hymn or song of praise in honour of God, and a declaration of His Almighty power." And about the mouth of babes and sucklings he says thus:

The first of the wonders which appear in man after he comes forth to the air of the world, is the act of sucking. For it is right that man should praise the Creator, and acknowledge his power and might, on account of his works which are visible in the heavens, and in the earth, and in the conformation of his own body, which is formed in the womb, and grows by degrees, till his members are perfected, and he comes forth to the air of the world. And this he celebrates in the Psalm, "O LORD, Thou hast searched me out, and known me." (Ps. cxxxix.) But the present Psalm says, from the beginning of his coming forth to the air of the world, and from his sucking, are the wonderful works of God acknowledged, and his kindness towards man. Therefore he says, Thou hast laid a foundation. For as the foundation is the beginning of the building, so sucking is the first thing in which we recognise the kindness of the Creator towards man after he comes forth to the air of the world. For the Holy One, Blessed be He! has made for him a hole in the breasts, like the puncture of a fine needle, no bigger than that for if it were wider, the milk would flow without pressure, and enter into his mouth in greater quantities than is necessary, so as to choke him; and if it were finer than it is, the act of pressing would become difficult to the child, and his lips would suffer. But all is in due proportion and measure. And the wonder [in man] above all other animals is, that God has placed the breasts of his mother near the seat of intelligence, (i. e. the heart) as our Rabbies,* may their memory be blessed! have told us. Therefore he said, From the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast laid the foundation of power.

But enough, and more than enough, of this "Rabbinical learning.” If Christianity be not, from first to last, "a cunningly devised fable," the true meaning of this eighth Psalm is as far removed from all these Jewish dreams as light from darkness. Saviour and his Apostle we affirming that this Psalm is advent of Christ in the flesh.

On the authority of our conceive ourselves perfectly safe in a prophetical hymn of praise for the In the first four verses the prophet, as

* We cannot omit the opportunity which this allusion to the Talmud affords us, of quoting the following passage from this extraordinary work. After affirming that David sang a psalm or song to God in his mother's womb, As it is written, "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name," (Ps. ciii. 1,) the Talmud proceeds to the second stage of his existence, and says thus:

ינק משדי אמו ונסתכל בדדיה ואמר שירה שנאמר ברכי נפשי את יהוה ואל תשכחי כל גמוליו : מאי כל גמוליו אמר רבי אבהו שעשה לה דדים במקום בינה טעמא מאי אמר רב יהודה כדי שלא יסתכל בערוה רב מתנה אמר כדי שלא יינק ממקום הטנופת-.Berachoth, p. 10, a

From delicacy to our readers we forbear to translate this precious morceau; but we entreat the learned to weigh well this appalling fact, that the Talmud, from which this passage is extracted, and which abounds with similar specimens of nonsense, and filth, and obscenity, and blasphemy, is at this hour, and has been for ages, regarded by the Jews with a degree of superstitious veneration, to which their reverence for the writings of Moses and the Prophets bears no comparison; and that while they kiss the book with unfeigned devotion, and regard it as a talisman, a household god, which will preserve them from all evil, not one in a thousand of them is able to read a single line of its

contents.

it appears to us, addresses Him as Jehovah. The expression, “THOU, who displayest thy glory in the heavens," seems to relate to "the glory which He had with the Father before the world was;" and the Psalmist expresses his wonder and admiration that He, who " in the beginning was with God, and was God," should make choice of children and sucklings, to welcome Him with hosannahs, and proclaim his praise on earth;—that He "who made the world, and upholdeth all things by the word of His power," should lay aside the glory of the Godhead, and come " to visit us in great humility." Then, regarding Him in his new character, as the man Christ Jesus, he abruptly changes his mode of address, speaking to Jehovah in the second person, and of Christ in the third: and the antecedent to the pronoun "Him," in ver. 5, 6, is not "man," and "the son of man," in ver. 4. ; but THE VISITOR mentioned in the preceding line, He who had before been personally addressed as God, but is now described as made for a season lower than God (or, than the angels), for the suffering of death," and afterwards "crowned with glory and honour." This transition cannot, perhaps, be expressed in Greek or in English; but in Latin it is obvious: for instead of continuing the pronoun "eum" through the whole passage, as in the existing Latin versions, we conceive it would be more accurately rendered thus:—

Quoniam videbo cœlos, opera digitorum Tuorum,

Lunam et stellas quæ Tu fundasti;

Quid est homo, quòd memor es ejus?

Aut filius hominis, quoniam visitas eum?

Minuisti Illum paulo minùs ab angelis,

Gloriâ et honore coronasti Illum;

Constituisti Illum super opera manuum tuarum,
Omnia subjecisti sub pedibus Illius.

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Is it altogether impossible that this transition may be indicated, in the Hebrew, by the change in the form of the affixed pronoun? The use of the epenthetic Nun, in cases like this, is, we believe, very little understood; and we are inclined to think that the change from to, corresponding to our proposed change from " eum to "Illum," was not made without a reason. But an objection may, perhaps, be raised against this interpretation of the passage from the conjunction () "For" or "Yet," at the beginning of ver. 5, which seems to connect it immediately with the preceding sentence. readers, however, will observe that, though the version in their Bible and that of our present authors have retained this conjunction, it does not appear in their Prayer-book; and there is abundant reason to believe it an interpolation. For it was not in the copy of the Septuagint quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews; it is not in any of the versions in the London Polyglott, except the Chaldee; nor in any of the

Our

fragments remaining of the Hexapla of Origen, though the passage is extant in them all. Moreover, it is not in the version of Jerome, who would not, we imagine, have omitted it had it existed in his copy of the "Hebrew Verity;" and lastly, it is not in any of the standard editions of the Latin Vulgate. The earliest trace, we believe, of this conjunction is to be found in the Commentary of Chrysostom,who quotes the Hebrew in Greek letters; thus, ovulaapnou uat unewstu. It appears therefore that the word was then read, not according to the present punctuation, anal, but go and the conjunction thus pronounced, might easily have crept in, by mere accident, from the conclusion of the preceding word. Although this letter (1) therefore appears in all the Hebrew manuscripts yet discovered, we think it not improbable that the Psalm was originally written without it.

A more formidable difficulty, however, arises from ver. 7, 8; a difficulty which even the "profoundly learned Joseph. Mede" was unable to overcome, and which induced him to adopt the notion that the quotations of this Psalm in the New Testament are mere accommodations of the words. But, with reverence be it spoken, his discourse is a lamentable instance of a great mind losing itself in a mist of its own creating. For our own part, though we are aware that in expressing such a sentiment we are opposing the opinions of many learned and pious men, we cannot conceive that our Saviour and His Apostles would have quoted this Psalm in the manner they have done, had it not been, in its primary sense, an express prophecy of those events which they have pointed out as its accomplishment. And if these verses are really inconsistent with this view of the prophecy, so that we are absolutely reduced to the alternative of either disbelieving their testimony, or discarding these verses from the Psalm, we do not hesitate to adopt the latter hypothesis, and to conclude that this passage is a mere interpolation of the Jews, foisted in for the purpose of giving support to their accommodation of the Psalm, and more effectually robbing it of its prophetical character.

Let us now proceed to the sixteenth Psalm; the present version of which appears to us to be an extraordinary specimen of learned trifling. (See p. 211 of our last Number). The translation which our authors have given of verse 10,

For Thou wilt not abandon me to the grave,

is so totally at variance with the plain meaning of the Hebrew words, that though we fully acquit them of intentionally corrupting the truth, we do not hesitate to say that in their hands the truth has been most unfortunately corrupted. The ancient translators, without exception, understood the word here to mean the soul, and is the habitation of the soul after death: and why our authors have departed from these literal and proper meanings of the words, we

confess ourselves utterly unable to explain, and we verily believe they are equally so. If the words were doubtful in other passages, this place alone is so obvious as to fix their sense, and serve as a clue to all the rest. For nothing can be more certain than that this text contains a direct prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus: Christianity and this apostolical interpretation must stand or fall together: and it appears to us that no great depth of learning is required to perceive that it distinctly describes this resurrection with reference to the two component parts of man, the soul and the body; that the four lines composing verses 9 and 10 relate to the soul and the body alternately, the first and third to the soul, the second and fourth to the body, and that the last two contain the ground of the confidence expressed in the two former. For why should His heart be glad, and His glory, His immortal soul rejoice, but from His assurance that that Soul would not be left in Sheol? And why should His body or flesh rest in confidence, but because of the same unshaken faith that that flesh would not be suffered to putrefy or see corruption? But how have our authors rendered the word in other places? In Ps. xxxi. 17; xlix. 14, 15; lv. 15; lxxxviii. 3; lxxxix. 48; cxvi. 3; cxxxix. 8, they have rendered it "the grave:" but in Ps. lxxxvi. 13, "the pit;" in Ps. xviii. 5, "Hades;" in Ps. ix. 17, "the place of the dead;" and in Ps. vi. 5, "the regions of the departed." Moreover, in a note on this last place, which we trust our readers have not forgotten, our authors have expressly told us that it is not the region of departed bodies, or the grave, but "the gloomy mansion of departed SPIRITS." What admirable consistency! But our readers have yet to learn that consistency is one of the points on which our authors pride themselves.

The plan adopted by the Translators, of assigning but one meaning to any single word or sentence, even although the real import of the one or the other may be yet unsettled, necessarily gives a dogmatical cast to all their explanations. They are neither insensible nor indifferent to the charges which may be brought against them on this head. Purposing, however, to furnish merely a Manual of the Psalms, they conceived that, to encumber their translation with tedious and intricate disquisitions, would have been to depart entirely from the plan which they had prescribed to themselves; and that, consistently with this design, they could only state the particular interpretation, which seemed to them, after mature deliberation, to have the balance of argument and authority in its favour. The Translators do not wish to conceal the fact that, with regard to several words and expressions, their minds long wavered in doubt and uncertainty, and were eventually determined by only a slight preponderance of evidence; nor do they deny that, as to the precise meaning of some few passages in the Psalms, their opinion is even yet far from being decidedly formed. They deem it right to add that, in these latter instances, they have adhered, in the main, to the present authorized version.-Pref. iv. v. But one meaning to any single word! How happens it then that the word has changed its meaning in passing from the sixth to the sixteenth Psalm? Again, we can readily believe that the

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"preponderance of evidence" in favour of their translation of the passage before us was slight" indeed; and we think they would have shewn more judgment had they, in this instance, followed their own rule, and "adhered, in the main, to the present authorized version." For though it may accord with their system of interpretation to represent the "real import" either of the whole sentence, or of the words composing it, as "yet unsettled; " we fearlessly assert that to raise doubts respecting the general accuracy of our authorized version of this celebrated prophecy, is not a jot more rational than to doubt whether or not the sun be risen amidst the warmth and splendour of noon day.

This passage is the clue to the whole Psalm; for the same person who speaks these words, speaks the whole,-there being no change of person that we can discover except in one passage which relates to "the saints which are upon the earth." If, therefore, on the authority of the New Testament, we are to consider Jesus as the speaker in ver. 10, He is equally so throughout; and the whole Psalm is nothing else than a prayer uttered by Him in the days of his Humiliation. Our readers need not be told that the mean condition in which our Saviour appeared on earth was the great obstacle to His reception by the rulers of the Jewish nation; that they looked for a temporal deliverer, and contemptuously rejected the claims of the meek and lowly Jesus to the character of their predicted Messiah. These views being so utterly at variance with the truth, we cannot be surprised to find the Messiah prophetically introduced in the Old Testament, declaring it unnecessary for the salvation of mankind that he should be renowned for worldly greatness,-expressing his entire satisfaction with that state of poverty and degradation which it pleased God to appoint him in the present life,—and looking forward with joyful anticipation to his own future resurrection. Such we conceive to be the simple meaning of this Psalm; the train of thought being once interrupted in order to afford Him a consolatory glimpse of the constancy and triumphs of His first disciples. As many of our readers will not be able to refer to the old versions, they will not, we hope, be displeased at our introduction of the following extracts from them. The line marked (†) is the only one in which the Hebrew text seems to us to have suffered any material corruption.