such a one in the annals of men, and we yield the argument of this controversy. Men there have been, driven before the wrath of kings, to wander outlaws and exiles, whose musings and actings have been recorded to us in the minstrelsy of our native land. Draw these songs of the exile into comparison with the Psaims of David, and know the spirit of the man after God's own heart; the stern defiance of the one, with the tranquil acquiescence of the other; the deep despair of the one, with the rooted trust of the other; the vindictive imprecations of the one, with the tender regret and forgiveness of the other. Show us an outlaw who never spoiled the country which had forsaken him, nor turned his hand in self-defence or revenge upon his persecutors, who used the vigour of his arm only against the enemies of his country, yea, lifted up his arm in behalf of that mother, which had cast her son, crowned with salvation, away from her bosom, and held him at a distance from her love, and raised the rest of her family to hunt him to the death;-in the defence of that thankless, unnatural, mother-country, find us such a repudiated son lifting up his arm, and spending its vigour, in smiting and utterly discomfiting her enemies, whose spoils he kept not to enrich himself and his ruthless followers, but dispensed to comfort her and her happier children. Find us among the Themistocles and Coriolani, and Cromwells, and Napoleons of the earth such a man, and we will yield the argument of this controversy which we maintain for the peerless son of Jesse.

But we fear that not such another man is to be found in the recorded annals of men. Though he rose from the peasantry to fill the throne, and enlarge the borders of his native land, he gave himself neither to ambition nor to glory; though more basely treated than the sons of men, he gave not place to despondency or revenge; though of the highest genius in poetry, he gave it not license to sing his own deeds, nor to depict loose and licentious life, nor to ennoble any worldly sentiment or attachment of the human heart, however virtuous and honourable, but constrained it to sing the praises of God, and the victories of the right hand of the Lord of Hosts, and his admirable works, which are of old from everlasting. And he hath dressed out religion in such a rich and beautiful garment of divine poesy as beseemeth her majesty, in which, being arrayed, she can stand up before the eyes even of her enemies, in more royal state, than any personification of love, or glory, or pleasure, to which highly gifted mortals have devoted their genius.

The force of his character was vast, and the scope of his life was immense. His harp was full-stringed, and every angel of joy and of sorrow swept over the chords as he past; but the melody always breathed of heaven. And such oceans of affection lay within his breast, as could not always slumber in their calmness. For the hearts of a hundred men strove and struggled together within the narrow continent of his single heart and will the scornful men have no sympathy for one so conditioned, but scorn him, because he ruled not with constant quietness, the unruly host of divers natures which dwelt within his single soul? Of self-command surely he will not be held deficient, who endured Saul's javelin to be so often launched at him, while the people without were ready to hail him king; who endured all bodily hardships, and taunts of his enemies, when revenge was in his hand; and ruled his desperate band like a company of saints, and restrained them from their country's injury. But that he should not be able to enact all characters without a fault, the simple shepherd, the conquering hero, and the romantic lover;

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the perfect friend, the innocent outlaw, and the royal monarch; the poet, the prophet, and the regenerator of the church; and, withal, the man, the man of vast soul, who played not these parts by turns, but was the original of them all, and wholly present in them all. Oh! that he should have fulfilled this high priesthood of humanity, this universal ministry of manhood without an error, were more than human. With the defence of his backslidings, which he hath himself more keenly scrutinized, more clearly decerned against, and more bitterly lamented than any of his censors, we do not charge ourselves, because they were, in a manner, necessary, that he might be the full-orbed man which was needed to utter every form of spiritual feeling: but if, when of these acts he became convinced, he be found less true to God, and to righteousness; indisposed to repentance and sorrow, and anguish, exculpatory of himself, stout-hearted in his courses, a formalist in his penitence, or in any way less worthy of a spiritual man in those than in the rest of his infinite moods, then, verily, strike him from the canon, and let his Psalms become monkish legends, or what you please. But if these penitential Psalms discover the soul's deepest hell of agony, and lay bare the iron ribs of misery, whereon the very heart dissolveth; and if they, expressing the same in words which melt the soul that conceiveth, and bow the head that uttereth them, then, we say, let us keep these records of the Psalmist's grief and despondency, as the most precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed in the case of every man who essayeth to live a spiritual life. For, though the selfsatisfied moralist, and the diligent Pharisee, and all that pigmy breed of purists, who make unto themselves a small and puny theory of life, and please their meagre souls with the idea of keeping it thoroughly, smiting upon their thigh, and protesting by their unsullied honour and inviolate truth, and playing other tricks of self-sufficiency, will little understand what we are about to say, we will, nevertheless, for truth's sake, utter it; that, until a man, however pure, honest, and honourable he may have thought himself, and been thought by others, discovereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled, and sinful in the sight of God, a worm of the earth and no man, his soul cleaving to the dust, and bearing about with it a body of sin and death; and until, for expressions of his utter worthlessness, he seek those Psalms in which the Psalmist describes the abasement of his soul, yea, and can make them his own, that man hath not known the beginnings of the spiritual life within the soul: for (let him that readeth understand) a man must break up before there is any hope of him; he must be contrite and broken in spirit, before the Lord will dwell with him.

Of all the delusions with which Satan lulls man into sweet security, this of our completeness and integrity is the most fatal. While we dwell in the idea of our rectitude, our unsullied purity, our inflexible honesty, our truth, our moral worth, and think that we implement any, the lowest, of God's commandments, (but they are all equally high) we are like the hard and baked earth, whose surface haply some sward of greenness may cover, but which will not wave with the rich and fruitful harvest, until you bury that first crop of nature under the share of the plough, and turn up the rough black mould to the heat of the sun, and the genial action of the air, and, the ancient roots being scorched up, sow it anew with precious seed, and wait upon the same with diligent husbandry. Where this soul-tillage hath taken place and the integrity of selfisness is broken up, and the poisonous weeds of selfishness are cut down, and our shallow

and insufficient righteousness trodden under foot; when the old man hath broken into pieces, and we feel ourselves murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars, in the sight of God, then shall we come to use, and thank God that we have at hand, the penitential Psalms of David; the confessions, the groanings, the languishings of the desolate king of Israel. It booteth not that we have not committed the acts, we wanted power, we wanted opportunity, we wanted means; but ah! we wanted not will. It was in our heart, out of which proceed murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness. It hath been all the while in our heart, and we knew it not. It was rooted there, and we fostered it. Ay, and it will cause us bitter groans, ere it will leave the place of its roots.

But to return from these rebukes of the scorners, to the instruction of the Christian Church upon the fitness of David to be their Psalmist.— Why were such oceans of feeling poured into David's soul, such true and graceful utterance of poetry infused into his lips, and such skill of music seated in his right hand? Such oceans of feeling did God infuse into his soul, and such utterance of poetry he placed between his lips, and such skilful music he seated in his right hand, in order that he might conceive forms of feeling for all saints, and create an everlasting Psalmody, and hand down an organ for expressing the melody of the renewed soul. The Lord did not intend that his church should be without a rule for uttering its gladness and its glory, its lamentation and its grief; and to bring such a rule and institute into being, he raised up his servant David, as formerly he raised up Moses to give to the Church an institute of law. And to that end he led him the round of all human conditions, that he might catch the spirit proper to every one, and utter it according to truth; he allowed him not to curtail his being by treading the round of one function, but by every variety of functions, he cultivated his whole being, and filled his soul with wisdom and feeling. He found him objects for every affection, that the affection might not slumber and die. He brought him up in the sheep-pastures, that the groundwork of his character might be laid amongst the simple and universal forms of feeling. He took him to the camp, and made him a conqueror, that he might be filled with nobleness of soul and ideas of glory. He placed him in the palace, that he might be filled with ideas of majesty and sovereign might. He carried him to the wilderness, and placed him in solitudes, that his soul might dwell alone in the sublime conceptions of God, and his mighty works; and he kept him there for long years, with only one step between him and death, that he might be well schooled to trust and depend upon the Providence of God. And in none of these various conditions and avocations of life, did he take away from him his Holy Spirit. His trials were but the tuning of the instrument with which the Spirit might express the various melodies which he designed to utter by him for the consolation and edification of spiritual men. It was the education of the man most appropriate for the divine vocation of the man. John the Baptist being to be used for rough work, was trained in the rough desert; Paul being to be used for contentions and learned work, was trained at Gamaliel's feet; Daniel being to be used for judgment and revelation, was trained in the wisdom of the east; Joseph being to be used as a providence to Egypt and his Father's house, was trained in the hardest school of providence; and every one hath been disciplined by the providence of God, as well as furnished in the fountains of his being, for that particular work for which the Spirit of God designed him. There

fore, David had that brilliant galaxy of natural gifts, that rich and varied education, in order to fit him for executing the high office to which he was called by the Spirit, of giving to the church those universal forms of spiritual feeling, whereof we have been endeavouring to set forth the excellent applications. And, though we neither excuse his acts of wickedness, nor impute them to the temptation of God, who cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth any man, we will also add, that by his loss the church has gained; and that out of the evil of his ways, much good hath been made to arise; and that if he had not passed through every valley of humiliation, and stumbled upon the dark mountains, we should not have had a language for the souls of the penitent, or an expression for the dark troubles which compass the soul, that feareth to be deserted by its God. So much for the fitness of the Psalmist to have been made the organ of spiritual feeling unto the Church.

There is another question which remains for resolution, before bringing this Essay to a close. In how far the good Bishop Horne and others, are justified in referring so much of these Psalms to the Messiah.

In maintaining for these Psalms the high place which the universal voice of the Christian church hath assigned to them, there is a tendency to pass into the extreme of applying them wholly to Christ, and finding some experience of Christ's soal in every experience of the Psalmist's soul. Now, while it is true, that of all these Psalms are still applicable to the saints and to the church, because the saints and the church are still compassed about with the same fleshly nature, and worldly dispositions, liable to the same backslidings, idolatries, and oppositions as heretofore, none of them which confess transgression, and lament over indwelling sin, are at any time applicable unto Christ, who suffered indeed as David, and all his seed have suffered from the plottings of the world, and the enmity of the devil, and was in all points tempted as they are, yet without sin, without sliding back, without opposing himself to his Father, without yielding to the temptation; wherefore, it is little short of blasphemy to apply unto the spotless and blameless Saviour, any or all of those spiritual experiences, any or all of those deep self-accusations, any or all of those entreaties for forgiveness which compose so large a portion of the Psalms of David, and the spiritual utterances of David's seed. Surely no spiritual man in these times would apply to Christ his personal experiences of sin and sorrow for sin. No more can the Psalmist's be applied unto Christ, without confounding the workings of the first Adam with the workings of the second Adam, and destroying all those distinctions between good and evil, which it is the end of revelation to define and demonstrate. The workings of the second Adam, by which we become convinced of sin, and desirous of holiness, separate from the world, and hated of it, united to God, and beloved of him, are in us as in David, all derived from Christ, and will apply to Christ's own experience in the flesh. For the word of God manifested in the Son of Mary, is the same word of God which came by the Spirit unto the prophets, and which is applied by the Spirit unto us who believe, who are only members of Christ, suffering and enjoying with our living and life-giving Head. And, therefore, we may well apply to him, what by his Spirit is revealed in us. But that other

part within us which holdeth of the first Adam, and which lusteth against the Spirit, loveth the world, and with all its instincts warreth against God, whose evil deeds a Christian, if he speak truth, must constantly confess, and seek grace to overcome ;-to apply any of the foul deeds, or wicked

experiences thereof unto Christ, is a wonderful blindness which hath come over certain holy men in the church, from their eagerness to find Christ every where in these consecrated songs.

And yet the path to this error is open, and very easily fallen upon. For in those Psalms which have been applied in the New Testament unto Christ, it is found difficult, if not impossible, to separate the Psalmist's personal experience from that of Christ, or to find how, without much violence, they can be wholly appropriate to Messiah. Now, with as little straining of interpretation, they judge that another and another, and at length all may be applied to Christ, in a typical, or in a real signification. But this is to err from ignorance of the prophetic Scriptures. Except the prophecies of Daniel, and the prophecies of the Apocalypse, the other prophecies are always of a mixed character, belonging partly to the times, and partly surpassing the conditions of the times, and occasionally glancing through to the very end of time. So that in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the other prophets, even in our Lord's prophecies of his second coming, and the Apostles' constant reference thereto, you cannot by any endeavour make a clear separation between that which was then fulfilled, or hath since been fulfilled, and that which still standeth over to be fulfilled. The reason of which doubtless is explained by our Lord, that the times and the seasons, the Father hath kept in his own power, so that even the Son himself was not permitted to reveal them. And Peter saith, that the prophets inquired diligently, but could not discover what and what manner of things the Spirit which was in them did signify. And I doubt not that the Apostles might themselves be as ignorant of the time of the second coming of Christ, as the prophets were of his first coming. Which taken together, is an illustration of this great law which may be gathered from the very face of the prophetic writings, That they arose by the suggestion of some condition of the church, present in the days of the prophets, as the particular case, but passing beyond this in time, and passing beyond it in aggravation of every circumstance, they give, as it were, a consecutive glance of all the like cases, and kindred passages in the history of the church, and bring out the general law of God's providence and grace in the present, and in all the future parallel cases;-yet with such mark of different times interspersed as may be sufficient, by a skilful comparison with the exact and historical prophecies of Daniel and the Revelations, to draw the attention of the wise to their coming, and suffice to the convictions of the unwise when they are past. Of this great law of prophetic writing, the confusion of David and Messiah in the Psalms referred to, are only one instance. David's prophecies of Messiah which are personal, arose by suggestion of the Spirit, from his own personal experiences, and include it. His prophecies of Messiah, which are royal and kingly, arose out of his kingly experience, and the two persons are interwoven with one another in such a manner as not to be separable, just as in the other prophecies, the first, and second, and third events to which they have reference, are, in like manner, interwoven.

Which so far from being an evil, is a great beauty in the Psalms; so far from being an inconvenience, is a great advantage to those who understand aright. In connecting David with the Messiah, it connects the church and every particular saint who adopts David's feelings with Messiah, the children with their parents, the subjects with their king; so that we cannot sing his praise or his triumphs, but we must take ourselves in as a part, and be embraced in the very praises of our great Head, and