lso--from that enlightening day Christiana's Bible
became full of them. Peter says that no prophecy is of any private
interpretation; and, whatever he means by that, what he says must be
true. But Christiana would have understood the apostle better if he had
said the exact opposite of that,--if not about the prophecies, at least
about the psalms. Leave the prophecies in this connection alone; but of
the psalms it may safely be said that it is neither the literal nor the
historical nor the mystical interpretation that gets at the heart of
those supreme scriptures. It is the private, personal, and, indeed,
secret interpretation that gets best at the deepest heart of the psalms.
An old Bible came into my hands the other day--a Bible that had seen
service--and it opened of its own accord at the Book of Psalms. On
turning over the yellow leaves I found a date and a deep indentation
opposite these words: "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in Him:
and He will bring it to pass." And as I looked at the figures on the
margin, and at the underscored text, I felt as if I were on the brink of
an old-world secret. "Create in me a clean heart" had a significant
initial also; as had this: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit."
The whole of the hundred-and-third psalm was bracketed off from all
public interpretation; while the tenth, the cardinal verse of that secret
psalm, had a special seal set upon it. Judging from its stains and scars
and other accidents, the whole of the hundred-and-nineteenth psalm had
been a special favourite; while the hundred-and-forty-third also was all
broidered round with shorthand symbols. But the secret key of all those
symbols and dates and enigmatical marks was no longer to be found; it had
been carried away in the owner's own heart. But, my head being full of
Christiana at the time, I felt as if I held her own old Bible in my hand
as I turned over those ancient leaves.

4. Our Lord so practised secrecy Himself in His fasting, in His praying,
and in His almsgiving, and He makes so much of that same secrecy in all
His teaching, as almost to make the essence of all true religion to stand
in its secrecy. "When thou prayest," says our Lord, "shut thy door and
pray in secret." As much as to say that we are scarcely praying at all
when we are praying in public. Praying in public is so difficult that
new beginners, like His disciples, have to practise that so difficult art
for a long t