ay. We are too much inclined to minimise the reality
of sin, and to imagine that it is {38} disappearing before civilisation
and the growth of gentler ways and sentiments. The Psalmists knew
better--they knew that the battle was to the death, and that God alone
can win His own victory; and they express, sternly and roughly perhaps,
but with the utmost sincerity, their undying faith that He will; that
the overthrow of malice and falsehood and treachery must one day be
manifested,

God shall suddenly shoot at them with a swift arrow,

and that the part we each have played in the battle will be the true
measure of our worth.

All they that are true of heart shall be glad.
(lxiv.)

In this sense we may even repeat the dreadful conclusion of the
Babylonian exiles' Psalm:

Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children:
And throweth them against the stones.
(cxxxvii.)

For what are Babylon and her children but the powers of falsehood,
oppression, and cruelty? and blessed still and ever is he who is afire
with indignation against such things, who scorns {39} any easy
compromise with them, who burns to deal a blow at them for Jerusalem's
sake!

And there is still another justification for the continued use of these
Psalms, which will be understood by those who have begun to be
disciples in the Church's school. The Psalms are not merely the
response to revelation, they are part of that revelation themselves.
The Church uses them not as mere human utterances, but as the inspired
words which God Himself has given her, and which the Lord Jesus
consecrated by His own personal use of them. God cannot contradict
Himself. The Gospel may expand the Law, or do away with its letter in
order to bring out the underlying spirit, but it cannot abrogate it.
If there were a real discrepancy between the imprecatory Psalms and the
New Testament, it would be scarcely conceivable that the first word of
Scripture quoted in the first history of the Church would be that
sentence already alluded to:

Let his habitation be made desolate:
And let no man dwell therein.

The severities of the Psalms are matched by the severities of the
Gospels. There is no real difference between our Lord's sentence on
the scribes and Pharisees, "Behold, your house is {40} left unto you
desolate," and the sentence which the Holy Spirit puts into our mouth
against the hypocrite and the traitor, "Let his children be fatherl