he love which it proclaims too wide for them, the God whom it
reveals too good for them: so that they shrink from taking the
Bible and trusting the Bible, in its fulness; and are perpetually
falling back on heathen notions--the very old heathen notions from
which this psalm delivers us--concerning what God's anger means, and
what God's punishment means; because they are afraid of taking the
words of Scripture literally and fully, and believing honestly the
blessed news, that God is Love.

They try to make God's ways as their ways, and God's thoughts as
their thoughts. But do not you do so. Receive the Bible in its
fulness. Believe that it tells you infinitely more of God's
character and dealings, than you can ever tell yourselves; that
God's ways are not as your ways, nor God's thoughts as your
thoughts, even at their best: but that God's ways are always wider
and deeper than yours, were you the most learned of men; God's
thoughts are always more loving and just than yours, were you the
most holy of men, and that when you have learned all that you can
learn, or that any man can learn, out of the Bible, there will be
still left behind treasures beside, which you have not yet found
out. For the riches of Christ are unsearchable; like the depth of
the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose only-begotten
son, and perfect likeness, he is; and the man who reads the
Scripture with a single eye, and an humble heart, will see that the
more he finds in the Bible, the more he has yet to find; and that if
he studied it to all eternity, he would have fresh and fresh cause
for ever to cry with the Psalmist, 'Oh give thanks to the Lord; for
he is gracious, and his mercy endureth for ever!'

Footnotes:

{328} Plutarch.

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