quired but a step forward to realise the truth of its permanence, but whether the Psalmists took this step is doubtful. But even if they did, there was still no clear and explicit revelation on which the doctrine of a future life or of a resurrection could be based. It was but a 'postulate of faith,' a splendid hope, a personal and individual conclusion. What was the meaning and purpose of this reserve in the teaching of the O.T.? Mankind had to be trained through long ages by this stern discipline to know the bitterness of death as the punishment of sin, and to trust God utterly in spite of all appearances. They had to be profoundly impressed with a sense of need and of the incompleteness of life here, in order that they might long for deliverance from this bondage and welcome it when it came (Heb. ii. 15). Nor could the revelation of the Resurrection and eternal life be made in fulness and certainty (so far as we can see) otherwise than through the victory of the second Adam who through death overcame death and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life (1 Cor. xv. 21 ff.). Yet, as Delitzsch observes, there is nothing which comes to light in the New Testament which does not already exist in germ in the Psalms. The ideas of death and life are regarded by the Psalmists in their fundamental relation to the wrath and the love of God, in such a way that it is easy for Christian faith to appropriate and deepen, in the light of fuller revelation, all that is said of them in the Psalms. There is no contradiction of the Psalmist's thought, when the Christian as he prays substitutes hell for Sheol in such a passage as vi. 5, for the Psalmist dreaded Sheol only as the realm of wrath and separation from the love of God, which is the true life of man. Nor is there anything contrary to the mind of the authors in the application of xvii. 15 to the future vision of the face of God in all its glory, or of xlix. 14 to the Resurrection morning; for the hopes there expressed in moments of spiritual elevation can only find their full satisfaction in the world to come. The faint glimmerings of twilight in the eschatological darkness of the Old Testament are the first rays of the coming sunrise. And the Christian cannot refrain from passing beyond the limits of the Psalmists, and understanding the Psalms according to the mind of the Spirit, whose purpose in the gradual revelation of salvation was ever directed towards the final consummation. Thus understood, the Psalms belong to the Israel of the New Testament not less than of the Old Testament. The Church, in using the Psalms for its prayers, recognises the unity of the two Testaments: and scholarship, in expounding the Psalms, gives full weight to the difference between them. Both are right; the former in regarding the Psalms in the light of the one unchanging salvation, the latter in distinguishing the different periods and steps in which that salvation was historically revealed1. The sacred poetry of heathen religions, in spite of all that it contains of noble aspiration and pathetic "feeling after God," has ceased to be a living power. But "the Psalms of those far distant days, the early utterances of their faith and love, still form the staple of the worship and devotion of the Christian Church"... "The Vedic hymns are dead remains, known in their real spirit and meaning to a few students. The Psalms are as living as when they were written.... They were composed in an age at least as immature as that of the singers of the Veda; but they are now what they have been for thirty centuries, the very life of spiritual religion-they suit the needs, they express, as nothing else can express, the deepest religious ideas of the foremost in the files of time.'2" 1 Delitzsch, The Psalms, p. 63. Dean Church, The Sacred Poetry of Early Religions, pp. 12, 38. PSALMS. مة CHAPTER X. THE PSALTER IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. If a history of the use of the Psalter could be written, it would be a history of the spiritual life of the Church. From the earliest times the Psalter has been the Church's manual of Prayer and Praise in its public worship, the treasury of devotion for its individual members in their private communing with God. "No single Book of Scripture, not even of the New Testament, has, perhaps, ever taken such hold on the heart of Christendom. None, if we may dare judge, unless it be the Gospels, has had so large an influence in moulding the affections, sustaining the hopes, purifying the faith of believers. With its words, rather than with their own, they have come before God. In these they have uttered their desires, their fears, their confessions, their aspirations, their sorrows, their joys, their thanksgivings. By these their devotion has been kindled and their hearts comforted. The Psalter has been, in the truest sense, the Prayer Book both of Jews and Christians1." "What is the history of the Church," writes Dean Stanley, "but a long commentary on the sacred records of its first beginnings?...The actual effect, the manifold applications, in history, of the words of Scripture, give them a new instruction, and afford a new proof of their endless vigour and vitality.... The Psalter alone, by its manifold applications and uses in after times, is a vast palimpsest, written over and over again, illuminated, illustrated, by every conceivable incident and emotion of men and nations; battles, wanderings, dangers, escapes, deathbeds, obsequies, of many ages and countries, rise, or may rise, to our view as we read it?" It would be impossible in a few pages to trace the history of the use of the Psalter even in the barest outline. All that can 1 Bishop Perowne, The Psalms, p. 22. 2 Stanley, The Eastern Church, pp. lxxiv, lxxv. be attempted here is to give some few indications of the vast influence which the Psalter has exercised, and of its paramount importance in the history of Christian worship and devotion. There is no evidence that the entire Psalter was used in the public worship of the Jewish Church, though many Psalms were sung or chanted in the services of the Temple and the Synagogue1. But the number of the quotations from the Psalter in the New Testament, and the multitude of indirect allusions to its thoughts and language, prove how familiarly it was known in the apostolic age. It was upon the Psalms that our Lord's spiritual life was nourished. The sting of the Tempter's quotation of Ps. xci lay in the fact that its words were a precious reality to Him. He sang the 'Hallel' (Pss. cxiii-cxviii) with His disciples at the Last Supper (Matt. xxvi. 30). A Psalm was the subject of His meditation as He hung upon the Cross, and with the words of a Psalm He gave up His life. In the Psalms He and His disciples found the foreshadowing of His own experience (John xiii. 18; ii. 17), and He taught His disciples to understand how they prepared the way for His coming (Luke xxiv. 44). The first Christian hymns-the Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc Dimittis-are composed after the model of Psalms and contain numerous echoes of them. Doubtless the hymns which Paul and Silas sang in the prison at Philippi (Acts xvi. 25) were Psalms. St James commends the singing of Psalms as the most fitting expression of joyfulness (v. 13); St Paul enjoins it as the natural outlet for spiritual enthusiasm and a means of mutual edification (Eph. v. 19; Col. iii. 16). It was a common practice at the meetings of the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. xiv. 26). As we pass on into later ages we find that the singing of Psalms was not only a constant element of common worship, but a favourite occupation of Christians in their homes and at their work. It was a tradition in the Church of Antioch that the antiphonal singing of Psalms was introduced by Ignatius, the first bishop (c. A.D. 100), who saw a vision of angels praising the Trinity in antiphonal hymns, and delivered the method of 1 For the daily Psalms see above p. xxvii. singing which he had seen in his vision to the Church at Antioch, whence it spread to all the Churches1. The hymns from Holy Scripture which Tertullian in the second century tells us were sung at the agapae or love-feasts were doubtless Psalms2. St Jerome, writing from Bethlehem to Marcella3, and describing the charms of the Holy Land, tells her that the singing of Psalms was universal. "Wherever you turn the labourer at the plough sings Alleluia: the toiling reaper beguiles his work with Psalms: the vine-dresser as he prunes the vine with his curved pruning-hook sings something of David's. These are the songs of this province: these, to use the common phrase, are its love ditties: these the shepherd whistles; these are the labourer's implements." St Chrysostom1 (347-407) thus describes the universality of the use of the Psalms in his day. "If we keep vigil in the Church, David comes first, last, and midst. If early in the morning we seek for the melody of hymns, first, last, and midst is David again. If we are occupied with the funeral solemnities of the departed, if virgins sit at home and spin, David is first, last, and midst. O marvellous wonder! Many who have made but little progress in literature, many who have scarcely mastered its first principles, have the Psalter by heart. Nor is it in cities and churches alone that at all times, through every age, David is illustrious; in the midst of the forum, in the wilderness, and uninhabitable land, he excites the praises of God. In monasteries, amongst those holy choirs of angelic armies, David is first, midst, and last. In the convents of virgins, where are the bands of them that imitate Mary; in the deserts, where are men crucified to this world, and having their conversation with God, first, midst, and last is he. All other men are at night overpowered by natural sleep: David alone is 1 Socrates, Hist. Eccl., vi. 8. 2 Tert. Apol. c. 39. 3 Ep. xlvi. 4 Quoted in Neale and Littledale, Comm. on the Psalms, p. 1. 5 St Chrysostom is referring to that stanza of Theognis, ἀλλ ̓ αἰεὶ πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον, ἔν τε μέσοισιν |