metrical composition. It is the mighty soaring of an exalted soul which
makes the Psalms so dear to us, and not their artificial structure.
They were made to reveal the ways of God to man and the life of the
human soul, not to immortalize heroes or dignify a human love. We may
not be able to appreciate in English form their original metrical skill;
but it is impossible that a people so musical as the Hebrews were
kindled into passionate admiration of them, had they not possessed great
rhythmic beauty. We may not comprehend the force of the melodic forms,
but we can appreciate the tenderness, the pathos, the sublimity, and the
intensity of the sentiments expressed. "In pathetic dirges, in songs of
jubilee, in outbursts of praise, in prophetic announcements, in the
agonies of contrition, in bursts of adoration, in the beatitudes of holy
bliss, in the enchanting calmness of Christian life," no one has ever
surpassed David, so that he was called "the sweet singer of Israel."
There is nothing pathetic in national difficulties, or endearing in
family relations, or profound in inward experience, or triumphant over
the fall of wickedness, or beatific in divine worship, which he does not
intensify. He raises mortals to the skies, though he brings no angels
down. Never does he introduce dogmas, yet his songs are permeated with
fundamental truths, and are a perpetual rebuke to pharisaism,
rationalism, epicureanism, and every form of infidel speculation that
with "the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." As the Psalter
was held to be the most inspiring poetry in the palmy days of the Hebrew
commonwealth, so it proved the most impressive part of the ritual of the
mediaeval Church, and is still the most valued of all the lyrics which
Protestantism has appropriated in the worship of God. And how potent,
how lasting, how valued is a good song! The psalmody of the Church will
last longer than its sermons; and when a song stimulates the loftiest
sentiments of which men are capable, how priceless it is, how
permanently it is embalmed in the heart of the world! "Thus have his