LITERAL AND HISTORICAL SENSE, AS THEY RELATE TO KING DAVID AND THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, AND THEIR APPLICATION TO MESSIAH, TO THE CHURCH, AND TO IS POINTED OUT; WITH A VIEW TO RENDER THE USE OF THE PSALTER PLEASING AND PROFITABLE BY GEORGE, LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH. AND PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY THE REV. EDWARD IRVING, MINISTER OF THE CALEDONIAN CHURCH, LONDON. AND A MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER, 58 CANAL STREET, 1845. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. As in political affairs the enlightened Scottish patriot and statesman, in order to work upon the people, asked for the songs of a nation, rather than its profound and laborious literature; and, in ecclesiastical affairs, the politic churchmen of Rome apprehended more danger to their craft and mystery, from Luther's spiritual songs, than from all his writings of controversial and popular theology; so, in spiritual affairs, it is to be believed that no book of the sacred canon seizeth such a hold upon the spiritual man, and engendereth in the church so much fruitfulness of goodness and truth, of comfort and joy, as doth the Book of Psalms. We say not that the Psalms are so well fitted as the pure light of the Gospel by John, and Paul's Epistles, which are the refraction of that pure light over the fields of human well-being, to break the iron bone, and bruise the millstone heart of the natural man; but that they are the kindliest medicine for healing his wounds, and the most proper food for nourishing the new life which comes from the death and destruction of the old. For, as the songs and lyrical poems of a nation, which have survived the changes of time by being enshrined in the hearts of a people, contain the true form, and finer essence of its character, and convey the most genial moods of its spirit, whether in seasons of grief or joy, down to the children, and the children's children, perpetuating the strongest vitality of choice spirits, awakened by soul-moving events, and holding, as in a vessel, to the lips of posterity, the collected spirit of venerable antiquity: so the Psalms, which are the songs and odes, and lyrical poems of the people of God, inspired not of wine, or festal mirth, of war, or love, but spoken by holy men as they were moved by the HOLY GHOST, contain the words of GOD'S SPIRIT taught to the souls of his servants, when they were exercised with the most intense experiences, whether of conviction, penitence, and sorrow or faith, love, and joy; and are fit not only to express the same most vital moods of every renewed soul, but also powerful to produce those broad awakenings of spirit, to create those overpowering emotions, and propagate that energy of spiritual life in which they had their birth. Be it observed, moreover, that these Songs of Zion express not only the most remarkable passages which have occurred in the spiritual experience of the most gifted saints, but are the record of the most wonderful dispensations of God's providence unto his church:-containing pathetic dirges sung over her deepest calamities, jubilees over her mighty deliverances, songs of sadness for her captivity, and songs of mirth for her prosperity, prophetic announcement of her increase to the end of time, and splendid anticipations of her ultimate glory. Not indeed the exact narrative of the events as they happened, or are to happen, nor the pro |