PSALMS

The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more

clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the

Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the

divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or,

rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal

heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of

the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and

unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius of Hebrew

poetry to lay little stress upon artifices of rhyme and rhythm. By

its simple device of parallelism, it suggests a rhythm profounder

than the sound of any words--the response of thought to thought, the

calling of deep to deep, the solemn harmonies that run throughout

the universe. Whether the second thought of a verse is co-ordinate

with the first, as--

Let us break their bands asunder,

And cast away their cords from us, ii 3.

or contrasted with it, as--

Jehovah knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the ungodly shall perish, i. 6,

the resulting parallelism is essentially simple, and the Hebrew poet

can express his profoundest thoughts and feelings with lucidity and

freedom. It is the depth and sincerity of its emotion, coupled with

this unrivalled simplicity of expression that has given the Psalter

its abiding-place in the religious history of humanity.

With the partial exception of Psalm xlv., which is a marriage song,

the songs of the Psalter are exclusively religious. Indeed most of

the poetry of the Old Testament is religious; the Song of Deborah,

e.g. (Jud. v.), or the Psalm of Hezekiah (Isa. xxxviii.). But, from

scattered hints it is abundantly plain that, especially before the

exile, Hebrew poetry must have ranged over a wide variety of themes.

So far as we know, the Hebrews never had an epic; and though a

certain epic power is occasionally suggested by the extant

literature, it may be doubted whether the Hebrew genius, which was

essentially lyrical, would have been capable of the long sustained

effort demanded by a great epic. But the lyrical genius of the

Hebrew found abundant opportunity in life's common joys, sorrows and

activities. Victories in battle were celebrated in ballads, which

made the blood leap, love songs were sung at weddings, and dirges

were chanted over the dead. The labour of drawing water, of reaping

the fields or gathering the vintage, was relieved by snatches of

song. There was all this and more, but it has nearly all perished,

leaving little more than an echo, because the men who compiled and

edited the Old Testament were dominated by an exclusively religious

interest.

But if the interest of the Psalter be exclusively religious, we have

no reason to complain of its variety. From the deepest despair to

the highest exaltation, every mood of the soul is uttered there.

Many a classification of the Psalter has been attempted, e.g. into

(_a_) psalms of gladness, such as thanksgiving (xlvi.),

adoration (viii.); (_b_) psalms of sadness, such as lamentation

(lxxiv.), confession (li.), supplication (cii.); (_c_) psalms

of reflection, such as the occasional didactic poetry (cxix.), or

discussions of the moral order (lxxiii.). But in the nature of the

case, no classification can ever hope to be completely satisfactory,

if for no other reason than that the psalms, being for the most part

lyrics, are often marked by subtle and rapid changes of feeling,

passing sometimes, as in Psalm xxii., from the most touching laments

to the most daring expressions of hope and gladness. The following

classification, though exposed, as all such classifications must be,

to the charge of cross-division, will afford a working basis for the

study of the Psalter:--

(1) Psalms of Adoration, including (_a_) adoration of God for

His revelation in nature, viii., xix. 1-6, xxix., civ.; (_b_)

adoration of Him for His love to His people, xxxiii., ciii., cxi.,

cxiii., cxv., cxvii., cxlvii.; (_c_) praise of His glorious

kingdom, cxlv., cxlvi., ending with the call to universal praise,

cxlviii., cl.

(2) Psalms of Reflection (_a_) upon the moral order of the

world, ix., x., xi., xiv., xxxvi., xxxvii., xxxix., xlix., lii.,

lxii., lxxiii., lxxv., lxxxii., xc., xcii., xciv.; (_b_) upon

Divine Providence, xvi., xxiii., xxxiv., xci., cxii., cxxi., cxxv.,

cxxvii., cxxviii., cxxxiii., cxxxix., cxliv. 12-15; (_c_) on

the value of Scripture, i., xix. 7-14, cxix.; (_d_) on the

nature of the ideal man, xv., xxiv. 1-6, l.

(3) Psalms of Thanksgiving, most of them for historical

deliverances, e.g. from the exile, or from the Syrians in the second

century B.C., xxx., xl., xlvi., xlviii., lxv., lxvi., lxvii.,

lxviii., lxxvi., cxvi., cxviii., cxxiv., cxxvi., cxxix., cxxxviii.,

cxliv. 1-11, cxlix.

(4) Psalms in Celebration of Worship, v., xxiv., 7-10, xxvi.,

xxvii., xlii.-xliii., lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiv.

(5) Historical Psalms (_a_) emphasizing the unfaithfulness of

the people, lxxviii., lxxxi., cvi.; (_b_) emphasizing the love

or power of God, cv., cxiv., cxxxv., cxxxvi.

(6) Imprecatory Psalms, lviii, lix., lxix., lxxxiii., cix., cxxxvii.

(7) Penitential Psalms, vi., xxxii., xxxviii., li., cii., cxxx.,

cxliii.

(8) Psalms of Petition (_a_) prayers for deliverance,

preservation or restoration, iii., iv., vii., xii., xiii., xvii.,

xxv., xxxi., xxxv., xli., xliv., liv., lv., lx., lxiv., lxxi.,

lxxiv., lxxvii., lxxix., lxxx., lxxxv., lxxxvi., lxxxviii., cxx.,

cxxiii., cxxxi., cxl., cxli., cxlii; (_b_) answered prayers,

xxii., xxviii., lvi., lvii.

(9) Royal Psalms (_a_) king's coronation, xxi.; (_b_)

marriage, xlv.; (_c_) prayers for his welfare and success, xx.,

lxi, lxiii.; (_d_) his character, lxxii., ci.; (_e_)

dominion, ii., xviii., cx.; (_f_) yearning for the Messianic

King, lxxxix., cxxxii.

(10) Psalms concerning the universal reign of Jehovah, i.e.

Messianic psalms in the largest sense of the word, xlvii., lxxxvii.,

xciii., xcv., xcvi., xcvii., xcviii., xcix., c.

The Psalter has plainly had a long history. In its present form it

obviously rests upon groups, which in turn rest upon individual

psalms, that are no doubt often far older than the groups in which

they stand. Like the Pentateuch, and perhaps in imitation of it, the

Psalter is divided into five books, whose close is indicated, in

each case, by a doxology (xli., lxxii., lxxxix., cvi.), except in

the case of the last psalm, which is itself a doxology (cl.). This

division appears to have been artificially effected. Psalm cvii.,

which starts the last book, goes naturally with cv. and cvi., which

close the fourth book; and the circumstance that the number of

psalms in the fourth book corresponds exactly with that of the

third, raises a strong suspicion that the break was deliberately

made at Psalm cvi. It is very probable, too, that the doxology at

the close of Psalm cvi. (cf. 1 Chron. xvi. 36), which differs

somewhat from the other doxologies, was originally intended as a

doxology to that psalm only, and not to indicate the close of the

book. In any case, the contents of books 4 and 5, which are very

largely liturgical, are so similar that they may be practically

considered as one book.

Books 2 and 3 may also be similarly regarded; for whereas in books

1, 4 and 5 the name of the divine Being is predominantly Jehovah, in

books 2 and 3 it is predominantly Elohim (God), and there can be no

doubt that these two books, at least as far as Ps. lxxxiii., have

been submitted to an Elohistic redaction. Psalm xiv., _e.g._,

reappears in the 2nd book as Psalm liii. in a form practically

identical, except for the name of God, which is Jehovah in the one

(xiv.) and Elohim in the other (liii.); the change is, therefore,

undoubtedly deliberate. This is also made plain by the presence of

such impossible phrases as "God, thy God," xlv. 7, 1. 7, instead of

the natural and familiar "Jehovah, thy God." Whatever the motive for

the choice of this divine name (Elohim) may be, it is so thoroughly

characteristic of books 2 and 3 that they may not unfairly be held

to constitute a group by themselves. In this way the Psalter falls

into three great groups--book I (i.-xli.), which is Jehovistic,

books 2 and 3 (xlii.-lxxxix.), which are Elohistic, and books 4 and

5 (xc.-cl.), which are Jehovistic..

These greater groups rest, however, upon other smaller ones, some formally

acknowledged, e.g. the so-called Psalms of Ascent or Pilgrim psalms

(cxx.-cxxxiv.), the Psalms of David, Psalms of the Korahites (xlii.-xlix.,

etc.), Psalms of Asaph (lxxiii.-lxxxiii., etc.), and others not so obvious

in a translation, e.g. the Hallelujah Psalms, cxi.-cxiii., cxlvi.-cl.

These groups must often have enjoyed an independent reputation as

groups, and even been invested with a certain canonical authority, for

occasionally the same psalm appears in two different groups (xiv.=liii.,

xl. 13-17=lxx., cviii.=lvii. 7-11 +lx. 6-12). Such repetition proves that

the final editors did not consider themselves at liberty to make any

change within the groups. The principle of the arrangement of individual

psalms within the group was probably not a scientific one: e.g. xxxiv.

and xxxv. seem to be placed together for no other reason than that both

refer to "the angel of Jehovah," xxxiv. 7, xxxv. 5. Sometimes a psalm

has been wrongly divided into two (cf. xlii., xliii., originally one

psalm) and occasionally two psalms have been united, usually for

reasons that are transparent (so perhaps xix., the revelation in the

heavens and the revelation in the Scriptures, and xxiv., the entrance

of Jehovah into His temple, and the essential conditions for the

entrance of man).

The original order of the groups themselves appears to have been

dislocated. Whoever added the subscription to Psalm lxxii. can hardly

have been aware of the eighteen psalms which, in the subsequent books

of the Psalter, are ascribed to David; nor is it natural to suppose

that the Asaphic (l.) and Korahitic psalms (xlii.-xlix.) stood in the

second book when that subscription was written. It is not improbable

that Psalms xlii.-l. originally belonged to the third book, along

with the Asaphic group, lxxiii.-lxxxiii., and that lxxii. 20, "The

prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended," was intended as the

subscription of all the Davidic psalms that had then been collected

(Book I, except Pss. i., ii., x., xxxiii., and book 2, Pss. li.-lxx.).[1]

The first two books originally represented a Davidic hymn-book; they

probably represent, as a whole, the oldest part of the Psalter.

[Footnote 1: Psalms i. and ii. were placed at the beginning as

prefatory to the whole Psalter. They deal with the two cardinal

points of Judaism--the law and the Messianic hope. Psalms ix. and x.

originally constituted _one_ alphabetic psalm, and xxxiii. is

ascribed to David in the Septuagint.]

The problem of the authorship of the Psalms is one of the thorniest

in the Old Testament. One hundred psalms are ascribed to definite

authors: one is ascribed to Moses (xc.), seventy-three to David, two

to Solomon (lxxvii., cxxvii.); and yet there are not a few scholars

who maintain that, so far from any psalm being Mosaic, or even

Davidic, there is not a single pre-exilic psalm in the Psalter, and

the less radical critics do not allow more than thirty or forty. The

question must be settled entirely upon internal evidence, as the

superscriptions, definite as they often are, are never demonstrably

reliable, while some of them are plainly impossible. To begin with,

doubt attaches to the meaning of the Hebrew preposition in the

phrase, "Psalm _of_ David." It is the same preposition as that

rendered by _for_ in the phrase, "For the chief musician," and

as in this phrase authorship is out of the question, it may be

seriously doubted whether it is implied in the phrase rendered

"Psalm of David." This doubt is corroborated by the phrase, "Psalms

of the sons of Korah." Plainly all the Korahites did not cooperate

in the composition of the psalms so superscribed; and the most

natural inference is that the phrase does not here designate

authorship, but that the psalm is one of a collection in some sense

belonging to or destined for the Korahitic guild of temple-singers.

[1] In that case the phrase would have a liturgical sense, and the

parallel phrase "of (or for) David," might have to be similarly

explained. It must be confessed, however, that whatever the actual

origin of the superscription, "of (or for) David," it certainly came

to be regarded as implying authorship--the many historical notices

in the superscriptions of Psalms li.-lx. are proof enough of that;

and no other explanation is possible of the superscription "of

Moses" in Psalm, xc (cf. Is. xxxviii. 9, the writing of Hezekiah).

[Footnote 1: It is not absolutely impossible that the phrase might

point to a collection composed by this guild, cf. "Moravian

brethren." But the other supposition is more likely.]

In later times, then, authorship was plainly intended by the

superscriptions. But it is quite certain that the superscriptions

themselves are no original and integral parts of the psalms. In the

Septuagint they occasionally differ from the Hebrew, assigning

psalms that are anonymous in the Hebrew (xcv., cxxxvii.) to David,

or to other authors (e.g., cxlvi.-cxlviii. to Haggai and Zechariah.)

The ease with which psalms were, without warrant, ascribed to David

may be seen from the Greek superscription to Psalm xcvi. "When the

house [i.e. the temple] was being built after the captivity; a song

of David": in other words, an admittedly post-exilic psalm is

ascribed to David. The superscriptions were added probably long

after the psalms, and there is no reason to suppose that the Hebrews

were exempt from the uncritical methods and ideas which

characterized the Greek translators. That they shared them is

abundantly proved by the historical superscriptions. One at least

(Ps. xxxiv.) in substituting the name of Abimelech (Gen. xx.) for

Achish (1 Sam. xxi.) shows either ignorance or carelessness, and

casts a very lurid light on the reliability of the superscriptions.

The contents of other psalms are manifestly irreconcilable with the

assumed authorship: Asaph, e.g., whom the Chronicles regards as a

contemporary of David (1 Chron. xvi 7), laments in Psalms lxxiv.,

lxxix. the devastation of the temple, which was not at that time in

existence. The principles on which the superscriptions were added

were altogether superficial and uncritical. Psalm cxxvii. is

ascribed to Solomon, chiefly because its opening verse speaks of the

building of the house, which was understood to be the temple. So

Psalm lxiii. is described as "a psalm of David when he was in the

wilderness of Judah," simply on the strength of the words, "My soul

thirsteth for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is"--words

which are taken literally, though they were undoubtedly intended

metaphorically. A parallel case is that of the psalm inserted in

Jonah ii., obviously a church psalm whose figurative language has

been too literally pressed.

Enough has been said to show that the superscriptions are later than

the psalms themselves, and often, if not always, unreliable; we are

therefore wholly dependent upon internal evidence, and the criteria

for Davidic authorship must be sought outside the Psalter. The only

absolutely undisputed poems of David's are the elegy over Saul and

Jonathan in 2 Samuel i. and the lament over Abner (2 Sam. iii. 33,

34). There is no means of proving that 2 Samuel xxii. (=Ps. xviii.)

and 2 Samuel xxiii. 1-7 are David's, as they are interpolated in a

section of Samuel which is itself an interpolation (xxi.-xxiv.),

interrupting as it does the continuity of 2 Samuel xx. and I Kings

i. The data offered by the elegy are much too slender to enable us

to decide whether any particular psalm is David's or not. Some have

ventured to ascribe a dozen psalms or so to him on the strength of

their peculiar vigour and originality, but obviously all such

decisions must be altogether subjective. What is certain is that

David was an accomplished musician (1 Sam. xvi. 18) and a great poet

(2 Sam. i.), a man of the most varied experience, rich emotional

nature and profound religious feeling, a devoted worshipper of

Jehovah, and eager to build Him a temple; and it is not impossible

that such a man may have written religious songs, but in the nature

of the case it can never be proved that he wrote any of the songs in

the Psalter. Psalm xviii. has been by many assigned to him with

considerable confidence because of the support it is thought to

receive from its appearance in a historical book; but besides the

fact that this support, as we have seen, is slender, the psalm can

hardly, at least in its present form, have come from David. The

superscription assigns it to a later period in his life when he had

been delivered from all his enemies; but at that time he could not

have looked back over the past, stained by his great sin, with the

complacency which marks the confession in vv. 20-24. Others have

supposed that xxiv. 7-10, with its picture of the entrance of

Jehovah through the "ancient gates," may well be his. It may be, if

the gates are those of the city; but if, as is more probable, they

are the temple gates, then the psalm must be long after the time of

Solomon. In the quest for Davidic psalms we can never possibly rise

above conjecture. Later ages regarded David as the father of sacred

song, just as they regarded Moses as the author of Hebrew law.

There can be little doubt, however, that there are pre-exilic psalms

or fragments in the Psalter. From Psalm cxxxvii. 3, 4 we may safely

infer that already, by the time of the exile, there were songs of

Jehovah or songs of Zion. We cannot tell what these songs were like;

but when we remember that for nearly two centuries before the exile

great prophets had been working--and we cannot suppose altogether

ineffectually, for they had disciples--it is difficult to see why,

granting the poetic power which the Hebrew had from the earliest

times, pious spirits should not have expressed themselves in sacred

song, or why some of these songs may not be in the Psalter.

We appear to be on tolerably sure ground in at least some of the

"royal" psalms. Doubtless it is often very hard to say, as in Psalms

ii., lxxii., whether the king is a historical figure or the

Messianic King of popular yearning; and possibly (cf. lxxii.) a

psalm which originally contemplated a historical king may have been

in later times altered or amplified to fit the features of the ideal

king. Other psalms, again (e.g., lxxxix., cxxxii.), clearly are the

products of a time when the monarchy is no more. But there remain

others, expressing, e.g. a wish for the king's welfare (xx., xxi.),

which can only be naturally referred to a time when the king was on

the throne. It is not absolutely impossible to refer these to the

period of the Hasmoneans, who bore the title from the end of the

second century B.C.; but the history of the canon renders this

supposition extremely improbable. The contents of these psalms are

not above pre-exilic possibility, and their position in the first

book would, generally speaking, be in favour of the earlier date.

Psalm xlv. also, which celebrates the marriage of a king to a

foreign princess, seems almost to compel a pre-exilic date.

Some scholars, struck by the resemblance between many of the

sorrowful psalms and the poetry of Jeremiah, have not hesitated to

ascribe some of them to him (cf. xl. 2). Such a judgment is

necessarily subjective, but there can be little doubt that Jeremiah

powerfully influenced Hebrew religious poetry. The Greek

superscriptions, again, which assign certain psalms to Haggai and

Zechariah, though doubtless unreliable, are of interest in

suggesting the liturgical importance of the period following the

return from the exile. This period seems to have produced several

psalms. Psalm cxxvi,, with its curiously complex feeling, apparently

reflects the situation of that period, and the group of psalms which

proclaim Jehovah as King, and ring with the notes of a "new song,"

were probably composed to celebrate the joy of the return and the

resumption of public worship in the temple (xciii., xcv.-c., cf.

xcvi. 1). The history of the next three centuries is very obscure,

and many a psalm which we cannot locate may belong to that period;

but the psalms which celebrate the law (i., xix. 7ff., cxix.) no

doubt follow the reformation of Ezra in the fifth century.

It is not probable that there are many, if any, psalms later than

170-165 B.C. in the Maccabean period; some deny even this

possibility, basing their denial on the history of the canon. But if

the book of Daniel, which belongs to this same period, was admitted

to the canon, there is no reason why the same honour should not have

been conferred upon some of the psalms. The Maccabean period was

fitted, almost more than any other in Israel's history, to rouse the

religious passion of the people to song; and, as the possibility

must be conceded, the question becomes one of exegesis. Exegetically

considered, the claims of at least Psalms xliv., lxxiv., lxxix.,

lxxxiii. are indubitable. They speak of a desolation of the temple

in spite of a punctilious fulfilment of the law, a religious

persecution, a slaughter of the saints, a blasphemy of the holy

name. No situation fits these circumstances so completely as the

persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C., and

these psalms betray many remarkable affinities with passages in the

first book of the Maccabees. As long ago as the fifth century A.D.

the sharp-sighted Theodore of Mopsuestia believed that there were

seventeen Maccabean psalms; Calvin admitted at least three. It may

be safely concluded, then, that the Psalter brings us within about a

century and a half of the Christian era.

The criteria for determining the date of a psalm are few and meagre.

The Psalter expresses the piety of more than half a millennium, and

even the century cannot always be fixed. The language is often

general, and the thoughts uttered would be as possible and

appropriate to one century as another. Nearly forty years ago

Nöldeke maintained that there were psalms of which we could not say

with any definiteness to what period they belonged between 900 and

160 B.C. He himself referred Psalm ii. to Solomon, which had been

referred by Hitzig to Alexander Jannaeus (105-78 B.C.). Even where

the historical implications may seem fairly certain, there may be

more than one legitimate interpretation. Psalm xlvi., e.g., which is

usually regarded as a song of triumph sung after the departure of

Sennacherib, is by some interpreted eschatologically; Zion is the

ideal Zion of the latter days, and the stream that makes her glad is

the stream of Paradise. Some psalms, of course, have their origin

stamped very legibly upon them. Psalm cxxxvii. e.g., clearly implies

that the exile is not long over. The presence of Aramaisms in a

psalm is a fairly sure indication of a relatively late date. Within

certain limits, also, its theological ideas may be a guide, though

we know too little of the history of these ideas to use this

criterion with much confidence. Still, so elaborate an emphasis on

the omnipresence of God as we find in Psalm cxxxix. is only possible

to a later age, and this inference is more than confirmed by its

highly Aramaic flavour. Both these considerations render its

ascription to David utterly untenable.

The question was raised long ago and has been much discussed in

recent times, whether the subject of the Psalter is the individual

or the church; and till very recently the opinion has been gaining

ground that the experience and aspiration of the Psalter are not

personal and individual, but that in it is heard the collective

voice of the church. Many difficulties undoubtedly disappear or are

lessened on this interpretation, e.g., the bitterness of the

imprecatory psalms, or the far-reaching consequences attached in

other psalms (cf. xxii., xl.) to the deliverance of the singer. Till

the exile, the religious unit was the nation, and the collective use

of the singular pronoun is one of the commonest phenomena in Hebrew

literature. The Decalogue is addressed to Israel in the 2nd pers.

sing., in Deuteronomy the 2nd pers. sing, alternates with the pl.,

in the priestly blessing (Num. vi. 24ff.) Israel is blessed in the

singular. In Deutero-Isaiah, the servant of Jehovah is undoubtedly

to be interpreted collectively, and in many of the psalms the

collective interpretation is put beyond all doubt by the very

explicit language of the context:

Much have they afflicted me from my youth up,

Let _Israel_ now say, cxxix. 11

All this is true, and there are probably more collective psalms in

the Psalter than we have been accustomed to believe. But it would be

ridiculous to suppose that every psalm has to be so interpreted. Some

of the psalms were originally written without any view to the temple

service, and they must have expressed the individual emotion of the

singer.[1] Besides, Jeremiah had shown or at least suggested that

the real unit was the individual; the teaching of Ezekiel and the

book of Job are proof that the lesson had been well learned; and,

although the post-exilic church may have felt its solidarity and

realized its corporate consciousness as acutely as the pre-exilic

nation, the individual, as a religious unit, could never again be

forgotten. He had come to stay; and if, in many psalms, the general

voice of the church is heard, it is equally certain that many others

utter the emotions and experiences of individual singers.

[Footnote 1: That Psalms, now collective, were originally

individual, and subsequently altered and adapted to the use of the

community is seen, e.g., in the occasional disturbance of the order

in alphabetical psalms (ix., x.). ]

The Psalter, or part of it, was used in the temple service[1]-witness

the numerous musical and liturgical superscriptions (cf. superscr. of

Ps. xcii.)--though the people probably did no more than sing or utter

the responses (cvi. 48). It would be difficult to estimate the

importance of the Psalter to the Old Testament Church. It was the

support of piety as well as the expression of it; and, to a worship

which laid so much stress upon punctilious ritual and animal sacrifice,

the Psalter, with its austere spiritual tone, its simple passion for

God, and its bracing sense of fellowship with the Eternal, would come

as a wholesome corrective. Almost in the spirit of the older prophets

(Hos. vi. 6) animal sacrifice is relegated to an altogether subordinate

place (xl., l., li.), if it is not indeed rebuked: the sacrifice dear

to God is a broken spirit. Thus the Psalter was a mighty contribution

in one direction, as the synagogue in another, to the development of

spiritual religion. It kept alive the prophetic element in Israel's

religion, and did much to counteract the more blighting influences of

Judaism. The place of the law is occasionally recognized (i., xix. 7ff.),

once very emphatically (cxix.), but it is honoured chiefly for its moral

stimulus. It is not, as in later times, an incubus; it is still an

inspiration.

[Footnote 1: The addition of the last verse to the alphabetic

psalms, xxv. and xxxiv., adapts these psalms, whether originally

individual or collective, to the temple service.]

There are tempers in the Psalter which are anything but lovely-hatred

of enemies, protestation of self-righteousness, and other utterances

which prevent it from being, in its entirety, the hymn-book of the

Christian Church. Historically these things are explicable and perhaps

inevitable, but the glory of the Psalter is its overwhelming sense of

the reality of God. The men who wrote it counted God their Friend; and

although they never forgot that He was the infinite One, whose home is

the universe and who fills the vast spaces of history with His

faithfulness and His justice, He was also to them the patient and

loving One, who preserves both man and beast, under the shadow of whose

wings the children of men may rest with quietness and confidence, and

before whom they could pour out the deepest thoughts and petitions of

their hearts, in the assurance that He was the hearer of prayer, and

that His tender mercies were over all His works. He was to them the

source of all strength and consolation and vision. In His light they

saw light; and in their noblest moments--whatever they might lose or

suffer--with Him they were content. In Luther's fine paraphrase of

Psalm lxxiii. 25, "If I have but Thee, I ask for nothing in heaven or

earth."