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The mind often goes back in review of the past human world. On this great field there are presented all the grand varieties of character. They come to view in great divisions and assemblages — in mass, as it were — bearing the broad distinctions of their respective ages, nations, and religions. Here and there individuals stand up conspicuously to view — of extraordinary and pre-eminent character and action. What an odious and horrid character rests upon some. They seem to bear eternal curses on their heads. And these have gone in that same character, unaltered, into another world, and that a state of retribution. But there has been "a multitude that no man can number," bearing on earth and bearing away from it the true image of their Father in heaven. The saints of God in the past time are presented as a general comprehensive object to our memory. And we have many of "the just" retained in memory as individuals. They abide in memory, and ever will, kept alive, as it were, the images, the examples, the personifications of what we approve, admire, and feel that we ought to love and to be. Now, their memory "is blessed," self-evidently so, for the mind blesses it, reverts to it with complacency mingled with solemnity. It is blessed when we consider them as practical illustrations, verifying examples of the excellence of genuine religion. Their memory is blessed while we regard them as diminishing to our view the repulsiveness and horror of death, and as associated with the most blessed things through all time.

(J. Foster.)

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KJV: The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.

WEB: The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.