Ver. 8.-Secret sin. The word used is a singular one, and may be rendered "our secret" (character). "God needs no other light to discern our sins by but the light of his own face. It pierceth through the darkest places; the brightness thereof enlighteneth all things, discovers :ill things. So that the sins that are committed in deepest darkness are all one to him :i.s if they were done in the face of the sun. For they are done in his face, that shines more, and from which proceeds more light than from the face of the sun. S:i that this ought to make us the more fearful t-0 offend; he sees us when we see not him, and the light of his countenance shines about us when we think our- selves hidden in darkness." "These words have a singular force if written by Moses, who saw the splendour of God, and ca.rried away upou his person its ma.nifest tokens." L DECBET SIN BEGABDED AS THAT WHICH WE WOULD GLADLY CONCEAL FROM OTIIERB. Secrecy is always suspicious. "He tha.t doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manilest, tha.t they are wrought in God." Secrecy may be duty; in public spheres it may be wise policy; but when a man, in private life, does not wish any one to know what he is doing, he is generally found to be doing something wrong. The burglar, the coiuer, the sensualist, want secrecy. They work in the da.rk; they go under feigned names; they hide themselves in the great cities; they devise all sorts of excuses to account fur their time. If they succeed in deceiving their fellows, surely their ways and works are "naked and open " to God, whose "eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." Il. SECRET SlN REGARDED AS THAT WHICH WE TBY TO CONCEAL FROM OURSELVES. This point requires more searching treatment. 1. Natural disposition, and errors in education, prevent men from recognizing the sinfulness of their own sins. 2. Conscience may be blunted so that it is no longer keen to witness against sin. 3. Strong will to continue in sin sets men upon persuading themselves tha.t their sin is not sin. lllustra.te from tbe sins of drinking, slandering, envying, etc. A ma.n may deceive himself, but God quickly tears away his "refuges of lies." God knows the man who does not know himself. He puts the secrets into the "light of bis countenance." III. SECRET SIN BE.GAllDED AB THAT WHICH WE TBY TO CONCEAL FROM Goo. As did A.dam, by biding among the trees. Men say, "The Lord shall not see;" but no man ever yet succeeded in closing the eye of Heaven. Men's most desperate effort is t-0 a:sert and prove that there iti no God, and so no observer of their sin. 'l'hey never PB, XO, 1-17.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 265
really succeed. Iafidelit-y 'is the hopeless a.ttempt to get rid of a God who sees, and will be sure to judge.-R. T.
Ver. 9.-Brief life as judgment on sin. This is the point that is specially present to the mind of the a.uthor of the psalm; and it is the point specially impressed by the historical associations of the psalm. "Human transitoriness, the creature made subject to vauHy, death in its much-disregarded connection with sin,-these and the awful con- trast, God's eternity, his absolute disposition of men's lives, his mindfulness of their misdeeds, are here the theme of melancholy contemplation." Recall the fact that during the thirty-eight years of the Israelite wanderings in the wilderness, they were subject to an extraordinary mortality, which was a direct judgment of Jehovah on their rebellion. A whole generation was punished, for the sin at Kadesh, by prematnre death. A.11 from twenty years old and upward perished during the following years, so that only two representatives of the entire generation, Caleb and Joshua, actually entered the promised land. His true that Moses himself lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, but his generation could not have reached a higher standard than seventy or eighty years. 'l'he truth that" the wages of sin is death" is forcibly ilhtS- trated by the historical record of the wilderness-generation. We may trace the Divine wisdom in giving the judgment on sin this particular form, of shortened life. I. PROLONGED LIFE GIVES OPPORTUNITY FOR INCREASE OF BIN. See the case of the antediluvian sinners, who went on sinning through long lives until they became hope- lessly corrupt, and had to be swept away by the Flood. It may, indeed, be a severe judgment to prolong a life, and a gracious judgment to shorten it. II. THE LOVE AND CLINGING TO LIFE MA.KE BHORTENINA LIFE A VERY EFFECTIVE JUDGMENT. Love of life is natural to man. It is the expn-ssion of his consciousness of immortality, only it lea.de him to want his immortality here. The things which man begins to do make it extremely trying to have to leave them unfinished. Life means pleasant relationships, which man feels it a very bitter thing to break off. III. MAN'S UTTER HELPLESSNESS IN THE PB.ESESCE OF EARLY DEATH M.AKES THIS FORM OF JUDGMENT SPECIALLY HUMILIATING. To conquer, rise above, mate and master everything, is man's supreme passion. Early death is God-it may be the neglected God-mastering him.-R. '.I.',