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The Psalms as the mirror of the human soul: their association with national and individual life: their universality; not limited to any age, nation, or variety of Christian creed; their translation into verse; their influence in literature; the first of religious autobiographies; power over human lives in all ages of history.
ABOVE the couch of David, according to Rabbinical tradition, there hung a harp. The midnight breeze, as it rippled over the strings, made such music that the poet-king was constrained to rise from his bed, and, till the dawn flushed the eastern skies, he wedded words to the strains. The poetry of that tradition is condensed in the saying that the Ron^ gf Psalms contains the whole music of the heart of man, swe&t J^y the hand of his Maker. In it are gathered the lyricaT burst of his tenderness, the moan of his penitence, the pathos of his sorrow, the triumph of his victory, the despair of his defeat, the firmness of his confidence, the rapture of his assured hope. In it is presented the anatomy of all parts of the human soul; in it, ,as Heine says, are collected "sunrise and sunset, birth and death, promise and fulfilment the whole drama of humanity".
In the Psalms is painted, for all time, in fresh unfading colours, .the picture of the moral warfare of man, often baffled yet never wholly defeated, struggling upwards to all that is best and highest in his nature, always aware how short of the aim falls the attempt, how great is the gulf that severs the wish from its fulfilment. In them we do not find the innocent converse of man with God in the Garden of Eden; if we did, the book would for our fallen natures lose its value. On the contrary, it is the revelation of a soul deeply conscious of sin, seeking, in broken accents of shame and penitence and hope, to renew personal communion with God, heart to heart, thought to thought, and face to face. It is this which gives to the Psalms their eternal truth. It is this which makes them at once the breviary and the viaticum of humanity. Here are gathered not only pregnant statements of the principles of religion, and condensed maxims of spiritual life, but a nrnrnpl-nayf of effort, a summary of devotion, a manual of prayer and praise, and all this is clothed in language, which is as rich in poetic beauty as it is universal and enduring in poetic truth.
The Psalms, then, are a mirror in which each man sees the motions of his own soul. They express in exquisite words the kinship which every thoughtful human heart craves to find with a supreme, unchanging, loving God, who will be to him a protector, guardian, and friend. They utter the ordinary experiences, the familiar thoughts of men; but they give to these a width of range, an intensity, a depth, and an elevation, which transcend the capacity of the most gifted. They translate into speech the spiritual passion of the loftiest genius; they also utter, with the beauty born of truth and simplicity, and with exact agreement between the feeling and the expreteion, the inarticulate and humble longings of the unlettered peasant. So it is that, in every country, the language of the Psalms has become part of the daily life of nations, passing into their proverbs, mingling with their conversation, and used at every critical stage of existence.
With our national, as well as with our private lives, the Psalms are inextricably mingled. On the Psalms, both in spirit (Ps. xx. 9), and language (Ps. Ixviii. i), is based our ..National Anthem. From the lion and the unicorn of Ps. xxii. m, are taken the supporters of the royal arms, In all the Coronation Offices from Egbert to Edward VII, not only iJia services, but the symbolic ceremonies are based upon the Psalms the oil of gladness above his fellows, the sword girded on the thigh of the most Mighty one, the crown of pure gold, the sceptre of righteousness, the throne of judgment. In Christian Art, as the conventional representation of the Wise Men of the East as three kings is founded on the Kings of Tharsis, Saba, and Arabia of Ps. Ixxii. 10-11, so the use of the Pelican as a symbol of Christ is guided by the comparison of the pelican in the wilderness of Ps. cii. 6. A Psalm (li,, verse i) supplied the "neck verse" of mediaeval justice, which afforded the test of benefit of clergy. In the Psalms ancient families have sought their mottoes, such as the "Fortuna mea in bello campo" (P i xyi. y) of the Beauchamps, the "Nisi Dominus frustra" (Ps. cxxvii. i) of the Comptons, or the "Non dormit qui custodit" (Ps. cxxi. 3) of the Coghills. Ancient trade guilds have found in the Psalms the legend of their charter of incorporation, like the "Omnia subjecisti sub pedibus, oves et boves" (Ps. viii. 6-7) of the Butchers' Company. From the Psalms Edinburgh takes its motto of " Nisi Dominus frustra" (Ps. cxxvii., verse i). From the same source the University of Oxford took its "Dominus illuminatio mea" (Ps. xxvii. i), and the University of Durham its "Fundamenta ejus" (Ps. Ixxxvii. i). Under the sanction, as it were, of a text from the Psalms "The earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is; the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein," Ps. xxiv., verse i), was held the Great Exhibition of 1851. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Ps. cxxvii., verse i), is the verse chosen byi Smeaton for the Eddystone Lighthouse. To innumerable^ almshouses, hospitals, public buildings and private houses, the Psalms have supplied inscriptions. To coins they have furnished legends, like the coins of the Black Prince in Guienne, "Dominus adjutor meus et protector meus," etc. (Ps. xxviii. 8); the florin of Edward III. in 1344, "Domine, ne in furore arguas me" (Ps. vi. i); or the shilling of Edward VI. in 1549, "Inimicos ejus induam confusione" (Ps. cxxxii. 19). On sword-blades, trenchers, and rings, verses from the Psalms are inscribed. By texts from the Psalms, sundials all over the world enforce the solemn lesson of the passage of time. Here are the "Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt" (Ps. cii. n) of San Michele at Venice, or Langen Schwalbach; the English version 'My days are gone like a shadow,' at Arbroath, and St. Hilda's, Whitby; and the same idea, ( L'homme est semblable a la vanite; ses jours sont comme une ombre qui passe" (Ps. cxliv. 4), at St. Brelade's, in Jersey.
With a psalm we are baptized, and married, and buried; with a psalm we begin, and realize to the full, and end, our earthly existence. With what strange power do the familiar words of the Book come home to us as we grow older! Here are verses, over which have stumbled, forty years ago, the childish lips of brothers, severed from us by years of change and absence, yet now, by force of association with the Psalms, seated once again by our side in the broken circle of home. Here again is a passage, which, with trembling voice and beating heart, we read aloud by the deathbed of one, with whose passing the light faded and our own lives grew grey, and void, and lampless. Yet still it is to the Psalms, even when they wound us most, that we turn for help and comfort. As life's evening closes round us, and as the winged thoughts, that we have made our own, sweep in from the horizon of our memories, no words come home to us with swifter, surer flight than those of the Psalms.
To weary travellers of every condition and at every period of history, the Psalms have been rivers of refreshment and wells of consolation. They alone have known no limitations to a particular age, country, or form of faith. In them the spirit of controversy and the war of creeds are forgotten: love of the Psalter has united the Anglican and Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Nonconformist. Over the parched fields of theological strife the breath of the Psalms sweeps, fresh and balmy. For centuries the supplications of Christians, clothed in the language of the Psalter, have risen like incense to the altar-throne of God; in them have been expressed, from age to age, the devotion and the theology of religious communions that, in all else, were at deadly feud. Surviving all the changes in Church and State, in modes of thought, in habits of life, in forms of expression, the Psalms, f3S devotional exercises, have sunk into our hearts; as sublime poetry, have fired our imaginations; as illustrations of human life, have arrested our minds and stored our memories.
In the Psalms the vast hosts of suffering humanity have found, from the time of Jonah to the present day, the deepest expression of their hopes and fears. As our Lord Himself died with the words of a psalm upon His lips, so the first martyr, Stephen, had used the words thus hallowed. So also, in prison at Phillipi, Paul and Silas encouraged themselves by singing psalms throughout the night. It was by the Psalms that the anguish, wrung from tortured lips on the cross, at the stake, on the scaffold, and in the dungeon, has been healed and solaced. Strong in the strength that they impart, young boys and timid girls have risen from their knees in the breathless amphitheatre, thronged with its quivering multitudes, and boldly faced the lions. Neither the rudeness of mosaic art, nor the lapse of sixteen centuries, has obliterated the radiant smile of triumph, with which St. Agnes and her companions, on the walls of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, press forward to greet Him, for whose sake they gave their young and tender bodies to be tortured. With the Psalms upon their tongues, myriads have died now in quiet sickrooms, surrounded by all who have loved them best in life now alone, and far from home and kindred now hemmed in by fierce enemies howling for their blood. Thus in the Psalms there are pages which are stained with the life-blood of martyrs, and wet with the tears of saints; others, which are illuminated by the victories of weak humanity over suffering and fear and temptation; others, which glow with the brightness of heroic constancy and almost superhuman courage. Over the familiar words are written, as it were in a palimpsest, the heart stirring romances of spiritual chivalry, the most moving tragedies of human life and action.
How much, or how little, of our religion is a matter of habit, or a personal acquisition, this is no place to inquire. But assuredly the Psalms gain in interest and power from their associations with human history, and from their use by our fellowmen in every form of trial which can confront humanity. They have inspired some of the noblest hymns in our language. Their rendering into verse has occupied many of the most gifted men in the history of our nnation knights of chivalry, like Sir Philip Sidney, aided by his sister, Margaret, Countess of Pembroke; men of science, like Lord Bacon, in whose version the philosopher overmasters the poet; classical scholars, like George Sandys, one of the most successful of early versifiers; courtiers, like Sir Thomas Wyatt; ambassadors, like Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Henry Wotton, or Hookham Frere; distinguished prelates, such as Archbishop Parker, or Bishop Ken, or Bishop Hall, or Bishop King: queens and kings, like Elizabeth, or James I.; sturdy Puritans, such as Francis Rous; Cromwellian captains, like Thomas, Lord Fairfax, or George Wither, whose sweet vein of early poetry was soured by the vinegar of politics and polemics ; poets like Crashaw, Phinehas Ffetcher, Henry Vaughan, Bums, Cowper, or Milton, whose versions, with one exception, fall below the standard which we should have expected his lyric genius and devotional fervour to attain; parish priests, like George Herbert and John Keble; heroes of the Dunciad, like Sir Richard Blackmore and Luke Milboume; masters of prose, like Addison; Methodists, like Charles Wesley; Nonconformists, such as Isaac Watts, whose version of Ps. xc., '0 God, our help in ages past,' is perhaps the finest hymn in the English language.
Poets and men of letters, like Dante and Camoens, Shakespeare and Cervantes, Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Carlyle and Ruskin, Heine and Herder, Pascal and Lamartine, have acknowledged the unrivalled charm of the Psalter. From the Psalms hymn writers have drawn their most striking inspirations; to turn them into verse has been the occupation of men of all nationalities, professions, and pursuits at every period of history; their language, imagery, and ideas have fascinated men of the highest poetic genius. But besides the indirect influence which they have thus exercised on literature, the Psalms may be said to have created a literature of their own. Of all that mass of writings in which is recorded the inner life of Christians, they are the precursors and the pattern. They are the parents of those religious autobiographies which, even in literary and psychological interest, rival, if they do not surpass, the Confessions of Rousseau, or the Truth and Fiction of Goethe. From the Psalms are descended books like the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis, the Grace Abounding of John Bunyan, the Devotions of Bishop Andrewes, the Thoughts of Blaise Pascal.
In the pages of such works the tone and spirit of the Psalms are faithfully represented; whether in devotional exercises, in guides to the spiritual life, in meditations and counsels on holy living and holy dying, or in the unconscious records of the personal history of religious minds, their
influence is everywhere present. They are the inspiration of that soliloquy at the throne of God, in which Augustine revealed his soul before a world which is yet listening, as for fifteen centuries it has listened, to the absolute truthfulness of his Confessions. They are the wings which lifted Thomas a Kempis out of his white-washed cell, bore him above the flat meadows of St Agnes, and floated heavenwards those mystic musings of the Imitation which thrilled with mingled awe and hope the heart of Maggie Tulliver. They lent their height and depth to the religion of Bishop Andrewes, whose private prayers, in their elevation above doctrinal controversies, in their manliness and reality, and in the comprehensiveness of their horizon, seem to translate, for individual use in the closet, the public worship of the Anglican Church. They were the live coal which touched the lips of John Bunyan, and transformed the unlettered tinker into a genius and a poet, as, with a pen of iron and in letters of fire, he wrote the record of his passage from death to life. They sharpened the keen sight with which Pascal pierced to the heart of truth, and nerved the courage with which he confronted the mysteries of the vision that his lucid intellect conjured up before his eyes. Thus the Psalms, apart from their own transcendent beauty and universal truth, have enriched the world by the creation of a literature which, .century after century, has not only commanded the admiration of sceptics, but elevated the characters of innumerable believers, encouraged their weariness, consoled their sorrows, lifted their doubts, and guided their wavering footsteps.
So far I have spoken mainly of the influence of the Psalms on human thought. But their workings in the sphere of human action have been equally striking and equally universal. No fragment of the glorious temples at Jerusalem has survived the lapse of time; but the imperishable hymns of the Jewish worship rule the hearts of men with more than their pristine power, and still continue to inspire and elevate the conduct and devotions of successive generations of mankind. Fathers of the early Church, like Origen, Athanasius and Jerome, Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine apostles of British Christianity, such as Columba, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Dunstan, and Bede mediaeval saints, like Bernard, Francis of Assisi, or Thomas of Villanova statesmen, like Ximenes, Burghley, and Gladstone have testified to the universal truth and beauty of the Psalms. With a psalm upon their lips died Wyclif, Hus, and Jerome of Prague, Luther and Melancthon. Philosophers, such as Bacon and Locke and Hamilton; men of science, like Humboldt and Romanes; among missionaries, Xavier, Martyn, Duff, Livingstone, Mackay and Hannington; explorers, like Columbus; scholars, like Casaubon and Salmasius; earthly potentates, like Charlemagne, Vladimir Monomachus, Hildebrand, Louis IX., Henry V., Catherine de Medicis, Charles V., Henry of Navarre, and Mary, Queen of Scots have found in the Psalms their inspiration in life, their strength in peril, or their support in death.
To collect together some of the countless instances in which the Psalms have thus guided, controlled and sustained the lives of men and women in all ages of human history, and at all crises of their fate, is the purpose of this book.