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that it gives us the knowledge of what is wrong, and yet we are not pained in doing that wrong ? As conscience is constituted, it is never what it ought to be in the best of men, and it is never without some witnessing power in the worst.^
I was ashamed, I dared not lift my eyes,
I could not bear to look upon the skies ;
What I had done ! sure, everybody knew !
From everywhere hands pointed where I stood,
And scornful eyes were piercing through and through
The moody armour of my hardihood.
I heard their voices too, each word an asp That buzz'd and stung me sudden as a flame: And all the world was jolting on my name. And now and then there came a wicked rasp Of laughter, jarring me to deeper shame.
And then I looked, but there was no one nigh, No eyes that stabbed like swords or glinted sly, No laughter creaking on the silent air : And then I found that I was all alone Facing my soul, and next I was aware That this mad mockery was all my own.^
5. " The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever." The metaphor here is probably that of the unblemished offering. Nothing which was unclean was allowed to have part in the life of the nation ; nothing which had a blemish in it was suffered to ascend in sacrifice to the Fountain of Life. The unblemished sacrifice, whatever else it symbolized, was a symbol of immor- tality; it marked the transition of the soul into a higher life; and it implied that such a transition could be made only by a soul emancipated from its uncleanness. What, then, is the bearing of this metaphor on the Psalmist's meditation ? What does he mean by the implication that the revelation of God in physical Nature is a less clean manifestation than the revelation of God in Conscience ? He clearly means to suggest that the revelation of Nature does not convey to the mind the notion of immortality. It is not that the eye, as it looks upon the face of Nature, is impressed with its frailty and its perishableness ; its
1 H. Macmillan, Life Work of G. F. Watts, 187. ^ James Stephens, The Hill of Vision, 65.
PSALM XIX. 7-9 'i^T^j
silence on the subject of immortality would be equally profound although we knew, as a! matter of fact, that Nature would endure for ever. For the silence lies here : even if the universe were everlasting, it would still be a contingent universe ; it does not convey the impression of something which must be. It would always be felt that its eternity lay in some force external to its own.
What the spirit of man wants is something whose death is inconceivable, which not only will be, but must be, which cannot even in thought be associated with the idea of annihilation. It seeks what the Egyptians are supposed to have sought when they built those colossal pyramids — a sign of immortality, an emblem of eternity, an image of life that cannot die. This is what the Egyptians failed to find in the pyramids ; this is what the Psalmist failed to find in Nature. Nature did not convey to him the idea of cleanness, did not suggest to him the thought of a necessary existence, of a life whose very essence was incorruptible, of a world which must live in the very nature of things; he missed in it the sign of immortality. But when he turned his eye inward, he was once more arrested by the very thing he wanted. In the commandment of Conscience he was confronted by the sign of immortality, and found that which even in thought he could not imagine not to be.
^ The great German philosopher, at the distance of three millenniums, has not been ashamed to reproduce the same experience. We can, as we have said, imagine a time when other systems shall circle other suns, and other physical forces shall obey other laws. But we can never imagine a time, go where this spirit may, when the forces of the moral universe shall cease to be what they are. We can never conceive a period when right shall be anything but right, or wrong anything but wrong. We can never figure to ourselves a world where " malice and hatred and envy and all uncharitableness " shall be other than loathsome and repulsive, where integrity, uprightness, purity of heart, benevolence, " the love of love, the scorn of scorn, and the hate of hate " shall be other than things of beauty and joys for ever. In this world of Conscience the Psalmist finds the sign of immortality ; for he meets with that whose negation is inconceivable. Heaven and earth might pass away ; their existence hung upon a thread of contingency ; there was no reason in the nature of things why they should not cease to be : but this Divine word of Conscience,
JOB-PS. XXX. — 2 2
33^ THE PERFECT LAW
this word spoken in the inner chamber of the soul, could not pass away ; once spoken, it must reverberate through all time.^
6. "The judgements of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether." Law and love are not opposed to one another. One of the sure tokens of God's Fatherhood is the inflexibility of His moral administration, by which alone we are turned to the right and kept in the right. The retributions of the world to come are the merciful discipline of Him who wills not that any should perish.