April 14

I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love. - Psalms 119:113.

THOUGH the Jews lived under a dispensation which abounded with carnal ordinances, many of them were very far from being carnal men. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews holds forth some of them as examples for Christian imitation, and commands us “not to be slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Now, there are persons who seem to imagine that the religion of the Jews consisted in the paternity of Abraham, the rite of circumcision, numerous sacrifices and ceremonial observances. But it consisted in none of these; it was essentially the same with the Christian. The difference was not in the body, but in the dress; not in the reality, but in the degree:-“God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” They worshipped the same God; their theology is our theology; their morality is our morality; and the book of Psalms is a magazine of Christian experience, and especially this psalm. Now, this belongs to what we call experimental religion.

Experience means knowledge derived from experiment, in contradistinction to speculation and theory. Much has been said, especially since the days of Bacon, of experimental philosophy; and why may we not say much also of experimental religion? Is not the one as capable of trial and realization as the other? It is pleasing to hear men talk of things through which they have actually and feelingly passed,-the pilgrim of his travels, the soldier of his wars, the patient of his cure; especially if we are in the same relation, if we are travellers, if we are soldiers, if we are patients: we are then desirous of hearing something that suits our circumstances, and on which we can rely. “I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love.” David here speaks of his hatred and of his love. These are two very powerful passions and principles. We are all the subjects of them; and if a man does but know what to do with his hatred and his love that is, where to place them, and how to exercise them-he may be called a wise man. You remember the language of Solomon: -“A wise man’s heart is at his right hand, but a fool’s heart at his left.” How is this?

Why, physically considered, every man’s heart is at his left hand; but Solomon uses the word “heart” metaphorically; he means by it the affections; and when he says, “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand,” he means that he rightly exercises them, or dexterously; the word dexterous being derived from dexter, the Latin word for the right hand. The object of hatred should be always something bad; the object of love should be always something good. And this would be the case in a perfect being. This was the case in man before the fall; but the fall perverted every thing, and, in consequence of it, men have been lovers of evil and haters of good. But the design of the gospel is to rectify all this confusion, and to put things in proper order again.

In the Acts, the apostles are spoken of as “men who are come to turn the world upside-down;” and the testimony is very true; not indeed in the sense-the factious, seditious sense-of their accusers, but in their own sense, and with regard to their own aim, which was “to turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God;” and to make men “new creatures;” with whom old things had passed away, and all things had become new.

Let us, therefore, endeavour to consider and improve what David says of his aversion:-“I hate vain thoughts;” and what he says of his affection:-“But thy law do I love.”