"But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." Am I then one of whom a voice that cannot err declares that they are blessed, and subjoins the succeeding promises? That is worth a pause to think upon. Delight is the strongest term of pleasure; and sad is the heart indeed, that lives from day to day, without a consciousness of delight in something. And if there is any thing in particular our hearts are set upon to delight in it, that thing, whether we will or not, whether we forbid it or invite it, will be the subject of our meditation; not content with our day thoughts, it will disperse our slumbers, and possess our dreams. This I have felt to be the case with other things: but has it been ever the case with me respecting the things of God, all of which may be comprised in what is termed his law? Is the subject so near my heart, that it comes into it the first on the morning? So dear, that it will not go from it till the last at night; and if aroused at midnight will come back again? And this not as a loathed spectre haunts the conscience to distract it—but because the presence and the thought of God are my consolation and my joy?

Then I am blessed-"And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. These words are for me. It may seem if I regard my outward circumstances, that they are not well fulfilled. But the witness of God's word is better than the evidence of circumstance. The season of the fruit may not be come, and the leaf may not yet be put forth. But mistrust and anxiety do not become me. He of whom this, Psalm is primarily spoken, and for his sake transfered to all who bear his likeness, was a tree planted long or ever its fruit was borne. What he did for a season did not seem to prosper-rather did it appear that, planted on an ungenial soil, it withered to the root and died. Yet is he blessed for ever; because he never walked in fellowship with the ungodly, nor had

other delight than in his Father's law. And it is true of me, as it was of him. If the former verses apply to me, these are pledged to me. I am more blessed already than other beings, and the yet fairer promises remain to be fulfilled. I will not faint nor be afraid.

"The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." Is this any thing to me? I have read it in my life hundreds and hundreds of times; and it never struck me with fear, lest withered and valueless, like a thing without root, the breath of heaven should bear me away from earth, and from all the pleasant things I have enjoyed in it. And yet I have been ungodly, and a sinnerperhaps I still stand under the denunciation. It is contrasted with the former description-if I am not one, I am the other. If I am in doubt, my heart should go up to heaven in prayer; if assured, in grateful adoration.

"For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Is this good news to me, or bad? One it must be. It is the summing up of all; shall I close the book weeping or rejoicing in this issue. Perhaps I would rather God did not know my ways. I would rather him look aside, and let me follow my own liking for awhile, and conceal from him for ever, if it might be, the secrets of my heart. Then it is no glad news to me that he knoweth my ways, and watches my footsteps and directs every movement of my heart to the furtherance of his own will. His presence is fearful to me, his interference is importunate; I submit to it of necesssity, but it is no joy to be reminded of it. Then if the first part of the verse is not for me, the other must be. There are but two ways-the righteous man's, which is God's, and the sinner's, which is his own. The first is under eternal guidance, and will lead to eternity; the last is the device of mortals, and ends with his mortality.

It is thus that in pausing on the meaning of the sacred words, one eye as it were on them, the other on our own consciousness, what does not suit us will convict us; what finds no sympathy in our bosoms will bring us to question why there is none. The falsehoods on our lips, though purest truth from him that wrote them, will startle the slumbering conscience as we read, and perhaps force an appeal to Heaven for aid: and thus the bosom which as yet cannot taste its beauties, or partake the deep interest of these breathings of a fervent heart, because as yet there is no response of sympathising feeling, may still be benefited, essentially benefited by the peru sal, if honestly intent on being so, and pursuing the search in such temper of mind as has been before suggested.

This slight example we have given, not as a comment on the psalm, or a prescription of the train of thought to be pursued; but as an illustration of what we mean, to mark the object likely to result from such manner of reading, and to prove how utterly incompatible it is with the reading by measure and mechanism we may have been accustomed to. What flights of thought, what pauses of feeling, what scrutiny of ourselves, and ardent appeals to heaven, might have arisen out of the brief suggestions we have made; enough to occupy with the matter of these six verses, or perhaps with not half their number, the longest period allotted to this devotional exercise. And yet is this psalm more limited perhaps in meaning than almost any other; the ideas being confined to two-the blessedness of the righteous, and the brevity of the course of ungodliness. We have but to cast our eye to the succeeding ones, to see what subjects of reflection, of feeling, self-examination and devotion are developed in the space of a few verses, sometimes comprised in a single one.

Speaking for those to whom the experimental in religion is least available, because of their yet small expe rience in it, and consequently the Psalms an unattractive part of Scripture, I would urge the attempt

120 ON THE READING OF THE SCRIPTURES.

thus to meditate, and apply, and appropriate them to ourselves; and I have little doubt a new and growing interest will be perceived and ultimately enjoyed, by many who have hitherto avoided, or read them only from a feeling of propriety in doing so. To those more advanced it is unnecessary to commend a frequent perusal of the Psalms. They are the treasure house of christian sympathy. There is not a feeling of sorrow or of joy, of sin and helplessness, of holiness and triumph, of gentle promise, or of awful warning, the sacred poet has left unuttered or untouched: and I can scarcely hesitate to add, there is not a passage in them that will not at some period of our existence come home to our bosom as the response of its secret utterances, at once its voice and the reply of its present emotions. It is therefore the sorrowful and the deep feeling spend more hours perhaps over the Psalms than any other portion of scripture. If we consider them but as the language of a believer speaking forth his own experience under the immediate inspiration of the Spirit of God-if they were the sorrows and the joys and the prayers of David, and in him of every other believer whose heart responds to them, they were a sufficient treasure. But if we may consider them, as I believe we may, as the words of him of whom David was the type, if the tears were the Saviour's tears, the vows the Saviour's vows, and the deep wrought expression of human feelings and desires, the prophetic language of the Saviour's humanity, their value to the pious mind is increased above all price. This does not, as some have thought, rob us of the personal application of the Psalms: rather it makes them doubly ours. What we are he was—what he is we are to be. Our present portion is to follow him, our future recompense is to be like him. Whatever promise was made to Jesus, whatever sins were acknowledged by him, whatever sentiment was expressed by him, his people are to be partakers of: and it is fit his language should become their language. Sin he had not, it is true-but he

had it to bear, to mourn and to conquer; and therefore even in this, the expressions that become his people, became him who was made like them; and the language which discloses the feelings of his humanity is the appropriate language of every devout believer who follows in his footsteps. We must reserve the subject for another section.