payers." On the other hand, he observes :-"The advantages of field-work for boys in workhouses are often neutralized by allowing them to work under the charge or in company with adult male paupers. Then he goes on to advocate the Central scheme. "The great value of the district or separate school lies in the removal of the children from workhouse associations, and the possibility of intercourse with adult paupers." To this we should add that the greater value of an orphanage under the care of the district clergy would be, that a Christian education instead of the unchristian, broad bottomed, comprehensive one of Kneller Hall might be secured to them.

An orphanage then, would be simple enough in establishment and management. Let a district be formed of those neighbouring parishes in which there are churchmen willing to co-operate. Let a committee of clergy and laity be formed for the purpose of raising the funds sufficient for starting it. The outlay need not be great. To furnish a farmhouse and stock a few acres proportionable to the number of working children, would not cost much. Nor would the salary of the training-master be great. And let it be impressed on the richer rate-payers that many of them pay nothing, most of them less than their due proportion toward the poor rate, and that if they will even give what the barest modicum of Christianity enjoins, i.e., their tithe of funded or other as yet untouched property or income, there would be more than ample funds to accomplish the revival in many parishes of DISTRICT ORPHANAGES. Our own view is of course that this institution should be more or less unconnected with Boards of Guardians. In many unions the Guardians would allow to an orphanage what it now costs them for each child. As we have said, the clergy are the natural guardians of the poor. All modern legislation has ignored this fact. Boards of Guardians have owed their origin to the neglect of tithes on the part of the laity and to the misuse of tithes on the part of the clergy. The latter have often forgotten that one object of the tithe-system was the support of the poor; and the former have been left in ignorance that tithes is a part of true religion. What we go for is to rouse the laity to juster recognition of their duty to GOD, and the clergy to recover that care of the poor, which ought to be one of their special functions. This is our objection to District Pauper Schools. They must take their tone from the Parliamentary Guardians of their respective unions. We want Church schools-not infidel or miscreant schools. We do not want to be fettered by this thick-headed farmer, who is opposed to the children being instructed in geography: or by this dissenter, who mislikes the Prayer Book, or by this Puritan, who hates what he calls Puseyism. We are aware that possibly the district school might be more easily established and supported. But we prefer the orphanage, because its funds will be voluntary and not parlia

mentary-because it will call forth energies and aspirations which the cold shade of a Law Church has checked and thwarted. Everything in the present day which prepares us for the coming separation of Church and State, is valuable. Everything which bids church people think of the duty of honouring GOD with a return of His gifts. Everything which in the dark and cloudy day when the Church of England shall share the fate of other Establishments, shall bear fruit by teaching to lean on GOD and His immutable truth, rather than on the secular arm.

Let people be told as plainly as possible that as things stand now, they are daily robbing Almighty GoD in tithes and offerings -and so robbing His poor. This luxurious feast or this expensive amusement, or this costly dress, would maintain one child in an orphanage, rear one body in habits of industry, and happiness, save one soul from pollution and death. Could then we but see the rich thus laying themselves out systematically and judiciously for the good of the souls and bodies of their poorer brethren, we should hail the signs of a truer Catholic era than has long been vouchsafed. An orphanage would be the safest investment of Christian charity, and yet strange to say, it has met with the least consideration. It would be prevention rather than cure-preservation rather than restoration. And to a father or mother whose children had been taken from the evil to come by a merciful Parent of all, what more blessed work than, so to speak, to adopt, in such a way as this, poor lost orphans of the Christian family in the place of those angel faces they have lost awhile. We are not unaware that several benevolent ladies have established Homes for orphan girls. But we should wish to see the thing done systematically for children of both sexes, and on the broad basis of Christian duty and charity, and not simply for the amusement of those who have nothing else to do.

We trust that those of our countrymen who visit Paris during this summer, will make inquiry into the working of the French Church in these and similar departments of labour. It will be a much better employment, if done in a right spirit, than attending English services at the Oratories, which is the centre of unbelieving Rationalism for all France.

365

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PSALMS.

(Continued from page 316.)

THE most important of all the general questions connected with the interpretation of the Psalms is, Who is the chief Speaker in them, the principal Subject of them? All other considerations connected with their exposition are subordinate to this, and in a measure dependent thereon. On this leading question, together with certain of the consequences thence resulting, we propose in the following paper to offer a few observations.

Who then is the chief speaker in the Psalms? But this question may seem to involve a second-Who are the several authors of these Sacred Songs? as the Person of the speaker may be naturally supposed to depend, in some measure, upon the writer of the Psalm, and to vary with the several variations in the authorship.

Of the hundred and fifty Psalms, David appears to have been the author of about eighty; twenty-six we owe to David's singers, i.e., twelve to Asaph and his school, fourteen to the school of Korah: Psalm xc. is due to Moses; lxxii., cxxvii., to Solomon: besides which we appear to have forty-one nameless Psalms.

Now as many of these Psalms are occupied with the recital of personal history and experience, are we therefore to assume that the individual subject of it, is constantly varying, and that in singing this experience day by day, we are merely recounting the private trials and deliverances of certain holy Jews?

One remarkable fact here deserves notice, that personal history finds place in the Psalms in reference to one individual only, viz., David. It is in his Psalms only, together with certain of those composed by his singers, that personal narrative occurs at all: and even in these latter cases, it is not the person of the writer that appears, but that of David alone. He is the one representative Psalmist. Now this is an important and suggestive fact; and points to another probable conclusion, viz., that David himself qua 'Psalmist,' is a typical personage. And this probability is converted into a certainty when we listen to his own description of himself in this capacity, and see how he unconsciously identifies himself with his Divine Son and LORD. He describes himself as "the Man that was raised on High, the Anointed One of the God of Jacob, the Sweet Psalmist of Israel," in whom "the Spirit and Word of JEHOVAH Spake." (2 Sam. xxiii. 1.) Here then we have an explicit declaration as to the real Person of the "Psalmist :" he is the

Our readers will find some interesting facts connected with the external features of the Psalter, its arrangement, division into books, &c. &c., in the appendices to Hengstenberg's Commentary on the Psalms. 3 B

VOL. XVII.

Exalted One, the Anointed One, the Tabernacle of the Spirit of JEHOVAH.

But how does the dying monarch yet further describe his compositions? They are not only Psalms or Praise-Songs," but 'PraiseSongs of Israel.' Therefore the chief Singer is CHRIST Himself. The Songs are the Songs of Israel. In other words, it is the Church of CHRIST in the Person of her Head, it is the whole CHRIST,' Who is the one complex centre, subject, sum, and substance, of the Psalmodic Poetry. The Songs are the Songs of Israel-of every one of us. Each individual member of the Church, no less than the collective Body, may claim them as the expressions of his or her sorrows, experience, temptations, consolations, triumphs. They are the blessed inheritance of every Israelite indeed.'

Now this individual multiplicity of the speaker in the Psalter, this idea of a Representative Psalmist, who is at once Israel and Israel's chief Musician'-an individual Head, but with many members; a 'First-born,' but with many brethren'-will go a good way in explaining many of the surface difficulties of the Psalms, such (e.g.) as the abrupt apparent changes in the Person of the speaker; his one while appearing as Divine, at another as human; now as holy, now as a sinner; now as a single individual, now as a whole congregation. It will also tend to give us a much more living and personal interest in these Holy Songs, than we could otherwise possess; by reminding us that in uttering them, we are speaking of nothing extraneous to ourselves, but of what affects us most intimately; that we are singing CHRIST'S OWN words, in so far as He was one with us, nay, our own words, in so far as we are really one with Him; and that in them we may recognize "et in Illo voces nostras, et voces Ejus in nobis." (S. Aug. in Ps. lxxxvi.) The Psalmist' is the "Anointed of the LORD"-that Holy Corporation on Whose HEAD the HOLY GHOST was poured without measure, that it might descend to the skirts of His raiment, (Ps. cxxxiii.) and suffuse the whole Body. So that, in our humble degree-each in his measure-the Psalmist' is every one of ourselves: His experience is ours; His sufferings are, or will be to some extent, ours; His triumphs and glory, ours. The career of the Head is repeated, corporately as well as individually, in the members: "CHRISTUS illuc pergit quo præcessit: præcessit enim CHRISTUS in Capite, sequitur in Corpore." S. Aug. ubi sup.

We see then by whom the Psalms are uttered-by CHRIST in us, by us in CHRIST. But to whom are they uttered? Can CHRIST be separated from that Eternal GODHEAD Who is the Blessed Object of these Songs of Israel? No, wondrous Mystery!—He is Subject and Object at once; the Being to Whom, as well as by Whom Israel's prayers and praises are sung; the one Divine Mediator Who prays for us, Who prays in us, Who is prayed to, by us:

"Orat pro nobis ut Sacerdos noster; orat in nobis ut Caput nostrum; oratur a nobis ut DEUS noster."

But let us turn to certain other features of the Psalmodic poetry which hence perhaps may receive elucidation.

And first, how often do we find sincere Christians shrinking from the use of the Psalter language, as expressive at times, (1) of states of mind with which they feel themselves to have so little sympathy, or (2) of degrees of Grace to which they can lay so little claim. We allude (1) to the vindictive' passages in the Psalms, and (2) to those claims of perfect uprightness, innocence, holiness, which are so constantly made by the Psalmist. A word at present about the latter of these.

How frequently in the Psalter do we find Righteousness, perfect Righteousness, challenged for himself by the Speaker; asserted as a ground for being heard, and as necessarily, even by the rule of justice, ensuring to him, at once deliverance out of his present troubles (those troubles which, arising out of the enmity of the evil world, always must accompany Righteousness here), and everlasting salvation: "Judge me, O LORD, according to my Righteousness, &c." Language like this is often pronounced as "savouring of legality," as unbecoming in the mouth of a Christian who knows himself a sinner, who feels that if GOD were to deal with him " according to his righteousness," his case would be sad indeed.

The

But, irrespective of the direct allusion to "the LORD our Righteousness," has such language no equivalent even in the New Testament? Undoubtedly it has. Not only in the Psalmodic prophecies, but even in the Apostolic Epistles is perfect Righteousness predicated of the Christian: "He that is born of GOD.... cannot sin."2 Christian in such passages speaks, and is regarded, as "Christian." He speaks in the Psalms, and is described in the Epistles as a member of the New Creation, "created in CHRIST JESUS unto good works," and is viewed solely in reference to this New Birth. The language therefore and description are not only approximately, or in a qualified manner, but absolutely true. And this must be fully recognized if we would understand the real force of the words of the Psalmist and S. John. True, in many places, alike in the Psalms and (still more) in the Epistles, we meet with the ordinary complex Christian, with his twofold nature, the old and the new-his two lives, struggling the one against the other; the Spirit elevating the flesh, the flesh dragging down the Spirit; the two being "contrary the one to the other," and ever fighting for the mastery—their sub

1 So, "Give sentence with me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, and according to the innocency that is in me." Again, in the 18th Psalm, the Psalmist stops in the narration of his glorious successes and victories, to tell us the ground of them all, viz., his own integrity; "The LORD rewarded me according to my righte ous dealing;" and to enunciate thereupon the Eternal principle that Righteousness alone is the sure and necessary pathway to Salvation.

2 Vid. 1 S. John ii. 6, 20; iii. 3, 6, 9; v. 4, &c.