The Christian Use of the Psalter. Whitham Arthur Richard
its Creator. "Thou preparest their heart, and Thine ear hearkeneth thereto" (Ps. x. 19).
This is surely a very great thought. The Old Testament is the record of God's gradual unveiling of Himself to His elect, whom for the world's sake He had chosen out of the world. The revelation was not indeed to them alone. God had spoken in many ways, more than even the Church yet recognises, to the heathen world. Yet to Israel God gave that highest privilege of receiving and keeping the true knowledge of Himself, of His unity, His universality, His moral being, His holiness, His love, and of the demand which this knowledge makes on human conscience. The unknown author of 2 Esdras, looking back on history after the great blow had fallen on Jerusalem, has expressed this in vivid and pathetic language: "Of all the flowers of the world Thou hast chosen Thee one lily: and of all the depths of the sea Thou hast filled Thee one river: and of all builded cities Thou hast hallowed Sion unto Thyself: … and among all the multitudes of peoples Thou hast gotten Thee one people: and unto this people, whom Thou lovedst, Thou gavest a law that is approved of all" (2 Esd. v. 24-7). In the Psalter God has provided, as it were, for His people the words of praise in which their thankful hearts may express their love and loyalty to what He has revealed.
This feature, the glad response to revelation, is stamped upon the Psalter from end to end. Thus the 1st Psalm describes the secret of human blessedness:
His delight is in the law of the Lord:
And in His law will he exercise himself day and night.
The 9th Psalm is an outburst of thanksgiving to "the Name" of God, Who is revealed as the moral Governor of the world. The 19th couples the self-revelation of God in nature, God Whose glory the heavens declare, with the revelation given in the Law, which is, as it were, the sun in the moral world restoring the soul and enlightening the eyes. The 25th reads like a comment from man's heart on the great proclamation of God's Name given to Moses in the "cleft of the rock"—"The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 5-7). So the Psalmist prays, as it were, in answer:
Call to remembrance, O Lord, Thy tender mercies:
And Thy loving-kindnesses, which have been ever of old.
O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:
But according to Thy mercy think Thou upon me, O Lord,
for Thy goodness.
The 40th offers the response of a converted will to what is found and recognised in the Law:
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God.
The 78th recounts the long history of rebellious Israel as in itself part of the "testimony" of God. The mingled record of deliverance and failure, of judgment and hope, is in itself "a parable," a "dark saying of old," which faith can read and make answer to. The 131st expresses the very fundamental spirit of faith, the essential temper and attitude of the Church, the spirit of humility, of intellectual submission, of obedience, which is the same under the Gospel Dispensation as under the Old Covenant.
Lord, I am not high-minded:
I have no proud looks.
I do not exercise myself in great matters:
Which are too high for me.
But the most remarkable illustration of this characteristic attitude of the believer is the 119th Psalm. It is like a piece of music, every verse a subtle and harmonious variation on one dominant theme. It is the voice of the converted soul, learning the one lesson which man must learn in this world's school, if he is to attain his true being—learning to be ever turning away from self, from one's own doubts, troubles, persecutions, sufferings, to rest on what God has revealed in His statutes, His judgments, His testimonies, His laws. Nor is it without a subtle propriety that this Psalm is arranged as an acrostic under the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These letters are, as it were, the rudiments out of which man is enabled to exercise his characteristic gift of articulate speech; and in the acrostic Psalms they are visibly consecrated to His service Who made the mouth of man. And each part of the 119th Psalm consists of eight verses, a significant Hebrew number, the symbol of the Resurrection and the restoration of all things in that eighth day, the octave of eternity, which is yet to come, and will complete the work of the seven days of the first creation.
This Psalm, which expresses the unchanging spirit of true religion, was most naturally appropriated by Christian devotion to form the services for the working part of each day, beginning at Prime, when "man goeth forth to his work and his labour" with that benediction which comes on labour done with a pure motive in God's Name:
Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way:
And walk in the law of the Lord,
and ending at None, the hour of the death of the Lord, when day visibly declines, with the confession that the worker, as he looks back, must always make:
I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost:
O seek Thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments.
It was like a stream of water, crossing unexpectedly a dusty way—mirabilia testimonia tua! In psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly fresh, the soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout hour, from the sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in contemplation of the unfaltering vigour of the Divine righteousness, which had still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night, but alert in the drowsy afternoon.5
We can scarcely exaggerate the value, in our own time especially, of this use, not only of the 119th Psalm, but of the whole Psalter, as the response of the Church and the human soul to the revealed word of God. These times of Christ have indeed filled and enriched the early conception of "the Name" of God. We have learned to see in the Trinity the justification of belief in the Divine Unity; we have learned more of the Fatherhood of God in the face of His only Son; we have learned that the Cross is the key to human suffering; we have learned the Catholic nature of the Divine sovereignty: nevertheless the foundation teaching of the Psalmists as to the relation of the creature to his Creator remains unchanged. We still find in the Psalter a guide for our uncertain footsteps in our journey back to God. Is not the answer to every problem of faith, even such mysteries as the existence and continuance of evil, or the calamities that fall on the just, still to be found as the author of the 73rd Psalm found it, in returning and rest upon the God Who has made Himself known to suffering man?
My flesh and my heart faileth:
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
The prevailing thought of the 119th Psalm, that God's revelation is fixed and permanent and the law of human life, marks the great separation between the world and the Church. Such a belief is abhorrent and distasteful always to the natural mind, while it is familiar to and welcomed by the Catholic Church, as it was by the Jewish. The Church's witness to the world is of a revelation from above: she has received it; she may not alter it without apostasy. Her mission in the world is not to be the mirror of each succeeding phase of human thought, nor merely the consecration of human aspirations, but rather to speak with a supernatural authority, to tell men what God is and what is His will, "whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear." And the Church can only deliver her message aright, in the face of the frowns of the princes of this world, so long as worship gladdens and confirms her witness, so long as she herself finds her joy in contemplating her treasure and returning thanks for it to the Giver.
As the devout Israelite found in the Psalter the natural expression of an intelligent devotion to the God Who had revealed Himself in Law and Prophets, so the Christian Church, with no break of continuity, found the Psalter still adequate to express her joy in her fuller knowledge. For that fuller knowledge was strictly in line with the old. The faith of Israel had not been changed, but carried forward, developed, illuminated. In the Law the Gospel lay hid, and the Christian Church felt in the old words of devotion no outworn or alien accents,
Walter Pater,