THERE is perhaps no book in the Bible to which the preacher turns so frequently as to the Book of Psalms. There are probably more sermons preached from passages in the Psalter than from any other portion of Holy Writ. Not only is -it, as Mr. Gladstone said, " the highest known treasure-house of individual and personal devotion "; it is also employed in public worship to an extent far exceeding that of any other part of the Bible.

As a book of meditation it is unapproached by any of the great masterpieces of devotion. Great are the Confessions of St. Augustine, great is the Imitatio Christi, great are the Holy Living and Holy Trying of Jeremy Taylor, great are Baxter's Saints' Rest, and Keble's Christian Year; but incomparably greater is David's Book of Psalms. It remains, as Dean Church truly said, "an unique book, equally, and in equal measure, the prayer-book of public and common worship, and the chosen treasury of meditation, guidance, comfort to the individual soul." '

In studying the Psalter with a view to teaching, it is difficult to exaggerate the value of Bishop Perowne's Commentary, and of Dr. Kirkpatrick's volumes in the " Cam bridge Bible "; while for purposes of preaching, Dr. Maclaren's Book of Psalms in the " Expositor's Bible " will be found most stimulating and suggestive. From a more critical standpoint, Dr. Driver's chapter on the Psalms in his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament is invaluable; and Professor W. T. Davison's article on the " Book of Psalms," in the fourth volume of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, is most concise and useful.

For the part played by the Psalter in history and biography, abundant illustrations will be found in Dean Stanley's Jewish Church, vol. ii., Lecture xxv., in Marson's The Psalms at Work, and in Prothero's Psalms in Human Life.

Among other useful books, special mention may be made of Dr. Driver's Parallel Psalter, of Delitzsch's Commentary (English translation), Dr. Cheyne's Works, Archbishop Alexander's Witness of the Psalms to Christ, and of Dean Church's lectures on "The Sacred Poetry of Early Religions," published in his Gifts of Civilization, and his sermon on "The Psalms," in The Discipline of the Christian Character.