Psalms 19

1. THE heavens declare the glory of God : And the firmament sheweth his handy-work. 2 Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night sheweth knowledge. 3 There is no speech nor language ; Their voice cannot be heard. 4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. 5 In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. 6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it : And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. 7 The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul : The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. 8 The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart : The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. 9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever : The judgments of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold : Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. 11 Moreover by them is thy servant warned : In keeping of them there is great reward. 12 Who can discern his errors ? Clear thou me from hidden faults. 13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins ; Let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be perfect, And I shall be clear from great transgression. 14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer.

THIS Psalm consists of two distinct parts, in which are contrasted God’s revelation of Himself in nature and His revelation of Himself in His Word. It speaks first of His glory as seen in the heavens, and then of His glory as manifested in His law. It may have been written, perhaps, in the first flush of an Eastern sunrise, when the sun was seen “going forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a mighty man to run his course.” The song breathes all the life and freshness, all the gladness and glory of the morning. The devout singer looks out, first, on the works of God’s fingers, and sees all creation bearing its constant though silent testimony to its Maker; and then he turns himself with a feeling of deep satisfaction to that yet clearer and better witness concerning Him to be found in the inspired Scriptures. Thus he begins the day; thus he prepares himself for the duties that await him, for the temptations that may assail, and the sorrows that may gather as a cloud about him. He has made trial of the preciousness of that word. He knows its deep, hallowing, soul-sustaining power. He knows that it is full of life and healing. But he knows also that it is a word that searches and tries the heart, that reveals the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man; and therefore he bows himself in prayer, saying, “As for errors—who can understand them? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” P.

This Psalm is in two parts : in the first (vs. 1-6) the visible heavens come before us as witnesses for God ; in the second (vs. 7-14) God’s written law is presented, both in its qualities and in its moral effects. Comprehensively we might say here is, first, nature; secondly, revelation. Both are thought of as books from God ; both as proclaiming His character, witnessing to His glorious majesty and His matchless wisdom and beneficence. The Psalm has been admired in all ages for its exquisite poetry, its comprehensive and pertinent thought, and for its sublime moral lessons. C.—The object of the Psalm is not to contrast the moral and material revelations, but rather to identify their author and their subject. The doctrinal sum of the whole composition is, that the same God who reared the frame of nature is the giver of a law, and that this law is in all respects worthy of its author. A.

Let it be noted that the names of the Deity used here are not taken up at random, but are wisely chosen. “El,” the Mighty One, the Great Creator and Ruler of all, is He whose glory the heavens are telling. It is as such a glorious Creator and disposer of all the worlds in space that the heavens are forever proclaiming His glory. On the other hand, the giver of the law (vs. 7-14) is “Jehovah,” the God of the Covenant, the God of the promises, the God who first revealed the significance of this name, “Jehovah,” to Moses and to Israel (Ex. 6: 3 and 3: 11-15), in calling His people forth from Egypt and giving them then His moral law together with statutes and judgments under which they might walk in communion with Him as their revealed Lord and Father. C.

This Psalm, universally regarded as one of the profoundest and most affecting of David’s compositions, is especially remarkable for the vivid contrast, and at the same time the inner harmony, which it recognizes between the results of natural and revealed religion. The heavens, as Bacon observes, declare the glory, but not the will of God: that is known only by His law, revealed to man as the perfect expression of that will, for his conversion, instruction and guidance. Cook.

No natural scene or object in the Old Testament is ever pictured for its own sake, to leave the impression of itself. The Psalmist gazes at the starry heavens by night, he views the wondrous march of the sun by day, but his words are no pen-pictures of these brilliant objects; no, these are nothing in themselves, only in their grandeur speaking silently of God. E. L. Curtis.—“The glory of God” is no other than the glorious qualities of His character—His wisdom, power, and beneficence. Everything in this vast field of nature above our heads is magnificent and beautiful, grand in its order and method, vast in its proportions, and, above all, beneficent in its provisions of light and heat for the good of man and of all sentient beings. C.—Nature is but one grand symbol by which God shadows forth His own invisible Being and character—and the chief glory of nature lies not in her vastness or her order—in the beauty and grandeur of her forms, or the exquisite harmony of her adaptations—but in this, that rock and stream and star and sea, the gleam of her sunshine and the gloom and mystery of her night, the voice of her waters and the silent majesty of her hills—all her mute and material and all her animate creatures alike are but types and symbols of the invisible and eternal glory of Him concerning whom “day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge.” Caird.

1. The Psalm opens with the impression produced on the poet’s mind by the magnificence and the order of creation. Of the two clauses of this verse, the first states the fact that the heavens publish God’s glory; the second explains how this is done—viz., by testifying that He has made them. This is the true meaning of the heavens and their pomp. That splendor which fills their arch, that beauty which so attracts the eye, that everlasting order by which day and night follow in sweet vicissitude—these things are not the offspring of chance; they are not the evolution of some blind spirit enchained within the mass which it vivifies; much less are they the work of some evil power whose kingdom and whose triumph are to be seen in the material universe. God created them, and they show forth His glory. His fingers fashioned them. He clothed them with light as with a garment, and put the sun in the midst of them to show forth His praise. P.—When we contemplate the celestial bodies, can we fail of conviction? Must we not acknowledge that there is a Divinity, a perfect Being, a ruling intelligence, which governs; a God who is everywhere and directs all by His power? Anybody who doubts this may as well deny there is a sun that lights us. Time destroys all false opinions, but it confirms those which are formed by nature. Cicero.

Would you gain some idea of the Wisdom of God, look to the admirable adjustments of the magnificent retinue of planets and satellites which sweep around the sun. Every globe has been weighed and poised, every object has been measured and bent to its beautiful form. All is changing, but the laws fixed by the wisdom of God, though they permit the rocking to and fro of the system, never introduce disorder or lead to destruction. All is perfect and harmonious, and the music of the spheres that burn and roll around our sun is echoed by that of ten millions of moving worlds, that sing and shine around the bright suns that reign above. O. M. Mitchell.—Turn to the millions of stars in the Milky Way. Our sun is neither more nor less than just one, and one unimportant, star in that Milky Way. To David, when he said that the heavens declared the glory of God, only were known two or three thousand stars visible to the naked eye. To us are known somewhere about fifty millions. To us is known that the Galaxy is but the fused light of stars innumerable, that the nebulae of the Centaur and the clouds of Magellan are composed of star clusters so infinitely distant that, though separated from us by abysses of the heaven, they seem by myriads to touch each other, so that our whole solar system would be but a speck in the infinite expanse; and that our whole firmament is but one of some five thousand firmaments, and that each one of those so-called fixed stars is a flaming sun, perhaps with its attendant planets, of which the nearest of all—the star Sirius—is supposed to be fifteen times larger than our own sun, and is rushing away from the earth at the rate of twenty miles a second, and yet separated from us by a space so inconceivably immeasurable that it is as bright as it was two thousand years ago. And, yet, I say again that the Christian is not in the least appalled by all this vastness. Space is nothing to that God who extends through all extent, and in the hollow of whose hand all those worlds lie as though they were but a single waterdrop. Farrar.

See what the stellar universe reveals concerning God. Wherever we look, however profoundly we penetrate the depths of space, we find, so far as we can see, one power, one law, one reasonable intelligence pervading and controlling all; an intelligence which we can recognize as harmonizing with our own wherever we can follow it. We find distant worlds moving just as they would move if the same law of gravitation prevailed with them as it does with us; and terrestrial mathematics, mechanics, and optics apply to them as well as to the earth. Meteors fall, and bring us from interplanetary space only familiar elements. In the luminous music of the rays of distant stars we detect familiar indications of familiar earthly substances. In the spectrum of such a star as Capella, iron and sodium, magnesium and hydrogen, manifest themselves precisely as they do in our sun, or on the earth. The heavens declare the essential unity of matter, and inferentially that of God Himself. C. A. Young.

Nature and the supernatural are generous witnesses for God; they vie with each other in the richness of their testimony. The wide campus of matter swept by microscope and telescope as far as yonder picket nebula is everywhere covered with hieroglyphics of Him which no Champollion is needed to decipher, everywhere tracked with His giant foot-prints vastly more scientifically intelligible than any of these fossil scriptures which so nobly enrich our mumusseums; while the supernatural evidence carries itself still more regally in a God who has often spoken audibly with men; has often stood among them in visible personal forms; has made the future visible, the dead to live, the earth to tremble, the heavens to blaze, the angels to fly singly or in armies along the sky in attestation of Himself; indeed, has even personally come down in presence of forewarned and expecting hosts, embosomed in a storm of miracles and with ineffable pomp; and, finally, has scattered these direct manifestations and these attesting miracles, with their diaconate of special providences, through the ages as liberally as can be shown consistent with their best effect, bridging the intervals between them with well-accredited and well-believed traditions from amid whose mighty arches and colonnades and picturing perspectives they can, not improbably, be seen to better advantage by the majority of mankind than from the portico itself. Barr.

The upholding of the world is a continual causing of it. If therefore the creation do wonderfully declare the power and wisdom and goodness of God, so also doth the conservation. And is it not as great a declaration of the power of God that He causes the sun to shine, and to keep its wondrous course from age to age, as if He did such a thing but for a day or hour? and as if He caused it to stand still a day? And is it not as great a demonstration of His knowledge also, and of His goodness? Baxter.

2. Day to day shall pour out speech, and night to night shall utter knowledge.** Both verbs are peculiar to the poetical dialect and books of the Old Testament. Pour out, in a copious, ever-gushing stream. Speech means the declaration of God’s glory, and knowledge the knowledge of the same great object. The idea of perpetual testimony is conveyed by the figure of one day and night following another as witnesses in unbroken succession. A.—To the personification of the heavens succeeds that of day and night. The words may either be rendered as in the text, or “one day after another,” “day after day, night after night.” This verse expresses not so much the progressive character, as the never-failing continuance of the testimony. There is no pause, no change in the stately procession; none of them thrusts or breaks his ranks; forever they abide the same.

3. No speech and no words; their voice is not heard;** lit. “is inaudible.” This seems to be a kind of correction or explanation of the bold figure which had ascribed language to the heavens. They have a language, but not one that can be classed with any of the dialects of earth. They have a voice, but one that speaks not to the ear, but to the devout and understanding heart. P.—Though day and night are silent in their coming and going, though they utter no audible voice, no articulate speech, yet do they give forth a testimony for God co-extensive with the earth and the heaven. “Like an unbroken chain, their message is delivered from day to day, and from night to night. At the silence of one herald, another takes up his speech; and holy silence itself is a speech to the listening soul.” J. P. T.—Luther’s rendering is, “There is no language nor speech, where one does not hear their voice,” i.e., as Calvin also explains it: the testimony of the heavens to God is understood by the peoples of all languages and tongues. D.

The Psalmist adds, no words, to show that he here uses speech in the strict sense of articulate language. The absence of articulate language, far from weakening the testimony, makes it stronger. Even without speech or words, the heavens testify of God to all men. A.—The lessons of day and night it were well if all men learned. It should be among our day-thoughts and night-thoughts to remember the flight of time, the changeful character of earthly things, the brevity both of joy and sorrow, the preciousness of life, our utter powerlessness to recall the hours once flown, and the irresistible approach of eternity. Day bids us labor, night reminds us to prepare for our last home; day bids us work for God, and night invites us to rest in Him; day bids us look for endless day, and night warns us to escape from everlasting night. S.

4. Once more, this testimony is not only full and clear and unbroken, it is universal. Everywhere the heavens span and compass the earth, and everywhere they preach the same Divine sermon. P.—The revelation is universal, continuous, copious. Every day pours forth the story, as full streams flow from inexhaustible sources; and night is represented as breathing knowledge, imparting it freely and without stint. True, there is no speech and there are no words. No lips are seen to move, no articulate sentences are heard. Yet no oratory is so penetrating nor reaches so far. Their line goes out into all the earth, and their unspoken words are heard in all the habitable world. It is a beautiful picture. The line is the string of a lyre or harp, and so comes to stand for the sound which the harp emits when its strings are swept by the hand. Nature is a harp, whose vibrating tones reach to the earth’s boundaries, over mountains and seas, into desert and cave, through all the heights and all the depths, and wherever men go to build their homes, they hear the sweet and familiar music. And that music is the glory of God—His power, His wisdom, His unchanging goodness. These home voices precede and follow us; make populous and radiant the bleakest solitude. Never are you alone; never need you lack for inspiring and profitable companionship. Behrends.—How vast and precious an influence would these scenes and elements of nature exert in building up our being, if we were properly alive to them! There would be “transferred into the internal economy of ideas and sentiment something of a character and a color correspondent to the beauty, vicissitude, and grandeur which continually press upon the senses.” And this internal economy of ideas and sentiment, of which John Foster so beautifully speaks, would not be intellectual merely, but full of the sense of God and heaven. There would be the home-feeling of a father’s house, the tracing of a father’s hand, the sense of a father’s presence, the enjoyment of every natural blessing by a father’s kind arrangements. When God Himself is in the soul, diffusing there the spirit of His love, how every created particle of matter and variety of form shines in His light! Cheever.

5,6. He sweeps athwart the heavens from the distant East to the farthest West, and nothing can escape the heat of his beams. Vegetation starts into fresh life at his touch: all living things and creatures rejoice in his light and heat. His ministries of good pervade the wide earth from the end of heaven, the eastern horizon, to the uttermost end of it on the face of the western sky. C.—This vast, portentous globe of fire is made to subserve the humblest purposes of man. It is but one thirty-second millionth of this sun’s light that this earth receives; and yet that mere fraction of its effluence gives man temperate warmth. It gives him golden days. It evaporates the waters. It ripens the fruit. It quickens the seedling. It tinges the odorous blossom of the rose. When we know what the sun is—what it does for us—ought not three thousand years of additional knowledge to have infused new adoration and new intensity into David’s words? “It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it again; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” And yet the sun—nay, even our whole solar system—is a mere nothing—is no more in the sidereal heavens than a mote in that sun’s beam. Farrar.

There is nothing hid from the heat thereof. This is literally the case. The earth receives its heat from the sun, and by conduction, a part of it enters the crust of our globe. By convection, another portion is carried to the atmosphere, which it warms. Another portion is radiated into space, according to laws yet imperfectly understood, but which are evidently connected with the color, chemical composition, and mechanical structure of parts of the earth’s surface. At the same time the ordinary state of the air, consisting of gases and vapor, modifies the heat rays and prevents scorching. Thus, the solar heat is equalized by the air. Nothing on earth or in air is hid from the heat of the sun. E. Sidney.

When the foundations of the globe were laid, there were collected in the atmosphere all the essential elements of organized beings. From this inexhaustible storehouse the plant absorbs water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, which were placed there for its use, and which have been made to serve as its nourishment and food. It is the special office of the plants to elaborate from these few mineral substances, and a small amount of earthy salts, all the materials of organized beings. The animal receives these crude materials already prepared, and builds with them its various tissues; but no sooner are the cell-walls finished, and the structure ready to discharge its vital functions, than it is consumed by almost the very act which gave it life. The carbonic acid, water, and ammonia are restored to the atmosphere, and the cycle is complete. Of this Divine economy the sun’s rays are the great moving cause, and it is their mysterious power which is constantly reappearing in all the varied phases of organic life. And not in these alone; for this same gentle influence keeps in motion the aerial currents which blow our ships across the ocean. It raises the water which turns the wheels of our factories. It drives the locomotive over the iron road, and impels the steamer through the waves. It roars at the cannon’s mouth, and charges the grander artillery of the skies. There is no motion on the globe which cannot be traced directly or indirectly to the sun, and were his rays to lose their mysterious power, all nature would become silent, motionless, and dead. Attempt to bring together in imagination all the energies acting at one moment on the earth, and unite them in one tremendous aggregate. Begin with the moving power of the air, the hurricanes, the tornadoes, the storms, and the gentler winds which are everywhere at work from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole, omitting in making the estimate, if you choose, the lightning and the thunder, which, though brilliant and noisy demonstrations of power, would hardly increase by a unit the vast sum. Add to this the mechanical power in the mighty flow of waters, the ocean currents, the rivers, the cataracts, the glacier-streams, and the avalanches, all over the globe. Bring into the calculation the forces at work in the various phases of animal and vegetable life. Remember the conflagrations, the furnaces, the fires, and the other manifestations of the terrible energies of the atmospheric oxygen, whenever it is aroused. Do not even forget the comparatively insignificant power which man is wielding with the aid of powder and of steam. Making now an immense allowance for what you must have overlooked, sum this all up—if you can without bewilderment—and what part is it of the whole? Why, it has been calculated that it is equal to but one 2,300,000,000th of the force which the sun is every moment pouring into space. And what is the sun? A small star in the infinitude of space, where shine Sirius and Arcturus, Regulus and Aldebaran, Procyon and Capella, with unnumbered others, all shedding forth a far mightier effluence than our feeble star; yet the grand total of the power streaming from all the suns which human eye has seen, or which still lie undiscovered in the depths of space, alone represents the active energy of the universe. Of two theories of causation, one regards this energy as an unintelligent power. The other sees in it simply the will of the Eternal Jehovah. Which is the more probable? Cooke.

The glorious sun is an eminent example of nature’s testimony to God. For that great orb God has pitched a tent, and has fixed for it His law and its abiding-place. Its grand apparent march through the heavens, joyfully emerging from the chambers of the East, and climbing the heavenly vault, and then returning by an unseen path to the place whence it arose—all this presents at least one important manifestation of Divine power. Nor is the sun merely a grand processionist or a magnificent firework. It is a beneficent practical distributor of light and heat, “There is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” This noble personification of the sun farther connects itself with the fact that in the spiritual world Christ is the “Sun of Righteousness,” whose going forth is from everlasting, and who is the sole dispenser of salvation, as the great orb of day is of material quickening to all nature. J. W. Dawson.—Conspicuous among this great company of singers and teachers is the sun, who as their chief never wearies in proclaiming the greatness and glory of God. Every morning he flings aside the curtains of darkness radiant and refreshed. He is eager for the race. He leaps upon the path like a man of might who does not know what to do with his superabundant strength. He takes no rest. He does not so much as stop to take breath in making the vast circuit from dawn to dawn, and with each daybreak he answers the call. Nothing is hidden from his heat. The mists scatter, the clouds melt away, the mountain-tops grow bare, the rivers break their icy fetters, the birds wake, the summer hastens, the harvests grow golden. We may judge the Maker by this single specimen of His handiwork. If the sun is so unwearied, so prompt and rapid, so mighty, pervasive and beneficent, what must He be who made the sun? This is the undertone: God is never weary, His resources are abundant. He moves with rapid and strong step, and nothing can resist His power, an energy which enlightens and enriches. Thus the sun suggests the very perfections of God which His word brings into clearer prominence and on which faith reposes. Behrends.

In looking to heaven as the model of our service, we need not pass by the visible heavens from which David so constantly drew lessons for himself. To see how God’s will should be done, we have but to turn the eye to the “unworn sky,” old in the service of God, but fulfilling His will as at first. We see the precise regularity which should characterize our service also. We see how unweariedly all perform their parts, the great sustaining the small, the small reflecting and enhancing the glory of the great; all as members of one system, obeying in peaceful harmony Him who calls them all by their names. We see how the sun morning after morning comes forth rejoicing to run his race, how the moon observes her appointed seasons, and the sun knoweth his going down; how all, though it be in an unvarying course, fulfil the will of God untiringly. Dods.—Every world sweeps round its orbit without the delay of a second; every planet completes its august circuit through the heavens to the instant; suns rise and set century after century, and the sublime movement of the universe goes forward without the loss of a moment. The heavens which declare the glory of God declare also His promptness; the business of the universe is always done on time. Anon.

The natural sun is a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapors of the night season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification: not surely in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception. For religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; and then faith is but its continuation; even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness. It is night, sacred night! the upraised eye views only the starry heaven, which manifests itself alone; and the outward beholding is fixed on the sparks twinkling in the awful depth, though suns of other worlds, only to preserve the soul steady and collected in its pure act of inward adoration to the great I AM, and to the filial Word, that reaffirmeth it from eternity to eternity, whose choral echo is the universe. Coleridge.

What a glorious heaven is this which Thou hast spread over our heads! With how precious a vault hast Thou walled in this our inferior world! What worlds of light hast Thou set above us! These things which we see are wondrous, but those which we believe and see not are yet more. Thou dost but set out these unto view to show us what there is within. How proportionable are Thy works to Thyself! If the lowest pavement of that heaven of Thine be so glorious, what shall we think of the better parts yet unseen? And if this sun of Thine be of such brightness and majesty, oh, what is the glory of the Maker of it! And if such a sky be prepared for the use and benefit even of Thine enemies also upon earth, how happy shall those eternal tabernacles be which Thou hast sequestered for Thine own! Bishop II.

7-10. Despite the seeming abruptness, there is a point of connection between the two portions of the Psalm. What the sun is in the natural world, that the law is in the spiritual—the one quickens and cherishes all animal life, the other quickens and cherishes the life of the soul. P.—The transition from the one part of the Psalm to the other is not marked by anything external; it is indicated, however, by the circumstance that the Divine name Jehovah now takes the place of El. Whereas the word of nature reveals God as El, the word of Scripture reveals Him as Jehovah; the former proclaims God’s power and glory, the latter also His counsel and will. The encomiums upon the law are warranted also from a New Testament point of view. Even Paul says, “The law is holy and spiritual; the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” The law deserves these encomiums in itself; and for him who stands in the state of grace, it is indeed no longer a law pronouncing a curse, but a mirror of the God who is gracious in holiness, a mirror into which he can look without slavish fear, and a rule of hearty and willing obedience. D.

The turn from the outer world to the better light of God’s Word is most natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference of style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also an obvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is described by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun, enlightening the eyes. The Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavens which tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show how familiar to his thoughts it was. To him it is “the law,” “the testimonies” by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: “the statutes,” the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches “the fear of God,” the “judgments” or utterances of His mind on human conduct. They are “perfect, firm, right, clean, pure”—like that spotless sun—“eternal, true.” “They quicken, make wise, enlighten,” even as the light of the lower world. A. M.

The God whose glory is thus shown forth by the material creation is the author of a spiritual law, which the Psalmist now describes in the next three verses by six characteristic names, six qualifying epithets, and six moral effects produced by it. A.—Here are six corresponding and nearly parallel statements in three pairs, all treating of essentially the same written law of God, though under six different designations: “law,” “testimony,” “statutes,” “commandments,” “the fear of the Lord,” and “His judgments;” in each case giving one defining characteristic in a single word, and then adding one statement as to its precious results or effects—all with the same systematic order. C.—The order in which the six words describing God’s law occur should be observed: 1. The law, of which the fundamental principle is instruction (Heb. thorah, from yarah, teach). 2. The testimony, i.e., warning; God’s appeal to the conscience, bearing witness to the law. 3. Statutes, or, more exactly, visitations, securing obedience, or checking infringements of the law. 4. Commandments, i.e., precepts, better understood as man advances under the teaching of the law. 5. The fear of God, the settled habit of the soul informed by the law. 6. The judgments, the final awards of the Giver of the law. The omission of “the Word” is noticeable. David may have regarded it as synonymous with “the law;” and in this passage his object is specially to set forth the beauty of “the law” as the rule of life, and the expression of God’s will. Cook.

7-11. From the knowledge which David had gained by an attentive study of himself, and of the world in which he lived, he turned to the study of the Law—the Bible in his hands; and he exhausts his vocabulary in describing its excellence and its salutary effects. It is pure, as incapable of improvement as is the sunbeam; it is perfect, all its parts thoroughly consistent; it is sure, an eternal Amen, dealing only with indisputable truth; it is clean, enduring forever. The purest gold, in unlimited abundance, cannot so enrich the soul. The dropping of honeycombs is not so sweet. There is safety in the admonition of the Divine precepts; there is great reward in their observance. Behrends.

The law of the Lord is perfect. Adapted to the exigencies of a lost world, it speaks on all those subjects on which no speech is heard from the heavens, and is attended with glorious efficacy. It converts the soul; it makes wise the simple; it rejoices the heart; it produces a fear of the Lord, which endures forever; and to all who have felt its sanctifying power, it is more precious than gold, and sweeter than honey. L. Beecher.—David sets open the word in its perfection, its certainties, and firmness; its righteousness, purity and truth; and then in its efficacy—that it is a converting word, an enlightening word, an instructing word, a rejoicing word, a desirable word, a warning word, and a rewarding word. O. Solgwick.

We have here the expression of a strong personal affection for the law of God. In the first Psalm, where the character of the righteous man is portrayed in contrast with that of the wicked, it is summed up in these words: “In the law of Jehovah is his delight, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” The longest Psalm in the whole collection, the hundred and nineteenth, might be entitled “The praise of the law;” for it sets forth in ceaseless variety of application the value of the law, the statutes, the judgments of God. With affectionate tenderness the sacred poet lavishes his epithets of admiration upon this word of God. In its nature he declares it to be perfect, sure, right, pure, standing fast forever, the very truth itself, righteous altogether. These epithets mark it as reflecting the holiness of God (pure, righteous, etc.), as being in its nature worthy of all reliance, as that which cannot be set aside or tampered with. It is no leaden rule that may be bent and twisted by the unsteady hand of human caprice to suit its own selfish purposes; but the truth, that we may believe it; pure, that it may lift us out of our sin; standing fast forever, that we may find in it at all times the same unerring guide. The love and affection here expressed toward the law are expressed toward it regarded simply as the reflection of the pure and perfect and holy will of God. To the spiritually minded Jew under the Old Testament, that law was not merely an outward letter of restraint; his heart and conscience consented thereto. And one capital object of the teaching of the prophets was to represent it in its truly spiritual meaning, and so to set forth as a proper object of affection to every heart which waited upon God. P.

7. The law, the testimony. These are the collective terms embracing the whole body of “statutes,” “judgments,” etc., afterward mentioned. This revelation has the name of “testimony;” as testifying, bearing witness of, God’s character both in His good-will toward those who obey Him, and in His displeasure against transgression.

Restoring the soul. It calls it back from its wanderings by reminding it of its ingratitude, by setting before it its high destiny, by bringing it to its true Shepherd and Guardian. P.

The doctrine revealed by God he declares to be perfect, and yet David had but a very small part of the Scriptures; and if a fragment, and that the darkest and most historical portion, be perfect, what must the entire volume be! How more than perfect is the book which contains the clearest possible display of Divine love, and gives us an open vision of redeeming grace! S.

Another effect ascribed to the law is that of making wise the simple, not the foolish, in the strong sense in which that term is applied to the ungodly, but those imperfectly enlightened and still needing spiritual guidance, a description applicable to all believers. It is a singular fact that while this usage of the Hebrew word is peculiar to David, Solomon constantly applies it to the culpable simplicity of unconverted men. In like manner Paul describes the “sacred Scriptures” as able to make wise unto salvation. A.—Humble, candid, teachable minds receive the word, and are made wise unto salvation. Things hidden from the wise and prudent are revealed unto babes. The persuadable grow wise, but the cavillers continue fools. As a law or plan the Word of God converts, and then as a testimony it instructs; it is not enough for us to be converts, we must continue to be disciples; and if we have felt the power of truth, we must go on to prove its certainty by experience. S.

8. Enlightening the eyes. The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is all our own. The wisdom of God created understanding fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glisterings, what is that to truth? If we will but pursue with sovereign eye-slave that intellectual ray which God has planted in us, then we would believe the Scriptures protesting their own plainness and perspicuity, calling them to be instructed, not only the wise and learned, but the simple, the poor, the babes, foretelling an extraordinary effusion of God’s Spirit upon every age and sex, attributing to all men, and requiring from them the ability of searching, trying, examining all things, and by the Spirit discerning that which is good; and as the Scriptures themselves pronounce their own plainness, so do the fathers testify of them. Milton.—When this perfect law was unfolded before the vision of the human race, it was like a sun irradiating all things by its light, and penetrating with its subtle virtue to the very thoughts of the heart. It was like a mirror, reflecting not what we are, but what we ought to be and what we might be. It was like a deeper moral consciousness, penetrating below the surface of our common thoughts and aims, and disclosing to us our inner, yea, our inmost selves. For when man comes to know the law aright, then he also knows himself aright; he sees what he ought to be—that he ought to be wholly holy in all his desires and thoughts and acts, and that, so long as he is not thus pure, he has failed of attaining the great end for which he was made. For the law is made for man’s soul as much as light is made for man’s eyes; and to let the light of the law in upon the soul is a revelation no less clear and distinct than to let the light of the visible sun in upon eyes that may long have had a film gathering over them. H. B. Smith.

9. The fear of Jehovah. Another name for the law, but as contemplated in its working on the heart. Not the religious feeling itself is here meant, but the law as intended to evoke and guide that religious feeling, and therefore identified with it. P.—As the law was designed to teach men how to fear the Lord (Deut. 17: 19), the phrase may here be understood as a description of the law viewed in reference to this peculiar purpose, the fear of the Lord being put for that which leads or teaches men to fear Him. A.—The doctrine of truth is here described by its spiritual effect—viz., inward piety, or the fear of the Lord; this is clean in itself, and cleanses out the love of sin, sanctifying the heart in which it reigns. “Enduring forever.” The grace of God in the heart being a pure principle, is also an abiding and incorruptible principle, which may be crushed for a time, but cannot be utterly destroyed. S.

10. As the preceding verses describe what the law is in itself and in its general effects, so this seems to express what it is to the Psalmist’s apprehensions and affections, thus affording a transition from the comprehensive doctrines of the foregoing context to the practical and personal appropriation of those doctrines, which now follows and concludes the Psalm. A.—“More to be desired”—strictly, loved, cherished, valued—and measured here by that which men most prize and by general consent have made the standard of value—gold. So the next figure compares the sweetness of this law of the Lord to that of honey, even when dripping fresh from the comb. Thus the love of the heart for God and His law is set forth as stronger than the strongest earthly passions of men. C.

It is more desirable than gold, than fine gold, than much fine gold. Gold is of the earth, earthy, but grace is the image of the heavenly. Gold is only for the body, and the concerns of time; but grace is for the soul, and the concerns of eternity. H.—Bible truth is enriching to the soul in the highest degree; the metaphor is one which gathers force as it is brought out;—gold—fine gold—much fine gold; it is good, better, best. As spiritual treasure is more noble than mere material wealth, so should it be desired and sought after with greater eagerness. “Sweetest also than honey and the honeycomb.” Trapp says, “Old people are all for profit, the young for pleasure; here’s gold for the one, yea, the finest gold in great quantity; here’s honey for the other, yea, live honey dropping from the comb.” The sweetest joys, yea, the sweetest of the sweetest falls to his portion who has God’s truth to be his heritage. S.

The most learned, acute, and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume. The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore; new light continually beams from this source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men; and he will at last leave the world confessing that the more he studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he had of his own ignorance and of their inestimable value. Walter Scott.

11-14. And then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of prayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits than any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who is conscious of dormant evils which life has not yet evolved, and his prayer is more directed toward the future than the past, and is thus very unlike the tone of the later Psalms, that wail out penitence and plead for pardon. “Errors” or weaknesses—“faults” unknown to himself—“high handed sins”—such is the climax of the evils from which he prays for deliverance. He needs not only a God who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made known, but one who will touch his spirit—not merely a Maker, but a pardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song closes with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for the seventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a grateful heart, as “my Rock, and my Redeemer.” A. M.

The same God who speaks to us of His wisdom and beneficence, His might and majesty, in the glory of the sun and the stars, addresses our moral nature through His revealed Word, His law of truth and right and purity, the perfection of love. Like the sun in the Syrian sky, this law searches everything by its light and heat—the secret faults, the unconscious errors, no less than wilful and presumptuous sins. Yet the Psalmist would not shrink from this all-penetrating presence of God in His Word; for as the light of the sun is health to the body, so this searching light of the Bible is cleansing also; and, in the degree that the truth purifies the life, it rejoices the heart. Through and above the light that exposes and condemns, the trembling, repentant soul discerns the Lord, its strength and its Redeemer. J. P. T.

11. In keeping of them there is great reward.** Those who make conscience of their duty will not only be no losers by it, but unspeakable gainers. There is a reward, not only after keeping, but in keeping God’s commandments; a present great reward of obedience in obedience. Religion is health and honor, it is peace and pleasure; it will make our comforts sweet and our crosses easy, life truly valuable and death itself truly desirable. H.—“In keeping of Thy commandments”—and not merely after or for keeping them—“there is great reward.” Think of what will be escaped—the bitterness after the sweetness of the bread eaten in secret; the gnawings of conscience; the retributions in kind; the desolation over much of the life; and the fearful prospect. Think of what obedience brings—a quiet heart, reflecting a calm heaven, that spreads blue above it; increased susceptibility for all that is good; increased capacity for service; diminished love of evil; Peace and Power, Righteousness and Joy, all these are the linked attendants of Obedience, the leader of the chorus. A. M.

When grace is improved and exercised, gracious services are easily performed. The more our natural strength is exercised and improved, with the more ease and pleasure are all physical duties discharged; so, the more grace is acted and exercised, with the more profit and delight all Christian services are performed. Such souls find wages in their very work; they find that not only for keeping, but also in keeping of His commandments there is great reward. The joy, the rest, the refreshing, the comforts that saints now enjoy in the ways of God are so precious that they would not exchange them for ten thousand worlds. Oh, if there be so much to be had in the wilderness, what then shall be had in paradise! T. Brooks.

There is no work like God’s; in the keeping of His commands there is reward. Sin brings shame and sorrow, but gracious actions leave a savor of sweetness, and diffuse a joy throughout the soul. Conscience of duty gives the purest contentment to the mind. Sinful satisfactions are bought with clamor of conscience, and then they are bought very dear. What a great reward may we expect, since we have so much joy and peace in the expectation of it! How great must be the joys of heaven when the very interest in them casts such a lightsome brightness upon the soul! If the mere taste be such, what is the fulness? If the morning glances and forerunning beams be so glorious, what will the high noon be? If there be songs in your pilgrimage, you will have hallelujahs in your country! Manton.

12,13. But with all this affection for God’s Word, there is mingled awe and reverence. That Word lays a man bare to himself. It judges him; it shows him what is in him, convinces him how much there is that needs to be purged, how far even one who loves it is from a perfect obedience. It is at once a copy of the will of God, and a mirror of the heart of man. Hence it calls forth the penitent confession, “As for errors, who can understand them?” and the prayer both to be absolved—“pronounce me free” (like the New Testament brauvio)—and to be kept from sin; first for pardon, and then for sanctification. P.

After this survey of the works and word of God, he comes at last to peruse the third book, his conscience. And what finds he here? A blurred copy that he is puzzled how to read; “who,” says he, “can understand his errors?” Those notions which God had with His own hand imprinted upon conscience in legible characters are partly defaced and slurred with interlinings of “secret faults,” partly obliterated and quite razed out with “presumptuous sins.” And yet this manuscript cannot be so abused but it will still give in evidence for God; there being no argument in the world that can with more force extort an acknowledgment of God from any man’s conscience than the conviction of guilt itself labors under. For the sinner cannot but know he has transgressed a law, and he finds within him, if he is not past all sense, apprehensions that “for all these things God will bring him into judgment.” The conscience being thus convicted of sin, where there is any sense of true piety the soul will, with David, address itself to God for pardon, that it may be “cleansed from secret faults,” and for grace, that by its restraints, and preventions, and assistances, it may be “kept back from presumptuous sins,” and if unhappily engaged, that it may be freed at least from the “dominion” of them. A. Littleton.

Face to face with the greatness of God, in power, wisdom, holiness and love, the Psalmist is startled by his own ignorance and moral imperfection. He dares not trust his own judgment. The approval of conscience is good, but he does not rest in that. God is the only infallible judge, and therefore he is anxious that God shall pronounce him innocent. Strength of will is good, nay, indispensable, in resisting temptation, but that does not make him invulnerable and infallibly secure; and therefore he asks God to keep him. These are the three things in his earnest prayer: His inmost heart is set upon being holy in God’s sight. He pleads for the Divine forgiveness and he implores the continued almighty protection of God. He holds fast to God, and asks Him never to permit him to wander from His side. So intent is he on having the Divine approval that he wants not only his spoken words, but the murmur of his heart to be acceptable to God, whom he addresses as his Rock, unmoved and immovable, and as his Redeemer, his God, his Kinsman and Defender, who is pledged to maintain his cause against all enemies. It is a great thing to have God’s approval of our conduct. It is a greater thing to have God’s approval of all we say, kept from all hastiness and bitterness of speech. But the greatest thing is to have a heart that never vibrates to a false note, whose lowest murmur makes the face of God smile with loving approval. Ah! that prayer cuts deep. It leaves no room for self-complacency. But the peace that endures forever, and the joy that is unspeakable and unclouded come only with a purity in which the murmur of the heart answers the holiness of God. That is the redemption we need; none other can satisfy us; and the promise of God in Jesus Christ pledges its ultimate and eternal possession to every penitent and trusting heart. Behrends.

12. Errors who shall understand? Clear Thou’me from hidden ones!** The word translated errors is akin to one sometimes used in the Law to denote sins of inadvertence, error, or infirmity, as distinguished from deliberate, wilful, and high-handed sins, such as are deprecated in the next verse. Against such sins no wisdom or vigilance can wholly guard. The word translated clear is also borrowed from the Law, and means not so much to cleanse by renovation of the heart as to acquit by a judicial sentence. (See Num. 14: 18.) Such an acquittal, in the case of sinners against God, involves the idea of a free forgiveness. A,—Errors, sins both of ignorance and infirmity, those which are done unintentionally and unconsciously; “For we are entangled in so many nets and snares of Satan, that none of us can perceive the hundredth part of the evils that cleave to him.” Calvin.

Secret (faults); lit. things hidden, i.e., not only from others, but from our own hearts, through inobservance, through a too ready forgetfulness of them when observed, through the habit of self-deception, or even through their being wilfully cherished. P.—Few, indeed, are the hearts that would bear the revolution of its workings for a single day without exciting a blush; and few are the inhabitants of this world who would be willing that their secret views and thoughts and plans, for any considerable period of their lives, should be laid open before their best friends. Barnes.

Hidden sins may be sins of conscience. How many “secret faults” then we may be cherishing under the protecting mantle of conscience itself! How many little graces in ourselves we may be admiring, which, after all, are but vices in saintly apparel! Or they may be sins of ignorance. What a multitude of such sins hide in the nooks and crannies of the human heart! Even the wisest of us—those best skilled in the Christian morality—are perpetually stumbling through ignorance. Again, unconscious sins may be sins of inadvertence. Who does not every day and every hour commit sins of thoughtlessness;—sins of sudden impulse; sins of drifting revery; sins of uncontrolled memory; sins of an unsentinelled, careless car; sins of an unguarded, unleashed tongue; sins of unconscious, wild abandonment in the turmoil and shocks of life’s battle, even as the drumbeat is unheard in the booming of the cannonade? These sins of inadvertence, how they throng and litter life’s pilgrimage, as countless as the autumn leaves on the highway, and as unnoticed! Again, unconscious sins may be sins of omission. Sins of omission are the most positive of sins. For man owes to his Maker the unintermittent and perfect obedience of his lifetime; so that one single sin of omission is a debt which he can never find time or means to pay; and therefore the Lord teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts.” In fact, the parent sin—the sin of sins, that root sin of which it is one of the offices of the Holy Spirit to convict the world—is a sin of omission: “Of sin, because they believe not on Me.” Alas! most persons are troubled only with those sins which are called sins of commission—outward, manifest sins. They forget that by far the larger proportion of our sins in God’s sight are sins of simple neglect. Boardman.

We have every one of us besetting sins, not one, but many; sins, that is, which more easily get advantage over us than others to which we have a mournful proclivity, an especial predisposition; it may be through natural temperament, it may be through faults in our education, it may be through the circumstances in which we are placed, it may be through having given way to them in times past, and thus broken down on their side more than on any other the moral defences of our soul. It is, then, a point of obvious prudence to strengthen the defences of the city of the soul there, where they are felt and known to be weakest—where, that is, every one who has kept any close record of the sad secrets of his own spiritual life will in his own case abundantly know—to watch and pray against all sin, but, above all, with especial emphasis and earnestness against the sin which most easily besets us. Trench.

Fine grains of sand will bury travellers in the desert. Fine flakes of snow, so light that they seem to hang in the air and scarce to fall, will, if they gather over the sleepy wayfarer, extinguish life; if they drift, they will bury whole houses and their dwellers. Fine, delicate sins, as people think them, will chill the soul and take away its life. Pusey.—The worst sin is not some outburst of gross transgression, forming an exception to the ordinary tenor of a life, bad and dismal as such a sin is; but the worst and most fatal are the small continuous vices which root underground and honeycomb the soul. Many a man who thinks himself a Christian is in more danger from the daily commission, for example, of small pieces of sharp practice in his business, than ever was David at his worst. White ants pick a carcass clean sooner than a lion will. A. M.

The force of habit makes sins once known become secret sins. To the force of habit must be added that of custom. The most religious men, unless they are specially watchful, will feel the sway of the fashion of their age, and suffer from it, as Lot in wicked Sodom, though unconsciously. Our chief guide amid the evil and seducing customs of the world is obviously the Bible. “The world passeth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.” How much extended then, and strengthened, necessarily must be this secret dominion of sin over us when we consider how little we read Scripture! To think of these things, and to be alarmed, is the first step toward acceptable obedience; to be at ease is to be unsafe. We must know what the evil of sin is hereafter if we do not learn it here. Newman.

Take heed of secret sins. They will undo thee if loved and maintained: one moth may spoil the garment; one leak drown the ship; a penknife stab and kill a man as well as a sword; so one sin may damn the soul; nay, there is more danger of a secret sin causing the miscarrying of the soul than open profaneness, because not so obvious to the reproofs of the world; therefore take heed that secret sinnings eat not out good beginnings. Burroughs.—If secret faults are indulged, they will sooner or later break out like smothered fires, and the true character of the heart will be developed. They cannot always be concealed, and God designs that they shall not always be. It is well, under the Divine administration, that the true state of the heart should be made manifest, and that it should be seen what man is. Accordingly, few things are more common than such sudden developments of character, and outbreakings of the secret faults of the soul. We are often shocked by such cases, and our philosophy about man seems to fail, and we are at a loss to account for the instances of sudden depravity that appall the community. But these painful disclosures are not departures from the great principles of human nature. There is a maxim in law that no one suddenly becomes eminently vile. These melancholy lapses into sin are but exponents of the real character of the man: the regular results of a long course of guilt; the regular outbreakings of secret faults—like the breaking out of the volcano, or like the tumbling down of a bowing wall, or the fall of a house that has been long undermined by secret streams. Barnes.

13. Presumptuous sins are those done with a high hand. Against these he prays that they may not get the full mastery over him. This completes the climax, which begins with involuntary and advances to hidden, presumptuous, and at length ruling sins, which leave a man their hopeless slave. P.—The sin becomes presumptuous when it is the fruit of deliberation and contrivance; when the person ruminates and plots, and lays schemes for executing his criminal designs. The presumption is farther heightened when obstinacy is added to knowledge and deliberation; when the transgressor “holdeth fast his iniquity, and will not let it go,” but rusheth forward in his wicked course, “even as the horse rusheth into battle.” R. Walker.

As sins of presumption are more difficultly cured, so they waste the conscience infinitely more than any other sins. As really as blows and wounds weaken the body and by degrees dispose it to its final dissolution, so certainly do some sins shake and batter and tear down the constitution of the soul. Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, by degrees gnawing and creeping into it, as that does, till at length it has eaten out the very substance of the metal. The inward as well as the outward man has his proper health, strength, and soundness naturally belonging to him; and in proportion has also his diseases and distempers, arising from an irregular course of living. And every act of presumption is to him as a spiritual debauch or surfeit, things that bring a present disorder, and entail a future decay upon nature. This kind of sin is marvellously apt to grow and prevail upon him that gives way to it. Every presumption is properly an encroachment, and all encroachment carries in it still a farther and a farther invasion upon the persons encroached upon. It enters into the soul as a gangrene does into the body, which spreads as well as infects, and, with a running progress, carries a venom and a contagion over all the members. Presumption never stops in its first attempt. He that wades so far as to wet himself, cares not how much he trashes farther. When the ten lerness of the soul is lost, and its first awe of God and religion broke by a bold sin, it grows venturous, and ready to throw itself upon all sorts of outrages and enormities. It steps undauntedly into that stream that is like to carry away and swallow it up forever. South.

There is that in every one of us which is always ready to take the part of sin, to plead for sin, to be upon sin’s side, sin having a natural correspondence and affinity with everything which is corrupt and fallen within us. There is our love of ease; our love of pleasure; our pride. All the pride as well as all the passions of man are enlisted on the side of sin. How shall we deliver ourselves from these sorceries of sin? How shall we understand our errors, or at least understand that we can never understand them to the full, and thus seek of God that He would cleanse us from them? Grasp with a full and firm faith the blessed truth of the one sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction made for your sins. Remember that He who made that atonement for your sins, and so enabled you to look them in the face—for they are sins not imputed any more—is also the Giver of the Spirit, of that Spirit which convinces us of sin, of righteousness, of judgment to come. Ask of God, and ask earnestly, and ask continually, for this convincing Spirit. Trench.—When sin is dethroned in the heart, the most secret faults bow it in humility before the Lamb. To His precious blood the believer has recourse for cleansing; he finds daily need of it. He cannot understand all his errors. Many secret faults cleave unto him. He is sensible that even these must be washed away, lest they defile his conscience and spread a cloud over his mind. It is the peculiar wisdom of disciples not only to observe the bud, blossom, and fruit of sin; but also to consider the evil root, the polluted nature from which it springs. Here is the exercise of watchfulness. This calls for their daily prayer to be kept by the power of God. W. Mason.

14. Finally the singer prays for a gracious acceptance of his prayer, in which mouth and heart accord, he himself being upheld by the rock-like faithfulness and redeeming love of his God. D.—The prayer or expectation of acceptance derives peculiar beauty from the obviobvious allusion to the frequent use of the same Hebrew phrase in the law of Moses, to denote the acceptance of the sacrificial offerings, or rather the acceptance of the offeror on account of them. This allusion also serves to suggest the idea, not conveyed by a translation, of atonement, expiation, as the ground of the acceptance which the Psalmist hopes or prays for. A.

The meditation of my heart. As meditation is the best preparative for prayer, so prayer is the best issue of meditation. Meditation and prayer should go together. It is when we thus consider our prayers, and then only, that we may expect that God will consider them, and take that to His heart which comes from ours. H.

The name of Jehovah is repeated for the seventh time. The epithets “my Rock,” “my Redeemer,” have here a peculiar force. For He is my strength in keeping the law; my Redeemer as delivering me from the guilt and the power of sin. P.—Our near Kinsman’s name, our God or Redeemer, makes a blessed ending to the Psalm; it began with the heavens, but it ends with Him whose glory fills heaven and earth. S.

From two books I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expensed unto the eyes of all. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature; which I define not with the schools, the principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of His creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first gave it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hath so contrived His work that with the self-same instrument, without a new creation, He may effect His obscurest designs. I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe His actions unto her is to devolve the honor of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honor of our writing. . . . Now nature is not at variance with art nor art with nature, they being both the servants of His providence; art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was in the sixth day, there were yet a chaos; nature hath made one world and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. Browne.

There are but two books wherein we can read God: the one is His Word, His works the other; this is the bigger volume, that the more exquisite. The characters of this are more large, but dim; of that, smaller, but clearer. Philosophers have turned over this and erred; that, divines and studious Christians, not without full and certain information. In the works of God we see the shadow or footsteps of the Creator; in His Word we see the face of God in a glass. Happiness consists in the vision of that infinite Majesty; and if we be perfectly happy above in seeing Him face to face, our happiness is well forward below, in seeing the lively representation of His face in the glass of the Scriptures. We cannot spend our eyes too much upon this object; for me, the more I see the more I am amazed, the more I am ravished, with this glorious beauty. Bishop II.

Two things fill the soul with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily one holds them in contemplation: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I need not search for or imagine either of them, as if they were held in darkness, or were in a transcendental sphere, beyond the circle of my sight. I see them before me, and associate them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first acts upon me from the place which I occupy in the exterior world of the senses, and extends the connection in which I stand into immeasurable vastness, with worlds upon worlds, and systems of systems, even moreover into the boundless times of their periodic motion, its commencement and its duration. The second begins its action with my invisible self, my own personality, and stations me in a world which has true infinitude, but which is only to be traced by the intellect, and with which—as thereby also at the same time with all yonder visible worlds—I recognize myself as in a connection not merely accidental, but universal and necessary. Kant.

It is not for the refutation of objectors merely, and for the conviction of doubters, that it is worth while to study the two volumes—that of nature and that of revelation—which Providence has opened before us, but because it is both profitable and gratifying to a well-constituted mind to trace in each of them the evident handwriting of Him, the Divine author of both. Whately.—The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible, that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Locke.—The books of nature and of Revelation equally elevate our conceptions and invite our piety; they mutually illustrate each other; they have an equal claim on our regard; for they are both written by the finger of one eternal, incomprehensible God. R. Watson.—No man with God’s exhaustless Scriptures in His hands, and with the rich book of nature and providence open in its pictured radiance before his eyes, needs to have either a dwindling or an impoverished soul. W. R. Williams.

The laws of nature are discoveries; the laws of the spiritual world are revelations. The former are found out; the latter are given. The former are confessedly imperfect, added to continually as years go by; the latter are complete, the same yesterday, to day, and forever. The former claim no finality. They may be challenged, put upon their trial, called upon to justify themselves; the latter, if they are from God, claim our reverence, our obedience, our willing submission. Nor does it affect this difference, that revelation is verified in the pure heart and will, finding an echo within our best self. Revelation does not claim to reverse our natural hopes and aspirations and longings, but to lift them into a higher region, and to seal them with a supernatural authority. To ignore that authority is to forget the essential element in a revelation. Knowledge, real knowledge, which is the correlative of truth and the means of freedom, belongs both to the revelations of the Spirit and the discoveries of the interpreters of nature; but the motto of science is, Doubt, till you have proved, while the motto of revealed truth is always, Believe, in order that you may know. A. L. Moore.

With the natural sciences, on the one hand, appealing so largely to our reason, and the Scriptures, on the other hand, appealing so constantly to our faith, our duty is to depreciate neither, but to welcome both the sciences and the Scriptures, to ascertain their harmony, to note their differences, and to accept the treasures of truth which they may bring. Indifference is inexcusable as is excessive zeal, and apathy as antagonism. The Bible, free to us as are the fields of science, challenges the severest scrutiny. It is the boldest of books, and demands the application of every test. As it is the most comprehensive history in the world, and gives the amplest scope for research, as its earliest records are the oldest in existence, and its latest prophecies shed light far into the future, as it touches depths and reaches heights which no other book can approach, as it brings into closest connection the visible and invisible, natural law and supernatural influence, the condition of man and the character of God, it is exposed to assaults which no other book can bear. W. Fraser.

We have always regretted that endeavors should have been made to depreciate nature with a view of exalting revelation; it has always appeared to us to be nothing else than the degrading of one part of God’s works in the hope thereby of exalting and recommending another. Science and religion have too many common foes in ignorance and prejudice, in passion and vice under all their forms, to admit of their lawfully wasting their strength in a useless warfare with each other. Science has a foundation, and so has religion; let them unite their foundations, and the basis will be broader, and they will be two compartments of one great fabric reared to the glory of God. Let the one be the outer and the other the inner court. In the one, let all look and admire and adore; and in the other, let those who have faith kneel, and pray, and praise. Let the one be the sanctuary where human learning may present its richest incense as an offering to God, and the other the holiest of all, separated from it by a veil now rent in twain, and in which, on a blood-sprinkled mercy seat, we pour out the love of a reconciled heart, and hear the oracles of the living God. McCosh.

The grand old book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the sacred Word. Dana.—Does a man ask what this world is, and why man is placed in it? It was that the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world might be clearly seen. Have we ever stood beneath the solemn vault of heaven when the stars were looking down in their silent splendor, and not felt an overpowering sense of His eternity? When the white lightning has quivered in the sky, has that told us nothing of power, or only something of electricity? Rocks and mountains, are they here to give us the idea of material massiveness, or to reveal the conception of the Strength of Israel? When we take up the page of past history, and read that wrong never prospered long, but that nations have drunk one after another the cup of terrible retribution, can we dismiss all that as the philosophy of history, or shall we say that through blood, and war, and desolation we trace the footsteps of a presiding God, and find evidence that there sits at the helm of this world’s affairs a strict, and rigorous, and most terrible justice? To the eye that can see, to the heart that is not paralyzed, God is here. The warnings which the Bible utters against the things of this world bring no charge against the glorious world itself. The world is the glass through which we see the Maker. F. W. R.

That nature in its obvious sense and literal interpretation declares the being and attributes of the Almighty Father, none but the fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. But it has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all ages, it is the poetry of all human nature, to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspondences and symbols of the spiritual world. Coleridge.

Habits of meditation on the depths of our own being, and the attributes of God to whom we are related, are requisite for those who would read aright the lines and lessons of creation. There may be worshippers of nature who are not worshippers of God; but there is no true natural religion without a devout heart toward God, a heart renewed by grace. Nor are the influences of nature such as can ever supply the work of grace, or approximate to it. The eye and ear must be quickened and guided by that inward love, that heavenly sympathy in the soul, which is the secret of true and living knowledge, and then “the heavens and the earth shall declare, not only the power of their Maker, but the glory and the presence of their God, even as He appeared to the great prophet during the vision of the mount, in the skirts of His divinity.” When viewed through a heart filled with the inspiration of love to God and in communion with Him, nature becomes not less beautiful, but God is more clearly seen. The intellectual and poetical atmosphere is not disesteemed or neglected, but is not dwelt in exclusively or alone; the element of spiritual devotion, of prayer, praise, and heavenly love, mingles with it, diffuses a warmer glow and sweeter tints, through which the lines of the works of God disclose something of the Divine face of their Author, and produce not only a deeper power of joy and a harmony of soul, in which we seem to see into the life of things, but a still more blessed mood, as on the verge of the unseen and eternal, participating of the

earnest of the Spirit, and approximating to the life of heaven. Cheever.

There is religion in everything around us, a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of nature, which man would do well to imitate. It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in unawares upon the heart; it comes quickly and without excitement; it has no terror, no gloom in its approaches; it does not rouse up the passions; it is fresh from the hands of its Author, glowing from the immediate presence of the Great Spirit which pervades and quickens it; it is written on the arched sky, it looks out from every star; it is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind; it is among the hills and valleys of the earth where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage; it is spread out, like a legible language, upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean; it is this which breaks, link after link, the chain that binds us to materiality, and which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness. Ruskin.

The beauty which some would elevate into a religion is no religion in itself, but it speaks of a God who has impressed on nature, as far as was possible, shadows of His attributes. It speaks of His perfection, of His glory, of His worthiness to absorb us and fill us with a passion of love. To rest in beauty, without tracing it to its source, is to miss much of the teaching it was intended to convey. It is to stop short where God intended us to reach forward. It is to forget that though the sublimity and beauty of nature may please the imagination, and even refine and exalt it, they cannot in themselves affect the soul or change the heart. It is only when we “look through nature up to nature’s God” that we reach the real teachings of nature, and hear her true voice. G. R. —In the blue heavens above, in the smiling earth beneath, and in the social world around, you will find full scope for the exercise of your noblest faculties, and a field ample enough for the widest range of invention and discovery. Science has never derived any truth, nor art any invention, nor religion any bulwark, nor humanity any boon from those presumptuous mystics who grovel amid nature’s subverted laws, burrowing in the caverns of the invisible world, and attempting to storm the awful and impregnable sanctuary of the future. If these views be sound, the instruction of literary and theological students, and, indeed, of the whole population, in the grand truths of the material world, becomes the duty of a Christian Church and a Christian state. D. Brewster.

The Bible not merely contains the Word of God, it is the Word of God. It does not give us some grains of Divine truth, some messages really sent by God to man, amid a great mass of statements proceeding from man’s own wit and fancy; it is—all—God’s truth and God’s Word. It is the flower and crown of all God’s revelation to man; everything that we can read, or fancy we read, on the pages of nature or providence, we find far more plainly stated in the Bible; and we find a vast deal more. We find there things most needful unto salvation, about which earth and sea and stars are dumb. We find the message of salvation through a crucified Redeemer; we find how we may get the pardon of sin; we are told of that kindly blessed Spirit, of whom is everything pure, and true, and good, and kind, that can be found in human being! Sweep the heavens and scan the earth; but what word will you find of such saving, cheering, priceless truths as these! Boyd.

The voice of the new revelation in grace agrees with the voice of the old in nature. The absolute unity of plan which strict research is daily proving more and more—a unity now known to reach as far as the planets in their spheres—attests that the Creator is one. All Scripture proceeds on the unity of God. Throughout all nature we find a will at work whose method is to bind itself by orderly method and fixed law. Now the revelation of the Divine will in Scripture is likewise the revelation of a law, and its chief end is the reduction of moral anarchy to moral order. Again, we are daily learning how patiently, and through what long, slow, even laborious processes God has been pleased to build up His physical universe. This is God’s way in nature, and it has been His way in grace. Once more, the God of nature avenges the transgression of every physical law by a sentient creature. Scripture discovers precisely the same features in the moral and spiritual rule of God. Of law, of transgression, of penalty and reward, of life and death, nature has no more to say than the Bible has. But of another law higher than that of penalty—of the spiritual law of self-sacrifice, of redemption of life by life, and giving up of the just for the unjust, and forgiveness of sin, and the regeneration of the lapsed—the physical universe is wholly, or all but wholly, silent. Dykes.

Of the Bible, the author is God, not man; the inditer, the Holy Spirit, not the wit of the apostles or prophets; the penmen, such as were sanctified from the womb and endued with a principal portion of God’s Spirit; the matter, verity, piety, purity, uprightness; the form, God’s Word, God’s testimony, God’s oracles, the word of truth, the word of salvation, etc.; the effects, light of understanding, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof, fellowship with the saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance, immortal, undefiled, and that shall never fade away. Happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night. Translators of the English Version.—I see in the Bible my heart and the world painted to the life; and I see just that provision made, which is competent to the highest ends and effects on this heart and this world. R. Cecil.

Until we have reached the point where we can accept the Scriptures as the infallible rule of our faith and practice we are like wrecked mariners clinging to a spar and drifting on a boundless sea. The man who has not sound views of inspiration is absolutely at sea with reference to all religious truth. It is a God-breathed book; as it is said, “Holy men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” It must therefore be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is not enough to say, this book contains the Word of God; it is the Word of God. On a winter’s day I breathe upon a window pane, and my breath congeals there into a landscape of beauty; so God, through the inspired writers, has breathed His breath into the Scriptures and left a perfect outline of spiritual truth. It is perfect and complete; ending with “finis,” and allowing neither errata nor addenda. It was adjusted in the beginning to all the progress of the ages. All other books are subject to amendment. There is not now a text book in use in our public schools that was used fifty years ago. There must be successive editions, “corrected and enlarged.” But the question in respect to the Bible is how to get back to the first edition; what we want is the precise original, the breath of God. Burrell.—God has spoken, after His own method, once for all, and He will speak no more. Revelation is complete, and it is ended—the Book is closed and sealed! Still and silent are the heavens now forevermore. If men would know the mind of God, they must consult His revealed Word. Whether they will remain holy or unholy, righteous or filthy, depends upon the mode in which they are affected toward that one, finished, all-sufficient revelation, which God has given to the world. Men may ask for a sign, and no sign shall be given to them, beyond what they have already. They wish that God would speak to them, though it were but a word; and the silence of the heavens assures them most impressively that all knowledge and all salvation are in that one system of redemption which is disclosed in the inspired volume. W. Adams.

It is a great privilege to ascend some of earth’s mountain tops, and gaze on the outspread bosom of the earth, till the finite seems to be almost lost in the infinite. For these faint reflections from God’s face one cannot be too grateful. It is a high privilege to look through the astronomer’s glass. One would think that the heart would overflow with emotion, and words of gratitude would constantly tremble on the lips, as one leaf after another of that sublime theology is unrolled before us. Greater still, if possible, is the privilege of gazing at the other extreme of God’s works; of beholding, through the medium of science, the wonders on wonders, which a small worm, a dry leaf, a little flintstone, a minute coral of the ocean, reveal. How can one hesitate, living in such mysteries, to bow down in grateful praise and lowly adoration! But what are all these in comparison with the truths of redemption, with the grace of the Redeemer, the love of the Holy Spirit, the mystery of godliness, the themes in which we have the angels for fellow-students, our Lord as the omniscient instructor, our own endless well-being as both the immediate and the ultimate aim! Common thankfulness, it should seem, would lead us never to tire in plucking these medicinal leaves, these immortal fruits, which grow for our especial benefit. By remembering what God has done for us, we should be impelled to make the utmost practical use of all those regenerating truths which lie within our possible grasp. Or rather, we should need no external inducement, no pressing invitation, no suggestion of conscience or of gratitude. We could not stay away from this royal table. We should throng around these wells of living water. So ennobling is Divine truth, so healing to the broken spirit, so precisely does it meet the craving wants of a corrupt nature, so fully does it respond to the yearnings of the immortal spirit, so efficacious is it in all the ex-

igencies of our being, in life and in death, that we should feel a kind of insatiable covetousness till we have sounded its depths, and climbed its heights, and made trial of its last possible pow-

ers of help and restoration, and given to our Redeemer that tribute of love, of honor, of thankfulness, as great and as trustful as the limits of a finite capacity will permit. B. B. E.