Psalms 80:13

The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.

People to be feared

By this homely but expressive figure, the text sets forth the bad influences which in olden time broke in upon God’s heritage, as with swine’s foot trampling, and as with swine’s snout uprooting the vineyards of prosperity. What was true then is true now. There have been enough trees of righteousness planted to overshadow the whole earth, had it not been for the axemen who hewed them down.

I. I propose to point out to you those whom I consider to be the uprooting and devouring classes of society.

1. First, the public criminals. What is the fire that burns your store down compared with the conflagration which consumes your morals? What is the theft of the gold and silver from your money safe compared with the theft of your children’s virtue?

2. Again: in this class of uprooting and devouring population are untrustworthy officials (Ecclesiastes 10:16). It is a great calamity to a city when bad men get into public authority. Too great leniency to criminals is too great severity to society.

3. Again: among the uprooting and devouring classes in our midst, are the idle. When the French nobleman was asked why he kept busy when he had so large a property, he said: “I keep on engraving so I may not hang myself.” I do not care who the man is, you cannot afford to be idle. It is from the idle classes that the criminal classes are made up. Character, like water, gets putrid if it stands still too long.

4. Again: among the uprooting classes I place the oppressed poor. While there is no excuse for criminality, even in oppression, I state it as a simple fact that much of the scoundrelism of the community is consequent upon ill-treatment. There are many men and women battered and bruised, and stung until the hour of despair has come, and they stand with the ferocity of a wild beast, which, pursued until it can run no longer, turns round, foaming and bleeding, to fight the hounds. I want you to know who are the uprooting classes of society.

II. Because I want you to be more discriminating in your charities. Because I want your hearts open with generosity, and your hands open with charity. Because I want you to be made the sworn friends of all city evangelization, and all newsboys’ lodging houses, and all Howard missions, and Children’s Aid Societies. But more than that, I have preached the sermon because I thought in the contrast you would see how very kindly God had dealt with you, and I thought that you would go to-day to your comfortable homes, and sit at your well-filled tables, and look at the round faces of your children, and that then you would burst into tears at the review of God’s goodness to you, and that you would go to your room and lock the door; and kneel down, and say: “O Lord, I have been an ingrate; make me Thy child.” (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Ecclesiastical ruins

Whatever may have been the period when this psalm was written, it is a remarkable fact that it has been suitable for every age, from the days of the Judges until now, and been found expressive of the prayer and outlook of the people of the Lord. Failure has ever attended the ecclesiastical systems of earth. The theocracy which Joshua left was soon in ruins. The magnificent and well-ordered temple ritual organized by David and established by Solomon did not continue in its glory for one generation. Again and again it was restored by reforms, but grew worse and worse till the Lord Christ came. Then followed the Christian Church; but as that slowly rose into power it became a degenerate vine, and Catholicism grew to be such a curse that one-third of the Christian world rose in open protest, and the revolt of another third was stifled with blood. Then came the Reformed Churches. For a while they flourish, but full soon when the Master looks for fruit they bring forth wild grapes. The holiest souls in each to-day are crying, as they have through all the ages, “The forest boar rends it, and the wild beast feeds upon it.” This continued failure is solemn and instructive. As yet every religious system has sooner or later degenerated. Its fence has been broken down and wayfarers have mocked. Man was not made for ecclesiastical organization, but ecclesiastical organization for man. The work of the Holy Spirit of God is upon separate souls, and sometimes ecclesiastical failure drives the soul into closer communion with the true God. Grand spirits, like Asaph, are developed amidst Church disorder. Let the psalmists and the prophets, let the heroes of successive reformations, Columba and Patrick, Wickliffle and Luther, Wesley and Whitfield bear testimony to this. (J. H. Cooke.)