Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need not look far to see. It was this,—David looked on the earth as God’s earth; we look on it as man’s earth, or nobody’s earth. We know that we are here, with trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us. And we know that we did not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they will go on just as they went on before we were born,—each tree, and flower, and animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more. The earth is here, and we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why we are on it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to David the earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to him of God who made it. By seeing what this earth is like, he saw what God who made it is like: and we see no such thing. The earth?—we can eat the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, and ploughing and digging it; and that is all most men know about it. But David knew something more—something which made him feel himself very weak, and yet very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and yet honoured with glorious knowledge from God,—something which made him feel that he belonged to this world, and must not forget it or neglect it, that this earth was his lesson-book—this earth was his work-field; and yet those same thoughts which shewed him how he was made for the land round him, and the land round him was made for him, shewed him also that he belonged to another world—a spirit-world; shewed him that when this world passed away, he should live for ever; shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had an immortal soul too; shewed him that though his home and business were here on earth, yet that, for that very reason, his home and business were in heaven, with God who made the earth, with that blessed One of whom he said, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall fade as a garment, and like a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and _Thy_ years shall not fail. The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight.” “As a garment shalt Thou change them,”—ay, there was David’s secret! He saw that this earth and skies are God’s garment—the garment by which we see God; and that is what our forefathers saw too, and just what we have forgotten; but David had not forgotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm again, how he refers every thing to God. We say, ‘The light shines:’ David says something more; he says, “Thou, O God, adornest Thyself with light as with a curtain.” Light is a picture of God. “God,” says St. John, “is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” We say, ‘The clouds fly and the wind blows,’ as if they went of themselves; David says, “God makes