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Expositor's Bible Commentary Psalm 88:1 A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite. O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: Psalm 88:1-18 A PSALM which begins with "God of my salvation" and ends with "darkness" is an anomaly. All but unbroken gloom broods over it, and is densest at its close. The psalmist is so "weighed upon by sore distress," that he has neither definite petition for deliverance nor hope. His cry to God is only a long-drawn complaint, which brings no respite from his pains nor brightening of his spirit. But yet to address God as the God of his salvation, to discern His hand in the infliction of sorrows, is the operation of true though feeble faith. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is the very spirit of this psalm. It stands alone in the Psalter, which would be incomplete as a mirror of phases of devout experience, unless it had one psalm expressing trust which has ceased to ask or hope for the removal of life-long griefs, but still clasps God’s hand even in the "darkness." Such experience is comparatively rare, and is meant to be risen above. Therefore this psalm stands alone. But it is not unexampled, and all moods of the devout life would not find lyrical expression in the book unless this deep note was once sounded. It is useless to inquire what was the psalmist’s affliction. His language seems to point to physical disease of long continuance and ever threatening a fatal termination; but in all probability sickness is a symbol here, as so often. What racked his sensitive spirit matters little. The cry which his pains evoked is what we are concerned with. There is little trace of strophical arrangement, and commentators differ much in their disposition of the parts of the psalm. But we venture to suggest a principle of division which has not been observed, in the threefold recurrence of "I cry" or "I call," accompanied in each case by direct address to Jehovah. The resulting division into three parts gives, first, the psalmist’s description of his hopeless condition as, in effect, already dead ( Psalm 88:1-8 ); second, an expostulation with God on the ground that, if the psalmist is actually numbered with the dead, he can no more be the object of Divine help, nor bring God praise ( Psalm 88:9-12 ); and, third, a repetition of the thoughts of the first part with slight variation and addition ( Psalm 88:13-18 ). The central portion of the first division is occupied with an expansion of the thought that the psalmist is already as good as dead ( Psalm 88:3-6 ). The condition of the dead is drawn with a powerful hand and the picture is full of solemn grandeur and hopelessness. It is preceded in Psalm 88:1-2 , by an invocation which has many parallels in the psalms, but which here is peculiarly striking. This saddest of them all has for its first words the Name Which ought to banish sadness. He who can call on Jehovah as the God of his salvation possesses a charm which has power to still agitation, and to flush despair with some light of hope as from an unrisen sun. But this poet feels no warmth from the beams, and the mists surge up, if not to hide the light, yet to obscure it. All the more admirable, then, the persistence of his cry; and all the more precious the lesson that Faith is not to let present experience limit its conceptions. God is none the less the God of salvation and none the less to be believed to be so though no consciousness of His saving power blesses the heart at the moment. Psalm 88:1 b is obscure. Psalm 22:2 and other places suggest that the juxtaposition of day and night is meant to express the continuity of the psalmist’s prayer; but, as the text now stands, the first part of the clause can only mean "In the time (day) when I cry," and the second has to be supplemented so as to read "[My cry comes] before Thee." This gives a poor meaning, and there is probability in the slight emendation on the word for day; which is required in order to make it an adverb of time equivalent to "In the day," as in the passage already quoted. Another emendation, adopted by Graetz, Bickell, and Cheyne, changes "God of" into "my God," and "my salvation" into "I cry" (the same word as in Psalm 88:13 ), and attaches "by day" to the first clause. The result is, - Jehovah, my God, I cry to Thee by day, I call in the night before Thee. The changes are very slight and easy, and the effect of them is satisfactory: The meaning of the verse is obvious, whether the emendation is accepted or not. The gain from the proposed change is dearly purchased by the loss of that solitary expression of hope in the name of "God of my salvation," the one star which gleams for a moment through a rift in the blackness. With "For" in Psalm 88:3 the psalmist begins the dreary description of his affliction, the desperate and all but deadly character of which he spreads before God as a reason for hearing his prayer. Despair sometimes strikes men dumb, and sometimes makes them eloquent. The sorrow which has a voice is less crushing than that which is tongueless. This overcharged heart finds relief in self-pitying depicting of its burdens, and in the exercise of a gloomy imagination, which draws out in detail the picture of the feebleness, the recumbent stillness, the seclusion and darkness of the dead. They have "no strength." Their vital force has ebbed away, and they are but as weak shadows, having an impotent existence, which does not deserve to be called life. The remarkable expression of Psalm 88:5 "free among the dead," is to be interpreted in the light of Job 3:19 , which counts it as one blessing of the grave, that "there the servant is free from his master." But the psalmist thinks that that "freedom" is loathsome, not desirable, for it means removal from the stir of a life, the heaviest duties and cares of which are better than the torpid immunity from these, which makes the state of the dead a dreary monotony. They lie stretched out and motionless. No ripple of cheerful activity stirs that stagnant sea. One unvarying attitude is theirs. It is not the stillness of rest which prepares for work, but of incapacity of action or of change. They are forgotten by Him who remembers all that are. They are parted from the guiding and blessing influence of the Hand that upholds all being. In some strange fashion they are and yet are not. Their death has a simulacrum of life. Their shadowy life is death. Being and non-being may both be predicated of them. The psalmist speaks in riddles; and the contradictions in his speech reflect his dim knowledge of that place of darkness. He looks into its gloomy depths, and he sees little but gloom. It needed the resurrection of Jesus to flood these depths with light, and to show that the life beyond may be fuller of bright activity than life here-a state in which vital strength is increased beyond all earthly experience, and wherein God’s all-quickening hand grasps more closely, and communicates richer gifts than are attainable in that death which sense calls life. Psalm 88:7 traces the psalmist’s sorrows to God. It breathes not complaint but submission, or, at least, recognition of His hand; and they who, in the very paroxysm of their pains, can say, "It is the Lord," are not far from saying, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," nor from the peace that comes from a compliant will. The recognition implies, too, consciousness of sin which has deserved the "wrath" of God, and in such consciousness lies the germ of blessing. Sensitive nerves may quiver, as they feel the dreadful weight with which that wrath presses down on them, as if to crush them; but if the man lies still, and lets the pressure do its work, it will not force out his life, but only his evil, as foul water is squeezed from cloth. Psalm 88:7 b is rendered by Delitzsch "And Thy billows Thou pressest down," which gives a vivid picture; but "billows" is scarcely the word to use for the downward rushing waters of a cataract, and the ordinary rendering, adopted above, requires only natural supplements. Psalm 88:8 approaches nearer to a specification of the psalmist’s affliction. If taken literally, it points to some loathsome disease, which had long clung to him, and made even his, friends shrink from companionship, and thus had condemned him to isolation. All these details suggest leprosy, which, if referred to here, is most probably to be taken, as sickness is in several psalms, as symbolic of affliction. The desertion by friends is a common feature in the psalmist’s complaints. The seclusion as in a prison house is, no doubt, appropriate to the leper’s condition, but may also simply refer to the loneliness and compulsory inaction arising from heavy trials. At all events, the psalmist is flung back friendless on himself, and hemmed in, so that he cannot expatiate in the joyous bustle of life. Blessed are they who, when thus situated, can betake themselves to God, and find that He does not turn away! The consciousness of His loving presence has. not yet lighted the psalmist’s soul; but the clear acknowledgment that it is God who has put the sweetness of earthly companionship beyond his reach is, at least, the beginning of the happier experience, that God never makes a solitude round a soul without desiring to fill it with Himself. If the recurring cry to Jehovah in Psalm 88:9 is taken, as we have suggested it should be, as marking a new turn in the thoughts, the second part of the psalm will include Psalm 88:9-12 . Psalm 88:10-12 are apparently the daily prayer referred to in Psalm 88:9 . They appeal to God to preserve the psalmist from the state of death, which he has just depicted himself as having in effect already entered, by the consideration which is urged in other psalms as a reason for Divine intervention { Psalm 6:5 ; Psalm 30:9 , etc.} -namely, that His power had no field for its manifestation in the grave, and that He could draw no revenue of praise from the pale lips that lay silent there. The conception of the state of the dead is even more dreary than that in Psalm 88:4-5 . They are "shades," which word conveys the idea of relaxed feebleness. Their dwelling is Abaddon- i.e. , "destruction,"-"darkness," "the land of forgetfulness" whose inhabitants remember not, nor are remembered, either by God or man. In that cheerless region God had no opportunity to show His wonders of delivering mercy, for monotonous immobility was stamped upon it, and out of that realm of silence no glad songs of praise could sound. Such thoughts are in startling contrast with the hopes that sparkle in some psalms (such as Psalm 16:10 , etc.), and they show that clear, permanent assurance of future blessedness was net granted to the ancient Church. Nor could there be sober certainty of it until after Christ’s resurrection. But it is also to be noticed that this psalm neither affirms nor denies a future resurrection. It does affirm continuous personal existence after death, of however thin and shadowy a sort. It is not concerned with what may lie far ahead, but is speaking of the present state of the dead, as it was conceived of, at the then stage of revelation, by a devout soul, in its hours of despondency. The last part ( Psalm 88:13-18 ) is marked, like the two preceding, by the repetition of the name of Jehovah, and of the allusion to the psalmist’s continual prayer. It is remarkable, and perhaps significant, that the time of prayer should here be "the morning," whereas in Psalm 88:1 it was, according to Delitzsch, the night, or, according to the other rendering, day and night. The psalmist had asked in Psalm 88:2 that his prayer might enter into God’s presence; he now vows that it will come to meet Him. Possibly some lightening of his burden may be hinted at by the reference to the time of his petition. Morning is the hour of hope, of new vigour, of a fresh beginning, which may not be only a prolongation of dreary yesterdays. But if there is any such alleviation, it is only for a moment, and then the cloud settles down still more heavily. But one thing the psalmist has won by his cry. He now longs to know the reason for his affliction. He is confident that God is righteous when He afflicts, and, heavy as his sorrow is, he has passed beyond mere complaint concerning it, to the wish to understand it. The consciousness that it is chastisement, occasioned by his own evil, and meant to purge that evil away, is present, in a rudimentary form at least in that cry, "Why castest Thou off my soul?" If sorrow has brought a man to offer that prayer, it has done its work, and will cease before long, or, if it lasts, will be easier to bear, when its meaning and purpose are clear. But the psalmist rises to such a height but for a moment, though his momentary attaining it gives promise that he will, by degrees, be able to remain there permanently. It is significant that the only direct naming of Jehovah, in addition to the three which accompany the references to his prayers, is associated with this petition for enlightenment. The singer presses close to God in his faith that His hardest blows are not struck at random, and that His administration has for its basis, not caprice but reason, moved by love and righteousness. Such a cry is never offered in vain, even though it should be followed, as it is here, by plaintive reiterations of the sufferer’s pains. These are now little more than a summary of the first part. The same idea of being in effect dead even while alive is repeated in Psalm 88:15 , in which the psalmist wails that from youth he had been but a dying man, so close to him had death seemed, or so death-like bad been his life. He has borne God’s terrors till be is distracted. The word rendered "I am distracted" is only used here, and consequently is obscure. Hupfeld and others deny that it is a word at all (he calls it an " Unwort "), and would read another which means to become torpid. The existing text is defended by Delitzsch and others, who take the word to mean to be weakened in mind or bewildered. The meaning of the whole seems to be as rendered above. But it might also be translated, as by Cheyne, "I bear Thy terrors, my senses must fail." In Psalm 88:16 the word for wrath is in the plural, to express the manifold outbursts of that deadly indignation. The word means literally heat; and we may represent the psalmist’s thought as being that the wrath shoots forth many fierce tongues of licking flame, or, like a lava stream, pours out in many branches. The word rendered "Cut me off" is anomalous, and is variously translated annihilate, extinguish, or as above. The wrath which was a fiery flame in Psalm 88:16 is an overwhelming flood in Psalm 88:17 . The complaint of Psalm 88:8 recurs in Psalm 88:18 , in still more tragic form. All human sympathy and help are far away, and the psalmist’s only familiar friend is darkness. There is an infinitude of despair in that sad irony. But there is a gleam of hope, though faint and far, like faint daylight seen from the innermost recesses of a dark tunnel, in his recognition that his dismal solitude is the work of God’s hand; for, if God has made a heart or a life empty of human love, it is that He may Himself fill it with His own sweet and all-compensating presence. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee. Psalm 88 A portrait of a suffering man Homilist. I. DEPICTING HIS WRETCHED STATE. He speaks of himself as "full of troubles," satiated with sufferings. 1. He represents himself as tottering on the grave and without power (vers. 2-5). 2. Crushed by agonies and conscious of the Divine displeasure (vers. 6, 7). 3. Bereft of friends, and the subject of social contempt (ver. 8). 4. Deprived of liberty and exhausted with grief. "I am shut up," etc. (ver. 8). II. SUPPLICATING HIS AFFLICTING GOD. This he did — 1. With unremitting earnestness (ver. 1). To whom can human sufferers look for help, but to the God of "salvation"? And to look to Him with earnest constancy is at once our duty and our interest. 2. With profound inquiries (vers. 10-12). The living have a profound interest in the dead. 3. With pious determination (ver. 13). 4. With painful apprehension (vers. 14-18). ( Homilist. ) Heman's sorrowful psalm From this psalm — I. LEARN HOW TO PRAY. 1. Tell the Lord your case. 2. Pray naturally. 3. Pray with this belief fixed in your mind, that your help must come from God, and pray expecting salvation from the Lord. 4. Pray often. 5. With weeping and mourning. 6. Pleadingly. II. RESOLVE TO PRAY IN YOUR VERY WORST CASE. When you are full of troubles, go to God with them, that is the very time when you most need to pray. "But," say you, "Mr. Spurgeon, you do not know all that I have to think of." No, but I do know that, the more you have to think of, the more reason you have to go to God in prayer about it. The more loads you have to drag, the more horses you need; and the more work there is to be done, the more reason is there for crying to God to help you to do it. Do not, I pray you, stay away from the outward means Of grace when you are in trouble; but especially do not stay away from God Himself when you are tried and perplexed. When you are as full of trouble as ever you can be, then is the time to pray most. "But I have nobody to speak to," says another. Never mind if you have not; that is all the more reason why you should pray to God, and plead with God, who will not leave you. "But I am distracted," says another. Yes, and you will be distracted, unless you will go to God as you are, and implore Him to look at your distractions, and to lay His gentle hand upon you, and to restore you to yourself, and then to restore you to Himself. III. REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP ON PRAYING. 1. You cannot lose anything by prayer. 2. It is not so great a thing, after all, to have to continue to ask. As a sinner I kept God waiting for me long enough, aye, far too long. 3. Cease not to pray, for He to whom thou prayest is a gracious God. Take good heart; thou wilt not plead in vain, for He loves to hear thy prayers. He must, He will, answer thee, for He is a God of grace. 4. He has heard others. 5. He has promised to hear thee. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) No trouble too great for God to lift The Advertiser. The tide was out. A great ocean steamer lay at the wharf, loaded to the line; by its side was a little boat that danced on top of the waves. The big iron ship grew worried, and said to the dancing, happy boat: "I fear, when the tide comes in, I'm so heavy it can't lift me, and I'll go to the bottom." "Never fear," said the smaller one, "it can lift thee as well as me." "Oh but you are so light, while I'm so heavy. It's easy enough to lift you, but me — oh, dear! Worry not, worry not, old ironsides. It's lifted the likes o' you many a time, and will soon lift thee as well as me." And the tide came in; up and up they both rose on the bosom of the sea; one lifted as high and as easy as the other. Great heart, loaded to the line with thine own sorrows and others' burdens, filled with fears and worried with doubt, thou wilt not go down. ( The Advertiser. ) For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. Psalm 88:3 Heman: a child of light walking in darkness A. Whyte, D. D. (with 1 Chronicles 25:5 ): — A seer is just a man who sees. Other men also have eyes indeed, but, then, they do not see with their eyes as a seer sees. Now, Heman was a seer. Heman saw constantly a sight that to most men even in Israel was absolutely invisible. Heman saw, and saw nothing else, but his own soul. 1. "My soul is full of troubles," says this great seer, speaking about himself. What led Heman to speak and to publish abroad this most melancholy of all the psalms we are not told. It was not Heman's actual sin, like David's. Neither was this terrible trouble, like David's, among his large family of sons and daughters. Heman had brought up his sons and daughters more successfully than David had done. For all Heman's children assisted their father in sacred song in the house of the Lord. At the same time Heman cannot take a happy father's full joy cut of his talented and dutiful children because of the overwhelming trouble of his own soul. It is a terrible baptism into the matters of God to have a soul from his youth up so full of inconsolable troubles as that. 2. "My soul is full of troubles," says Heman, "till I am driven distracted." Every day we hear of men and women being driven distracted through love, and through fear, and through poverty, and through pain, and sometimes through ever-joy, and sometimes, it is said, through religion. It was thought by some that the Apostle Paul was quite distracted in his day through his too much thought and occupation about Divine things. But be not too much cast down. Comfort My people. Say to them, and assure them, that this is the beginning in them of the wisdom, and the truth, and the love, and the salvation of their God and Saviour Jesus Christ. 3. Now, with all that, this is not to be wondered at that Heman says next (ver. 18). Anything else but this is not to be expected from Heman. Heman makes it an additional complaint, but it is a simple and a necessary consequence of his troubled and distracted soul. Friends and lovers, the oldest, and the warmest, and the bests — they all have their several limits. Most men are made with little heart themselves, and they are not at home where there is much heart, and much exercise of heart. They flee in a fright from the heights and the depths of the high and deep heart. It needs a friend that sticketh closer than a brother to keep true to a man who has much heart, and who sees and feels with all his heart. Heman, besides being the King's seer, was also an eminent type of Christ, both in the distracting troubles of his soul, and in the fewness and in the infidelity of his friends. 4. Now, all that, bad as it is, would have been easily borne had it been a sudden stroke and then for ever over. Had it been a great temptation, a great fall, a great repentance, a great forgiveness, and then the light of God's countenance brighter than ever all Heman's after days. But Heman's yoke from his youth up has been of that terrible kind that it has eaten into his soul deeper and deeper with every advancing year. Had Heman lived after Paul's day he would have described himself in Paul's way. He would have said that the two-edged sword had become every year more and more spiritual, till it entered more and more deep every year into his soul. 5. There are these four uses out of all that.(1) The first is to justify such a proceeding as to take a text like this for a Communion evening. What could be more comely in a worthy" communicant, who has been stayed with flagons and comforted with apples all day than to say to the outcasts of Israel ere this day closes ( Isaiah 43:1, 25 ).(2) And then for the use of all Heman-like, all distracted communicants — do not despair. Do not give way to distraction.(3) Are you quite sure that this deep darkness of yours is quite unaccountable to you short of God's sovereignty — short of His deep, hidden, Divine will? I doubt it, and I would have you doubt it. I would have you make sure that there is no other possible explanation of this darkness of His face. All the chances are that it is not God's ways that are so distractingly dark, but your own.(4) There is a singular use in Heman for ministers. When God is to make a very sinful man into a very able, and skilful, and experimental minister, He sends that man to the same school to which He sent Heman. Now, who can tell what God has laid up for you to do for Him and for men's souls when you are out of your probationer-ship of trouble and distraction, and are promoted to be a comforter of God's troubled and distracted saints? He may have a second David, and far more, to comfort and to sanctify in the generation to come; and you may be ordained to be the King's seer in the matters of God. Who can tell? Only, be you ready, for the stone that is fit for the wall is not left to lie in the ditch. ( A. Whyte, D. D. ) Heman's elegy Samuel Cox, D. D. Two Hemans attained eminence in Israel. One was a singer, the other was a sage ( 1 Chronicles 15:16-22 ; 1 Chronicles 25:5 ; 1 Kings 4:31 ). The two facts which filled Heman's soul with trouble were by no means unusual facts. They were — 1. The growing infirmities, the frailties and Sicknesses, of age (ver 7); and — 2. The loss of friends, or the supposed alienation of friends, which often accompanies age, especially when it is sick and weary of the world (vers. 8-18). These are common facts, but they are none the more welcome for being common when they come home to us personally. Our sage broods over them, resents them, as we all do at times, and laments his feebleness and isolation. Nay, as he traces all the facts and events of human life to the hand of God, he charges God with all the responsibility, all the pains and bitterness of them, and concludes that even this great Friend has forgotten him; or has turned against him. With all his wisdom he has been, as he confesses (ver. 5). Of a sceptical and misgiving temperament from his youth up. Two ways in which we may view the contents of the psalm — either making the best of them, or making the worst of them, in so far at least as they bear on the character and aim of the author of the psalm. We are not bound to adopt Heman's views, or even to sympathize with them. Much in the Bible was written for our warning and admonition. If we bring a generous spirit to the interpretation of this song, or elegy, we may recall the familiar maxim: "In much wisdom is much sorrow." A thoughtful mind is a pensive mind. The more a man sees of human life, the more he feels how much there is in it which is wrong, foolish, base, disappointing, if not hopelessly corrupt and bad. So we shall begin to make excuse for Heman. Let us remember also that in much sorrow there is much discipline, and discipline by which a wise man should profit. Do you, do all men, resent the wrongs of time? Remember that resentment, then, as well as the wrongs which provoke it; and consider what a happy omen lies in the fact that men do hate and resent that which is wrong, and both love and demand that which is just and right. Those who decry "mere human wisdom" are very likely to conclude that Heman the sage was punished for his largeness and freedom of thought, that he was abandoned to the guidance of his own wisdom in order that he might learn how little it could do for him in the greatest emergencies of life, how little, therefore, it was worth. I see no reason to judge him thus harshly. I find much in this psalm to lead us to a more kindly judgment. But, doubtless, there are many among us to whom such a description would apply. ( Samuel Cox, D. D. ) Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave. Psalm 88:5 A true and a false idea of the grave Homilist. I. A TRUE idea of the grave: "Free" — 1. From all physical sufferings. 2. From all secular anxieties. 3. From all social tumults. 4. From all human tyrannies. II. A FALSE idea of the grave. That the dead are — 1. Forgotten by God. 2. Separated from God. They are not "cut off" from Him in any sense. ( Homilist. ) "Free among the dead A. Maclaren, D. D. This remarkable expression is to he interpreted in the light of Job 3:19 , which counts it as one blessing of the grave, that "there the servant is free from his master." But the psalmist thinks that that "freedom" is loathsome, not desirable, for it means removal from the stir of a life, the heaviest duties and cares of which are better than the torpid immunity from these, which makes the state of the dead a dreary monotony. In some strange fashion they are and yet are not. Their death has a simulacrum of life. Their shadowy life is death. The psalmist speaks in riddles; and the contradictions in his speech reflect his dim knowledge of that place of darkness, He looks into its gloomy depths, and he sees little but gloom. It needed the resurrection of Jesus to flood these depths with light, and to show that the life beyond may be fuller of bright activity than life here — a state in which vital strength is increased beyond all earthly experience, and wherein God's all-quickening hand grasps more closely, and communicates richer gifts than are attainable in that death which sense calls life. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves. Psalm 88:7 For the troubled A s men, the people of God share the common lot of men, and what is that but trouble? Yea, there are some sorrows which are peculiar to Christians, some extra griefs of which they partake because they are believers, though these are something more than balanced by those peculiar and bitter troubles which belong to the ungodly, and are engendered by their transgressions, from which the Christian is delivered. I. EXPOUND THE TEXT. 1. Tried saints are very prone to overrate their afflictions. 2. Saints do well to trace all their trials to their God. 3. Afflicted children of God do well to have a keen eye to the wrath that mingles with their troubles. God will visit His children's transgressions. He will frequently let common sinners go on throughout life unrebuked; but not so His children. If you were going home to-day, and saw a number of boys throwing stones and breaking windows, you might not interfere with them-, but if you saw your own lad among them, I will be bound you would fetch him out, and make him repent of it. Perhaps the reason of your trouble may not be a sin committed, but a duty neglected. Search and look, and see wherein you have been guilty of omission. When you have so done let me give one word of caution. Do not expect when in the trouble to perceive any immediate benefit resulting from it. Remember that word, "Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness." The gardener takes his knife and prunes the fruit trees to make them bring forth more fruit; his little child comes trudging at his heels and cries, "Father, I do not see that the fruit comes on the trees after you have cut them." No, dear child, it is not likely you would, but come round in a few months when the season of fruit has come, and then shall you see the golden apples which thank the knife. Graces which are meant to endure require time for their production, and are not thrust forth and ripened in a night. Were they so soon ripe they might be as speedily rotten. II. THE BENEFITS OF TROUBLE. 1. Severe trouble in a true believer has the effect of loosening the roots of his soul earthward and tightening the anchor-hold of his heart heavenward. How can he love the world which has become so drear to him? Why should he seek after grapes so bitter to his taste? 2. Affliction frequently opens truths to us, and opens us to the truth. Blessed is that man who receives the truth of God into his inmost self; he shall never lose it, but it shall be the life of his spirit. 3. Affliction, when sanctified by the Holy Spirit, brings much glory to God out of Christians, through their experience of the Lord's faithfulness to them. 4. Affliction gives us through grace the inestimable privilege of conformity to the Lord Jesus. We pray to be like Christ, but how can we be if we are not men of sorrows at all, and never become the acquaintance of grief? 5. Our sufferings are of great service to us when God blesses them, for they help us to be useful to others. Luther was right, when he said affliction was the best book in the minister's library. How can the man of God sympathize with the afflicted ones, if he knows nothing at all about their troubles? ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Psalm 88:8 The imprisoning power of suffering Homilist. I. SUFFERING ALWAYS SHUTS US UP TO OURSELVES. It does this in two ways, it destroys both the disposition and the capacity to go out into society. Suffering isolates, it throws us back upon Ourselves, and makes us feel our absolute lonelihood. This is often — 1. Spiritually necessary. 2. Spiritually beneficent. II. Suffering SOMETIMES shuts us up to God. When "shut up "to ourselves, we are often urged into the conscious presence of God. God is better seen and heard in solitude than in society. I am not alone, "the Father is with me." "Enter into your closet, and shut your door," etc. III. Suffering MUST shut us up to the GRAVE. Elsewhere the writer says, "My life draweth nigh unto the grave." ( Homilist. ) Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Psalm 88:9 The godly man in trouble D. Dickson. 1. Godliness doth not make men senseless of grief, nor doth it hinder tears or mourning, or any other effects of sorrow to be seen in their body. 2. Sorrow should neither hinder the godly to seek God, nor move them to seek their consolation elsewhere. 3. It is possible that a godly man may be instant daily with God, praying with tears for comfort, and yet not obtain for a long time, as this example doth teach. 4. As in serious prayer, specially in secret, the affections of the heart do utter themselves in the answerable gestures of the body, as well as in the voice and words of the mouth; so those gestures have their own speech unto God, no less than the words of the mouth have; as here, "I have stretched out my hands unto Thee," is brought forth to express his submissive rendering up of himself .unto God, and his dependence upon Him. ( D. Dickson. ) I have called daily upon Thee The necessity for daily prayer appears when we consider the consequences of neglecting it. Experience proves that a regular habit, at some fixed hour or hours, becomes a safeguard against forgetfulness, as well as an invaluable help to the constant "practice of the presence of God," whereas those who say that they can pray at any time, end in praying very seldom, or never. And Mrs. Besant has testified that "God fades out of the life of the man who forgets to pray." On the other hand, you may lose hold of many a Christian doctrine, but you have not lost your faith so long as the angels can say of you, "Behold, he still prayeth." Distress teaches us to pray, and prayer dispels distress. One wedge displaces the other. Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise Thee? Psalm 88:10-12 The great problem Homilist. I. Here is a problem COMMON TO HUMANITY. Lived there ever a man who has not asked this question in some form or other? II. Here is a problem that UNAIDED REASON CANNOT ANSWER. 1. Ancient philosophy tried and failed. Witness . 2. Modern philosophy has nothing but speculations. III. Here is a problem ON WHICH THE GOSPEL THROWS LIGHT. What saith the Gospel? ( 1 Corinthians 15:51 ). ( Homilist. ) Wonders shown to the dead J. C. Philpot. In these verses we find mention made of four things on the part of God: "wonders," "lovingkindness, .... faithfulness," and "righteousness" — four attributes of the blessed Jehovah, which the eyes of Heman had been opened to see, and which the heart of Heman had been wrought upon to feel. But he comes, by Divine teaching, into a spot where these attributes seem to be completely lost to him;and yet (so mysterious are the ways of God!) the very place where those attributes were to be more powerfully displayed, and made more deeply and experimentally known to his soul. 1. "Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?" He is speaking here of his own experience; he is that "dead" person, to whom those "wonders" are to be shown. And being in that state of experience, he considered that every act of mercy shown to him where he then was must be a "wonder." All God's people are brought by the Spirit's operations upon their souls, sooner or later, to be in that spot where Heman was. Paul was there, when he said ( Romans 7:9 ). Then, surely, he was "dead"; that is, he had been killed in his feelings by the spirituality of God's law made known in his conscience — killed, as to all hopes of creature-righteousness, and killed as to any way of salvation which the creature could devise. But the word "dead" carries with it a still further meaning than this. It expresses a feeling of utter helplessness; not merely a feeling of guilt and condemnation, so as to be slain to all hopes of salvation in self, but also to feel perfectly helpless to deliver himself from the lowest hell. But if We look at the expression as it simply stands, it seems to be uttered by one who is passing under the sentence of death before the wonder is displayed. It does not run in the past tense, "Hast Thou shown wonders to the dead?" It is not couched in the present tense, "Art Thou showing wonders to the dead?" The language is not the language of praise for the past; nor of admiration for the present; but that of anxious inquiry for the future" "Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?" Is it possible? Am I not too great a sinner? Is not my case too desperate? 2. "Shall Thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?" We have come a step lower now. We had been communing with "the dead"; but now we must go a step lower. We must go to the sepulchre; we must accompany the corpse to the grave. Now, what is "the grave" but the place where corruption riots, where putrefaction reigns? Here, then, is a striking figure of what a living soul feels under the manifestations of the deep corruptions of his heart. All his good words, once so esteemed, and all his good works, once so prized, and all his prayers, and all his faith, and hope, and love, and all the imaginations of his heart, not merely paralyzed and dead, not merely reduced to a state of utter helplessness, but also in soul feeling turned into rottenness and corruption. Now, were you ever there? Did your prayers ever stink in your nostrils? And are all your good words, and all your good works, and all your good thoughts, once so esteemed, now nothing in your sight but filthy, polluted and unclean? 3. "Or Thy faithfulness in destruction?" What is this "faithfulness" of which Heman speaks? It is, I believe, in two different branches; faithfulness to the promises that God has made in His word of truth — and faithfulness to His own witness and His own work upon the souls of His children. The Lord has destroyed your false religion, your natural hopes, your imaginary piety, your mock holiness, and those things in you which were not of Himself, but which were of the earth earthy, and were drawing you aside from Him; and has made you poor, naked, empty before His eyes. But it is in these very acts of destruction that He has shown His faithfulness — His faithfulness to His covenant, His faithfulness to His written word, His faithfulness to those promises which He has dropped with power into your heart. 4. "Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? and Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" Here is another attribute of God about which Heman was exercised. His "righteousness," God's righteousness, I believe, here and elsewhere does not mean only Christ's righteousness, but also the righteous acts of God in dealing with the soul in a way consistent with His own equitable character. This land of forgetfulness seems to imply two things — our forgetfulness of God, and God's apparent forgetfulness of us.(1) We often get into this sleepy land of forgetfulness toward God; we forget His universal presence, forget His heart-searching eyes, forget His former benefits, forget His past testimonies, forget the reverence which belongs to His holy name; which, above all things, we have desired most earnestly to remember. It is, then, in this land of forgetfulness, in this dull and heavy country, when, like the disciples in the garden, we sleep instead of watching, that God is still pleased to show forth His righteousness. God's righteousness runs parallel with Christ's atonement, for therein is His intrinsic righteousness manifested, that is, His strict compliance with equity and justice, because equity and justice have been strictly fulfilled by the propitiation of the Son of God.(2) But the land of forgetfulness often means forgetfulness on God's part — God seems to forget His people ( Isaiah 49:13 ). "Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies?" Does it not seem, at times, as though the Lord had utterly forgotten us, would take no more notice of us, slights us, rejects us, and would not cast one look, or bestow one word upon us? ( J. C. Philpot. ) Marvels amidst the tombs J. W. Hardman, LL. D. What a sad day in the history of a great country was that when over the gateway of the chief cemetery of Paris was inscribed the sentence, "Death is an eternal sleep"! This hopeless statement was the product of a highly civilized age, that chose to live without God; but the primitive races of men had not sunk so low in religious matters. When the chieftain of prehistoric days was placed in his tomb, before they raised his tumulus they placed with his bones his weapons of stone, or bronze, that he might in "the spirit world" pursue his avocations which he had followed on earth. But when men became philosophers, and studied the grounds of evidence, a cold withering frost of doubt seemed to freeze up their cheering convictions. Even the great , with his last breath, speaks with a kind of faltering utterance to his judges, "And now we part, and whether it will be best for you, or for me, is known to God only." Then came the dawn of a nobler day. Christ Jesus walked on earth. In the death-chamber of the little Jewish maiden He recalled the vanished spirit. Thus the Christian answers to the despairing, wailing cry of Scepticism — "Does God show signs amongst the dead?" by pointing to the empty sepulchre; to the white-robed angels, that announce — "He is not dead, He is risen"; to the testimony of the pious women, who found the spices might be reserved for incense to burn in the worship of their Ascended Lord; and to the multitude of sober and sufficient witnesses, who both on the first Easter Day, and afterwards in Galilee, by many infallible proofs, perceived that He was alive, and alive for evermore! And now He holds the keys of death and of Hades — that is, the unseen world — and adoring Christendom bows before His name, who has "shown wonders amongst the dead." In this faith our dear ones close their eyes, in His peace they rest; "in sure and certain hope "of His resurrection power we lay their earthly tabernacles beneath the green sod. ( J. W. Hardman, LL. D. ) The land of forgetfulness The land of forgetfulness J. Parker, D. D. There is a fabled river in ancient mythology called Lethe, — simply meaning forgetfulness. The idea of the fabulist was that whoever drank water out of that river instantly forgot everything that had happened; all the past was a forgotten dream. Nay, more than this, consciousness itself was not left after the Lethal water was taken. The man who drank one draught of the water of Lethe, oblivion, was not aware of his own existence; that draught had utterly extinguished him. Men have often longed for a draught of that water; men have sighed for the land of forgetfulness; souls, harps on which music was meant to be played, have desired with unspeakable earnestness to be allowed to die, to forget, to be forgotten. I. In some aspects the land of forgetfulness is A DESIRABLE LAND. There are moments when we want to enter it and be enfranchised in it for ever. There are things that other people have done to us that we long to forget; if we could wholly forget them life would be sweeter, friendship would be dearer, the outlook would be altogether more inviting. What is it that makes the land of forgetfulness a land in poetry, a land inaccessible? Is there no potion that the soul may take? there are potions that the body may drink, but we do not want to drink our bodies into some lower level and some baser consciousness; we are inquiring now about soul-potions, drinks that affect the mind, draughts that lull the soul. II. There are other aspects in which the land of forgetfulness is AN ATTAINABLE LAND. We can so live as to be forgotten. Men can live backwards. Men can be dead whilst they are alive, and forgotten while they are present to the very eyes. What is there to remember about them? Beginning as ciphers they have continued as ciphers; they have never done anything for the world, or for any individual in the world. Where are the parts of character on which we can lay hold and say, By these we shall remember you evermore? III. But the land of forgetfulness is in fact AN IMPOSSIBLE LAND. Effects follow causes: deeds grow consequences. The Lord forgets nothing: but after a process known to us by the sweet name "forgiveness" there comes the state in the Divine mind which is known by the human word "forgotten." Sometimes we say we can forgive but never forget. Then we cannot forgive; and if we cannot forgive we cannot pray; if we cannot forgive we cannot believe. Forgiveness is the true orthodoxy. Largeness, sensitiveness, responsiveness of heart, slavery to love, that is orthodoxy. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Things that should be forgotten J. Parker, D. D. Let us forget all unkindness, incivility, discourtesy. Let us forget our good deeds. That will be one great step towards the land of heaven. There are some who remember every good deed they ever did, and therefore they never did anything worth doing. No man has ever done anything for God if he has kept account of it. It may be difficult to teach this lesson, and to drive it home; but so long as a man can tell you when he gave pounds and shillings, and when he rendered service, and to what inconvenience he put himself, all that he did is blotted out. The value of our greatest deeds is in their unconsciousness. The rose does not say, I emitted so much fragrance yesterday and so much the day before. The rose knows nothing about it; it lives to make the air around it fragrant. Thus ought souls to live, not knowing how long they have preached, how much they have done, what the extent of their good deeds has boon. They know nothing about it; they are absorbed in love; they are borne away by the Divine inspiration, and whilst anything remains they suppose that nothing has been given. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) In the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee. Psalm 88:13 Morning devotion T. L. Cuyler, D. D. As the Oriental traveller sets out for the sultry journey over burning sands by loading up his camel under the palm-trees' shade, and fills his water flagons from the crystal fountain which sparkles at its roots, so does Christ's pilgrim draw his morning supplies from the exhaustless spring. Morning is the golden hour for prayer and praise. The mind is fresh; the mercies of the night and the new resurrection of the dawn both prompt a devout soul to thankfulness. The buoyant heart takes its earliest flight, like the lark, towards the gates of heaven. One of the finest touches in Bunyan 's immortal allegory is his description of Christian in the chamber of Peace, "who awoke and sang while his window looked out to the sun rising." "In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee." ( T. L. Cuyler, D. D. ) Why hidest Thou Thy face from me? Psalm 88:14 Divine hiding God sometimes hides Himself in nature that He may reveal Himself in providence; He sometimes hides Himself in providence that He may reveal Himself in grace; and He sometimes hides Himself in grace that He may reveal Himself in glory. I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer Thy terrors, I am distracted. Psalm 88:15 Religious terrors Bp. Sherlock. A s the comforts which true religion affords are the only sure support against the evils and calamities to which every condition of life is more or less exposed, so the terrors of religion, being very grievous in themselves, exclusive of these comforts, add weight to all our miseries, and are a burden too heavy for the spirit of a man to susta

88:1-9 The first words of the psalmist are the only words of comfort and support in this psalm. Thus greatly may good men be afflicted, and such dismal thoughts may they have about their afflictions, and such dark conclusion may they make about their end, through the power of melancholy and the weakness of faith. He complained most of God's displeasure. Even the children of God's love may sometimes think themselves children of wrath and no outward trouble can be so hard upon them as that. Probably the psalmist described his own case, yet he leads to Christ. Thus are we called to look unto Jesus, wounded and bruised for our iniquities. But the wrath of God poured the greatest bitterness into his cup. This weighed him down into darkness and the deep. 88:10-18 Departed souls may declare God's faithfulness, justice, and lovingkindness; but deceased bodies can neither receive God's favours in comfort, nor return them in praise. The psalmist resolved to continue in prayer, and the more so, because deliverance did not come speedily. Though our prayers are not soon answered, yet we must not give over praying. The greater our troubles, the more earnest and serious we should be in prayer. Nothing grieves a child of God so much as losing sight of him; nor is there any thing he so much dreads as God's casting off his soul. If the sun be clouded, that darkens the earth; but if the sun should leave the earth, what a dungeon would it be! Even those designed for God's favours, may for a time suffer his terrors. See how deep those terrors wounded the psalmist. If friends are put far from us by providences, or death, we have reason to look upon it as affliction. Such was the calamitous state of a good man. But the pleas here used were peculiarly suited to Christ. And we are not to think that the holy Jesus suffered for us only at Gethsemane and on Calvary. His whole life was labour and sorrow; he was afflicted as never man was, from his youth up. He was prepared for that death of which he tasted through life. No man could share in the sufferings by which other men were to be redeemed. All forsook him, and fled. Oftentimes, blessed Jesus, do we forsake thee; but do not forsake us, O take not thy Holy Spirit from us.