The only return God looks for.
"I will take the cup of salvation." Visiting Muller's Orphan House at Ashley Down, Bristol, some years ago, we were shown into a room where, ranged on a gallery, were some seventy or eighty infant orphans of from three to five years of age, fatherless, if not motherless too. They sang to us a little hymn, and the pathetic refrain of it, as sung by those infant voices, we hear still in our souls—
"What shall we render, O heavenly Friend, to thee,
For care so tender, for love so free?"
It is the feeling of all pious souls, the ever-growing feeling of the deepening experience, that no fitting return can be made to God, and that the only possible return we can make is to let him do all his work of grace in us—to take his "cup of salvation." We know how, sometimes, in the ordinary associations of life, the gifts of our friends altogether overwhelm us. We cannot keep pace with them in returning their gifts. At last we give up attempting to do so, and just let them spend their love on us as they will. This may help us to understand the psalmist's feeling concerning God. Possibly there is a reference to the "cup of blessing" in the observance of the Pass over, which may have been introduced after the Exile; but it is better to regard it simply as a poetical figure, and as meaning, "I will accept thankfully and with devout acknowledgment the blessings which God gives me as my portion." The Christian can flu the term "salvation" with higher and holier meanings.
I. THE HOPELESSNESS OF FINDING ANY WAY OF RETURNING GOD'S GOODNESS. Because he wants nothing of us. When we would return a gift, how anxiously we try to find out what our friend wants I But it is hopeless to think of finding out any thing that God wants. Illust. by the reproachful plea through the psalmist (Psalms 1:1-6.), "Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof." And because we could find nothing that he wanted, if he did want. Things are not in our possession or control. How can we give when we have nothing? And all the things we seem to have are his.
II. THE HOPEFULNESS OF RESPONDING TO GOD'S WAY FOR OUR RECOGNIZING HIS GOODNESS. What he asks of us is to let him bless us—to be willing recipients of his benedictions, to take his cup of salvation; he wants not things, but thanks; not gifts but love; not offerings, but praise. "Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving." That we can do.—R.T.