The Psalms in History and Biography

While pointing out its defects, the views of very opposite critics have admitted its merits. Dr. James Beattie, the author of The Minstrel, speaks of it, 'notwithstanding many imperfections, as being the best-with numbers often harsh and incorrect, but having a manly severe simplicity, without any affected refinement.' Dr. Chalmers thinks it has a charm peculiar to itself."' Dr. Robert Lee, who devoted himself to the improvement of Church worship on other lines, describes it as 'sometimes rugged, occasionally sinking to doggerel, but upon the whole faithful, vigorous, and good — equal if not superior to any other; while it almost never fails to render well those psalms which in themselves are of the highest character as compositions, and best adapted for the service of song in the Church of the New Testament.' Sir Walter Scott, who had no prejudices in its favour, wrote to Principal Baird, the convener of the Psalmody Committee, hoping that, 'whatever change might be made, it would be with a lenient hand. Its expression,' he says, 'though homely, is plain, forcible, and intelligible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty which would be ill exchanged for mere elegance.' No doubt he was attracted by the antique chant-like style of rendering in which such historical psalms as the 77th, 78th, 80th, 89th, 105th, 106th, and others tell the story of the chosen people, as if a wailing breeze passed through them from the far-off times and grey memorial stones of his native land, and he was

unwilling that the moss and lichens which had gathered in the lettering of the record should be rudely torn But he was moved also by deeper tones. away. his dying hours, when asked, 'What book they should read to him?' and he replied, 'Can you ask? There is but one,' they could hear in his wandering words, murmured snatches of the old version of the Psalms mingled with the cadences of the Dies Ira. Episcopalian as he was, he would have walked all the way with that Scotsman in England who was accustomed to travel twenty miles that he might get a guid sing at the auld Psalms;' and he would have been found in the company of the exiles in the Far West who were without regular ordinances, and convened from a wide. circuit to a little church they had reared, where they could sing the Psalms of David as they had been accustomed, and read the Bible. There must be what Dr. Chalmers calls 'a peculiar charm' about a version that has drawn to it an affection so deep, kept it so long, and carried it so far over land and sea. While we think that some of the criticisms given above do it scant justice, we may admit a number of the imperfections pointed out. But with them all, and more,

we should wonder at the taste of the man who would choose the flat watery smoothness of Brady and Tate before the unpolished power and quaint beauty which break so often from the old Scottish version. It is very much as if one were to prefer a lawn-pond, with its environments of trim bushes and orderly bust

work, to the Fall of Foyers. We shall close our remarks on it with the expression of two wishes. The one is that an Anthology-a collection of its choice portions should be prepared for our Scottish youth, that they may have in memory a standard of sacred song to keep them safe from the false and flimsy; and the other is, that the Presbyterian Church should take the whole old Psalter into its hand, reverently and kindly, and touching it here and there, give us something to sing, full of the past, and yet fitted for the present something we might hope which could be joined in, as truly Catholic, by sister Churches of other names, and which might, form a bond of union more free and wide than entered into the thought of the Westminster Assembly. A worthier work could not well be undertaken.

Arctic Zone,

Barbary, Exiles on Coast of,
Baxter, Richard,

Bedell, Bishop,

Brady and Tate,

British Reformation-

Armada, Spanish,
Bilneg, Thomas,

Bruce, Rev. Robert,

Communions,

Coverdale, Miles,

Craig, John,

Danger, Hours of,

Durie, John,