dness of Thy people,
And give thanks with Thine inheritance.
(cvi. 4, 5.)

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Not only the attitude of praise should be cultivated, but also that of
sympathy. This will be especially fruitful as we take upon our lips
these constantly recurring expressions of penitence, struggle, and
sorrow. These are certain to be at times unreal to us, unless we can
remember that we recite them not merely for ourselves, but as part of
the Church's intercession for the world, in which it is our privilege
to take part. Others are suffering under the burden of sin and grief,
others are overwhelmed with sorrow, racked with pain, harried by the
slanderer and the persecutor. It is such as these that we remember
before God, as fellow-members of the one body. And will not such a
remembrance, such sympathy, bring us very near to our blessed Lord's
own use of the Psalter in His days on earth, Who "Himself took our
infirmities and bore our sicknesses"?

Yet beyond all these difficulties of language, history, and modes of
thought, whether they yield to study or not, there are outstanding
_moral_ difficulties of the Psalter. Some of the Psalms appear to be
inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel, or even with the moral
sense of mankind, educated as it has been for so long in the
Gospel-school. This objection seems at first {33} sight a more serious
difficulty than any of the others; but before it can be satisfactorily
dealt with, another and more fundamental question must be faced. What
is the attitude, as a whole, of the objector to the revealed word of
God? There are those to whom the Psalms seem to speak altogether in an
alien tongue, who find the recitation of them in the Church's service
"tedious" (a reason alleged recently as one of those which keep people
from attending church), to whom the 119th Psalm appears to be
"mechanical and monotonous," whose very expression in church proclaims
them "bored." Such feelings may be only the result of ignorance, or
lack of effort, or inherited misconceptions. Or the reason may lie
deeper. The worship of the Catholic Church can only be understood by
those who are of the mind of the Church, who have learned to place
themselves in the believer's attitude towards God and His revelation.

However much the word "conversion" may have been abused, and turned
into a mere catchword or shibboleth, it is unquestionable that the
Christian religion demands a fundamental change