The Back of Psalms.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 515, 7 October 1890, Page 3

The Back of Psalms.

The Book of Psalms forms the .object of Mr Gladstone*, article in the'July number of Good Words. The first paragraph of the first section (which treats their historic* place in the devotion of all eges) is as follows “John Bright has told me that he would be content to stake upon the Book df Psalms, as it stands, the great question whether there is or Is not a Divine revelation. It Was not to him conceivable how a work so widely severed from all the known productions of antiquity, and standing upon a level ad much higher, could be accounted for. except by a special and extraordinary aid ealculatea to produce special and extraordinary result. for it is reasonable, nay, needful, to presume a- du# correspondence betweanthe canfe and the effect. Nor does, thia opinion anuear to b« unreasonable. If Bright did not possess the special qualifications of the scholar or the Critic, he was, I conceive, a very capable judge of the moral and religious elements in any. case that has been brought before him by his personal experience. The second sections deal with the.antiquity of the Book of Psalms. "On this point cf antiquity it is more than enough if a large portion of the Psalms arj ascribable to King David, I venture, however, to offer two suggestions: First, the Psalms oome to us through a channel supplied by the kingdom of Judah, not the kingdom of Israel, If they had. been largely composed after the severance of the ten tribes from the two, would they not have presented some more definite indication of that severance? The name of Israel is the name under which in the Psalms the chosen people are described. We have this name repeated twenty six times. The name of Judah was likely, it may be supposed, afte* the schism, to become the prevailing and distinctive name still more so after the captivity and the dispersion of the ten tribes, and as long as their remnants continued to maintain any serious and systematic rivalry with the Jews. Yet throughout the Psalter we never find the . PWe pt Judah used in this paramount sense. Could this have been so if the Psalms had mainly been composed when Judah was the only acknowledged name for the elect people, and Israel wqs « stranger, often an enemy, always Ihe symbol of a rival and proscribed worship