If we are not, then David’s words are of course worse than nothing.  If we are, I do not see why David was wrong in calling on God to exercise that moral and providential government of the world, which is the very note and definition of a living God.

But what right have we to use these words?  My friends, if the Church bids us use these words, she certainly does not bid us act upon them.  She keeps them, I believe most rightly, as a record of a human experience, which happily seems to us special and extreme, of which we, in a well-governed Christian land, know nothing, and shall never know.

Special and extreme?  Alas, alas!  In too many countries, in too many ages, it has been the common, the almost universal experience of the many weak, enslaved, tortured, butchered at the wicked will of the few strong.

There have been those in tens of thousands, there may be those again who will have a right to cry to God, ‘Of thy goodness slay mine enemies, lest they slay, or worse than slay, both me and mine.’  There were thousands of English after the Norman Conquest; there were thousands of Hindoos in Oude before its annexation; there are thousands of negroes at this moment in their native land of Africa, crushed and outraged by hereditary tyrants, who had and have a right to appeal to God, as David appealed to him against the robber lords of Palestine; a right to cry, ‘Rid us, O God; if thou be a living God, a God of justice and mercy, rid us not only of these men, but of their children after them.  This tyrant, stained with lust and wine and blood; this robber chieftain who privily in his lurking dens murders the innocent, and ravishes the poor when he getteth him into his net; this slave-hunting king who kills the captives whom he cannot sell; and whose children after him will inevitably imitate his cruelties and his rapine and treacheries—deal with him and his as they deserve.  Set an ungodly man to be ruler over him; that he may find out what we have been enduring from his ungodly rule.  Let his days be few, and another take his office.  Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.  Let his children beg their bread out of desolate places.  Let there be no man to pity him or take compassion on his fatherless children—to take his part, and breed up a fresh race of tyrants to our misery.  Let the extortioner consume all he hath, and the stranger spoil his labour—for what he has is itself taken by extortion, and he has spoiled the labour of thousands.  Let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation his name be clean put out.  Let the wickedness of his father and the sin of his mother be had in remembrance in the sight of the Lord; that he may root out the memorial of them from the earth, and enable law and justice, peace and freedom to take the place of anarchy and tyranny and blood.’

That prayer was answered—if we are to believe the records of Norman, not English, monks in England after the Conquest, by the speedy extinction of the most guilty families among the Norman conquerors.  It is being answered, thank God, in Hindostan at this moment.  It will surely be answered in Africa in God’s good time; for the Lord reigneth, be the nations never so unquiet.  And we, if we will read such words rationally and humanly, remembering the state of society in which they were written—a state of society, alas! which has endured, and still endures over a vast portion of the habitable globe; where might is right, and there is little or no principle, save those of lust and greed and revenge—then instead of wishing such words out of the Bible, we shall be glad to keep them there, as testimonies to the moral government of the world by a God and a Christ who will surely avenge the innocent blood; and as a Gospel of comfort to suffering millions, when the news reaches them at last, that they may call on God to deliver them from their tormentors, and that he will hear their cry, and will help them.