Time and again in the Psalter we find this appeal for a new song. First of all, and most obviously, the appeal concerns the contents of the song. It reminds us of the duty of making our grateful acknowledgement of God's goodness to us expand with our growing experience of that goodness. It is, if, one may so phrase it, a reminder to us that our praise needs bringing up to date. A hymn considerably later in date than this psalm exhorts us to 'count' our 'blessings,' and to 'name them one by one.' This exhortation to attempt the impossible is perhaps more worthy of being heeded than the form in which it is presented to us might lead some to suppose. There is no getting away from the simple fact that a man's thankfulness has a real and proportionate relationship to the things for which he has cause to be thankful. If in our daily life the phrase 'the goodness of God' is to have a deepening and cumulative significance, it must be informed and vitalized continually by an alert and responsive recognition of the forms in which that goodness is ever freshly manifested to us. Whilst the roots of the tree of praise lie deep beneath the surface, and wind their thousand ways into dim places where memory itself cannot follow them, yet surely the leaves of the tree are fresher and greener for rain that even now has left its reviving touch upon them, and for the sunshine that is even now stirring the life in all their veins. The figure is imperfect. We are not trees. We do not respond automatically to all the gracious and cheering ministries of the Eternal Goodness in our lives. We may easily overlook many a good gift of our God. And though in our forgetfulness and unthankfulness we profit by the sunlight and the dew and by each tender thought of God for His creatures, yet the full and perpetual profit of all good things is for each of us bound up with the power to see them, the wisdom to appraise them, the mindfulness that holds them fast, and the heart that sings out its thanksgiving for them. 'O sing unto the Lord a new song.' Bring this day's life into the song. Bring the gift that has come to thee this very hour into the song. Look about thee. See if there be but one more flower springing at the path-side. See if the bud of yesterday has but unfolded another leaf. Behold the loaf on thy table, feel the warmth of thy hearth, yea, feel the very life within thee that woke again and stirred itself with the morning light, and say these gifts are like unto the gifts of yesterday, but they are not yesterday's gifts. Yesterday's bread is broken, and yesterday's fire is dead, and yesterday's strength is spent. O God, Thy mercies are new every morning! So shall a new song break from the heart.