Psalms 116:16

Psalms 116:16

I. David's design here is to represent his piety as hereditary; and he mentions his mother because to her especially, in all probability, his religious convictions and impressions were instrumentally due. If this were the case, how much does the Church owe, under God, to the kindly wisdom of that godly mother, for it is the mother, after all, that has most to do with the making or the marring of the man.

II. David and Moses may be regarded as instances in which the good seed fell into good soil, and in which the return was speedy as well as rich. But it is not always so; usually, we may say, it is not so. For the most part the seed lies apparently dormant, the spring is long and unpromising, and the faith of the sower has to be exercised in a patient waiting for the promised growth. Nay, sometimes it seems as if all were lost, as if the seed had utterly perished, and as if the soil that had been so carefully cultured and watched over must be hopelessly given up to desolation or to rank and abominable weeds. But a mother's teachings have a marvellous vitality in them; there is a strange, living power in that good seed which is sown by a mother's hand in her child's heart in the early dawn of the child's being; and there is a deathless potency in a mother's prayers and tears for those whom she has borne, which only God can estimate.

W. Lindsay Alexander, Christian Thought and Work, p. 255.

References: Psalms 116:16 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 42; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi., No. 312, and vol. xxix., No. 1740; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 13th series, p. 5; Good Words, 1861, p. 190. Psalms 116:18 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 38. Psalms 117:1 . B. M. Palmer, Ibid., vol. ix., p. 143.