488

THE FIRST PSALM.

CHAPTER XIII. PART II.

"As you wish it we may illustrate this briefly by the Book of Psalms. It is called more properly the Book of Praises, or of those songs which through a number of generations were brought forth for the service of the temple. It is therefore the Liturgy, or the Book of Common Prayer, of the Hebrew priesthood. The first Psalm, as the book is now arranged, may not be nearly the oldest; but it is a convenient Preface, expressing the general blessings of the righteous, and the falling of the ungodly. There is nothing here the Church cannot adopt; except that she turns our minds more to blessings of the soul; and if she still observes worldly virtues have their reward, she does not hold this as her special promise. If by the leaf which does not wither, and the ripening of whatever fruit the tree by the waterside bears,' any one chooses to understand the 'unfading garland' of St Paul, and the good deeds which come of Christian faith, such an interpretation will suit the changed point of view from which the Church now looks on body and soul; but yet if we so apply the words, we can hardly say the old Hebrew so meant them. But there has been a growth of the inner mind of men, which makes them often speak a new language, and often apply the old in a new meaning. Yet often the more homely and literal view has a perpetual truth of its

own.

"In the second song we have a clear expression of some time of trouble, when nations and kings made war against Jerusalem. The singer then boldly identifies the cause of his country with that of the Lord whom she honoured. Her anointed king becomes to him anointed as it were by the Eternal King; and he bids those who, like Edomites or Hagarens, would shake off the yoke of his sovereign, beware, lest they be shattered like the potter's vessel. He even declares it for a fixed decree, that

SECOND AND EIGHTH PSALMS.

489

the king of Sion shall be as a son, or a fixed favourite of heaven. He bids the surrounding nations therefore honour the Son; or, as it is better rendered, to worship purely, lest Jehovah be angry, and so they perish before Him. Now, if you remember what I said about the temporal kingdom of the Jews, and the spiritual one which Christ establishes, you will understand why the Jews are clearly right in applying this song literally to some king of old, and in extending its application to whatever deliverer they may hope for at any time. Yet you will also see why we, thinking a kingdom of thought better than one of the sword, and the binding of nations in peace under the throne of God far better than any Jewish triumph in Palestine, can only take up this song by transferring it from the realm of the body to that of the mind, and making its temporal accents vocal with a better meaning, which Christ, and not David, has taught us.

"In the eighth song, which the maidens of Israel chanted as they trod out the grapes, we have the goodness of God celebrated as putting all lower creatures under the feet of man. We dare not say, for it is not true, that the phrase 'Son of man,' which the Hebrews used for any mortal, is here spoken predictively of Jesus. But yet, if we consider, how the likeness of God in man was blurred by sin, and how he lost his rightful superiority to the beasts that perish by letting his sight of God and consequently his hope of everlasting life become faint, we can understand how Jesus, coming forth as the true likeness of God, and restoring in us that likeness by delivering us from evil, may be especially the Son of man. We do not therefore blame the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whether he were Paul, or Apollos, or some one else, for taking up these words, and applying them to Christ, as one under whose feet all things should most properly be put. Yet in the transfer of this passage there is less inherent fitness, and more fanciful play of words, than in many others.

"The eighteenth song is difficult. For the Hebrew title makes it sung by David when he was delivered from the power of Saul,

490

EIGHTEENTH PSALM.

or perhaps from imminent death, and there is no fair room to doubt that it speaks of some temporal deliverance*. Yet it is conceived in so lofty a strain of poetry that some think its images too grand for any human application. The terrors of death encompass the speaker, and the bands of the sepulchre come about him. But earthquake and storm, with wind, and hail, and lightning, attest the presence of God as his Deliverer: so that he comes forth into freedom, and is rewarded for his righteous dealing, by strength in battle, and by victory over enemies, with submission even of strangers who dwelt in distant fortresses. Thus it would seem that David in his latter days gathered up into one poetical description the scenes of his eventful life; and as many years crowded on his memory, his deliverance from so many perils seemed a stooping of the most High to deliver him with His right hand. Perhaps, in recounting the guidance of their souls into the way of peace, men are apt thus to group in unity, and concentrate in an hour, what were really many steps of growth or of time. When, however, the first Christians had chosen Christ's empire over their hearts instead of a national triumph, they naturally transferred to this diviner object of their homage, whatever expressions had been familiarly used of David, or of the chosen line of princes which had inherited his throne. Such a transfer from outward dominion to the realm of thought requires often a translation of the language from history or poetry into parable and hymn. But in this case, as in some others, what had been poetically said of David may be literally applied to Christ, who is first encompassed by the grave, and then having its bands loosed, comes forth into freedom. This application to Christ was not probably intended by the original writer; but many Christians conceive that the natural play of his thoughts may have been overruled by the unseen inspiration of the Almighty, so that what he spoke

This will remain true, even if for Saul in the title we read Sheol, the grave, as the contents of the Psalm may incline us. Death surrounds, when the "fear of death comes over” a man, and "the archers follow hard after him."

THE PSALMS HOW FAR MESSIANIC.

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poetically of things human should come out after the lapse of ages as prophetic of things divine*. Such interpreters apply this kind of notion to the greatest part of the Old Testament, and especially to the Psalms. Thus many ancient doctors of the Church said, that 'David only sustained the character of Christ,' and that Christ is in every book of Scripture.' According then to this view, which differs from the nakedly predictive, in that it does not require us to violate the natural interpretation of the Old Testament, but frankly admits its evident reference to Hebrew history, we are to consider that all the Old Testament predicts the New, and 'David sings Psalms of Christ;' yet not nakedly, so much as by parable, or by a spiritual sense, which underlies the literal, and is implied in the words rather than expressed. But again others, and perhaps the most thoughtful, and the best skilled in tongues among us, would say that the praises of the Old Testament are not so much predictive of Christ as applicable to Him: for they are predicative of truths which find the highest ideal expression in Him; and whatever is spoken of a thing after its kind may be applied with sometimes more and with sometimes less of force, to whatever is highest in that kind. Such interpreters take the moral affinity in prophecy as a weightier element than the external circumstance, which they think not of the essence, but of the accident. They often say that the correspondence between the worldly history of the Hebrews and the spiritual life of Christ is very wonderful, and points to a certain providential unity of design repeating itself. Nor does it surprise them, since the world has one eternal Governor, that His dealings with men in earlier ages should be so repeated in later instances, that whatever things were written of old, should turn out written for the learning of

Compare Pascal's Thoughts, with Lowth's Prelections, and Bishop Kidder's Boyle Lectures, called "A Demonstration of the Messiah."

† The English reader may consult, for a view of this subject, Bishop Horne's Preface to the Psalms, and his Comments on the 18th; also, Davison's Lectures on Prophecy, and Dr Arnold's Sermons on the same subject, with the discourses which touch upon it in Rational Godliness, by Rowland Williams, B.D.

492

ANALOGY OF PROPHECY.

men under a larger dispensation, which we may conceive of as the last trial Almighty God can give to mankind. If then they are asked, whether such applications of the ancient Hebrew writings as Christians now make to the ruler of their hearts, and priest of their lives, and prophet of their best thoughts, may not, though unforeseen by the original writers, have been foreseen in the mind of the Eternal Spirit who wields men and nations at His will, they fairly answer that such a question opens again the same doubt as I have now been discussing in various relations between a Providence governing all things by general law, or one arranging each thing by a succession of special interferences. Those who take either the broader or the narrower view in the course of the world, and in life, and in religious revelation, and in sacred record, will do so again in prophecy. You may judge from what I have said, to which of the two alternatives my own mind leans, in prophecy, as elsewhere. You can also understand how a new bearing or relation, which ancient words may acquire in virtue of new events happening to which they become applicable, may appear to some as if it was a part of the original sense. Yet the prophecy may lie in the parallel of the events, and in the speaker's right apprehension of the first, rather than in his foresight of the second. Perhaps the question is not one of practical religion so much as of the mode in which we should apprehend the Divine dealings. But yet the larger view may not only explain many difficulties to thoughtful men, but may turn out, as the highest truth always does in freedom, the most wholesome practically to simple people, so far as they are able to receive it.

"I need hardly go on to shew, with many more of the Psalms, how each of the songs will admit of being taken up and applied to Christ, or to the life which now is, as well as to that which is of old. Many may innocently think, that even in every man's personal life there are stages of growth answering to the development of the Hebrew people. They may perceive how from an infancy of guileless unconsciousness we fall into a sense of