e," where, instead of purpose and
progress, there is but a dawnless twilight, the land "without any
order" of Job (xlix., lxxxviii., cxv. 17).

And yet the more one studies and uses the Psalms in the light of other
Scriptures and the Church's interpretation, the more it is found that
these partial, at first sight erroneous, conceptions have still their
practical value for Christians. There is nothing in them that is {26}
positively false, and they suggest, on the other hand, aspects of truth
which we tend to forget. Thus in the instances given above, by "the
gods of the heathen" the Christian may well be reminded of the
continued existence and influence in the heathen world of the powers of
evil, of the malignant warfare that is still being waged by
"principalities and powers" against light and truth. The ancient
conception of the shadowy abode of the dead has also its value. Even
the Lord Himself could speak of the night coming "when no man can work"
(John ix. 4), and such Psalms as the 49th and the 115th may serve to
remind us that this life is a time of work and probation in a sense
that the life after death is not, that the grave cannot reverse the
line that has been followed here nor put praises in the mouth of those
who have never praised God "secretly or in the congregation" in this
world. And again, the "present-worldliness" of the Psalter may well
point the duty of Christians in respect of what they see and know
around them here. Many are content, while repeating pious phrases
about heaven, to ignore the fact that this present human life is the
great sphere of Christian activity, and that whether the Church is able
to regenerate human society here or {27} not, it is her business to try
to do it, as fellow-workers with Him--

Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong:
Who feedeth the hungry.
(cxlvi. 6.)

Have we not a remarkable witness to the continuity of the Holy Spirit's
teaching, and to the fact that not "one jot or one tittle" of the law
is to remain unfulfilled, in the way that these apparent imperfections
and limitations of the Psalter fall into their place in connection with
the later revelation?

Another obvious difficulty of the Psalter lies in the frequent
obscurity of connection between verse and verse, in the rapid
transitions, in the uncertainty as to the sequence of thought, or the
meaning of the Psalm as a whole. This difficulty, as it bears upon the
liturgical use