The safety of our life.
"He shall keep thy soul." The term "soul" stands often in the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments for the animal life; but we use it for that spiritual being which man is, as distinguished from that bodily form which man has. Taking the first idea, it may be shown that God's care of our natural life involves and includes all due provision for the thousandfold needs of that life. The greater includes the less. The daily renewed gift of life carries with it the gift of all the life will need day by day. This may be applied to the national life of Israel. The restored exiles may well gain and keep full confidence in God, seeing that he had kept their national life through such anxious and imperiling times. He had kept it; they might be sure that he would keep it. And this assurance carried with it the confidence that God's defense and blessing were still upon the restored nation. If God keeps us in being, and gives us new days, then we may confidently hold him to his promise, "As thy day so shall thy strength be." He is able and willing to make "all grace abound" unto "all-sufficiency." Taking the second idea, we come upon God's continued interest in, and care for, the new life he has quickened in our souls. His concern for the material life does but illustrate his care for the spiritual life ("This is the will of God, even our sanctification"). "Soul-keeping is the soul of keeping. If the soul be kept, all is kept. The preservation of the greater includes that of the less, so far as it is essential to the main design; the kernel shall be preserved, and in order thereto the shell shall be preserved also. Our soul is kept from the dominion of sin, the infection of error, the crush of despondency, the puffing up of pride—kept from the world, the flesh, and the devil; kept for holier and greater things, kept in the love of God, kept unto the eternal kingdom and glory." But we need not miss the important fact that God's soul-keeping runs along with, and works through, our own soul-keeping. "Keep thy heart with all keepings, for out of it are the issues of life."—R.T.