Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/56

 themselves, so long as they keep clear of overt acts of sin. The man who is here threatened with a vengeance from which there will be no escape (v. 22) is not himself perchance the thief; but he is one whose moral consciousness is of the same order, and who would do the same—opportunity favouring. He is not himself perchance the adulterer; but he is one who, being impure in heart, is ready for guilt, and pleases himself with the thought of it. Indebted for his virtue entirely to external restraints, he thinks himself free to give vent to censorious language, and to shed the venom of his tongue upon those who are nearest to him in blood. Here, then, there is not merely a protest in behalf of virtue, but it is a deep-going commixture of spiritual and ethical truth, with a promise of grace for the condign; it is a presentation of justice and of favour:—it is a discrimination of motives and characters also:—it is such that it vindicates its own Divine origination in the court of every human conscience. In this Psalm it is the voice of God we hear; for man has never spoken in any such manner as this to his fellows.

Let it be asked, then, in what manner the Divine and the human elements, in this one instance, sustain each other throughout all time? In tens of thousands of copies we possess this literary monument; and it is an imperishable and an unalterable document: it is liable to no decay or damage; and it may yet endure ages more than can be numbered: nothing on earth's surface is more safe from destruction; none can ever