an body, a human soul, a human
spirit; He is "the second Adam," the great Head of our race, Who, in
the striking phrase of S. Irenaeus, has "summed up" (_recapitulavit_)
all humanity and all the long history of man. "For verily, not of
angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the {53} seed of
Abraham" (Heb. ii. 16). He has gathered into Himself all truly human
experience, the hopes of humanity, and its sufferings; its infinite
pathos, its capacity of sorrow and of joy, its progress towards God,
and its final apprehension and vision of God.

This is the key to the most constant feature of the Psalter, the
portrait of the Righteous Sufferer. Whether we regard it as the
personification of the holy nation or the self-expression of human
conscience in its moral witness and its conflicts, it is an ideal that
is only fulfilled in the Just One, Jesus Christ. He appeared in the
world as the pattern Man, in Whom the Divine image is perfected and
Whose moral nature corresponds with that holiness which is God's
essential character. He appeared, too, as the perfect realisation of
the filial spirit, that spirit of sonship which is the true attitude of
the creature towards the Creator. Therefore it is in Christ Himself
that the witness of the Psalms to righteousness, their expression of
man's effort towards his ideal, is taken up, illuminated, made perfect.
Therefore it is that a New Testament writer is found applying directly
and without question to Christ not only the descriptions of the
self-revealing God of the Old Testament, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning
hast {54} laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the
works of Thy hands" (Heb. i. 10, from Ps. cii.), and the portrait of
the Messianic King, "The sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy
kingdom" (_ib._, from Ps. xlv.), but also the description of _man_ in
his ideal excellence and supremacy:

Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honour,
And didst set him over the works of Thy hands
(Heb. ii., from Ps. viii.),

and that word in which some unknown psalmist and prophet had
consecrated the free obedience of his will to God, as a higher offering
than the sacrifices of the Law:

Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
Thou hadst no plea