PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT.

THE author of the following work, the Rev. DAVID CALDWELL, was a well-known clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the diocese of Virginia. Ordained in 1841, by the venerable Bishop Moore, during the session of the Diocesan Convention at Alexandria, he took charge first of several country congregations in Amherst. county, in that State; removed subsequently to St. Paul's church in the city of Norfolk: thence, after some years' useful service, returned again, with health exceedingly enfeebled, to the neighbourhood of his former charge. The healthful air and comparatively light duties of an upland and interior parish, sufficiently invigorated his exhausted strength to enable him, after two or three years. of labour in the country, to venture once more on a city rectorship in Christ Church, Georgetown, District of Columbia. But here again his health, at all times feeble, failed; and he retired, after little more than two years, to Hanover county, Virginia, exchanging parishes with the Rev. Dr. Norwood. Discouraged in Hanover by a fire which consumed his dwelling, with an excellent library which he had been gathering for many years, he was induced, after no great length of time, to accept the wealthier rectorship of St. James's Church, Sherburne parish, Leesburg, Virginia, where, in the autumn of 1858, he died.

Clear in his views of doctrine; comprehensive in his

grasp of truth; with a penetrating intellect, a wonderful fertility of illustration, and a more than ordinary measure of logical and oratoric power; he was extensively popular both as a pastor and a preacher; drew always large audiences around him; and, but for his extreme fragility of constitution, might easily have taken rank with the most eminent of our American divines.

The idea of a practical Commentary on the Psalms of David, unincumbered with critical discussions, and adapted to the furtherance of the Divine life within the soul, was conceived by him while in charge of his last church in Leesburg, and carried out, in the form of Lectures to his people, as far as the present work extends. At the close of the Commentary on the Fiftieth Psalm, the hand that held the pen began to falter; and, after a few weeks of hopeful but vain struggle with disease, a calm and Christian death well closed a useful life,

Only one-third of his projected work upon the Psalms was finished at the time of his decease. But as this was entirely complete within itself; contained fresh and valuable thoughts on the sacred compositions it embraced; and had in it much that was "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;" his family have thought that the interests of religion, as well as the desire of friends, claimed of them the publication of it as far as it had gone. It is, accordingly, given to the world with the prayer that God may make it, through his Spirit, a means of enlarging men's acquaintance with his truth, and of promoting its benign and purifying influence on human character.

PHILADELPHIA, October, 1859.

INTRODUCTION.

PERHAPS there is no other portion of the word of God, except the Gospels, more generally read by Christians than the Psalms of David. We wonder not at this: for it matters not what our frame of mind may be, whether joyful, or sorrowful; hopeful, or full of fears, we here find words that express our feelings as no other words can. Nor is it the mind of the believer alone which these sacred lyrics describe, but also the mind of the man who says in his heart, "There is no God." They reveal the thoughts that fill and the feelings that agitate the heart of each. They also reveal the thoughts and feelings of one other heart, the thoughts and feelings of the heart of Him of whom it is written, "He is love." Moreover, there is not an aspect of nature, endless as it is in its scenes of beauty and sublimity, which is not here depicted with a vividness, fidelity of outline, filling up, and colouring, to which the highest achievements of the unaided human intellect in the same direction are but dis