essedness of the pure in heart; the warfare of
Paul, the spirit against the flesh.

In other psalms, again, is a poignant cry for help and deliverance. It
is the expostulation of the soul with Fate, the cry to a Power who should
be a friend, but hides his face. There, is a pathetic sense of man's
frailty and mortality. "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my
cry; hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover
strength, before I go hence, and be no more."

Praise for God's greatness and awe for his eternity are joined with the
sad sense of man's mortality. "Wilt thou show wonders to the dead?
Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy lovingkindness be
declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy
wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of
forgetfulness?"

Very often again the burden is the cry of the weak against the oppressor.
Man, wronged by his fellow, cries to God, and can imagine no deliverance
save by the ruin of his enemies. The cursing is tremendous. "O daughter
of Babylon, happy shall he be that taketh thy little ones and dasheth
them against the stones!" At this point is the widest ethical difference
between "them of old time" and our own religion. In them, abhorrence of
sin was not yet distinguished from hatred of the sinner, and the foes of
the Psalmist or his nation were always identified with the foes of God.
To hate thine enemy seemed as righteous as to love thy friend.

In a sense we may say the Psalms are a cry to which Jesus is the answer:
"Lord, save me, and destroy my enemies!" "Love your enemies, and in
loving you are saved."

In the book of Psalms there blends and alternates with the old theory of
reward and punishment a later idea,--that goodness carries its own
blessing with it,--that better than oil and wine, flocks and herds,
health and friends, is the peace of well-doing, the joy of gratitude,
yes, even the passionate contrition in which the soul revolts from its
own sin and finds again the sweetness of the upward effort and a response
to that effort like heaven's own smile. Not, goodness brings blessings,
but goodness _is_ blessed; not, the wicked shall perish, but wickedness
_is_ perdition; this is the deep undertone of the best of the Psalms.

Among these hymns are some which are filled with a noble delight in the
works of nature