It is recommended, thirdly,—that such expressions as, from their obscurity, are unintelligible to the bulk of our congregations, be also omitted. The 7th and 8th verses of the 60th Psalm, which are repeated in the 108th, may be properly adduced as a specimen of passages of this description. To a well informed mind, indeed, these verses may not only appear intelligible, but also convey an animated description of the successive victories of the son of Jesse; but surely to the greater part of our ordinary congregations they can present no idea, or, what is still more to be deprecated, only a ludicrous one.

"Gilead is mine, and Manasses is mine Ephraim also is the strength of my head; Judah is my law-giver;

8 Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom

:

10 Their throat is an open sepulchre they flatter with their tongue.

11 Destroy thou them, O God; let them perish through their own imaginations: cast them out in the multitude of their ungodliness for they have rebelled against thee."

will I cast out my shoe; Philistia, be thou glad of me."*

Fourthly, It is recommended that those parts of the Psalms which, from their apparent appeal to hostile and uncharitable passions, have been denominated imprecatory, be expunged from our Liturgic Services. The 69th and 109th Psalms abound with passages of this description. These Psalms seldom occur without exciting a revulsion in the minds of many of our hearers: on such occasions some have been observed to close their books, and suspend as it were their attention to the Service; and others who have not manifested the same outward dissatisfaction, have afterwards acknowledged that they never joined in them without fear and trembling. The writer is far from intending to lower in any degree that

* These verses have been thus paraphrased :

"Gilead and Manasseh have submitted unto me : Ephraim furnishes me with valiant men; and Judah with men of prudence and wisdom. I will reduce the Moabites to servitude; I will triumph over the Edomites, and make them my slaves; and the Philistines shall add to my triumph."

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fearful apprehension of the divine justice and holiness which as miserable sinners we ought ever to experience. Fully, however, as he is convinced, that all should be deeply impressed with the conviction that God will no less excecute his awful threatenings against the wicked, than fulfil his gracious promises to the righteous; he still wishes to point out the glaring absurdity of adopting language in public prayer which we should tremble to use in private.

Various have been the arguments adduced for the retention of these passages in our Liturgy. We have been told that some of them may be fairly considered not as the language of the Psalmist, but rather as that of his malicious and implacable enemies. We have been reminded that others, instead of being translated in the imperative form, as expressive of the wishes of the writer, might with equal faithfulness have been rendered in the future tense, as divine predictions; and that we should ever confine our application of them to our own spiritual enemies, and to the foes of God and his Church.

Observations like the preceding may be profitably, because deliberately, considered during our private meditations on these awful passages of scripture; but surely it is utterly unreasonable to suppose, that in the haste and ardor of alternate responses, the general mass of a congregation will be able to exalt and spiritualize their devotions to this pure and evangelical sense.

There was a severity of character, it should never be forgotten, pervading the Jewish dispensation, and an apparent degradation of employment, if we may be allowed the expression, assigned to the members of its community, utterly inapplicable to the benign spirit of the Christian religion. The peculiarity of their circumstances and the confined nature of their dispensation, rendered it fitting that kings, priests, and prophets among the Jews should occasionally be appointed to be not merely the denunciators of the wrath of God, but even the executioners of his righteous vengeance; whereas Christians are set apart to be the harbingers of mercy, the almoners

of the divine benevolence. The language of our benign dispensation is, "Render to no man evil for evil, but contrariwise blessing. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." Surely, then, we should tremble at the thought of placing the temptation in the way of our people, of appropriating to themselves the language and feelings of the imprecatory denunciations of the inspired writers. "Other parts of scripture," it has been well observed, "are read to us, but the Psalms every man repeats as his own words.”*

If it were deemed desirable that some of the imprecatory passages should be retained in our public services, in consequence of their being prophetical of our Lord's rejection by the Jews, and of the subsequent punishment which was inflicted on that infatuated people, they might be appointed to be read by the Minister on Good Friday, as one of the lessons of the day. This mode * Shepherd on the Liturgy.