"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence."-PSALM CXxxix. 7.

IT

T is of the moral, rather than of the physical, aspects of God's omnipresence that I purpose speaking. The series of striking images in which the Psalmist goes on to describe the exploring spirit, unable to find a place where God is not, is full of moral suggestiveness. It explains to the reason the structure and order of the material universe; it fills the imagination with the awful sense of a presence to whom nothing is hidden, from whom there is no escape; but greater than its effect on the reason and the imagination is its influence on the heart. The God whom the Psalmist found everywhere was the Lord whom he knew and trusted, in all the tenderness of His providence, in all the clearness of His judgment, welcoming the restless spirit to worship and to trust. The God whom we find everywhere is the God and

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of spirits, in all the patience of His redeeming purpose and the graciousness of His discipline. The universe of space filled with God's presence is but a symbol of the measureless complex of human life and history, in which God's spirit and operation are to be for ever found.

God in all modes of personal existence; God in the yet untrodden ways of human history; God in the perplexities of our experience-these are the illustrations of His omnipresence suggested by our text.

I. God in all modes of personal existence. These are all covered by the contrast between heaven and hell, than which no words would suggest a completer contrast to every thoughtful Hebrew. Heaven was the scene of the highest personal activity; it was the abode of Him with whom was "the fountain of life;" there dwelt cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, all rejoicing in the highest exercise of thought and the noblest powers of service. Hell-or the grave, the place of the dead-was the end of thought, the cessation of employment. It was overhung with

if he should lie down among the dead, God would be there. For the Jews had no clear thought of immortality, no full conception of a human personality which death does not dissolve and the grave never holds. No Son of Man had come to them, alive although He had died, bringing with Him the promise of resurrection. Death appeared to them in all its naked horror; blackness and desolation overhung the grave; it was an image of the curse of sin, itself God's doom on evil-workers. And yet, dark and lonesome as was the thought of dying, there was this one ray of comfort in the prospect-that death was of God's appointment; as much as the heaven of His own abode, it was beneath the rule of God. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Though the saint should die, he had reposed his trust in God, and that trust should be fulfilled. This faith contained, in germ, the hope of the resurrection; Christ Himself points out its implication-"God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Here is one instance of the fruitfulness of the Psalmist's faith in an omnipresent God. God uses it as the basis of a clear, intelligent expectation. The feeling that God was to be trusted, even in sight of the grave, is rewarded in due time by the revelation of life and immortality in the gospel.

It is impossible for us, even in imagination, to contemplate death as the Hebrews saw it; we cannot look upon the grave without seeing the light that is beyond it. "Now is Christ risen from the dead, become the firstfruits of them that slept;" we triumph over the grave in the faith of a definite revelation. And yet there are times when to us, too, there is unspeakable rest in the assurance that God is in the appointment of death as truly, though not as clearly, as He is in His own heaven. When the Eden of a perfect human love is suddenly turned to a house of mourning, and chilled affection cowers silently before the tomb; when youthful promise and manhood's power are laid in the grave, and many an interest seems making its bed with them; the all-consoling presence is not seldom felt. How many who dreaded the desolation of bereavement have found that God is there. They are not alone, for the Father, the Saviour, the Comforter, is with them; the discipline of bereavement is as Divine as the sweetest training of companionship. Did we but see what noble issues have been wrought for men by death; how it has refined affection and chastened passion, and given scope to patience, and cultured hope; how it has surrounded men's pathway with angels and breathed a saintlier spirit into common lives; we should gain a nobler vision than before of