1. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Soul music is the very soul of music. The psalmist strikes the best
key-note when he begins with stirring up his inmost self to magnify the Lord.
He soliloquizes, holds self-communion and exhorts himself as though he felt
that dullness would all too soon steal over his faculties, as, indeed, it will
over us all, unless we are diligently on the watch. Jehovah is worthy to be
praised by us in that highest style of adoration which is intended by the term bless.
Our very life and essential self should be engrossed with this delightful
service, and each one of us should arouse his own heart to the engagement. And all that is within me, bless his holy name. Many are our faculties,
emotions, and capacities, but God has given them all to us, and they ought all
to join in chorus to his praise. Half-hearted, ill-conceived, unintelligent
praises are not such as we should render to our loving Lord. If the law of
justice demanded all our heart and soul and mind for the Creator, much more may
the law of gratitude put in a comprehensive claim for the homage of our whole
being to the God of grace. The psalmist dwells upon the holy name of
God, as if his holiness were dearest to him; or, perhaps, because the holiness
or wholeness of God was to his mind the grandest motive for rendering to him
the homage of his nature in its holiness. By the name we understand the
revealed character of God, and assuredly those songs which are suggested, not
by our fallible reasoning and imperfect observation, but by unerring
insperation, should more than any others arouse all our consecrated powers.
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