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We sang "Chevy Chase" from end to end, and then chaunted the 119th Psalme; and by the time we had attained to Lucerna Pedibus, I heard the buttermilk separating and splashing in righte earnest. 'Twas neare midnighte, however. Gillian thinketh our Latin brake the spell. June 21. I walked with William juxta fluvium, and he talked not badlie of his travels.
I remembered also to put in my pocket a bright guinea which good Mr. Walpole had presented me with in my twelfth year as a reward for having repeated the 119th Psalm, and which my father had strictly forbidden me to spend. Thus provided, I opened the door of my bedroom and crept out, carrying my shoes in my hand.
We see from the 119th Psalm how beautiful a form religion may assume even under these terms, when the book in question is felt to be a spiritual treasure, and to speak the words of a living God; but the system of a book-religion has in it the germs of very different fruits.
My mother's list of the chapters with which, thus learned, she established my soul in life, has just fallen out of it. I will take what indulgence the incurious reader can give me, for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent: Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th. 2 Samuel, " 1st, from 17th verse to end. 1 Kings, " 8th. Psalms, " 23d, 32d, 90th, 91st, 103d, 112th, 119th, 139th.
David made a Psalm of two and twenty parts, in each of which are eight verses, and yet in all is but one kind of meaning, namely, he will only say, Thy law or word is good. I have conjectured that the 119th Psalm might have been a form of ordination, in which a series of candidates made their prayers and profession in the open Temple before they went to the several synagogues in the country. Ib.
I sate alone, a silent listener, and it seemed to me that every appeal which the beauty of art could make to the spirit was here delicately displayed. Eye and ear, emotion and intellect, were alike thrilled and satisfied. They sang the 119th Psalm, that perfect expression of holy quietude: "Thy testimonies are wonderful; therefore doth my soul seek them."
So, on this unlucky morning, in spite of fresh-lit fires smoking in his face, and fenders in dark passages throwing him headlong into lurking coalscuttles, he kept his temper like a man, until coming into his study, he found his favourite discourse on the sixth seal lying on the floor by the window, his lectures on the 119th Psalm on the hearthrug, and the maid fanning the fire with his CHEF D'OEUVRE, the Waterloo thanksgiving.
To be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the adversary's threat, and the harlot's temptation, this is in the meaning of every great nation to be free; and the one condition upon which that freedom can be obtained is pronounced to you in a single verse of the 119th Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
Compare the 119th Psalm with the Upanishads, or with any of the six schools of philosophy. The one deals with moral precepts and spiritual aspirations, all the others with subtle theories of creation or problems of the universe. The one is the outflowing of joyous experience found in obedience to God's moral law, and only out of the heart could such a psalm have been written.
It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive the 119th Psalm has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His gospel.
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