sure:
Then said I, Lo, I am come

{55}

(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God."
(Heb. x., from Ps. xl.)

This line of interpretation may be followed out with great spiritual
profit in the varied aspects of the Psalms. The thanksgivings of the
Psalter are in the same spirit as those recorded by the Evangelists
from our Lord's own lips, as when He thanked the Father for the
revelation made to babes rather than to the wise and understanding
(Matt. xi. 25), or at the grave of Lazarus gave thanks that His prayer
was heard (John xi. 41). The prayers of the Psalter might well be
those in which the Incarnate Son communed with the Father. For He
fought our human battle with the human weapons of faith and prayer.
The great description given by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
of Christ as "the Author and Finisher of our faith" (Heb. xii. 2),
implies One Who inaugurated our effort of faith by Himself first taking
part in it, and Himself perfectly accomplished it by bearing to the
very final and utmost strain our human temptations. Hence we may hear
the voice of Christ Himself in those pathetic outcries of the Psalter;
in its appeal of faith as the Righteous One wrestles with doubt and
{56} depression or faces the contradiction of sinners; in its stedfast
hold on God even when sin is triumphing, and a world created good seems
given over into the hand of the wicked. All these utterances have a
new meaning, a fuller efficacy, when we recognise in them the words of
the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." There is nothing
either fantastic or presumptuous in this reading of the Gospel in the
Psalter. Did not He Himself vouchsafe to shew us something of this
human struggle of faith in the words spoken on the eve of His Passion,
when He confessed that His soul was troubled, and He would fain have
said, "Father, save Me from this hour" (John xii. 27)? Did He not lift
the veil even further in admitting us to the dark sanctuary of
Gethsemane, in suffering us to hear even His utterances from the Cross?

The fourth Word from the Cross, so often misunderstood, is the opening
of the 22nd Psalm. This cry at the climax of the Passion is really the
voice of faith, faith triumphing over desolation of spirit, faith
holding on by the unseen, amidst the falling away and the vanishing for
the time of every consolation. It is not _merely_ "Why didst Thou
forsake Me?" but it i