tudes of peoples Thou hast gotten
Thee one people: and unto this people, whom Thou lovedst, Thou gavest a
law that is approved of all" (2 Esd. v. 24-7). In the Psalter God {9}
has provided, as it were, for His people the words of praise in which
their thankful hearts may express their love and loyalty to what He has
revealed.

This feature, the glad response to revelation, is stamped upon the
Psalter from end to end. Thus the 1st Psalm describes the secret of
human blessedness:

His delight is in the law of the Lord:
And in His law will he exercise himself day and night.

The 9th Psalm is an outburst of thanksgiving to "the Name" of God, Who
is revealed as the moral Governor of the world. The 19th couples the
self-revelation of God in nature, God Whose glory the heavens declare,
with the revelation given in the Law, which is, as it were, the sun in
the moral world restoring the soul and enlightening the eyes. The 25th
reads like a comment from man's heart on the great proclamation of
God's Name given to Moses in the "cleft of the rock"--"The Lord, the
Lord, a God full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy and truth" (Ex. xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 5-7). So the
Psalmist prays, as it were, in answer:

{10}

Call to remembrance, O Lord, Thy tender mercies:
And Thy loving-kindnesses, which have been ever of old.
O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:
But according to Thy mercy think Thou upon me, O Lord,
for Thy goodness.

The 40th offers the response of a converted will to what is found and
recognised in the Law:

In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God.
(R.V.)

The 78th recounts the long history of rebellious Israel as in itself
part of the "testimony" of God. The mingled record of deliverance and
failure, of judgment and hope, is in itself "a parable," a "dark saying
of old," which faith can read and make answer to. The 131st expresses
the very fundamental spirit of faith, the essential temper and attitude
of the Church, the spirit of humility, of intellectual submission, of
obedience, which is the same under the Gospel Dispensation as under the
Old Covenant.

{11}

Lord, I am not high-minded:
I have no proud looks.
I do not exercise myself in great matters:
Which are too high for me.

But the most remarkable illustration of this characteristic attitude of
the believer is the