The duty of witnessing in public for God.
The terms used seem to include the narrow and the wider spheres in which our witness for God may be, and should be, made. The Prayer-book Version brings out this point. "Secretly, among the faithful, and in the congregation." It is a point with the psalmists that God's praise can be no private thing merely, no personal indulgence or enjoyment only. If a man feels thankful to God, if a man recognizes his indebtedness to God, if a man is impressed with the greatness of God or the goodness of God, he lies under the solemn obligation to say so to somebody. If he is a sincere man, he feels the impulse to say so to somebody. He will even want to speak of these things to everybody whom he can reach. The sentences of the fortieth psalm may be taken as characteristic of the psalmists, and there is something guileful in the man who is unable or unwilling to recognize this duty of publicly witnessing for God. "I have not hid thy righteous ness within my heart: my talk hath been of thy truth, and of thy salvation. I have not kept back thy loving mercy and truth from the great congregation."
I. EACH MAN HAS A PUBLIC SPHERE OF HIS OWN. A circle outside himself, of which he is himself the center. Every man, in his own particular public sphere, is bound to make his witness for God. It is the same thing to say that every man must come into relationship with others outside himself; and these relations constitute his first public sphere. It may be a friendship. It may be the marital relation. It may be a family. It may be a business or social circle. If a man is for God, he must be active and voiceful for God in those first spheres. Illustrate by the stone thrown into a pond: it influences the waters that touch the shores only through influencing the little circle of waters just where it fell, and so on and on, through ever-widening circles.
II. EACH MAN HAS A PLACE IN THE GENERAL PUBLIC SPHERE, The congregation is made up of individuals, and the enthusiasm of each goes to make the enthusiasm of the whole. The congregation is no mere mass of receptivity. That mistaken notion spoils much of public worship. The congregation, as an aggregate of individuals, should make common witness, by praise, thanksgiving, and testimony. But the testimony that is healthy, and inspiring to others, is testimony for God and concerning God; not that weak and enervating thing, testimony concerning individual feelings and experiences.—R.T.