Minster without and the Psalms within bear witness that prayer is man's strongest worker, and praise his noblest language. We may well go further, and add-The songs which, day by day, are chanted in the Cathedrals are suited to them as if written for them. For the Church connects them with the worship of Jesus. In days when faith has waxed cold, even those who profess to be Christians ask, 'Is it meet to worship and invoke Christ directly? › It may be replied 'Christ is risen and at God's right hand.' And He shall live: and one shall give to Him of Sheba's gold. The Church's perpetual worship acknowledges that perpetual blessing. The Psalter is her manual. Still as she chants Thy Throne, O God, is for ever, she bows before Him as her God. Still, as the 22nd Psalm is wailed with its pathetic music, she bends before the Pierced Hands and Feet. The 16th Psalm is addressed to Him as Risen-the 24th, as King of Glory-the 110th, at God's Right Hand. Christmas, Epiphany, Advent, Lent, Passion Week, Easter, Ascension-tide, are marked in a marvellous manual of worship. Without that collection of sacred songs the Church would have been like a Cathedral, whose special function it is to express a nation's joy and sorrow before God and man, left furnished with no peal of bells. 1 Psalm lxxii. 15. LECTURE VII. The Scripture, foreseeing. GALAT. iii. 8. IF we have conducted our examination of the Psalter fairly, we have obtained from it a threefold witness-to the new character called into existence by Christianity, to the new organized community which was destined to embrace all races, and to the new worship which was to ascend to the Throne of Grace. One condition more is wanting to make this testimony complete. Men of this character, welded together in this society, expressing their adoration in this form, must have a common stock of religious conceptions. They must be possessed of common ideas about the nature and character of God, about the mystery of their own origin, about the nature of the Messiah whom they worship, about the significance of His sufferings, the mode of acceptance with God, and the value of the great ordinances which they possess. other words, they must have a common Theology. I. In We proceed, therefore, to examine the witness to the great conceptions of Christian Theology which is to be found in the Psalter. This examination may conveniently be arranged under four general heads: (i.) the Theistic, Q (ii.) the anthropological, (iii.) the Christological, and (iv.) the scheme of Redemption, as efficacious with God, realized by man, and conveyed to him through special sacramental channels. i. The Theistic ideas of the Psalms. It is often said that the sublime idea of one spiritual God came to the Hebrews from Nature. But why did not other races see His Name in the starry heaven, like David? When Israel was given up to his own instincts, he was always revolting to Baal and Moloch, to the cruelties and obscenities of alien altars. The chief witnesses of Jehovah were His martyrs. Israel was the prophet of Theism, not because of race instincts, but in spite of them-not by the inspirations of the voice of nature, but against them. For the critical distinctions between the Jehovistic and Elohistic Psalms, I must be content to refer you to others. What I now insist upon is that the Psalms, under these and other names, give us that idea of the Living Personal God, never confounded with His creatures, which is the 'preamble' of Christian Theology. God, in the Psalms, is not only Creator, King, and Judge. He has the Eye that guides, the Wing that shelters, the Hand that sustains. Their tone is eloquently condensed into a few sentences by Donne. 'If He be our Refuge, what enemy can hurt? if our Defence, what temptation can subdue? if our Rock, what storm can overwhelm? if our Salvation, what melancholy can depress? if our Glory, what calamity can hurt?' God's attributes, too, are distinctly mentioned, that we may reason from them. For instance Once God spake, yea, twice have I heard the same, That power belongeth unto God. Also unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy." Again Compassionate and gracious is the Lord, So far hath He removed our sins from us. As a father hath compassion on his children, So hath the Lord compassion on them that fear Him.3 When presented with certain extreme doctrines men say-'Such views contradict the best idea which we can form of God's justice.' They are sometimes told in answer that they really know, and can know, nothing about God's justice, i.e., that God's justice may become injustice. It is quite a different thing from this to say that, with larger knowledge, relations might be discovered which would prove the thing objected to to be just. A moral attribute becomes infinite, not by being changed into its opposite, but by taking in all of which it it susceptible. Take any quality in man. Eliminate from it all that is partial, evil, ambiguous. Conceive it made superlative. And it will give us a conception, inadequate indeed, but perfectly true, so far as it goes, of the same attribute in God. Thus, for the wrath of God. Take from the notion of wrath all that is blind, capricious, and merely vindictive. Thus, for God's compassion. In human compassion there is always an element of suffering. We project ourselves into the sufferer's place, and suffer with him. Take this from sympathy, and we have then the tranquil goodness, the love without emo tion, of God. 'In passing up the 2 Psalm lxii. 11, 12. *Davison, Discourses on Prophecy, pp. 513-518. (Note on Discourse vii.) † See Bishop Martensen, II. § 42. On our conceptions of the Divine attributes, and their validity, see S. Augustin, De Div. Quæst. ad Simplicianum, II. Quæst. ii.; De Trinit. lib. v. cap. 1; Confess. lib. i. cap. 4. Cf. Nourrisson, La Philos. de S. Augustin, Tom. i. pp. 275, sqq. Faithfulness strong as the rock, and love to redeem and liberate, are His, who is the soul's Strength and Redeemer.'1 The natural proofs for the existence of God may be divided into two general classes. Man rises to God (1) from himself, (2) from the world. The first includes the two arguments which, in modern philosophy, are universally known as the ontological and moral. The second includes the two others, now generally styled cosmological and teleological. The last is peculiarly Western. It leads us to look upon the world, not as a mere pageant, but as 'a reality rich in meaning a grand and fruitful combination of rational ends and proper means.' 2 Its practical importance has been pointed out by Leibnitz in a recently discovered manuscript, only printed within the last few years. 'Meditations which are not in some degree based upon reason,' said that great thinker, 'are but arbitrary imaginations which vanish with the least sensation. Accustom yourself to find everywhere some subject for worship and love; for there is nothing in nature which may not furnish something whereof to make a hymn to God. Accustom yourself to remark the links, the order, the fair progression in everything; and, as we can never have enough experience in matters moral, political, theological (for God exercises our faith in the mists and cloud), we shall do well to establish our minds by sensible experiences of God's greatness and wisdom, found in the marvellous harmonies of the masterly and inexhaustible mechanism of the inventions of God which 1 .15 .Psalm xix צוּרִי וְגוֹאֲלִי 2 Bishop Martensen, II. § 40. |