And he set Judges in the land.
Good government should be the result of piety in rulers
Alfred the Great was a distinguished statesman and warrior, as well as zealous for true religion. St. Louis of France exercised a wise control over Church and State. On the other hand, Charlemagne’s successor, the Emperor Louis the Pious, and our own Kings Edward the Confessor and the saintly Henry VI were alike feeble and inefficient; the zeal of the Spanish kings and their kinswoman, Mary Tudor, is chiefly remembered for its ghastly cruelty; and in comparatively modem times the misgovernment of the States of the Church was a byword throughout Europe. Many causes combined to produce this mingled record. The one most clearly contrary to the chronicler’s teaching was an immoral opinion that the Christian should cease to be a citizen, and that the saint has no duties to society. This view is often considered to be the special vice of monasticism, but it reappears in one form or another in every generation. In our own day there are those who think that a newspaper should have no interest for a really earnest Christian. According to their ideas, Jehoshaphat should have divided his time between a private oratory in his palace and the public services of the temple, and have left his kingdom to the mercy of unjust judges at home and heathen enemies abroad, or else have abdicated in favour of some kinsmen whose heart was not so perfect with Jehovah. (W. H. Bennett, M.A.)
The origin and right of human judicature
The administration is for the Lord.
I. The power of the judgment is God’s right.
II. The matter of the judgment is God’s cause.
III. The issue of the judgment is God’s end. “Is with you in the judgment.” (Dean Young.)