Sermon Preached in the Holy Trinity Cathedral by Dean Trivett on March 6
Taxn—"I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies 1 made haste, I delayed not to keep thy Comma: ments." Psalms 119, 55-60.
We have once more entered upon that season in the Church Year which we call "Lent." This observance is almost as old as the Church itself. We are told that the practise of keeping Lent probably originated from a fast which was observed in ihe very early days of the Church, to commemorate the forty dark and despairful hours between the Cruciixion and the Resurrection, By the sixth century, the customary period we know had been established throughout the Church—a fixed season commencing on Ash-Wednesday, and continuing until Easter, forty days exclusive of Sundays.
The season of Lent has always been observed in the Church as a special time when Christians are called to self examination and prayer, and to a greater use of the means of grace. A time to review ow lives in the light of the teaching of God's Holy Word. A time to consider carefully how far short we have come of our duty towards Him, and towards our neighbours. He died for our sins—This we confess—and by calling us to thus consider how far short we have come in what we ought to do and be, to realize our sins in word and thought and deed, the Church fittingly prepares us to approach the commemoration of the Death and Passion of our Lord.
Review our Lives I have said that the season of Lent is a time in which we are called to review our lives in the light of God's Holy Word. And with that thought in mind I have chosen my text this morning. The 119th Psalm is in a sense an autobiography. The writer has set himself to look back over the records of a long life, and to' gather together what he has recorded as the result of his meditation and experience in regard to the Law of God, and its relation to his every day life. The Psalm consists of 176 verses, and you will find that everyone of them contains a reference to the Law of God, or something bearing on His Word. It makes an appropriate study for us this morning, since it shows low the Word of God may be related to the every day life of the Christian, I said it is an autobiography, and as we read its verses we see how the Word of God has been the guiding light of this man's life—his support and stay in difficulty, danger, and temptation, the source of every good resolution, and a continual inspiration. How it has helped him to make aright the important decisions, which, looking back, he sees to have been the Red Letter Days in his life.
Our text marks one such decision, so momentous that we might call it—using the expressive word of the revivalist—his conversion. He hat been doing what the Church calls each member to do during Lent, He had been reviewing his past life. it had been, apparently, a very searching and illuminating review for he had come to the conclusion that he was going in the wrong direction. And having reached that conclusion, without a moments delay. he made a complete right about face. His feet, to use the figure of the Psalm, were set in the ways of self-will and disobedience, but he turned about in the way, and brings himself into conformity with the Law of God, and the keeping of His Commandments.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.