SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL SUNDAY EVENING LECTURES. BY P. W. PERFITT, PH. D.

THE PSALMS OF ́DAVID.'

(Continued from p. 64.)

WHO wrote it? I shall not offer you the gratuitous insult of attempting to prove that it was not written by "the direct Inspiration of God," for I am satisfied you are not so blind to the insult implied in that statement as to need argument upon that point. And of those millions who sit in the darkness of believing such gross blasphemy, I must express my belief that they never really and intelligently read the poem, or tried to fathom its meaning, for if they had, then, undoubtedly, long ago, they must have ceased to believe in the inspiratoin theory.

I believe that it was Jeremiah who wrote nearly, if not all, these cursing poems, and, to some extent, the circumstances in which he was placed furnish an apology for his bitterness. That they are in his style is certain, and the following comparison with passages from his works will render that clear unto all :

Jeremiah lived in the days when the Israelites were captive and fallen, and when the house of Judah was pursuing the course which inevitably led to the

same result for itself. Jeremiah was at daggers drawn with the men in authority, about the course to be pursued after the first invasion under Nebuchadnezzar. He preached hatred to Egypt, and submission to the Chaldeans and so earnest was he in this preaching that the opposite faction shut him up in prison. I abstain from discussing the question, whether he was a wise patriot, who advised what was noblest and best for his countrymen, or whether he was the paid tool of the Babylonians, as so many have asserted. When, in this course of lectures, we arrive at that period of the Hebrew history when he lived, I shall enter into that question; here it is merely suggested as explaining the origin of the Cursing Psalms. Jeremiah was a partizan who could write political ballads; had he lived in the times of Burdett and the Westminster Election, there is no doubt his poems would have figured largely in the literary proceedings. He wrote, out of the bitterness of his heart, against men who had gained a party victory over him, and what he lacked in power to do them harm, he made up by the bitterness of his praying. Thus read, the poems possess the value of revealing the actual condition of Jerusalem just before the Babylonian power wasted it; but when divines insult us by insisting that they are to be read as Divine Revelations, we hardly know which to marvel at most, their blindness and impiety, or the benevolence of the God they blaspheme, as seen in His still permitting them to live. A writer in Kitto's Biblical Cyclopædia, says that, "only a morbid benevolence, a mistaken "philanthropy, takes offence at these Psalms, for, in reality, they are not opposed to "the spirit of the Gospel, or to that love of enemies which Christ enjoined." This is equal to saying that love your enemies means that we should “ "pray for "their death and damnation;" but there is no accounting for the freaks of orthodoxy. It understands plainly enough that the "poor are to be obedient," and that "the Sabbath is to be observed," but does not understand the difference between loving a man, and praying that he may be clothed with cursing as with a garment.

In dealing with the Psalms we must carefully observe the general ideas relating to God which are scattered through them. In them lies much of their real worth to the living, who read, either as a source of strength, or with the view of learning the theology of the ancients; especially to discover whether the highest minds in the Hebrew nation believed what is called the Mosaic system. Here is a passage from the fiftieth, which demonstrates the contrary:

"I will reprove thee, not for the sake of thy sacrifices,

Nor of thy burnt offerings, which are daily before me.

I will take no bullock from thy stalls;

Nor he goat from thy folds;

For all the beasts of the forest are mine,

And the cattle upon a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the mountains,

And the wild beasts of the plains are before me.

If I were hungry I would not tell thee,

For the world is mine and all that is therein.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls? or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God thanksgiving, perform to Him thy vows!
Then when cometh thy day of trouble call upon me,
And I will deliver thee from out of thy dangers,
So that thou shalt live and glory in thy God."

In this Psalm we have as distinct a denial of the Levitical system of sacrifice as it is possible to give. The writer repudiates everything in the shape of formal offering and sacrifice; yet undoubtedly the historical books teach the doctrine of sacrifices. But the true poet cannot abide within the realm of formalism; cannot be bound by the law of gifts and offerings; and hence it is that so frequently the Psalm-writers strike to the heart of the formal system. As instance the next, the fifty-first, where it is said :

"Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it;
Thou dost not delight in burnt offerings.

The sacrifice thou lovest is a repentant spirit

The broken and contrite heart thou wilt not despise."

Here, forms and days, times, seasons, services, sacrifices, are all treated with scorn, for the writer has soared above the symbol to the original thought, and hence he could only antagonise the formality and show which were rapidly eating away all that was good in the state.

The religion of goodness is insisted upon in some of the Psalms as infinitely transcending all else, and thus the persons who are truly and mindfully religious, are spoken of as being the only beings who can stand in the presence of the Eternal.

"Who shall ascend into the mountains of Jehovah ?
And who shall stand in the seat of His holiness?
He whose hands are innocent and whose heart is pure;
Who hath not put his trust in vanity.

Nor sworn for the purpose of deceiving;

He from Jehovah shall receive a blessing,

And righteousness from the God of salvation."

'He whose hands are innocent and whose heart is pure shall receive the blessing,' and what more need be said? It is another way of saying, He is the religious man who lives uprightly. It is quite true that in this Bible we can find passages in abundance which embody in a few words everything that is essential to religion, and passages also which are directly the reverse. But when lost we our right to choose between them? Were we all left to our own judgment we should not, as now, go so far astray; but, unfortunately, a body of self-elected men have added systems and theologies which cast a dark cloud over the mind, and leave their victims incapable of exercising their natural freedom. We get crammed with theological notions before we begin to read the books from whence these notions are supposed to have been derived, and hence in reading, we see rather what we are previously told is there, than what is really written. The writer of this Psalm was no system-monger, but a veritable human being, who taught what is as true for our own age as it was for his. Faith and forms were to him but as the boglights, which seem to guide, but never do so, and which cannot be honestly placed in the stead of noble and generous actions. Eloquence may dwell upon the beauty and redeeming power of this faith, of this soul-belief; but as thought which is not followed by action is unproductive, so this eloquence must fail to impart vitality to the dead form it bears about as though it were Divine. The eloquent may delude the world upon the point, but cannot reform it. Like the drugmongers who administer opium to lull pain and deceive the ignorant into believing that thereby a great good has been achieved (whereas nothing more has been done than to still the voice which told of the evil, without doing anything to remove the evil itself), so these spiritual drugmongers silence the voice of conscience by administering doses of eloquence upon Faith without the filthy rags of works,' and as a natural result the evils remain unchecked, and religion seems powerless to heal. Let them teach of work, of clean hands and innocent lives, and behold a cure will follow.

There are several Psalms which teach the doctrine of Special Providence, but in language which raises it far above the ordinary forms. Take, for instance, the eighteenth, which may be viewed as an ode written after some great success. The writer opens with a declaration that he will call upon God-that God who had already delivered him-who stands as his rock, his fortress, his buckler and tower of defence:

"The sorrows of death girt me round about,

And the power of the ungodly filled me with fear.
The sorrows of Sheol encompassed me about,
And the snares of death lay upon my path.

In

my distress I called upon Jehovah;

In His temple He heard my voice,

My cry entered unto His ear and He arose.
Then the earth shook and was alarmed,

The foundations of the hills trembled in terror,
For the wrath of Jehovah was hot against them.
Before His face a smoke ascended,

A flame burned brightly, obscuring His presence;
And great fires were kindled by its fervent heat.
He bowed the heavens and came down,
And dark clouds were beneath His feet.
He rode upon the pinions of the Cherubim,
And flew upon the wings of the wind,

In a veil of darkness He concealed Himself;

A pavilion encompassed Him about, a pavilion

Of dark water and thick clouds of ether,

From the brightness before Him thick clouds passed along,
Hailstones and burning fires.

Jehovah thundered in the heavens ;

And the most high God sent forth His voice.

He shot out His arrows and dispersed mine enemies,

His thunder He multiplied and confounded them."

The fact that, through a storm, a victory was gained, is plain enough, but it is equally plain that the writer viewed the storm as a Divine interposition, which we can understand as natural to the age and its religious ideas.

But were we to confine our attention to such passages, our conception of the Hebrew Psalm-writers' views of God would be false. The idea is very frequently expressed that the Infinite dwells in a temple and has a local habitation, but the true poet could not allow himself to remain confined within such a narrow circle of thought. The Greeks had conceived a God of All; the Egyptians and Persians were not behind them in the thought of Universal Power, and it would be strange if the Hebrews in this particular were to form an exception to all the ancient nations. That they were not will be seen by the following passage from the hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm :

-

Thy right hand shall hold me!' Here the idea of God everywhere is mated with the idea of His ever acting to preserve His children.

This the Greek never

conceived, but with the Hebrew, although limited to those of his own race, it was an ever-present thought.

(To be continued.)

LONDON PUBLISHED BY M. PATTIE, 31, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND GEORGE

:

GLAISHER, 470, NEW OXFORD Street.

Printed by W. Ostell, Hart-street, Bloomsbury.

THE PATHFINDER,

A JOURNAL OF

PURE THEISM AND RELIGIOUS FREETHOUGHT,

THE ORGAN OF INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS REFORM.

THE ignorant man is loud in his complaints that life is a kind of mockery, mainly composed of disappointments and insuperable difficulties, and these he very naturally treats as the parents of a numerous progeny of miseries. There are hours when he will admit, that, as the gloom of winter may be occasionally relieved by glorious bursts of sunshine, so life may be irradiated and rendered joyous; but the words have not long gone forth from his lips before he resolves to add, as his commentary upon them, that they are but momentary blessings, which vanish hastily away, and leave the evils to remain as masters of the scene.

Unhappily such men look only upon one side of the shield, before pronouncing upon the colour of both. They can taste the bitterness of the medicine, but cannot conceive the advantages to the body which may follow its use. They utterly fail in recognising the educational value of disappointment, and the strength-imparting power of difficulty; they impeach both, and decree their condemnation, precisely the same as the poor savage condemns winter, without ever attempting to comprehend its intrinsic value. But in addition to this, and which is of even more importance, they close thier eyes to the fact that man creates more difficulties than he finds in nature. He is the author of nine-tenths of the impediments which lie upon his path to retard his progress. Immediately following upon the demonstration by a scientific man of some new truth, there is heard a chorus of voices, all joining in the exclamations, "How beautiful and simple! How clear and valuable!" and then all begin to marvel that what was so plain and easy to be understood was not discovered at an earlier date.

There is no cause left for wondering at the lateness of the revelation when we consider the fact, that it is the fixed habit of man to create difficulties, which, as veils, he hangs over the truth. He starts with a theory, and persists in looking at nature through its mists, thus he perceives not the thing which is, but only the image of his own theory. The mystery was not in the object, but in his own mind. Nature stood ready to show the truth, but he was not ready to use his unaided vision. Thus, the difficulty which had to be conquered lay in himself, and immediately he dared to see for himself, the whole truth in all its simplicity and beauty stood revealed before him.

VOL. V. NEW SERIES, VOL. I.

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