《The People ’s Bible – Psalms》(Joseph Parker)
Commentator
Joseph Parker (9 April 1830 - 28 November 1902) was an English Congregational minister.
Parker's preaching differed widely from his contemporaries like Spurgeon and Alexander Maclaren. He did not follow outlines or list his points, but spoke extemporaneously, inspired by his view of the spirit and attitude behind his Scripture text. He expressed himself frankly, with conviction and passion. His transcriber commented that he was at his best when he strayed furthest from his loose outlines.
He did not often delve into detailed textual or critical debates. His preaching was neither systematic theology nor expository commentary, but sound more like his personal meditations. Writers of the time describe his delivery as energetic, theatrical and impressive, attracting at various times famous people and politicians such as William Gladstone.
Parker's chief legacy is not his theology but his gift for oratory. Alexander Whyte commented on Parker: "He is by far the ablest man now standing in the English-speaking pulpit. He stands in the pulpit of Thomas Goodwin, the Atlas of Independency. And Dr. Parker is a true and worthy successor to this great Apostolic Puritan." Among his biographers, Margaret Bywater called him "the most outstanding preacher of his time," and Angus Watson wrote that "no one had ever spoken like him."
Another writer and pastor, Ian Maclaren, offered the following tribute: "Dr. Parker occupies a lonely place among the preachers of our day. His position among preachers is the same as that of a poet among ordinary men of letters."
Introduction
Psalm
I am strenuously endeavouring to compress The People"s Bible within twenty-five volumes, and therefore I must leave the Psalter almost untouched; I say "almost untouched," for even this volume, with all its closely-printed pages, hardly begins the work of expounding or amplifying the poetry of the Book of Psalm. This book alone would afford ample materials for the whole twenty-five volumes which I proposed to issue when I conceived the idea of The People"s Bible, so abundant and so rich are its immortal songs. This is emphatically the heart"s own book, which Isaiah , indeed, at once a reason for expansion and condensation. Who would wish to expand the twenty-third psalm? Is it not full to overflow of all sacred emotion and all noble thought concerning God who is the Shepherd of the universe? Yet the twenty-third psalm could be sung in a hundred different ways, care being taken that the very variety of its adaptations might not be perverted into a weakness. We should take care how we try to vary the music of heaven. All my life long have I revelled in the Book of Psalm. What can I say about it now? It grows in tenderness. Its thunders were never so solemn and majestic; its minor strains never so delicate and comforting. Every psalm bears its own marks of inspiration. Human experience has been anticipated in all its innumerable phases. Is it nothing to have a book which knows the soul through and through, and can express all its sorrow and all its rapture? How mountain-like is the sublime old Hebrew among the languages of earth! and how noble its billow-like swell amid the waves of meaner speech! David knew me. Asaph is my bosom friend. Solomon is my confidant. All the unnamed minstrels are bringing me music from heaven. I would they might all tarry with me for ever, for in their society I can know nothing of weariness and nothing of pain. Under the spell of their genius, oratory becomes poetry, and the rains of grief are turned into the rainbows of hope. We know what a great lake is among the mountains. How it redoubles the scene! how it softens all rocks, and makes the shadowed mountains quiver as with reverent joy! It is the mirror of the landscape. So is this Book of Psalm among the books of the Bible. All the other parts of the Bible are in the Psalm. There creation is repeated; there the wilderness is remembered; there the Church is outlined; there Christ is born; there the wail of Calvary sanctifies all other agony. There, too, is Sinai interpreted in righteousness, and there the Cross gives welcome to contrition. The Psalmists were not content to lift up their own voices in the worship of the Eternal God. Those voices in the estimation of the Psalmists were too feeble for the occasion. They must be accompanied—accompanied by thunders and billows, by organs and trumpets, by harps and cymbals. It seems as if the Psalmists could never have accompaniment enough. They would call all nature to their aid. Whatsoever had a voice or could make a sound was to be impressed into the holy service. Yet some amongst us, even at this late day, object to musical instruments in the sanctuary! Such objection is valid, if we never get beyond the instrument: if we are fascinated by the sound of brass, or the quiver of prepared chords; but if the instrument is used to multiply ourselves, to give us a larger personality, to find for us a vaster, grander, and tenderer expression, then is the musical instrument not our master, but our servant. Pitiable is the objection to musical instruments in aiding the public worship of God. To object to them is to show an utter ignorance of their scope and purpose. God has so constructed the universe that every star and every flower, every hill and every stream, shall contribute to swell the anthem of his praise.
I can picture a wonderful assembly around the Psalter. There are the saints who love the Lord, and are in quest of speech fit for the expression of all that belongs to him in the way of adoration and praise. Nowhere else can they find similar expression. All that is noble and all that is tender can be found here. Every name by which the Lord was ever known to ancient history is repeated in this solemn and impressive music. The English cannot do without the Hebrew: the Gentile is dependent on the Jew. In every particular, salvation is of the Jews; in our sublimest moods we flee to the Hebrew Scriptures for the only language that can give fit utterance to our noble and saintly rapture. Not only are the saints gathered around the Book of Psalm , but sinners also congregate with tears and sighs, that they may seek the Lord, and find words fit for the expression of broken-heartedness. The fifty-first psalm is the prodigal"s highway back to pardon, to heaven, to God. How far soever human speech may go in the invention of expressions designed to set forth the depth and agony of contrition, it can never get beyond what we find in this wail of the heart,—this solemn outburst of sorrow and bitterness of soul on account of individual transgression. With the saints and the sinners there come a whole multitude of sorrowful souls; each knowing its own bitterness, and feeling the weight of its own burden; each feeling that the Psalm were written for his particular case, so exquisite is their thought, so tender their expression, so complete and soul-subduing their conception and vision of God. Add to all this host those who are dumb in soul, men who are speechless on account of grief, and you will complete the host of readers and inquirers gathered in eagerness and gratitude around this music of the heart. It is along this line that I find proofs of the true unity of the race. What unity may be established by merely physical considerations it is open to science to determine. The spiritual student discovers lines of unity in the moral region which can never be destroyed. To think that thousands of years ago our deepest experiences were uttered for us! To think that in all countries the heart has felt the same agonies, borne the same burdens, wept the same tears, and cried out in various accents for the same deliverance! In the Psalm we find the real meaning of inspiration. This question does not turn upon dates, localities, mere personalities of a transient kind, but upon instruction which covers the whole breadth of human ignorance, and upon consolation which touches every quivering fibre of human sorrow. All this accounts for the Bible"s growing influence. Not because the Bible tells men about distant lands and now archaic habits, but because it addresses the soul in all its sorrows, aspirations, desires, and bitternesses, because the Bible, or the Psalter in particular, brings messages to those who have lost all light and all hope, the Bible will remain for ever the supreme book and the supreme influence in literature.
The whole Bible may be said to be condensed into the Book of Psalm. Everything is related in poetry. All the plainest and least poetical works are turned into music. The Book of Job is repeated in the Book of Psalm In Job we find the concrete and the personal, the intensely dramatic and realistic; yet in the Psalm we find the same personalities represented, the same devil, the same upright souls, the same temptations, the same fears, and the same ultimate deliverance. Whether we read Job or the Psalm , we are in reality reading the same book. This observation holds good even of the Book of Proverbs. The Psalter is set between Job and the Proverbs in our canon; and account for it as we may, that would seem to be the best place for it. Nearly all the Proverbs are in some form in the Psalter. It seems to be the function and prerogative of poetry to take up all history, all Proverbs , all moral maxims, and all commonplaces of human intercourse, and magnify and sublimate them into poetical expression. Can such singers be dead? Were they but so many songsters, like nightingales in the darkness, singing to human sorrow? and are they now dead, extinct, annihilated? It is impossible to believe this. To such singers, music was no mere enjoyment. It was an instrument by which they communicated divine revelation to human listeners. It was the soul in its highest raptures. It was the intensest enjoyment which the human can hold with the divine. Other music comes and goes, changing its fickle fashion without reason and without defence, but this solemn, glorious, booming music rolls on night and day, through all the centuries of human evolution. The men who sang such songs must be living; their immortality cannot be limited to their music. Would we could live in this Psalter all the rest of our days! We need it every word, and we need every word every hour. By various figures could our enjoyment be represented. We should be as men called to reap the largest harvest ever grown in the vineyards of earth. We should be as those privileged to hear spiritual music stealing down upon us from the hidden places of the sky. We should be as prodigals to whom the word of pardon and of love is being spoken in ever-varying tones, yet with such definiteness that the heart can never miss the sweet and healing message. In the Psalm we need find no controversy. In the music of the Church all controversy should be hushed. When men lecture, or preach, or discourse in any form, they provoke more or less intellectual indignation on the part of those who listen to them; but when the noble psalm or sweet hymn is being sung all controversy is silenced, and alienation is forgotten in brotherhood. When we are puzzled, therefore, by other portions of Scripture, and are inclined to high debate, and even to furious contention, let us suspend the angry combat, and go into the Psalter, that we may find a music which will reconcile us and unite us in holiest love. Blessed be God for the Psalter. It seems to have been written in our mother tongue. It is a calendar which we can consult every day in the year, and for every day of the year find some bright motto, some gentle speech, some anticipative gospel.
Prayer
Almighty God, surely thou hast laid up for us in thy law a store of good things: give us the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the understanding heart, that none of thy treasures be wasted upon us. We have heard the words of the wise, and behold they are as nails fastened in a sure place: may we receive the same and order our life according to them, that being found in the way of wisdom we may also walk in the paths of pleasantness and find enjoyment and peace as we advance from step to step. We have heard also the words of thy dear Song of Solomon , our only Saviour: we beseech thee to make a highway to our feet for the progress of his kingdom, that it may be set up there in all its grandeur, strength, and infinite graciousness and beauty. May we be the subjects of his crown, citizens of his kingdom, followers of his captaincy, and may the royalty of his strength and grace rule us with a sweet and welcome compulsion. We rejoice that, though he was equal with the Father, he was found in fashion as a man; and being found in fashion as a Prayer of Manasseh , he opened his mouth in parables and revealed the ancient secrets, and set up the kingdom of heaven upon the earth. We bless thee for its largeness; we thank thee that we all may find a place within the enclosure of thy sanctuary; may none be left outside, may the citizenship of heaven include every one of us—so shall there be in our heart a spring of joy which can never fail.
Great are the riches of thy house, and wondrous the lights which play upon our life as we wait upon thee in the sanctuary. We see afar, we are no longer bounded by things visible, we are not prisoners of time and space, we are called by an emancipating voice into infinite liberty—yea, the freedom of thy children is glorious freedom—enable us to walk in it, without licence, enjoying thy Revelation , living upon thy grace, eating thy word with a devouring appetite, and finding all our strength and rest and deep content in thy holy word.
We have come to bless thee for all thy care: we will not restrain our speech before thee, but let our hearts run out after thy mercy in grateful and ardent appreciation. Pardon all our sin. If our sin is great thy grace is greater, and thou dost not grudgingly but abundantly pardon. Thou wilt magnify the Cross in our forgiveness; yea, thou wilt make glad the heart of Christ by the overflowing pardon with which thou wilt answer our cry for pity and release. Chasten the strong, encourage the weak, sanctify those of us who are struggling after better experience; save the young from temptation, and by the way of the Cross do thou bring us all to thy dwelling-place on high, even to thy holy Jerusalem, whose streets are of pure gold, the gates whereof shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there Amen.