?Expositor's Dictionary of Texts - Psalms?(William R. Nicoll)
Commentator
Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH (October 10, 1851 - May 4, 1923) was a
Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church
minister. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at
the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the
Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister
of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to
Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of The Expositor for Hodder & Stoughton, a
position he held until his death.
In 1885 Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack
of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886 he moved south to London,
which became the base for the rest of his life. With the support of Hodder
and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper,
which also gained great influence over opinion in the churches in Scotland.
Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including
Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander
Maclaren, and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents
as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of
Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading
with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891,
and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder &
Stoughton.
Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible and The Theological
Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897), and a
series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from
1904).
He projected but never wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English
Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes
of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted in 1909, ostensibly for his
literrary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for
the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of
Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.
00 Introduction
Introduction to the Book of Psalm
At the age of twenty-two Melanchthon wrote a preface to Luther"s commentary
on the Psalm (1519). He dwelt on the help and consolation which the Psalm
bring to the troubled conscience.
"For what doth it profit thee to know that the world was created by God, as
Genesis tells us, if thou dost not adore the mercy and wisdom of the
Creator? Again, how would it help thee to know that God is wise and
merciful if thou couldst not take to thyself the thought that He is
merciful for thee, just for thee, wise for thee? And that is what it means
to have truly known God, but Philosophy has not attained that ultimate mode
of Divine knowledge; it belongs to Christians alone. The spirit of the
Psalm truly distils that sweetness into pious minds, and this is that
celestial harmony which is attuned by the Spirit of God."
-Corpus Reformatorum, vol. I. p73.
01 Psalm 1
Verses 1-6
The Tree and the Chaff
Psalm 1:1
There is a law to obey which is life; there is a King, to serve Whom is
blessedness, and rebellion against Whom is destruction.
I. Note first the picture of a fair and fruitful life. If you have not
learned to shelter your positive goodness behind a barrier of negative
abstinence, there will be little vitality and little fruit in the weakling
plants that are trying to blossom in the undefended open, swept by every
wind. But then note further how in this abstinence there is a certain
progress. It is quite clear, I think, that there is an advance in the
prominence of association with evil, expressed by the three attitudes,
walking, standing, sitting.
II. Then we come to the next step here. Abstinence is useless unless it be
for something. There is no virtue in not doing Song of Solomon -and-so
unless there be a positive doing something a great deal better. And now to
the second part of this picture-how it fares with lovers of God"s law. Such
a life will be rooted and steadfast, for the word here translated "planted"
is not that ordinarily employed to express that idea, but conveys mainly
the notion of fixity and steadfastness. If you want your life to have a
basis then you must consciously and intelligently feel and pierce down
through all superficial fleeting things, until you grasp the centre and
wrap yourselves round that. Such a life shall be vigorous and fruitful.
Such a life shall "prosper". Now turn to the other dark picture of the
rootless, fruitless life. The light and the shadow, the blackness and the
glory, are put right against one another and each is heightened by the
juxtaposition.
III. There comes next the disappearance of such a life in the winnowing
wind as a consequence of its essential nullity. Nothing lasts but obedience
to the will of God. That which God knows lasts. That which He does not know
perishes. There are two roads before us. The one steep, rough, narrow,
hard, but always climbing steadily upwards, and sure to reach its goal; the
other broad, easy, flowery, descending, and therefore easier than the
first. One is the path of obedience for the love of Christ. In that path
there is no death, and those who tread it shall come to Zion with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads. The other is the path of self-will and
self-pleasing, which fails to reach its unworthy goal and brings the man at
last to the edge of a black precipice over the verge of which the impetus
of his descent will carry his reluctant feet. "The path of the just is as
the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The
way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble."
-Alexander Maclaren, The Freeman, 6 March, 1891 , p147.
Psalm 1:1
Tennyson was very grand on contemptuousness. It was, he said, a sure sign
of intellectual littleness. Simply to despise nearly always meant not to
understand. Pride and contempt were specially characteristic of barbarians.
-Wilfrid Ward in The New Review (July, 1886).
Contempt is murder committed by the intellect, as hatred is murder
committed by the heart Charity, having life in itself, is the opposite and
destroyer of contempt as well as of hatred.
-George MacDonald, David Elginbrod (pt. ii. chap. IX.).
References.-I:1.-A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi. p269. C.
Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p61. The International Critical
Commentary, p3. E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p203. C. C.
Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p245. I:1 , 2.-A. Maclaren, Sermons
Preached in Manchester (3Series), p225. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit,
vol. iii. p127. W. G. Pearce, Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, pp1 , 17.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p209. I:1-3.-M. R. Vincent,
Gates Into the Psalm Country, p3. I:1-4. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit,
vol. iii. p127. I:1-6.-C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p316.
A Tree Planted By Rivers of Water
Psalm 1:3
I. The happy man of this Psalm is none other than the man who presents his
body a living sacrifice unto God, and is not fashioned according to this
world"s pattern and device, but is transformed by the renewing of his mind
through an earnest pondering of God"s thoughts, and who thereby proves by a
daily experience what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Wherein, then, does his happiness consist? Blessed is this Prayer of
Manasseh , for "he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water".
What is it that is contrasted with a tree in this Psalm? Chaff; and the
contrast that is presented to us in this Psalm is this, as to whether our
lives are to be like a tree or like the chaff. Now a tree viewed in
contrast to the chaff provides a noble image of a rich, full, fruitful
life. The special force of the image lies in this, that a tree perfectly
portrays to us the connexion between thinking and working, between the
roots of conduct and the fruits of conduct A tree derives its nourishment
from hidden roots, and all the fruit that grows amid sunshine grows out of
the hidden roots that have struck down into the earth, and have been
drinking there of the lower streams. And the answering fact in human life
is this that the roots of our life and conduct are inward and downward.
Strong characters are not uncaused things. Strong characters are produced
by strong thinking, by strong teaching. Good deeds are the outgrowth of
great thoughts. It is quite true that men sometimes fail to put their best
thoughts into action, and why is it? Is it not because their thoughts are
not allowed to take full possession of them and of their feelings and
minds? And hence men who sometimes have very good thoughts have very bad
lives. The remedy for that is to think more. Yes, even though it be painful
to think more, to think.
II. Two words here deserve special notice. The word "planted" is
significant in the text. It is equal to our word "transplanted". Now of
course, a literal tree never chooses its locality, but all emblems drawn
from nature in Scripture fail to represent man"s power of will and of
choice. The tree cannot transplant itself. But that is not so with man.
Where God has given the stream of His Word, where God"s Word is known, men
may choose to strike their roots into its fatness if they will. Then the
word "streams" or "rivers" is specially significant. The Psalmist does not
