In France it is spoken of as "the Jew," because of its wandering habits; and in the science of heraldry it was used as a crest by the crusader pilgrims to symbolise the fact that they too were strangers in a strange land. But to the swallow no land is strange. The whole earth is its fatherland. And while it _does_ wander to and fro over land and sea, it always observes its appointed seasons. All its wandering is guided by a purpose. Its freedom is regulated by unfailing instinct. It may speed its flight to far distant climes, but it comes back to the same nest. This is the law of its migration; and in obedience to it, the swallows appear in April and disappear in October with all the regularity of the seasons or the ebb and flow of the tide. The cause is there, and the effect follows. The bird of freedom is a slave to its own higher destiny. And so ought we. Freedom to wander is not so great a boon as obedience to a higher, diviner law. Like the needle trembling to the pole, or the swallow returning to the same old nest, our hearts ought to hark back to the sacredness of home and to the God and faith of our fathers. "There is an instinct in the new-born babes of Christ, like the instinct that leads birds to build their nests" (Rutherford). And this instinct, like the law of migration, makes us the children of _obedience_. There is no license in the liberty of Christ. We are only free to _serve_. III.—IT IS THE BIRD THAT BUILDS ITS NEST IN GOD’S TEMPLE. "Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even Thine altars" (Ps. lxxxiv. 3). Swallows sometimes build their nests in the most extraordinary places—on a picture frame, on a lamp-bracket, on a door-knocker, in a table-drawer, and between the handles of a pair of shears hung on the wall. James Gilmour, in his missionary travels through Mongolia, found that they actually entered his tent and built their nests within reach of his hand. And so fully do the little birds confide in man’s protection, that they will even take up their abode in his places of worship. The heathen temples, the Mohammedan mosques, and the Christian churches are all inhabited by the swallow, and here, in the eighty-fourth Psalm, it is spoken of as having sought and found a home in the courts of the Jewish temple.