chanted a song of triumph over the fallen enemies of Israel. In this song, we read: "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be."1 Jael had treacherously slain Sisera whom she had decoyed into her tent. No argument is needed to show the inconsistency of such an act with the precepts of Christianity. Yet it receives from the mouth of a Prophetess the most distinguished praise. The motive of the act was a high and unselfish one; the deed which sprang from it was wrong, though ignorantly done. "If we can overlook the treachery and violence which belonged to the morals of the age and country, and bear in mind Jael's ardent sympathies with the oppressed people of God, her faith in the right of Israel to possess the land in which they were now slaves, her zeal for the glory of Jehovah as against the gods of Canaan, and the heroic courage and firmness with which she executed her deadly purpose, we shall be ready to yield her the praise which is her due." "Deborah speaks of Jael's deed by the light of her own age, which did not make manifest the evil of guile and bloodshed; the light in ours does."3 What shall be said, in the light of the Gospel, of Deborah's applause of Jael? It is merited if applied to the motive; it is misplaced when directed to the act. The act was right "according to that dispensation," where "love your friend and hate your enemy" was the highest recognized rule of conduct. Deborah was cognizant of no broader rule of morality.

Nowhere do the deepest emotions of the religious mind find so pathetic an expression as in the Psalms. Yet this collection embraces, in addition to lyrics composed by David, others of an earlier date, and many of later origin, ex

1

1 Judges v. 24. 2" Speaker's Commentary," Judges v. 24.

3 Ibid., Judges iv. 21.

'See Dr. Mozely's remarks, Ruling Ideas, etc., p. 163 seq.

tending down beyond the Exile. And they bear the traces of the elder dispensation out of which they were produced. The Christian reader occasionally meets with imprecations that grate upon his ear, from their seeming antagonism to the humane precepts of the New Testament. This feeling is not confined to sentimental religionists who would subtract righteousness from religion. It is generally felt. Some have sought to construe these passages as a mere prophecy of what is actually to befall evil-doers; but this untenable interpretation simply shows the pressure of the difficulty which it seeks to avoid. Some would consider them an outburst of righteous indignation, free from all personal vindictiveness, like the cry of Milton in the Sonnet upon the Massacre of the Waldenses:

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold."

More commonly it is alleged that such imprecations were uttered by David in his character as theocratic king, as personating the Messiah, and with reference to the enemies of Christ. But if imprecations were uttered by David and other authors of the Psalms, from what may be called public considerations as distinguished from personal resentment, it still remains true that Jesus himself did not pour out maledictions against his foes, or against the enemies of his kingdom; for the denunciations uttered with reference to the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt. xxiii.), though expressive of indignation as well as grief, are not to be thus construed. On the contrary, He bade his disciples pray for those who hated them and their cause. They were rebuked for wishing to call down fire from heaven to consume his enemies. He himself prayed on the cross for the pardon of his destroyers. Among his precepts we feel ourselves in a new atmosphere, where the retributive sentiment is no longer uppermost.

But do all the maledictions in the Psalms admit of being referred to sympathy with divine justice, as contrasted with personal revenge? Is there not a residue which do not come under this category? Who can suppose the 109th Psalm to emanate wholly from this impersonal motive, or to have been written by a Christian disciple? "Let his prayer become sin," "let his days be few," "let there be none to extend mercy to him," "let his children be continually vagabonds and beg," "let his posterity be cut off "compare these invocations with the Sermon on the Mount.

The truth is that the rule of retaliation-" an eye for an eye”—had been given to them of old time, but Christ gave another law, the law of love. Forbearance, and mercy to enemies are not unknown to the Old Testament; but they are in the background. They did not find that place in the Old Testament type of piety, which is given them in the teaching and example of Jesus. If Christ had nothing new to teach, why should he teach at all? To expect all the characteristic graces of the Gospel in the writers of the Psalms, and to complain if they are absent, is not less unreasonable than to wonder that flowers do not blossom in January. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The revelation of justice must precede that of forgiveness; and revenge, which Lord Bacon calls a kind of wild justice, bad as it is, is a less evil than torpidity of conscience. It was well that men should learn to abhor wickedness; the Gospel has taught us to discriminate between the evil principle and the person in whose character it mingles. The method of progress in the revelation of the Gospel is like that which is to govern its spread: "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

In the ancient Scriptures there is one book, analogous in

'John i. 17.

2 Mark iv. 28.

its structure to the Psalms, but of an ethical character,— the Book of Proverbs. It is an "anthology from the sayings of the sages of Israel, taking its name from the chiefest of them;" for it is a compilation which did not see the light in its present form until centuries after the time of Solomon. It is like the Psalms, which are "an anthology from the hymns, not of David only, but of the sons of Korah and others, some named, and some anonymous." The Proverbs are distinguished from heathen literature of a similar kind by the characteristic elements of the Old Testament religion which are found in them.

The Fear of the

Yet in the pro

Lord is made the beginning of Wisdom. minence given to prudential motives, in the stress laid upon temporal rewards, the difference of tone from that of the Gospel is manifest. It is the point of view of the earlier dispensation.2

The difference between the Christian and the Jewish Dispensation is affirmed by Jesus in the reply which he made to the disciples when they were disposed to call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable Samaritans, in imitation of the Prophet Elijah. "Wist ye not," he said,for the answer should probably be read as a question— "Wist ye not what manner of spirit ye are of?" The Spirit of God that animated them was a spirit of forbearance and love. The Spirit of God was with Elijah; but

1.66

"Speaker's Commentary," Introd. to Proverbs.

2 When the historical and progressive character of Revelation is clearly apprehended, the value of such books, for example, as Ruth, Esther, and Canticles, is easily discerned. There is no book in the Old Testament which does not aid in illustrating the Dispensation. The moral standards, the social and religious sentiments, engendered at a given stage of Revelation, are reflected in the contemporaneous literature that springs up within its circle. All of this literature is stamped with a character which distinguishes it from the products of Gentile thought.

3 Luke 1x. 55.

4 Compare Luke i. 17.

the retributive sentiment—the stern tone of justice-marked the elder Dispensation. It was a high, but not the highest, not the complete, expression of the principle of goodness.

The superiority of Christianity over the Judaic system, and the fact that it effected more than a bare purification of a corrupted doctrine and ritual, are involved in the reply of Jesus to the question of his disciples about fastingwhy he did not make them to fast, as John made his disciples. "New wine," he said, "must be put into new bottles."1 Institutions must conform to the doctrine which they embody. They must be new, because that is new. A new type of piety must create a new ritual congenial with itself. It will not brook customs incongruous with it. Closely connected as his religion was with the antecedent faith, it was yet no mere reproduction of the old. It was something original, differing from the former doctrine; though, in some sense, the complement of it. The New Testament authors call the hallowed rites of the Old Testament, shadows,-unsubstantial images of the realities of which the believer in Christ is possessed. Indignant that Christian believers should retreat back to the Mosaic observances, the Apostle Paul styles them "weak and beggarly elements," or rudiments, which the Gospel has left behind. The law which formed the kernel of the Mosaic Revelation is described in its moral as well as ceremonial features, as a schoolmaster, taking charge of the unripe youth, and leading him to a place where this provisional office is superseded."

Apart from all other defects, the Apostle Paul sets forth the radical insufficiency of the Old Testament system. It was, in its predominant character, a law-system. Law, coming from without, had to encounter the principle of sin

1

Luke v. 38, (Matt. ix. 17, Mark ii. 22.) 3 Gal. iv. 9.

2 Col. ii. 17. 4 Gal. iii. 24, 25.