or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as his
Rock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical
indications of Saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish the
psalms of this period from those of Absalom's revolt, in which the
remembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims.
In like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are too
triumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heart
yearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearly
broke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence in
God, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with
the buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate
adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If then
we may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that
period, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon
us from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhere
about five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fully
conscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts his
spirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with God which no
tumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgression
troubled and stained. His harp is his solace in his wanderings; and
while plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for the
deepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clear
ringing notes of glad affiance in the "God of his mercy."

Distinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are,
undoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than has
been sometimes carelessly assumed. Their infrequency and comparative
vagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptions
which allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. But in so far as
it is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surely
rather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. For if
these are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to which
they are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by a
tradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter?
Besides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expect
precisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailed
allusions to the writer's circumstances. The poetic imaginatio