Suffering that which we make others suffer.
"As he loved cursing, so let it come to him." We have a popular sentence which illustrates. When a man suffers what he planned to make others suffer, he is said to be "hoist with his own petard;" and human nature, in every age, is specially pleased with cases of retributive justice, such as that of Haman, who was hanged on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai. "The psalmist felt that he was praying in accordance with the Divine will, when he prayed that the ungodly might fall into their own nets together, while he ever escaped them. So again with his prayer that the mischief of their own lips might fall upon the heads of them that compassed him about. For it was a matter at once of faith and of experience with the psalmist, that the evil-deviser and evil-doer, travailing with mischief, conceiving sorrow, and bringing forth ungodliness, who had graven and digged up a pit, was apt to fall himself into the destruction he made for other. 'For his travail shall come upon his own head, and his wickedness shall fall on his own pate.'"
I. A MAN'S PUNISHMENT DOES OFTEN COME IS THIS WAY. See the punishment of those who arranged the den of lions for Daniel. "Owen Feltham delights to recall, from the stores of ancient and mediaeval story, how Bagoas, a Persian nobleman, having poisoned Artaxerxes and Artamenes, was detected by Darius, and forced to drink poison himself; how Diomedes, for the beasts he had fed on human flesh, was by Hercules made food; and how Pope Alexander VI; having designed the poisoning of his friend Cardinal Adrian, by his cup-bearer's mistake of the bottle, took the draught himself, and so died by the same engine which he himself had appointed to kill another." Many other illustrations may be found.
II. STRONG IMPRESSIONS OF A MAN'S SIN ARE MADE BY THIS FORM OF PUNISHMENT. There is something striking and arresting in it; it takes public attention. There is often the element of humor in such judgments. But a sin which would otherwise have been passed over, is shown up in all its baseness when the wrongdoer suffers his own designed wrong. He feels the wrong; and others see it.—R.T.
The power of prayer to change our moods.
There is clearly a different tone in the closing portion of this psalm. It may not be so evident as we should like it to have been, but it is there. The storm of angry feeling dies down, and we only hear mutterings after the loud thunder-peals. There is gradually more earnest prayer for himself, less concern about his enemy, and a fuller confidence that God will answer his prayer, and, in his own wise way, bless the good and shame the evil. It is his praying on that has wrought this change of mood. He has prayed himself into a better mind, by the very saying out so freely all the bitter things he had thought and felt.
I. PRAYER CHANGES OUR MOODS BY EXHAUSTING THE BAD MOODS. Here is a most singular thing. Saying out all our bad feelings to a fellow-man would only intensify the badness. We should excite ourselves even to plan revengeful things. But if we say out all our bad feelings to God, we find they get exhausted. Somehow, in his presence, we cannot keep them up. We soon come to the end, and the very Divine silence seems to be waiting until we have said it all; and presently we feel as if there was nothing more we could say. Another mood must come, as tears come when passion has expended itself. So prayer helps by finding us the opportunity for safely saying out all that is in our hearts.
II. PRAYER HELPS US BY ENCOURAGING NEW AND BETTER MOODS. Gradually, as we pray on, the sense of God's presence makes us feel kinder. We cease to want our enemy punished, we want ourselves vindicated; and then presently we feel as if we could just leave our enemy in the hands of God. The Judge of all the earth will surely do the right. At last we find ourselves filled with pity for them; it comes to us, as we pray, that it is far sadder to be a wrong-doer than to be a wronged one; the injurer is much more to be pitied than the injured. So mood after mood changing for the better, we come at last to the Christian mood, and do as the Lord Jesus did, and as St. Stephen did—pray for our enemies. In all the strain-times of life we may prove the soothing, correcting, and comforting power of prayer.—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT