4. By the ordinances of the Mosaic law, the coming out of Egypt, the sojourn in the wilderness, and other memorabilia of Israel’s history were constantly brought before the minds of the people, and their children were by such means instructed in the wonders which God had wrought in old time. Especially were they designed to confirm the faith of His people in the Divine love, and to make them know that “the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.” Grace is as conspicuous as righteousness in the great work of God. S.—Grace is of the greatest and sweetest use to the soul; it is a staff to uphold the soul, and a sword to defend the soul; it is bread to strengthen the soul, and wine to cheer the soul; it is physic to cure all diseases, and a plaster to heal all wounds, and a cordial to strengthen the soul under all faintings. Grace is thy eye to see for Christ, thy ear to hear for Christ, thy head to contrive for Christ, thy tongue to speak for Christ, thy hand to do for Christ, and thy feet to walk with Christ. T. Brooks.

5. He will ever be mindful of His covenant. This clause is in the future tense, while all the other clauses are in the past—"He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered;" “He hath given meat unto them that fear Him;” “He will ever be mindful of His covenant;” not He hath ever been. Dwelling on these past favors of God to Israel, it is his joy to think that they were but partial fulfilments of a covenant promise which still remained, and in its highest sense should remain forever; and that covenant, itself the memorial or type of the better, the spiritual covenant, the Gospel. So out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh, and he celebrates God’s promised truth to Israel as the memorial and pledge of His eternal faithfulness to the New Testament Israel, His blood-ransomed Church. Vidal.

5-9. He has shown His goodness in never failing to supply the need of His people; He gave them manna in the wilderness, He gave them the spoil of the heathen in Canaan; He thus kept with them the covenant which He made of old with their fathers. Not unmindful of other nations, it is to His people that He has specially revealed Himself; He has given them their promised inheritance. As in His works so in His commandments, as in His providence so in His Word, the same truth and faithfulness are visible. Therefore His commandments ments cannot fail; they remain the sure, everlasting pillars of His kingdom. The great seal of all is the redemption which He accomplished for His people; He who brought them out of Egypt will never suffer His covenant to fail. P.

7. The works of God expound His Word, in His works His Word is often made visible. The acts of God are verity—that is, God acts His own truths; the works of His hands are His own verity and judgments. When we cannot find the meaning of God in His Word, we may find it in His works; His works are a comment, an infallible comment upon His Word. Caryl.

8. They stand fast for ever and ever. That is to say, His purposes, commands, and courses of action. Immutable principles rule in the courts of Jehovah, and He pursues His eternal purposes without the shadow of a turning. He acts in eternity and for eternity, and hence what He works abides forever. Much of this lasting character arises out of the fact which is next mentioned—namely, that they “are done in truth and uprightness.” God always acts according to the glorious principles of truth and integrity, and hence there is no need of alteration or revocation; His works will endure till the end of time. S

9. His precepts, the rule of our actions, are unquestionably just and good, and therefore unchangeable and not to be repealed. His promises and threatenings are all sure and will be made good; nor shall the unbelief of man make either the one or the other of no effect. They are established, and therefore they stand fast forever and ever, and the Scripture cannot be broken. The wise God is never put upon new counsels, nor obliged to take new measures, either in His laws or in His providences. All is said, as all is done, in truth and uprightness, and therefore it is immutable. Men’s folly and falsehood make them unstable in all their ways, but infinite wisdom and truth forever exclude retraction and revocation. He has commanded His covenant forever. H.

Sent redemption, commanded His covenant. The deliverance was the more thankworthy, as being upon a covenant account; for thus every mercy is a token of the Lord’s favor to His favorite; it is this which makes common mercies to become special mercies. A child of God knows that everything that comes through the Redeemer’s hands and by His covenant is the better for it, and tastes the sweeter by far. W. Cooper.

“The fear of the Lord” in Scripture signifies not only filial reverence of our adorable Father who is in heaven, but it is frequently put for the whole of practical religion; hence it is explained in the last part of the verse by “doing His commandments.” The fear of the Lord, in this latitude, implies all the graces and all the virtues of Christianity. S. Davies.

A good understanding have all they that do His commandments. They which do the commandments have a good understanding; not they which speak of the commandments, nor they which write of the commandments, nor they which preach of the commandments. H. Smith. —A great understanding they have that know God’s commandments and can discourse learnedly of them; but a good understanding have they that do them and walk according to them. H.

Over and above all accumulation of knowledge and all discipline of the intellect, there remains, as the indispensable condition of true theological thought, that of purity of soul, the love of truth for its own sake, the willingness to be taught of God, and to do His will, to which is attached the promise that it “shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.” The true King’s highway to the wisdom which we seek is to be found in an intellect emancipated from prejudice and a heart purified from baseness. Plumptre. — Our Saviour prescribes men an unfailing method to assure themselves of the truth of this doctrine. “If any one,” says He, “will do the will of the Father, he shall know of My doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.” There is a strange intercourse and mutual corroboration between faith and practice. For as belief first engages practice, so practice strengthens and confirms belief. South.

A very large portion of the Christian’s doubts are not doubts; they are won’ts. The will is not subdued to God. It has not completely surrendered itself to the best it knows, and to the dictates of the Spirit of the Lord and the promptings of the conscience. Often when the man stands doubting, as he supposes he is, the struggle really is between the conscience and the will. That trouble lies at the root of the whole matter. He knows what is right, but hesitates to do the right. When the prodigal said, “I will arise and go to my father,” the question was settled. God worketh in us to will and to do. Let us be workers together with Him in willing and in doing. Anon. — And here it is to be observed, that in order to our carrying out the mightiest schemes of God, it is not necessary that we know what these are. God gives to each what each can do, and by the various gifts and labors of all fulfils His own grand purpose. What we need to know is only the commands of God, what He sees fit for us to do. And doing this we may be sure that, so far as we are concerned, the secret purposes of God are accomplished. All murmuring and excusing is in vain, for these three things, God’s commandment, our circumstances, and God’s eternal purpose, are all of them springing from one source, the will of God, and do therefore harmonize. Our circumstances are allotted by the same will which commands us. Dods.

Know thyself that thou mayest fear God; know God that thou mayest love Him; in this thou art initiated to wisdom, in that, perfected. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; the love of God is the fulfilling of the law. . . . In all thy actions think God sees thee, and in all His actions labor to see Him; that will make thee fear Him; this will move thee to love Him. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, and the knowledge of God is the perfection of love. Quarles.

Is it not the highest wisdom to fear such a God as this, so great in His works, so true in His Word, so faithful to His covenant? To fear God and to keep His commandments is the whole duty of man; to praise Him man’s highest employment both now and forever. P.

The Test of Doctrine.

Verse 10. A good understanding have all they that do thereafter. The theological demand of the times is that we shall work from facts and not theories; that in our building, facts fit each other so closely, exactly, and beautifully, that there shall be no need of intervening mortar of man’s argument to bind and hold them together. The direction in which biblical scholarship has advanced, more than any other, is in the search for facts. Our scientific theologians declare there is a fact basis for the truth of the Gospel’s doctrines as valid as that which underlies geology or chemistry in the natural world. Thus the two chief tests of doctrine in the past have been theory and fact, logic and deduction. Formerly men advanced from general principles to conclusions which they said must follow from the necessity of logic. Later men rise from facts by laws of evidence along inductive lines, to an affirmation of the truth. It was first Plato, then Bacon. But Christ announced a new and

Gospel method of testing truth. “He that doeth the truth cometh to the light.” And in another place explaining how doctrine may be learned, He says there is only one way. “If any wills to do God’s will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or not.” The English version does not exactly express the idea. Not if any man purposes to do the will of God, but if any man has a desire, bias, aspiration to do the will of God, he shall know. Many people would resolve to do God’s will for the purpose of finding out the doctrine. But the test of a doctrine is not in a resolution. The Tyndal prayer-test says we will put men in wards, pray for them in one, and not pray for them in the other, and see what the outcome will be. That was a resolution without any bias toward God’s will, merely a critical purpose to find out what God’s will was. Of course it would not yield to that test. Our relation to God’s will and doctrine must not be that of a critic, must not be the result of a resolution, but of a bias that will incline our being toward His ways—that is, to understand God we must be on His side. It is not so with matters purely intellectual. It does not matter which side you are on when you study gravitation, or chemistry, or mathematics. But Paul says spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. You must have a spiritual eye and occupy spiritual ground. If you want to see truth you must look at it from God’s standpoint. If we look at the movement of planets from the earth, they are irregular and confused, but if we could look at them from the sun, they would all appear harmonious. So it is necessary to get near God to see truth. But the only way we can get near Him is in spirit. We cannot have His holy knowledge that looks through all disguises, but we can at least aspire toward Him, and practise, as far as may be, what He commands. We must, as it were, experiment with the truth, by putting it into life. The world, when it comes to consider truth, says, “Think about it.” Christ says, “Do it.”

It can be brought to the test of experiment. The Gospel can be lived. Christian doctrine can be put into Christian practice, and that leads to Christ.

A great deal of scepticism has a moral rather than an intellectual origin. It is just as true that the doing of God’s will leads to a knowledge of God’s will, as not to do it obscures that knowledge. Moral vision goes out of the man who refuses to use it. It is a law of grace, as well as nature, that God gives only what we use. The man who does not use spiritual faculties in Christian aspiration shall have no spiritual vision. Darwin says that it is the use that makes the organ, it is the effort to see that makes the eye. It is the effort to be good that opens up spiritual realities. And this spiritual knowledge will come, even through our failures. Christ does not say that the man who does the doctrine shall know. That would discourage us. If the range of our knowledge were only according to our success in doing, we would have narrow horizons. But the measure of it is rather our striving. “If any man wishes to do God’s will, he shall know.” Not our attainments, but our aspirations are the measure of our progress in Christian knowledge. No wonder that John the apostle wrote so delightfully about Jesus Christ. What an Apocalypse he gave us of future things! The reason of it is apparent; he saw truth from Jesus’ breast. In proportion, then, as we are in sympathy with Christ, we will be guided into truth. In proportion as our aspirations are toward God and our practices are of Christian life, will light come into Christian ideas. It is true, of course, that a man’s life may be better than his faith; he may be turned aside by mental bias or inherited idiosyncrasies, but it remains true that right living tends to right doctrine. The man who lives godly may be incapable of forming or expressing elaborate doctrine; he may not get any farther than the Lord’s Prayer, but he will not come short of faith, hope, and charity. C. L. Thompson.

1. DELIVER me, O LORD, from the evil man; Preserve me from the violent man: 2 Which imagine mischiefs in their heart; Continually do they gather themselves together for war. 3 They have sharpened their tongue like a serpent; Adders’ poison is under their lips. [Selah 4 Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; Preserve me from the violent man: Who have purposed to thrust aside my steps. 5 The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; They have spread a net by the way side; They have set gins for me. [Selah 6 I said unto the LORD, Thou art my God: Give ear unto the voice of my supplications, O LORD. 7 O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.

8. Grant not, O LORD, the desires of the wicked; Further not his evil device; lest they exalt themselves. [Selah 9 As for the head of those that compass me about, Let the mischief of their own lips cover them. 10 Let burning coals fall upon them: Let them be cast into the fire; Into deep pits, that they rise not up again. 11 An evil speaker shall not be established in the earth: Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him. 12 I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, And the right of the needy. 13 Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto thy name: The upright shall dwell in thy presence.

THIS Psalm is a prayer for protection against enemies who were at once violent and crafty and unscrupulous in the use of their tongues. The general strain of the Psalm is like that of many which occur in the earlier books, and like them it is ascribed to David. P.—From the Sauline persecution the images are evidently borrowed. Besides the warlike tone, the vigorous conciseness, the verbal agreements with Davidic Psalms combined with eminent originality, the very structure is Davidic, and exhibits the familiar sequence of complaint, prayer, and confident anticipation. A.—He complains here of serpent-like, treacherous, slanderous adversaries, who are preparing themselves for war against him, and whom he will ultimately have to fight in open battle. The Psalm, more bold than beautiful in form, is Davidic in thoughts and figures, and is to be explained by the circumstances of Absalom’s rebellion, which was followed by the rebellion of Sheba the Benjamite as an outbreak of Ephraimitish jealousy. Psalms 58 and 64 are very similar. D.

2,3. The wicked assault the righteous with three weapons: with the heart, by conspiracy; with the tongue, by lying; and with the hand, by violence. Lorinus.

3. Sharpened their tongues like a serpent. To sharpen or whet the tongue imports the keenest and extremest kind of talkativeness, much more to sharpen the tongue “like a serpent.” Naturalists tell us that no living creature stirs his tongue so swiftly as a serpent, and serpents are therefore said to have a treble tongue, because, moving their tongue so fast, they seem to have three tongues. The Psalmist means, the wicked speak thick and threefold, they sting and poison me with their tongues. Caryl.—There are men, the very existence of whom is a baneful poison. They dart their livid tongue like the tongue of a serpent; and the vetom of their disposition corrodes every object upon which it concentrates itself; ever vilifying and maligning. Pliny.

In order to constitute slander, it is not necessary that the word spoken should be false; half-truths are often more calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a

dropped lip, an arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an incredulous expression of countenance; nay, even an emphatic silence may do the work; and when the light and trifling thing which has done the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction, “Adders’ poison is under their lips.” F. W. R.