stand where they do, the first and last verses of the whole collection,
enclosing all, as it were, within a golden ring, and bending round to
meet each other. They are the summing up of the whole purpose and issue
of God's revelation to men.

The first and second psalms echo the two main portions of the old
revelation--the Law and the Prophets. The first of them is taken up with
the celebration of the blessedness and fruitful, stable being of the man
who loves the Law of the Lord, as contrasted with the rootless and
barren life of the ungodly, who is like the chaff. The second is
occupied with the contemplation of the divine 'decree' by which the
coming King is set in God's 'holy hill of Zion,' and of the blessedness
of 'all they who put their trust in Him,' as contrasted with the swift
destruction that shall fall on the vain imaginations of the rebellious
heathen and banded kings of earth.

The words of our first text, then, may well stand at the beginning of
the Psalter. They express the great purpose for which God has given His
Law. They are the witness of human experience to the substantial, though
partial, accomplishment of that purpose. They rise in buoyant triumph
over that which is painful and apparently opposed to it; and in spite of
sorrow and sin, proclaim the blessedness of the life which is rooted in
the Law of the Lord.

The last words of the book are as significant as its first. The closing
psalms are one long call to praise--they probably date from the time of
the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, when, as we know, 'the service
of song' was carefully re-established, and the harps which had hung
silent upon the willows by the rivers of Babylon woke again their
ancient melodies. These psalms climb higher and higher in their