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BS 1430 .H815 1825 v.l Home, George, 1730-1792. A commentary on the book of Psalms

SELECT CHRISTIAN AUTHORS,

WITH

INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS.

23

UBLISHED 1- 1/."ILL:

COMMENTARY

ON THE

BOOK OF PSALMS.

By' GEORGE HORNE, D.D.

LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH.

WITH

AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY,

BY THE

REV. EDWARD IRVING, A.M.

MINISTER OF THE CALEDONIAN CHURCH, LONDON.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. L

GLASGOW:

PRINTED FOR CHALMERS AND COLLINS;

WILLIAM WHYTE & CO. AND WILLIAM OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH:

R. M. TIMS, AND WM. CURRY, JUN. & CO. DUBLIN;

AND G. B. WHITTAKER, LONDON.

1825.

Printed by W. Collins ^ Co. Glasgow.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

As in political affairs the enlightened Scottish pa- triot and statesman, in order to work upon the peo- ple, asked for the songs of a nation, rather than its profound and laborious literature; and, in ecclesias- tical affairs, the politic churchmen of Rome appre- hended more danger to their craft and mystery, from Luther's spiritual songs, than from all his writings of controversial and popular theology; so, in spi- ritual affairs, it is to be beheved that no book of the sacred canon seizeth such a hold upon the spi- ritual man, and engendereth in the church so much fruitfulness of goodness and truth, of comfort and joy, as doth the Book of Psalms. We say not that the Psalms are so well fitted as the pure light of the Gospel by John, and Paul's Epistles, which are the refraction of that pure light over the fields of human well-being, to break the iron-bone, and bruise the millstone-heart of the natural man; but that they are the kindliest medicine for healing his wounds, and the most proper food for nourishing the new life which comes from the death and destruction of the old. For, as the songs and lyrical poems of a na-

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tion, which have survived the changes of time by being enshrined in the hearts of a people, contain the true form, and finer essence of its character, and convey the most genial moods of its spirit, whe- ther in seasons of grief or joy, down to the children, and the children's children, perpetuating the strongest vitality of choice spirits, awakened by soul-moving events, and holding, as in a vessel, to the lips of posterity, the collected spirit of venerable antiqui- ty : so the Psalms, which are the songs and odes, and lyrical poems of the people of God, inspired not of wine, or festal mirth, of war, or love, but spo- ken by holy men as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, contain the words of God's Spirit taught to the souls of his servants, when they were exer- cised with the most intense experiences, whether of conviction, penitence, and sorrow; or faith, love, and joy ; and are fit not only to express the same most vital moods of every renewed soul, but also powerful to produce those broad awakenings of spirit, to create those overpowering emotions, and propagate that ener- gy of spiritual life in which they had their birth.

Be it observed, moreover, that these Songs of Zion express not only the most remarkable passa- ges which have occurred in the spiritual experience of the most gifted saints, but are the record of the most wonderful dispensations of God's providence unto his church : — containing pathetic dirges sung over her deepest calamities, jubilees over her migh- ty deliverances, songs of sadness for her captivity, and songs of mirth for her prosperity, prophe- tic announcement of her increase to the end of time, and splendid anticipations of her ultimate glory.

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Not indeed the exact narrative of tlie events as they happened, or are to happen, nor the prosaic improve- ment of the same to the minds of men ; but the po- etical form and monument of the event, where it is laid up and embalmed in honourable-wise, after it hath been incensed and perfumed vvith the spiritual odours of the souls of inspired men. And if they contain not the code of the divine law, as it is writ- ten in the Books of Moses, and more briefly, yet better written in our Lord's Sermon on the mount, they celebrate the excellency and glory of the Law, its light, life, wisdom, contentment, and blessedness, with the joys of the soul which keepeth it, and the miseries of the soul which keepeth it not. And if they contain not the argument of the simple doc- trines, and the detail of the issues of the gospel, to reveal which the word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us: yet now that the key is given, and the door of spiritual life is opened, where do we find such spiritual treasures as in the book of Psalms, wherein are revealed the depths of the soul's sin- fulness, the stoutness of her rebellion against God, the horrors of spiritual desertion, the agonies of con- trition, the blessedness of pardon, the joys of resto- ration, the constancy of faith, and every other vari- ety of Christian experience? And if they contain not the narrative of Messiah's birth, and life, and death; or the labours of his apostolic servants, and the strugglings of his infant church, as these are written in the books of the New Testament; where, in the whole Scriptures, can we find such declara- tions of the work of Christ, in its humiliation and its glory, the spiritual agonies of his death, and glo-

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rious issues of his resurrection, the wrestling of his kingdom with the powers of darkness, its triumph over the heathen, and the overthrow of all its enemies, until the heads of many lands shall have been wound- ed, and the people made willing in the day of his power? And where are there such outbursting re- presentations of all the attributes of Jehovah, be- fore whom, when he rideth through the heavens, the very heavens seem to rend in twain, to give the vision of his going forth, and we seem to see the haste of the universe to do her homage, and to hear the quaking of nature's pillars, the shaking of her foundations, and the horrble outcry of her terror? And oh! it is sweet in the midst of these soarings into the third heavens of vision, to feel that you are borne upon the words of a man, not upon the wings of an archangel; to hear ever and anon the frail but faithful voice of humanity, making her trust under the shadow of His wings, and her hiding place in the se- cret of His tent; and singing to Him in faithful strains, " For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." So that, as well by reason of the matter which it contains, as of the form in w^hich it is ex- pressed, the Book of Psalms, take it all in all, may be safely pronounced one of the divinest books in all the Scriptures; which hath exercised the hearts and lips of all saints, and become dear in the sight of the church; which is replenished with the types of all possible spiritual feelings, and suggests the forms

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of all God-ward emotions, and furnishing the choice expressions of all true worship, the utterances of all divine praise, the confession of all spiritual humility, with the raptures of all spiritual joy.

If now we turn ourselves to consider the man- ner or style of the Book, and to draw it into com- parison with the lyrical productions of cultivated and classical nations, it may well be said, that as the heavens are high above the earth, so are the songs of Zion high above the noblest strains which have been sung in any land. For, take out of the lyrical poetry of Greece and Rome, the praises of women, and of wine, the flatteries of men, and idle in- vocations of the muse and lyre, and what have we left? What dedication of song and music is there to the noble and exalted powers of the human spirit — what to the chaste and honourable relations of human society — what to the excitement of tender emotions towards the widow and the fatherless, the stranger and the oppressed — what to the awful sanctity of law and government, and the practical forms of justice and equity! We know, that in the more ancient time, when mendvveic nearer to God, the lyre of Or- pheus was employed to exalt and pacify the soul ; that the Pythagorean verses contain the intima- tions of a deep theology, a divine philosophy and a virtuous life ; that the lyre of Tyrtceus was used by the wisdom of Lycurgus, for accomplishing his great work of forming a peculiar people, a nation of brave and virtuous men: but in the times which we call classical, and with the compositions of which we imbue our youth, we find little purity of sen- timent, little elevation of soul, no spiritual represen- A3

tationsof God, nothing pertaining to heavenly know- ledge or holy feeling: but, on the other hand, im- purity of life, low sensual ideas of God, and the pollution of religion, so often as they touch it. But the Songs of Zion are comprehensive as the human soul, and varied as human life; where no possible state of natural feeling shall not find itself tenderly expressed and divinely treated with appropriate re- medies;.where no condition of human life shall not find its rebuke or consolation: because they treat not life after the fashion of an age or people, but life in its rudiments, the life of the soul, with the joys and sorrows to which it is amenable, from con- course with the outward necessity of the fallen world. Which breadth of application they compass not by the sacrifice of lyrical propriety, or poetical method : for if there be poems strictly lyrical, that is, whose spirit and sentiment move congenial with the movements of music, and which, by their very nature, call for the ac- companiment of music, these Odes ofa people despised as illiterate, are such. For pure pathos and tender- ness of heart, for sublime imaginations, for touching pictures of natural scenery, and genial sympathy with nature's various moods; for patriotism, whether in national weal or national wo, for beautiful ima- gery, whether derived from the relationship of hu- man life, or the forms of the created universe, and for the illustration, by their help, of spiritual con- ditions: moreover, for those rapid transitions in which the lyrical muse delighteth. her lightsome graces at one time, her deep and full inspiration at another, her exuberance of joy and her lowest falls of grief, and for every other form of the natural soul, which

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is wont to be shadowed forth by this kind of compo- sition, we challenge any thing to be produced from the literature of all ages and countries, worthy to be compared with what we find even in the English version of the Book of Psalms. Were the distinction of spiritual from natural life, the dream of mystical enthusiasts, and the theology of the Jews, a cunningly devised fable, like the mythologies of Greece and Rome, these few Odes should be dearer to the man of true feeling and natural taste, than all which have been derived to us from classical times, though they could be sifted of their abo- minations, and cleansed from the incrustation of impurity which defiles their most exquisite parts. But into these questions of style we enter no further, our present aim being higher. Paulo major a cana- miis. Let us employ the few pages which we have devoted to this Essay, on something more noble than questions of taste, and more enduring than the gra- tifications of the natural man.

These Songs of Zion have always been very dear unto Zion's cliildren, and the various churches of the Christian faith, as by one harmonious and uni- versal consent, have adopted the Psalms as the out- ward form by which they shall express the inward feelings of the Christian life. However much the infinitely varying expositors of Christian doctrine may differ in the opinions and views which they de- duce from the Scripture at large; in this they are agreed, that the effusions of the inspired Psalmist must always be the true and expressive language of the believing soul. An organ of utterance well and rightly attuned to every aspiration, and to every

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emotion of that soul which hath been quickened from spiritual death, and made alive in Christ Je- sus the Lord. The pious Arminian, who resteth content with the infant state of Christ, and seeth no more in the rich treasures of God's word than a free gift to all men, shrinking back with a feeling of dismay from such parts of the sacred volume as fa- vour a system of doctrine suited to the manly state of Christian liie, can yet trust himself without dis- may or doubt to give back, from his inmost spirit, the sentiments and thoughts which he finds embo- died in the book of Psalms, veiled with no obscu- rity of speech, and perplexed with no form of controversy. He delighteth to read that " the Lord is loving unto every one, and that his tender mercy governs all his works." His spirit hath its liberty amidst those unlimited declarations of the divine be- neficence, sung by Zion's King, when he calleth upon all nature's children to take part with him in bis song of praise, and in his liberality includeth the lower creatures, and the very forms of inanimate na- ture; gathering the voice of all the earth into one, and joining it in symph-ony with the hosannahs of the unfallen and redeemed spirits which are around the throne of God. And the more enlightened and not less pious Calvinist, who is not content ever- more to dwell in the outer court of the holy tem- ple, but resolveth for his soul's better peace and higher joy, to enter into the holy and most holy place, which is no longer veiled and forbidden, finds in this Book of Psalms, a full declaration of the deepest secrets of his faith, expression for his in- most knowledge of the truth, and forms for his

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most profound feelings upon the peculiar, and ap- propriate, and never-lailing love of a covenant God towards his own peculiar people; and in concert with David, the Father of a spiritual seed, he doth cele- brate the praises of that God, who freely and for his own sake hath loved his people with an everlast- ing love; '* visiting their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquities v/ith stripes, but not suf- fering his loving- kindness to fail, or his goodness to depart for evermore." And from whatever point be- tween these two extremes of spiritual life (the former the infancy, the latter the mature and perfect man- hood) any church hath contemplated the scheme of its doctrine— by v»^hatever name they have thought good to designate themselves, and however bitterly op- posed to one another in church government, obser- vance of rites, or administration of sacraments, still find them v/ith one voice consentino; to em-

ou

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ploy those inspired Songs, as well fitted to express the emotions of their spirits, when stirred up to devout and holy aspirations of prayer and praise. The reason why the Psalms have found such con- stant favour in the sight of the Christian church, and come to constitute a chief portion of every mis- sal and liturgy, and form of worship, public or pri- vate, while forms of doctrine and discourse have undergone such manifold changes, in order to repre- sent the changing spirit of the age, and the diverse conditions of the human mind, is to be found in this — that they address themselves to the simple instinctive feelings of the renewed soul, vvhich are its most constant and permanent part, whereas, the forms of doctrine and discourse address themselves to the

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spiritual understanding, which differs in ages and countries according to the degree of spiritual illu- mination, and the energy of spiritual life. For, as those instincts of our nature, which put them- selves forth in infancy and early life, towards our parents, and our kindred, and our friends, and derive thence the nourishment upon which they live, are far more constant, than those opinions wliich we afterwards form concerning society, civil polity, and the world in general; and, as those im- pressions of place, and scene, and incident, which come in upon us in our early years, are not only more constant in their endurance, but more uniform in their effect upon the various minds which are sub- mitted to them, than any which are afterwards made by objects better fitted to affect us both perma- nently and powerfully — so we reckon that there is an infancy of the spiritual man, which, with all its instincts, wanders abroad over the word of God, to receive the impressions thereof, and grow upon their wholesome variety into a maturity of spiritual reason, when it becomes desirous to combine and arrann-e in- to conceptions, and systems of conceptions, the mani- foldness and variety of those simple impressions which it hath obtained. During those days of its spiritual infancy, the soul rejoiceth as a little child at the breast of its mother ; feeds upon the word of God with a constant relish ; dehghts in the views and prospects which open upon every side, and glories in its heavenly birthright and royal kindred ; and consi- dereth with wonder the kinfrdom of which it is be- come a denizen, its origin, its miraculous progress, and everlasting glory: and as the infant life opens

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itself to the Sun of Righteousness, it delights in its activity, and exhales on all around the odour of its breathing joy. To this seiison of the spiritual mind, the Psalms come most opportunely as its natural food. We say not that they quicken the life, to which nothing is so appropriate as the words of our Lord recorded in the Gospels, but being quickened, they nourish up the life to man- hood, and when its manly age is come, prepare it for the stronff meat which is to be found in the writings of the prophets and the apostles. But ever afterwards the souls of believers recur to these Psalms as the home of their childhood, where they came to know the loving-kindness of their heavenly Father, the fotness of his house, and the full river of his goodness, his pastoral carefulness, his sure defence, and his eye that slumbereth not, nor sleepeth, with every other simple representa- tion of divine things, to the simple affections of the renewed soul. Therefore are these psalms to the Christian what the love of parents and the sweet af- fections of home, and the clinging memory of infant scenes, and the generous love of country, are to men of every rank and order, and employment; of every kindred, and tongue, and nation.

This principle which binds these psalms with cords of love to the renewed soul, and the right use and application of them to the bringing up of spiritual children, will be more clearly manifested, if, from the varieties of Christian experience, we select those great leading features, which are common to all, and show how fitly they are expressed in the Book of Psalms, with how much beauty and tenderness of feeling, with how much richness of allusion to the

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ancient history of the church, and with whatever other accompaniments which can make them sweet to the present perusal of the soul, easy and dehghtful to it in its recollective and reflective mood. There- by we shall give, as it were, a fit spiritual introduc- tion to the excellent Commentary of the good Bishop Horne, whose book is full of the particu- lars of such spiritual application.

Without dispute or controversy upon minor points of difference, the church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven, meet upon the com- mon ground of a fallen nature. Once they had supposed themselves upright before God, strong in natural integrity, possessing an undoubted claim to the final approbation of a righteous judge. But it was in the days of their ignorance that they thus conceived of their own worth ; and now that the rays of divine light and truth have penetrated the darkness in which their souls were shrouded, they see an end of that perfection which was hereto- fore their boast. The breadth of the divine com- mandment is revealed to them, and being sorely pressed with an even present sense of their defile- ment, they afflict their souls together, fafling pros- trate before the thrice Holy Majesty, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; and confess with the royal penitent, " Behold, I was shapen in ini- quity, and in sin did ray mother conceive me." Whatever point of faith or doctrine any one of Zion's children may seem to be deficient in, if he be but a babe of Christ, able to feed only upon the nourishment of babes, and rejecting the food of

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riper years, yet shall he have come to the know- ledge of the plagues of his own heart, and be moved to spread forth his hands in supplication towards the temple of the Lord, and to say, " I acknowledge my transgression, and ray sin is ever before me*" The universal church afflicteth her soul under the abiding sense of the loss of her original beauty, and under a deep feeling of her present misery, she de- ploreth her bondage to the powers of darkness and the God of this world ; and her children mingle their tears together by the waters of their captivity, and wail because of the oppression of their mother, and they cry out of the depths of their desolation, '' Let the sighing of the prisoners come before thee, and according to the greatness of thy power preserve those that are appointed unto death." " Save us, O Lord, by thy name, judge us by thy strength, for strangers are risen up against us, and oppressors seek after our souls." Oh, how do the true mour- ners with one accord come unto the Lord weeping and with supplication, " that their captivity may be turned, and salvation brought them out of Zion !" How do they beseech the Lord, " giving him no rest till he make Jacob to rejoice, and Israel to be glad; till he do good in his good pleasure unto Zion, and build up again the walls of Jerusalem!" and when the Lord hath hearkened unto the voice of the cry of his people, and turned their captivity, deliver- ing them from the strong enemy that held them, bringing them forth also into a large place, and subduing under them the foes that were too mighty for them; how do they with one accord magnify the Lord, and extol his name together, and with one

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harmonious voice celebrate the praise of him who, strong to save them, hath trodden upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon hath trampled under foot. " Oh Lord of Hosts, who is a strong God like unto thee? thou hast a mighty arm, strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that was slain. Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne, mercy and truth shall go before thy face." The true Israel of God, the spiritual worshippers under the gospel dispensation, being rescued from this worse than Egyptian bondage, by the strong hand and outstretched arm of the God of their sal-^ vation, commemorate in many a song sung in Zion of old, the interposition of divine love and grace, and oft looking back upon the raging sea, which was fain to yield them a safe passage; they proceed onward in their course through the weary wilder- ness, to the abode of their rest, and the promised city of their habitation : and they had hoped they were safe from the power of their cruel adversary, and that their foot was safely planted upon their own land. But now they find, to the travail of their souls, that though they be no longer the wilHng slaves of Satan, but partakers of the glorious liberty wherewith Christ hath set his people free, they must use the arms of freemen to retain their newly acquired liberty, march militant, and build the wall of their city in troublous times, and abide unto the death the faithful soldiers of the Captain of their salvation. " Each one had said in his prosperity, I shall never be moved, thou. Lord, of thy favour hadst made my mountain to stand strong." But

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ere long, each one for himself exclaims, " Oh God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance, thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones." — ** Send thine hand from above, rid me and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speakcth vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood." And oh, how do Zion's children cry out ever and anon to- gether, in pain to be delivered from the remaining and continually reviving power of that sin which cleaveth to them with all the force of nature, and is only kept in check and brought under subjection, by the more powerful operation of the Spirit of grace which dwelleth in them! And they continually cry out with the king of Israel, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me: purge me with hyssop, and 1 shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than the snow." The experience of the Lord's saints is ever one. As face answereth to face in a glass, so the heart of man to man, whether it be the heart in its unre- newed or renewed state, its workings will not be found diverse, but the same, — moods of the mind common to every child of tlie second as of the first Adam. Whatever is written in Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, concerning the former church, must be fulfilled in the experience of every saint of the present church; and there is no spiritual song, which they do not appropriate and make their own. In them it is fulfilled. For, it is but the Spirit of Christ speaking at various times; of whom no word is mortal, but every word immortal. And it is their constant work to search out the personal

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application of the Spirit, and appropriate it to them- selves : and through every trial and stage of their spiritual life, they say, with the Psalmist, " Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path; open thou mine eyes that I may discern won- drous things out of thy law." Ah, how they me- ditate thereon day and night ! and truly can every child of David's kingdom say, " Lord, how I love thy law ; it is my meditation all the day ; mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate on thy word." And the anxious and diligent tra- vail of Zion's children in the study of their Master's word, is repaid by the sweet and pleasant contem- plations which they are continually deriving thence, for the refreshment and consolation of their spirit. And the language of their soul is ever, " How sweet are thy words to my taste, yea sweeter than honey to my mouth ! the law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver."

But the saints of God mourn not for themselves alone, nor do they rejoice only for themselves. Nor is it for their own solitary rescue from the jaws of the devouring lion, that they offer up strong cries unto the Lord; nor for their single salvation, that they sing the praises of redeeming love. They are not altogether absorbed with the variety of their own spiritual conflicts, or swallowed up in the sense of their own manifold trials and temptations ; nor for themselves alone do they study the precious word of God, or dig for its hid treasure with the avarice of the man who knoweth not the riches of communi- cated wealth. The utterances of individual feeling, of whatever kind, form but a part, perhaps the

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lesser part, of the spiritual exercises of the man of God. If he fears with a salutary fear, lest it be said of him at any time, " The vineyard of others hath he kept, but his own vineyard hath he not kept :" he hath yet a heart to mourn with those that mourn, and to rejoice with those that rejoice. He is a member of the mystical body of his Lord, whereof when any member suffers, all the members suffer with it ; when any member is honoured, all the members rejoice. Therefore it is a first in- stinct of the spiritual man, to have a deep and abiding sympathy with every brother of human kind, upon whose renewed spirit he discovers the impress of his Master's image: and he says, " All my de- light is in the saints that are upon the earth, and upon such as excel in virtue." Unlike the natural man, who at his best estate is built up in selfish feeling or unholy emulation, the man of God looks not only at his own things, but at the things of others. With the love that is peculiar to the true saint, he desires the well-being of his brother, and rejoiceth over it even as if it were his own. How doth he continually make supplication for all saints, that their faith and love may abound unto the glory of God: how earnestly doth he desire their increase of grace, and that they may be filled with all the knowledge of God ! and he ever prays for the peace of Jerusalem, saying evermore, " Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, peace be with thee. Because of the house of our God, I will seek thy good. Do good, O Lord, unto those that be good ; and strengthen the up-

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right in heart." In Zioii's troubles his spirit is troubled, and he hangeth his harp upon the wil- lows, refusing the song of mirth, and preferring the cause of captive Zion, before his own chief joy. And he prayeth on her behalf continually, " The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend thee." Send thou help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion. Remember all thy offerings, and accept all thy burnt sacrifices. Grant thee according to thy heart, and fulfil all thy counsel.

Now there hath grown up in these lean years, a miserable notion, that the Psalms are not so appro- priate for expressing the communion of the Christian church, for the reason that they contain allusions to places and events which are of Jewish, and not of Christian association. And some have gone so far as to weed out all those venerable associations, by intro- ducing modern names of places in their stead. Why do they not upon the same principle weed out the Jewish allusions of the four Gospels, and the Epis- tles ? But it is as poor in taste and wrong in feel- ing, as it is daring in the thought, and bold in the execution. In doing so, they consult for the Jiomely feeling of the natural^ not of the sjnritual man, be- cause the home of the spiritual was in Jerusalem, and Mount Zion and the temple of God, with which the soul connects her anticipations, no less than her re- collections, being taught that the new Jerusalem is to come down from heaven like a bride, decked for her bridegroom, and that those who are sealed are to stand upon Mount Zion with the Lamb of God. Every name in the Psalms, whether of person or of

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place, hath a mystical meaning given to it in the Christian Scriptures. Jerusalem is not the Jerusa- lem that was, nor is Babylon the Babylon that was, and even David hath lost his personality in the ever- lasting David. Judah and Israel mean not now the cast-away root, but the branch that hath been grafted in. Besides, we hold at present only one cycle of the revolution of God's purpose ; the Jews shall yet be brought in, and Jerusalem become glorious, and the dwelling of God be again wuth men. Why then should any part of everlasting Scrip- ture be made the property of an age or place, which suppose every Christian nation to do, and where were the community of the Christian church ! It is heady innovation, and leanness of spirit which hath brought this to pass, for no end that we can see, save to gratify national vanity, and connect religion in a strange league with patriotism; thereby breaking the continuity of God's dispensation ; and destroying all lyrical propriety. As if you would render the odes of Horace into English, with English names of men and places, in order to make them more edifying to the English reader. But more need not be said upon this blunder in piety, which will disappear when the lean years are over and gone. If we take not our forms for expressing spiritual patriotism, from those inspired songs through which, in the old time, the church breathed the spirit of her high privilege, and separate community, where shall we obtain them of like unction and equal authority, in the experience of times during which no prophet hath arisen in the holy city ? For though the church hath been as sorely tried under the Gentile, as under the Jew-

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isli despensation, it hath not pleased the Lord to be- stow upon any of her priests or people, the garment of mspiration, with which to clothe in spiritual songs the depths of he? sorrow, or the exultation of her joy. And we are shut up to the necessity, either of responding to the voice of the Spirit in the an- cient Psalmist, or to re-echo the poetical effusions of Hninspired men,— -either to address the living God in the language of his own word, or in the language of some vernacular poet, whose taste and forms of thinking, whose forms of feeling, yea, and forms of opinion, we must make mediators between our soul and the ear of God, — which is a great evil to be avoided, whenever it can be avoided. For Christians must be forms of the everlasting and com- mon Spirit ; not mannerists of mortal and individual men.

But to return. Not only do the personal instincts, and the social instincts of the child of God, find in these Psalms the milk and honey of their existence, a cradle and a home where to wax and grow, and a multifarious world of imagery to awaken and enter- tain its various senses; but also those instincts of pity, and compassion, and longing charity, which it hath towards the enemies of Christ, not indeed as his enemies, but as the hopeful prodigals of the human family, which he loveth in common with the rest, and would, in like manner, save. The true disciples of the compassionate and tender-hearted Friend of sin- ners, adopt the language of Israel's king, when he pours out his soul in anxious longings for the sal- vation of the wicked, deprecating their stout-hearted rebellion against the King of kings, and exhorting

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to be timely wise, lest they fail of tlicir final and ever- lasting rest. The new man in Christ Jesus, the re- generate, adopted chikl of tlie second Adam, who, under the sweet and enlightening influence of many newly awakened feelings, perceives himself to be linked in new and constraining bonds of sympathy with every kindred soul in Christ, is, nevertheless, not so absorbed in the joyful consciousness of those newly formed relations into which he hath been in- troduced by grace, as to forget that he is still united by many dear and tender ties to his brethren in the flesh. His original descent from the first Adam, he does not cease to recollect; and the conviction that, in virtue of this descent, he was by nature a child of wrath even as others, stimulates his zeal in behalf of those who appear to be less highly fa- voured than himself, and will not suffer his love to- w^ards them to fail. If, to the inexpressible peace and consolation of his soul, he finds himself to be now under the royal law of liberty, he grieveth to behold his kindred, his friends, his neighbours, the world at large, still oppressed with the yoke of bond- £ige, heedless of their degradation, and careless to take up their purchased redemption. If the law of God be precious to him, and he discover in it a beauty, and excellence, and a goodness ever com- mending it to the love and admiration of his enligh- tened spirit, how doth he weep and mourn on ac- count of those by whom it is ignorantly set at nought and utterly despised ! He adopteth the language of Israel's king, " Horror hath taken hold upon me, because of the wicked that forsake thy law. Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep

B 23

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not thy law. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron : Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Beware now, therefore, O ye kings ; be in- structed, ye judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the right way, when his wrath is kindled but a little."

There are many passages in the Psalms which seem to breathe an opposite spirit of hostility and revenge upon the personal enemies of the Psalmist, and to heap upon their heads all the curses which are written in the book of the law of God. Con- cerning this, and many other points, it is well stated in the Preface to this Commentary, whereof we would not repeat any thing, but add, for the further explication of this matter, that though the gospel law be " charity out of a pure heart," this charity doth manifest itself under various forms, some pleasant, but most of them painful to the natural man. Rebuke is a form of charity; and censure, and ex- communication, yea, and total abandonment for a while. Truth is always a form of charity; or, to speak more properly, truth is the soul of which charity is but the beautiful, graceful, and lovely member. Charity, therefore, is not to be known by soft words, and fair speeches and gentle actions, which are oftener the form of policy and cour- tesy; but must be sought in the principle of the heart, out of which all our words, speeches, and actions come forth. It is love to God producing love to all his family, by which we are moved; then is it charity, be its form commendation or blame, mildness or zeal, the soft and gentle moods of mercy, or the stern inflictions of justice, or the hasty strokes

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of hot and fiery indignation: and wisdom must de- termine the form which is proper to the occasion. Is not God a God of love? and how diversified are the moods of his providence even to his own heloved children ? Christ brought mercy to the earth, and in the gospel builded for her an ark, in which she might swim over the deluge of cruelty which covereth the earth. Yet how terrible is that gospel in its revelation to the wicked, how unsparing of the world, how cruel to the flesh, how contemptuous of good- natured formality, how awfully vindictive against hy- pocrisy; taking every one of its children, and swear- ing him upon the altar to be an enemy, till death, against the world, the devil and the flesh ! Against the various forms then of the devil, the world and the flesh we are sworn, and, in order to their de- struction, must make war with the two-edged sword which proceedetli out of the mouth of the word of God. Of these strong actings of the soul against the wickedness of the wicked, the Psalmist's lan- guage of cursing is but the breath. The world is the heathen whom he prays God to break in pieces. And for ever let the Christian exercise himself with that warfare, else he shall never know the fellowship of the Redeemer's sufferings. It is the capital prin- ciple of all sound doctrine. That the world is to be destroyed. It is the deep-rooted source of all here- tical doctrine. That the world is to be mended. And to keep the one in mind, the other out of mind, it is most necessary that no mean portion of the de- votion of a Christian church should be to express the desires of/their soul on this behalf. Charity being unviolateci; yea, charity being edified; for until the B2

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sceptre of the world is broken in pieces, charity can find no room, but is fain to flee into the wilderness. Out of the same charity, therefore, ought the Christian to adopt these expressions of his hatred to the form, and fruits of wickedness, that he expres- seth his longing desire that the souls of the wicked should be set free and saved.

Such is the food, exercise, and entertainment which the child of God receives in this precious portion of his word, to all those instincts of the re- newed spirit which regard self-preservation, the communion of saints and the salvation of the world. But beyond these objects which dwell upon the earth, he is carried upward to hold communion with the God and Father of his spirit, from whom he hath obtained the new birth, and by whom this new principle is kept alive in its uncongenial habitation. Many are the conflicts of Zion's children in their way to the heavenly city, and great the travail of their souls, under the variety and might of which they need appropriate encouragement from Him who is greater than all their enemies, and in whom is their trust. Their own individual salvation, their own peculiar trials, their own besetting enemies, Zion's well-being, and the share of all her sorrows till her warf^ire is ended; the world's salvation, in which they must travail till the number of the elect is accomplished, and, as priests unto God, offer up continual supplication : how shall they prosper in such an arduous work, without constant communion and fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ? For which communion with the Godhead, these divine songs of Israel furnish the

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most sublime, the most pathetic and the most varied forms. Here the perfections of Jehovah are revealed to all his saints, whether in his strength as the God of Hosts, or in his righteousness, as before whom the heavens are not clean ; or in his intelligence as the pure light in whom is no deirk- ness at all ; or in his all pervading presence in the highest heavens, and the deepest hell, and the ut- termost parts of the earth, and the dwelling place of darkness; or as the Father of all life, and the Creator of all wealth, and the liberal Provider for the wants of every thing that liveth, as the Glory of the hosts above, and the Terror of the hosts beneath ; the Eternal, Unchangeable, without variableness or the shadow of turning; who of old laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of his hands ; which, when they wax old, he shall fold up as a vesture, and cover them with a new garment of creation, while he remaineth the same and his years have no end. Oh, my soul! that thou couldst tell how thou hast been enlarged into the liberty of divine thought, and borne upon the wings of contemplation beyond the bounds of time and space, wrapt into the mysteries of the divine life, and with a strong heart and serene countenance, brought back to fight and finish thy warfare, till thy change come, by the glorious re- presentations of Jehovah and his acts, contained in the Book of Psalms, which truly are the fiery chariot, the vehicle sent from God to carry the saints into the third heavens, that they may breathe an imperial air, and return lightened of their troubles, and quickened in their spirit, to finish the heavy work which God hath given them to do.

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Of this, indeed, no one will doubt, be he spi- ritual or carnal, that these Psalms contain such re- presentations of the great and mighty God, as mind of man never conceived, or pen of man indited, but more marvellous is it still to find in these Psalms, which looked afar off at the day of Christ, all the perfections and peculiar attributes of Messiah, which form to his redeemed people the endless theme of praise, issuing from the heart, and return- ing into the heart again, like the waters which the firmament draweth from the earth, and droppeth again upon the earth in dews and refreshing showers. These are set forth in a way most noble, most true, and most full of feeling. In such a wonderful way is the man Christ Jesus represented in these Psalms, uttering his soul unto his Father, unto his people, unto his persecutors, or unto his own bosom, that the children are able to take part in them, and find to their inexpressible joy that he is one with them in mind, in heart, in deed and in very word. And now, let us take free scope to set forth this, the most soul-quieting, and soul-delighting virtue of these Songs of Zion: that they contain the sym- phonies of Messiah and his children, of Immanuel and his people.

But first, like the bride who loveth to look upon the face of the bridegroom, and to hear of all his excellence, that she may with the more gladness give herself into his bosom, and rejoice in his em- brace; the church doth well love and much delight to hear it said of him by Jehovah, " I will declare the decree, Thou art mine only Son ; this day have I begotten thee." " Thou wast set up from ever-

XXXI

lasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was ;" " from everlasting to everlasting thou art God, the same who did appoint the foundation of the earth, establish the clouds above, and strengthen the fountains of the deep ; of old thou hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands." And how her glory rejoiceth to hear, that for the love of her that he might wash her in his blood, and present her without spot or wrinkle in the presence of his Father, he became a partaker of flesh and blood, and was found in fashion as a man, yea, took upon him the form of a servant; that by toil, and servitude, and suffer- ing, and death, he might purchase her love. Mak- ing request unto his Father, thus — " Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me : mine ears hast thou bored. Lo, I come to do thy will, O God !" Remembering how he fulfilled all righteousness for her sake, and re- deemed her from the curse, by becoming a curse for her, she thus sings her unbounded love, " And he bowed the heavens and came down, darkness was under his feet. He made darkness his secret place, his pavilion round about him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. He took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me." And looking on him whom she caused to be pierced, whose beauty was wasted by death, and the joy of his soul drunk up by the fierce arrows of his Father, she mourns and weeps, and her eyes distil with tears, at the thought of those stripes by which she was healed; and by the deepest

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of all sympathies, the sufFerings of Messiah became the sufferings of the church, and she crieth out, with her suffering Lord, " My God, my God, wliy hast thou forsaken me ! O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest me not, and in the night sea- son, and am not silent ! I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; thou hast brought me to the dust of death."

But the symphonies which the Church singeth with Christ out of this book, are not all a fellowship of suf- fering. For, not only by the shedding of his blood did Messiah make propitiation for her sins, and destroy her writing of condemnation, and put a new song in her mouth — " Who is he that condemneth," but also for her hath he purchased the raiment of an everlasting righteousness, and the beauties of holiness, and the spirit of a perfect obedience, which, by precious justifying faith, she claimeth as her own, and over which she singeth other symphonies of gladness: " I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments wexe before me, and 1 did not put away his statutes from me. I was upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteous dealing, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eye sight." And in the great- ness of her loyal love, how many a song singeth the daughter of Zion, touching the things that belong unto the King, when her tongue is as the pen of a ready writer : " Thou art fairer than the children of men ; grace is poured upon thy lips, therefore God

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hath blessed thee for ever. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, and crowneth thee with loving kindness, and tender mercies." x\nd with what a brave pulse of glory doth her heart exult towards the accomplishment of Messiah's kingdom, and the fulness of his power; when all lands shall call upon his name, and all nations shall bow before him, and there shall be given to him of Sheba's gold, and his name shall endure for ever, and last like the sun, and men shall be blessed in him, and all nations shall call him blessed ! Then his people sing in high symphony with their triumphant King, and all-conquering Lord, in whom each one feeleth himself to be a conqueror and a king, seated on his throne, and sharing in his royal sovereignty, '^ Thou hast made me the head of the heathen; a people whom I have not known shall serve me, as soon as they hear of me they shall obey me. The strangers shall submit themselves unto me."

For what are the conquests of David, or the greater conquests of David's everlasting Son, over the kingdoms of the earth, but a shadow of that inward conquest which Christ worketh over his ene- mies within our soul, which is more valuable than the earth, and to conquer which is a higher achievement than to subdue the kingdoms of the earth ! The history of the church is such a shadow of soul- history, as creation is of the omnipotent Spirit which made it. The soul is a thing for the Son of God to conquer, the world is for Cesar, or the son of Philip. The soul, the boundless world of the soul to recover, to reconcile its warring powers, B3

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to breathe the life of God over its chaotic wastes — this is a work whereof all outward works are only fit to be the emblems; a work, in the execution of which every spiritual man feels the going forth of his Saviour conquering and to conquer. And he hath every outward action of holy writ realized inwardly every groan of the conquered, every struggle of the conqueror, his toil, his sweat, his wounds, his death, his resurrection, his second going forth in the pleni- tude of the Spirit, his unconquered resolution, his long-abiding labour, the turning of the tide of bat- tle, his sword upon the neck of his enemies, the shout of victory, the treading of the nations in the wine-piess of his fury, his shivering them with his iron sceptre like a potsherd, his driving them with death, and the grave, and him that had the power of death, into the bottomless pit. His reign of peace, its joy, full contentment, and perfect assu- rance, what are they all, but letters, words, and similitudes, whereby the believer may better under- stand, and better express the spiritual work which is going on with his own soul, by the casting down of imaginations, and every high thing, that exalteth itself a";ainst the knov/led(ye of God, and brinmng into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ? If a company of musical and melodious souls feel in unison with the sounds which flow from chords touched by the hands of a master mu- sician, and a company of rich and poetical souls feel in harmony, while the drama of a master poet is rehearsed with true action in their ears, shall not the souls of spiritual men be in harmony, while perusing the outward action, whereof they

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are the subject ? Be in harmony ! aye, in truest harmony. For they are the end of it all, the meaning of it all. In them it hath its reality, and till realized in them, it is an incomprehensible world to words and images, a hieroglyphic with no interpretation ; a musical instrument, with no hand cunning enough to bring out its infinite streams of liquid music. Therefore, by no mystery but reality, though it be deep spiritual reality, deeper far than nature's penetration, they sing, " He hath ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, and receiving gifts for us, even for the rebellious, that the Lord our God may dwell among us. Lift up your heads, Oye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye ever- lasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is the King of glory ? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift up ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory." And in spirit they see the heavens to have opened their glorious gates, and behold the desire of their soul seated at the right hand of God, and they hear the welcome of Jehovah to the Son of man, " Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool, and thy peo- ple willing in the day of thy power, when the rod of thy strength shall be sent out of Zion."

But the sympathy of the church with her glorified Head endeth not with his exaltation to the right hand of the Highest, but from the new office to which she heareth him appointed — " Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek," she doth derive an

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assurance, a blessed confidence, that he standeth ever on high, to revive the drooping faith of his peo- ple. He is passed within the veil, to offer the blood of his own sacrifice, and intercede for the sms of his people, whose hope is passed in along with him, and anchored within the veil. And when their souls lanijuish even to the ffates of death, and the adversary presseth sore upon them, that they might fall, and for a moment darkness covereth their soul, and they say, Will the Lord cast off' for ever, and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies ? Straightway, they re- member their infirmity, and call to mind the years of the right hand of the Most High; and are assured that Messiah ever liveth to make intercession for them, and that if any man sin, he has an advocate with the Most High, even Christ Jesus, the righteous. They remember the man of sorrows who was ac- quainted with grief, and can be touched with the feeling of their infirmities, having been in all points tempted like as they are, yet without sin. And tak- ing heart, they exclaim, " The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid ? Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident, the Lord is my rock and my fortress, my strength in whom I will trust, my buckler, the horn also of my salvation, and my high tower." And thus the children of God are exercised between the troubles of life, and the consolations of faith, be- tween a body of sin and death, and a life which is

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born of God, and hidden with Christ in God. The principaUties and powers of darkness would fain overwhelm the light and life of their soul, but they know that the powers of the flesh cannot op- press the powers of the Spirit. They see the body of Christ, which was rescued by the power of the Spirit from the jaws of the grave, standing in the presence of God on high. And they are assured thereby that the holy seed, born within them of the same Spirit, will, in like manner, quicken their mortal flesh, and at length re-demand and rescue from the grave the body, that it may live and reign with Christ for evermore.

At length cometh the end of all trial and expe- riences, for which there is an abundant preparation made in this storehouse of spiritual feeling. Mes- siah's spiritual seed, the heirs of many exceeding great and precious promises, who know that to them an abundant entrance shall be ministered into the everlasting kingdom of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, anticipate with hope and joy, not with fear and dismay, the time when their earthly house of this tabernacle being dissolved, they shall enter into the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Many a dark and gloomy valley have they passed through, since the time at which they find all their faces Zionward, and became pilgrims in the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life. The last sad and dismal vale through which they have to pass, before their earthly pilgrimage be accomplished, is the valley of the shadow of death, which so many appalling shapes and forms of terror, hover around. The deep shades

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of an eternal night seem evermore to rest upon it. Dark and portentous clouds hang round about it, and shut it in, impervious to mortal sight. Nature looks upon the gloom, and attempts in vain to dis- cover the limits of the inhospitable region. Know- ledge is baffled, and discovery is set at nought. Visions of terror trouble the eye which comes near it. Unearthly sounds of horror strike upon his ear who approach eth it. New and mysterious emotions seize upon the appalled spirit, which feels no capacity of dying, nor symptoms of death, while the tabernacle is all crumbling into dust, and she shrinks back aghast, and asks herself how she is to fare alone, with no one to cheer or accompany her. And though nature would fain nerve herself to it, she feels how utterly weak she is, how profitless strength, wealth, knowledge, friendship, and what else she boasted in. " My heart is sore pained with- in me, and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed my soul." None can wrestle with death but He who overcame death, and those to whom he giveth power to overcome that king of terrors. Whom he hath taught with the eye of faith to peruse the dark vale, and pierce its gloom, and know the bright and happy region which to them lies revealed within, though to others it be the mouth of the yavvning pit. And as the man of God walks onwards through the valley, he says unto his God, " I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. My heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth, my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nei-

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ther wilt thou sufFer thy Holy One to see corrup- tion."

Now the man of God looks to the end of the race he has been patiently running, and beholds the goal at hand. He looks upon the recompense of reward which is awaiting him, the prize of his high calling in Christ Jesus. The last enemy that he has to overcome is death. The king of terrors is to be met face to face. He cannot avoid the com- bat if he would, and he would not if he could. How often, in the travail of his soul, hath he ex- claimed, " Wo is me that I am constrained to dwell in Meshech, and to have my habitation amongst the tents of Kedar ? O that I had the wings of a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest !" How often hath he said, " In thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore ! As for me I shall behold thy face in righteousness. Wlien I awake I shall be satisfied with thy likeness.'* And now that his conflicts are about to cease for ever, and his sorrows to have an end, he lifteth up his head, because the day of his redemption draweth nigh. In vision his spirit, already winged to take its everlastinf^ flight, discerneth the throne of God en- circled by a thousand times ten thousand sons of light. In vision he mingles with the glorious throng. He tunes his harp to the heavenly theme, and sings the song of Moses and the Lamb. Sprinkled with the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things, than the blood of Abel, he ascends in spirit " to the Mount Zion, the city of the living God, making one with the innumerable company of angels, and general assembly and church of the first-born, whose

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names are written in heaven. Ah ! how doth it grieve his soul to wake once again out of the trance of bUss, to open his eyes once again upon the dull, cold, blank realities of life. The syren world hath no longer charms for him. He hath proved the falseness of her beauty: he hath seen the glory that excelleth, and hath no eye to look upon fictitious brightness. He hath seen the King in his beauty, and the land that is afar off: how shall he endure to soil his feet again with the base mould of the de- generate earth, to breathe any longer the polluted atmosphere of a world poisoned with sin, and full of the voices of sorrow ! In this tabernacle he groans, being burdened. And when the grisly king shakes against him his terrible dart, he openeth his bosom to receive the stroke of grace, saying the while, '^ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" And looking up to heaven, he takes his departure, saying, " Into thy hand I com- mend my spirit; for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth !"

It has been our purpose to show, by the above sketch and commentary of Christian life, that the multiplied experiences of the soul, the various states of mind through which the regenerate children of the second Adam pass, from their first entrance upon the life of faith, to the period when that life is swal- lowed up in light, are all exemplified in the book of Psalms. So that the believer cannot be in any con- dition whether of joy or sorrow, but he will find in this book most appropriate forms of utterance, ready prepared for the expression of his feelings of what-

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ever kind. Wc have only brought to light a por- tion of these feelings, tracing their genuine and ex- pressive utterance, as it were with the Psalmist's pen. But it would not be difficult to show, that in the Psalms, the expressions of spiritual feeling are in- finitely varied, and correspond to every emotion, and to every aspiration of the soul, quickened to the life of faith and holiness, yet groaning still under the partial bondage of a fleshly nature, exposed to the assaults of innumerable enemies, and compassed upon every side with temptation and infirmity. So that this Book is to be regarded as a spiritual world, with which the new-born spirit may converse, and acquire the knov/ledge and use of its faculties, as well as the knowledge and use of those objects which are revealed therein. And hence it hath a charm -which it can never lose, being associated with the simple and true affections of the spirit, and with the joy and satisfaction which attend the revelation of any new faculty within us. And this charm must grow with our growth, and strengthen with our strength; for according as we increase in spiritual strength, we are able to make more of those feelings our own ; and the more we become acquainted with dialectic methods, the more we discern their diffi- culty and uncertainty, and desire to return to the simple impressions made upon the soul by the words of the Holy Spirit. And we reckon also that the more we advance in divine life, the simpler our dis- course will become, and the more delivered from the forms of human learning, into the forms of the Spi- rit's teaching, until in the end, if by reason of ex- treme age or languor, we can say no more, we will

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say, as is reported of the Apostle John, " Little children, love one another;" and when speech is de- nied us to utter any thing, we will occupy our spi- ritual musings with some simple forms of divine truth, as the learned Baxter is reported to have said upon his death-bed, that he had been meditating all night long upon the great wisdom of the Lord's prayer and the ten commandments. So that we very much question if these Psalms, which have the charm of having unloosed to us the secrets of our own spi- ritual selves, may not, like a true and faithful friend, continue to add to their first loveliness and value unto the end. For, as was said in the beginning, and hath been amply illustrated, the part of our be- ing which they take hold upon, is not our opinions or our reasonings, or any of our peculiarities, but those universal feelings of the spiritual man, which being constant in all, we have denominated spiritual instincts', in the abiding of which is the abiding of spiritual life, and upon the experiences of which all spiritual knowledge is built up.

While executing this sketch of spiritual expe- rience, in order to exhibit the proper character and true value of the Book of Psalms, several questions arose to our minds besides those we touched in pass- ing, from the consideration of which we withheld ourselves till we should have completed the main purpose of our Essay, but which cannot be omitted, without leaving it, in a good measure hypothetical, and to which therefore we now address ourselves.

The first is, How far we are justified in applying to Christian life in general, those feelings and ex-

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in

pfessions of feeling, whicli, in the first instance, per- tained to individuals, and in general to one indivi- dual— David, the son of Jesse. To this we answer, that spiritual men are the only proper judges of that which is appropriate to the expression of their feel- ings, who, from the beginning of the church in the days of Moses, even until now, have gathered up, and preserved, and appropriated these morsels of divine instruction, as they fell from the lips of the men who spake them; and that not in the Jewish church, but in the Christian church, and these not in latter days, but in primitive days, and the days of the Fathers, to an extent and depth of spirituality un- known in our times. The universal church of Christ hath therefore given its witness, that these Psalms are not made for one age, but for all ages; not for one place, but for all places; not for one soul, but for all souls; time, place, and person, be- ing only so far present in them, as to associate them with that generation to which they were first given, not to dissociate them from any other generation of spiritual children, which, in after ages, was to be born to the same Spirit by the seed of the word, which liveth and abideth for ever. The temptations of David's soul, and its experiences under them, are as much the property of every saint, and of every acre of the church, as are the discourses, remon- strances, parables, and instructions of our Lord to his untoward generation — as are the arguments, and demonstrations, and Epistles of Paul to the early churches which he planted or watered. They are all equally personal, (for the Son of God himself was a person,) and the personal runneth like a

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thread of humanity through the heavenly hues of their discourse. They are all equally secular, and the conditions of the age are the frame-work upon which the tissue of the web is woven. Which pre- sence of the personal, and intermixture of the tem- porary, instead of taking from the force and power of the revelations, do only apply them with the more force and power to the 2:»ersonality of every other saint, and ihQ peculiarity of every other age. For, had the revelations not breathed of the man who spoke them, and told of the condition of the age to which they were given, the former would have been an automaton, and the latter a looker upon the won- ders which the automaton spoke; neither the one nor the other feeling any interest or concern in the mar- vellous display of divine art. But God wished both prophet and people to take heed, and to stand in awe of fearful issues, if they heeded not; therefore, he moulded his man to his purpose, and cast him into the conditions which suited his ends, and still he was a man, acted on by course of nature, and manifest to the people as a fellow-man, through whom, in- deed, they heard soul-stirring truths, uttered vvith ear-piercing words, and, when need was, sustained by attention -rivetting works; but still suited to their case, and thrust in their way, and spoken to their feelings, and pressed on their consciences, and riv- etted there by the most mighty sanctions of life and death, present and eternal. But they are not the less spoken to us. No, not the less, on that ac- count, spoken to us. Yet, that we might have no shadow of excuse, nor shield of self-delusion, the Lord appointed a race of prophets, or ministers, to

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abide until his coming, who should be gifted of his Spirit, to apply the universal and unchangeable, in all his revelation, to the condition of every time, place, and individual; and so far from abandoning the iieculiarifij of the revelation, to use that no less than the other, wherever it will accommodate itself to the case in hand, and to bring it home with ten- fold force, by the appHcation of the parable, " Thou, even thou thyself, art the very man" — this, even this, is the very season — this, even this in which we live, is the very condition to which this revelation was given. We do admire how this automaton-inspi- ration can stand a thought, when it is the very rule of heaven's communications, that in every word of God there should be a humanity^ as well as a divinity present. And as The Word which was in the beginning took not voice — nor intelligence, but flesh, human flesh, and the fulness of the Godhead was manifested hodilij ; so, when that same word came unto the fathers by the prophets, and discovered a part of his fulness, it was through their flesh or their humanity, that is, through their present conditions of spirit, and mind, and body, and outward estate, that he discovered himself to the flesh or the humanity of tlie people, that is, their present conditions of spirit, and body, and outward estate. Whence, if it be said that Moses was Christ under the veil, and if Paul says of himself, that not he but Christ lived in him, then it may be said, that David was the humilia- tion and the exaltation of the churcli under the veil. Now, as the apostle, in writing to the Hebrews concerning the priesthood of Christ, calls upon them to consider Melchizedek, his solitary majesty, and

xlvi

singular condition, and remarkable honour; so call we upon the church to consider David, the son of Jesse, his unexampled accumulation of gifts, his wonderful variety of conditions, his spiritual riches and his spi- ritual desolation, and the multifarious contingencies of his life; with his faculty, his unrivalled faculty of expressing the emotions of his soul, under all the days of brightness and days of darkness which passed over his head. For thereby shall the church under- stand how this the lawgiver of her devotion was pre- pared by God for the work which he accomplished, and how it hath happened that one man should have brought forth that vast variety of experience, in which every soul rejoiceth to find itself reflected. For Moses was not more prepared by all the wisdom and learning of Egypt, for becoming a fit vehicle to carry from God unto the people an institution of law, than David was prepared, by the experiences of his life between the sheepcot and the throne, for becom- ing a fit vehicle to carry from God unto his church, an institution of spiritual experience, and devotional feeling.

And we the more gladly enter upon the education and gifts of this saint, the great revealer of the moods of the renewed soul, that we may ashame or silence the Rabshekas who rail upon this great type of Messiah's humiliation and exahation, the man after God's own heart. We call upon the Church, and all reasonable men, to consider this man David, how well furnished he was by nature, and educated by providence, for the great honour to which the Christian church hath preferred him.

There never was a specimen of manhood, so rich

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and ennobled as David, the son of Jesse, whom other saints haply may have equalled in single features of his character, but such a combination of manly, he- roic qualities, such a flush of generous godlike ex- cellencies, hath never yet been seen embodied in a single man. His Psalms, to speak as a man, do place him in the highest rank of lyrical poets, as they set him above all the inspired writers of the Old Testament, — equalling in sublimity the flights of Isaiah himself, and revealing the cloudy mystery of Ezekiel; but in love of country, and gloryings in its heavenly patronage, surpassing them all. And where are there such expressions of the varied conditions into which human nature is cast by the accidents ol Providence, such delineations of deep affliction, and inconsolable anguish, and anon such joy, such rap- ture, such revelry of emotion, in the worship of the living God ! Such invocations to all nature, ani- mate and inanimate, such summonings of the hidden powers of harmony, and of the breathing instru- ments of melody ! Single hymns of this Poet would have conferred immortality upon any mortal, and borne down his name as one of the most fa- voured of the sons of men.

But it is not the writings of the man, which strike us with such wonder, as the actions and events of his wonderful history. He was a hero without a peer, bold in battle, and generous in victory; by distress, or by triumph, never overcome. Though hunted like a wild beast, among the mountains, and forsaken like a pelican in the wilderness, by the country whose armies he had delivered from disgrace, and by the monarch whose daughter he had won — whose son he had

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bound to him with cords of brotherly love, and whose own soul he was wont to charm with the sa- credness of his minstrelsy — he never indulged ma- lice or revenge against his unnatural enemies. Twice, at the peril of his life, he brought his blood- hunter within his power, and twice he spared him, and would not be persuaded to injure a hair upon his head — who, when he fell in his high plaji^, was lamented over by David, with the bitterness of a son, and his death avenged upon the sacrilegious man who had lifted his sword against the Lord's anointed. In friendship, and love, and also in domestic affec- tion, he was not less notable than in heroical endow- ments, and in piety towards God he was most re- markable of all. He had to flee from his bed- chamber in the dead of night, his friendly meetings had to be concerted upon the perilous edge of captivity and death — his food he had to seek at the risk of sacrilege — for a refucre from death, to cast himself upon the people of Gath — to counterfeit idio- cy, and become the laughing-stock of his enemies. And who shall tell of his hidings in the cave of Adullam, and of his wanderings in the wilderness of Ziph; in the weariness of which he had power to stand before his armed enemy with all his host, and, by the generosity of his deeds, and the affectionate language which flowed from his lips, to melt into childlike weeping the obdurate spirit of king Saul, which had the nerve to evoke the spirits of the dead !

King David was a man extreme in all his excel- lencies— a man of the highest strain, whetlier for counsel, for expression, or for action, in peace and

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in war, in exile and on the throne. That such a warm and ebuUient spirit should have given way be- fore the tide of its affections, we wonder not. We rather wonder that, tried by such extremes, his mighty spirit should not often have burst con- trol, and enacted right forward the conqueror, the avenger, and the destroyer. But God, who anointed him from his childhood, had given him store of the best natural and inspired gifts, which preserved him from sinking under the long delay of his promised crown, and kept him from contract- ing any of the craft or cruelty of a hunted, per- secuted man. And adversity did but bring out the splendour of his character, which might have slum- bered like the fire in the flint, or the precious metal in the dull and earthy ore.

But to conceive aright of the gracefulness and strength of king David's character, we must draw him into comparison with men similarly conditioned, and then shall we see how vain the world is to cope with him. Conceive a man who had saved his coun- try, and clothed himself with gracefulness and re- nown in the sight of all the people, by the chivalry of his deeds won for himself intermarriage with the royal line, and by \inction of the Lord's prophet been set apart to the throne itself; such a one con- ceive driven with fury from house and hold, and, through tedious years, deserted of every stay but heaven, with no soothing sympathies of quiet life, harassed for ever between famine and the edge of the sword, and kept in savage holds and deserts: and tell us, in the annals of men, of one so disap- pointed, so bereaved and straitened, maintaining not b 23

1

fortitude alone, but sweet composure and a heavenly- frame of soul, inditing praise to no avenging deity, and couching songs in no revengeful mood, according with his outcast and unsocial life; but inditing praises to the God of mercy, and songs which soar into the third heavens of the soul: not indeed, without the burst of sorrow, and the complaint of solitariness, and prophetic warnings to his blood-thirsty foes, but ever closing in sweet preludes of good to come, and desire of present contentment. Find us such a one in the annals of men, and we yield the argument of this controversy. Men there have been, driven before the wrath of kings to wander outlaws and exiles, whose musings and actings have been recorded to us in the minstrelsy of our native land. Draw these songs of the exile into comparison with the Psalms of David, and know the spirit of the man after God's own heart : the stern defiance of the one, with the tranquil acquiescence of the other; the deep despair of the one, with the rooted trust of the other; the vindictive imprecations of the one, with the tender regret and forgiveness of the other. Show us an outlaw who never spoiled the country which had forsaken him, nor turned his hand in self- defence or revenge upon his persecutors, who used the vigour of his arm only against the enemies of his country, yea, lifted up his arm in behalf of that mother, which had cast her son, crowned with salvation, away from her bosom, and held him at a distance from her love, and raised the rest of her family to hunt him to the death; — in the defence of that thankless, unnatural, mother-country, find us such a repudiated son lifting up his arm, and

spending its vigour, in smiting and utterly discom- fiting her enemies, whose spoils he kept not to en- rich himself and his ruthless followers, but dispensed to comfort her and her happier children. Find us among the Themistocles, and Coriolani, and Crom- wells, and Napoleons of the earth such a man, and we will yield the argument of this controversy which we maintain for the peerless son of Jesse.

But we fear that not such another man is to be found in the recorded annals of men. Though he rose from the peasantry to fill the throne, and enlarge the borders of his native land, he gave himself nei- ther to ambition nor to glory; though more basely treated than the sons of men, he gave not place to despondency or revenge; though of the highest ge- nius in poetry, he gave it not license to sing his own deeds, nor to depict loose and licentious life, nor to ennoble any worldly sentiment or attachment of the human heart, however virtuous or honourable, but constrained it to sing the praises of God, and the victories of the right hand of the Lord of Hosts, and his admirable works which are of old from everlasting. And he hath dressed out relioion in such a rich and beautiful garment of divine poesy as beseemeth her majesty, in which, being arrayed, she can stand up before the eyes even of her enemies, in more royal state, than any personification of love, or glory, or pleasure, to which highly gifted mortals have devoted their genius.

The force of his character was vast, and the scope

of his life was immense. His harp was full-stringed,

and every angel of joy and of sorrow swept over the

chords as he past; but the melody always brcatl.ed

b 2

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of heaven. And such oceans of affection lay within his breast, as could not always slumber in their calmness. For the hearts of a hundred men strove and stru£f"led together within the narrow continent of his single heart : and will the scornful men have no sympathy for one so conditioned, but scorn him, because he ruled not with constant quietness, the unruly host of divers natures which dwelt within his single soul? Of self-command surely he will not be held deficient, who endured Saul's javelin to be so often launched at him, while the people without were ready to hail him king; who endured all bodily hardships, and taunts of his enemies, when revenge was in his hand ; and ruled his des- perate band like a company of saints, and restrained them from their country's injury. But that he should not be able to enact all characters without a fault, the simple shepherd, the conquering hero, and the romantic lover: the perfect friend, the inno- cent outlaw, and the royal monarch ; the poet, the prophet and the regenerator of the church ; and, withal, the man^ the man of vast soul, who played not these parts by turns, but was the original of them all, and wholly present in them all; oh ! that he should have fulfilled this high priesthood of humanity, this universal ministry of manhood with- out an error, were more than human. With the defence of his backslidings, which he hath himself more keenly scrutinized, more clearly decerned against, and more bitterly lamented than any of his censors, we do not charge ourselves, because they were, in a manner, necessary, that he might be the full-orbed man which was needed to utter every

liii

form of spiritual feeling : but if, when of these acts he became convinced, he be found less true to God, and to righteousness ; indisposed to repentance and sorrow, and anguish; exculpatory of himself; stout-hearted in his courses, a formalist in his penitence, or in any way less worthy of a spiritual man in those than in the rest of his infinite moods, then, verily, strike him from the canon, and let his Psalms become monkish legends, or what you please. But if these penitential Psalms discover the soul's deepest hell of agony, and lay bare the iron ribs of misery, whereon the very heart dis- solveth, and if they, expressing the same in words which melt the soul that conceiveth, and bow the iiead that uttereth them, then, we say, let us keep these records of the Psalmist's grief and despon- dency, as the most precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed in the case of every man who es- sayeth to live a spiritual life. For, though the self-satisfied moralist, and the diligent Pharisee, and all that pigmy breed of purists, who make unto themselves a small and puny theory of life, and please their meagre souls with the idea of keeping it thoroughly, smiting upon their thigh, and pro- testing by their unsullied honour and inviolate truth, and playing other tricks of self-sufficiency, will little understand what we are about to say, we will, never- theless, for truth's sake, utter it; that, until a man, however pure, honest, and honourable he may have thought himself, and been thought by others, dis- covereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled, and sin- ful in the sight of God, a worm of the earth and no man, his soul cleaving to the dust, and bearing

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about with it a body of sin and death; and until, for expressions of his utter ^yorthlessness, he seek those Psahiis in which the Psahiiist describes the abase- ment of his soul, yea, and can make them his own, that man hath not known the beginnings of the spirituallife within the soul : for (let him that read- eth understand) a man must break up before there is any hope of him; he must be contrite and broken in spirit, before the Lord will dwell with him.

Of all the delusions with which Satan lulls man into sweet security, this of our completeness and in- tegrity is the most fatal. While we dwell in the idea of our rectitude, our unsullied purity, our in- flexible honesty, our truth, our moral worth, and think that we implement any, the lowest, of God's commandments, (but they are all equally high) we are like the hard and baked earth, whose surface haply some sward of greenness may cover, but which will not wave with the rich and fruitful harvest, until you bury that first crop of nature under the share of the plough, and turn up the black rough mould to the heat of the sun, and the genial action of the air, and, the ancient roots being scorched up, sow it anew with precious seed, and wait upon the same with diligent husbandry. When this soul-tillage hath taken place, and the integrity of selfishness is broken up, and the poisonous weeds of selfishness are cut down, and our shallow and insufiicient righteousness trodden under foot; when the old man hath broken into pieces, and we feel ourselves murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars, in the sight of God, then shall we come to use, and thank God that we have at hand, the penitential Psalms of

Iv

David; the confessions, the groanings, the lan- guishings of the desolate king of Israel. It boot- eth not that we have not committed the acts, we wanted power, we wanted opportunity, we wanted means ; but ah ! we wanted not will. It was in our heart, out of which proceed murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness. It hath been all the while in our heart, and we knew it not. It was rooted there, and we fostered it. Ay, and it will cause us bit- ter groans, ere it will leave the place of its roots.

But to return from these rebukes of the scorners, to the instruction of the Christian church upon the fitness of David to be their Psalmist. — Why were such oceans of feeling poured unto David's soul, such true and graceful utterance of poetry infused into his lips, and such skill of music seated in his right hand? Such oceans of feeling did God in- fuse into his soul, and such utterance of poetry he placed between his lips, and such skilful music he seated in his right hand, in order that he might con- ceive forms of feeling for all saints, and create an everlasting psalmody, and hand down an organ for expressing the melody of the renewed soul. The Lord did not intend that his church should be with- out a rule for uttering its gladness and its glory, its lamentation and its grief; and to bring such a rule and institute into being, he raised up his ser- vant David, as formerly he raised up Moses to give to the church an institute of Law. And to that end he led him the round of all human con- ditions, that he might catch the spirit proper to every one, and utter it according to truth; he allowed him not to curtail his being by treading the round

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of one function, but by every variety of functions, he cultivated his whole being, and filled his soul with wisdom and feeling. He found him objects for every affection, that the affection might not slum- ber and die. He brought him up in the sheep-pas- tures, that the groundwork of his character might be laid amongst the simple and universal forms of feehng. He took him to the camp, and made him a conqueror, that he might be filled with nobleness of soul and ideas of glory. He placed him in the palace, that he might be filled with ideas of ma- jesty and sovereign might. He carried him io the wilderness, and placed him in solitudes, that his soul might dwell alone in the sublime concep- tions of God, and his mighty works ; and he kept him there for long years, with only one step be- tween him and death, that he might be well schooled to trust and depend upon the Providence of God. And in none of these various conditions and avoca- tions of life, did he take away from him his Holy Spirit. His trials were but the tuning of the instru- ment with which the Spirit might express the various melodies which he designed to utter by him for the consolation and edification of spiritual men. It was the education of the man most appropriate for the divine vocation of the man. John the Baptist being to be used for rough work, was trained in the rough desert ; Paul being to be used for contentious and learned work, was trained at Gamaliel's feet; Daniel being to be used for judgment and revelation, was trained in the wisdom of the east; Joseph being to be used as a providence to Egypt and his Father's house, was trained in the hardest school

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of providence; and every one hath been discipHned by the providence of God, as well as furnished in the fountains of his being, for that particular work for which the Spirit of God designed him. There- fore, David had that brilliant galaxy of natural gifts, that rich and varied education, in order to fit him for executing the high office to which he was called by the Spirit, of giving to the church those universal forms of spiritual feeling, whereof we have been endeavouring to set forth the excellent applica- tions. And, though we neither excuse his acts of wickedness, nor impute them to the temptation of God, who cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth any man, we will also add, that by his loss the church hath gained; and that out of the evil of his ways, much good hath been made to arise; and that if he had not passed through every valley of humiliation, and stumbled upon the dark mountains, we should not have had a language for the souls of the peni- tent, or an expression for the dark troubles which compass the soul, that feareth to be deserted by its God. So much for the fitness of the Psalmist to have been made the organ of spiritual feeling unto the church.

There is another question which remains for re- solution, before bringing this Essay to a close. In how far the good Bishop Home and others, are justified in referring so much of these Psalms to Messiah.

In maintaining for these Psalms the high place

which the universal voice of the Christian church

hath assigned to them, there is a tendency to pass

into the extreme of applying them wholly to Christ,

b3

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and finding some experience of Christ's soul in every experience of the Psalmist's soul. Now, while it is true, that all of these Psalms are still applicable to the saints and to the church, because the saints and the church are still compassed about with the same fleshly nature, and worldly dispositions, Hable to the same backslidings, idolatries, and oppositions as heretofore, none of them which confess transgres- sion, and lament over indwelling sin, are at any time applicable unto Christ, who suffered indeed as David, and all his seed have suffered from the plot- tings of the world, and the enmity of the devil, and was in all points tempted as they are, — yet without sin, without sliding back, without opposing himself to his Father, without yielding to the temp- tation; wherefore, it is little short of blasphemy to apply unto the spotless and blameless Saviour, any or all of those spiritual experiences, any or all of those deep self-accusations, any or all of those en- treaties for forgiveness which compose so large a por- tion of the Psalms of David, and the spiritual utter- ances of David's seed. Surely no spiritual man in these times would apply to Christ his personal experiences of sin and sorrow for sin. No more can the Psalmist's be applied unto Christ, without confounding the workings of the first Adam with the workings of the second Adam, and destroying all those distinctions between good and evil, which it is the end of revelation to define and demonstrate. The workings of the second Adam, by which we become convinced of sin, and desirous of holiness, separate from the world, and hated of it, united to God, and beloved of him, are in us as in David,

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all derived from Christ, and will apply to Christ's own experience in the flesh. For the word of God manifested in the Son of Mary, is the same word of God which came by the Spirit unto the prophets, and whicli is applied by the Spirit unto us who be- lieve, who are only members of Christ suffering and enjoying with our living and life-giving Head. And, therefore, we may well apply to him, what by his Spirit is revealed in us. But that other part within us which holdeth of the first Adam, and which lust- eth against the Spirit, loveth the world, and with all its instincts warreth against God, whose evil deeds a Christian, if he speak truth, must con- stantly confess, and seek grace to overcome; — to apply any of the foul deeds, or wicked experiences thereof unto Christ, is a wonderful blindness which hath come over certain holy men in the church, from their eagerness to find Christ every-where in these consecrated songs.

And yet the path to this error is open, and very easily fallen upon. For in those Psalms which have been applied in the New Testament unto Christ, it is found difficult, if not impossible, to se- parate the Psalmist's personal experience from that of Christ, or to find how, without much violence, they can be wholly appropriate to Messiah. Now, with as little straining of interpretation, they judge that another and another, and at length all may be ap- plied to Christ, in a typical, or in a real signification. But this is to err from ignorance of the prophetic scriptures. Except the prophecies of Daniel, and the prophecies of the ApocalypsOy^ and one or two of the visions of Esdras, (especially that of the

Ix

three-headed ten-feathered eagle)/ the other pro- phecies are always of a mixed cnaracter, belonging partly to the times, and partly surpassing the con- ditions of the times, and occasionally glancing through to the very end of time. So that in Isaiah, Jere- miah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets, even in our Lord's prophecies of his second coming, and the Apostles' constant reference thereto, you cannot by any endeavour make a clear separation between that which was then fulfilled, or hath been since fulfilled, and that which still standeth over to be fulfilled. The reason of which doubtless is explained by our Lord, that the times and the seasons, the Father hath kept in his own power, so that even the Son himself was not permitted to reveal them. And Pej;er saith, that the prophets inquired diligently, but could not discover what and what manner of things the Spirit which was in them did signify. And I doubt not that the Apostles might themselves be as ignorant of the time of the second coming of Christ, as the prophets were of his first coming. Which taken together, is an illustration of this great law which may be gathered from the very face of the prophetic writings. That they arose by the suggestion of some condition of the church, present in the days of the prophets, as the particular case, but passing beyond this in time, and passing be- yond it in aggravation of every circumstance, they give, as it were, a consecutive glance of all the like cases, and kindred passages in the history of the church, and bring out the general law of God's providence and grace in the present, and in all the future parallel cases ; — yet with such mark of dif-

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ferent times interspersed as may be sufficient, by a skilful comparison with the exact and historical pro- phecies of Daniel and the Revelations, to draw the attention of the wise to their coming, and suffice to the convictions of the unwise when they are past. Of this great law of prophetic writing, the confu- sion of David and Messiah in the Psalms referred to, are only one instance. David's prophecies of Messiah which are jpersonal^ arose by suggestion of the Spirit, from his own •personal experiences, and include it. His prophecies of Messiah, which are royal and kingly, arose out of his kingly ex- perience, and the two persons are interwoven with one another in such a manner as not to be separable, just as in the other prophecies, the first, and second, and third events to which they have re- ference, are, in like manner, interwoven.

Which so far from being an evil, is a great beauty in the Psalms ; so far from being an incon- venience, is a great advantage to those who under- stand aright. In connecting David with Messiah, it connects the church and every particular saint who adopts David's feelings with Messiah, the children with their parent, the subjects with their king; so that we cannot sing his praise or his triumphs, but we must take ourselves in as a part, and be embraced in the very praises of our great Head, and are not permitted to separate ourselves from him; but at once are we constrained to worship the objective Saviour, who is at the right hand of God ; and the subjective Saviour, who is in us; the objective Saviour who humbled himself to the cross, and the subjective Saviour who humbled himself to behold and redeem

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his servant ; the objective Saviour who ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, and the sub- jective Saviour who in us hath triumphed over death, and raised us to newness of life, who liveth with us and is seated in the throne of our hearts. Which happy blending of our spiritual nature, suffering or enjoying with Christ suffering or enjoying, we should have lost, had we been able to separate between David and Christ in those Psalms which have a reference to Christ. For at one time we should have sung objectively of Christ, and at another subjectively of ourselves, as represented in David, and so lost the intermarriage of the object with the subject, which is the true propagation of religion in the soul ; — a loss this which the Christi- ans are beginning to experience in those modern Hymns which are coming into use, and those metrical versions which have the boldness to paraphrase the Psalms, and new-model them to the present times, (a most daring innovation upon a book of Scripture). Therefore, while we reject the puerile conceit, and most mischievous dogma which would make every word of these Psalms to be applicable to Christ, we feel greatly indebted to any commentator, who, preserving sound principles of interpretation, can find the Saviour present in the Psalms, which is to give not only more sacred ness and spirituality to them, but to increase that happy blending of sub- jective and objective rehgion, which is the best condition for true and spiritual worship. And if the commentary of Bishop Home be more valuable on one account than another, it is for this very rea- son, that his strong spiritual senses have been able

Ixiii

to discern and point out the presence of Christ in many Psahns, where the reader had not perceived it hef'ore. In doing which, he hatli not strained the sense of the passage, nor generalized and re- fined upon the character and person of Christ, but simply exercised that spiritual sense which was strong in him to perceive, and to adore his Lord.

And now that we are brought to speak of this Commentary of Bishop Home, we would, before delivering our opinion of it, with which we shall conclude, beg it to be understood, that we have no such idea in our mind, as that any thing we can say should commend a book which hath com- mended itself to Christians ever since the time of its publication ; and that we have had no such aim or intention before us in this Essay. But in a Series of Select Christian Authors, which should present to the Christian world the spirit of Chris- tian divinity in its most practical and profitable form, we felt that it would have been a great blank in- deed, if we did not offer some work which should contain an enlightened and spiritual exposition of the gospel as it is written in the Book of Psalms ; for what are the Psalms but the poetical lyrical form of the gospel? And what vvork could we put into our Series so worthy of a place, and so fit to fill the blank, as the Commentary of Bishop Home, from which the souls of the pious have derived so much edification? It is a book of a most orthodox and evangelical odour, of great learning though not displayed, of a sufficient knowledge and of a pure classical taste, by which the whole man may be fur- nished to every good word and work; his soul ele-

Ixiv

vated, his mind filled, his heart purified and re- fined ; his knowledge enlarged, his faith quickened, his new obedience enlarged; but above all, his love and affections drawn out and fixed upon the blessed Saviour and Redeemer of his soul. With a too frequent reference to Messiah he hath been charged, but this is the charge of those but half- enlightened in spiritual truth, and far short of the mark of Christian doctrine, and which will of itself be forgotten, (as indeed it is already in a good mea- sure forgotten,) when they shall have risen into the comprehension of a more spiritual and enlarged theology, and the divines of the church shall have constructed out of the ruins, the noble shafts, and columns, and massive remains of former systems of theology, another building, which may represent the glory of divine truth to the outward eye of these present times, which differ widely from the times in which those former buildings were erected. If, instead of making collections of Hymns, many of them disgusting both to taste and feeling, and all of them beneath the mark of divine Psalmody, -{^ja^ which account we have deemed it for the edification of the pious, to present, in our Series, a selection* made by a Poet truly Christian, whose praise is in all the- churches,) if instead of making other editions of the Book of Psalms with improvements, if instead of multiplying paraphrases and translations, the churches would require of their ministers (what here- tofore the ministers of their own accord were wont to do,) to preface upon the Psalms, or set forth

* " The Christian Psalmist," by Montgomery.

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their spiritual significations to the people, their pro- phetic anticipations, and their rich unction of hea- venly poesy — that would be to do for the people every Sabbath, what Bishop Home hath done for the church in this excellent book ; then, from our old metrical versions of the Psalms, however bald, and especially from our Scottish version because of its very baldness, that is its want of what they call poetic diction, (but the simplest, truest diction is the most poetical,) we would anticipate infinitely more benefit to the spiritual life of the saints, and the con- viction of the ungodly, than if you were to congre- gate a whole sanhedrim of poets, (as that name goes at present,) and require of them to work up the remnant of their wits into Psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. But there be a few poets of the ancient seed still extant in the land, and of these there are some who have shown themselves masters in the simple stanza of the old song, and who add thereto the faith and feeling of revealed religion,* to whom we would recommend it as an object worthy of their muse, to give to us an improved metrical version of the Psalms, whose improvement should consist in not sacrificing the true expression of the original to mere poetical language, but in a close adherence to the words of the original, even a more dose condensation of them than in the prose version, of which condensation our Scottish version contains many admirable examples.

* We may only name Montgomery, Coleridge, and Words- wofth.

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But to return to the good Bishop Home. We know of no Commentary upon the Book of Psalms, more likely to be influential in awakening the natu- ral heart to a due sense of their real signification, than that which he hath gathered from all sources, both of his own learning and experience, and those of others, and combined together in this brief but sufficient Treatise. He was eminently qualified to perform the task which he had undertaken to exe- cute. His spiritual elucidations, and deeply affect- ing applications, must approve themselves to every feeling and unprejudiced heart; to every mind which is not altogether dead and callous to the words of spiritual truth ; to every ear which is not deaf as the adder to the sweet and pleasant voice of the charmer. Here the man of polished taste will meet with no- thing to discompose his nicest associations of intel- lectual refinement with religion, but will find him- self addressed in the language of the schools with much beauty of style and harmony of diction. Good taste in the widest and fullest acceptation of the term, is a never-failing characteristic of the pious and clas- sical Author of this Commentary. Himself a high dignitary in the church of England, and the presi- dent of one of the colleges of a learned university, our author is at once upon a level with his most critical and his most dignified readers. We cannot therefore but rejoice, that a Christian Bishop should be found consecrating his pen to the sacred cause of spiritual truth, and presenting its sane and salutary lessons to the religious votaries of rank, who love an outward dignity in the church as in the world.

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But the truly pious of all ranks will here find a food well suited to their spiritual taste, a nourishment proper to their growth in knowledge and in grace, many a rich and precious cordial for the support of their fainting spirits, many a sweet physician-like application of the balm that is in Gilead, and of the leaves which are for the healing of the nations. And if the man of critical taste and dignified as- sociations will never be shocked by vulgarity of style or homeliness of diction, but rather attracted by the grace and beauty oF the discourse ; so also will the Christian, whose enlarged spirit hath been set free to soar far beyond the narrow confines of polemical theology, never find himself aggrieved by the strait narrow moulds of a mind, or the angular points of controversial bigotry. Every sentiment in this exposition he will find free of that sickening leaven, which leaveneth many a loaf of wholesome food. Finally, we may venture to assert, that be- lievers of all churches and denominations will be able to peruse, with satisfaction and delight, this spi- ritual exposition of the Book of Psalms, and that whilst they read they will find themselves identified after a nevv and delightful manner, with the inspired son of Jesse : above all, if they drink deep into the spirit of this Commentary, will they find them- selves linked to the spiritual David by a thousand minute and tender ties, whose existence they may not hitherto have perceived, or of which they may at least have been but faintly conscious. For every line breathes of Messiah, and every sentiment leads to him. In every thought the spiritual David

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hath a share, who is here, what m all Christian works he should be, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last of the Author's desire and delight.

E. I.

London, May, 1825.

PREFACE.

The Psalms are an epitome of the Bible, adapted to the purposes of devotion. They treat occasion- ally of the creation and formation of the world; the dispensations of Providence, and the economy of grace; the transactions of the patriarchs; the exodus of the children of Israel; their journey through the wilderness, and settlement in Canaan; their law, priesthood, and ritual; the exploits of their great men, wrought through faith; their sins and captivi- ties; their repentances and restorations; the suffer- ings and victories of David; the peaceful and happy reign of Solomon; the advent of Messiah, with its effects and consequences; his incarnation, birth, life, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, kingdom, and priesthood; the effusion of the Spirit; the conver- sion of the nations; the rejection of the Jews; the establishment, increase, and perpetuity of the Chris- tian church; the end of the world; the general judgment; the condemnation of the wicked, and the final triumph of the righteous with their Lord and King. These are the subjects here presented to our meditations. We are instructed how to con- ceive of them aright, and to express the different affections which, when so conceived of, they must Vol. I. C

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excite in our minds. They are, for this purpose, adorned with the figures, and set off with all the graces, of poetry; and poetry itself is designed yet farther to be recommended by the charms of music, thus consecrated to the service of God; that so de- light may prepare the way for improvement, and pleasure become the handmaid of wisdom, while every turbulent passion is calmed by sacred melody, and the evil spirit is still dispossessed by the harp of the son of Jesse. This little volume, like the para- dise of Eden, affords us in perfection, though in miniature, every thing that groweth elsewhere, " every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;" and above all, what was there lost, but is here restored, the tree of life in the midst of the garden. That which we read, as matter of specu- lation, in the other Scriptures, is reduced to practice, when we recite it in the Psalms; in those, repen- tance and faith are described, but in these, they are acted; by a perusal of the former, we learn how others served God, but, by using the latter, we serve him ourselves. *' What is there necessary for man to know," says the pious and judicious Hooker, " which the Psalms are not able to teach? They are to beginners an easy and familiar introduction, a mighty augmentation of all virtue and knowledge in such as are entered before, a strong confirmation to the most perfect among others. Heroical magnani- mity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wis- dom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the ter- rors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Providence over this world, and the promised joys

39

of that world which is to come; all frood necessarily to be either known, or done, or had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth. Let there be any grief or dis- ease incident unto the soul of man, any wound or sickness named, for which there is not, in this trea- sure-house, a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found."* In the language of this divine book, therefore, the prayers and praises of the church have been offered up to the throne of grace, from age to age. And it appears to liave been the manual of the Son of God, in the days of his flesh; who, at the conclusion of his last supper, is generally sup- posed, and that upon good grounds, to have sung an hymn taken from it;f who pronounced, on the cross, the beginning of the xxii. Psalm; " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and expired wdth a part of the xxi. Psalm in his mouth; " Into thy hands I commend my spirit." Thus He, who had not the Spirit by measure, in whom were hidden all the treasures of \visdom and knowledge, and who spake as never man spake, yet chose to conclude his life, to solace himself in his greatest agony, and at last to breathe out his soul, in the Psalmist's form of words rather than his own. No tongue of man or angel, as Dr. Hammond justly observes, can con- vey a higher idea of any book, and of their felicity who use it arij^ht.

Proportionable to the excellency of the Psalms,

* Hooker's Ecclesiast. Pol. b. v. sect. 37.

f St. Matthew informs us, chap. xxvi. 30. tliat he and his apostles " sung an hymn;" and the liymn usually sung by the Jews upon that occasion, was, what they called the " great Hal- lel," consisting of the Psalms from the cxiii. to the cxviii. in- clusive.

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liath been the number of their expositors. The ancients were chiefly taken up in making spiritual or evangelical applications of them; in adapting their discourses on them to the general exigencies of the Christian church, or to the particular necessities of the age in which they wrote. The moderns have set themselves to investigate with diligence, and ascertain with accuracy, their literal scope and mean- ing. Piety and devotion characterize the writings of the ancients; the commentaries of the moderns display more learning and judgment. The ancients have taught us how to rear a goodly superstructure; but the moderns have laid the surest foundation. To bring them in some measure together, is the de- sign of the following work; in which the author has not laboured to point out what seemed wrong in either, but to extract what he judged to be right from both ; fo make the annotations of the latter a ground-work for improvements like those of the former; and thus to construct an edifice, solid as well as spacious. Materials, and good ones, he cannot be said to have wanted; so that if the building should give way, the cement must have been faulty, or the workman unskilful.

The right of the Psalter to a place in the sacred canon, hath never been disputed; and it is often cited by our Lord and his apostles in the New Testament, as the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether David therefore, or any other prophet, was employed as the instrument of communicating to the church such or such a particular Psalm, is a question which, if it cannot always be satisfactorily answered, needs not disquiet our minds. When we discern, in an epistle.

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the well known hand of a friend, we are not solici- tous ahout tlie pen with wliich it was written.

The number of Psalms is tlie same in the original, and in the version of the LXX; only these last have, by some mistake, thrown the ninth and tentli into one, as also the hundred and fourteenth and the hundred and fifteenth, and have divided the hundred and sixteenth into two, as also the hundred and for- ty-seventh. The Hebrews have distributed them into five books; but for what reason, or upon what authority, we know not. This is certain, that the apostles quote from " the Book of Psalms,"* and that they quote the " second Psalm" of that book, in the order in which it now stands. f That division, which our own church hath made of them, into thirty portions, assigning one to each day of the month, it hath been thought expedient to set down in the margin; as persons may often choose to turn to the commentary on those Psalms, which occur in their daily course of reading.

In the titles, prefixed to some of the Psalms, there is so much obscurity, and in the conjectures which have been made concerning them, both in a literal and spiritual way, so great a variety and uncertainty, that the author, finding himself, after all his searches, unable to offer any thing which he thought could content the learned, or edify the unlearned, at length determined to omit them; as the sight of them un- explained, only distracts the eye and attention of the reader. The omission of the word selah must be apologised for in the same manner. The mforma-

* Acts i. 20. t Acts xiii. 33.

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tion obtained from the historical titles will be found in the Argument placed at the head of each Psalm; though even that is not always to be relied on.

Where this information failed, the occasion and drift of a Psalm were to be collected from the inter- nal evidence contained in itself, by a diligent perusal of it, with a view to the sacred history; the light of which, when held to the Psalms, often dissipates the darkness that must otherwise for ever envelop allu- sions to particular events and circumstances. Some- times, indeed, the descriptions are couched in terms more general; and then, the want of such informa- tion is less perceived. If it appear, for instance, that David, at the time of composing any Psalm, was under persecution, or had been lately delivered from it, it may not be of any great consequence, if we cannot determine with precision, whether his per- secution by Saul and Doeg, or that by Absalom and Ahithophel, be intended and referred to. The ex- pressions either of his sorrow or his joy, his strains, whether plaintive or jubilant, may be nearly the same, in both cases, respectively. This observation may be extended to many other instances of calamities bewailed, or deliverances celebrated, in the Psalms, sometimes by the prince, sometimes by the commun- ity, and frequently by both together. Upon the whole, it is hoped, that the design of each Psalm hath been sufficiently discovered, to explain and apply it, for the instruction and comfort of believers.

The result of such critical inquiries as were found necessary to be made, is given in as few words as possible; often only by inserting into a verse, or subjoining to it, that sense of a word, or phrase,

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which seemed upon mature deliberation to be the best; as it was deemed improper to clog, with prolix disquisitions of this kind, a work intended for gen- eral use. The reader will, however, reap the bene- fit of many such, which have been carefully consulted for him. And he will not, it is presumed, have reason to complain, that any verse is passed over without a tolerable consistent interpretation, and some useful improvement. — Where the literal sense was plain, it is noticed only so far as was necessary to make an application, or form a reflection. Where there appeared any obscurity or difficulty, recourse was had to the best critics, and that solution, which seemed the most satisfactory, given in the concisest manner. Much labour hath here been bestowed, where little appears. The plan of every Psalm hath been attentively studied, with the connexion and dependence of its parts, which it is the design of the Argument to exhibit at one view, and of the Com- mentary to pursue and explain from beginning to end.*

No person is more thoroughly sensible than the author is, of the respect and gratitude due from all lovers of the sacred writings, to those who have la- boured in the field of literal criticism: great and illustrious characters, whose names will be had by the church in everlasting remembrance ! All, who desire to understand the Scriptures, must enter into

* Nos Lectoris pium hunc laborem adjuvandum suscepimus: dum constitutis argiimentis scopum attention! figimus; dum scrutarum literam, et ex sacra historia, quantum possumus, om- nia repetimus; dum annotamus qvae pietatem inflamment; alia 60 exemplo quEerenda indicamus. Bossuet Dissertat. in Psal. cap. vii.

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their labours, and make the proper advantage of them, as he himself hath endeavoured to do. But let us also bear in mind, that all is not done when this is done. A work of the utmost importance still remains, which it is the business of Theology* to undertake and execute; since, with respect to the Old Testament, and the Psalter more especially, a person may attain a critical and grammatical know- ledge of them, and yet continue a Jew, with a veil upon his heart; an utter stranger to that sense of the holy books, evidently intended, in such a variety of instances, to bear a testimony to the Saviour of the world; that sense, which is styled, by divines, the prophetical, evangelical, mystical, or spiritual sense. As it is one great design of the following work to investigate that sense in many of the Psalms, this is the proper place to lay before the reader those grounds and reasons upon which such investigation has been made.

That the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture, like all other good things, is liable to abuse, and that it hath been actually abused, both in ancient and modern days, cannot be denied. He who shall go about, to apply in this way, any passage, before he hath attained its literal meaning, may say w^hat in itself is pious and true, but foreign to the text from which he endeavoureth to deduce it. St. Jerome, it is well known, when grown older and wiser, la- mented, that, in the fervours of a youthful fancy, he had spiritualized the prophecy of Obadiah, before he

* Theologiae insignis hie usiis est, ut, verborum sensu exposito, REM intelligas. Eisner. Prsefat. ad Observat. Sacr.

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understood it. And it must be allowed, that a due attention to the occasion and scope of the Psalms, would have pared off many unseemly excrescences, which now deform the commentaries of St. Augustin, and other fathers, upon them. But these, and other concessions of the same kind, being made, as they are made very freely, " men of sense will consider, that a principle is not therefore to be rejected, be- cause it has been abused;"* since human errors can never invalidate the truths of God.

It may not be amiss, therefore, to run through the Psalter, and point out some of the more remark- able passages, which are cited from thence by our Lord and his apostles, and applied to matters evan- gelical.

No sooner have we opened the book, than the second Psalm presenteth itself, to all appearance, as an inauguration hymn, composed by David, the anointed of Jehovah, when by him crowned with victory, and placed triumphant on the sacred hill of Sion. But let us turn to Acts iv. 25. and there we find the apostles, with one voice, declaring the Psalm to be descriptive of the exaltation of Jesus Christ, and of the opposition raised against his Gos- pel, both by Jew and Gentile.

In the eighth Psalm we imamne the writer to be setting forth the pre-eminence of man in general, above the rest of the creation; but by Heb. ii. 6, we are informed, that the supremacy conferred on the second Adam, the man Christ Jesus, over all

• Bishop Kurd's Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies, p. 64.

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things in heaven and earth, is the subject there treated of.

St. Peter stands up, Acts ii. 24. and preaches the resurrection of Jesus from the latter part of the six- teenth Psahn; and, lo! three thousand souls are converted by the sermon.

Of the eighteenth Psalm we are told, in the course of the sacred history, 2 Sam. xxii. that " David spake before the Lord the words of that song, in the day that the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul." Yet in Rom. xv. 9. the 49th verse of that Psalm is adduced as a proof, that " the Gentiles should glo- rify God for his mercy in Jesus Christ, as it is written. For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name."

In the nineteenth Psalm, David seems to be speak- ing of the material heavens, and their operations only, when he says, " their sound is gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." But St. Paul, Rom. x. 18. quotes the passage to shovv', that the Gospel had been universally pubhshed by the apostles.

The twenty-second Psalm Christ appropriated to himself, by beginning it in the midst of his sufferings on the cross; " My God, my God," &c. Three other verses of it are, in the New Testament, ap- plied to him ; and the words of the 8th verse were actually used by the chief priests, when they reviled him; " He trusted in God," &c. Matt, xxvii. 43.

When David saith, in the fortieth Psalm, " Sa- crifice and offering thou didst not desire — Lo, I come to do thy will:" we might suppose him only

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to declare in his own person, that obedience is better than sacrifice. But from Heb. x. 5. we learn, that Messiah, in that place, speaketh of his advent in the fiesh, to abolish the legal sacrifices, and to do away sin, by the oblation of himself, once for all.

That tender and pathetic complaint, in the forty- first Psalm, " Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lift up his heel against me," undoubtedly might be, and pro- bably was, originally uttered by David, upon the re- volt of his old friend and counsellor, Ahithophel, to the party of his rebellious son, Absalom. But we are certain, from John xiii. 18. that this Scripture was fulfilled, when Christ was betrayed by his apos- tate disciple — " I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scriptures may be fulfilled. He that eateth bread with me hath lift up his heel against me."

The forty-fourth Psalm we must suppose to have been written on occasion of a persecution under which the church at that time laboured ; but a verse of it is cited, Rom. viii. 36. as expressive of what Christians were to suffer, on their blessed Master's account: "As it is written, For thy sake are we killed all the daylong; we are counted as sheep appointed to be slain."

A quotation from the forty-fifth Psalm, in Heb. i. 8. certifies us, that the whole is addressed to the Son of God, and therefore celebrates his spiritual union with the church, and the happy fruits of it.

The sixty-eighth Psalm, though apparently con- versant about Israelitish victories, the translation of the ark to Sion, and the services of the tabernacle.

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yet does, under those figures, treat of Christ's resur- rection, his going up on high, leading captivity cap- tive, pouring out the gifts of the Spirit, erecting his church in the world, and enlarging it hy the acces- sion of the nations to the faith; as will be evident to any one who considers the force and consequence of the apostle's citation from it, Ephes. iv. 7, 8. " Unto every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men."

The sixty-ninth Psalm is five times referred to in the Gospels, as being uttered by the prophet, in the person of Messiali. The imprecations, or rather predictions, at the latter end of it, are applied, Rom. xi. 9, 10. to the Jews; and to Judas, Acts i. 20. where the hundred and ninth Psalm is also cited, as prophetical of the sore judgments which should befal that arch-traitor, and the wretched nation of which he was an epitome.

St. Matthew, informing us, chap. xiii. 34. that Jesus spake to the multitude in parables, gives it as one reason why he did so, " that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet," Psalm Ixxviii. 2. " I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter things which have been kept secret from the founda- tion of the world."

The ninety-first Psalm was applied, by the tempter, to Messiah; nor did our Lord object to the applica- tion, but only to the false inference, which his adver- sary suggested from it. Matt. iv. 6, 7.

The ninety-fifth Psalm is explained at large in Heb. iii. and iv. as relative to the state and trial of

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Christians in tlie world, and to their attainment of tlie heavenly rest.

The hundred and tenth Psalm is cited by Christ himself, Matt. xxii. 44. as treating of his exaltation, kingdom, and priesthood.

The hundred and seventeenth Psalm, consisting only of two verses, is employed, Rom. xv. 11. to prove, that the Gentiles were one day to praise God for the mercies of redemption.

The 22d verse of the hundred and ei^jhteenth Psalm, " The stone which the builders refused," &c. is quoted six different times, as spoken of our Saviour.

And, lastly, " the fruit of David's body," which God is said, in the hundred and thirty-second Psalm, to have promised that he would place upon his " throne," is asserted, Acts ii. 30. to be Jesus Christ.

These citations, lying dispersed through the Scriptures of the New Testament, are often suf- fered by common readers to pass unnoticed. And many others content themselves with saying, that they are made in a sense of accommodation, as pas- sages may be quoted from poems of histories merely human, for the illustration of truths, of which their authors never thought. " And this," as a learned critic observes, " is no fault, but rather a beauty in writing. A passage applied justly, and in a new sense, is ever pleasing to an ingenious reader, who loves to be agreeably surprised, and to see a likeness and pertinency where he expected none. He has that surprise, which the Latin poet so poetically gives to the tree;

♦' Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua pona."

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The readers, who have been accustomed to con- sider the New Testament citations in this view of accommodation only, must perceive the necessity of such accommodation, at least, to adapt the use of the Psalms, as a part of divine service, to the times and circumstances of the Gospel; and cannot therefore reasonably object, upon their own principles, to the applications made in the following sheets for that purpose. But not to inquire, at present, whether passages are not sometimes cited in this manner, surely no one can attentively review the above-made collection of New Testament citations from the book of Psalms, as they have been placed together before him, without perceiving that the Psalms are written on a divine, pre-concerted, prophetical plan, and con- tain much more than, at first sight, they appear to do. They are beautiful without, but all glorious within, like " apples of gold in pictures, or network cases, of silver;" Prov. xxv. 11. The brightness of the casket attracts our attention, till, through it, upon a nearer approach, we discover its contents. And then, indeed, it may be said to have " no glory, by reason of the glory that so far excelleth."* Very delightful and profitable they are, in their Hteral and historical sense, which well repayeth all the pains taken to come at it. But that once obtained, a farther scene begins to open upon us, and all the blessings of the Gospel present themselves to the eye of faith. So that the expositor is as a traveller ascending an eminence, neither unfruitful, nor un- pleasant; at the top of which, when he is arrived, he beholds, like Moses from the summit of Mount Nebo,

* 2 Cor. iii. 10.

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a more lovely and extensive prospect lying beyond it, and stretching away to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills. He sees valleys covered over with corn, bloomhig gardens, and verdant meadows, with flocks and herds feeding by rivers of water; till, ravished with the sight, he cries out, as Peter did at the view of his Master's glory, " It is good to be here !"

It would be unreasonable to suppose, that no parts of the Psalms may by us be spiritually applied, but such as are already expressly applied for us by the inspired writers. Let any man consider attentively a New Testament citation; then let him as carefully read over, with a view to it, the Psalm from which it is taken, and see if it will not serve him as a key wherewith to unlock the treasures of eternal wisdom; if it will not " open his eyes," and show him " won- derful things" in God's laws. When we are taught to consider one verse of a Psalm as spoken by Mes- siah, and there is no change of person, what can we conclude, but that he is the speaker through the whole ? In that case, the Psalm becomes at once as much transfigured, as the blessed Person, sup- posed to be the subject of it, was on Mount Tabor. And if Messiah be the speaker of one Psalm, what should hinder, but that another Psalm, where the same kind of scene is evidently described, and the same expressions are used, may be expounded in the same manner?

It is very justly observed by Dr. AUix, that " al- though the sense of near fifty Psalms be fixed and settled by divine authors, yet Christ and his apos- tles did not undertake to quote all the Psalms they

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could quote, but only to give a key to their hearers, by which they might apply to the same subjects the Psalms of the same composure and expression."* The citations in the New Testament were made incidentally, and as occasion was given. But can we imagine, that the church was not farther in- structed in the manner of applying the Psalms to her Redeemer and to herself? Did she stop at the applications thus incidentally and occasionally made by the inspired writers? Did she stop, be- cause they had directed her how to proceed? We know she did not. The primitive fathers, it is true, for want of critical learning, and particularly a com- petent knowledge of the original Hebrew, often wan- dered in their expositions; but they are unexcep- tionable witnesses to us of this matter of fact, that such a method of expounding the Psalms, built upon the practice of the apostles in their writings and preachings, did universally prevail in the church from the beginning. They, who have ever looked into St. Augustin, know, that he pursues this plan invariably, treating of the Psalms as proceeding from the mouth of Christ, or of the church, or of both, considered as one mystical person. The same is true of Jerom, Ambrose, Arnobius, Cassiodor-e, Hilary, and Prosper. Chrysostom studies to make the Psalter useful to believers under the GospeL Theodoret attends both to the literal and prophetical sense. But what is very observable, Tertullian, who flourished at the beginning of the third century, men- tions it, as if it were then an allowed point in the

» Preface to his Book of Psalms, p. 9.

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church, that " almost all the Psalms are spoken in the person of Christ, being addressed by the Son to the Father, that is, by Christ to God."* In this channel flows the stream of the earliest Christian expositors. Nor did they depart, in this point, from the doctrine held in the church of the ancient Jews, who were always taught to regard Messiah as the capital object of the Psalter. And though, when the time came, that people would not receive Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah, it does not appear that they ever objected to the propriety of the cita- tions made by our Lord and his apostles, or thought such passages applicable to David only and his con- cerns. Nay, the most learned of their Rabbis, who have written since the commencement of the Chris- tian era, still agree w^ith us in referring many of the Psalms to Messiah and his kingdom; differing only about the person of the one, and the nature of the other.

When learning arose, as it were, from the dead, in the sixteenth century, and the study of primitive theology by that means revived, the spiritual inter- pretation of the Scriptures revived with it. It was adopted at that time, by one admirably qualified to do it justice, and to recommend it again to the world by every charm of genius, and every ornament of language. I mean the accomplished Erasmus, who oraitteth no opportunity of insisting on the useful- ness and even the necessity of it, for the right un- derstanding of the Scriptures; for the attainment of

* Omnes pene Psalmi Christi personam sustinent. — Filium ad Patrein, id est Christum ad Deum verba facientem represen- tant.

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that wisdom which they teach, and that hoHness which they prescribe; seeming to think himself never better employed, than when he is removing the earth and rubbish with which those Philistines, the monks, had stopped up the w^ells of salvation, opened by the apostles and first fathers of the church, for the bene- fit of mankind.* This great man was much impor- tuned by his learned friends, as he informeth us in an epistle to Cardinal Sadolet, to write a commentary on the Psalms.f Such a work, executed by him, had been one of the richest ffifts that were ever cast into the Christian treasury; as we may judge from the specimen which he hath left us, in his discourses on eleven of them. Some of these were drav^ai up with a view to enlarge upon the transactions of the times; and in all of them he is more diffuse and luxuriant, than, it is to be presumed, he would have been in a general exposition. But they abound with a rich variety of sacred learning, communicated in a man- ner ever pleasing, and ever instructive. If at any time he takes us out of the road, it is to show us a fine country, and we are still in company with Eras- mus. He considers a Psalm, as it may relate to Christ, either suffering or triumphant : as it may con- cern the church, whether consisting of Jews or Gen- tiles, whether in adversity or prosperity, through the

* Enchirid. Mil. Christ, in Prsefat. Canon. 5. et passim.

f Lib. XXV. Epist. 11. edit. Froben. 10085, edit. Cler. Non semel rogatus sum, quum ab aliis, tum ab Anglorum rege, ut in omnes Psalmos ederem Commentaries; sed deterrebant me qumn alia multa, tum ilia duo potissimum ; quod viderem hoc argumentum vix posse pro dignitate tractari, nisi quis calleat Hebraeorum literas, atque etiam antiquitates; partim quod vere- bar ne turba Commentariorum obscuraretur Sermo Proplieticus, eitius quam illustraretur.

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several stages and periods of its existence ; and as it may be applicable to the different states and circum- stances ot individuals, during the trials and tempta- tions which they meet with, in the course of their Christian pilgrimage and warfare here below, till, having overcome their last enemy, they shall sit down with their Lord in his kingdom; when the scheme of prophecy shall receive its final accomplish- ment, and " the mystery of God be finished."*

It is obvious, that every part of the Psalter, when explicated according to this Scriptural and primitive method, is rendered universally " profitable for doc- trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;" and the propriety immediately ap- pears of its having been always used in the devo- tional way, both by the Jewish and the Christian church. With regard to the Jews, bishop Chandler very pertinently remarks, that " they must have un- derstood David, their prince, to have been a figure of Messiah. They would not otherwise have made his Psalms part of their daily worship, nor would David have delivered them to the church to be so employed, were it not to instruct and support them in the knowledge and belief of this fundamental article. Was the Messias not concerned in the Psalms, it were absurd to celebrate twice a day, in their public devotions, the events of one man's life, who was deceased so long ago as to have no re- lation now to the Jews, and the circumstances of their affairs; or to transcribe whole passages from them, into tlieir prayers for the coming of the Mes-

» Rev. X. 7.

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siah."* Upon the same principle, it is easily seen, that the objections which may seem to lie against the use of Jewish services in Christian congregations cease at once. Thus, it may be said, Are we con- cerned with the affairs of David and Israel? Have we any thing to do with the ark and the temple? They are no more. Are we to go up to Jerusalem, and to worship on Sion? They are desolated and trodden under foot by the Turks. Are we to sa- crifice young bullocks, according to the law ? The law is abolished, never to be observed again. Do we pray for victory over Moab, Edom, and Philistia; or for deliverance from Babylon? There are no such nations, no such places in the world. What then do we mean, when, taking such expressions into our mouths, we utter them in our own persons, as parts of our devotions, before God? Assuredly we must mean a spiritual Jerusalem and Sion; a spiri- tual ark and temple; a spiritual law; spiritual sacri- fices; and spiritual victories over spiritual enemies; all described under the old names, which are still retained, though " old things are passed away, and all things are become new."-]- By substituting Mes- siah for David, the Gospel for the Law, the church Christian for that of Israel, and the enemies of the one for those of the other, the Psalms are made our

* Defence of Christianity, First Part, p. 241.

f 2 Cor. V. 17. Ergo arrige aures, Christiane Lector, et ubi talia in Davide legeris, tu mihi fac cogitas, non Arcam, fragile lignum, aut Tabernaculum contectum pellibus; r.on urbem lapi- dibus compositam; non Templum divinse Majestati augustum : sed Christi et Ecclesiae Sacramenta, sed vivos lapides, Christo angulari lapidi coaptatos ; sed ipsam Eucharistiam prsesentis Dei testem ; denique cifileste regnum et seternam felicitatem. — Bos- SUET Dissertat. de Psal. cap. i. ad fin.

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own. Nay, they are, with more fuhiess and pro- priety, apphed now to the substance, than they were of old to the '' shadow of good things then to come."* And, therefore, ever since the commence- ment of the Christian era, the church hath chosen to celebrate the Gospel mysteries in the words of tliese ancient hymns, rather than to compose for that purpose n€w ones of her own. For, let it not pass unobserved, that, when, upon the first publication of the Gospel, the apostles had occasion to utter their transports of joy, on their being counted worthy to suffer for the name of their dear Lord and Master, which was then opposed by Jew and Gentile, they brake forth into an application of the second Psalm to the transactions then before their eyes: see Acts iv. 25. The primitive Christians constantly follow- ed this method, in their devotions; and particularly when delivered out of the hands of persecuting ty- rants by the victories of Constantino, they praised God for his goodness, and the glorious success and establishment of Christ's religion, no words were found so exquisitely adapted to the purpose, as those of David, in the xcvi. xcviii. and other Psalms — " Sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, and praise his name: be telling of his salvation from day to day. Declare his honour unto the heathen, his worship unto all people," &c. &c. &c. In these, and the like Psalms, we continue to praise God, for all his spiritual mercies in Christ, to this day.

The Psalms, thus applied, have advantages which

* Heb. X. 1.

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no fresh compositions, however finely executedj can possibly have; since, besides their incomparable fit- ness to express our sentiments, they are, at the same time, memorials of, and appeals to, former mercies and deliverances; they are acknowledgments of pro- phecies accomplished; they point out the connexion between the old and new dispensations, thereby teaching us to admire and adore the wisdom of God displayed in both, and furnishing, while we read or sing them, an inexhaustible variety of the noblest matter that can engage the contemplations of man.

Why is the mind more than ordinarily affected, and either melted into sorrow, or transported with joy, when on the days set apart for the commemora- tion of our Saviour's birth, passion, resurrection, &c. the Proper Psalms are read, which the church hath appointed, following herein the directions of evan- gelists and apostles, and the usage of the early ages? Why, but because, by such appointment, we are ne- cessarily put upon transferring our ideas from the complaints or exultations of Da\id and Israel, to those of a suffering or glorified Messiah, of whose sufierings or glories we participate, as members of his mystical body ! And how much more intense would be the effect, if, in the sermons preached on those occasions, such Proper Psalms were expounded to the people, and their propriety evinced, as it might easily be ! Discourses of this kind would make the hearts of the auditors to " burn wdthin them;" and men would cease to w'onder, that three thousand Jews were converted to the faith by St. Peter's ani- mated discourse on part of the sixteenth Psalm. Were believers once brought well acquainted with

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tliese Proper Psalms, they would be better enabled to study and apply the rest, which might likewise be explained to them, at different times, and certainly, afford the finest subjects on which a Christian orator can apply his eloquence. That this was done in the primitive church, we learn from the exposition of the Psalms left us by St. Chrysostom in the east, and 8t. Augustin in the west, those expositions still subsisting in the form of homilies, as delivered to their respective congregations. Is it not to be feared tiiat, for want of such instructions, the repetition of the Psalms, as performed by multitudes, is but one degree above mechanism ? And is it not a melan- choly reflection to be made, at the close of a long life, that, after reciting them, at proper seasons, through the greatest part of it, no more should be known of their true meaning and application, than when the Psalter was first taken in hand at school?

Many sensible and well-disposed persons, there- fore, who, when they read or sing the Psalms, de- sire to read or sing " with the spirit and the un- derstanding," have long called for a commentary which might enable them to do so, which might not only explain the literal sense of these divine compo- sitions, and show how they may be accommodated to our temporal affairs, as members of civil society;"*

* A concern for tlie present peace and prosperity of the world, and of that kingdom in it to which we belong, ought ever to be entertained and cherished by the most exalted Christian. And if this part of the subject sliould, at anytime, in the following work, appear to be but slightly touched upon, the reason is, be- cause it lies obvious upon tlie surface, and has been so frequently inculcated by other expositors. Nor are mankind indeed so lia- ble to forget the relation they bear to the world, as tliey are to

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but miglit also unfold the mysteries of the kingdom of God, which are involved in them, and teach their application to us, as members of that spiritual and heavenly society of which Christ Jesus is the head, and for whose use, in every age, they were intended by their omniscient Author. A work of this kind, though often desired, has never yet been executed, upon any regular and consistent plan. The survey of a province in theology, hitherto almost unoccu- pied among the moderns, which promised a great deal of pleasing as well as profitable employment, gave birth to the attempt which had been made to cultivate it, in the ensuing Commentary; in which the author has only endeavoured to evince, by an in- duction of particulars, the truth of what so many learned and good men have asserted in general, con- cerning the prophetical, or evangelical, import of the Psalter. Dr. Hammond, in the preface to his Annotations, tells us, he chose to leave every man to make applications of this kind for himself, finding he had work enough upon his hands in the literal way. But so much having been done by him, and other able critics, in that way, it seems to be now time that something should be done in the other, and some directions given, in a case where directions cannot but be greatly wanted.

Very few of the Psalms, comparatively, appear to be simply prophetical, and to belong only to Mes- siah, without the intervention of any other person. Most of them, it is apprehended, have a double

overlook that which subsists between them and their Creator and Redeemer.

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sense, which stands upon this ground and foundation, that the ancient patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings, were typical characters, in their several of- fices, and in the more remarkable passages of their lives, their extraordinary depressions, and miraculous exultations, foreshowing Him who was to arise, as the Head of the holy family, the great Prophet, the true Priest, the everlasting King. The Israelitish polity, and the law of Moses, were purposely framed after the example and shadow of things spiritual and heavenly; and the events which happened to the an- cient people of God, were designed to shadow out parallel occurrences, which should afterwards take place, in the accomplishment of man's redemption, and the rise and progress of the Christian church. For this reason, the Psalms composed for the use of Israel, and Israel's monarch, and by them accordingly used at the time, do admit of an application to us, who are now " the Israel of God,"* and to our Redeemer, who is the king of this Israel.f

Nor will this seem strange to us, if we reflect, that the same divine Person, who inspired the Psalms, did also foreknow and predispose all the events of which he intended them to treat. And hence it is evident, that the spiritual sense is, and must be, pe- culiar to the Scriptures ; because of those persons and transactions only, which are there mentioned

* Gal. vi. 16.

f That expressions and descriptions in liuman writings are often so framed as to admit of a double sense, without any im- propriety or confusion, is shown by the very learned Mr. Mer- rick, on his excellent Observations on Dr. Benson's Essay con- cerning the Unity of Sense, &c. subjoined to his Annotations on the Psalms.

Vol. I. D

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and recorded, can it be affirmed for certain, that they were designed to be figurative. And should any one attempt to apply the narrative of Alexander's expe- dition by Quintus Curtius, or the Commentaries of Cesar, as the New Testament writers have done, and taught us to do, the histories of the Old, he would find himself unable to proceed three steps with con- sistency and propriety. The argument, therefore, which would infer the absurdity of supposing the Scriptures to have a spiritual sense, from the ac- knowledged absurdity of supposing histories or poems merely human to have it, is inconclusive; the sacred writings differing, in this respect, from all other writings in the world, as much as the nature of the transactions which they relate differs from that of all other transactions, and the author who relates them differs from all other authors.

" This double, or secondary, sense of prophecy, was so far from giving offence to Lord Bacon, that he speaks of it with admiration, as one striking ar- gument of its divinity. ' In sorting the prophecies of Scripture with their events, we must allow,' says he, ' for that latitude, which is agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies, being of the nature of the Author, with whom a thousand years are hut as one day ; and therefore they are not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and germinant accom- plishment through many ages, though the height or fulness of them, may refer to some one age.'

" But that we may not mistake, or pervert, this fine observation of our great philosopher, it may be proper to take notice, that the reason of it holds, in such prophecies only as respect the several successive

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parts of one system; which being intimately con- nected together, may be supposed to come within the view and contemplation of the same prophecy; whereas it would be endless, and one sees not on what grounds of reason we are authorized, to look out for the accomplishment of prophecy, in any casual unrelated events of general history. The Scripture speaks of prophecy, as respecting Jesus, that is, as being one connected scheme of Providence, of which the Jewish dispensation makes a part; so that here we are led to expect, that ' springing and germinant accomplishment,' which is mentioned. But had the Jewish law been complete in itself, and totally unre- lated to the Christian, the general principle — that ' a thousand years are with God but as one day' — would no more justify us in extending a Jewish pro- phecy to Christian events, because perhaps it was eminently fulfilled in them, than it would justify us in extending it to any other signally corresponding events whatsoever. It is only when the prophet hath one uniform connected design before him, that we are authorized to use this latitude of interpretation. For then the prophetic spirit naturally runs along the several parts of such design, and unites the re- motest events with the nearest: the style of the pro- phet, in the mean time, so adapting itself to this double prospect, as to paint the near and subordinate event in terms that emphatically represent the distant and more considerable. So that, with this explana- tion, nothing can be more just or philosophical, than the idea which Lord Bacon suggests of divine pro- phecy,

" The great scheme of redemption, we are now D2

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considering, being the only scheme in the plan of Providence, which, as far as we know, hath been prepared and dignified by a continued system of pro- phecy, at least this being the only scheme to which we have seen a prophetic system applied, men do not so readily apprehend the doctrine of double senses in prophecy, as they would do if they saw it exem- plified in other cases. But what the history of man- kind does not supply, we may represent to ourselves by many obvious suppositions; which cannot justify, indeed, such a scheme of things, but may facilitate the conception of it."*

In allegories framed by man, the ground-work is generally fiction,f because of the difficulty of finding one true series of facts, which shall exactly represent another. But the great Disposer of events, " known unto whom are all his works," from the beginning to the end of time, was able to effect this ; and the Scripture allegories are therefore equally true in the letter and in the spirit of them. The events signi- fying, no less than those signified, really happened as they are said to have done.ij: Why the allegories

* Bishop Kurd's excellent Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies. Serm. iii.

f I say, " generally," since, as the above-cited Mr. Merrick justly observes, " It is possible (for example) in a complimental address to a modern statesman, or general, to relate the actions of some ancient patriot of the same character, in such a manner, that the parallel intended to be dra^^^l between them, shall be readily knowTi, and the praises expressly bestowed on the one, be transferred, by the reader's own application, to the other."

\ Neque propterea ab historico, sive laterali atque immediate, lit aiunt, sensu aberrare nos oportet: quin eo erit clarior et fundatior secretioris illius intelligentiae sensus, quo typum ipsum, hoc est, historiam ac literam figemus certius. — Bossuet Disser- tat. in Psal. ad finem.

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of this most perfect form, with which the book of God abounds, and which are all pregnant with truths of the highest import, should be treated with neglect and contempt, while the imperfect allegories of man's devising are universally sought after. and admired, as the most pleasing and efficacious method of convey- ing instruction, it is not easy to say. Why should it not afford a believer as much delight, to contem- plate the lineaments of his Saviour portrayed in one of the patriarchs, as to be informed, that the charac- ter of lapis was designed by Virgil to adumbrate that of Antonius Musa, physician to Augustus? Or why should not a discourse upon the redemption of the church, as foreshadowed by the exodus of Israel, have as many admirers among Christians, as a dis- sertation, however ingeniously composed, on the de- scent of ^neas to the infernal regions, considered as typical of an initiation into the Eleusinian mys- teries ?

A learned, judicious, and most elegant writer of the present age, hath stated and illustrated the sub- ject we are now upon, with a felicity of thought and expression peculiar to himself. I shall endeavour to gratify the English reader with a view of his senti- ments. The beauties of his language are not to be translated.

" It would be an arduous and adventurous under- taking to attempt to lay down the rules observed in the conduct of the Mystic Allegory; so diverse are the modes in which the Holy Spirit has thought pro- per to communicate his counsels to different persons, upon different occasions; inspiring and directing the minds of the prophets according to his good pleasure ;

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at one time vouchsafing more full and free discoveries of future events ; while, at another, he is more ob- scure and sparing in his intimations. From hence, of course, ariseth a great variety in the Scripture usage of this kind of allegory, as to the manner in which the spiritual sense is couched under the other. Sometimes it can hardly break forth and show itself at intervals through the literal, which meets the eye as the ruling sense, and seems to have taken entire possession of the words and phrases. On the con- trary, it is much oftener the capital figure in the piece, and stands confessed at once by such splendour of language, that the letter, in its turn, is thrown into shade, and almost totally disappears. Sometimes it shines with a constant equable light; and some- times it darts upon us on a sudden, like a flash of lightning from the clouds. But a composition is never more truly elegant and beautiful, that when the two senses, alike conspicuous, run parallel to- gether through the whole poem, mutually corres- ponding with, and illustrating each other. I will produce an undoubted instance or two of this kind, which will show my meaning, and confirm what has hitherto been advanced on this subject of the mystic allegory.

" The establishment of David upon his throne, notwithstanding the opposition made to it by his ene- mies, is the subject of the second Psalm. David sustains in it a twofold character, literal and allegori- cal. If we read over the Psalm, first with an eye to the literal David, the meaning is obvious, and put out of all dispute by the sacred history. There is indeed an uncommon glow in the expression, and

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sublimity in the figures, and the diction is now and then exaggerated, as it were on purpose to intimate, and lead us to, the contemplation of higher and more important matters concealed within. In compliance with this admonition, if we take another survey of the Psalm, as relative to the person and concerns of the spiritual David, a nobler series of events instantly rises to view, and the meaning becomes more evident, as well as exalted. The colouring, which may per- haps seem too bold and glaring for the king of Is- rael, will no longer appear so, when laid upon his great anti-type. After we have thus attentively considered the subjects apart, let us look at them to- gether, and we shall behold the full beauty and ma- jesty of tliis most charming poem. We shall per- ceive the two senses, very distinct from each other, yet conspiring in perfect harmony, and bearing a wonderful resemblance in every feature and linea- ment, while the analogy between them is so exactly preserved, that either may pass for the original from whence the other was copied. New light is continu- ally cast upon the phraseology, fresh weight and dig- nity are added to the sentiment, till gradually as- cending from things below to things above, from human affairs to those which are divine, they bear the great important theme upwards with them, and at length place it in the height and brightness of heaven.

" What hath been observed with regard to this Psalm, may also be applied to the seventy-second; the subject of which is of the same kind, and treated in the same manner. Its title might be, ' The In- auguration of Solomon.' The scheme of the allc-

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gory is alike in both ; but a diversity of matter oc- casions an alteration in the diction. For whereas one is employed in celebrating the magnificent tri- umphs of victory, it is the design of the other to draw a pleasing picture of peace, and of that felicity which is her inseparable attendant. The style is, therefore, of a more even and temperate sort, and more richly ornamented. It aboundeth not with those sudden changes of the person speaking, w^hich dazzle and astonish; but the imagery is borrowed from the delightful scenes with which creation cheers the sight, and the pencil of the divine artist is dipped in the softer colours of nature. And here we may take notice how peculiarly adapted to the genius of this kind of allegory the parabolical style is, on ac- count of that great variety of natural images to be found in it. For as these images are capable of be- ing employed in tlie illustration of things divine and human, between which there is a certain analogy maintained, so they easily afford that ambiguity which is necessary in this species of composition, vvhere the language is applicable to each sense, and obscure in neither; it comprehends both parts of the allegory, and may be clearly and distinctly referred to one or the other."*

The scheme of exposition so beautifully delineated and illustrated in two instances by this truly valuable author, has been extended, in theory, by another learned writer, to a great part of the Psalter ; and that upon a principle deduced from the attributes of God, and the nature and design of the divine dispen-

* Bishop Lowth on the Hebrew Poetry. Lect. xi.

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sations ; though his own hibours, like those of Dr. Hammond, were employed chiefly in literal criticism. His reasoning is as follows :

" In this point (namely, the application of the Psalms to the mysteries of the Gospel) I am very clear. The Jews only, as a nation, acknowledged the one supreme God, under the name of Jehovah ; they must be, therefore, his peculiar people. There is nothing capricious in this ; they are correlates, and of necessity answer reciprocally to each other. Hence that singular intercourse between God and them. Hence, among other instances of his favour, his communication of himself to them by superna- tural ways of Oracles, Inspiration, &c. When the acknowledgment of the one God branched itself, from this Jewish stock, over the face of the earth, and by that means he was become the God of all mankind, they must all, for the same reason, become his people. As God is ever the same, and his do- ings uniform, his conduct towards mankind must exactly be proportioned to his conduct towards the Jewish nation. Let us, therefore, place God in common over them both: and there will be — on one side, the Jewish nation; and on the other, man- kind : on one side, Canaan, and a national prosper.- ity; on the other, heaven, and human happiness: on one side, a redemption from Egyptian servitude, and national evils; on the other, a redemption of the w^hole human race from absolute evil: on one side, national crimes atoned by national ceremonies, sacrifices, priests ; on the other, sins expiated by the one universal sacrifice of Jesus Christ : on one side, national and temporary saviours, kings, prophets, &c. D3

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on the other, all this universal, and eternal : on one side, the law, and every branch of it, adap- ted to a favourite nation; on the other, the ever- lasting Gospel, suited to all mankind. It is impos- sible, therefore, that God can say any thing to David, under the quality of king of this chosen nation, which he does not speak, at the same time, to Jesus Christ, as King of all the elect; and that in a truer and nobler sense. To each of them he speaks in a sense adapted to the nature of their respective king- doms. Nor is the latter a bare accommodation of words, but the first and highest meaning of them, and which only, absolutely speaking, can be the true sense of God; the other being this sense, confined to a particular ch'cumstance; in other words, an ab- solute truth, made history and matter of fact. This is a principle, which shows, that, far from denying the Christian application, I consider the literal and historical sense only as a kind of vehicle for it."*

Upon this plan it is, that many of the Psalms are interpreted in the following sheets.

In such of them as were written by David, and treat of his affairs, that extraordinary person is con- sidered as an illustrious representative of Messiah, who is more than once foretold under the name of David, and to whom are applied, in the New Testa- ment, Psalms which do undoubtedly, in the letter of them, relate to David, and were composed on occa- sion of particular occurrences which befel him ; a cir- cumstance in theology, to be accounted for upon no other principle.

* Preface to an Essay towards a New English Version of the Book of Psalms, by tlie Rev. Mr. Mudge.

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When, therefore, he described himself as one hated and persecuted without a cause ; as one accused of crimes which he never committed, and suffering for sins the very thoughts of which he abhorred; as one whose life was imbittered by affliction, and his soul overwhelmed with sorrows ; yet withal, as one whom no troubles could induce to renounce his trust and confidence in the promises of God concerning him; when he repeated his resolutions of adhering to the divine law, setting forth its various excellen- cies, and the comforts which it afforded him in the days of adversity; when he complaineth of that im- placable malice, and unrelenting fury, with which he was pursued by Saul and his attendants, by Doeg the Edomite, by rebellious Absalom, traitorous Ahi- thophel, &:c. and when, contrary to all appearances, he predicteth their destruction, with his own final ex- altation; in expounding the Psalms of this cast and complexion, it hath been my endeavour to direct the reader's thoughts to parallel circumstances, which present themselves in the history of the true David; his sorrows and sufferings; his resignation under them all; his obedience to the will of his Father; the temper and behaviour of his betrayers and mur- derers ; the prophecies of judgments to be inflicted upon them, and of glory to be conferred upon him. As the Psalter was the liturgy of the Jewish church, of which our Lord was a member, and to which he therefore entirely conformed during his abode and humiliation upon earth, he might pour forth his com- plaints, and " offer up his prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears,"* in the very words

* II cb. V. 7. '

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which his progenitor David had before used under his own troubles, but which were given by inspira- tion, with a view to the case of that blessed person whom, in those troubles, he had the honour to pre- figure.

Other Psalms there are, which disclose far differ- ent scenes. In them, the sorrows of David are at an end ; and the day of his deliverance hath already dawned. The heavens are opened, and Jehovah ap- peareth in the cause of his afflicted servant. He descendeth from above, encompassed with clouds and darkness, preceded by fire and hail, proclaimed by thunder and earthquake, and attended by lightnings and whirlwinds. The mountains smoke, and the rocks melt before him; the foundations of the globe are uncovered, and the deep from beneath is moved at his presence. The adversary is dismayed and confounded; opposition, in the height of its career, feels the blast through all its powers, and instantly withers away. The anointed of God, according to his original designation, is at length elevated to the throne; his sceptre is extended over the nations; the temple is planned by him, and erected by his son; the ser\ices of religion are appointed in perfect order and beauty; Jerusalem becometh a praise in all the earth; and the kingdom is established in honour, peace, and felicity, if in Psalms of the former kind the holy Jesus might behold those per- secutions and sufferings, under which he was to be humbled, and to mourn, during his pilgrimage here below; in Psalms of this latter sort, he might strengthen and console hunself, as a man " touched with the feehng of our infirmities, and tempted in

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all points like as we are," by viewing " the glory that should follow;" by contemplating the manifes- tation of the Father in favour of his beloved vSon; his o^vTi joyful resurrection, triumphant ascension, and magnificent inauguration; the conversion of the world, and the establishment of the church; events which were foreshadowed by those above-mentioned; and to which, when the strongest expressions made use of by the divine Psalmist are applied, they wiU no longer appear hyperbolical ; especially if we bear in mind, that these prophetic descriptions wait for theii' full and final accomplishment at that day, when the mystical " body of Christ," having " filled up that which is behind of his afflictions,"* shall also, amidst the pangs and convulsions of departing na- ture, arise from the dead, and ascend into heaven ; where all the members of that body, which have been afflicted, and have mourned with their Lord and Master, shall be comforted and glorified together with him.f

In some of the Psalms, David appears as one suf- fering for his sins. When man speaks of sin, he

* Col. i. 24.

f Neque praetermittendum illiid Augustini passim ; tunc Psal- mos videri suavissimos, ac divinissima luce perfusos, cum in his caput et membra, Christum et Ecclesiam, sive aperte propalatos, sive latenter designates intelligimus — Quare iterum atque iterum erigamus animos; atque iibi Davidem atque Solomonem; ubi Davidis hostes, Saulem, Achitophelem, alios ; ubi bella et pacem, captivitatem, libertatem, ac caetera ejusmodi audimus ; turn animo infigamus Christum; et Ecclesiam labor ibus periculisque exerci- tam, atque inter adversa et prospera peregrinantem ; turn sanc- torum persecutores, non modo visibiles, seel etiam invisibiles illas atque aereas potestates, pugnasque in hac vita perpetes, ac secu- turam postea pacem sempiternam. Bossuet Dissertat. in Psalm, ad fin.

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speaks of what is his own; and, therefore, every Psalm where sin is confessed to be the cause of sorrow, belongs originally and properly to ns, as fallen sons of Adam, like David and all other men. This is the case of the fifty-first, and the rest of those which are styled Penitential Psalms, and have always been used in the church as such. Some- times, indeed, it happens, that we meet with heavy complaints of the number and burden of sins, in Psalms from which passages are quoted in the New Testament as uttered by our Redeemer, and in which there seems to be no change of person, from begin- ning to end. We are assured, for instance, by the apostle, Heb. x. 5. that the sixth, seventh, and eighth verses of the fortieth Psalm, " Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire," &c. are spoken by Messiah coming to abohsh the legal sacrifices, by the oblation of himself once for all. The same person, to ap- pearance, continues speaking, and, only three verses after complains in the following terms: " Innumer- able evils have compassed me about, mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me." So again, there are no less than five quotations from different parts of the sixty-ninth Psalm, all concurring to inform us that Christ is the speaker through that whole Psalm. Yet the fifth verse of it runs thus: " O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my cd^k guiltiness is not hid from thee." The solution of this difficulty given, and continually insisted on, in the writings of the Fathers is this; that Christ, in the day of his passion, standing charged with the sin and guilt of

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his people, speaks of such their sin and guilt as if they were his own, appropriating to himself those debts for which, in the capacity of a surety, he had made himself responsible. Tlie lamb which, under the law, was offered for sin, took the name QiyK, " guilt," because the guilt contracted by the offerer was transferred to that innocent creature, and typi- cally expiated by its blood.* Was not tliis exactly the case, in truth and reality, with the Lamb of God? " He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; but he bare our sins in his own body on the tree.f He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. "J Christ and the church compose one mystical person, of which he is the head, and the church the body; and as the body speaks by the head, and the head for the body, he speaks of her sin, and she of his righteousness; which considera- tion is at the same time a key to any claims of righ- teousness made in the Psalms by her, and to any confession of sin made by him. This seems to be a satisfactory account of the matter. Such, at least, appears to have been the idea generally adopted and received, in the first ages of the Christian Church; a circumstance which, it is presumed, will be deemed a sufficient apology for the author, if, in the explica- tion of such passages, he hath ventured to proceed accordingly. Nay, and even in reciting the Peni- tential Psalms, when the unhappy sufferer is ready to sink down under that weight of woe which sin hath laid upon him, if he will extend his thoughts,

* See Levit. v. 6. f 1 Pet. ii. 22. ^ 2 Cor. v. 21.

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as he is sometimes directed to do, to that holy and most innocent person, who felt and sorrowed so much for us all, he will thereby furnish himself with the best argument for patience, and an inexhaustible source of comfort. Nor can it, indeed, well be imagined, that our blessed Lord, as a member of the Jewish church, and an attendant on the service of the synagogue, though conscious to himself of no sin, did not frequently join with his " brethren ac- cording to the flesh," in the repetition of the Peni- tential, as well as the other Psalms, on the days of humiliation and expiation, when the use of them might be prescribed. If, from his circumcision to his crucifixion, " he bare our sins in his own body;'* why should it be thought strange, that he should confess them on our behalf, with his own mouth?

The offence taken at the supposed uncharitable and vindictive spirit of the imprecations, which occur in some of the Psalms, ceases immediately, if we change the imperative for the future, and read, not " let them be confounded," &c. but, " they shall be confounded," &c. of which the Plebrew is equally capable. Such passages will then have no more difficulty in them, than the other frequent predictions of divine vengeance in the writings of the prophets, or denunciations of it in the Gospels, intended to warn, to alarm, and to lead sinners to repentance, that they may fly from the wrath to come. This is Dr. Hammond's observation; who very properly re- piarks, at the same time, that in many places of this sort, as particularly in Psalm cix. (and the same may be said of Psalm Ixix.) it is reasonable to resolve, that Christ himself speaketh in the prophet; as be-

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iug the person there principally concerned, and the completion most signal in many circumstances there mentioned; the succession especially of Matthias to the apostleship of Judas. It is true, that in the citation made by St. Peter from Psal. cix. in Acts i. 20. as also, in that made by St. Paul from Psalm Ixix. in Rom. xi. 9. the imperative form is preserv- ed; " Let his habitation be void," &c. " Let their table be made a snare," &c. But it may be consi- dered, that the apostles generally cited from the Greek of the LXX version; and took it as they found it, making no alteration, when the passage, as it there stood, was sufficient to prove the main point which it was adduced to prove. If the imprecatory form be still contended for, all that can be meant by it, whether uttered by the prophet, by Messiah, or by ourselves, must be a solemn ratification of the just judgments of the Almighty against his impeni- tent enemies, like what we find ascribed to the blessed spirits in heaven, when such judgments were executed: Rev. xi. IT, 18. xvi. 5, 6, 7. See Mer- rick's Annotations on Ps. cix. and Witsii Miscellan. Sacr. lib. i. cap. xviii. sect. 24. But, by the future rendering of the verbs, every possible objection is precluded at once. This method has therefore been adopted in the ensuing Commentary.

Of the Psalms which relate to Israel, some are employed in celebrating the mercies vouchsafed them, from their going forth out of Egypt, to their com- plete settlement in Canaan. These were the con- stant standing subjects of praise and thanksgiving in the Israelitish church. But we are taught, by the writers of the New Testament, to consider this part

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of their history as one continued figure, or allegory. We are told, that there is another spiritual Israel of God; other children of Ahraham, and heirs of the promise; another circumcision; another Egyptj from the bondage of which they are redeemed; another wilderness through which they journey; other dangers and difficulties which there await them; other bread from heaven for their support; and another rock to supply them with living water; other enemies to overcome; another land of Canaan, and another Jerusalem, whicli they are to obtain, and to possess for ever. In the same light are to be viewed the various provocations and punishments, captivities and restorations, of old Israel afterwards, concerning which it is likewise true, tliat they " happened unto them for ensamples,"* types, or figures, " and were written for our admonition."-}- Care has therefore been taken to open and apply, for that salutary pur- pose, the Psalms which treat of the above-mentioned particulars.

What is said in the Psalms occasionally of the law and its ceremonies, sacrifices, ablutions, and purifi- cations; of the tabernacle and temple, with the services therein performed; and of the Aaronical priesthood; all this Christians transfer to the new law; to the oblation of Christ; to justification by his blood, and sanctification by his Spirit; to the true tabernacle, or temple not made with hands; and to what was therein done for the salvation of the world, by Him who was, in one respect a Sacrifice; in an- other a Temple; and in a third, an High Priest for

* Gr. Tvroi. f 1 Cor. x. 11.

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ever, after the order of Melcbisedek. That such was the intention of these legal figures, is declared at large in the Epistle to the Hebrews: and they are of great assistance to us now, in forming our ideas of the realities to which they correspond. " Under the Jewish economy," says the excellent Mr. Pascal, " truth appeared but in a figure; in heaven it is open, and without a veil; in the church militant it is so veiled, as to be yet discerned by its correspon- dence to the fio-ure. As the fififure was first built upon the truth, so the truth is now distinguishable by the figure." The variety of strong expressions used by David in the nineteenth and the hundred and nineteenth Psalms, to extol the enlivening, sav- ing, healing, comforting, efficacy of a law, which in the letter of it, whether ceremonial or moral, with- out pardon and grace, could minister nothing but condemnation, do sufficiently prove, that David understood the spirit of it, which was the Gospel itself.* And if any, who recited those Psalms, had

* Hsec inter, veri et spirituales Jiida?i, hoc est, ante Christum Christ! discipuli, altiora cogitabant, et rerum ccelestium Sacra- menta veneiati, novam Jerusalem, novum templum, novam arcam iiituebantur. — Bossuet Dissertat. in Psal. cap. i. Lex, juxta Spiritum accepta, ipsum erat Evangelium, sub veteribus figuris dehtescens, et cerimoniarum velis obtectum, ab ipso quidem Mose (imprimis in Deutcronomio) aliquatenus et pro temporum ratione explicatum, a prophetis vero succedentibus (ut visum est Divinse Sapiential) dihicidus ostensum, demum a Cbristo et apos- toh's plenissime et luce ipso sole clariori patefactuin. — Bulli Opera per Grabe, p. 6 14-. If the Jews, as our Saviour tells them, " thought they had eternal life in their Scriptures," they must needs have understood them in a spiritual sense: and I know not what other spiritual sense, that should lead them to the expectation of eternal life, they could put on their Scriptures, but that proplietical or tyjjical sense, which respected the Mes- siah. Jesus expressly asserts, at the same time, that their

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not the same idea, it was not the fault of the Law or of the Psalms, of Moses or of David, or of him who inspired both, but it was their own; as it is that of the Jews, at this hour, though their prophecies have now been fulfilled, and their types realized. " He that takes his estimate of the Jewish religion from the grossness of the Jewish multitude," as the last cited author observes, " cannot fail of making a very wrong judgment. It is to be sought for in the sacred writings of the prophets, who have given us sufficient assurance, that they understood the law not according to the letter. Our religion, ip like manner, is true and divine in the Gospels, and in the preaching of the apostles; but it appears utterly disfigured in those who maim or corrupt it."

Besides the figure supplied by the history of Israel, and by the law, there is another set of images often employed in the Psalms, to describe the bles- sings of redemption. These are borrowed from the natural world, the manner of its original production, and the operations continually carried on in it. The visible works of God are formed to lead us, under the direction of his w^ord, to a knowledge of those which are invisible; they give us ideas, by analogy, of a new creation rising gradually, like the old one, out of darkness and deformity, until at length it arrives at the perfection of glory and beauty; so that while we praise the Lord for all the wonders of his

" Scriptures testified of Him." How generally they did so, he explained at large, in that remarkable conversation with two of his disciples after his resm'rection ; when, " beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all tlie Scrip- tures, the things concerning himself." Kurd's Introd. to the Study of the Prophecies, Serm. ii.

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power, wisdom, and love, displayed in a system which is to wax old and perish, we may therein con- template, as in a glass, those new heavens, and that new earth, of whose duration there shall be no end.* The sun, that fountain of life, and heart of the world, that bright leader of the armies of heaven, enthroned in glorious majesty; the moon shining with a lustre borrowed from his beams; the stars glittering by night in the clear firmament; the air giving breath to all things that live and move; the interchanges of light and darkness; the course of the year, and the sweet vicissitudes of seasons; the rain and the dew descending from above, and the fruitfulness of the earth caused by them; the bow bent by the hands of the Most High, which compasseth the heaven about with a glorious circle; the awful voice of thunder, and the piercing power of lightning; the instincts of animals,f and the qualities of vegetables and mine-

* Read nature ; nature is a friend to truth ; Nature is Christian, preaches to mankind ; And bids dead matter aid us in our creed. Young.

f " I beheve, a good natural pliilosopher might show, with great reason and probabiUty, that there is scarce beast, bird, rep- tile, or insect, that does not, in each particular climate, instruct and admonish mankind of some necessary truth for their happi- ness either in body or mind." Dr. Cheyne's Philosophical Con- jectures on the Preference of Vegetable Food, p. 73. That which a celebrated writer has observed concerning a poet, may perhaps be equally applicable to a divine — " To him nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, should be familiar to his imagination, he should be conversant with all that is awfully vast, or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, should all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for everj-^ idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth ; and he who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions, and uilexpected in-

rals; the great and wide sea, with its unnumbered inhabitants; all these are ready to instruct us in the mysteries of faith, and the duties of morality: —

They speak their Maker as they can, But want and ask the tongue of man.

Parnell.

The advantages of Messiah's reign are represent- ed, in some of the Psalms, under images of this kind. We behold a renovation of all things, and the world, as it were, new created, breaks forth into singing. The earth is crowned with sudden verdure and fer- tility; the field is joyful, and all that is in it; the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord; the floods clap their hands in concert, and ocean fills up the mighty chorus, to celebrate the advent of the Great King.

Similar to these, are the representations of spiri- tual mercies by temporal deliverances from sickness, prison, danger of perishing in storms at sea, and from the sundry kinds of calamity and death, to which the body of man is subject; as also by scenes of domestic felicity, and by the flourishing state of well ordered communities, especially that of Israel in Canaan, which, while the benediction of Jehovah rested upon it, was a picture of heaven itself. The foregoing and

struction. By him, therefore, no kind of knowledge should be overlooked. He should range mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and picture upon his mind every tree of the forest, and flower of the valley; tlie crags of the rock, and the mazes of the stream." Rasselas, chap. x. The reader may see this exemplified in some " Disquisitions on Select Subjects of Scripture," by my worthy friend, the reverend Mr. Jones, whose labours make it evident, that true philosophy will ever be th« handmaid of true divinity.

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every other species of the sacred imagery, if there be any other not hitherto included, it hath been the author's main endeavour to illustrate. And a view of what is done in this way will, it is humbly hoped, afford some reasons to tliink, there may not be that necessary connexion, which a late noble writer has been pleased to suppose, between devotion and dul- ness.

The Psalms which remain, are such as treat, in plain terms, without figures or examples, of wisdom and folly, righteousness and sin; the happiness pro- duced by one, and the misery caused by the other; of particular virtues and vices; of the vanity of hu- man life; of the attributes of God; of that patience with -which the faithful should learn to bear the sight of wickedness triumphant in this world, looking for- ward to the day of final retribution; and subjects of the like nature. As Psalms of this kind call for little in the expository way, the general doctrines or pre- cepts implied in them, or suggested by them, are drawn forth in short reflections, attempted after the manner of those made by Father Quesnel on each verse of the New Testam_ent. The opportunity of doing this, where nothing else seemed to be required, and indeed of doing, upon every occasion, what did seem to be required in any way, was the reason for throwing the work into its present form, rather than that of a paraphrase, or any other. Some repeti- tions, in a performance of this sort, are unavoidable. But a Commentary on the Book of Psalms is not to be read all at once;* and it was thought better to

* The most profitable way of reading it, perhaps, would be, by «mall portions, often reviewing the text and the comment, and

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give the evposition of each Psahn complete in it- self, than to refer the reader elsewhere; which, therefore, is only done, when passages of a consid- erable length occur in two Psalms without any ma- terial difference.

Such is the method the Author has taken, such the authorities upon w^hich he has proceeded, and such the rules by which he has directed himself. If con- sistency and uniformity in the comment have been the result, they will afford, it is hoped, no contempti- ble argument on its behalf; since it is scarce possible to expound uniformly, on an erroneous plan, so great a variety of figurative language, as is to be found in the book of Psalms.*

Let us stop for a moment, to contemplate the true character of these sacred hymns.

Greatness confers no exemption from the cares and sorrows of life. Its share of them frequently

comparing them carefully together; at times >vhen the mind is most free, vacant, and calm : in the morning more especially, to pre- pare and fortify it for the business of the day ; and in the even- ing, to recompose, and set it in order, for the approaching season of rest.

* The student in theology, who is desirous of farther informa- tion upon a subject so curious, so entertaining, and so interesting as that of the figurative language of Scripture, the principles on which it is founded, and the best rules to be observed in the sober and rational intei-pretation of it, may find satisfaction, by consulting the following authors :

Lowth's Preface to his Commentary on the Prophets.

Lowth's Prselect. de Sacr. Poes. Heb. Prselect. iv. — xii.

Paschal' s Thoughts, sect. x. — xiv.

Kurd's Introd. to the Study of the Prophecies. Serm. ii. iii. iv.

Vitringa, Observat. Sacr. lib. vi. cap. xx. et lib. vii.

Vitringa, Praefat. ad Comment, in Jesaiam.

Glassii Philologia Sacra, lib. ii.

Witsii Miscellan. Sacra, torn. i. lib. iii. cap. iii. lib. ii. Dissert. i. ii. (Econom. Feed. lib. iv. cap. vi. — x.

Waterland's General Preface to Scripture Vindicated.

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bears a melancholy proportion to its exaltation. This the Israelitish monarch experienced. He sought in piety, that peace which he could not find in empire, and alleviated the disquietudes of state with the exer- cises of devotion.

His invaluable Psalms convey those comforts to others which they afforded to himself. Composed upon particular occasions, yet designed for general use; delivered out as services for Israelites under the Law yet no less adapted to the circumstances of Christians under the Gospel ; they present religion to us in the most engaging dress ; communicating truths which philosophy could never investigate, in a style which poetry can never equal; while history is made the vehicle of prophecy, and creation lends all its charms to paint the glories of redemption. Calculated alike to profit and to please, they inform the understanding, elevate the affections, and enter- tain the imagination. Indited under the influence of Him to whom all hearts are known, and all events foreknown, they suit mankind in all situations, grate- ful as the manna which descended from above, and conformed itself to every palate. The fairest pro- ductions of human wit, after a few perusals, like ga- thered flowers, wither in our hands, and lose their fragrancy; but these unfading plants of paradise be- come, as we are accustomed to them, still more and more beautiful; their bloom appears to be daily heightened; fresh odours are emitted, and new sweets extracted from them. He who hath once tasted their excellencies, will desire to taste them yet again; and he who tastes them oftenest will re- lish them best. Vol. I. E

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And now, could the Author flatter himself, that any one would take half the pleasure in reading the following exposition, which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly; vanity and vexation flew away for a season, care and disquietude came not near his dwelling. He arose, fresh as the morning to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say, that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every Psalm improved infinitely upon his acquaint- ance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last : for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent on these meditations on the Songs of Sion, he never ex- pects to see in this world. Very pleasantly did they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along: for when thus engaged, he counted no time. — They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet.

— But, alas ! these are the fond effusions of paren- tal tenderness. Others will view the production with very different eyes; and the harsh voice of in- exorable criticism will too soon awaken him from his pleasing dream. He is not insensible, that many learned and good men, whom he does not therefore value and respect the less, have conceived strong pre- judices against the scheme of interpretation here pur- sued; and he knows how little the generality of mo- dern Christians have been accustomed to speculations of this kind; which, it may likewise, perhaps, be said, will give occasion to the scoffs of our adversaries,

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tlie Jews and the Deists. Yet, if in the preceding pages it hath been made to appear, that the applica- tion of the Psalms to evangelical subjects, times, and cii'cum stances, stands upon firm ground; that it may- be prosecuted upon a regular and consistent plan; and that it is not only expedient, but even necessary to render the use of them in our devotions rational and profitable; will it be presumption in him to hope that, upon a calm and dispassionate review of the matter, prejudices may subside, and be done away ? If men, in these days, have not been accustomed to such contemplations, is it not high time they should become so? Can they begin too soon to study, and make themselves masters of, a science which pro- mises to its votaries so much entertainment, as well as improvement; which recommends the Scriptures to persons of true taste and genius, as books intended equally for our dehght and instruction; which de- monstrates the ways of celestial wisdom to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths to be peace in^ deed? From the most sober, deliberate, and atten- tive survey of the sentiments which prevailed upon this point, in the first ages of the church, when the apostolical method of citing and expounding the Psalms was fresh upon the minds of their followers, the Author cannot but be confident, that his Com- mentary, if it had then made its appearance, would have been universally received and approved, as to the general design of it, by the whole Christian world. And, however the Jews, in their present state of alienation and unbelief, may reject and set at nought such applications of their Scriptures to our Messiah and his chosen people, as they certainly will do; he E2

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is not less confident, that, whenever the happy and glorious day of their conversion shall come, and the veil shall be taken from their hearts, they will be- hold the Psalter in that light in which he has endea- voured to place it.* As to the deists, they, while they continue such, can have neither lot nor part in this matter; for giving no credit to the Scripture ac- count of things, either in the Old Testament or the New, to discourse with them concerning a connexion and analogy subsisting between the one and the other, is to reason about a fifth sense with a man who has only four. For the conviction both of the Jews and deists, other arguments are to be urged; arguments from undeniable miracles openly wrought, and plain prophecies literally fulfilled. Such proofs are " for them that believe not." And such have been re- peatedly urged, in their full force, by the many able

* " If this appears to l)e the case in so many of the Psalms (namely, that tliey are predictive of Messiah), how strongly does it justify our Lord's appeal to them as treating of Him ! And what a noble argument may hence arise, for the conviction and conversion of that extraordinary people, to whom tliey were originally communicated, when once the veil that is on their hearts shall be taken awai/, as by the same Spirit of prophecy Ave are assured it shall!" The Bishop of Carlisle's Theory of Religion, p. 176, 6th edit. With what transports of zeal and devotion, of faith and love, will the^ recite these lioly liymns, in the day when the whole body of the Jews, returning to the Lord their God, shall acknowledge their unparalleled crime in the murder of their King, and their penitential sorrow for the same, perhaps as his Lordship intimates, in the words of the filly-first Psalm : " De- liver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation ; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ; thou de- lightest not in burnt-oi!ering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not de- spise. O do good in thy good pleasure to Zion; build thou the walls of Jerusalem !"

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champions, who have stood forth (success evermore attend their lahours!) in defence of the evidences of Christianity. Expositions and meditations, hke those in the subsequent pages, serve not, nor are intended to serve, " for them who believe not, but for them who behave;"* who will exercise their faculties in discerning and contemplating the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and who are going on unto per- fection; to increase their faith, and inflame their cha- rity: to delight them in prosperity, to comfort them in adversity, to edify them at all times. Such effects, the Author doubts not, will be experienced by be- lievers, who will read this book with an honest and good heart, with seriousness and attention; for though he humbly trusts it M'ill not be deemed altogether unworthy a place in the libraries of the learned, he builds chiefly on that approbation which he is solici- tous it should receive in the closets of the devout; as considering, that it is love, heavenly love, wdiich " never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part: but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done aw^ay."f They who find not the wished-for satisfaction in one por- tion, will find it in another; they who disapprove of an interpretation at the first reading, may, perhaps, approve of it at the second; and they who still con- tinue to disapprove of some particulars, will not there- fore disdain to accept the benefit of the rest. He

* 1 Cor. xiv. 22. f 1 Cor. xiii. 8.

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has written to gratify no sect or party, but for the common service of all who call upon the name of Je- sus, wheresoever dispersed, and howsoever distres- sed, upon the earth. When he views the innu- merable unhappy differences among Christians, all of whom are equally oppressed with the cares and calamities of life, he often calls to mind those beauti- ful and affecting words which Milton represents Adam as addressing to Eve, after they had wearied themselves with mutual complaints and accusations of each other: —

But rise ; let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere ; but strive, In offices of love, how we may lighten Each other's burden in oui- share of woe.

B. X. V. 958.

Enough has been given to the arts of controversy. Let something be given to the studies of piety and a holy life. If we can once unite in these, our tempers may be better disposed to unite in doctrine. When we shall be duly prepared to receive it, " God may reveal even this unto us." To increase the number of disputes among us, is, therefore, by no means the intent of this publication. The Author having, for many years, accustomed himself to consider and ap- ply the Psalms, while he recited them, according to the method now laid down, has never failed to expe- rience the unspeakable benefit of it, both in public and in private; and would wish, if it so pleased God, that death might find him employed in meditations of this kind.* He has likewise frequently taken oc-

♦ i(

I have lost a world of time," said the learned Salmasius, on his death-bed; " if I had one year more, 1 would spend it in reading David's Psalms, and Paul's Epistles.

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casion, in the course of his ministry, to explain a Psalm, upon the same plan, from the pulpit; and whenever he has clone so, whether the audience were learned or unlearned, polite or rustic, h-e has gene- rally had the happiness to find the discourse, in an especial manner, noticed and remembered. But still many may be of a different opinion, who may con- scientiously believe the doctrines, and practise the duties of the Gospel, whether they see them shadow- ed out in the Psalms or not. Such will enjoy their own liberty, and permit their brethren to do the same. Or, if they shall think it necessary to take up the polemical pen, he desires only to receive that treat- ment, which he has himself shown to every writer, cited or referred to by him.* Instead of engaging in a tedious, and, perhaps, unprofitable altercation upon the subject, he feels himself at present much rather inclined, in such a case, to follow, at his pro- per distance, the amiable example of his greatly re- spected Diocesan, who reprinted in England the ob- jections made by a foreign professor, to some parts of his Lectures on the Hebrew Poetry, and left the public to form its own judgment between them.f

* Detur igitur erratis meis venia: ipse demum exemplo meo mihi prosim, qui neminem eorum, aquibus dissenserim, contume- liis affeci; qui non, vitio criticorum, in diversae sententise propug- natores acriter invectus sum ; qui denique earn veniam anteces- soribus meis libens tribui, quam ab iis, qui haec in manus sumturi sint, velim impetrare. Pearce in Prcefat. ad edit. Cic. de Oratore. f " In his si quae sunt, quae mihi minus persuasit Vir Clarissimus, ea malui hoc modo Ubero lectorum nostrorum judicio permittere, quam in disceptationem et controversiam injucundam, etfortasse infructuosam, vocare." Lowth in Praef. ad. edit. 2dam Prselect. de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum. — " Authors should avoid, as much as they can," says another very learned critic, " replies and re- joinders, the usual consequences of which are, loss of time and

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From that public, the Author of the following work is now to expect the determination of his fate. Should its sentence be in his disfavour, nothing further re- mains to be said, than that he has honestly and faithfully endeavoured to serve it, to the utmost of his power, in the way in which he thought himself best able; and to give the world some account of that time, and those opportunities, which, by the provi- dence of a gracious God, and the munificence of a pious Founder, he has long enjoyed in the happy retirement of a college.

loss cf temper. Happy is he who is engaged in controversy with his own passions, and comes off superior; who makes it his endeavom-, that his follies and weaknesses may die before him, and who daily meditates on mortality and immortality." Jortin's Preface to his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, p. xxxiv.

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That the Reader may the more easily tm-n to such Psahns as will best suit the present state of his mind, according to the different circumstances, whether external or internal, into which, by the changes and chances of life, or the variations of temper and disposition, he may, at any time, be thrown, the common Table of Psalms, classed under their seve- ral subjects, is here subjoined.

PRAYERS.

I. Prayers for pardon of Sin. Psalm 6, 25, 38, 51, 130. Psalms styled Penitential, 6, 32, 38, 5J, 102, 130, 143.

II. Prayers composed when the Psalmist was deprived of an opportunity of the public exercise of religion. Psalm 42, 43, 63, 84.

III. Prayers wherein the Psalmist seems extremely dejected, though not totally deprived of consolation, under his afflictions. Psalm 13, 22, C9, 77, 88, 143.

IV. Prayers wherein the Psalmist asketh help of God, in con- sideration of his own integrity, and the uprightness of his cause. Psalm 7, 17, 26, 35.

V. Prayers expressing the firmest trust and confidence in GOD under afflictions. Psalm 3, 16, 27, 31, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 71, 86.

VI. Prayers composed when the people of God were under afflic- tion or persecution. Psalm 44, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 89, 94, 102, 123, 137.

VII. The following are likewise Prayers in time of trouble and affliction. Psalm 4, 5, 11, 28, 41, 5b, 59, 64, 70, 109, 120, 140, 141, 142.

VIII. Prayers oi Intercession, Psalm 20, 67, 122, 132, 144.

PSALMS OF THANKSGIVING.

I. Thanksgivings for mercies vouchsafed to particular persons. Psalm 9, 18, 22, 30, 34, 40, 75, 103, 108, 116, 118, 138, 144.. E3

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II. Thanksgivings for mercies vouchsafed to the Israelites in general. Psalm 46, 48, 65, 66, 68, 76, 81, 85, 98, 105, 124, 126, 129, 135, 136, 149.

PSALMS OF PRAISE AND ADORATION, DISPLAY- ING THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

I. General acknowledgments of God's Goodness and Mera/, and particularly his care and protection of good men. Psalm 23, 34, 36, 91, 100, 103, 107, 117, 121, 145, 146.

II. Psalms displaying the Power, Majesty, Glory, and other attri- butes of the Divine Being. Psalm 8, 19, 24, 29, 33, 47, 50, e5, 66, 76, 77, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 104, 111, 113, 114, 115, 134, 139, 147, 148, 150.

INSTRUCTIVE PSALMS.

I. The different characters of good and bad men : The happiness of the one, and the miseries of the other, are represented in the following Psalms, 1, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 24s 25, 32, 34, 36, 37, 50, 52, 53, 58, 73, 75, 84, 91, 92, 94, 112, 119, 121, 125, 127, 128, 133.

II. The Excellence of God's Law. Psalm 19, 119.

III. The Vanity of Human Life. Psalm ,39, 49, 90.

IV. Advice to Magistrates. Psalm 82, 101.

V. The Virtue of Humility. Psalm 131.

PSALMS MORE EMINENTLY AND DIRECTLY PROPHETICAL.

Psalm 2, 16, 22, 40, 45, 68, 72, 87, 110, 118.

HISTORICAL PSALMS. Psalm 78, 105, 106.

t ^ ■ .'tLOGU

COMMENTARY

ON THE

BOOK OF PSALMS.

PSALM I.

First Day. — Morning Prayer,

ARGUMENT.— This Psalm, which is generally looked upon by expositors as a preface or introduction to the rest, describes the blessedness of the righteous, consisting, verse 1, negatively, in their abstaining from sin ; 2. positively, in holy meditation of the Scriptures, productive of continual growth in grace, which 3. is beautifully represented under an image borrowed from vegetation; as, 4. is the opposite state of the unbeliev- ing and ungodly, by a comparison taken from the threshing- floor. The last two verses foretel the final issue of things, with respect to both good and bad men, at the great day.

Verse " 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scorn- ful."

The Psalter, like the Sermon on the Mount, openeth with a " beatitude," for our comfort and

96 [Ps. 1.

encouragement, directing us immediately to that happiness which all mankind, in different ways, are seeking, and inquiring after. All Would secure themselves from the incursions of misery; but all do not consider that misery is the offspring of sin, from which it is therefore necessary to be delivered and preserved in order to become happy, or " bles- sed." The variety of expressions, here used by David, intimateth to us, that there is a gradation in wickedness; and that he who would not persist in evil courses, or commence a scoffer at the mystery of godliness, must have no fellowship with bad men : since it is impossible for any one who forsakes the right