This Psalm, which expresses the unchanging spirit of true religion, was most naturally appropriated by Christian devotion to form the services for the working part of each day, beginning at Prime, when "man goeth forth to his work and his labour" with that benediction which comes on labour done with a pure motive in God's Name: Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way: And walk in the law of the Lord, and ending at None, the hour of the death of the Lord, when day visibly declines, with the confession that the worker, as he looks back, must always make: I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost: O seek Thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments. It was like a stream of water, crossing unexpectedly a dusty way--_mirabilia testimonia tua_! In psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly fresh, the soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout {13} hour, from the sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in contemplation of the unfaltering vigour of the Divine righteousness, which had still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night, but alert in the drowsy afternoon.[5] We can scarcely exaggerate the value, in our own time especially, of this use, not only of the 119th Psalm, but of the whole Psalter, as the response of the Church and the human soul to the revealed word of God. These times of Christ have indeed filled and enriched the early conception of "the Name" of God. We have learned to see in the Trinity the justification of belief in the Divine Unity; we have learned more of the Fatherhood of God in the face of His only Son; we have learned that the Cross is the key to human suffering; we have learned the Catholic nature of the Divine sovereignty: nevertheless the foundation teaching of the Psalmists as to the relation of the creature to his Creator remains unchanged. We still find in the Psalter a guide for our uncertain footsteps in our journey back to God. Is not the answer to every problem of faith, even such mysteries as the existence and continuance of evil, or the calamities that fall on the just, {14} still to be found as the author of the 73rd Psalm found it, in returning and rest upon the God Who has made _Himself_ known to suffering man? My flesh and my heart faileth: But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.