wings shall be my refuge, until
this tyranny be over-past. I will call unto the most high God, even
unto the God that shall perform the cause which I have in hand. He
shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproof of him that would
eat me up. God shall send forth His mercy and truth: my soul is among
lions. And I lie even among the children of men, that are set on
fire, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp
sword. Set up Thyself, O God, above the heavens, and Thy glory above
all the earth. They have laid a net for my feet, and pressed down my
soul: they have digged a pit before me, and are fallen into the midst
of it themselves. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will
sing, and give praise. Awake up, my glory; awake, lute and harp: I
myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord,
among the people, and I will sing unto Thee among the nations. For
the greatness of Thy mercy reacheth unto the heavens, and Thy truth
unto the clouds. Set up Thyself, O God, above the heavens, and Thy
glory above all the earth.

Some people now-a-days would call this poetry; and so it is. But what
poetry! They would call it a Hebrew song, a Hebrew lyric; and so it is.
But what a song! There is something in us, if we be truly delicate and
high-minded people, which will surely make us feel a deep difference
between it and common poetry, or common songs; which made our forefathers
read or chant it in church, and use it, as many a pious soul has ere now,
in private devotion.

David did not compose it in church or in temple. He never meant it,
perhaps, to be sung in public worship. He little dreamed that we, and
millions more, in lands of which he had never heard, should be repeating
his words in a foreign tongue in our most sacred acts of worship. He was
thinking, when he composed it, mainly of himself and his own sorrows and
dangers. He intends, he says, to awake early, and sing it to lute and
harp. Perhaps he had composed it in the night, as he lay either in the
cave of Adullam or Engedi, hiding from Saul among the cliffs of the wild
goats; and meant to go forth to the cave's mouth, and there, before the
sun rose over the downs, he would, to translate his words exactly, "awake
the dawning" with his song in the free air and the clear sky, singing to
his little band of men.

And to some one more than man, my friends.