Perhaps it was one of those frequent periods in the life of Israel, in which the religious institutions of the people were so abased that the Psalmist could see in them no pledge nor provocation of hope. Indeed, these institutions may have been altogether overthrown. There was no leader on whom God had set His seal, and the national life had nothing to raise the heart, but was full of base thoughts and paltry issues that dissipate faith, and render the interference of God an improbable thing. So the Psalmist lifted his thoughts to the sacraments which God has fixed in the framework of His world. He did not identify his help with the hills--no true Israelite could have done that,--but the sight of them started his hope and filled his heart with the desire to pray. This may have happened at sunrise, when, even more than at other hours, mountains fulfil the ministry of hope. Below them all was in darkness; it was still night, but the peaks saw the morning, and the signal of its coming fell swiftly down their flanks. In this case the Psalm is a matin-song, a character which the rest of the verses carry out. Or at any other hour of the day, it may simply have been the high, clear outline of the hills which inspired the Psalm--that firm step between heaven and earth, that margin of a world of possibility beyond. A prophet has said, _How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring good tidings!_ But to our Psalmist the mountains spread a threshold for a Divine arrival. Up there God Himself may be felt to be afoot. Now to a pure heart and a hungry heart this is always what a mountain view effects. 'A hill-top,' says a recent writer, 'is a moral as well as a physical elevation.' He is right, or men would not have worshipped on hill-tops, nor high places have become synonymous with sacred ones. Whether we climb them or gaze at them, the mountains produce in us that mingling of moral and physical emotion in which the temper of true worship consists. They seclude us from trifles, and give the mind the fellowship of greatness. They inspire patience and peace; they speak of faithfulness and guardianship. But chiefly the mountains are sacraments of hope. That high, steadfast line--how it raises the spirits, and lifts the heart from care; how early it signals the day, how near it brings heaven! To men of old its margin excited thoughts of an enchanted world beyond; its clear step between heaven and earth made easy the imagination of God descending among men.