There's lots of music in the Psalms, those dear sweet Psalms
of old, With visions bright of lands of light and shining streets of
gold; I hear them ringing, singing still, in memory soft and clear, "Such pity as a father hath unto his children dear."
They seem to sing for evermore of better, sweeter days, When the lilies of the love of God bloomed white in all the
ways: And still I hear the solemn strains in the quaint old meeting
flow, " 0 greatly blessed the people are the joyful sound that know."
No singing-books we needed then, for very well we knew The tunes and words we loved so well the dear old Psalm
Book through; To " Coleshill " at the Sacrament we sang, as tears would fall, " I'll of salvation take the cup, on God's name will I call."
^ J. Baldwin Brown. ^ Luther.
PSALM I. I 169
And so 1 love the dear old Psalms, and when my time shall
come, Before the light has left my eyes, and my singing lips are
dumb, If I can only hear them then I'll gladly soar away, — "So pants my longing soul, 0 God, that come to Thee I
may."
2. The First and Second Psalms are distinguished by having no title or preliminary inscription. They appear to stand as an introduction to the Psalter. They serve as an overture to the great choral symphony which follows, giving forth the two great themes which are to be wrought into so many forms of melody in later Psalms. The one strikes the key-note of the blessedness of keeping God's law ; the other puts into music the hope of a coming Messiah, and so together they anticipate almost all that is to follow. At what stage of the collection of the Psalter they were prefixed, or by whom, we do not know, and the knowledge would be of no importance.
The teaching of these Psalms as to the blessedness of keeping the law is to some extent the characteristic Old Testament teaching of the outward prosperity of the righteous, and the transiency of the wicked. Christianity does not altogether repeat that teaching. The Cross has taught new lessons of the meaning of suffering and the mystery of pain ; and now that the Holy One of God has been made perfect by suffering, the Old Testament thoughts as to the connexion between well-doing and well-being, so far as externals go, have been modified and deepened. But the inmost heart of them remains true for evermore, and these Psalms declare a universal and irreversible law, rooted in the nature of things, and eternal as the throne of God, when they declare that obedience is blessedness, and sin is destruction.
^ The benediction, in the opening of the First Psalm, divides at once the virtue which is to be strengthened, or to find voice, in the following Psalms, into three conditions, the understanding of which is the key to the entire law of Old Testament morality.
" Blessed is the man who " (first) " has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly."
That is to say, who has not advanced, or educated himself, in the " counsel " (either the opinions or the advice) of men who are unconscious of the existence of God.
I70 THE MAN THAT IS BLESSED
That is the law of our Intellectual Education.
" Nor " (secondly) " stood in the way of sinners."
That is to say, who has not adopted for the standing, establish- ing, and rule of his life, the ways, customs, or principles of the men who, whether conscious or unconscious of God's being, disobey His commands.
That is the law of our moral conduct.
" And hath not " (thirdly) " sat in the seat of the scornful."
That is to say, who has not, in teaching or ruling others, permitted his own pride or egotism to make him intolerant of their creeds, impatient of their ignorance, or unkind to their failings. This throne of pride is, in the Vulgate, called the throne of Pestilence. I know not on what ground ; but assuredly conveying this further truth, that the source of all noisome blast of heresy, "that plaguing strays" in the Christian Church, has been the pride and egotism of its pastors.
Here, then, are defined for us in the first words of the Psalter, the three great vices of Intellectual Progress, Moral Stature, and Cathedral Enthronement, by which all men are tempted in their learning, their doing, and their teaching ; and in conquering which, they are to recei^'^e the blessing of God, and the peaceful success of their human life. These three sins are always expressed in the Greek Psalter in the same terms.
Ungodliness is asebeia ; Sin is hamartia ; Pride is hyperephania ; and the tenor of every passage throughout the Psalms, occupied in the rebuke or threatening of the " wicked," is coloured by its specific direction against one or other of these forms of sin.
But, separate from all these sins, and governing them, is the monarchic " Iniquity," which consists in the wilful adoption of, and persistence in, these other sins, by dehberately sustained false balance of the heart and brain.
A man may become impious, by natural stupidity. He may become sinful, by natural weakness. And he may become insolent, by natural vanity. But he only becomes unjust, or unrighteous, by resolutely refusing to see the truth that makes against him; and resolutely contemplating the truth that makes for him.