him; he is alone in wonderland, the Creator ann Worker of true marvels, compared with which all other remarkable things are as child'~ play. None of the crods or the lords helped Jehovah in creation or in the redemption of his people." As "'the theme of this psalm is the Divine mercy, we must find the merciful in the wonderful. This psalm recalls to our minds the first chapter of Genesis, which declares the absolute Creatorsbip of God. It does not consist of a precise, definite, and detailed account of the processes of creation, but contains a series of distinct and repeated affirmations of God's supreme relations to all forms of existence, in all their order, all their origin, all their growth, all their relations. It is designed to impress on us that the world was not created by chance, by self-regeneration, by impersonal powers of nature, or by many agents acting either in harmony or in antagonism. God is distinct from that he bas made. God is the one primal Source of all things. God's will is represented in all laws that rule. God's good pleasure shapes all ends. This chapter impresses on mind and heart the existence, independence, and personality of one Divine Being, the universality of his rule, the omnipotency of his power, and the eternal persistence of his relationship to the world he has created. 1. The chapter declares God's unique relation to every part of creation. We may conceive of no created thing, no existing thing, to which the assurance is not attached-God made it, God ordained it, God arranged it. The chapter includes all the components of the earth's crust; all the treasures of the mighty deep; all the elements of the atmosphere; all the hosts of heaven, from the ruling sun to the faintest distant star; all the multiplied forms of vegetable life; all the higher forms of animal life; and all the yet higher forms of human life. And the declaration of God's creation includes all the natural laws and forces that act in creation, These things may be illustrated. 2. The relation of God as Cause and Arranger to all the changes of creation. One living God is at the begin- ning of all cbange11, designing all change, and presiding over all change. 3. The rela- tion of God as Cause and Controller to the entire range of development in creation. Tell us of millions of bygone ages : God was there. Show us a thing : God made it. Describe a change: God ordered it. 'l'alk of immeasurable distances, in which the stars swing free: God set them there.-R. T.
Vars. 10, 11.-God's judgme'Tlts are two-sided. " To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn; ... and brought out Israel from among them." Much misapprehension of the Di,·ine dealings follows from fixing attention too excluaively on one side of the Divine judgments, We readily see what they are to those who suffer under them, but we do not sufficiently see what they are to those who are delivered through them. God emote Egypt, but the smiting was a delivering of bis people; and if we would under- stand his doing we must see it on both its sides. Suppose that God designs to dis- cipline a particular race for a great world-mission which he purposes to entrust to it, then the presence of Israel in Egypt is explained. And when the time hns come for thnt race to go forth and accomplish its mission, the ordinary difficulties of getting 11 great part of a nation's population safely away had to be dealt with, and the special complications arising had to be mastered. So deliverance had to take the form of judgment. There are two possible explnnations of Divine judgments. J. THE EASIER EXPLANATION: THEY VINDICATE THE DIVINE Bl(JHTEOUSNESS IN TUE PUNISilMENT OF WRONG-DOEns. This is familiar truth. Some time or other the cup of a man's, or a family's, or a city's, or a nation's iniquity becomes full, and then the Divine judgments must descend. The world b«M°ore the Flood, the cities of the plain, the Egyptians, the Israelites, Nineveh, and Babylon illustrate this. Egypt wns smitten for its national sins. We see one special feature of that sin; it was Pharaoh Meneph- thah's treatment of God's people, in spite of all warnings that were given him. "Is God righteous who taketh vengeance?" Certainly he is. He would be no righteous God if he did not. !I. THE DEEPER EXPLANATION: THE LAW OF VI0ABIOUS SUFFEn!NG APPLIES EVEN IN THE 0ABE OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS. We have yet to apprehend that all moral and spiritual laws are as absolute, universal, and unchangeable as nll natural laws. Vicarious suffering is absolutely universal. Nobody evor gets any good without somebody suffer- ing loss. Egypt must suffer if Israel is to be delivered. An adequate impression of the Divine power must be made on Israel as a basis of its belief in God, l\nd Egypt 294 THE BOOK OF PSALMS. [PS, OXXXVI, 1-26,
must suffer that God's po_wer may be shown. It is a thrillingly interesting view of one of the supreme mysteries of humnn life, that on one side of them God's judgtnents should be apprehended as vicarious sufferings for the sake of others.-R. T.