Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord.
The blessed tendency of true piety
The subject is the blessed tendency of true piety, and the truly pious man is described as one that “feareth the Lord” and “walketh in His ways.”
I. Its tendency is to make business prosperous (verse 2). This stands in splendid contrast to the terrible threat which Moses addressed to the Israelites of old, should they break God’s law (Exodus 25:35; Deuteronomy 18:40).
II. Its tendency is to make the family happy (verse 3). Ungodly families are stars wandering from their orbits, but a truly pious family, small though it be, is an orb rolling round the eternal Sun of Righteousness, and from it deriving its life, its light, and its harmony.
III. Its tendency is to make the country blessed (verses 4, 5). “Righteousness exalteth a nation.”
1. In material wealth. Truth, honesty, integrity, in a people; are the best guarantees of commercial advancement. Credit is the best capital in the business of a nation as well as in the business of an individual, and credit is built on righteous principles.
2. In social enjoyments. According as the principles of veracity, uprightness, and honour, reign in society, will be the freeness, the heartiness, and the enjoyment of social intercourse.
3. In moral power. The true majesty of a kingdom lies in its moral virtues.
IV. Its tendency is to make the life long (verse 5). There should be a full stop after the word “Children,” and the word “and” is not in the original. Genuine piety tends to long life.
1. Long life depends upon obedience be the laws of our constitution, physical, mental, and moral laws.
2. In order to obey the laws of our constitution, those laws must be understood.
3. In order to understand those laws, man must study them. They will not come to him by intuition, inspiration, or revelation. He must study them, study nature.
4. In order to study them effectively he must have supreme sympathy with their Author. (Homilist.)
The labour question and Christianity
Prevailing distress among the poor, calamitous conflicts between Labour and Capital, call for earnest thought, and wise and faithful utterance from the Church of Christ. Working-men claim their right “to secure the full enjoyment of the wealth they create,” and they certainly have a right to a larger “share in the gains of advancing civilization.” How is this to be realized?
I. Not by Socialistic revolution and Communistic confiscation and redistribution. These methods are contrary alike to nature, reason, revelation and experience.
II. Organization, bureau registration, co-operation, arbitration, legislation, etc., are largely empiric and artificial expedients, productive at best of only partial and superficial amendment.
III. The Christian religion will secure whatever is good in the above, and, besides, will produce the only radical and permanent cure.
1. It teaches and realizes a Brotherhood of Humanity, embracing rich and poor, in which, it one member suffer, all suffer.
2. Its golden law strikes at the selfishness of the rich in refusing to consider the poor, secures the immediate relief of Christian philanthropy, and the permanent improvement of “things just and equal” (Colossians 4:1). “A fair day’s work, etc., fair day’s wage.”
3. It gives best promise of regulating the labour-market by checking over-crowding in the easier callings, substituting conscientious choice and providential guidance for the unreasoning selfishness which makes time and means for pleasure the great consideration--e.g. City factory and sewing-room always crowded, farm and domestic service rarely if ever fully supplied.
4. It imparts dignity and self-respect through union and fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, a brother mechanic, and the only perfect model of what the working-man may be and ought to be. Thus alone can he realize his ideal aristocracy of “industrial and moral worth,” instead of wealth and birth.
5. It secures him the best of all help, Self-help, and puts him in the way of working out his own salvation. The fruition of such culture will be, from his own stock, trusty and efficient representatives who “shall stand before kings.”
6. It will make his home the scene of highest comfort, purest and most stable domestic happiness and family welfare. (W. M. Roger.)
Piety in its principle, development, and blessedness
Here we have--
I. Piety in principle. The love to God that constitutes piety is characterized by two things:--
1. Predominancy. Most men have a kind of love for the Supreme, that flows through them with other natural emotions, but attains no ascendancy over other sentiments, no control over the other faculties. The love to God that constitutes piety must be the controlling disposition.
2. Permanency. Perhaps, in most minds, the sentiment of love to God, of gratitude, adoration, and even of reverence, arises at times: especially when moving amidst the grand and beautiful in nature, or experiencing the enjoyment of some special blessings. But this sentiment, to become piety, must be crystallized, and settled as a rock. It is the embryo of all excellence in all worlds. It is a seed out of which grows all that is beautiful and fruitful in the Eden of God.
II. Piety in development. How is this principle rightly developed? Not in mere songs and hymns, and prayers, and ceremonies, but in conduct. “That walketh in His ways.” “His ways,” the ways of truth, honesty, purity, and holy love. True piety is not a dormant element sleeping in the soul, like grain buried under the mountains, it struggles into form, and takes action, it walks, and its walk is onward and upward.
III. Piety in blessedness. (David Thomas, D. D.)
On religion
I. Religion is pleasant. No man ever performed an action which was wise and good, such as supplying the wants of the industrious poor, relieving the distress of the orphan, or vindicating the character of the worthy from unmerited detraction, without meeting the reward of beneficence in that very hour. He will feel a secret satisfaction, which can never be equalled by the pleasures of sense. He may not be able, it is true, to execute all his laudable designs; but the very consciousness of good intention is more delightful than the triumphs of successful iniquity. “This is the way of religion--walk thou in it.”
II. Religion is profitable. The very duties which religion inculcates, it cannot have escaped your observation, have a natural tendency to procure the comforts and conveniences of life. Health, honour, riches, and that good name which is better than riches, are, in many cases, part of the recompense of religion. Religion embraces both the temporal welfare of individuals, and the prosperity of states and of empires. “Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord, that walketh in His ways.” Blessed are the young; blessed are the aged; blessed are the prosperous; and blessed the afflicted. (T. Laurie, D. D.)
Relation of gladness to godly fear
G. K. Chesterton remarks--“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of pleasure.” When life ceases to be a mystery it ceases to hold the secret of joy. The world that has banished awe has banished wholesome laughter. The ages that have known most of religious fear are the ages from which have come the most lyrical notes of Christian joy. Those older ages lived and breathed and rejoiced in God amidst their dark theologies. Bernard of Clairvaux had stern, stupendous ideas of the Deity, and yet it was he who sang--
“Jesus, the very thought of Thee,
With sweetness fills my breast.”
Samuel Rutherford was steeped in all the rigours of a Calvinism which touches the very springs of awe in the human breast, and yet from him came the love letters of Christianity--letters too sacred for any except our most solitary moods. The moment we cease to tremble before God we cease to know joy. (W. C. Piggott.)