Spirit of the Psalms

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 12, 1858

Spirit of the Psalms.

Amongst all compositions, these alone deserve the name of sacred lyrics. These alone contain a poetry that meets the spiritual nature in all its moods and all its wants, which strengthens virtue with glorious exhortations, gives angelic eloquence to prayer, and almost rises to the seraph's joy in praise. In distress and fear, they breathe the low, sad murmur of complaint; in penitence, they groan with the agony of the troubled soul. They have a gentle music for the peace of faith; in adoration, they ascend to the glory of creation and the majesty of God. For assemblies or for solitude, for all that gladdens and all that grieves, for our heaviness and despair, for our remorse and our redemption, we find in these divine harmonies the loud or low expression. Great has been their power in the world. They resounded amidst the courts of the tabernacle; they floated through the lofty and solemn spaces of the temple. They were sung with glory in the halls of Zion; they were sung with sorrow by the streams of Babel. And when Israel had passed away, the harp of David was still awakened in the church of Christ. In all the eras and ages of that church, from the hymn which first it whispered in an upper chamber, until its anthems filled the earth, the inspiration of the royal prophet has enraptured its devotions and ennobled its rituals. Chorused by the winds of heaven, they have swelled through God's own temple of the sky and stars; they have rolled over the broad deserts of Asia, in the matins and vespers of ten thousand hermits. They have rung through the deep valleys of the Alps, in the sobbing voices of the forlorn Waldenses; through the steeps and caves of Scottish Highlands, in the rude chantings of the Scottish Covenanters; through the woods and wilds of primitive America, in the heroic hallelujahs of the early Pilgrims.—Banner of the Cov.