originally, stand at the head of a history not yet over -and never once broken, except by atheism—of irretrievable idolatry. The Psalms too stand, in a very important sense, at the head of a great religious history, as the first great outburst of the religious affections and emotions in the people of Israel. But what they once proclaimed, as the truth of truths, about God and righteousness, that they kept alive, unquenched, unmistaken, undoubted to this hour. The Jewish religion, of which they were the soul and the guardian, passed through as many disasters, as many dangers, as any other. Its tendencies to degenerate were as obstinate; none ever sunk at last under a more tremendous catastrophe. But the faith which was at its heart never was utterly lost in the darkest days and the foulest apostasies. It went on from one step to another, of higher thought and clearer light. It had risen from the Law to the Psalms; it went on from the Psalms to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the Gospel. And the Psalms, which had expressed, in so many strains and in so many keys, the one unwavering belief of the people of Israel,—that belief which neither idolatry, nor its punishment, the captivity, nor the scepticism of Sadducees, nor the blindness of Pharisees, had impaired or shaken,-passed on, unchanged but transfigured, to be the perpetual language of the highest truth, of the deepest devotion, in the Christian Church. LECTURE II THE PSALMS THERE is one book of sacred poetry which is unique of its kind, which has nothing like it or second to it. It expresses the ideas and the feelings of a religion of which the central and absorbing object of faith is One who is believed to be the absolute, universal, Living God, the one God of the world and all things, Almighty, All-Holy, Supreme. It not only expresses this religion, but as a matter of fact, it has been one of the most certain means of maintaining unbroken the tradition and fullest conviction of it. From age to age this book has been its companion and its minister. And there is this to be observed about it. It has been equally and in equal measure the prayer-book of public and common worship, and the chosen treasury of meditation, guidance, comfort to the individual soul. To each of these two purposes, in many respects widely different, it has lent itself with equal suitableness; When and it has been to men of the most widely different times and ideas what no other book has been. ever the Book of Psalms began to be put together, and whenever it was completed, from that time in the history of the world, the religious affections and the religious emotions, the object of which was the One Living God of all, found their final, their deepest, their unsurpassed expression. From that time to this there never has been a momentary pause, when somewhere or other the praises of His glory and the prayers of His worshippers have not been rehearsed in its words. There are other collections of ancient religious poetry venerable for their age, for which our interest and respect are bespoken. In the preceding lecture I glanced at two examples of them, the primitive utterances of two great religions of Asia-the Indian hymns of the Veda, the Persian hymns of the Zendavesta. Separated as we are from these by great chasms of time and still greater differences of ideas, we have been taught, rightly I think, to see in them the words of men "feeling after" Him whom they could not see but could not help believing, and expressing, as best they could, their thoughts of His Ꮓ footsteps and His tokens. But put at the highest what they were in religious significance to their own age, they were so to their own age alone. They were the seeds of no spiritual truth to the ages after them or to mankind; whatever there was of it in them, though they were themselves preserved with jealous reverence, was overlaid and perished. There were, I am ready to believe, in the ancient world, many attempts to know God, to learn His mind, to rest under His shadow, to lay hold on His hope. There was only one which as a religion attained its end; only one acknowledged by God, by the blessing of vitality and fruitfulCompared with the Psalms of that religion which was going on, side by side with them, in a little corner of the world, the preparation for the "fulness of time "these remains of early heathen religion are like the appearance of the illuminated but dead surface of the moon, with its burnt-out and extinct volcanoes, contrasted with the abounding light and splendour of the unexhausted sun, still, age after age, the source of life and warmth and joy to the world, still waking up new energies, and developing wonders. ness. new We find in these hymns a high imaginative sense |