O God, how long! ... Remember! ... Arise! ... Forget not! Probably of the same period is the 79th, written apparently in the very hour of the heathen triumph, when the Temple is defiled, Jerusalem "an heap of stones," the blood of the righteous flowing on every side like water. And there is still the characteristic turning away from self and personal humiliation to the thought of the dishonour done to God Himself. For to the faithful the honour of God is dearer than their own liberty or life. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name: O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for Thy Name's sake. The 83rd belongs perhaps to an earlier age. It seems to recall the great confederacy of the nations against Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx.). The Psalmist cries out to God against the {91} gathering hordes who have no interest in common, except their mutual hatred of Israel and Israel's God. It is a sorry catalogue: Edomites, Ishmaelites, Moabites, Hagarens; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistines, Tyrians, Assyrians: "All the warring hosts of error Sworn against her, move as one." But the hot indignation which prays that this rabble of malice and mischief may be swept like the stubble before the whirlwind, consumed like the dry grass before the mountain fires, is yet tempered with a higher thought. Defeat may lead to conversion and to a better mind: Make their faces ashamed, O Lord: That they may seek Thy Name. Once again, the 102nd Psalm breathes out the pathetic appeal of the exile, or the lonely, friendless watcher over the desolations of the holy city. His heart is "smitten down and withered like grass"; he has "eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled his drink with weeping." But his fasting and tears are not for himself; there is the eternal background of hope; God is unchanging; future generations {92} will know again the happiness of worship and service--his sorrow is for Zion: Thy servants think upon her stones: And it pitieth them to see her in the dust. Do not experiences and prayers like these come home to Christians with a curious sense of familiarity? Is not this tragedy of faith repeated in every age? In every Christian generation it has been "given" to the Beast to war against the saints and overcome them (Rev. xiii. 7). His undying malice has too often been seconded by the impotence, the lack of unity, the fear of truth and its consequences, which have marred the Christian defence.