Messiah, every allusion shews the author's acquaintance with the customs and ceremonies of Asiatic Courts. The splendour of the royal robes, the sabre girt upon the thigh, the sharp arrows in the hand of the mighty, the princely state, the gorgeous apartments inlaid with ivory, barbaric pearl and gold,' the bright damsel-train, the perfumed and embroidered garments, and above all, that great luxury of the East, the fragrant and aromatic oil composed of the most costly balms, and redolent of "myrrh and aloes and cassia,"-here called, from its exhilarating effect upon the animal spirits, "the oil of gladness,”—all shew that the picture is drawn from the life, and that the scene is laid in foreign climes, in a country nearer to the sun than our own. We have read of a distinguished individual who went out to the East an infidel, and returned a Christian, and upon whom some of these ceremonies had been performed, who avowed that the first thing which shook his scepticism, was the perfect accordance between the descriptions of Scripture and the practices of those countries in the present time, which convinced him that the first assumption of the Bible, that of being an Eastern book, was undeniably true, and consequently predisposed him for the examination and reception of its higher evidences. In the Travels of Ibn Batuta, recently published by the Oriental Translation Committee, and translated by the Rev. Professor Lee, we have a splendid description of the court of Sultan Mahommed Uzbek, visited by Batuta in the fourteenth century, which is adduced by the learned Translator as 6 a fine illustration of the regal pomp exhibited in 'the xlvth Psalm, where we find the queen also enjoying the 'honour due to her rank, very unlike the practice of the Ma6 hommedans, among whom they are never allowed to appear in 'public.'*

* I next set out,' says Batūta, for the camp of the Sultan, and arrived at a station to which the Sultan with his retinue had just come before us. This Sultan, Mohammed Uzbek, is very powerful, enjoys extensive rule, and is a subduer of the infidels. He is one of the seven great kings of the world. It is a custom with Mohammed Uzbek to sit after prayer on the Friday, under an alcove, called "the golden alcove," which is very much ornamented: he has a throne in the middle of it, overlaid with silver plate, which is gilded and set with jewels. The Sultan sits upon the throne; his four wives, some at his right hand, others at his left, sitting also upon the throne. Beneath the throne stand his two sons, one on his right hand, the other on his left; before him sits his daughter. Whenever one of these wives enters, he arises, and taking her by the hand, puts her into her place upon the throne. Thus they are exposed, without so much as a veil, to the sight of all. After this come in the great emīrs, for whom chairs are placed on the right hand and on the left. Before the king stand the princes, who are the sons of his uncles, brothers, and near

In the expressions, "The princess of Tyre shall bring thee presents. Bearing thy precious treasures appear the daughters of kings," the allusion is to the ancient custom of female captives of the highest rank, gracing the triumph of the conqueror, with their treasures carried before them; a scene from the distant apprehension of which the haughty spirit of Cleopatra recoiled, preferring death to such dishonour. By the queen consort in the psalm, seated at the king's right hand, Horsley understands the Jewish Church, and, by the captive daughters of royalty bringing in their tributary gifts, the converts gathered from among the Gentiles were symbolized; a prophecy which accorded with the favourite anticipation among the Jews, that all nations should be subsidiary to their greatness, and participate in the splendour of their religious privileges. An illustration of an opposite custom, that of princes bestowing presents, occurs in the lxviii. Psalm :"Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast received gifts for men, even for the rebellious also." This is usually referred to the donatives and largesses distributed by a popular monarch among the multitude on the day of his coronation or of his triumph, but peculiarly relates to the profuse liberality of Eastern princes to their favoured subjects, and sometimes, in their generous clemency, even to rebellious chiefs. De Sacy, in his Chrestomathie Arabe, gives various instances of this prodigality of benefits on the part of the family of the Barmekides, their liberality having passed into a proverb, and their presence in the valleys of Mecca being compared to the rising of a new sun over the horizon of that city. The kings of Persia and of India were no less celebrated for this popular quality. No one can be compared,' says Batūta, to the king of India. On one occasion, he placed one of his emirs in a pair of scales, putting gold in the opposite part till the gold preponderated: he then gave him the gold, and said, "Give alms out of this for your own salvation. At another time, the above-mentioned Sheikh entered the presence of the king, who rose, and having kissed his feet, poured upon his head

kinsmen. In front of these, and near the doors, stand the sons of the great emīrs, and behind these the general officers of the army. People then enter according to their rank; and saluting the king return, and take their seats at a distance. When however the evening prayer is over, the supreme consort, who is queen, returns; the rest follow, each with their attendant beautiful slaves. The women who are separated, are seated upon horses; before their carriages are cavalry, behind them beautiful Mamlūks. The wives of this king are highly honoured: each one has a mansion for herself, her followers and servants.'Travels of Ibn Batuta, translated from the abridged Arabic manuscript copies, with notes, by the Rev. S. Lee. pp. 76, 77.

with his own hand, a vessel full of gold, and said: "Both the gold and the vessel, which is gold, is thine." In the New Testament, the above prophecy of the Psalmist is declared to have been fulfilled, when Christ ascended up on high, and gave gifts unto men, and enriched his church with a confluence of spiritual blessings, giving some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, for the perfecting of the saints, and for the edifying of the body of Christ. We read also, probably in allusion to the same usages, of God's "unspeakable gift," of the "unsearchable

riches of Christ diffused among the Gentiles ;" and as princes bestowed provinces and kingdoms upon a successful general as a reward for distinguished service, we find our Lord declaring:— "To him that overcometh will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my Father, and I will give him the morning star,"-the well known oriental hieroglyphic for sovereignty and dominion.

Upon the much-litigated question of the application of the Psalms to Christ, it is due to Mr. Townsend to state, that he has wisely avoided the fallacious views of the Hutchinsonian commentators, whose possible good intentions must not be admitted as any sort of apology for the certain mischief which their perversions have occasioned. Their system, if system it may be called, “which shape had none," admits of the arbitrary and indiscriminate application of the whole book of Psalms to Christ, without any authority beyond their own vagrant fancies, and in perfect contempt of the best ascertained rules of enlightened criticism. We protest against this scheme as resting upon nothing better than gratuitous and unphilosophical assumptions; as wholly unsustained by any adequate evidence; as destructive of all just principles of interpretation, and as calculated to deprive us of the instruction and comfort of these divine hymns, considered as portraitures of character and specimens of devotion, in which light they are undoubtedly presented in the sacred page. Between those who would apply every thing in them to Christ, and those who would apply nothing at all to him, there is danger of the grossest perversion of these invaluable productions from the spiritual uses for which they were designed. This is the less to be tolerated, as no reason whatever can be suggested for departing, in reference to the psalms, from those recognized canons of criticism which have been so successfully applied to other parts of the inspired record. Before, therefore, we can permit any peculiar meaning, foreign from its literal and obvious signification, to be affixed to a psalm, we must demand direct evidence of the soundness of the proposed exposition, just as we should in reference to any passage in the classics; and this demand, we are confident, would put to flight a host of arbitrary and fabricated interpre

tations, by which the simple truth of this part of holy writ has been perplexed and obscured. Upon a subject, however, of so much importance in theology, as the intended relation and application of the prophetic psalms, it is our happiness not to be left either to circuitous induction on the one hand, or to fanciful hypothesis on the other; but to have a safe and adequate guide in the only authoritative interpreter of Scripture-Scripture itself. The best method by which dangerous extremes can be avoided, is to betake ourselves implicitly to apostolical precedent and authority here we cannot do wrong. After having given our best attention to this point, and with a full view of the conflicting opinions on either side, we must be permitted to avow our deliberate conviction, that the plain and sufficient rule for the determination of what psalms are, or are not, prophetic of the Messiah, is precisely that which decides the application of Scripture types in both cases, we hold that those, and those only, are to be certainly ascribed to our Lord, which are distinctly stated in the New Testament to relate to him. By adhering to this authorized rule, we escape at once from all the uncertainties of conjectural criticism, building our arguments upon a rock; whereas, by any other course, we put to hazard one of the most essential parts of the Christian evidence, that derived from prophecy, which the senseless theories we oppose would go to overset and destroy.

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If it be objected, that this principle, by limiting the range of the prophetic word, appears in some degree to diminish the spiritual instruction to be derived from the psalms, we answer, first, that if such were the case, truth is not to be sacrificed even to this view of expediency; and next, that one real reference to Christ, authenticated by the New Testament, is far more available for the purposes of instruction and edification than many fanciful and shadowy resemblances, traced by the erring ingenuity of fallible man. These references are, however, by no means few, or inconsiderable. Nearly fifty of the psalms have been enumerated by Dr. Allix and others, parts of which are quoted in the New Testament; a large proportion, if the statement-be correct, considering the limitation of Jewish knowledge upon subjects connected with the evangelical economy. We should be careful not heedlessly to attribute to the writers of the psalms more light than was possessed by all the prophets put together, and not to assign to the men of those times a fuller acquaintance with the mysteries of the Christian faith, than was attained by the immediate disciples of our Lord before his resurrection. Let it be recollected also, that, as the great question in dispute at the commencement of the Christian era was, whether Jesus was the promised Messiah, and as the Jews were more likely to be convinced by any argument derived from their own prophecies, than

even by miracle itself, it might be expected that the apostles would strongly urge this, and would not fail to quote, in their sermons and letters, the chief prophecies which were decisive upon the subject. To these, in fact, Our Lord himself referred, in the way to Emmaus, distinctly adverting to the things" written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning himself"; and since this conversation was not likely to be forgotten, it may be presumed that the same Scriptures were afterwards brought forwards by the apostles, as recorded in the book of Acts. The probability, therefore, under all the circumstances of the case, would appear to be very great, that the whole of the passages distinctly prophetic have been more or less definitely referred to by the New Testament writers: and if the range thus opened before us be extensive, the rule of interpretation is not less sure.

As to the assumption on which the otherwise admirable Bishop Horne affects to argue, that because some of the Psalms are applied to Our Lord, which we might not have thought of referring to him, therefore, they may all be deemed predictions of him, we can only say that it is a miserable non sequitur, a mere assertion, unsustained by the shadow of proof. For orthodox divines to invent references to Christ, at variance with the plain letter of scripture, is, in our view, just as iniquitous as it would be for the Unitarians or the German Neologians to exclude, or explain away, those numerous passages, which, we rejoice to believe, do unquestionably relate to him. It is equally possible to err on the side of excess, and on that of deficiency. That the justly celebrated Bishop Horsley should, in any degree, have lent the sanction of his great name to the fallacious theories of the Hutchinsonian school, and should have so far committed himself as to say, that "the misapplication of the psalms to the literal David, has done more mischief than the misapplication of any other parts of the Scriptures," is no less surprising to us, than that Mr. Hartwell Horne should have quoted the sentiment in his own most valuable work, without protesting against so unguarded an assertion. Nothing can be more painful than to detect the errors of the good, and the follies of the wise: such a perversion, on the part of Bishop Horsley, can scarcely be accounted for, except from the inclination which, in common with men of a peculiar order of genius, he sometimes manifests to throw himself into a desperate cause, like Sampson at Gaza, that he may shew his herculean strength, in carrying away the gates and bars which threatened to confine him, to the surprise alike of friend and foe. We need only apply to him, in this connection, his own caustic and just remark, that "it is one thing to write histories, and quite another to make riddles." But it is due to the

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