t of all the psalms I love the Hundred-and-nineteenth; yet as a
child what a weary thing I thought it. It was long, it was monotonous;
it dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think, upon dull
things--laws, commandments, statutes. Now that I am older, it seems to
me one of the most human of all documents. It is tender, pensive,
personal; other psalms are that; but Psalm cxix. is intime and
autobiographical. One is brought very close to a human spirit; one
hears his prayers, his sighs, the dropping of his tears. Then, too, in
spite of its sadness, there is a deep hopefulness and faithfulness
about it, a firm belief in the ultimate triumph of what is good and
true, a certainty that what is pure and beautiful is worth holding on
to, whatever may happen; a nearness to God, a quiet confidence in Him.
It is all in a subdued and minor key, but swelling up at intervals into
a chord of ravishing sweetness.

There is never the least note of loudness, none of that terrible
patriotism which defaces many of the psalms, the patriotism which makes
men believe that God is the friend of the chosen race, and the foe of
all other races, the ugly self-sufficiency that contemplates with
delight, not the salvation and inclusion of the heathen, but their
discomfiture and destruction. The worst side of the Puritan found
delight in those cruel and militant psalms, revelling in the thought
that God would rain upon the ungodly fire and brimstone, storm and
tempest, and exulting in the blasting of the breath of His displeasure.
Could anything be more alien to the spirit of Christ than all that? But
here, in this melancholy psalm, there breathes a spirit naturally
Christian, loving peace and contemplation, very weary of the strife.

I have said it is autobiographical; but it must be remembered that it
was a fruitful literary device in those early days, to cast one's own
thought in the mould of some well-known character. In this psalm I have
sometimes thought that the writer had Daniel in mind--the surroundings
of the psalm suit the circumstances of Daniel with singular exactness.
But even so, it was the work of a man, I think, who had suffered the
sorrows of which he wrote. Let me try to disentangle what manner of man
he was.

He was young and humble; he was rich, or had opportunities of becoming
so; he was an exile, or lived in an uncongenial society; he was the
member of a court where he was derided, disliked, slandered, plotted
against