The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 1 — Section 327

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-5.-God the salvation of the countenance; or, a light heart makes a bright face. Dr. Binnie remarks, "The forty-second and forty-third [psalms] (which go together), were almost certainly written by the Korahites who accompanied David in his flight beyond the Jordan during Absalom's rebellion." 1 Nearly all modern critics consider that this and the preceding psalm formed originally but one. 2 So the simi- larity of Pss. xlii. 5, 11 and x:liii. 5 would suggest. '!'here is a variation between some of the expressions in the former and those in the latter; but there is nothing in this psalm which needs elaborate explanation. There is, however, an expression in both of them, which contains in itself a doctrine of amazing depth, one of which thousands of living believers are perpetual illustrations and proofs, though, as a doctrine, it receives far too little notice. The doctrine is connected with the religion of the face, and is this-that when Divine light shines in the soul of man, it will cause a radiance all its own to beam from the countenance; that God is indeed the salvation of a man's features. An Irishman was once asked what made him look so happy after his conversion.. "Oh," he said, "Christ lightens our hearts, and then he brightens our face." As Dickson quaintly remarks l1ereon, "As when the Lord withdraweth both the outward tokens of his favour and bis inward consolation for a time, the counte- nance of the godly cannot but be heavy, cast down, and look sad, like a man that is sick; so when God retumeth to comfort an<l to own his own, either both inwardly and outwardly, or inwardly only, the man's face looketh cheerful: he is the health of my countenance." 3 The Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, U.S., in a remarkable lecture on Solar Self-Culture, says, "There is only one form of culture that gives supremacy, and that is the form which produces the solar look; and the solar look comes only from the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. It may be incon- trovertibly proved, by the coolest induction from fixed natural law, that the highest culture must be that through which the solar look shines, and that this look is possible only when there exists in the soul glad self-surrender to the innermost holiest of C011scieoce. In that innermost holiest Christianity finds a personal Omnipotence." t We are all familiar enough, indeed, with the generally admitted fact that the face is 1 'The Psnlrne, their History, Teaching and Use,' by Wm. Binnie, D.D., new edit., 1886, p. 72. Dr. Binnie has a most interesting chapter on "David's Ol'dinanees for the Service of Song," pp. 5B-7G. 2 'Variorum Dible,' in loc. • 'A Brief Explanation of the Psalms,' 'by Rev. David Dickson. There is no date to the bo6k, but the at1thor died in IG62. His life, by Wodrow, is dated 1726. ~ ':&,eton Monday Lectures,' by the Ilev. Jos. Cook, 2nd aerie,., pp. 148, et aeq.: Dickinson. rs. XJ.III, 1-5.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 339