word ' sympathy ' is not found in the Psalter, but that for wliich the word stands sheds rays across the gloom of dirge-like psalms (39 and 88), and shines like a radiant sun in the glow of such psalma as 21. 40. 103, and 140. And the marvel is that He who bends so low to lift the downcast, the de- graded, and the sinner, is He whose ' kiii;,'dom luleth over all,' and for whom the whole Ps:ilter, as well as the 9yth psalm, provides the refrain, Moll/ is He.
2. The manifestation of God in nature — to use a modem phrase — is not, properly speaking, a tlieme of the psalms. The nature-psahns are well known : the 8th and 19th, the iOth and 93rd, the Ooth and 104th have taught mankind many lessons, liut tlie pictures of nature come in by the way. For the psalmist, nature is not so much a revelation, as the frame of a picture which contains one. Occasionally tlie eye wanders to the frame and dwells upon it, but it is only in passing. The picture itself is concerned with the human .soul and its relation to the living God. And if the psalms are a wonder of literature because of the unique picture of God which they present, in con- trast with the highest conceptions of which man thus far had shown himself capable, no less remark- able is their portraiture of man. The Heb. psalmist might seem to be a child by the side of the Hindu sage and the Greek philoso[iher, but neither of these could sound the human heart as he has done. The complexities, the inconsistencies, the para- doxical contradictions which characterize human life are all here. ' What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him ? ' The littleness and the greatness of man are there, in a line ; disceriieil, almost un- consciously to himself, by the poet, because his eye was fixed, not on man but on God. The first and last verses of the 8th psalm give tlie keynote to its music, and that of the wliule Psalter, and man falls into his place, so sm.all in himself, so great in his relation to God. ' Nothing is more easy than to take a high view of human nature, (ili)»e, or a low view, aloni; ; there are facts and ajinearances in abundance to account for and justify eitlier. IJut the view of the I'saliiis combines them ; man's littleness and insignificance, in relation to the immense universe about him, and to its infinite and everlasting God ; man's littleness in his rela- tion to time, to his own short passage between its vast before and after, his feebleness, his misery, his sin : on the other side, man's greatness, as the consummate work of (Jod s hands, thought worthy of His care, His choice. His provident and watch- ful regard ; man's greatness and ies|ionsil)ility, as aipable of knowing (iod and loving Him, of win- ning His blessing and perishing un<ler His judg- ment; man's greatness even as a sinner able to sink so low, and yet to rise by reijentaiice out of the deejjest degradation and most hopeless ruin' (K. W. Church).
3. There may at first sight appear to be an in- consistency between the language of various psalms on the suoject of sin. The deepest contrition is jHirtrayed in the 32nd and .51st; the utmost con- fidence, sounding perilously likeself-rightcousness, in the "tli, 18th, and 101st. It may be thought that hero is a mark of varying date, Israel's sense of sin deepening as history advanced ; or that the contrast is between the language of men of diflcrent temperaments, or the .same man in difrcient moods. But tlio inconsistency is only ajipareiit. The assertion of integrity is relative, not absolute. It is that of the hn.dd, the 'pidly' man, who is determined to keep well within the bounds of the covenant which is the charter of national religion, or is conscious of having done so. The same man may bow low in humility before God and confesa
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his sins ; just as the nation — for in the opinion of many the ' clnircli-nation ' is the speaker in the ' I ' of the psalms — may at one moment plead the sacredness of the bond which binds it to J ", and at another deplore its own unfaithfulness to covenant- vows.
That the ethical view of the psalmist was limited is unquestionable ; he was the child of his own age. Ethics was as yet too little personal, and the individual sense of wrong-doing «as, for the most part, neither deep nor poignant. The life of the communitj' — for better, for worse — was more important ; and it is no easy matter sometimes to distinguish between the passages in which the psalmist speaks in his own name and those in which his personality is merged in the national life. The tendency of modern criticism is to minimize the personal element in the Psalms (see Smend, ' Ueber das Ich der Psalmen' in ZATW, 1888, pp. 49-147 ; and Cheyne, who says in Origin of Ps. p. 205 : ' In the psalmists, as such, the indi- vidual consciousness was all but lost in the corporate — the Psalter is a monument of church-conscious- ness ' ; and notes, pp. 276, 277). It is not necessary to recoU to the other extreme in reaction against the excessive individualism of some schools of in- terpreters. There are psalms in w hich the personal note is unquestionable (3. 4. 6. 18. 27, etc. ). Others, again, are as clearly national (44. 46. 76) ; whilst in others the references to trouble or to joy may be such that they might apply equally well to personal or to national experience (31. 86. 118) ; or the psaJra WTitten by an individual for himself might be used in worship by the community. Eminent modern critics (\V. R. Smith, Driver, Cheyne) are content to understand the 51st psalm ' as a prayer for the restoration and sanctitication of Israel in the mouth of a prophet of the Exile.' But such a view not merely runs counter to tradi- tional exegesis, but appears to many, including the present writer, to fail to do justice to the language of such a psalm. Deep sense of sin and contrition on account of it, though not very frequently expressed in the psalms, forms an essential part of the religious life therein depicted. Some of the ' penitential ' psalms, so-called, may refer to trouble rather than transgression, but the psalmist's religion cannot be understood if it be resolved into a sense of national humiliation and distress.