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    The Christian Use of the Psalter
    The Christian Use of the Psalter
    The Christian Use of the Psalter
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    The Christian Use of the Psalter

    By Arthur Richard Whitham

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Christian Use of the Psalter

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      Book preview

      The Christian Use of the Psalter - Arthur Richard Whitham

      Project Gutenberg's The Christian Use of the Psalter, by A. R. Whitham

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Christian Use of the Psalter

      Author: A. R. Whitham

      Release Date: August 22, 2010 [EBook #33492]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN USE OF THE PSALTER ***

      Produced by Al Haines

      The English Churchman's Library

      THE CHRISTIAN USE

      OF THE PSALTER

      BY THE

      REV. A. R. WHITHAM, M.A.

      Principal of Culham Training College, and formerly

      Vice-Principal of Cuddesdan College

      Impleta sunt quæ concinit

      David fidelis carmine

      A. R. MOWBRAY & CO., LTD.

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      THE ENGLISH CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY

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      The Mysteries of Grace. By T. A. Lacey, Chaplain of the House of Mercy, Highgate.

      Letters to a Godson. First Series. By Cyril Bickersteth, Priest of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield.

      First Studies In S. Mark. By G. M. Ireland Blackburne.

      Spiritual Counsels to District Visitors and others. By the late George Howard Wilkinson, D.D., Bishop of S. Andrews: Primus.

      The Christian Use of the Psalter. By A. R. Whitham, M.A., Principal of Culham Training College.

      Our Working Girls and How to help them. By Flora L. Freeman, Author of Sunshine of Everyday Life.

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      PREFACE

      This little book, based on three Lectures delivered to the S. Paul's Lecture Society in January, 1908, is not intended so much for the scholar as for the plain man who goes to Church and loves the Prayer Book, but finds the Psalms sometimes puzzling. They are certainly the most difficult, though the most characteristic, part of the daily offices of the Church. What has been attempted in these Lectures is not to explain them in detail, but to suggest the broad lines of interpretation which seem always to have been in the mind of the Church in her use of the Psalter. A few additional helps have been suggested in the Notes.

      CULHAM, 1908.

      CONTENTS

      PAGE

      PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

      LECTURE I

      PART I.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

      PART II.--DIFFICULTIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

      LECTURE II

      CHRIST IN THE PSALTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

      LECTURE III

      THE CHURCH IN THE PSALTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

      NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

      APPENDIX

      BRIEF SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE CHRISTIAN USE OF EACH PSALM . 107

      INDEX OF PSALMS REFERRED TO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

      The Christian Use of the Psalter

      LECTURE I

      PART I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES

      Haereditate acquisivi testimonia tua in aeternum:

      Quia exsultatio cordis mei sunt.

      The Christian use of the Psalter is as old as Christianity itself. The new-born Catholic Church, returning from her earliest conflict with the kingdoms of this world, found the most natural expression of her faith and her need in the words of the 2nd Psalm:

      Why did the Gentiles rage,

      And the peoples imagine vain things?

      The kings of the earth set themselves in array,

      And the rulers were gathered together,

      Against the Lord, and against His Anointed.

      (Acts iv. 25, 26, R.V.)

      Before this, on the very birthday of the Church, the chief of the Apostles had appealed to the witness of David, for the Resurrection and Triumph of the Holy One (Pss. xvi., cx. in Acts ii. 25-8, 34, 35). And even earlier, during the ten days of waiting, the great Psalms of righteous wrath (thought so impossible by many to-day) had supplied the prophecy of the fall of Judas:

      Let his habitation be made desolate,

      And let no man dwell therein;

      and the justification of the election of Matthias:

      His office let another take.

      (Pss. lxix. and cix. in Acts i. 20.)

      So harmoniously did the praise-book of the Jewish Church pass into the service of Christ; so clearly did the first believers recognise that the Spirit of Christ was the same Who had spoken by David. This immediate appropriation of the Psalter as a book of Christian witness is remarkable evidence to the felt unity and continuity of the two Covenants. No book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Isaiah, is so frequently quoted in the New as the book of Psalms.

      But still more remarkable is the influence of the Psalter on Christian worship. The Church exists in the world not only as the teaching, but also as the worshipping community. As the ages pass she ceases not to bear the witness of her praise and thanksgiving to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. From the beginning she showed a tendency to do this in ordered and liturgical forms. The Apostolic Church continued steadfast in the prayers (Acts ii. 42, R.V.). The expression implies not merely a daily gathering for worship, but the offering of that worship in a fixed and orderly manner, suggested, no doubt, by the existing Jewish services. Whatever may have been the actual form of the prayers in the first age of the Church, or whatever stages they may have passed through, there can be no doubt that they are the germ of all the rich later developments of the liturgy of the Church, such as are represented in the Middle Ages by the Missal and the Breviary, and to-day by our own Book of Common Prayer.

      The regular services of the Church fall naturally into two classes. The Eucharist, the service of the Altar, took the place of the sacrificial worship of the Temple. The Divine Office, the service of the Choir, may have been suggested by the services of the Synagogue. But if so, there is one most significant difference. The Christian Church made a much fuller public use of the Psalms than the Synagogue ever seems to have done.[1] The Psalms in the Jewish Church seem to have been adjuncts or embellishments of the service, rather than its central feature. The Divine Office of the Christian Church practically is the Psalter. The readings from other parts of Scripture, so prominent in the Synagogue service, fall now into a secondary place. The recitation of the Psalms, which appears from very early times as the characteristic Christian devotion, became the very centre and core of the sevenfold daily Choir Office of the mediæval Church. The whole Psalter in theory was said through once a week, mainly at Mattins (the midnight office), while selected Psalms formed the chief part of the subsequent services of the day.[2] The English Reformers, however hastily and trenchantly they may have cut down and simplified these services of the Breviary, showed the true Catholic instinct in this at least, that they provided as the leading feature of Morning and Evening Prayer an unbroken and systematic recitation of the Psalms. In this respect their claim was justified that they had provided an order much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers.[3] It was a return from mediæval complications to a more primitive ideal.

      What, then, was this book of praise and worship which the Catholic Church found ready to hand, and made unhesitatingly her own, and which has set the standard and provided the chief material for her continual voice in the ear of God? The Psalter, as we know it now, had been for some time before Christ the recognised praise-book of Israel. Its Hebrew name is simple and significant—Tehillim, praises. Its historical origins and growth are still indeed wrapt in obscurity, and to discuss them would be alien from our present purpose. Suffice it to say that there seems no conclusive reason for discrediting the universal Jewish and Christian tradition that the Psalter begins at least with David. Some of the earlier and more personal psalms are naturally felt to reflect his character and youthful struggles. Nor is it unreasonable to believe that the later historical books are substantially correct in making him the founder of the Temple choir (1 Chron. xv.; Ezra iii. 10). Doubtless the majority of the Psalms belong to a later age, and their collection is due to the scrupulous care and reverence of the period of Jewish history which begins with Ezra. The singers of the Temple after, perhaps even before, the Captivity formed various collections of sacred lyrics, which passed under characteristic names, some being

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