THE DIVERSITY OF THE PSALTER

IN the opening chapter of his book, The Psalms in Human Life, Mr. Prothero refers to the Hebrew legend that the harp of David would give forth music in the mid night when the wind swept across its strings. "The poetry of that tradition," he beautifully says, " is condensed in the saying that the Book of Psalms contains the whole music of the heart of man, swept by the hand of his Maker. In it are gathered the lyrical burst of his tenderness, the moan of his penitence, the pathos of his sorrow, the triumph of his victory, the despair of his defeat, the firmness of his confidence, the rapture of his assured hope. In it is presented the anatomy of all parts of the human soul; in it, as Heine says, are collected t sunrise and sunset, birth and death, promise and fulfilment — the whole drama of humanity.' '

1. A MIRROR OF THE SOUL.

It is this extraordinary variety of subject that gives the Psalter its unique character. There is hardly an experience of the human heart but what finds expression in it. Amid the thousand vicissitudes of human life, men turn to the Book of Psalms, and find in it, as St. Athanasius said, " a mirror of the soul." A few testimonies on this point may be not unfitly quoted. " What," asks the judicious Hooker,1 "is there necessary for man to know which the Psalms are not able to teach? . . . Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Providence over this world, and the promised joys of the world to come, — all good to be either known, or done, or had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth." There is no grief or disease incident unto the soul of man, no wound or sickness named, for which there is not in this treasure-house a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found. " There are feelings," said Frederick Robert son of Brighton,2 the greatest English preacher of the nineteenth century, " of which we do not speak to each other; they are too sacred and too delicate. If we do speak of them they lose their fragrance, become coarse; nay, there is even a sense of indelicacy and exposure. Now the Psalms afford precisely the right relief for this feeling; wrapped up in the form of poetry, metaphor, etc., that which might seem exaggerated is excused by those who do not feel it; while they who do can read them, applying them, without the suspicion of uttering their own feelings. Hence their soothing power; and hence, while other portions of Scripture may become obsolete, they remain the most precious parts of the Old Testament. For the heart of man is the same in all ages." "From pompous ritual and national pæan," writes Professor Moulton,3 "down to the cry of a solitary soul in the dark, there is nothing that cannot find a record in the Book of Psalms." "Every form of human sorrow," said Charles Kingsley,4 in one of his most striking sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, " doubt, struggle, error, sin; the nun agonizing in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel, and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son starving in a far country, and recollecting the words which he learnt long ago at his mother's knee; the peasant boy trudging afield in the chill dawn, and remembering that the Lord is his shepherd, there fore he shall not want — all shapes of humanity have found, and will find to the end of time, a word said to their inmost hearts, and more, a word said for those hearts to the living God of heaven, by the vast humanity of David, the man after God's own heart." "All the wonders of Greek civilisation heaped together," said Mr. Gladstone, "are less wonderful than is the simple Book of Psalms — the history of the human soul in relation to its Maker." Truly, in the language of St. Augustine, " the Psalms are read in all the world, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

2. THE HYMN-BOOK OF THE CHURCH.

It may be taken as beyond dispute that it is this amazing variety of mood, and subject, and occasion, which gives the Psalms their catholicity, and combined with their spirituality, fits them, as Dr. Driver5 says, to be the hymn-book, not only of the Second Temple, but also of the Christian Church. This diversity is partly to be accounted for by the fact that the Psalter is the product, not of one mind, or of one age, but is a collection of religious lyrics com posed by many different authors, and written at various times during a long period of national vicissitudes. Just as Palgrave's Golden Treasury is a selection of the best songs and lyrical poems in the English language, so is the Book of Psalms a collection of the finest Hebrew lyrics from the time of the monarchy to that of the Maccabees. Hence some of the psalms are national, some collective, some individual. Some are the communings of the soul with God, some the expression of congregational worship, some the outbursts of national thanksgiving.

There are personal psalms such as the 23rd ("The Lord is my Shepherd"), and the 63rd (" O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee"); some, like the 51st (" Have mercy upon me, O God "), and the De Profundis ("Out of the deep," 130), expressive of deep penitence; others, like the 32nd ("Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven "), full of the joy and blessedness of pardon. There are national psalms, be wailing the desolation of the sanctuary, as the 79th ("O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance "), or praying for the peace of Jerusalem, as the 122nd (" I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the house of the Lord "). Sometimes, perhaps more frequently than is commonly supposed, the poet speaks in the name of the nation. We have undoubted instances of this personification in Psalm 124 ("If the Lord Himself had not been on our side, let Israel now say"), and in Psalm 129 ("Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up "). The use of history as a means of moral instruction is abundantly justified in such psalms as the 7 8th ("Hear My law, O My people "), and the iO5th and io6th. Then there are royal psalms, often pregnant with Messianic teaching, celebrating, it may be, a king's marriage, as Psalm 45 (" My heart is inditing of a good matter "), or embodying a solemn prayer that God will endow the king with wisdom and the spirit of righteousness, as Psalm 72 ("Give the king Thy judgments, O God").

Many of the psalms again celebrate the glory of God in the wonders and beauties of creation, of which striking examples may be found in Psalms 8 ("O Lord, our Governor"), 19 (" The heavens declare the glory of God "), and 104 ("Praise the Lord, O my soul"). Now and again we find incorporated in the Psalter smaller collections of poems, such as the Songs of Degrees6 (A.V.), or Songs of Ascents, which doubtless constituted "The Pilgrims' Handbook," intended for the use of those pious Hebrews — reminding us of the Canterbury pilgrims in after ages — who went up to Jerusalem for the yearly festivals. In this collection is not only the Traveller's Psalm (" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills" 121), in which we almost seem to hear the voices of the pilgrims chanting on their way; but one or two family pieces, of which the 127th ("Except the Lord build the house ") has been beautifully called the Hebrew Cottar s Saturday Night.7 Other smaller collections may be the Hallel (Psalms 113-118), and the Hallelujah Psalms (146150) to which we shall have occasion to refer later. Indeed the Psalter abounds in liturgical compositions, specially designed for the use of the Second Temple, but not less appropriate to the services of the Christian Church.

In addition to these aspects of the Psalter, many of the psalms are of the nature of meditations — some on God's moral government of the world, some in praise of the law, some on the character of the upright man; others with a more direct reference to the individual circumstances of the poet. In many instances again, the psalms rise above all local and immediate circumstances, and speak the language of all time. Of this class we may take as an illustration " that ancient psalm, that psalm of eternity," beginning " Lord, Thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another." "The 90th psalm," says Isaac Taylor, "might be cited as perhaps the most sublime of human com positions, the deepest in feeling, the Ioftiest in theological conception, the most magnificent in its imagery." Since the year 1662 it has found a place, most appropriately, in the Burial Service of the Church of England, and is now read every week over the remains of thousands of the sons of men. Dr. Watts' well-known hymn, one of the finest in the English language, is based upon this psalm —

"O God, our help in ages past,

     Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

     And our eternal home."

3. THE DEVOTIONAL HANDBOOK OF THE WORLD.

Such are some of the varied aspects of this wonderful book, selected by way of illustration. It cannot therefore be a matter of surprise that the Psalter has appealed to the religious instinct of mankind in a way that is true of no other composition. " There is one book of sacred poetry," said Dean Church in a lecture delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral,8 "which is unique of its kind, has nothing like it, or second to it. It expresses the ideas and the feelings of a religion of which the central and absorbing object of faith is One who is believed to be the absolute, universal, Living God, the One God of the world and all things, Almighty, All-Holy, Supreme. . . . Whenever the Book of Psalms began to be put together, and whenever it was completed, from that time in the history of the world, the religious affections and the religious emotions formed their final, their deepest, their unsurpassed expression. From that time to this there never has been a momentary pause, when somewhere or other the praises of His glory and the prayers of His worshippers have not been rehearsed in its words."

The Psalter has thus become "the devotional handbook of the world." Of the two hundred and eighty-three quotations from the Old Testament to be found in the New, no less than one hundred and sixteen are said to be from the Book of Psalms. It was a psalm that Christ and His disciples sang before they left the Upper Room on the night on which He was betrayed. With the words of a psalm upon His lips Jesus gave up the ghost. Among the early Christians psalms were sung at the love-feasts, and formed their morning and evening hymns. " They have furnished the bridal hymns, the battle songs, the pilgrim marches, the penitential prayers, and the public praises of every nation in Christendom, since Christendom was born."9 They have provided mottoes for ancient families, for universities, for trade-guilds, for cities, for hospitals, for alms-houses, for lighthouses, and for innumerable coins, rings, and sun dials.

"Of the many aspects presented by an English Cathedral," wrote the eloquent Archbishop Alexander,10 " there is one which is often overlooked : it is a shrine for the Psalter." The Psalmists, he goes on to say, "cannot be put away from us, with an impatient shrug, to a more convenient season. At marriages and funerals, by sick beds and in stately ceremonials, in churches and homes, they make their voices heard at every turn." The Psalter, moreover, is the sacred book, not of one Church or of one community; it is the sacred book of the world. In it the voice of controversy is silent; Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Anglican and Non conformist, are at one. " The history of the psalms," wrote Bishop Perowne11 in his epoch-making commentary on the Psalter, " is the history of the Church, and the history of every heart in which has burned the love of God. It is a history not fully revealed in this world, but one which is written in heaven. Surely it is holy ground. We cannot pray the psalms without realizing in a very special manner the communion of saints, the oneness of the Church militant, and the Church triumphant. We cannot pray the psalms, without having our hearts opened, our affections enlarged, our thoughts drawn heavenward. He who can pray them best is nearest to God, knows most of the spirit of Christ, is ripest for heaven."

1 Ecclesiastical Polity, v. xxxvii. 2.

2 Sermons, 2nd series, p. 106.

3 The Psalms, in "The Modern Readers' Bible," p. xii.

4 David, p. 37.

5 Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. p. 346.

6 Psalms 120-134.

7 Professor James Robertson, The Poetry and Religion of the Psalms, p. 222.

8 Published in The Gifts of Civilization, p. 336.

9 Baldwin Brown, The Higher Life, p. 103.

10 The Witness of the Psalms, p. 3.

11 Vol. i. p. 40.