The Noisome Pestilence

‘*¢ He shall deliver thee from... the noisome pestilence.” PSALM Xxci. 3. Ir is one thing to deliver us from the influence of acts, it is a deeper thing to deliver us from the influence of an atmosphere. There are

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forces which operate like air, they besiege us like atmospheres. We may escape the blighting influence of some particular member of a club, but it is a more difficult thing to find escape from the influence of the club itself. There are antagonisms which are like climates. We draw our breath in hostilities. There is the climate of worldliness. There is the air of frivolity. There is the pestilence of vulgarity. Sometimes our spiritual enemy is discovered in the spirit of the age. The surrounding air can be foul or fair, and our very breathing may be a minister of enervation or strength.

Now we have the promise of the Lord to provide a defence against a pestilential atmosphere. He is our sufficiency against evil infection. And how is our safety effected? By making it possible for a man to carry his own defensive atmosphere into the most destructive climate. Our firemen are now provided with helmets in which they can carry fresh air with them into the thick smoke of desolating fires. In the suffocating fumes the fireman breathes at ease. And so it is in the choking, dulling atmosphere of the world: we can take our own climate with

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us, and we can breathe the air of heaven even amid the most noxious fumes of sin.

Dr. George Adam Smith gives this significant rendering of a familiar phrase in the book of Isaiah: ‘‘ He shall draw in breath in the fear of the Lord.” A man who does that is breathing mountain air wherever he is. No plague shall come nigh his dwelling. He is immune from the noisome pestilence. His spiritual atmosphere is the breath of the Holy Ghost.