it was made brake it in all its conditions. Yet His righteousness is not as ours, it is perfect mercy and perfect love; and in that righteousness did He pity them, and made even their conquerors to feel compassion for their misery.

45. Deliver us, O Lord our God, and gather us from among the heathen: that we may give thanks unto Thy holy Name, and make our boast of Thy praise.

Thus step by step in the fortunes of Israel, and the dealings of their God, may we trace the progress of many a Christian soul. Delivered from the slavery of sin, baptized into newness of life, led by the teaching of God's commandments through the wilderness of the world, fed with food from heaven, and refreshed with living water, it yet forsakes its mercies and breaks its covenant; it neglects to destroy those deadly sins which its Lord hath given it in charge to slay; it joins in alliance with them, and learns their works; it becomes again their slave and captive, and can only be made free by bitter penitence and tears. Oh turn we to Him Whose mercy is ever over us; beseech we the Father of everlasting compassion to forsake not us feeble Israelites, whom He has brought so far out of Egypt, but to help our poor and wandering souls that they faint not, neither turn from the right way; that they forget not His covenant, and fall not from His grace! Pray we to Him to deliver all who confess His Name from the power of sin and the chain of ignorance, that they ever give thanks 'with the

remnant of the true Israelites, one fold under one Shepherd.'

46. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting, and world without end and let all the people say, Amen.

Heb. And all the people say, Amen. Hallelujah.

Therefore, to that Lord God of Israel, Who keepeth His covenant and mercy for ever, even the covenant of redemption and of salvation which He hath made with His Church, established on earth by the hand of the eternal Mediator, and accomplished in Heaven in the glorifying of His saints,-to Him be ascribed blessing and praise which shall never cease, in which all the peoples of the earth shall join, who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They who begin with the Amen of faith and prayer here, shall end with the Hallelujah of immortal joy and praise.

The connection of this Psalm with the preceding one has already been pointed out. This is an exhortation to penitence and confession, as that was to gratitude and obedience. It goes over the history of Israel's disobedience in the wilderness, as the seventy-eighth Psalm does, though with a different object. The spiritual comment on this history is given by St. Paul (1 Cor. x. 1-12). It is difficult to fix the period of the composition of these two Psalms, which have no title; but we notice what clear witness they bear to the narrative of Moses in Numbers and Deuteronomy. It is probable that both of them were written to be used at the solemn celebration of the Passover. In this Psalm compare verses 12, with Ex. xiv. 31; 16, with Numb. xi. 16; 20, with Rom. i. 23; 24, with Numb. xiii. 33; 30, 31, with Numb. xxv. 7, 12; and 32, with Numb. xx. 13. This Psalm concludes the fourth book.

THE FIFTH DIVISION OF THE BOOK

OF PSALMS.

PS. CVII.-CL.

THE last of the five books of the Psalms is not concluded as the other books are, by an ascription of praise to God, unless the whole of Psalm cl. may be considered as standing in the place of such an ascription. It merely ends with the word 'Hallelujah,'-a word of which the whole Psalter is but the expanding and the commentary.

The fifty-three Psalms of which it is made up are varied in their character. Many of them are by David; and others are Psalms of the captivity and of the restoration. Among them we may notice particularly, I. Psalm cxiii. and the five which follow it, which make up what the Jews call 'the Greater Hallel,' and were solemnly sung on the night of the Passover by those who had joined in eating the paschal lamb. These Psalms, no doubt, formed the very hymn. which was sung by the Saviour and His apostles at the last Supper, of which the Evangelists speak,And when they had sung an hymn they went out into the mount of Olives,' (St. Matt. xxvi. 30; St. Mark xiv. 26). II. Psalm cxix., which consists of twenty-two parts, of eight verses each, after the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,-each of the eight verses of the first part beginning with Aleph, each of the second part with Beth, and so on

in succession; from which this Psalm has received the name of 'the Great Alphabet.' And III. the fifteen short hymns (cxx.-cxxxiv.) which immediately follow Psalm cxix., and which are entitled, in our translation, the 'Psalms of Degrees.' These are, literally, the Psalms of the goings up,' and were, it seems probable, those which were chanted by the pilgrims who went up each year to Jerusalem to keep the great festivals, as they journeyed along. And the Psalms in this division are generally, if we allow weight to the opinion of Bp. Horsley, of a liturgical character. The book itself was, there is no doubt, compiled after the return from the captivity, when the whole Book of the Psalms was finally arranged in the canon of Scripture by the great Synagogue, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.