e far more, they are prophecy and preaching
concerning God. They preach and declare to the Jews the Living God. They
are the speech of a man whose thoughts and works were begun, continued,
and ended in God. A man who knew that God was about his path, and about
his bed, and spying out all his ways. A man whose one fixed idea was,
that God was leading and guiding him through life. That idea, "The Lord
leads me," is the key-note of David's psalms, and makes them what they
are, an inspired revelation of Almighty God.

But is that idea true? Of course, you answer, it is true, because it is
in the Bible. But that is not the question. That is rather putting the
question aside, which is, Do _we_ believe it to be true, and find it to
be true? We believe that God was leading David because we read it in the
Bible. But do we believe that God is leading _us_? If not, what is the
use of our reading David's psalms, either in private or publicly in
church every Sunday? You all know how largely we use them, but why? If
we are not in the same case as David was, what right have we to take
David's words into our mouths? We do not fancy that there is any magical
virtue in repeating the same words, as foolish people used to repeat
charms and spells. Our only right, our only excuse for saying or singing
David's psalms in public or in private, must be, that as David was, so
are we in this world, under the continual guidance of God.

And therefore it is that the Church bids us to use these psalms in our
devotions, day by day, all the year round--that we may know that our God
is David's God, our temptations David's temptations, our fears David's
fears, our hopes David's hopes, our struggles and triumphs over what is
wrong in our hearts and in the world around us, are the same as David's.
That we are not to fancy, because David was an inspired prophet, that
therefore he was in a different case from us, of different passions from
ours, or that his words are too sacred and holy for us to use. Not so,
we are to believe the very contrary. We are to believe that no prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation--that is--has not merely to
do with the man who spoke it first--but that because David spoke by the
Spirit of God, who is no respecter of persons, therefore his words apply
to you, and to me, and to every human being--that David is revealing to
us the everlasting laws of God's Spirit, and of God's providence, whereby
He