Job 34:18

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly?" Job 34:18

This makes a large assumption with regard to royal character. This enables us to understand the exhortations of the Bible with regard to kings, princes, and rulers. The assumption of the Bible is that they are good men, animated by a spirit of righteousness, and intent upon serving the interests of truth. The Bible never assumes the king to to be a bad man, or a prince to be ungodly. This is the secret of all its exhortations to loyalty and obedience. The king is to represent the whole state; the prince is to typify the righteousness of the universe. We are not to look at kings and princes in their mere individuality, for then they may not be equal to many over whom they reign, in intellectual capacity or in moral nobleness; king and prince are typical or symbolical terms, and they have reference to character, and to office, and to divine designs. If a king is not to be regarded as wicked, what about a Christian? If the thought of princes being ungodly is abhorrent, what must be the thought of praying men being unfaithful to their own prayers, living a contradiction to their own most pious desires? The more we expect from men the more we ought to realise from them, in the way of character and honour and utility. Kings must be made to feel that their people expect great things from them things worthy of kingship, actions worthy of royal designation; in this sense the people may make the king, the ruled may make the ruler. Let the kings of the earth feel that their people are increasing in education, in moral elevation, and in enlargement of view, and it will be impossible for the officially great to linger behind the untitled nobility. After all democracy has everything in its own hands; not immediately, but remotely, and it may attain all its purposes by painstaking effort in matters of education, self-culture, and self-discipline. The lowly will soon give the mighty to understand what is expected of them, by showing in themselves capacity for government and willingness to obey where laws are right and beneficent. Nothing is gained by effrontery, impertinence, defiance. I is easy to defy a king nothing comest of such rebellion; the true defiance is to be found in growing goodness, growing wisdom, growing simplicity of character. That is not the defiance of audacity, but the holy defiance of virtue.