THE PSALMS IN HISTORY AND 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH, 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
THE PSALMS 
 
 IN 
 
 HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EEV. JOHN KEE, D.D. 
 
 'Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.' 
 
 PSALM cxix. 54. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 ANDREW ELLIOT, 17 PRINCES STREET. 
 
 1886. 
 
' What a record that would be, if one could write it down, all the 
 spiritual experiences, the disclosures of the heart, the comforts and the 
 conflicts which men in the course of ages have connected with the ivords 
 of the Psalms I What a history, if we could discover the place this 
 Book has occupied in the inner life of the heroes of the Kingdom 
 of God ! ' THOLUCK. 
 
K4-7 
 
 PEEFATOEY NOTE. 
 
 THE interest of this little work is increased by the 
 fact that it was the last effort of my brother's mind. 
 He had given the finishing touches to it with his own 
 hand when he was suddenly called home. Like 
 most men of strong faith, and deep insight into the 
 human heart, he was especially fond of the Psalms, 
 and nothing delighted him more when he was with a 
 few chosen friends than to repeat one of his favourites, 
 and to expatiate on its beauties. 
 
 Another thing may give interest to the work 
 my brother had begun to draw out a course of 
 lectures on the Psalms for his class, to be given 
 during the winter. These were to be treated more 
 from an exegetical and doctrinal standpoint, and to 
 show what a rich mine of wealth there is in them, 
 'for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in 
 
 312 
 
vi PREFA TOR Y NOTE. 
 
 righteousness.' But the voice of the teacher and 
 friend will be heard no more, though miny will long 
 remember its winning tones, and Faith and Love can 
 join him in that new song he is singing before the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb. 
 
 And may we not hope that this, his latest work, 
 ' sown in weakness, will be raised in power ' to the 
 glory of God, in drawing hearts more to this precious 
 part of His word for comforting, quickening, and 
 edifying, so that, though being dead, he yet may 
 speak. 
 
 E. K. N. 
 EDINBURGH, October 1880. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT would not be easy to number up the com- 
 mentaries on the book of Psalms. Calmet, in tho 
 early part of last century, reckoned them at about 
 a thousand, and from his time to Mr. Spurgeon's 
 Treasury of the House of David, they have largely 
 increased. The present little book has a simpler 
 object in view. Its editor (he cannot call himself 
 author) was struck many years ago with the manner 
 in which the Psalms have pervaded human life, 
 and made themselves felt in the most critical moments 
 of action and suffering ; and he began to note 
 down instances, from time to time, as they occurred 
 in the course of his reading. The passage from 
 Tholuck, given on page iv., fell in his way, and 
 confirmed a growing idea that a selection of them 
 might be read with interest, and perhaps profit. The 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 wise man has said of words fitly spoken, that they 
 are like ' apples of gold in pictures (baskets) of silver/ 
 The incidents may be the silver baskets, the Psalms 
 are certainly the golden apples, and the only work 
 has been the gathering and storing them. In regard 
 to this the words of good Bishop Home in his Com- 
 mentary on the Psalms may be adopted : ' If any one 
 derive half the pleasure from reading that has been 
 received in the collecting, the work is more than paid/ 
 Had all the incidents in ordinary biography been 
 made available, there would have been no end of 
 material ; but an attempt has been made to limit the 
 instances to persons or events of a more public 
 character, or to such as throw some light on the 
 psalm, or the portion of it quoted. On the other 
 hand, the incidents, if merely named, would have been 
 bare and colourless, and it has been felt necessary, in 
 a number of cases, to describe briefly the circum- 
 stances in which the words were used. These in- 
 cidents are not confined to what is commonly known 
 as the Christian circle first, because it might be 
 presumptuous to draw any such marked line, and 
 next, because oue object was to show the broad 
 humanity of the book of Psalms. Its plenteous rain 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 has watered not only what may be called the garden 
 of God, but has scattered drops far and wide 'to 
 satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause 
 the bud of the tender herb to spring forth.' When 
 we find its words quoted in strange places, and by 
 unlikely lips, we may learn their wonderful power 
 to make room for themselves, where they may ' grow 
 and stand ; ' and we may look hopefully to him who 
 does not break the bruised reed, and who can make 
 the seed which springs up in thorny places overcome 
 surrounding obstacles, and change the very soil. 
 
 An attempt was made to classify the incidents 
 under separate heads, but this was soon found to be 
 perplexing, and indeed impossible ; and the Psalms 
 have therefore been taken in order, which may suffice 
 for common reference. As, however, a number of the 
 Psalms are referred to in different places, a general 
 index, including them all, has been given ; and also 
 an index to the leading persons and events used 
 in illustration. By this means, it is hoped, something 
 may be done, or at least suggested, in the way of aid 
 to reading in the family, and instruction in Sabbath 
 classes, so as to bring this part of the Bible into 
 connection with Christian biography and history. 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 Psalms and events could be arranged together in a 
 number of consecutive courses, and thereby fresh 
 interest might be given to both. The early Christian 
 Church, the Keformation in the different countries of 
 Europe, the Covenanting period in Scotland, have, all 
 of them, had their own sacred songs, enshrined in 
 deeds of heroic struggle, illuminated by the fires of 
 martyrdom, endeared and hallowed by the most touch- 
 ing memories. The study of the event in history, and 
 the fixing of the song in the memory, and, by God's 
 grace, in the heart, would be one of the best ways of 
 turning the hearts of the children to their fathers, and 
 of giving to the young their inheritance in the son of 
 Jesse. The same may be said of Christian biography. 
 Silvio Pellico, in the history of his imprisonment, has 
 an striking chapter on the written records left upon 
 the walls by those who preceded him in the cells 
 through which he passed. In the book of Psalms 
 we have a series of chambers where hearts and lives 
 have left the records of their experience. They are 
 very varied, but in all of them, prison or palace, there 
 is a window towards the sun-rising. The hope that the 
 intelligence of parents and teachers may be stimulated 
 to some such plans for deepening the interest of the 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 young in the book of Psalms has been one reason for 
 sending out these notes. 
 
 We may add that we are anxious to contribute, in 
 however small a degree, to the maintenance of the 
 Psalms in the public worship of our churches. By 
 this we do not mean that they should have an ex- 
 clusive place. It is difficult to see why we should 
 not use the New Testament in our praise as well as 
 in our prayers and our preaching ; or wherefore we 
 should not have scriptural songs in which the name 
 of Jesus is confessed by our tongue, and his saving 
 deeds proclaimed as they have been most fully 
 revealed. There may be room for both Testaments 
 for the Song of Moses, and the Lamb in the worship 
 of earth as well as of heaven. But, in the reaction 
 towards hymns, let us not forget the songs of the 
 ancient Church of God. Their language and modes 
 of thought help us to the spiritual appreciation of the 
 Old Testament, which is still for us the larger portion 
 of God's word, even though it is not the clearest. 
 This subdued light has its value. There are moods of 
 musing, dubious wanderings under star- gleams, and 
 longing for light in the night seasons, which suit the 
 heart at times when it cannot open to the brightness 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 of mid-day. And even when the dawn appears, as it 
 often does in these Psalms, and the mohiing is spread 
 upon the mountains, there is a freshness and gladsome- 
 ness about it when it comes with the dew of youth. 
 The Christian Church, at any one time, has probably 
 members who belong to all the past periods of her 
 existence ; the night, the dawn, and the full daylight 
 nay, each member may have by turns all these 
 seasons in himself. There should be songs to suit 
 them all, and can we have them better than by taking 
 those which have risen to God in the course of her 
 lengthened history ? Among these the book of 
 Psalms must always hold a foremost place. And 
 there is this marked feature in them, that while they 
 are full of the praise of God's mercy, and laden with 
 comfort, there are no sacred songs which exalt so 
 highly the divine righteousness and purity, and im- 
 press so strongly the duties of uprightness and truth. 
 We need songs to attemper our souls to these high 
 attributes if we are to understand the gospel, and 
 fulfil its precepts. Hence the Psalms formed the men 
 who faced danger, and did not quail before the 
 multitude of spearmen, who did not weary under suffer- 
 ing, and were faithful unto death. Our worship may 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 put on fairer forms, and there is no reason why it 
 should not do so, with due regard to spirit and truth ; 
 but we shall grow up a feebler race than our fathers 
 when we cease to sing their Psalms, and when we 
 forget the order of worship the Psalmist has given ; 
 * Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary/ 
 
 To the historical illustrations of particular psalms 
 we have appended some testimonies to the value of 
 the book of Psalms as a whole ; and in the close 
 there will be found an account of the metrical versions 
 of the Psalms that have been in chief use among the 
 Eeformed Churches. As there is reference to them in 
 the illustrations, this account may have some interest. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 '. '* vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 
 
 . 1 
 
 PSALM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PSALM 
 
 
 i. . 
 
 . 17 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 . 23, 144 
 
 ii. . 
 
 . . .19 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 . 69 
 
 in. . 
 
 . 21 
 
 XL. 
 
 . 70 
 
 IV. . 
 
 . 22 
 
 XLI. 
 
 . 71, 175 
 
 v. . 
 
 . 170 
 
 XLII. 
 
 ... 62, 72 
 
 VI. . 
 
 23, 41, 114, 208 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 . 73, 118 
 
 VIII. . 
 
 . . 5, 17 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 . . .74 
 
 IX. . 
 
 . 26 
 
 XLV. 
 
 . 77 
 
 XI. . 
 
 27, 41 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 . 78, 160, 195, 208 
 
 XII. . 
 
 . 17, 28 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 . 17 
 
 XIV. . 
 
 . . 17 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 . 81 
 
 XV. . 
 
 . 17, 29 
 
 L. 
 
 . . .82 
 
 XVI. . 
 
 5, 30, 93, 98, 136 
 
 LI. 
 
 . 23, 32, 55, 83, 87, 
 
 XVII. . 
 
 . 32 
 
 
 96, 150, 160, 172 
 
 XVIII. . 
 
 22, 33 
 
 LIII. 
 
 . 55, 87 
 
 XIX. . 
 
 . 3, 17, 93, 203 
 
 LV. 
 
 . 88, 92 
 
 XX. . 
 
 . 36 
 
 LVI. 
 
 . 89 
 
 XXI. . 
 
 . 38, 114 
 
 LX. 
 
 . 89, 155 
 
 XXII. . 
 
 5, 39, 114 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 82, 92, 208, 209 
 
 XXIII. . 
 
 17, 22, 28, 40, 98, 
 
 LXV. 
 
 52, 93, 133 
 
 
 151, 208 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 . 93, 208 
 
 XXIV. . 
 
 . 17, 46 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 . 94, 138, 139 
 
 XXV. . 
 
 . 49 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 . 114 
 
 XXVI. . 
 
 . 50 
 
 LXX. 
 
 . 26 
 
 XXVII. . 
 
 . 22, 51 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 . 97 
 
 XXIX. . 
 
 . 52 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 17, 95, 175, 208 
 
 XXX. . 
 
 . 52, 114, 208 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 . 99 
 
 XXXI. . 
 
 53, 97, 114 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 . 101, 121, 133, 159 
 
 XXXII. . 
 
 . 23, 58, 81, 208 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 . 17 
 
 XXXIV. . 
 
 . 61 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 . 104 
 
 XXXVII. . 
 
 . 66 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 . 208, 210 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PSALM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PSALM 
 
 PAOK 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 . 210 
 
 cxv. 
 
 . 136 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 . 75, 106 
 
 CXVL 
 
 . 99, 136 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 . 210 
 
 cxvh. 
 
 . 137 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 . 108 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 ... , .138 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 . 43, 109 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 . 3, 143 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 . 112 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 . 149 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 . 113, 122 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 . 22, 150 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 . 113 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 . 150 
 
 LXXXI X. 
 
 . 116, 175, 210 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 . 139, 151, 200, 204 
 
 xo. 
 
 . 52, 116, 203, 208 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 . 155 
 
 XCI. 
 
 . 120, 122, 149 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 . 155 
 
 XCII. 
 
 . 121 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 . 157 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 . 208 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 23, 58, 160, 195 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 . 123 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 . 163, 173 
 
 xcv. 
 
 . 123 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 . 149, 175 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 . 124 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 . 164, 172, 204 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 . 125 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 . 165 
 
 c. 
 
 . 126, 204 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 . 110 
 
 CI. 
 
 . 126 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 . 168 
 
 OIL 
 
 . 23, 82, 128, 204, 208 
 
 CXLI. 
 
 . 170 
 
 cm. 
 
 . 130, 172, 208 
 
 CXLII. 
 
 . 23 
 
 JIV. 
 
 17, 52, 132 
 
 CXLIII. 
 
 . i>3, 58, 170, 172, 
 
 cv. 
 
 . 210 
 
 
 204, 209 
 
 CVI. 
 
 . 210 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 . 171 
 
 CVII 
 
 . . . . 133 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 . 171, 204 
 
 ex 
 
 . 5 
 
 cxLvr. 
 
 . 172, 203 
 
 CXII. 
 
 . 135 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 52, 92, 173, 209 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 . 135 
 
 CXLVIII. 
 
 . 174 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 . 135 
 
 CL. 
 
 . 174 
 
 TESTIMONIES TO THE VALUE OF THE PSALMS, 
 
 . . .; .. 177 
 
 METRICAL 
 
 VERSIONS OF THE PSALMS, . 
 
 . 192 
 
 
 
 . 213 
 
THE PSALMS IN HISTORY AND 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 HSTTKODUCTION. 
 
 THESE are three ways in which the Psalms may be 
 regarded historically. The first is their connection 
 with the life of those who, under the inspiring breath 
 of God's Spirit, were their authors. Dr. Maclaren of 
 Manchester, in his interesting volume, David in the 
 Psalms, has dealt with this in the case of the chief 
 of these. He has brought the utterances of the 
 sacred poet into contact with his history, and has 
 shown how they illustrate each other. We understand 
 both of them better when this is done, and we reach 
 a higher estimate of David's character. It is not 
 easy to perceive how he was the man ' according to 
 God's heart ' when we read only the narrative in the 
 books of Samuel and Kings. We have there 'the 
 
2 1NTR OD UCTION. 
 
 battle of the warrior with confused noise, and garments 
 rolled in blood/ the heavy incidents of fight and flight, 
 of breathless struggle and victory ; but* we see little of 
 the movements of his soul. It is in the book of 
 Psalms that we put our finger on the beating of his 
 heart -pulse. Wordsworth, in one of the finest of his 
 sonnets, that on Kilchurn Castle, compares the view 
 of the past to a waterfall, which is frozen and rigid 
 when seen from a distance, but when we come near 
 it, every drop is full of fervid life and motion. 
 David's Psalms give us this close access to his time ; 
 they are instinct with the stress and strain of his 
 inmost life. He is in conflict with enemies and 
 worldly allurements, beset with temptations of ambi- 
 tion and pleasure, with a keenly sensitive and pas- 
 sionate nature, but he turns with deep conviction to 
 faith in God as his only safety, and seeks fellowship 
 with him as his supreme happiness. We find him at 
 the court of Saul praying that he may be kept un- 
 spotted from the world, in the midst of his wild 
 followers in the cave of Adullam, sending the breath- 
 ings of his soul Godward, in banishment among 
 strangers turning to God's house as the home of his 
 heart, on the throne of Israel clothing himself in 
 sackcloth for hi? terrible fall ; and as we see God 
 taking him from the sheep-folds of Bethlehem to feed 
 
IJSITR OD UCTION. 3 
 
 Israel his inheritance, and listen to the experience of 
 the singer in every time of life, and at every turn of 
 condition, we not only have a deeper view of David's 
 character, but we comprehend why the sacred poet of 
 the Bible, who was to waken in men of all ranks so 
 many chords of feeling, should have a history with 
 such a wonderful range. It is the same, in degree, 
 with the other psalms not belonging to David. The 
 great majority have sprung from history, personal or 
 national from Moses in the wilderness of Sinai to the 
 captivity by the rivers of Babylon, and to the return 
 from it. Even the didactic psalms, which seem to be 
 an exception, are not so in reality. They are the 
 products of a history of the inner life, openings to 
 the light of day from the strong hidden currents 
 which have been flowing underneath. Take the 19th 
 or the 119th, or any of them, and remark how the 
 personality of the speaker enters, leaps up as it were, 
 into his song : ' Who can understand his errors ? 
 Cleanse thou me from secret faults/ ' Thou hast 
 commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. 
 that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes/ 
 They are so intensely subjective that we feel some- 
 times as if we could write a spiritual biography from 
 them. These men did not sit down and say, * I shall 
 make a poem on such an event, or I shall analyse 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 human nature and depict this emotion in song.' The 
 rod of God smote the rock, and the waters gushed out ; 
 they could not but sing what they felt. For the 
 centre of the Bible is a life, and this great life which 
 pervades it, in various forms from first to last, gives 
 plan and consistency to the Scriptures. So each part 
 is drawn into sympathy and conformity with the 
 centre, many circles of lives with their different 
 orbits, some of them nearer, some farther away, but 
 all under divine guidance, revolving round him of 
 whom it is said, ' In him is life, and the life is the 
 light of men.' The Psalms give us the fullest ex- 
 pression of this in the Old Testament, and, wherever 
 we can trace the circumstances out of which they 
 sprang, or enter into full contact with a human soul 
 speaking in them, we shall find that, with God's help, 
 they come most powerfully from the heart to the 
 heart. 
 
 The second history connected with the Psalms is 
 that of Christ. He himself has said, ' It is written in 
 the Psalms concerning me ; ' and his apostles have 
 applied to him many of their utterances, and 
 reasoned from them as containing views of his person 
 and work. His deepest agony on the cross was ex- 
 pressed in their words ; his soul was breathed through 
 them into his Father's hand ; his victory over death, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 and his exaltation to the throne of the universe, were 
 seen far off in their visions of a glorious future. 
 These are not surely meant to be exceptional or rare 
 references to what was the great hope of the ancient 
 Church, but finger-points to the lines by which we are 
 to read the book, guides for discovering in it the 
 burden of its prophecy, ' the sufferings of Christ, and 
 the glory that should follow.' We speak of certain 
 psalms as Messianic, the 8th, the 16th, the 22nd, the 
 110th, and others, and we do it justly, for in these 
 the person of Christ emerges more distinctly, and 
 there are events which belong to him and no other. 
 The inspired writer rises above himself, and passes 
 over into the great absorbing subject of his con- 
 templation. But there is also a sense, and a very 
 true one, in which every psalm is Messianic ; it would 
 never have found a place in the word of God, or 
 expressed the feeling it does, but for a Christ who 
 was to come. If there be a plan which will come 
 out at last in the movements of the world's history, 
 advancing to a far-off end, we may well believe that 
 in this inner history, which God has prepared for the 
 world's guidance and impulse, there will be a method ; 
 and no other is so natural as that the thoughts and 
 feelings, and hopes and aims of those who are 
 divinely trained under it should be advancing to him 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in whom they all find their completion. And this, 
 whether they be great or small, near or distant, open 
 or hidden, as the sun draws upwards the sea in its 
 great bays and little creeks, brightens the clouds and 
 colours the leaves, holds in their circuits the mightiest 
 planets and the latest asteroids which the astronomer 
 has felt travelling across the sky before he has 
 discovered their orbit. Christ is this in the Bible ; 
 and in the book of Psalms we can trace it most 
 distinctly. The vision of the perfectly righteous man, 
 who delights to do God's will and prospers in all he 
 undertakes, is never entirely fulfilled till it reaches 
 him who did no sin ; the cries for pardon, the desires 
 for fellowship with God, find their completion only in 
 the cross and the spirit of Christ ; the prayers for the 
 relief of the oppressed, for the lifting up of the fallen, 
 for the entrance of a divine kingdom of righteousness 
 and peace, go forward to him who has all power given 
 him in heaven and earth for carrying out his just and 
 merciful designs. It is true that the dove of prophecy, 
 as it circled over the waters, was not always in view 
 of the ark ; but, in its farthest wanderings, it was under 
 its attraction, and was swayed by, and fluttering to, 
 that final resting-place. In this sense, then, not only 
 the psalms of direct prediction, but those of confession, 
 of supplication, of aspiration of the failing sight, and 
 
INTR OD UCTION. 7 
 
 fainting heart looking for God's salvation, are truly 
 Messianic. They are shadows cast from the tree with 
 the healing leaves, never so clearly defined as when 
 they lie deepest on the soul, channels grooved for 
 the river of life from which the course of its 
 streams could be foreseen never so distinct as when 
 the ploughshare of trial is sharpest and heaviest. 
 And, indeed, if we would understand the secret of 
 this history, we must remember that it was Christ's 
 own spirit which infused the desires that led to 
 himself. As the world makes known God, because 
 God is the maker of the world, the Psalms make known 
 Christ because he inspired them. It was a long 
 Emmaus journey, and he was walking beside the 
 travellers all the time, making their hearts burn 
 within them, and drawing them forth to reveal their 
 need before he came to reveal himself as the satisfaction 
 of it. The Psalms contain his history, because he is 
 not only their subject, but their divine author, the root 
 as well as the offspring of David. 
 
 There is still a third history connected with the 
 Psalms that to which we have already made reference 
 in the preface, and which we wish to make the subject 
 of illustration hereafter. They have written a new 
 record for themselves in the experience of many 
 Christian men and women, and in some of the most 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 remarkable movements of the Church and of the 
 world. The Lord Jesus Christ who breathed them 
 into human hearts at first, gathered them afterwards 
 into his own, and then, having filled them with richer 
 meanings, commissioned them on wider and grander 
 errands. He left his cross, ascended his throne, and 
 sent them forth like his angels, as ministering spirits 
 to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. 
 What a wonderful story they could tell if we could 
 gather it all from lonely chambers, from suffering 
 sick-beds, from the brink of the valley of the shadow 
 of death, from scaffolds and fiery piles witnessing in 
 sunlight, from moors and mountains beneath the stars, 
 and in high places of the field turning to flight the 
 armies of the aliens ! We may hope that the collection 
 of some of them in historical association will furnish 
 more than pictures to the fancy. Fresh light may be 
 cast on the words from the way in which they are 
 used. There is an exposition by example as well as 
 by the mere understanding, and if we see how the 
 sword of the Spirit has been wielded in some emergency, 
 it may reveal the point and edge of the weapon, and 
 help our hand to the hilt. Even where it does not 
 cast light on the meaning, it will give a psalm fresh 
 power over us to know that it has taken part in 
 shaping some great crisis, or that it has carried a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 message in time of trial to some suffering heart. 
 There is a want of memory for the choicest parts of 
 the word of God which many people plead guilty to, 
 without regret or shame. Yet the apostle puts great 
 emphasis on the value of a right memory : ' By which 
 also/ he says, 'ye are saved if ye keep it in memory/ 
 The Psalmist, too, is never weary of insisting on the 
 duty of remembering God's works and words, and he 
 shows us a way by which we may attain to it : 'I will 
 never forget thy precepts, for with them thou hast 
 quickened me/ If we can connect God's word with 
 our living experiences, we shall not easily let it slip ; 
 the heart will make an indelible mark with that text 
 on the memory. And, next to our own experience, 
 we shall remember it through the help it has given to 
 others. The book of Psalms, beyond every book of 
 man, and most parts of the book of God, can be brought 
 into this connection with life. We can take passage 
 after passage and write out for it some grief it has 
 comforted, some doubt it has solved, some deliverance 
 it has wrought or celebrated. This, we can say, was 
 cast into a well of Marah and sweetened it ; this 
 brought water out of the rock and made the desert 
 fresh for many a mile ; this went down with Joshua 
 into the battle, and held up the hands of Moses on the 
 mount ; this descended with the ark of the covenant 
 
j INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 into the swellings of Jordan to dry up the flood. If 
 we can read the book, or a part of it, yi the light of 
 such experiences, we may be helped to make- it more 
 our own, to take it home to our heart and to keep it 
 for a possession. There are promises in the Bible 
 which seem beyond our reach ; we have nothing to 
 draw with, and the well is deep. But some one, like 
 ourselves, has been there before us, and has left a cup 
 to be let down with his name and story engraven on 
 the rim : ' Tor this shall every one that is godly pray 
 unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found/ 
 
 It is but another side of this truth to say that the 
 Psalms, when associated with such experiences, help 
 us to realize the oneness of the life of God in all his 
 family. They form the closest bond between the Old 
 Testament and the New, the bond of spirit and life. 
 When we sing them we join with a multitude which 
 no man can number, a long line of pilgrims in the 
 most distant ages, who drew from them strength for 
 their journey and solace for their hardships. There 
 are no sacred words on Christian lips which have such 
 an antiquity, no river of melody which has made glad 
 so many generations in the city of God. The men 
 who lived long after the deliverance from Egypt, 
 claimed fellowship with those who came forth with 
 Moses, and felt as if they were present when they 
 
INTRODUCTION. n 
 
 joined in the praise : ' They went through the flood 
 on foot: there did we rejoice in him/ The Psalms 
 furnish us with such an age-long communion of 
 interest. They are like the memorial stones of 
 Gilgal, witnesses to a glorious past, and even more, 
 for they gather new testimonies as the fathers leave 
 them to their children, 'that all the people of the 
 earth might know the hand of the Lord that it is 
 mighty; that ye might fear the Lord your God for 
 ever.' If the Psalms form this fellowship in the 
 world of time, they do it not less throughout the 
 world of space, and among living Christians. They 
 are the most Catholic element in all the varieties of 
 worship found in every country and clime, among 
 them that name the name of Christ. It has often 
 been remarked that those who differ in definitions of 
 doctrine, agree when they approach the throne of 
 grace in prayer, or the person of Christ in reverence 
 and love. In the Psalms of the Old Testament and 
 the Gospels of the New the songs of the son of 
 Jesse and the person of the Son of David there is 
 room for the meeting of many who may be divided 
 elsewhere. Before the art of printing made the whole 
 Bible open to the Church, these were the parts tran- 
 scribed without end by the copyist's pen. It arose 
 from the feeling that here is to be found the heart 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and essence of the word of God. The spirit was 
 preserved by them for long centuries from being 
 crushed under the weight of ceremonialism, and 
 blinded by the thick darkness. When we listen, and 
 hear from these ages the chanting of the Psalms, 
 imperfectly understood as they were, it sounds l like a 
 song as in the night, when a holy solemnity is kept, 
 until the Lord caused his glorious voice to be heard, 
 and showed the lighting down of his arm/ And still, 
 wherever they are sung, we may feel that we can join 
 in that worship, and hope that the unity of the Spirit, 
 in this part, will clear away, in God's time, mists 
 which remain. Thought has its rights, and must use 
 them for the discovery of all Christian truth; but 
 meanwhile it is well that we have this common meet- 
 ing-place for the heart. 
 
 There is one further purpose which we hope may 
 be served by this association of the Psalms with 
 history ; it may aid in showing how great the debt is 
 which human life owes to the word of God. Every 
 one who has read the Eclipse of Faith by Henry 
 Eogers will remember the chapter called the Blank 
 Bible. He dreams that he awakens one morning to 
 find his Bible reduced to pages of white paper ; and 
 on inquiry, in all the houses around, the same thing 
 has happened. The Bible as a book has disappeared 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 from the world, and everything borrowed from it in 
 literature has vanished likewise. Never before was 
 it known to what an extent genius had been indebted 
 to the Book of books, and never was such value set 
 on the memories of the humble Christians who could 
 aid in restoring the lost treasure. The world began 
 to recognise the worth of what it had long despised, 
 now that it had lost it. But what if we could carry 
 out this fancy of Eogers, and suppose the Bible 
 obliterated from the history of the world and the life 
 of man ! Imagine all erased that the Bible has done 
 in setting before men the ideal of equity and purity, 
 of generosity and mercy ; all the motives which have 
 nerved the patriot's arm to do, and the martyr's soul to 
 suffer ! Conceive the destruction, or the non-existence 
 of the strength and peace and joy which the Bible 
 has infused into the hearts of the desolate and be- 
 reaved, which it has sent into the homes of rich and 
 poor alike, of many surrounded by grandeur and glitter 
 who are withering amid the sunshine from a worm at the 
 root, and of lonely creatures who are crying out in 
 forsaken misery, c Eef uge failed me ; no man cared for 
 my soul ! ' If it were possible to represent this, and 
 to show ' the shadow from the heat, the covert from 
 wind and rain ' which would have been lost, we do 
 not beKeve a Christian Apology would ever need to 
 
i 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be written 'upon all the glory this should be the 
 defence/ It is not possible. It comes under the eye 
 of him alone, who ' looketh to the ends of the earth, 
 and seeth under the whole heaven/ and who will 
 reveal it when he opens the books the book of his 
 word, of his providence, and of the souls of men. 
 But we may form some small conception of it when 
 we take one portion of God's word, such as this book 
 of Psalms, and gather some of the cases in which it 
 has brought help to men in trouble, or strength and 
 guidance to the Church in trying moments of her 
 history. Yet what are the few incidents which fall 
 to the knowledge of any one compared with the 
 experience of the Church of the living God through 
 all time, and in all parts of the world ? The few 
 that meet the light of day, what are they to the 
 hearts which are bound up and healed in the secret 
 chambers of his presence ? Nevertheless the few 
 stars which cross our narrow window chink may lead 
 our thoughts, as God did Abraham, to the wide 
 heaven with its unnumbered lights, and to all those 
 who from the broad sea and earth, and from every 
 lonely place, are looking upward to his sky. The 
 firmament of his word has also its stars which no 
 man can number, the promises and hopes and con- 
 solations by which God has given ' power to the faint, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 and increased strength to them that have no might/ 
 Each one has had its record in some heart and life. 
 What a history it will be when they are all gathered 
 together and made known, and how the old challenge 
 will be renewed in a higher sphere of divine handi- 
 work ! * Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who 
 hath created these, that bringeth out their host by 
 number : he calleth them all by names by the great- 
 ness of his might, for that he is strong in power j not 
 one faileth.' 
 
lisalm I. 
 
 RUSKIN says the Psalter contains, in the first half of 
 it, the sum of personal and social wisdom. The 1st, 
 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 24th Psalms, 
 well learned and believed, are enough for all personal 
 guidance; the 48th, 72nd, and 75th have in them 
 the law and the prophecy of all righteous govern- 
 ment ; and every real triumph of natural science is 
 anticipated in the 104th. 
 
 The earliest version of the first psalm known in 
 Scotland, in the native tongue, is by Alexander 
 Montgomery, who lived in the reign of James VI. 
 He belonged to the Eglinton family, wfts a captain in 
 the bodyguard of Eegent Morton, and is referred to 
 by James Melville in his diary as ' a good, honest man, 
 and the Eegent's domestic/ His best known poem, 
 containing passages which show a true sympathy with 
 nature, is the allegory of the ' Cherry and the Slae/ 
 He is the author of many odes, sonnets, and psalms ; 
 arid we extract this as a specimen, and as showing 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 that love for the Psalms which became so strong a 
 feature in the character of the Scottish people. We 
 have changed obsolete words and spelling, and brought 
 the rhyme closer to our present pronunciation, but 
 the entire rhythm and general expression have been 
 preserved. A French critic remarks on the old 
 versions of Marot and Beza that they owe their 
 great variety of rhythm to their having been formed 
 in the 16th century, before the more monotonous 
 measures of the 17th and 18th began to prevail. It 
 may be that our present Scottish version (Kous's) has 
 suffered somewhat from this later origin, but it has 
 gained by closer fidelity to the original Scripture. 
 
 That man is blest, 
 
 And is possessed 
 
 Of truest rest, 
 Who from ungodly counsel turns his feet ; 
 
 Who walks not in 
 
 The way of sin, 
 
 Nor comes within 
 The place where mockers take their shameful seat ; 
 
 Eut in God's law to go 
 
 He doth delight ; 
 
 And studies it to know 
 
 Both day and night. 
 That man shall be like to a tree 
 Which by the running river spreads its shade ; 
 Which fruit does bear in time of year ; 
 Whose root is firm, whose leaf shall never fade. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 19 
 
 II. 
 
 His actions all 
 
 Still prosper shall ; 
 
 So doth not fall 
 To wicked men ; whom, as the chaff and sand, 
 
 Winds, day by day, 
 
 Shall drive away ; 
 
 Therefore I say 
 The wicked in the judgment shall not stand : 
 
 Neither shall sinners dare, 
 
 Whom God disdains, 
 
 To enter the assembly where 
 
 The just remains. 
 
 For God most pure, keeps record sure ; 
 He knows the righteous' heart and converse aye : 
 But like the fire kindles his ire 
 'Gainst wicked men, till they consume away. 
 
 2. 
 
 As the first psalm is the outer door of practical 
 insight with a prophetic close, so the second psalm is 
 the inner door of prophetic foresight with a practical 
 close ; and these two interchange and interpret each 
 other through the whole book, in the one case the life 
 bestowing vision, in the other the vision leading to life. 
 
 The earliest song of thanksgiving and prayer in 
 the Christian Church is drawn from this psalm. It 
 is the beginning of that long history in which David, 
 Christ, and the experience of the Church, are found so 
 often re-appearing in union. (Acts iv. 24-30.) 
 
20 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 ' And when they heard that, they lifted up their 
 voice to God with one accord, and said, 
 
 * " Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven and earth, 
 And the sea, and all that in them is : 
 Who "by the mouth of thy servant David hast said. 
 Why did the heathen rage, 
 And the people imagine vain things ? 
 The kings of the earth stood np, 
 And the rulers were gathered together 
 Against the Lord, and against his Christ. 
 For of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, 
 Whom thou hast anointed, 
 
 Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, 
 And the people of Israel, were gathered together, 
 For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel 
 Determined before to be done. 
 And now, Lord, behold their threatenings : 
 And grant unto thy servants, 
 That with all boldness they may speak thy word, 
 By stretching forth thine hand to heal ; 
 And that signs and wonders may be done 
 By the name of thy holy child Jesus." ' 
 
 Ver. 10 was the remonstrance addressed to Henry 
 VIII. by John Lambert, who was burned at Smith- 
 field in 1538 : 
 
 ' Now, ye kings, understand, and ye which judge 
 the earth be wise and learned. Serve the Lord with 
 fear, and rejoice in him with trembling/ 
 
 Lambert's martyrdom was one of the most cruel 
 of that time, and the often-quoted words came from 
 him as he lifted his fingers flaming with fire, ' None 
 but Christ, none but Christ ! ' 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 21 
 
 3. 
 
 Vers. 3-6. ' But thou, Lord, art a shield for me ; 
 my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. . . . 
 
 ' I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that 
 have set themselves against me round about.' 
 
 This was the text from which Bishop Bedell preached 
 to his fellow-prisoners in the time of the Irish rebellion 
 in 1642, when he and trie Protestants of the district 
 were shut up in hold, and in danger of death at any 
 moment. He was one of the best bishops who ever 
 lived in Ireland, and, had his example been 
 generally followed, the Eeformation would have made 
 much greater progress in the country. He learned 
 the Irish language, had the Bible translated into it, 
 was assiduous in Christian work, and filled with the 
 spirit of meekness and self-sacrifice. The word "bedel in 
 Hebrew signifies tin, and so deep was his desire of 
 an entire renewal that he took for his motto, Isa. i. 25, 
 ' I will purely purge thy dross, and take away all thy 
 (bedel) tin.' He lived from 15*70 to 1642, and, 
 when he died in the midst of these troubles, the 
 Irish had such regard for him that they fired a volley 
 at his interment, and cried, Reqiiiescat in pace ultimus 
 Anglorum. 
 
 The French Protestants, in the time of their persecu- 
 tion, had psalms adapted to their varied circumstances. 
 The 3rd Psalm was for the stationing of sentinels to 
 
22 THE PSALMS IN HIS TOR Y 
 
 keep watch against sudden attack ; when the danger 
 was over, and they could worship in safety, they 
 sang Psalm 122nd. 
 
 $salm 4+ 
 
 Augustine quotes this psalm as of special value, 
 and worthy to be sung aloud before the whole world 
 for an expression of Christian courage, and a testimony 
 of the peace God can give in outward and inward 
 trouble (Conf. ix. 4). 'I will both lay me down in 
 peace and sleep ; for thou, Lord, only makest me 
 dwell in safety/ 
 
 James Melville quoted it, among others, when he 
 was dying. 'This being done, he comforteth himself 
 with sundrie speeches out of the Psalms, quhilk he 
 rehearsit in Hebrew ; as, namely, ane speech out of 
 Psalm 4th, " Lord, lift up the light of thy counten- 
 ance upon me." Psalm 2*7th, "The Lord is my light 
 and my salvation, quhat can I fear?" Psalm 23rd, 
 " Albeit I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
 death, yet will I fear none evil, because God is with 
 me." The candell being behind back, he desired that 
 it should be brought before him, that he might see 
 to die. By occasioune thereof, he remembered that 
 Scripture, Psalm 18th, "The Lord will lighten my 
 candell ; He will enlighten my darkness." ' 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 23 
 
 6. 
 
 This psalm might have a history to itself. It has a 
 wail of pain and sorrow, deepening into anguish, running 
 through it; but comfort dawns at the close, like an 
 angel turning the key of the prison. It is the first 
 of the seven penitential psalms, the others being the 
 32nd, 38th, 51st, 102nd, 130th, 143rd. One of the 
 strangest things, though not the happiest, in its records 
 is, that, along with Psalm 142nd, it was the choice 
 of Catherine de Medici, the Jezebel and Athaliah of the 
 French monarchy. She was irreligious and super- 
 stitious, profligate and devoured by ambition; and 
 the fact that she had no children, seemed likely to 
 deprive her of the control which she hoped to gain 
 in the counsels of the kingdom. The psalm was the 
 expression of mere worldly disappointment. She 
 became at last the mother of Francis II. (the first 
 husband of Mary Stuart) and of Charles IX., whose 
 character she corrupted by ministering to his vices, 
 and whom she urged to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 
 ' Her desire was realized/ says a French historian, 
 'for the misery of France; and that family, which 
 then took pleasure in the Psalms, put to death 
 thousands of the Eeformed for singing them/ 
 
 It has a more pleasing association with another 
 princess, allied to the French royal family. Elizabeth 
 Charlotte was niece of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 
 
24 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 and grand-daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, after whom 
 she was named. She had remarkable abilities, and 
 was carefully educated by her aunt Sophia, under 
 the eye of the great Leibnitz. Her father, the 
 Elector Palatine, constrained her to a marriage with 
 the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., in the 
 hope that the union might save his principality from 
 the aggression of the French king. But it helped 
 Louis to fresh claims ; and, when her beautiful native 
 land, beside the Ehine and Neckar, was wasted by 
 the French armies, its towns laid in ashes, the Castle 
 of Heidelberg, the home of her childhood, under- 
 mined and shattered, and the people she loved driven 
 out in winter to die houseless and famishing, she 
 could not sleep for the visions of havoc, and for the 
 thought that she had been cruelly sacrificed to a 
 vain policy. Her letters, lately published, are deeply 
 interesting for the light they throw on the time, and 
 on the Court of France. Her heart went back to 
 her early Protestant faith, and to the old Castle of 
 Osnabruck, where she had spent her happiest days 
 with her aunt. In a letter to her she relates an 
 incident connected with this psalm. She was walking 
 one day in the orangery at Versailles, and was singing 
 it in the translation of Clement Marot, as an expres- 
 sion of her feelings, A noted artist of the time, 
 warmly attached in heart to the Eeformed religion, 
 was engaged in painting the roof, and heard her. 
 ' Scarcely/ she writes, ' had I finished the first verse, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 25 
 
 when I saw M. Kousseau hasten down the ladder and 
 fall at my feet. I thought he was mad, and said, 
 " Kousseau, Rousseau, what is the matter ? " He 
 replied, " Is it possible, madam, that you still recollect 
 our psalms and sing them ? May God bless you, and 
 keep you in this good mind." He had tears in his 
 eyes.' It is interesting to know that Louis XIV., 
 broken-hearted in his old age by defeats and dis- 
 appointments, recognised her worth, and leaned on 
 her for comfort. 
 
 Another woman, of our own time, with trials in a 
 different position, and yet like in kind to those of 
 Elizabeth Charlotte, has put her heart into some 
 of the words. The wife of Thomas Carlyle inserts 
 verses 2-4 in her Journal, 1855, when in sore 
 trouble of body and mind, amid weakness and weari- 
 ness, sleepless nights and wounded feelings. 'Oh, 
 dear ! I wish this Grange business were well over. 
 It occupies me (the mere preparation for it) to the 
 exclusion of all quiet thought and placid occupation. 
 To have to care for my dress, this time of day, more 
 than I ever did when young and pretty and happy 
 (God bless me, to think I was once all that!), on 
 penalty of being regarded as a blot on the Grange gold 
 and azure, is really too bad. Ach Gott ! if we had been 
 left in the sphere of life we belong to, how much 
 better it would have been for us in many ways ! 
 Ah, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak as 
 water. To-day I walked with effort one little mile, 
 
26 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 and thought it a great feat. Sleep has come to look 
 to me the highest virtue and the greatest happiness ; 
 that is, good sleep, untroubled, beautiful), like a child's. 
 Ah me ! " Have mercy upon me, Lord ; for I am 
 weak : Lord, heal me ; for my bones are vexed. 
 My soul is also sore vexed : but thou, Lord, how 
 long ? " ' 
 
 This same verse 3 was the common expression of 
 Calvin when he was in trouble, ' Tu Domine usque 
 quo ? ' ' Thou, Lord, how long ? ' and parts of the 
 psalm, with the last verse of Psalm 70th, were 
 among the dying words of Eobert Bollock, the first 
 Principal of the University of Edinburgh, a man 
 remarkable for power of administration and deep 
 piety. 
 
 Psalm 9. 
 
 Five scholars of Lausanne, devoted to the Beforma- 
 tion, were taken in France, A.D. 1553, and burned in 
 the Place des Terreaux at Lyons. As they were 
 being carried to execution, they sang with a loud voice 
 this psalm, ( De tout mon cceur, fexalterai, Seigneur! 
 ' I will praise thee, Lord, with my whole heart. . . . 
 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remeni- 
 bereth them : he forgetteth not the cry of the humble/ 
 At this time, by a decree of Pope Paul IV., began 
 that reign of terror, under the treacherous and cruel 
 Guises, which lasted nearly till a different terror, its 
 daughter and Nemesis, took its place. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 27 
 
 When John Welsh and his fellow- captives were 
 summoned from their prison in Blackness, on the 
 Firth of Forth, to appear before the Court at 
 Linlithgow, they sang this psalm as they walked 
 by night under guard to their trial. In the old 
 version, which they used, it stands : 
 
 " I trust in God, how dare ye then 
 
 Say thus my soul untill ; 
 
 Flee hence as fast as any fowle, 
 
 And hide you in your hill ? 
 
 c Behold, the wicked bend their bowes, 
 
 And make their arrows prest (ready) 
 To shoot in secret, and to hurt 
 The sound and harmless breast. 
 
 4 But he that in his temple is 
 
 Most holy and most hie, 
 And in the heavens hath his seat 
 Of royal majestie, 
 
 ' The poor and simple man's estate 
 
 Considereth in his mind ; 
 And searcheth out full narrowly 
 The manners of mankind. 7 
 
 While they were lying in their dungeon, deep and 
 dark, below the level of the sea, they received a letter 
 from Lady Melville, of Culross, one of the best women 
 of her time, bidding them be thankful that they were 
 
28 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 only ' in the darkness of Blackness, and not in the 
 blackness of darkness/ 
 
 They were at length banished ' forth the kingdom,' 
 under the arbitrary government of James VI., who 
 was bent upon the establishment of Episcopacy. 
 Calderwood says: 'Upon the 6th of Nov. 1606, 
 about the evening, when they were ready to embark, 
 Mr. John Welsh conceived a fervent prayer, on the 
 shore of Leith, and they took good-night of their 
 friends, wives, and acquaintances, and entered in the 
 boat ; and after they had waited a good space upon 
 the skipper, because he was not ready, they returned 
 by two hours in the morning, at which time many 
 were present. After prayer, they entered in the boat, 
 with singing the 23rd Psalm. The people were much 
 moved, and prayed heartily for them/ 
 
 An old writer tells that a ship, with exiles for 
 religion, was driven on the coast of Barbary, in a 
 night of fearful storm, when they had nothing before 
 them but death among the waves, or captivity among 
 the Moors. They sang together the 12th Psalm, and 
 when they reached the 5th verse, the ship went to 
 pieces, most of them perishing in the sea, or rather 
 passing through it to life and liberty. 
 
 The 5th verse was the text of the sermon preached 
 by Dr. Fabricius before Gustavus Adolphus, when he 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 29 
 
 took Augsburg after a severe fight, in which the 
 honour of the day was given by the king to the 
 Scottish Brigade under Colonel Hepburn. A solemn 
 thanksgiving was held in the principal church, and 
 religious liberty was proclaimed in the city of the 
 famous Confession, while the ferocious Tilly, after 
 his defeat, retired breathing out threatenings and 
 slaughter. 
 
 Ver. 5. Tor the oppression of the poor, for the 
 sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the 
 Lord ; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth 
 at him/ 
 
 John Wilson (Christopher North), in his Lights and 
 Shadows of Scottish Life, chooses this psalm to be sung 
 at the ' elder's death-bed/ for 'it was an old custom in 
 Scotland that the ransomed of the Lord returned and 
 came to Zion with songs/ It is a description of a 
 class of men who, for centuries, and in every rank of 
 life, have been an honour and strength to their Church 
 and country. 
 
 ' Within thy tabernacle, Lord, 
 
 Who shall abide with thee ] 
 And in thy high and holy hill 
 
 Who shall a dweller be ? 
 The man that walketh uprightly, 
 
 And worketh righteousness, 
 And as he tliinketh in his heart, 
 
 So doth lie truth express/ 
 
30 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 This psalm was the last Scripture read by Hugh 
 M'Kail, the evening before his execution in the Grass- 
 market of Edinburgh. After reading it he said to his 
 father, and those about him : ' If there were anything 
 in this world sadly and unwillingly to be left, it were 
 the reading of the Scriptures. I said " / shall not see 
 the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living" But 
 this needs not make us sad ; for, where we go, the 
 Lamb is the book of Scripture, and the light of that 
 city, and, where he is, there is life, even the river of 
 the water of life, and living springs.' 
 
 He was a young man of fervid poetic nature, with 
 much ability and culture, was educated at the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh and in Holland, and was licensed to 
 preach at the time of the treacherous overturn of the 
 constitution of the Church of Scotland by Charles II., 
 Middleton, and Sharp. His last sermon in the High 
 Church of Edinburgh was preached while 400 
 Presbyterian ministers were being driven from their 
 churches, September 8, 1662. Speaking of the 
 persecutions of the Church, he said : ' She had suffered 
 from an Ahab on the throne, a Haman in the State, 
 and a Judas in the Church ; ' which last was taken to 
 himself by Sharp, for whose part in his trial, see 
 M'Crie's Notes to the Life of Veitch. The torture of 
 the boot, and his weak state of health, seemed likely 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 31 
 
 to end his days before he came to the scaffold, and he 
 wrote these lines : 
 
 1 Vitse ergo innumeris curarum erroribus actse 
 
 Clausula consimilis perbreve finit iter, 
 Distrahor ambigui dubio discrimine fati ; 
 ^Eger enim jaceo ; sin revalesco, cado,' 
 
 which may be freely rendered 
 
 4 To right, to left, where'er I turn mine ear, 
 My parting knell, on either side, I hear; 
 My deepening sickness leads me to death's gates, 
 And for returning health the scaffold waits.' 
 
 No painter has chosen this for his subject like the 
 ' Last Evening of the Girondists ; ' and yet it is surely 
 as interesting to see a young man, in the first bloom 
 of youth, inditing an epigram with the scholarship 
 that had descended from George Buchanan, and rising 
 to the joy that comes from a higher source. It is the 
 more necessary to advert to this view of Hugh 
 M'Kail's character, because he is the chief figure in a 
 picture of the Covenanters, given by Sir Walter Scott, 
 who, unfortunately, with all his generous sympathy, 
 was unfitted partly by taste, and more by education, 
 for appreciating this side of Scottish history. 
 
 As in all deeply tender natures, Hugh M'Kail had 
 his vein of humour. Being asked, on one occasion, 
 how his tortured leg was, he replied, c The fear of my 
 neck maketh me forget my leg ; ' and then, reverting 
 to the lamentations of some of the women, he said, 
 
32 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 ' that though in years he was young, and but in the 
 budding of his ministry, yet he was not to be 
 mourned, for one drop of his blood, through the grace 
 of God, might make more hearts contrite than many 
 years' sermons might have done.' And so, indeed, it 
 came to pass. 
 
 1 But as for me, I thine own face 
 
 In righteousness will see ; 
 And with thy likeness, when I wake, 
 I satisfied shall be.' 
 
 Alexander Hume of Hume closed his life by singing 
 this verse before being executed at Edinburgh in 1682. 
 His death was one of the most cruel judicial murders 
 of the time, and was resolved on to strike terror into 
 men of position and property, who might be inclined 
 to the popular cause. He was known to be attached 
 to the Presbyterian interest, and attended some of the 
 proscribed meetings. His wife, Isabel Hume, appealed 
 on the day of his execution to Lady Perth, and begged 
 her to interpose for her husband's life, and for the 
 sake of her five young children. She was rudely 
 repulsed, his estate was forfeited, and his wife and 
 children exposed to great privation till the Ke volution. 
 A fine paper drawn up by him, just before his death, 
 is given by Wodrow, iii. 418. 
 
 This Earl of Perth suppressed an influential peti- 
 tion in favour of Hume. When James became king, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 33 
 
 Perth declared himself a Roman Catholic, was created 
 a duke, adhered faithfully to his royal master's cause, 
 and retired with him to France, where he ended his 
 days, and had his body deposited in the Scots College, 
 beside James' heart ; till another Revolution, wilder 
 than that which banished them, cast forth their relics, 
 'no marble tells us whither.' Only the Epitaph 
 remains in which James is described as wise and 
 pious like David, William is Absalom, and Carstares 
 and the rest are Achitophels. The son of this Perth, 
 also called Duke, came over with the Chevalier in 
 1715, and so harried the districts of Strathearn and 
 Strathallan that his name still lives in local rhyme, 
 
 1 Marshal Duke of Perth ! 
 You're the plague of all the earth 
 You breed hunger and great dearth 
 Where you go.' 
 
 This is far enough away from good Alexander 
 Hume, and his death-song on the scaffold, and we 
 may return to it by saying that his descendants still 
 hold their place in Berwickshire. 
 
 $salm 18. 
 
 This psalm is connected, at an early period, with the 
 history of France, in a way which illustrates the spirit 
 of the time. The practice of divination which once 
 employed the writings of Virgil for reading the fates 
 of the future, changed to the Psalter, when David 
 
 c 
 
34 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 took his place above the Sibyl. Clovis, the founder 
 of the French monarchy, whose name in the form of 
 Louis has descended to so many kings,* was marching 
 southward from Paris, A.D. 507, to meet the formidable 
 Visigoths in battle. Anxious to forecast the result, 
 he sent messengers to consult the shrine of St. Martin 
 of Tours, the oracle of Gaul. They were told to mark 
 the words of the psalm chanted, when they entered the 
 church. These were vers. 39, 40, and encouraged Clovis 
 to the step which proved decisive in French history : 
 
 ' I have wounded them that they were not able to 
 rise ; they are fallen under my feet. 
 
 ' For thou hast girded me with strength unto the 
 battle ; thou hast subdued under me those that rose up 
 against me/ 
 
 For a very different purpose, and to point the way 
 to a nobler victory, the words from vers. 1719 were 
 sung upon the scaffold by four sons of the Huguenots, 
 many centuries afterwards : 
 
 1 He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from 
 them which hated me : for they were too strong for me. 
 
 ' They prevented me in the day of my calamity : but 
 the Lord was my stay. 
 
 ' He brought me forth also into a large place ; 
 he delivered me because he delighted in me/ 
 
 They were sung by the last martyrs of the desert, 
 Francis Eochette, and three brothers of the name of 
 Grenier, who suffered as late as 1762, under the reign of 
 Louis XV. Eochette was executed first, and exhorted 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 35 
 
 his companions to endure to the end. ' Die a 
 Catholic/ the executioner said. ' Judge/ Eochette 
 answered, ' which is the better religion, the one which 
 persecutes, or the one which suffers/ The youngest 
 of the brothers Grenier, who was only twenty years of 
 age, held his hands before his face during the tragic 
 scene. The other two looked on with unmoved 
 countenance. They embraced one another, and com- 
 mended their souls to God. The eldest first laid his 
 head on the block. When the turn of the youngest 
 came, the executioner, moved with pity, said, 'You 
 have seen your brothers perish ; change your religion 
 that you may be spared/ ' Do your duty/ the young 
 man said, and his head was severed from his body. 
 The words of De Pressense about this period are 
 worthy of quotation : 
 
 ' In the land warmed by the burning sun of the 
 South, planted with the pale and sad-coloured olive, 
 the stones cry out, for they have been watered by 
 precious blood ; and they proclaim the unconquerable 
 fidelity of our fathers to their faith. Near to Mmes, 
 in a solitary spot, there is to be seen the cave where 
 the assemblies of the desert were held. The height is 
 pointed out where the sentinel was placed who had to 
 announce to the worshippers the approach of the 
 dragoons of Louis XIV. At Nimes itself, the tomb 
 of Paul Eabaut, the re-organizer of the persecuted and 
 scattered churches of the eighteenth century, was 
 lately discovered. It was transported to the centre of 
 
3 6 THE PSALMS IN HIST OR Y 
 
 the Cevennes, near the house of the celebrated Cevenol 
 chief, Eoland, who, more than once, with a handful of 
 brave mountaineers, put to flight the army of " the great 
 monarch." That house has been rebuilt by subscrip- 
 tion, and it remains a monument of one of the most 
 heroic struggles ever maintained for liberty of con- 
 science. Another touching memorial of the time is 
 the tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes. The town 
 of Aigues-Mortes, built by Saint Louis, on the model 
 of Darnietta, after his return from the first Crusade, 
 has not been touched by modern civilisation It 
 remains what it was in the thirteenth century, behind 
 its bastioned walls, on the brink of a dark stagnant 
 water. All is sad and silent. Here is the famous 
 tower of Constance, which served as a prison for the 
 Protestant ladies who refused conversion to Catholicism. 
 Some remained nearly forty years in this sepulchre, 
 without seeing or hearing from a single friend. Such 
 a captivity is worse than all deaths of torture, worse 
 than to be cast, like Blandina, to perish by the teeth 
 of lions. The names of those holy women may now 
 be read on the walls of their prison, and the old 
 Psalms of the French Eef ormation are sung from time 
 to time by the children of the Huguenots who visit 
 the spot/ 
 
 2(X 
 
 The famous physician, Sir James Y. Simpson, was one 
 of a family which had the privilege of a pious mother. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 37 
 
 She was early left a widow, and had many a perplexing 
 thought and sore struggle in providing bread for her 
 household. When she was hard pressed with thinking 
 and toiling, and could not see her way through, she 
 used to sit down and repeat the 20th Psalm. She 
 rose refreshed, and her children learned to call it 
 ' mother's psalm/ 
 
 ' Jehovah hear thee in the day 
 
 When trouble he doth send ; 
 And let the name of Jacob's God 
 
 Thee from all ill defend. 
 O let him help send from above, 
 
 Out of his sanctuary : 
 From Zion, his own holy hill, 
 
 Let him give strength to thee. 7 
 
 On March 9, 1839, the sides of a coal pit, called 
 'The High Pressure/ near Musselburgh, Midlothian, 
 fell in, and the shaft was filled up with earth, im- 
 prisoning thirteen people. After trying in vain every 
 means of exit by abandoned shafts, they retired to a 
 narrow space which had been hollowed out of the coal 
 seam, 18 ft. by 24 ft., and 3| ft. in height. Here they 
 sat down, and prepared for death. They held a prayer- 
 meeting, which they began by singing together the 
 first four verses of this psalm. They were all calmed 
 and strengthened, and conversed on the Scriptures, the 
 state of their souls, and their hopes for another world, 
 now and then pathetically referring to their loved ones 
 athome. After long suspense, they were delivered 
 
38 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 almost by miracle, and the last verse of their song 
 seemed prophetic : j 
 
 ; In thy salvation we will joy ; 
 In our God's name we will 
 Display our banners ; and the Lord 
 Thy prayers all fulfil.' 
 
 Psalm 2t 
 
 ' The king in thy great strength, Lord, 
 
 Shall very joyful be : 
 In thy salvation rejoice 
 How vehemently shall he ! ' 
 
 A noble coronation psalm when raised to the praise 
 of him who has a right sceptre and an eternal throne. 
 It was sung throughout England by the over-trustful 
 Presbyterians at the restoration of Charles II. They 
 afterwards mildly characterized it as a day when the 
 bitter was mingled with the sweet. The most ignoble 
 part of the history of British Presbyterianism was 
 from 1650 to 1660; in Scotland even more than 
 in England. During those years it was struggling to 
 have the liberty of the Church secured on an 
 impossible basis, and shutting its eyes to the profligacy 
 and perfidy of the worst of the Stuarts. Such a psalm 
 applied to such a monarch looks like a hideous parody. 
 It needed twenty-eight years of persecution unto 
 death to wipe out the stains, and to vindicate the 
 claim of the true King whose right it is. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 39 
 
 Henry of Navarre, in an hour of remorse, and in a 
 dark and wintry night, fled from Paris, and joined the 
 Protestants assembled at Alengon (see Psalm Ixxxviii.). 
 The next morning he went to divine service, and the 
 21st Psalm, giving the picture of a true king, was 
 sung. He asked if it had been selected on his account, 
 and, finding that it came in regular course, he was 
 much impressed. Unhappily, like his grandson, our 
 Charles II., he did not preserve his good impressions 
 when on the throne. 
 
 22. 
 
 Vers. 4, 5. c Our fathers trusted in thee : they 
 trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto 
 thee, and were delivered : they trusted in thee, and were 
 not confounded.' These words were conjoined with 
 one of the most celebrated antiphones, or responsive 
 chants of the middle ages : Medid vita in morte sumus. 
 ' In the midst of life we are in death.' It has 
 been transferred to the Anglican litany, and is known 
 throughout Germany in Luther's version, ' Mitten wir 
 im Leben sind, Mit dem Tod umfanyen! The original 
 Latin hymn, in which the words of the Psalm find a 
 place, is attributed to Notker, of the great Abbey of St. 
 Gall in Switzerland, who died A.D. 912. The Huns at 
 that time were the terror of Europe, having penetrated 
 to the heart of Germany, and the hymn was used in 
 battle against them. Afterwards it was applied to 
 
40 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 such superstitious ends, that special permission was 
 required for its use. ' In the midst of life we are in 
 death/ is said to have been suggested to Notker's mind 
 from the sight of the perilous position of some men 
 who were throwing a bridge over a frightful chasm 
 in the Alps, as Wesley's visit to Land's End suggested 
 his hymn, 
 
 ' Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
 'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand/ 
 
 We may claim a distant connection with the hymn 
 of Notker, from the fact that St. Gall was founded A.D. 
 614 by Celtic missionaries, in the midst of what was 
 then a pathless forest on* the shores of Lake Constance, 
 and that they made it a centre for carrying the light 
 of the Gospel north and south among the Gothic race, 
 as their brethren at home did among the heathen 
 Saxons who landed on our eastern coasts. One of the 
 most curious things preserved in the monastery is a 
 vocabulary of the Celtic and Gothic words employed 
 to qualify them for their work c 
 
 $salm 23. 
 
 1 The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want 
 
 He makes me down to lie 
 In pastures green : he leadeth me 
 The quiet waters by/ 
 
 Every line, every word of it, has been engraven for 
 generations on Scottish hearts, has accompanied them 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 41 
 
 from childhood to age, from their homes to all the seas 
 and lands where they have wandered, and has been to 
 a multitude no man can number, the rod and staff of 
 which it speaks, to guide and guard them in dark 
 valleys, and, at last, through the darkest. And in 
 many a tongue besides, it has shown its power when 
 the ' Good Shepherd ' speaks through it to those who 
 know his voice. Its history sparkles to the daylight 
 in numerous records, and it would be longer if we 
 could follow it into all the secret, but not sunless, 
 resting-places in hidden hearts, which only the day of 
 God will declare. The 6th Psalm may be called a 
 well of Marah into which the tree is at last thrown 
 which sweetens the waters. This, from first to last, is 
 as the waters of Siloa that go softly, having its source 
 in the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most 
 High. 
 
 At Psalm 1 1th is mentioned the case of six ministers 
 who were taken from Blackness prison to be judged at 
 Linlithgow. Eow, the historian, tells us * that they 
 were afterwards brought to Leith, and there, the ship 
 being ready and many attending their embarking, they 
 fell down upon their knees upon the shore, and prayed 
 several times very fervently, moving all the multitude 
 about to tears in abundance, and to lamentation ; and, 
 after they had sung the 23rd Psalm joyfully, taking 
 their leave of their brethren and acquaintances, passed 
 to the ship, and re-encountering with a stormy tempest, 
 so that they sailed that night no further but over to 
 
42 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 the other side of the water ; but then, upon the morn, 
 getting a fair wind, were safely transported and landed 
 in France.' 
 
 Calderwood tells us that it was John Welsh who 
 prayed, and that the parting psalm, the 23rd, was 
 sung at two in the morning, and that many people 
 accompanied them to the boat, much moved, and 
 praying heartily for them. A parting this which 
 reminds us of another long before, on the shore of 
 Miletus. John Welsh, the son-in-law of John Knox, 
 who took a prominent part then and afterwards in the 
 Eeformed Church, both in Scotland and France, was 
 the first graduate and licensed preacher sent out by 
 the University of Edinburgh. He never returned to 
 Scotland after this banishment, but he preached to 
 thirty of his old congregation from Ayr, who visited 
 him at Eochelle as a deputation a wonderful token 
 of attachment, when we think of the distance at that 
 time. It may be interesting to give the old version of 
 the psalm as it was sung on Leith shore : 
 
 1 ' The Lord is only my support, 
 
 And he that doth me feede ; 
 How can I then lack anie thing 
 Whereof I stand in need ? 
 
 2 ' He doth me fold in coates most safe, 
 
 The tender grass fast by ; 
 And after driv'th me to the streams 
 Which run most pleasantly. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 43 
 
 3 ' And when I feel myself near lost, 
 
 Then doth he me home take ; 
 Conducting me in his right paths 
 Even for his own name's sake. 
 
 4 ' And though I were even at death's door, 
 
 Yet would I fear none ill ; 
 For by thy rod, and shepherd's crook, 
 I am comforted still. 
 
 5 ' Thou hast my table richly deckt 
 
 In despite of my foe ; 
 Thou hast my head with bairn, refresht, 
 My cup doth overflow. 
 
 6 c And, finally, while breath doth last, 
 
 Thy grace shall me defend ; 
 And in the house of God will I 
 My life for ever spend.' 
 
 Marion Harvey, a servant girl in Borrowstounness, 
 twenty years of age, was executed at Edinburgh in 
 1681 for hearing Donald Cargill, and for helping his 
 escape at South Queensferry. When annoyed on her 
 way to the scaffold, by the curate who wished to thrust 
 his prayers on her and her fellow-sufferer, she said, 
 ' Come, Isabel, let us sing the 23rd Psalm/ which they 
 did ; and having come to the scaffold, and sung the 
 84th Psalm, she said, 'I am come here to-day for 
 avowing Christ to be Head of his Church, and King in 
 Zion. O seek him, sirs, seek him, and ye shall find 
 him.' 
 
 Isabel Alison, who suffered with her, belonged to 
 
44 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 Perth, and lived very privately till she was apprehended 
 for having heard Donald Cargill, and for refusing the 
 test. On the scaffold she said, ' Farewell all created 
 comforts ; farewell sweet Bible in which I delighted 
 most, and which has been sweet to me since I came 
 to prison ; farewell Christian acquaintances ; now into 
 thy hands I commit my spirit, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost/ Whereupon the hangman threw her over. 
 
 No execution of those cruel times seems to have 
 excited a deeper interest and sympathy throughout the 
 country. Lord Fountainhall, a well-known judge of 
 the period, twice notices their end, and tries to excuse 
 the sentence. In his Observes he says, ' There were 
 hanged at Edinburgh two women of ordinary rank, for 
 their uttering treasonable words and other principles 
 and opinions contrary to all our government. They 
 were of Cameron's faction. At the scaffold, one of 
 them told, so long as she followed and heard the curates, 
 she was a swearer, Sabbath-breaker, and with much 
 aversion read the Scriptures, but found much joy 
 upon her spirit since she followed the conventicle 
 preaching.' 
 
 When Edward Irving was on his deathbed, he 
 repeated the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew. His last words 
 were, ' In life and in death I am the Lord's/ He had 
 the conviction for a time that he would certainly remain 
 till the coming of Christ ; but he realized at length 
 the approach of death. Christians may be reconciled 
 to this necessity by the knowledge ' that they who are 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY, 45 
 
 alive and remain shall not prevent (anticipate) those 
 who are asleep.' There is, in truth, a sense in which 
 dying is the higher part ; it makes us more conformable 
 in our history to Christ himself. That was a noble 
 saying of James Guthrie, when, being told that he was 
 to be hanged while Argyle was to be beheaded, he said, 
 ' I am willing to suffer on a tree like my Lord and 
 Master.' 
 
 Yer. 4. ' Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me/ 
 were the dying words of the great Scottish philosopher, 
 Sir William Hamilton. 
 
 When Dr. Alexander Duff, the Indian missionary, 
 was travelling in the Himalayas, he saw a native 
 shepherd followed by his flock. The man frequently 
 stopped and looked, back. If he saw a sheep drawing 
 too near the edge of the precipice, he would go back and 
 apply his crook to one of the hind legs, and gently 
 pull it back till the animal joined the rest. Going up 
 to the shepherd, he noticed that he had a long rod, as 
 tall as himself, and twisted round the lower half, a 
 thick bar of iron. The region was infested with 
 wolves and other dangerous animals, which in the 
 night-time prowled about the place where the sheep 
 lay. With his long rod the shepherd could strike the 
 animal such a blow as would make it flee. This 
 brought to the remembrance of the traveller the 
 expression of David the shepherd, ' Thy rod and thy 
 staff they comfort me,' and saved it, as he thought, 
 from the charge of tautology, the staff referring to 
 
46 THE PSALMS IN H2STOR Y 
 
 God's hold of the sheep, the rod to his defence against 
 enemies. When he himself lay dying, and apparently 
 unconscious (Feb. 1878), his daughter repeated to 
 him the 23rd Psalm, and he responded at the end of 
 each verse. 
 
 Poor desolate and afflicted Heinrich Heine, who 
 had been a pantheist and a scoffer, alternately or com- 
 bined, was laid for years on what he called his mattress 
 sepulchre, and took to reading the Bible, especially the 
 Psalms. One of the very last of his poems, addressed 
 to his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, bears 
 traces of the shepherd-song of God's flock, and if it 
 wants the sparkle and point of his early genius, it is 
 redeemed by its softened tenderness. It begins 
 thus : 
 
 6 My arm grows weak ; Death comes apace, 
 Death pale and grim ; and I no more 
 Can guard my lamb as heretofore. 
 God ! into thy hands I render 
 My crook ; keep thou my lambkin tender. 
 When I in peace have laid me down, 
 Keep thou my lamb, and do not let 
 A single thorn her bosom fret, 
 And guide where pastures green and sweet 
 Refresh the wanderer's weary feet.' 
 
 24+ 
 
 The psalm of the Lord the Shepherd is followed by 
 that of the Lord the King, for the door of mercy leads 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 47 
 
 into the throne-room of power, and places those who 
 enter by it under the shadow of the Almighty. 
 
 The father of the celebrated Principal Carstares, 
 the restorer of the Scottish Church at the Kevolution, 
 was a man of warm devotional character, and suffered 
 severely in the time of the twenty-eight years' persecu- 
 tion. Woodrow (Analecta) tells of him : ' He was 
 doing duty at the Sacrament for a brother minister 
 at Calder. Upon the Sabbath he was wonderfully 
 assisted in his first prayer, and had a strange gale 
 through all the sermon, and there was a remarkable 
 emotion among the hearers. He gave out for singing 
 part of the 24th Psalm : ' 
 
 ' He from th' Eternal shall receive 
 
 The blessing him upon, 
 And righteousness, ev'n from the God 
 
 Of his salvation. 
 This is the generation 
 
 That after him inquire, 
 Jacob, who do seek thy face, 
 
 With their whole heart's desire/ 
 
 While singing these and the following verses, the 
 narrator says 'he came to the communion tables, and 
 all in the assembly were marvellously affected, glory 
 seeming to fill that house. He served the first table 
 in a kind of rapture, and he called some ministers 
 there to the next, but he was in such a frame that 
 none of them ventured to come and take the work off 
 his hands. He continued at the work with the 
 
48 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 greatest enlargement and melting, upon himself and all 
 present, that could be, and served fourteen or sixteen 
 tables. A Christian that had been J at the table and 
 obliged to come out of the church, pressing to be in 
 again, stood without the door, and said he was rapt in 
 the thought of the glory that was in that house for 
 near half-an-hour, and got leave scarce to think upon 
 any other thing/ 
 
 It seems to have been a movement similar to that 
 which took place at Kirk of Shotts under John 
 Livingstone, and is evidence of the great wave of 
 religious feeling which was then sweeping over 
 Scotland a preparation for the furnace heated seven 
 times, which the church was about to enter. The 
 spring-tide of it can be best seen in the most remark- 
 able book of the time Rutherford's Letters. 
 
 Protestant worship was never authorized in Paris, 
 or its neighbourhood, till the Edict of Nantes, 1598. 
 In that year, Catherine of Navarre assembled a large 
 company in the Palace of the Louvre, which had been 
 the centre of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The 
 psalm first sung was the 24th, and with deep feeling 
 the escaped remnant sang, 'The earth is the Lord's, 
 and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that 
 dwell therein/ They were not long allowed such a 
 meeting-place, but they found rest, for a time, elsewhere. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 49 
 
 $salm 25, 
 
 ' My sins and faults of youth 
 Do thou, Lord, forget : 
 After thy mercy think on me, 
 And for thy goodness great.' 
 
 Touching words in themselves, and surely never 
 more so than when they began the dying-song of 
 Margaret Wilson, while the sea was rising round her 
 at the mouth of the water of Blednoch, by Wigtown. 
 She was twenty years of age, blameless and gentle, 
 but had been in the habit of attending field and house 
 conventicles, and refused to take the test. Tor these 
 things she was condemned to be drowned along with 
 an elderly woman, named Margaret Lachlan, accused 
 of the same offences. They were tied to stakes within 
 the tide-mark, where the waters of the Solway come 
 up swift and strong into the channel of the Blednoch. 
 The older woman was placed farther from the bank, 
 that the sight of her struggles might terrify the 
 younger, and cause her to give way. But she was 
 faithful to the death. 
 
 1 do thou keep my soul, 
 
 Do thou deliver me : 
 And let me never be asham'd, 
 Because I trust in thee. 7 
 
 Desperate efforts were made to cast discredit on 
 the narrative in Napier's Life of Claverhouse, but the 
 
50 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 question has been set at rest by the book of Dr. 
 Stewart of Glasserton, The, Wigtown Martyrs. The 
 two women are buried in the churchyard a little 
 above the place where they were drowned, and 
 descendants of the family to which Margaret Wilson 
 belonged are to be found near Glenvernock, on the 
 water of Cree, where she lived. 
 
 $salm 26. 
 
 Vers. 812. 'Lord, I have loved the habitation of 
 thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth. 
 Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with 
 bloody men. . . . But as for me, I will walk in mine 
 integrity ; redeem me, and be merciful unto me. My 
 foot standeth in an even place : in the congregations 
 will I bless the Lord/ 
 
 After the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 
 1685, by Louis XIV., the Protestant ministers were 
 expelled from France, but the people were forbidden 
 to leave, and all the highways and byways were 
 jealously watched to prevent them. Fines, imprison- 
 ment, tortures, were then employed to make them re- 
 nounce their religion, and their children were taken 
 from them to be brought up in the Eoman Catholic 
 faith. Despair drove the Protestants to attempt every 
 means of escape. They took refuge among the 
 mountains and woods, hiding by day, and fleeing by 
 night to reach the frontiers. The most industrious 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 51 
 
 and intelligent of her population left France, and 
 inflicted on her a loss from which she has not yet 
 recovered. The stories of some of these refugees are 
 of the most thrilling kind. When they reached a 
 friendly land, they thanked God with ecstasy for the 
 safety and freedom their own country denied them. 
 Pineton of Chambrun, one of these exiles, tells that 
 when he and his companions came in sight of Geneva, 
 they sang with tears of joy this psalm, from verse 8 
 to the close, every word of which seems made for such 
 a case. 
 
 $salm 27. 
 
 India was still heaving with the ground -swell of 
 the terrible mutiny of 1857, when the wife of Sir 
 John Lawrence was called home to her children in 
 England, and had to leave her husband, who could 
 not quit his post, surrounded by the smouldering 
 embers which might, at any moment, rekindle into 
 flame, and worn to exhaustion with the anxiety and 
 labour which did so much for the preservation of the 
 Indian empire. 
 
 She thus writes, ' When the last morning of separa- 
 tion, Jan. 6, 1858, arrived, we had our usual Bible 
 reading, and I can never think of the 27th Psalm, 
 which was the portion we then read together, without 
 recalling that sad time/ In perusing the psalm, one 
 can see what springs of comfort must have opened in 
 every verse, from the beginning to the close : 
 
52 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 ' The Lord is my light and my salvation : whom 
 shall I fear ? The Lord is the strength of my life ; 
 of whom shall I be afraid ? . . . For in the time of 
 trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion : in the 
 secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me ; he shall 
 set me up upon a rock. , . I had fainted, unless I 
 had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the 
 land of the living. Wait on the Lord ; be of good 
 courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, 
 I say, on the Lord/ 
 
 $salm 29. 
 
 In some of the old versions of the Psalter, in the 
 seventeenth century, there is an arrangement of a 
 number of the psalms according to the months of the 
 year, forming what may be called a Calendar of 
 nature yielding its fruit of praise every month. 
 The 29th is taken for July, the season of thunder- 
 storms, for, in this psalm, seven thunders utter their 
 voices. April has the latter part of the 65th; and 
 the showers and springing verdure of May have the 
 104th, vers. 13, 14. Psalm 90th, in December, 
 suggests the flight of time, and the 147th, vers. 16, 17, 
 is chosen for the snow and ice of January. 
 
 $salm 30. 
 
 Among those who suffered in the Netherlands, during 
 the fierce governorship of the cruel Alva, was one 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 53 
 
 John Herwin. ' In prison/ says the chronicler of the 
 tune, ' he was wont to recreate himself by singing of 
 psalms, and the people used to flock together to the 
 prison door to hear him. At the place of execution, 
 one gave him his hand and comforted him. Then 
 began he to sing the 30th Psalm. A friar interrupted 
 him, but Herwin quickly finished his psalm, many 
 joining with him in singing of it. Then he said to 
 the people, " I am now going to be sacrificed ; follow 
 you me when God of his goodness shall call you to it." 
 And so he was first strangled, and then burnt to ashes. 
 Think of the faith which could look through death, 
 and close his song and his life, with the words, " Thou, 
 hast turned for me my mourning into dancing : thou 
 hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness ; 
 to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, 
 and not be silent. Lord my God, I will give 
 thanks unto thee for ever." ' 
 
 Verse 5 was among the latest sayings of Dr. John 
 Brown, the commentator, as he repeated it, 'His 
 anger is for a moment: his favour is for a life; 
 weeping may endure for a night, but joy conieth in 
 the morning.' 
 
 $salm 31. 
 
 This psalm sparkles all through with lamps, which 
 have lighted the steps of men in dark places. Above 
 all, the 5th verse has given the closing words to 
 many a life. It was one of the seven sayings on the 
 
54 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 cross, and the last ' Father, into thy hands I 
 commend my spirit.' It was the dying word of 
 Stephen, addressed to Christ himself, ' Lord Jesus, 
 receive my spirit.' It was the parting word of 
 Luther, of Knox, of John Huss, of Jerome of Prague, 
 of Julian Palmer, one of the noted martyrs in the 
 reign of the English Mary, of Francis Teissier, the 
 first martyr of the ' Desert,' who ascended the scaffold 
 singing it, in 1686, and of countless more. 'The 
 Lord himself gave the word, and great has been the 
 company of those who published it.' No watchword 
 of the Captain of salvation has been taken up by so 
 many sons whom he has led to glory through the 
 \ralley of the shadow of death. Let us try to catch 
 more fully the accents of some of them. 
 
 On the 6th of July 1415, the anniversary of his 
 birth, John Huss was burned to death in a field near 
 the ancient city of Constance. He had come there 
 from Bohemia, under a warrant of safety from the 
 hand of the Emperor Sigismund, for the violation of 
 which the pope granted absolution, pressing it on the 
 reluctant monarch. The doctrines for which Huss 
 was condemned were essentially those which Luther 
 proclaimed a century later. A brass tablet let into 
 the floor of the cathedral marks the spot where Huss 
 stood, while seven bishops removed his priestly dress 
 piece by piece, and placed on his head a paper crown 
 painted with demons. They addressed him, ' We de- 
 liver thy soul to Satan.' ' But I,' he said, ' commend 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 55 
 
 it into thy hands, Lord Jesus Christ, who hast 
 redeemed me/ When taken to the place of execution 
 he fell on his knees, and repeated in prayer some of 
 the psalms, especially the 51st and 53rd. He was 
 heard to repeat frequently the words, ' Into thy 
 hands I commit my spirit : thou hast redeemed me, 
 Lord God of truth.' When he arose, he said, ' Lord 
 Jesus Christ, stand by me, that, by thy and thy 
 Father's help, I may endure this painful and shameful 
 death which I suffer for thy word.' When the fire 
 was kindled he cried three times, ' Jesus, thou Son of 
 God, have mercy on me.' At the third time his voice 
 was stifled by the smoke, but they saw his lips still 
 moving. His ashes were cast into the Ehine, and for 
 a century it seemed as if fire and water had triumphed 
 over truth. 
 
 Luther died in 1546. His last words were, ' my 
 heavenly Father, the God and Father of my Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the God of all consolation, I give thee 
 thanks that thou hast revealed to me thy dear Son 
 Jesus Christ, in whom I believe, whom I have 
 preached and confessed, whom I have loved and 
 honoured. I pray thee, Lord Jesus Christ, to take 
 my soul into thy keeping.' Then he said thrice, 
 ' Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit : thou 
 hast redeemed me, Lord God of truth ; ' and, without 
 a struggle, he yielded up his breath. 
 
 John Knox died on the 24th Nov. 1572, when 
 dark clouds were gathering round the Eeformed 
 
56 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Churches, at home and abroad, after the terrible 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew. On Friday, 21st, he 
 ordered his coffin to be made, and was^much engaged 
 all day in meditation and prayer. These words were 
 often in his mouth, ' Come, Lord Jesus. Sweet Jesus, 
 into thy hands I commit my spirit. Be merciful, 
 Lord, to thy Church which thou hast redeemed. 
 Give peace to this afflicted Commonwealth. Eaise up 
 faithful pastors who will take the charge of thy 
 Church/ From this time till his death his pious 
 ejaculations were so many, that those who waited on 
 him could remember only a small part ; for he was 
 seldom silent, except when they were employed in 
 reading or prayer. On Monday the 24th he said, 
 1 Now, for the last time, I commend my spirit, soul, 
 and body/ touching three of his fingers, 'into thy 
 hand, Lord/ About eleven o'clock at night he gave 
 a deep sigh, and said, ' Now, it is come.' Eichard 
 Bannatyne, his faithful attendant, immediately drew 
 near, and desired him to think upon those comfortable 
 promises of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which he had so 
 often declared to others ; and, perceiving that he was 
 speechless, requested him to give them a sign that he 
 heard them, and that he died in peace. Upon this he 
 lifted up one of his hands, and, sighing twice, expired. 
 Nearly a century after this, on a dark morning, 
 Dec. 22, 1666, the words were the parting-song of 
 Hugh M'Kail, at the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, in the 
 version now used in Scotland, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 57 
 
 4 Into thine hands I do commit 
 My spirit ; for thou art he, 
 thou, Jehovah, God of truth, 
 Who hast redeemed me.' 
 
 We have already, at Psalm 16th, spoken of his 
 imprisonment. He was among those who came from 
 the west before the fight at Pentland, but wishful to 
 enter Edinburgh on a mission to friends, he was taken 
 at Braid's Craigs, and, after suffering the torture of 
 the boot, was condemned to death. 'About two of 
 the clock/ says the narrative, ' he was carried to the 
 scaffold with five others, who suffered with him, where 
 he appeared to the conviction of all that formerly 
 knew him, with a fairer, better, and more staid 
 countenance than ever they had before observed. 
 Being come to the foot of the ladder, he directed his 
 speech northward to the multitude, saying that "as 
 his years in the world had been few (only twenty-six), 
 so his words at that time should not be many." 
 Having done speaking to the people, who heard him 
 with great attention, he sang a part of the 31st 
 Psalm, and then prayed with such power and fervency 
 as forced many to weep bitterly. Having ended, he 
 gave his cloak and hat from him ; and when he turned 
 himself and took hold of the ladder to go up, he said, 
 with an audible voice, " I care no more to go up this 
 ladder, and over it, than if I were going home to my 
 father's house." As he went up, hearing a great 
 noise among the people, he called down to his fellow- 
 
58 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 sufferers, " Friends and fellow-sufferers, be not afraid ! 
 Every step of this ladder is a degree nearer heaven." ' 
 His farewell address is known to all acquainted 
 with Scottish history, and is one of the most rapt 
 and seraphic of that fervid time. Death touched 
 his lips with a live coal from the altar before it 
 closed them. The deaths of such men produced so 
 much sympathy that at length drums were beat to 
 drown their voice, and the place of execution was 
 transferred to some distance from the city, between 
 Edinburgh and Leith. 
 
 32. 
 
 ' Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, 
 whose sin is covered/ This was the favourite Psalm 
 of Augustine. With reference to it he says, ' Intelli- 
 gentia prima est ut te noris peccatorem! ' The begin- 
 ning of understanding is to know thyself a sinner/ 
 
 When Luther was asked which were the best 
 Psalms, he replied, ' Psalmi Paulini,' 'The Pauline 
 Psalms ; ' and being asked to name them, he gave 
 the 32nd, 51st, 130th, and 143rd. These all belong, 
 it will be observed, to the penitential psalms. 
 Luther's frame of spirit, and his struggle for justifica- 
 tion by faith, disposed him to this preference. But 
 the best psalms are those which help us most in 
 our time of need. The heart feels its way to them 
 in extremity, as David's hand to the hilt of Goliath's 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 59 
 
 sword. ' There is none like that ; give it me ' for 
 God's Word is made like the sword at the gate of 
 Eden, ' it turns every way/ 
 
 As if to show that the follies of the most frivolous 
 courts cannot shut out the thought from the occasional 
 view of the real and deeper side of life, this psalm is 
 said to have been a favourite with Diana of Poitiers. 
 
 Ver. 2 contains the spiritual ideal which quaint old 
 Izaak Walton set up for the model of his life. In 
 closing his biography of Bishop Sanderson, he says : 
 'Tis now too late to wish that my life may be like 
 his, for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age ; but 
 I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may 
 be, and I earnestly beg of every reader to say, Amen. 
 ' Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth 
 not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile! 
 
 This psalm was also a favourite with Alexander 
 Peden. There is a distinct region in the south-west 
 of Scotland, from upper Clydesdale and Nithsdale to 
 the Solway, a land of intricate rolling hills, clear 
 streams, remains of ancient forest, with, on the one 
 hand, green smiling valleys that stretch to the sea, 
 and at their heads, on the mountain summits, breadths 
 of waste moorland and labyrinths of bog and morass, 
 the haunts of the curlew and lapwing that break the 
 deep solitude with their wild melancholy cry. It is 
 peculiarly the land of the Covenant, where it stood at 
 bay, and found sympathy in the glens, and, when 
 pursuit was fierce, refuge among the uplands, where 
 
60 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 the memories of marvellous escapes and cruel slaughters 
 remain in the grey moss-covered stones which sprinkle 
 the hills. 
 
 1 Where wives and little children 
 
 Were faithful unto death, 
 And graves of martyred heroes 
 Lie in the desert heath. 7 
 
 The name of Alexander Peden still flits, as he did 
 himself, over all that wide district, and is attached to 
 points such as Peden's cave, Peden's pulpit, Peden's 
 bed, while his terse sayings, and intuitions into 
 character and events, have procured for him the title 
 of ' the prophet/ His sermons, filled with forebodings 
 of judgment, and tender invitations to take shelter 
 under the wing of mercy, have the effect of a sky 
 traversed by thunder-clouds with interspersed c glints ' 
 of sunshine the kind of man to be produced when 
 truth is hunted amid dragonnades and deserts. His 
 life was passed among the moors and mists, surrounded 
 by deaths manifold. Men would call it ' charmed ; ' 
 he would have accounted for it by ' snow and vapours 
 fulfilling his word.' When hard pressed by the 
 troopers, and brought to a breathless stand, he used 
 to pray that God would ' cast the skirt of his cloak 
 over him/ and more than once the cloud which has 
 its home among these hills removed and came 
 between him and his pursuers. He died at last 
 peacefully in one of his hiding - places ; but his 
 persecutors took his body and hung it on a gibbet at 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 61 
 
 Cumnock. It has made the place a burying-ground 
 God's Field for all the neighbourhood. One little 
 incident of his life in connection with this psalm 
 helps us to come close to him. 'On one occasion/ 
 says the narrative, ' when the service was ended, he 
 and others that were with him lay down in the sheep- 
 house and got some sleep. He rose early, and went 
 up by the burnside and stayed long. When he came 
 in to them, he did sing the 32nd Psalm from the 
 *7th verse to the end. 
 
 " Thou art my hiding-place, thou shalt 
 
 From trouble keep me free : 
 Thou with songs of deliverance 
 About shalt compass me. 
 
 " Ye righteous, in the Lord be glad, 
 
 In him do ye rejoice : 
 All ye that upright are in heart, 
 For joy lift up your voice." 
 
 When he had ended, he repeated the 7th verse 
 again, and said, "These and what follow are sweet 
 lines which I got at the burnside this morning, and I 
 will get more to-rnorrow, and so we shall have daily 
 provision." ' 
 
 $salm 34+ 
 
 The 34th Psalm is mentioned by Cyril, A.D. 340, and 
 also by Jerome, as being usually sung by the Church 
 of Jerusalem at the time of Communion. It is 
 
62 THE PSALMS IN HIST OR Y 
 
 appropriate throughout, some of the parts specially so, 
 and it contains the passage which the Evangelist John 
 (xix. 36) applies to our Lord, 'He xeepeth all his 
 bones ; not one of them is broken/ Error had begun 
 in different ways to creep into the Christian Church, 
 but the memorials of the bread and wine were parted 
 among all, and the thanksgiving of the communion had 
 not passed into the sacrifice of the mass. The 
 efficacy of atonement is ascribed only to the personal 
 work of Christ himself, and such expressions as these 
 occur : ' It is by Jesus Christ we bring this sacrifice 
 of praise in thy name, and in the name of Christ and 
 of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we render thanks to 
 thee by thy well -beloved Son Jesus Christ, whom 
 thou hast sent in the last times to be our Saviour and 
 Eedeemer, the Messenger of thy Counsel. It is by 
 him, the Word who comes forth from thee, that thou 
 hast done all/ It may be seen how well this spirit 
 agrees with the burst of gratitude in the opening of 
 the psalm, ' I will bless the Lord at all times : his 
 praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul 
 shall make her boast in the Lord : the humble shall 
 hear thereof, and be glad/ Sometimes there was 
 added the fervent aspiration of the 42nd Psalm, 'As 
 the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth 
 my soul after thee, God/ It was the love of youth 
 burning all the brighter that it was borne heavenwards 
 by winds of persecution. 
 
 Ver. 10. 'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 63 
 
 but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good 
 thing/ were the last words written by Columba after 
 he had spent a long life of incessant Christian labour, 
 part of which was given to the transcription of copies 
 of the Psalms and Gospels. Columba' s figure in the 
 history of the British Church is the most clear and 
 noble from the entrance of Christianity to the Beforma- 
 tion, with the exception of Bede and Wickliffe ; 
 and he surpassed both of these in the missionary 
 ardour he felt and infused into his followers. His 
 position in Scotland is a singular one. He stands 
 among the stormy Hebrides, like one of their lonely 
 lighthouses, upheld by a mighty arm of rock, to cast a 
 sudden gleam over the waters, and draw it back again 
 into the night. But like theirs, too, the light re- 
 appears, hidden, but not quenched ; or, still more, it is 
 flashed from point to point as time moves on. Placed 
 as he and his disciples were on the known limits of 
 the western world, their zeal turned eastward, and 
 sought a field among the Celtic and Gothic tribes 
 to the very centre of Europe. The endless knot 
 the peculiar signet mark of Scottish art is found 
 carved in stone, graven in gold and silver, inscribed on 
 illuminated parchment, and tells at Wiirtzburg, at 
 St. Gall, at Eatisbon, that the foot of the Coluinban 
 missionary has pressed the heathen soil with the 
 message of the faith. Columba died on the morning 
 of the Lord's day, June 9, A.D. 597, in his beloved 
 lona. 
 
6 4 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 1 There sleep the saintly dead, 
 
 Whom from their island home 
 The Baptist's hermit spirit led \ 
 
 O'er moss and moor to roam. 
 Where, soft as spring-tide dew, 
 
 Their gracious speech was heard, 
 Wild tribes whom Caesar never knew 
 
 Bowed captive to the Word.' 
 
 The narrative Adamnan gives of his closing hours, 
 of his farewell words with his sorrow - stricken 
 disciples, of his parting with his faithful old horse, 
 which put its head on its master's breast as if aware 
 of the event, reveals the deep tenderness and humanity 
 of his nature. 
 
 When the biographer has lingered lovingly on the 
 little incidents that preceded the death, he continues : 
 c After these words he descended the hill, and, having 
 returned to the monastery, sat in his hut transcribing 
 the Psalter; and coming to that verse of the 34th 
 Psalm, where it is written, " They that seek the Lord 
 shall want no manner of thing that is good," " Here," 
 said he, " at the end of the page I must stop, and 
 what follows let Baithen write." The last verse he 
 had written was very applicable to the saint who was 
 about to depart, and to whom eternal good shall never 
 be wanting; while the one that followeth is equally 
 applicable to the father who succeeded him, the 
 instructor of his spiritual children, " Come, ye children, 
 and hearken unto me : I will teach you the fear of 
 the Lord." And indeed he succeeded, as recommended 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 65 
 
 by him, both in writing the words, and in teaching 
 his disciples.' 
 
 Far away from Columba in time, and yet with the 
 same simple faith, two men sang a part of this psalm 
 at the place of execution in Edinburgh, 1679. They 
 were Andrew Sword and John Clyde, countrymen 
 from Galloway, who were condemned for having been 
 at Bothwell, and in penalty for the death of Arch- 
 bishop Sharp, though neither of them had ever seen 
 him. 
 
 Ver. 19. The troubles that afflict the just 
 
 In number many be ; 
 But yet at length out of them all 
 The Lord doth set him free/ 
 
 ' God hath not promised/ said one of them, 'to keep 
 us from trouble, but to be with us in it, and what 
 needs more ? ' I bless the Lord for keeping of me to 
 this very hour ; for little would I have thought a 
 twelvemonth since that the Lord would have taken a 
 poor ploughman lad, and have honoured me so highly 
 as to have made me first appear for him, and then 
 to keep me straight, and now hath keeped me to this 
 very hour to lay down my life for him. At the 
 ladder foot, he said to his brother, ' Weep not for me, 
 brother, but weep for yourself and the poor land ; and 
 make him sure for yourself, and he shall be better to 
 you than ten brethren/ 
 
 It was surely fire from God's own heaven which 
 E 
 
66 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 breathed this soul into the mould of a Scottish 
 ploughman. 
 
 37. 
 
 This Psalm was the basis of the hymn of Paul 
 Gerhardt, Befielil du deine Wege, which has taken 
 national rank in Germany, next to Luther's Mn 9 feste 
 Burg. It has become well known in the English 
 language through John Wesley's translation : 
 
 1 Commit thou all thy griefs 
 And ways into his hands, 
 To his sure truth and tender care, 
 Who heaven and earth commands.' 
 
 The story told of its origin is well known. When 
 Paul Gerhardt was banished from Berlin by the 
 Elector of Brandenburg, because he conscientiously 
 refused some conditions attached to his ministry, he 
 turned in with wife and children to a small wayside 
 hostelry, not knowing where to betake himself. 
 Seeing his wife deeply depressed, he quoted to her 
 Psalm xxxvii. 5 : ' Commit thy way unto the Lord ; 
 trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass ; ' and 
 then went out into the garden. There, sitting under 
 an apple tree, he composed the hymn, and read it to 
 his wife for her comfort. That same evening two 
 messengers arrived from Duke Christian of Merseburg 
 to offer him an honourable place in his dominions. 
 There are circumstances which cast doubt on some of 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 67 
 
 these details, but this is certain, that the hymn was 
 the expression of Paul Gerhardt's character and life ; 
 and that it has spoken to the heart of many in 
 troublous times. 
 
 It was the custom in some of the high schools in 
 Germany, when pupils were leaving at the close of 
 their course, to accompany them to the gate of the 
 town singing this hymn. 
 
 When the first Lutheran church was opened in 
 Philadelphia, in 1743, it was with Gerhardt's song. 
 
 When Queen Louisa of Prussia, in 1806, received 
 the news of the disastrous battle of Jena, she sat 
 clown, after her first burst of weeping, and sang this 
 hymn softly at the piano ; when she rose, her eye was 
 clear and her spirit calm. 
 
 This fifth verse was also the frequent promise with 
 which David Livingstone, the African missionary and 
 traveller, encouraged himself in the midst of his 
 wanderings and perils, a man sprung from the island 
 of Ulva, near lona, who caught the mantle of 
 Columba, and with it crossed oceans and planted the 
 seeds of Christianity among races first discovered by 
 himself. 
 
 Ver. 25 was the promise which Eobert Baillie of 
 Jerviswoode left to his young son George, when his 
 estates were confiscated, and he was condemned to 
 death at Edinburgh, December 24, 1684. He was 
 the great-grandson of John Knox, was called the 
 Scottish Sidney, and was feared and hated by the 
 
68 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 government of the time for his religious and political 
 opinions, though no unlawful act could be laid to his 
 charge. Dr. John Owen, writing to a friend in 
 Scotland, says of him : ' You have truly men of great 
 spirit among you ; there is, for a gentleman, Mr. 
 Baillie of Jerviswoode, a person of the greatest 
 abilities I ever almost met with.' Bishop Burnet 
 says : ' This worthy and learned gentleman was 
 brought to his death in a way so full of the spirit and 
 practice of the Courts of the Inquisition, that one is 
 tempted to think the methods taken were studied in 
 them/ He had a speech prepared for the scaffold, 
 which was erected at the old Cross of Edinburgh, but 
 on beginning, 'My love for the Protestant religion 
 hath brought me to this ' the drums were beat, and 
 he could say no more. In his dying testimony he 
 says, ' I leave my wife and children upon the compas- 
 sionate and merciful heart of my God, having many 
 reiterated assurances that God will be my God, and 
 the portion of mine/ He bade his son George, who 
 visited him the evening before his execution, trust in 
 the testimony of the psalmist, ' I have been young, 
 and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous 
 forsaken, nor his seed begging bread/ The son 
 proved worthy of the father, rose to high office in the 
 State after the Eevolution, and the descendants of 
 Kobert Baillie are found among some of the noblest 
 families in the kingdom. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 69 
 
 $saim 39. 
 
 Socrates, called Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical his- 
 torian of the fifth century, tells of a plain man named 
 Pambo who came to a learned man, and asked him to 
 teach him some psalm. He began to read to him the 
 39th: 'I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I 
 sin not with my tongue/ Having heard this first 
 sentence, Pambo took his leave, saying he would 
 make this his first lesson. He did not return, 
 and when his teacher met him after the space 
 of two months, and asked him when he would 
 proceed, he replied that he had not yet mastered 
 his first lesson ; and he gave the like answer to 
 one who asked the same question forty-nine years 
 after. 
 
 A very good illustration of the saying of James, 
 ' The tongue can no man tame ; ' but Pambo might 
 have succeeded better had he allowed his teacher to 
 go on to ver. 7 : ' And now, Lord, what wait I for ? 
 my hope is in thee ; ' or had he sought, as the apostle 
 describes it, ' the wisdom from above, which is first 
 pure and then peaceable/ 
 
 Ver. 9. The last days of Calvin were passed under 
 severe bodily suffering, which forced from him in- 
 voluntary moans. Those about him heard repeatedly 
 the words of Hezekiah, ' I did mourn as a dove : mine 
 eyes fail with looking upward/ followed by those of 
 
70 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 this psalm, ' I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; 
 because thou didst it/ j 
 
 When Dr. Thomson, of St. George's, fell dead at 
 the door of his own house in Edinburgh, the blow was 
 thought to be irreparable by the evangelical party 
 in the Church of Scotland. Dr. Jones of Lady 
 Glenorchy's, his bosom friend, shut himself up in 
 privacy, and did not appear till the following Sabbath, 
 when he preached with powerful effect. The first 
 psalm he gave out for singing sent a thrill through 
 the immense congregation 
 
 1 Dumb was I, opening not my mouth, 
 Because this work was thine/ 
 
 It was the penetration of Dr. Jones which dis- 
 covered the genius of Dr. Chalmers in obscure 
 Kilmany, from which he came as a new standard- 
 bearer. 
 
 $salm 40. 
 
 Ver. 17. Deus meus, ne tardaveris, 'Make no tarry- 
 ing, O my God,' words which were repeatedly in 
 the mouth of Eobert Eollock, the first Principal of 
 the University of Edinburgh, during his last illness. 
 Under long and painful suffering he had interviews 
 with friends, colleagues, ministers and magistrates of 
 the city, exhorting them to faithfulness in their duty. 
 His biographer says that, as he came near his end, he 
 kept silence during the night till the Sabbath dawn, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 71 
 
 when he broke out with the words, ' Corne, Lord, make 
 no delay ; come, Lord Jesus, tarry not. I am wearied 
 with my loathing of day and night. Come, Lord 
 Jesus, that I may come to thee/ It was early 
 spring, 1599, when he died; and at his funeral a 
 tempest of rain and wind was sweeping the streets of 
 Edinburgh; but multitudes of every class followed 
 him to his grave, and made great lamentation over 
 him. 
 
 ' Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; the Lord 
 will deliver him in time of trouble. . . . The Lord will 
 strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou 
 wilt make all his bed in his sickness/ Thomas Fuller 
 tells how Queen Mary of England, abstracted from 
 her evil counsellors, had good features of character. 
 She erected again the hospital of the Savoy which had 
 been founded by her grandfather, Henry VII.; and 
 her maids of honour, out of their own wardrobe, 
 furnished it with beds, blankets, and sheets ; and 
 then he adds, ' Were any of those ladies still alive, 
 I would pray for them in the language of the psalmist : 
 " The Lord make all their bed in their sickness." 
 And he is a good bed-maker indeed, who can and 
 will make it fit the person, and please the patient. 
 But seeing such are all long since deceased, it will 
 be no superstition to praise God for their piety, and 
 commend their practice to the imitation of posterity/ 
 
72 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 42. 
 
 Ver. 1. 'As the hart panteth after the water- 
 brooks/ gives the keynote to a psalm which must 
 have been often in the thoughts of the early Christians 
 in the time of persecution. The hart is a common 
 emblem on the walls of the Catacombs where they 
 found refuge, and the whole psalm was often sung 
 at the close of Communion. 
 
 Yer. 5. ' Why art thou cast down, my soul ? 
 and why art thou disquieted in me ? ' The narrative 
 of the death of the Bohemian martyrs, who suffered 
 at Prague in 1621, says, ' John Schultis was the next. 
 who on the scaffold said, " Why art thou cast down. 
 my soul ? hope thou in God ; for I shall yet praise 
 him." " The righteous seem in the eyes of men to die, 
 but indeed they go to their rest." Then kneeling down, 
 he said, " Come, come, Lord Jesus, and do not tarry ; " 
 and so he was beheaded.' 
 
 There is a wild but beautiful pass called Dalveen, 
 which connects Nithsdale with Clydesdale, and has 
 communication with numerous glens around ; among 
 them with the famous defile of the Enterkin. From 
 its sequestered character and ready doors of escape 
 it was a favourite refuge for ' the wanderers/ Here, 
 in the summer of 1685, Daniel M'Michael was 
 surprised by the troopers and told to prepare for 
 death. He calmly said, 'If my life must go for his 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 73 
 
 cause, I ain willing ; God will prepare me.' He was 
 shot in the presence of some of his relatives while 
 singing part of this psalm 
 
 Yer. 8. ' His loving-kindness yet the Lord 
 
 Command will in the day ; 
 His song's with me by night ; to God, 
 By whom I live, I'll pray.' 
 
 His friends carried his body to the romantic church- 
 yard of Durisdeer, ' the door of the oak forest,' where 
 he lies under a rude stone with a quaint epitaph 
 
 1 Daniel was cast into the lions' den 
 For praying unto God, and rot to men ; 
 Thus lions cruelly devoured me 
 Tor bearing unto truth my test'mony ; 
 I rest in peace till Jesus rend the cloud, 
 And judge 'twixt me and those who shed my blood.' 
 
 f salm 43. 
 
 The 43rd Psalm was chanted in the church at 
 Milan A.D. 387, when Augustine, after a severe and 
 prolonged spiritual conflict, was baptized by Ambrose, 
 whom he looked upon as his spiritual father. Conf. 
 ix. 14. 
 
 Yer. 3. ' send thy light forth and thy truth ; 
 
 Let them be guides to me, 
 And bring me to thine holy hill, 
 Even where thy dwellings be.' 
 
 After the ministers and elders of the Free Church 
 
74 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 of Scotland, at the Disruption, had reached Tanfield 
 Hall in their first step of emancipation, May 18, 
 1843, Dr. Chalmers took the chair as Moderator, and 
 rose to give out the opening psalm. Dr. Buchanan, 
 the historian of the Ten Years Conflict, says, ' A heavy 
 thunder-cloud had for some time darkened the heavens, 
 and, as the eye ranged at that particular moment over 
 the dense mass of human beings who covered the 
 immense area of the low-roofed hall, individual forms 
 had almost ceased to be distinguishable through the 
 sombre shade. The psalni which Dr. Chalmers had 
 chosen was the 43rd. He began at that touching and 
 beautiful line 
 
 " send thy light forth and thy truth," 
 
 and as the words sounded through the hall, the sun, 
 escaping from behind his cloudy covering, and darting 
 his brilliant beams through the windows which pierced 
 the roof, turned on the instant the preceding darkness 
 into day. It was one of those incidents which only 
 superstition could misunderstand, but which, at the 
 same time, is entitled to its own place among the 
 traits of the picturesque which belonged to the scenes 
 we are describing/ 
 
 jjJsaltti 44+ 
 
 A psalm wherein the depressed and almost hopeless 
 state of the Church is contrasted with the great 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 75 
 
 history of God's doings for it in the past, closing 
 with a piercing cry for a new interposition. 
 
 James Melville in his diary, at the year 1572, 
 says : ' Our Primarius (Principal of the University 
 of St. Andrews), Mr. James Wilkie, a guid, peaceable, 
 sweet auld man, caused sing commonly this year the 
 44th and 79th Psalms, which I learned by heart, 
 for that was the year of the bloody massacres in 
 France and great troubles in this country/ John 
 Knox died that same year, with firm faith in God, 
 but with his spirit clouded by the dark signs of the 
 time in Scotland as well as France ; for Eegent 
 Murray had fallen by the shot of the assassin in the 
 streets of Linlithgow, and the plots of the Guises 
 against the Eeformation were constant and far-reaching, 
 
 Ver. 22. The words quoted by the Apostle Paul, 
 Piom. viii., and enshrined in a triumphant hymn of 
 victory, were sung by the noble Bohemians, who were 
 executed in the midst of a terrible persecution of the 
 Protestants by Ferdinand of Austria, in the Grosser 
 Eing at Prague, June 21, 1621. Forty-seven were 
 executed on two separate days, and among them were 
 those men of the nation most distinguished for rank, 
 learning, and piety. As the first passed on to their 
 death, those still in prison sang to them, ' Yea, for thy 
 sake are we killed all the day long, we are counted 
 as sheep for the slaughter/ They spent the night 
 after in psalms, prayer, and mutual exhortation. 
 Early in the morning they washed, put on their best 
 
76 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 apparel as if going to a marriage feast, and cut off 
 the collars of their doublets, that, when they came to 
 the scaffold, they might need no making ready. When 
 called forth, one by one, they went to their death 
 with undaunted heart, and took leave of each other 
 with the words : ' Farewell, loving friends ; God 
 give you the comforts of His Spirit, patience and 
 courage, that what you have confessed with your 
 mouth you may confirm with your death/ Ferdinand, 
 persuaded by his counsellors, Cardinals Clesel and 
 Caraffa, had sworn to extirpate heresy. The Protestant 
 churches were closed, the leaders and ministers 
 executed or banished, and the Jesuits sent forth to 
 work at the conversion of the people. Pescheck, in 
 his History of the Bohemian Church, gives short 
 biographies of the sufferers in 1621. and the touch- 
 ing incidents in their life and death. It was the 
 custom to have a sword, similar to that of the 
 executioner, engraven with the names of the condemned 
 and preserved as a record. One of these, which had 
 been brought to Edinburgh among a collection of 
 ancient armour, was recognised lately by a Bohemian 
 student to whom the graven names were household 
 words, and was sent back with him to his native land, 
 where freedom and gospel truth are slowly rising from 
 the blood-stained soil. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 77 
 
 45. 
 
 A psalm sung by Columba near the fortress of the 
 king of the Northern Picts, by the mouth of the river 
 Ness. Adamnan, his biographer, says, ' But another 
 story concerning the great and wonderful power of his 
 voice should not be omitted. The thing is said to 
 have taken place near the fortress of King Brude. 
 When the saint himself was chanting the evening 
 hymns, with a few of the brethren, some Druids 
 coming near to them did all they could to prevent 
 God's praises being sung in the midst of a pagan 
 nation. On seeing this, the saint began to sing the 
 44th (our 45th) Psalm, and at the same moment so 
 wonderfully loud, like pealing thunder, that the king 
 and people were struck with amazement and fear.' 
 Adamnan tells that his voice could be heard at five 
 hundred, and sometimes even a thousand paces, and 
 yet that when near, it did not seem exceeding loud. It 
 is to the credit of these old Picts that, though they 
 tried to drown his voice, they do not seem to have 
 gone to extremes of persecution. We read of only one 
 violent death among the early Scottish missionaries, and 
 even this does not seem to have been premeditated. 
 
 The 45th Psalm had a special place in the heart 
 of Edward Irving, and Dr. Begg tells of the effect 
 produced on himself by the deep, finely-modulated 
 bass voice and profound feeling with which it was 
 
78 THE PSALMS JN HISTORY 
 
 read to a crowded audience in the West Church of 
 Edinburgh. It is one of those psalms of majesty 
 and tenderness which appeals to the spirit of mingled 
 power and pathos possessed by both Columba and 
 Irving. From King Brude and his fierce Pictish 
 chieftains to the Edinburgh of the nineteenth century 
 is a long journey, but the psalm compasses it in its 
 prophetic sweep. 
 
 1 thou that art the mighty One, 
 Thy sword gird on thy thigh ; 
 Even with thy glory excellent, 
 And with thy majest} r . 
 
 Thy name remembered 1 will make 
 
 Through ages all to be : 
 The people, therefore, evermore 
 
 Shall praises give to thee.' 
 
 $salm 46. 
 
 This is the Scripture version, with a better basis of 
 confidence, of what is perhaps the noblest of all 
 classic utterances 
 
 ' Si fractus illabatur orbis 
 Impavidum ferient niinse.' 
 
 ' Should the strong firmament in ruins break, 
 Fearless the just man stands amid the wreck.* 
 
 On this psalm Luther has founded his notable hymn, 
 Ein* feste Burg ist unser Gott, C A fortress strong is 
 God our Lord/ It breathes the force of battles, faces 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 79 
 
 fearlessly the fire and the scaffold, and thrills in every 
 line with unconquerable faith and Christian heroism. 
 It was written in 1529, during the preparations for 
 the Diet of Augsburg, when the Protestant cause 
 seemed wavering in the balance. During the sitting 
 of the Diet, Luther resided at the Castle of Coburg, 
 and he sang it to the lute every day, standing at the 
 window, and looking up to heaven. When Wittenberg 
 was surrendered to Charles V., and Melancthon, 
 Jonas, and Kreutziger, who, after Luther's death, 
 were the leaders of the German Eeformation, were 
 sent into banishment, they entered Weimar in great 
 trouble of spirit. As they passed along the street, 
 they heard a girl singing Luther's hymn. ' Sing on, 
 dear daughter mine,' Melancthon said ; ' thou knowest 
 not what comfort thou bringest to our heart.' Before 
 the battle of Leipsic, Sept. 17, 1631, Gustavus 
 Adolphus asked his whole army to sing it, and after 
 the victory he thanked God that the word was made 
 good, 'The field he will maintain it.' Before the 
 Edict of Toleration in 1781, by the Emperor Joseph II., 
 the Protestants of Linz were torn from their families 
 and banished to Transylvania. In their bitter grief 
 they sang with tears the words of this hymn 
 
 1 Take, if they will, our life, 
 Goods, honour, children, wife, 
 Yet is their profit small, 
 These things may vanish all, 
 
 The city of God remainetli.' 
 
So THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Heine, though mistaken as to the place where the 
 hymn was first sung, has well described its spirit 
 and history : ' Luther loved music, and has been 
 called the swan of Eisleben. But he is very unlike 
 a swan in some songs in which he animates the 
 courage of his friends, and excites himself to the 
 fiercest ardour. The hymn with which he entered 
 Worms, followed by his companions, was a true 
 war-song. The old cathedral trembled at these un- 
 wonted sounds, and the crows were startled out of 
 their dark nests in the turrets of the spire. This 
 hymn, the Marseillaise of the Eeformation, has pre- 
 served to this day its energetic power, and perhaps 
 we may soon have to raise again these old words, 
 flashing and pointed with iron.' 
 
 When the Huguenots and the Covenanters of 
 Scotland were in trouble, they used to say, ' Come 
 and let us sing the 46th Psalm' 
 
 ' God is our refuge and our strength, 
 
 In straits a present aid ; 
 Therefore, although the earth remove, 
 We will not be afraid.' 
 
 Ver. 10. 'Be still, and know that I am God; 1 
 will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted 
 in the earth,' was the text from which Eichard 
 Cameron preached July 17, 1680, in Avondale, near 
 Drumclog, three days before his death. A man 
 whose course was brief and bright like a meteor, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. Si 
 
 but burning its spirit into the cause, so that his name 
 became a star of guidance till the day dawned. It 
 was his last sermon, and some notes of it have been 
 preserved : ' The work begun shall be carried on in 
 spite of all opposition. If ye be not delivered, and 
 made a free and purified people, ye shall no more be 
 a nation than the Jews at this day. I say not this 
 to cast you down, but to stir you up to take hold of 
 Christ, and to range yourselves under his standard. 
 Our Lord shall not fail to raise it in the world, but 
 that it might be in Scotland ! ' 
 
 Too many of those who uphold the nationality of 
 the Scottish people forget that these men were as 
 needful to its distinct independence, while they were 
 pursuing their own high aim, as were the men who 
 fought against the Edwards. But for this endurance 
 the special character of the nation, and all that has 
 flowed from it, would have been lost. Wallace, Knox, 
 Cameron are in the line of common descent. 
 
 Another psalm of Alexander Peden's (See Psalm 
 xxxii.). It was his strong confidence in the final 
 display of God's righteousness, whatever clouds 
 meanwhile may obscure it. He had taken refuge 
 for a time in Ireland, and a narrative speaks of him 
 preaching in a wood and reading this psalm. In 
 giving it out to be sung, he charged his hearers not 
 
82 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 to join unless they could do it in a believing spirit. 
 ' Few at first took part, but soon many broke out and 
 sang with such force and feeling, that the like was 
 seldom witnessed/ Richard Baxter has the true way 
 of putting the spirit in which psalms of strong personal 
 experience should be sung. Speaking of Psalm Ixiii., 
 ' My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for 
 thee in a dry and thirsty land/ he says, ' I can sing 
 it, because though I have not a soul like David, I 
 desire to have it ; / have a heart to the heart.' 
 
 50. 
 
 There is a mystery about the authorship of that 
 wonderful hymn Dies Irce, f Day of judgment, day of 
 burning/ which adds to its power as it falls from the 
 bosom of distant centuries, like the tones of a cathedral 
 bell, dropping slow and solemn from the tower at mid- 
 night. It is now generally ascribed to Thomas of 
 Celano, who lived in the thirteenth century ; but little 
 is known of him. The first verse of the hymn, Teste 
 David cum Sibylla, represents the heathen prophetess 
 as joining David in looking forward to the consum- 
 mation of all things in the fire of the final day. It 
 has been matter of discussion what passage in the 
 Psalms is referred to, and opinions are divided between 
 Psalm 1. 3 and Psalm cii. 26. The starting note 
 seems struck most distinctly in these sublime words : 
 ' Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence : a 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 83 
 
 fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very 
 tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the 
 heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may 
 judge his people/ 
 
 Ver. 16. 'But unto the wicked God saith, What 
 hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou 
 shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth ? ' the 
 words on which Origen lighted when, in a time of 
 great mental depression and self-accusation, he was 
 called on by the Church at Jerusalem to preach to 
 them. He overcame it by earnest prayer, and rose 
 higher through the trial. 
 
 51. 
 
 A psalm which fitly follows the 50th; the cry for 
 mercy and purity rising from the view of judgment, 
 and in this, too, harmonizing with the tone of the 
 Dies Tree. 
 
 ' Quid sum miser turn dicturus, 
 Quern patronum rogaturus, 
 Quum vix Justus sit securus ? ' 
 
 ' Guilt and shame my soul assailing, 
 Where shall I find friend availing, 
 When the righteous man is quailing ? ' 
 
 It is one of the Pauline psalms which delighted 
 Luther, and has had a manifold history, open and 
 secret. It was sung by George Wishart and his 
 friends at the Laird of Ormiston's, in East Lothian, 
 
84 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 on the night when he was taken prisoner, to be after- 
 wards burned at St. Andrews. ' After supper he 
 held comfortable purpose of the death of God's chosen 
 children, and pleasantly said, " Methinks that I desire 
 earnestly to sleep," and therewith he said, " will we 
 sing a psalm?" and so he appointed the 51st, which 
 was put in Scottish metre (Wedderburn's Version), 
 and began thus : 
 
 " Have mercy on me, God of might, 
 
 Of mercy Lord and king ; 
 For thy mercy is set full right 
 
 Above all earthly thing ; 
 Therefore I cry both day and night, 
 
 And with my heart shall sing ; 
 To thy mercy with thee will I go." 3 
 
 For a long period in the Middle Ages, and after the 
 Eeformation, it was the Miserere, the last cry for mercy, 
 sung, or heard, by those who were about to step into 
 the presence of the judgment - seat. When it was 
 read to Henry V. of England on his death-bed, the 
 closing words, 'Build thou the walls of Jerusalem/ 
 seemed to fall on the ear of the dying man as a 
 reproach, for he had cherished a vow, and he 
 murmured, ' If I had finished the war in France, 
 and established peace, I would have gone to Palestine 
 to rescue the Holy City from the Saracens/ It was 
 read to Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford 
 Dudley, when they were executed together, Aug. 22, 
 1553, read to her in Latin, and repeated by her in 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 85 
 
 English. It was read also at Norfolk's execution a 
 few years later. It was the last prayer of Oecolampa- 
 dius, who had his sickness aggravated and his death 
 hastened by the untimely end of his friend Zwingle 
 in 1531. He called the ministers of the churches 
 round him, exhorted them to fidelity and purity 
 of doctrine, prayed earnestly in the words of 
 David in the 51st Psalm, and soon after died. It 
 would be too long to tell of all the Protestants in 
 France who made it their death -song, during that 
 long agony in which it is difficult to say whether we 
 wonder most at the cruelty of the persecutors or 
 the constancy of the sufferers. Pierre Milet was 
 one of the earliest burned, in 1550, on the Place 
 Maubert, Paris, with the refinements of cruelty 
 common at the time; and more than 200 years 
 after, March 27, 1752, Francis Benezet met his 
 death, both of them with this psalm on their lips. 
 There is a remarkable similarity in the manner of 
 death of the French and Scottish martyrs, arising 
 from the frequent intercourse between the Churches 
 in the early days of the Eeformation, and from 
 their common devotion to the book of Psalms. 
 
 One of the most interesting of these to a Scotsman 
 is that of Thomas Forret, who suffered martyrdom 
 on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, nearly a quarter of 
 a century before the Eeformation gained firm footing 
 in the land. He was of a family that had owned 
 the estate of Forret in Fife from the time of William 
 
86 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 the Lion, and was Canon of Inchcolm in the Firth 
 of Forth. A volume of Augustine led him. to the 
 Bible, and there he found salvation through Christ 
 alone. When the people came to have pardon for 
 money, he would say, 'I am bound to speak the 
 truth to you. There is no pardon for our sins that 
 can come to us from Pope or any other, but only by 
 the blood of Christ/ This, and the abundance of 
 his work in preaching, brought him before the Bishop 
 of Dunkeld and the Abbot of St. Colm's, who urged 
 him to keep silence. ' You are a friend to my body/ 
 he replied, 'but not to my soul. Before I deny a 
 word I have spoken, you shall see this body of mine 
 blow away with the wind in ashes/ The account of 
 his death has been preserved by his faithful servant, 
 Andrew Kirkie. When he was brought to the stake 
 on the Castle Hill, he cried first in Latin and then 
 in English, ' God be merciful to me, a sinner ; ' then, 
 ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit/ and ended with the 
 Miserere, ' Have mercy upon me, God, according to 
 thy loving-kindness/ 
 
 Ver. 7. Probably the northernmost grave on the 
 surface of the earth is one made for a member of the 
 expedition of Sir George Nares to the Arctic Sea, in 
 the ship Alert. It is near Cape Beechy, on the 
 brow of a hill covered with snow, and commanding a 
 view of crowded masses of ice which stretch away 
 into the mysterious Northern Ocean, where, hung 
 like a lamp over the door of the unknown, shines the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 87 
 
 polar star. A large stone covers the dead, and, on a 
 copper tablet at the head, the words are engraved, 
 ' Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow/ 
 
 Ver. 18. The first presbytery of the Irish Presby- 
 terian Church was constituted by immigrants from 
 Scotland, in Carrickfergus, June 10, 1642. There 
 were five ministers and as many elders. The sermon 
 was from Psalm li. 18, 'Do good in thy good 
 pleasure unto Zion ; build thou the walls of Jerusalem/ 
 Two hundred years afterwards, in 1842, every minister 
 of the Church preached from this same text. There 
 were then above five hundred. 
 
 53. 
 
 Eepeated along with the 51st by John Huss, at 
 the place of execution near Constance. We can see 
 how he chose the one for the expression of 
 his personal experience, the other to mark the 
 character of his time, and his hope of the triumph 
 of truth, ver. 6, '0 that the salvation of Israel 
 were come out of Zion ! When God bringeth back 
 the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and 
 Israel shall be glad/ Justice is now being done to 
 John Huss in his own country for what he did in 
 the foundation of its language and literature, but the 
 universal Church of Christ is his debtor for the light 
 he kindled at the torch of Wickliffe, and handed on 
 to Luther. The timid Erasmus could admire it 
 
88 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 when he said, Joannes Huss exustus, non convictiis 
 ' burned, not confuted/ 
 
 55* 
 
 Darnley's servants told of the last hours of his 
 life, that Mary's words at parting made him feel 
 uneasy. She left him at the house of the Kirk o' Field 
 (near the present University), and went to Holyrood 
 to be present at the marriage of one of her maids of 
 honour. On leaving she said, ' It is a year to-day 
 since David liizzio died/ He could not sleep, and 
 turned to read the lesson of the day, which was the 
 55th Psalm. Next morning he was found lying 
 dead in the little garden beside the house. The 
 house itself had been blown up with gunpowder. 
 It was Sabbath evening, Feb. 9, 1567, when he lay 
 reading the words, some of which sound like a knell 
 on the past, and a doom on the men of blood around. 
 Well for him if the closing words of the psalm 
 entered his heart. 
 
 Yer. 4. ' My heart is sore pained within me ; and 
 the terrors of death are fallen upon me. 
 
 Ver. 5. 'Fearfulness and trembling are come upon 
 me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. 
 
 Yer. 23. 'But thou, God, shalt bring them down 
 into the pit of destruction : bloody and deceitful men 
 shall not live out half their days ; but I will trust 
 in thee/ 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 89 
 
 56. 
 
 Ver. 8. 'Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou 
 iny tears into thy bottle : are they not in thy book ? ' 
 a verse frequently in the mouth of Archbishop Usher, 
 one of the best and most learned men of his time 
 born in Dublin 1580, driven to and fro through 
 England and Ireland amid the troubles in Church 
 and State, during one of the most troublous times in 
 our history, and at length finding the rest he often 
 sighed for at Reigate in England, 1655, after he 
 had preached the gospel for fifty-five years. 
 
 60. 
 
 It was in the order of service, March 20, 687, and 
 was sung at the death of Cuthbert. This missionary 
 of the seventh century is first heard of as a shepherd 
 boy on the hills of Gala Water, then known as 
 Wedale. The religious movement among the Celtic 
 races under Columba and his followers laid hold of 
 the Saxons, and Cuthbert became the apostle of the 
 glens of the south of Scotland and the north of 
 England. Lindisfarne, or Holy Isle, which he first 
 chose as his centre, was the lona of the eastern coast ; 
 but the solitude of the storm-beaten Feme Islands, 
 known in later times through the heroism of Grace 
 Darling, drew him to them, from that love of 
 
90 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 seclusion which was in part morbid, but in part a 
 natural desire to escape the turmoil and tempests of 
 the time. Numerous legends have gathered round 
 his life, and the wanderings of his body after his death, 
 till he found a resting-place in Durham Cathedral. In 
 the midst of all the stories, we can see even from the 
 churches that bear his name between the Forth and 
 Tyne, and down into Galloway, that he was an 
 unwearied traveller and preacher. The seed he 
 sowed in troublous times took vital hold and sprang 
 up in after ages. The account of his death has been 
 given by Bede, who received it from Herefrid, an 
 eye-witness. He had retired to one of the Feme 
 Islands, and was known to be dying. A company of 
 his brethren from Lindisfarne came to visit him, but 
 only one was admitted to his death-bed. Meanwhile 
 the others sang the 60th Psalm. When Herefrid 
 came out and announced his death, one of them 
 mounted the high ground above the cell and held up 
 two lighted torches, a preconcerted signal to their 
 friends in Lindisfarne that Cuthbert had departed. 
 The accents of the psalm and the wail for the dead 
 were carried with the signal across the sea. 
 
 It was in Cuthbert's time, 685, that the Pictish 
 monarch, after a great victory over the Saxons, crossed 
 the Forth, took possession of Edinburgh and the 
 Lothians, and prepared the way for an independent 
 nationality and Church, the Church of Knox, 
 Henderson, and the Covenanting struggle. The 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 91 
 
 60th Psalm had a place in one of the incidents of 
 that history. Eobert Douglas gave it out to be sung 
 when he preached the coronation sermon of Charles 
 IT. at Scone, January 1, 1651, the Marquis of Argyle 
 putting the crown on the head of the ungrateful 
 monarch who afterwards sent him to the block. The 
 text was 2 Kings xi. 12, 17, most appropriately 
 chosen, the sermon very long and filled with uncourtly 
 truths. The earnestness of the preacher and the 
 duplicity of the chief hearer, if hearer he was, are 
 one of the historical contrasts of the time ; but there 
 was a true word of prophetic insight in the close of 
 the discourse, when the text which sealed the Solemn 
 League and Covenant, in the East Church of Edinburgh, 
 was again quoted, Neh. v. 13, ' Also I shook my lap, 
 and said, So God shake out every man from his house, 
 and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, 
 even thus be he shaken out and emptied.' Nearly 
 forty years of broken pledges and of profligacies elapsed 
 till the threatening was made good. 
 
 The 60th Psalm is also memorable in the history of 
 the Secession Church of Scotland. When Ebenezer 
 Erskine, in 1740, had to leave his church, he took 
 his place with an immense multitude below the battle- 
 ments of Stirling Castle, and sang the first five verses 
 of this psalm. Looking down on the field where 
 the heroic Wallace gained a decisive victory for 
 his country, the words have in them the ring of 
 battle : 
 
92 - THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 ' And yet a banner thou hast given 
 
 To them who thee do fear ; 
 That it by them, because of truni, 
 Displayed may appear. 
 
 That thy beloved people may 
 
 Delivered be from thrall, 
 Save with the power of thy right hand, 
 
 And hear me when I call.' 
 
 The psalm of his friend, Wilson of Perth, in similar 
 circumstances, had a quieter tone, though scarcely less 
 appropriate, Ps. Iv. 6-8 and 12-14. His text was 
 fittingly chosen, Heb. xiii. 13. Both of these leaders 
 were children of the Covenanters. When the 
 Secession and Eelief Churches joined in 1847, in 
 Tanfield Hall, Edinburgh, the 60th Psalm was again 
 sung, and with it Ps. cxlvii. 13, division ending 
 in reconstruction : 
 
 ' God doth build up Jerusalem, 
 
 And he it is alone 
 That the dispersed of Israel 
 Doth gather into one.' 
 
 63. 
 
 As early as the third century this was the morning 
 song of the Christian Church. 
 
 Yers. 6, 7. In the life of Theodore Beza it is told 
 that, being much troubled with want of sleep, he be- 
 guiled the time with holy meditation, and, speaking to 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 93 
 
 his friends of it, used that speech: ' When I remember 
 thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night 
 watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore 
 in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.' And also 
 Ps. xvi. 7, ' My reins also instruct me in the night 
 seasons/ 
 
 65. 
 
 This beautiful psalm, first of grace, then of nature, 
 inverting the order of Ps. xix., seems to have taken 
 early possession of the heart of the Christian Church. 
 There is a prayer which has come down to us from 
 the Church of Alexandria, alluded to by Origen, first 
 half of the third century, in which its language is 
 largely used, and applied to the land of Egypt : ' Send 
 rain out of thy treasures upon those places which 
 stand in need of it. Eenew and make glad the face 
 of the earth by its descent that it may bring forth and 
 rejoice in the rain-drops. Eaise the waters of the 
 river to their just height ; renew and make glad the 
 face of the earth by its ascent ; water the furrows and 
 increase their produce. Bless, Lord, and crown the 
 year with the riches of thy goodness, for the sake of 
 the poor, the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger/ 
 
 Psalm 67. 
 
 This psalm has been called by the ancient expositors 
 'the Lord's prayer of the Old Testament/ It has, 
 
94 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 like that of the New, seven divisions. The first 
 three verses and last three are linked by a longer 
 one in the middle, and the third and fifth are in the 
 same words. It is by special distinction the missionary 
 psalm. 
 
 In the year 1644, the Corporation of London 
 invited the two Houses of Parliament to a grand 
 banquet, in proof of the union of their cause, and 
 in celebration of their victory. The Westminster 
 Assembly of Divines and the Scottish Commissioners 
 were also invited, and the festival was after the manner 
 of that of Solomon at the dedication of the temple. 
 Stephen Marshall, a noted preacher of the day, 
 selected for his text the appropriate words, 1 Chron. 
 xii., last three verses ; and the spiritual provision 
 seems to have reached a profusion not thought of in 
 public feasts of our days. Baillie gives a full de- 
 scription of the rejoicings, and tells how the feast 
 ended with the singing of the 67th Psalm, Dr. Burgess 
 reading the line, that all might take part, ' a religious 
 precedent/ says a chronicler of the time, ' worthy to be 
 imitated by all godly Christians in both their public 
 and private meetings/ 
 
 $salm 68. 
 
 A psalm of wonderful power and compass, of living 
 fire and dramatic picturesqueness, ranging from the 
 remote past with its triumphs, onward to a final and 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 95 
 
 irreversible victory in the future ; with figures which 
 startle us by their sternness (ver. 23), and others 
 (ver. 30) that teach us the spirit in which we should 
 read the whole. With what a blast of irresistible 
 storm it breaks out, sweeping all enemies before it 
 in hopeless ruin, and then clear like a silver trumpet 
 rising from the din of the battle, comes the call to 
 1 rejoice in God ! ' ' But let the righteous be glad/ 
 followed by the reason of the summons so strange and 
 touchingly tender like rain from a thunder-cloud : 
 
 ' Because the Lord a father is 
 
 Unto the fatherless ; 
 God is the widow's judge, within 
 His place of holiness/ 
 
 And then the psalm moves on by the memories of 
 Sinai and Horeb, of manna provision, and water from 
 the stricken rock, through march and conflict, and 
 ' garments rolled in blood/ till it ends in the conquest 
 of the world for the King of righteousness and peace. 
 The sword in it is that which God permits, in his 
 righteous government, the sword with which sin 
 executes judgment on itself ; the peace is that which 
 Christ promises as his legacy and gift, and which is 
 more fully described in Ps. Ixxii. 
 
 This 68th Psalm was known among the Huguenots 
 as the ' song of battles/ and was raised by them in 
 many a bloody and desperate conflict. The words in 
 their old version are : 
 
96 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 ' Que Dieu se montre senlement 
 Et 1'on verra soudainement 
 
 Abandonner la place, 
 Le camp des ennemis e"pars, 
 Et ses haineux, de toutes parts 
 Fuir devant sa face.' 
 
 An old Camisard, as the hunted Protestants of the 
 Cevennes were called, says, ' We flew when we heard 
 the sound of the psalms, we flew as if with wings. We 
 felt within us an animating ardour, a transporting 
 desire. The feeling cannot be expressed in words. 
 It is a thing that must have been felt to be known. 
 However weary we might be, we thought no more of 
 our fatigue, and grew light as soon as the psalms 
 reached our ear/ 
 
 It was chanted by Savonarola and his brother 
 Dominicans, A.D. 1497, as they marched to the grand 
 Piazza of Florence to meet the trial of fire to which 
 they had been summoned by their enemies. The 
 corruption of the Church of Eome was never deeper in 
 the lives of pontiffs and clergy ; and, in the midst of 
 it, rose the wonderful contrast and protest of Era 
 Angelico who breathed into his paintings the mystic 
 beauty of a seraphic soul, and of Savonarola, whose 
 outraged conscience broke forth in words of flame. 
 Both belonged to the same convent of San Marco, and 
 Rome spared the artist, but burned the Reformer, 
 May 23, 1498. While in prison awaiting his death, 
 he wrote a brief exposition of Ps. IL and Ps. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 97 
 
 xxxi., pouring out his soul in a torrent of the most 
 fervid feeling. A few lines help us to see the prisoner 
 in his dungeon, and to hear the sobs with which he 
 pressed David's words close to his heart. ' Be pitiful 
 to me, Lord ; not according to the mercy of man, 
 which is small, but according to thine, which is great, 
 immense, incomprehensible. Have mercy upon me, 
 Lord, not according to thy small mercy, for thy 
 mercy is small when it relieves and liberates men 
 from bodily miseries ; but it is great when thou 
 pardonest sin, and raisest men above the level of the 
 earth. So, Lord, have mercy upon me, according to 
 thy great mercy. According to the multitude of thy 
 mercies, cancel my iniquity, and cleanse my heart 
 from every impurity ; let it become white and clean, 
 that thy finger may write on it the law of thy love 
 with which sin can never more dwell. I come to 
 thee, Lord, not as the Pharisee, but as the publican, 
 for I know my iniquity ; I come to thee, bowed down 
 with sin, and I weary myself day and night with the 
 moaning of my heart/ 
 
 $saim 71 
 
 Was, in his old age, the cherished psalm of the dis- 
 tinguished Covenanter, Eobert Blair, which he was 
 accustomed to call ' my psalm/ The Christian Father, 
 Origen, made the same claims on those passages of the 
 Bible which came specially home to him ' this is my 
 
 G 
 
98 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Scripture/ Eobert Blair was one of the most remark- 
 able men of his time for ability, learning, and piety. 
 His life was a very eventful one. Forded by persecu- 
 tion to take refuge in Ireland, he became there 
 one of the founders of the Irish Presbyterian 
 Church. Still pursued by intolerance, he was half- 
 way across the Atlantic to seek rest in New England, 
 when a storm drove him back to continue his work in 
 his native land. After the Kestoration, he was an 
 object of fear and dislike to Archbishop Sharp, who had 
 him sent into virtual banishment in the neighbourhood 
 of Aberdour, where he died, broken by age, infirmity, 
 and anxiety for the public interest, in 1666. Before 
 he died, he repeated the 16th Psalm, the 23rd, and 
 the whole of his own psalm, attracted no doubt 
 specially to vers. 17, 18 : 'Now also when I am old 
 and grey-headed, God, forsake me not/ His son 
 had to purchase leave to raise a simple monument to 
 him in the churchyard of Aberdour, with an inscrip- 
 tion very brief, it is said, ' because of the iniquity of 
 the time/ It still stands with the epitaph, MOTS 
 Janua Vitce, f death the gate of life/ with a seeming 
 reference to the words in Ps. xvi., ' Thou wilt show me 
 the path of life/ His grandson was Eobert Blair, 
 author of The Grave; among his descendants, Dr. 
 Hugh Blair, with other noted men of the name. 
 
 The 7 1st Psalm was asked for on his death-bed by 
 Philip de Morny, known as Plessis de Morny, a man 
 of illustrious rank, chivalrous spirit, and sincere piety, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 99 
 
 who cast in his lot with the Huguenots, and stood by 
 them in every extremity. Prayer being ended, he 
 desired they would read unto him the 71st Psalm, 
 giving testimony of the infinite pleasure which he 
 took in it, and of his experience of it for his own 
 consolation. He said he was persuaded of an eternal 
 life by the demonstration of the Holy Spirit, more 
 powerful, more clear, and more certain than all the 
 demonstrations of Euclid, repeating two or three times 
 the words of the Psalmist, cxvi. 10, 'I believed, 
 therefore have I spoken/ 
 
 $saim 73. 
 
 After the defeat of Montcontour, as they were 
 carrying Coligny off the field, nearly suffocated by the 
 blood of three wounds pouring into his closed visor, 
 an old friend, who was being carried wounded beside 
 him, repeated the first verse of this psalm, 
 
 ' Si est ce que Dieu est tres doux/ ' 
 
 'Truly God is good to Israel/ The historian adds, 
 ' That great captain confessed afterwards that this 
 short word refreshed him, and put him in the way of 
 good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future/ If 
 the whole psalm is read, it will be seen to be singularly 
 suited to such an emergency ; and so well were the 
 psalms then known, that the first verse called up the 
 whole. 
 
TOO THE PSALMS IN H2STOR Y 
 
 Ver. 25. One of the most interesting records of the 
 Covenanting time, is the diary of Mrs. Veitch, wife of 
 one of the outlawed ministers who was imprisoned 
 and exiled, and more than once in view of the scaffold. 
 They survived all, and after the Eevolution he became 
 minister, first of Peebles and then of Dumfries, where 
 he died. An extract from her journal may give some 
 idea of the tenderness of heart that lay beneath the 
 stern conscience of those times, and of the springs of 
 simple faith in personal experience which refreshed 
 and strengthened them in their endurance for principle. 
 She tells of the death of her third son, twelve years of 
 age, with whom, and other children, she had taken 
 refuge in Northumberland, while her husband and her 
 older sons were in Holland. She saw the death of 
 her child approaching, but feared that the thought of 
 it was bitter to him. When in this state of anxiety 
 she says, ' One day, calling me to his bedside, he told 
 me that the world had lost its attractions to him, and 
 that he was resigned to die. I asked the reason of 
 this, as his heart seemed to be otherwise set. He said 
 that he had been praying and giving himself to Christ ; 
 that Christ had assured him of the delight he took in 
 his soul, and this had comforted him. Afterwards he 
 said, "Is it not a wonder that Jesus Christ should 
 have died for sinners ? Oh, this is a good tale, and 
 we should think often on it." He frequently repeated 
 these words, " Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and 
 there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee," 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 101 
 
 which refreshed me/ says his mother, ' more than if I 
 had been made heir of a great estate. Calling for his 
 brother, who was at home, and his sisters, he blessed 
 them all, and bade them farewell. On becoming 
 unable to speak, he held up his hand while I spoke 
 to him of death and heaven. At last, with his own 
 hand he closed his eyes, and so we parted in hope of 
 a glorious meeting/ 
 
 Ver. 26. 'My flesh and my heart faileth, but God 
 is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever/ 
 was the last verse on which the thoughts of Charles 
 Wesley rested, and with which his sanctified genius 
 rose to higher notes among angels and ransomed 
 spirits. His death was like his life. He called his 
 wife, and bade her write to his dictation. It was the 
 last of seven thousand hymns, some of them the finest 
 in the English language, which had welled from his 
 heart day and night, wherever he moved. 
 
 ' In age and feebleness extreme, 
 Who shall a sinful worm redeem ? 
 Jesus, my only hope thou art, 
 Strength of my failing flesh and heart ; 
 0, could I catch a smile from th.ee, 
 And drop into eternity ! ' 
 
 $salm 74+ 
 
 A cry of tne Church, on the brink of despair, to God, 
 who seems to stand with face averted and arm inactive ; 
 
i o 2 THE PSALMS IN HIS TOR Y 
 
 and yet it is certain he wrought wonders of deliver- 
 ance in the past, and that he is still the giving God in 
 his works around. The appeals to him are bold 
 beyond measure, yet deep in their humility ; agonizing 
 in the feeling of forsaken neglect, yet full of faith ; in 
 the spirit of Jacob, * I will not let thee go/ or of 
 Jeremiah, ' Why shouldest thou be as a man astonied, 
 as a mighty man that cannot save ? Yet thou, 
 Lord, art in the midst of us ; leave us not/ 
 
 * God, why hast thou cast us off 1 
 
 Is it for evermore 1 
 Against thy pasture-sheep why doth 
 Thine anger smoke so sore 1 
 
 Thy hand, even thy right hand of might, 
 Why dost thou thus draw back? 
 
 from thy bosom pluck it out, 
 For our deliverance sake.' 
 
 It was the song of a band of Covenanters, Nov. 28, 
 1666, at Bullion Green, on the skirts of the Pentlands, 
 when brought to bay by the Government troops. 
 Goaded by intolerable oppression, they had come from 
 the West to present an armed remonstrance at Edin- 
 burgh. The authorities refused them a hearing, and 
 resolved to strike terror by a powerful force which 
 had been placed outside the city. The Covenanters 
 were retiring to their homes, when they were pursued 
 and intercepted. With 900 men, outworn with 
 fatigue and hunger, they occupied a steep slope which 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 103 
 
 rises from the romantic stream of the Glencorse. 
 They raised the plaintive cry of the 74th Psalm, and 
 were attacked by 3000 disciplined troops, under the 
 fierce Dalziel. Outnumbered as they were, they made 
 a determined resistance, and the report to the Govern- 
 ment says that ' never were men seen to fight more 
 gallantly, and abide better than they did, the general 
 being forced to use stratagems to break them/ The 
 fight was prolonged till dusk, when they were dis- 
 persed, and many of them captured. The prisoners 
 were treated with great barbarity, being shut up 
 without food or shelter in Greyfriars Churchyard, 
 numbers being executed, or sent to the plantations as 
 slaves. The graves of some of those who fell in the 
 struggle may be seen on the hillside. A simple 
 stone, with lines rude in rhyme but true in feeling, 
 marks the spot : 
 
 ' A cloud of witnesses lie here, 
 Who for Christ's interest did appear. 
 And to restore true liberty, 
 O'erturned then by tyranny ; 
 These heroes fought with great renown, 
 By falling got the martyr's crown.' 
 
 The psalm they sang does not finish, but is broken 
 off, and, as it were, taken up into the swelling din of 
 a prolonged battle, to indicate that in the defeat of 
 a righteous cause we have to look up to God, till he 
 turns the page and lets us read Victory on the other 
 side, immediate for the fallen, ultimate for the truth. 
 
io 4 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 ' Do not forget the voice of those 
 
 That are thine enemies ; 
 Of those the tumult ever gro\f s, 
 That do against thee rise/ 
 
 Psalm 76. 
 
 Sung atDrumclog, June 1, 1679. At this time, in 
 Scotland, those who met for worship elsewhere than 
 in the churches sanctioned by Government were 
 given over to martial law, frequently shot in the 
 fields or on the moors, without trial, and their bodies 
 left where they fell. It was this period which, in the 
 words of Kenwick, 'flowered the mosses with martyrs. 7 
 One of their gatherings was held, not long before 
 midsummer, on a Sabbath morning, at Drumclog, 
 where the head-waters of the Avon and Ayr approach 
 each other, and close to the peak of Loudon hill, where 
 grey cairns commemorate battlefields of Wallace and 
 Bruce, who struggled for national freedom, as the 
 Covenanters did for spiritual, these services for which 
 they 'jeoparded their lives in the high places of the 
 field/ winning for us our quiet Sabbaths. Claverhouse 
 had heard of the intended meeting, and came with a 
 strong body of his troopers ; but the Covenanters, 
 though poorly armed, were skilfully led, and resolute 
 of heart. After a severe action the dragoons were 
 entirely defeated, Claverhouse escaping with difficulty. 
 The psalm sung by the Covenanters, as they descended 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 105 
 
 the hill to the encounter, was the noble burst of 
 triumph which celebrated the overthrow of Sennacherib 
 and his host, and the tune was the plaintive but lofty 
 Martyrs : 
 
 1 There arrows of the bow he brake, 
 The shield, the sword, the war. 
 More glorious thou than hills of prey, 
 More excellent art far. 
 
 Those that were stout of heart were spoiled, 
 
 They slept their sleep outright ; 
 And none of those their hands did find, 
 
 That were the men of might.' 
 
 About a century before, in 1588, the same psalrn 
 was given out to be sung at the Market Cross of 
 Edinburgh, by Eobert Bruce, a descendant of the 
 great King Eobert, when the news came of the defeat 
 and dispersion of the Spanish Armada. This Bruce, 
 like his namesake, was a man of heroic nature, and 
 a preacher of such majesty and power, that John 
 Livingstone says when he heard him, he thought 
 ' there had been no such preacher since the days of the 
 apostles, and never would be again/ 'Every one of 
 his prayers seemed like a strong bolt shot up to 
 heaven.' 
 
 About ten years later it was sung by Alexander 
 Shiels (author of The Hind let Loose), and by other 
 Covenanters, at the Market Cross of Douglas, in cele- 
 bration of the Eevolution. Doubtless Drumclog was 
 
106 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 in their memory, and they were in the line of descent 
 from the old achievements of Castle Dangerous. At 
 Douglas, at this time, the Cameronian regiment was 
 formed, which defended Dunkeld so stoutly, in 1689, 
 against the victors of Killiecrankie, and which has 
 distinguished itself since in many a stricken field. 
 William Cleland, its first lieutenant-colonel, a man of 
 literary gifts, had fought at Drumclog, and fell bravely 
 at Dunkeld. 
 
 Charles Kingsley had a special love for the psalm. 
 When sailing up the Rhine, and looking on the ruined 
 strongholds of the old freebooters, he writes, ' How 
 strange that my favourite psalm about the hills of the 
 robbers (hills of prey) should have come in course the 
 very day I went up the Rhine ! ' 
 
 79. 
 
 Fourteen Protestants of Meaux, arrested at a 
 meeting, sang this psalm as they went to death, 
 
 6 Les gens entres sont en ton heritage. ' 
 
 ' God, the heathen are come into thine inherit- 
 ance/ The priests and monks tried to drown their 
 voices by singing ' salutaris hoslia- ; ' but the song 
 of the martyrs was silenced only by the flames. 
 While some of these sufferers chose psalms with the 
 cry for pardon for sin, and others the hope and joy of 
 the divine vision, there were those again who, as in 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 107 
 
 this case, appealed to God for his persecuted truth. 
 Crespin, the early French martyrologist, tells of one of 
 these, Jean Kabac, put to death with indescribable 
 cruelty, at Angers, in 1556, that he continued to sing 
 this psalm till he had scarcely the form of a man, and 
 so gave up his soul to God. 
 
 It was not till 1562 that the Huguenots were 
 driven to resistance by these barbarities, and by the 
 massacres committed by the Duke of Guise. No one 
 who is ignorant of this history can estimate rightly 
 the position taken up by John Knox, when all the 
 craft of her uncles sought to employ Mary Stuart as 
 an instrument for crushing the Eeformation, first in 
 Scotland and then in England. It was his foresight 
 and firmness which thwarted the deeply laid plans of 
 the Papal party in France and at Borne. 
 
 The 79th Psalm was one of those which came 
 closely home to the hearts of our countrymen and 
 countrywomen in the days of the Indian Mutiny. 
 Think of it as read amid the horrors of Cawnpore and 
 Lucknow. 
 
 Yer. 2. We are told in Jurieu's Letters that the 
 Protestants of Metz sang this verse when they lifted 
 from a heap of refuse, where it had been cast, the 
 body of one of their brethren, a judge of the city, and 
 carried it away to interment. 
 
 Yer. 8. ' remember not against us former iniquities: 
 let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us ; for we 
 are brought very low/ They were the last words of 
 
io8 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 John Owen, who died August 24, 1683, when things 
 looked very dark in England and Scotland for the 
 cause of religious truth and freedom. It was the 
 time of which the poet Waller has said, 
 
 4 Bold is the man who dares engage 
 For piety in such an age. 7 
 
 Indifference, infidelity, immorality were general 
 in court and country, and the Church of Eome was in 
 great hope of regaining its power. But Owen had a 
 bright hope beyond. When told, in his last illness, 
 that his book, Meditations on the Glory of the Redeemer, 
 perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most 
 elevated, of all his works, had just been put to the 
 press, the dying man lifted up his hands, and said, 
 e I am glad to hear it, the long wished-f or day is come 
 at last, in which I shall see that glory in another 
 manner than I have ever done, or was capable of 
 doing, in this world/ 
 
 Vers. 8-16. c Hear, my people, and I will testify 
 unto thee : Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me : 
 there shall no strange god be in thee ; neither shalt 
 thou worship any strange god. I am the Lord thy 
 God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt.' 
 
 The whole passage forms the beginning of the 
 appeal of the Scottish exiles in Newcastle, Aug. 10, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 109 
 
 1584. They had been compelled to quit Scotland, 
 owing to the oppressive course which was afterwards 
 pursued in Church and State for a full century, during 
 the reign of the later Skiarts. At the head of the 
 exiled party were Andrew Melville and his nephew 
 James, and here was drawn up the system of government 
 for the Church of Scotland, which fought its way to a 
 definite triumph in the Glasgow Assembly of 1638. 
 Andrew Melville took up the standard from the 
 dying hand of John Knox, and, instead of Frankfort 
 and Geneva, the shelter of the refugees was found in 
 Berwick and Newcastle. The common interest of the 
 Eeformation was now drawing England and Scotland 
 more closely together, especially on. the side of the 
 Puritans, and preparing the way for the union of the 
 kingdoms. 
 
 $salm 84+ 
 
 Jocelyn, in his life of Kentigern, tells of an inter- 
 view between him and Columba, A.D. 584, at a place 
 called Mellindenor, where they and their companies 
 met one another singing psalms. Mellindenor is 
 what is now known as Molendinar, rivus molendinarius, 
 the little stream by Glasgow Cathedral, used for the 
 primitive mill, the first glimpse we have of the city 
 with mills innumerable, with a kind of anticipation of 
 its motto of welfare through the preaching of the 
 Word. The psalms said to have been sung were 
 
1 10 THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y 
 
 on the side of Kentigern, Ps. cxxxviii. 5, c In the 
 ways of the Lord, how great is the glory of the Lord ! ' 
 and on the side of Columba ' they sang with tuneful 
 voices ' Ps. Ixxxiv. 7, ' The saints shall go from 
 strength to strength, until unto the God of gods 
 appeareth every one in Sion.' It is matter of regret 
 that the lives of these good men should have been 
 disfigured, through the superstition of a later age, 
 with so many trifling legends ; but the evidence we 
 have of their delight in the Psalms and Gospels is 
 proof of their deep spiritual feeling. 
 
 Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, under the year 1554, 
 in the reign of Queen Mary, gives an account of one 
 William Hunter, nineteen years of age, who was 
 pursued to death for the gospel's sake. It is taken 
 from his brother's narration. ' He suffered with great 
 constancy, and recited the 84th Psalm as he was 
 a-dying. Then there was a gentleman who said, " I 
 pray God have mercy upon his soul." The people said, 
 " Amen, Amen." Immediately fire was made. Then 
 William cast his Psalter right into his brother's hand, 
 who said, " William, think on the holy passion of 
 Christ, and be not afraid of death ! " And William 
 answered, " I am not afraid." Then, lifting up his 
 hands to heaven, he said, " Lord, Lord, Lord, receive 
 my spirit ; " and, casting down his head again into 
 the smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for the 
 truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of God/ 
 
 When Thomas Halyburton was dying, he caused 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. in 
 
 them to read the 84th Psalm, and to sing the latter 
 part of it, 
 
 1 Lord God of hosts, my prayer hear ; 
 
 Jacob's God, give ear. 
 See God our shield, look on the face 
 Of thine anointed dear.' 
 
 He joined in singing, and, after prayer, he said, 
 ' I had always a mistimed voice, a bad ear, but, which 
 is worst of all, a mistimed heart. But, shortly, when 
 I join the temple service above, there shall not be, 
 world without end, one string of the affections out of 
 tune/ And, after that, he caused one of the ministers 
 to read to him what Dr. Owen had said of this temple 
 service above, in his book on the Person of Christ. 
 Thomas Halyburton, born 1674, died 1712, with a 
 brief life, has left in Scotland a well-known name. 
 He was a man of remarkable ability, uniting a fervent 
 nature with a decided power of^ metaphysical thought. 
 His piety had the character of that of Eutherford and 
 M'Cheyne, clinging to the person of Christ with a 
 deep, intimate affection. His death-bed sayings, many 
 of which were preserved by his friends, are like those 
 of Bunyan's pilgrims by the river's brink when they 
 looked across to the King in his beauty. One of them 
 is, ' blessed be God that ever I was born ! I have 
 a father, a mother, and ten brethren and sisters in 
 heaven, and I shall be the eleventh. O blessed be 
 the day that ever I was born ! ' He was Professor 
 
1 1 2 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 of Divinity at St. Andrews, and lies there by Ruther- 
 ford's side. 
 
 Ver. 11. 'No good thing will hfe withhold from 
 them that walk uprightly.' When Thomas Carlyle 
 was leaving, in doubt and despondency, his quiet 
 mountain home at Craigenputtock for the untried 
 tumult of London, he quoted part of this verse for 
 comfort to his brother Alexander and himself, but 
 mingled it with the words of another passage, Rom. 
 viii. 28. It must be confessed that his accuracy in 
 Scripture knowledge is not so remarkable as in some 
 other matters, and he himself would have owned that 
 the exact words of the Psalmist are more suited to 
 his philosophy than those of the apostle. Yet his 
 faith in its core is Christian : ' I turned my thoughts 
 heavenward, for it is in heaven only that I find any 
 basis for our poor pilgrimage on this earth. Surely 
 as the blue dome of heaven encircles us all, so does 
 the providence of the Lord of heaven. "He will 
 withhold no good thing from those that love him ! " 
 This, as it was the ancient Psalmist's faith, let it like- 
 wise be ours. It is the Alpha and the Omega, I 
 reckon, of all possessions that can belong to man/ 
 
 85. 
 
 Ver. 10. 'Mercy and truth are met together; 
 righteousness and peace have kissed each other,' was 
 the text of Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the great Indepen- 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 113 
 
 dent divine, at the opening of Parliament, Jan. 27, 
 1659, when Eiehard Cromwell was installed as 
 Protector. The sermon is a reasonable plea for 
 liberty of conscience, and an exhortation to unity and 
 peace seed cast on stormy waters, not to be found 
 till after many days. 
 
 $salm 86. 
 
 Observe the place of this psalm, an earnest personal 
 appeal, standing between two others which promise great 
 things to the cause of God. It is one of the plaintive 
 songs, edged with hope, 'a cloud turning out its 
 silver lining on the night/ with which the French 
 Huguenots were accustomed to march to death. 
 
 Bishop Hooper, who was burned at the stake in 
 Gloucester, A.D. 1555, during the reign of Queen 
 Mary, commends this song to his wife, when writing 
 to her from prison. ' It contains,' he says, ' the prayer 
 of a man brought into extreme anguish and misery, 
 and who, being vexed with adversaries and persecutions, 
 saw nothing but death and hell. And although he 
 felt in himself that he had not only man but also God 
 angry towards him, yet he by prayer humbly resorted 
 unto God, as the only port of consolation in his 
 desperate state of trouble. These psalms/ he continues, 
 ' be for the purpose of help, when the rnind can have 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y 
 
 no understanding, nor the heart any joy of God's 
 promises; and therefore were the 6th, 22nd, 30th, 
 31st, 38th, and 69th Psalms also made, from 
 the which you shall learn both patience and con- 
 solation.' 
 
 It had a place also in the history of Henry of 
 Navarre. After the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 in 1572, the Eeformed party were without a head. 
 Henry seemed called by his birth to take the position, 
 but he was a prisoner in the hands of Catherine de 
 Medici, who sought to corrupt his spirit through 
 sensual indulgence, as she had done with her own son. 
 Henry, however, had not lost conscience, and one 
 night Agrippa d'Aubigne*, his attendant, heard him 
 sighing and speaking to himself. On listening he 
 heard the words of the 88th Psalm, ' Lord God of 
 my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. 
 Let my prayer come before thee : incline thine ear 
 unto my cry/ D'Aubigne said to him, ' Sire, is it not 
 true that the Spirit of God is still dwelling and 
 working in you ? While your friends are fighting 
 against your enemies, you fail them. Your friends 
 fear only God, and you, a woman, before whom you 
 crouch when they stand erect like men/ The prince 
 made his escape from Paris and joined his friends at 
 Alengon. It was the hour of service, and they were 
 singing the 21st Psalm, the character and blessing 
 of a true king. The king was struck by it, for he 
 had heard it from D'Aubigne* during their flight. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 115 
 
 The history of Henry IV. is well known, his gallant 
 struggle for the crown of Trance, his renunciation of 
 Protestantism to secure it, and his proclamation of 
 the Edict of Nantes, which gave, for a time, a measure 
 of religious liberty. But it may be questioned 
 whether his weak apostasy and loose morality did not 
 ultimately bring as much harm to France as the 
 intolerance of Louis XIV. His conduct shook con- 
 fidence in principle, opened wider the floodgates of 
 corruption in the court and country, and so this act 
 of the first Bourbon prepared the ruin of the family, 
 and sore loss to the nation. His daughter, Maria 
 Henrietta, married to our Charles L, did much to imbue 
 her husband's mind with the love of absolutism ; and the 
 sensual indulgence, from which he was free, reappeared 
 in the later Stuarts, and with their devotion to 
 despotism in Church and State prepared their fall. 
 The old Holyrood of Edinburgh witnessed the visit of 
 our Charles I. in 1633 which commenced his quarrel 
 with his Scottish people, the meteor-like passage of 
 his descendant Charles Edward in 1745, and the 
 sojourn of Charles X. of France in 1831 when expelled 
 from his throne ; and down through the whole history 
 strangely linked together, comes the wail of this psalm, 
 which Henry of Navarre did not lay enough to 
 heart. 
 
 Its beauty and pathos struck Wordsworth as given 
 in the words of the Scottish Version. The passage is 
 in the funeral song in the Solitary, 
 
1 1 6 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 1 A solemn voice, 
 
 Of several voices in one solemn sound, 
 Was heard ascending : mournful, d$ep, and slow, 
 The cadence as of psalms a funeral dirge,! 
 We listened, looking down upon the hut, 
 But seeing no one : meanwhile, from below, 
 The strain continued, spiritual as before ; 
 And now distinctly could I recognise 
 These words : Shall in the grave thy love be known, 
 In death thy faithfulness ? ' 
 
 $salm 89. 
 
 Ver. 6. ' Who in the heaven can be compared unto 
 the Lord ? Who among the sons of the mighty can 
 be likened unto the Lord ? ' The reply of a French 
 Huguenot to a courtier who was urging Henry IV. to 
 choose the strongest side. 
 
 $salm 90. 
 
 A prayer of Moses the man of God. A psalm of 
 deep solemnity and pathos, beginning with a past 
 eternity, and moving on to an eternal future, while it 
 gathers into its bosom men with their sins and brief 
 fading lives, and supplicates for them God's forgiveness 
 and tender mercy. 
 
 Vers. 1-4 is the burial song of the Kussian Church. 
 Ver. 12. 'So teach us to number our days, that we 
 may apply our hearts unto wisdom.' Thomas Fuller 
 tells in his own quaint way, that Bishop Eudd was 
 requested to preach before Queen Elizabeth by the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 117 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, because he was a special 
 favourite with the Queen, and was, indeed, designed as 
 the Archbishop's successor when he died. The Arch- 
 bishop said, at the same time, 'The truth is, the 
 Queen now is grown weary of the vanities of wit and 
 eloquence, wherewith her youth was formerly affected ; 
 and plain sermons which come home to her heart 
 please her best/ Encouraged by this guidance, honest 
 Bishop Eudd chose for his text Ps. xc. ver. 12, 
 and touched on the infirmities of age, with a personal 
 application to the Queen. But Her Majesty, to whom 
 hearing about death was most ungrateful, was highly 
 displeased, and Bishop Eudd lost both the reversion of 
 the archbishopric and Her Majesty's favour. ' But he 
 justly retained/ says Fuller, ' the repute of a reverend 
 and godly prelate, and carried the same to the grave/ 
 
 Dr. Stoughton, describing the funeral of John 
 Hainpden, says : His remains were conveyed to the 
 churchyard of Great Hampden, close beside the old 
 family mansion, where the patriot had spent so much 
 of his life in the studies and sports of a country 
 gentleman. Through lanes under the beech-covered 
 chalk hills of the Chilterns, a detachment of his 
 favourite troops, bareheaded, carried him to his last 
 resting-place, their arms reversed, their drums and 
 ensigns muffled, mournfully chanting as they slowly 
 marched along the dirge from the Book of Psalms : 
 Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all genera- 
 tions. Thou turnest man to destruction. Thou 
 
1 1 8 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 carriest them away as with a flood ; they are as a sleep : 
 in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. 
 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ; in the 
 evening it is cut down, and withereth.' When the 
 funeral was over, the soldiers, retiring from the village 
 church to their quarters, made the green woods and the 
 white hills, that summer day, resound to the beautiful 
 prayer, so appropriate to their circumstances, Ps. xliii. : 
 1 Judge me, God, and plead my cause against an 
 ungodly nation : deliver me from the deceitful and 
 unjust man. For thou art the God of my strength : why 
 dost thou cast me off? Why go I mourning because 
 of the oppression of the enemy ? send out thy 
 light and thy truth ; let them lead me/ John 
 Hampden met his death in June 1643, in the be- 
 ginning of the great civil war. He died in prayer, with 
 the words, ' Lord God of hosts ! great is thy mercy; 
 just and holy are thy dealings unto us sinful men. 
 O Lord, save my bleeding country. Have these 
 realms in thy special keeping. Lord Jesus, receive 
 my soul ! Lord, save my country ; Lord, be 
 merciful to ' His speech failed, and falling back- 
 wards he expired. 
 
 Perhaps this psalm was never read amid circum- 
 stances that brought it nearer to the history where it 
 was indited, in the desert and under the shadow of 
 Sinai, than in one striking instance. In the year 
 1865 a dreadful accident occurred in Switzerland, 
 upon the Matterhorn, a mountain which till then had 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 119 
 
 defied all attempts to ascend it. Its summit was 
 gained, but in coming down, three of the party, Lord 
 E. Douglas, Mr. Hadow, Eev. Charles Hudson, along 
 with Michael Croz, a guide, lost their footing on the 
 ice, and were swept over a tremendous precipice 4000 
 feet high. The body of Lord F. Douglas was never 
 recovered; the other three were found, lifeless and 
 almost formless, on the glacier at the base. The 
 Eev. J. M'Cormick, Mr. Hudson's intimate friend, 
 describes the purity and spirituality of his character, 
 and the feeling of reverence and prayerfulness with 
 which he contemplated the works of God in these awful 
 solitudes. ' Whether/ he says, c the enterprise which 
 ended in his death be looked on as wise or foolish, I 
 am persuaded that his soul was filled with joy and 
 gratitude as he stood where no human being had ever 
 stood before, and gazed from a new point of view on 
 the great Creator's works.' His Prayer-Book was 
 found on his body, and it was suggested that there 
 should be a short funeral service. 'Poor Hudson's 
 Prayer-Book was produced for this purpose. I read 
 out of it Ps. xc., so singularly appropriate to time 
 and place, and repeated some prayers and a portion 
 of the Burial Service. Imagine us standing with our 
 bronze-faced guides, leaning on their axes or alpen- 
 stocks, around that singular grave, in the centre of a 
 snow-field, perhaps never before trodden by man, with 
 that awful mountain frowning above us, under a 
 cloudless sky, in the very sight, as it were, of the 
 
120 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 Almighty, and try and catch the sound of the words : 
 " Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one genera- 
 tion to another. Before the mountain^ were brought 
 forth, or ever the earth and world were made, thou 
 art God from everlasting, and world without end. 
 Thou turnest man to destruction ; again thou sayest, 
 Come again, ye children of men." ' 
 
 Theodore Beza relates that, in his younger years, 
 he was one day in the church of Charenton, and 
 heard the 91st Psalm expounded. It came home to 
 him with power, and he was enabled to close with the 
 2nd verse : ' I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge 
 and my fortress : my God ; in him will I trust/ At his 
 death he declared to his Christian friends that, in the 
 after changes of his life, he found the promises one by 
 one fulfilled. In the civil wars, then so fierce in 
 France, he was kept in a composed spirit, and had 
 most convincing deliverances from most imminent 
 hazards. 'And now/ he said, 'I have no more to 
 wait for but the fulfilling of these last words of the 
 psalm, " I will show him my salvation," which with 
 confidence I look for.' Beza was born 1519, and 
 died 1605. In early life he was light-minded and 
 devoted to worldly pleasure, but, after the change he 
 records, he became, next to Calvin, the most influential 
 leader in the Eeformed Church. His long life was 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 121 
 
 spent in preaching, writing and administration, with 
 a diligence peculiar to that age. His translation of 
 the New Testament into Latin came into universal 
 use among Protestants ; and the French Psalter, which 
 had such an effect on the spirit of the Huguenots, 
 owes more than a half of its version to his poetic 
 genius, the rest being the work of Clement Marot. 
 The church of Charenton, associated with the memory 
 of Beza, and many of the most eminent ministers of 
 the French Eeformation, was an immense structure in 
 the suburbs of Paris, near the junction of the Seine 
 and Marne, where liberty for Protestant worship was 
 enjoyed. Few edifices ever gathered round them 
 memories of so many eloquent and devoted preachers 
 and pious worshippers. At last, when the Edict of 
 Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV., it was razed to 
 the ground amid the tears and groans of the despairing 
 Huguenots. A picture of the scene, struck off and 
 circulated in numberless prints, with reference to 
 Ps. Ixxiv. ver. 7, served to keep alive their grief and 
 love : ' They have cast fire into thy sanctuary ; they 
 have defiled by casting down the dwelling-place of 
 thy name to the ground/ A century afterwards the 
 rebound of the blow shattered the French monarch's 
 throne. 
 
 $saltn 92 
 
 Is called by Dante (Purg. xxviii. 80), E Salmo 
 Delect a sti, because, in the Vulgate, the 4th verse 
 
122 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 begins with the word, ' Thou hast made me glad.' 
 A beautiful female form, representing the higher life, 
 is introduced as saying, ' She is so happy because she 
 can sing like the psalm Delectasti, " Thou, Lord, hast 
 made me glad through thy work." ' 
 
 Ver. 12. Casaubon was one of the most learned 
 men of his age, and truly devout. He was so humble 
 and reticent, that some doubted his religious spirit ; 
 but there is an incident he records in his diary which 
 reveals it, and which shows the hold the book of 
 Psalms had on the hearts of Christians of that time. 
 He and his wife, residing in Paris, wished to go to 
 the Protestant Church of Charenton. There was only 
 a frail old boat to take them up the Seine, but they 
 ventured it rather than lose the service. ' On em- 
 barking/ he says, ' my wife, as her custom was, began 
 to sing the Psalms. We had finished Ps. xci. and 
 had reached Ps. xcii. ver. 12, when the boat sank. 
 With difficulty we saved our lives, but the psalm- 
 book, which had been a wedding gift to my wife 
 twenty-two years before, was lost. We reached in 
 time for the second service ; and on looking into the 
 book of a young man near me to see what was being 
 sung, I found it was Ps. Ixxxvi. 13, "for great is 
 thy mercy towards me : and thou hast delivered my 
 soul from the lowest grave." I thought immediately 
 of the word of St. Ambrose, that " those who listen 
 to, or read, the Psalms aright may find as if they 
 had been indited expressly for themselves." 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 123 
 
 Psalm 94+ 
 
 Vers. 9, 10. 'He that planted the ear, shall he 
 not hear ? he that formed the eye, shall he not 
 see ? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he 
 know ? ' These verses made a strong impression on 
 the mind of Sophia the Electress of Hanover, a 
 woman of decided mental power, and were adopted 
 with approbation by her friend the philosopher 
 Leibnitz in his opposition to Atheism. The principle 
 on which he reasoned was, that as the stream cannot 
 rise above its fountain, intelligence in man implies 
 an intelligent source. Thought must come from 
 thought. Descartes had already given expression 
 to the same idea in his Meditations, III., ' Now it 
 is manifest by the light of nature that there must 
 be as much reality in the efficient cause as in the 
 effect; for whence could the effect draw its reality 
 but from the cause ? And how could the cause 
 communicate the power to it, if it had it not in itself ? 
 And from this it follows, not only that nothing can 
 be produced from nothing, but also that what is more 
 perfect cannot be a result of, and dependent on, what 
 is less perfect/ 
 
 Psalm 95. 
 
 This psalm, the Venite exultemus Domino, ' come, 
 let us sing unto the Lord/ was the chant of the 
 Templars, the Knights of the Red Cross, when during 
 
i2 4 THR PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 the Crusades (hey entered into battle with the 
 Saracens for the conquest of Jerusalem. 
 
 In a different .".pint, the great missionary, Christian 
 Schwartz, took the 6th verse, and put it over the 
 entrance of his new church in Tranquebar : ' come, 
 let us worship and bow down : let us kneel before the 
 Lord our Maker/ He called the church Bethlehem, 
 as his predecessor, Ziegenbalg, had built one with the 
 name Jerusalem, which was filled with native converts. 
 More devoted labourers never entered the mission 
 field. The death of Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant 
 missionary to India, was one of rapture, departing 
 at the age of thirty-six. His closing words were : 
 ' Christ says, " Father, I will that where I am, there 
 shall also my servant be." ' He then put his hand to 
 his eyes, and exclaimed, ' How is it all so clear ? 
 It seems as if the sun were shining in my eyes/ He 
 then asked that the hymn Jesus meine Zuversicht, 
 'Jesus my trust/ should be sung, and died while 
 they sang it. 
 
 96. 
 
 Julian, the nephew of Constantino, succeeded to the 
 Empire A.D. 361, renounced Christianity, which had 
 been established by his uncle, and devoted a brief but 
 energetic reign of two years to the attempted restora- 
 tion of paganism. He sought to put a new spirit 
 of philosophy into the old forms, and, without return- 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 125 
 
 ing to sanguinary persecution he used measures of 
 restriction which were more dangerous. The Church 
 historians of that period tell us that the psalm 
 commonly sung by the Christians during the reign 
 of Julian was the 96th. Eead in this light, it 
 becomes singularly appropriate. 
 
 97* 
 
 This psalm has also an association with Julian 
 and the Christians of the East. The gospel gained 
 an early hold of the important city of Antioch (Acts 
 xi. 26), and, in the time of Julian, though weakened 
 by impurity, it had great influence among the masses 
 of the people. One of the bishops, named Babylas, 
 had suffered martyrdom a century before, and he had 
 been buried in the grove of Daphne, sacred to Apollo, 
 on the banks of the famed Orontes. Julian wished 
 the place to be restored to the w r orship of ike god of 
 day, and ordered the body of Babylas to be removed. 
 The Christians of the city carried it in solemn proces- 
 sion to another resting-place, chanting the 97th Psalm. 
 There is a tone of lofty confidence running through it, 
 and the Church historian refers particularly to the 
 7th verse, ' Confounded be all they that serve graven 
 images, that boast themselves of idols : worship him, 
 all ye gods.' The spot was visited during the late 
 survey of Palestine, and Captain Conder speaks of it 
 as bright with the red blossoms of the oleanders, 
 
126 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 which here rise to the dignity of trees. This plant, 
 he thinks, must have been the true Daphne the 
 Dakana or dawn sacred to Apollo, J as there is no 
 flower in the East whose delicate rosy flush could be 
 so well used as the emblem of the opening morning. 
 If so, there are words in the psalm which might have 
 a fitting reference to the occasion, whether the singers 
 of Antioch meant it or not; ver. 11, 'Light is sown 
 for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in 
 heart.' ' 
 
 $salm 100, 
 
 The great psalm of praise sung in all lands for 
 many centuries and in countless gatherings. In the 
 Scottish Version, and with the accompaniment of 
 Luther's melody, it has already girdled the earth. 
 But it could not have spoken to so many, or raised 
 thanksgivings so joyful, unless there had been tender 
 human feeling in its heart. When Melancthon was 
 mourning the death of his son in Dresden, July 12, 
 1559, not long before his own, he drew comfort from 
 the 3rd verse, ' It is he that hath made us, and not 
 we ourselves : we are his people, and the sheep of his 
 pasture/ 
 
 $ salm 101. 
 
 It is related of Ernest the Pious, Duke of Saxe- 
 Gotha, that he sent an unfaithful official a copy of the 
 101st Psalm, and that it became a proverb in the land 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 127 
 
 when any magistrate had done wrong, 'He will 
 certainly receive the Prince's psalm to read/ ' Mine 
 eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they 
 may dwell with me : he that walketh in a perfect way, 
 he shall serve me. He that worketh deceit shall not 
 dwell within my house : he that telleth lies shall not 
 tarry in my sight/ The Ernest who set such value 
 on this psalm was one of the best men of his time, the 
 founder of the Saxe-Gotha family, born 1601, died 
 1675. He was the bosom friend of Gustavus 
 Adolphus, and after his fall on the field of Lutzen 
 brought up the reserve which turned the tide and 
 secured victory. When peace returned to Germany, 
 after the terrible Thirty Years' War, he set himself to 
 repair its ravages, and many of the institutions remain 
 which were founded by him. He was one of the first 
 since the Eeformation to interest himself in foreign 
 mission work, and sent embassies to Egypt and 
 Abyssinia for that end. He took for his own guide 
 the 2nd verse of this psalm, ' I will behave myself in 
 a perfect way. when wilt thou come unto me ? 
 I will walk within my house with a perfect heart/ 
 Himself the son of a pious mother, he superintended 
 the religious instruction of his own children, in the 
 midst of his public duties, so thoroughly, that they 
 could repeat by heart the greater part of the Bible. 
 
128 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 102. j 
 
 One of the seven penitential psalms, giving the 
 picture of a man who has sunk to the deepest abyss 
 of trial, crushed in body, broken in spirit, surrounded 
 by what seems the utter wreck of the cause of God ; 
 and then rising to confidence and gladness when he 
 remembers the power and faithfulness of him who is 
 everlasting. In this the psalm is a forecast shadow 
 of the history of Christ Himself, to whom it is applied, 
 (Heb. i. 10), and who, after passing through its depths, 
 rises to his throne, and says to his brethren, ' Because 
 I live, ye shall live also/ 
 
 The second version of it in the oldest Scottish 
 Psalter, a remarkably fine one, is by John Craig, who 
 was Knox's colleague in St. Giles', and whose own 
 experience may be said to be given in the psalm. 
 When a Dominican monk at Eome, he embraced the 
 principles of the Reformation, was cast into the prison 
 of the Inquisition, and about to be led to the stake. 
 The very night before he was to suffer the Pope died, 
 an insurrection broke out, the prisons were thrown open, 
 and he escaped through a series of remarkable deliver- 
 ances to take an important part in the work of reform 
 in his native Scotland. 
 
 There is no grander missionary hymn than vers. 
 13-22, a fitting companion to the 60th chapter of 
 Isaiah, taking up, to use the words of Milton, ' the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 129 
 
 whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on the 
 other . . . like that of our Saviour Christ, suffering to 
 the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh, and presently 
 triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit, 
 which drew up his body also ; till we in both be 
 united to him in the revelation of his kingdom/ 
 
 1 Thou shalt arise, and mercy yet 
 Thou to Mount Zion shalt extend : 
 Her time for favour which was set, 
 Behold, is now come to an end. 
 Thy saints take pleasure in her stones, 
 Her very dust to them is dear. 
 All heathen lands and kingly thrones 
 On earth thy glorious name shall fear/ 
 
 The psalm is the keynote to Mrs. Browning's De 
 Profundis, written in the anguish of bereavement, and 
 drawing hope from the thought of an unchanging 
 God: 
 
 * By anguish which made pale the sun, 
 I hear him charge his saints that none 
 Among the creatures anywhere 
 Blaspheme against him with despair, 
 However darkly days go on. 
 And having in thy life-depth thrown 
 Being and suffering (which are one) 
 As a child drops some pebble small 
 Down some deep well, and hears it fall, 
 Smiling ... So I ! THY DAYS GO ON ! ' 
 
1 3 o THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 103. 
 
 There is a well - known German version of this 
 psalm, Nun lob, mein* Seel' den Herrn. It was made 
 by John Graumann at the request of Albert I., Duke 
 of Prussia, that he might be able to sing in verse 
 words which he highly prized. He had it frequently 
 sung to him on his last sick-bed, joining in it and 
 adding his own thoughts. It was also the death-song 
 of Christian III. of Denmark, A.D. 1559, and he 
 expired when they had reached the verse, ' Like as a 
 father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
 that fear him ! ' 
 
 When Gustavus Adolphus entered Augsburg, the 
 city of the Protestant Confession, after his great 
 victory at Leipsic which struck the decisive blow for 
 religious freedom in Germany, he went straight to the 
 Church of St. Ann, and caused this psalm to be sung 
 in the German version. 
 
 Part of the psalm was sung, Feb. 17, 1688, in the 
 Grassrnarket of Edinburgh by James Ken wick, the last 
 sufferer in the long twenty-eight years of persecution. 
 Young in years, there is a plaintive tone in the 
 
 words, 
 
 6 Such pity as a father hath 
 Unto his children dear ; 
 Like pity shows the Lord to such 
 As worship him in fear.' 
 
 And then, as if he felt the breath of the coming 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 131 
 
 deliverance to himself and his country already blowing 
 on his dying cheek, come the words of joyful trust, 
 
 * But unto them that do him fear 
 
 God's mercy never ends ; 
 And to their children's children still 
 His righteousness extends.' 
 
 He died, not with resignation, but in transport, like 
 some of the early Christian martyrs. He was much 
 interrupted by the beating of drums, but the people 
 about him caught up and preserved many of his 
 words. He appealed to the Lord if this was not the 
 most joyful day he had ever seen. He blessed the 
 Lord for honouring him with the crown of martyrdom, 
 an honour which the angels could not have, being 
 incapable of laying down their lives for their princely 
 Master. Speaking of the disturbance he suffered, he 
 said, ' I shall soon be above these clouds ; then I shall 
 enjoy thee and glorify thee without interruption or 
 intermission for ever.' When they would let him 
 speak no longer, he ascended the ladder, and said, 
 ' Lord, I die in the faith that thou wilt not leave 
 Scotland, but that thou wilt make the blood of thy 
 witnesses the seed of thy Church, and return again to 
 be glorious in our land. And now, Lord, I am ready. 
 The bride, the Lamb's wife, hath made herself ready. 
 Lord, into Thy hand I commit my spirit : thou hast 
 redeemed me, Lord God of truth/ 
 
 The 103rd Psalm w r as read over, once every day, 
 
132 THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y 
 
 in the family of John Angell James, of Birmingham. 
 When his wife died he was asked if it should be read. 
 ' Yes/ he said, ' it is as full of * comfort as of 
 thanksgiving.' 
 
 $salm 104. 
 
 Henry Stephanus, the celebrated classical scholar, 
 has a Commentary on the Psalms, Liber Psalmorum 
 Davidis, Paris 1562, and in the preface he tells 
 that, when he was in Kome, he met with some who in 
 their one-sided love of classic literature, denied the 
 Psalms all poetic merit, and laughed at the poet 
 Antonius Flaminius because he attempted to reproduce 
 them in Latin verse, which they said was trying ' to 
 put seeds in dry sand/ Stephanus says he convinced 
 them of the opposite by quoting a number of the 
 psalms, and especially the 104th, and he showed them 
 that nothing can be found more poetic and inspiring 
 than these old lyrics, and that, if Flaminius did not 
 succeed, it was not the soil, but the sower, who was 
 to blame. 
 
 The 104th Psalm was a favourite with Alexander 
 von Humboldt. After speaking in his Cosmos of the 
 exalted views of nature given in the Old Testament, 
 as the living expression of the omnipresence of God in 
 the visible world, he refers specially to this psalm: 
 'We are astonished to find, in a lyrical form of such 
 limited compass, the whole universe, the heavens and 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 133 
 
 the earth, sketched with a few bold touches. The 
 toilsome labour of rnan, from the rising of the sun to 
 his setting, when his daily work is done, is contrasted 
 with the moving life of the elements of nature. This 
 contrast and generalization of the action of the natural 
 world, and this vision of an omnipresent invisible 
 power which can renew the earth or crumble it to 
 dust, are not so much a glowing and gentle, as a 
 solemn and exalted conception of creation ! ' Humboldt 
 names Ps. Ixv. 618, Ixxiv. 15-17, as having 
 similar features in softer form. 
 
 Vers. 19-24 is the Evensong of the Eussian Church. 
 
 107. 
 
 Ver. 20. 'He sent his word and healed them/ was 
 the text of the Eeformer, George Wishart, in Dundee, 
 A.D. 1544. The town had been visited with the 
 plague in a very deadly form, and there was great 
 consternation among the people. Wishart no sooner 
 heard of it than he hastened to the place. ' They are 
 in trouble/ he said, ' and need comfort ; perchance the 
 hand of God will make them now to magnify and 
 reverence that word which before, for fear of men, 
 they set at light part/ He was received with great 
 joy, and preached standing on the east gate, which 
 still remains, the infected being without and the whole 
 within. Knox says, ' By this sermon he roused up the 
 hearts of all that heard him, so that they regarded not 
 
1 34 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 death/ He visited the sick, relieved the wants of the 
 poor, and exposed himself fearlesslyjto the risk of 
 infection. Dundee became one of the foremost towns 
 in the cause of the Eeformation. Wishart himself, 
 not long after, suffered at the stake in St. Andrews, 
 and was the forerunner of Knox, as, at a longer 
 interval, Huss was of Luther. 
 
 Dr. George Smith, in his life of the distinguished 
 Indian missionary Dr. Duff, tells that when he was 
 on his first voyage to India, in 1830, the vessel was 
 wrecked amid breakers off the coast of South Africa. 
 By a wonderful escape, they reached in boats a small 
 island, with nothing left to them but life. A sailor 
 walking along the beach noticed an object cast ashore. 
 Going up to it, he found it was a quarto copy of 
 Bagster's Bible, and a Scottish psalm-book, somewhat 
 shattered, but with Dr. Duff's name on both. Taking 
 them to the hovel where the passengers had sought 
 shelter, he presented them to the owner. They 
 knelt down, while Dr. Duff spread the books on the 
 white bleached sand, and read the 107th Psalm. We 
 can conceive with what deep meaning the words came 
 home, as he read with thanksgiving and prayer the 
 four deliverances recorded there, among them that of 
 the sailors in the storm, and closed with ' Whoso is 
 wise, and will observe these things, even they shall 
 understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.' He had 
 been taking 800 volumes to found a library, and of 
 all his store the Word of God alone remained. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 135 
 
 Ver. 4. ' Unto the upright there ariseth light in 
 the darkness/ was the text of the Convocation Sermon 
 preached by Dr. Chalmers in St. George's, Edinburgh, 
 Nov. 17, 1842. It was on the eve of the Disruption, 
 and perplexity as to the future was in every heart. 
 ' Never/ says Dr. Buchanan, ' was the truth, " A 
 word spoken in season, how good is it," more vividly 
 realized when the preacher gave out his text. Every 
 man looked at his neighbour, and exchanged the 
 silent but strong expression of conscious comfort and 
 encouragement which the very utterance of these 
 words at such a moment called forth.' 
 
 $saim 113. 
 
 With the opening verses of this psalm began the 
 Evening hymn of the Apostolic Constitutions : c From 
 the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, 
 the Lord's name is to be praised.' 
 
 Psalm 114. 
 
 'When Israel went out of Egypt/ the psalm of 
 deliverance from bondage, was that with which one 
 of the Huguenot martyrs, Aymon de la Voye, marched 
 to the death by fire, as Beza says, with noble 
 constancy, in 1552; and in 1762, more than two 
 
136 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 hundred years afterwards, Francis Eochette, the last 
 martyred minister in France, ascended the scaffold, 
 also singing one of Marot's psalms. 
 
 Non Ndbis Domine was the battle-song of the 
 heroic John Sobieski, king of Poland, Sept. 12, 
 1683, when he marched down from the heights of 
 Kalenberg, and defeated the immense army of the Turks 
 which was besieging Vienna, and had reduced it to 
 the last extremity. It was a turning-point in history, 
 the final great Eastern invasion which has thundered 
 at that gate of Europe ; and ever since, the Turkish 
 power and Mahommedan faith have been on the wane. 
 There was indescribable enthusiasm as the psalm was 
 sung, 'Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is 
 now their God ? But our God is in the heavens : 
 he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased/ 
 
 Ver. 4. Many ages before, Publia, a noble Koman 
 lady, was cruelly beaten for singing in the time of 
 Julian, ' Their idols are silver and gold, the work of 
 men's hands/ 
 
 This was a burial song of the early Church, looking 
 through death to life, and in this way a companion 
 to Psalm xvi. 
 
 Ver. 7 is given as the verse with which Babylas 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 137 
 
 of Antioch comforted himself in the prospect of his 
 martyrdom under the Emperor Decius. 'From this 
 we learn/ the historian says, ' that our soul comes to 
 rest when it is removed by death from this restless 
 world/ 
 
 Vers. 13-19 has been the communion song of 
 many a company of Presbyterian worshippers through 
 centuries : 
 
 ' I'll of salvation take the cup, 
 On God's name will I call ; 
 I'll pay my vows now to the Lord, 
 Before his people all.' 
 
 The whole psalm is the foundation of a remarkable 
 hymn of thanksgiving by one Burkard Waldis. He 
 was a monk who became a noted evangelist in 
 Germany. After embracing the doctrines of the 
 Reformation, he was seized by night, carried hundreds 
 of miles from his home, and kept in severe imprison- 
 ment till rescued by his brothers, John and Bernhard, 
 at cost of great danger and travail ; and to them he 
 dedicates this song, with others which he made in 
 his captivity, as he says, ' To drive away the sad and 
 weary thoughts and Satanic temptations with which 
 he was assailed.' 
 
 The psalm sung by Cromwell and his army after 
 the victory of Dunbar, Sept. 3, 1650, and known 
 
138 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 afterwards by the Puritans as the Dunbar Psalm. 
 As the Scottish army left their strong position on 
 the heights to offer their raw soldiers to Cromwell's 
 veterans, he pointed to the sun, whose disc was rising 
 over the German Ocean, with the words, 'Let God 
 arise, let his enemies be scattered/ 
 
 It was the custom of Philip Henry to sing the 
 117th Psalm every Sabbath after the first sermon, 
 as the fullest expression of thanksgiving. He used 
 to say that the more singing of psalms there is in 
 our families and congregations on Sabbath, the more 
 like they are to heaven ; and that he preferred singing 
 whole psalms to pieces of them. 
 
 IIS. 
 
 A psalm which might have a history to itself, 
 sounding the depths of trial, rising to the loftiest 
 heights of triumph, and looking far forward to him 
 who measured them both in his rejection and his 
 final victory beginning and closing with thanksgiving 
 for everlasting mercy 
 
 In those days when it was the custom for kings 
 and courtiers to choose for themselves special psalms, 
 this was the selected of Charles V. The biographer 
 of Clement Marot tells that, in 1540, he presented 
 to that emperor, as he was passing through France, a 
 copy of his Psalter as far as it had been carried. 
 The emperor accepted it benignly, gave the poet 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 139 
 
 200 doubloons, and asked him to complete his 
 translation, praying him especially to send him, as soon 
 as he could, the translation of the 118th, Confitemini 
 Domino quoniam 'bonus, as he loved it much. It took 
 rank along with the 68th Psalm as the battle-song 
 of the Huguenots, and in the fields and woods the 
 24th verse was the frequent opening of their 
 worship : 
 
 ' La voici 1'lieureuse journee 
 
 Que Dieu a faite a plein d6sir ; 
 
 Par nous soit joie d6menc6, 
 
 Et prenoiis en elle plaisir.' 
 
 It was sung by them on bended knee at Coutras, 
 when some courtiers in gay dress cried, 'See, the 
 cowards are already begging mercy ! ' ' No/ said an 
 officer, who knew their way, ' you may expect a stern 
 fight from the men who sing psalms and pray.' 
 After the victory the Huguenots sang the 124th 
 Psalm. So dear were the psalms to them, that, 
 when persecution had done its worst, when their 
 churches were demolished and their worship forbidden, 
 they sometimes gathered at night round the ruins, 
 and imagined they heard the sound of psalms in the 
 air ' A song in the night, as of a holy solemnity.' 
 Most frequently the words which seemed to reach 
 them were the 27th verse of the 118th Psalm; and 
 a deed of the Parliament of Pau remains, prohibiting 
 the meeting of the Huguenots by night at their 
 ruined church of Orthez to listen for the echo of the 
 
140 THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y 
 
 psalms. In similar circumstances, the same feeling 
 sprang up among the hunted Covenanters of Scotland. 
 Where the grand defile of the Enterkin breaks down 
 on the Nith, there is a little side valley with the 
 ruined church of Kirkbride, the burial-ground of 
 some who suffered there ; and when the wind was 
 playing round it, especially on a summer Sabbath 
 evening, the people fancied they could hear the 
 accents of the psalms from the spot. A poet of the 
 district has given expression to the feeling : 
 
 * Hark, from the far hill-taps, 
 
 And low from the lanesome glen, 
 A sweet psalm-tune like a late dew draps 
 
 Its accents doon the win* ; 
 But naething on earth can disturb that sang, 
 
 Not Clavers in a' his pride, 
 For it's raised by the Lord's am ransomed thrang, 
 
 Forgathered aboon Kirkbride.' 
 
 These sounds from the sky were the echoes in the 
 hearts of the people of many psalms that had risen 
 from scattered groups on the moorlands, and from 
 dying men on the scaffold. 
 
 Donald Cargill became the leader of the Covenanters 
 after the death of Eichard Cameron, and when he 
 suffered in the Grassrnarket, he sang part of the 
 118th Psalm. When going up the ladder, he said, 
 ' The Lord knows I go on this ladder with less fear 
 and perturbation of mind than I have sometimes entered 
 the pulpit to preach/ He was interrupted with the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 141 
 
 beating of drums, and could finish only three verses, 
 16-18, which he used often to quote during life: 
 
 * The right hand of the mighty Lord 
 
 Exalted is on high ; 
 The right hand of the mighty Lord 
 
 Doth ever valiantly. 
 I shall not die, but live, and shaU 
 
 The works of God discover ; 
 The Lord hath me chastised sore, 
 
 But not to death given over.' 
 
 With an immovable fidelity to conscience, Donald 
 Cargill had a tender, sensitive nature, and, with his 
 own death full in view, gave himself to comfort 
 his fellow-sufferers. In a letter to one of them before 
 execution, he says, ' Farewell, dearest friend, never to 
 see one another any more till at the right hand of 
 Christ. Tear not, and the God of mercies grant a 
 full gale, and a fair entry into his kingdom, which 
 may carry sweetly and swiftly over the bar, that you 
 find not the rub of death.' 
 
 Some of these verses from this psalm were sung 
 by the army of William of Orange, when he landed 
 at Torbay in 1688. William asked Carstares to 
 conduct service; and he prayed and gave part of 
 the 118th Psalm to be sung, 'in which the troops all 
 along the beach joined; and this act of devotion 
 produced a sensible effect/ It is not likely that 
 William knew the minute incidents of Donald Cargill's 
 death, but he must have heard of him. Carstares no 
 
H2 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 doubt was fully acquainted with the circumstances, 
 and may have been led thereby to the choice of the 
 psalm. In any case it is fitted to stir, thought, 
 that the words drowned on the lips of the dying 
 Covenanter were not long after taken up triumphantly 
 by the army of deliverance under William. Another 
 striking coincidence referred to by the Prince of 
 Orange as a propitious token was, that exactly a 
 hundred years had passed since the Spanish Armada 
 had been scattered on these same coasts. 
 
 The Carstares here spoken of was one of the most 
 remarkable men of his time, driven to Holland as a 
 refugee, the trusted friend and counsellor of William 
 of Orange, and the chief instrument in bringing about 
 the settlement of the Church of Scotland in 1688, a 
 learned, good, and most sagacious man, who died in 
 1715, while he was Moderator of the General 
 Assembly for the fourth time, and who lies buried in 
 the historic churchyard of Greyfriars, beside many of 
 the leaders of that period. 
 
 Ver. 15. 'The voice of rejoicing and of salvation is 
 in the tabernacles of the righteous/ used to be quoted 
 by Philip Henry in commendation of family worship, 
 with the remark that ' it is a way to hold forth godli- 
 ness, like Kahab's scarlet thread, to such as pass by 
 our windows/ 
 
 The 17th verse, 'I shall not die, but live, and 
 declare the works of the Lord/ was the last utterance 
 of Philibert Berthelier, a noble Genevese. At the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 143 
 
 time Bonivard was committed to the dungeon of 
 Chillon, A.D. 1519, for defending the liberty of his 
 native city, Berthelier was beheaded on the island 
 where the blue waters of the Ehone make their first 
 swift rush for freedom from the lake. A tablet marks 
 the spot. This confidence in a life beyond death was 
 the frequent testimony of these witnesses for truth 
 and righteousness. James Guthrie, one of the earliest 
 martyrs for the Covenant, expressed it in the words 
 of the prophet when, as he ascended the scaffold, he 
 looked up to the sky and said, ' Art thou not from 
 everlasting, Lord my God, mine Holy One ? We 
 shall not die ! ' 
 
 Ver. 22. 'The stone which the builders refused is 
 become the head stone of the corner/ is the text from 
 which Ebenezer Erskine, Oct. 10, 1732, preached 
 the sermon, before the Synod of Perth and Stirling, 
 which led to the formation of the Secession Church 
 and began a new movement in the religious history 
 of Scotland. 
 
 U9, 
 
 A psalm embracing the length and breadth of 
 human life in its wonderful variety, and revolving 
 round one centre, the word of God, resembling in 
 this the living Word, who is God's manifold Wisdom, 
 and the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is 
 called by an old commentator, a holy alphabet for 
 Zion's scholars, and was evidently constructed to help 
 
144 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 the ancient believers to carry out the principle of 
 ver. 11, 'Thy word have I hid in my heart, that 
 I might not sin against thee.' It might supply, of 
 itself, endless incidents, from which only some can be 
 given. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon quotes two from men of different 
 temperament. In the midst of a London season, 
 and in the stir and turmoil of a political crisis, 1819, 
 William Wilberforce writes in his diary, 'Walked 
 from Hyde Park Corner repeating the 119th Psalm 
 in great comfort.' And again, John Kuskin in 
 Fors Clavigera, 'It is strange that of all the pieces 
 of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which 
 cost me most to learn, and which was to my child's 
 mind most repulsive, the 119th Psalm, has now 
 become, of all, the most precious to me in its over- 
 flowing and glorious passion of . love for the law 
 of God.' 
 
 One of our most popular hymns, We speak of the 
 realms of the Uest, had its origin in this psalm, not 
 from any direct reference to the heavenly world, but 
 from the spirit which it breathes, and the longing it 
 excites for all that is pure and perfect. The hymn 
 was written, after reading Bridges on the 119th Psalm, 
 a few weeks before her death, by Mrs. Elizabeth Mills, 
 who died in 1839 at the age of twenty- four. 
 
 There is frequent reference to the psalm in the 
 diary of Henry Martyn : ' Found some devotion in 
 learning a part of the 119th Psalm.' 'In the evening 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 145 
 
 grew better by reading the 119th Psalm, which 
 generally brings me into a spiritual frame of mind.' 
 ' Again in a fretful frame ; it was not till I learned 
 some of Psalm cxix. that I could return to a proper 
 spirit/ 
 
 It drew to it the special admiration of Pascal, who, 
 as his sister Madame Perier says, often spoke with 
 such feeling about it, ' that he seemed transported,' 
 ' gvtil paraissait hors de lui m&me.' He used to say 
 that, 'with the deep study of life, it contained the 
 sum of all the Christian virtues/ He singled out 
 ver. 59, as giving the turning-point of man's 
 character and destiny : ' I thought on my ways, and 
 turned my feet unto thy testimonies/ 
 
 Ver. 9. ' Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse 
 his way ? By taking heed thereto according to thy 
 word/ Henry Scougal, author of The Life of God in 
 the Soid of Man, when a youth, opened his Bible and 
 lighted by peradventure on this passage. It went to 
 his heart, and he gave himself to God, and to the 
 Christian ministry. He became Professor of Theology, 
 King's College, Aberdeen, and dying in 1678 at the 
 early age of twenty-eight, has left a fragrance in his 
 name which associates it with that of Leighton. 
 
 Ver. 20. Chalmers says that though 'he could not 
 speak of the raptures of Christian enjoyment, he 
 thought he could enter into the feeling of the Psalmist, 
 " My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto 
 thy judgments at all times/' ' 
 
 K 
 
146 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Ver. 25. 'My soul cleave th unto the dust: quicken 
 thou me according to thy word,' was the expression 
 of the Emperor Theodosius, when he was received into 
 the Church again by Ambrose at Milan, after acknow- 
 ledging his sin in the massacre at Thessalonica. 
 
 Ver. 28. 'My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen 
 thou me according unto thy word/ is referred to with 
 strong emphasis by Maine de Biran, who may be 
 looked on as the founder of the spiritual school of 
 philosophy in France, a school which after many 
 struggles seems to be reviving, and gives hope of a 
 return to Christian truth among the best thinkers. 
 He was at first a firm adherent of the school of 
 Condillac and sensationalism, but through a course of 
 solitary reflection reached a deeper basis, and came to 
 delight in God's word. He says of this verse : ' The 
 word which can give me life will not come from 
 myself, nor my own will, nor from anything I can see 
 or hear around me. In religion there are two things, 
 feeling and faith. Feeling no doubt inclines to faith, 
 and then faith in its turn is the spring of new feel- 
 ings. But feeling without faith can be only a vague 
 mysticism, without a fixed foundation or a' firm con- 
 viction. Christian truth acts on me with a varying 
 degree of intensity ; but in the midst of its variations 
 I still know that it is truth, and I cannot cease to 
 yield to its authority/ 
 
 It is interesting to compare this self -analysis of the 
 philosopher with the experience of one who had 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 147 
 
 advanced deep into the divine life. Jonathan 
 Edwards, speaking of this verse, says, 'I had 
 vehement longings of soul after God and Christ, and 
 after more holiness ; wherewith my heart seemed to 
 be full, ready to break ; which often brought to my 
 mind the words of the Psalmist, Ps. cxix. 28.' 
 
 Ver. 46. 'I will speak of thy testimonies also 
 before kings, and will not be ashamed/ is the motto 
 prefixed to the Augsburg Confession the charter of 
 the German Lutheran Church. 
 
 Ver. 71. When Francis I. of France was defeated 
 and taken prisoner at the disastrous battle of Pavia, 
 A.D. 1525, where 'all was lost save honour/ he was 
 carried off the field to the Church of the Certosa. The 
 choir at the time was chanting part of this psalm, 
 and, when they came to the 7 1st verse, the captive 
 monarch preceded them in a loud voice, 'It is good for 
 me that I have been afflicted : that I might learn thy 
 statutes.' 
 
 Ver. 84. Like a cry from beneath the altar of 
 testimony comes the voice of two men whose story is 
 given in the Cloud of Witnesses, and who at ' twilight 
 of the evening were put to death at the Gallow-lee 
 between Edinburgh and Leith, for their adherence to 
 the Covenant/ 
 
 ' How many are thy servant's days ? 
 
 When wilt thou execute 
 Just judgment on these wicked men 
 That do me persecute ? ' 
 
148 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Ver. 92. 'Unless thy law had been my delight, 
 I should have perished in mine affliction/ is written 
 on Martin Luther's Bible by his own hand. The 
 date is 1542, and the Bible is preserved at the 
 Brandenburg Mark Museum, Berlin. 
 
 Ver. 97. Henry Martyn says, 'I experienced a 
 solemn gladness in learning this part, " MEM," of the 
 119th Psalm/ 
 
 Ver. 105. 'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet/ 
 This is the text prefixed to a little book called The 
 Lantern of Light, which was the favourite reading of 
 the Lollards before the Eeformation. The close of a 
 prayer in the preface shows the principles of these 
 children of the dawn : ' When thou, Lord, didst 
 die upon the cross, thou didst breathe into Thy 
 word the spirit of life, and didst give it power to 
 quicken us through thine own precious blood, as thou 
 thyself hast said : " The words that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit and they are life." ' The Lollards of 
 England and Scotland were charged with reading the 
 Bible in their mother tongue, Wickliffe's translation, 
 and with esteeming it above any instruction they 
 received from the priests. On this account they were 
 called BMemen. A considerable number of them were 
 taken up for trial in Kyle in Ayrshire, and other 
 western districts, in 1494, nearly seventy years before 
 the time of Knox. That region, so prominent in the 
 time of the Eeformation and the Covenant, had the 
 seed in the soil. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 149 
 
 121. 
 
 Dr. Blaikie, in his Life of Livingstone, tells that 
 this psalm and the 135th were read by him when 
 he parted with his family and went out first as a 
 missionary to Africa. ' I remember my father and 
 him/ writes his sister, ( talking over the prospects of 
 Christian missions. They said that the time would 
 come when rich and great men would think it an 
 honour to support whole stations of missionaries, 
 instead of spending their money on hounds and horses. 
 On the morning of iVth November 1840, we got up 
 at five o'clock. David read the 121st and the 135th 
 Psalms and prayed. My father and he walked to 
 Glasgow to catch the Liverpool steamer/ The old 
 man walked back with a lonely heart to Blantyre, 
 while his son's face was set in earnest toward the 
 dark continent. The 121st Psalm was also a ground 
 of hope to Livingstone's mother-in-law, Mrs. Moffat, 
 when she wrote to him at Linyanti, on the threshold 
 of his perilous journeys : ' My dear son Livingstone, 
 hitherto I have kept up my spirits, and have been 
 enabled to believe that our Great Master may yet 
 bring you out in safety. But his ways are often 
 inscrutable, and I should have clung to the many 
 precious promises made in his word as to temporal 
 preservation such as the 91st and 121st Psalms; 
 but I have been taught that every petition, however 
 
150 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 fervent, must be with submission to his will. Un- 
 ceasing prayer is made for you. When I think of 
 you, my heart will go upwards. " Keep him as the 
 apple of thine eye ;" "Hold him in the hollow of thine 
 hand," are the ejaculations of my heart/ 
 
 $saim 122. 
 
 Wolfgang Schuch, a Protestant pastor in Lorraine, 
 was burned at Nancy because he maintained that 
 salvation is to be found only through the free grace 
 of God, by faith in Jesus Christ his Son. When he 
 heard his sentence he began to sing the 122nd Psalm, 
 the song of ascent to the city of God. When he was 
 led to the place of execution, he sang the 51st Psalm, 
 and continued it till the smoke and flame took from 
 him voice and life. 
 
 $salm 123. 
 
 ' Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that 
 dwellest in the heavens/ With this psalm Philip 
 Henry was accustomed to conclude his Sabbath even- 
 ing service in his own family at Broadoak. His 
 children then knelt down around him and received 
 his blessing. The account which his son, Matthew 
 Henry, gives of the household is one of the fairest 
 pictures we have from the Puritan time, and might 
 serve for the Chamber Peace in the palace Beautiful 
 described by Bunyan. After meat and thanks, on 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 151 
 
 every Sabbath, the usual song of the family and guests 
 was the 23rd Psalm. 
 
 $ salm t24> 
 
 ' Now Israel may say, and that truly, 
 If that the Lord had not our cause maintained ; 
 If that the Lord had not our right sustained, 
 When cruel men against us furiously 
 
 Kose up in wrath, to make of us their prey.' 
 
 This second version of the psalm, with its bold 
 marching melody, is known in Scotland as Durie's 
 Psalm. James Melville, in his own quaint way, gives 
 in his diary, date 1582, the origin of the name. 
 John Durie had been banished from his pulpit and 
 from Edinburgh for his boldness of speech in criticiz- 
 ing some of the high-handed acts of James VI. ; but 
 the feeling in his favour was so strong that the 
 sentence had to be reversed. The case can be best 
 understood by giving James Melville's own words : 
 ' Within few days after the petition of the nobility, 
 John Durie gat leave to ga haim to his ain flock of 
 Edinburgh ; at whase returning there was a great 
 concours of the haill toun, wha met him at the Nether 
 Bow ; and going up the street, with bare heads and 
 loud voices, sang to the praise of God, and testifying 
 of great joy and consolation, the 124th Psalm, "Now 
 Israel may say, and that trewly," till heaven and 
 earth resoundit. This noise, when the Duke (of 
 Lennox), being in the toun, heard, and ludging in the 
 
152 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Hiegate looked out and saw, he rave his beard for 
 anger, and hasted him off the toun/ The picture 
 given of John Durie is so lifelike that we cannot 
 help giving it in the original : c John Durie was of 
 small literature, but had seen and marked the works 
 of God in the first Eeformation, and been a doer baith 
 with toung and hand. He had been a diligent hearer 
 of Mr. Knox, and observer of all his ways. He con- 
 ceived the ground of matters weil, and could utter 
 them fully and manfully, with a mighty spirit, voice, 
 and action. The special gift I marked in him was 
 holiness, and a daily, careful, continual walking with 
 God in meditation and prayer. He was a verie gude 
 fallow, and took delyt as his special comfort to have 
 his table and house filled with the best men. These 
 he would gladly hear, with them confer and talk, 
 professing he was but a buik-bearer, and would fain 
 learn of them ; and getting the ground and light of 
 knowledge in any gude point ; then would he rejoice 
 in God, praise and pray thereupon, and urge it with a 
 clear and forcible exhortation in assembly and pulpit.' 
 It was the number of these men, spread over Scotland 
 at the time, not of the first rank, but captains of 
 hundreds and fifties, which gave the Eeformation such 
 a hold upon the body of the people. 
 
 The psalm has a place in Swiss history very like 
 
 the incident of John Durie. After Geneva had 
 
 gained its freedom and become the head of the 
 
 Reformed/ the Dukes of Savoy, who were leaders of 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 153 
 
 the Eomisli party, made many attempts to crush the 
 new movement. One of the most noted was in 1602, 
 known as the Escalade. The inhabitants, lulled to 
 security by peaceful professions, had neglected all 
 precautions. On a dark night in December, 200 
 Savoyards, the advanced party of a large force, scaled 
 the walls, and were about to admit their associates. 
 The assailants were so sure of their prey, that they 
 despatched a messenger to their commander, announc- 
 ing their complete successs. A sentinel going his 
 rounds lighted on them and was killed ; but the dis- 
 charge of his matchlock, before he fell, aroused the 
 citizens. They flew to arms, each man with the 
 nearest weapon, and after a desperate conflict the 
 town and walls were cleared of the enemy. An iron 
 pot with which an old woman knocked down a soldier 
 a counterpart of the stool of Jenny Geddes was 
 long preserved in the town arsenal; 1 and a monu- 
 ment to the Genevese who fell, with their names 
 inscribed, stands in the cemetery of St. Gervais. 
 
 1 The veritable iron pot was carried off to Paris, during the French 
 occupation of the town by the first Napoleon, and has gone amissing ; 
 but its place is supplied by numbers of the iron caps of the Savoyards 
 thrown ' away in their flight, and by the scaling ladders used in the 
 attack. The Escalade, is commemorated by a handsome fountain- 
 monument with bas-reliefs, one of which represents Theodore Beza 
 giving out the psalm at the door of the Cathedral. The French 
 version of the psalm is by Beza himself, and is sung to the same tune 
 as that of our old 124th. It may be interesting to know that our 
 Scottish version is from the old Reformation Psalter, and was made by 
 Whittinghain, who succeeded Knox as pastor of the English exiles in 
 Geneva, and who was married to Calvin's sister 
 
1 54 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 When the conflict was over, the venerable Theodore 
 Beza, eighty years old, returned solemn thanks, and gave 
 out the 124th Psalm to be sung. Every year since, 
 on the 12th December, it has been sung in Geneva. 
 
 The learned and pious Dr. Tholuck of Halle used 
 to tell an anecdote of his father-in-law. He was a 
 convert from Roman Catholicism ; and as it happens 
 sometimes that though the mind may be entirely 
 emancipated, the desire for priestly absolution returns, 
 his son-in-law asked him before he died, if he had any 
 such feeling. The dying man expressed his sole con- 
 fidence in the great High Priest, and, giving a wave of 
 triumph with his hand, said in the words of Luther's 
 version of the psalm, 
 
 1 Stride ist Entzwei, und wir sindfrei. 1 
 
 1 Broke are their nets, and thus escaped we.' 
 
 The biographer of M'Cheyne, giving an account of 
 his death, tells that ' next day he continued sunk in 
 body and mind, till about the time his people met for 
 their usual evening prayer-meeting, when he requested 
 to be left alone for half-an-hour. When his servant 
 entered the room again, he exclaimed with a joyful 
 voice, " My soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare 
 of the fowler ; the snare is broken, and I am escaped." 
 His countenance, as he said this, bespoke inward 
 peace ; and ever after he was observed to be happy.' 
 We cannot help being reminded of Zacharias, when he 
 went into the temple of the Lord, while the whole 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 155 
 
 multitude of the people were praying without at the 
 time of incense, and there appeared to him an angel of 
 the Lord, who said, 'Fear not; for thy prayer is 
 heard/ 
 
 Ver. 8. ' Our help is in the name of the Lord, who 
 
 made heaven and earth/ With this verse the French 
 
 Protestant Church always begins its public worship 
 
 words which well become the children of the 
 
 Huguenots. 
 
 $salm 125, 
 
 1 They in the Lord that firmly trust 
 
 Shall be like Sion hill, 
 Which at no time can be removed, 
 But standeth ever still.' 
 
 This psalm was frequently sung in the hours of 
 danger during the Scottish Reformation period. The 
 tune which accompanied it was St. Andrew. It was 
 in frequent use also with the French Protestants, 
 when hiding from the dragonnades of Louis XIV, and 
 fleeing to the frontiers for escape. Every verse and 
 word seemed made for such emergencies. 
 
 126. 
 
 Very nearly nine hundred years after the dirge of 
 St. Cuthbert had been sung on the Northumbrian 
 shores, in the 60th Psalm, James Melville in his diary, 
 
156 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 1585, tells how he and other Scottish exiles, returning 
 home with ' the bountiful and graciousj hand of their 
 God upon them ' along these same coasts, sang on the 
 Sabbath day, at Alnwick, the 126th Psalm and many 
 more. It may be interesting to give a verse of the 
 psalm then in use, as showing the variety of rhythm 
 employed. The version is by William Keith, a native 
 of the North of Scotland, and one of the exiles at 
 Geneva in the time of Knox : 
 
 1 Full true it is That they who sow with tears indeed, 
 
 A time will come When they shall reap in mirth and joy. 
 They went and wept, In bearing of their precious seed, 
 For that their foes Full oftentimes did them annoy : 
 
 But their return With joy they sure shall see ; 
 
 Their sheaves home bring And not impeded be/ 
 
 Ver. 5. ' They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,' 
 a favourite verse with Philip Henry, who used to say 
 that ' weeping should not hinder sowing/ His death 
 brought a fulfilment of it. It took place suddenly on 
 the morning of a fast for public danger, when he was 
 to have preached. Some wished to defer the service, 
 but this text was quoted for going forward with it. 
 His son, Matthew Henry, spoke from 2 Kings xiii. 
 20: 'And Elisha died . . . and the bands of the 
 Moabites invaded the land/ 
 
 1 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our 
 tongue with singing/ the expression of ecstatic joy at 
 the triumph of freedom, and a righteous cause, gave 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 157 
 
 language to Powell Buxton when he heard of the 
 Abolition of the Slave Trade. It was deep religious 
 feeling which nerved the men who stood in the van of 
 that battle. 
 
 129. 
 
 This psalm has a place in a peculiar crisis of the 
 history of the ancient Church of the Waldenses. 
 When Louis XIV., in 1685, revoked the Edict of 
 Nantes, he succeeded by promises and threats in 
 inducing Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, to expel the 
 Yaudois of Italy from their valleys, and to plant 
 Eomanists in their stead. Thousands were put in 
 prison for refusing to renounce their faith, while a 
 portion were permitted, at the instance of some of the 
 friendly Cantons, to retire to Switzerland. For two 
 years the exiles sought to form new ties, but the 
 yearning love of the old home was too strong, and, in 
 the autumn of 1689, a band of 800 men resolved to 
 regain their valleys or die. In frail boats, under 
 cover of night, they crossed the Lake of Geneva, with 
 the heroic Henri Arnaud, pastor and colonel, as their 
 leader the Moses and Joshua of this new and 
 strange exodus. Their course led them over snow- 
 covered mountains, across impetuous rivers, along the 
 face of terrible precipices, where the look-back in day- 
 light made them shudder ; and amid an unfriendly 
 population, ready to obstruct their march and reveal 
 it to the hostile troops which hovered round them. 
 
158 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 It was not far on the one side from the track pursued 
 by Hannibal, and on the other from that of Napoleon, 
 when they poured their legions on the plains of 
 Piedmont ; but how different the movement of Henri 
 Arnaud and his little band in true moral grandeur ! 
 Arrived in their native valleys, they were attacked on 
 both sides by the forces of Louis and Amadeus more 
 than forty times their number. The celebrated 
 Balsille, a natural fortress of rocks, enabled them to 
 set every attack at defiance, till through a change of 
 politics, in which the English Eevolution had its 
 share, Amadeus came to terms with them, and sought 
 their help as auxiliaries to expel the troops of the 
 French king, who had been the original cause of their 
 banishment. The history is one of the most wonder- 
 ful since the deliverance from Egypt, and is recorded 
 in a journal, set down day by day, entitled, Story of 
 the glorious Return of the Vaudois into their Valleys. 
 By Henry Arnaud, Pastor and Colonel of the Vaudois. 
 The nlanner of the story is as remarkable as the 
 matter of it, simple, natural, and unaffected ; but 
 through its clear transparency can be seen the intense 
 love of country and of God, and the faith in an unseen 
 Presence which was leading them by the hand through 
 darkness, and shielding them in its hollow from the 
 rage of overwhelming enemies. When the exiles had 
 reached the first church in their old home, the Journal 
 says, ' We had the pleasure of finding the church of 
 Prals still standing, and, after removing the marks of 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 159 
 
 Eomish worship, we sang the 74th Psalm: "0 God, 
 why hast thou cast us off for ever ? Why doth thine 
 anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture ? Ee- 
 member thy congregation which thou hast purchased 
 of old. . . . Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desola- 
 tions, even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in 
 the sanctuary ." Then M. Arnaud, that he might be 
 heard by those without as well as within, stood on a 
 bench placed in the opening of the door, and having 
 made them sing the 129th Psalm, he preached from 
 some of the verses of it : " Many a time have they 
 afflicted rne from my youth, may Israel now say : 
 many a time have they afflicted me from my youth ; 
 yet they have not prevailed against me." A thing 
 worthy of remark,' the narrative goes on to say, ' is 
 that God ordered it that the first sermon the Vaudois 
 heard in their valleys was in a church where M. 
 Leidet had ministered; one who had been surprised 
 singing the psalms among the rocks, and for having 
 confessed publicly the truth of the gospel, he lost 
 his life on the scaffold in 1682, in the fort of St. 
 Michel.' 
 
 The 74th Psalm, here sung by the Vaudois, had not 
 long before been sung by the Covenanters on the 
 Pentlands ; and both, from mountains far apart, had 
 entered into the ear of the Lord God of Sabaoth. 
 * Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name/ 
 
160 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 130. , 
 
 Along with the 51st, this was the peculiar delight 
 of Luther ; for these two, in the Old Testament, 
 approach nearest to his favourite text, Eom. iii. 24 ; 
 through which, as he says, he saw the gate of heaven 
 opening wide before him. One of his great psalm- 
 hymns, which penetrated to the heart of the German 
 people, was formed on this 130th: ' Aus tiefer notli 
 schrei ich zu Dir' 'Lord, from the depths to thee I 
 cry.' If the 46th furnished the major, this gave the 
 minor key among the sacred songs of Germany. It 
 was written in 1524, and has its history. On the 
 6th of May of the same year, a poor old weaver sang 
 it through the streets of Magdeburg, and offered it for 
 sale at a price that suited the poorest. He was cast 
 into prison by the burgomaster; but 200 citizens 
 marched to the town hall, and would not leave till he 
 was released. Psalms and music were chosen weapons 
 of the time. The song returned into Luther's own 
 heart. During the Augsburg Diet, when he was at 
 the castle of Coburg, and had to suffer much from 
 inward and outward trials, he fell into a swoon. On 
 awaking from it he said, ' Come, and in defiance of 
 the devil, let us sing the psalm, "Lord, from the 
 depths to thee I cry." Let us sing it in full chorus, 
 and extol and praise God.' In the first days of the 
 Reform, along with the 51st, it was frequently 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 161 
 
 employed as a funeral song. It was sung at the 
 interment of Frederick the Wise, the staunch friend 
 and protector of Luther, in 1525. When the body of 
 Luther was on its way from Eisleben, where he died, 
 to Wittenberg, where he lies beside Melancthon and 
 the two great Electors, Frederick and John, it remained 
 a night in Halle, 20th February 1546, in the Lieb 
 frauen Kirche, of which his bosom friend, Justus 
 Jonas, was minister. This psalm in Luther's version 
 was given out by Jonas, and sung by the thousands 
 who thronged and wept around the bier. 
 
 Dr. John Owen gives an account of the way in 
 which he was led to write his commentary, or rather 
 series of discourses, on this psalm. ' Mr. Richard 
 Davis/ he says, ' who afterwards became pastor of a 
 church in Eowel, Northamptonshire, being under 
 religious impressions, sought a conference with me. I 
 put the question to him, " Young man, pray, in what 
 manner do you think to go to God ? " " Through the 
 Mediator, sir," Mr. Davis answered. " That is easily 
 said," I replied ; " but I assure you, it is another 
 thing to go to God through the Mediator than many 
 who make use of the expression are aware of. I 
 myself preached Christ some years, when I had but very 
 little, if any, experimental acquaintance with access to 
 God through Christ ; until the Lord was pleased to 
 visit me with sore affliction, whereby I was brought to 
 the mouth of the grave, and under which my soul 
 was oppressed with horror and darkness ; but God 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE PSALMS IN HIS TOR Y 
 
 graciously relieved my spirit by a powerful applica- 
 tion of Ps. cxxx. 4 : ' But there is forgiveness with 
 thee, that thou mayest be feared/ irom whence I 
 received special instruction, peace, and comfort in 
 drawing near to God through the Mediator, and 
 preached thereupon immediately after my recovery." ' 
 This is no doubt the reason why nearly three-fourths 
 of Owen's treatise is occupied with this verse. 
 
 It was the 130th Psalm, sung in St. Paul's, May 
 1738, and heard by John Wesley with deep emotion, 
 that prepared him for the truth of justification by 
 faith, which he embraced shortly afterwards, through 
 reading Luther on the Galatians. His conversations 
 with Peter Bohlen, of the Moravian Brethren, also 
 aided him greatly, and helped to preserve him from 
 the mystic legalism of Laws Serious Gall, to which he 
 was at one time inclined. But for this decision, the 
 mighty movement which has sprung from Wesley would 
 have failed in the birth. 
 
 Ver. 6. Jonathan Edwards, in his Journal, says, 
 'In September 1725, was taken ill at Newhaven, and 
 endeavoured to go home to Windsor; was so ill at 
 the North Village that I could go no farther, where 
 I lay sick for about a quarter of a year. And in this 
 sickness God was pleased to visit me again with the 
 sweet influences of His Spirit. My mind was greatly 
 engaged there on divine pleasant contemplations and 
 longings of soul. I observed that those who watched 
 with me would often be looking out for the morning, 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 163 
 
 and seemed to wish for it ; which brought to my mind 
 those words of the Psalmist, which my soul with 
 sweetness made its own language, " My soul waiteth 
 for the Lord, more than they that watch for the 
 morning : I say, more than they that watch for the 
 morning." And when the light of the morning came 
 in at the windows, it refreshed my soul from one 
 morning to another. It seemed to me to be some 
 image of the sweet light of God's glory.' 
 
 To how many hearts this psalm has brought comfort 
 and hope God only can tell, but seldom do four such 
 names as Luther, Owen, Wesley, and Edwards surround 
 one portion of the word of God. It reminds us of 
 the ancient fourfold encampment of the tribes of Israel 
 round the tabernacle, or the city that lieth foursquare, 
 with a herald at each central gate. 
 
 133. 
 
 1 Behold, how good a thing it is, 
 
 And how becoming well, 
 Together such as brethren are 
 In unity to dwell ! ' 
 
 In 1638 it was sung at the close of the famous 
 Assembly held in Glasgow, of which Alexander 
 Henderson was moderator. It was the triumph, for 
 the time, of the second Eeformation, the Bannockburn 
 of Scottish religious liberty, a bright morning, to be 
 followed by clouds and conflicts, but never forgotten. 
 
164 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 With all our divisions we are in advance of that 
 period, and every time the psalm is sung it has a 
 prophetic look, and a prayer for the final happy issue. 
 The American Greely Expedition went into their 
 winter house in 1881, amid the eternal ice and snow 
 of the Arctic Circle, with a night before them of four 
 months and a half. They arranged their reckoning of 
 time so as to keep their Sabbath, and have a religious 
 service, including the reading of the Psalms. The 
 first Sabbath contained Ps. cxxxiii., and the Commander 
 brought before the men the duty of brotherly feeling, 
 and his hope that every one would endeavour to cherish 
 a friendly spirit, and endeavour to reconcile those who 
 might drift into any unpleasant controversy. The 
 result may be found in the fact to which he bears 
 witness, that though ' for months without drinking 
 water, destitute of warmth, with sleeping bags frozen 
 to the ground, with walls, roof, and floor covered with 
 frost and ice, deprived of sufficient light, heat, or food, 
 they were never without courage, faith, and hope/ 
 
 136. 
 
 The foundation of Milton's ' Let us with a gladsome 
 mind,' written when he was fifteen, the only one 
 of his psalms which has been taken into the public 
 worship of the Church, though no one felt more than 
 he did the surpassing depth and height of the 
 Psalmist's inspiration. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 165 
 
 6 Their songs, 
 
 Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, 
 Will far be found unworthy to compare 
 With Sion's songs to all true tastes excelling 
 Where God is praised aright, and godlike men, 
 The Holiest of holies, and his saints, 
 Such are from God inspired/ 
 
 ' By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ; yea, 
 we wept when we remembered Zion/ has struck the 
 key to many a song of the love of country. The 
 Abbe Curci, a great Oriental scholar, and author of a 
 translation of the Old Testament into Italian, one of 
 the few of the Eoman Catholic clergy who have taken 
 the side of Italy and freedom against the Papacy, 
 lectured, in 1883, to an immense assembly in Eome, 
 and expressed his special love to the 137th Psalm. 
 He said it was the first and grandest patriotic song 
 which was ever written, linking God and country 
 together. Camoens, the national poet of Portugal, 
 has paraphrased it as f the psalm of pious patriotic 
 memory.' 
 
 When the gifted but unfortunate Henri Heine 
 yielded to the political oppression and social indignity 
 meted out to his race in Germany, and submitted, 
 without heart-conviction, to Christian baptism, he was 
 moved to the soul by this psalm, while he loathed the 
 dishonesty of his own act. It is touching to know 
 
1 66 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 how beneath his surface cynicism there was a burning 
 love to his kindred, and a yearning hfcart toward the 
 things that are written in the Book. Writing to a 
 Jewish friend, he says, 'I remember me that the 
 psalm, " We sat by the waters of Babylon," was then 
 your favourite, and that you recited it so beautifully, 
 so nobly, so touchingly, that I would fain weep now, 
 and not alone over the psalm/ And again, writing 
 from Heligoland, 1830, 'As yesterday was Sunday, 
 and a leaden ennui lay on the whole island and almost 
 crushed my heart, I took up the Bible in desperation, 
 and in spite, as I confess to you, of my being a secret 
 Hellene, the Book has not only well entertained, but 
 deeply edified me. What a Book ! Vast and wide as 
 the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and 
 towering up beyond the blue secrets of heaven ! 
 Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and 
 death, the whole drama of humanity, all are in this 
 Book. It is the Book of Books BIBLION. The Jews 
 may easily console themselves for having lost Jeru- 
 salem, and the temple, and the ark of the covenant, 
 and the golden vessels, and the precious things of 
 Solomon. Such a loss is insignificant compared with 
 the Bible, the imperishable treasure which they have 
 rescued. If I do not err, it was Mahomet who named 
 the Jews " the people of the Book " a name which 
 has remained theirs to the present day on the earth, 
 and is deeply characteristic. A book is their father- 
 land. They live within the boundaries of this Book. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 167 
 
 Here do they exercise their inalienable citizen rights. 
 Here they can be neither persecuted nor despised. 
 Absorbed in the study of this Book, they observed 
 little of the changes which went on about them in 
 the world. Nations arose and perished ; States 
 flourished and disappeared ; revolutions stormed forth 
 out of the ground, but they lay bent over their Book, 
 and observed nothing of the wild tumult of the times 
 which passed over their head/ Poor Heine passed 
 through many phases of thought and feeling, far 
 enough away from the spirit of the Bible ; but, years 
 after his letter from Heligoland, he writes to one 
 of his friends from Paris, when his body was at the 
 grave's mouth, but his mind unbroken : ' I attribute 
 my enlightenment entirely and simply to the reading 
 of a book. Of a book ? Yes, and it is an old homely 
 book, modest as nature a book which has a look 
 natural as the sun which warms us, as the bread which 
 nourishes us, a book as full of love and blessing as 
 the old mother who reads in it with her dear, trembling 
 lips, and this book is the Book, the Bible. With right 
 is it named the Holy Scripture ; he who has lost his 
 God can find him again in this book, and he who has 
 never known him is here struck by the breath of the 
 Divine Word/ 
 
 In a still higher point of view than the love of the 
 earthly land, the 137th Psalm may be regarded as 
 the spring of the songs of the ' Jerusalem above/ 
 which, in all ages of the Church, have looked 
 
1 68 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 away from the banishment of exile to the final 
 home j 
 
 ' For thee, dear, dear country, 
 
 Mine eyes their vigils keep ; 
 For very love, beholding 
 
 Thy happy name, they weep ; 
 Even now, by faith, I see thee, 
 
 Even now thy walls discern ; 
 To thee my thoughts are kindled, 
 
 And strive, and pant, and yearn.' 
 
 139. 
 
 A psalm of wonderful power, in which the singer 
 takes the sense of God's omnipresence first into his 
 own heart, and then makes it flash to the utmost 
 bounds of the universe, and into the deepest secrets of 
 being. ' Lord, thou hast searched me and known 
 me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up- 
 rising, thou understandest my thought afar of/ But 
 the penetrating eye of divine holiness would be terrible, 
 unless he had assurance of its benignity ; and so he 
 takes refuge in the thought of divine mercy, praying 
 for cleansing from impurity, that he may be able to 
 look to God with a clearer vision. Notice the advance 
 in the meaning of the word search (vers. 1 and 23): 
 ' Thou hast searched me and known me/ ' Search 
 me, God, and know my heart/ Notice also how he 
 prays that he may hate sin, not only when it is around, 
 but when it is within him, anticipating the apostle 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 169 
 
 (Eom. vii. 24). This gives the key to many of the 
 expressions in the Psalms which have been spoken of 
 as vindictive. These men were in conflict with sin, 
 which surrounded them, wounded them, sought to 
 crush them ; but they were taught by the Spirit of 
 God to hate it also in themselves ; and the completion 
 of this lesson, as of the love of God, is reserved for the 
 New Testament. 
 
 Villemain, a noted French critic, speaks of this 
 psalm in his essays on the genius of Pindar : ' I was 
 seized with admiration the first time I read Plato's 
 testimony to the omnipresence and providence of God 
 " If you were hidden in the deepest caverns of the 
 earth, if you were to take wings and fly to the height 
 of the skies, if you were to seek the confines of the 
 world, if you were to descend to the depths of 
 Tartarus, or some more dreadful place, the Divine 
 Providence would still be near you." This is higher 
 than Homer's description of the movement of his gods 
 in three steps to the ends of the earth ; but compare 
 it with the Psalmist's, " Whither shall I go from thy 
 Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If 
 I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make 
 my bed -in Sheol, behold, thou art there. If I take 
 the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost 
 parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, 
 and thy right hand shall hold me." If this poetry 
 is man's, it is from a spirit transfigured by divine 
 grace, as was the face of Moses when he came 
 
170 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 down from Sinai, shining with the brightness he had 
 seen/ 
 
 Was the Evening song of the early Christian Church. 
 ' Let my prayer be set before thee as incense, and the 
 lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice/ The 
 calm floating of the fragrant cloud upward, the hands 
 outstretched to God when the day's work is done, are 
 a contrast to the morning prayer, full of purpose and 
 aim, like an archer who fits his arrow to the bow, and 
 then follows it to the mark. Ps. v. 3 : ' My voice 
 shalt thou hear in the morning, Lord ; in the 
 morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will 
 look up/ 
 
 $saim 143. 
 
 Thomas Bilneg, burned in the reign of Henry VIII., 
 had, at first, fear of death, but he rose above it, and 
 his behaviour at the stake made a great impression on 
 the people. ' He made his private prayer with such 
 earnest elevation of his eyes and hands to heaven, and 
 in so good and *quiet behaviour, that he seemed not to 
 consider the terror of his death ; and ended at last his 
 private prayers with the psalm beginning, " Hear my 
 prayer, Lord ; consider my desire ! " And the next 
 verse he repeated, in deep meditation, thrice : " And 
 enter not into judgment with thy servant : for in thy 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 171 
 
 sight shall no man living be justified." And so, 
 finishing that psalm, he ended his prayers/ 
 
 144* 
 
 From this psalm, which was in the order for the 
 day, Bishop Bedell preached, Jan. 30, 1642, in the 
 midst of the Irish Civil War, and died a few days after- 
 wards. (See Ps. iii.) There is a singular appropriate- 
 ness to the circumstances : ' Blessed be the Lord, my 
 strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my 
 fingers to fight ; my goodness, and my fortress ; my 
 high tower, and my deliverer ; my shield, and he in 
 whom I trust.' . . . ' Happy is that people that is in 
 such a case ; yea, happy is that people whose God is 
 the Lord/ Bishop Bedell was one of the most devoted 
 men of his time. The Bible which, with great labour, 
 he got translated into the Irish language, was for a 
 long time the one chiefly in use among the Scottish 
 Highlanders ; but it was not till the beginning of this 
 century that it found much entry into Ireland. The 
 last sermon, on this psalm, was preached by him in 
 the house of a converted priest, to which he was 
 allowed to retire from Castle Oughterard, County Cavan, 
 where he had been kept a prisoner. He lies in a 
 corner of Kilmore churchyard, close to a large sycamore 
 tree which he himself had planted. 
 
1 7 2 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 $satm 145. i 
 
 The tradition about the Te Deum is that it was first 
 sung by Ambrose and Augustine, through inspiration, 
 when, in 387, they were together at Milan. The truth 
 is that this hymn had its origin in a responsive 
 Christian song which Ambrose introduced into the 
 West from the Eastern Church. It was a morning 
 psalm of praise, and began, ' Every day will I bless 
 thee, and praise thy name for ever and ever/ This 
 145th Psalm may be looked on as having the germ 
 of the widespread Christian hymn, and as being itself 
 the Te Deum of the Old Testament. The Jews were 
 accustomed to say that he who could pray this psalm 
 from the heart three times daily, was preparing him- 
 self best for the praise of the world to come. 
 
 The second version of it in the Scottish Psalm-book 
 is by John Craig, the colleague of Knox, and shows his 
 poetic taste. The peculiar versions of the 136th and 
 143rd were either by him or by Pow, minister of St. 
 Cuthbert's. In those days, larger portions were sung 
 than is now common; the 51st on fast days, the 
 103rd at communions, the harmonic parts being given 
 in the Psalm-book, and carefully rendered. The 
 attention given to sacred song was a feature of the 
 Eeformation. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 173 
 
 fgalm 146* 
 
 ' Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul. 
 While I live will I praise the Lord; I will sing 
 praises unto my God while I have any being/ This 
 psalm was the delight of David Home of Wedderburn, 
 who used to sing it, accompanying his voice with the 
 harp. He was a member of an old family in Berwick- 
 shire, and father of David Home of Godscroft, author 
 of one of the first Scottish family histories, The House of 
 Douglas. The troublous character of the time may be 
 judged from the fact that he was the first of his line 
 who, for a long period, had died a natural death, the 
 rest having lost their lives in defence of their country, 
 or of principle. He was remarkable for piety and 
 probity, candour and integrity, and had whole psalms 
 in memory, and short portions of them often in his 
 mouth. 
 
 Like the 133rd, the psalm of brotherhood. It has 
 been sung twice in seasons of Church union in Scot- 
 land, first in 1820, when two branches of the Secession 
 were reunited, and again in 1847, when the United 
 Secession and Eelief joined to form the United 
 Presbyterian Church. The second and third verses 
 strikingly connect union with spiritual comfort and 
 healing : 
 
174 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 1 God doth build up Jerusalem ; 
 
 And he it is alone 
 That the dispersed of Israel ' 
 
 Doth gather into one. 
 Those that are broken in their heart, 
 
 And grieved in their minds, 
 He healeth, and their painful wounds 
 
 He tenderly up-binds. J 
 
 $salm 148. 
 
 St. Bernard of Clairvaux thus describes the death 
 of his brother Gerard : ' Who could ever have loved 
 me as he did ? He was a brother by blood, but far 
 more in the faith. God grant, Gerard, that I may 
 not have lost thee, but that thou hast only gone before 
 me ; for, of a surety, thou hast joined those whom, in 
 thy last night below, thou didst invite to praise God, 
 when suddenly, to the surprise of all, thou, with a 
 serene countenance and cheerful voice, didst commence 
 chanting that psalm, " Praise ye the Lord from the 
 heavens ; praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, 
 all his angels ; praise ye him, all his hosts." At that 
 moment, my brother, the day dawned on thee, 
 though it was night to tirf ; the night to thee was all 
 brightness. Just as I reached his side, I heard him 
 utter aloud those words of Christ, " Father, into thy 
 hands I commend my spirit ! " Then repeating the 
 verse over again, and resting on the word Father, 
 Father ! he turned to me and smiling said, " how 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 175 
 
 gracious of God to be the Father of men, and what 
 an honour for men to be his children ! " ' 
 
 150. 
 
 Whatever connection we may be able to find in the 
 place which particular psalms hold to one another, 
 there can be no doubt of an arrangement as to the 
 whole. The book begins with benediction, and ends with 
 praise first, blessing to man, and then glory to God. 
 The entire book is divided into five portions, each with 
 a similar close, and evidently intended for the public 
 worship of the ancient Church, the 41st, the 72nd, 
 the 89th, the 135th, and the 150th. The last psalm 
 is the great Hallelujah, the triumphant acclaim to him 
 who hath gotten the victory, after the manifold 
 sorrows and conflicts through which the Church of 
 God and the believing soul have passed. The temple 
 thrills and throbs with the burst of gladness, as all the 
 powers of man, and all creatures in the universe are 
 summoned to aid the song. It seems as if this were 
 the very summit and climax of the praise that can 
 ascend to God, the loftiest wave of the many waters 
 that break at the foot of his throne ; and yet it yields 
 to that joy of which the apostle speaks, which is 
 ' unspeakable and full of glory/ In one of Eaphael's 
 great pictures, St. Cecilia, and the singers round her, 
 have caught hearing of the accents of the praise of 
 Heaven, and, as some look down and listen in profound 
 
i 7 6 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 thought, and others look up in rapt wonder and 
 ecstasy, the instruments of earth fall from their hands 
 and lie broken at their feet. When we .read this 
 psalm, and pass forward to the new song which fell 
 on the entranced ear of John in Patmos, we feel as if 
 the poet-painter had some vision like this before him : 
 ' And every creature which is in heaven, and on the 
 earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the 
 sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, 
 Blessing and honour, and glory and power be unto 
 him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
 for ever and ever/ 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 177 
 
 TESTIMONIES TO THE VALUE OF THE 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Athanasius says: ' It seems to me that the Psalms are 
 for every one who sings them like a mirror of the soul, 
 in which it can recognise its movements and express 
 its feelings. For in this book thou findest the whole 
 life of man pictured, the moods of the heart, the 
 movements of the thought. If thou hast need of 
 repentance, if thou hast met trial and temptation, if 
 thou art exposed to persecution and calumny, in all, 
 and in every case, thou canst find here instruction, 
 and bring thy case before God in the words of the 
 Psalms/ 
 
 Ambrose. 'The law of Scripture teaches, history 
 instructs, prophecy prepares, admonition corrects, 
 precepts advise. In the Psalms is the fruit of all, 
 and a healing medicine for the soul. It is the praise 
 of God, the weal of man, the voice of the Church, the 
 best confession of faith. Through the Psalms I 
 learn to avoid sin, and unlearn being ashamed of 
 
 repentance/ 
 
 M 
 
178 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Augustine. ' God, how have I spoken with 
 thee when I read the Psalms of David, those songs so 
 full of faith, those cries that shut out all pride ! How 
 have I spoken with thee in them, and been enkindled 
 and inflamed with love, when I could have read them 
 before the whole world, as a witness against the pride 
 of man ! And yet they are read in all the world, and 
 " there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." ' 
 
 Luther. ' The human heart is like a ship driven 
 on a wide sea by winds of sorrow and joy. And 
 what are the Psalms, but the earnest words of men 
 driven about by these winds ? Where are more 
 beautiful words of joy than the psalms of praise and 
 thanksgiving ? There thou seest into the heart of 
 all the saints, as into fair and pleasant gardens, as 
 into heaven itself, and walkest among the heart- 
 rejoicing flowers, the happy and gladsome thoughts 
 that rise to God and his goodness. And, again, 
 where findest thou deeper, more touching words of 
 sorrow than in the penitential psalms ? There thou 
 seest again into the heart of all the saints, as if into 
 death or hell itself. How dark and gloomy it is 
 there, when God hides his face ! And when they speak 
 of fear and hope, it is in such words that no painter 
 could give the colours, and no Cicero the language/ 
 
 Melancthon. 'This book is the most beautiful 
 (elegantissimus) in the whole world/ 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 179 
 
 Calvin. ' If the reading of my Commentary on 
 this book brings as much blessing to the Church of 
 God as I have got in the composition of it, I shall 
 not repent of the work. I may truly call this book 
 an anatomy of all the parts of the soul, for no one can 
 feel a movement of the spirit which is not reflected in 
 this mirror. All the sorrows, troubles, fears, doubts, 
 hopes, pains, perplexities, stormy outbreaks by which 
 the hearts of men are tossed, have been here depicted 
 by the Holy Spirit to the very life.' 
 
 Salmasius, one of the most learned men of his time, 
 the great antagonist of Milton, said on his death-bed : 
 ' I have lost a world of time ; if I had one year more, 
 I would spend it in reading David's Psalms and 
 Paul's Epistles.' 
 
 Milton, when he speaks of his design of writing his 
 great poem, and of the source of inspiration he hoped 
 for in the Bible, says: 'But those frequent songs 
 throughout the law and prophets, not in their divine 
 argument alone, but in the very art of composition, 
 may be easily made appear over all the other kinds of 
 lyric poesy to be incomparable. They are the inspired 
 gift of God to celebrate, in glorious and lofty hymns, 
 the throne and equipage of his almightiness, and what 
 he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with 
 high providence in his Church, to sing victorious 
 agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs 
 
i8o THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through 
 
 faith against the enemies of Christ.' 
 
 I 
 
 Hooker. 'The choice and flower of all things 
 profitable in other books, the Psalms do both more 
 briefly contain, and more movingly also express, by 
 reason of that poetical form wherewith they are 
 written. What is there necessary for man to know 
 which the Psalms are not able to teach ? They are 
 to beginners an easy and familiar introduction, a 
 mighty augmentation of all virtue and knowledge in 
 such as are entered before, a strong confirmation to 
 the most perfect. Heroical magnanimity, exquisite 
 justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance 
 unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries of God, 
 the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the 
 comforts of grace, the works of providence over this 
 world, and the promised joys of that world which is 
 to come, all good necessary to be either known, or 
 done, or had, this one celestial fountain yieldeth. Let 
 there be any grief or disease incident unto the soul of 
 man, any wound or sickness named, for which there 
 is not in this treasure-house a present comfortable 
 remedy at all times ready to be found/ 
 
 Sibbs, one of the richest and raciest of the Puritans, 
 in beginning his treatise on the Soul's Conflict with Itself, 
 from Ps. xlii. 11, says: 'The Psalms are, as it were, 
 the anatomy of a holy man, which lay the inside of a 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 181 
 
 truly devout man outward to the view of others. If 
 the Scriptures be compared to a body, the Psalms 
 may well be the heart, they are so full of sweet 
 affections and passions. For, in other portions of 
 Scripture, God speaks to us ; but in the Psalms holy 
 men speak to God and their own hearts/ 
 
 Bishop Home, in the preface to his Commentary, 
 says : ' This little volume, like the paradise of Eden, 
 affords us in perfection, though in miniature, every- 
 thing 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. 
 
 ' And now could the author flatter himself that any 
 one would take half the pleasure in reading the 
 following exposition which he hath taken in writing 
 it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The 
 employment detached him from the hurry and bustle 
 of life, the din of politics and the noise of folly ; 
 vanity and vexation flew away for a season, care and 
 disquietude came not near his dwelling. He arose, 
 fresh as the morning to his task, the silence of the 
 night invited him to pursue it ; and he can truly say 
 that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every 
 psalm improved infinitely upon acquaintance with it, 
 and no one gave him uneasiness but the last ; for then 
 he was grieved that his work was done. Indited 
 under the influence of him to whom all hearts are 
 
1 82 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 known, and events foreknown, they suit mankind in 
 all situations, grateful as the manna which descended 
 from above, and which conformed itselr to every palate. 
 The fairest productions of human wit, after a few 
 perusals, like gathered flowers, wither in our hands 
 and lose their fragrancy ; but these unfading plants 
 of paradise become, as we are accustomed to them, 
 still more and more beaiitiful ; their bloom appears to 
 be daily heightened, fresh odours are emitted, and 
 new sweets extracted from them/ 
 
 A good remark is made as to the authorship of 
 particular psalms : ' When we discern in a letter the 
 well-known hand of a friend, we are not solicitous 
 about the pen with which it was written/ 
 
 Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, father of Lady 
 Grisel Baillie, was compelled in the time of persecution 
 to hide for a lengthened period in the vault of Polwarth 
 Church. ' His great comfort, and constant entertain- 
 ment, for he had no light to read by, was repeating 
 Buchanan's psalms (in Latin), which he had from 
 beginning to end by heart, and retained to his dying 
 day. TW T O years before he died, which was in 1724, 
 I was witness to his desiring my mother to take up 
 that book, which amongst others always lay on his 
 table, and bid her try if he had forgot his psalms, by 
 naming any one she would have him repeat, and, by 
 casting her eye over it, she would know if he was 
 right, though she did not understand it; and he 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 183 
 
 missed not a word in any place she named to him, and 
 he said they had been the great comfort of his life, by 
 night and day, on all occasions/ Memoirs of George 
 Baillie of Jerviswoode and Lady Grisel Baillie. 
 
 Sir William Wallace, the Scottish patriot, when he 
 was being put to death, in a very cruel way, in 
 Smithfield, made the Psalter his mother had given him 
 be held before his face that he might look on it as long 
 as he lived. 
 
 'Great numbers of the French Huguenots, after 
 1685, fled across the frontier, and enriched materially 
 and intellectually every land they settled in ' (Weiss, 
 Protestant Refugees). But thousands had to suffer the 
 fiercest persecution in France. The Chatelet, Bastille, 
 Vincennes, Ham, Isles of St. Margaret near Cannes, 
 and all the prisons of the kingdom, had their prisons 
 choked with those who refused to abjure. These 
 places were so damp that their clothes rotted on them. 
 They were beaten and dragged by the hair for per- 
 sisting to sing the Psalms. Those who were con- 
 demned to the galleys reckoned themselves happy 
 when a more humane commander allowed them to 
 hum them ; and editions fitted for the pocket were 
 conveyed to them by their friends. They sang them 
 in the ships which carried them in banishment to the 
 colonies. Women and young girls were mixed with 
 the vilest criminals, and the Psalms were their defence 
 
1 84 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 against oaths and foulness. Meeting among the 
 mountains and forests of the 'Desert,' the Psalms guided 
 their friends to their assemblies, but sometimes brought 
 on them the sudden fire of the enemy. When at last 
 madness drove them to arms, the Psalms became their 
 battle-songs, and their opponents speak of their sing- 
 ing as wild and fierce like a trumpet. Three hundred 
 Cevenols, shut up in the tower of Bellot, refused to 
 surrender, fired their last cartridge, and perished in 
 the flames singing their Psalms. At an earlier period, 
 John Knox must have sung the Psalms in this same 
 version, when he was condemned to pull at the oar 
 in the galleys, and while he was putting in shape his 
 treatise on prayer. 
 
 Lelievre says : ' The effect of the Psalms on the 
 character of the Huguenots was wonderful. The songs 
 of a people reflect their life, and we may say, " Tell 
 me what you sing, I will tell you what you are." 
 The Psalter of Beza and Marot helped to give to the 
 Eef ormed Church of France a character of unexampled 
 firmness, and even sternness. It penetrated the 
 family, sanctified its joys, and consoled its sorrows ; 
 it was a breviary for the living, and a viaticum for 
 the dying. The Huguenot character received from 
 this its tone at once religious and moral, energetic 
 and tender. We must say, at the same time, that 
 certain mistakes which cost them dear, and certain 
 defects in their views, came from an exclusive use of 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 185 
 
 the songs of the Old Covenant. But it is nevertheless 
 true that the Psalms have nourished the moral life of 
 a race of men such as the world will never perhaps 
 see again. We need to-day a generation nourished 
 on this marrow of lions. If we may judge by its 
 weaknesses, our age uses little of this food. It seems 
 to seek its moral aliment in any place rather than 
 where it was found by the heroic singers of the 
 Psalms/ 
 
 Herder, in his Spirit of Hebrew Poetry : ' Not only 
 for its contents but its form, is the use of the book of 
 Psalms a benefit to the spirit of man. In no lyric 
 poet of Greece or Eome can we find so much 
 instruction or comfort, and in none such a variety and 
 rich change of the poetic mood. These flowers can be 
 carried to every time and every soil, and they bloom 
 in fresh youth. The book contains the simplest lyric 
 notes for the expression of the most manifold feelings, 
 and so it is a book of song for all ages.' 
 
 Tholuck. ' Songs which, like the Psalms, have stood 
 the test of three thousand years, may well be said to 
 contain in them the seed of eternity.' 
 
 Lamartine. 'David is the first of the poets of feeling 
 the king of lyrists. Never has the thought of poet 
 risen so high and pure. Never has the soul opened 
 before man and God in language so tender, so 
 
186 THE PSALMS IN HJSTOXY 
 
 sympathetic and moving. All the secret cries of the 
 human heart have found a voice through his lips. If 
 we think of the lyric poets of the 1 most cultivated 
 nations of antiquity, singing of wine, love, blood, the 
 victories of mules and horses in the fields of Elis, 
 we are seized with profound astonishment at the 
 mysterious utterances of the shepherd-prophet, who 
 speaks with God as a friend, who praises his wonders, 
 admires his justice, entreats his mercy, and seems to 
 be an anticipating echo of the poetry of the gospel, 
 repeating the loving words of Christ before he had 
 heard them. Eead Greek or Latin lyrics after a psalm 
 they turn pale !' 
 
 M. Henry. ' We have in the Psalms one of the 
 choicest and most excellent parts of all the Old 
 Testament ; nay, so much is there in it of CHKIST and 
 his gospel, as well as of God and his law, that it has 
 been called the abstract, or summary of both Testaments. 
 The history of Israel leads us to camps and council- 
 boards, and there entertains and instructs us in the 
 knowledge of God. The book of Job brings us into 
 the schools, and treats us with profitable disputations 
 concerning God and his providence. But this book 
 brings us into the sanctuary, draws us off from con- 
 verse with men, with the politicians, philosophers, 
 or disputers of this world, and directs us into 
 communion with God, by solacing and reposing 
 our souls in him, lifting up and letting out our 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 187 
 
 hearts towards him. Thus may we be in the mount 
 with God ; and we understand not our interests if we 
 say not. " It is good to be here" ' 
 
 Johannes von Muller was the greatest historian of 
 his time, and passed his life in the stormy period 
 of the French Eevolution and Napoleonic wars a 
 universally learned and widely experienced man. In 
 a letter to his brother he says : ' The most delightful 
 hour to me daily is that which I spend with David. 
 There is nothing Greek or Eoman, nothing in all the 
 Western or Northern spheres like David, whom the 
 God of Israel chose that his name might be set in 
 song above all the gods of the nations. His song 
 springs from the spirit and penetrates the heart, and 
 never in my life before have I seen God so clear and so 
 near. The Psalms can make a life of trial a life of joy/ 
 
 Hengsteriberg. 'The book of Psalms is full of the 
 noblest testimonies to the being of God and his 
 perfections. It has contributed in this respect vast 
 materials for developing the religious consciousness of 
 God, and the Christian Church rests far more upon 
 them for its apprehensions of God than might at first 
 sight be supposed. To perceive to what an extent 
 this is the case, we have only to search out the traces 
 of the Psalms in our liturgies and Church-songs. 
 Even the French Deists, the theo-philanthropists, 
 sworn enemies of the Bible, could only make out 
 
1 88 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 their liturgy by the help of the Psalms. This is one 
 chief reason why the Psalter is so precious to the 
 afflicted. It presents God so clearly and vividly 
 before their eyes, that they see him in a manner 
 with their bodily sight, and find thereby the sting 
 taken from their pains. In this, too, lies one great 
 element of the importance of the Psalter for the 
 present times. What men now most of all need is, 
 that the blanched image of God should again be 
 freshened up in them. The more closely we connect 
 ourselves with the Psalms, the more will God cease to 
 be to us a shadowy form, which can neither hear, nor 
 help, nor judge us, and to which we can present no 
 supplication/ 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. ' David, king of Israel, a soul 
 inspired by divine music, and much other provision, 
 was wont to pour himself in song ; he, with seer's eye 
 and heart, discerned the godlike amid the human, 
 struck tones that were an echo of the sphere-harmonies, 
 and are still felt to be such. Eeader, art thou one of 
 a thousand, able still to read a psalm of David, and 
 catch some echo of it through the old dim centuries ; 
 feeling far off in thy own heart what it once was to 
 other hearts made as thine ? To sing it attempt not, 
 for it is impossible in this late time ; only know that 
 it once was sung. Then go to the opera, and hear, 
 with unspeakable reflections, what things men now 
 sing/ 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 189 
 
 [Carlyle forgets that it is not so long ago since they 
 were sung by Huguenots and Covenanters with some 
 effect, and that there are churches and homes where 
 they are still vocal, 
 
 ' The strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 
 He wales a portion wi' judicious care ; ' 
 
 only that the measure must keep pace with the soul 
 of the old psalm, not in pirouetting gyrations like the 
 degenerate daughters of Zion, 'mincing as they go, 
 and making a tinkling with their feet/ but in ' a grave 
 sweet melody/ as in ' the night when a holy solemnity 
 is kept ! ' A great congregation sending a psalm 
 heavenward, in such frame, can never be out of date 
 till heaven is reached, and the song raised which is as 
 1 the voice of many waters round about the throne/] 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. c All the wonders of Greek civili- 
 sation heaped together are less wonderful than is the 
 simple book of Psalms the history of the human soul 
 in relation to its Maker/ 
 
 Delitzsch. 'This book has no equal in the expanse of 
 time which it reflects, beginning with the wanderings in 
 the wilderness, 1450 years before Christ, and reaching 
 down to the building of the second temple, 800 years 
 later. It is without equal in the richness of the form 
 and feeling of its poetry, for freshness of spirit and 
 outpouring of the deepest emotion from still soft 
 
190 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 prayer to the triumphant hymn of victory. To this 
 we may add that it is without equal for the richness 
 of its contents. It embraces nature and history, 
 heaven and earth, the world around and the world 
 within us, the experience of each and all from the 
 darkest abyss of trial to the summit of celestial joy. 
 It is unequalled in the depth of its secret soul- 
 experience, and the power of expressing it not the 
 palpable and superficial, but the root secrets of the 
 inmost life, ideal and real, abstract and concrete, 
 universal and individual and so it possesses for the 
 understanding of each reader and for the inquiry of the 
 commentator a growing attraction towards something 
 ever fresh and new. If it is the peculiarity of the 
 classic that the oftener it is read the more beautiful 
 and full of meaning it becomes, then are the psalms 
 classic in the highest degree/ 
 
 Dr. John Eadie in his English Bible, after relating 
 how the Gospels were rendered in early ages into our 
 mother tongue, goes on to say : ' But the favourite 
 portion of Scripture for translation in these times, as 
 in all times, was the Psalms ; and one can scarcely 
 wonder at the preference. The melody of the Psalmist 
 has many moods, but the song is ever the genuine 
 outburst of his heart, and the reader is lured into 
 living sympathy with it ; nay, as it throbs underneath 
 the page, he is brought into immediate fellowship 
 with the singer and not with his shadow. For the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 191 
 
 singer himself, in his various changes, is embodied in 
 his psalms, whether he sinks in deep contrition, or 
 soars away in spiritual rapture ; whether he extols 
 mercy, or sinks into awe before judgment ; or whether 
 he lays his sword and sceptre at the foot of the 
 throne in offer of suit and service, or in acknowledg- 
 ment that the kingdom and the victory are alike from 
 God. The Psalter is the poetay of spiritual life ; its 
 beauty, power, and freshness never fail, for it does 
 not consist of abstract impersonal effusions, or of 
 subjective theological dogmas. Difference of age and 
 country at once fades away. Therefore the Psalms 
 have always been cherished companions, not simply 
 because they are a body of divine truth, bearing on 
 man's highest interests, but because they come home 
 to human experiences, and tenderly touch them on so 
 many points ; because they are not only the true 
 elements of public worship, but may also be murmured 
 in earnest soliloquy as the spirit of confidence and 
 joyousness lifts itself to God.' 
 
192 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 METEICAL VEESIONS OF THE PSALMS. 
 
 IT is comparatively late, not indeed until about the 
 period of the Eeformation, that metrical versions of 
 the Psalms appear. There is abundant evidence that 
 psalms were used in the primitive Church, not only 
 for private edification, but for common worship. Our 
 Lord gave the example at the institution of the 
 communion, Matt. xxvi. 30, when it is said that, at 
 the close, he and his disciples sung an hymn. It 
 was, no doubt, a psalm, part of cxv.-cxviii., with which 
 the Jews were accustomed to terminate the celebra- 
 tion of the Passover. Other sacred songs, besides the 
 Psalms, were employed by the primitive Church, of 
 which some believe they find traces in Acts iv. 24, 
 Eph. v. 14, 1 Tim. iii. 16, the Christian songs in the 
 book of Eevelation, and elsewhere. The hymns 
 which, as Pliny tells us, in the beginning of the 
 second century, the Christians met together to sing 
 to Christ as to a God, must have been of this character ; 
 and they remain to us, both in Greek and Latin, from 
 an early period. But still the chief material for 
 praise was found in the Psalter. There were different 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 193 
 
 ways of employing it, reading, chanting, singing entire, 
 or by responses, and in these the whole community 
 of the faithful took part. As time went on, however, 
 and as the New Testament view of the priesthood of 
 all Christians was lost, the priests and officials shut 
 the people out from active participation in the 
 worship ; and so it continued for dark centuries. 
 The Psalms were still the spiritual nourishment of 
 some in private, for the Council of Toulouse in 1229, 
 which interdicted the Bible to the laity, left them 
 the use of the Psalter ; but their public share in it 
 was for a long season withdrawn. When light grew, 
 song grew with it; and as the sun is welcomed by 
 the birds before his rays are above the horizon, so 
 the faint fore-glimmerings of the Eeformation were 
 heralded by psalms and hymns among the people. 
 The name Lollards was given to the witnesses for 
 evangelical truth in the Low Countries, and in England 
 and Scotland, from their habit of singing, and is 
 connected with our word lull to sing softly ; they 
 were the sweet singers. Song has been a feature of 
 every new up-springing of truth, or marked deliverance 
 at the hand of God. It showed itself at the birth 
 of Christianity, the return from Babylon, the triumphs 
 of the reign of David, the deliverance from Egyptian 
 bondage, and it is repeated in every revival: 'She 
 shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as 
 in the day when she came up out of the land of 
 Egypt/ Hos. ii. 15. We know little of what these 
 
i 9 4 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 Lollards sang, for most of the information we have 
 about them conies from their enemies ; but as we 
 approach the Eeformation, we ha^e more precise 
 knowledge of the sacred songs of those separated 
 from the Eomish Church. Two things marked them : 
 they were in the mother tongue, and they took the 
 form known as rhyme. The necessity for both of 
 these had been slowly growing up. The only literary 
 language of the West, for a long period, had been 
 the Latin, and, as the mass of the people were ignorant 
 of it, they were shut out from sources of knowledge ; 
 but now national languages had grown up fit to carry 
 all the stores of thought, and the people demanded 
 entrance to spiritual provision in their mother tongue. 
 And as the Bible now spoke to them in their own 
 language, it behoved them to praise God in like 
 manner. But songs in the mother tongue implied a 
 different poetical measure from that which prevailed 
 in the classic poetry of Greece and Eome. The old 
 Latin hymn- writers began to feel very early that the 
 Christian spirit needed something more free and 
 natural than the fettered style of the Eoman lyrists, 
 and they gradually found their way to a simpler 
 rhythm, which many believe to be the original form 
 poetry takes among all nations. However this may 
 be, when the people claimed their share in the worship 
 of the Church, it was in song through the mother 
 tongue, and song fashioned according to what we call 
 ihyme. This at least as a rule ; and one benefit of 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 195 
 
 it is, that while the chant too frequently falls to 
 trained specialists, the rhythmic song, in the form of 
 psalm or hymn, remains oftener the possession of the 
 entire body of the people, and will, we hope, always 
 be claimed by them. 
 
 Coming now to the worship of praise in the 
 Churches of the Keformation, it may be remarked 
 that hymns belonged more to those of the Lutheran 
 order, and psalms to those of the Keformed or 
 Calvinistic. There was a reason for this. The 
 movement of Luther had its source in the great 
 doctrine of justification by faith, while that of Calvin 
 took for its basis the word of God. It is true that 
 these are not opposed ; on the contrary, they illustrate 
 and defend one another. Justification by faith, that 
 is, Christ truly interpreted to the conscience, gives 
 unity and consistency to the Bible ; while, on the 
 other hand, the Bible, rightly understood, finds its 
 centre in Christ, and thus these views are in harmony. 
 Nevertheless, beginning at different points, the two 
 movements have in some things taken different shapes. . 
 The Lutheran Church is satisfied with adherence to the 
 leading truth and spirit of the Bible, and is less careful 
 about the form. Luther's grandest hymns started from 
 particular psalms as their keynote, Xliri feste Burg 
 from Ps. xlvi., Aus tiefer Noth from Ps. cxxx. ; 
 but they are not versions, they are adaptations, 
 transfigured by the light of the New Testament and 
 the view of Christ. Versions of the Psalms were 
 
196 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 made in the German language, that of Lobwasser 
 shortly after the time of Luther ; but they did not 
 take deep or general root, and have survived to our 
 day only in a few localities. The religious poets of 
 Germany adopted the hymn as the medium of praise, 
 and they have given to their language a wealth of 
 song, so evangelical in its savour, so warm and edify- 
 ing and spiritual, that the use of it in the churches 
 has done much to save the people from the chill 
 unto death of rationalism. Yet it is a question 
 whether the almost total exclusion of the Psalms from 
 public worship has not contributed to the depreciation 
 of the Old Testament, and to the severance of the 
 Bible into two diverging, or almost conflicting parts ; 
 and to the fact that while Germany is so distinguished 
 for its professional expositors of the Bible, the exposi- 
 tion of the Bible, as a whole, occupies so small a place 
 in public ministerial teaching. Among the Eeformed 
 Churches, on the other hand, the use of hymns 
 entered at a period comparatively late, in the end 
 of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century. At that time a new tide of emotion 
 passed through all the German Churches under the 
 influence of Pietism and the labours of the Moravian 
 Brethren ; and the hymns of the period have a 
 sweetness, sometimes a sentimental lusciousness, by 
 which they can be distinguished from those of the 
 Keformation. They are specially hymns of feeling 
 and self-inspection, more than of doctrine, and dwell 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 197 
 
 on the person of Christ rather than on his work. 
 They found their way into England in the early part 
 of last century through the Wesleys, whose own 
 hymns and those of Watts have ever since taken so 
 large a place in the worship of English-speaking 
 Churches. They had great share in the remarkable 
 revival movements of the time, and supplied a felt 
 want in a season of cold formality and dead orthodoxy 
 which was passing over into barren negation. Think 
 of the fervid emotion of Watts' When I survey the 
 wondrous cross ; of Charles Wesley's Jesus, lover of my 
 soul ! of Toplady's Sock of Ages deft for me, and then 
 think of the affected literalism and cold culture of 
 the old Presbyterians, languidly reposing on their 
 private endowments, and it is easy to see how the 
 one became a renewing and life-giving power, while 
 the other crept forward in decay, almost to extinction. 
 And yet we cannot help regretting that the psalm was 
 so largely, almost entirely among Nonconformists at 
 least, supplanted by the hymn; for the psalm was 
 not at fault. It has proved itself in many a land 
 and in many a time the friend of true revival, and 
 has carried the souls of the singers in peace and in 
 struggle, and in struggle more than in peace, to an 
 enthusiasm unequalled in the history of the world. 
 It corrects the hymn on the side in which it some- 
 times errs, and when sentiment becomes morbid and 
 fancy superficial, it leads the soul into the depths of 
 its own nature, and gives it for its strength the very 
 
198 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 words of God. If the hymn awakens impressions 
 and aids revivals, the psalm conducts more directly 
 to the study of the word of God, without which 
 revivals are shallow and short-lived. The flame that 
 is caught from a hynui is most secure when its heart 
 rests on the white heat which gathers round a psalm. 
 Believing then that both have their place in Christian 
 worship, we return to speak of some of the metrical 
 versions of the Psalms in the Eeformed Churches. 
 
 The earliest of all the versions of the Psalms in 
 the tongue of the people was the celebrated one of 
 Clement Marot into French. Marot's poetry was 
 looked on as the mirror and model of the time. He 
 held a distinguished place at the Court of Francis I., 
 and was the fashionable hero with the wits and fine 
 ladies who cultivated literary repute. He was in this 
 way protected from the charge of heresy, for he 
 inclined to the Eeformation. But the Sorbonne became 
 so vehement that he had to seek refuge, now in Geneva 
 with Calvin, and again with the Duchess Ken4 in 
 Ferrara, at which place he died in 1544. It is a 
 curious picture of the divided state of the time, that 
 some of his translations were made at the request of 
 the Emperor Charles V., others at that of Calvin. 
 Though the version is commonly known as Marot's, 
 he translated only fifty psalms ; two were by Calvin, 
 and the rest by Theodore Beza, who to his many gifts 
 added that of a poetic faculty. The melodies to which 
 the psalms were first sung were the simple airs of the 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 199 
 
 popular songs, and a number of these were retained, 
 adapted, and harmonized by Goudimel when he set 
 the Psalms to music. Goudimel was the most noted 
 musical composer of the period, an ardent Protestant, 
 and one of the numberless victims of St. Bartholomew. 
 The Church of Eome owed him something better, for 
 he was the master of Palestrina, whose music is one 
 of the attractions on high occasions in St. Peter's. 
 The excellence of the translations, though now some- 
 what antiquated, the variety of the rhythm and the 
 beauty of the melodies, gave to the version of Marot 
 and Beza a wonderful popularity. In all the French- 
 speaking countries it was the book of song, in the 
 castle as well as the cottage, for recreation or at work, 
 for the lady in the hall, the weaver at his loom, the 
 peasant at the plough. The wars of religion had not 
 yet divided the people as they afterwards did, and the 
 general use of this version of the Psalms gave the 
 Eeforrnation that strong hold of France which could 
 be broken only by the bitter persecution of 200 years. 
 Later, when to sing psalms was to be a Protestant, 
 they became more dear by their prohibition. They 
 were so familiar to the memory, so close to the heart, 
 that they found a place in every step of life, the first 
 lesson taught to children, the last words whispered to, 
 or uttered by, the dying man. They were sung by 
 the Huguenots at the peril of life in the secrecy of 
 their homes and the solitude of the woods, rose boldly 
 in the onset of battle, cheered them at the galley- 
 
200 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 slave's toil, soothed them on the rack, mounted with 
 them to the scaffold, and, when the breeze was heard 
 among the rums of their churches, it snaped itself into 
 melodies of their psalms. For the sake of the rhythm 
 and airs, translations of them were made into almost 
 all the languages of Europe, and some of the East ; and 
 they have an interest for us, in that they exercised an 
 influence on the first Scottish Psalter of 1564. The 
 variety of measure in it was prompted by the French 
 one, and the old 124th in our present version has the 
 same rhythm and air as Marot's, or rather Beza's ; and 
 indeed they were both composed in Geneva about the 
 same time. Away in the mountainous Canton of 
 Grisons, at the head-waters of the Inn, and in the 
 highest inhabited land in Europe, the psalms of Marot's 
 version may yet be heard to some of the melodies we 
 know in Scotland. After being largely excluded from 
 the French Hymn-book, they are now finding their 
 way back, and in the edition published at the ter- 
 centenary of the organization of the French Protestant 
 Church, there are seventy psalms or portions of psalms 
 with the original melodies included in the collection 
 of sacred songs. It is pleasant to find the editors 
 saying, ' A few changes made here and there enable us 
 to restore the songs of the Psalmist, the want of which 
 has been so much regretted. The grave solemn 
 measures, and the strong sustained harmonies, give to 
 this part of our work a peculiar value, which will 
 soon be recognised by experience, and which will 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 201 
 
 commend to the taste and usage of the Church the 
 majestic character of those old melodies bequeathed to 
 us by the piety of our fathers, and admired wherever 
 they are known/ 
 
 In England and Scotland, before the definite 
 triumph of the Eeformation, there were metrical 
 versions of a number of the psalms, and, though 
 persecuted as keenly as their authors, they contributed 
 greatly to the spread of the revival. Those in England 
 were by Miles Coverdale, who was associated with 
 Tyndale in the first complete translation of the Bible 
 into English, published 1535, the prose version of 
 which is still retained for the psalms in the English 
 Prayer-Book. Those in Scotland were by three brothers 
 named Wedderburn in Dundee, and were known as 
 the Dundee Psalms. John Knox quotes one of them 
 as being sung by George Wishart and his friends at 
 Ormiston shortly before his death. How many were 
 translated we cannot certainly tell, and in Scotland 
 they were accompanied by versions of German hymns, 
 with which the Wedderburns had become acquainted 
 when driven from their native country by persecution. 
 At that time the Scottish Eeformers were more in 
 contact with Germany than with France. Patrick 
 Hamilton studied at Wittenberg under Luther and 
 Melancthon, and also at Marburg, then in great renown, 
 and frequented by students from all parts of Europe. 
 It was Knox and the later Eeformers who brought us 
 into contact with France and Geneva, and here we 
 
202 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 have to look for the first complete, or nearly complete, 
 English version of the Psalms. It is well known, at 
 least by name, that of Sternhold anA Hopkins. We 
 may trace its history first in connection with England. 
 Thomas Sternhold was groom of the robes to Henry 
 VIII. and Edward VI., and John Hopkins was a 
 minister in Suffolk ; but they were authors only of a 
 portion of the versions, the rest being additions from 
 time to time by various others. It was issued in 
 parts, first in London, and then enlarged in Geneva in 
 1556, to which city its publication was transferred on 
 account of the English-speaking refugees who took 
 shelter there from the persecution of Mary. In 1563 
 it was completed, and under Elizabeth adopted as the 
 metrical version to be used by the Church of England. 
 It had a wide and strong hold of the people, for there 
 were at least 309 distinct editions of it until 1698, 
 when it gave way to the version of Brady and Tate. 
 Its renderings of psalms are very unequal, some of 
 them poor and disjointed, others possessing a dignity 
 which has been seldom equalled. The version which 
 took its place is certainly free from its rudeness, and 
 smooth in syllables and metre, but with a frequent 
 weakness and wordy inflation which must have made 
 many a one even in that degenerate age say, ' The old 
 is better.' Brady and Tate has not maintained its 
 position, but has given way to hymns in most of the 
 Episcopal churches. One of the merits, however, of 
 the Book of Common Prayer is that it provides for 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 203 
 
 the people becoming acquainted with the Psalms 
 through the prominent part it assigns them in its 
 regular service. Among Nonconformists in England 
 the version of Sternhold and Hopkins continued in 
 use till the time of Watts. He made two separate 
 endeavours to advance the service of praise. The one 
 was by a version of the Psalms accommodated to New 
 Testament thought and language, a graft of the Apostle 
 Paul on David, which is not very successful, as it 
 becomes a kind of metrical commentary with the old 
 and new in perplexing conjunction, and Britain and 
 Zion claiming attention by turns. Some of the render- 
 ings, however, have deservedly taken a permanent 
 place in Christian psalmody, as Ps. xix., L.M., ' The 
 heavens declare thy glory, Lord ; ' xc., ' Our God, 
 our help in ages past ; ' cxlvi., ' I'll praise my Maker 
 with my breath/ and others. Watts rose much higher 
 when he took another method. He was the first to 
 open that stream of sacred song which was swelled by 
 the Wesleys, Cowper, and many more, and which has 
 refreshed and strengthened Christian feeling among all 
 branches of the Church. It is only to be regretted 
 that some distinct place has not been preserved for 
 the Psalms, such as they had in the early Eeformed 
 Churches. 
 
 Having glanced at England, we come to the versions 
 used in Scotland. The psalms and godly songs of the 
 Wedderburns were limited in number, and had no 
 more than a private circulation. The first version 
 
204 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 employed in the churches after the Reformation was 
 mainly that of Sternhold and Hopkins. Naturally it 
 came with John Knox from Geneva, but it was not 
 entirely the same as that adopted in England. Forty- 
 one psalms had different renderings by various authors, 
 William Whittingham, a brother-in-law of Calvin, and 
 minister of the English refugees in Geneva ; Robert 
 Pont, minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh ; William 
 Keith, a native of the north of Scotland ; and John 
 Craig, colleague to Knox in St. Giles'. Some of these 
 are to be found in our present Scottish version, and 
 have a marked excellence. The 100th, L.M., is by 
 Keith; the 124th, P.M., by Whittingham ; the 136th, 
 p.M. ; 143rd, P.M. ; 145th, L.M., by Craig, to whom also 
 we owe a number of expressions in 102nd, L.M. Those 
 by Craig have special merit, and it will be remarked 
 that the whole of the above are departures from the 
 common measure. This is a feature of the version as 
 distinguished from the present one. It has a greater 
 variety of rhythm with tunes prescribed for each 
 psalm, and more freedom in the rendering. The 
 complete version was first printed at Edinburgh in 
 1564, by order of the General Assembly, and con- 
 tinued in use till 1650. It was in great favour among 
 the people, and sang schules were general for teaching 
 them to sing it. The march of the four thousand men 
 up the High Street of Edinburgh, when they brought 
 back their banished minister, and made the air resound 
 to the volumed unison of the old 124th, is testimony 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 205 
 
 to their proficiency. It was the psalm-book of Knox, 
 Welsh, Melville, and the men who carried on the 
 struggle with James VI. and Charles I. It cheered 
 the prisoners in the dungeons of Blackness, sailed with 
 them in their ships to France, consoled their exile, and 
 sent its notes from Duns Law across the Merse to 
 challenge the song of the Cavaliers ; as Baillie delights 
 to tell, ' Had ye lent your ear in the morning, or 
 especially at even, and heard in the tents the sound 
 of some singing psalms, some praying, and some 
 reading Scripture, ye would have been refreshed/ No 
 doubt it cost Eutherford and Henderson a pang to 
 part with it, but changes in the language had made 
 many things obsolete, the tide of reform in matters 
 civil and religious was running strong, and the idea of 
 one Church in England and Scotland made multitudes 
 in both countries anxious to have some common forms 
 in worship as a bond. From this sprang the version 
 of the Psalms now in use in Scotland. 
 
 The Westminster Assembly, among its other labours, 
 addressed itself in 1643 to the selection of a 
 version that might take the place of the existing ones. 
 After comparison with others, it adopted that of 
 Francis Eous, and appointed a committee to confer 
 with him on changes and emendations. Kous, a 
 native of Cornwall, was a lay member of the Assembly 
 as well as of Parliament, and a man distinguished for 
 his learning and judgment. He died in 1658, Provost 
 of Eaton College in Oxford. When the divisions in 
 
206 THE PSALMS IN HISTORY 
 
 England deferred the adoption of this Psalter, the 
 General Assembly in Scotland took up the question 
 for itself. It chose the version of } Eous for a basis, 
 and adhered to it as a whole. It modified it, however, 
 in many things, and substituted for those of Eous a 
 number of translations drawn from the old Scottish 
 Psalter and other sources. Committees of superintend- 
 ence were engaged for three consecutive years, having 
 among their members, Eobert Douglas, James Guthrie, 
 Patrick Gillespie, Samuel Eutherford, John Livingstone, 
 and Zachary Boyd. At length, after many remits and 
 much pious care, the new psalm-book was ready in 
 1650, and there is mention that, in the midsummer 
 of that year, it was used for the first time in Glasgow 
 and in the town of Largo. The change from the old 
 version to the new was very great, and few compar- 
 ing them will refuse to admit that there has been 
 decided improvement. In some things, however, there 
 was loss. The old had a larger variety of metres, 
 and special tunes adapted and harmonized to each 
 psalm. Music appears to have declined from the 
 period of the first Eeformation. Some of the old 
 tunes have been transferred to the present version, and 
 are known, or should be, in our churches Dundee, 
 Martyrs, Old 100, Old 124th, St. David's, Elgin, 
 Montrose. The new version has now become old, 
 having reached an age three times greater than that of 
 its predecessor. It has returned into England, crossed 
 the sea to Ireland, America, and all the British colonies. 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 207 
 
 and has drawn to it the love of exiles, and the affection 
 of a Presbyterianism sometimes more tenacious of its 
 1 grave sweet melodies ' than has been the land of its 
 birth. No version has had so long an existence, if we 
 except that of Marot, and certainly none has made 
 a home for itself in so many lands. If it has been 
 loved, it has been much criticized condemned 
 as uncouth and Galilean in speech, faulty in measure 
 and rhyme, and affording little scope for musical variety 
 from its monotonous versification. It is easy to seem 
 to substantiate this through some quotations passed 
 from hand to hand by people who do not know it, or 
 who judge by the rule that smoothness is better than 
 strength, and correct rhyme superior to scriptural 
 fidelity. At the same time it would be foolish to 
 deny that it has not a few imperfections. The want 
 of variety in its measures is a defect ; its rhymes, made 
 in an age of vigorous manhood, fighting for great 
 issues, rebel often against modern sweetness ; and the 
 handling of its syllables, to bring them under musical 
 law, requires sometimes patient and loving skill. 
 But when all this is admitted, we can claim that no 
 version has ever been made which adheres so closely 
 to the Scripture. It proceeds on the principle of 
 giving every thought in the original, and nothing more ; 
 and in this it has succeeded to an extent which is 
 marvellous, and which can be realized only by one who 
 has tested it through careful comparison. It meets 
 with some stones of stumbling, and suffers some 
 
208 THE PSALMS IN HISTOR Y 
 
 dislocation of words, by adhering to the line laid 
 down ; but there is abundant compensation in the life 
 and energy, the picturesqueness and colour, which it 
 preserves by close contact with the old Hebrew soil. 
 The thought stands out clear, distinct, forceful, not 
 wrapped up in wordy paraphrases where David himself 
 would have had difficulty in recognising his meaning, 
 or .liquefied into weak sentimentalisms from which his 
 manly nature, to take no higher view, would have 
 turned away ashamed. This too may be said, that 
 those portions which the heart feels it needs in its 
 sorrowful hours, over which it leans and pours in its 
 deep musings, or from the summits of which it 
 mounts as on eagle's wings in its moments of joy, 
 have a tenderness, a quaint beauty, a majesty in their 
 form peculiar to that age of the English language in 
 which they were framed. Witness the 6th, L.M., the 
 23rd, 32nd, 46th, 63rd, 67th, 72nd, 77th, 90th, 93rd, 
 102nd, L.M., 103rd, we stop because we feel we have 
 omitted so many ; but the souls of those who seek 
 refreshment and comfort know how to find them, as the 
 feet of the hart carry it to the water-brooks. What 
 could be finer, we do not say in the thought, but 
 in the expression, than the description of God's 
 loving-kindness ? 
 
 ' For but a moment lasts his wrath, 
 
 Life in his favour lies : 
 Weeping may for a night endure, 
 At morn doth joy arise.' 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 209 
 
 Or the quiet repose of the soul in his presence ? 
 
 1 Since better is thy love than life, 
 My lips thee praise shall give. 
 I in thy name will lift my hands, 
 And bless thee while I live. 
 
 When I do thee upon my bed 
 
 Remember with delight, 
 And when on thee I meditate 
 
 In watches of the night.' 
 
 Or again, that longing after God where the desire 
 seems to pant in every word through broken cries ? 
 
 ' My hands to thee I stretch ; my soul 
 
 Thirsts as dry land for thee. 
 Haste, Lord, to hear, my spirit fails : 
 Hide not thy face from me.' 
 
 And then the view, which recurs so often, that he 
 who counts the stars counts the pulses of the heart, 
 and that since the mightiest is the most merciful, all 
 shall go well with those who trust in him ! 
 
 ' Those that are broken in their heart 
 
 And grieved in their minds 
 He healeth, and their painful wounds 
 He tenderly up-binds. 
 
 He counts the number of the stars ; 
 
 He names them every one. 
 Great is our Lord, and of great power ; 
 
 His wisdom search can none.' 
 
 
2 1 o THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y 
 
 While pointing out its defects, the views of very 
 opposite critics have admitted its merits. Dr. James 
 Beattie, the author of The Minstrel, speaks of it, 
 'notwithstanding many imperfections, as- being the 
 best with numbers often harsh and incorrect, but 
 having a manly severe simplicity, without any affected 
 refinement/ Dr. Chalmers thinks it has ' a charm 
 peculiar to itself.' Dr. Robert Lee, who devoted 
 himself to the improvement of Church worship on 
 other lines, describes it as ' sometimes rugged, occasion- 
 ally sinking to doggerel, but upon the whole faithful, 
 vigorous, and good equal if not superior to any 
 other ; while it almost never fails to render well 
 those psalms which in themselves are of the highest 
 character as compositions, and best adapted for the 
 service of song in the Church of the New Testament/ 
 Sir Walter Scott, who had no prejudices in its favour, 
 wrote to Principal Baird, the convener of the Psalmody 
 Committee, hoping that, ' whatever change might be 
 made, it would be with a lenient hand. Its expression,' 
 he says, ' though homely, is plain, forcible, and intelli- 
 gible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty 
 which would be ill exchanged for mere elegance.' 
 No doubt he was attracted by the antique chant-like 
 style of rendering in which such historical psalms as 
 the 77th, 78th, 80th, 89th, 105th, 106th, and others 
 tell the story of the chosen people, as if a wailing 
 breeze passed through them from the far-off times and 
 grey memorial stones of his native land, and he was 
 
AND BIOGRAPHY. 211 
 
 unwilling that the moss and lichens which had gathered 
 in the lettering of the record should be rudely torn 
 away. But he was moved also by deeper tones. In 
 his dying hours, when asked, ' What book they should 
 read to him ? ' and he replied, ' Can you ask ? There 
 is but one/ they could hear in his wandering words, 
 murmured snatches of the old version of the Psalrns 
 mingled with the cadences of the Dies Tree. Episco- 
 palian as he was, he would have walked all the way 
 with that Scotsman in England who was accustomed 
 to travel twenty miles that he might get ' a guid sing 
 at the auld Psalms ; ' and he would have been found in 
 the company of the exiles in the Far West who were 
 without regular ordinances, and convened from a wide 
 circuit to a little church they had reared, where they 
 could sing the Psalms of David as they had been 
 accustomed, and read the Bible. There must be what 
 Dr. Chalmers calls ' a peculiar charm ' about a version 
 that has drawn to it an affection so deep, kept it so 
 long, and carried it so far over land and sea. While 
 we think that some of the criticisms given above do it 
 scant justice, we may admit a number of the imper- 
 fections pointed out. But with them all, and more, 
 we should wonder at the taste of the man who would 
 choose the flat watery smoothness of Brady and Tate 
 before the unpolished power and quaint beauty which 
 break so often from the old Scottish version. It is 
 very much as if one were to prefer a lawn-pond, with 
 its environments of trim bushes and orderly bust- 
 
2 1 2 THE PSALMS IN H1STOR Y. 
 
 work, to the Fall of Foyers. We shall close our 
 remarks on it with the expression of two wishes. 
 The one is that an Anthology a collection of its 
 choice portions should be prepared for our Scottish 
 youth, that they may have in memory a standard of 
 sacred song to keep them safe from the false and 
 flimsy ; and the other is, that the Presbyterian Church 
 should take the whole old Psalter into its hand, 
 reverently and kindly, and touching it here and there, 
 give us something to sing, full of the past, and yet 
 fitted for the present something we might hope 
 which could be joined in, as truly Catholic, by sister 
 Churches of other names, and which might form a bond 
 of union more free and wide than entered into the 
 thought of the Westminster Assembly. A worthier 
 work could not well be undertaken. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arctic Zone, . . . . . .86 
 
 Barbary, Exiles on Coast of, . . . .28 
 
 Baxter, Richard, . ~ . . . L ' . 82 
 
 Bedell, Bishop, . . , .-:. -, . . .21,171 
 
 Brady and Tate, . . .. .. : . . 202 
 
 British Reformation 
 
 Armada, Spanish, . ... . . 105 
 
 Bilneg, Thomas, . . . . \ 170 
 
 Bruce, Rev. Robert, . .' , ' . . 105 
 
 Communions, * V. . . ' ' . . 172 
 
 Coverdale, Miles, . ... . .201 
 
 Craig, John, . % . ... . 128,172,204 
 
 Danger, Hours of, . . . . 155 
 
 Durie, John, . . . .... 151 
 
 Fast-Days, . . . V . 172 
 
 Forret, Thomas, . 85 
 
 Hooper, Bishop, . . ... . . 113 
 
 Hunter, William, . . . : . . 110 
 
 Keith, William, . . , , '. . 204 
 
 Knox, John, . . . . . 55,133,184 
 
 Lambert, John, . . . . . . . 20 
 
 Lantern of Light, The, . . . , . . 148 
 
 London Corporation, . . . . . . 94 
 
 Melville, James, . , . . 22, 75, 155 
 
 Newcastle Exiles, m . . . . .108 
 
 Palmer, Julian, . . . . . . 54 
 
 Pont, Robert, . . ^ . . . . 204 
 
 Rollock, Robert, . * . . . . 26, 70 
 
2i 4 INDEX. 
 
 British Reformation con tinned. PAGE 
 
 Sibbs, . . . . . . . 180 
 
 Sternhold and Hopkins, . . . 202, 204 
 
 Usher, Archbishop, . . j . . 89 
 
 Wedderburn, . . . . . ' . 201, 203 
 
 Welsh, John, . . . 27, 28, 42 
 
 Whittingham, William, * . . .204 
 
 Wishart, George, . . . . . 82, 133 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, . . . . . . 53 
 
 Burial Song, . . . . . . .116 
 
 Carrickfergus, Presbytery constituted in, . . . 87 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, .... 74, 135, 145, 210 
 
 Communion Song, . . . . . 137 
 
 Covenant 
 
 Alison, Isabel, . . . . . . ' 43 
 
 Baillie, Robert, of Jerviswoode, . . . . 67 
 
 Blair, Robert, . . . . . .97 
 
 Cameron, Richard, . . . 80 
 Cameronian Regiment, ..... 106 
 
 Cargill, Donald, ... .140 
 
 Carstares, Principal, Father of, . . . .47 
 
 Clyde, John, . . ... . .65 
 
 Douglas, Robert, . . . . .91 
 
 Drumclog, Battle of, . . . , .104 
 
 Exiles on Coast of Barbary, .... 28 
 
 Gallowlee, . . . . .147 
 
 Harvey, Marion, . .43 
 
 Henderson, Alexander, ... .163 
 
 Home, David, of Wedderburn, . .172 
 
 Hume, Alexander, . . 32 
 
 Hume, Sir Patrick, . .182 
 
 Lachlan, Margaret, . . . . . 49 
 
 M'Kail, Hugh, .... .30, 56 
 
 M 'Michael, Daniel, ... .72 
 
 Peden, Alexander, . 59, 81 
 
 Renwick, James, . 130 
 
 Rous, Francis, . . - 205 
 
 Rullion Green, Battle of, 102 
 
 Shiels, Alexander, . 105 
 
 Sword, Andrew, ..... 65 
 
INDEX. 215 
 
 Covenant continued. PAGE 
 
 Trouble, Song in, ..... 80 
 
 Veitch, Mrs., ...... 100 
 
 Westminster Assembly, . . . . . 205 
 
 Wilson, Margaret, . . . . . 49 
 
 Delitzsch, . . ... . . 189 
 
 Disruption, . . . . . , .74, 135 
 
 Eadie, Dr. John, . . ;.<.' ' . "* * 190 
 
 Early Christian Church 
 
 Ambrose, . *. '- . v Y . 73,172,177 
 
 Athanasius, ... * . . . . 177 
 
 Augustine, . . . . 22, 58, 73, 172, 178 
 
 Babylas of Antioch, ... . 125, 136 
 
 Burial Song, . . . . . . 136 
 
 Catacombs, . . . . . . 72 
 
 Columba, . . . . 63, 77, 109 
 
 Communion, . . '. . . . 61, 72 
 
 Cuthbert, ...... 89 
 
 Cyril, 61 
 
 Evening Hymn of Apostolic Constitutions, . . 135 
 
 Evening Song, . . . . . . 170 
 
 Jerome, . . . . . . 61 
 
 Julian, Christians under, . . . 124, 125 
 
 Morning Song, . . . . . . 92 
 
 Origen, . . . . . .83, 93, 97 
 
 Pambo, ....... 69 
 
 Publia, -' , . 136 
 
 Te Deum, . . . | . . . 171 
 
 Theodosius, Emperor, . . . . .146 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, . . . .. . 147, 162 
 
 Erskine, Ebenezer, . . . . . . 91, 143 
 
 Evensong, . . . . . 133 
 
 French Protestant Church, ..... 155 
 
 French, Swiss, and Italian Reformations 
 
 Arnaud, Henri, . . . . . .157 
 
 Berthelier, Philibert, . . . . . . 142 
 
 Beza, Theodore, . . * .92, 120, 154, 198 
 
 Calvin, John, .... 26, 69, 179, 198 
 
 Casaubon, - . .. . . . . 122 
 
 Escalade, . ... 153 
 
2i6 INDEX. 
 
 French, Swiss, and Italian Reformations continued. PAGE 
 Goudimel, ...... 199 
 
 Marot, Clement, . . . . 138, 198 
 
 Oecolampadius, . . . "... . . 85 
 
 Savonarola, . . , . 1 :. . 96 
 
 Whittingham, William, . . , ' . 204 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, . . . .. . . . 71 
 
 Germanic and Bohemian Reformations- 
 Albert of Prussia, . . , . . . 130 
 Augsburg Confession, . . , .147 
 Bohemian Martyrs, . . . . . . 75 
 
 Christian III. of Denmark, . . . . 130 
 
 Ernest the Pious of Saxe-Gotha, . . . 126 
 
 Fabricius, Dr., . . . . . ,.28 
 
 Frederic the Wise, . . . . ..161 
 
 Gerhardt, Paul, . . . , .. . ? 66 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus, . . . ,28, 79, 130 
 
 Herwin, John, . . . . * . 53 
 
 Huss, John, .. .. .. ... . 54, 87 
 
 Jerome of Prague, . . . . . 54 
 
 Luther, Martin, . " . 55, 58, 78, 80, 83, 148, 160, 178 
 
 Melancthon, . . . . .79, 126, 178 
 
 Schuch, Wolfgang, . .. . . .150 
 
 Schultis, John, . . . . . .72 
 
 Waldis, Burkard, . . . ... 137 
 
 Goodwin, Dr. Thomas, . . . . ... 112 
 
 Greely Expedition, . . . . . . 164 
 
 Halyburton, Thomas, . . . .. . .110 
 
 Hengstenberg, . . . . . . ,187 
 
 Henry, Matthew, 156, 186 
 
 Henry, Philip, . . . . . 138, 142, 150, 156 
 
 Hooker, ... ^180 
 
 Home, Bishop, . . . , . .... 181 
 
 Huguenot and Persecution Period 
 
 Aymon de la Voye, . . . , 135 
 
 Battle Songs, . . . -. t .95, 139 
 
 Benezet, Francis, . . . . > 85 
 
 Charenton, Church of, . . . V . . 121 
 
 Coligny, . . . . . . .- - 99 
 
 Elizabeth Charlotte, .... , . 23 
 
INDEX. 21 7 
 
 Huguenot and Persecution Period continued. PAGJB 
 
 Grenier, Three Brothers, .... 34 
 
 Hiding from Dragonnades, . . . - . 155 
 
 Lausanne, Scholars of, . . . . . 27 
 
 March to Death, . . . . . 113 
 
 Meaux, Protestants of, . > . . . 106 
 
 Metz, Protestants of, . . . . . 106 
 
 Milet, Pierre, . . . .- . ;> 85 
 
 Morny, Plessis de, . * . ' . . . 98 
 
 Pineton of Chambrun, . " : . - ' . . 51 
 
 Rabac, Jean, . . . . ... 107 
 
 Refugees, . . . . \ ' '. 183 
 
 Reply to a Courtier, . . . ' . . 116 
 
 Rochette, Francis, '. . . . 34, 136 
 
 Sentinels, . . . -. ... . 21 
 
 Teissier, Francis, . . . '. . 54 
 
 Trouble, Song in, . . . . ; ' 80 
 
 Irish Presbyterian Church, . . .' . . * 87 
 
 Irving, Edward, . . . ... . 44, 77 
 
 James, John Angell, . . . . r . . ' 132 
 
 Jones, Dr., . . . . . . . 70 
 
 Lee, Dr. Robert, . . v .' ' -. . 210 
 
 Lelievre, ^ . ' . 184 
 
 Linz, Protestants of, . . . . . 79 
 
 M'Cheyne, Robert, ; ., . .' ' '^.. . 154 
 
 Matterhorn, . * . . . ,'. : . 119 
 Medieval 
 
 Dies Irae, . . * * . : . 82, 83 
 
 Notker, . . . / . . . 39 
 
 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, . t . .174 
 
 Templars, < . . . * . 124 
 
 Messianic Psalms, . . . . . 5 
 
 Miners Imprisoned, . . . . .37 
 
 Missions and Missionaries 
 
 Duff, Dr. Alexander, . . , . . 45, 134 
 
 Livingstone, David, . . . . . .67, 149 
 
 Martyn, Henry, . . . . . 144 
 
 Missionary Psalms, . . ... 94, 128 
 
 Moffat, Mrs., . . . . . . 149 
 
 Schwartz, Christian, . . . . .124 
 
2i8 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Miiller, Johannes von, . ... . . . 187 
 
 Owen, John, ...... 108, 161 
 
 Pauline Psalms, . . . . . 58, 83 
 
 Penitential Psalms, . . . . 1 .4 . . 23 
 
 Philadelphia, Church opened in, . - . . ' . 67 
 Philosophy and Science 
 
 Descartes, . . . . . .123 
 
 Hamilton, Sir "William, . . . , . 45 
 
 Humboldt, Alexander von, , . . - . 132 
 
 Leibnitz, . ... . . . 123 
 
 Maine de Biran, . . . . . . 146 
 
 Simpson, Sir James, . . . . 36 
 
 Poetry and Literature 
 
 Beattie, Dr. James, ..... 210 
 
 Browning, Mrs., . . . .; ... 129 
 
 Camoens, . . . . . ., 165 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, ... . . 112, 188 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs., . . . . . 25 
 
 Curci, Abbe*, . . . . . . 165 
 
 Dante, . . . . . . . 121 
 
 Graumann, John, . . . . .130 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, . . . .46, 80, 165 
 
 Herder, . . . . . . .185 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, . , . . .106 
 
 Lamartine, . . * . . . 185 
 
 Mills, Elizabeth, . . . . .144 
 
 Milton, John, . . . . 164, 179 
 
 Montgomery, Alexander, . . . . 17 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, . . . . . 145 
 
 Ruskin, John, . . . . . . 17, 144 
 
 Salmasius, . . . . . .179 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, . . . . . 210 
 
 Stephanus, Henry, . . . . 132 
 
 Villemain, . . . . . . 169 
 
 Walton, Izaak, . . . , . . ^, 59 
 
 Watts, Isaac, . . . . , .203 
 
 Wilson, John ... . . . . 29 
 
 AVordsworth, William. . . . 115 
 
 Rudd, Bishop, . . . . . . . 117 
 
INDEX. 219 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scougal, Henry, ...... 145 
 
 Seasons, . . . . . . . ' 52 
 
 Secession Church, . . . . .91, 143, 173 
 
 Statesmen and Secular History 
 
 Buxton, Fowell, . . . y . 157 
 
 Carstares, Principal, . . ."' . . 141 
 
 Catherine de Medici, . . \ . . 23 
 
 Catherine of Navarre, . . . ' . . 48 
 
 Charles II., Restoration of, V . . .38.91 
 
 Charles V., . . . . . . 138 
 
 Clovis, . . . . v . . . . 34 
 
 CromweU, Oliver, . . . . " . 137 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, .. . . . / . 113 
 
 Darnley, . . . , . . . . 88 
 
 Diana of Poitiers, . . . . .59 
 
 Elizabeth Charlotte, . . . . . 23 
 
 Francis I., . . . . . .147 
 
 Gladstone, W. K, . . . . .189 
 
 Grey, Lady Jane, . . . . , . 84 
 
 Hampden, John, . . . . .117 
 
 Henry Y. of England, . . . . .84 
 
 Henry of Navarre, ..... 39, 114 
 
 Indian Mutiny, . . . . . .107 
 
 Lawrence, Sir John, . . . . .51 
 
 Louisa of Prussia, ..... 67 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, . . 85 
 
 Sobieski, John, . . . . . 136 
 
 Sophia, Electress of Hanover, . . . .123 
 
 Theodosius, Emperor, . . . . . 146 
 
 Wallace, Sir William, . . . .183 
 
 Wilberforce, William, . . . .144 
 
 William III., . . . . . . 141 
 
 Tholuck, Dr., . . .. . . 154,185 
 
 Union of Two Branches of Secession, . . , . 173 
 
 Union of Secession and Relief, . . . . .92, 173 
 
 Usher, Archbishop, . . . . . .89 
 
 Watts, Isaac, . . . . . .203 
 
 Wesley, Charles, . . , . . . . 101 
 
 Wesley, John, . 162 
 
 Wilson of Perth, . . . .93 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
U.C.BERKELEY I IBRA