The regular services of the Church fall naturally into two classes. The Eucharist, the service of the Altar, took the place of the sacrificial worship of the Temple. The Divine Office, the service of the Choir, may have been suggested by the services of the Synagogue. But if so, there is one most significant difference. The Christian Church made a much fuller public use of the Psalms than the Synagogue ever seems to have done.[[1]] The Psalms in the Jewish Church seem to have been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its central feature. The Divine Office of the Christian Church practically is the Psalter. The readings from other parts of Scripture, so prominent in the Synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place. The recitation of the Psalms, which appears from very early times as the characteristic Christian devotion, became the very centre and core of the sevenfold daily Choir Office of the mediæval Church. The whole Psalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at Mattins (the midnight office), while selected Psalms formed the chief part of the subsequent services of the day.[[2]] The English Reformers, however hastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these services of the Breviary, showed the true Catholic instinct in this at least, that they provided as the leading feature of Morning and Evening Prayer an unbroken and systematic recitation of the Psalms. In this respect their claim was justified that they had provided an order "much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers."[[3]] It was a return from mediæval complications to a more primitive ideal.
What, then, was this book of praise and worship which the Catholic Church found ready to hand, and made unhesitatingly her own, and which has set the standard and provided the chief material for her continual voice in the ear of God? The Psalter, as we know it now, had been for some time before Christ the recognised praise-book of Israel. Its Hebrew name is simple and significant—Tehillim, "praises." Its historical origins and growth are still indeed wrapt in obscurity, and to discuss them would be alien from our present purpose. Suffice it to say that there seems no conclusive reason for discrediting the universal Jewish and Christian tradition that the Psalter begins at least with David. Some of the earlier and more personal psalms are naturally felt to reflect his character and youthful struggles. Nor is it unreasonable to believe that the later historical books are substantially correct in making him the founder of the Temple choir (1 Chron. xv.; Ezra iii. 10). Doubtless the majority of the Psalms belong to a later age, and their collection is due to the scrupulous care and reverence of the period of Jewish history which begins with Ezra. The singers of the Temple after, perhaps even before, the Captivity formed various collections of sacred lyrics, which passed under characteristic names, some being entitled "Psalms of David" (though not of necessity all his work); others bearing the names of ancient leaders of the Temple choir, like Asaph, or of the guilds of singers, like "the sons of Korah." Another collection with a distinct individuality would be the "songs of degrees" or "ascents" (cxx.-cxxxii.), the pilgrim-songs of the faithful Israelites as they journeyed from their homes to keep the annual feasts at Jerusalem. At some unknown time these different collections, or selections from them, must have been brought together into one. Many scholars consider that the compilation cannot have been complete before the age of the Maccabees, as more than one Psalm is thought to refer to the agonies of faithful Israel during that great national crisis (e.g. Pss. xliv., lxxiv., lxxix., lxxx.). But it must have been substantially complete by the time that the Septuagint translation was made (in the second century B.C.); and so ancient then were the titles of the Psalms in the Hebrew that these Alexandrine scholars seem to have been frequently puzzled by them.
This collection of 150 Psalms, whenever precisely it may have been made, was divided into five books, each ending with an outburst of praise to the God of Israel.[[4]] The key to this somewhat artificial arrangement is no doubt to be found in the desire to make the Psalter correspond with the Pentateuch. "Moses," says a Rabbinical commentator (Midrash Tillim), "gave five-fifths of the Law, and correspondingly David gave the book of Tehillim, in which are five books." Of this Dr. Cheyne says, "The remark is a suggestive one: it seems to mean this—that the praise-book is the answer of the worshipping community to the demands made by its Lord in the Law, the reflexion of the external standard of faith and obedience in the utterance of the believing heart." This criticism is so illuminating that it may well suggest the first great principle in our own Christian use of the Psalter.
I. The Psalter is the inspired answer of praise which human faith is privileged to make to God's revelation. It is the "new song" put in the mouth of humanity by its Creator. "Thou preparest their heart, and Thine ear hearkeneth thereto" (Ps. x. 19).
This is surely a very great thought. The Old Testament is the record of God's gradual unveiling of Himself to His elect, whom for the world's sake He had chosen out of the world. The revelation was not indeed to them alone. God had spoken in many ways, more than even the Church yet recognises, to the heathen world. Yet to Israel God gave that highest privilege of receiving and keeping the true knowledge of Himself, of His unity, His universality, His moral being, His holiness, His love, and of the demand which this knowledge makes on human conscience. The unknown author of 2 Esdras, looking back on history after the great blow had fallen on Jerusalem, has expressed this in vivid and pathetic language: "Of all the flowers of the world Thou hast chosen Thee one lily: and of all the depths of the sea Thou hast filled Thee one river: and of all builded cities Thou hast hallowed Sion unto Thyself: ... and among all the multitudes of peoples Thou hast gotten Thee one people: and unto this people, whom Thou lovedst, Thou gavest a law that is approved of all" (2 Esd. v. 24-7). In the Psalter God has provided, as it were, for His people the words of praise in which their thankful hearts may express their love and loyalty to what He has revealed.
This feature, the glad response to revelation, is stamped upon the Psalter from end to end. Thus the 1st Psalm describes the secret of human blessedness:
His delight is in the law of the Lord:
And in His law will he exercise himself day and night.
The 9th Psalm is an outburst of thanksgiving to "the Name" of God, Who is revealed as the moral Governor of the world. The 19th couples the self-revelation of God in nature, God Whose glory the heavens declare, with the revelation given in the Law, which is, as it were, the sun in the moral world restoring the soul and enlightening the eyes. The 25th reads like a comment from man's heart on the great proclamation of God's Name given to Moses in the "cleft of the rock"—"The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 5-7). So the Psalmist prays, as it were, in answer:
Call to remembrance, O Lord, Thy tender mercies:
And Thy loving-kindnesses, which have been ever of old.
O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:
But according to Thy mercy think Thou upon me, O Lord,
for Thy goodness.