Psalm 112:9-10 He has dispersed, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honor.… I. HIS CONDUCT IS COMMENDED. 1. Its disinterestedness. 2. Its judicious distinction of their recipients and their circumstances. 3. Its modesty, and the benignity of manner in which it is performed. 4. Its evangelical motive and single aim. He looks to Calvary, and sees there the grand incentive to all virtue. The influence under which he acts is not the temporary excitement of sympathetic feeling, nor the sentimental emotion of a poetic generosity, nor the feverish thirst for distinction and applause, nor the mere mechanical habit of doing as others have done; but it is a Divine influence — a motive which comes fresh into his bosom from the fount of all purity and grace, and which instigates not to a fitful, but to a persevering — not to an indolent, but to an indefatigable — not to a self-complacent, but to a self-denying exercise of that "pure religion which is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." He who from such a principle engages in offices of brotherly kindness and charity never arrogates to himself the glory, but ascribes it all to God. II. HIS REWARD. 1. The exercise of benevolence naturally conciliates esteem. All virtuous conduct is deemed honourable; but men ever reserve their best eulogiums for the disinterested benefactors of their kind. 2. The inspired writers in repeated instances speak of it as part at least of a good man's singular felicity that his name shall be followed with blessings, and the remembrance of his piety be cherished when he has entered upon his everlasting rest. 3. The chief part of that reward which it pleases God to bestow upon Christian beneficence is reserved for another world. Little as we know of that future state of being upon which we enter at death, we are left in no doubt of the fact, that it will be to every man a state of misery or of happiness, according to the manner in which he shall have spent this present probationary season on earth. They, consequently, who, "by patient continuance in well-doing, are seeking for glory, honour, and immortality," shall not find themselves disappointed at last. (E. Steane.). Parallel Verses KJV: He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour. |
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