But when a man sets his mind to work
seriously, to try to understand what he hears and sees around him,
then he will be puzzled, and no shame to him; for he will find things
every day of his life which will require years of thought to
understand, ay, things which, though we see and know that they are
true, and can use and profit by them, we can never understand at all,
at least in this life.
But I do not think that God meant it to be so with these Psalms. He
meant the Bible for a poor man's book: and therefore the men who
wrote the Bible were almost all of them poor men, at least at one
time or other of their life; and therefore we may expect that they
would write as poor men would write, and such things as poor men may
understand, if they are fairly and simply explained. Therefore I do
not think you need be puzzled long to find out why these Psalms are
read every Sunday. For the men who wrote them had God's spirit with
them; and God's spirit is the spirit in which God made and governs
this world, and just as God cannot change, so God's spirit cannot
change; and therefore the rules and laws according to which the world
runs on cannot change; and therefore these rules about God's
government of the world, which God's spirit taught the old Hebrew
Psalmists, are the very same rules by which He governs it now; and
therefore all the rules in these Psalms, making allowance for the
difference of circumstances, have just as much to do with France, and
Germany, and England now, as they had with the Jews, and the
Canaanites, and the Babylonians then.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221