ose who have chosen and loved evil, and find the righteous a standing
reproach. There is gathered against her also the world's steady
resentment of spiritual authority; the world's antipathy against all
that refuses to come to terms, or water down its witness to suit
changing fashions of men's thought. It is the same spirit which in
earlier days called the Christians "the enemies of the human race," and
in these later times directs its sneers and opposition against the
Creeds, the Sacraments, the priesthood--"the spirit of Antichrist."

The 44th Psalm, perhaps belonging to the time of the great Maccabaean
struggle, makes its pathetic appeal to God amidst the scorn and
blasphemy of the heathen, and, what is worse, the bitterness of
apparent failure and defeat which seem to justify the heathen.

My confusion is daily before me:
The shame of my face hath covered me:

{89}

For the voice of the slanderer and blasphemer:
For the enemy and avenger.

Faith indeed does not fail the Psalmist: he clings to God; he still
recognises the hand of God throughout these sufferings; he prefers to
attribute them to God rather than to man:

_Thou_ makest us to turn our backs upon our enemies: ...
_Thou_ lettest us be eaten up like sheep: ...
_Thou_ sellest Thy people for nought:
And takest no money for them.

Nevertheless, it is all a puzzle, a bewildering maze in which faith
seems walking blindfold, like the Lord Himself when the malice of the
high-priest's servants bandaged His eyes and smote Him in derision and
bade Him prophesy! The light of God's presence seems to have gone out
of the world:

Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face:
And forgettest our misery and trouble.

Very similar is the 74th Psalm, with its same high consciousness of
faithfulness to God, the same agonising sense of contradiction in the
enemies of God being suffered to break down {90} the carved work of the
sanctuary, the same feeling of helplessness and lack of guidance. The
adversaries' banners are manifest enough, _their_ tokens are clear; but
with the faithful it is otherwise:

We see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more.

O God, how long! ... Remember! ... Arise! ... Forget not!

Probably of the same period is the 79th, written apparently in the very
hour of the heathen triumph, when the Temple is defiled, Jerusalem "an
heap of stones," the blood of the righteous flowing on every side like
water. And there is