Psalms 16:3

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"... The saints that are in the earth." Psa 16:3

Take this as indicating the mixed character of human society. Even if we had no Bible it would be impossible to deny that human society is composed of conflicting and irreconcilable elements. We find in the same community honesty and dishonesty, simplicity and duplicity, faithfulness and faithlessness, generosity and selfishness. The Bible does not create these distinctions; it recognises them. We have magnanimous men, and men of little mind: on every side we see men who take large and generous views of life, and men whose views of life are small and suspicious. Why, then, is it impossible that there should be men to whom the word "saint" should be applied? By "saints" understand holy men, separated men, men who live and move and have their being in God, men who test everything by divine standards. Has there ever been a time when the earth has been totally void of saints? By saints we are not to understand men who are perfect, but men whose aim is to discover God and to obey God. A saint is no good in any final sense. He is only good in his purpose, in his relations to other men, and in his aspirations towards God. Beside the holiness of God there is no purity. God chargeth his angels with folly, and the heavens are not clean in his sight. Yet, according to the common use of language, and according to a very high moral standard, there are moral men, honest men, upright men, saints, peculiarly and distinctively men who draw their life and their inspiration from God. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous. Say ye to the righteous, It shall be well with him. They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I number up my jewels. There is no indiscriminateness in the judgment of God. The Lord separateth men as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. Continually the Lord distinguishes between good and evil, light and darkness, and his judgment is directed according to the character of those who are set before him. To the righteous heaven itself is small; to the unrighteous all punishment is eternal. The saints are the salt of the earth. The saints are the light of the world. The saints are the security of the world. For the sake of ten righteous men, who can tell how many cities the Lord is now sparing? Who can tell how much we are indebted even for physical advantages to the praying souls in the neighbourhood in which we live? Life is not the flat and superficial thing which atheism would have us believe; it: is profound, subtle, infinite; the elements and forces which it touches are beyond all reckoning. So long as there are good men upon the earth, the earth will be precious in the sight of God. Let us rejoice when the godly are multiplied, for in their increase is there multiplication of prayer and multiplication of holy service.