the Revised Version), which were afterwards brought together in our present collection. The position of the Psalter, we repeat, is not due to any author's name, to any council's sanction, but to its compelling appeal to the highest side of men in that old Jewish Community. That was how the Holy Spirit wrought in making the Bible. Judged by the higher standard of Jesus Christ we can see imperfections and faults due to the poor imperfect men who wrote that Psalter. Strange if it were otherwise in that dark age in which it grew. But when all allowance has been made for these, who can doubt that that Psalter, which has been so powerful in inspiring human life through the ages since, caught on to men's souls in those early days and convinced them that it came from God? Again let us test it's compelling power on ourselves. Keep back still in that dim old world with its self-seeking, and idolatries, and human sacrifices, and lustful abominations, with no real sense of sin, no longings after holiness, and listen to the Jewish shepherd reciting in the field, and the Jewish choir boy singing in the church: "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, praise His Holy Name, Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, Who healeth all thy diseases. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction, Who crowneth thee with Like as a loving kindness and tender mercies. "Lord, who shall sojourn in Thy tabernacle, Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness and speaketh the truth in his heart. "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." "Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. . . The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Are not such songs in such an age one of the great miracles of history? How could men help loving and reverencing and preserving such songs? How could they help feeling that a divine Spirit was behind them? of the History. III The rest of the Old Testament The Appeal is the history of God's dealings with the nation a story gathered under the guidance of God's providence in many generations, from many sources, since the far back childhood of the race. At first sight the appeal to us seems decidedly weaker here than in the prophets and psalms. These historians had not our modern advantages. Much of their material came from old traditions and from various written records and collections of national songs and stories. So far as we can judge God's providence worked on natural lines. Evidently it is a true history in the main, but we have no right to assume that they were miraculously guarded from any inaccuracies of figure or fact in all these ancient sources, therefore we cannot claim infallibility for every detail. The appealing power of their history consists in the fact that it is a revelation of God, a history of God's dealings with men. Underneath it all lies the deep conviction, the foundation of Israel's religion. The Lord our God is a righteous God, and righteousness is what He desires in His people. This conviction had grown into the very blood of the nation. It belonged not to the prophets and historians alone, but to the whole community, however little they yielded to it. No one will ever know who these writers were. One writer wrote this part, another wrote that, others later on edited and revised and combined. So the story grew. It was no one author's story. It was a story by a community dedicated to God, telling what He helped them to see of His relation toward them. The historians were evidently men with a prophetic instinct. History was a part of the work of the prophetic order. As we shall see later on in the early foundations of the Old Testament, the books from Joshua to Kings were known as "The Former Prophets," as distinguished from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book of the Twelve, which were known as "The Latter Prophets." All prophets were not on the same high level. Obadiah hid a hundred prophets in a cave. There were many obscure prophets whose words we never hear of, simple, humble, religious men, who declared God's will and helped in their quiet way to build up the religious life of Israel. Amongst these unnamed ones were the men who generation after generation recorded and interpreted the history of the nation and showed God always behind it. But we make no appeal on the score of their being prophets. The appeal is made by the history itself. Was ever national history so extraordinarily written? It is the history of an evil and rebellious people, yet everything is looked at in relation to the God of Righteousness. Records of other ancient nations tell what this or that great king accomplished, how the people conquered or were conquered by their enemies. In these Jewish records everything is of God-a righteous, holy God. It is God who conquered, God who delivered, God who punished, God who fought. There is no boasting of the national glory, no flattering of the national vanity; their greatest sins and disgraces and punishments are recorded just as fully as their triumphs and their joys. In the records of other nations the chief stress is laid on power and prosperity and comfort and wealth. In these strange records goodness seems to be the only thing of importance. To do the right, to please the holy God is of infinitely more value than to be powerful or rich or successful in life. "He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord," "He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord" are the epitaphs of their most famous Kings. Therefore the national history of Israel also also holds its position by its appeal to the religious |