The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 3 — Section 338

remedJ:. 2. But this very sensitiveness needs to be soothed and sustained, strengthened and gmdeJ, by the faith of the love of God. For else it will rush into wild schemes, whi~h can do no good to those in distress, and will only recoil in many sad e.nd terrible ways on those who devised them. Or else it will settle down into e. hopeless despair, anrl to vain, frantic protests against what it deems the cruel laws under which men are condemned to live. 3. Nothing but confident trust in the love of God will avail. For all efforts to ameliorate the lot of our fellow-men demand patience and energy, and a hopefulness that nothing can quench. 'l'o face the gigantic evils of hui:nan life is no child's play, no holiday sport, but real, serious, earnest work, from which 11ll but the true-hearted will turn away. Apa.rt from this, men cannot and will not perse,ere ~n the often apparently hopeless task of lightening the burdens which oppress so ternbly so many of their fellnw-men. II. FoR THE FOES OF THIS FAITH ARE FOUND, FOR THE MOST PART, IN THE FALSE ornrroNs OF MEN. Opinions which they seldom express openly, but which, neverthe- less, paralyze their power for good, and hinder nll the efforts which they make to mend or end the evils around them. These false opinions confront the truth of our text and fight ng,1inst it, and too often seem to get the better of H. 1. Now, one of thes; false opinions is this-that chance rules all. Life, according to this opinion, is as a mere chip on a stream, caught now by this eddy, now whirled about by that, driven by this current in one direction, and then by another in a different one; borne hither and thither, from side to side, the sport of every breeze and of every stray force that may bear upon it. Life, they say again, is a labyrinthine puzzle, the clue of which no man has found; and so men go groping on, hoping always to find the right turning, but quite as likely to take the wrong. The poor and the distressed are simply unlucky, the prosperous are but the favourites of Fortune, the fickle goddess who, they say, governs all our lives. Now, no doubt, there is mnch in human life that looks as if it were the resnlt of mere chance. For it could not be foreseen, nor influenced by any- thing within our power; as, for example, of what pa.rents we should be born, the kind of home which we should have, the circnmstances amid which we should be kained, what constitution we should inherit, by what teachers we should be instructed • .b..nd many more and all-important elements in determining what our lives shall be, are, without doubt, beyond both our knowledge and control. Any hour of any day, in r, moment, something may happen utterly unexpected by us, and which we could in no wise have helped or hindered, but which may have the effect of entirely alter- ing, for the better or the worse, our whole futnre. Just as hy one pull of a lever the pointsman shunts the entire train on to a different line, the effect of which will be to take it the whole breadth or leugth of the land apart from where it would have gone had that lever not been pulled. And so often is it with the effect of some seem- ingly insicrnificant and unforeseen event upon our lives. When, some years ago, the huge reef° of rocks which~ barred one of the eutrances to the harbour of New York was removed, who that did not know of the arrangements that had been made, would have imagined that there was any connection between the tremendous upheaving and shattering of those massive rocks, and the mere moving of a handle by a little girl on shore some miles away? But we know they must have been connected, and tha.t, without the insignificant antecedent, the great result could never have followed. And similarly slight are many of the ea.uses which make or mar a ma.n's life. Observing such facts, the old Greeks came to believe in the doctrine of chance. 'l'he universe, accordina to them, was but the fortuitous coming together of the atoms which compose it. And still there are those who, if not professedly, yet really, do believe that chance, good luck, fortune, and mere accident govern all things. But the doctrine is horr:hly and utterly false. It is only our ignorance of the connection between events that makes us judge as we do. In any manufactory, our ignorance of the relation of one process to another never leads us to deny that there is such relation. We are sure there is, though we do not know what it is. Why cannot we reason in the same way in reference to the various processes which go to make up our lives? We are not the sport of mere haphazard or blind cha.nee, bnt we are under the wise, firm, loviug rule of our Father in heaven; he is ordering, directing, and controlling all our affairs, and ea.using all things to work together for good to them that love him. 2. .Another foe to the/aitlt that" God is love" is the doctrine of destiny. It teaches that our live• PB, OXLV, 1-21.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 381