| . |
In the search for food and fuel, a sailor found two books cast by the waves on the shore. One was a Bible, the other a Scottish Psalm Book. In both. Duff's name was written. To the shipwrecked party the books seemed a message from God. Led by Duff, they knelt down on the sand while he read them Psalm cvii., "Whoso is wise will ponder these things," etc. On Duff himself the effect was lasting. All his library was lost. With it had gone all his notes and memoranda, every- thing that reminded him of his student life. Only the Bible and Psalms were preserved. Henceforth, as he read the message, human learning was to be only a means and not an end. In this spirit he founded his College, to teach in the English language everything that was educationally useful, and to hallow secular teaching with the study of the Christian faith and doctrines. Every morning he and his household began the day by singing together one of the Psalms in Rous's version. On his journeys, the Psalms were ever in his mind. Travelling in 1849 from Simla to Kotghur, his road lay by a narrow bridle-path, cut out of the face of a precipitous ridge of rock. As he rode, he watched a shepherd, followed by his sheep, making his way along the mountain side. The man carried a long rod, at one end of which was a crook, at the other a thick band of iron. If the shepherd saw a sheep creeping too far up the mountain, or feeding too near the edge of the precipice, he went back, caught one of the hind legs of the animal in his crook, and gently pulled it back to the flock. The other end was used to beat off the dangerous beasts that prowled round the places where the sheep lay. " This brought to the traveller's remembrance the expression of David, the shepherd, in the 23rd Psalm (verse 4), ' Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me' the staff clearly meaning God's watchful guiding and directing providence, and the rod His omnipotence in defending His own from foes. It is no tautology."
Carey and Duff passed away in ripe old age, having lived to see some of the fruits of their labours. Henry Martyn, dying alone in a foreign land, had completed two of the great tasks on which he had set his mind. Very different was the fate of Alien Gardiner (1794-1851). The leader of a forlorn hope of missionary enterprise among the Tierra del Fuegans, he, with his six companions, was starved to death, never wavering in the patient courage or losing the sure trust in God which he drew from the book of Psalms.
After sixteen years' service in the Royal Navy, Commander Gardiner found himself, in 1826, without employment. He was free to devote his life to missionary work. For years he laboured, without any permanent success, among the Zulus in South Africa and the Indians in South America. On Septem- ber 7th, 1850, he sailed with six companions for Tierra del Fuego, where he hoped to establish a mission. In December the party was landed on Picton Island, furnished with pro- visions for six months. The natives were hostile and thievish;
the climate was rigorous, the country barren and wind swept. They had only a flask and a half of powder between them; the rest had been forgotten: their nets were broken; their food was exhausted, and no fresh supplies reached them from the Falkland Islands. One by one the party sickened and died, the last survivor being Gardiner. In his Diary their story is recorded.
Six months had passed. In the midst of snow, and ice, and storm, the little party prayed for the coming of the expected succour. On June 4th, 1851, Gardiner writes: " Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord " (Ps. xxvii., verse 14). A lucky shot, fired with almost their last grain of powder, killed five ducks. It is in the words of the Psalms, that the Diary records the gratitude of the hungry men: " i6th June. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer " (Ps. ciL, verse 17). " They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing" (Ps. xxxiv., verse 10). Three of the band were in a dying condition; and Gardiner himself had realised the pros- pect of starvation. Still he retained his confident trust: " Be merciful unto me, 0 God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in Thee: yea, in the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities are over past" (Ps. Ivii., verse i), is his entry for June 2ist. A week later was his birthday. "I know," he writes in his Diary for June 28th, " that it is written, ' They who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good' (Ps. xxxiv., verse 10). And again, ' Cast Thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee' (Ps. lv., verse 22). Whatever the Lord may in His pro- vidence see fit to take away, it is that which He Himself has bestowed. . . . Still I pray that, if it be consistent with Thy righteous will, 0 my heavenly Father, Thou wouldest look down with compassion upon me and upon my companions, who are straightened for lack of food, and vouchsafe to provide that which is needful . . . but, if otherwise. Thy will be done." One of the party had now died, and all were very weak. Still their sufferings were endured without a murmur. On July 5th, a hand was painted upon a rock leading to the Pioneer Cavern, in which Gardiner lived, and, underneath it, "Ps. Ixii., 5-8." The words referred to are: " Nevertheless, my soul, wait thou still upon God; for my hope is in Him. He truly is my strength and my salvation; He is my defence, so that I shall not fall. In God is my health and my glory; the rock of my might, and in God is my trust. 0 put your trust in Him alway, ye people;
pour out your hearts before Him, for God is our hope." At the end of August, two more of the band had died, and for the rest the end was rapidly approaching. The last entry in the Diary is dated September 5th: " Great and marvellous are the loving- kindnesses of my gracious God unto me. He has preserved me hitherto, and for four days, although without bodily food, without any feeling of hunger or thirst." When a relief ship arrived, October zist, 1851, the bodies of Gardiner and three of his companions were found lying unburied on the shore.
The death of Gardiner seemed to be an useless sacrifice in a hopeless cause. No results were achieved by him in Tierra del Fuego. The career of David Livingstone (1813-73) was in one respect a striking contrast. It was crowded with triumphs. Nor must his successful labour in the cause of geographical science allow us to invert the order of the objects to which his life was devoted. He was, before all else, a Christian mis- sionary, and, as part of the Gospel message, an apostle of freedom from the horrors of slavery.
Through his mother, David Livingstone seems to have added to the daring of his Highland ancestors the tenacity of the Lowland Covenanter. As a boy of nine, he won a New Testament from his Sunday-school teacher for repeating by heart Psalm cxix. A year later he became a " piecer " in the cotton factory of Blantyre, and grew up, inured to toil, insati- able for books, a keen student of natural history, and an occasional poacher. It was not till he was twenty that his mind took a decidedly religious turn. But, from that time onward, his heart, fired by the examples of Brainerd and of Carey, was set on a missionary life. He offered his services to the London Missionary Society, was accepted, and (Novem- ber aoth, 1840) ordained. A fortnight later, he sailed for the Cape.
With a psalm Livingstone bade farewell to his family and home. "I remember my father and him," writes his sister, " talking over the prospects of Christian missions. They agreed that the time would come when rich men and great men would think it an honour to support whole stations of missionaries, instead of spending their money on hounds and horses. On the morning of i7th November (1840), we got up at five o'clock. My mother made coffee. David read the isist and i35th Psalms, and prayed. My father and he walked to Glasgow to catch the Liverpool steamer." He never saw his father again. His mother had told him that she " would have liked one of her laddies to lay her head in the grave." "It so happened," writes David Livingstone in 1865, "that I was there to pay the last tribute to a dear good mother."
In Africa, for thirty years, Livingstone toiled unceasingly to explore the continent, abolish the slave trade, and evangelise the native races. He early learned the lesson that the spiritual cannot be absolutely divorced from the secular. Some may think that the explorer predominated over the missionary. Yet, throughout his journeys, he maintained, in all its strength and purity, his own inner life of fellowship with God. It was with a psalm that he encouraged himself to face the unknown future which each day might bring. Menaced with death by savages, sickened by the atrocities of the slave trade, often pros- trated by fever or gnawed by hunger, tormented by poisonous insects, sometimes moving in such bodily pain that he felt as if he were dying on his feet, he found his daily strength in the words, " Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in Him; and He shall bring it to pass" (Ps. xxxvii., verse 5). This was the text which sustained him, as he says himself, at every turn of his " course in life in this country, and even in England."
Livingstone's last expedition started from Zanzibar in 1866. He disappeared into the heart of Central Africa. Only vague rumours of his life or death reached the civilised world. In October 1871, he had arrived at Ujiji a living skeleton; all the stores which he expected had disappeared ; he was in a desper- ate plight; only three of his men remained faithful; the rest had deserted him; starvation stared him in the face. It was then that he was found by Stanley. At Unyanyembe Living- stone halted, while Stanley returned to the coast to send him men and stores. From March to August 1872, he waited. At last the men came, and it is in the words of a psalm that he records his joy. The entry in his Diary for August gth, 1872, is as follows: " I do most devoutly thank the Lord for His goodness in bringing my men near to this. Three came to-day, and how thankful I am I cannot express. It is well the men who were with Mr Stanley came again to me. (Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Amen.'" (Ps. ciii., verse i.)
With " failing strength, but never-failing will," he pressed on. Weak, bloodless, and suffering excruciating pain, he was, in fact, a dying man. On the morning of May ist, 1873, he was found dead, on his knees in the hut at Itala. " Kneeling at the bedside, with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow, his last words on earth were spoken, not to man but to God."
In the train of Livingstone followed James Hannington, the first Bishop of Equatorial Africa. In July 1885, he had set out from Frere Town to make his way through the Masai country to Lake Victoria Nyanza. Every morning, throughout his toilsome, dangerous journey, he greeted the sunrise by reading or repeating his " Travelling Psalm," " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills," etc. (Ps. cxxi.). On October i2th, he left the rest of his party, and, a week later, reached the shores of the lake. He was, in fact, marching to almost certain death. King Mwanga, fearing annexation of his dominions, and believing the missionaries to be the agents of the design, had begun a bitter persecution of the Christians. At a village on the shores of the lake, Hannington was seized, and confined in a miserable prison, surrounded by noisy, drunken guards. Consumed with fever, and at times delirious from pain, devoured by vermin, menaced every moment by the prospect of death, he found strength in the Psalms. On Wednesday, October 28th, he notes in his Diary : " I am quite broken down and brought low. Comforted by Psalm xxvii. Word came that Mwanga had sent three soldiers, but what news they bring, they will not yet let me know. Much comforted by Psalm xxviii." " October 2Qth, Thursday (eighth day in prison). I can hear no news, but was held up by Psalm xxx., which came with great power. A hyena howled near me last night, smelling a sick man, but I hope it is not to have me yet." This is his last entry. ^That day, at the age of thirty-seven, he was killed.
On the influence of the Psalms in the everyday lives of ordinary men and women, it is unnecessary to dwell. The career of Colonel Gardiner (1688-1745) proves, that even the chilling atmosphere of the early years of the eighteenth cen- tury did not impair their power over the human heart. Except for his death at Prestonpans, described in Waverley, there is little to distinguish Gardiner as in any way remarkable. " A very weak, honest, and brave man," is the testimony of Alexander Carlyle. Philip Doddridge relates that, in July 1719, James Gardiner, then a notorious rake, was " converted " by a vision which appeared to him as he sat in his room at Paris, waiting the hour for an assignation with his mistress, and idly turning the pages of The Christian Soldier to find amusement. Alexander Carlyle tells a less supernatural story. But, whatever were the true circumstances, it is not disputed that, from that time forward, Gardiner's character was changed, and that he strove to reform, not only his own life, but the lives of those about him and under his command. A psalm fur- nished the text (Ps. cxix., verse 158) from which Doddridge preached the sermon that found for him a way to the heart of Giardirier. In his biography of his friend, Doddridge shows how deep was the hold which the Psalms possessed on the colonel's life. That he might at all times command their com- fort and encouragement, he leamt several of the Psalms by heart, and, as he rode, alone and in unfrequented places, used to repeat them to himself or sing them aloud. Throughout his letters they are repeatedly quoted. In 1743 he had returned from Flanders, ill, and impressed with the conviction of a speedy death. His intimate friends, and those immediately about him, remembered how his mind dwelt with special delight on the words, " My soul, wait thou still upon God " (Ps. Ixii., verse 5), or upon Psalm cxlv., and the version of it by Isaac Watts. The outbreak of the Rebellion of 1745 found him sufficiently recovered to command his regiment of horse at the battle of Prestonpans, fought on the great open field into which the arable land was thrown. Mortally wounded, he was carried past the graveyard of Tranent to the minister's house, where he died. Five-and-twenty years before, he had dreamed a dream in which the place was depicted. " He imagined that he saw his Blessed Redeemer on Earth, and that he was following Him through a large Field, following Him whom his Soul loved, but much troubled because he thought his Blessed Lord did not speak to him; till he came up to the Gate of Burying Place, when turning about He smiled upon him, in such a Manner as filled his soul with the most ravishing Joy; and on After-Reflection animated his Faith, in believing that whatever Storms and Darkness he might meet with in the Way, at the Hour of Death his glorious Redeemer would lift upon him the Light of His Life-giving Countenance " (Ps. iv., verse 7).
So habitual a use as Colonel Gardiner made of the Psalms is uncommon. It belonged, perhaps, to the religious views and temperament of a man, who was a " noted enthusiast." Yet in the lives of most men and women, there are moods which only find their natural expression in the familiar language of the Psalms. When Thomas Carlyle sets down his half- humorous, half-bitter contempt for the trivialities of society, he quotes the same verse with which the "judicious" Hooker protested against his wife's shrewish tongue (Psalm cxx., verse 5). Returning in 1835 from a London dinner party, where he had met Sydney Smith "a mass of fat and muscularity . . . with shrewdness and fun, not humour or even wit, seemingly without soul altogether," he closes the note with the words:
" The rest babble, babble. Woe's me that I in Meshech am! To work." Or again, in a higher and wholly serious tone, it is with a psalm that he encourages his brothers to struggle on. "Courage, my brave brothers, all' Let us be found faithful, and we shall not fail. Surely as the blue dome of heaven encircles us all, so does the Providence of the Lord of heaven.
He will withhold no good thing from those that love Him (Ps. txxxiv., verse 12). This, as it is the ancient Psalmist's faith, let it likewise be ours. It is the Alpha and Omega, I reckon, of all possessions that can belong to man." Or, yet again, in one of those moods of despondency, which at times sweep over all of us, it is in the language of a psalm that Jane Welsh Car- lyle utters her cry for help. On March 24th, 1856, she had resolved, in spite of weakness and ill-health, neither to indulge in vain retrospects of the past, nor to gaze into vague distances of the future, but to find the duty nearest to hand, and do it. Two days later, she had leamt how much she was the creature of external conditions. "One cold, rasping, savage March day," aided by the too tender sympathy of a friend, brought back all her troubles, and she writes (March 26th, 1856):
" Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; 0 Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed; but Thou, 0 Lord, how long ? Return, 0 Lord, deliver my soul;
0 save me for Thy mercies' sake." (Ps. vL, verses 2-4.)
Few persons of mature years have not, at some time of their existence, proved the adequacy of the language of the Psalms an adequacy belonging to nothing else in literature to express, or elevate, or soothe, or solemnise their emotions. For that side of the subject, the everyday, universal experiences of humanity are enough. It only remains to illustrate the eternal influence of the Psalms at some of those exciting moments of secular life when modem history has been made.
The French Revolution, and the rise and fall of the Napoleonic Dynasty, may be taken as one example. In Brit- tany and La Vendee was concentrated all that remained of Royalist and religious enthusiasm. There, at the end of the eighteenth century, worship returned to the simplicity of its primitive conditions. There crowds of armed peasants, fired by the ardour of a child-like faith, knelt at the feet of their proscribed and hunted priests, who stood, under the sky and woods, by the bare rocks which served for the altars of God. There, as they commemorated friends or neighbours who had died fighting the Blues, or as the solemn words of Psalm cxxx., " Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, 0 Lord," etc., were repeated in alternate verses by priest and congregation, the survivors renewed their vows to fight on for their king and their faith. Nor was the struggle so hopeless as it seemed. High clay banks, topped by beeches, oaks, and chestnuts, inter- sected the fields, and fenced each side of the narrow, winding roads. Among these natural covers undisciplined peasants met regular troops on equal terms.
Elsewhere in France, the Republicans had gained an easy triumph. During the Reign of Terror, hundreds of men and women died on the scaffold, committing their spirits into the hands of God, in the language of the Psalms. So died Madame de Noailles, on July 32nd, 1794. With her was executed her father-in-law, the Due de Noailles-Mouchy, Marshal of France, who, at the age of eighty, mounted the scaffold for his God, as, at sixteen, he had mounted the breach for his king. With her perished also the Marechale de Noailles-Mouchy, who, fifty- two years before, was married at the Palais de Luxembourg, which had been her birthplace, and was afterward to be her prison.
The touching letters of Madame de Noailles addressed to M. Grelet, the tutor of her two sons, and the guardian of her infant daughter, reveal the beauty of her character and the depth and purity of her faith. "Good-bye, Alexis, Alfred, Euphemia," so, in one of these letters, she writes from her prison, " Keep God ever in your hearts all the days of your lives. Bind yourselves to Him by bonds that nothing can loosen. Pray for your father, and labour for his true happi- ness. Remember your mother, and never forget that her one longing for all of you was that she might bring you up to the life eternal." With quotations from the Psalms begins the codicil to her will, which she drew up in prison to dispose of her personal effects; ' In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Accept, 0 Lord, the sacrifice of my life, Into Thy hands I commend my spirit. My God, haste Thee to help me. Forsake me not when my strength faileth me." (Ps. xxxi., verse 6; IxxL, verses 10, 8.) Her prayer was heard. Few scenes are more striking, even in the history of that dramatic period, than that which is described in the Journal of M. Car- richon, who gave the prisoners absolution on their way to the scaffold. Months before, he had promised that he would do them this last service, and arranged the disguise of a dark-blue coat and red waistcoat, which he would wear. The message came that the ladies were condemned. On the appointed day, he followed the cart in which the prisoners, their hands bound behind them, sat on a rude plank without a back. The crowd was great. He hurried along by-streets to point after point on the road followed by the procession. But all his efforts to make his presence known were fruitless; he watched the eager hopefulness fade into despair. At last, as though by a miracle, a pitiless storm of wind and rain swept bare the crowded street, and left him almost alone and close to the cart in which sat the women. All his irresolution vanished. The prisoners bowed their heads as the disguised priest raised his hand, and, with his head covered, pronounced the whole formula of absolution. The storm ceased; the cart passed on; and the women died with unflinching courage.
In September 1812, the French army entered Moscow. A month later they evacuated the smoking ruins of the city, and began that retreat which proved the turning-point in the for- tunes of Napoleon. It was believed by the populace that powder magazines, stored beneath the cathedral of the Krem- lin, would explode whenever the gates were opened which separated the altar from the body of the building. A service was held to celebrate the retreat of the French. In spite of the prevalence of this belief, a vast throng, drawn to the spot by awe mingled with curiosity, packed the cathedral from end to end. The Metropolitan of Moscow, who was to preach the sermon, approached the gates, opened them, and passed through unharmed. The fears of the Russian peasants were dispelled, even as the forces of Napoleon were dispersed, and in that supreme moment of triumph the Metropolitan gave out his text, " Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered " (Ps. Ixviii., verse i).
The power of the first Napoleon was shattered by the disaster of the Russian campaign. Yet once again the imperial dynasty was restored on the ruins of the monarchy. With this second rise and fall are associated two psalms. During the Revolution of 1848, which gave Napoleon in. his opportunity, Psalm xlvi. (" God is our hope and strength ") was sung in the streets, not only of Berlin, but of Paris. Twenty-two years afterwards, the German armies were marching on the French capital, chanting Luther's version of Psalm xlvi. Bourget, a little village in the Department of the Seine, was, on three succes- sive days (28th to 3oth October 1870), the scene of desperate struggles. When the conflict was ended, there was found, on the bullet-pierced altar of the church, a Psalter. It was open at Psalm Ivii.: " Be merciful unto me, 0 God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in Thee; and under the shadow of Thy wings shall be my refuge, until this tyranny be overpast."
For Great Britain, it is in India, or on the Indian frontiers, that the romance of nineteenth-century history is mainly concentrated.
In September 1840, Captain Arthur Conolly was sent from Cabul to Bokhara to negotiate the release of Colonel Stoddart. He reached Bokhara in December of the following year, and with Stoddart was at once thrown into prison. For many months the two prisoners were kept in a filthy, unwholesome dungeon, swarming with vermin, without change of clothing. In June 1842, both were executed. Several years later, a little book was purchased by a Russian in one of the bazaars at Bokhara. It was Conolly's Prayer Book. Along its margins, and on its blank leaves, are noted the chief occurrences of his long imprisonment. " Thank God," he writes in one place, " that this book was left to me. Stoddart and I did not fully know before our affliction what was in the Psalms, or how beautiful are the prayers of our Church."
It is supposed that the news of the destruction of the Cabul force may have
decided the Ameer of Bokhara to execute his prisoners. No disaster of such
magnitude had ever before befallen the British arms in the East. On January
i3th, 1842, from the walls of Jellalabad, a single horseman was seen riding
towards the city. It was Dr Brydon, the sole survivor of the Cabul force. To the
British garrison of Jellalabad, the news meant their own immediate and imminent
peril. They knew that within a few days the storm would burst upon them;
that, insufficiently provided with ammunition, and scantily supplied with
food, fighting behind crumbling walls whose circuit was too vast to be properly
manned, they would have to hold their own for weeks against a host excited by
previous victory. Such a position might well solemnise the feelings of the most
careless. On the next Sunday the whole garrison assembled for Divine service in
one of the squares of the Bala Hissar. There was no chaplain, but the Church
Service was read to the officers and men by a grey-haired captain, of slight,
well-knit figure, whose clear strong voice made every word audible. Instead of
the Psalms appointed for the day, he chose the 46th Psalm, " God is our hope and
strength," etc., which, as he said, " Luther was wont to use in seasons of
peculiar difficulty and depression." The words, well-suited to the desperate
circumstances of the garrison, expressed their deter- mination to defend the
battlements to the last extremity. They expressed, also, the sublime dependence
upon God which was the strength of Henry Havelock, who officiated as chap- lain.
He was then an unknown man, though he had served with distinction in Burma, in
Afghanistan, Gwalior, and the Sutlej. Fifteen years later, when he died at the
Alumbagh, after the relief of Lucknow, his name was a household word. His death
was worthy of his life. " I have for forty years," he said, "so ruled my life,
that, when death came, I might face it without fear." His headlong march, his
rapid victories when the fate of British rule seemed trembling in the balance
had made him the idol of the nation. He had shown by his career, if such an
example be needed, that saints can be soldiers, and that those fear men least
who fear God most.
When Havelock died (November 24th, 1857), the worst of the Indian Mutiny was over. But the awful weeks which preceded his successes, had strained to the utmost tension the confidence which men and women reposed in the mysterious workings of the Divine purpose. Yet Dr Duff, writing from Calcutta in May 1857, relied on the promises of the Psalms. In the midst of panic, open mutiny, and secret disaffection, he himself felt " a confident persuasion that, though this crisis has been per- mitted to humble and warn us, our work in India has not yet been accomplished; and that until it be accomplished, our tenure of Empire, however brittle, is secure." ..." Never before," he continues, " did I realise as now the literality and sweetness of the Psalmist's assurance * I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, 0 Lord; save me, 0 my God!'" (Ps. Hi., verses 5-7).
Among records of hairbreadth escapes during the Indian Mutiny, few are more striking than the story of Mr William Edwards, the magistrate and collector of Budaon, in the Rohilkund district. From June ist, 1857, to August a7th, when he joined Havelock at Cawnpore, he was a fugitive. With him were a brother collector, Mr Probyn, Mrs Probyn, and their four children. Weeks of mental anguish were passed among natives, whose loyalty was doubtful, and who were under the strongest temptation to treachery. At first they were huddled together at Kussowrah, in a cow-house, from which they were forbidden to emerge, hearing at intervals of merciless massacres by natives, and tortured by anxiety for the safety of relations or friends. From Kussowrah they were moved to a village called Runjepoorah ("the place of afflic- tion "), a collection of huts gathered on a bare island a hundred yards square, which rose above floods that stretched almost as far as the eye could reach. Here, during the day, they were so closely packed that the only possible change of posture was sitting up or turning from one side to the other. From Futte- ghur they heard the bands of the mutineers playing English airs, and from Furruckabad came the sound of guns, which, they learned, were blowing away or shooting down women and children. One gleam of comfort came to Mr Edwards, but even that was darkened with a moment of despair. His wife and child were at Nynee Tal, ignorant of his fate. A native promised, if possible, to convey to them a note. Mr Edwards had only a tiny scrap of paper, half the fly-leaf of Bridges on the n.Qth Psalm. On this he wrote his message in pencil, dipped it in milk to make the writing indelible, and set it out to dry. He had hardly done so, when a crow pounced on it and carried it off. But fortunately his native servant had seen what had happened, followed the bird, and recovered the note.
On July 26th, they were able to return to the cow-house at Kussowrah. Their quarters were less cramped. But the heat was terrible; tormented by myriads of flies, starting at every unusual noise, they could only sleep when they had lighted heaps of dried cow-dung, which poured out volumes of acrid smoke and kept the insects at bay. One of the Probyn chil- dren died, and then another. The Psalms, however, proved to them a storehouse of comfort. " There is not a day," writes Mr Edwards in his Diary for August 5th, " on which we do not find something that appears as if written especially for persons in our unhappy circumstances, to meet the feelings and wants of the day. This morning, for instance, I derived unspeakable comfort from the i3th and i6th verses of the asth Psalm (" The secret of the Lord is among them that fear Him;
and He will show them His covenant," and <( The sorrows of my heart are enlarged: 0 bring Thou me out of my troubles ");
and in the evening, from the i4th, isth, and i6th verses of the ayth (verse 16, " 0 tarry thou the Lord's leisure; be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart; and put thou thy trust in the Lord ").
After a sleepless night, devoured by mosquitoes, depressed in mind and body, he writes, August i6th: "It is at such times I feel the real blessing the Psalms are. They never fail to give peace and refreshment, when all is dark and gloomy within and without. The circumstances under which many of them were written, seasons of danger and almost despair David fleeing and hiding from bloodthirsty enemies, as we are render them peculiarly suitable to our case. This morning I felt the 5th verse of the 68th Psalm most soothing, in the assurance it gives me that, if I am cut off, my God will be with my widow and fatherless children." ("He is a Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause of the widows, even God in His holy habitation.") Or again, on August 24th he notes, "Finished to-day, for the second time, that excellent work, Bridges on the 119 th Psalm; the sole book in my hands, except the Bible, for the past two months; and fortunate have I been to have had these sources of consolation." They were now in communication with Havelock; but the difficulty of traversing a country infested with mutineers was great. " Nothing new settled," writes Edwards on August 27th, "about our plans, and we are much harassed. Heavy guns firing at Furruckabad to-day, we know not from what cause; but they reminded us painfully of our fearful proximity to that place where are so many thirsting for our lives. Amidst it all, to-day's Psalms are most con- soling, and wonderfully suited to our case, especially the i2ist." (" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.")
Three days later, the party started to run the gauntlet for 150 miles of river way, through the midst of the enemy's country. The journey was successfully made. After three months of hourly suspense and danger, they were safe with the British troops.
From the Psalms the quiet confidence of Dr Duff drew its serenity; from them also the endurance of Mr Edwards derived its patient fortitude. The relief of Lucknow showed that the active daring, which not only braves death but courts it, may be equally stirred by the Psalms. " Quaker " Wallace of the 93rd regiment, went into the Secundrabagh, says an eye- witness, " like one of the Furies, if there are any male Furies, plainly seeking death, but not meeting it," and quoting the n6th Psalm, Scottish version in metre, beginning at the first verse:
" I love the Lord, because my voice And prayers He did hear. I, while I live, will call on Him, Who bowed to me His ear."
And thus he plunged into the Secundrabagh, quoting a line at every shot fired from his rifle, and at each thrust given by his bayonet:
"I'll of salvation take the cup, On God's name will I call;
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord Before His people all."
The Indian Mutiny does not afford the latest example of the influence of the Psalms on our secular history. Even in the present century, they have shown their power on the battle- fields of nations. It would not be wholly fanciful to compare the struggle carried on by the Scottish Covenanters against seventeenth-century England, with the challenge thrown down by the Boers to the British Empire of the twentieth century. In their pastoral habits, their civilisation, their education, their deep, yet narrow religion, their sturdy independence, Boers and Covenanters stand close together. To us, who regard the conflicts from the vantage-ground of the past, it may seem that the triumph of the large battalions was from the first inevitable. Yet in both cases geographical conditions favoured the smaller force, and foreign aid, or civil discord, was not un- reasonably anticipated. Both Boer and Covenanter arrogated to himself the promises of the Psalms. To the dwellers on the solitary veldts of South Africa, the words appealed with the same peculiar force which they had possessed for the inhabi- tants of the lonely recesses of the Lowland hills, and both Covenanter and Boer fought in the conviction that the Lord of Hosts was on his side.
In President Kruger's frequent appeals to the Psalms, it is unnecessary to discover hypocrisy. Treachery, guile; cruelty, even if such faults could fairly be laid to his charge, are not inconsistent with religious sincerity, when minds of a peculiar type and training are imbued with the spirit of the Old Testa- ment, or convinced that they are fighting the Lord's battle against His enemies. It is as a Cromwellian captain, or as a Scottish Covenanter, that he addresses his burghers in language which goes directly to their hearts. His speech to the Volksraads on October 2nd, 1899, couched in the language of the Psalms, interpreted their promises in favour of the Boers. "Read," he said, "that psalm attentively (Ps. cviii., '0 God, my heart is ready,' etc.), and associate your prayers with that: then will the Lord guide us; and, when He is with us, who shall be against us?" Similar was his speech on May 7th, 1900, in opening the Volksraads. There he applied the words of Psalm Ixxxiii. (" Hold not Thy tongue, 0 God," etc.) to the struggle with the British Empire, and dwelt especially on verse 4, where the enemies of God say, " Come, and let us root them out, that they be no more a people; and that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance." "Psalm Ixxxiii.," argued the President, "speaks of the attacks of the Evil One on Christ's Kingdom, which must no longer exist. And now the same words come from Salisbury, for he too says, < This people must not exist,' and God says, (This people shall exist.' Who will win ? Surely, the Lord." So again, in his circular despatch to his officers, dated from Machadodorp, June aoth, 1900, he returned to the same passage. " According to Psalm Ixxxiii., the enemies of old said that the people shall not exist in Christ's Kingdom. Salisbury and Chamberlain stand con- victed by their own words: < They shall not exist'; but the Lord says, ' This people shall exist,' and Christ is our Com- mander-in-Chief, Who leads us with His Word." Or, lastly, it is again to the Psalms that he made his appeal a month later, in a final despatch to his officers from Machadodorp: " See," he wrote, "the promise of the Lord in Psalm cviii., where He says, they who fight through God shall do so valiantly, and the Lord will deliver them, and tread down their enemies. Keep courage, therefore, you God-fearing band; the Lord will display His strength to your weakness. . . . Each of ye knows as I do, how unjust and godless the war is, as we were willing to yield almost everything, if we could only keep our liberty and our independence. See Psalm Ixxxiii., how the evil spirit of the air said that the valiant fighter named Israel must not exist, and the Lord says, 'He shall exist.' . . . Then the same spirit answered that this nation must not exist, or, to use his own words, ' I will not permit your nation to continue to be a nation.' Dear brothers, through God's Word I am sure of this, that the victory is ours."
A German mystic has said, " He whom God deludes is well deluded." In its entirety, the saying is a hard one ; yet it con- tains a truth. Only the immediate issues in the Boer War have been at present decided. The ultimate effects on the civilised progress of the world and the general interests of mankind belong to the region of the future and of hope. But as it has been with the Covenanters, so it may be with the Boers. Virtues which lent dignity and pathos to the struggle for independence may gain a broader sphere of exercise than the narrow field on which they were previously concentrated. The record of the Cameronian Regiment, raised among the defeated Covenanters, and first commanded by one of the leaders at Drumclog, may be reproduced on a larger scale in the future history of the Boer people.
When the pages of some ancient brown-bound volume are turned, there nutters from between the leaves the withered petal of a rose. The flower is faded, dry, scentless; but it has imprinted something of its shape and colour on the pages between which it has been pressed. As it floats to the ground, the most unimaginative of us is conscious of the desire to read its secret. What moment of joy or sorrow, of despair or hope, did it commemorate in the distant days, when the page was yet unstained, the petal full of fragrance and colour, the hand that placed it there still throbbing with life ?
Something similar is the effect of studying the Psalms through human history. There is scarcely a leaf in the Psalter which is not stained by some withered flower of the past. To gather some of these petals and read their meaning, as they fall thick from the pages, has been the purpose of this book. Vain must be the effort to recall to life persons or events divided from us by centuries of change. But as we read the familiar verses, the words bring before us, one by one, the hundreds of men and women, who, passing from tribulation into joy, have, in the language of the Psalms, conquered the terrors of death, proclaimed their faith, or risen to new effort and final victory.