SELECT READINGS FROM THE PSALMS.
Select Readings from the Psalms. With Preface by Joseph B. Idayor. (John Murray. 3s. 6d. net.)—We have long desired to see some seleetion of this kind, and. we feel deeply grateful to Professor Mayor for this fulfilment of the wish. What he has done is to remove the passages which contradict Christian fooling. The indiscriminate use of the Psalms is peculiar to the Anglican Church among Reformed Communions. The Protestant Episcopal Church of America has provided twenty selections which the minister may use instead of the Psalms for the day. The Reformed Jewish synagogues omit some ; in Mr. C. G. Monte- fiore's "Bible for Home Readers" as many as thirty entire Psalms are omitted, and passages are excised from others. The arguments that are used in favour of keeping the book as it is need not be discussed at length. Professor Mayor disposes of them, as, indeed, they have been disposed of before. Some of them at least are such as no one but a theologian would dream of using. It is urged, for instance, that these imprecations and commine,tions are levelled, not against men, but against evil spirits. How does this account for such curses as "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow," and "Let them fall from one 'wickedness to another" ? It is one of the set-offs against the undoubted advantages of a settled liturgy that such things have to be retained, and, what is perhaps worse, have to be defended. We might say such things with a mental reservation, or in an historical sense,—though saying them is no small trial to many. But to argue that we ought to say them, and moan them, as we Mean our prayers and praises, is really a demoralising act. Professor Mayor has put the Prayer-book version on one page and the R,evieed Version on the other. We should be sorry to lose the familiar harmonies of the one, while the other is indispensable if we are fully to understand the book.
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