Passing now to the corresponding Canticle at Evensong, we find _Cantate Domino_, the 98th Psalm, which, though much briefer, and nearly free from elaborate detail, makes the same acknowledgement of the Almighty Maker, and calls upon His creatures to praise Him in their various orders in very similar fashion. Here however the climax is reversed. Beginning with human beings and God's mercy to them, and notably to Israel, we pass on to the sea, the world, the floods, the hills and all the inhabitants, returning at the end to the people and God's justice and judgment. In both these Canticles, the thought is present that those, who do what God designs that they should do, are thereby praising Him. Hills, and valleys, and seas, are thought of as if they were human beings: they rejoice, and sing, and clap their hands, when ungrudgingly and with all the beauty and generosity of their best nature they carry out the Will of God. When man does the like, of his own will and in his {82} own place, he also sings, and makes great the praise of God. _v._ 2. _With his own right hand, and with his holy arm_. Several passages in Isaiah (li. 9, lii. 10, lix. 16, lxiii. 5) use this figure to represent God's invincible might. Other phrases of Isaiah (lii. 7-10) are to be traced in this Psalm. _The Lord the King_, "Thy God reigneth": _declared his salvation_, "publisheth salvation": _all the ends of the world have seen the salvation of our God, "all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God_." _O sing unto the Lord . . . let the hills be joyful_, "Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places." CANTICLES WHICH FOLLOW THE SECOND LESSON. We have seen that the Gospel is frequently hidden[1] in the Old Testament Lessons. The unfolding of this hidden thought comes by natural sequence in the Second Lessons. They are chosen from the Gospels, which tell the History of our Lord's Earthly Life, or from the other parts of the New Testament, which carry on the History from His Ascension. The Acts of the Apostles is the second volume of the Gospel History, and the Epistles form a book of correspondence commenting on the first, or illustrating the second, volume. Lessons from the Gospels are records of the Gospel Spring-time, Lessons from the {83} Epistles and the Acts are records of the Summer; the Revelation of S. John carries us on to the Autumn, or Harvest time. To adopt a different metaphor, one kind of Second Lessons are chapters from the Wars of our Leader, another kind are chapters from the Wars of His lieutenants. There is in the one kind the Gospel thought, pure and simple; in the other kind there is the Missionary thought.