HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver. 3.-" How long shall the wicked triumph 1" I. SurPOBE TREY NEVER DID. 1. Then the devil would be right when he asked, "Doth Job serve God for nought?" He meant to say that men serve God only from selfish, interested motives. 2. Men would want eu sin, though from fear they held back, The hea.t would remain 304 THE BOOK OF PSALMS. [PB, XOIV, 1-23.
unchanged, character would be the same. 3. The essential discipline and test of the righteous wo1dd be destroyed. We arc testerl when, though we see the wicked triumph, we still cleave to God. 4. The wicked would wax worse and worse. "The strength or Bin is the La'I"." 5. It would be a confesswn that men cannot be governed by higher motives than rorthly gain. II. SuPPOSE THEY ALWAYS DID. 1. Erirth would become hill, because of the wicked- ness oi' them thnt dwell therein. 2. The.faith and fear of God would disappear. III. SurrosE THEY SOMETIMES DO. This is the case. And sometimes they appear generally to triumph. Nevertheless, it is not always, nor for long. But the present <:irder a,·ails: 1. To glorify God by the .fidelity of his people. 2. To lift them to a higher life. 3. To convince the world of the reality of the faith the believer holds.-S. O. Vers. 8-10.-.An ai~qument all should understand. I. ITs NATURE. It is an argument from what we see in ourselves to what exists in God. H God has given to us certain powers, such powers must exist in him. ll. lTs FORCE. It is inconceivable that it should be otherwise. A man must have brutalized bis soul, and become a fool, not to see this. God is not as man is-the mere employer of force which be does not and cannot create, but he is behind all force, its Creator and Source. III. lTs SAFEGUARD. 1. For this argument needs guarding. If it be said that the presence of faculties in ourselves proves the existence of them in God, which is the argument in these "erses, then might it not be said God is the author of the sin that is in us as well as the good, of that which is wrong as well as of that which is right? The heathen thought so, and hence they regarded their gods as altogether like theru- selves--embodiments of not merely good qualities, but also of lust and hate aud all abomination. The idea of a holy God they never knew. And sinful men now often say," God made us so," and thus cast on him the responsibility for their sin. "He that planted in me the lo Ye of sin, doth he not love it too?" So they falsely reason. 2. But how must 611,Ch wrong extension of the argument of these verses /Je met 1 By noting that man has not merely the powers of thought, feeling, will, but also of conscience. This last is the regal, the judicial faculty, and decides what is of God, and what is only the product of our corrupt nature. Apart from conscience, there could be no right or wrong, but it infallibly tells, by its "excusing and accusing," how far we may go in arguing from what we see in ourselves to what exists in God. Else a. man might say, " He that made me to lust, shall he not lust?" The ancient Greeks and the whole heathen world did say this. IV. lTs MINGLED COMFORT AND WARNING. 1. As to the comfort tliis argument supplies. (1) It shows that all our gifts are of God. "It is he that planted the ear," etc. (et. Jas. i. 16--18). As we think of the manifold advantages that come to us through these gifts of God. and what joy, can we fail to see the beneficeuce of our God? (2) That they are reflections of God, mirrors, minute indeed, but yet trur, of what he is. There- fore my thought tells of thought in him; my Juve, of bis, my conscience, of moral judgment in him. It is our Lord's argument (Matt. vii. 9-11; Luke xv.). But: 2. TJ.ere is warm:ng likewise. Against pride: " What bast thou that thou hast not received?" Against envy. We are as God willed us to be, and, if we be but ob~dient, equally well-pleasing in his sight. Against trilling with sin. H we condemn 1t, .and will to punish it if unrepented of, that condemnation and that will reveal what is yet more in God. They tell of judgment to come.-S. C. Vers. 12, 13.-.A strange Beatitude. These verses contain more than this, but all they contain is linked on to this. Therefore consider- !. THE STRANGE BEATITUDE. "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest." Wherein is the blessedness ? We reply : 1. BecaUBe of what such chastening often reveals. If he were not really a child of God, he would not endure it; he would start aside and rebel. An infidel told a minister of Christ, who has been stricken with total blindness, that if God served him so, he would curse him to his face. 'l'hen this minister-well known to the writer-bore his testimony to the wonderful grace of God, how his soul had been kept in peace, and that he could and did rejoice in God,'notwithstanding all his trouble. The text is like the 1.a.8t of the Beatitudes, "Blessed are ye when men shall persecute PB, XCIV, 1-23.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 805