dwell on the outward history of the chosen people (Ps. lxxviii., cv., cvi.); it may contemplate God in Nature and Life (Ps. civ., cvii.); it may extol the glory of the Law and the beauty of worship (Ps. cxix., lxxxiv., xcii.). But the true essence of the Psalm comes out most emphatically in such consciousness of the Presence of God to the soul, as is expressed in Ps. cxxxix., and in the "thirst for God, yea, even for the living God," which breathes in Ps. xlii., lxiii. In it is expressed the vital principle of true spiritual religion.

(IV.) THE PSALMS IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.-Hence it was but natural that from Jewish usage the Psalms should pass into the public and private devotion of the Church of Christ. In the first account given us of an assembly of the disciples, we find a quotation from Ps. lxix. 25 rise at once to the lips of St. Peter (Acts i. 20) in his address to the brethren; we find that Ps. xvi. 8-11, and Ps. cx. 1, 2, supply the prophecies of the Resurrection and Ascension, on which he dwells in his first Sermon on the Day of Pentecost; and in the first record of united Christian worship it is Ps. ii. 25, 26, which suggests the idea and form of the prayer. The passages (in Eph. v. 19; Col. iii. 16) which suggest to Christians the " speaking to themselves," and "admonishing one another," in "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs;" the command, "Is any merry? let him sing Psalms" (James v. 13); even the complaint, "Every one hath a psalm, hath a doctrine" (1 Cor. xiv. 26)-all clearly indicate a free use of the Psalms in public and private devotion. These indications of the practice of the Apostolic age naturally lead on to countless passages in the writings of the Fathers, which show how principal a place was occupied by the Psalms in the worship and in the teaching of subsequent ages; till at last, with the Canticles and the later Hymns, catching to some degree their inspiration from them, they may be said to have moulded the whole of the element of Praise and Thanksgiving in the Services of the Church.

LITURGICAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE PSALTER.-Subsequently we find elaborate arrangements of the Psalms for continual use, both in the East and in the West, evidently independent, though not so wholly dissimilar as to obliterate some community of principal features. In the Western Church, with which we are especially concerned, the theory of the various arrangements of the Psalms was that, although not in order of succession, and not without some repetitions, the whole Psalter should be sung weekly; that on the numerous holy-days, festal or penitential, special selections should supersede the regular Psalms of the day; and that of all the Occasional Services appropriate Psalms should form a prominent part. With the Psalms were used "Antiphons," or responses of Prayer and Praise. These were originally designed to lay hold of the main idea of each Psalm, with a view to its better adaptation to Christian worship. In fact, the Gloria Patri, used from old

INTRODUCTION

times in the West at the end of each Psalm, in the East at the end of each group of Psalms, may be regarded as the most striking and universal specimen of such Antiphons. But in practice, so far at any rate as the public Services were concerned, the complaint of the Preface to the Prayer Book of 1549 was well founded: "Notwithstanding that the ancient Fathers have divided the Psalms into seven portions, whereof every one was called a Nocturn; now of late times a few of them have been daily said and the rest utterly omitted;" and the Antiphons, beautiful in themselves, were often irrelevant, rather obscuring than elucidating the sense of the Psalms. Happily in the various Primers selections from Psalms were found in English, containing among others the Seven Penitential Psalms, the "Psalms of Degrees," the "Psalms of the Passion," &c.; and these were, no doubt, largely used in the devotions of the people both at Church and at home.

THE PRAYER BOOK ARRANGEMENT.-In the Prayer Book of 1549, in this point, as in all others, resolution was taken to simplify the previous elaborate arrangements, with a view to form Services of really Common Prayer, and to provide for such regularity of recitation as should make the whole Psalter thoroughly familiar to the people. This led to the substitution of the monthly for the weekly recitation of the Psalter, the Psalms being sung in strict order of succession, and a moderate number assigned to each Morning and Evening Service. With a view better to preserve this principle of regularity, and under the idea that "Anthems, Responds, and Invitatories" "did break the continued course of the reading of the Scriptures," the compilers of the Prayer Book, instead of simplifying them, struck all out, often with loss of much beauty and instructiveness. At the same time, retaining the use of appropriate Psalms in the Occasional Services, they considerably reduced their number. Similarly, while keeping to the principle of Special Selections of Psalms for solemn occasions, they restricted this interference with the regular arrangement to the four great Festivals-Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Whitsuntide (to which in 1559 the two chief Fasts, Ash-Wednesday and Good Friday, were added); and, even in regard to Psalms occupying the place of Canticles in the Daily Services (such as Ps. xcv.), provided very carefully against any chance of repetition. Subsequently the Psalms used specially as Introits in the Prayer Book of 1549 (see Introduction to the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels) were struck out. In fact, in the Psalms, even more than in the Lessons, the principle of regularity has been allowed complete predominance, and speciality confined within the narrowest limits. The appropriateness of our Services to particular occasions may have been impaired thereby. But the desired result has certainly followed, in the wide extension of knowledge and use of the Psalter by all classes of the members of the Church of England.

(V.) THE CHRISTIAN USE OF THE PSALMS.-With this familiar use of the Psalter as a treasure-house of Christian thought and devotion are closely connected two questions of great interest.

THEIR EVANGELICAL CHARACTER.-The former of these, indeed, bears directly on the propriety of the use itself. Is the spirit of the Psalter, belonging as it does to the Old Covenant, so far "Evangelical" that it can rightly express the religious life of Christians under the New? The practice of ages has, indeed, unhesitatingly answered the question in the affirmative; and the leading characteristic of the Psalms already noticed-the profound sense of a spiritual Communion with a God, who has Covenant with man, and on whom the soul can rest with an absolute trustmay well justify the answer. In our deeper knowledge of the fundamental conception on which the Psalms rest, we may even be able to enter more fully into their inspired meaning than those who first heard or sang them, and so may claim them as not less, but more, properly our own. But, while this is true in the main, yet still in many points we have to do what the appending of the Gloria to each Psalm may be held to symbolize—that is, to translate them into the fuller and higher language of the Gospel. For of them, as of all other parts of the ancient system, it is true that "the Law"-the old Covenant-"made nothing perfect." Thus, for example, in relation to the future life, this imperfection is marked by the alternation of the sure confidence of Psalm xvi. that "God will not leave the soul in hell," with the bewilderment of Psalm 1xxxviii. in regard of the "land where all things -even God's glory-would seem "to be forgotten." It is an imperfection which, except in dark hours of passing despondency, none should feel, for whom the Lord Jesus Christ "has brought life and immortality to light." Again, in the relation to God, while there is less profound sense of the unworthiness of man to assert innocence and challenge judgment than belongs to the fuller conception which the Christian has of "the exceeding sinfulness of sin," yet-strange as this may seem-there is also a less complete subordination of the spirit of fear and awe to love, than belongs to such consciousness of God's love to us, as is breathed by St. Paul in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, or by St. John in the fifth chapter of his first Epistle. Still more evidently in relation to man, the fierceness of the "Imprecatory Psalms" (see Ps. xxxv. 4-8; Ixix. 22-28; cix. 6—20), crying out for vengeance on the enemies of the Psalmist, as enemies of goodness and of God, belongs to the "spirit of Elias" rather than the "spirit of Christ." So the last martyr of the Old Testament (2 Chron. xxiv. 20-22) died with the cry, The Lord look upon it, and require it," the first martyr of the New with the prayer of forgiveness, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge (Acts vii. 60). It is eternally right to hate sin, to long for and trust in retribution, to rejoice in believing that the enemies of God must fall. But Our

INTRODUCTION

Lord has taught us, while we hate the sin, to love the sinner, while we look for Judgment, to leave it wholly to God's Righteousness and Mercy, and to beware of thinking that the enemies of God's servants are necessarily enemies of God Himself. In these things, and such things as these, it is right to read the Psalms (as probably we mostly do half-unconsciously) in the light of the Word and the grace of Christ, scattering whatever is in them of darkness and imperfection, and transfiguring their brightness into a diviner beauty.

THEIR MESSIANIC WITNESS.-The other question is of less practical urgency, though hardly of less religious interest. How far are the Psalms Messianic? How far did they, consciously or unconsciously, foreshadow the true Christ?

Here also Christian tradition has pronounced a similar affirmative; and has pushed, even to the verge of fanciful exaggeration, its instinctive consciousness of this witness to Christ in the Psalter. That in some sense there is Messianic anticipation in the Psalter is absolutely certain, as by the undoubting belief of the Jews before Our Lord came, so by the express claim of Himself (see, for example, Matt. xxii. 42) and His Apostles (see Acts ii. 2535; xiii. 33-35). In fact, considering the universal tendency to Messianic expectation in the whole idea of the Ancient Covenant, and so in the whole both of Old Testament Revelation and of Jewish thought, it is inconceivable that in this utterance of what is deepest and most spiritual in that Covenant, such anticipation should be wanting.

But it may be well to examine more closely this Messianic application in a few characteristic instances. It will then appear that in some cases this anticipation is unconscious. The applica tion of the Psalms, even on the highest authority, may be simply application. Thus, when the denunciation of the treachery of the "familiar friend" of Ps. xli. 9 is applied by Our Lord to the treason of Judas (John xiii. 18), and when the judgment invoked in Ps. lxix. 25; cix. 8, is applied by St. Peter to his terrible doom, it is not necessarily implied that such application was known and intended by the Psalmist. So again, the complaint of Ps. Ixix. 21, "They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink," while it was signally fulfilled in the great Passion of Calvary, was probably to the Psalmist only a figure of insulting and malignant cruelty. In such cases as these, although to us there must be association with the Christ after the event, there may well have been no conscious anticipation of Him.

But, putting these aside, the Messianic foreshadowings of the Psalms are, as a rule, typical rather than directly prophetic.

There are, indeed, Psalms which are of the character of prophecy, because in them the writer does not express any emotion or aspiration of his own, but contemplates as from without the revelation of the Kingdom of God. Such is Psalm ii. (quoted in

Acts xiii. 33; Heb. i. 5), foretelling the struggle against enemies, and the enthronement in Zion of a King, who is the Son of God. Such, again, is Ps. xlv. (quoted in Heb. i. 8), contemplating in exultation the marriage feast of the King, who is hailed with the Divine title. Such, above all, is Ps. cx., quoted by Our Lord Himself as well as His Apostles (Matt. xxii. 44; Acts ii. 34; Heb. i. 13; x. 12), as foreseeing the "Lord of David," the "Priest after the order of Melchisedek," enthroned at the right hand of God, till His enemies be made His footstool. These are direct prophecies, and-whatever lesser fulfilments they may have had-it is impossible to doubt that they pointed on to the expected Messiah.

But these are exceptional. As a rule, the Psalm is simply the expression of a conscious communion with God, which implies two things-the revelation of Jehovah Himself to the soul of man (such as is promised in Jer. xxxi. 33), writing itself plainly both on mind and heart; and the exaltation of humanity, as made in the Divine Image, to an inspired realization of this Revelation of God. Now, it is not only clear, but it was familiarly known to the Jews, that both these elements of the communion with God were to be perfected in the Messiah; for the Messiah was at once an "Emmanuel" (Is. vii. 14), a manifestation of "Jehovah our Righteousness (Jer. xxiii. 6); and on the other hand, a Son of Man, "seed of Abraham" and "Son of David," on whom are accumulated (as in Is. ix. 6) attributes far above humanity, essentially Divine. So far, therefore, as any Psalmist realized the Communion with God in both its phases, so far he always was, and often knew himself to be, a type of the Messiah; so far he used language true in measure of himself, true without measure of "Him who was to come." He prophesied (so to speak) from within.

Thus, to take the celebrated example of Ps. xvi. 8-11, it is obviously in its original conception the expression of a joyful and thankful sense of unity with God, first in the familiar blessings of this world, next in the unknown mystery of Hell (Hades) and the grave; yet it is no less obvious (as both St. Peter and St. Paul argue) that it must be fulfilled perfectly, not in David, who underwent the common lot of man, but in Him who broke the chains, because He had "the keys, of Hell and of death." So also Ps. xl. 6-10 is in itself a declaration of the truth, so often urged by the Prophets, that sacrifice in itself is nothing, and the devotion of heart and life is everything; but yet, so far as it announces the passing away of the old sacrificial system, as merely typical of good things to come, it is clear (as is argued in Heb. x. 1-10) that it could be uttered only by the great Antitype Himself. Similarly in the

great Messianic Psalm (Ps. cxviii.), while we have primarily a vivid dramatic picture of a triumphant King, coming with his train to worship in the Temple, yet the instinct of the people of Jerusalem on the day of Our Lord's triumphal entry rightly applied to the Messiah the cry "Hosanna" and the blessing to "Him who cometh in the Name of the Lord." Nor less strikingly, in that