THE POETRY OF THE PSALMS.
THE Pulpit Commentary on the Psalms," edited by the Dean of Gloucester and his colleagues, and published by Kegan Paul, Triibner, and Co., has just been completed in three large volumes containing much learning and much valuable illustration of that wonderful collection of devotional poems, though we fear that the big book is more likely to be bought than read. The English people appear to have an impression that buying an edifying book is in itself a work of merit and will go far towards bringing about a gracious change in the heart. Where the people of Israel sacrificed a bullock or a ram in the Temple, the people of England sacrifice the price of a devout book by an approved author which they do not often think it necessary to read. And the superstition is not so much perhaps in the notion that sacrifice to God is intrinsically good, as in the notion that there can be sacrifice to God in promoting the sale of a work intended to effect a purpose not so much as begun until it has gone beyond the buying and selling point. There is something to us very melancholy in noting the huge books which appear on devotional subjects, nine-tenths of which are destined to stand upon shelves for almost the whole of their natural lives, though a certain number of copies are of course filtered through the sermons delivered in various churches and chapels. And especially is it melancholy when the books in question immure, as one may say, a vast stock of learning and piety within the cloisteral boards of unread books containing thoughts and feelings which once came fresh from the heart of true spiritual passion. In looking at volumes such as these mighty Commentaries on the Psalms, we have the kind of impression which must have been produced on our shuddering ancestors, when good men and women were walled up alive to breathe out their last breath in solitude and despair.
For surely there never was a book fuller of vivid life than the collection of poems contained in the book of Psalms, the original title of which was, as these commentaries bear witness, songs of praise and prayer. It is curious enough that 'praise," which was regarded as the original char- acteristic of the Psalms, though, even in the era of their first composition, many of them exchanged the tone of passionate exultation for the tone of passionate supplies: tion, has found much less echo in the hearts of later days than prayer. The freshest, and perhaps the most marvellous of the Hebrew Psalms are, as it were, bursts of gratitude, often even of exultation, due apparently to the personal dis- covery of God, and that not infrequently, even in circum- stances which were full of suffering and almost anguish, though that suffering was broken by irrepressible rushes of the profoundest hope and trust. Take, for instance, the 42nd Psalm, the one that begins, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks," which the critic of the book we have mentioned attributes to the time of David's flight from Jerusalem on the revolt of his son, but which is usually, we think, attributed to the time of one of the Babylonian captivities, when the singer had paused in his sad journey to look back upon the scenes of his happier days when he went "with the multitude," "with the voice of joy and praise, with the multitude that kept holyday." How profound, how im- movable, is his confidence that the clouds will pass away and that he shall yet praise God for the return of the joy that had been so fearfully interrupted. More characteristic still per- haps of the moods which gave their origin to this book is such a poem as the 30th Psalm, the burden of which is, "Thou haat turned for me my mourning into dancing ; thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness; to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee and not be silent. 0 Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever." The note of almost all the Psalms, whether they are exultant thanksgivings or passionate cries for help, is the confidence that that veil over the unseen which has de- scended again on this generation of ours, had been absolutely rent, and that God had been discovered behind it as the spring of all gladness whether past or present or future, and had been plainly visible even through the heaviest affliction. Even the bitterest cries pass by fine gradations into the brightest hopes, and are transformed from prayer to praise. That, to the present generation, which habitually exclaims piteously, with its late Poet-Laureate, "Behind the veil, behind the veil," is the most marvellous characteristic of the Hebrew Psalm which continually speaks of the "fulness of joy" as within human reach, and often even as grasped and held fast in an ecstasy of gratitude. Often within the limits of the same Psalm you find the profoundest thankfulness blended with the most pathetic entreaty, as, for instance, in the exultation that the Lord had "turned again the captivity of Zion," and that the mouth of the singer had been filled with laughter and his tongue with singing, with which the 126th Psalm opens, and which passes almost immediately into the entreaty, "Turn again our captivity, 0 Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed, shall doubt- less come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." You can hardly tell in that Psalm, and in very many of the others, which mood is predominant, that of exultation or that of entreaty, but in all alike you feel how keen is the conviction that the veil has been rent in twain, and that the giver of joy and sorrow is one and the same.
But what strikes us as still more curiously unique in the Hebrew Psalms than even that note of exultation which is so strangely intermingled with the pathetic anguish of ungranted prayer, is that marvellous power of painting the attitude and expression of men who are godless because they have such an insatiable thirst for the pleasures and treasures of this world, that they instinctively repudiate any power that might put restraint on their desires, in language that might well recall to modern readers Rubens's powerful painting of fleshly natures. "Deliver my soul from the wicked which is thy sword, from men which are thy hand, from men of the world which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou ffllest with thy hid treasure : they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes," is the picture given of them in the 17th Psalm in contrast to the men who hope to behold God's face in righteousness, and who will be satisfied only when they awake up after his likeness. A still more elaborate and powerful de- lineation of them is given in the 73rd Psalm :—" I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain ; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression ; they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore his people return hither, and the waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. And they say, How doth God know, and is there knowledge in the most High?" What a picture is that of the kind of "fulness of bread" which shrinks back from the knowledge of spiritual things,—the eyes standing out with fatness, and the tongue walking airily through the earth. Hardly could language be conceived to express more power- fully the habit of feeding greedily on earthly pleasures and earthly hopes and earthly thoughts and earthly precautions. And not only does the Hebrew genius express itself in picturing the contrast between what is of the earth, earthy, and what is of the spiritual world, spiritual, but it expresses itself with equal power in helping men to see how the spiritual world may penetrate and pervade the physical world. What a wonderful poem is that contained in the 19th Psalm, which some of the devotees of the so-called higher criticism have discovered to be a compound of two quite different poems, thereby extinguishing all the special effect of the parallelism between the light and heat which the sun diffuses throughout our physical universe, a light and heat full of speech to the mind, though not of sound to the ear, and the light and heat which the "law of the Lord" carries home to the spirit, "making wise the simple,' "rejoicing the heart," purifying the eyes, and warning the consciences of men against those "secret faults" so deeply ingrained in the complex nature of humanity. The singular power of the Psalms consists in this pervading conception of the ultimate harmony between the physical and the spiritual world, or, as Wordsworth says of Duty in his great ode :-
' Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
It was by translating the essential idea of the Hebrew Psalmists into modern language, that Wordsworth reclaimed for devotional poetry its rightful ascendency in English literature.
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