Psalms 32

The Lord preserveth the faithful. God’s providence is always good, but He needs our faithfulness, our truest and best work always to give full expression and result to the good that He plans. God never does His work unfaithfully, and we dare not charge to His providence the preventible accidents of life, those which come through men’s carelessness or dishonesty or greed of gain or fault of any sort. We must remember that even the providence of God cannot work completely or perfectly without our little work, each and every one’s little work, well done. It is not great deeds that God expects or requires of us, unless He has endowed us with large gifts and has given us great things to do. He gives us certain talents and puts us in certain relations, and then asks us to be faithful—nothing more. The man with the plain gifts and the small opportunities is not expected to do the great things that are required of the man with the brilliant talents and the large opportunities. “She hath done what she could” is the highest approving word that could be spoken of any one. J. R. M.

24. Take courage.** Three things characterize and distinguish the courage of a sanctified heart. The root, whence it ariseth, is love to God; all the saints of God that love the Lord be of good courage. The love of Christ constraineth me to make these bold and brave adventures, saith the apostle. The rule, whereby it is directed, is the Word of God—what the Lord hath pleased to leave on record for a Christian’s guidance in holy pages. And the end, to which it refers, is God. For every sanctified man being a self-denying and a God-advancing man, his God is his centre, wherein his actings, his undertakings rest; and his soul is not, yea, it cannot be satisfied but in God. Simeon Ash.

The godly and the faithful are here called “those who hope in the Lord.” They are to wait patiently, for this waiting has a glorious ending. This eye of hope patiently directed to Jehovah is the peculiarity of Old Testament faith. D.—Wonderful, indeed, is the hopeful trust of the saints of old in God, when we remember that they did not know Him as God manifest in the flesh. P.

To love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So had the Psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his feet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those “that hope in the Lord.” A. M.

1. BLESSED is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile. 3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old Through my roaring all the day long. 4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: My moisture was changed as with the drought of summer. [Selah 5 I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid: I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD;

And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. [Selah

6. For this let every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: Surely when the great waters overflow they shall not reach unto him. 7 Thou art my hiding place; thou wilt preserve me from trouble; Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance. [Selah 8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee.

9. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding :

Whose trappings must be bit and bridle to hold them in,

Else they will not come near unto thee.

10. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked :

DAVID draws from his own personal experience general lessons for the good of all in the Church. David was for a whole year, after his sin of adultery, like one condemned, in the utmost misery. Psalm 51 was composed when in this misery; Psalm 32 was written only after deliverance; the former in the midst of the penitential struggle, the latter after inward peace had been again attained. The theme of this Psalm is the rich treasures of knowledge drawn from that abyss of inward need: the blessedness of forgiveness, the sincere, unreserved confession of sin as the way to it, and the protection of God amid all dangers, as well as joy in God, as its fruits. D.

In this Psalm David gives to the world his experience as a sinner. He tells us of the blessedness of forgiveness. He is blessed because his sins are taken away; because his sins are covered or hidden, and that from God, not from men; because he is treated as innocent. He tells us of the result of his attempts to cover his sin. His body suffered from the terrors of remorse. The old freshness of his heart was gone, like a running stream dried up in the sickening heat of the Eastern sun. He tells us of the remedy which he found. It was confession. True confession implies your viewing the fact of your sin in the same light in which God views it. Confession implies renunciation. . . . Whatever else this Psalm may teach us, it teaches us this broad truth that the forgiven penitent, under God’s economy, is not a wretched man. While it is one of the saddest, is at the same time one of the most joyful of the inspired lyrics. It is no less the record of a bitter, penitential sorrow, than the expression of a heart full of praise. It comes to us to day to tell us that the worst sinner, forgiven by God, is a happy man. V.

Beginning with the recital of his own experience, David here turns it into instruction and warning for others. He had long struggled with the sense of his sin, had long been crushed to the earth with his burden, because he would not humble himself before God; but God had given him again the heart of a child. He had gone to his Father with the penitent confession,

But he that trusteth in the LORD, mercy shall compass him about.

11. Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, ye righteous :

And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.

“I have sinned;” and, as in the parable, the Father’s heart moved toward His prodigal son when he was yet a long way off, so David found that his Father was ready to forgive—“I said, I will confess;” and “Thou tookest away the guilt of my sin.” There can be little doubt that this Psalm was composed after Nathan came to him. Psalm 51 was the confession of his great sin and the prayer for forgiveness. This Psalm is the record of the confession made and the forgiveness obtained, and the conscious blessedness of his position as a son restored to his Father’s house. There was a shelter for him there now—“Thou art my hiding-place.” There was joy and gladness on his return—“Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.” P.

Its value lies very much in the fact that, while it records David’s personal experiences, and because it records them with the utmost simplicity and frankness, it expresses some of the cardinal and most common experiences of all godly men. It reflects his spiritual moods, reflects them so clearly that we see his inmost heart, and seeing his, recognize our own. For “as face answereth to face in the glass, so heart of man to heart of man.” The stages of spiritual experience which it sets forth are not peculiar to one person, but belong to all who have entered on the life of the spirit. Nor are they peculiar to any period of spiritual development; they belong to every period. The consciousness of sin, and the penitent confession of sin, the sense of forgiveness, and a growing trust in the forgiving love of the loving Father—these are not stages of spiritual experience through which we pass, passing through them and leaving them behind. They perpetually repeat themselves. The coming in of the Gospel has not removed us beyond their limits or emancipated us from their control. In respect of these, we are much where David was, having to “acknowledge sin” and to “confess transgression;” aspiring after the blessedness of the man “whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin,” though and because he would not hide it, “is covered;” rejoicing that the Divine “hiding-place” is still open, and running into it to find ourselves, like the grateful Psalmist, “compassed about with songs of deliverance.” Cox.

The contrast between sin and grace appeared in all its sharpness in David’s inner life; and that life brings to view, as its external course advanced in a state of continual conflict, both the deep degradation of the fallen, sin-burdened man, and the elevation of a spirit richly endowed with Divine grace. To a greater degree than any other Old Testament character, he experienced the restlessness and desolation of a soul burdened with the consciousness of guilt, the longing after reconciliation with God, the struggle after purity and renovation of heart, the joy of forgiven sin, the heroic, all-conquering power of confidence in God, the ardent love of a gracious heart for God; and has given in his Psalms imperishable testimony as to what is the fruit of the law and what the fruit of faith in man. And in saying this, we have touched upon that particular in which David most powerfully affected the spiritual life of his people. Oehler.

It is no wonder that Augustin is said to have incessantly pored over this Psalm, and even to have had it written on the wall in front of his death-bed. It is remarkably free from allusions to outer and legal forms, and is thoroughly evangelical. What David learned first in suffering he pours out in spiritual song. He had gone through a hard struggle not with outward calamities, but with the far deeper trials of the heart and conscience, and then had come out into the sunlight of assured restoration and peace; hence the impressiveness of his words alike in regard to the conflict and the victory. T. W. C.—Luther, one day being asked which of all the Psalms were the best, made answer, “Psalmi Paulini;” and when his friends pressed to know which these might be, he said, “The thirty-second, the fifty-first, the one hundred and thirtieth, and one hundred and forty-third. For they all teach that the forgiveness of our sins comes, without the law and without works, to the man who believes, and therefore I call them Pauline Psalms; and David sings, ‘There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.’ This is just what Paul says, ‘God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.’ Thus no man may boast of his own righteousness. That word, ‘That Thou mayest be feared,’ dusts away all merit, and teaches us to uncover our heads before God, and confess it is mere forgiveness, not merit at all.” Table Talk.

1,2. The first word of the Psalter, like that of the Sermon on the Mount, is a beatitude. The next beatitude of the Psalter is that of him whose sin is confessed, forgiven, subdued. Paul mentions David as describing the declaration of blessedness of those whose iniquities are dismissed, and whose sins are veiled off from sight by one great act of amnesty. Not without reason did Luther speak of this and three other Psalms as “right Pauline Psalms.” Bishop Alexander.

Blessedness is not in this case ascribed to the man who has been a diligent lawkeeper, for then it would never come to us, but rather to a lawbreaker, who by grace most rich and free has been forgiven. Self-righteous Pharisees have no portion in this blessedness. Over the returning prodigal the word of welcome is here pronounced. The word rendered forgiven is in the original taken off or taken away, as a burden is lifted or a barrier removed. S.

How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute sin, i.e., account it as standing against him in law, unforgiven! But this man must be profoundly sincere in his penitence, one in whose spirit there is no deceit, no insincerity; who makes no hypocritical pretensions, but whose confessions mean all they say. David had felt the sweet relief which comes of such confession and of the resulting sense of pardon from God. Well might he exclaim, O the blessedness of this sense of pardon! C.

Sin is here spoken of under three appellations, so as to include the whole idea of sin in all its manifestations: First, as “transgression” or departure from God, and open defection from his covenant. Secondly, as “a coming short of the mark,” a not doing of our duty. Thirdly, as including in the idea of wrong-doing the guilt and also the punishment. And there is a threefold blessedness. The man is one who has his transgression taken away (literally, who is lightened of the burden of sin); who has his sin coerced, so that he is in God’s sight as one who has not done the sin; and one to whom Jehovah reckoneth not iniquity, which, according to Paul’s interpretation (Rom. 4: 6-9), is equivalent to saying that he is one whose faith is reckoned for righteousness. The non-reckoning of iniquity and the reckoning of righteousness are convertible terms; and the righteousness so reckoned is faith, or a righteousness without works. But God only thus forgives and justifies one who, with all truth and sincerity of heart, confesses his sin, making no reservation, no excuses, no attempts still to hold fast and hide some darling lust. “David’s principal purpose in this text is, according to the interpretation of Paul, to derive all the blessedness of man from God.” P.

The heaping together of synonyms for sin and forgiveness is not tautology or feebleness.

The Psalmist’s heart is so full of its blessedness that one utterance is not enough to empty it; and though all the clauses describe the same thing, they do so with a difference. This is true with regard both to the words for sin and for pardon. As to the former, the three designations of sin present three aspects of its hideousness. The first, rendered “transgression,” seems to mean, literally, separating or breaking loose, and hence comes to signify apostasy or rebellion. Sin, then, is departure or revolt. It is thus regarded in its gravest aspect as in relation to God, being not merely a breach of some impersonal law, but having reference to a Lawgiver, from whom it is departure and revolt. That is its blackest character, and is precisely what we are least willing to recognize. Many of us are ready to acknowledge faults, weaknesses, derelictions, or even crimes, but we do not like to think that all these have relation to him. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” The very notion of sin implies God. It is the rising of our wills against His will, the voluntary rending apart of an existing union. We are knit to God, and, so far as we can, we break the tie by our sin, and, like the prodigal son, seek independence in the irresponsible use of the goods which we think our own, in the distance of the far country. “Departing from the living God” is the definition of sin. The word rendered “sin” is literally missing a mark. What is rebellion in regard to God is, in regard to myself, missing my aim, whether we consider the aim as that which a man is intended by his very make to be and do, or as that which he proposes to himself by his act. All sin tragically fails to hit the mark in both aspects. It is a fearful failure as to reaching the ideal of conduct and as to winning the desired satisfaction. It keeps the word of promise to the ear and breaks it to the hope, ever luring by flattering and lying promises; and if it gives the poor delights it promised, adding something else that embitters them all. The word rendered “iniquity” means something twisted or distorted, and seems to embody the same metaphor as do our words “right” and “wrong”—namely, the contrast of the crooked, wandering ways of sin with the straight line of duty.

The three expressions for forgiveness are also eloquent in their variety. The first means to take away, and implies the lifting and removal of a burden. It is more than the holding back of penal consequences; it is the taking away of the evil thing itself; and that not merely in the multitudinousness of its manifestations in acts, but in the depth of its inward source. The second, “covered,” paints forgiveness as putting the foul thing out of sight, and so shrouding it from the pure Divine eye that his action is no longer determined by its existence. The third describes forgiveness as God’s “not reckoning” a man’s sin to him. God does not deal with the forgiven man as having done sin, nor let his sin hinder the free flow of God’s love. So all three words set forth one idea in various phases, and express the entire removal of sin, so that it does not interfere with the flow of God’s love. He who is thus forgiven has his spirit purged from “guile;” for purifying comes with God’s pardon. A. M.

Impute. Not charging upon account. As sin is a defection from the law, so it is forgiven; as it is offensive to God’s holiness, so it is covered; as it is a debt involving man in a debt of punishment, so it is not imputed; they all note the certainty, and extent, and perfection of pardon—the three words expressing sin here being the same that are used by God in the declaration of His name (Ex. 34: 7). Charnook.—Aben-Ezra paraphrases it, of whose sins God does not think, does not regard them so as to bring them into judgment, reckoning them as if they were not; does not count or calculate them; does not require for them the debt of punishment. To us the remission is entirely free, our Sponsor having taken upon Him the whole business of paying the ransom. His suffering is our impunity, His bond our freedom, and His chastisement our peace; and therefore the prophet says, “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Leighton.

No guile. The one condition is that there be no dishonesty, no attempt to disguise, gloss over, extenuate, or justify the sin. The total absence of such a spirit proves that sin, great and deadly as it may be, is a stranger; that though admitted it is not welcomed, that when it is once clearly seen it is hated. David speaks of the first, the strongest and most enduring temptation of a sinner, and in stating the one condition of pardon he goes to the very root of evil. Cook.—They do not dissimulate their guilt; they attempt no deception in regard to it, whether before God or their own consciences; they do not deny, or extenuate, or conceal it; but they make frank and full acknowledgment before God of the evil they have done. W. H. G.

In whose spirit there is no guile; he does not say, “There is no guilt” (for who is there that lives, and sins not?), but no guile; that does not dissemble with God in his professions of repentance and faith, and in his prayers for peace or pardon; but in all these is sincere and means as he says; that does not repent with a purpose to sin again, and then sin with a purpose to repent again. H.—No guile; no falseness, that is, either to himself or to God. Of this guilelessness Leighton remarks: “Nothing is more pleasing to God, who seeth the heart, nothing more like to God; and therefore is it most pleasing to Him, because it is most like Him.” P.—The man whose transgression is forgiven; whose sin is hidden, God having cast it as a millstone into the depths of the sea; whose iniquity and perversion is not reckoned to his account; and whose guile, the deceitful and desperately wicked heart, is annihilated, being emptied of sin, and filled with righteousness, is necessarily a happy man. A. Clarks.

3. 4. For, as he had learned from his own experience, whoever does not pour out his whole corruption in confession before God, only tortures himself till he unburdens himself of his secret curse. The more he strove against confessing, the louder did his conscience speak, and seeing it was not in his power to silence this inner voice, in which God’s wrath found expression, he cried for help; but because it was with a yet unbroken heart, he got no answer. He cried all the day, for God’s punishing right hand lay heavy on him night and day, the sense of the Divine anger gave him no rest. A fire burned within him, which threatened to consume him utterly. D.—So long as he kept silence, laboring to smother his convictions and conceal his great sin, the dreadful agony was in his soul; his very bones—the firmest and least impressible part of his bodily frame—waxed old under the wasting torture, and he could only groan and sigh or moan all the day. Yes, all the day and all the night as well, the hand of God, impressing a sense of guilt, was heavy upon him. “My moisture,” the juice of my life—the figure being taken from vegetable life and meaning the fresh and joyous life power—turned to the drought of summer. From being a green, living tree, I became a dry stick. These figures from the vegetable world, applied to his body to set forth the agony of his soul, are intensely expressive. What a life was this! Who can measure the woes of a guilty conscience, heightened by a sense of that awful eye of God, impressing His purity and justice, and making the soul afraid of His wrath! “Selah” calls for a thoughtful pause over these startling but most instructive facts of his heart-history. C.

Of all the anguish in the world, there is nothing like this—the sense of God without the sense of nearness to Him. Elizabeth Frentiss.—There is something in guilt or the state of guiltiness that amounts to a virtual shutting up or suppression of all affinities with supernatural being. It condenses all the Godward and pure aspirations and gathers them in, by the dreadful recoil it makes on the soul’s own centre. It pronounces a damnation, too, upon itself, and by its own remorseful severities makes the sentence good. Falling away thus from God, and closing itself up as regards all supernatural relations and perceptions, it becomes self-centred, isolated, a worm in the ground, having its belongings there and not in the element of day. Bushnell.

In any really deep Christian experience, the great feeling of need, the energy of repentance, the agony of conviction, connects itself with a conscious estrangement from the heavenly Father, through a violation of His holy and merciful law; not merely a single act of sin, or a series of such acts; but a state of the nature and a habit of the life ungratefully and wickedly separated from God. Of course, so long as there is a feeble or lax sense of God’s holiness, of the sanctity of His requirements, of the exceeding height and breadth and length of His commandments, and of the widespread mischief and unutterable wrong even of a single infraction of it sending its jar of discord through the spiritual world, and directly offending such a Being as God is, so long this piercing and bitter conviction will not be realized. Some lighter and easier solution than the cross will satisfy the mind, or seem to satisfy it, till a deeper movement agitates the heart and breaks up its inmost fountains. Whenever that hour comes, there comes with it a cry for full redemption, such a redemption as only the suffering of Him who is both man and God can give. F. D. H.

5. The end of the struggle—confession, and so forgiveness and peace. God covers sin, but man must not cover his sin before God. “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” The former part of this verse contains the resolve, “I would acknowledge;” the second, the expression of the resolve, “I said."—And Thou. The pronoun is emphatic—it was God’s doing. To Him he made his confession; He forgave. The same words are used here of sin and its forgiveness as in v. 1. P.

The transition is described as sudden and complete; conscience once awakened finds no respite, seeks no delay; confession comes at once, at once followed by forgiveness. This accords exactly with the narrative. Nathan asks no more from the king, and at once declares his pardon. Observe that in this verse David again uses the three words of v. 1 to denote his sin, together exhausting all aspects, save that of rebellious and impenitent wickedness, from which he is free. Cook.—The three words for sin are repeated, though in a different order, and the act of confession is thrice mentioned, as the act of forgiveness was. The fulness of the pardon and its swiftness are emphatically given by the brief words, by the double designation, ’the iniquity of my sin,’ and by the representation of pardon following on the resolve to confess, before it was put into act. So eager was the Divine love to forgive, that it waited not for the actual confession, but anticipated it with its ready forgiveness. A. M.

He sums up the result in a single sentence: ‘Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.’ He has a whole catalogue of joyful consequences of his confession to present to us; but he is careful to make it perfectly clear at the outset that all these consequences are linked with forgiveness. The man is not blessed who can forget his sins; who can blind himself to them; who can divert his mind from them; who can temporarily escape their consequences. Blessed is he, and only he, whose transgression is forgiven. Thus we get back to the key-note of the Psalm. V.

The teaching of the Psalms on the forgiveness of sins is exactly the same as that of New Testament Scripture. Forgiveness is with God. It is bestowed of His free grace, and for His name’s sake, on those who confess and desire to forsake sin. And it is a present forgiveness, assured to the conscience by God’s Word—cleansing the soul and clearing the sinner from every charge of guilt. What the thirty-seventh Psalm was to the pious in perplexity, the thirty-second must have been to Hebrew penitents. It tells of transgression taken away, as an intolerable burden is removed; of sin covered, so that the sinner is before God’s judgment as if he had not sinned at all; and of iniquities not reckoned to the worker thereof. This it is which Paul quotes in one of his chief arguments on justification (Rom. 4 : 6). D. F.

Here is a clear note of joy over the blessed exexperience of him who pours out his heart to God—a musical Yea and Amen to the great truth of justifying grace. D.—The happiest being on earth is he who looks on all his manifold and great transgressions, and while he loathes himself on account of them, can say, ‘I am pardoned.’ This recollection melts him. It fills his heart with unutterable love for his dying Lord; it makes His very name precious to his soul. Whether in heaven or in earth, this is the character and this the happiness of the Christian—he is a pardoned sinner—he feels and acts as a pardoned sinner. C. Bradley.—And the only way to secure that pardon and happiness is by coming to that great Fountain that is opened for sin and for uncleanness, and resorting to that of which the Psalmist had a vision far in the future, and you and I have a clear sight conspicuous in the past—the cross on which Jesus Christ has taken away the sin of the world. Without that sure work done for us and in us, our consciences appeased, the burden lifted off our shoulders, there may be mirth and riotous gladness, there may be satisfaction in accomplished desires and fulfilled ambitions and gratified loves or lusts; but permanent and deep and central blessedness there will not be until we have lost our sin and found ourselves at the foot of the cross. A. M.

The sinner who confessed obtained mercy, and that very mercy caused the sinner to confess. This is a circle, you say. So it is; and it is like God. All the worlds are globes, and all their paths are circles. His dispensations circulate. All good comes forth from Himself, all glory returns to Himself. His mercy displayed broke the stony heart, and caused the confession to flow; the confession flowing opened the way for mercy to enter. If I have not a broken, contrite heart, God’s mercy will never be mine; but if God had not manifested His mercy in Christ, infinite and free, I could never, never have a broken, contrite heart. Arnot.

All true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things—a sense of sin and an assurance of pardon. There is no love possible—real, deep, genuine, worthy of being called love of God—which does not start with the belief of my own transgression, and with the thankful reception of forgiveness in Christ. You do nothing to get pardon for yourselves; but unless you have the pardon you have no true love to God. That, and that alone, is the road by which we come to possess the love of God, as a practical power, filling and sanctifying our souls. The Bible tells you, and the

Gospel and the cross of Christ tell you, no love without pardon, no fellowship and sonship without the sense of sin and the acknowledgment of transgression! . . . Unmistakably our Lord teaches (Luke 7: 47) that forgiveness comes first to us who have nothing, not even love, to pay with, and that it unlocks the flood-gates of the heart as nothing else will. We are not pardoned because we love, but we love because we are pardoned. We are pardoned because He loves us, and the knowledge of His forgiving love melts our hearts. Jesus seems to teach us that there must be this experience of forgiveness before there is real and deep love. Certainly the principle involved in these words has been proved true in all the history of Christianity since they were spoken. Forms of Christianity which minimize sin, and have little to say about pardon, have always been, and always will be, cold and stagnant. The one power that sets souls aflame with a holy and self-sacrificing love is the experience of God’s pardoning mercy in Jesus Christ. The measure of our consciousness of forgiven sin will be the measure of our love. A. M.

6. And now, because of the grace thus vouchsafed to every repentant sinner, David would encourage all the godly to seek Him who deals so graciously with sinners. P.—The time when God may be found is when the great waters swell about the despairing; when heart and flesh falleth; when there is help and hope in no earthly arm. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” It is when it seems as if even God could not make this trial tolerable, or this path passable, or this hindrance a help; it is when we are weakest, and most in doubt, when we know not what to pray for as we ought; in hours of pain, of bereavement, of poverty, of betrayal, of suspense, of misunderstanding, of sore temptation—it is then that God is nearest and readiest and strongest and kindest, easiest found, and surest to supply all the need of those who put their trust in Him. “For this let every one that is godly pray unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found; surely when the great waters overflow they shall not reach unto him.” H. C. T.

7. How noble and eloquent the brief words (echo of the historical narrative) that tell the full and swift forgiveness that followed simple confession—and how effectively the music again comes in, prolonging the thought and rejoicing in the pardon! How sure he is that his experience is of priceless value to the world for all time, when he sees in his absolution a motive that will draw all the godly nearer to their

Helper in heaven! How full his heart is of praise, that he cannot but go back again to his own story, and rejoice in God his hiding-place—whose past wondrous love assures him that in the future songs of deliverance will ring him round, and all his path be encompassed with music of praise. A. M.

See what God can do for a sinner. Look at this sinful, defiled soul, but now raging and smiting in his passion, blighting the fairest flowers of domestic peace in his selfishness, crushed and withered by remorse, groaning under God’s hand—and say if anything but Divine grace, Divine compassion, Divine forgiveness, can change such an one into the joyful singer of praises who speaks to us to-day through this familiar Psalm. V.—A sinner so lately tortured with a sense of guilt and shrinking before the awful eye of God now speaks sweetly of finding in this same God a hiding-place for his soul, a preserving hand against all danger and trouble, a God of ready and warm heart to gird him all about with joyous songs of deliverance! Is not this for a wonder and joy forever, that God can so freely and so fully forgive? “Compass me about with songs of deliverance” is singularly strong and expressive. It is not merely that his heart is full of them, but they invest him on every side; they enrobe him, they overspread him from head to foot—his glory and his covering! Here is a fit place for one more pause to think of these wonders of God’s love. Hence, “Selah.” C.

When a man has surrendered himself in humbleness and penitence to God, and the proud spirit of self-excuse has passed away; when the soul has opened itself to all His influences and known their power; when the saddest and bitterest part of suffering is felt no longer as the wrath of the Judge, but as the discipline of a Father; when the love of God has melted the soul and fused it into charity—then the soul is reconciled to God, and God is reconciled to the soul; for it is a marvellous thing how the change of feelings within us changes God to us, or rather those circumstances and things by which God becomes visible to us. His universe, once so dark, becomes bright; life, once a mere dull, dreary thing, “dry as summer dust,” springs up once more into fresh luxuriance, and we feel it to be a Divine and blessed thing. We hear the voice of God as it was once heard in the Garden of Eden whispering among the leaves; every sound, once so discordant, becomes music, the anthem of creation raised up with everlasting hallelujahs to the eternal throne. Joy is not delayed till we deserve it. Just so soon as a sinful man trusts that the mercy of God in Christ has done away with his transgression, the ring, and the robe, and the shoes are his, the banquet and the light of a Father’s countenance. F. W. R.

8,9. These verses seem to be best taken as the Divine voice answering the confidence of v. 7. The “I” and “thee” in each correspond; and the loving counsel by a glance, which God will give to those who dwell near enough to Him to see, and love Him enough to follow the lightest indication of His will, contrasts with the obstinacy of the untamed animal nature, which needs rough, outward constraint. The sense of pardon makes men docile, and binds them to God in such sweet bonds that they are eager to catch the faintest hint of His wish, and feel the glance of His eye as a mightier constraining power than all force or external restraints or impulses. Obedience extorted by force is no obedience, and a heart that is only brought near to God by “bit and bridle” is an untamed heart. They who watch for the guidance of the eye do not need the coarse restraints and constraints which lower natures require.

“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with Mine eye,” scarcely sounds like words meant to be understood as spoken by David. They are the promise from heaven of a gentle teaching to the pardoned soul. A. M.

No man ever need be at a loss as to the path of duty. If he goes wrong, it is either because he does so wilfully or because he doesn’t try to learn the right way. God stands ready to teach him his duty, to teach him by the written Word, by the lessons of Providence, by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. God makes this teaching work His own work. He wants men to look to Him for instruction. He doesn’t tell them to watch church-members, and do as well as they do—or as poorly. He doesn’t ask them to decide for themselves what He ought to teach, and then do what seems to them “reasonable;” for, as a rule, the less reason men have, the more ready they are to depend on it. He wants men to use their reason in finding out what He has commanded—not what they think He should have commanded—and then to do accordingly. He wants them to look to the one Example of godly living He has given among men, and to pattern after that. It is God’s work to disclose the right way. It is man’s work to walk in it. The showing is God’s part. The going is man’s. H. C. T.

Guide thee. How will the guiding come? God has made three great revelations of His will: the Bible, Christ’s life, the Holy Ghost’s teaching. But in each there is the same underlying principle and central fact. That principle, that fact, is the mind of God. The mind of God shining through these things into a man is God’s eye. It emits God to him. Faith is the inner eye of man. It is made to see, and to receive, and to follow truth. The eye of God and the eye of man must meet. Prayer clears the vision. Religious study clears the vision. Contemplation, the very looking into God’s eye, clears the vision. More light streams in; and light used makes light again, till it grows so distinct and bright, that the eye of the man is an actual reflector of the mind of God. We see as God sees. We judge as God judges. And the more like-minded we grow, the greater the assimilation and the more intuitive our sense of God’s will becomes about everything. In heaven we shall be holy, because we shall see Him face to face; that eye of God which lured us at the beginning, and never left us, has done it all. J. Vaughan.

The life of righteous men presents many an apparent contradiction of this truth. Men said to be under the guidance of that kindly eye do often walk in obscurity. Suffering is their lot. Their motives are impugned. They make no grand figure in the world. Their way is often rough, and rocky splinters pierce the feet. For loyalty to their convictions, friends desert them and enemies harass them. But none the less is it true, the Lord has never forgotten His faithful ones. That kindly eye has been upon them, that loving Providence over them. Haydn.

Life would be much calmer, freer, and stronger than most of us make it, if we really acted on the faith that God did lead us, and that He, rather than our poor foresight, had the shaping of our days. Constant watchfulness for the indications of His will is needed, if we are to realize His direction and to know the joy of swift obedience. “I will guide thee with Mine eye.” We must be near Him, and looking ever toward Him, if we are to catch its meaning. The watchful servant does not need spoken orders. The choice for every man lies between that gracious guidance by the eye, and the rough way of telling “the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding,” which road their master would have them go, by a tug at the rein and the pressure of the bit in their mouths. Many a hint of God’s will escapes us for want of watchfulness. Before we complain of the perplexities which beset our choice, let us make sure that we have caught all the indications which have been given. Wills held in suspense and equipoise until His will is plain are needed, if we would really be led by God. There is no more frequent cause of blindness to plain signs of duty than obstinate wishes opposed to it. The secret of all peace and of all practical wisdom is in submission. Whoso lets God’s manifest will determine his is king of all kings and of himself, and will seldom be at a stand as to his road. Impatient pressing on the heels of God’s purposes, before they have fully developed their direction, is sure to end badly. The true attitude is to watch and to wait, with wills held ready to bend either way, as He will. If it is not plain to patient, prayerful, acquiescent inquiry what He would have us do, it is plain that, for the moment, He would have us do nothing; and they who run before they are sent are sure to be out of the road. A. M.

9. It was a great misapprehension in our English translators to suppose that the bit and bridle were used to keep horse and mule from coming too near, instead of being used to break in those timid or wayward creatures and tame them to come to you, fearless and kind. The true version gives one of the finest illustrations of God’s ways in discipline, and suggests that we use the understanding God has given us to see and appreciate His love and to let it have its subduing and winning power on our otherwise stubborn and reluctant hearts. Such is the spirit of this exhortation. It is but too often needed. Conscious guilt is shrinking and does not love to face the purity against which it has sinned. C.

The bridle which restrains the beast is often its ornament. The fact is familiar that animals have a kind of pride in the gaudy trappings which are the signs of their degradation, the proofs that they cannot be appealed to on the grounds of reason and conscience. So it is often true that a sinful man is proud of his rebellion against God, and boasts of it. If he but knew it, this is his humiliation. It stamps him as a creature which does not realize its relations to God and eternity. God would gladly deal with him as a free man, on generous terms; but if he refuses the guidance of the eye, he must take up with bit and bridle. If men will not come nigh unto God, and fall in with His gracious economy, they must be sternly restrained from interfering with it. V.

“If you will be as beasts before Him, God will deal with you as beasts;” the cold, sharp bit will be thrust between your teeth, and, haply, the lash not spared. It is better even for a horse to be tamed with bit and bridle, and bent to useful work, than to live a useless, self-indulgent life, and at the last to rush off in wild stampede to unknown harms. And how much better is it for a man that he should have all needful corrections, and be won by them to a free and glad obedience, than that he should be left, unchastened, to travel on to the great darkness? Cox.—There is no more generous and noble-minded superior than God. When any seek to Him, He seeks no vantage of them, but He will bridle and bind to force them to acknowledge Him; and if they seek in to Him, He will pity, for it is His nature to pity poor afflicted and confused souls when they seek in to Him. Be not thou like the horse or mule, whose mouth must be holden by bridle and bit, else God shall bind and bridle foot and hand, and lay on till ye be forced to stand. Therefore in time make your prayer to Him while He may be found. Dickson.

God never uses harsh measures when more quiet ones will do. But if the believer will not listen to the gentle voice of God, then, rather than let him run on to his destruction, God will put on the bit and bridle. This is done not because He hates but because He loves the sinner. If affliction comes to you, and you are heavily burdened, you may be sure that by that experience God desires to teach you something that you could learn in no other way, and that it is important that you should know. Schaufler.—A Christian, when he sees trouble coming upon him, should not fly in the face of the instrument that brings, but in the face of the cause of its coming. Now the cause is thyself, thy base self, thy sinful self, and thy unworthy carriages toward God under all the mercy, patience, and longsuffering that God has bestowed upon thee and exercised toward thee. Here thou mayest quarrel, and be revenged, and spare not, so thou take vengeance in a right way; and thou wilt do so when thou takest it by godly sorrow. Bunyan.

Decision of character and firmness of purpose are very desirable qualities in the Christian. The Church of the present day needs men with independent minds and a strong, straight backbone, men who dare to say “No” clearly and earnestly. She needs men like Joshua and Daniel and Paul, who can withstand temptation, and even the false persuasion of friends. But we must beware, lest with the backbone we develop a tail and long ears. “Be not as the . . . mule.” G. H. Hubbard.

10. The usual contrast between the lot of the ungodly and that of the righteous, as the sum of all that has been said, and as a great religious axiom. P.—Many pains (are) to the wicked; and (as to) the (man) trusting in Jehovah, mercy shall encompass him, or, He will encompass him (with) mercy. In this and the remaining verse the Psalmist closes with the statement of a general truth, founded in necessity and verified by all experience, that sin produces misery and trust in God salvation. It is implied though not expressed in the first clause, that the sufferings of the wicked, while he still continues such, are hopeless and incurable, while those to which the righteous is subjected are salutary in effect and temporary in duration. Here again we may observe that the antithesis is not between the wicked and the absolutely righteous, but between the wicked and the man trusting in Jehovah, and that the effect ascribed to this trust is not the recognition of the man’s inherent righteousness, but his experience of God’s mercy, which implies that he is guilty and unworthy in himself, and can only be delivered from the necessary consequences of his sin by simply trusting in the mercy of the very Being whom he has offended. A.

He who sows sin will reap sorrow in heavy sheaves. Sorrows of conscience, of disappointment, of terror, are the sinner’s sure heritage in time, and then forever sorrows of remorse and despair. Let those who boast of present sinful joys remember the shall be of the future and take warning. S.

Note that the forgiven man is in this verse described as trustful, and in the next verse as “righteous” and “upright in heart.” Pardon leads to thankful confidence and to growing righteousness; and they are upright not who have not fallen, but who have been raised from their fall by God’s pardoning mercy. The mutual relation of these words is instructive, and carries the full Gospel in germ. Note, further, the allusion in “compass him about” to the use of the same word in v. 7, where it is the expression of the Psalmist’s own confidence; and here is the declaration of the Divine dealings. An unbroken ring of blessings, like a wall of fire, shall surround the pardoned, faithful soul, and there will not be a break in the circle through which a real evil can creep. A. M.

Mercy shall compass him about. He shall be surrounded with mercy—as one is surrounded by the air or the sunlight. He shall find mercy and favor everywhere—at home, abroad; by day, by night; in society, in solitude; in sickness, in health; in life, in death; in time, in eternity. He shall walk amid mermercies; he shall die amid mercies; he shall live in a better world in the midst of eternal mercies. Barnes.—“Mark that text, ‘He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about.’ I read it in my youth and believed it; and now I read it in my old age, thank God, I know it to be true. R. Aukins.

Mercy is antecedent to trust. Man trusts only because God is merciful. But the apprehension of the mercy succeeds trust. God is found merciful and precious as man trusts Him. So the sunlight precedes the power of vision, but as the eye is opened to behold it and appropriate it, its beauty and utility are discerned in ever-increasing measure. Trust, in the scriptural sense of the word, trust in the personal Saviour, implies faith in testimony. Trust is an advance in faith; it is its flower and fruit. Faith lays hold upon evidence; trust upon the person concerning whom the evidence is given. We believe the testimony which God hath given of His Son, and having believed, commit to Him the keeping of our souls and bodies. This committing is trust. The manifestation of mercy is according to the completeness of the trust. Trust is the soul’s emptying of self for His filling with Himself. “In having nothing,” says Chrysostom, “I have all things because I have Christ. Having therefore all things in Him I seek no other reward, for He is the universal reward.” “None that trust in Him shall be desolate.” Mercy everywhere! “Earth is full” of it; and it is “great above the heavens.” Mercy every day! It “shall follow me all the days of my life.” Mercy in every experience! “All the paths of the Lord are mercy.” N. W. Wells.

Let none despair, let none presume; let none despair that are sorry for their sins and would be saved by Jesus Christ; let none presume that abide in the liking of their sins, though they seem to know the exceeding grace of Christ; for though the doors stand wide open for the reception of the penitent, yet they are fast enough barred and bolted against the presumptuous sinner. It cannot be that God should be prevailed upon by lips of dissimulation; He knows them that trust in Him, and that sincerely come to Him by Christ for mercy. It is, then, not the abundance of sins committed, but the not coming heartily to God by Christ for mercy, that shuts men out of doors. Bunyan.

11. And then the Psalm ends with a great cry of gladness, three times reiterated, like the voice of a herald on some festal day of a nation: “Rejoice in Jehovah! and leap for joy, O righteous! and gladly shout, all ye upright

in heart!” The depth of penitence measures the height of joy; the “roaring all the day long” is changed into shouts of praise and gladness. Every tear sparkles like a diamond in the sunshine of pardon; and he who begins with the lowly cry for forgiveness as a contrite sinner will end on the sunlit heights of joy “in the Lord,” and be made, by His indwelling grace, “righteous” and “upright in heart.” A. M.