September 13

I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts. - Psalms 119:63.

MAN is a social being, and as soon as he comes under the power of religion, the social principle will be sanctified as well as other things. The man who before could not be even pulled away from scenes of vice and vanity, is now able easily enough to give up his sinful pleasures and ungodly companions. Another party now rises in importance in his view; these draw away his mind, and respecting whom he now says,

“In such society as this

My willing soul would rest,

The man that dwells where Jesus is

Must be for ever blest.”

Oh now he feels his need of the blessings which constitute their portion, and therefore prays, “Remember me with the favour thou bearest unto thy people; look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto them that love thy name.” He loves the same exercises in which they are engaged; delights to go with them to the throne of grace; to the house of prayer and of praise; to the table of the Lord; and to walk with them henceforth in all the ordinances and commandments of the Lord, blameless. How often Christians look back to the period when everything pertaining to the people of God became attractive and inviting to them. If they saw the name of one known to be a sincere Christian, it seemed to endear him to them. As they have been passing the meadow, or the field, or the house of a pious individual, they could not help saying: O, how I envy those to whom this belongs, and who live under that roof. And could they have turned to the individual they would have said, as many have injudiciously done, Oh that I were like you; Oh that I were in your state. And as they have looked upon the communicants at the table of the Lord, they have been ready to exclaim, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob; and thy tabernacles, O Israel.”

They were companions of them that feared the Lord in principle, and by inclination; before they might have been so by circumstances or by profession; and if they did not “take hold of the skirts of him that was called a Jew,” it was not from want of love, but from shrinking back through fear, and by a sense of their unworthiness to be associated with them. But after a while, after they had sung and sighed,

“Oh, let me see thy tribes rejoice,

And aid their triumphs with my voice,

This is my glory, Lord, to be

Join’d to thy saints and near to thee.”

Oh then they united themselves with them in the bonds of a covenant which shall never be broken. We here see what it is that makes people valuable: not worldly distinctions, not adventitious circumstances, but this, that they feel and exemplify the qualities which David ascribes to the citizen of Zion, whatever be his circumstances, “They fear the Lord,” and “keep his precepts.”