Stranger on the Earth

Let any man read the Psalms of David deliberately, let him look upon them as the honest expression of the writer's actual state of feeling: apart from the credit which he has been taught from his youth to assign to the Scriptures as inspired by the Holy Spirit, so as to form, simply and literally, the Word of God; let him simply contemplate with something like deliberation the state of heart, the character, the principle of conduct, the secret experiences which find vent in these wondrous compositions: and whether he has sympathy with the writer or not, he must come to the conclusion, "Assuredly this man was a stranger on the earth." The very revolt which the worldly mind feels from the sanctity and searching holiness of these spiritual songs is an involuntary confession that the writer of them must have been "a stranger on the earth," and the very reason why the ungodly man revolts and recoils from them, and never by any chance turns voluntarily to their pages with desire to meditate upon them, and be imbued with their spirit, is because, on the one hand, he is not prepared to be "a stranger on the earth," and, on the other hand, cannot but shrewdly know that the actual molding of his heart and character by these Psalms - the admission of their sentiments into any place of vital love in his heart, and of their principles to any place of influential government over his character and conduct in life, would inevitably make him what, from his love and friendship to the world, he is not prepared to be - "a stranger on the earth."   Hugh Martin