Public praise for personal deliverance.
The psalm may be taken as expressing individual experiences or sentiments, or the psalmist may be regarded as representing the nation, and expressing national feeling. There is distinct recognition of past trouble and suffering, as God's well-deserved chastening. The returned exiles looked on their humiliating captivity in Babylon as such a time of chastening. Then our text will associate with the dedication of the new (Ezra) temple; and we may picture the nation in procession, with the governor at the head, advancing to the gates of the temple, and then, in formal Eastern style, making loud public demand for admittance. But it is even more directly practical for us to think of the psalmist as using these public events to help his own private meditations. Certainly we may use the psalm in this way, when we have recovered from some Divine chastisement, which imperiled life, and feel that we want to go into the house of the Lord, to give thanks unto the Name of the Lord.
I. OUR DELIVERANCES FROM DANGER SHOULD HAVE PRIVATE RECOGNITION. On this it would be too familiar to insist. He who receives is honorably bound to thank the giver, and feels a natural impulse so to do. But a man may fairly urge that his duty is done when he has thanked the donor personally and privately; and that he is under no obligation to talk about it to everybody, or to send a notice of his thankful ness to the newspapers. On this line men plead when more than the private recognition of God's goodness to them is demanded. They have thanked God, and that is enough.
II. OUR DELIVERANCE FROM DANGER SHOULD HAVE PUBLIC RECOGNITION. Because he from whom we have received the blessing is a public Being, who sustains relations to others as well as ourselves; and whose direct acts in relation to one are designed to inspire confidence in the ethers, and therefore must be made known. If our donor is the sovereign of the land, it is a right feeling that impels us to make known her good ness to us. When the prince was brought back from the gates of death, the right feeling of the nation demanded a national service of thanksgiving, and this psalm may be efficiently illustrated by the great service at St. Paul's. In this matter Christian sentiment needs to be directed. In communities where the element of worship is not prominent, public acts of praise and thanksgiving are sadly neglected. True feeling says, "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the Name of the Lord."—R.T.