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The way in which a peculiar word brings a whole passage or argument en rapport with a train of historical associations or previous statements is wonderful; e.g., the verb of which Moses is formed occurs only in Exodus ii. 10, 2 Samuel xxii. 17, Psalm xviii. 16. See how the magnificent description of the Passage of the Red Sea in Psalm xviii. is connected with Moses by this one word.
"I always intended to think of it, sir, as soon as I could do so," returned saucy Hamish. And Ellen ran out of the room. That same afternoon Arthur Channing was seated at the organ in pursuance of his duty, when a message came up from the dean. He was desired to change the selected anthem, taken from the thirty-fifth Psalm, for another: "O taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is!"
He had, as antique stories tell, A daughter cleaped Dawsabel, A maiden fair and free; And for she was her father's heir, Full well she ycond the leir Of mickle courtesy. "The silk well couth she twist and twine, And make the fine march-pine, And with the needle work: And she couth help the priest to say His matins on a holy day, And sing a psalm in Kirk.
How all the tremor and agitation have gone away, just because he has kept his mind for a few minutes in the presence of the calm thought of God and His love. The first courses of his psalm, like those of some great building, are laid deep down in the darkness, but the shining summit is away up there in the sunlight, and God's glittering glory is sparklingly reflected from the highest point.
The morning service began by a psalm sung by the congregation, then a prayer was said by the minister, followed by a lecture on some chapter of the Bible, generally lasting an hour, after that another psalm was sung, followed by a prayer, a sermon which lasted seldom less than an hour, and the whole ended with a psalm, a short prayer and a benediction.
As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever Christianity prevails.
We may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony! I cannot call this Shakspeare a "Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them.
After reading a psalm from the old farm Bible, we all kneeled together, the flickering flames of the great log-fire flinging strange shadows on the whitened wall and rafters as we rose and bowed ourselves. I caught myself attempting, even in prayer, to make obscure but fitting reference to the special circumstances that had brought us together. But the reticence of my companion was contagious.
Otherwise this beautiful name, this name Shepherd, must remain to you the emptiest of metaphors: this Psalm only a fair song instead of the indestructible experience which both Name and Psalm become to him who gives himself to God. Men and women, who in this Christian land have grown up with this Psalm in your hearts, in all the great crises of life that are ahead shall this Psalm revisit us.
"I want to think as well as do what is right; but you cannot know how I feel or you would spare me. I love the very stones and clods of the land! The place is to me as Jerusalem to the Jews: you know what the psalm says: Thy saints take pleasure in her stones, Her very dust to them is dear!" "They loved their land as theirs," said Ian, "and have lost it!" "I know I must be cast out of it!
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