is only true if that short and glorious hour is spent with an inspiring and glorious personality. When, like Moses, our faces should shine as we come down from the mount. [3] Trench. 2. Praise becomes practically impossible. Sometimes we say, "We really must praise GOD more." But we cannot _make_ ourselves praise, any more than we can move a boat by swinging up and down in it. We must pull against something to make it move. What we want is an adequate idea of the splendour of GOD. When we come in sight of Mont Blanc or Niagara, or when we hear of some gallant deed on the battlefield, we say "How splendid!" quite naturally. We shall praise quite naturally when we catch sight--if only for a moment--of the true character of GOD, or believe He has done something great. 3. Religion, which means something which _binds_ us to GOD, becomes an uninspiring series of detailed scruples about ourselves. Self-examination is most necessary; but it was well said by an experienced guide of souls that, "for every time we look at ourselves, we ought to look nine times at GOD." Do some of you feel as I speak that your religion does not help you; that, while you have not given up your prayers, or coming to church, it is rather a burden than a help, or at any rate not such a help as it might be? It is because you have lost sight of the splendour of GOD. 4. Or, again, are you suffering from depression? You hardly know why, but everything seems to go wrong; you seem oppressed with what old writers called "accidie." Your will has lost its spring; the note of your life has lost its hope and its joyousness. You drag through life rather than "rise up with wings like an eagle" or "run," or even "walk." This is all because you have lost faith or never had faith in the splendour of GOD. 5. Or, on the contrary, you are busy from morning till night, and you are too busy for prayer or church; you are immersed in a thousand schemes for making money for yourself or for your family or for the good of mankind. And yet, with all your business abilities, you don't inspire people; you are conscious of a want yourself, and other people are more conscious of it. It is simply that you are without the one thing which matters; you are the planet trying to shine without its sun; you are ignoring the splendour of GOD. I. For consider how splendid GOD is! These writers of the psalms had many limitations. They had a very inadequate belief in the life after the grave; they knew nothing about the Incarnation; they had no Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, or Whit Sunday, to inspire them. But they are bursting with glorious song, because of their sense of the splendour of GOD. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art GOD from everlasting, and world without end."