The Psalter will not allow us to shut our eyes to this malignant and persecuting attitude of the world. The enemies of the Righteous find a place in almost every Psalm. The malice of human nature at its worst seems to be marshalled against Him, in slander and ingratitude and treachery. But there is also the opposition of the heathen as a whole against Israel. The vicissitudes of her history are typical; they illustrate a permanent principle which is found working from age to age. It was not less active nor less brutal in the first three Christian centuries {88} than it was in the days of Antiochus. To-day, though its attack is less outwardly cruel, the spirit which prompts it is just as deeply seated, and more malignant perhaps in proportion as it is veiled. The Church has not merely to contend with the hatred of those who have chosen and loved evil, and find the righteous a standing reproach. There is gathered against her also the world's steady resentment of spiritual authority; the world's antipathy against all that refuses to come to terms, or water down its witness to suit changing fashions of men's thought. It is the same spirit which in earlier days called the Christians "the enemies of the human race," and in these later times directs its sneers and opposition against the Creeds, the Sacraments, the priesthood--"the spirit of Antichrist." The 44th Psalm, perhaps belonging to the time of the great Maccabæan struggle, makes its pathetic appeal to God amidst the scorn and blasphemy of the heathen, and, what is worse, the bitterness of apparent failure and defeat which seem to justify the heathen. My confusion is daily before me: The shame of my face hath covered me: {89} For the voice of the slanderer and blasphemer: For the enemy and avenger. Faith indeed does not fail the Psalmist: he clings to God; he still recognises the hand of God throughout these sufferings; he prefers to attribute them to God rather than to man: _Thou_ makest us to turn our backs upon our enemies: ... _Thou_ lettest us be eaten up like sheep: ... _Thou_ sellest Thy people for nought: And takest no money for them. Nevertheless, it is all a puzzle, a bewildering maze in which faith seems walking blindfold, like the Lord Himself when the malice of the high-priest's servants bandaged His eyes and smote Him in derision and bade Him prophesy! The light of God's presence seems to have gone out of the world: Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face: And forgettest our misery and trouble. Very similar is the 74th Psalm, with its same high consciousness of faithfulness to God, the same agonising sense of contradiction in the enemies of God being suffered to break down {90} the carved work of the sanctuary, the same feeling of helplessness and lack of guidance. The adversaries' banners are manifest enough, _their_ tokens are clear; but with the faithful it is otherwise: We see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more.