The Lenten Psalms Author:John Adams Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: it. Not simply the reflection of sea and sky, however beautiful they are in their unity ; and assuredly not the relation of a man to his beast, as so graphically... more » depicted in verse 9; but that deeper and more spiritual communion of a father and son, as eye meets eye, and soul looks into soul, in an act of age-long, covenant love. " I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, / -willJix upon thee Mine eye" Obviously, one may rightly speak of the blessedness of the forgiven state. It is free from alarms by night, encircled with song by day, and characterised by deep, spiritual communion while life lasts—in a word, compassed about by Divine mercy, as in verse 10; who would not seek to rise into the fulness of so rich an experience, and lose the bitterness, if not the consciousness, of sin, in the glad ascription of praise with which this penitential psalm concludes— "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: And shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart." In conventional phrases, it may be, but with a deep, spiritual fervour that redeems and beautifies the whole, the songs that thrilled the Psalmist's heart are now to be caught up and chanted by the entire Church. For in this grand " Hallelujah Chorus " oi exultant adoration and praise, the penitence of the pious in Israel is to be glorified. PSALM XXXVIII. THE DIVINE ARROWS. " For Thine arrows stick fast in me, And Thy hand presseth me sore" (ver. 2). The verbs employed in this verse are two different forms of the same Hebrew root, meaning to descend cf. the rendering " lighted on " in the margin of the R.V. In no sense, however, does this do justice to the reflexive force of the original. The arrows do more than descend. They hurl themselves down with such force that t...« less