a correct comment. Probably the safest course for an English Churchman, is to take those Psalms as having a direct reference to the Saviour, which the Church has marked with that sacramental character, by appointing them for those holy days on which she commemorates His Birth, His Passion, His Resurrection, and His Ascension. In these we may seek for our Lord, and trust most surely to find Him, because His Church has told us that He is there. In the other Psalms we may hear Him speaking in His people,-praying, mourning, hoping, rejoicing in them; but in these we can joyfully acknowledge Him as speaking in His own Person.

The second rule of spiritual interpretation consists in attaching a new and inner meaning to certain expressions and images. Thus the feet are mystically interpreted to be the affections with which we run to Christ, the bones are fortitude and strength of resolution, mountains are angels and heavenly powers, the sun is the Lord of glory, the moon is the Church, the stars are the Saints, the heavens are the Scriptures, the clouds are mysteries, sheep are the people of Christ's Church, and oxen her ministers, the singing a Psalm is the leading a holy life, the ten-stringed lute is the decalogue, the lion is the devil, the young ravens the heathen; and so of all the objects and images which occur in the Psalms. In the same way, the history of the Israelitish Church is considered to be allegorical of that of the Christian Church,-the tyranny of Pharaoh is the tyranny of sin, the Red Sea is holy Baptism,

the wilderness is the scene of earthly temptation, the ark is the human nature of Christ, the manna is the Holy Eucharist, the rest of Canaan is the rest of Christ's kingdom, Sion is the Church on earth, and Jerusalem the Church in heaven. This method of interpreting is founded on Scripture. St. Paul uses it in his Epistles, and declares authoritatively that portions of the history of the Old Testament are an allegory. And the use of it is not only sanctioned by the inspired writers of the New Testament; but it was also intended to be so used by the writers of the Psalms themselves. One of the Fathers has remarked very rightly on those opening words of Psalm lxxviii.,—

"I will open my mouth in a parable,

I will declare hard sentences of old,"—

that after the prophet had made this declaration, one would think that his discourse would be filled with obscurities and with enigmatic sayings, but that, on the contrary, all through the Psalm there is nothing but what is most simple, and easy to be understood by everyone, it being a short history of the Israelites before they became a kingdom. The Psalmist, therefore, could only have spoken of these events as being 'parables and hard sayings,' because the things which were so easily understood in their historical meaning contained within themselves, in their mystical meaning, truths of mighty and wonderful importance. The light of the Holy Ghost was needed, as the Psalmist saw, to elucidate these

b Gal. iv. 24.

marvellous obscurities, and to explain how in these holy parables were hid the sacraments of the New Covenant.

Therefore we can only conclude that the spiritual and mystical meanings, which the Fathers dwell so much on, are not to be neglected or treated with indifference, though they may not at once approve themselves to minds which have been trained in another school; but that each Christian man, according to the gift given to him, must follow as he can in this sacred path of interpretation. There is room in the Divine writings for all; like the manna, they miraculously adapt themselves to each one's needs and each one's powers. The spiritual interpretations of the Fathers are not authoritative; they aim but to be edifying: and if in reading the Psalms we do follow closely those who closely followed Christ, we may still feel secure that, while we do so, we shall not stray far from the right and true way.

§ 2. THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE PSALMS.

THE Psalms were, of course, composed and written in Hebrew, the native language of the writers; and their Hebrew text, as we now have it, represents certainly in almost every case the sentiments and words of the inspired poets. It is possible that here and there a line or a word may have dropped out in the long course of transcribing,-as verse 14 in Psalm cxlv. has done,—or may have been erased by the Jews,

as bearing too clear a testimony to the Messiahship of our Lord as the Fathers asserted that the words of verse 10 of Psalm xcvi. originally were,

"Announce it to the Gentiles

That the Lord hath reigned from the tree."

but that the words 'from the tree' were intentionally omitted by the Jews from their manuscripts. But even supposing that one or two such omissions may possibly have been made, yet, upon the whole, we are sure the original text of the Psalms is undoubtedly preserved to us; and that the Psalms, as well as the rest of the Canon of Scripture, are in the same state as when they were finally revised by Ezra and his assistants, the men of the Great Synagogue,' among whom Rabbinical tradition reckons Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and Nehemiah.

By Ezra and the Great Synagogue, the ancient form of the Hebrew letters, which were the same as those of the Samaritan, were changed for the square and handsome characters which the Jews now use, and which were borrowed from the Assyrian; and in his time the custom began of reading the Scriptures to the people in the synagogues in Hebrew, and afterwards translating it into Chaldee; for the common people after the return from the captivity had lost the use of their ancient language, or at least only understood it very imperfectly, and spoke and understood Chaldee in their ordinary conversation. The Scribes, therefore, in the synagogues 'read in the book of the law distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading;' that is

to say, they used to read the Law of Moses, and doubtless also the Prophets and the Psalms, in Hebrew; they then gave the sense of it by translating it orally into Chaldee, and afterwards made them understand it by comments and expositions, generally of a traditionary character. These Chaldee

translations, or paraphrases, were in later times committed to writing, and are called by the name of Targums. The Hebrew text being in the first instance without the vowel-points, the interpretation of it must have been in many cases traditional; but at some period after the Christian Era the Masorites affixed the vowel-points to the whole Bible, and by doing so determined the sense of such passages in the Psalms and other books as before were doubtful.

About the year 286 B.C., when the number of Jews who had settled in Egypt had become very great, a translation was made of the whole of the Old Testament into Greek. These Jews had lost the knowledge of Hebrew even more completely than the Jews of Palestine, and therefore a translation of Scripture was much required for their use. The history of this translation is involved in obscurity. The account which is usually given is as follows:that the librarian of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of Egypt, called the attention of his sovereign to the importance of the Jewish sacred writings, and to the desirableness of enriching the magnificent library which existed at Alexandria with a translation of the Law and the other Scriptures; that upon this King Ptolemy sent the librarian, whose name was b