Verse 26. Beware of mistakes here. Do not say God is your confidence, if He be only your dread. An appalling amount of hypocrisy exists in Christendom, and passes current for devotion. He who is himself most worthy is often more disliked than any other being, and, as if this ingratitude were not enough, men double the sin by professing that they have confidence in Him. I have observed that sea-going ships do not trust to themselves in the windings of a river. Where they are hemmed in between rock and quicksand, grazing now on the one and now the other, they take care to have a steam-tug, both to bear them forward and to guide them aright. They hang implicitly upon its power. They make no attempt at independent action. But as soon as they get clear of the narrows--as soon as they have attained a good offing and an open sea--they heave off and hoist their own sails. They never want a steamer till they come into narrow waters again. Such is the trust in God which the unreconciled experience. In distress they are fain to lean upon the Almighty. While they are in the narrows they would hang on the help of a Deliverer. . . . The line of their dependence seems ever tight by their constant leaning. But when they begin to creep out of these shoals of life they heave off and throw themselves upon their own resources. . . . This is not to have confidence in God.--_Arnot._ _MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 27-29. DOING JUSTICE AND LOVING MERCY. True wisdom in the heart will show itself in right dealing between man and man. He who holds back any good thing by which it is in his power to bless another man is a thief. The withholding is a crime for which God will visit. This is true in relation not only to debts of justice (Jas. v. 4) but to so-called debts of mercy. When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, there will be some against whom He will bring the charge--"I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not" (Matt. xxv. 42, 43). There are _five_ reasons against the postponement of any act of justice or mercy until the morrow. 1. The person who is in need to-day may be beyond your reach to-morrow. Death may remove him from your reach, and he may go into eternity your creditor. Men and women have been saved from taking a step which would have been their ruin, by a kindly word or act which would have come too late on the morrow. 2. If your needy friend does live to be helped on the morrow, you may not live to give him help, and you will then enter the presence of God a debtor to your brother. To-morrow is God's property, to-day is man's. 3. If your brother is not beyond your reach to-morrow, his need has been increased by the delay. If a man's condition calls for medical aid to-day, and it is withholden, the disease will have a firmer hold to-morrow and will be harder to cure.