This spirit of the godly man is associated with another aspect of the same truth which is ever present in the Bible, and which is very imperfectly realized among men in general. We are apt to be satisfied with recognizing right and wrong as one of the many elements with which we are concerned in life. Life is a vast scene of innumerable passions, and interests, and pleasures, and schemes--personal, social, political, and imperial; and nearly all of us recognize, no doubt, that right and wrong, righteousness and justice, have a momentous place among these various energies and interests; but in the light of the Bible, and in the teaching of our Lord, that is a very imperfect view to take of their position. There, right and wrong, righteousness and justice, are supreme over all other interests; they are the foundation on which the whole edifice of life is built up; or they are, as it were, the very cement by which the whole is held together. As the history of the Jewish people is told in the Bible, every event in their career is shown to turn on the question of their righteousness or wickedness. God’s one object is to educate them to be a righteous nation, to keep His commandments, and statutes, and judgments, so that they may realize His great design for them. They suffer punishment, such as invasion by enemies, or captivity by Assyria or Rome, not merely because of the ambition of those nations, and of their own comparative weakness, but because they were becoming faithless to the law of God, and not living for His honour and glory. All that the world, and the worldly historian, might see of them was that they had provoked the Assyrian or Roman monarch by some act of self-assertion and pride, and that he avenged himself by invading and desolating their country. But the prophetical men who wrote the Books of Kings, and other historical Books of the Old Testament, went behind this immediate cause, and saw that it was by the providence of God that the people were thus punished, because they had forgotten the God of their fathers, and were ceasing to serve Him. They were inspired to see this element of righteousness, and of the law of the Lord, as the most essential in the whole history, and asserting itself continually under the control of God’s providence.