The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 3 — Section 344

in man which instantly convicts him or his wrong-doing, and as instantly fills him with fear of God's anger. When that anger is hold in, the man wonders. If he is a bad man, it leu.ds him to presume. If he is a good man, it becomes to him a persuasion. It reveals to him God's anxiety about him. He feels to be in God's thou"ht and patience, and he is moved to recover himself from that wrong state of mind a~d heart which brought on him the Divine anger.-R. 'l.'. Ver. 9.-Recognizing God's universal goodness. "We who recognize the loving- kindness, a~ well as the power of God, in what may seem the harsher and more forbidding agencies of Nature, ought not to be weary and faint in our minds if over our warm human life the same kind pitying hand should sometimes cause his snow of disappointment to fall like wool, and cast forth his ice of adverHity like morsels, know- ing that even by these unlikely means shall ultimately be given to us, too, as to Nature, tho beauty of Sharon and the excellency of Carmel" (Hugh Macmillan).' "The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wi<le world's joy. The lonely pine on the mountain-top waves ita sombre boughs, and cries, 'Thou art my sun.' And the little meadow violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath,' Thou nrt my sun.' So God sits, effulgent in heaven, not for a favoured few, but for the uni verfe of lifo; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with childlike confidence and say,' My Father, thou art mine'" (War<l Ileecher). Our Lord taught concerning the heavenly Father, " He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." I. Gon's UNIVERSAL GOODNESS IS NOT THE APPEABANOE Oli' THINGS, From man's point of view the world is full of things that he cannot call good. And he often wonders why God made things ns they are. How can he call calamities and di~asters, bloodshed and war, pain and death, signs of Divine goodness? He can only see the appearance; and with that liwited vision it is wholly impossible for man to realize the universal goodness of God. And in moral spheres he is equally puzzled. Crime con- stantly goes undetected and unpunished. 'l'he wicked succeed and the righteous fail. How can God be good to all when so many live lives of misery? • II. Gon's UNIVERSAL GOODNESS 1B THE FAOT OF THINGS. But it can only be seen from proper points of view, and with the properly cleared vision. God's world is not a material, it is a moral world, and a material only for the sake of the moral. God's universal goodness is clearly seen in the measure in which we can apprehend God's moral end in everything that he does and permits.-R. T. Ver. 10.-Praising and blessing. Matthew Henry indicates the distinction between these terms, and the approprio.teness with which each is used. "All God's works shall praise him. They all minister to us mo.tter for praise, and so praise him according to their capacity; even those that refuse to give him honour he will get himself honour upon. But his saints (beloved ones) do bless him, not only as they have peculiar blessings from him, which other creatures have not, but ns they praise him nctively, while his other works pro.ise him only objectively. They bless him, for they collect the rent 01· tribute of praise from the inferior creatures, and pay it into the treasury above. All God's works do praise him, as the beautiful building pro.ises the builder, or the well-drawn picture praises the artist; but the saints bless him as the children of prudent tender parents rise up and call them blessed. Of all God's works, his saints, the workmanship of his grace, the firstfruits of his creatures, have most reason to bless him.'' I. PRAISING IS COMMON TO ALL BEING. Because all being is creaeion, and h118 its satisfaction in being what it was designed to be, and doing what it was designed to do. We must distinguish between what creation does, and what the poetic o.nd the pious soul thinks of creation as doing. It is true that (perhaps) everything, animato and inanimate, has in it the capacity of sound; and its sound may be its voice of praise. But the praise is what man hears in his soul. It is the voice of nature translated by man. So marvellous, so perfect, and so mutually adapted, are all the creations of God, that every existing thing can be concei ve<l of as praising God for its very being, because it find~ p\e-11.~ure in being. II. DLE8HtiG lS srEcIAL TO MAN. Because it indicates the intellectual apprehensions. 3SS THE BOOK OF PSALM& [PS, CXLV, 1-21.