The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^13. Now if man were to be through the whole of his life in toil, and in sufferings, in pain, in tortures, in prison, in scourgings, in hunger, and in thirst, every day and every hour through the whole length of life, to the period of old age, yet the whole life of man is but a few days. That labour being over, there is to come the Eternal Kingdom; there is to come happiness without end; there is to come equality with the Angels; there is to come Christ's inheritance, and Christ, our “joint Heir,” is to come. How great is the labour, for which you receive so great a recompense? The Veterans who serve in the wars, and move in the midst of wounds for so many years, enter upon the military service from their youth, and quit it in old age: and to obtain a few days of repose in their old age, when age itself begins to weigh down those whom the wars do not break down, how great hardships do they endure; what marches, what frosts, what burning suns; what privations, what wounds, and what dangers! And while suffering all these things, they fix their thoughts on nothing but those few days of repose in old age, at which they know not whether they will ever arrive. Thus it is, the “steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in His way.” This is the point with which I commenced. If you “delight in the way” of Christ, and art truly a Christian (for he is a Christian indeed who does not despise the way of Christ, but “delights in” following Christ's “way” through His sufferings), do not thou go by any other way than that by which He Himself has also gone. It appears painful, but it is the very way of safety; another perhaps is delightful, but it is full of robbers. “And he delights in His way.”

14. “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds his hand”. See what it is “to delight in” Christ's “way.” Should it happen that he suffers some tribulation; some forfeiture of honour, some affliction, some loss, some contumely, or all those other accidents incident to mankind frequently in this life, he sets the Lord before him, what kind of trials He endured! And, “though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds his hand,” because He has suffered before him. For what should you fear, O man, whose steps are ordered so, that you should “delight in the way of the Lord”? What should you fear? Pain? Christ was scourged. Should thou fear contumelies? He was reproached with, “You have a devil,” who was Himself casting out the devils. Haply you fear faction, and the conspiracy of the wicked. Conspiracy was made against Him. You can not make clear the purity of your conscience in some accusation, and sufferest wrong and violence, because false witnesses are listened to against you. False witness was borne against Him first, not only before His death, but also after His resurrection....

On the Third Part of the Psalm.

1. “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”.

If it is spoken but in the person of one single individual, how long is the whole life of one man? And what is there wonderful in the circumstance, that a single man, fixed in some one part of the earth, should not, throughout the whole space of his life, being so short as man's life is, have ever seen “the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread,” although he may have advanced from youth to age. It is not anything worthy of marvel; for it might have happened, that before his lifetime there should have been some “righteous man seeking bread;” it might have happened, that there had been some one in some other part of the earth not where he himself was. Hear too another thing, which makes an impression upon us. Any single one among you (look you) who has now grown old, may perhaps, when, looking back upon the past course of his life, he turns over in his thoughts the persons whom he has known, not find any instance of a righteous man begging bread, or of his seed begging bread, suggest itself to him; but nevertheless he turns to the inspired Scriptures, and finds that righteous Abraham was straitened, and suffered hunger in his own country, and left that land for another; he finds too that the son of the very same man, Isaac, removed to other countries in search of bread, for the same cause of hunger. And how will it be true to say, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”? And if he finds this true in the duration of his own life, he finds it is otherwise in the inspired writings, which are more trustworthy than human life is.