October 22

Surely the. wrath of man shall praise thee. - Psalms 76:10.

THIS is, indeed, far from being the natural design and tendency of it. In this sense, “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” But his wisdom and power are infinite; and by his overruling providence he causes the expression of human rage to conduce to the display of his own glory, and thus turns the curse into a blessing. The Bible abounds with instances of this, and a very striking exemplification will be found in the case of Jehoiakim, king of Judah.

Jeremiah was commanded to write on a roll all the words which had been denounced against Israel and Judah. This he did by means of Baruch, who not only transcribed the roll, but read it in the court of the temple of the Lord, the people standing underneath. Michaiah heard him, and related the substance to the princes, who were assembled in the scribes’ chamber, in the house of the king. The king immediately ordered Jehudi to go and fetch the roll. “Now, the king sat in the winter-house, in the ninth month; and there was a fire on the hearth, burning before him. And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was burning on the hearth.”

Vain rage! would this hinder the execution of the threatenings? Nay; it could not prevent the infliction of them. Jeremiah is ordered to take another roll:- “After that the king had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying, Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim, the king of Judah had burned.” Nor was this all: the roll, instead of being eventually destroyed or injured, was even enlarged and improved. But since the days of Jehoiakim there have been, and there are to be found, persons who would destroy the Scriptures.

We seem to shudder at the very proposal; we wonder that any person should be capable of such an action as this wicked king, who cut to pieces the divine roll and threw it into the fire. About one hundred and seventy years before Christ, Antiochus caused all the copies of the Jewish Scriptures he could find to be burnt; and three hundred and three years after, Dioclesian, the Roman emperor, by an edict, ordered all the Scriptures to be committed to the flames; and Eusebius, the historian, tells us he saw large heaps of them burning in the market-place. We have heard of Voltaire and Paine, and other lampooners and revilers of the Bible, who have, by their deeds, more than betrayed the wishes of their hearts; and every wicked man, though restrained from burning the Bible, may be considered as an enemy to it.

Men make the Book their enemy, and then they become its enemies, and hate it, because it does not prophesy good of them, but evil. As Carlile, the infidel, said to Mr. Wilberforce, “I’ll bear nothing from that book. How can you suppose that I can bear that book? For, if that book be true, I am a miserable man.”