mist saying, "They that
hate me, and would destroy me, are my enemies wrongfully, and they are
many and mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. For _thy
sake_ have I borne reproach: the reproaches of them that reproached thee
are fallen upon me. I was the song of the drunkards. Reproach hath
broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some one
to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but none
appeared." Thus the men that wronged and tormented the Psalmist were
enemies to God and goodness, as well as to himself.

We know that the virtue of the injured and tormented Psalmist was not
the virtue of the Gospel; but it _was_ virtue. It was the virtue of the
law. And the law was holy, just, and good, so far as it went. If the
resentment of the Psalmist had been cherished against some good or
innocent man, it would have been wicked; as it was, it was righteous.
True, if the Psalmist had lived under the better and brighter
dispensation of Christianity, he would neither have felt the reproaches
heaped on him so keenly, nor moaned under them so piteously, nor
resented them so warmly. He might then have learned

"To hate the sin with all his heart,
And still the sinner love."

He might have counted reproach and persecution matters for joy and
gladness. And instead of calling for vengeance on his enemies, he might
have cried, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." But
the Psalmist did _not_ live under the dispensation of the Gospel. He
lived under a system which, good as it was, made nothing perfect. And he
acted in accordance with that system. And the intelligent Christian, and
the enlightened lover of the Bible, will not be ashamed either of the
Psalmist, or of the Book which gives us the instructive and interesting
revelations of his experience.

5. Another of my objections to the Bible was grounded on the statement,
that God visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children. But it is
a fact, first, that children _do_ suffer through the sins of their
fathers. The children of drunkards, thieves, profligates, all suffer
through the misdoings of their parents. It is also a fact, that men
generally suffer through the misdoings of their fellow-men. We all
suffer through the vices of our neighbors and countrymen. The sins of
idlers, spendthrifts, misers, drunkards, gluttons, bigots, persecutors,
tyrants, thieves, murderers, corrupt politicians, and sinners of