s melting, and as he remembers his
glad songs of old, and this miserable dumbness, his final prayer is, "O
Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise."

The same consciousness of sin, which we have found in a previous verse
discerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads also
to the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices--a thought
which is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product of
the latest age of Judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole of
the history, and indicates not the date, but the spiritual elevation of
its utterer. David sets it on the very summit of his psalm, to sparkle
there like some stone of price. The rich jewel which he has brought up
from the abyss of degradation is that truth which has shone out from its
setting here over three millenniums: "The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not
despise."

The words which follow, containing a prayer for the building up of Zion,
and a prediction of the continuous offering of sacrifice, present some
difficulty. They do not necessarily presuppose that Jerusalem is in
ruins; for "build Thou the walls" would be no less appropriate a
petition if the fortifications were unfinished (as we know they were in
David's time) than if they had been broken down. Nor do the words
contradict the view of sacrifice just given, for the use of the symbol
and the conviction of its insufficiency co-existed, in fact, in every
devout life, and may well be expressed side by side. But the transition
from so intensely personal emotions to intercession for Zion seems
almost too sudden even for a nature as wide and warm as David's. If the
closing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awaking
to a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected,
first, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbid
self-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious one
that the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. But
there is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecture
that these verses are a later addition, probably after the return from
captivity, when the walls of Zion were in ruins, and the altar of the
temple had been long cold. If so, then our psalm, as it came from
David's full heart, would be all of a piece--one great gush of penitence
and faith, beginning with, "Have me