The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-22

sermon the preacher shows that to tne man or woman who is living ar1ght and in harmony with Gods laws those laws are no longer a burden, but are trans formed into a continual song of encour- agement The text is Psalm cxix, 64, Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage"
 Never did sculptor's chisel create two statues of more opposite character than are Michael Angelos Moses and David" When you study these two wonderful figures it does not seem possl- ble that the same human brain could con- ceive both. They are as different as the storm cloud and the sunshine, as the rumbling onrushing avalanche breaking loose from it's anchorage and the bub- bling, laughing. leaping, happy brook gurgling down the mountain side. They are different as tho shriels and the groans of tho carnage of battle ana the soft cooing lullahies of a mother rocking her baby to sleep. In other words, the one statue represents power and the other love. The one represents the crags and the cliffs and inaccessible heights of old Sinai, with It's bare rocks indented by the sword cuts of the lightnings, and the other represents the melodious harp of the young shepherd boy singing to his sheep among the wild flowers Of the var- ley and the dreamy relaxation of the poet while, lying upon couch of softest leaves, he watches the parent birds feed their young among the swaying branches overreaching his noontde resting place. Never did Phidias' colossal gtatue of "Zeus' at Ellis or Canova's 'Theseus at Vienna represent greater strength than does Angelo's Moses at Rome. Never did Praxiteles' "Aphrodite' at Cnidus or the Sleeping Ariadne'' at Rorne reveal more love or poetic symmetry than does Angelos marvellous statue of David" at Florence.
 But, though we have perfect right to think of David the musician, David the poet, David the imaginative youth. who is always singing the praises of God, l wonder if we have not sometimes over looked the fact that David sang his songs of triumph under the shadow of old Mount Sinai and that he had but vague and shadowy idea of the tender ness of the cross of Jesus Christ. The poetic eyes of David in the statue may not search us from out of deep sockets or from under over-arching forehead, as do the penetrating eyes of Moses the law giver, but the same thought that teemed in the brain of Moses lived and throbbed in the brain of David. All through the Psalms l find that the Ten Command ments of Mount Sinai are the skeletons upon which David the psalmist based his praises. When David writes his most beautiful songs he seems to be echoing in rhyme what Moses, the great law giver had written 800 years before in the books of the Penateuch. David's poetry is only Moses laws and commandments set to music.
 The Law of God.
 It was so with the other poets whose compositions arc in that great hymnaL.
 
 you can find this fact illustrated. What is the burden of the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm? It is tho law, the rock ribbed law of God. "Oh, how love thy law It Is my meditation day and night" Is the song What is the burden of the First Psalm? It Is the law of God. What is the burden of the Thirty seventh Psalm and the Forteth Psalm and the Seventy eighth Psalm? It is the law of God. And today in the words of my text the shepherd poet tells us that the stat ues of God have been his songs in the house of his pilgrimage all through his life. The law of Moses is here found to be the theme of the sweetest singer Israel ever produced
 Did you ever stop to think that the laws of God could be set to music? Oh, how prosaic q book of common law is to the average manl When my brother was a
 
 day came to my father and placed be- fore him a law book and said Father, read that. Did you ever read any set of rules so dry or so uninteresting?" Truly, for a young man a law book is a dry and uninteresting book, but when the young man has mastered those dull codes and uses them in his practice they arc changed from dry skeletons Into living forces. Then he sees how those legal en- a pt m tS bnrriarS Inv ryhiCh the rights of men are protected against the assaults of evildoers. So with David. When he mastered the principles of Gods laws he was able to clothe them with poetic imagery. He saw the far-rea ching effects of those laws. Instead of being 8 collection of skeletons bleaching In a cemetery they became to him a living power. AS living principles they well comed him at the cradle. They guided him through childhoods hours. They led him forth into the struggle of young man. hood. They were the crown of glory of his old age. Thus as an aged servant of God he celebrates the glory of old Mount Sinai as he sings, "Thy satutes have been my songs In the house of my pilgrimage" Now let us try to understand how Gods laws have become the keynotes of Dav1d's songs.
 His Lullaby Song.
 In the HrSt place the statutes or tne Lord were the psalmist's cradle songs. They were the lullabies with which hls mother used to sing him to sleep. They were the divine promises with which God adopted him as his child. The cove nant with which Abrahams children and children became part of Gods great redemption plan was the same cov- enant with which Christians enter into adoption as Gods children. And they are the same divine promises with which our enter Into covenant relations with God.
 Now, the great practical question which comes before us today is, How can a child of Christian parents become a child of the covenant? In the old dlspensation the rite of circumcision made a child a par taker in the covenant. Abraham was a child of God. He was to inherit Pales- tine, and. besides this, he was to have the divine protection. His descendants were to enjoy the same privilege so long as they obeyed Gods law. The promises of God were to be continued from one | to another to all of Abraham's who fulfilled the obligations of the covenant If was a bargain, and the seal of it was the outward rite which | marked the child as an heir of the cov- enant Tn other words circumcision Tn l