XII. Meditations on Subjects of Interest XIV. False Aids Judged THE PRESENT TESTIMONY. ETC., ETC. N. I. PSALMS. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THE book of Psalms has evidently a peculiar character. It is not the history of God's people or of God's ways with them; nor is it the inculcation of positive doctrines or duties; nor the formal prophetic announcement of coming events. Many important events, doubtless, are alluded to in the Psalms, and they are immediately connected with various prophetic revelations, as, indeed, with precepts, and with all the other parts of the divine word to which I have referred; but none of these constitute the character of the book itself. The subjects, too, of which the various parts of Scripture I refer to treat-necessarily find their place in the thoughts expressed in the Psalms. But the Psalms do not directly treat of them. The Psalms are-almost all-the expression of the sentiments produced in the hearts of God's people by the events (or I should speak more correctly if I said-prepared for them when in the events) through which they pass, and, indeed, express the feelings not only of the people of God, but often, as is known, of the Lord Himself. They are the expression of the part the Spirit of God takes, as working in the heart, in the sorrows and exercises of the saints. The Spirit works in connection with all the trials through which they pass and the human infirmity which appears in those trials; in the midst of which it gives thoughts of faith and truth which are a provision for them in all that happens. We find in this book, consequently, the hopes, fears, distress, and confidence in God, which respectively fill the minds of the saints. Sometimes we have the part which the Lord Himself takes personally in them, and (this too occasionally exclusive of all but Himself) the place which He has held that He might so sympathize with them. Hence a maturer spiritual judgment is required to judge rightly of the true bearing and application of the Psalms than of other parts of Scripture: because we must be able to understand what dispensationally gives rise to them, and judge of the true place before God of those whose souls' wants are expressed in them-and this is so much the more difficult, as the circumstances, state, and relationship with God, of the people whose feelings they express are not those in which we find ourselves. The piety they breathe is edifying for every time, and the confidence they often express in God in the midst of trial has cheered the heart of many a tried servant of God in his own. This feeling is carefully to be preserved and cherished, yet it is for that very reason so much the more important that our spiritual judgment should recognise the position to which the sentiments contained in the Psalms refer, and which gives form to the piety which is found in them. Unless we do this, the full power of redemption, and the force of the gospel of the grace of God is lost for our own souls; and many expressions which have shocked the Christian mind, unobservant of their true bearing and application, remain obscure and even unintelligible. The heart that places itself in the position described in the Psalms returns back to experiences which belong to a legal state, and to one under discipline for failure and trial in that state, and to the hopes of an earthly people. A legal and, for a Christian, unbelieving state is thus sanctioned in the mind: we rest content in a spiritual state short of the knowledge of redemption; and while we think to retain the Psalms for ourselves, we keep ourselves in a state of soul in which we are deprived of the intelligence of their true use and of our own privileges, and become incapable of the real understanding of, and true delight in, the Psalms themselves; and, what is more, of the blessed and deeply instructive apprehension of the tender and gracious sympathies of Christ in their true |