Psalm 119:96 I have seen an end of all perfection: but your commandment is exceeding broad. I have seen an end of all perfection. "The true relation of the two parts of this verse to each other seems to be that of contrast. No other relation brings out so clear and full a meaning. The meaning of the whole, therefore, must be something like this: Here is something called 'perfection' existing among men in a great variety of forms. 'But,' says the psalmist, 'according to my experience and observation, these are altogether too superficial, and too precarious, and too short-lived to make men happy, and the very best of them, the idealisms of human life, can never be attained. But thy commandment is exceeding broad,' and that will do, unless men hinder, what nothing else will do." The human hopes referred to are a man's wholly self-centered purposes and ambitions. Let a man fashion something for himself as a supreme aim of life; let it be something which he regards as "perfection;" let it bear no relation to the blessing of his fellow-men, or to the will and honor of God, and there will surely be an end to all such perfection. Let perfection be humanly conceived success and happiness, and ere life closes the man will say with the "preacher," who had such a varied experience, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." I. ALL AROUND US WE MAY SEE THE END OF PERFECTIONS. The story of the ages is the story of well-conceived ideals in social and national life that were never realized. The story of individual lives that had only self-centered aims is this wail, "My purposes are broken off." It is even a large truth that no life ever was lived that realized its ideal, reached its perfection, or accomplished its purposes. And this must be so because perfection is for the race, not for the individual, who has never more than a piece of the whole entrusted to him. And because, by man's very nature, he cannot rest satisfied with things, only with character, which finds expression in things, and is always below a possible attainment, while God is the supreme character. II. IF WE CANNOT GET PERFECTION, WE MAY WORK TOWARDS IT. To do this we must get out of the human sphere into the Divine sphere. Man fails to reach his own perfection because it is so small. God's Word is large, broad, and towards its perfection man may move through all eternity, and get ennobled as he moves. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.WEB: I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commands are boundless. MEM |
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