" Thus the men that wronged and tormented the Psalmist were
enemies to God and goodness, as well as to himself.
We know that the virtue of the injured and tormented Psalmist was not
the virtue of the Gospel; but it _was_ virtue. It was the virtue of the
law. And the law was holy, just, and good, so far as it went. If the
resentment of the Psalmist had been cherished against some good or
innocent man, it would have been wicked; as it was, it was righteous.
True, if the Psalmist had lived under the better and brighter
dispensation of Christianity, he would neither have felt the reproaches
heaped on him so keenly, nor moaned under them so piteously, nor
resented them so warmly. He might then have learned
"To hate the sin with all his heart,
And still the sinner love."
He might have counted reproach and persecution matters for joy and
gladness. And instead of calling for vengeance on his enemies, he might
have cried, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." But
the Psalmist did _not_ live under the dispensation of the Gospel. He
lived under a system which, good as it was, made nothing perfect. And he
acted in accordance with that system. And the intelligent Christian, and
the enlightened lover of the Bible, will not be ashamed either of the
Psalmist, or of the Book which gives us the instructive and interesting
revelations of his experience.
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