, seeing God everywhere, and
learning to perfect praise from his youthful lips.

III.--EARLY DAYS--_CONTINUED_.

In addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to the
devout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection with
David's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to be
his. The twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with the
glory of God as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as the
recipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundest
tranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and the
peace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult and
noise. It is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm,
such as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouched
under some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge about
him. Its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling peals
reverberating among the hills.

There is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry,
calling upon the "sons of God," the angels who dwell above the lower
sky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, to
ascribe to Jehovah the glory of His name--His character as set forth in
the tempest. They are to cast themselves before Him "in holy attire," as
priests of the heavenly sanctuary. Their silent and expectant worship is
like the brooding stillness before the storm. We feel the waiting hush
in heaven and earth.

Then the tempest breaks. It crashes and leaps through the short
sentences, each like the clap of the near thunder.

_a._ The voice of Jehovah (is) on the waters.
The God of glory thunders.
_Jehovah (is) on many waters._
The voice of Jehovah in strength!
The voice of Jehovah in majesty!

_b._ The voice of Jehovah rending the cedars!
_And Jehovah rends the cedars of Lebanon_,
And makes them leap like a calf;
Lebanon and Sirion like a young buffalo
The voice of Jehovah hewing flashes of fire!

_c._ The voice of Jehovah shakes the desert,
_Jehovah shakes the Kadesh desert_.

The voice of Jehovah makes the hinds writhe
And scathes the woods--and in His temple--
--All in it (are) saying, "Glory."

Seven times the roar shakes the world. The voice of the seven thunders
is the voice of Jehovah. In the short clauses,