Psalms 14

1. THE fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; There is none that doeth good. 2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there were any that did understand, That did seek after God. 3 They are all gone aside; they are together become filthy; There is none that doeth good, no, not one. 4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?

THERE seems to be no reference to any particular historical occasion. The Psalm was, no doubt, originally written to express the feelings of God’s people, in all times and places, with respect to the original depravity of all men and the obstinate persistency in evil of the greater number. A.—The singer, keenly alive to the evils of his time, sees everything in the blackest colors. The apostasy is so widespread that all are involved in it, except the small remnant (implied in v. 4); and the world seems again ripe for judgment as in the days of Noah (v. 2). Both in this Psalm and in Psalm 12 the complaint is made that the wicked oppress and devour the righteous. In both corruption has risen to its most gigantic height; but here the doings of bad men, there their words, form the chief subject of complaint. In form the ode is dramatic, or quasi-dramatic. A great tragedy is enacting before the eyes of the poet. Sin is lifting itself up in Titanic madness against God, and God looks down upon its doings as once upon the builders of Babel. He sees utter apostasy (v. 3); He speaks from heaven (v. 4), and the evil-doers are confounded at the word of His mouth (v. 5). “It would scarcely be possible,” says Ewald, “for a great truth to be sketched in fewer or more striking outlines.” There is nothing in the Psalm which can lead us to fix its date or authorship precisely. The feeling is common enough at all times in men of earnest mind. Filled with a holy jealousy for God, no age seems to them so corrupt as their own, because they are engaged in perpetual and, as they are apt to think,

Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And call not upon the LORD. 5 There were they in great fear: For God is in the generation of the righteous. 6 Ye put to shame the counsel of the poor, Because the LORD is his refuge. 7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When the LORD bringeth back the captivity of his people, Then shall Jacob rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.

hopeless encounter with its evils. Indeed, despair would be the result, did not the promise of the future lift them above the present (v. 7). P.

There is a peculiar mark put upon this Psalm, in that it is twice in the Book of Psalms. The fourteenth Psalm and the fifty-third Psalm are the same, with the alteration of one or two expressions at most. And there is another mark put upon it, that the apostle transcribes a great part of it. Owen.

1. Fool. The language of the Old Testament is uncommonly rich in designations of the unwise. The simple and the silly form the lowest rounds of this ladder; the idiot and the lunatic, the uppermost. In the middle lies the notion of the fool or crack-brained, which signifies either to project, to be prominent, or to distend one’s self, to relax, to become decrepit, to wither. “A fool” (thus Isa. 32: 6) “speaks folly and his heart works iniquity, to practise knavery and to utter foolish things against Jehovah, to leave empty the soul of the hungry, and to refuse drink to the thirsty.” D.—The Hebrew is singularly rich in words expressing folly, with the inseparable notion of wickedness. Here the word chosen by David, nabal, means imbecile, a vapid, worn-out fool, one whose heart and understanding are degraded, incapable of seeing truth. It is a word never used of mere natural obtuseness, but of spiritual corruption. Cook.

In his heart. Rather a practical than a theoretical atheism; not so much a denial of the being of a God, as a denial of His moral government of the world; and this evinced in their actions, rather than in their words. Their lives show what the thought of their hearts is (as indeed immediately follows). “The fool” is not the philosophic atheist with his arguments; but the man who, by the practice of wickedness so stifles and corrupts within him the knowledge of God that he virtually acknowledges no God. P.

The atheist is morally as well as mentally a fool, a fool in the heart as well as in the head; a fool in morals as well as in philosophy. With the denial of God as a starting-point, we may well conclude that the fool’s progress is a rapid, riotous, raving, ruinous one. He who begins at impiety is ready for anything. “No God,” being interpreted, means no law, no order, no restraint to lust, no limit to passion. S.—The atheist’s divinity is couched in one article, and that negative, too, clean contrary to the fashion of all creeds, “There is no God.” The article but one; but so many absurdities tied to the train of it and itself so irreligious, so prodigiously profane, that he dares not speak it out, but saith it softly to himself, in secret, “in his heart.” R. Clerke.—Atheism is too conscious to be venturous and open. That is the property of truth, the daughter of the light and of the day. South.

It is not said, “The fool hath thought in his heart;” he saith it by rote to himself as that he would have, rather than that he can thoroughly believe it or be persuaded of it; for none deny there is a God but those for whom it maketh that there were no God. It appeareth in nothing more that atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man than by this, that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it within themselves and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others; nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects; and, which is most of all, you shall have of them that will suffer for atheism and not recant; whereas, if they did truly think that there were no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? Bacon.

Religion, as both the corner-stone and the keystone of morality, must have a moral origin; so far at least that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly independent of the will. It were therefore to be expected that fundamental truths would be such as might be denied, though only by the fool, and even by the fool from the madness of the heart alone. Coleridge.

Whosoever shall observe the disposition of all the parts of the world, their connection, sometimes, the variety of seasons, the swarms of different creatures, and the mutual offices they render to one another, cannot conclude less than it was contrived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and governed by infinite wisdom. None can imagine the parts of the world to perform their several functions without a wise guide; considering the members of the body cannot perform theirs, without the active presence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool to deny that which every creature in his constitution asserts, and thereby renders himself unable to give a satisfactory account of that constant uniformity in the motions of the creatures. Charnock.

In its investigations of questions of origins, science has made a discovery. It has seen plainly that atheism is unscientific. It is a remarkable thing that, after trailing its black length for centuries across European thought, atheism should have had its doom pronounced by science. H. Drummond.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind; and therefore God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it. It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further, but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Bacon.

The philosophy which eliminates the supernatural is hopelessly shattered in the court of every man’s conscience. The denial of the living God involves discredit of the moral nature, whose ingrained sense of guilt and consciousness of weakness demand a pardoning and redeeming God. Hence, Tertullian speaks of the soul’s testimony as naturally Christian; and Augustine describes the heart of man as restless until it found its rest in God. . . . As Descartes insisted that absolute doubt involved the existence of the doubter, defying elimination by any process of dialectics, so it may be said that personality is itself the affirmation of the supernatural, and that even he who denies the existence of a personal God proves that the idea of the supernatural is a perfectly indigenous and familiar form of thought. It is a waste of time to argue with an atheist or a pantheist. The short method with such people is the direct appeal to the sense of personal dependence, and of personal obligation. The only argument here is that of self-conviction; and that can never fail, for the soul is eternally at war with any system which eliminates the ethical, and the ethical means a personal and righteous God. Behrends.

To see rare effects and no cause; an excellent government and no ruler; a motion without an immovable; a circle without a centre; a time without eternity; a second without a first; a thing that begins not from itself, and therefore not to perceive there is something from whence it does begin, which must be without beginning—these things are so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must needs be a beast in his understanding that does not assent to them; this is the atheist: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” That is his character; the thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, yet talks against Him that did, saying, that which is made is, and that which made it is not. But this folly is as infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing. Jeremy Taylor.

The wonder turns on the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know everything that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus unless he knows all things—that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself—he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist. But he must know that He does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection, and acts accordingly. J. F.—

Atheism robs the universe of all finished and consummate excellence even of idea. The admiration of perfect wisdom and goodness, for which we are formed and which kindles such unspeakable rapture in the soul, finding in the regions of scepticism nothing to which it corresponds, droops and languishes. In a world which presents a fair spectacle of order and beauty; of a vast family, nourished and supported by an almighty Parent; in a world which leads the devout mind, step by step, to the contemplation of the first fair and the first good, the sceptic is encompassed with nothing but obscurity, meanness, and disorder. R. Hall.

A fatherless world it is which atheism presents to us; let no one tell me that it does not need a God! It is weak and sickly, and needs a strong Divine arm to lean upon, a strong Divine tenderness to nurse and shield it. It is a world in rags, cold, hungry, thirsty, wandering about without shelter under inclement skies; it needs a Heavenly Father to care for it, and give it home and fireside and raiment and daily bread. It is a sorrowful world, it needs a Heavenly and omnipresent Consoler; a world full of temptations and dangers, it needs a Heavenly and omnipresent Protector; a world full of wrong tendencies and actual disorders, wilful and wayward and corrupt to a miracle, it needs a Wise, Omnipotent, and yet Pitiful Heavenly Governor; a world full of ignorance and error, it needs a Heavenly and Omnipotent Counsellor and Enlightener. Burr.

Atheism takes away Christ, but leaves sin. It forbids the remedy, but leaves the leprosy burning like fire into flesh and bones. It takes away the Gospel, and leaves the stern facts and realities of nature. Sorrow, affliction, remorse, sweat, labor, sickness, bereavement, death—it leaves them all in the world! It extinguishes no evil, wipes no tear, imparts no comfort; and hence it is that, granting all that infidelity ever claimed, it disbelieves nothing but the remedy, and leaves man to be broken and crushed by those great laws and facts of nature which roll over him more resistless than the mighty wheels which Ezekiel saw in his vision at Chebar. If any man disbelieves the Gospel of Christ, the only result is that he leaves himself in that very state in which he was without the Gospel. Infidelity is a mere negation. It does not pretend to supply the place which it has vacated. It takes away the Saviour who was born in Bethlehem, but does it substitute a better? It leaves man to suffer, sorrow, weep, and die, unconsoled, unhelped, uncheered, and unblessed! Leaves him as before, did we say? With one grave supplement of misery! The disease is exasperated when remedies are rejected; and the infatuation which refuses the friendly offices of the Redeemer can only treasure up and aggravate the miseries of remorse. W. Adams.

It is not much that the good man ventures: after this life, if there be no God, he is as well as the bad; but if there be a God, is infinitely better; even as much as unspeakable and eternal happiness is better than extreme and endless misery. Tillotson.—Indisputably, the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all others—for this simple reason, that if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst of them) “out of nothing nothing can arise,” not even sorrow. Lord Byron.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beast by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. Bacon.

Have done abominable works. Bad principles soon lead to bad lives. One does not find virtue promoted by the example of your Voltaires and Tom Paines. Those who talk so abominably as to deny their Maker will act abominably when it serves their turn. It is the abounding denial and forgetfulness of God among men which is the source of the unrighteousness and crime which we see around us. S.—Where has infidelity ever purified a heart, or blessed a family, or enriched and tranquillized a community, or built a hospital, or opened an asylum for orphans, or, in short, done any good thing? Morrison.

Whatever defects and imperfections may attach to a few points of the doctrinal system of Calvin—the bulk of which was simply what all Christians believe—it will be found that Calvinism, or any other ism which claims an open Bible and proclaims a crucified and risen Christ, is infinitely preferable to any form of polite and polished scepticism, which gathers as its votaries the degenerate sons of heroic ancestors, who, having been trained in a society and educated in schools, the foundations of which were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and kick down the ladder by which they have climbed up, and persuade men to live without God and leave them to die without hope. The worst kind of religion is no religion at all; and these men, living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amusement of going without religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where the Gospel they neglect has tamed the beastliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of scepticism, which had hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard—when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the sceptical literati to move thither, and then ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom. J. R. Lowell.

2. God’s judgment rests upon a knowledge of the actual state of the case, which is represented in such passages after the manner of men. God’s eyes, which take in everything and pierce through everything, review humanity. Is there one who shows discernment in thinking and in acting, one to whom fellowship with God is the highest good and therefore also that after which he strives?—so inquires God, who has His delight in such, and whose close and yearning search such would certainly not escape. D.

Understand. Or, deal wisely. All men living without God are adventurers out upon God’s world, in neglect of Him, to choose their own course. There is nothing good preparing for any man who will not live in God’s plan. If he goes a prospecting for himself, and will not apprehend that for which he is apprehended, it cannot be to any good purpose. Nothing is more sad and painful to think of, to a soul properly enlightened by reason and God’s truth, than so many years of Divine good squandered and lost; whole years, possibly many years, of that great and blessed biography which God designed for a man, occupied by a frivolous and foolish invention of his own, substituted for the good counsel of God’s infinite wisdom and love. Bushnell.—It is not for God that the disbelieving man is a merchant, an artisan, a man of property, a laborer, a citizen, or the head of a family; it is for himself. He is his own God and his own law. Events adverse and prosperous come by turns. They succeed each other without interruption, and always find him without God. Happy—he has no emotion of gratitude to the Lord. Unhappy—he does not receive the occasion of it as a reproof or a counsel. Sick—he thinks not of the great Physician. Dying—he has no hope of heaven. In a word, that thought of God which must be everything or nothing in the life is nothing in his; nothing, at least, worth estimating. He yields nothing to it, sacrifices nothing, offers nothing. All his actions prove that his thoughts are all as if there were no God! A. Vinet.

3. The whole has apostatized; together they have putrefied; there is none doing good; there is not even one. Total and universal corruption could not be more clearly expressed than by this accumulation of the strongest terms, in which, as Luther well observes, the Psalmist, not content with saying all, adds together, and then negatively, no, not one. It is plain that he had no limitation or exception in his mind, but intended to describe the natural condition of all men, in the widest and most unrestricted sense. The whole, not merely all the individuals as such, but the entire race as a totality or ideal person. A.—See how many words he uses that he may comprehend all, excluding none. First he says all, then together, and then no, not one. Luther.—Their sin is described in gradation. They do not understand, because a true knowledge of things Divine forms the basis of proper conduct toward God; they do not ask for God, because they only care for Him whose clear and sure insight apprehends Him as their highest possession; they are gone aside, because he who cares not for Him is sure to get estranged from Him, and to deviate from His paths; and they are altogether become filthy (i.e., worthless), because man’s proper strength and fitness for virtue must well from the fountain of communion with God. Tholuck.

Each age of men has its peculiarities—each country its peculiar temper and type of civilization. Each class has its good and weak points, its elevating convictions, its unworthy prejudices. No two human characters, as no two human faces, are exactly alike. But one thing there is that unites us all. One consciousness there is in which we all, of all ages and all countries, of all classes and tempers, sooner or later must agree, and that is, that we are sinners. It is now as it was in the ages of old. David’s saying is alway true. “There is none righteous, no, not one.” H. P. L.—All the advances in our latter-day science and philosophy have not in anywise affected the doctrine of depravity. The best natural man of the nineteenth century, with all that the centuries have done for him and all that he is able to do for himself, is still a sinner and conscious of his sin. He is as really and hopelessly involved in the meshes of guilt as was Cain when he cried, “My burden is greater than I can bear!” or David when he made his supplication, “Have mercy upon me, O God, and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” The same penalty that was pronounced upon sin in the beginning hangs over it to day. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” And the soul of the whole ruined race, groaning and travailing, utters forth as anxiously as ever the old question: “What shall I do to be saved?” D. J. Burrell.

Sin is actually found in every one of us, from the moment he wakes to consciousness—that is, the moment he knows that he exists at all. It is an internal disease, and not on the surface. It is of the heart, and not of the hands and feet. It belongs to character before it belongs to conduct, or else it would never seriously estrange us from God. It is a vitiated state of the spiritual system and its circulations. Its forms are manifold; it breaks out into avarice, lust, temper, falsehood, slander, vanity, selfishness, profanity—the whole brood of vices, crimes, impieties, worldlinesses. But they all have one organic root in the heart. They press and goad us, they beset us in society and solitude, they follow after and irritate and corrupt us. And just so far as they master us, they drag us apart from God. Just as far as we yield to them, we lose sight of Him, and the blessed feeling of friendship which is our need. The difficulty is sin. F. D. H.

Human nature as created is upright, as born or propagated, a corrupted and damaged nature. But however corrupted and damaged, however fallen, it has the original Divine impress on it, everywhere discernible. It has the same feelings, sentiments, powers of thought and affection, the same longings and aspirations, only choked in their volume, and crazed by the stormy battle of internal discord and passion in which they have their element. The most sad fact—fact and also evidence—of human depravity is, that the religious nature stands a temple still for God, only scarred and blackened by the brimstone fires of evil; more majestic possibly as a ruin than it would be if it did not prove its grandeur by the desolations it withstands. Bushnell.—The stately ruins visible to every eye bear in their front (yet extant) this doleful inscription—here God once dwelt. Enough appears of the admirable frame and structure of the soul of man to show that the Divine presence did once dwell in it, more than enough of vicious deformity to proclaim He is now retired and gone. Look upon the fragments of that curious sculpture which once adorned the palace of that Great King—the relics of common notions—the lively prints of some undefaced truth—the fair ideas of things—the yet legible precepts that relate to practice. Behold with what accuracy the broken pieces show these to have been engraven by the finger of God; and how they be torn and scattered, one in this dark corner, and another in that, buried in heaps of dust and rubbish. Howe.

It is vain for any man who has a conscience, and who believes in Providence and law—it is vain for any man who has ever reflected upon his nature and his prospects, to allege that he is under no vows to God. We have all made them, and, alas! we have all broken them. Their wrecks may be seen along the whole course of our history. When I reflect upon the magnitude of human guilt in this single aspect of it, I am amazed and confounded at the long-suffering forbearance of God. I am ashamed of myself, I am ashamed of my species, when I recollect how false and faithless we have been. Who can boast of his honor, who can scorn the imputation of a lie, when there are promises in heaven unredeemed, vows that are forgotten or despised? Who dares glory in his righteousness when the first principles of justice are openly transgressed? No, no. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. But in His amazing goodness there is a remedy. All-guilty as we are, we can be pardoned and accepted; all-polluted as we are, we can be purified and cleansed. There is a fountain opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness. Let us wash in that fountain, and we shall come forth new men—men of real truth, honor and integrity. The laws of God will be put into our minds and written upon our hearts, and the Spirit of all grace will effectually train us for glory, honor and immortality, and crown us with eternal life. Thornwell.

5. There.** It does not mean “there, i.e., some day,” as if it pointed to an indefinite future, but “there, i.e., then,” when God shall speak to them in His wrath. Then, when God’s longsuffering passes over into indignation and wrath, their inmost heart trembles with anguish at the prospect of judgment. On the other hand, however, this judgment of wrath is a revelation of love. D.—By generation we are not to understand merely contemporaries. Here, as often elsewhere, a moral meaning attaches to the word, and it denotes those who are of the same spirit, whether that be the spirit of the world or the spirit which is of God. P.

6. In consequence of the self-attestation of God in judgment, of which he has become so certain and the assurance of which fills him with such consolation, the Psalmist himself confronts his oppressors, full of joyous defiance. D.—Ye put to shame the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge. In the fifty-third Psalm it is, “Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.” Of course, the allusion is totally different in each; in this Psalm it is the indignant remonstrance of the Psalmist with “the workers of iniquity” for undervaluing and putting God’s poor to shame; the other affirms the final shame and confusion of the ungodly, and the contempt in which the Lord holds them. In either case it illustrates God’s care of His poor and lowly ones, the oppressed and the injured. It is this character of God which is so conspicuously delineated in His word. We may look through all the Shasters and Vedas of the Hindoo, the Koran of the Mohammedan, the legislation of the Greek, and the code of the Roman, aye, and the Talmud of the Jew, the bitterest of all; and not in one single line or page shall we find a vestige or trace of that tenderness, compassion, or sympathy for the wrongs, and oppressions, and trials, and sorrows of God’s poor, which the Christian’s Bible evidences in almost every page. Bouchier.

7. In this concluding expression is formulated the view that prevails throughout the whole Psalm, that in the midst of the world, and even in the midst of the so-called Israel, the “righteous generation” finds itself in a condition of oppression, imprisonment and bondage. When God shall turn this condition of His people, then Jacob shall exult and Israel be glad. To rejoice then is the grateful duty of the redeemed. And how could they do otherwise! D.

Atheism, Pantheism, Superstition and Faith. There are those who discover reigning design in all God’s works, and so are opposed to atheism; who discover evidence of a power separated from and above nature, a pure and benevolent God, and so have extricated themselves from the toils of pantheism; who observe a present God in the more striking agents which He employs, but who trace Him, too, in those daily gifts which are not less beneficent because they are constantly bestowed, and in those regular arrangements of Providence which are not less wonderful because they may have become familiar to us. It is a sound and enlightened faith. It keeps the mind in a vigorous and healthy state. The error of the atheist arises from his not observing the footsteps of a designing mind in the heavens and earth without us, or of a Governor and Judge in the moral sense or law within us. The error of the pantheist does not consist in his contemplating the laws of nature, so exact and so beautiful, but in refusing to look beyond them to a wise, an intelligent, a righteous, and benevolent Being, who not only gave to matter all its laws, but all its arrangements also, and uses them for the furtherance of moral ends. The error of the superstitious man consists in his seeing God only in those events which are fitted to startle his fears or stir his fancy, while he pays no regard to other portions of God’s works reflecting no less clearly the perfections of his character. The atheist closes his cylinders, and asserts that there is no God because he will not open his eyes to behold the traces of Him. The philosophical and poetical pantheist, the worshipper of nature, opens his eyes only half-way; and amid the many lovely “dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,” he refuses to gaze upon the still lovelier, but more dazzling image of a holy God. The victim of superstition opens and shuts his eyes by turns, opens them when there is anything to alarm or please, and shuts them against all that might enlighten the reason, or mould the character after the image of a perfect God. True faith opens the eyes, and keeps them fully directed upon the glorious works of nature, and wonderful events of Providence, till they rise in glowing admiration, to the perception of a light ever shining, with unchanged and unchangeable lustre, upon a universe rejoicing in its beams; and they continue to gaze till, “dazzled by excess of light,” they shut themselves, in holy meditation and devout adoration. M’ Cosh.

He who thinks most deeply, and has the most intimate acquaintance with human nature, as exhibited in his own heart, will be the most apt to resolve all unbelief into atheism. Especially will this be the case at a time when physical science, in league with a subtle pantheism, is everywhere substituting its jargon of laws, and elements, and nebular star-dust, and vital forces, and magnetic fluids, for the recognition of a personal God, and an ever-wakeful, ever-energizing special Providence. Theism, we admit, is everywhere the avowed creed, but it wants life. It is too much of a mere philosophy. There are times when the bare thought that God is comes home to the soul with a power and a flash of light which gives a new illumination and a more vivid interest to every other moral truth. It is on such occasions the conviction is felt that all unbelief is atheism, or an acknowledgment of a mere natural power clothed with no moral attributes, and giving rise to no moral sanctions. We want vividness given to the great idea of God as a judge, a moral governor, the special superintendent of the world and all its movements, the head of a moral system, to which the machinery of natural laws serves but as the temporary scaffolding, to be continued, changed, replaced, or finally removed, when the great ends for which alone it was designed shall have been accomplished. Just as such an idea of God is strong and clear, so will be a conviction of sin, so will be a sense of the need of expiation, so will be a belief in a personal Redeemer, and so will follow in its train an assurance of all the solemn verities of the Christian faith, so strong and deep that no boastful pretension of that science which makes the natural the foundation of the moral, and no stumbling-blocks in the letter of the Bible, will for a moment yield it any disquietude. There is a want of such a faith, as is shown by the feverish anxiety in respect to the discoveries of science, and the results of the agitations of the social and political world. This timid unbelief, when called by its true name, is atheism. The next great battle-ground of infidelity will not be the Scriptures. What faith there may remain will be summoned to defend the very being of a God, the great truth involving every other moral and religious truth—the primal truth, that He is, and that He is the rewarder of all who diligently seek Him. T. Lewis.