1. That the Psalmist is not set up as our great example, and that his utterances are not given as the highest manifestation of goodness.
2. The Psalms are exceedingly instructive and interesting, and must have been of immense value, both as a means of comfort and improvement, to those to whom they were first given; but the perfection of divine revelation was yet to come. The Psalms are of incalculable value still, but they are not our standard of the highest virtue. John the Baptist was greater, higher, better than the Psalmist; yet the least of the followers of Jesus is higher than he.
3. But thirdly; we must not conclude that the feelings and expressions of the Psalmist were wicked, merely because they fell short of the highest Christian virtue. 'Revenge,' says one of our wisest men, 'is a wild kind of justice;' but it is justice notwithstanding, when called forth by real and grievous wrong. It is goodness, though not goodness of the highest kind. It is virtue, though not perfect Christian virtue. And the revenge of the Psalmist was provoked by wrong of the most grievous description. Read the account of the matter given in the Psalm itself. 'Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise; for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer. And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.' This was injustice, ingratitude, cruelty of the most grievous kind. And these wrongs had been continued till his health and strength wore reduced to the lowest point. 'I am gone,' says he, 'like the shadow when it declineth. My knees are weak; my flesh faileth; so that when men look at me, they shake their heads.'
And a similar cause is assigned for the revengeful expressions in the 69th Psalm. There we find the persecuted Psalmist saying, "They that hate me, and would destroy me, are my enemies wrongfully, and they are many and mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. For thy sake have I borne reproach: the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. I was the song of the drunkards. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some one to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but none appeared." 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.
5. Another of my objections to the Bible was grounded on the statement, that God visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children. But it is a fact, first, that children do suffer through the sins of their fathers. The children of drunkards, thieves, profligates, all suffer through the misdoings of their parents. It is also a fact, that men generally suffer through the misdoings of their fellow-men. We all suffer through the vices of our neighbors and countrymen. The sins of idlers, spendthrifts, misers, drunkards, gluttons, bigots, persecutors, tyrants, thieves, murderers, corrupt politicians, and sinners of every kind, are in this sense visited on us all. And we derive advantages on the other hand from the virtues of the good. And it would be a strange world, if no one could help or hurt another. It is better things are as they are. The advantages we receive from the good, tend to draw us to imitate their virtues. The sufferings entailed on us by the bad, tend to deter us from their vices.
And so it is with parents and children. Children are specially prone to imitate their parents. If they never suffered from the evil ways of their parents, they would be in danger of walking in those ways themselves for ever. When they suffer keenly from their parents' misdoings, there is ground to hope that they will themselves do better. I have known persons who were made teetotalers through the sufferings brought on them by the drunkenness of their fathers. And on the other hand; the blessings entailed on children by the virtue of their parents, tend to draw them to goodness. And I have known fathers, who would venture on evil deeds when they thought only of the suffering they might bring on themselves, who have been staggered, and have shrunk from their contemplated crimes, when they have thought of the ruin they might bring on their children. And where is the good parent who is not more powerfully stimulated to virtue and piety by thoughts of the blessings which he may secure thereby to his offspring? The whole arrangement, by which our conduct is made to entail good or evil on others, and by which the conduct of others is made to entail good or evil on us, tends to engage us all more earnestly in the war with evil, and to make us labor more zealously for the promotion of knowledge and righteousness among all mankind.
6. Another of my objections to the Bible was based on those passages which represent God as causing men to do bad deeds. Joseph tells his brethren, that it was not they, but God, who sent him into Egypt. David says, 'Let Shimei curse; for God hath bidden him.' Of course, the words of men like Joseph and David are not always the words of God. But Jesus Himself speaks of Judas as appointed or destined to his deed of treachery. What can we make of such passages? Does God make men wicked, or cause them to sin? We answer, No. How is it then? We answer, What God does is this: when men have made themselves wicked, He turns their wickedness to good account, by causing it to show itself in some particular way rather than in some other. God did not make the brethren of Joseph envious and malicious; but he caused their envy and malice to induce them to sell their brother into Egypt, rather than to kill him and throw him into a pit. The wickedness was their own; the particular turn given to it was of God. God did not make Shimei a base, bad man; but Shimei having become base and bad, God chose that his villany should spend itself on David, rather than on some other person. God did not make Judas a thief and a traitor; but Judas having made himself so, God so places him, that his avarice, his dishonesty and his treachery shall minister to the accomplishment of a great beneficent design. God did not teach the spirits that deceived Ahab to lie; but those spirits having given themselves to lying, God chose that they should practise their illusions on Ahab rather than on others. God did not make Pharaoh mean or tyrannical; but Pharaoh having become so, God chooses to employ his evil dispositions in bringing about remarkable displays of His power. God does not make politicians corrupt; but politicians having become corrupt, God chooses to place them in positions in which they can rob, and torment, and dishonor us, and so incite us to labor more zealously for the Christianization of our country. A man becomes a thief, and says, I will rob John Brown to-night. And he places himself in the way along which he expects John Brown to pass, and prepares himself for his deed of plunder. But God does not wish to have John Brown robbed; so He arranges that David Jones, a man whom he wishes to be relieved of his money, shall pass that way, and the thief robs him. The dishonesty is the thief's own, but it is God that determines the party on whom it shall be practised.