or sickness named, for which there is not in this treasure-house a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found.'

Luther called the Book of Psalms 'a small Bible;' and similarly Bishop Horne, in the preface to his well-known Commentary on the Psalms, designates it 'An epitome of the Bible, adapted to the purpose of devotion. This little

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volume (he adds), like the Paradise of Eden, affords us in perfection, though in miniature, everything that groweth elsewhere, every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;" and, above all, what was there lost, but is here restored, "the tree of life in the midst of the garden." That which we read, as matter of speculation, in the other Scriptures, is reduced to practice, when we recite it in the Psalms in those, repentance and faith are described, but in these, they are acted; by a perusal of the former, we learn how others served God, but by using the latter, we serve Him ourselves.' Merrick describes them as a treasury, abounding with every kind of valuable doctrine and instruction.' Chalmers speaks of them as 'this rich and precious department of Scripture.' Horsley forcibly points out their important fitness for Christian use, not only from the considerations already advanced, but from the belief, shared by Augustine (whose commentary is founded upon the principle), and by many writers of ancient and modern date, that not only are there what are called Messianic Psalms, but that all the Psalms refer in their secondary application to the Messiah; that, in short, 'there is not a page in the Book of Psalms in which the pious reader will not find his Saviour, if he reads with the view of finding Him.' 'It is true,' adds this learned writer, 'that many of the Psalms are commemorative of the miraculous interpositions of God in behalf of his chosen people; for, indeed, the history of the Jews is a fundamental part of revealed religion. Many were probably composed upon the occasion of remarkable passages in David's life, his dangers, his afflictions, his deliverances. Of those which relate to the public history of the natural Israel, there are few in which the fortunes of the mystical Israel, the Christian church, are not adumbrated; and of those which allude to the life of David,

there is none in which the Son of David is not the principal and immediate subject. David's complaints against his enemies are Messiah's complaints, first of the unbelieving Jews, then of the heathen persecutors, and the apostate faction in later ages. David's afflictions are the Messiah's sufferings. David's penitential supplications are the supplications of the Messiah in agony, under the burden of the imputed guilt of sin. David's songs of triumph and thanksgiving, are Messiah's songs of triumph and thanksgiving for his victory over sin, and death, and hell.'

To this extent in the application of the Psalms we are scarcely prepared to go. It is, however, a question of extent; for that very many of the Psalms apply to Christ, is avouched in the New Testament; and the principle of this application being thus established beyond all controversy, the more extensively one is enabled fairly to carry it out, the more nutritive, edifying, and profitable the Psalms become to him, and the more essentially they contribute to establish his heart in faith and love.

The veneration for the Psalms has in all ages of the church been very great. The fathers assure us that in the earlier times the Book of Psalms was generally learned by heart, and that ministers were expected to be able to repeat them from memory; that psalmody was a constant attendant at meals and in business; that it enlivened the social hours and softened the fatigues of life. The Psalms were much in use at the Reformation; and they have, as Lord Clarendon observes, been ever thought to contain something extraordinary for the instruction and reformation of mankind. It is indeed remarked by Dr. Gray, that this Book of Psalms is exactly the kind of work which Plato wished for the instruction of youth, but conceived it impossible to execute, as being above the reach of human abilities: 'But this must be the work of a god or some divine person.'1

The grand distinguishing characteristic of the Psalms is their spirituality. In them the soul holds direct and immediate communion with God. Forms and ceremonies are cast aside, times and places are forgotten, and the earnest spirit of the creature goes * Τοῦτο δὲ θεοῦ ἢ θείον τίνες ἂν εἴν.—De Legibus, ii. 657.

into the immediate presence of the Creator. There is no restraint but that arising from conscious guilt; there is no veiling of the soul's real state. Every sin, every fear, every doubt, every want, every difficulty, every hope, every aspiration, is laid fully before God. He and He alone is praised as the source of all past mercies He and He alone is appealed to for all needful, present and future, mercies. 'Alike in the persecutions of his enemies and the desertions of his friends, in wretchedness of body and in the agonies of inward repentance, in the hour of impending danger and in the hour of apparent despair, it is direct to God that the Psalmist utters forth his supplications. Connected with this is the faith by which he everywhere lives in God rather than in himself. God's mercies, God's greatness, form the sphere in which his thoughts are ever moving; even when, through excess of affliction, reason is rendered powerless, the naked contemplation of God's wonders of old forms his effectual support.'

As the Psalms are the natural addresses of the awakened and enlightened spirit to a present spiritual God, they are universal in their applicability. In whatever state the soul is, it will in them find appropriate language to express its feelings or wants. The whole church therefore—the church in every age, in every land, under every circumstance—has this precious book as its heavengiven liturgy. The old and the new meet and blend gloriously in the Psalms: the old, with its pompous but instructive ritual, and its gorgeous but suggestive imagery; and the new, with its simple but sublime truths. Thus, standing midway between both covenants, and serving equally to the members of each as the handmaid of a living piety, the Book of Psalms is a witness of the essential identity of their primary and fundamental ideas.

Ninth Week Second Day.

PARALLELISM.

Two days ago our attention was called to the general character of Hebrew poetry, and we may now proceed to explore its forms.

Some of the older writers persuaded themselves that they could find, in the Hebrew poetry, hexameter, pentameter,

alcaic, and other metres; and some of later date have entertained us with their discoveries as to the rhythm of Hebrew verse. Lowth, although he derides these pretensions, yet admits the existence of something like measures in the Hebrew poetry, and endeavours to prove it, by pointing to certain licences of poetry which he thinks that only the existence of metre could authorize or exact-such as the equal dimensions of the verses in the alphabetic Psalms and poems; the introduction of foreign words, and words little in ordinary use ; and the peculiar employment of certain poetical particles. But it will be observed, that Lowth does not suppose we can discover the Hebrew metre or rhythm, but only argues from these indications, that, although now lost, it once existed. How the knowledge of this might come to be lost, may be felt by any one who attempts, in reading aloud an old English poem-say one of Chaucer's—to give it the rhythm and metre which he knows it to possess; and still greater becomes the difficulty of preserving these more transitory qualities of poetry, when, like the Hebrew, it was originally written without the vowels, which, in the usage of pronunciation, determine the rhythm and metre of any poetry,—such vowels as we now find in the Hebrew, and which declare to us the pronunciation of the words, having been inserted in a later and comparatively modern age.

But this opinion, that the Hebrew verse ever did possess metre, has to some good judges seemed extremely hazardous. The late celebrated French orientalist, M. de Sacy--than whom there could not perhaps be a better authority on a question of this nature—has produced various considerations, which he regards as rendering it most certain that the poetical books of Scripture never contained any metre properly so called; but that the words only presented to the ear certain propositions, cadenced and harmonious, in which noun answered to noun, and verb to verb, so that these grammatical forms being reproduced in the same places, presented the sense under a regular parallelism. This appears to be also the view of Herder, who may be regarded as the greatest of the German writers on this subject. He does not find in the Hebrew poetry cadenced

and measured syllables, but simply periods artificially constructed and balanced, resembling a well-tressed garland, or a row of pearls arranged in just proportions.

We may conclude, then, that under the circumstances we have described, it would be impossible to re-establish the metre, and still less the rhythm, of the Hebrew verse, if it ever had either. And without absolutely denying that the Hebrew verse had some kind of metre, it is tolerably certain that such metre could not have been very rigorous, and consisted rather in a certain proportion and symmetry of equal sentences than in anything analogous to the regular measures of Greek and Latin verse.

Our great poems in blank verse, the Ossianic poetry, and such as the Thalaba of Southey-with the absence of anything like rhyme in those portions of Scripture which strike even the dullest sense as far other than prose-render us more familiar than many European nations with the idea of poetry without rhyme. Nevertheless there are some who may find it difficult to recognise the poetical character of a kind of verse, which has neither syllabic metre, rhyme, nor even verbal rhythm; and who reconcile the matter to their own understandings, by assuming the probability that the original possessed these common qualities of poetry, but has become divested of them in the process of translation. But it is not so. Ancient Hebrew had too much simple majesty, and too much gravity, for the jingling play of rhyme. Rhyme is in fact entirely foreign to the genius of ancient Hebrew poetry; and although a rhyme may here and there be met with, it may safely be pronounced to be the result of accident rather than design, or any part of poetical contrivance. It is of the more consequence to notice this, because later Hebrew poetry has both rhyme and metre-simply because the power in the use of the language, and the vigour of poetical conception, had so much waned, that the Spanish Jews of the middle ages resorted to these props to give to their effusions a poetical character.

We have thus indicated the characteristics which are not to be sought in Hebrew poetry, and have also pointed out