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This message had the desired effect. The men were kept prisoners during the whole time of the siege, and not so much as one gun was fired against it." In this connection occurs the oft-told story of his ready wit, when one of the preachers wound up his discourse by giving out the metrical version of the fifty-second Psalm, with an obvious allusion to his royal hearer:
It is blasphemy to say that our God sent the famine and dried the mother's breast from her infant's withered lips? Is it blasphemy to say that He is the author of the pestilence; that He ordered some of His children to consume others with fire and sword? Is it blasphemy to believe what we read in the 109th Psalm? If these things are not blasphemy, then there is no blasphemy.
There never was such a lonely soul on this earth as His, just because there never was one so pure and loving. 'The little hills rejoice together? as the Psalm says, 'on every side, but the great Alpine peak is alone there, away up amongst the cold and the snows. Thus lived the solitary Christ, the uncomprehended Christ, the unaccepted Christ.
"I've travelled there," said Henry, and repressed a shudder, for he had found the Middle West deplorable. He preferred South America. "I am related to the poet," said Miss Longfellow. "That great poet who wrote Hiawatha, Evangeline, and The Psalm of Life. Possibly you came across him out in the States?" "No," said Henry. "I fancy he was even then dead. You are a descendant of his?"
But something was heard which told that the place was not only inhabited, but Christianised. The slow psalm rose into the still air. Everyone who could speak could sing a psalm. It was a practice lovingly kept up in every house. Some voices were tremulous, and a few failed; but this was from emotion. The strongest was Annie's, for hers was the most practised.
If we glance for a moment at the marvellous picture of suffering and desolation in the previous portion of this psalm, which sounds the very depths of both, we shall understand more touchingly what it is on which Christian hearts are to feed.
"No, not really afraid. Sometimes in the night, when I lie awake with that strange oppression, I think how strange it will be without you all, and to have only the angels to talk to me. But I suppose I shall get used to it. I always say that psalm over to myself, and then the queer feeling leaves me. Don't you know? 'He shall give His angels charge over thee.
Seen upon the morning in question, when the bright summer sun filled every corner with gladsome light, just as the long procession of white-robed priests, and monks in their sombre garb, with their hoods thrown back, were entering for high mass, and the choral psalm arose, it was peculiarly imposing.
The psalm has sung of the whole round of the day's wandering, all the needs of the sheep, all the care of the shepherd. Now the psalm closes with the last scene of the day. At the door, of the sheepfold the shepherd stands and 'the rodding of the sheep' takes place. The shepherd stands, turning his body to let the sheep pass; he is the door, as Christ said of himself.
Evil-willers. 2. Well-wishers. 3. Neutrals. 1. The evil-willers are Edom; and he was Jacob's brother; yet in Psalm cxxxvii. he cries, "raze, raze this work to the foundation." There is a number that is crying, raze, raze this work to the foundation. 2. There is a second sort that are well-wishers, crying, grace, grace be unto it.
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