The Psalms (5)

The pieces of which this book consists are in their leading character devotional summaries , expressing the pious thoughts and feelings which the consideration of God's ways and the knowledge of His revelations were fitted to raise in reflecting and spiritual bosoms . But the singular thing is , that they are this for the New as well as the Old Testament worshipper . They are still incomparably the most perfect expression of the religious sentiment , and the best directory to the soul in its meditations and communings about divine things , which is anywhere to be found . There is not a feature in the divine character , nor an aspect of any moment in the life of faith , to which expression , more or less distinct , is not there given . How could such a book have come into existence , centuries before the Christian era , but for the fact that the Old and the New dispensations - however they may have differed in outward form , or in the ostensible nature of the transactions belonging to them -  were founded on the same relations and pervaded by the same essential truths and principles ? No otherwise could the Book of Psalms have served as the great handbook of devotion to the members of both covenants .  There the disciples of Moses and Christ meet as on common ground -  the one still readily and gratefully using the fervent utterances of faith and hope which the other had breathed forth ages before . And though it was comparatively carnal institutions under which the holy men lived and worshipped who indited those divine songs ; though it was transactions bearing directly only on their earthly and temporal condition which formed the immediate ground and occasion of the sentiments they uttered ; yet , where in all Scripture can the believer who now worships in "spirit and in truth " more readily find for himself the words that shall fitly express his loftiest conceptions of God , embody his most spiritual and enlarged views of the divine government , or tell forth forth the feelings and desires of his soul even in many of its most lively and elevated moods .Patrick Fairbairn