t inner room of
life there sits Regret with her pale face, and Shame with dust on her
forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes. It is a pitiable thing at
times, is this our coming in. More than one man has consumed his life in a
flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in. 'The Lord shall
keep ... thy coming in.' That means help for every lonely, impotent, inward
hour of life.

Look at the last word of this promise--'for evermore.' Going out and coming
in for evermore. I do not know how these words were interpreted when very
literal meanings were attached to the parabolic words about the streets of
gold and the endless song. But they present no difficulty to us. Indeed,
they confirm that view of the future which is ever taking firmer hold of
men's minds, and which is based on the growing sense of the continuity of
life. To offer a man an eternity of music-laden rest is to offer him a poor
thing. He would rather have his going out and his coming in. Yes, and he
shall have them. All that is purest and best in them shall remain.
Hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of living and wider
visions of life; still come in to greater and ever greater thoughts of God.

II.

THE HABIT OF FAITH

Trust in Him at all times, ye people.
Pour out your heart before Him.
God is a refuge for us.

Ps. lxii. 8.

Here the Psalmist strikes the great note of faith as it should be struck.
He sets it ringing alike through the hours and the years. _Trust in Him at
all times._ Faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a
principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. It is
the constant factor in life's spiritual reckonings. It is the
ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. It is always in the high and
lasting fitness of things. There are words that belong to hours or even
moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. But
faith is not such a word. It stands for something inclusive and imperial.
It is one of the few timeless words in earth's vocabulary. For the deep
roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the
whole sweep of things spiritual. So the 'all times' trust is not for one
moment to be regarded as some supreme degree of faith unto which one here
and there may attain and which the rest can well afford to look upon as a
counsel of perfection. This exhortation to trust in God at all times
concerns firs