Bible Commentaries

Religion Nothing Without Morality

Psalm 50:3). When he came to give the law, he brought all the lightning with him; and when he comes to see what has become of the law, he brings that same lightning back again. Wherever you have to deal with law you have to deal with lightning. Lightning has no mercy; lightning has no sentiment; lightning is no poet, though it writes nothing but poetry. When the Lord came to Sinai to give the law, he burned and thundered; when he comes now to judge the earth, he comes in fire and tempest, and manifold yet musical uproar. This is the consistency of the divine movement, this is the wondrous harmony of the action which we call law. We shall be able by these phenomena to identify God, and to say with sureness of conviction, Yea, this is he who came to Sinai,—we remember that very lightning; we heard that very thunder; these are the smokings that rose up before us like an infinite cloud; this is the feeling of weirdness which made us say to Moses, Oh, do not let God speak to us himself any more, but speak thou to us in his name. We shall know the heavenly signs when they reappear.

Who will God have for witnesses? Suppose he shall make an accusation, and shall not be able to establish it by proof, what then? Asaph provides against that contingency:—"He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people" ( Psalm 50:4). That is to say, he will empanel all heaven and all earth as a jury, and they shall decide what his course of providence has been. The blue sky shall speak for God, the green earth shall not hold its tongue when God's judgments are being criticised by men; the heaven and the earth will speak up for him, and will say, He nourished us, he never neglected us, to us his goodness was daily and continual, and we have no reason to complain of the divine administration. The stars will say Psalm 50:7-8). The meaning is: I have nothing to say against what you have done in the matter of sacrifices and burnt-offerings; you have been most punctual. The word used here in English is "continually," literally, daily: not a single day had been omitted or neglected by these poor mistaken souls. They were mere grinders, simple slaves, repeaters of customs; not entering into the meaning, spirit, thought, poetry of the action; always doing something and not knowing why they were doing it. That sentence would seem to be the history of a good deal of modern piety. Understand what the Lord says to these simple, dreary, mistaken ceremony-finders; in effect, he says, Now hear me: I am not going to tell you that your sacrifices have been too few, or that your burnt-offerings have been neglected; you have been punctual, regular, daily in your service of the altar: but the spirit of your work you have never seen for a moment; you serve God with the hand, and you think that is enough.

Now comes a statement which may be easily mistaken:—

"I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" ( Psalm 50:9-13).

Therefore he says ( Psalm 50:14), "Offer unto God thanksgiving." How much is this expression mistaken!—as who shall say, God wants none of your ritualism, be it even simple church-going or simple Psalm 50:16 the Lord is full of anger: he repels the wicked. Up to this point he has been speaking to the mistaken; now he turns upon the wicked, and all heaven is dark as manifold midnight:—"Unto the wicked God saith—" and then comes such a storm of interrogation and rebuke and repudiation as to constitute a noble commentary on the character of God. This charge is principally notable as showing how character deteriorates. He is speaking to priests who are cloaked hypocrites. He says, "When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him," saying, If you will steal and divide the profit with me not a word shall be said about the process; there is room enough under my cloak to cover you. "Thou givest thy mouth to evil," literally, Thou allowest the devil to borrow thy mouth, so that the devil shall come behind thy lips and talk out all his lies and blasphemy, as under a priestly personality and guise. "Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son." Thus a man cannot be wrong with God and right with his own brother. A man cannot forget to pray, and yet be just to his own son. A man cannot live a bad life, and leave an equitable will. He may think it is equitable, he may satisfy his own depraved conscience about it; but you cannot be wrong religiously and right humanly. Your own wills will testify against you; and as for speech, you would as soon speak against your own flesh and blood as speak about the veriest stranger on the face of the earth. All sacred relations go down when the piety of the soul towards God becomes corrupt. "Thou slanderest,"—in Arabic, Thou givest a thrust. Its corresponding or equivalent word is in the Greek "scandal," both words meaning that which causes a man to stumble or to fall. A scandal is a falling. Here you have the very priests of God causing their own flesh and blood to fall; here you have men that saw them pray, setting something before an unsuspecting fellow-man that he may in the darkness tumble over it, and then they will run to help him, or probably run away to tell what a scandal has been created in the Church. These men first make the scandals, and then report them; first thrust at their brother, and then tell others that he has fallen, apostatised, and divested himself of every claim to confidence or consideration. The charge goes further. God forbore; he did not strike the fools with lightning at once; and they misconstrued his very patience. They said, God is approving our policy; not one gleam of lightning have I seen, not one growl of thunder have I heard, as if God were in anger or in trouble: God is looking on with approbation,—"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." Now when he comes to judgment, he says, "Consider, lest I tear you in pieces." Do not misconstrue God's providence; do not say, The bad man prospers, therefore God is bad; do not say that, because an evil policy has succeeded, therefore providence has stamped it with the seal of approbation; the voice thundering along the heavens and through all the corridors of history is this: I have forborne, I have had patience; but now consider, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces. He shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel, he shall rend them limb from limb, and there shall be none to deliver. Yet the Lord could not finish his psalm in this tone, so he says he that ordereth his conversation aright he will bless, and he will accept his good behaviour as a tribute to the divine glory. "Conversation" means conduct. The apostle says, "We have our conversation in heaven," literally, We have our citizenship in heaven. The reference is not to speech, for there are men who have a gift of cunning phrase, and could talk piety all the day. This word "conversation" means conduct, discipline, attention to the spirit and expression of life, and he that ordereth his life aright shall see the salvation of God and bring glory to heaven. That is our duty. Now is our opportunity. We are helpless, but God is almighty. On thy power, O Holy Spirit, would we evermore confidently and gratefully rely.