My moisture was turned into the drought of summer.
[I said] I would acknowledge my sin unto thee,
And mine iniquity did I not cover.

I said I will confess my transgressions unto Jehovah,
And thou didst take away the iniquity of my sin.

For this cause let every godly man pray to thee in a time when thou mayest be found;

[So] of a surety when the great waters overflow they shall not reach him.

Thou art my hiding place; thou wilt preserve me from

trouble;

Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

Be not as horse or mule, without understanding,

Whose trapping is with bit and bridle to hold them,

Or else they will not come nigh unto thee.

Many are the sorrows of the wicked,

But whoso trusteth in Jehovah, loving-kindness compasseth him about.

Rejoice in Jehovah, and exult, O ye righteous,

And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart!

A most beautiful and spiritually repentant psalm is the fifty-first. The sinner's heart has turned; it is again upright towards its God; and filled with repentance unto righteousness, a repentance that yearns for renewed purity, for God's holy spirit, for the joy of his salvation ; a repentance which offers a broken heart as the true sacrifice; a repentance of renewed zeal in the service of God, and a repentance so filled with the sense of God's holiness that all else passes from the psalmist's mind, and he can think of his sin as a sin only against God;—a true view, for sin is the creature's deviation from the pattern of the creator's ways, which he has commanded him to follow ; it is primarily offense against God, and only secondarily, through breach of God's laws, a crime against the human sufferer.'

'This is true, whether we consider the sin as a breach of the creator's law, or whether we consider such a sin as David's in its evil effect among

Right
Attitude.

The prophets of the Old Testament had set forth the height and depth of Jehovah's compassionate and forgiving love. It was for the psalmist with his The Soul's lyric human cry to tell man's need of God, man's sense of sin and yearning for forgiveness, and so express the attitude of that soul which may be forgiven and taken back into communion with God, the soul which can receive again God's faith and peace. This attitude of the soul to which forgiveness is possible is expressed in the one hundred and thirtieth psalm with its call from out the depths, its waiting for Jehovah, its looking for the Lord, and its sense of Jehovah as a God with whom there is loving-kindness and plenteous redemption, and forgiveness that he may be feared; for Jehovah's forgiveness is not unto sin, but unto fear of him, which is redemption.' And the next psalm tells the attitude of a soul newly forgiven, received back to God's peace, quieted with return of faith,— stilled and hushed as a weaned child upon its mother. More broadly, these psalms suggest a truth of human righteousness, such righteousness as sinful man can reach. All men sin, none can be perfect; man's righteousness lies in repentance and more heartfelt striving; it lies in the attitude of the soul towards God, in its reverence, humility, sense of unworthiness, sense of sin, repentance, loving acquiescence in God's chastening, in trust, in faith, -which is all Old Testament foreshadowing of Christian truth. Thus, and not because free from sin, was David a righteous man;' righteous not always in his word and act, but ever quickly turning to Jehovah, stung by sin, his heart contrite, broken, responsive to Jehovah's voice, loving its God; such righteousness is a very human, loving,

God's chosen people, causing their confidence in their king to fall, leading them to sin, and so thwarting God's purposes. Amidst such magnitude of resulting evil, the simple thought of Uriah slain before the walls of Rabbah may have passed from David's mind.

1 Compare lxix.

See ante, chap. xvii.

passionate phase of that most comprehensive of Israel's thoughts, fear of Jehovah. It is the keynote of the penitential psalms.'

In the thirty-second psalm it was said, blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven, to whom Jehovah reckoneth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Some psalms go beyond this and assert the psalmist's righteousness. Yet herein they complete the full circle of the soul's attitude towards God: the sense of nothingness before infinitude, the sense of sins committed and of sinfulness of nature entailing recurrent shortcoming before the divine pattern; then the yearning towards God the righteousness of power, and heartbroken repentance, and then a sense of pardon and relief rising from a sense of God's forgiveness coupled with sense of the soul's own honesty, nothing concealed from its God. But there are times when man, though knowing his sinful nature, nay, rather because he knows his frailties, has the feeling that he has done right, and in so far is righteous. On this righteous conduct, palpable reward in prosperity may follow or may not; nay, the man's enemies may seem triumphant and himself in the dust. In the one case, the man sees in his prosperity God's seal set on his conduct, and he praises God for faithfulness in rewarding him according to his righteousness; in the other, the soul, cast down, disturbed, yet conscious of its right endeavor, calls on God to judge it according to its integrity, calls on God for deliverance. Such is the note of the seventh psalm, while the eighteenth gives furthest expression to sense of the righteousness according to which Jehovah has rewarded the royal psalmist.' In other psalms the sense of integrity precedes a prayer for God to judge the

In the seventh psalm the psalmist cries; let his enemy tread him down if he has rewarded evil for good. Conversely in the sixty-sixth, v. 18, a psalm wherein prayer has been answered, he says, If I had seen iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not hear me ; but God hath heard.

psalmist, try him and purify him; a connection of ideas showing that the psalmist's sense of righteousness is but a sense of right endeavor.' Or finally the psalmist's sense of his righteousness consists rather in a sense of the divine intimacy, of Jehovah's nearness and knowledge of his heart which he has proved and visited, and wherein he has found no evil thoughts.' And in all these psalms, the assertion of the psalmist's righteousness or integrity is joined with such prayer and outpouring of the spirit to Jehovah as to preclude all suggestion of self-sufficiency, or of any righteousness having its source apart from God; the psalmist's righteousness consists in fulfilling Jehovah's laws. And, largely viewed, these psalms are all compatible with such sense of human sinfulness as this:

Enter not into judgment with thy servant;
For before thee no man living is righteous.'

In lyrical modes the psalms assume and express again and again the general teaching of the Old Testament, that the lot of the righteous is blessed and the Fret not lot of the wicked accursed. Yet many psalms Thyself. are cries of troubled souls, and tell the suffering of the righteous. Throughout the psalter there is no deep contradiction of its opening utterance," Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked; Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish." Nor is there in the psalter any doubt as to Jehovah's power; all that kings and nations meditate against him is a vain thing; the Lord hath them in derision; for the wrath of man must praise thee.' The thirty-seventh psalm utters Israel's faith:

Fret not thyself because of the evil-doers,

Be not envious because of the workers of iniquity.

For they shall soon be cut down like the grass,

And like the green herb shall they wither.
Trust thou in Jehovah and do good.

And he shall give thee the petitions of thy heart.

Hold thee still for Jehovah and hope in him.

Better is a little that the righteous man hath,
Than the riches of many wicked.

Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down,
For Jehovah upholdeth his hand.

So for a time may the wicked prosper and boast; but soon shall they be cut down; it cannot be otherwise; for Jehovah is judge and in his hand there is a cup for the wicked: '

Consider, O ye brutish among the people!
And ye fools, when will ye be wise?

He that planteth the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formeth the eye, shall he not see?

He that instructeth the nations, shall he not reprove?'

Trust Jehovah.

These thoughts are deeply true, however much the surface of events may dispute them. Yet they rather ignore the problem of Job. The answer vouchsafed him by the Almighty consisted merely in a broader disclosing of the majesty of God.' The Psalter has its answer too, similar to that in Job, but fervent because of the passionate religious feeling of the psalms; and with a positive religious element added in the assurance not only of God's infinite majesty and holiness, but of his blessed all-sufficiency for the righteous

1 lxxv.

3 xciv, 8-10. The ninety-first psalm is a most beautiful expression of the thought of Jehovah's protection of the righteous; and may be compared (Plumtre) with Eliphaz's words in Job v, 17-23.

See post, chap. xxi.