Psalm 19:11 Moreover by them is your servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. Compare this text with the saying of Paul, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable." Where, then, is the present reward of keeping God's commandments? There might be a reward hereafter; how could there be one now? What are we to say to this apparent contradiction? St. Paul was supposing a case; we must ascertain what his supposition was not, and what it was. Take a man whose whole soul was in his religion, who upheld himself in every trial by the consolations of the blessed hope. He has staked everything on the truth, and having surmounted a thousand obstacles and made his way through a thousand foes, and offered his body on the altar of the living God, he is pressing on with rejoicing and elevated spirit. Tell him that there is no resurrection, and no hope in Christ for an after state of being, and what then? That man would be most miserable if he took into his heart your message. You may say that in shutting out the future we still leave the present; but the present is the foretaste of the future. In cutting off the streams you destroy the fountain. If such a man were told that after fighting through life he would be vanquished in death, what would be left him of gladness? Who, then, shall rival the Christian in misery if, after setting out in the expectation of a blessed immortality, he discovers that only in this life is there hope in Christ? Our object has been to show that there is nothing in the quoted words of St. Paul which militates against the fact alleged in our text, and in other parts of Scripture, that, in respect of present happiness — happiness during this life — the godly have the advantage over the ungodly. (Henry Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.WEB: Moreover by them is your servant warned. In keeping them there is great reward. |
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