A Psalm like this should have corrected one of the most dangerous errors of which the Jewish people were guilty. They were inordinately proud of the high distinctions which God had conferred upon them, and regarded all other men as common and unclean. In this Psalm Jewish narrowness gives place to the broadest and most generous humanity. The Psalmist passes across all intervening generations, and stands by the side of Christian Apostles, glows with the same fervour, burns with the same universal charity, exults with them in the bright vision of a regenerated and sanctified world. The general impression produced both by the Jewish and Christian Scriptures seems to me to be that in this very world, which has been made desolate by the crimes of men and by the judgments of God, truth and righteousness are to win a secure and universal victory; and we are to see how bright and blessed a thing a man's life may be made before this mortal puts on immortality, and this corruptible incorruption. "The earth shall yield her increase."
I. When all the people praise God, we may expect a condition of universal and unexampled material prosperity. The providence of God has so ordered it that the great discoveries and inventions which are now giving to man an authority over the material world all seem to originate within the limits of Christendom, and to be intended to augment the riches and power of Christian nations. We have not yet penetrated into all the secrets of nature; as the world advances in morality and religion, so that it can be safely trusted with the control and direction of still more gigantic powers than we can now command, He from whom cometh every good and perfect gift will inspire with brightest genius the men whom He shall choose to make the more wonderful discoveries He has reserved for the future.
II. The universal triumph of the Christian faith will powerfully affect the intellectual condition of our race. The religion of Christ is an intellectual as well as a spiritual discipline. Its great facts and truths exalt and invigorate every faculty of the human mind, as well as purify the affections of the soul.
III. When the rich and the poor alike shall be educated, industrious, and upright; when every throne shall be established in righteousness, and all laws shall be just, the political and social condition of mankind will pass into a far higher and more perfect form than the world has ever witnessed yet. Separate the morals of Christianity from the Divine energies with which through nineteen centuries they have been associated, they become powerless abstractions; let them remain in living unity with the history of "God manifest in the flesh" and the perpetual presence of the Holy Ghost in the world, they will not only secure the victory of justice, purity, and generosity in individual souls, but will regenerate the laws of States, the constitution of society, and the whole temporal life of mankind.
R. W. Dale, Discourses on Special Occasions,p. 215.
References: Psalms 67:6. C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 127; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 118. Psalms 67:6; Psalms 67:7. Ibid., Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 819. Psalms 67:7. Congregationalist,vol. vii., p. 406. Psalms 68:4. G. W. McCree, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 74.