e as to this, that he had God's counsel and that
God kept communion with him? God had spoken to this man and shown
him His will. Yes, he had received what we call inspiration and
revelation, and had proved the truth of these in his life. They had
led and they had lifted him. Nor had they come to him as many men
falsely suppose revelation and inspiration exclusively have come to
mankind, by means, namely, that were extraordinary and miraculous. The
psalmist tells us of no vision of angels, of no voice from heaven. The
Lord had not appeared to him in dreams nor by any marvelous signs; on
the other hand, he tells us simply that the divine counsel of which
he was so sure, and which he passes on to us, came to him through the
workings of his inner spiritual life. That is what he means by the
emphatic statement "yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons,"
which he adds parallel with the thought, "I will bless the Lord, who
hath given me counsel." According to the primitive physiology of
this man's nation and times, the reins of a man fulfil the same
intellectual function which we, with our larger knowledge, know are
discharged by the brain. This was how God's revelation came to this
brother of ours, through the working of his mind and conscience, but
it was in the night seasons that they worked, not in the day and in
the sunshine, but in the night when a man is left to himself with
only this advantage to his thought: that like the blind he is yet
undistracted by the influences which are seen. When he lies down he
thinks soberly and quietly about himself and about life and about God,
and about the great hidden future that is waiting for him. He
was communing with God, who had made his brain and used it as an
instrument of revelation. In these thoughts God was communing with man
through his reason and through his conscience. You and I are always
contrasting God's providence and His grace. We are always attempting
to oppose reason and revelation; to this man they were one. God's
great grace had come to him through God's own providence, and God's
revelation was ministered to him through the reason with which he had
endowed the creature He had made in His own image. This psalmist's
chief and practical help to us men and women today is that he became
sure of God not because of any miracle or supernatural sign, on his
report of which we might be content indolently to rest our faith, but
in God's own providence in his life and in