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Judgment is, in Scripture, a large and comprehensive term. It is sometimes synonymous with "rule," or "government," because in ancient monarchies actual magistracy - due personal consideration and decision of rival claims, or accusations of crimes - took a prominent place. Sometimes reference is intended to that appointment of deserts in men's earthly experiences which may be regarded as a Divine judgment continually working. And sometimes the allusion is to that great occasion on which the anomalies of life are to gain permanent adjustment, and the issues of human conduct to be eternally fixed. Whatever other figures for God may gain attraction to us, we may not lose our thought of him as the "Judge of all the earth." We fix attention on the fact that the judging of God is no merely future thing, the glory of a coming day. It may be urged that -

I. GOD IS "EVER COMING TO JUDGE" IN THE WITNESS OF MEN'S CONSCIENCES. No man has to wait for his judgment. He has it at once in the inward conviction of the rightness or wrongness of his action. We should never, in our thought, separate conscience from the inward voice of God our Judge.

II. GOD IS EVER "COMING TO JUDGE" IN THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SIN AND SUFFERING. Suffering being the proper issue of sin, and necessarily connected with it by God in order to reveal its character. All suffering may be regarded as a beginning and present illustration of God's judgment.

III. GOD IS EVER "COMING TO JUDGE" IN THE CONVICTIONS WROUGHT BY THE PRESENCE AMONG US OF HOLY MEN. Illustrate how Enoch and Noah carried God's judgment on their sinful generation, in the conviction produced by their holy lives. And in the fullest sense this was true of the Lord Jesus as the holiest of men. His presence among them was God's abiding judgment on a sinful and adulterous generation. ]n measure the same is true still of both private and public spheres - the presence of holy men and women tests us, and, too often, both judges and condemns.

IV. GOD IS EVER "COMING TO JUDGE" IN THE ORDERINGS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. Calamities, and even disappointments, are signs of the Divine presence recognizing and dealing with wilfulness and sin. And this is quite as true when we are able to trace the natural laws according to whose legitimate workings the calamities or failures may have come.

V. GOD IS SURELY ALSO COMING WITH HIS FINAL JUDGEMENT ON THE LIVES AND RECORDS OF NATIONS AND OF MEN. Of that fact we are well assured; of the manner and method of it we have only as yet vague poetical figures, which we are unable to trans- late into earthly fact. Enough is told us to make the thought of coming judgment a present moral power. David connected the Divine "judgment" with "righteousness" and with "truth," as these, he knew, had been so gloriously manifested in the fulfilment of ancient promises. "These being the characteristics of Jehovah's judgment to which the view is directed in this psalm, the essentially joyous tone of it is accounted for." Think aright of God's judgment, and of it we may even learn to sing. - R.T.

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KJV: Then shall the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the LORD, because he cometh to judge the earth.

WEB: Then the trees of the forest will sing for joy before Yahweh, for he comes to judge the earth.