From Reflections on the Psalms When the mind becomes more capable of abstraction and analysis this old unity breaks up.  And no sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God himself.  Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may then take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own.  There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter.  I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began, “Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.”  This seems to me, [...]

From Reflections on the Psalms “Now let us stint all this and speak of mirth.”  So far – I couldn’t help it – this book has been what the old woman in Scott described as “a cauld clatter o’ morality.”  At last we can turn to better things.  If we think “mirth” an unsuitable word for them, that may show how badly we need something which the psalms can give us perhaps better than any other book in the world. David, we know, danced before the Ark.  He danced with such abandon that one of his wives (presumably a more modern, though not a better, type than he) thought he was making a fool of himself.  David didn’t care whether he was making a fool of himself or not.  He was rejoicing in the Lord.  This helps to [...]

From Reflections on the Psalms In many passages this is quite clear, even in our translation, to every attentive reader.  The clearest of all is the cry in Psalm 89:46: “O remember how short my time is: why hast thou made all men for nought?”  We all come to nothing in the end.  Therefore “every man living is altogether vanity,” (Psalm 39:6).  Wise and foolish have the same fate, (Psalm 49:10).  Once dead, a man worships God no more; “Shall the dust give thanks unto thee?” (Psalm 30:10); “for in death no man remembereth thee,” (Psalm 6:5).  Death is “the land” where, not only worldly things, but all things, “are forgotten, (Psalm 88:12).  When a man dies “all his thoughts perish,” (Psalm 146:3).  Every man [...]

From Reflections on the Psalms According to my policy of taking first what is most unattractive, I should now proceed to the self-righteousness in many of the psalms.  But we cannot deal with that properly until some other matters have been noticed.  I turn first to a very different subject. Our ancestors seem to have read the psalms and the rest of the Old Testament under the impression that the authors wrote with a pretty full understanding of Christian theology; the main difference being that the Incarnation, which for us is something recorded, was for them something predicted.  In particular, they seldom doubted that the old authors were, like ourselves, concerned with a life beyond death, that they feared damnation and hoped for [...]