For the eyes of the Lord are
over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers: but the
face of the Lord is against them that do evil."

This is one of the texts which is apt to puzzle people who do not read
their Bibles carefully enough. They cannot see what the latter part of
it has to do with the former.

St. Peter says that we Christians are called that we should inherit a
blessing. That means, of course, they say, the blessing of salvation,
everlasting life in heaven. But then St. Peter quotes from the 34th
Psalm. "For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain
his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile." Now that
Psalm, they say, speaks of blessing and happiness in this life. Then why
does St. Peter give it as a reason for expecting blessing and happiness
in the life to come? And then, they say, to make it fit in, it must be
understood spiritually; and what they mean by that, I do not clearly
know.

Their notion is, that the promises of the Old Testament are more or less
carnal, because they speak of God's rewarding men in this life; and that
the promises of the New Testament are spiritual, because they speak of
God's rewarding men in the next life; and what they mean by that, again,
I do not clearly know.

For is not the Old Testament spiritual as well as the New? I trust so,
my friends. Is not the Old Testament inspired, and that by the Spirit of
God? and if it be inspired by the Spirit, what can it be but spiritual?
Therefore, if we want to find the spiritual meaning of Old Testament
promises, we need not to alter them to suit any fancies of our own; like
those monks of the fourth and succeeding centuries, who saw no sanctity
in family or national life; no sanctity in the natural world, and,
therefore, were forced to travesty the Hebrew historians, psalmists, and
prophets, with all their simple, healthy objective humanity, and
politics, and poetry, into metaphorical and subjective, or, as they
miscalled them, spiritual meanings, to make the Old Testament mean
anything at all. No; if we have any real reverence for the Holy
Scriptures, we must take them word for word in their plain meaning, and
find the message of God's Spirit in that plain meaning, instead of trying
to put it in for ourselves. Therefore it is that the VII. Article bids
us beware of playing with Scripture in this way. It says the Old
Testament is not c