Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 115:8

Albert Barnes Commentary

Psalms 115:8

1798–1870
Presbyterian
Albert Barnes
Albert Barnes

Albert Barnes Commentary

Psalms 115:8

1798–1870
Presbyterian
SCRIPTURE

"They that make them shall be like unto them; Yea, every one that trusteth in them." — Psalms 115:8 (ASV)

They that make them are like unto them—stupid, senseless, irrational. See the notes at Isaiah 44:9-20.

So is everyone that trusteth in them—people who do this show that they are destitute of all the proper attributes of reason, since such gods cannot help them.

It is most strange, as it appears to us, that the worshippers of idols did not themselves see this. But this is in reality no more strange than that sinners do not see the folly of their course of sin, or that people do not see the folly of worshipping no God.

In fact, there is less folly among pagans than there is in this class of men. The worship of an idol shows at least that there is some religious tendency in the mind: some conviction that God ought to be worshipped, some aspiration after a proper object of worship, and some appreciation of the true dignity and rank of man as made for worship.

But what shall be said of the man who evinces no such tendency, who has no such aspiration or desire, who endeavors to extinguish in his nature all that was designed to express the idea of worship or to lead him to God, who never starts the inquiry whether there is a God, who never prays for light, for guidance, for pardon, for a preparation for death and eternity, and who never even testifies so much interest in religion as to set up an image of gold, or wood, or stone, as indicating that he is made above the brutes?

Multitudes of pagans are less stupid and foolish than such people in Christian lands.