ngel came to the virgin of the house of David, it was felt by
those who had read aright the history of their nation that here was no
mere fanciful resuscitation of a dead past, but the vindication of
God's undying purpose: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son
of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of
His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i. 32, 33).

It was therefore strictly legitimate, and in line with all the history
of revelation, that the Christian Church should adopt these Messianic
Psalms as her own thanksgiving for the mysteries of the Incarnation.
Thus on Christmas Day she welcomes the Nativity in some of the Psalms
already alluded to--in that which tells of the reconciliation of
mankind with one {49} another and with God under the figure of the
marriage between the anointed King and the king's daughter "all
glorious within" (xlv.); in that which pleads the great promises to him
who so loved God's presence that he would not "suffer his eyes to sleep
nor his eyelids to slumber" until he had found a permanent
resting-place for that presence among men (cxxxii.); or in that, again,
which in the strength of faith can gaze even on the casting down of the
throne and the breaking of the covenant, resting still on God's
faithfulness among "the rebukes of many people" (lxxxix.).

But there are other Psalms which, if they cannot strictly be called
Messianic, yet bear their witness to another aspect of the same great
hope of Israel. In the voice of prayer, or joyful confidence, they
look forward to some _coming_ of God to earth, some visible
manifestation of His righteousness and His world-wide purpose:

For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth:
And with righteousness to judge the world,
and the people with His truth
(xcvi. 13),

{50}

or--

Bow Thy heavens, O Lord, and come down:
Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
(cxliv. 5.)

In the 85th, one of the Psalms appointed for Christmas Day, this advent
of God is spoken of in words which are re-echoed in the prologue to S.
John's Gospel (i. 14) as a dwelling or "tabernacling" of God's glory,
not in the darkness of a Holy of Holies (as the later Jews imagined the
Shekinah), but as a new and permanent fact in the moral order of the
world:

For His salvation is nigh them that fear Him:
That glory