Psalms 1
Butler1. BLESSED is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, Nor standeth in the way of sinners, Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; And in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also doth not wither;
THE book opens with an exquisite picture of the truly Happy Man, as seen from the highest ground of the old dispensation. He is described both literally and figuratively, positively and negatively, directly and by contrast, with respect both to his character and his condition, here and hereafter. The compression of all this into so short a composition, without confusion or obscurity, and with a high degree of graphic vividness, shows what the Psalm is in a rhetorical or literary point of view, apart from its religious import and Divine authority. It contains a summary of the doctrine taught in this book and in the Scriptures generally, as to the connection between happiness and goodness. It is well placed, therefore, as an introduction to the whole collection. A.
This Psalm seems to have been placed first in the collection because, from its general character and subject, it formed a suitable introduction to the rest. It treats of the blessedness of the righteous, and the misery of the wicked, topics which constantly recur in the Psalms, but it treats of them as if all experience pointed only in one direction. The poet rests calmly in the truth that it is well with the righteous. He is not vexed with those passionate questionings of heart which meet us in such Psalms as the
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4. The wicked are not so; But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. 5 Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: But the way of the wicked shall perish.
thirty-seventh and seventy-third. The close of the Psalm is, as Ewald remarks, truly prophetical, perpetually in force, and consequently descriptive of what is to be expected at all times in the course of the world’s history. In style the Psalm is simple and clear. In form it is little more than the expansion of a proverb. P.
Obviously this Psalm was either written for an introduction to the Psalter or was selected by the compiler as one adapted to this place. It breathes forth and foreshadows the spirit of the entire book in this special respect, celebrating the blessedness and prosperity of the truly good man in this world and inferring his corresponding fruition in the world to come. He is put in contrast with the wicked both in his life and in his destiny. C.—This Psalm carries blessedness in the frontispiece; it begins where we all hope to end: it may well be called a Christian’s guide, for it discovers the quick-sands where the wicked sink down in perdition, and the firm ground on which the saints tread to glory. Thomas Watson.
The Book of Psalms may be said to be built upon the foundation of its first word. There is not a “woe” in the whole book. God is loath to speak of judgments, but there are very many instances of the occurrence of this phrase “blessed.” It appears some five-and-twenty times. We used to call the book “The Psalms of David.” We have learned that it is not a solo, but a chorus of many voices, many sorts of men, under many circumstances, in many generations. And these experts in the devout life all unite in a harmonious conception of what makes true joy. The Beatitudes of the Psalter are the anticipation of, and in fact identical with the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. For the conditions of human blessedness are always the same, and the essence of true religion is one, and its effects uniform, in every age of the Church and stage of Revelation. The various instances of the occurrence of this phrase teach us the elements of human blessedness—in our relation to God, in our conduct, and in our circumstances. A. M.
1. Blessed.** Christ opens the Sermon on the Mount with His “Blessed,” “Blessed” are the people of a certain sort. To the Psalmist and to Christ; in life and at the judgment, in this world and in the next world, are two sorts of folk, two only, the godly and the ungodly, the righteous and the wicked. They move on different lines, even when they walk side by side and live under the same roof. They are ruled by different motives, they are seeking different ends. Haydn.—Blessednesses are to him; blessings of all kinds, enough to make him completely happy; no ingredients of happiness shall be wanting to him. When he undertakes to describe a blessed man, he describes a good man; for, after all, those only are truly happy that are holy; and we are more concerned to know the way to blessedness than to know wherein blessedness will consist. Nay, goodness and holiness are not only the way to happiness, but happiness itself. That man is a happy man that keeps in the way of duty. H.
A kind of climax has been noticed in the choice of expressions. Thus we have, first, three degrees of habit in the verbs “walked,” “stood,” “sat;” next, three degrees of evil in the character: the “wicked,” described as the passionate or restless; or perhaps, simply, as the unrighteous, the false; “the sinners,” as the active habitual doers of iniquity; “the mockers,” who make an open scoff, and blaspheme; lastly, three degrees of openness in the evil-doing: the “counsel” referring apparently to hidden designs; “the way” to public life; “the seat” or “assembly,” to a deliberate confederacy in wickedness. P.
Walking—standing—sitting—these are the three stages. Counsel—way—seat—these are the three steps. Thoughts lead to deeds, and deeds to habits. Take care of the starting-point, for the walk makes the way, and the way makes the end. These are the three dreadful steps: Neglecting (Heb. 2: 3); rejecting (Heb. 12: 25); despising (Heb. 10: 28). Pearse.—Men are usually first corrupted by bad counsel and company, which is called “walking in the counsel of the ungodly;” next they habituate themselves to their vicious practices, which is “standing in the way of sinners;” and then, at last, they take up and settle in a contempt of all religion, which is called “sitting in the seat of the scornful.” Archbishop Tillotson.
It is clearly said that the wicked have their counsels, sinners their way, and scorners their haunts; and that the man who will be happy must keep out of them all. The man who is happy has so done and so continues, is the idea. The counsels are principles and maxims. The wicked have such in abundance: as to what is fit and right to do in trade; as to keeping the Sabbath; as to the getting and using of money; as to how men are to be amused; as to the training of children; as to the whole domain and claims of religion. Sinners also have their “way”—their manner of life, which matches their counsels. It is called in the Book “a false way,” “a crooked way,” “a way of darkness,” and “a way of death.” Blessed is the man who leaves the counsels, the ways and haunts of the wicked, but more blessed he who has always shunned them. Ask the man who has had large and long experience in every sort of evil, but who now has found the penitent’s peace and pardon, and hates the paths he once trod in reckless folly—ask him what he would give if he only could forget—if he could banish forever from the chambers of his soul the vile pictures of the life of those dissolute days. What is the price of a pure imagination and a chaste memory! The blood of atonement will not give that, when once they are defiled. No man can get away from his record. Forgiven he may be, but he must remember. Blessed is the man whose feet not only walk in right paths, but whose memory is clean and pure.
2. The positive side of the godly man’s character we find summed up in a statement of great brevity: “His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth He meditate day and night!” The one hundred and nineteenth Psalm is a disclosure of the blessedness of revelation to one who devoutly received it. What light upon the path, what guidance for the steps, what wisdom, what comfort, what inspiration! The man of our time has the light of that day intensified, its wisdom amplified a hundred-fold. “The law of the Lord” now covers the New Testament as well as the Old. Christ is the Wisdom of God. He who spake in divers ways and times by angels and by godly men of old, now speaks by His Son. Haydn.
“His delight (or will) is in the law of Jehovah.” Now this will is that pure satisfaction of the heart in the law which does not ask what the law promises or what it threatens, but only this, that the law is holy, just, and good. It is, therefore, a loving delight in the law, which neither prosperity nor adversity can take away or overcome, but through the midst of want it forces its victorious way; for it shines forth chiefly in adversities. Luther.—Sin is not the Christian’s element. He may fall into it, but he cannot breathe in it; cannot take delight and continue to live in it; but his delight is in the law of the Lord. That is the walk that his soul refreshes itself in; he loves it entirely, and loves it most where it most crosses the remainders of corruption that are in him; he bends the strength of his soul to please God, and aims wholly at that. Leighton.
The blessed man grows right up out of the Word of God. He does not read it only, does not only search it; he meditates in it day and night. He lets his thoughts and desires feed upon it. Pearse.—By this it appears that his delight is in it, for what we love we love to think of (119 : 97). To meditate on God’s Word is to discourse with ourselves concerning the great things contained in it, with a close application of mind, a fixedness of thought, till we be suitably affected with those things, and experience the favor and power of them in our hearts. This we must do, day and night; we must have a constant habitual regard to the Word of God as the rule of our actions and the spring of our comforts, and we must have it in our thoughts upon every occasion that occurs, whether night or day. No time is amiss for meditating on the Word of God, nor any time unseasonable for those visits. We must not only set ourselves to meditate on God’s Word morning and evening, at the entrance of the day and of the night; but these thoughts should be interwoven with the business and converse of every day, and with the repose and slumbers of every night; When I awake, I am still with Thee. H.
Meditation doth discriminate and characterize a man; by this he may take a measure of his heart, whether it be good or bad, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” As the meditation is, such is the man. Meditation is the touchstone of a Christian; it shows what metal he is made of. It is a spiritual index; the index shows what is in the book, so meditation shows what is in the heart. T. Watson.—Meditation chews the cud, and gets the sweetness and nutritive virtue of the Word into the heart and life; this is the way the godly bring forth much fruit. B. Ashwood.—Meditation helps judgment, wisdom, and faith to ponder, discern, and credit the things which reading and hearing supply and furnish. It assists the memory to lock up the jewels of divine truth in her sure treasury. It has a digesting power, and turns special truth into spiritual nourishment; and lastly, it helps the renewed heart to grow upward and increase its power to know the things which are freely given to us of God. N. Rinew.
The blessed man delights in the law of the Lord and therefore meditates upon it. And this implies something deeper yet—a delight in the Lord Himself. He loves God, His character and His ways, and so all His works are a joyful study to him. For you notice the emphasis put upon observing, keeping, running in the way of these testimonies; “with my whole heart,” says the author of the 119th Psalm. This gives zest to meditation, and interest to every page, to every fresh disclosure of what God is and wants him to be. . . . The secret of what the Bible is to them who delight themselves therein is that it finds them, brings them face to face with Him Who is the Life and Light of men, and shows the way for prodigal children back to the Father’s house, to peace and rest in Him. And let us not forget that only by brooding over the great things of the Word will they disclose to us their fulness. We are to study as well as read, pray as well as search, and all that we may fix them in our lives, and put our life into them, for ourselves to know the blessedness of him whose delight is in the law of the Lord, whose pleasure it is to walk therein. Haydn.
I know not a grander quality of the soul than that quiet calmness which, while it feels deeply, yet remains sovereign over the feelings, and in which lordly reason sits upon the throne. Superior to this in usefulness, and not below it as a source of power, is that steady, unwearied progress which is the result of permanent convictions, which is attended not with violent feelings, rising like gusts to-day and dying down to-morrow, but with an undercurrent of soul which “runs, and as it runs, forever will run on.” Such characters are like the mountains for majestic repose; they are like perennial deep streams for constancy. Such characters we may have, if we mingle meditation on divine truth with activity in works of usefulness. T. D. W.
3. The figure which follows possessed for an Eastern mind a vividness of which we can form but a faint conception. When all else was parched and sterile, the “brooks of water” and the “torrent-beds” had their bright strip of verdure (1 Kings 18 : 5). There the grass was freshest and greenest, and there the trees flourished most luxuriantly. P.—The charming figure of a tree, ever green, thrifty, flourishing, and fruitful sets forth prosperity. In Palestine, vegetables of annual growth might fall through drought; but the tree (e.g., the fig, olive, or palm), deep-rooted, beside living waters, whose leaf never withered, and its fruit never failed, became a true type of the good man whose life could never be a failure—whose work was evermore sure to prosper. C.
The Blessed Man is like a tree planted, not growing wild; pruned and brought under Divine culture, not left to the natural workings of mind and heart; brought into circumstances and relations favorable to his highest development, not left to chance influences in this untoward world, to be sapped at the root by his vices, consumed by his appetites and passions, but planted, cared for, and brought forward in the garden of the Lord, whose trees are full of sap. Planted by the rivers of water brings into view the sources of nourishment, growth, fruit-bearing, the careful husbandry employed. God is the source of supply which by the channels of His grace is conveyed to men. The Incarnation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, His blessed Word and appointed ordinances, these go to the roots of being; they satisfy the heart of the Blessed Man, and out of the heart are the issues of life. Haydn.
The man who delights in God’s Word, being taught by it, bringeth forth patience in the time of suffering, faith in the day of trial, and holy joy in the hour of prosperity. S.—He has comfort in the depths of affliction, strength in the hour of temptation, and comes forth unharmed from the perils of the world, rejoicing in the labors and tears that assure him a rich harvest of glory. Whether the powers of reason crave the loftiest subjects for their exercise; or the imagination asks the widest field wherein to expatiate; or the spirit of devotion seeks an exhaustless store of aliment—all is found here. For the ignorant there is overflowing instruction in its simplest forms; for the learned there are mysteries without end, profound enough to engage and baffle an angel’s powers; for the careless and the headstrong there is reproof uttered in the strongest terms; for the timid and irresolute there are encouragement and assurance in the most soothing language; for the erring there are directions that none can misunderstand; for the presumptuous warnings given in tones of thunder, and for the broken-hearted consolation is poured forth “in strains as sweet as angels use.” It is a mine of unfathomable wealth, and fully yields its soul-enriching treasures to the search of the diligent, while it leaveth poverty enough to him that dealeth in it with a slack hand. R. S. Storrs, Sr.
Character should grow, like a tree, at both ends. Upward, it should send forth a trunk, strong, erect, and stately, together with branches numerous, graceful, and widespread. It should shed a benign shade for refuge from the heat; and it should be filled to the top with flowers and fruits for beauty and for food. But no such development in mid-air is possible unless the tree grows deeply at the other end, shooting its roots far down and in widening circles, seeking moisture and nutriment. There must be this unseen, this secret life. The roots of the soul, with their myriads of fibres, must take firm and deep hold in the soil of God’s truth, and absorb the elements of the new life by meditation and prayer, by communion with Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit. H. M. Scudder.—All the sap and nourishment that the branches of a tree have they receive from the root. This shadows out unto us that our life, growth, strength, and all our spiritual acts are from Christ. He is the root and stock of every believer, and all spiritual life is from Him; not only the principles of grace, but also the workings of grace. Aug.
His fruit in his season. A godly education, under the influences of the Divine Spirit, which can never be withheld where they are earnestly sought, is sure to produce the fruits of righteousness; and he who reads, prays, and meditates, will ever see the work which God has given him to do; the power by which he is to perform it; and the times, places, and opportunities for doing those things by which God can obtain most glory, his own soul most good, and his neighbor most edification. A. Clarke.—His conscience shall be reinforced and become increasingly tender; his heart shall be elevated in its affections and longings; and his mind shall be trained to what is high and holy. Thus is the whole being enriched and the life enlarged. Edgar.
Moral growths do not all fructify at the same time or rate. No workman of God need be disheartened because his fruit season comes late. The latest fruit is usually the best. But, early or late, the fruit of godly character is seasonable. It will be found that God nourishes His men as He does the fruits of the earth, to meet the demands of special seasons; and that in each individual character Divine graces fructify as the occasion demands—courage for seasons of danger, patience for seasons of suffering, strength for seasons of trial, wisdom for seasons of difficulty, words spoken in season—in short, the beautiful fitness of godliness is no less remarkable than its fruitfulness. V.
His leaf shall not wither. Even the leaf of those who bring forth only the leaves of profession, without any good fruit, will wither, and they shall be as much ashamed of their profession as ever they were proud of it; but if the word of God rule in the heart, that will keep the profession green, both to our comfort and credit; the laurels thus won shall never wither. H.—His leaf also shall not wither; showing how the Divine culture looks after the details of the life of the Blessed Man—even the leaf, soonest to feel exposure, soonest to show lack of the conditions of health, shall not wither; assurance that God’s supply reaches to the minute necessities and providential emergencies of the life of His children. Haydn.
And all, or every thing, which he, the man represented by the verdant fruitful tree, shall do, he shall make to prosper, or do prosperously, with good success. This pleasing image is in perfect keeping with the scope of the Psalm, which is not to describe the righteous man as such, but the truly happy man, with whom the righteous man is afterward identified. The whole description is not so much a picture drawn from real life, as an ideal standard or model, by striving to attain which our aims and our attainments will be elevated, though imperfect after all. A.—It is a most astonishing promise to give to men; yet here, as all through this Psalm, the correspondence with the broader thought of the New Testament is marked. “All things are yours” because you are God’s. Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper, because he is planted in God’s garden, by God’s rivers, and this suggests a very important thought as to the standard of prosperity. If it is prosperity which comes from God, it must be measured by God’s rule—and that is quite another rule from men’s—so that with reference to a large number of godly men the world is disposed to deny this statement and to say it is rather the other way: whatsoever he doeth does not prosper. He has sickness and financial disaster; his plans miscarry; he has tribulation, distress, nakedness and peril. Yet it by no means follows that he does not prosper according to a different and a higher standard. V.
This is not to be apprehended in a mercantile sense—nor is it to be viewed as though success, as men term it, were identical with prosperity. Success may be all one with sheer, irretrievable ruin. Defeat may mean good fortune. Adversity, as men esteem it, is oft-times a godly man’s prosperity, attended by a positive increase of his blessedness. The thought moves on the higher plane which contemplates a man as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, to whom this world yields its fruits of increase according to the laws that rule therein; and to him accrues the advantage which belongs in this world, to integrity of character and uprightness of moral purpose. Haydn.—Outward prosperity, if it follow close walking with God, is sweet; as the cipher, when it follows a figure, adds to the number, though it be nothing in itself. Trapp.
The spiritual plant of God is placed by the running waters; it is nourished and recruited by the never-failing, the daily and hourly supply of their wholesome influences. It grows up gradually, silently, without observation; and in proportion as it rises aloft, so do its roots, with still less observation, strike deep into the earth. Year after year it grows more and more into the hope and the posture of a glorious immobility and unchangeableness. What it has been, that it shall be; if it changes, it is as growing into fruitfulness, and maturing in its fruit’s abundance and perfection. Nor is that fruit lost; it neither withers upon the branches nor decays upon the ground. Angels unseen gather crop after crop from the unwearied, never-failing parent, and carefully store them up in heavenly treasure-houses. The servant of God resembles a tree in his graciousness; in his fruitfulness; in his immobility. Newman.
The great lesson, then, of this first part of the Psalm is—Holiness is happiness, security, stability, fruitfulness; and holiness is based solely upon the law of God. Within the sphere of that law, as in a sheltered and well watered garden, are all the fountains which minister to perfect blessedness and to permanent efficiency. V.—The man who loves God and keeps His statutes with his whole heart has a counsel, a way, a resort, which are intensified in sweetness and significance as he goes on; the very opposite of the counsel of the ungodly, the way of sinners and the seat of the scornful.
His counsel, his way, his haunts, are full of Divine Wisdom and ennobling fellowships. In harmony with God and His laws, in love with His works and ways, in faith of His providence over him, the man is blessed—any man may be. Conscience approves. The outer world utters a benediction. So does every pure and right-minded man. Deep calleth unto deep, “It is well.” In sickness and in health; at home, abroad; awake, asleep; in life, in death, “It is well!” “It is well!” Haydn.
4. The ungodly are not so.** No one pretends that every man who is not an avowed servant of God is a defier of all moral obligation. No one denies that such often exhibit the loveliest moral traits; but God’s tests go straight through these superficial developments of character, down to the roots of character. Where is it planted? Whence does it get its impulse? What gives it its ultimate law? The Bible is concerned only with the question of allegiance to God. It puts us to this simple test—God’s servant or not? That not contains the germs of all moral disaster. Thus we are prepared for the sharp contrast here introduced: “The ungodly are not so.” The Psalmist does not dwell upon the details of their ungodliness. As in the case of the righteous, he confines himself to indicating the sources of their life, and passes over all that intervenes, until the judgment. The great object of this introductory Psalm is to show us the fountain-heads of moral character. Its developments of both kinds we find in abundance throughout the Book of Psalms; but in this the proper truth to be set forth is the fundamental one, that all true fruitfulness of character is found in God’s garden only; in being planted by God’s hand and by God’s rivers, and that all barrenness and uselessness result from being not so. V.
Like the chaff that the wind driveth away. We do not get the full force of the imagery, till on some Eastern threshing-floor, like that of Araunah, the Jebusite, on some high hill exposed to the winds of heaven, we see the husbandman tossing his grain into the air, that the wind may separate the chaff and carry it away. A more striking contrast it is hardly possible to conceive. Haydn.—They are without root below, without fruit above, without vital force and freshness, lying loose upon the threshing-floor, and fleeing away if a wind but blows; so altogether null and unstable are they. D.—The chaff, which only lives by the grain, which feeds no one, which has no power of reproduction, is driven away.
So it is the law, the unchanging law of God, that the life which gives nothing has no place in His Divine order; that the life which is bound to no other life by God’s laws of love and of ministry, but is self-centred, is a light, useless life, to be shaken to the four winds when God shall shake heaven and earth. V.
5. Therefore,** because they are unlike a living tree, and like the worthless chaff, fit only to be scattered by the wind, wicked (men) shall not stand, i.e., stand their ground or be able to sustain themselves, in the judgment; i.e., at the bar of God. This includes two ideas, that of God’s unerring estimation of all creatures at their real value, and that of His corresponding action toward them. A.—This part of the Psalm is an almost literal anticipation of the parable of the tares. Tares and wheat are in the same field, as wheat and chaff are on the same threshing-floor. The tares, for the time, enjoy immunity for the wheat’s sake. So the chaff, while it keeps close to the wheat, enjoys some privileges for the wheat’s sake. In the world, good and evil grow together. But there is coming a day of judgment whose searching tests shall make clearly manifest what is wheat and what is chaff. In that day of fearful winnowing what hypocrisies shall be disengaged from their goodly wrappings, what self-deceptions, what imposing phantoms of greatness and usefulness and goodness driven away like morning mist. V.
Here it is plainly said—the wicked shall not stand in the judgment. He cannot maintain himself, or hold his ground in that day, at that tribunal. Here and now, he often more than holds his own. He is victorious. Here and now, he often seems to own the tribunal that is to pass upon his case. Here and now, he is often taken for what he is not. But at the judgment every mask is dropped. Character stands forth in its naked truthfulness. The counsel of the wicked will not abide, and he who walked in it is driven away, like the chaff out of the threshing-floor. Hitherto, he has presented himself among his fellows, in the mart of business, in social festivities, in worshipping assemblies, where lines are never sharply drawn—where men grow together as do wheat and tares. But this is to end, as every man goes to his own place. The judgment does not make character, but declares it; and that separateness which has been so real in spirit is now to take effect in the formal act of separation. “Sinners shall not stand in the congregation of the righteous.” Thus was foreshadowed what is so impressively set forth by our Lord Himself, in one of His latest discourses. The conclusion is not an event detached from the life that lies behind it, but its immediate consequence. The chain is as unbroken as that betwixt seed-sowing and harvest. To stand on the right or the left hand of the Judge, men’s lives are all the time fitting them; and choices, fellowships and deeds are all the time charging life with bane or blessing; they are shaping a sinner or a saint. That such a final separation should come is both reasonable and beneficent. It is solemnly declared to lie before us all. Haydn.
6. Knoweth.** Regards with watchful care and love (31 : 7 ; 144 : 3). The participle denotes that this is the character of Jehovah. P.—The ungodly perish. Their doom is to be disowned of God, condemned, and made monuments of His eternal justice. C.
Here, then, is the contrast between the two portions of this Psalm. Here is the fruitful, cherished tree, and here the driving chaff. On the one side, stability, Divine culture, fruitfulness; on the other, instability, uselessness, ruin. On the one side, a law which nourishes every form of goodly power, and provides every variety of instruction and of comfort; on the other, license which dissipates power, begets restlessness, and ends in worthlessness. On the one side, a Divine vindication; on the other, a Divine exposure. Which shall be our portion? Where our place? In the garden beside the river of God, or on the threshing-floor at the mercy of the wind? V.
The Psalm teaches that the keeping of God’s commandments, which is blessedness, must spring from the inward consent and delight of the heart in the law. Reluctant obedience has no blessedness in it. The name of it is slavery. Many professing Christian people would very much like to do the thing that they think they durst not do—I was going to say, then they may as well do them! That would be an exaggeration, but yet it would be in the direction of the truth. For a man that refrains from profitable or pleasant infractions of the law of righteousness because, and only because, he thinks he ought, and who keeps hanker, hanker, hankering after the things that he is too much of a coward to do, has a very imperfect righteousness, if he has any at all. The first thing that we have to see to is to bring our hearts into harmony with the commandments, and only then is obedience blessedness, when it is the spontaneous and thorough expression of our delight in the law, which again is the child of our love to the Lawgiver. A. M.
With reason is the decalogue filled with thou-shalt-nots. It marks a tendency, that this is so; a tendency to evil, to false gods, to lying, stealing, coveting, killing; a tendency in men to walk in the counsel of the wicked, to stand in the way of sinners, to sit in the seat of the scornful. “Thou shalt not,” is the Lord’s obstruction in the way. He that gives rein to this tendency must break over Divine command. “Thou shalt not,” arrests attention, gives time for thought, and the better, brighter way presents itself, and if accepted, entered, enjoyed, the commands, the “nots” become of little value, and less necessity. He who loves virtue need not be told to hate vice. He who is wedded to truth need not be told to abhor lying. Haydn.
There are few Christian duties more neglected than that of meditation, the very name of which has fallen of late into comparative disuse—that augurs ill for the frequency of the thing. We are so busy thinking, discussing, defending, inquiring; or preaching, and teaching, and working, that we have no time and no leisure of heart for quiet contemplation, without which the exercise of the intellect upon Christ’s truth will not feed, and busy activity in Christ’s cause may starve the soul. A. M.
We observe two classes of men answering to those outlined in this Psalm. Look at representative men on either side. In them principles have gone to seed. One class, rooted in the love of God, in principles of righteousness, in the hearts of men, in the well-being of society. The longer they live, the more a blessing they are, the more needful to society; old age, a crown of glory to them, their counsel esteemed, their character venerated, their name cherished. Another class there is, rooted in no good thing, doing nothing to make their life essential to society, nothing to command the veneration of men, nothing to make their memory green when gone.
Is life worth living? Answer it on the plane of the materialist; of life without God and without hope—no! For the most of men—no! Answer it from the heart of him whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates upon it day and night, drinking at this peren-
nial fountain, and rising invigorated, day by day, to make life a series of victories—yes, a thousand times, yes! This book of the Lord counsels us to seek first the kingdom of heaven. Yea, it forbids us to set our affections on the things of earth. It bids us dismiss anxious care; take our losses and disappointments with composure; lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven; use this world and not abuse it; forsake the greedy scramble for wealth; crucify inordinate ambition and live soberly, righteously and godly in this present evil world. So shall all this teeming tide of thought and activity bring to our doors their argosies of wealth to minister to our comfort and our taste, to meet our necessity or swell our abundance, as the case may be; and given or refused we cannot be miserable if we are delight-
ing ourselves in the law of the Lord, and our souls are fed, nourished and satisfied by meditation thereupon! Haydn.