Bible Commentaries

REVERENCE TOWARD GOD

‘Holy and reverend is His name.’

Psalms 111:9

What is the character of the age in which we live? It is an age of great advance and progress, but, alas! an age of irreverence. There are many things which give the age this tone of irreverence, but time will not allow me to dwell upon them all. I will glance at two of them: (1) The prevalent shallowness; (2) the general impatience of authority.

I. The daily papers, the cheap literature which is so enormously circulated, all contribute to this shallowness, this superficiality of thought.—Now, in matters of religion, this shallowness is painfully evident. There are many whose religion consists of a few doctrines learnt by rote in the same superficial way, without any real apprehension of the deep truths embodied therein; a religion whose origin was emotional, and whose present being is but the mere recollection of that emotion, but with no abiding spiritual life, no close walk with God, no actual self-denial, no personal communion with the Saviour.

II. Another source of reverence that we have mentioned is a general impatience of authority.—Men profess in these days to be much wiser than their ancestors; they will no longer run in the same narrow groove, be blinded by the same prejudices, or be hemmed in by the same barriers as their forefathers. So we have the world heaving to and fro with new nationalities and new theories of government. In our own land the labouring classes are beginning to find out their strength, and to assert it in a very significant manner. Old ways of thinking are now abandoned, hitherto accepted truths are rudely assailed, and the foundations of society are roughly shaken.

—Rev. Forbes E. Winslow.

Illustration

‘Oh, how boldly and familiarly men talk of the supreme Being—how they invoke His aid in their unrighteous quarrels, how they use His holy Name in sanction of their wicked, lawless deeds! How boldly they rush into His presence, how carelessly they venture to kneel and lift up their voices in prayer, and without one feeling of solemnity or godly fear insult the God they should reverently adore by the cold, faithless utterance of their unrepenting lips!’