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Similar utterances are scattered throughout the Old Testament, and the prominence given to the more spiritual side depends not on the speaker's date but on his disposition and devotion. So here this Psalmist, because his soul was filled with true longings after God, passes clear through the externals and says, 'Here am I with no incense, but I have brought my prayer.
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea, Diseases haunt our frail humanity, Through noon, through night, on casual wing they glide, Silent, a voice the power all-wise denied. Once man was a favourite of the Creator, as the royal psalmist sang, "God had made him a little lower than the angels, and had crowned him with glory and honour.
The Psalmist was probably a member of the Levitical family of the Sons of Korah, who were 'doorkeepers in the house of the Lord. He knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless.
The extreme severity of the results of our sins does not fall on penitent, believing spirits, but some do fall. As the Psalmist says: 'Thou wast a God that forgavest them though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions. A profligate course of life may be forgiven, but health or fortune is ruined all the same.
What had his lies to do with her? She had been told a thousand, had heard a thousand told to others. Her life had been passed in a world of which the words of the Psalmist, though uttered in haste, are a clear-cut description. And she had not thought she cared. Yet really she must have cared. For, in leaving this world, her soul had, as it were, fetched a long breath.
True, if the Psalmist had lived under the better and brighter dispensation of Christianity, he would neither have felt the reproaches heaped on him so keenly, nor moaned under them so piteously, nor resented them so warmly. He might then have learned "To hate the sin with all his heart, And still the sinner love." He might have counted reproach and persecution matters for joy and gladness.
The ringing of the Sabbath bell now collects an encouraging congregation; and some of us, I trust, could experimentally adopt the language of the Psalmist, in saying, "I was glad when they said unto us, let us go into the house of the Lord."
'It is good, said the Psalmist, 'that I have been afflicted: before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word." Many of the men were so affected, that they sobbed aloud, and I could scarcely refrain from doing the same thing myself. After this I prayed that the word spoken might be blessed to those who had heard it, and then took my leave.
The same peculiarity is observable in all experiments with the moving tables or rapping spirits, which are more successful when accompanied by constant music. Circe fascinated with incantation; and the Psalmist alludes to it as a means of charming. Serpents, as well as men, are thus charmed.
And the Spirit of God told him there must be One who purposed all this; who meant to do it, and who had done it; who thought it out and planned it by wisdom and understanding. Then the Psalmist saw how everything, from the highest to the lowest, was of use.
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