may dwell in our land.
Mercy and truth are met together:
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall flourish out of the earth:
And righteousness hath looked down from heaven.

In such prophetic visions as these, as well as in the Psalms that speak
of the glories of the Messianic King, the Christian conscience has {51}
rightly recognised definite predictions of the coming of Christ, of Him
Who was both "the effulgence of God's glory" (Heb. i. 3) and also, by
His human birth, the Son of David and King of Israel, and Who
manifested the holiness of God in human flesh and blood. He Himself,
when He came, selected from the Psalms one striking phrase, in which
both ideas, the Divine glory and the human calling, are combined. For
He quotes, as a witness to Himself and as a corrective of imperfect
views, the 110th Psalm (again a proper Psalm for Christmas Day), where
the Messianic King is spoken of both as Ruler and Victor and Priest of
humanity, and as standing also in a unique relationship to God, which
exalts Him far above any mere earthly connection with David:

The Lord said unto my Lord:
Sit thou on My right hand--
If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?
(Matt. xxii. 45.)

But besides all these prophecies, which look onward to the great
outcome of Israel's history, there is another and wider sense, as the
Christian Fathers apprehended, in which the whole Psalter is the book
of the {52} Incarnation and speaks of Christ. "David," says S. Jerome,
"on his harp and ten-stringed lute, sings throughout of Christ, and
brings Him up from the dead." However fanciful and over-subtle the
early Christian commentators may seem to us in their working out of
this idea, they had grasped a profound truth. When we once recognise
that Christ, knowing Who He was and why He came into the world (_cf._
John xiii. 1), must in the Jewish services or in private prayers have
recited the Psalms with a perfect intention, and found in them the true
expression of Himself, with regard both to the eternal Father and to
His brethren, we are compelled to admit the possibility of each verse
of the Psalms having some bearing on the Incarnation. It is a
conclusion which might at first sight seem extravagant; but it forces
itself upon us as we realise the true humanity of the Saviour. He is
"the Son of Man"; He took of the substance of His Virgin-mother the
fulness of human nature; He has a hum