moralities in his temple, his better-informed people of to-day being judges? Is morality-righteousness-then a fast and loose matter, not in the knowledge and experience and practice of his only partially-instructed and partially sanctified earthly servants, but in the law and the testimony which holy men of old spake and sang as they were moved by the Holy Ghost? Surely, there must be other interpretation than this.

In 1874, Professor Swing, then a Presbyterian minister in Chicago, was arraigned before his Presbytery for unsoundness in the faith. The twenty-third specification of the second charge against him is based mainly upon a sermon he had preached and published on Psalm cix., and on certain articles of his in the Interior, in which he was charged with referring to Psalm cix. as "a battlesong"-as "the good of an hour"—“a revenge," and with using the following and similar language: "The prominence given to Psalm cix. in my remarks arises only from the fact that it has long been a public test of the value of any given theory of inspiration. This is one of the places at which the rational world asks us to pause and apply our abundant and boastful words. Most of the young men, even in the Presbyterian Church, know what the historian Froude said of this psa'm a few years since: "Those who accept Psalm cix. as the word of God are already far on their way to auto-da-fés and massacre of St. Bartholomew,' and while they may for a time reject these words, they will soon demand a theory of inspiration very different from the indefinite admiration of the past." That we may be just to Professor Swing's memory, even at the risk of a little prolixity, we quote from his published sermon on Psalm cix.: "These thoughts bring me now to the structure of the psalms of David. Many of them being deeply religious, and suitable to all religious hearts everywhere, there are others that belonged only to the days when they were sung. If it was permitted the Israelites to destroy their enemies, and thus establish the better their monotheism, it was necessary they should sing battle-songs, and that much of their hymnology should be military. In days of American struggle with England, the song of 'The Star-spangled Banner' might be useful and truthful. It might impel men along the best path of the period. In France,

a few years, the 'Marseillaise' was rising with power, for it was necessary for the people to check the reckless ambition of Lonis Napoleon. These hymns might be confessed to possess a temporary inspiration. That is, their good is unmistakable. But let the world and civilization advance, let war become a crime and barbarism, let peace become not only an article of religion but a policy of all nations, let all disputes be settled by arbitration and payment of damages, and in their golden age the war-songs of America and France become a poor dead letter, and no heart remains so warlike as to sing them. Thus with such psalms as the cix. They had a temporary significance, depending altogether upon the kind of work the Hebrews had to perform. If it was necessary for them to go to battle, it was desirable they should have a battle-song, a 'Marseillaise.' If their hands must do bloody work they were entitled to sing a terrific psalm. But the moment the Hebrew method of life passed away, the moment their war for national existence ceased, that moment Psalm cix. lost its value. For if the bloody Hebrew war is over, so is its bat le-song. There is no logic in perpetuating a war-cry after the war itself has passed away."

We have quoted Professor Swing thus at length in order to do justice to his most peculiar theory of the imprecatory psalms. We do not know, indeed, what to say of such interpretation, except that it is hardly conceivable to us as the theory of more than one man in all the generations of expositors. Meantime, no wonder that, with such idea, he relegates his only conceivable method of treating the Old Testament to eclecticism. On that basis, of course, every man is to have his own Bible, and be a law unto himself. How soon and how sadly would the whole church of God cry out for some positive "thus saith the Lord"!

A very frequent exposition of the imprecatory psalms by commentators and theologians is as prophetic; i. e., the Psalmists sing of what shall be to the wicked, in the just judgment of God. It is not the curse, nor the prayer, nor the wish of the psalmist, but a declaration of the divine purpose. This principle of interpretation is favored, at least partially, by Calvin, Gill, and Addison Alexander. Now, that at any rate a part of Psalın cix. was thus

prophetic is made certain by Peter's declaration of its fulfilment in the person and fate of Judas: "This Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, spake before concerning Judas." But it is evident that many declarations of the holy word have at once a historic and a prophetic application, and at once touch objectives retrospective, present, and prospective, and have temporal and corporeal, and at the same time, spiritual or remote, but none the less designed fulfilment. Those who most devoutly recognize the fulfilment of Psalm cix. as a prophecy of Judas, nevertheless look for David's nearer object in Saul, or Absalom, or Ahithophel, or Doeg the Edomite, and might well anticipate the application also to persons yet to be born. So may this psalm also be at once a prophecy and a denunciation, a curse, and a declaration of the vindictive will of God. And in linguistic, grammatic, and rhetoric form, it certainly is, primarily, a series of denunciations and curses, as are the other imprecatory psalms. Moreover, the psalmist frequently and emphatically avows the vindictive spirit which lies behind imprecations. "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? . . . I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies."

There certainly seems to be a manifold element here. These psalms are the expression of divine indignation and wrath; they are the prophecy of divine judgment, and they are the outpouring of the emotions of the Lord's indignant servants. And these three agree in one; the Lord's expressed indignation results in the Lord's temporal and eternal judgments, and the Lord's servants say, Amen. And this is the eternal principle of the divine righteousness. Even in heaven is heard, amid the songs of everlasting praise, the echo of the imprecatory psalms: "The souls of them that were slain for the word of God cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

We give thee thanks, O Lord, God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come, because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldst give reward unto thy servants . . . and shouldst

destroy them which destroy the earth. . . . And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God, for true and righteous are his judgments, for he hath judged the great whore which cid corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up forever and ever." Now perhaps we have partly cleared the ground for some principles of interpretation.

First, These psalms are, each one, complete in itself. They are not, therefore, to be expounded as, for instance, the speeches of Job's friends, which are counterbalanced and corrected by subsequent utterances of the same book.

Second, Standing in the midst of the holy word, they are part of the Scripture, which is all given by inspiration of God.

Third, Their utterances, therefore, however characteristic of their writers and moulded by circumstances, are the word of the Lord, and entitled to utmost reverence as true and righteous, though we might be at entire loss as to their interpretation.

Fourth, These things being so, they were not only entirely proper in the mouths and at the hands of their original writers, but those writers could not have been justified in not writing. them as they are.

Fifth, Neither can they be the utterance of unworthy or unholy passion.

Sixth, There must be such a thing, therefore, as holy indignation and holy vindictiveness; but, of course, only when the human passion is in full accord with the divine mind and will.

Seventh, As they are in a divinely-inspired and ordained ritual for the church of God, they may be, and ought to be, used by his saints under appropriate circumstances and in a proper spirit. Not, of course, for the expression of unsanctified resentment, as in the case cited by Calvin, in loco: "How detestable a piece of sacrilege," says he, "is it on the part of the monks, and especially the Franciscan friars, to pervert this psalm by employing it to countenance the most nefarious purposes! If a man harbor malice against a neighbor it is quite a common thing for him to engage

one of these wicked wretches to curse him, which he would do by daily repeating this psalm. I know a lady in Frauce who hired a parcel of these friars to curse her own and only son in these words." But it is altogether proper, and by the very fact of these psalms is enjoined, to unite in the will of God in cursing his determined and irreconcilable enemies, root and branch. He has put the word into our mouths for use only when he has put a holy disposition thereto in our hearts. If we never learn to do it in this world with the right spirit and the true understanding, we certainly will do it when we join in the songs of the redeemed in heaven.

Eighth, We have here a fearful illustration of that just now much-belabored doctrine of reprobation.

Ninth, If these imprecatory Psalms have now no other use or meaning for the worshipping church on earth, they are a most solemn warning against persistent enmity to God, and against apostasy.

Tenth, The imprecatory psalms are a standing protest against the "universal Fatherhood of God," as that phrase is all too generally understood to mean that he is too unjust to judge every man according to his works, and too soft-hearted finally to condemn unreconciled sinners.

Eleventh, Unless he be divinely inspired, let no man presume to identify his personal emeny, or any man personally, with the reprobate enemy of God, lest haply he be found to curse him whom the Lord hath not cursed. Stephen might well have thought himself justified in praying concerning Saul of Tarsus, when he stood consenting unto his death, "Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand," when Saul was, nevertheless, a chosen vessel unto God. When we make the imprecatory psalms our own, let us have in mind only generally the irreconcilable enemies of God, leaving him who knows to make the personal application.

In the early days of the civil war, while still under the intense excitement of the recent occurrence, the present writer heard John B. Gough say, from a lecture-platform in Troy: "If it be true that the disaster at Ball's Bluff and the death of Colonel Ba