"_Them that love him_" is a brief, but most fitting description of true believers, whether Jewish or Christian. Saints are distinguished from others, not only in their relations to God, but in their affections towards him. Reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, they love him with a reverential, obedient, and constant love. Such are, in the highly poetic language of the prophetess, compared to the sun when he goeth forth in his might. A bold and extravagant figure indeed it appears to us at first view. To liken Christians to the sun may seem presumptuous--the sun, that glorious orb which marshals at his command the planets and satellites that revolve around him--that great central fountain of light and heat, scattering his rays over the vast fields of immensity, imparting light and warmth and vitality throughout his vast territories, and gladdening the numerous tribes of creatures which inhabit them. But the comparison in the text is specific rather than general. It is to _the going forth_ of the sun in his might--to his apparent motion round the earth, produced really by the revolution of the earth upon its axis. The Scriptures employ the language of common life when they describe the phenomena of the natural world. The going forth of the sun is seen when he rises in glory in the eastern sky, and climbs the heavens in majestic splendor, scattering the mists and gloom of night; when with untiring steps he mounts the zenith, and bends his course along the western slope, till at the close of day he flings aslant over mountaintop and embosomed lake his parting beams, and dips his golden rim behind the horizon, to shine on other lands and gladden their inhabitants. It is this tireless movement of the sun, this daily progress of the king of day, patrolling as with a giant's tread the ramparts of the skies, that the text employs to illustrate the course of God's people in the world. Parallel to the text is the passage in Proverbs 4th: "The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." Our subject is then to study the life and experience of the Christian as illustrated by the sun when he goeth forth in his might. What more sublime and glorious sight can be conceived of than this every-day phenomenon, so common that it is unappreciated and almost unnoticed by the multitudes of busy men--the going forth of the sun in his might? O ye effeminate children of sloth, it is worth snatching a lazy hour from your feverish beds, to rise before the dawn, and watch how the shadows of the night gradually soften and flee away at the approach of the sun-rising, and how the eastern sky lifts her curtains of crimson and gold to welcome his coming. The various tribes of animated creation rejoice on every side. The lark warbles his glad notes, and soars high in the air to catch his first beams.