imputed to Him. But what, it may be asked, were the trespasses and disobediences of the Messiah's youth, which He requests not to be remembered? I agree with Mr. Hutchinson, that (these) sins may be the sins juniorum, of his younger brethren, i. e. the Christians." Bishop Horne's annotations on this very Psalm are among the most edifying in his volumes, without the slightest tincture of mysticism or elaborate subtilization. But if the hypothesis of Hutchinson, so authoritatively adopted by Horsley, and exemplified in chivalrous defiance of all unsophisticated reasoning as well as feeling on the subject, in this instance, be admitted as the true mode of interpreting the Hebrew text, who can be sure of the true meaning of any disputed passages, since fifty persons as learned in the original as Hutchinson, as pious as Horne, and as mighty in the Scriptures as Horsley, may differ from each other respecting it upon infallible critical principles, for where the literal meaning is not in some way the fact-meaning, what other meaning may not be made of it, when every primitive word, in the original (as the writer of this was once assured by a sincere Hutchinsonian) is a Cyclopedia, and may have manifold significations. Yet we are gravely told, that the Hebrew, being a language of ideas, not of conventional signs, can never mislead the interpreter of it; and the Arabic has been disparaged by this class of scholars, because it has a hundred nay five hun

dred words for one thing, and must therefore be a Babel of confusion. Granting this, of what superiority for communicating clear intelligence can that language boast, in which one word may mean a hundred, nay five hundred things, from the paucity of radicals and the multiplicity of ramifications? The Old Testament, instead of being, in its plain passages, what 'he that runneth may read,' must be a book of hieroglyphics, of which the original key having been lost, conjectural picklocks alone can be employed to open its arcana. Like a timepiece without hands, though it be so correct that the longitude might be ascertained by it in any part of the globe, yet even the hour of the day cannot be known, while every second of every minute is distinctly recorded by its ticking; even so would the word of God be a book with seven seals upon it, which no man could open. How then could that portion of it entitled the Psalms be " a whole system of divinity for the common people of the Christian Church ?"

The Psalms authenticate the books of Moses, and the other historical records to the age of David. There are few allusions to any subsequent events, from the reign of Solomon to the captivity; but the melancholy memorials of the latter, and the joyful ones of the restoration of the Jews to their own land are numerous, and as full of pathos, power, and sublimity, according to the theme, as

most of the more ancient compositions. These inspired strains of poetry were thus produced at successive eras, and in process of time became so numerous and so admirably diversified as to suit every season and circumstance for which devotional verse can be desired. They may be read in the closet, in the family, or in the great congregation, and wherever they may be read they may be sung likewise. David delighted in music, and even invented for himself instruments of harmony wherewith to praise the Lord. No profanation of a noble, innocent, and exquisite art can be urged as a legitimate argument against the sanctified use of it; and that this may be so sanctified we have both precedent and exhortation again and again in these pages of the divine oracles. How happily the poetry of the Psalms may be married to music even of our days, there are numerous examples in church anthems, and other choral pieces called sacred, because adapted to words of holy writ. As a poem, had the hundred and fourth Psalm been found in the Greek anthology, how would it have been extolled by critics as the most perfect specimen of lyric song, in classical records the most precious relic of antiquity in its kind, for the symmetry of its parts, the beauty of its imagery, the splendour of its diction, and the diversity of its subjects, embracing the whole of the phenomena of nature, by day and by night, the living and the dead creatures of

almighty power, their destruction and renovation, the economy of Providence, natural death and the renewal of life; by the sovereign dispensations of one only eternal, all-wise, and all gracious Being. Had Handel, instead of wasting his wonderful harmonies, and his inimitable melodies, on verbiage unworthy of them, in his rhyming oratorios, -had Handel set this Psalm, from beginning to end, to such music as he only could compose, and compose only when inspired himself by the language of inspiration, he might indeed have produced a worthy companion-piece to his own unrivalled Messiah. The plan of this divine ode is perfect; every link in the chain of circumstances is consecutive, progressive, and occupying its own peculiar place; at the same time the transitions are so admirable, that while nothing can be more natural, the whole is the consummation of art, hiding itself like light, which reveals every thing but its own identity. Take one section, from the nineteenth to the twenty-fourth verse inclusive: He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down: Thou makest darkness and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth :-the young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God:-the sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens: MAN GOETH FORTH UNTO HIS WORK AND LABOUR TILL EVENING: O LORD! how mani

fold are thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of thy goodness."Who that has any music in his soul cannot imagine the possibility of strains of vocal and instrumental concords, which might be composed on the scenes and subjects presented in these poetic and pictorial verses equal, though not similar, except in character and kindred climax-to Haydn's magnificent conception of his overture of Chaos to the Creation, followed by that triumph of music,-that bursting, spreading, towering harmony of sounds, at the words, Let there be light, and there was light,' which overwhelms the listener, till he almost shuts his ears from intensity of delight, as he would have shut his eyes from the overpowering effulgence, had he seen the first created beam springing out of the womb of unessential night, and diffusing itself through infinite space.

The proper limits of this Preliminary Essay (which have been already exceeded) forbid further expatiation on the character of particular parts of the Book of Psalms. The reader will find abundance of discriminative as well as elegant strictures on these, regarded as literary compositions, in Bishop Horne's Commentary. This, without being curiously critical, or learnedly elaborate, to perplex ordinary readers, is accompanied in the body of the text of the authorized version, with such occasional new renderings of the Hebrew phraseology as throw