beautiful garden, as into heaven itself. What delicate, sweet, and lovely flowers are there springing up of all manner of beautiful, joyous thoughts towards God and his goodness! On the other hand, where do you find more profound, mournful, pathetic expressions of sorrow than the plaintive psalms contain? There again you look into the heart of all the holy as into death, yea, as into the pit of despair. How dark and gloomy is it there, in consequence of all manner of melancholy apprehension of God's displeasure! So also when the psalmists speak of fear or hope, they use such words, that no painter could so delineate, and no Cicero or eloquent orator so describe them."

We will add two passages more from the highly valuable work to which we have already referred:

*

"The Psalter has further become the Sacred Book of the world, in a sense belonging to no other part of the Biblical records. Not only does it hold its place in the liturgical services of the Jewish Church, not only was it used more than any other part of the Old Testament by the writers of the New, but it is in a special sense the peculiar inheritance of the Christian Church through all its different branches. From whatever point of view any Church hath contemplated the scheme of its doctrine, by whatever name they have thought good to designate themselves, and however bitterly opposed to each other in church government or observance of rites, you will find them all, by harmonious and universal consent, adopting the Psalter as the outward form by which they shall express the inward feelings of the Christian life.' It was so in the earliest times. The Passover psalms were the 'Hymn' of the Last Supper. In the first centuries, psalms were sung at the Love-feasts, and formed the morning and evening hymns of the primitive Christians. Of the other Scriptures,' says Theodoret in the fifth century, the generality of men know next to nothing. But the Psalms you will find again and again repeated in private houses, in market-places, in streets, by those who have learned them by heart, and who soothe themselves by their divine melody.' 'When other parts of Scripture are used,' says St. Ambrose, 'there is such a noise of talking in the church, that you cannot hear what is said; but, when the Psalter is read, all are silent.

* Stanley: Lectures on the Hist. of the Jewish Church, ii. 162-4; 170--4.

They were sung by the ploughmen of Palestine, in the time of Jerome; by the boatmen of Gaul, in the time of Sidonius Apollinaris. In the most barbarous of churches, the Abyssinians treat the Psalter almost as an idol, and sing it through from end to end at every funeral. In the most Protestant of churches, the Presbyterians of Scotland, the Nonconformists of England,—‘psalmsinging' has almost passed into a familiar description of their ritual. In the Churches of Rome and of England, they are daily recited, in proportions such as far exceed the reverence shown to any other portion of the Scriptures.

If we descend from churches to individuals, there is no one book which has played so large a part in the history of so many human souls. By the Psalms, Augustine was consoled on his conversion and on his death-bed. By the Psalms, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Savonarola, were cheered in persecution. With the words of a psalm, Polycarp, Columba, Hildebrand, Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Huss, Jerome of Prague, Columbus, Henry the Fifth, Edward the Sixth, Ximenes, Xavier, Melancthon, Jewell, breathed their last. So dear to Wallace in his wanderings was his Psalter, that during his execution he had it hung before him, and his eyes remained fixed upon it as the one consolation of his dying hours. The unhappy Darnley was soothed in the toils of his enemies by the 55th Psalm. The 68th Psalm cheered Cromwell's soldiers to victory at Dunbar. Locke, in his last days, bade his friend read the Psalms aloud; and it was whilst in rapt attention to their words that the stroke of death fell upon him. Lord Burleigh selected them out of the whole Bible as his special delight. They were the framework of the devotions and of the war-cries of Luther: they were the last words that fell on the ear of his imperial enemy, Charles the Fifth."

"But there are three points in which the Psalms stand unrivalled:

"The first is the depth of personal expression and experience. There are doubtless occasions when the psalmist speaks as the organ of the nation. But he is for the most part alone with himself and with God. Each word is charged with the intensity of some grief or joy, known or unknown. If the doctrines of St. Paul derive half their force from their connection with his personal

struggles, the doctrines of David also strike home and kindle a fire wherever they light, mainly because they are the sparks of the incandescence of a living human experience like our The patriarchs speak as the fathers of the chosen race; the prophets speak as its representatives and its guides. But the psalmist speaks as the mouthpiece of the individual soul, of the free, independent, solitary conscience of man everywhere.

own.

“The second of these peculiarities is, what we may call in one word, the perfect naturalness of the Psalms. It appears, perhaps, most forcibly, in their exultant freedom and joyousness of heart. It is true, as Lord Bacon says, that, if you listen to David's harp, you will hear as many hearselike airs as carols;' yet still the carols are found there more than anywhere else. Rejoice in the Lord.' Sing ye merrily.' Make a cheerful noise.' -Take the psalm, bring hither the tabret, the merry harp, with the lute.'-'O praise the Lord, for it is a good thing to sing praises unto our God.'- A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful.' This, in fact, is the very meaning of the word 'psalm.' The one Hebrew word which is their very pith and marrow is hallelujah.' They express, if we may so say, the sacred duty of being happy. Be happy, cheerful, and thankful, as ever we can, we cannot go beyond the Psalms. They laugh, they shout, they cry, they scream for joy. There is a wild exhilaration which rings through them. They exult alike in the joy of battle, and in the calm of nature. They see God's goodness everywhere. They are not ashamed to confess it. The bright side of creation is everywhere uppermost; the dark, sentimental side is hardly ever seen. The fury of the thunder-storm, the roaring of the sea, are to them full of magnificence and delight. Like the Scottish poet in his childhood, at each successive peal they clap their hands in innocent pleasure. The affection for birds and beasts and plants, and sun and moon and stars, is like that which St. Francis of Assisi claimed for all these fellow-creatures of God, as his brothers and sisters. There have been those for whom, on this very account, in moments of weakness and depression, the Psalms have been too much; yet not the less is this vein of sacred merriment valuable in the universal mission of the chosen people. And the more so, because it grows out of another feeling in the Psalms,

which has also jarred strangely on the minds of devout but narrow schools, the free and princely heart of innocence,' which to modern religion has often seemed to savor of self-righteousness and want of proper humility. The psalmist's bounding, buoyant hope, his fearless claim to be rewarded according to his righteous dealing, his confidence in his own integrity, no less than his agony over his own crimes; his passionate delight in the Law, not as a cruel enemy, but as the best of guides, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,— these are not according to the requirements of Calvin, or even of Pascal: they are from a wholly different point of the celestial compass than that which inspired the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. But they have not the less a truth of their own, a truth to nature, a truth to God, which the human heart will always recognize. The frank, unrestrained benediction on the upright, honest man, the noblest work of God,' with which the Psalter opens, is but the fitting prelude to the boundless generosity and prodigality of joy with which in its close it calls on every creature that breathes,' without stint or exception, to 'praise the Lord.' It may be that such expressions as these owe their first impulse, in part, to the new epoch of national prosperity and individual energy ushered in by David's reign; but they have swept the mind of the Jewish nation onward towards that mighty destiny which awaited it; and they have served, though at a retarded speed, to sweep on, ever since, the whole spirit of humanity in its upward course. 'The burning stream has flowed on, after the furnace itself has cooled.' As of the classic writers of Greece it has been well said, that they possess a charm quite independent of their genius, in the radiance of their brilliant and youthful beauty; so it may be said of the Psalms, that they possess a like charm, independent even of their depth of feeling or loftiness of doctrine. In their free and generous grace, the youthful, glorious David seems to live over again with a renewed vigor. All our fresh springs' are in him, and in his Psalter.

"These various peculiarities of the Psalms lead us, partly by way of contrast, partly by a close though hidden connection, to their main characteristic, which appears nowhere else in the Bible with equal force, unless it be in the life and words of Christ himself. The reason why the Psalms have found such constant favor in

every portion of the Christian Church, while forms of doctrine and discourse have undergone such manifold changes in order to represent the changing spirit of the age, is this, that they address themselves to the simple, intuitive feelings of the renewed soul.' They represent the freshness of the soul's infancy, the love of the soul's childhood; and therefore are to the Christian what the love of parents, the sweet affections of home, and the clinging memory of infant scenes, are to men in general.””

Perhaps the maledictions or imprecations, contained in some of the psalms, may appear inconsistent with the views which have been advanced. I am here willing to admit the unsoundness of some of the explanations which have been given of these imprecations. They cannot all, as has been supposed, be regarded as mere predictions or denunciations of the punishment which awaits evil-doers. Some of them, at least, are wishes or prayers. See Ps. cxxxvii. 8. But on this subject it should be remembered that

I. Many prayers against enemies, contained in the Psalms, are equivalent to prayers for personal safety. They were composed by the head of the nation, in a state of war, when prayer for the destruction of enemies was equivalent to prayer for preservation and success. So Christian ministers are accustomed to pray for success for the arms of their country. So on our national festivals we are accustomed to thank God that he enabled our fathers to overcome their enemies. What is harsh, therefore, in prayers of this kind, is incidental to a state of warfare. This explanation will also apply to the psalms composed by David during his persecution by Saul. These prayers should never be used by private Christians with respect to personal enemies.

II. Another consideration is, that these prayers are expressed in the strong language of poetry; and that some of the particular thoughts and expressions, which are connected with the general subject of the prayer, result from an effort for poetic embellishment and effect, rather than from vindictiveness of feeling.

III. The imprecations which are not included in the classes above mentioned are extremely few. I shall not undertake to reconcile a part of Ps. lxix., cix., and cxxxvii., with the general spirit of even the Jewish religion, and far less with the spirit of Him who said, "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven," and who