at the command of the infamous Duke of Alva. Carey, the
first English missionary to India, desired the first four lines to be
the text of his funeral sermon. Shakespeare uses lines 11 and 12 in
the King's speech in Hamlet--

"Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow?"

Lines 19 and 20 were repeated by the great English teacher, Thomas
Arnold, on his deathbed, while Teresa, the Spanish Catholic saint,
died repeating lines 15 and 16. Lines 21 and 22 serve as the motto of
Michael Angelo's picture of Savonarola. Few Psalms have been more on
the lips of holy men of all ages than the 51st.

_Psalm 68_ was the favorite Psalm of the Emperor Charlemagne. It was
used by the friends of Savonarola at the crisis of his career. A
Franciscan friar, whom he had angered by his preaching, challenged
him, after the custom of the Middle Ages, to prove his preaching by
the test of fire. One of his friends accepted the challenge for him,
and on the appointed day headed a procession which marched through the
streets of Florence, singing Psalm 68. The challenger did not appear;
and the crowd, with the usual bad logic of crowds, {501} turned
against Savonarola. Two days later he was thrown into prison, and
torture and death ended the scene. This Psalm was the battle hymn of
the Huguenots, in the form of a verse translation into French by Beza,
a great scholar of the Reformation. Battle after battle was entered to
the sound of this splendid song. At one battle, that of Courtras, a
young courtier in the opposing army saw the Huguenots kneel as they
sang. "See," he said, "the cowards are afraid. They are confessing."
"When the Huguenots behave thus, they are ready to fight to the
death," replied a veteran from the ranks. Cromwell opened his
Parliament with a speech expounding this Psalm. Lines 1 and 2 were the
text of the sermon at the service held by the Russians of Moscow in
1812 to give thanks for the retreat of the French from Moscow.
Cromwell's "Ironsides" sang this Psalm at the decisive battle at
Dunbar, when, the mists arising from the valley, they charged and
broke the enemy's ranks.

_Psalm 72_ was the favorite Psalm of Athanasius, the greatest figure
at the Nicene Council in 325 A. D. "Against all assaults upon thy
body," he says, "thine estate, thy soul, thy reputation, against all
temptations, tribulations, plots and slanderous reports, say this
Psalm." The familiar representation, in pictur