David Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge. By
Charles Kingsley, M.A. (Macmillan.)—Thoroughly Kingsleian, and not very satisfactory. Mr. Kingsley maintains that David's curses on his enemies were both acts of vindictive passion in him and inspired for the benefit of man,—on the ground that the retributive feeling towards sin is God's earliest and simplest inspiration, His law that we are to forgive and love the sinner His latest and highest. In the first place, however, there is nothing to show that David's curses were directed towards the sin in the hearts of his enemies. Many of them seem to bs directed at their mischievousness and their prejudicial character to him and his-fortunes. And who can say that is inspired? In the second place, David was evidently quite capable of a higher, if not fully of the Christian frame of mind, towards personal enemies, and to say that God inspires any lower state of feeling than a man is really capable of, under given circumstances, sounds to us like profanity. Why not accept the truth as to David's psalms—that the Bible records the worse as well as the better, the uninspired as well as the inspired thoughts of men, and that some of David's thoughts were evil, though some were full of the very Spirit of God?
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