{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33492/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33492","id":"gutenberg_33492","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33492","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Psalms -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe English Churchman's Library\n\n\n\n\n  THE CHRISTIAN USE\n  OF THE PSALTER\n\n\nBY THE\n\nREV. A. R. WHITHAM, M.A.\n\n\n  _Principal of Culham Training College, and formerly\n  Vice-Principal of Cuddesdan College_\n\n\n\n\n  Impleta sunt quae concinit\n  David fidelis carmine\n\n\n\nA. R. MOWBRAY & CO., LTD.\n\nLONDON: 34 Great Castle Street, Oxford Circus, W.\n\nOXFORD: 9 High Street\n\n\n1909\n\n\n\n\nTHE ENGLISH CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY\n\n_One Shilling each net_\n\n\nThe Mysteries of Grace.  By T. A. Lacey, Chaplain of the House of\nMercy, Highgate.\n\nLetters to a Godson.  First Series.  By Cyril Bickersteth, Priest of\nthe Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield.\n\nFirst Studies In S. Mark.  By G. M. Ireland Blackburne.\n\nSpiritual Counsels to District Visitors and others.  By the late George\nHoward Wilkinson, D.D., Bishop of S. Andrews: Primus.\n\nThe Christian Use of the Psalter.  By A. R. Whitham, M.A., Principal of\nCulham Training College.\n\nOur Working Girls and How to help them.  By Flora L. Freeman, Author of\n\"Sunshine of Everyday Life.\"\n\nLetters to a Godson.  Second Series.  By Cyril Bickersteth, M.A.\n\nThe Practical Religion.  By Vernon Staley, Provost of Inverness\nCathedral.\n\n\n_Others in preparation._\n\n  A. R. MOWBRAY & CO., LTD.\n  CHURCH PUBLISHERS\n  LONDON: 34, Great Castle Street, W.\n  OXFORD: 9, High Street\n\n\n\n\n{v}\n\nPREFACE\n\nThis little book, based on three Lectures delivered to the S. Paul's\nLecture Society in January, 1908, is not intended so much for the\nscholar as for the plain man who goes to Church and loves the Prayer\nBook, but finds the Psalms sometimes puzzling.  They are certainly the\nmost difficult, though the most characteristic, part of the daily\noffices of the Church.  What has been attempted in these Lectures is\nnot to explain them in detail, but to suggest the broad lines of\ninterpretation which seem always to have been in the mind of the Church\nin her use of the Psalter.  A few additional helps have been suggested\nin the Notes.\n\nCULHAM, 1908.\n\n\n\n\n{vii}\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                                           PAGE\n\nPREFACE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      v\n\n\n_LECTURE I_\n\n  PART I.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES  . . . . . . . . . . . . .      1\n  PART II.--DIFFICULTIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     22\n\n\n_LECTURE II_\n\nCHRIST IN THE PSALTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    43\n\n\n_LECTURE III_\n\nTHE CHURCH IN THE PSALTER  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   73\n\n\nNOTES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  101\n\n\n_APPENDIX_\n\nBRIEF SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE CHRISTIAN USE OF EACH PSALM  .  107\n\n\nINDEX OF PSALMS REFERRED TO  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  142\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nThe Christian Use of the Psalter\n\n\nLECTURE I\n\nPART I.  GENERAL PRINCIPLES\n\n  Haereditate acquisivi testimonia tua in aeternum:\n  Quia exsultatio cordis mei sunt.\n\n\nThe Christian use of the Psalter is as old as Christianity itself.  The\nnew-born Catholic Church, returning from her earliest conflict with the\nkingdoms of this world, found the most natural expression of her faith\nand her need in the words of the 2nd Psalm:\n\n  Why did the Gentiles rage,\n  And the peoples imagine vain things?\n  The kings of the earth set themselves in array,\n  And the rulers were gathered together,\n  Against the Lord, and against His Anointed.\n          (Acts iv. 25, 26, R.V.)\n\n{2}\n\nBefore this, on the very birthday of the Church, the chief of the\nApostles had appealed to the witness of \"David,\" for the Resurrection\nand Triumph of the Holy One (Pss. xvi., cx. in Acts ii. 25-8, 34, 35).\nAnd even earlier, during the ten days of waiting, the great Psalms of\nrighteous wrath (thought so impossible by many to-day) had supplied the\nprophecy of the fall of Judas:\n\n  Let his habitation be made desolate,\n  And let no man dwell therein;\n\nand the justification of the election of Matthias:\n\n  His office let another take.\n          (Pss. lxix. and cix. in Acts i. 20.)\n\n\nSo harmoniously did the praise-book of the Jewish Church pass into the\nservice of Christ; so clearly did the first believers recognise that\nthe Spirit of Christ was the same Who had spoken by \"David.\"  This\nimmediate appropriation of the Psalter as a book of Christian witness\nis remarkable evidence to the felt unity and continuity of the two\nCovenants.  No book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Isaiah,\nis so frequently quoted in the New as the book of Psalms.\n\nBut still more remarkable is the influence of the Psalter on Christian\n_worship_.  The Church {3} exists in the world not only as the\nteaching, but also as the worshipping community.  As the ages pass she\nceases not to bear the witness of her praise and thanksgiving to the\nFather, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  From the beginning she showed a\ntendency to do this in ordered and liturgical forms.  The Apostolic\nChurch continued steadfast in \"the prayers\" (Acts ii. 42, R.V.).  The\nexpression implies not merely a daily gathering for worship, but the\noffering of that worship in a fixed and orderly manner, suggested, no\ndoubt, by the existing Jewish services.  Whatever may have been the\nactual form of \"the prayers\" in the first age of the Church, or\nwhatever stages they may have passed through, there can be no doubt\nthat they are the germ of all the rich later developments of the\nliturgy of the Church, such as are represented in the Middle Ages by\nthe Missal and the Breviary, and to-day by our own Book of Common\nPrayer.\n\nThe regular services of the Church fall naturally into two classes.\nThe Eucharist, the service of the Altar, took the place of the\nsacrificial worship of the Temple.  The Divine Office, the service of\nthe Choir, may have been suggested by the services of the Synagogue.\nBut if so, there is one most significant difference.  {4} The Christian\nChurch made a much fuller public use of the Psalms than the Synagogue\never seems to have done.[1]  The Psalms in the Jewish Church seem to\nhave been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its\ncentral feature.  The Divine Office of the Christian Church practically\nis the Psalter.  The readings from other parts of Scripture, so\nprominent in the Synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place.\nThe recitation of the Psalms, which appears from very early times as\nthe characteristic Christian devotion, became the very centre and core\nof the sevenfold daily Choir Office of the mediaeval Church.  The whole\nPsalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at Mattins (the\nmidnight office), while selected Psalms formed the chief part of the\nsubsequent services of the day.[2]  The English Reformers, however\nhastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these\nservices of the Breviary, showed the true Catholic instinct in this at\nleast, that they provided as the leading feature of Morning and Evening\nPrayer an unbroken and systematic recitation of the Psalms.  In this\nrespect their claim was justified that they had provided an {5} order\n\"much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers.\"[3]  It was\na return from mediaeval complications to a more primitive ideal.\n\n\nWhat, then, was this book of praise and worship which the Catholic\nChurch found ready to hand, and made unhesitatingly her own, and which\nhas set the standard and provided the chief material for her continual\nvoice in the ear of God?  The Psalter, as we know it now, had been for\nsome time before Christ the recognised praise-book of Israel.  Its\nHebrew name is simple and significant--_Tehillim_, \"praises.\"  Its\nhistorical origins and growth are still indeed wrapt in obscurity, and\nto discuss them would be alien from our present purpose.  Suffice it to\nsay that there seems no conclusive reason for discrediting the\nuniversal Jewish and Christian tradition that the Psalter begins at\nleast with David.  Some of the earlier and more personal psalms are\nnaturally felt to reflect his character and youthful struggles.  Nor is\nit unreasonable to believe that the later historical books are\nsubstantially correct in making him the founder {6} of the Temple choir\n(1 Chron. xv.; Ezra iii. 10).  Doubtless the majority of the Psalms\nbelong to a later age, and their collection is due to the scrupulous\ncare and reverence of the period of Jewish history which begins with\nEzra.  The singers of the Temple after, perhaps even before, the\nCaptivity formed various collections of sacred lyrics, which passed\nunder characteristic names, some being entitled \"Psalms of David\"\n(though not of necessity all his work); others bearing the names of\nancient leaders of the Temple choir, like Asaph, or of the guilds of\nsingers, like \"the sons of Korah.\"  Another collection with a distinct\nindividuality would be the \"songs of degrees\" or \"ascents\"\n(cxx.-cxxxii.), the pilgrim-songs of the faithful Israelites as they\njourneyed from their homes to keep the annual feasts at Jerusalem.  At\nsome unknown time these different collections, or selections from them,\nmust have been brought together into one.  Many scholars consider that\nthe compilation cannot have been complete before the age of the\nMaccabees, as more than one Psalm is thought to refer to the agonies of\nfaithful Israel during that great national crisis (e.g. Pss. xliv.,\nlxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.).  But it must have been substantially complete\nby the time that the Septuagint translation was made (in the second\ncentury {7} B.C.); and so ancient then were the titles of the Psalms in\nthe Hebrew that these Alexandrine scholars seem to have been frequently\npuzzled by them.\n\nThis collection of 150 Psalms, whenever precisely it may have been\nmade, was divided into five books, each ending with an outburst of\npraise to the God of Israel.[4]  The key to this somewhat artificial\narrangement is no doubt to be found in the desire to make the Psalter\ncorrespond with the Pentateuch.  \"Moses,\" says a Rabbinical commentator\n(Midrash _Tillim_), \"gave five-fifths of the Law, and correspondingly\nDavid gave the book of _Tehillim_, in which are five books.\"  Of this\nDr. Cheyne says, \"The remark is a suggestive one: it seems to mean\nthis--that the praise-book is the answer of the worshipping community\nto the demands made by its Lord in the Law, the reflexion of the\nexternal standard of faith and obedience in the utterance of the\nbelieving heart.\"  This criticism is so illuminating that it may well\nsuggest the first great principle in our own Christian use of the\nPsalter.\n\n\nI.  The Psalter is the inspired answer of praise which human faith is\nprivileged to make to {8} God's revelation.  It is the \"new song\" put\nin the mouth of humanity by its Creator.  \"Thou preparest their heart,\nand Thine ear hearkeneth thereto\" (Ps. x. 19).\n\nThis is surely a very great thought.  The Old Testament is the record\nof God's gradual unveiling of Himself to His elect, whom for the\nworld's sake He had chosen out of the world.  The revelation was not\nindeed to them alone.  God had spoken in many ways, more than even the\nChurch yet recognises, to the heathen world.  Yet to Israel God gave\nthat highest privilege of receiving and keeping the true knowledge of\nHimself, of His unity, His universality, His moral being, His holiness,\nHis love, and of the demand which this knowledge makes on human\nconscience.  The unknown author of 2 Esdras, looking back on history\nafter the great blow had fallen on Jerusalem, has expressed this in\nvivid and pathetic language: \"Of all the flowers of the world Thou hast\nchosen Thee one lily: and of all the depths of the sea Thou hast filled\nThee one river: and of all builded cities Thou hast hallowed Sion unto\nThyself: ... and among all the multitudes of peoples Thou hast gotten\nThee one people: and unto this people, whom Thou lovedst, Thou gavest a\nlaw that is approved of all\" (2 Esd. v. 24-7).  In the Psalter God {9}\nhas provided, as it were, for His people the words of praise in which\ntheir thankful hearts may express their love and loyalty to what He has\nrevealed.\n\nThis feature, the glad response to revelation, is stamped upon the\nPsalter from end to end.  Thus the 1st Psalm describes the secret of\nhuman blessedness:\n\n  His delight is in the law of the Lord:\n  And in His law will he exercise himself day and night.\n\n\nThe 9th Psalm is an outburst of thanksgiving to \"the Name\" of God, Who\nis revealed as the moral Governor of the world.  The 19th couples the\nself-revelation of God in nature, God Whose glory the heavens declare,\nwith the revelation given in the Law, which is, as it were, the sun in\nthe moral world restoring the soul and enlightening the eyes.  The 25th\nreads like a comment from man's heart on the great proclamation of\nGod's Name given to Moses in the \"cleft of the rock\"--\"The Lord, the\nLord, a God full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and\nplenteous in mercy and truth\" (Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 5-7).  So the\nPsalmist prays, as it were, in answer:\n\n{10}\n\n  Call to remembrance, O Lord, Thy tender mercies:\n  And Thy loving-kindnesses, which have been ever of old.\n  O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:\n  But according to Thy mercy think Thou upon me, O Lord,\n      for Thy goodness.\n\n\nThe 40th offers the response of a converted will to what is found and\nrecognised in the Law:\n\n  In the roll of the book it is written of me:\n  I delight to do Thy will, O my God.\n          (R.V.)\n\n\nThe 78th recounts the long history of rebellious Israel as in itself\npart of the \"testimony\" of God.  The mingled record of deliverance and\nfailure, of judgment and hope, is in itself \"a parable,\" a \"dark saying\nof old,\" which faith can read and make answer to.  The 131st expresses\nthe very fundamental spirit of faith, the essential temper and attitude\nof the Church, the spirit of humility, of intellectual submission, of\nobedience, which is the same under the Gospel Dispensation as under the\nOld Covenant.\n\n{11}\n\n  Lord, I am not high-minded:\n  I have no proud looks.\n  I do not exercise myself in great matters:\n  Which are too high for me.\n\n\nBut the most remarkable illustration of this characteristic attitude of\nthe believer is the 119th Psalm.  It is like a piece of music, every\nverse a subtle and harmonious variation on one dominant theme.  It is\nthe voice of the converted soul, learning the one lesson which man must\nlearn in this world's school, if he is to attain his true\nbeing--learning to be ever turning away from self, from one's own\ndoubts, troubles, persecutions, sufferings, to rest on what God has\nrevealed in His statutes, His judgments, His testimonies, His laws.\nNor is it without a subtle propriety that this Psalm is arranged as an\nacrostic under the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  These\nletters are, as it were, the rudiments out of which man is enabled to\nexercise his characteristic gift of articulate speech; and in the\nacrostic Psalms they are visibly consecrated to His service Who made\nthe mouth of man.  And each part of the 119th Psalm consists of eight\nverses, a significant Hebrew number, the symbol of the {12}\nResurrection and the restoration of all things in that eighth day, the\noctave of eternity, which is yet to come, and will complete the work of\nthe seven days of the first creation.\n\nThis Psalm, which expresses the unchanging spirit of true religion, was\nmost naturally appropriated by Christian devotion to form the services\nfor the working part of each day, beginning at Prime, when \"man goeth\nforth to his work and his labour\" with that benediction which comes on\nlabour done with a pure motive in God's Name:\n\n  Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way:\n  And walk in the law of the Lord,\n\nand ending at None, the hour of the death of the Lord, when day visibly\ndeclines, with the confession that the worker, as he looks back, must\nalways make:\n\n  I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost:\n  O seek Thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments.\n\n\nIt was like a stream of water, crossing unexpectedly a dusty\nway--_mirabilia testimonia tua_!  In psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly\nfresh, the soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout {13} hour,\nfrom the sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in\ncontemplation of the unfaltering vigour of the Divine righteousness,\nwhich had still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night,\nbut alert in the drowsy afternoon.[5]\n\n\nWe can scarcely exaggerate the value, in our own time especially, of\nthis use, not only of the 119th Psalm, but of the whole Psalter, as the\nresponse of the Church and the human soul to the revealed word of God.\nThese times of Christ have indeed filled and enriched the early\nconception of \"the Name\" of God.  We have learned to see in the Trinity\nthe justification of belief in the Divine Unity; we have learned more\nof the Fatherhood of God in the face of His only Son; we have learned\nthat the Cross is the key to human suffering; we have learned the\nCatholic nature of the Divine sovereignty: nevertheless the foundation\nteaching of the Psalmists as to the relation of the creature to his\nCreator remains unchanged.  We still find in the Psalter a guide for\nour uncertain footsteps in our journey back to God.  Is not the answer\nto every problem of faith, even such mysteries as the existence and\ncontinuance of evil, or the calamities that fall on the just, {14}\nstill to be found as the author of the 73rd Psalm found it, in\nreturning and rest upon the God Who has made _Himself_ known to\nsuffering man?\n\n  My flesh and my heart faileth:\n  But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.\n\n\nThe prevailing thought of the 119th Psalm, that God's revelation is\nfixed and permanent and the law of human life, marks the great\nseparation between the world and the Church.  Such a belief is\nabhorrent and distasteful always to the natural mind, while it is\nfamiliar to and welcomed by the Catholic Church, as it was by the\nJewish.  The Church's witness to the world is of a revelation from\nabove: she has _received_ it; she may not alter it without apostasy.\nHer mission in the world is not to be the mirror of each succeeding\nphase of human thought, nor merely the consecration of human\naspirations, but rather to speak with a supernatural authority, to tell\nmen what God is and what is His will, \"whether they will hear, or\nwhether they will forbear.\"  And the Church can only deliver her\nmessage aright, in the face of the frowns of the princes of this world,\nso long as worship gladdens and confirms her {15} witness, so long as\nshe herself finds her joy in contemplating her treasure and returning\nthanks for it to the Giver.\n\nAs the devout Israelite found in the Psalter the natural expression of\nan intelligent devotion to the God Who had revealed Himself in Law and\nProphets, so the Christian Church, with no break of continuity, found\nthe Psalter still adequate to express her joy in her fuller knowledge.\nFor that fuller knowledge was strictly in line with the old.  The faith\nof Israel had not been changed, but carried forward, developed,\nilluminated.  In the Law the Gospel lay hid, and the Christian Church\nfelt in the old words of devotion no outworn or alien accents, but\nliving utterances of the Spirit of Life, which renewed their youth with\nhers.  So from the beginning she found strength and comfort in her\nwarfare for the truth, in the praises of Israel.  From the beginning\nshe based her ordered worship on the services of Temple and Synagogue.\nThe choirs of the Catholic Church find their most lasting and\ncharacteristic voice not in hymn or anthem, but in--\n\n        \"The chorus intoned\n  As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.\"\n\n\n{16}\n\nII.  A second great principle of the Christian use of the Psalter will\nbe found in its humanism.  The Psalms are profoundly human.  They\nsympathise with the soul of man in all his varied efforts after God.\nThey find a voice for him in his battles for truth and right, in his\nmoments of defeat as well as his victories, in his doubts no less than\nhis certainties.  They put words into his mouth as he contemplates the\nvariety, the beauty, and the law of nature, or the injustice, the\nobstinacy, the treachery of men.  The Psalms make his bed in his\nsickness; they strengthen him in the inward agonies of faith; they go\nwith him to the gates of death, and farther still, even to God's \"holy\nhill and His dwelling\"; they point him to the eternal morning, when he\nwill wake up and be satisfied with God's likeness (_cf._ Pss. civ., x.,\nxli., lxxvii., lxxxviii., xliii., xvii.).\n\nWe have all no doubt felt something of this abiding sympathy of the\nPsalter.  Dean Church expressed it very remarkably in a letter written\nby him shortly before his death:\n\n\nThe thought of what is to take the place of things here is with me all\nday long, but it is with a strange mixture of reality and unreality,\nand I wish it did me all the good it might.  Books are not\nsatisfactory--at least, I have always found it {17} so.  It seems to me\nthat there is nothing equal to letting the Psalms fall on one's ears,\ntill at last a verse starts into meaning, which it is sure to do in the\nend (_Life and Letters_, p. 409, ed. 1897).\n\n\nThe Psalter has in this way endeared itself to many generations of\nstruggling and dying men, and appealed even to many who were alien from\nits spirit.  It has interwoven itself with striking scenes and moments\nof history, as when Hildebrand chanted \"He that dwelleth in heaven\nshall laugh them to scorn\" (ii.) before the encircling hosts of emperor\nand anti-pope; or when S. Athanasius, on that night of fear when the\nimperial soldiers had blockaded the doors of the church, and the fate\nof the faith of Nicaea seemed to hang in the balance, bade the deacon\nintone that Psalm which tells of God smiting great kings, \"for His\nmercy endureth for ever\" (cxxxvi.); or when Henry V. turned his face to\nthe wall and died, confessing that his ideal was unfulfilled, and that\nGod, and not he, must \"build the walls of Jerusalem\" (li.).\n\nThis humanism of the Psalter makes it pre-eminently a Christian\npossession, for Christianity is human through and through.  It is the\nreligion of \"the soul which is by nature Christian.\"  It redeems and\nconsecrates, as no other religion could ever dare to do, all the\nfulness of man's being.  {18} And why?  Here we touch the innermost\nsecret of the Psalter.  It is the book of the Incarnation.  \"The Word\nwas made flesh, and dwelt among us.\"  God Himself has taken to Himself\na human soul and spirit as well as a human body.  And the Incarnate\nWord found on earth the voice of His communing with the Father, as the\nfaithful of His own adopted nation did, in the words of the Psalms.\nThese words rise naturally to His lips in the supreme agony on the\nCross; they must have provided His prayers and thanksgivings, we may\nreverently imagine, not only in the public services which He attended,\nbut in His home at Nazareth, and in His lonely vigils of prayer.  He\ngathered together in Himself all the human experiences of the past\nwhich are reflected in the Psalter.  Hence the Psalter is also the\ncharacteristic voice of His Church, that Church which was founded by\nHim, and is united to Him, and is the assembly of the first-born of\nhumanity calling Him \"Lord\" and Mary \"Mother.\"\n\nThe consideration of these great truths will be reserved for subsequent\nlectures; but it would be impossible to speak of general principles in\nour Christian use of the Psalter without pointing out on the very\nthreshold its indissoluble connection, historically and doctrinally,\nwith the {19} \"Author and Finisher of our faith,\" and with His Church\n\"the household of faith.\"\n\n\nIII.  Once again, the Psalter is appropriate for Christian use because\nit is the book of Hope.  The world estranged from God is without hope.\nThe heathen looked back to a golden age; Virgil stands almost alone in\nhis dream of its possible return.[6]  The Israel of God is the\nfellowship of the future.  It feels itself in harmony with an\nincreasing purpose of God.  The great revelation to Moses of the Name\nof God, \"I will be that I will be\" (Ex. iii. 14, R.V. marg.), left its\nmark on all subsequent history.  So the Old Testament writers, under\nevery imaginable difficulty and persecution and reverse, among the\ntreacheries of friends, as well as the attacks of a hostile heathen\nworld, are ever straining forward to a coming of God and a Kingdom of\nGod.  Like the spirits in Virgil's vision:\n\n  Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum,\n  Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.[7]\n\n\n{20}\n\nThe Psalms throughout delight in this attitude.  The most casual reader\nis struck by the constancy with which an outlook of hope and joy\nsucceeds to the sorrow and stress of the opening verses of Psalm after\nPsalm.  Even the darkest have their gleams of promise.  And so the\nChristian Church, having learned what the hope of Israel meant, found\nthe Psalms come naturally to her lips.  She could sing with fuller\nmeaning of the rising up again of the righteous (xli.), of the\ndeliverances from the stormy waters and from the wandering out of the\nway in the wilderness (cvii.), of the bringing up of the sufferer \"from\nthe deep of the earth again\" (lxxi.).  The Psalter was and is to the\nChristian not merely the reflection of his characteristic sorrows and\ntrials, but the book of the Resurrection, of the restitution of all\nthings, of the doing away of the imperfect and the coming of the\nperfect.\n\n  Thou shalt shew me the path of life; in Thy presence\n      is the fulness of joy:\n  And at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.\n          (xvi. 12.)\n\n\nThus the Psalter is ours, for it is the new song of gratitude to Him\nWho has given us the {21} Catholic Faith; it is ours because it is the\nbook of Him Who has redeemed us by making Himself one with us, and\n\"taking the manhood into God\"; it is ours because it has not merely the\nhuman consecration of ages of Christian use, but it is the channel\nwhich the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in the Church, seems deliberately to\nhave chosen in which to make His ineffable intercession for the sons of\nGod who wait for their adoption, \"the redemption of the body\" (Rom.\nviii. 19-27).  Appreciation of the Psalter grows with the devout use of\nit.  The obligation to recite it month by month in the daily office is\none of the best gifts the Church has given to her priests; and both\npriest and laity alike will find increasingly that the Psalms need no\napology.  They are the noblest and most comprehensive form of public\nworship; they are the most truly satisfying book of private devotion.\n\n\n\n[1] Note A, p. 101.\n\n[2] Note B, p. 102.\n\n[3] \"Concerning the Service of the Church,\" the original Preface to the\nPrayer Book.\n\n[4] xli. 13, lxxii. 18-19, lxxxix. 50, cvi. 46, cl.\n\n[5] Walter Pater, _Gaston de Latour_.\n\n[6] Virgil, _eclogue_ iv.\n\n[7] Virgil, _Aeneid_, vi. 313, 314 (_cf._ Heb. xi. 13):\n\n    Praying, they stood with hands of love outspread,\n    If but that farther shore each might be first to tread.\n\n\n\n\n{22}\n\nPART II.  DIFFICULTIES\n\n  Servus tuus sum ego:\n  Da mihi intellectum ut sciam testimonia tua.\n\n\nBesides general principles, we are also to consider some of the general\ndifficulties in the use of the Psalter as a Christian book.  The Psalms\nare certainly not easy.  Nothing as great as they are ever could be\neasy.  None of the books of the Bible yield their secret except to\nlabour and prayer, and the Psalms present special difficulties of their\nown.  These are of various kinds and need various methods of approach.\nThere is a difficulty inherent in the very origin and history of the\nPsalms.  They are translated somewhat imperfectly from an ancient\nlanguage, not akin to our own--a language which, if not difficult in\nitself, is rendered so by the comparative scantiness of its literature.\nThe Psalms, humanly speaking, are the work of a race widely different\nfrom ourselves in habits and in modes of thought and expression.  They\ncontain allusions to events and circumstances imperfectly known or\nrealised to-day.  Most of our interpretation of these things is\nnecessarily guess-work.  The same Psalm may be ascribed {23} with equal\nprobability, by scholars of equal learning and reverence, to periods\nmany centuries apart.  Was the sufferer of Ps. xxii. David or Jeremiah,\nor is it altogether an ideal portrait?  Was the coming of the heathen\ninto God's inheritance of Ps. lxxix. that of the Babylonians in the\nsixth century B.C. or of the soldiers of Antiochus in the second?  Who\nwas the \"king's daughter\" in Ps. xlv. and who \"the daughter of Tyre\"?\nIs the Temple of the Psalms ever the first Temple, or is it always the\nsecond?  Such problems still wait an answer.  Again, there are\ndifficulties inherent in Hebrew thought.  It is intensely concrete and\npersonal, in contrast with our more usual abstractions and\ngeneralities.  The Psalmists speak habitually of \"the wicked\" and \"the\nungodly,\" where we should more naturally speak of the qualities rather\nthan the persons.  They ignore, as a rule, immediate or secondary\ncauses, and ascribe everything in nature or human affairs to the direct\naction or intervention of God.  Thus a thunder-storm is described:\n\n  There went a smoke out in His presence:\n  And a consuming fire out of His mouth,\n      so that coals were kindled at it.\n            (xviii. 8.)\n\n{24}\n\nAnd thus a national calamity:\n\n  Thou hast shewed Thy people heavy things:\n  Thou hast given us a drink of deadly wine.\n          (lx. 3.)\n\n\nSuch ways of describing God's work in Nature or His providence are\npartly, of course, due to the fact (often overlooked by the\nhalf-educated) that the Psalms are poetry and not prose.  For the same\nreason inanimate objects are personified: \"the earth trembled at the\nlook of Him,\" \"the mountains skipped like lambs\"; the mythical\n\"Leviathan\" appears both as a title of Egypt (lxxiv. 15) and as an\nactual monster of the deep (civ. 26).  God Himself, again, is spoken of\nin language that might seem more appropriate to man.  He is \"provoked,\"\nand \"tempted.\"  He awakes \"like a giant refreshed with wine.\"  He is\ncalled upon, not to sleep nor to forget, to avenge, to \"bow the heavens\nand come down.\"\n\nNor do the Psalms in their literal meaning rise always above the\ncurrent and imperfect religious conceptions of their time.  The moral\ndifficulties involved in this will be considered a little later, but it\nmay be interesting to point out here some examples which bear on {25}\nthe progressiveness of revelation in the Old Testament by which heathen\nideas became, under God's guidance, \"stepping-stones to higher things.\"\nThe Psalms seem sometimes to speak as if \"the gods of the heathen\"\nreally existed and were in some way rivals of the God of Israel,\nuniversal and supreme though He is acknowledged to be.  They are spoken\nof as \"devils\" as well as idols.  They are called upon to \"worship Him\"\n(_cf._ cvi. 36, xcvii. 7, 9, cxxxviii. i).\n\nAgain, the Psalmists' horizon is, for the most part, limited to this\npresent life, which is regarded as if it were the chief, almost the\nonly, scene in which moral retribution would be worked out.  And\noccasionally there appears the primitive Hebrew idea of the after-world\nas the vague and gloomy Sheol, like the shadowy Hades of Homer, where\nthe dead \"go down into silence,\" where, instead of purpose and\nprogress, there is but a dawnless twilight, the land \"without any\norder\" of Job (xlix., lxxxviii., cxv. 17).\n\nAnd yet the more one studies and uses the Psalms in the light of other\nScriptures and the Church's interpretation, the more it is found that\nthese partial, at first sight erroneous, conceptions have still their\npractical value for Christians.  There is nothing in them that is {26}\npositively false, and they suggest, on the other hand, aspects of truth\nwhich we tend to forget.  Thus in the instances given above, by \"the\ngods of the heathen\" the Christian may well be reminded of the\ncontinued existence and influence in the heathen world of the powers of\nevil, of the malignant warfare that is still being waged by\n\"principalities and powers\" against light and truth.  The ancient\nconception of the shadowy abode of the dead has also its value.  Even\nthe Lord Himself could speak of the night coming \"when no man can work\"\n(John ix. 4), and such Psalms as the 49th and the 115th may serve to\nremind us that this life is a time of work and probation in a sense\nthat the life after death is not, that the grave cannot reverse the\nline that has been followed here nor put praises in the mouth of those\nwho have never praised God \"secretly or in the congregation\" in this\nworld.  And again, the \"present-worldliness\" of the Psalter may well\npoint the duty of Christians in respect of what they see and know\naround them here.  Many are content, while repeating pious phrases\nabout heaven, to ignore the fact that this present human life is the\ngreat sphere of Christian activity, and that whether the Church is able\nto regenerate human society here or {27} not, it is her business to try\nto do it, as fellow-workers with Him--\n\n  Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong:\n  Who feedeth the hungry.\n          (cxlvi. 6.)\n\nHave we not a remarkable witness to the continuity of the Holy Spirit's\nteaching, and to the fact that not \"one jot or one tittle\" of the law\nis to remain unfulfilled, in the way that these apparent imperfections\nand limitations of the Psalter fall into their place in connection with\nthe later revelation?\n\n\nAnother obvious difficulty of the Psalter lies in the frequent\nobscurity of connection between verse and verse, in the rapid\ntransitions, in the uncertainty as to the sequence of thought, or the\nmeaning of the Psalm as a whole.  This difficulty, as it bears upon the\nliturgical use of the Psalms, has been increased by the abolition of\nthe _antiphons_, which in the pre-Reformation offices certainly helped\nat times to suggest a leading thought, or to guide the worshipper as to\nthe Church's intention in the recitation of this or that Psalm.  (Note\nC, p. 104.)  Sometimes indeed, the connection between the verses of a\nPsalm is really very slight, more a matter {28} of suggestion or\nassociation than of logic.  Such is the case in \"proverbial\" Psalms,\nlike the 33rd, 34th, and 37th, or the 119th.  But in others it is well\nworth the effort to gain a continuous view of the Psalm as a whole.  A\nsimple commentary will give this, or even sometimes the R.V. alone, or\nthe headings in the A.V., such as the very suggestive one prefixed to\nthe 110th: \"1 The kingdom, 4 the priesthood, 5 the conquest, 7 and the\npassion of Christ.\" (Note D, p. 106.)\n\nThere are also difficulties caused by a real obscurity in the Hebrew,\nor by mistranslations.  Here, again, a comparison with the R.V. is of\ngreat value.  The meaning of the 87th springs to light at once when we\nread \"This one was born there,\" instead of the mysterious \"Lo, there\nwas he born,\" etc.  The Psalm refers not to the birth of the Messiah,\nbut to the new birth of individuals out of the heathen races who thus\nbecome citizens of Sion.  \"So let indignation vex him, even as a thing\nthat is raw\" (lviii. 8), becomes certainly more intelligible as \"He\nshall take them away with a whirlwind, the green and the burning alike\"\n(a metaphor from a traveller's fire of brushwood, blown away by a\nsudden wind); and even if \"the beasts of the people\" remains still\nobscure in Ps. lxviii. in the revised {29} translation, its \"why hop ye\nso, ye high hills?\" is more significant when it is read--\n\n  Why look ye askance, ye high mountains:\n  At the mountain which God hath desired for His abode?\n\n\nSometimes the alteration of a single word makes the difference between\nobscurity and sense, as in xlix. 5, where \"the wickedness of my heels\"\nbecomes intelligible as \"iniquity at my heels\"; or in Ps. xlii., where\n\"Therefore will I remember thee concerning the land of Judah and the\nlittle hill of Hermon\" is made clear at once by the substitution of\n\"from\" for \"concerning.\"  The verse is the cry of the exile, who, far\naway in northern Palestine, among the sources of the Jordan, yearns for\nthe Temple and its services, which he is no longer able to visit.\n\nDoubtless the reasons which prevented the older version of the Psalms\nbeing changed in the Prayer Book in the seventeenth century, when other\npassages of Scripture were revised, still hold good.  Neither A.V. nor\nR.V. are so well adapted for music, nor have they endeared themselves\nto the worshipper by daily use.  Those who have time and opportunity\nmay {30} discover for themselves more exact meanings or clear up\ndifficulties by private study.  But even those who have not may find\nthat there are better uses of the Psalter than a merely intellectual\ngrasp of its meaning.  Possibly an occasional obscurity may even have a\nhumbling or awe-inspiring effect on the mind.  The strange version of\nthe Vulgate of Ps. lxxi. 14, though incorrect, is not without its point:\n\n  Quoniam non cognovi litteraturam,\n  introibo in potentias Domini.[1]\n\n\nLearning by itself can never lift the soul on the wings of devotion and\nworship.  The unlearned, Christ's \"little ones,\" have in every age\nfound a voice that spoke to them in the liturgy of the Catholic Church,\neven though its accents were inarticulate, and its message music rather\nthan words.  Such considerations may prevent us distressing ourselves\nbecause something, perhaps much, in the Church's book of praise is\nunintelligible and must remain so.\n\nTwo practical suggestions may be offered here to those who find\nthemselves hindered in devotion by the difficulties of the Psalter, by\nits rapid transitions, or its constantly varying tone.  The leading\npurpose of the Psalter in {31} the Church's use is expressed in its\nHebrew title, _Tehillim_, \"praises.\"  \"We shall do well,\" says Dr.\nCheyne, \"to accustom ourselves to the intelligent use of this title,\nand to look out in every psalm for an element of praise.\"  It is good\nto allow this thought to dominate our mind while the Psalms are being\nread or sung in the Church's service.  For this and for that our\nfathers in the Faith thanked God; for what He had revealed, or promised\nor done.  And He is the same, He changes not.  Ever and anon as the\nservice proceeds, a verse will suggest some ground of thanksgiving for\nourselves or for the Church we love.  We need to keep our minds, like\nour bodies, in the attitude of praise and aspiration, like that exiled\nlover of his nation who wrote Ps. cvi.:\n\n  Remember me, O Lord, according to the favour that Thou\n      bearest unto Thy people:\n  O visit me with Thy salvation;\n  That I may see the felicity of Thy chosen:\n  And rejoice in the gladness of Thy people,\n  And give thanks with Thine inheritance.\n            (cvi. 4, 5.)\n\n\n{32}\n\nNot only the attitude of praise should be cultivated, but also that of\nsympathy.  This will be especially fruitful as we take upon our lips\nthese constantly recurring expressions of penitence, struggle, and\nsorrow.  These are certain to be at times unreal to us, unless we can\nremember that we recite them not merely for ourselves, but as part of\nthe Church's intercession for the world, in which it is our privilege\nto take part.  Others are suffering under the burden of sin and grief,\nothers are overwhelmed with sorrow, racked with pain, harried by the\nslanderer and the persecutor.  It is such as these that we remember\nbefore God, as fellow-members of the one body.  And will not such a\nremembrance, such sympathy, bring us very near to our blessed Lord's\nown use of the Psalter in His days on earth, Who \"Himself took our\ninfirmities and bore our sicknesses\"?\n\n\nYet beyond all these difficulties of language, history, and modes of\nthought, whether they yield to study or not, there are outstanding\n_moral_ difficulties of the Psalter.  Some of the Psalms appear to be\ninconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel, or even with the moral\nsense of mankind, educated as it has been for so long in the\nGospel-school.  This objection seems at first {33} sight a more serious\ndifficulty than any of the others; but before it can be satisfactorily\ndealt with, another and more fundamental question must be faced.  What\nis the attitude, as a whole, of the objector to the revealed word of\nGod?  There are those to whom the Psalms seem to speak altogether in an\nalien tongue, who find the recitation of them in the Church's service\n\"tedious\" (a reason alleged recently as one of those which keep people\nfrom attending church), to whom the 119th Psalm appears to be\n\"mechanical and monotonous,\" whose very expression in church proclaims\nthem \"bored.\"  Such feelings may be only the result of ignorance, or\nlack of effort, or inherited misconceptions.  Or the reason may lie\ndeeper.  The worship of the Catholic Church can only be understood by\nthose who are of the mind of the Church, who have learned to place\nthemselves in the believer's attitude towards God and His revelation.\n\nHowever much the word \"conversion\" may have been abused, and turned\ninto a mere catchword or shibboleth, it is unquestionable that the\nChristian religion demands a fundamental change of mind and attitude, a\nchange which does not come by education only, nor by any natural\nprocess.  There is a hidden wisdom in the Church which to the natural\nman is {34} \"foolishness\" (1 Cor. ii. 14); it can only be learned by\nthose who humbly set themselves to be taught by the Spirit.  This\nchange, come it suddenly or very slowly, must have its effect upon the\nwhole man, his intellect, as well as his heart and will.  \"There is\nnothing hid from the heat thereof.\"  Especially will it rule our\nattitude towards Holy Scripture.  Without such a change neither\nhistorical nor grammatical explanations can make the Scripture sweet or\neven intelligible.  Not least will our comprehension of the Psalter be\ninfluenced by it.  How impossible is it really to say, \"Lord, what love\nhave I unto Thy law,\" if one has never realised that there is a law of\nGod, supreme and absolute, to be read in the Scriptures and in the\nwitness of the Church; and that only in obedience to this law can man\nfind his true self and \"walk at liberty.\"  It is vain to seek to be\ncritics before we are disciples.  And the Psalter is clearly meant for\nthe initiated, not for him who merely follows the crowd.  The Divine\nOffice, which the Psalter fills and dominates, is the means whereby the\ninstructed faithful express their unchanging delight in, and loyalty\nto, what they have received freely from God.  It is not the Church's\nmessage to the unconverted world, nor the voice of man's natural\ndesires and sympathies, {35} undisciplined by grace.  The Catholic\ntemper, the mind of the Church, is an absolute first principle in the\nright use of the Church's book of praise, and the key to its chief\ndifficulties.\n\nBearing this in mind, let us endeavour to face, in conclusion, this\nmoral difficulty of some parts of the Psalter--a difficulty which\nundoubtedly causes pain and uncertainty to some who are really devout,\nand which has led many to ask for a revised or expurgated Psalter for\nthe public services.  First, there is what appears to be the\nself-righteousness of the Psalter.  Side by side with the most perfect\nexpressions of humility and penitence, there are found protestations of\ninnocence and purity which, if they were merely personal, we should\nrightly hesitate to make our own.  But the \"I\" of the Psalter is not\nmerely personal; it is the collective voice of the Church, and of the\nChurch in her ideal aspect, such as we confess her in the Creed--\"one,\nholy, Catholic.\"  It is the voice of the great company of the holy\nsouls from the beginning of the world, on earth and beyond the veil.\nIt is with these that we recite our psalms, with these that we humbly\nassociate ourselves, it is their righteousness that we seek to make our\nown, for it is the righteousness of Christ.\n\nAnd if the \"I\" of the Psalter is the {36} self-expression of the\nCommunion of Saints, still more is it the voice of the King of Saints,\nthe immaculate Lamb, in whose Name we offer our worship.\n\nBut there is still the problem of the Psalms of Imprecation.  What can\nwe say of their apparent fierceness and vindictiveness, their\nreflection of the stormy passions and bitter warfare of a primitive\nage?  There is much indeed that can be rightly urged, here, as in the\nother Old Testament writings, from the point of view of the difference\nbetween Hebrew modes of expression and our own, and from the\nprogressive character of revelation, much that may help to remove\nprejudice and clear away apparent inconsistencies.  But the larger view\nof the Psalter as the book primarily of the Church is of still greater\nimportance.  The imprecations of the Psalms, though expressed in so\nvividly personal a manner, are no more personal than the protestations\nof innocency.  They express rather that age-long passion for\nrighteousness, that burning belief in a moral Judge of the world Who\nmust do right, which have always been the Church's saving salt among\nthe corruptions and indifference of the world.  It is this spirit that\ninspires them, rather than the thirst for {37} vengeance or the\nvindication of self.  They express the Church's belief that there is a\nworld-conflict ever proceeding between the cause of God, the cause of\ntruth and right, and the passions of men urged on by the powers of evil.\n\n  For lo, Thine enemies make a murmuring:\n  And they that hate Thee have lift up their head.\n  They have imagined craftily against Thy people:\n  And taken counsel against Thy secret ones.\n          (lxxxiii. 2, 3.)\n\n  Lay hand upon the shield and buckler:\n  And stand up to help me.\n  Bring forth the spear and stop the way\n      against them that persecute me:\n  Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.\n          (xxxv. 2, 3.)\n\n\nThis sense of an irreconcilable conflict between the malignity of evil\nand the will of God, between the carnal mind and that reflection of\nGod's will which He has implanted in the human conscience, is much to\nseek in our own day.  We are too much inclined to minimise the reality\nof sin, and to imagine that it is {38} disappearing before civilisation\nand the growth of gentler ways and sentiments.  The Psalmists knew\nbetter--they knew that the battle was to the death, and that God alone\ncan win His own victory; and they express, sternly and roughly perhaps,\nbut with the utmost sincerity, their undying faith that He will; that\nthe overthrow of malice and falsehood and treachery must one day be\nmanifested,\n\n  God shall suddenly shoot at them with a swift arrow,\n\nand that the part we each have played in the battle will be the true\nmeasure of our worth.\n\n  All they that are true of heart shall be glad.\n          (lxiv.)\n\nIn this sense we may even repeat the dreadful conclusion of the\nBabylonian exiles' Psalm:\n\n  Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children:\n  And throweth them against the stones.\n          (cxxxvii.)\n\nFor what are Babylon and her children but the powers of falsehood,\noppression, and cruelty? and blessed still and ever is he who is afire\nwith indignation against such things, who scorns {39} any easy\ncompromise with them, who burns to deal a blow at them for Jerusalem's\nsake!\n\nAnd there is still another justification for the continued use of these\nPsalms, which will be understood by those who have begun to be\ndisciples in the Church's school.  The Psalms are not merely the\nresponse to revelation, they are part of that revelation themselves.\nThe Church uses them not as mere human utterances, but as the inspired\nwords which God Himself has given her, and which the Lord Jesus\nconsecrated by His own personal use of them.  God cannot contradict\nHimself.  The Gospel may expand the Law, or do away with its letter in\norder to bring out the underlying spirit, but it cannot abrogate it.\nIf there were a real discrepancy between the imprecatory Psalms and the\nNew Testament, it would be scarcely conceivable that the first word of\nScripture quoted in the first history of the Church would be that\nsentence already alluded to:\n\n  Let his habitation be made desolate:\n  And let no man dwell therein.\n\n\nThe severities of the Psalms are matched by the severities of the\nGospels.  There is no real difference between our Lord's sentence on\nthe scribes and Pharisees, \"Behold, your house is {40} left unto you\ndesolate,\" and the sentence which the Holy Spirit puts into our mouth\nagainst the hypocrite and the traitor, \"Let his children be fatherless:\nand his wife a widow\" (cix. 8).  God is still \"a God of judgment\" and a\n\"consuming fire,\" and there is a \"wrath of the Lamb\" revealed, even\nthough He is \"the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.\"\n\nGod has, as it were, put upon our lips, in these Psalms, His own great\ncondemnation of sin, and made us our own judges.  We recite,\nremembering that it is His word, and not our own, the denunciation of\nthe sensual and the covetous, the traitor and the liar, the persecutor,\nthe slanderer, and the hypocrite.  From this point of view the\nrecitation of such Psalms as the 69th or the 109th should be an\nexercise of personal humility, of godly fear for ourselves and others,\nand might well bring to our mind often that other great challenge of\nthe Spirit:\n\n  Why dost thou preach My laws, and takest My covenant in thy mouth?\n  Whereas thou hatest to be reformed:\n  And hast cast My words behind thee.\n          (Ps. l. 16, 17.)\n\n\n{41}\n\nThese are considerations which surely ought to be well weighed before\nwe seek to make the Psalter a book of \"smooth things\" only, or\neliminate any part of its witness.  There are no short or easy methods\napplicable to its deeper difficulties.  Like all the ultimate problems\nof faith, they fade away only before the uncreated Light of the Spirit\nof God, when He visits the heart.\n\n  I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear:\n  But now mine eye seeth _Thee_.\n          (Job xlii. 5.)\n\n\n\n[1] \"Inasmuch as I know not man's learning, I will enter into the\nmighty works of the Lord.\"\n\n\n\n\n{43}\n\nLECTURE II\n\nCHRIST IN THE PSALTER\n\nParavi lucernam Christo meo.\n\n\nJewish and Christian tradition alike connect the Psalter with the great\nname of David.  Whether David himself wrote any of the Psalms or not is\na question that may continue to agitate the minds of scholars.  But\nthere can be no question that the permanency of the throne of David and\nthe Divine promises on which it rested are leading thoughts in the\nPsalter.  The starting-point must be sought earlier in the Old\nTestament, in the great oracle communicated by Nathan to David (2 Sam.\nvii., referred to directly in Ps. lxxxix. 20, etc.), \"Thy throne shall\nbe established for ever.\"  In this was recognised from the first\nsomething more than a mere promise of the long continuance of the crown\nin the family of the son of Jesse.  It carried with it some special\nsanction and {44} blessing over and above the ordinary Divine authority\nof heaven-anointed kings.  The words \"I will be his Father, and he\nshall be My son\" seemed to imply a peculiar and unique relationship\nbetween God Himself, the true King of Israel, and His earthly\nrepresentative.  The comment ascribed to David himself is significant:\n\"Is this the manner of _man_, O Lord God?\"  No mere human sovereignty,\nhowever glorious or firmly settled, would satisfy such a prophecy as\nthis.\n\nThe thoughts of the pious in Israel must have dwelt often and deeply in\nafter-time upon this promise and its connection with the Divine calling\nof the sacred nation and her mission in the world.  It is remarkable\nhow persistently this thought of the permanence and supernatural\ncharacter of the Davidic sovereignty recurs in the prophetic\nwritings--even when the crown had passed to an unworthy head, or seemed\nto have been plucked off for ever.  Jeremiah, when the clouds are\ngathering thickly round the doomed city, foretells that the covenant of\nDavid will be as lasting as that of \"the day and the night in their\nseason,\" and that the seed of David will be unnumbered \"as the host of\nheaven and the sand of the sea\" (Jer. xxxiii.).  Ezekiel from his\nfar-off exile {45} by the waters of Babylon, while he proclaims the\nDivine sentence against the degenerate son of David--\"Remove the mitre,\nand take off the crown: this shall be no more: ... I will overturn,\noverturn, overturn it, ... until He come Whose right it is\"--predicts\nthe time when Judah and Ephraim shall be one, and \"David My servant\nshall be their prince for ever\" (Ezek. xxi. 26, 27, xxxvii. 15-28).\nHaggai, in the days of the Return, continues the promise to the\nuncrowned prince, Zerubbabel--\"I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of\nhosts\" (Hag. ii. 23).\n\nIt is not to be wondered at that in the Psalter, the inspired response\nof worshipping Israel to the revelation of God, we should find Psalms\nthat rejoice in this indestructible and royal hope, Psalms that look\nbeyond present failures and imminent perils to a perfect fulfilment of\nwhat God had spoken \"sometime in visions to His saints.\"  Thus the 2nd\nPsalm tells triumphantly of the Divine \"law\" or \"decree\" concerning\nDavid's son, and sees in it the assurance of a world-wide empire, the\ndiscomfiture of the raging of the nations and the gathering of the\nkings of the earth:\n\n  Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee.\n\n{46}\n\n  Desire of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance:\n  And the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.\n\n\nThe 18th describes the Almighty riding on His chariot of whirlwind and\nstorm, coming down from heaven itself in His condescension, to pluck\nHis anointed out of \"many waters,\" \"to deliver him from the strivings\nof the people, and to make him the head of the heathen.\"  The 45th\ntells, with \"the pen of a ready writer,\" of this everlasting sceptre\nand throne, founded on truth and righteousness, of a king to whom\nDivine titles are given, \"anointed with the oil of gladness above his\nfellows,\" and sees in the marriage of this king with a foreign princess\nthe earnest of a kingdom over all the earth.  The 72nd describes not\nonly the prosperity, but the moral greatness of this empire stretching\nfrom sea to sea, \"from the river to the ends of the earth.\"  Not like\nthe giant empires of the East, founded on aggression and cruelty, with\nno motive but the monstrous pride of their founders and rulers, the\nDavidic king is to be the champion of the poor, the needy, and the\nhelpless:\n\n  He shall deliver their souls from falsehood and wrong:\n\n{47}\n\n  And dear shall their blood be in his sight.\n\n\nThe 89th, while it tells how God has found David His servant and\nanointed him with holy oil, and made him \"His first-born, higher than\nthe kings of the earth,\" is bold to face in those later days the\nagonising problem of the apparent failure of all this lofty promise:\n\n  But Thou hast abhorred and forsaken Thine anointed:\n  And art displeased at him.\n  Thou hast broken the covenant of Thy servant,\n  And cast his crown to the ground.\n\n\"Lord, how long? ... Lord, where are Thy old loving-kindnesses? ...\nRemember, Lord!\"\n\n\nThe 132nd, also apparently a Psalm of a later age, though ascribed to\nDavid, dwells with joy on David's love of the sanctuary of God, pleads\nfor the fulfilment of the promise, asks that the lamp may not be put\nout, nor the face of God's anointed \"turned away\" in confusion.\n\nRightly are such Psalms as these called \"Messianic.\"  We feel that even\nthose who {48} originally wrote them looked for more than \"transitory\npromises.\"  They were learning to look for the redemption of Israel and\nof the world itself through Israel and her kings.  They were bold to\nbelieve, even when the crown was gone and the purple faded, and Israel\nwas no longer a sovereign state, that the ancient word of God to David\ncould never be exhausted.  So when at last the great message of the\nArchangel came to the virgin of the house of David, it was felt by\nthose who had read aright the history of their nation that here was no\nmere fanciful resuscitation of a dead past, but the vindication of\nGod's undying purpose: \"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son\nof the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of\nHis father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;\nand of His kingdom there shall be no end\" (Luke i. 32, 33).\n\nIt was therefore strictly legitimate, and in line with all the history\nof revelation, that the Christian Church should adopt these Messianic\nPsalms as her own thanksgiving for the mysteries of the Incarnation.\nThus on Christmas Day she welcomes the Nativity in some of the Psalms\nalready alluded to--in that which tells of the reconciliation of\nmankind with one {49} another and with God under the figure of the\nmarriage between the anointed King and the king's daughter \"all\nglorious within\" (xlv.); in that which pleads the great promises to him\nwho so loved God's presence that he would not \"suffer his eyes to sleep\nnor his eyelids to slumber\" until he had found a permanent\nresting-place for that presence among men (cxxxii.); or in that, again,\nwhich in the strength of faith can gaze even on the casting down of the\nthrone and the breaking of the covenant, resting still on God's\nfaithfulness among \"the rebukes of many people\" (lxxxix.).\n\nBut there are other Psalms which, if they cannot strictly be called\nMessianic, yet bear their witness to another aspect of the same great\nhope of Israel.  In the voice of prayer, or joyful confidence, they\nlook forward to some _coming_ of God to earth, some visible\nmanifestation of His righteousness and His world-wide purpose:\n\n  For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth:\n  And with righteousness to judge the world,\n      and the people with His truth\n          (xcvi. 13),\n\n{50}\n\nor--\n\n  Bow Thy heavens, O Lord, and come down:\n  Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.\n          (cxliv. 5.)\n\n\nIn the 85th, one of the Psalms appointed for Christmas Day, this advent\nof God is spoken of in words which are re-echoed in the prologue to S.\nJohn's Gospel (i. 14) as a dwelling or \"tabernacling\" of God's glory,\nnot in the darkness of a Holy of Holies (as the later Jews imagined the\nShekinah), but as a new and permanent fact in the moral order of the\nworld:\n\n  For His salvation is nigh them that fear Him:\n  That glory may dwell in our land.\n  Mercy and truth are met together:\n  Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.\n  Truth shall flourish out of the earth:\n  And righteousness hath looked down from heaven.\n\n\nIn such prophetic visions as these, as well as in the Psalms that speak\nof the glories of the Messianic King, the Christian conscience has {51}\nrightly recognised definite predictions of the coming of Christ, of Him\nWho was both \"the effulgence of God's glory\" (Heb. i. 3) and also, by\nHis human birth, the Son of David and King of Israel, and Who\nmanifested the holiness of God in human flesh and blood.  He Himself,\nwhen He came, selected from the Psalms one striking phrase, in which\nboth ideas, the Divine glory and the human calling, are combined.  For\nHe quotes, as a witness to Himself and as a corrective of imperfect\nviews, the 110th Psalm (again a proper Psalm for Christmas Day), where\nthe Messianic King is spoken of both as Ruler and Victor and Priest of\nhumanity, and as standing also in a unique relationship to God, which\nexalts Him far above any mere earthly connection with David:\n\n  The Lord said unto my Lord:\n  Sit thou on My right hand--\n  If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?\n          (Matt. xxii. 45.)\n\n\nBut besides all these prophecies, which look onward to the great\noutcome of Israel's history, there is another and wider sense, as the\nChristian Fathers apprehended, in which the whole Psalter is the book\nof the {52} Incarnation and speaks of Christ.  \"David,\" says S. Jerome,\n\"on his harp and ten-stringed lute, sings throughout of Christ, and\nbrings Him up from the dead.\"  However fanciful and over-subtle the\nearly Christian commentators may seem to us in their working out of\nthis idea, they had grasped a profound truth.  When we once recognise\nthat Christ, knowing Who He was and why He came into the world (_cf._\nJohn xiii. 1), must in the Jewish services or in private prayers have\nrecited the Psalms with a perfect intention, and found in them the true\nexpression of Himself, with regard both to the eternal Father and to\nHis brethren, we are compelled to admit the possibility of each verse\nof the Psalms having some bearing on the Incarnation.  It is a\nconclusion which might at first sight seem extravagant; but it forces\nitself upon us as we realise the true humanity of the Saviour.  He is\n\"the Son of Man\"; He took of the substance of His Virgin-mother the\nfulness of human nature; He has a human body, a human soul, a human\nspirit; He is \"the second Adam,\" the great Head of our race, Who, in\nthe striking phrase of S. Irenaeus, has \"summed up\" (_recapitulavit_)\nall humanity and all the long history of man.  \"For verily, not of\nangels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the {53} seed of\nAbraham\" (Heb. ii. 16).  He has gathered into Himself all truly human\nexperience, the hopes of humanity, and its sufferings; its infinite\npathos, its capacity of sorrow and of joy, its progress towards God,\nand its final apprehension and vision of God.\n\nThis is the key to the most constant feature of the Psalter, the\nportrait of the Righteous Sufferer.  Whether we regard it as the\npersonification of the holy nation or the self-expression of human\nconscience in its moral witness and its conflicts, it is an ideal that\nis only fulfilled in the Just One, Jesus Christ.  He appeared in the\nworld as the pattern Man, in Whom the Divine image is perfected and\nWhose moral nature corresponds with that holiness which is God's\nessential character.  He appeared, too, as the perfect realisation of\nthe filial spirit, that spirit of sonship which is the true attitude of\nthe creature towards the Creator.  Therefore it is in Christ Himself\nthat the witness of the Psalms to righteousness, their expression of\nman's effort towards his ideal, is taken up, illuminated, made perfect.\nTherefore it is that a New Testament writer is found applying directly\nand without question to Christ not only the descriptions of the\nself-revealing God of the Old Testament, \"Thou, Lord, in the beginning\nhast {54} laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the\nworks of Thy hands\" (Heb. i. 10, from Ps. cii.), and the portrait of\nthe Messianic King, \"The sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy\nkingdom\" (_ib._, from Ps. xlv.), but also the description of _man_ in\nhis ideal excellence and supremacy:\n\n  Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;\n  Thou crownedst him with glory and honour,\n  And didst set him over the works of Thy hands\n          (Heb. ii., from Ps. viii.),\n\nand that word in which some unknown psalmist and prophet had\nconsecrated the free obedience of his will to God, as a higher offering\nthan the sacrifices of the Law:\n\n  Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,\n  Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,\n  But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;\n  In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin\n      Thou hadst no pleasure:\n  Then said I, Lo, I am come\n\n{55}\n\n  (In the roll of the book it is written of Me)\n  To do Thy will, O God.\"\n          (Heb. x., from Ps. xl.)\n\n\nThis line of interpretation may be followed out with great spiritual\nprofit in the varied aspects of the Psalms.  The thanksgivings of the\nPsalter are in the same spirit as those recorded by the Evangelists\nfrom our Lord's own lips, as when He thanked the Father for the\nrevelation made to babes rather than to the wise and understanding\n(Matt. xi. 25), or at the grave of Lazarus gave thanks that His prayer\nwas heard (John xi. 41).  The prayers of the Psalter might well be\nthose in which the Incarnate Son communed with the Father.  For He\nfought our human battle with the human weapons of faith and prayer.\nThe great description given by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews\nof Christ as \"the Author and Finisher of our faith\" (Heb. xii. 2),\nimplies One Who inaugurated our effort of faith by Himself first taking\npart in it, and Himself perfectly accomplished it by bearing to the\nvery final and utmost strain our human temptations.  Hence we may hear\nthe voice of Christ Himself in those pathetic outcries of the Psalter;\nin its appeal of faith as the Righteous One wrestles with doubt and\n{56} depression or faces the contradiction of sinners; in its stedfast\nhold on God even when sin is triumphing, and a world created good seems\ngiven over into the hand of the wicked.  All these utterances have a\nnew meaning, a fuller efficacy, when we recognise in them the words of\nthe \"Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.\"  There is nothing\neither fantastic or presumptuous in this reading of the Gospel in the\nPsalter.  Did not He Himself vouchsafe to shew us something of this\nhuman struggle of faith in the words spoken on the eve of His Passion,\nwhen He confessed that His soul was troubled, and He would fain have\nsaid, \"Father, save Me from this hour\" (John xii. 27)?  Did He not lift\nthe veil even further in admitting us to the dark sanctuary of\nGethsemane, in suffering us to hear even His utterances from the Cross?\n\nThe fourth Word from the Cross, so often misunderstood, is the opening\nof the 22nd Psalm.  This cry at the climax of the Passion is really the\nvoice of faith, faith triumphing over desolation of spirit, faith\nholding on by the unseen, amidst the falling away and the vanishing for\nthe time of every consolation.  It is not _merely_ \"Why didst Thou\nforsake Me?\" but it is \"My God, My God,\" the fundamental confession of\na personal faith in a personal God, seeing Him {57} Who is invisible,\nwaiting for Him Who hides His face, believing, even though His truth\nand justice seem blotted out of the world, that God is, and that He is\nstill \"enthroned upon the praises of Israel\" (v. 3).  And this faith\nfinds its last utterance of peace and thanksgiving and renewed\nconsciousness of union with the Father in the seventh Word, again from\nthe Psalter, \"Into Thy hands I commend My spirit\" (Ps. xxxi. 6).\n\nOne of the most fruitful lines of Christian meditation will be found in\nthis Christological aspect of the Psalms.  It throws a wonderful light\non the inner life of our Lord, and gives the Psalter a value which no\nmerely literary study could give.\n\nThe five Psalms appointed by our Church for Good Friday are a rich\nstorehouse of the secrets of the Passion.  The 22nd and the 69th bear\nupon it very directly, and present many points of similarity.  In each\nthe sufferings of the Righteous are described minutely and\npathetically, in each these sufferings lead on to triumph and to the\nassurance of their world-wide efficacy:\n\n  All the ends of the earth shall remember themselves,\n      and be turned unto the Lord:\n\n{58}\n\n  And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him.\n          (xxii. 27.)\n\n  For God will save Sion, and build the cities of Judah:\n  That men may dwell there and have it in possession.\n  The posterity also of His servants shall inherit it:\n  And they that love His Name shall dwell therein.\n          (lxix. 36, 37.)\n\n\nEach, again, in its picture of undeserved suffering, brings out the\ntrue nature and the malignity of _sin_.  In the 22nd sin is portrayed\nin its cruelty and its irrational character, as if men led by it were\nbut wild beasts, \"wild oxen,\" \"bulls of Bashan,\" \"dogs,\" and \"lions.\"\nIn the 69th we see its ingratitude, and its pitiless and causeless\nmalice, and the fact that, whatever its immediate object, it is really\ndirected against God Himself:\n\n  For Thy sake I have suffered reproach.\n      *      *      *      *      *\n  The reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon me.\n\n\nBoth these Psalms, again, contain what we {59} must confess to be\ndefinite predictions of details of the Passion.  The 22nd tells of the\nvery words and gestures which the chief priests and Pharisees in their\nblindness made use of to insult the Crucified:\n\n  All they that see me laugh me to scorn:\n  They shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying,\n  He trusted in God, that He would deliver him:\n  Let Him deliver him now, if He will have him.\n          (_Cf._ Matt, xxvii. 39-43.)\n\n\nAnother startling prediction is that of the piercing of the hands and\nthe feet.  No such punishment was used by the Jews, or endured, as far\nas we know, by any of the martyrs of the Old Testament.  All the four\nEvangelists, again, note the literal fulfilment of xxii. 18:\n\n  They part my garments among them:\n  And cast lots upon my vesture.\n\n\nIndeed, this 22nd Psalm along with Isaiah liii. stands forth beyond all\nthe other writings of the Old Testament as a witness which is proof\nagainst all attempts to explain it away, to the {60} truth that \"the\nSpirit of Christ\" was in the prophets \"testifying beforehand of the\nsufferings of Christ \"(1 Peter i. 11).\n\nThe 69th (like the 40th) may have been originally suggested by the\npersecution of the prophet Jeremiah, when he was thrown into the miry\ncistern (Jer. xxxviii.); but it contains an anticipation of Calvary,\nwhose fulfilment is described by all the Evangelists, in the wine\nmingled with myrrh, and the vinegar and gall offered in mockery before\nthe Crucifixion:\n\n  They gave me gall to eat:\n  And when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.\n\nS. John, the nearest to the Cross and to the heart of the Crucified,\ntells us moreover that this verse was consciously appropriated by\nChrist Himself, when, \"knowing that all things are now finished, that\nthe Scripture might be accomplished, He saith, I thirst\" (John xix. 28).\n\nEach of the other proper Psalms for Good Friday bears its witness to\nthe suffering Christ.  The 88th, at first sight one of the most\ndifficult in the Psalter, a Psalm whose darkness seems scarcely\nilluminated by any ray of hope, is clearly chosen to illustrate\nChrist's desolation on the Cross, the Three Hours of darkness, His {61}\nBurial and His descent into Hades.  The Sufferer is absolutely alone,\nlover and friend are in darkness; He is fighting the battle with that\nlast enemy of mankind, the King of Terrors, yet overcoming the\nsharpness of death by faith and patient endurance; He is looking on to\nthe dawn of Easter:\n\n  Unto Thee have I cried, O Lord:\n  And early shall my prayer come unto Thee;\n\nor--\n\n  In the morning shall my prayer come before Thee (R.V.).\n\n\nMay not even those strange words \"from My youth up Thy terrors have I\nsuffered with a troubled mind\" have been on the lips and in the thought\nof the \"Man of Sorrows\" as the Cross cast its shadow over Him, perhaps\nfrom His earliest years?  \"For not even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,\"\nsays _The Imitation_ in one of those chapters which sweeten the tears\nof the world, \"was ever one hour without the anguish of His Passion as\nlong as He lived\" (_Imit._ ii. 12).\n\nBoth the 40th and the 54th suggest that inner secret of the Atonement\nwhich the writer of the {62} Epistle to the Hebrews has fixed upon as\ngiving Christ's Passion its universal efficacy:\n\n  An offering of a free heart will I give Thee.\n          (liv. 6.)\n\n  I come--that I should fulfil Thy will, O my God.\n          (xl. 9, 10.)\n\n\n\"By which will we have been sanctified, through the offering of the\nbody of Jesus Christ once for all\" (Heb. x. 10).  For the Passion is\nthe supreme oblation of the freewill of man, the re-direction into the\nright attitude of that high faculty by which man had sinned and fallen\noriginally, the consecration of it to its true end, voluntary obedience\nto God.  \"Not My will, but Thine be done\"; that Christ as man should\nbring the human will perfectly into conformity with the will of God is\nwhat \"in the volume of the book\"--_i.e._ in the writings of all the\nline of prophets--was written of Him; for this \"the body was prepared\"\nfor Him in the pure flesh of the Virgin-mother; for this His \"ears were\nopened,\" that as child and youth and man He might perfectly hear and\nobey the word of the Father.\n\nBut the 15th verse of the 40th Psalm suggests {63} an obvious\ndifficulty in the application of the Psalms as a whole to Christ\npersonally:\n\n  My sins have taken such hold upon me that I am not\n      able to look up:\n  Yea, they are more in number than the hairs of my head,\n      and my heart hath failed me.\n\nHow can we ascribe these words, or any of the confessions of sin in the\nPsalter, to the sinless Lamb of God?  Are not these at least all our\nown?  And yet He Himself must on earth have repeated them.  In their\noriginal meaning they referred either to personal or national guilt.\nIn either sense the recitation of them, at first sight, would seem to\nbe alien and external to His pure conscience.  But do they not take a\ndeeper and more solemn tone when we consider them in the light of the\nprophet's great description of the Atoning Sufferer, \"The Lord hath\nlaid on Him the iniquity of us all\" (Is. liii. 6), or of S. Paul's\nstatement, \"Him Who knew no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf\" (2\nCor. v. 21)?  Such words as these contain more than the mere bearing of\nthe punishment of sin; they imply some inward connection between the\nSufferer and the sin.  Indeed, rightly understood, they help to {64}\nremove the difficulty that many have felt as to the apparent injustice\nor unreality of a vicarious Atonement.  Christ was not merely a Victim\nsuffering for human sin; He was man's Creator taking that sin upon\nHimself.  Thus these expressions of penitence in the Psalter may be\nregarded as the voice of the sympathetic love of the Sin-bearer, the\nlove which stands by the sinner's side, and feels with him so\nintimately that it makes its own what is not its own but utterly alien\nand hateful, makes it its own that it may burn it up in the flame of\nlove.  So in these Psalms we may hear the Son of Man confessing and\nmaking reparation for all the age-long sin of man; speaking of it as if\nit were His own sin, so closely has He made Himself one with us in our\nextremest need.\n\nCardinal Newman, in one of the most eloquent of his sermons, \"The\nMental Sufferings of our Lord in His Passion,\" has developed this\nthought in language whose daring is only justified by its devotion.  It\nis a description of Christ kneeling alone in Gethsemane:\n\n\nHis very memory is laden with every sin which has been committed since\nthe Fall, in all regions of the earth, with the pride of the old\ngiants, and the lusts of the five cities, and the obduracy of Egypt,\nand the ambition of Babel, and the {65} unthankfulness and scorn of\nIsrael.  Of the living and the dead and of the as yet unborn, of the\nlost and of the saved, of Thy people and of strangers, of sinners and\nof saints, all sins are there....  It is the long history of a world,\nand God alone can bear the load of it....  They are upon Him, they are\nall but His own.  He cries to His Father as if He were the criminal,\nnot the victim.  His agony takes the form of guilt and compunction.  He\nis doing penance, He is making confession, He is exercising contrition\nwith a reality and a virtue infinitely greater than that of all saints\nand penitents together; for He is the one Victim for us all, the sole\nsatisfaction, the real penitent, all but the real sinner.[1]\n\n\nConnected closely with these confessions of sin, these outcries of\nsuffering and expiation, with the _Miserere_ and the _De Profundis_,\nare those solemn declarations of God's wrath upon the impenitent sinner\nwhich have already been alluded to in a previous lecture.  Viewed as\nthe utterances of the Son of Man such Psalms are more rightly to be\ncalled _judicial_ than denunciatory.  It is He to Whom all judgment has\nbeen committed by the Father, He Whose coming into the world was\ninevitably \"for judgment,\" Who seems here to be delivering {66}\nsentence.  He is taking up and confirming the fragmentary utterances of\nolder days, in which the human conscience, imperfectly perhaps, and not\nwithout some mixture of personal feeling, yet on the whole rightly, had\ncried out against falsehood and wrong, and appealed to the wrath of\nGod.  The words of such a Psalm even as the 109th might have been used\nby Him Who twice scourged the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, and\nWho denounced in words that burn like fire through the centuries the\ncruelty and hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees; Who Himself in mercy\nwarned us of the outer darkness and the unquenched flame.\n\n\nBut the Psalms not only illustrate the Passion of Christ in its mercy\nand judgment; they also supply words befitting His Resurrection and\nTriumph.  It may be true that there is no clear or continuous line of\nprophecy in the Old Testament concerning the life after death.  But it\nis at least equally true that the belief is there, grasped in moments\nof intuition by the saints of Israel, disappearing for a time like a\nburied river, but coming ever and anon again to the surface.  So in the\nPsalms there are certainly evidences of the undying hope of the\nfaithful that truth and justice must one day {67} visibly triumph, and\nthat man, in proportion as he is true to these things and therefore\ntrue to God, Whose nature they are, and true to himself, as made in\nGod's image--man must also be immortal.  He will not go down into\nsilence; an endless future opens before him, as yet unfathomed and\nunknown, but certain.  So in the Psalms which the Christian instinct,\nilluminated by the Spirit of Pentecost, seized upon in its first words\nof witness (Acts ii. 25-8) as prophetic of Christ, we have the\nassurance:\n\n  I have set God always before me:\n  For He is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall.\n  Wherefore my heart was glad, and my glory rejoiced:\n  My flesh also shall rest in hope.\n  For why?  Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell:[2]\n  Neither shalt Thou suffer Thy Holy[3] One to see corruption.\n          (Ps. xvi. 9-11.)\n\n{68}\n\nAnd again:\n\n  As for me, I will behold Thy presence in righteousness:\n  And when I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.\n          (Ps. xvii. 16.)\n\n\nSo again, in that profoundly spiritual Psalm, the 73rd, the writer\nturns from the puzzles of the moral order and the misgivings of his own\nheart, and seeks refuge in the abiding fact of his personal fellowship\nwith God.  He finds _there_ the assurance not only that the wicked will\npass away \"like a dream when one awaketh,\" but that the righteous is\nundying:\n\n  My flesh and my heart faileth:\n  But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.\n\nSuch Psalms as these find their full meaning only in the light of\nEaster.  The Resurrection of Christ was no mere portent or isolated\nmiracle; it was strictly in line with all that man had risen up to in\nhis highest spiritual intuitions in the past.  It is true, in a much\nfuller sense than that of accomplishing a mere prediction, that Christ\n\"rose again, according to the Scriptures.\"\n\nThis essential immortality of the righteous, through his union with\nGod, is implied throughout {69} the Easter Psalms, especially in the\n118th (part of \"the Egyptian Hallel\"), words which must have been\nrecited by the Lord and His Apostles at the Passover Supper, in the\nvery imminence of the Passion.\n\n  The voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous: ...\n  I shall not die, but live:\n  And declare the works of the Lord.\n\n\nAscension Day completes the triumph of man raised to immortality\nthrough his union with God in Christ.  It inaugurates the\naccomplishment of man's ideal, in the eternal mediatorial reign of\nChrist as the Head of the human race.  The appointed Psalms are again\nmost suggestive.  The 8th sings triumphantly of the supremacy of man\nover all the works of God, man crowned \"with glory and worship.\"  The\n15th and the 24th describe the moral perfections which are the\ncondition of this exaltation:\n\n  Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle:\n  Or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill?\n  Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life:\n  And doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth\n      from his heart.\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\n{70}\n\n  Whoso doeth these things:\n  Shall never fall.\n          (xv.)\n\n\nThe 21st and the 108th look back to the promises to David and to the\ntypical character of his wars and victories.  They shew that these\nevents were part and parcel of the Divine warfare; they were a\nforetaste of the triumph of God Himself.  They suggest that the\nAscension of Christ, while it gathers into itself all the moral\nvictories of the past, is the beginning of a new order.  It brings in a\nCatholic empire of truth and righteousness, which, in spite of puzzles\nand warfare and contradictions, parallel to those which vexed the heart\nof the prophets of old, is now absolutely certain in its hope:\n\n  Who will lead me into the strong city:\n  And who will bring me into Edom?\n  Hast not Thou forsaken us, O God:\n  And wilt not Thou, O God, go forth with our hosts?\n  O help us against the enemy:\n  For vain is the help of man.\n  Through God we shall do great acts:\n  And it is He that shall tread down our enemies.\n          (cviii.)\n\n\n{71}\n\nThus, to him who, by God's mercy, has learned the Catholic Faith, the\nPsalms are full of Christ from end to end.  He reads Christ in them,\nnot by a pious imagination, but as the legitimate and only perfect key\nto their meaning and their use by the Church.  In the Psalms he\nworships Christ as God:\n\n  Thy seat, O God, endureth for ever.\n          (xlv. 7.)\n\nIn the Psalms he worships with Christ as the Son of Man, with Him Who\nalone could say rightly:\n\n  My soul hath kept Thy testimonies:\n  And loved them exceedingly.\n          (cxix. 167.)\n\nThe human sorrows and struggles which cry out in the Psalter have been\ntaken into the sacred heart of Him Who is the Word of the Father, and\nthe King and Priest and Prophet of humanity, in Whom is fulfilled the\nsaying:\n\n  He sent His Word, and healed them:\n  And they were saved from their destruction.\n          (cvii. 20.)\n\n\nThis Catholic secret of the Psalter, writ large as it is over the\nhistory of the Church's worship, {72} is yet something that eludes mere\nhuman research, and is a stumbling-block to human learning and\nscholarship.  It can only be taught by that \"hidden wisdom\" of which S.\nPaul has told us (1 Cor. ii.), the wisdom given often to the weak of\nthis world, the wisdom of the Spirit Who dwells in the Church, and\nmakes her \"the pillar and ground of the truth\" (1 Tim. iii. 15).\n\n\n\n[1] _Discourses to Mixed Congregations_, xvi.\n\n[2] _i.e._ Sheol, Hades, the grave or place of departed souls.\n\n[3] _i.e._ godly or pious, a characteristic word of the Psalmists,\nimplying not only consecration but active devotion to God.\n\n\n\n\n{73}\n\nLECTURE III\n\nTHE CHURCH IN THE PSALTER\n\n  Gloriosa dicta sunt de te:\n  Civitas Dei.\n\n\nIt has already been pointed out that the personal element in the\nPsalms, vivid and even passionate as it appears, if they are read as\nmere lyrics, has been transformed by the Church's use of them as her\nhymns of worship.  The \"I\" of the Psalter has become the voice of the\nworshipping community.\n\nThe Jews themselves recited the personal Psalms in a national sense.\nEven such an intensely personal confession of sin as the 51st Psalm\nbecomes through the last two verses (possibly added by a later pen) the\nconfession of national penitence and the voice of national hope:\n\n  O be favourable and gracious unto Sion:\n  Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.\n\n\n{74}\n\nBut besides such liturgical adaptations, whether of letter or spirit,\nmany of the later Psalms, especially those which clearly belong to the\nperiod of the second Temple, were written intentionally for the nation\nas a whole.  \"We\" predominates, instead of the earlier \"I.\"  In these\nPsalms the nation reviews her past history, or cries out against her\npresent oppressors, or looks onward to liberty and enlargement in the\nfuture.\n\nBut the nation which thus finds her voice in the Psalms is of a\ndifferent spirit from the kingdoms of this world.  Her patriotism is of\na higher order.  She is conscious of a Divine vocation, separating her\nfrom the nations of the heathen:\n\n  Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt:\n  Thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.\n          (lxxx. 8.)\n\n  What time as they went from one nation to another:\n  From one kingdom to another people;\n  He suffered no man to do them wrong:\n  But reproved even kings for their sakes;\n  Touch not Mine Anointed:\n  And do My prophets no harm.\n          (cv. 13-15-)\n\n{75}\n\nShe has a treasure committed to her keeping, which others have not:\n\n  He sheweth His word unto Jacob:\n  His statutes and ordinances unto Israel.\n  He hath not dealt so with any nation:\n  Neither have the heathen knowledge of His laws.\n          (cxlvii. 19-20.)\n\nShe has a hope that burns within her, which to the world would be\nfoolishness:\n\n  The Lord hath chosen Sion to be a habitation for Himself:\n  He hath longed for her.\n  This shall be my rest for ever:\n  Here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein.\n          (cxxxii. 14, 15.)\n\n\nIn other words, the community which speaks in the Psalter is more than\na nation; she is a theocracy, a Church.  Her characteristic names are\nprophetic; they suggest supernatural dealings and a heavenly calling.\nShe is \"Israel,\" heiress of him who \"persevered with God\" and won the\nblessing; she is the \"seed of Abraham,\" in which it was promised that\n\"all the nations of {76} the earth should be blessed\"; she is \"Sion,\"\nthe \"stronghold,\" \"Jerusalem,\" name of ideals, \"vision\" or \"possession\"\nor \"foundation\"--\"of peace\"!  It is as this sacred congregation, this\n_ecclesia_, that the nation rejoices in the Psalms in her calling and\nillumination, sorrows over her failures, prays in her warfare, waits\nfor her glory.\n\nIt is not surprising that the Catholic Church recognised here her own\nportrait, or that the outlines sketched in the Psalter have been filled\nwith light and colour and detail during the Christian centuries.  The\nCatholic Church instinctively felt herself to be the true successor of\nthe Israel of the Psalms.  The ancient titles were retained, but in a\nfuller meaning.  To S. Paul the Church is the \"Israel of God\" (Gal. vi.\n16) in contrast to the \"Israel after the flesh.\"  The author of the\nEpistle to the Hebrews tells his Christian readers that they are \"come\nunto Mount Sion\" (xii. 22).  S. Peter applies to the Church the old\ntitles given to Israel in the Law, \"an elect race, a royal priesthood,\na holy nation\" (1 Peter ii. 9).  S. John in the Apocalypse sees the new\nJerusalem, having not only the names of \"the twelve apostles of the\nLamb\" on her jewelled foundations, but the names of the \"twelve tribes\nof the children of Israel\" on {77} her gates of pearl (Rev. xxi. 12,\n14).  Old things had passed away, the sacred people of God remained,\nbut no longer confined to the narrow boundaries of Palestine, nor to\nthe dispersed descendants of Abraham: her children were \"princes in all\nlands,\" all who were \"of faith\" were counted her seed.  The Church knew\nherself to be the Israel of the future, custodian of a greater\ntreasure, called to a grander work.\n\nThe Psalter indeed demands this higher interpretation.  Just as the\nportrait of the Righteous One would have been an unfulfilled ideal had\nnot Christ made it His own, so the glowing descriptions of Israel would\nhave been but pious dreamings had not the Catholic Church risen up out\nof the fallen tabernacle of David.  As the songs of the Temple falter\nand die away, the new spirit of praise clothes itself in the ancient\nforms.  \"From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs,\nGlory to the Righteous\" (Is. xxiv. 16).  The very words of the Psalter\nbecome transfigured like the garments of the Lord on the holy mount.\n\nNor is this passing away of the glory of old Israel into the greater\nglories of the Catholic Israel of God without some foreshadowing in the\nPsalter itself.  In the 22nd, the great {78} Psalm of the Passion, the\nSufferer passes from the dogs and lions and the mocking faces that\nsurround him to contemplate the far-off fruit of his anguish.  He seems\nto see \"a great congregation,\" in the midst of which he himself\nhereafter will praise God Who has heard his prayer.  Mysteriously it\nseems to rise, this \"seed,\" this \"people that shall be born,\" out of\nthe very hopelessness and desolation of the Cross.  \"All the ends of\nthe earth\" are united in it, \"all the kindred of the nations\" worship\nthere.  The rich and the poor alike have their place in this kingdom of\nthe future.  And the special characteristic of this new creation of God\nwill be the sharing in a sacrificial feast, the Sufferer's\nthanksgiving, his Eucharist in which he \"pays his vows.\"  Here \"the\nmeek shall eat and be satisfied,\" here eating and worshipping are\nstrangely intermingled--a prophecy unread and unfulfilled until the\nChurch learnt the secret \"in the same night that He was betrayed.\"\n\n  \"Therefore we, before Him bending,\n    This great Sacrament revere;\n  Types and shadows have their ending,\n    For the newer Rite is here.\"\n\n\nThis ecclesiastical aspect of the Psalter is {79} of very high\nimportance.  There is perhaps no part of the Christian faith which is\nmore difficult for \"the natural man\" than \"the Holy Catholic Church.\"\nAn erroneous or imperfect idea of the Church seems to pass muster,\namong Christians even, so much more readily than error in other matters\nof faith.  All through Christian history the true idea of the Church\nhas been obscured, now by imperialism, with its misleading traditions\nof the Roman Empire; now by nationalism, as if the Church were only the\nreligious aspect of a civil community; or again by individualism, as if\nshe were no more than a collection of separate units.  Erastianism and\nPuritanism in turn have led men astray.  The warning against such\nthings is written largely enough in the history of ancient Israel.  The\nJews of our Lord's time, while insisting keenly, even bitterly, on\ntheir separation from the Gentiles, were for the most part forgetful of\nwhat that separation really involved.  Their ambition to be separate\nfrom the nations of the earth only meant for them a worldly and selfish\nexclusiveness.  In earlier days the clamour for a king, the thirst for\nalliances with Egypt and Assyria and Babylon, had displayed in the\nopposite manner much the same spirit.  Religious privileges, that\nDivine calling which {80} had made them a nation, were to be used as a\nmeans to worldly advancement and security.  In the Psalter there stands\nout a truer conception of the Church as the spiritual commonwealth, a\nkingdom of God in the world, but not of this world's spirit, organised\nfor higher ends than self-protection or self-development, aiming not at\nconquest but at the conversion and good of mankind, glorying not in\nprivilege but in vocation, not in self but in the law of God.  And this\nis the pattern for all time.  The Christian Church may find in the\nPsalter her own just self-expression in a fuller manner than ever\nancient Israel did or could.  Indeed, we may trace indelibly stamped on\nthe Psalter the true lineaments of the ideal Church.\n\nFirst in the Psalter there is the note of _comprehensiveness_.  The\nheathen, the nations, so often denounced or prayed against in the\nPsalms, are, after all, not so much those who are outside the\nboundaries of Israel as those who are alien from her spirit.  They are\ncommunities, societies, untouched by grace, governed by passion and\nworldly ambitions rather than by conscience or the Divine law.  And\nside by side with threats and foreboding of their utter destruction in\nthe day of God there are glimpses here and there of the possibility of\n{81} their conversion, and even of their becoming one family with\nIsrael.  The great Psalm of Whitsunday, the 68th, passes from the\nthought of God wounding the head of His enemies, of His warriors\ndipping their feet in the blood of the vanquished, to the hope of the\nprinces coming out of Egypt, and Ethiopia making haste to stretch out\nher hands unto God.  So, again, the 47th Psalm looks forward to the\nessential sovereignty of God over all the earth being recognised even\nby this world's rulers:\n\n  The princes of the people are joined unto the people\n      of the God of Abraham.[1]\n\n\nAnd lest it should be thought that such hopes referred only to an\nempire of external rule, like that of Solomon's, we have the startling\npredictions of Ps. lxxxvii.  Here the people of Rahab (Egypt) and\nBabylon, the Philistines, the Tyrians, the Ethiopians, all types of the\nobstinate and idolatrous heathen world, are pictured as forsaking their\nnatural lineage and descent to be born again in Zion, enrolling\nthemselves there as citizens of the Lord's {82} glorious foundation\nupon the holy mountains, finding there their joy and the fount of their\ninspiration.\n\n  The Lord shall count, when He writeth up the peoples:\n  This one was born _there_.\n  They that sing as well as they that dance shall say,\n  All my fountains are in Thee.  (R.V.)\n\nSurely this is one of the most remarkable foreshadowings in the Old\nTestament of the catholicity of the Church, and of that new birth of\nBaptism by which men of every race and tongue are grafted into the one\nbody, \"where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and\nuncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is\nall, and in all\" (Col. iii. 11).  In this and in many other Psalms\n(_cf._ lxvii., xcviii., c.) we confess the essentially _missionary_\nvocation of the Church; that she calls to all mankind, not to the\nWestern nations only, nor to the progressive and civilised only.  Hers\nis the one faith for all men, her citizenship unlimited by any barriers\nof race or temperament.\n\nIf the catholicity of the Church is so clearly sketched in the Psalter,\nno less clear is {83} her _social_ ideal.  The poor, the oppressed,\nthose who have no helper, are equally called to share in Israel's hope\nand her gifts.  God Himself is her pattern, Who--\n\n  Taketh up the simple out of the dust:\n  And lifteth the poor out of the mire;\n  That He may set him with the princes:\n  Even with the princes of His people.\n        (cxiii.)\n\nThe Messianic King will count the blood of the poor and needy equally\nprecious with that of the rich and great (lxxii.).  The Sufferer of the\nPassion Psalm (xxii.) looks forward, as we have seen, to the result of\nhis triumph, in not only calling the \"fat ones of the earth\" to eat and\nworship at his table, but in finding there an equal place for--\n\n  Even him that cannot keep his soul alive.\n        (xxii. 30, R.V.)\n\n\nThese are lessons which we have as yet gone but a little way in\nlearning.  Yet the Psalter, as we recite it day by day, puts in our own\nmouth the condemnation of exclusiveness and pride and of deafness to\nthe complaint of the poor; it makes us confess at least the Catholic\n{84} ideal of unity, of universal justice, of the imperishable value of\nthe individual life, of the transformation of human society in the\nlight of the Divine sovereignty of Christ.\n\nThe two lines of the Church's activity just alluded to, missionary and\nsocial, so prominent in the Psalms, are calling to-day so loudly for\nself-humiliation and new effort, that they may profitably be dwelt on a\nlittle further.  The Psalmist's prophecy of the kings of Arabia and\nSaba bringing gifts (lxxii.) is still largely unfulfilled.  The East is\nstill almost untouched.  Asia has not yet brought her characteristic\ngift to Christ.  She is still under the dominion of imperfect\nreligions--Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam.  And yet India is our possession;\nJapan is our pupil.  \"The way of the kings of the East\" is already\n\"prepared\" (Rev. xvi. 12), but where is the adequate response from\nEnglish Christianity?  \"Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My\nmessenger that I send?\"\n\nAnd turning homewards, what are we to say of these grotesque and\nmonstrous contrasts between wealth and poverty, luxury and squalor in\nEngland to-day, where rich and poor alike are baptized?  What of the\nimmoralities of commerce, of the bad work of the labourer as well as\nthe swindling of the capitalist?  Does {85} not the spirit of the\nPsalter cut across it all like the keen breath of the mountain wind?\nYet Englishmen are spending time and energy in ritual debates and\npersecutions, and educational and social strife.  Worse still, the rich\nand intellectual, for some prejudice or political motive, are eager to\ndeny the poor the beauties of worship or the definiteness of the\nCatholic Faith.\n\n  Surely Thou hast seen it:\n  For Thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong.\n          (x. 15.)\n\n\nIn view of these unfulfilled ideals of the Church, the Psalter provides\nus in such Psalms as the 78th, the 79th, or the 106th with confession\nof sin and failure under the figure of Hebrew history.  The recitation\nof these may well remind us not merely of personal faults but of our\nown share in the shortcomings of the Church of God:\n\n  We have sinned with our fathers:\n  We have done amiss and dealt wickedly.\n\nFor the Church as well as ourselves we are taught to pray, \"Turn us\nagain, O Lord God of hosts.\"  The sorrows and desolations of Zion are\nnever represented in the Psalms as being _merely_ the effect of heathen\nmalice, {86} though they are so largely that, but as calls to look back\nupon history, and also to look within, to consider what unfaithfulness\nthere may have been and is, what \"starting aside like a broken bow\" in\nour fathers and in ourselves.\n\nFrom this point of view the penitential Psalms\"[2] might profitably be\nused not merely as the expression of personal penitence, but as an act\nof reparation, an offering to God of our sorrow for the worldliness and\nimperfections of His Church; as an incentive also to effort, that we\nmay do our part to remove the \"reproach of the heathen,\" to restore the\nChurch from within, to seek her unity and peace.\n\n\nThere is, however, another side to the problem of the Church's\nfailures.  Israel and Jerusalem are constantly described in the Psalms\nas being the marks for the malignity and opposition of external\nenemies.  Indeed, a persistent note of the Church, Jewish as well as\nChristian, is the hatred which she awakens in the powers of this world.\nThe object of suspicion and attack from Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon in\nearly days, Jerusalem fares no better after the humiliation of the\nCaptivity.  The attempts to {87} rebuild the Temple and restore the\ncity arouse the bitterest hostility from the surrounding peoples, a\nhostility not merely political, but traceable to a deeper cause.  The\nattempts of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century B.C. to break\ndown Jewish separation and to destroy Jewish worship are marked by the\nsame spirit, working in a more arrogant and brutal manner.  Our Lord\nHimself promises no smoother or more popular course for His faithful\nones.  \"Ye shall be hated of all men.\"  S. Paul recognises the same\nantagonism running throughout the history of the elect: \"As then he\nthat was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the\nSpirit, even so it is now\" (Gal. iv. 29).\n\nThe Psalter will not allow us to shut our eyes to this malignant and\npersecuting attitude of the world.  The enemies of the Righteous find a\nplace in almost every Psalm.  The malice of human nature at its worst\nseems to be marshalled against Him, in slander and ingratitude and\ntreachery.  But there is also the opposition of the heathen as a whole\nagainst Israel.  The vicissitudes of her history are typical; they\nillustrate a permanent principle which is found working from age to\nage.  It was not less active nor less brutal in the first three\nChristian centuries {88} than it was in the days of Antiochus.  To-day,\nthough its attack is less outwardly cruel, the spirit which prompts it\nis just as deeply seated, and more malignant perhaps in proportion as\nit is veiled.  The Church has not merely to contend with the hatred of\nthose who have chosen and loved evil, and find the righteous a standing\nreproach.  There is gathered against her also the world's steady\nresentment of spiritual authority; the world's antipathy against all\nthat refuses to come to terms, or water down its witness to suit\nchanging fashions of men's thought.  It is the same spirit which in\nearlier days called the Christians \"the enemies of the human race,\" and\nin these later times directs its sneers and opposition against the\nCreeds, the Sacraments, the priesthood--\"the spirit of Antichrist.\"\n\nThe 44th Psalm, perhaps belonging to the time of the great Maccabaean\nstruggle, makes its pathetic appeal to God amidst the scorn and\nblasphemy of the heathen, and, what is worse, the bitterness of\napparent failure and defeat which seem to justify the heathen.\n\n  My confusion is daily before me:\n  The shame of my face hath covered me:\n\n{89}\n\n  For the voice of the slanderer and blasphemer:\n  For the enemy and avenger.\n\n\nFaith indeed does not fail the Psalmist: he clings to God; he still\nrecognises the hand of God throughout these sufferings; he prefers to\nattribute them to God rather than to man:\n\n  _Thou_ makest us to turn our backs upon our enemies: ...\n  _Thou_ lettest us be eaten up like sheep: ...\n  _Thou_ sellest Thy people for nought:\n  And takest no money for them.\n\n\nNevertheless, it is all a puzzle, a bewildering maze in which faith\nseems walking blindfold, like the Lord Himself when the malice of the\nhigh-priest's servants bandaged His eyes and smote Him in derision and\nbade Him prophesy!  The light of God's presence seems to have gone out\nof the world:\n\n  Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face:\n  And forgettest our misery and trouble.\n\n\nVery similar is the 74th Psalm, with its same high consciousness of\nfaithfulness to God, the same agonising sense of contradiction in the\nenemies of God being suffered to break down {90} the carved work of the\nsanctuary, the same feeling of helplessness and lack of guidance.  The\nadversaries' banners are manifest enough, _their_ tokens are clear; but\nwith the faithful it is otherwise:\n\n  We see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more.\n\nO God, how long! ... Remember! ... Arise! ... Forget not!\n\nProbably of the same period is the 79th, written apparently in the very\nhour of the heathen triumph, when the Temple is defiled, Jerusalem \"an\nheap of stones,\" the blood of the righteous flowing on every side like\nwater.  And there is still the characteristic turning away from self\nand personal humiliation to the thought of the dishonour done to God\nHimself.  For to the faithful the honour of God is dearer than their\nown liberty or life.\n\n  Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name:\n  O deliver us, and be merciful unto our sins, for Thy Name's sake.\n\n\nThe 83rd belongs perhaps to an earlier age.  It seems to recall the\ngreat confederacy of the nations against Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx.).\nThe Psalmist cries out to God against the {91} gathering hordes who\nhave no interest in common, except their mutual hatred of Israel and\nIsrael's God.  It is a sorry catalogue: Edomites, Ishmaelites,\nMoabites, Hagarens; Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistines, Tyrians,\nAssyrians:\n\n  \"All the warring hosts of error\n    Sworn against her, move as one.\"\n\n\nBut the hot indignation which prays that this rabble of malice and\nmischief may be swept like the stubble before the whirlwind, consumed\nlike the dry grass before the mountain fires, is yet tempered with a\nhigher thought.  Defeat may lead to conversion and to a better mind:\n\n  Make their faces ashamed, O Lord:\n  That they may seek Thy Name.\n\n\nOnce again, the 102nd Psalm breathes out the pathetic appeal of the\nexile, or the lonely, friendless watcher over the desolations of the\nholy city.  His heart is \"smitten down and withered like grass\"; he has\n\"eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled his drink with weeping.\"\nBut his fasting and tears are not for himself; there is the eternal\nbackground of hope; God is unchanging; future generations {92} will\nknow again the happiness of worship and service--his sorrow is for Zion:\n\n  Thy servants think upon her stones:\n  And it pitieth them to see her in the dust.\n\n\nDo not experiences and prayers like these come home to Christians with\na curious sense of familiarity?  Is not this tragedy of faith repeated\nin every age?  In every Christian generation it has been \"given\" to the\nBeast to war against the saints and overcome them (Rev. xiii. 7).  His\nundying malice has too often been seconded by the impotence, the lack\nof unity, the fear of truth and its consequences, which have marred the\nChristian defence.\n\nWe find eloquent illustrations of this unceasing, heart-sickening\nwarfare in such moments of history as that in the fourth century, when\n\"the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian\";[3] in the\nseventh and eighth, when the armies of Islam swept away the divided and\nbickering Churches of the East and that Church of North Africa, once so\nglorious, where holiness had not kept pace with zeal; in the fifteenth,\n{93} when Constantinople fell, and the great cathedral of S. Sophia\npassed into the hands of the Turks, and this very day, where once\nChristian worship was offered, and Christian emblems high on its walls\nstill make their silent protest,\n\n  \"Moslem prayers profane\n  At morn and eve come sounding;\"\n\nin the sixteenth, when the fair abbeys of England were despoiled and\nsuffered to fall into ruin, through covetousness and irreligion\nmasquerading under the garb of piety; in the seventeenth, when the\nvoice of the Church's worship was stifled, and the faithful were\ninterrupted in their very Christmas Communion by the levelled muskets\nof the Cromwellian troopers[4]; in our own day, when liberality can\ntolerate everything except the Catholic Faith?  Verily these Hebrew\nPsalms are a Christian possession for ever.  They speak to us and speak\nfor us in accents of undying truth, and every year that passes verifies\ntheir witness and points more sharply their appeal.\n\nBut not only does the Psalter tell of the Church and her ideals, of her\nwarfare and her failures, it insists with equal conviction on her\n_stability_.  God's great promise to the line of {94} David carried\nwith it the preservation of David's city.  The attacks of the heathen\nseemed to have reached their climax when Sennacherib's army had taken\nall the fortified cities of Judaea, and Jerusalem was left isolated and\nhelpless (2 Kings xix.).  Yet when human hope was gone, the prophet's\nword rang out with the certainty of faith.  \"I will defend this city to\nsave it, for Mine own sake, and for My servant David's sake.\"  The\nsequel was one of the most startling catastrophes in history.  The\nAssyrian hosts were destroyed in a single night, and Assyrian invasions\nceased.  Again, in a later generation, when the promise seemed at last\nto have failed, and the Temple had fallen, the city was burnt and her\nking and citizens in captivity, the prophets never waver in their\nvision of a future restoration when sin has been repented and national\nguilt expiated.  Zerubbabel and Joshua, Ezra and Nehemiah, Judas\nMaccabaeus and his descendants, restore and maintain Temple and city to\nlast till \"the fulness of the time,\" when the true meaning of the\nDavidic promises was revealed.\n\nThe sense of this supernatural continuance has left its mark on the\nPsalms.  The rout of the Assyrian armies is commemorated in one at\nleast, the 76th:\n\n{95}\n\n  The proud are robbed, they have slept their sleep:\n  And all the men whose hands were mighty have found nothing.\n  At Thy rebuke, O God of Jacob:\n  Both the chariot and horse are fallen.\n\nThe secret of victory preludes the Psalm.  Jerusalem is the seat of\nGod's special presence:\n\n  At Salem is His tabernacle:\n  And His dwelling in Sion.\n\nThe 46th may also refer to the same event.  The flood of heathen\ninvasion is breaking itself in vain against the walls of the city of\nGod:\n\n  God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed:\n  God shall help her, and that right early.\n\n\nThe great historical Psalm, the 78th, speaks at its close of the hill\nof Sion and the Temple \"built there on high\" as coeval with the earth\nitself; its foundation is \"like the ground which He hath made\ncontinually.\"[5]  And the later {96} Psalms seem even to unite Sion and\nJerusalem and the sacred nation with the very eternity of God Himself:\n\n  This shall be My rest for ever.\n      *      *      *      *      *\n  The Lord thy God, O Sion, shall be King for evermore.\n      *      *      *      *      *\n  Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem:\n  Praise thy God, O Sion.\n  For He hath made fast the bars of thy gates:\n  And hath blessed thy children within thee.\n          (cxxxii. 15, cxlvi. 10, cxlvii. 12, 13.)\n\n\nThe end of earthly Jerusalem, when it came, was no less significant\nthan her long continuance.  The double destruction of the city by the\nRoman armies (A.D. 70 and A.D. 135) was consummated by the strangeness\nof the failure of Julian the Apostate to rebuild and re-establish the\nTemple; flames burst out from the foundations and the workmen fled in\nterror.[6]  But long before this the Christian Church had recognised\nthat in her world-wide citizenship and her worship, confined no longer\n{97} (as the Lord had foretold) either to Jerusalem or a mountain in\nSamaria, she had inherited in fuller measure these promises of\ncontinuance.  Had it not been said, when the great Apostle made his\nconfession of Christ's Divinity, \"Upon this rock I will build My\nChurch, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it\"?  And in\nthis consciousness the Catholic Church rightly appropriated to herself\nthe songs of Sion's confidence.  Just as early Christian art set above\nthe altars the figure of the living Christ enthroned as the Eternal\nKing of the universe, so the Church has always known in her darkest\nmoments that her continuance is as certain as her Master's throne; and\nthat as He remains the same, though the heavens and the earth decay,\nand are changed as a garment, the promise of the 102nd Psalm is hers\nfor ever:\n\n  The children of Thy servants shall continue:\n  And their seed snail stand fast in Thy sight.\n\n\nOnce again, the Psalmists feel that as Israel, the Church, is in a\nsense partaker in God's own eternity, so she is, even on earth, a\nshadow of His essential beauty, she appeals with His attractiveness to\nthe soul of man.  Hence the {98} Christian finds in the Psalter words\nin which he may express his joy in his calling in the Church, his love\nand delight in his heavenly citizenship; words which may also remind\nhim that, in spite of all the failures and littlenesses of the visible\nChurch, it is through her that he is in touch with the ideal and the\ninvisible.\n\nThus in no mere partisan or ecclesiastical spirit we are invited in the\nPsalms to express our love of the Catholic Church.  On Whit Sunday, the\nChurch's birthday, we take up the ancient strain of affection:\n\n  The hill of Sion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth.\n\nWe gaze with awe upon her jewelled foundations and her jasper walls; we\nwander with delight in her spacious golden streets:\n\n  Walk about Sion, and go round about her:\n  And tell the towers thereof.\n  Mark well her bulwarks, set up her houses:[7]\n  That ye may tell them that come after.\n  For this God is our God for ever and ever:\n  He shall be our guide unto death.\n          (xlviii.)\n\n\n{99}\n\nIn another Psalm, the 122nd, one of the pilgrim-psalms recited of old\nas the faithful drew near to Jerusalem, we contemplate with joy and\nself-forgetfulness the ideal unity of the Church as the true centre of\nthe earth, and as \"the seat of judgment\" to which all this world's\nshams and shadows must come sooner or later for their reformation or\ntheir sentence:\n\n  O pray for the peace of Jerusalem:\n  They shall prosper that love thee.\n  Peace be within thy walls:\n  And plenteousness within thy palaces.\n  For my brethren and companions' sakes:\n  I will wish thee prosperity.\n  Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God:\n  I will seek to do thee good.\n\nIt is an aspiration that should find an echo in the heart of every\nfaithful son of the Church, especially in such \"a day of trouble and of\nrebuke and blasphemy\" as our own.\n\nThus while we recognise in the Psalter the expression, put into our\nlips by the Holy Spirit, of our own personal struggles and joys and\nsorrows in the spiritual life, while we remember with awe and gratitude\nthat the {100} Eternal Son of God Himself here speaks and prays and\nsuffers as one of us, we shall find here also the voice of our\ncorporate consciousness, our life and worship as citizens even on earth\nof that \"Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all.\"\n\nAnd so as we conclude every Psalm in the Church's service with the\n_Gloria_, with that confession of our faith which prophets and kings\nwould fain have known and knew not, let us lift up our hearts and give\nglory to the Father, Who has revealed to us His Name; glory to the Son,\nWho has vouchsafed in all things to be made like unto us His brethren;\nglory to the Holy Ghost, Whose word and power in the Church is undying,\nWho is still bringing forth from the ancient treasury old things which\nare ever new.\n\n  Gloria Patri, et Filio:\n  Et Spiritui Sancto.\n  Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper:\n  Et in saecula saeculorum.\n          Amen.\n\n\n\n[1] The princes of the people are gathered together,\n    To be the people of the God of Abraham.\n          (R.V.)\n\n[2] vi., xxxii., xxxviii., li., cii., cxxx., cxliii.\n\n[3] \"Ingemuit totus orbis et se Arianum esse miratus est\" (S. Jerome).\n\n[4] Evelyn's Diary: Dec. 25, 1657.\n\n[5] The earth which He hath established for ever (R.V.).\n\n[6] Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, c. xxiii.\n\n[7] \"Consider her palaces\" (R.V.).\n\n\n\n\n{101}\n\nNOTES\n\nA.  The extent to which the Psalms were used liturgically by the Jews\nin Temple and Synagogue is not at all fully known.  The following list\nof uses is interesting in itself, but probably does not by any means\ncover the whole field.  And it seems certain, from the free and natural\nway in which the Psalms are referred to in the New Testament, that,\neven if a comparatively small number were used in the public services,\nthe Psalter must have been very familiar indeed to the pious Jew of our\nLord's time and have formed practically his book of private devotion.\n\n\nDAILY IN THE TEMPLE (AND PROBABLY ELSEWHERE):\n\n_First day_.  Ps. xxiv.  The earth is the Lord's, etc.\n\n_Second day_.  Ps. xlviii.  Great is the Lord.\n\n_Third day_.  Ps. lxxxii.  God standeth in the congregation.\n\n_Fourth day_.  Ps. xciv.  O Lord God, to Whom vengeance belongeth.\n\n{102}\n\n_Fifth day_.  Ps. lxxxi.  Sing we merrily unto God our strength.\n\n_Sixth day_.  Ps. xciii.  The Lord is King.\n\n_Sabbath day_.  Ps. xcii.  It is a good thing to give thanks.\n\n\nTHE PASSOVER, AND ON OTHER GREAT FESTIVALS.  The Hallel, probably Pss.\ncxiii.-cxviii.\n\n\nFEAST OF TABERNACLES:\n\n_First day_.  Ps. cv.  O give thanks.\n\n_Second day_.  Ps. xxix.  Bring unto the Lord.\n\n_Third day_.  Ps. l. 16.  But unto the ungodly said God.\n\n_Fourth day_.  Ps. xciv. 16.  Who will rise up with me.\n\n_Fifth day_.  Ps. xciv. 8.  Take heed, ye unwise.\n\n_Sixth day_.  Ps. lxxxi. 6.  I eased his shoulder.  Pss. cxx.-cxxxiv.\nSongs of Degrees.\n\n_Seventh day_.  Ps. lxxxii. 5.  They will not be learned.\n\n\nNEW MOON OF SEVENTH OR SABBATICAL MONTH.  Ps. lxxxi.  Sing we merrily.\n\n\nDEDICATION.  The Hallel, as at the Passover.\n\n\nPRESENTATION OF FIRST-FRUITS.  Ps. cxxii.  I was glad.  Ps. xxx.  I\nwill magnify Thee, O Lord.\n\n\nB.  The allusions to the singing of Psalms in the New Testament shew\nthat it was from the first a recognised Christian devotion, both in\npublic and private (Acts xvi. 25; 1 Cor. xiv. 26; Eph. v. 19; {103}\nJames v. 13).  This is borne out by the evidence of the Christian\nFathers (see, for example, S. Athanasius' _Epistle to Marcellinus_; S.\nAug. _Confess._ ix. 8; S. Jerome, Ep. xlvi.).  But it was no doubt the\nrise of the monastic life in Egypt and its subsequent spread over the\nwhole Church in the fourth and fifth centuries that led by its\ndisciplined devotion to the systematic arrangement of the Psalter for\ndaily services and to its continuous recitation.  Many of the early\nmonks, indeed, recited the whole Psalter daily; but the Western use,\nsettled traditionally by S. Gregory the Great, aimed at a weekly\nrecitation, and this system in theory dominated the Breviary services\nall through the Middle Ages.\n\nThe normal arrangement of the Psalter in the daily offices was, roughly\nspeaking, as follows:\n\nAt _Mattins_, Ps. i.-cix., divided into nine \"Nocturns,\" three of which\nwere said on Sunday, and one on each of the following week-days,\nbeginning each day with the 95th, the Invitatory Psalm.\n\nAt _Lauds_, Pss. lxiii., lxvii., cxlviii.-cl., with certain other\nvarying Psalms.\n\nAt _Prime_, always Ps. liv. and the first four portions of the 119th,\nand one varying Psalm.\n\nAt _Terce_, the next six portions of the 119th.\n\nAt _Sext_, the next six portions of the 119th.\n\nAt _None_, the last six portions of the 119th.\n\nAt _Vespers_, Pss. cx.-cxlvii., divided into seven portions, omitting\nthe 119th.\n\nAt _Compline_, iv., xxxi. 1-6, xci., cxxxiv.\n\n{104}\n\nThus the bulk of the Psalms were said at the two offices which\ncorresponded most closely to our Morning and Evening Prayer; some few\nwere said daily, the 51st was said at every one of the offices, and the\nothers were said weekly.\n\nBut in practice a festival arrangement of the Psalms, in which a much\nsmaller number, and chiefly of the shorter Psalms, were recited, was\nlargely substituted for the normal or ferial use, thus justifying the\ncriticism of our Reformers, \"Now of late time a few of them have been\ndaily said and the rest utterly omitted.\"\n\nThe following special uses are also interesting:\n\nTHE OFFICE OF THE DEAD:\n\n_Vespers_ (the \"Placebo\"): cxvi., cxx., cxxi., cxxx., cxxxviii.\n\n_Mattins_ (the \"Dirge\"): v., vi., vii.; xxiii., xxv., xxvii., xl.,\nxli., xlii.\n\n_Lauds_: li., lxv., lxiii., cxlviii.-cl., cxlv.\n\nPREPARATION FOR MASS: lxxxiv., lxxxv., lxxxvi., cxvi. 10., cxxx., xliii.\n\nTHANKSGIVING AFTER MASS: cl.\n\n\nC.  Antiphons were originally verses sung as a refrain between each\nverse of the Psalms, one side of the choir taking the former and the\nother the latter.  The refrain varied at different seasons and\nfestivals.  An example of this early and more elaborate use survived in\nthe Breviary in the treatment of the Venite as an Invitatory Psalm.\nBut gradually, for the sake of brevity, this method {105} was\nabandoned, and the normal use of antiphons in the Breviary was simply\nafter (or on festivals before and after) each Psalm or set of Psalms.\nThe advantage of the antiphon lay in the fact that it shewed at once\nwith what particular intention the Psalm was sung, as the same Psalm\nnaturally might be sung on many different occasions and with reference\nto a different season or festival.  But the very complex nature of the\nantiphons or \"anthems\" led the English Reformers to abandon them\naltogether; \"many times,\" as they said, \"there was more business to\nfind out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.\"\nThe only traces of antiphons left in the Prayer Book are: (1) \"O\nSapientia,\" in the Kalendar on December 16, the first words of the\nfirst of the \"Greater Antiphons\" to the Magnificat, which began on that\nday and continued till Christmas Eve, each commencing with some\nstriking Old Testament title of the Messiah; (2) in the Litany, the\nrepetition of the words, \"O Lord, arise,\" etc., shews that this is the\nantiphon to the Psalm \"O God, we have heard\" (perhaps originally the\nwhole of Ps. xliv., but now one verse only); (3) the words \"O Saviour\nof the world,\" etc., in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick.  The\nlast is the best example: the antiphon connects the recitation of Ps.\nlxxi. with the Passion of our Lord; the _intention_ of the Psalm is\nthus shewn to be the association of our sufferings in sickness with\n{106} the Cross of Christ (_cf._ the second exhortation in the same\noffice).\n\n\nD.  Helps to the study of the Psalter.\n\n\n_Literal Meaning_:\n\nKirkpatrick, in the _Cambridge Bible_ (3 vols.).  The Introduction is\nextremely useful, and an excellent list of the literature bearing on\nthe Psalter is also given.\n\nPerowne, _The Book of Psalms_.\n\nCheyne, _The Book of Psalms_.\n\nBarry, _Teacher's Prayer Book_.\n\n\n_Mystical and Spiritual Meaning_:\n\nNeale and Littledale, _Commentary on the Psalms_ (4 vols.).  This has a\nvery valuable Introduction on the Psalms as used in the offices of the\nChurch, and a dissertation (in vol. i.) on the mystical and literal\ninterpretation of the Psalms.\n\nWalpole, _The People's Psalter_.\n\n\n_General_:\n\nProthero, _The Psalms in Human Life_.\n\nMarson, _The Psalms at Work_.\n\nChurch, _The Sacred Poetry of Early Religions_, in _The Gifts of\nCivilisation_.  _The Discipline of the Christian Character_, iii.\n\nRobertson Smith, _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, lect. vii.\n\nOrr, _The Problem of the Old Testament_, c. xii.\n\nAlexander (Archbishop), _The Witness of the Psalms to Christ_.\n\n\n\n\n{107}\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n_Brief Suggestions as to the Christian Use of each Psalm_\n\nThe following suggestions, which follow the lines of the preceding\nlectures, do not claim any special authority, except in cases noted,\nwhere the New Testament or the Church's actual use has appropriated a\nPsalm to some particular Christian application.\n\n\nPSALM i.  _Beatus vir_\n\nThe Church's witness to the blessedness of the life of holiness, based\non obedience to the revealed Word of God (the great example of which is\nthe life of Christ Himself); with which is contrasted the eternal\nfailure of the ungodly.\n\n\nPSALM ii.  _Quare fremuerunt gentes?_\n\nActs iv. 25-28.  Easter Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe futile warfare of the princes of this world against Christ and His\nChurch.  The certainty {108} of Christ's victory and His universal\nkingdom, as seen in His Resurrection and Ascension.\n\n\nPSALM iii.  _Domine, quid multiplicati?_\n\n[Introit for Second Mass on Easter Day, in 1549 Prayer Book]\n\nChrist's victory in His Resurrection over all His enemies; the\nblessedness of His Church.\n\n\nPSALM iv.  _Cum invocarem_\n\nThe deliverance of Christ from the contradiction of sinners.  The\nChurch's certainty of salvation in Christ, both in this life and in\nthat which is to come, contrasted with the doubts and uncertain riches\nof the world.\n\n[One of the Compline Psalms, in which the Christian commends himself to\nsleep in Christ.]\n\n\nPSALM v.  _Verba mea auribus_\n\nA Psalm illustrating the life of prayer, public and private; witnessing\nto prayer and meditation as the source of inward strength and guidance,\nboth in the life of Christ and in that of His people, in the face of\nthis world's treachery and cruelty.\n\n[One of the Psalms for the Dirge (whence it derives its name, ver. 8,\n\"Dirige\"), referring to God's leading the departed soul through the\nattacks of evil spirits to its rest in Him.]\n\n{109}\n\nPSALM vi.  _Domine, ne in furore_\n\nAsh Wednesday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe prayer of the human soul suffering the temporal punishments, bodily\nand mental, of sin.  Christ Himself endured these sufferings to the\nutmost, not for Himself, but for His people, and in this sense it, with\nthe other penitential Psalms, may be called a Psalm of the Incarnation.\n\n\nPSALM vii.  _Domine, Deus meus_\n\nThe declaration of the Innocency of Christ against the persecution and\ntreachery of His enemies; His appeal to the Father's justice.\n\n\nPSALM viii.  _Domine, Dominus noster_\n\nHeb. ii.  Ascension Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe glory of God's Name (or revelation of Himself) in nature and in the\nIncarnation.  The triumph and universal empire of Christ as the Son of\nMan, and the Second Adam.\n\n\nPSALM ix.  _Confitebor tibi_\n\nThanksgiving for the triumph of God's righteousness in Christ, which is\nthe pledge of the future destruction of all evil.\n\n\nPSALM x.  _Ut quid, Domine?_\n\nContinues the thought of Ps. ix., and prays for the manifestation of\nGod's righteousness in Christ, {110} in view of the continuance of\nevil, the apparent immunity of the wicked, and their unceasing warfare\nagainst the Church.\n\n\nPSALM xi.  _In Domino confido_\n\nA Psalm of the Passion of Christ; His faith in the Father's\nrighteousness, and in the ultimate overthrow of the wicked.\n\n\nPSALM xii.  _Salvum me fac_\n\nA prayer of Christ and His Church against the evil tongues of the\nwicked; with these are contrasted the purity and certainty of the\nDivine revelation, \"the words of the Lord.\"\n\n\nPSALM xiii.  _Usque quo, Domine?_\n\nA prayer of Christ and His faithful ones in view of the approach of\ndeath.\n\n\nPSALM xiv.  _Dixit insipiens_\n\nRom. ii. 10-18\n\nThe judgment of the world's unbelief, contrasted with the Church's\nfaith, and her hope in the coming of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM xv.  _Domine, quis habitabit?_\n\nAscension Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe human perfections of Christ, enthroned in heaven as the Son of Man.\n\n{111}\n\nAlso a picture of the saintly life, in union with Christ, Who is God's\ntabernacle among men (Rev. xxi. 3).\n\n\nPSALM xvi.  _Conserva me, Domine_\n\nActs ii. 25-28.  [Introit for Easter Day, Prayer Book of 1549]\n\nChrist's devotion to the Father; His preservation through death and the\ngrave; His Resurrection and eternal joy at the right hand of the Father.\n\n\nPSALM xvii.  _Exaudi, Domine_\n\nA prayer of Christ and His Church against the temptations of the world,\nin view of the hope of the Resurrection and the Life everlasting.\n\n\nPSALM xviii.  _Diligam te, Domine_\n\nThe triumph of Christ (under the figure of David); His universal empire.\n\n\nPSALM xix.  _Coeli enanant_\n\nRom. x. 18.  Christmas Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's thanksgiving for God's Word in Nature, in the Incarnation,\nin the Bible; and her prayer for faithfulness.\n\n\n{112}\n\nPSALM xx.  _Exaudiat te Dominus_\n\nKing's Accession (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's witness to Christ her King as He goes forth to battle in\nthe power of His finished sacrifice.  Suitable also as a prayer for a\nChristian ruler, whose strength is in Christ.\n\n\nPSALM xxi.  _Domine, in virtute tua_\n\nAscension Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's joy in the triumph of Christ; in the Father's answer to\nHis prayer, and in His glorious coronation as the Son of Man.\n\n\nPSALM xxii.  _Deus, Deus meus_\n\nMatt. xxvii. 35-46 (with parallels in other Evangelists), Heb. ii. 12.\nGood Friday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nChrist's prayer in His Passion and Crucifixion; His prophecy of the\ncalling of His Church, and of the Eucharist.  (See above, pp. 77, 78.)\n\n\nPSALM xxiii.  _Dominus regit me_\n\nJohn x. 1-16, 26-29\n\nThe Church's confession of faith in Christ the Good Shepherd, and in\nHis sacramental gifts.\n\n\nPSALM xxiv.  _Domini est terra_\n\nAscension Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe joy of the Church and of the angels in the Ascension of Christ, the\nKing of Glory.\n\n\n{113}\n\nPSALM xxv.  _Ad te, Domine, levavi_\n\nA confession of faith in the Name of God; the Church's prayer for\ndeliverance from temptation and adversity.\n\n\nPSALM xxvi.  _Judica me, Domine_\n\nA prayer of Christ as He approaches His Passion; and of the Christian\npriest when about to offer the Holy Eucharist.\n\n\nPSALM xxvii.  _Dominus illuminatio_\n\nThe hope of Christ and His Church in the Fatherhood of God; a prophecy\nof the Resurrection and the Holy Eucharist (vv. 6, 7).\n\n\nPSALM xxviii. _Ad te, Domine_\n\nThe prayer of Christ for deliverance from His enemies; and for His\nChurch (ver. 10).\n\n\nPSALM xxix.  _Afferte Domino_\n\nThe Church's thanksgiving for the sovereignty of Christ over all the\npowers of nature, and over His Church.\n\n\nPSALM xxx.  _Exaltabo te, Domine_\n\nA thanksgiving of Christ and His Church for the Resurrection.\n\n\n{114}\n\nPSALM xxxi.  _In te, Domine, speravi_\n\nS. Luke xxiii. 46\n\nChrist's prayer in His Passion and Crucifixion; His exhortation to His\nChurch (vv. 26, 27).\n\n\nPSALM xxxii.  _Beati, quorum_\n\nRom. iv. 6-8.  Ash Wednesday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's confession of sin, and the blessedness of forgiveness\nthrough faith in Christ.  (See on Ps. vi.)\n\n\nPSALM xxxiii.  _Exultate, justi_\n\nThe Church's thanksgiving for creation and redemption, and for her own\nexceeding blessedness in being called to be the people of the Lord.\n\n\nPSALM xxxiv.  _Benedicam Domino_\n\nA thanksgiving of Christ for His Resurrection.  His call to His Church\nto obedience, to holiness, to courage.\n\n\nPSALM xxxv.  _Judica, Domine_\n\nA prayer of Christ against the persecution and false witness of His\nenemies, and on behalf of those who love Him.\n\n\nPSALM xxxvi.  _Dixit infustus_\n\nThe Church's witness to the awfulness of sin; {115} her confession of\nhope in the blessedness of the life eternal in contrast with the doom\nof the ungodly.\n\n\nPSALM xxxvii.  _Noli cemulari_\n\nA Psalm of a proverbial character; the testimony of the Church's\nexperience of the justice of God, in spite of the apparent prosperity\nof the wicked: it expresses the _restfulness_ of the life of faith.\n\n_Cf._ ver. ii with Matt. v. 5.\n\n\nPSALM xxxviii.  _Domine, ne in furore_\n\nAsh Wednesday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ bearing in loneliness and silence the burden of human\nsin, confessing it on man's behalf to the Father, and praying for our\nsalvation.\n\n\nPSALM xxxix.  _Dixi, custodiam_\n\nBurial of the Dead (Prayer Book)\n\nContinues in some respects the tone of the previous Psalm.  It may be\nregarded as a Psalm of Christ bearing the sorrow of man's mortality,\nand interceding on man's behalf with the Father.\n\n\nPSALM xl.  _Expectans expectavi_\n\nHeb. x. 5-10.  Good Friday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ's Incarnation, Passion, Sin-bearing, and\nResurrection; it expresses the {116} secret of His Atonement (see\nabove, pp. 61, 62) and His fulfilment of O.T. prophecy (ver. 10).\n\n\nPSALM xli.  _Beatus qui intelligit_\n\nJohn xiii. 18\n\nA Psalm of Christ's compassion; and of the treachery of His enemies,\nespecially of Judas.\n\n\nPSALM xlii.  _Quemadmodum_\n\n[Introit for Burial of the Dead, Prayer Book of 1549]\n\nA Psalm of Christ's human soul in His earthly pilgrimage, and in the\nprospect of death; His desire to return to the Father.  Hence also\nsuitable for the Christian soul in sickness and dying.\n\n\nPSALM xliii.  _Judica me, Deus_\n\nA continuation of the previous Psalm.  Christ speaks in it to the\nFather as He approaches His Passion, and contemplates with joy the\nsacrifice He is about to offer for man.  Hence this Psalm has long been\nused in the Church as the immediate preparation of the Priest for\noffering the Holy Eucharist.\n\n\nPSALM xliv.  _Deus, auribus_\n\nRom. viii. 36\n\nThe appeal of the suffering and persecuted {117} Church to Christ; her\nconfession of faithfulness to that which He has entrusted to her\nkeeping.\n\n\nPSALM xlv.  _Enructavit cor meum_\n\nHeb. i.  Christmas Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church celebrates the Incarnation under the figure of a royal\nmarriage.  The bridegroom is Christ Himself, described in vv. 3-9; the\nbride, the King's daughter, is the Church destined to spread into all\nlands.  The \"daughter of Tyre\" is symbolical of the heathen world\ncoming to Christ.  The \"queen\" (or queen-mother) of ver. 10 has often\nbeen interpreted of the Blessed Virgin.\n\n\nPSALM xlvi.  _Deus nosier refugium_\n\nA Psalm of the Church's confidence: she is conscious of the presence of\nChrist and the Holy Spirit (ver. 4, R.V.) within her; and confesses\nthat this is her eternal strength amidst the warfare and tumult of the\nworld.\n\n\nPSALM xlvii.  _Omnes gentes, plaudite_\n\nAscension Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe joy of the Church in the glorious Ascension of Christ; and in His\nuniversal sovereignty, which all the world will ultimately acknowledge.\n\n\nPSALM xlviii.  _Magnus Dominus_\n\nWhitsun Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe joy of the Church in her ideal beauty and {118} her steadfastness;\nand her sure hope of ultimate victory over all the powers of this world.\n\n[The Psalm should be compared both with the promise of Christ in Matt.\nxvi. 18 and the picture of the perfected Church in Rev. xxi., xxii.]\n\n\nPSALM xlix.  _Audite haec, omnes_\n\nThe Church's meditation upon the vanity of human riches and greatness\nin view of death; the need of man's redemption through Christ alone\n(vv. 7, 8); the certainty of the resurrection of the faithful through\nthe Resurrection of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM 1.  _Deus deorum_\n\nThe second advent of Christ as the final Judge of the world, and\nespecially of His Church.\n\n\nPSALM li.  _Miserere mei, Deus_\n\nAsh Wednesday (Commination Service)\n\nThe Church's confession of sin, and of failure to fulfil her great\nvocation in the world; her prayer to Christ for forgiveness and\nrestoration.  (See on Ps. vi.)\n\n\nPSALM lii.  _Quid gloriaris?_\n\nThe Church's challenge to \"the prince of this world\" and to Antichrist;\nand the confession of her own eternal hope in Christ.\n\n{119}\n\nPSALM liii.  _Dixit insipiens_\n\nSee on Ps. xiv.\n\n\nPSALM liv.  _Deus, in nomine_\n\nGood Friday, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nA prayer of Christ in His Passion, and His self-consecration to the\nFather.\n\n\nPSALM lv.  _Exaudi, Deus_\n\nA prayer of Christ in His loneliness and desolation, amidst the\ntreachery of His enemies and especially of His false disciple.\n\n\nPSALM lvi.  _Miserere mei, Deus_\n\nChrist's complaint to the Father against the contradiction of sinners;\nHis confidence in the Father's word, and His sure hope in His\nResurrection.\n\n\nPSALM lvii.  _Miserere mei, Deus_\n\nEaster Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Psalm of Christ \"glorified\" through His Passion and Resurrection.\n\n\nPSALM lviii.  _Si vere utique_\n\nChrist's judgment upon sinners; the vindication of Divine justice.\n\n\n{120}\n\nPSALM lix.  _Eripe me de inimicis_\n\nA prayer of Christ in His Passion against the malice of His enemies;\nHis denunciation of their impenitence; His hope of the Resurrection and\nthe final vindication of Divine justice.\n\n\nPSALM lx.  _Deus, repulisti nos_\n\nA prayer of the scattered and persecuted Church, and the answer of the\ntriumphant Christ (under the figure of David's victories).\n\n\nPSALM lxi.  _Exaudi, Deus_\n\nA prayer of the scattered Church, praying to be established on the rock\nof Christ; her confession of faith in the eternal royalty of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxii.  _Nonne Deo?_\n\nThe Church's confidence in Christ her rock in contrast with the\nfalsehood of the world and the deceitfulness of riches; her faith in\nthe ultimate manifestation of the Divine justice.\n\n\nPSALM lxiii.  _Deus, Deus meus_\n\nA prayer of the exiled Church; her joy in worship, and her confidence\nin the sovereignty of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxiv.  _Exaudi, Deus_\n\nA prayer of Christ in His Passion; the {121} prediction of the\noverthrow of the Jewish nation, and the continual testimony of this\noverthrow to the truth of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxv.  _Te decet hymnus_\n\nThe Church's hope of her heavenly inheritance in Christ, and of the\nregeneration of the earth by the river of His spiritual gifts.  The\nPsalm seems to be a forecast of the joy and prosperity of \"the new\nheaven and the new earth.\"\n\n\nPSALM lxvi.  _Jubilate Deo_\n\nThanksgiving after a Storm at Sea (Prayer Book)\n\nThe thanksgiving of the Church in the conversion of the world; she\nlooks forward to the end of this world and her deliverance from its\nsufferings, and contemplates her entrance into the eternal worship of\nheaven.\n\n\nPSALM lxvii.  _Deus misereatur_\n\nAlternative to Nunc Dimittis; Holy Matrimony (Prayer Book)\n\nThe joy of the Church in the conversion of the world to Christ; her\nhope of God's blessing upon all her works.\n\n\nPSALM lxviii.  _Exurgat Deus_\n\nWhitsun Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nThe triumphant procession-hymn of the Catholic {122} Church in her\nprogress through the world; rejoicing in the gifts of the ascended\nChrist, and in the hope of the conversion of the heathen.\n\n\nPSALM lxix.  _Salvum me fac_\n\nMatt. xxvii. 34; John ii. 17, xix. 28, 29; Rom. xv. 3.  Good Friday,\nevening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ; a denunciation of\nDivine vengeance upon the Jews; concluding with a prophecy of the\ncalling and continuance of the Church.\n\n\nPSALM lxx.  _Deus in adjutorium_\n\nA Psalm similar in tone to the preceding; it may be applied to Christ\nin His Passion, or to the faithful ones who suffer with Him, and look\nto Him as Redeemer.\n\n\nPSALM lxxi.  _In te, Domine, speravi_\n\nVisitation of the Sick (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ sharing our human life with its vicissitudes and\ntroubles--born of Mary, increasing in wisdom and stature, suffering\npersecution, proclaiming the Gospel, dying, and rising \"from the deep\nof the earth again\" (ver. 18).  Consequently it is a Psalm of the\nsaintly life in its conformity to Christ,\n\n\n{123}\n\nPSALM lxxii.  _Deus, indicium_\n\nMatt. ii. 1-11\n\nThe Church's joy in Christ, as the Son of David and the King of\nhumanity.  The peace and justice of His Kingdom are described, its\nuniversality and eternity.\n\n\nPSALM lxxiii.  _Quam bonus Israel!_\n\nA Psalm of the inward struggle and victory of _faith_.  Christ Himself\nmay be heard speaking in it, as He is \"the author and finisher of our\nfaith,\" and in His human soul fought for us the battle of faith.  So\nthe Psalm becomes the Church's testimony to the individual believer of\nthat ultimate answer to the trials of faith which is found in union\nwith God through Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxxiv.  _Ut quid, Deus?_\n\nA Psalm of the Church, persecuted and despoiled, appealing to the\neternal sovereignty of Christ over nature and man, as it has been\nrevealed in all the history of the Church, both under the old covenant\nand the new.\n\n\nPSALM lxxv.  _Confitebimur tibi_\n\nA dialogue, as it were, between Christ and His Church.  He asserts His\nsovereignty over the world, His justice, and its ultimate vindication.\n\n\n{124}\n\nPSALM lxxvi.  _Notus in Judaea_\n\nA Psalm of the victory of Christ; of \"the wrath of the Lamb,\" and the\nfinal judgment of the world.\n\n\nPSALM lxxvii.  _Voce mea ad Dominum_\n\nLike Ps. lxxiii., a Psalm of the struggles of faith.  The thought of\nGod's past work in His Church as revealed in history, and of His\neternal years, is the Church's consolation when He seems to hide His\nface.\n\n\nPSALM lxxviii.  _Attendite, popule_\n\nMatt. xiii. 35; _cf._ xxiii. 37\n\nThe voice of Christ recounting the history of His Church, His patience\nand mercy with backslidings, His many deliverances; ending with His own\nIncarnation and personal rule of His Church, under the figure of\nDavid's call to the throne.\n\n\nPSALM lxxix.  _Deus, venerunt_\n\nA prayer of the Church, especially of the martyrs and confessors, in\ntime of persecution and bloodshed.\n\n\nPSALM lxxx.  _Qui regis Israel_\n\nA prayer of the Church when the light of God's presence waxes dim, when\nChrist's vineyard is broken into by secular oppression.  The Church\n{125} prays that Christ's power may again be made known (ver. 17) and\nthat she herself may be converted.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxi.  _Exultate Deo_\n\nThe Church's joy in her past deliverances; the warning voice of Christ\n(ver. 6 onwards) shewing that the Church's own failures in loyalty are\nthe cause of her oppressions.  Greater faithfulness would have brought\ndeliverance, and greater joy in Christ's sacramental gifts (ver. 17).\n\n\nPSALM lxxxii.  _Deus stetit_\n\nJohn x. 34-6\n\nThe voice of Christ bearing witness to the ideal greatness of man, and\nto man's failure in his responsibility as God's vicegerent in the\nworld, especially in the administration of justice.  He Himself is set\nforth as the true and perfect Judge of the world.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxiii.  _Deus, quis similis?_\n\nA prayer of the Church against the confederacy of her enemies.  She\nprays that their defeat may lead to their conversion to Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxiv.  _Quam dilecta!_\n\nA Psalm of the Church in her pilgrimage through this world.  She\nexpresses especially her joy in {126} public worship, the comfort which\nthe hope of the heavenly worship brings amidst human sorrows, and her\neternal hope in Christ.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxv.  _Benedixisti, Domine_\n\nChristmas Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the Church's joy in the Incarnation, as the proof of\nforgiveness for the past, and the beginning of a new and better world.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxvi.  _Inclina, Domine_\n\nA Psalm of Christ and of the Christian soul, renewing the dedication of\nself to God, praying for strength against the trials of the world, and\nfor the manifestation to the world of God's presence with those who\nlove Him.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxvli.  _Fundamenta ejus_\n\nA Psalm describing the catholicity of the Church, and the new birth of\nBaptism whereby members of all nations become her citizens and find in\nher the source of all joy and refreshment.\n\n\nPSALM lxxxviii.  _Domine Deus_\n\nGood Friday, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ's desolation, the darkness on the Cross, His death\nand burial and descent into hell.\n\n\n{127}\n\nPSALM lxxxix.  _Misericordias Domini_\n\nChristmas Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's praise for the promises of the Incarnation, and their\nfulfilment in the line of David.  The certainty of the eternal reign of\nChrist and the preservation of His Church.  At ver. 37 the tone changes\nto prayer respecting the present eclipse of Christ's glory, and the\nfailures of His Church.  The Psalm ends, as it were, with the appeal of\nChrist Himself to the Father (49-50) for His suffering Church.\n\n\nPSALM xc.  _Domine, refugium_\n\nBurial of the Dead (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Psalm of the Church's hope in the eternity of God, and the\nunfailing nature of His purpose to restore man in Christ, in contrast\nwith man's mortality, his short life and earthly failure.\n\n\nPSALM xci.  _Qui habitat_\n\nA Psalm of the trust of Christ and of the Christian soul in the\nprovidence of God, in the continual ministry of the angels, and in the\nfinal discomfiture of the powers of evil.\n\n\nPSALM xcii.  _Bonum est confiteri_\n\nA thanksgiving of Christ for His Resurrection and for the eternal hope\nof His Church.\n\n\n{128}\n\nPSALM xciii.  _Dominus regnavit_\n\nA Psalm of the sovereignty of the ascended Christ; His supremacy over\nnature and the storms of this world.\n\n\nPSALM xciv.  _Deus ultionum_\n\nA prayer of the Church for the second coming of Christ, and the\nmanifestation of the Divine justice; ending (ver. 12, etc.) with the\nexpression of the Church's patience, her acceptance of tribulation, and\nher sure confidence in the coming of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM xcv.  _Venite, exultemus_\n\nHeb. iii. 7-iv. 11.  Morning Prayer, daily (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's prelude to worship: the expression of her joy and trust in\nGod's creation and preservation; her daily warning against failure\nthrough unbelief (like Israel of old) to enter into God's rest.\n\n\nPSALM xcvi.  _Cantate Domino_\n\nThe Church's outburst of joy in the universal sovereignty of Christ.\nShe calls to the heathen world to acknowledge Him, and looks forward\nwith rapture to His second Advent.\n\n\nPSALM xcvii.  _Dominus regnavit_\n\nThe Church's declaration to the world of the sovereignty of Christ, and\nof His second Advent.  {129} She reminds herself of the moral fruits of\nChrist's kingdom, and of the Christian joy which springs from His\nservice.\n\n\nPSALM xcviii.  _Cantate Domino_\n\nAlternative to Magnificat (Prayer Book)\n\nThe triumph song of the Church in the redeeming work of Christ, in\nwhich she calls all nature and the heathen world to join.\n\n\nPSALM xcix.  _Dominus regnavit_\n\nAgain, a Psalm of the sovereignty of Christ.  The Church sings of the\nessential holiness of His kingdom, of His mercy and His chastisements,\nand calls on the world to worship Him.\n\n\nPSALM c.  _Jubilate Deo_\n\nAlternative to Benedictus (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's triumphant call to all the world to worship with her; she\nconfesses her dependence on Christ, and the unfailing truth of His\nGospel.\n\n\nPSALM ci.  _Misericordiam et judicium_\n\nKing's Accession (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the Church testifying her desire and endeavour to imitate\nboth the mercy and the justice of Christ, and to exercise just\ndiscipline over her members, remembering the judgment-seat of {130}\nChrist.  A Psalm also appropriate to a Christian ruler, as the minister\nof Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cii.  _Domine exaudi_\n\nHeb. i. 10-12.  Ash Wednesday, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThis may be regarded in part as appropriate to our Lord weeping over\nJerusalem; in a wider sense it is a Psalm of the faithful sorrowing\nover the decay of the Church, offering their penitence, looking forward\nto restoration, and trusting in the changelessness of Christ, Who\nremains the same though earth and heaven pass away, and has promised\nthe like continuance to His Church.\n\n\nPSALM ciii. _Benedic, anima mea_\n\nA Psalm of the Church's thanksgiving for God's forgiveness in Christ,\nfor His love in the past and the certainty of its continuance in the\nfuture.  Angels and saints and the powers of nature are summoned to\njoin in this thanksgiving.\n\n\nPSALM civ.  _Benedic, anima mea_\n\nWhitsun Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's witness to the immanence of the Word in all creation; she\nrecognises this in the beauty, the order, the preservation of all forms\nof varied life.  Especially in the renewal of natural life (vv. 30-5)\nshe recognises and praises {131} the life-giving activity of the Holy\nSpirit, and sees in it a prophecy of the restoration of all things in\nthe Resurrection to their first perfection, and the final overthrow of\nevil.\n\n\nPSALM cv.  _Confitemini Domino_\n\nA Psalm of the Church's thanksgiving as she reviews her history and the\nprovidence which has preserved her in all vicissitudes, and considers\nthe eternal inheritance which is the reward of obedience.\n\n\nPSALM cvi.  _Confitemini Domino_\n\nAlso an historical Psalm, in which the Church in time of exile and\npersecution recalls God's providence, and her many failures; she places\nher trust in the intercession of Christ, of Whom Moses was a type, and\nprays for her restoration.\n\n\nPSALM cvii. _Confitemini Domino_\n\nThanksgiving after a Storm at Sea (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church celebrates the age-long compassion of God towards the\nwanderer, the prisoner, the sufferer, as seen in the salvation of His\nChurch, and in the Incarnation of the Word (ver. 20).  The refrain (vv.\n8, 15, 21, 31) exhorts to thanksgiving, and especially to the offering\nof the Holy Eucharist (ver. 22).\n\n\n{132}\n\nPSALM cviii.  _Paratum cor meum_\n\nAscension Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ glorified in His Resurrection, praying for His Church\nand foretelling His future victories (under the figure of David's\nwars).  The last three verses seem to be the prayer of the Church and\nthe voice of her confidence of ultimate triumph in Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cix.  _Deus laudem_\n\nActs i. 20\n\nA Psalm of Christ's judgment upon impenitent sinners; His prayer for\nHimself in His Passion, and for His Church in whose sufferings at the\nhands of sinners He Himself is crucified afresh.\n\n\nPSALM cx.  _Dixit Dominus_\n\nMatt. xxii. 41-5 (parallels in Mark and Luke); Acts ii. 34, 35; Heb. i.\n13, v. 6-vii.  Christmas Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's witness to the Divinity of Christ, to His eternal\nPriesthood, His warfare, sufferings, and victory.\n\n\nPSALM cxi.  _Confitebor tibi_\n\nEaster Day, morning (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of Christ praising the Father for His Resurrection; in which\nHis Church also joins, commemorating the Eucharist (ver. 5), the new\nand {133} eternal covenant, and the sacredness of the truth committed\nto her keeping.\n\n\nPSALM cxii.  _Beatus vir_\n\nThe Church's testimony to the blessedness of the life of faith, hope,\nand charity, of which she has seen the perfect example in Christ\nHimself.\n\n\nPSALM cxiii. _Laudate, pueri_\n\nEaster Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe world-wide joy of the Church in the Catholic faith of the\nIncarnation, by which man is exalted from the dust of Adam's fall, and\nis no longer \"subject to vanity,\" but made equal to the angels.\n\n\nPSALM cxiv.  _In exitu Israel_\n\nEaster Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe Church's song of deliverance through the mighty power of the\nResurrection.  A Psalm also of the Christian soul delivered from the\nEgypt of this world, and crossing the Jordan of death to the joy of the\nheavenly Canaan.\n\n\nPSALM cxv.  _Non nobis, Domine_\n\nA continuation of the previous Psalm: the Church's joy in the living\nGod, in Whom she hopes for life eternal; she calls upon priests and\npeople alike to praise Him.\n\n\n{134}\n\nPSALM cxvi.  _Dilexi, quoniam_\n\nChurching of Women (Prayer Book)\n\nA thanksgiving of Christ and His Church for the Resurrection; with\nreference especially to the offering of the Eucharist, and the joy of\nHoly Communion, and also to the final rest and thanksgiving of the\nsaints in Paradise.\n\n\nPSALM cxvii.  _Laudate Dominum_\n\nThe Church's call to the heathen world to praise God by conversion to\nthe faith of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxviii.  _Confitemini Domino_\n\nMatt. xxi. 9, 42, xxiii. 39 (with parallels in Mark and Luke).  Easter\nDay, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nThe great Psalm of thanksgiving by Christ and His Church for the\nResurrection, the victory over death and the judgment of the prince of\nthis world.  A Psalm especially appropriate for Sunday, and as a\nprelude to the Church's worship in the Holy Eucharist.\n\n[It is the special Psalm for Sunday at Prime in the Breviary.]\n\n\nPSALM cxix.  _Beati immaculati_\n\nThe characteristic Psalm of the Catholic Church, in which she expresses\nher loyalty to and joy in {135} all that God has revealed and\ncommanded.  It is animated throughout by the spirit of _sonship_, of\nwhich the perfect realisation is seen in Christ Himself.  It may\ntherefore be regarded as a Psalm of Christ, with Whom the Church\nassociates herself in its recitation.\n\n\nPSALM cxx.  _Ad Dominum_\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church praying for peace and deliverance from\nthe ceaseless and bitter warfare of this world.\n\n\nPSALM cxxi.  _Levavi oculos_\n\nAccession Service (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the Church's pilgrimage through this world's perils, as she\njourneys towards the eternal hills and the city of God.\n\n\nPSALM cxxii.  _Laetatus sum_\n\nThe joy of the Christian soul in the Catholic Church and in Catholic\nworship.  The hope of the Church in her pilgrimage towards the heavenly\nJerusalem and the throne of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxxiii.  _Ad te levavi oculos meos_\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church amidst this world's scorn and contempt,\nexpressing her absolute dependence upon Christ.\n\n\n{136}\n\nPSALM cxxiv.  _Nisi quid Dominus_\n\nPart of the Hymn of Thanksgiving for a Victory at Sea (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church's deliverance from the storms and waves\nof this troublesome world; her unshaken confidence in Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxxv.  _Qui confidunt_\n\nThe confidence of the pilgrim Church in the unceasing protection of\nChrist against the attacks of an evil world, and the apostasy of false\nChristians.\n\n\nPSALM cxxvi.  _In convertendo_\n\nThe joy of the pilgrim Church in her great deliverance from the\ncaptivity of this world; her hope that through tribulation she will be\nmade perfect.\n\n\nPSALM cxxvii.  _Nisi Dominus_\n\nChurching of Women (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church confessing that her progress and her\nenlargement cannot be the fruit of human care and labour, but of the\ngrace of Christ only.\n\n\nPSALM cxxviii.  _Beati omnes_\n\nHoly Matrimony (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church celebrating the consecration of human\nlife and labour through the Incarnation.\n\n\n{137}\n\nPSALM cxxix.  _Saepe expugnaverunt_\n\nA Psalm of the warfare and persecutions of the pilgrim Church, and of\nthe vanity and fruitlessness of the attacks of her enemies.\n\n\nPSALM cxxx.  _De profundis_\n\nAsh Wednesday, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the sorrows, the ceaseless watching, and the undying hope of\nthe pilgrim Church.  Especially appropriate to the souls of departed\nChristians, the Church Expectant, who wait for the second Advent.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxi.  _Domine, non est_\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church expressing her humility, her submission\nto revelation, her unceasing trust in Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxii.  _Memento, Domine_\n\nChristmas Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm in which the pilgrim Church joyfully commemorates before God\nthe Incarnation of His Son, and His age-long indwelling within her; and\nHis gift in the Eucharist (ver. 16); and expresses her faith in the\neternal sovereignty of Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxiii.  _Ecce, quam bonum!_\n\nA Psalm in which the pilgrim Church expresses her joy in her essential\nunity, the gift of the unction {138} of the Holy Spirit poured upon her\nfrom the ascended Christ.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxiv.  _Ecce nunc_\n\nA Psalm of the pilgrim Church as she contemplates her entry into the\neternal sanctuary, the heavenly city of Christ, and the fellowship of\nthe angels in their unceasing praise.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxv.  _Laudate Nomen_\n\nThe Church's thanksgiving for her calling in Christ, and the eternal\nrule of Christ over nature and man; she expresses her confidence in the\nliving Christ Who dwells within her, in contrast with this world's\nidolatries.\n\n\nPSALM cxxxvi.  _Confitemini_\n\nA Psalm of the Church's thanksgiving for the eternal mercy of Christ,\nas seen in creation, and in her own history and deliverances, and also\nin His abiding gift of the Eucharist (ver. 25).\n\n\nPSALM cxxxvii.  _Super flumina_\n\nA Psalm of the sorrows of the Church in her captivity in this world,\nwhere she is persecuted and misunderstood.  She expresses her loyalty\nto her heavenly calling, her desire for \"Jerusalem which is above,\" and\nher warfare with Babylon, for whose overthrow she confidently waits.\n\n\n{139}\n\nPSALM cxxxviii.  _Confitebor tibi_\n\nA Psalm of Christ and His saints, giving praise for the Resurrection,\nthe hope of the conversion of the world, the Church's final\ndeliverance, and the \"redemption of the body.\"\n\n\nPSALM cxxxix.  _Domine, probasti_\n\nA Psalm of the creature to the Creator, celebrating His omnipresence,\nHis wisdom, His claim to love; praying for sincerity and the gift of\nperseverance.  It is appropriate to Christ in His sacred manhood, in\nwhich He is \"inferior to the Father\" (Athanasian Creed); and therefore\nalso a Psalm of the Church in which the human body and soul are\nregenerate and consecrated by the Incarnation.\n\n\nPSALM cxl.  _Eripe me, Domine_\n\nA Psalm of Christ's warfare and Passion; pronouncing the overthrow and\njudgment of the wicked, and the eternal continuance of His Church.\n\n\nPSALM cxli.  _Domine, clamavi_\n\nA Psalm of the Church's devotion to Christ; her humility in accepting\nrebuke and tribulation; her unceasing spirit of prayer.\n\n\nPSALM cxlii.  _Voce mea ad Dominum_\n\nA Psalm of Christ's prayer to the Father in His {140} Passion and\nDeath, and His longing for the gathering together of His Church to\nHimself as the fruit of His Resurrection.\n\n\nPSALM cxliii.  _Domine, exaudi_\n\nAsh Wednesday, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of prayer for those who suffer with Christ; of preparation for\ndeath, and hope of the Resurrection, through the gift of the Holy\nSpirit.\n\n\nPSALM cxliv.  _Benedictus Dominus_\n\nA Psalm of the triumph of Christ (under the figure of David), and of\nthe eternal blessedness of His Church through Him.\n\n\nPSALM cxlv.  _Exaltabo te, Deus_\n\nWhitsun Day, evening (Prayer Book)\n\nA Psalm of the everlasting joy of the Church in Christ her King, in the\nHoly Eucharist (ver. 7), in the Communion of Saints, and in the\ncertainty of the answer to prayer.\n\n\nPSALM cxlvi.  _Lauda, anima mea_\n\nLike the preceding, a Psalm of the Church's thanksgiving for the\neternal sovereignty of Christ in its mercy and its judgment.\n\n\nPSALM cxlvii.  _Laudate Dominum_\n\nThe joy of the Church in her calling and preservation {141} by Christ,\nin the Gospel committed to her trust, and in the truth that all things\ntemporal as well as eternal are hers in Christ, Who is Lord of all.\n\n\nPSALM cxlviii.  _Laudate Dominum_\n\nThe Church's call to the angels, to all the powers of nature, and to\nall estates of men to give thanks to Christ, with her.\n\n\nPSALM cxlix.  _Cantate Domino_\n\nA Psalm of the Communion of Saints, in which the living and departed\n(ver. 5) unite to praise Christ their King, and ascribe to Him their\nvictory over the powers of this world.\n\n\nPSALM cl.  _Laudate Dominum_\n\nThe eternal song of praise of the Church militant and triumphant, in\nwhich man's powers and development are consecrated to their true end,\nthe giving of glory to the eternal Trinity.\n\n\n\n\n{142}\n\n  INDEX OF PSALMS REFERRED TO\n\n  PSALM            PAGE\n\n  I. . . . . . . . 9, 107\n  II.  . . . . . . 1, 17, 45, 107\n  III. . . . . . . 108\n  IV.  . . . . . . 103, 108\n  V. . . . . . . . 104, 108\n  VI.  . . . . . . 86, 104, 109\n  VII. . . . . . . 104, 109\n  VIII.  . . . . . 54, 69, 109\n  IX.  . . . . . . 9, 109\n  X. . . . . . . . 8, 16, 85, 109\n  XI.  . . . . . . 110\n  XII. . . . . . . 110\n  XIII.  . . . . . 110\n  XIV. . . . . . . 110\n  XV.  . . . . . . 69-70, 110\n  XVI. . . . . . . 2, 20, 67, 111\n  XVII.  . . . . . 16, 68, 111\n  XVIII. . . . . . 23, 46, 111\n  XIX. . . . . . . 9, 111\n  XX.  . . . . . . 112\n  XXI. . . . . . . 70, 112\n  XXII.  . . . . . 23, 56, 57, 59, 77, 78, 83, 112\n  XXIII. . . . . . 104, 112\n  XXIV.  . . . . . 60, 101, 112\n  XXV. . . . . . . 9, 10, 113\n  XXVI.  . . . . . 113\n  XXVII. . . . . . 104, 113\n  XXVIII.  . . . . 113\n  XXIX.  . . . . . 102, 113\n  XXX. . . . . . . 102, 113\n  XXXI.  . . . . . 57, 103, 114\n  XXXII. . . . . . 86, 114\n  XXXIII.  . . . . 28, 114\n  XXXIV. . . . . . 28, 114\n  XXXV.  . . . . . 37, 114\n  XXXVI. . . . . . 114\n  XXXVII.  . . . . 28, 115\n  XXXVIII. . . . . 86, 115\n  XXXIX. . . . . . 115\n  XL.  . . . . . . 10, 54, 55, 60, 61-3, 104, 115\n  XLI. . . . . . . 7, 16, 20, 104, 116\n  XLII.  . . . . . 29, 104, 116\n  XLIII. . . . . . 16, 104, 116\n  XLIV.  . . . . . 6, 88, 105, 116\n  XLV. . . . . . . 23, 46, 49, 71, 117\n  XLVI.  . . . . . 95, 117\n  XLVII. . . . . . 81, 117\n  XLVIII.  . . . . 98, 101, 117\n  XLIX.  . . . . . 25, 26, 29, 118\n  L. . . . . . . . 40, 102, 118\n  LI.  . . . . . . 17, 73, 86, 104, 118\n  LII. . . . . . . 118\n  LIII.  . . . . . 119\n  LIV. . . . . . . 61, 62, 103, 119\n  LV.  . . . . . . 119\n  LVI. . . . . . . 119\n  LVII.  . . . . . 119\n  LVIII. . . . . . 28, 119\n  LIX. . . . . . . 120\n  LX.  . . . . . . 24, 120\n  LXI. . . . . . . 120\n  LXII.  . . . . . 120\n  LXIII. . . . . . 103, 104, 120\n  LXIV.  . . . . . 38, 120\n  LXV. . . . . . . 104, 121\n  LXVI.  . . . . . 121\n  LXVII. . . . . . 82, 103, 121\n  LXVIII.  . . . . 29, 81, 121\n  LXIX.  . . . . . 2, 40, 57, 58, 60, 122\n  LXX. . . . . . . 122\n  LXXI.  . . . . . 20, 30, 105, 122\n  LXXII. . . . . . 7, 46, 83, 84, 123\n  LXXIII.  . . . . 14, 68, 123\n  LXXIV. . . . . . 6, 24, 89, 123\n  LXXV.  . . . . . 123\n  LXXVI. . . . . . 94, 124\n  LXXVII.  . . . . 16, 124\n  LXXVIII. . . . . 10, 85, 95, 124\n  LXXIX. . . . . . 6, 23, 85, 90, 124\n  LXXX.  . . . . . 74, 124\n  LXXXI. . . . . . 102, 125\n  LXXXII.  . . . . 101, 102, 125\n  LXXXIII. . . . . 37, 90, 125\n  LXXXIV.  . . . . 104, 125\n  LXXXV. . . . . . 50, 104, 126\n  LXXXVI.  . . . . 104, 126\n  LXXXVII. . . . . 28, 81, 82, 126\n  LXXXVIII.  . . . 16, 25, 60, 61, 126\n  LXXXIX.  . . . . 7, 43, 47, 49, 127\n  XC.  . . . . . . 127\n  XCI. . . . . . . 103, 127\n  XCII.  . . . . . 102, 127\n  XCIII. . . . . . 102, 128\n  XCIV.  . . . . . 101, 102, 128\n  XCV. . . . . . . 103, 128\n  XCVI.  . . . . . 49, 128\n  XCVII. . . . . . 25, 128\n  XCVIII.  . . . . 82, 129\n  XCIX.  . . . . . 129\n  C. . . . . . . . 82, 129\n  CI.  . . . . . . 129\n  CII. . . . . . . 54, 86, 91, 92, 97, 130\n  CIII.  . . . . . 130\n  CIV. . . . . . . 16, 24, 130\n  CV.  . . . . . . 74, 102, 131\n  CVI. . . . . . . 7, 31, 85, 131\n  CVII.  . . . . . 20, 71, 131\n  CVIII. . . . . . 70, 132\n  CIX. . . . . . . 2, 40, 66, 132\n  CX.  . . . . . . 2, 28, 51, 132\n  CXI. . . . . . . 132\n  CXII.  . . . . . 133\n  CXIII. . . . . . 83, 113\n  CXIII.-CXVIII. . 102\n  CXIV.  . . . . . 135\n  CXV. . . . . . . 25, 26, 133\n  CXVI.  . . . . . 104, 134\n  CXVII. . . . . . 134\n  CXVIII.  . . . . 69, 134\n  CXIX.  . . . . . 11-13, 14, 28, 33, 71, 103, 134\n  CXX. . . . . . . 104, 135\n  CXX.-CXXXIV. . . 6, 102\n  CXXI.  . . . . . 104, 135\n  CXXII. . . . . . 99, 102, 135\n  CXXIII.  . . . . 135\n  CXXIV. . . . . . 136\n  CXXV.  . . . . . 136\n  CXXVI. . . . . . 136\n  CXXVII.  . . . . 136\n  CXXVIII. . . . . 136\n  CXXIX. . . . . . 137\n  CXXX.  . . . . . 86, 104, 137\n  CXXXI. . . . . . 10, 11, 137\n  CXXXII.  . . . . 47, 49, 75, 96, 137\n  CXXXIII. . . . . 137\n  CXXXIV.  . . . . 103, 138\n  CXXXV. . . . . . 138\n  CXXXVI.  . . . . 17, 138\n  CXXXVII. . . . . 38, 138\n  CXXXVIII.  . . . 25, 104, 139\n  CXXXIX.  . . . . 139\n  CXL. . . . . . . 139\n  CXLI.  . . . . . 139\n  CXLII. . . . . . 139\n  CXLIII.  . . . . 86, 140\n  CXLIV. . . . . . 50, 140\n  CXLV.  . . . . . 104, 140\n  CXLVI. . . . . . 27, 96, 140\n  CXLVII.  . . . . 75, 96, 140\n  CXLVIII. . . . . 141\n  CXLVIII.-CL. . . 103, 104\n  CXLIX. . . . . . 141\n  CL.  . . . . . . 7, 104, 141","title":"The Christian Use of the Psalter","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":28141}