And first: he was certainly of a different opinion from nine persons out of ten, I fear from ninety-nine out of a hundred, of every country, every age, and every religion.
For, he says—Before I was troubled, I went wrong: but now have I kept Thy Word. Whereas nine people out of ten would say to God, if they dared—Before I was troubled, I kept Thy Word. But now that I am troubled; of course I cannot help going wrong.
He makes his troubles a reason for doing right. They make their troubles an excuse for doing wrong.
Is it not so? Do we not hear people saying, whenever they are blamed for doing what they know to be wrong—I could not help it? I was forced into it. What would you have a man do? One must live; and so forth.
One finds himself in danger, and tries to lie himself out of it. Another finds himself in difficulties, and begins playing ugly tricks in money matters. Another finds himself in want, and steals. The general opinion of the world is, that right-doing, justice, truth, and honesty, are very graceful luxuries for those who can afford them; very good things when a man is easy, prosperous, and well off, and without much serious business on hand: but not for the real hard work of life; not for times of ambition and struggle, any more than of distress and anxiety, or of danger and difficulty. In such times, if a man may not lie a little, cheat a little, do a questionable stroke of business now and then; how is he to live? So it is in the world, so it always was; and so it always will be. From statesmen ruling nations, and men of business “conducting great financial operations,” as the saying is now, down to the beggar-woman who comes to ask charity, the rule of the world is, that honesty is not the best policy; that falsehood and cunning are not only profitable, but necessary; that in proportion as a man is in trouble, in that proportion he has a right to go wrong.
A right to go wrong. A right to make bad worse. A right to break God’s laws, because we are too stupid or too hasty to find out what God’s laws are. A right, as the wise man puts it, to draw bills on nature which she will not honour; but return them on a man’s hands with “No effects” written across them, leaving the man to pay after all, in misery and shame. Truly said Solomon of old—The foolishness of fools is folly.
But the Psalmist, because he was inspired by the
Spirit of God, was of quite the opposite opinion. So far from thinking that his trouble gave him a right to go wrong, he thought that his trouble laid on him a duty to go right, more right than he had ever gone before; and that going right was the only possible way of getting out of his troubles.
“Take from me,” he cries, “the way of lying, and cause Thou me to make much of Thy law.
“I have chosen the way of truth, and Thy judgments have I laid before me.