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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 or 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; and it has been to men of the most widely different times and ideas [and races] what no other book has been. Whenever 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.' What the late Dean of St. Paul's has so well said at the opening of his fascinating lecture on the Psalms is true both of the Christian Church and of the Jewish Synagogue. The Jews have ever deeply loved and cherished their own great hymn-book, and they have found in it the adequate response and the satisfying expression for every spiritual aspiration and need, whether in times of sadness or in times of joy, whether as individuals or as a community. Nor can this intimate familiarity and abiding affection surprise

us.

What may more justly be called surprising is the wealth and variety of the hymnal itself. For in the Psalter we find almost every mood satisfied and cared for. Do we want to express our gratitude to God for deliverance and prosperity; do we want to pour forth our prayers to him in days of darkness and gloom; do we seek to strengthen our faith in his goodness, our conviction of his final and unquestionable wisdom; do we desire to praise him as the Lord of nature, to extol him as the Ruler of man; do we wish to utter aspirations for the coming of his kingdom upon earth, when all men shall know him as he on earth may best and most truly by us men be known;-where can we find another hymnal in which our would-be prayers, praises and aspirations are more movingly expressed, and on the whole more adequately satisfied, than in the Book of Psalms National in one sense as the Psalms may be, they nevertheless respond to the fundamental spiritual needs and yearnings of the human heart and soul; and even if the speaker in

every Psalm were proved to be a personification of Israel or the community of believers, these very Psalms would be none the less suitable for individual worshippers and for their own separate relation to the divine Father of all.

It is pleasant too to be able to believe that the Psalter was composed by many hands. It is a truly national book; with its strength and its weakness (for, like all things human, it is not perfect), a genuinely popular product. Here we find a great and notable result from the long teaching of the prophets and the lawgivers. Surely Jeremiah did not live and die in vain! For in the Psalter we find the community possessed by that complete faith in one supreme, spiritual God, all-holy, all-righteous, for which prophet and law-giver had laboured so earnestly and so long. And it is not the mere assertion that such a God exists which the Psalter contains; it is no mere cold intellectual belief which pervades it. This faith in the God of righteousness and mercy is a trust and a joy; it dominates life and gives to it its meaning. It sustains in trouble; it adds significance to prosperity. For even in trouble there may be peace if it is believed that God has sent it, and prosperity is spiritualized if God be the giver. In the Psalter communion with God is described in brief touches of wonderful felicity. And this communion with its rapture is the response of the community to the prophetic teaching As a great scholar has finely said, if the highest words of the prophets are the revelation of God to man, the Psalter, with its prayer and praises, with its spiritual faith and spiritual joy, is the answer of man to God. And in the words of another distinguished scholar: In the Psalms the community answers to the demands imposed upon it by God in the Law, and confesses its faith in his promises. Thus the Psalms are the echoing response of the community to the Law and to the Prophets. To the divine command, Thou shalt,' it answers, 'Lord, I will, I have pleasure in thy statutes;' to the divine promises, it replies, 'Lord, I wait for thee.'

Prophet and lawgiver had denounced idolatry; they had enjoined a belief in the one true God. The writers of the Psalter do not merely believe in God-that were but little-but to believe in him is their joy, to praise him is their privilege. With them the law is graven on their hearts. Within their limits they all know the Lord,' and to serve him is their delight. Nor are the highest aspirations of the prophets without their echo in the Psalter. All nations shall praise God, even as Israel praises him. As we have already heard in that pure lyric of universalism: 'Concerning Zion, it shall be said, each and every one was born in her.'

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§ 5. Arrangement of the present section.-We have seen that the Psalter, with its 150 separate Psalms, is made up of three distinct collections. Within each of these collections the order of the individual Psalms appears, as Professor Driver says, 'to have been often determined by accidental causes,' though sometimes 'the juxtaposition of two Psalms seems to be due to community of subject, and sometimes also to the occurrence in them of some more or less noticeable expression.' There are even certain small groups of consecutive Psalms in the three collections which can be more or less clearly distinguished through similarity of contents or subject-matter. Moreover, the three main collections themselves have upon the whole certain predominant characteristics of their own. I do not, however, propose in the selections which I shall give from the Psalter in this volume to follow the existing order, or to go through each of the original collections separately. I shall treat the Psalter as a whole, but group the Psalms according to a rough division of subjects. Only one group will be kept as it now exists: it is the group known as Songs of Degrees or Ascents, pilgrimage songs, probably written for worshippers who came up to Jerusalem at the great festivals or on other special occasions. Of the 150 Psalms I shall give about 120. But I shall not always quote all these Psalms in their entirety. I have said that the Psalter, as a great national and communal hymn-book, reflects not only what was best and greatest in the national and communal religion, but sometimes also its weaknesses and errors. Now we know that one weakness of the Jewish religion in this post-exilic period was its occasional narrowness of vision towards those who were beyond its pale, its fierceness of antagonism towards its enemies, whether within or without the community. This defect is reflected and expressed in the Psalter. Prayers for the ruin of enemies (apostates within or foes without) frequently accompany prayers for aid and deliverance. Curiously enough, these Psalms have often been favourites with pious warriors in all later ages. Where the Psalms are to be historically treated and their value critically assessed, all such passages must be taken into full and fair consideration. But my main object here is to present what is best and most permanent in the Psalter for religious and devotional purposes. Therefore I have occasionally omitted verses which lower the religious value and use of an otherwise noble and excellent Psalm. Let us gain as much as we can from the Psalter; let its greatness shine forth as purely as possible.

CHAPTER II

PSALMS OF PRAYER IN SEASONS OF TROUBLE

§ 1. Characteristics of the group of Psalms collected together in the present chapter. The first group of Psalms which I will print may be described as Psalms of Prayer in seasons of trouble. The trouble may be of varying degrees of intensity and of varying origin and nature. Yet in almost all cases it does not resemble those purely individual sorrows which are perhaps shared by no other human being, or only by a man's family or friends; rather is it national or communal. Intensely felt by the writer who gives expression to it, and who finds relief for his burdened soul in prayer, the 'trouble' is nevertheless not exclusively his own, but is shared by his people or his party. And as his party in the writer's eyes constitutes the true Israel, in which his enemies, even though Israelites, can claim no share, all these Psalms express the nation's sorrows and petitions through the mouth of an individual who feels them perhaps all the more intensely because they are his people's-the sorrows of the people of God-and not merely his own personal and private woes. For Israel's sorrows concern God: they are in themselves religious. Here, as so often before, we touch on that co-ordination of Israel's salvation and the divine glory which always gave strength to the believer but sometimes marred the purity of his faith.

It must be remembered that this description of the first group is only a rough one, just as all divisions of the Psalter into 'subjects' are more or less inaccurate and approximative. For many Psalms are of a mixed character; they begin perhaps in a strain of supplication, and as the poet proceeds the confidence that his prayer will be answered grows upon him, and he ends in a tone of jubilant exultation.'

It is noteworthy how large a proportion of the Psalms assigned to this group are taken from the first or second collection.

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I include in it thirty-eight Psalms and a half, and of these fifteen and a half belong to the first collection, sixteen to the second, and seven to the third.

§ 2. The first Psalm: The Two Ways.-But before we enter on this group, we must listen to the first Psalm of all, which was perhaps written, and at any rate chosen, as an introduction either to the first collection or to the entire Psalter. It may partly owe its place to its opening word 'happy.' The Psalter is the book of spiritual happiness' (Dr. B. Jacob).

Happy is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor standeth in the way of sinners,

Nor sitteth in the assembly of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord;

And in his law doth he meditate day and night.

For he is like a tree planted by watercourses,
That bringeth forth its fruit in its season,
And whose leaf doth not wither;

And whatsoever he doeth he maketh to prosper.

The wicked are not so:

But they are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the wicked cannot stand in the judgement, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: But the way of the wicked shall perish.

'The Lord knoweth.' God 'knows,' that is, he takes an interest in, protects and makes secure the fortunes of the righteous, while the way of life pursued by the wicked ends in disaster and destruction.

The ungodly sinners here referred to are Israelites. The 'law' is pre-eminently the Pentateuch, but may also include the other sacred writings known to the writer. The 'judgement' is either the general and constant, or else that final sifting judgement of God which was expected in the Messianic age. The views of the Psalmist are too closely akin to those of Job's friends to be wholly in accordance with our own. Righteousness leads to life and prosperity (in the highest sense of the word); sin leads to dissolution and death. Such is our dogma too. But we cannot say that on earth, at any rate, the righteous always prosper; and we trust that no soul which God has created will perish in its sin.

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