Would that I might see thy sanctuary,
To behold thy power and glory.—Ps. lxiii.
He knew by heart all the psalms which had any relation to Jerusalem, and no sooner had he finished one, than his fingers and his voice, unbidden, began another.
When Israel went out of Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah was his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.—Ps. cxiv.
His own pilgrimage to Jerusalem seemed to him like the departure of Israel from Egypt fourteen hundred years before, and he was transported at once to those remote ages with so lively a feeling, that the psalm seemed to him to spring fresh from his own soul, and to have been dictated by his own emotions. The forty-third Psalm occurred to his mind, and with the raised look, but subdued voice of humble devotion, he sung—
Send out thy light and thy truth and let them guide me!
Let them bring me to thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles!