People have
supposed that these invisible beings desired them to do certain things,
to refrain from doing certain other things, and they have expected them
to reward or punish them how? By giving them that which they desired,
on the one hand, or sending them something which they did not desire,
on the other. They have brought the gods their offerings, their
sacrifices, their words of praise, and have asked that they might be
successful in war, that they might bring home the game which they
sought when they went on a hunting expedition. When there have been
disease, pestilence, famine, drought, no matter what the nature of the
evil, they have been regarded as allotments of these divine powers sent
on account of something they have done or omitted to do. It never
occurred to them to interpret these as part of a natural order, because
they knew nothing about any natural order. They reasoned as well as
they were able to reason at that stage of culture in any particular age
of the world's history which they had reached. But this has been the
thought of men time out of mind concerning the method of the divine or
spiritual or unseen government of the world.
Is this way of looking at it confined to primitive man, confined to
pagan nations? Do we find something else, some other condition of mind,
when we come to study carefully the Old Testament? Let us see. Take the
first verse which I read as a part of my text. The author of this Psalm
we do not know who he may have been says, "I have been young, and now
am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging their bread.
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