strengthened in this work by the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah : and the same Spirit who moved those prophets to speak to the people, moved psalmists to cheer them with new songs. Who these psalmists were, we do not know. We cannot name one of them. We cannot even determine with certainty the tribes from which they were raised up. In the absence of any hint to the contrary, we can only conjecture that, like the generality of the psalmists after David, they would belong to the Levitical families, whose inheritance was the service of song in the Temple. We know from the history, that when the Levitical singers were carried to Babylon, they neither abandoned the honourable office transmitted to them from their fathers, nor suffered their right hand to forget its cunning. They mustered strong in the remnant who returned. The sons

of Asaph, in particular, who had so pathetically lamented the desolation of the sanctuary, in the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-ninth psalms, are recorded as having officiated in song when the foundation of the Second Temple was laid. They were set, on that high day, "with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel" (Ezra iii. 10, 11). We need not doubt that these Levites, like their brethren the sons of Korah, were employed by the Spirit in the composition of new psalms-that they were psalmists as well as singers.

Of the psalms written after the return, a large proportion were primarily designed for use in the Temple Service. So strongly marked is this design that, if they were collected into one book, it might be entitled, "The Songs of the Second Temple." Some of them are very short-the Hundred and thirty-fourth for example :

"Behold, bless ye the LORD, all ye servants of the LORD, Which stand in the house of the LORD in the nights. Lift up your hands to the sanctuary,

And bless ye the LORD.

The LORD bless thee out of Zion,

The Maker of heaven and earth."

The Hundred and seventeenth, the shortest of all the psalms, belongs also to this time. The shortest, but not the least weighty, in the Psalter. It is cited in the Epistle to the Romans as cele

brating beforehand the calling of the Gentiles; for it invites them to unite with God's ancient people in worshipping Him. Since the invitation is addressed to all the nations, we may look upon it as truly a millennial song. Overleaping the intervening centuries, it anticipates the happy time when the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brought in :

"Praise the LORD, all ye nations;
Laud him, all ye peoples.

For mighty towards us is his loving-kindness:

And the faithfulness of the LORD endureth for ever.
Hallelujah!"

These Temple Songs are not all short. Some of them are amongst the longest in the Psalter. The Hundred and eighteenth may be named as a beautiful example. It is evidently a Temple Song; and the critics, with great unanimity, ascribe it to the century after the return. The precise occasion on which it was written is a point on which opinions differ; some of the critics, like Ewald, holding that it was composed to be sung at the Feast of Tabernacles, when the remnant who returned commenced to offer again the daily sacrifice; others, with Hengstenberg, connecting it with the laying of the foundation of the house; while others again, with Delitzsch, connect it with the solemnity of the dedication (Ezra iii. 1-6, 8-13; vi. 15-22). The truth seems to be that it is simply a Festal Psalm of the Second Temple, which may well have been sung on any or all of the occasions named by the critics, but is not to be restricted to any one in particular. It breathes a spirit of jubilant trust in the Lord, in the midst of infinite difficulties and perils. Its trumpet tones made it one of Luther's favourite psalms. In the midsummer of 1530, when Melancthon was deputed to present the Confession of the Reformed Churches of Germany to the Diet at Augsburg, Luther was advised to abstain from any public appearance. Looking out from his retirement on the perils of the time, "the sea and the waves roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear," he found in the Hundred and eighteenth psalm a word in season, and set his pen to work on an exposition of it. In the dedication, which is dated "er Eremo, the first of July MDXXX.," he gives characteristic expression to his love for this por tion of the Divine word. "Since I am obliged

to sit here idle in the desert, and, moreover, must sometimes spare my head, and give it a rest and holiday from my great task of translating all the prophets, I have gone back to my mine of wealth, my treasure. I have taken in hand my precious psalm, the Confitemini, and put on paper my meditations upon it. For it is my psalm, that I delight in. For although the whole Psalter and the Holy Scripture is dear to me, my proper comfort and life, I have taken so to this psalm in particular that I must call it my own. Many a service has it done me; out of many great perils has it helped me when help I had none, either from emperor, or king, or saint, or wise and prudent. I would not give it in exchange for the honour, wealth and power of all the world, Pope, Turk, and Emperor. In calling the psalm mine own, I rob no man of it. Christ is mine, nevertheless he is the same Christ to all the saints that he is to me. Would God that all the world would challenge the psalm for their own, as I do; it would be such friendly contention as scarce any unity or love could compare with. Alas! that there should be so few, even among those who might well do it, who will once say to the Holy Scriptures or to some particular psalm, Thou art my book: thou shalt be mine own psalm." * I make no apology for this extract. The work from which it is taken is inaccessible to the English reader; and, besides, there are few things better fitted to make us feel what a treasure God has given us in the psalms than being put in mind of the strength and encouragement that have been ministered to saints in critical times by some which most readers might pass by.

The Hundred and thirty-fifth and Hundred and thirty-sixth psalms belong evidently to the same class and period as Luther's favourite. One of them is a Hallelujah psalm, the other is remarkable for the recurrence, in every verse, of the refrain which makes itself heard so often in the songs of the sacred temple, "For his mercy endureth for ever." Along with these we may class the five with which the Psalter ends: all the five are Hallelujah psalms, beginning and ending with the summons to praise the Lord.

* Luther's Works, Walch's Edition, vol. iv., p. 1704.

Eighty years after the first band of exiles returned, under Zerubbabel and Joshua, the remnant at Jerusalem had their hands mightily strengthened by the advent of a fresh band, under the leadership of Ezra the priest. The title by which this distinguished man is constantly designated is, the Shopher, or Scribe. When his name is first mentioned in Scripture, he is introduced to the reader as "a ready scribe in the law of Moses," who "had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." He is the first well-defined example of an order of men who have never since ceased in the Church; men of sacred erudition, who devote their lives to the study of the Holy Scriptures, in order that they may be in a condition to interpret them for the instruction and edification of the Church. It is significant that the earliest mention of the pulpit occurs in the history of Ezra's ministry. He was much more of a Teacher than a Priest. We learn from the account of his labours in the book of Nehemiah, that he was careful to have the whole people instructed in the law of Moses; and there is no reason to reject the constant tradition of the Jews, which connects his name with the collecting and editing of the Old Testament canon. The final completion of the canon may have been, and probably was, the work of a later generation; but Ezra seems to have put it pretty much into the shape in which it is still found in the Hebrew Bible. When it is added that the complete organization of the Synagogue dates from this period, it will be seen that the age was emphatically one of Biblical study.

Of this also, traces have been left on the Psalter. We see these in certain historical and Biblical psalms. The age of Ezra, it is true, was not the first to be furnished with HISTORICAL psalms. The Sixty-eighth and Seventy-eighth were written, the former by David, the latter by Asaph the Seer. But the longest of this class of compositions are undoubtedly to be traced to the century after the return. The Hundred and fifth and Hundred and sixth psalms-those beautiful abridgements in verse of the history of the chosen people-go together, and the latter is wound up with the prayer, "Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks

warning will suffice to guard from striking on the scarce hidden rocks; while nothing is more certain than this, that, apart from them, the whole drift or current of the book is as little sacramentarian as it is possible to be.

At the same time, just because we are about to speak of the book in terms of the strongest commendation, we conceive it to be right to point out plainly at the very outset what we regard as its blots. They constitute

the internal evidence to which we have already referred, that the author is a High Churchman. The blots themselves are all connected with an idea about baptism which comes to the surface now and again, and which is not only not very intelligible in itself, but seems to us quite inconsistent with Dr. Goulbourn's own otherwise most thoroughly evangelical religious system. We shall best put the thing before the reader by quoting some of the passages in which the notion occurs.

"The mere earnest desire for a holier life. . . . is the fruit of grace; it is the working in the inner man of the instinct which baptism implanted."

"As we first consciously entered into fellowship with Christ by faith (I say consciously entered into fellowship with him, for when we were baptized as infants, we entered unconsciously into this fellowship), so there is no other way to abide in him than by repeated exercises of the same faith."

"At the beginning of the spiritual life, when the first fervours of conversion are upon a man, when he has fully declared for Christ in his own mind, or, in other words, has realized in his own experience the conditions on which baptism was granted, he is almost sure to dream of heaven at once."

"As to the guilt arising from the corruption of our nature, it has been the constant doctrine of the Church that it is removed by the sacrament of baptism, when that sacrament has been realized in the individual's experience by faith."

"Be but true to your convictions. Do but follow the instigations of that Spirit who hovered over the waters of your baptism."

Now, these are, so far as we have observed, the only passages in the book which even hint at the dogma of baptismal regeneration. One or two of them are capable of an interpretation to which evangelicals would assent; but taking them altogether, we suppose they can scarcely be regarded as doing less than proving that Dr. Goulbourn holds views about the office and efficacy of one of the sacraments which so far sectarianizes what would else be in every respect a broad and catholic manual of practical religion. The leaven, however, we repeat, exists in so small a quantity, and pervades the mass in so slight a degree, that it cannot seriously enbarrass any one. We have read the work for ourselves with delight, and we trust with profit, and we would not hesitate to put it into the hands of the youngest and least instructed believer. If there is danger to be apprehended from

Not, indeed, that with all this we are in the least reconciled to the sentences we have quoted. They are excrescences on the work. We can scarcely imagine how one holding the views which Dr. Goulbourn everywhere else propounds upon the essentially spiritual character of the gospel, could bring his mind to write them; for if it is true, as he says, that baptisin is a "repository" of grace, and has the power to implant an instinct in an infant's nature, one does not see why he should hesitate to go further. The germ of all sacramentarianism is there; and after admitting such a dogma, he ought to have, in consistency, enlarged on the inherent efficacy of the Church and the Eucharist. But he not only does not do that, but says a great deal of a quite contrary tendency; and we are driven to suppose, either that there is a real discord somewhere in his doctrine, or that he does not put upon his own words the full sense that they seem to bear. We would almost venture to make an appeal to him to consider whether it is worth his while to preserve needlessly in his pages equivocal expressions, to which some will certainly attach a significance which he would himself be the first to disclaim, and over which other good people equally conscientious will as certainly stumble. No one who has thought upon the subject at all will refuse to admit that there is scarcely any doctrine of our religion which it is so difficult accurately and adequately to state, as the doctrine of baptism. While shunning the Scylla of those who make everything of it on the one hand, we tend to run into a Charybdis on the other side, and make nothing of it. But just because it is so difficult to define the real nature and value of the ordinance, it seems reasonable to expect that in books intended to promote the divine life which has been already awakened in the soul, and to be of service not to a mere section of a community, but to the whole body of believers, the allusions to that means of grace should take as little as possible of a controversial form. Dr. Goulbourn's work, we repeat again in the most emphatic way, appears to us very much just such a book as the religious world, as it is at present constituted, needs. It is suited to the wants of Christians of every name. Why, then, should he go out of his way to remind us that there are serious divisions amongst us? "Pilgrim's Progress" was written by a Baptist, and yet no one is once reminded of this in its perusal: why should we seek sheer spiritual good in these "Thoughts on Personal Religion," and meet even half a dozen times forms of speech which compel you to remember that the author is a High Churchman? Is it not possible nowa-days for our devotional writers to be catholic?

The

We must now proceed to notice some of the ideas and practical suggestions of the book; but, before doing so,