these receivers of grace must correspond to the grace which they received. "God," says St. , "will not save us through ourselves, but He will not save us without ourselves." The grace of regeneration is not a talisman which wins heaven, be the baptized what they may; it is a conditioned gift which, like the crown of David, will be retained or forfeited by the monarch that wears it as men are careful or not to recognize its obligations. Of this let us be most sure, that if God's promises seem to any to have failed, the fault lies not with Him but with ourselves; it is we who have changed, not He. All we have to do if our lot is cast amid discouraging circumstances, or if we seem to be coming short of what He has promised us, is to lift up our hearts to Him in repentance and faith, and all will be well.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest unto David in thy truth?

WEB: Lord, where are your former loving kindnesses, which you swore to David in your faithfulness?