The Christian Use of the Psalter

Оглавление

Whitham Arthur Richard. The Christian Use of the Psalter

PREFACE

LECTURE I

PART I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES

PART II. DIFFICULTIES

LECTURE II. CHRIST IN THE PSALTER

LECTURE III. THE CHURCH IN THE PSALTER

NOTES

APPENDIX

Отрывок из книги

The Christian use of the Psalter is as old as Christianity itself. The new-born Catholic Church, returning from her earliest conflict with the kingdoms of this world, found the most natural expression of her faith and her need in the words of the 2nd Psalm:

Before this, on the very birthday of the Church, the chief of the Apostles had appealed to the witness of "David," for the Resurrection and Triumph of the Holy One (Pss. xvi., cx. in Acts ii. 25-8, 34, 35). And even earlier, during the ten days of waiting, the great Psalms of righteous wrath (thought so impossible by many to-day) had supplied the prophecy of the fall of Judas:

.....

We have all no doubt felt something of this abiding sympathy of the Psalter. Dean Church expressed it very remarkably in a letter written by him shortly before his death:

The thought of what is to take the place of things here is with me all day long, but it is with a strange mixture of reality and unreality, and I wish it did me all the good it might. Books are not satisfactory—at least, I have always found it so. It seems to me that there is nothing equal to letting the Psalms fall on one's ears, till at last a verse starts into meaning, which it is sure to do in the end (Life and Letters, p. 409, ed. 1897).

.....