velvet; and the burden that we have to draw behind us is laid upon wheels that will turn so easily that the load is diminished, inasmuch as for Duty He substitutes Himself and says to us, 'If ye love Me, keep My Commandments.'
So, dear brethren! here is a very easily applied, and a very far-reaching test for us who call ourselves Christians: Does our love and does our trust culminate in practical righteousness? We are all tempted to make too much of the emotions of the religious life, and too little of its persistent, dogged obedience. We are all too apt to think that a Christian is a man that believes in Jesus Christ. 'Justification by faith alone without the works of the law' used to be the watchword of the Evangelical Church. It might be so held as to be either a blessed truth or a great error, and many of us make it an error instead of a blessing.
On the other hand, there is only one way by which righteousness can be attained, and that is: first by faith and then by love. Here are three steps: 'we have known and believed the love that God hath to us'; that is the broad, bottom step. And above it 'we love Him because He first loved us,' that is the central one. And on the top of all, 'herein is our love made perfect that we keep His Commandments.' They that trust are they also who love Thy Name, and they who trust through love are, and only they are, the righteous.
ONE SAYING FROM THREE MEN
'The wicked hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved.'
—PSALM x. 6.
'Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.'
—PSALM xvi. 8.
'And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.'
—PSALM xxx. 6.
How differently the same things sound when said by different men! Here are three people giving utterance to almost the same sentiment of confidence. A wicked man says it, and it is insane presumption and defiance. A good man says it, having been lulled into false security by easy times, and it is a mistake that needs chastisement. A humble believing soul says it, and it is the expression of a certain and blessed truth. 'The wicked saith in his heart, I shall not be moved.' A good man, led astray by his prosperity, said, 'I shall not be moved,' and the last of the three put a little clause in which makes all the difference, 'because He is at my right hand, I shall never be moved.' So, then, we have the mad arrogance of godless confidence, the mistake of a good man that needs correction, and the warranted confidence of a believing soul.
I. The mad arrogance of godless confidence.
The 'wicked' man, in the psalm from which our first text comes, said a good many wrong things 'in his heart.' The tacit assumptions on which a life is based, though they may never come to consciousness, and still less to utterance, are the really important things. I dare say this 'wicked man' was a good Jew with his lips, and said his prayers all properly, but in his heart he had two working beliefs. One is thus expressed: 'As for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved.' The other is put into words thus: 'He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten, He hideth His face. He will never see it.'
That is to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two thoughts: either 'There is no God,' or 'He does not care what I do, and I am safe to go on for evermore in the present fashion.' It might seem as if a man with the facts of human life before him, could not, even in the insanest arrogance, say, 'I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity.' But we have an awful power—and the fact that we exercise, and choose to exercise, it is one of the strange riddles of our enigmatical existence and characters—of ignoring unwelcome facts, and going cheerily on as though we had annihilated them, because we do not reflect upon them. So this man, in the midst of a world in which there is no stay, and whilst he saw all round him the most startling and tragical instances of sudden change and complete collapse, stands quietly and says, 'Ah! I shall never be moved'; 'God doth not require it.'
That absurdity is the basis of every life that is not a life of consecration and devotion—so far as it has a basis of conviction at all. The 'wicked' man's true faith is this, absurd as it may sound when you drag it out into clear, distinct utterance, whatever may be his professions. I wonder if there are any of us whose life can only be acquitted of being utterly unreasonable and ridiculous by the assumption, 'I shall never be moved'?
Have you a lease of your goods? Do you think you are tenants at will or owners? Which? Is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all others? If there is not, what about the sanity of the man whose whole life is built upon a blunder? He is convicted of the grossest folly, unless he be assured that either there is no God, or that He does not care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of a continuance in our present state.
Do you say in your heart, 'I shall never be moved'? Then you must be strong enough to resist every tempest that beats against you. Is that so? 'I shall never be moved'—then nothing that contributes to your well-being will ever slip from your grasp, but you will be able to hold it tight. Is that so? 'I shall never be moved'—then there is no grave waiting for you. Is that so? Unless these three assumptions be warranted, every godless man is making a hideous blunder, and his character is the sentence pronounced by the loving lips of Incarnate Truth on the rich man who thought that he had 'much goods laid up for many years,' and had only to be merry—'Thou fool! Thou fool!'
If an engineer builds a bridge across a river without due calculation of the force of the winds that blow down the gorge, the bridge will be at the bottom of the stream some stormy night, and the train piled on the fragments of it in hideous ruin. And with equal certainty the end of the first utterer of this speech can be calculated, and is foretold in the psalm, 'The Lord is King for ever and ever. … The godless are perished out of the land.'
II. We have in our second text the mistake of a good man who has been lulled into false confidence.
The Psalmist admits his error by the acknowledgment that he spoke 'in my prosperity'; or, as the word might be rendered, 'in my security.' This suggests to us the mistake into which even good men, lulled by the quiet continuance of peaceful days, are certain to fall, unless there be continual watchfulness exercised by them.
It is a very significant fact that the word which is translated in our Authorised Version 'prosperity' is often rendered 'security,' meaning thereby, not safety, but a belief that I am safe. A man who is prosperous, or at ease, is sure to drop into the notion that 'to-morrow will be as this day, and much more abundant,' unless he keeps up unslumbering watchfulness against the insidious illusion of permanence. If he yields to the temptation, in his foolish security, forgetting how fragile are its foundations, and what a host of enemies surround him threatening it, then there is nothing for it but that the merciful discipline, which this Psalmist goes on to tell us he had to pass through by reason of his fall, shall be brought to bear upon him. The writer gives us a page of his own autobiography. 'In my security I said, I shall never be moved.' 'Lord! by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide Thy face.' What about the security then? What about 'I shall never be moved' then? 'I was troubled. I cried to Thee, O Lord!'—and then it was all right, his prayer was heard, and he was in 'security'—that is, safety—far more really when he was 'troubled' and sore beset than when he had been, as he fancied, sure of not being moved.
Long peace rusts the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. Our lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being, tend to make
