HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-7.-The depravity of a godless world, viewed by God. This psalm is givon us twice-as the fourteenth and the fifty-third. It is one of those which assumes a revelation of God as a redeeming God, and also the existence of e. redeemed people of God. And by way of consequence it assum!!"s the necessity of e. Divine redemption in order to bring about "the generation of the righteous." 'l'bis could only have come about by Divine grace and by Divine power. Hence the very manifest distinction noted in the psalm between "the children of men" (ver. 2) and the people of God (ver. 4). 'l'he central part of the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is a commen- tary on this psalm by one of the most richly inspired penmen. When God saw, as with his all-piercing gaze he looked down from hea.ven, that among" the children of men" there was absolutely not one righteous, no, not one-manifestly, a "generation of the righteons" could never have existed save for a gracious redemption and regeneration from above. And while the Apostle Paul develops from this description of the world, man's absolute need of a Divine interposition, we, in expounding the psalm itself, must work distinctly on its own lines, showing the state of things in the world on which the eye of God rested, and also how far that state of things exists in it still. The expositor must also take np the Christian standpoint, and show when and for what purpose the Lord looked down on such a sight. I. A FEAilFUL SIGHT ON WHICH "THE Lonn LOOKED DOWN." To what precise period of time the psalm refers, we have no means of knowing; nor at what exact period it was written. 'l'his, however, is of no consequence. Every point specified here can be verified now. 1. The depravity of man had vented itself in the most egregious folly, even in the denial, of God. There is ample room for the Christian teacher to expose the folly of such denial quite irrespectively of his theory of crea.tion, be it the evolu- tionary one or no. 1 Either way, the (1) teleological, (2) cosmological, and (3) onto- logical proofs remain the same; in fact, the teleological proof is receiving abundant and amazing illustrations in modern discovery; so much so that its power again and again "overwhelmed" Mr. Darwin himself. The argument in Paley's 'Natural 'l'heology' may need resetting, but in substance has lost none of its force. While Mr. Herbert Spencer's statement, that we know with undoubting certainty that there is "an infinite and eternal Energy from which eTerything proceeds" is one of which the Christian advocate may make large and effective use. That there is a God all Nature cries aloud in all her works. And not till a man is a" nabal," "a fool," a withered, sapless being, does he come to deny the Divine existence. Such denial has, however, not yet ceased. On the contrary, it has assumed in our days a boldness not ~ven contemplated by the psalmist himself. 'l'here is (1) practical atheism, where 11:1en profess to know God, while in works they deny him; (2) agnosticism; <3) !heore~1c~l atheism, and even anti-theism; (4) and in some of the works of pos1t1v1sts,9 1t 1s even reckoned as a virtue for men to have "no fea.r of God before their eyes" I 2. Such atheism is the most striking and grievO'UB folly. (1) It is irrational. (2) It is corrupting. (3) It breaks out into abominable acts. (4) In the course of its evolution, 1 See Ebrard's •Apologetics' (Clark: 1886); Domer's 'Syetem of Christian Doctrine'
(Clark); three articles by the Duke of Argyll, on "Darwinism as a Philosophy," in (Jood Words, March, April. May, 1888; 'The Law of Causality,' by Professor Wat~s, D.D., 1888; and 'The Ori.,.in cf the World, ac~ording to Scripture and Science,' by Sir J. W. Dawson, F.R.S. (Hodder and Stoughton). Spurgeon's 'Treasury of David' has a le:rge uumlJer of forcible passages on the first verse of this psalm, which, if read with oauhon, Jllay Le found helpful and suggestive. • Cf. George Eliot's 'Tlieophrastus Such.' ~S. XIV, 1-7.) 'l'HE BOOK OF PSALMS.