PSALMS 56


13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before Elohim in the light of the living?

The truth has taught us what men to be wise must recognize, but are most unwilling to learn -- that in the state of nature, we are totally without hope or comfort; that sin reigns unto death in every member of the human family; that judgment hath passed upon all men unto condemnation, and that in Christ alone can men be justified unto life eternal.

We are by nature the children of wrath. We are born into a state of sin and under condemnation. We are made subject to vanity, though not willingly. We find ourselves mortal in spite of all aspirations after a higher state. We are feeble and corruptible, in spite of lingering traces of a god-like type and angelic powers of mind.

Our abhorrence of death and our tenacious clinging to life, do not for a moment stay our progress towards the end of the living; mingle our bones with mother earth we must, love and study as we may.

In Adam we are in the grip of an irrevocable destiny which makes us strangers in creation. We cannot contemplate the works of God as ours in any sense. The azure vault of heaven, with its resplendent sun in the daytime and the shining host at night, is magnificent; but not for us, for they fill the ages, while we flutter, like the morning insect, for a few moments, and are gone for ever.

The broad and smiling face of the earth, with its countless beauties of land and water, in "ocean depths and spreading wood," is "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever"; but not to such as we -- dust and ashes, whose days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

We raise our eyes to the measureless immensity of the splendid universe around, and think of the ineffable Being whose power, and wisdom, and love have evolved and sustained them all. But we have to confess, as natural men, we have no acquaintance with Him. We are far from Him; we have no relation to Him higher than the other works of His power -- menials in His great house -- here but a short time, unlike the Son who abideth ever.

In this unutterable orphanage which we inherit in Adam -- in the consuming dreariness of our abortive being, what joy surrounds this [memorial meeting] table; what blessedness belongs to the people who know the joyful sound which those symbols represent. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance! Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!

No longer mere creatures, nor even servants, but sons -- elevated to the highest friendship with the Great Intelligence of the Universe -- brought into fellowship with the Eternal Power and wisdom which holds all things in the hollow of His hand! This is, indeed, a greater privilege than we at all times realize: yet it is simply what the heavenly calling means.

Bro Roberts - The Only Hope