EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (2)

Verse 6.—“I have hated.” Holy men have strong passions, and are not so mincing and charitable towards evil doers as smooth-tongued latitudinarians would have them. He who does not hate evil does not love good. There is such a thing as a good hater.—C. H. S.

Verse 6.—“They that regard lying vanities.” The Romanists feign miracles of the saints to make them, as they suppose, the more glorious. They say that the house wherein the Virgin Mary was when the angel Gabriel came unto her was, many hundred years after, translated, first, out of Galilee into Dalmatia, above 2,000 miles, and thence over the sea into Italy, where also it removed from one place to another, till at length it found a place where to abide, and many most miraculous cures, they say, were wrought by it, and that the very trees when it came, did bow unto it. Infinite stories they have of this nature, especially in the Legend of Saints, which they call “The Golden Legend,” a book so full of gross stuff that Ludovicus Vives, a Papist, but learned and ingenuous, with great indignation cried out, “What can be more abominable than that book?” and he wondered why they should call it “golden,” when as he that wrote it was a man “of an iron mouth and of a leaden heart.” And Melchior Canus, a Romish bishop, passed the same censure upon that book, and complains (as Vives also had done before him), that Laertius wrote the lives of philosophers, and Suetonius the lives of the Cæsars, more sincerely than some did the lives of the saints and martyrs.

They are most vain and superstitious in the honour which they give to the relics of the saints; as their dead bodies, or some parts of them; their bones, flesh, hair; yea, their clothes that they wore, or the like. “You may now, everywhere,” saith Erasmus, “see held out for gain, Mary’s milk, which they honour almost as much as Christ’s consecrated body; prodigious oil; so many pieces of the cross, that if these were all gathered together a great ship would scarce carry them. Here Francis’s hood set forth to view; there the innermost garment of the Virgin Mary; in one place, Anna’s comb; in another place, Joseph’s stocking; in another place, Thomas of Canterbury’s shoe; in another place, Christ’s foreskin, which, though it be a thing uncertain, they worship more religiously than Christ’s whole person. Neither do they bring forth these things as things that may be tolerated, and to please the common people, but all religion almost is placed in them.”[4]—Christopher Cartwright.

Verse 6.—The sense lies thus, that heathen men, when any danger or difficulty approacheth them, are solemnly wont to apply themselves to auguries and divinations, and so to false gods, to receive advice and direction from them: but doing so and observing their responses most superstitiously, they yet gain nothing at all by it. These David detests, and keeps close to God, hoping for no aid but from him.—H. Hammond, D.D.

Verse 7.—“I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy.”—In the midst of trouble faith will furnish matter of joy, and promise to itself gladness, especially from the memory of by-past experiences of God’s mercy; as here, “I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy.”... The ground of our gladness, when we have found a proof of God’s kindness to us should not be in the benefit so much as in the fountain of the benefit; for this giveth us hope to drink again of the like experience from the fountain which did send forth that benefit. Therefore David says, “I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy.”—David Dickson.

Verse 7.—“Thou hast considered my trouble:”

Verse 7.—“Thou hast known my soul in adversities.” One day a person who, by the calamities of war, sickness, and other affliction, had been reduced from a state of affluence to penury, came to Gotthold in great distress. He complained that he had just met one of his former acquaintances, who was even not distantly related to him, but that he had not condescended to bow, far less to speak to him, and had turned his eyes away, and passed him as if he had been a stranger. O sir, he exclaimed with a sigh, how it pained me! I felt as if a dagger had pierced my heart! Gotthold replied, Don’t think it strange at all. It is the way of the world to look high, and to pass unnoticed that which is humble and lowly. I know, however, of One who, though he dwelleth on high, humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth (Ps. cxiii. 5, 6), and of whom the royal prophet testifies: “Thou hast known my soul in adversities.” Yes; though we have lost our rich attire, and come to him in rags; though our forms be wasted because of grief, and waxed old (Ps. vi. 7, Luth. Ver.); though sickness and sorrow have consumed our beauty like a moth (Ps. xxxix. 11); though blushes, and tears, and dust, overspread our face (Ps. lxix. 7), he still recognises, and is not ashamed to own us. Comfort yourself with this, for what harm will it do you at last, though men disown, if God the Lord have not forgotten you?—Christian Scriver.

Verse 8.—He openeth and no man shutteth. Let us bless the Lord for an open door which neither men nor devils can close. We are not in man’s hands yet, because we are in the hands of God: else had our feet been in the stocks and not in the large room of liberty. Our enemies, if they were as able as they are willing, would long ago have treated us as fowlers do the little birds when they enclose them in their hand.—C. H. S.

Verse 9.—“Mine eye is consumed with grief.” This expression seems to suggest that the eye really suffers under the influence of grief. There was an old idea, which still prevails amongst the uninstructed, that the eye, under extreme grief, and with a constant profuse flow of tears, might sink away and perish under the ordeal. There is no solid foundation for this idea, but there is a very serious form of disease of the eyes, well known to oculists by the title of Glaucoma, which seems to be very much influenced by mental emotions of a depressing nature. I have known many striking instances of cases in which there has been a constitutional proneness to Glaucoma, and in which some sudden grief has brought on a violent access of the disease and induced blindness of an incurable nature. In such instances the explanation seems to be somewhat as follows. It is essential to the healthy performance of the functions of the eye, that it should possess a given amount of elasticity, which again results from an exact balance between the amount of fluid within the eye, and the external fibrous case or bag that contains or encloses it. If this is disturbed, if the fluid increases unduly in quantity, and the eye becomes too hard, pain and inflammation may be suddenly induced in the interior of the eye, and sight may become rapidly extinguished. There are a special set of nerves that preside over this peculiar physical condition, and keep the eye in a proper state of elasticity; and it is a remarkable fact, that through a long life, as a rule, we find that the eye preserves this elastic state. If, however, the function of these nerves is impaired, as it may readily be under the influence of extreme grief, or any depressing agent, the eye may become suddenly hard. Until a comparatively recent date, acute Glaucoma, or sudden hardening of the eye, attended with intense pain and inflammation, caused complete and hopeless blindness; but in the present day it is capable of relief by means of an operation. The effect of grief in causing this form of blindness seems to be an explanation of the text, “Mine eye is consumed with grief.”[5]

Verses 9, 10:—

Verse 10.—“Mine iniquity:” Italian version, “my pains;” because that death and all miseries are come into the world by reason of sin, the Scripture doth often confound the names of the cause and of the effects.—John Diodati.

Verse 10.—I find that when the saints are under trial and well humbled, little sins raise great cries in the conscience; but in prosperity, conscience is a pope that gives dispensations and great latitude to our hearts. The cross is therefore as needful as the crown is glorious.—Samuel Rutherford.

Verse 11.—“I was a reproach among all mine enemies.” If anyone strives after patience and humility, he is a hypocrite. If he allows himself in the pleasures of this world, he is a glutton. If he seeks justice, he is impatient; if he seeks it not, he is a fool. If he would be prudent, he is stingy; if he would make others happy, he is dissolute. If he gives himself up to prayer, he is vainglorious. And this is the great loss of the church, that by means like these many are held back from goodness! which the Psalmist lamenting says, “I became a reproof among all mine enemies.”—Chrysostom, quoted by J. M. Neale.

Verse 11.—“They that did see me without fled from me.” I once heard the following relation from an old man of the world, and it occurs to me, as illustrative of what we are now considering. He was at a public assembly, and saw there an individual withdrawing herself from the crowd, and going into a corner of the room. He went up to her, she was an old and intimate friend of his; he addressed himself to her—she, with a sigh, said, “Oh, I have seen many days of trouble since we last met.” What does the man of the world do? Immediately he withdrew himself from his sorrow-stricken friend and hid himself in the crowd. Such is the sympathy of the world with Christ or his servants.—Hamilton Verschoyle.

Verse 12.—“I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind.” A striking instance of how the greatest princes are forgotten in death is found in the deathbed of Louis XIV. “The Louis that was, lies forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned ‘to some poor persons, and priests of the Chapelle Ardente,’ who make haste to put him ‘in two lead coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.’ The new Louis with his court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the royal tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d’Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no more.”—Thomas Carlyle in “The French Revolution.”

Verse 12.—“I am forgotten,” etc. As a dying man with curtains drawn, whom friends have no hope of, and therefore look off from; or rather like a dead man laid aside out of sight and out of mind altogether, and buried more in oblivion than in his grave; when the news is, “she is dead, trouble not the Master.” Luke viii. 49.—Anthony Tuckney, D.D., 1599-1670.

Verse 12.—“I am like a broken vessel.” As a vessel, how profitable soever it hath been to the owner, and how necessary for his turn, yet, when it is broken is thrown away, and regarded no longer: even so such is the state of a man forsaken of those whose friend he hath been so long as he was able to stand them in stead, to be of advantage to them.—Robert Cawdray.

Verses 12-15:—

Verse 13.—“I have heard the slander of many.” From my very childhood, when I was first sensible of the concernments of men’s souls, I was possessed with some admiration to find that everywhere the religious, godly sort of people, who did but exercise a serious care of their own and other men’s salvation, were made the wonder and obloquy of the world, especially of the most vicious and flagitious men; so that they that professed the same articles of faith, the same commandments of God to be their law, and the same petitions of the Lord’s prayer to be their desire, and so professed the same religion, did everywhere revile those that endeavoured to live in good earnest in what they said. I thought this was impudent hypocrisy in the ungodly, worldly sort of men—to take those for the most intolerable persons in the land who are but serious in their own religion, and do but endeavour to perform what all their enemies also vow and promise. If religion be bad, and our faith be not true, why do these men profess it? If it be true and good, why do they hate and revile them that would live in the serious practice of it, if they will not practise it themselves? But we must not expect reason when sin and sensuality have made men unreasonable.