had to contend not only with the powers of the world leagued against Him, but (as His own words just quoted inform us) with "the power of darkness"-even Satan, whose triumph this was, and the host of wicked spirits who form his kingdom; while the second verse predicts the very words of His persecutors while He hung upon the cross-"Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for Him in God;"-" He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him" (Matt. xxvii. 43): the most envenomed arrow which they could shoot into his heart: for, to the man who with his whole being throws himself upon God, it is even as "death in his bones" to hear his enemies say, "Where is thy God?"

2. But of the Saviour suffering-suffering truly as man for man-it is said He "committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously" (1 Pet. ii. 23), and so here His answer to His revilers is-"But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me: my glory, and the lifter-up of my head." And, as another Scripture saith that "in the days of His flesh, when He had offered prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him from death, He was heard in that He feared" (Heb. v. 7), so in the next verse He adds-"I cried unto Jehovah with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy hill." He prayed to Him "who was able to save Him out of death" (K Oavárov), and He was heard. He was not saved from death; He did not put away the cup from Him: He drank it to the dregs; and was content to do it as being His Father's will. But "out of death" He was saved by resurrection. When His humiliation was perfected, Jehovah proved to be "His glory;" when laid low in the grave," the lifter-up of His head:" and this it is which He anticipates in the fifth verse-"I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for Jehovah sustained me." His last words were:-"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," when "composing Himself to His rest upon the cross, that bed of sorrows;" and, after a short night, the third day proved that His confidence was not misplaced, the morning which saw Him burst the bands of death and leave the prison of the grave, "raised in the glory of the Father;" of Him in whom, notwithstanding the gainsaying

of the enemy, "there was help for His soul" (ver. 2). It was at night that the plot laid against David was to be matured: as it is written, 2 Sam. xvii. 1, 2:—" Ahitophel said unto Absalom, Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night: and I will come upon him when he is weary and weak-handed, and will make him afraid: and all the people that are with him shall flee, and I will smite the King only." But that very night his words were as here, on closing his eyes in sleep," I will not be afraid of ten thousands [myriads1] of the people that have set themselves against me round about." And so could His Antitype say in prospect of that dread night of death, when He had to encounter not only the powers of earth, but of hell, sustained by the same strength: He could in like manner assure Himself of safely seeing the light of another and an eternal day.

3. The remaining verses (7, 8) may be regarded as the further expression of the Saviour's confidence at the same period, in the days of His humiliation and suffering; derived from the anticipation not only of His triumph over death in resurrection, but ultimately over all enemies when His kingdom shall come: when Jehovah will" arise" to maintain the cause of His Anointed, and He whose heel the Serpent bruised shall bruise the Serpent's head after which the universal song shall be-" Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: Thy blessing is upon thy people."

But here we are sent back to the beginning to revise the Psalm in

II. Another view or fulfilment of it, no less certainly contemplated by the Spirit of inspiration, and suggested by this its closing sentence.

It will be observed, then, that the Psalmist, who has hitherto spoken in the first person, as of himself, here introduces the mention of the Lord's "people,"—" Thy blessing is upon thy people :" where the "blessing" is the "salvation," according to the natural construction and the parallelism: that "salvation" or "delive

.3 in ver. 2 and רבים and רבי referring to רבבות !

rance," namely, which is the answer of the prayer of ver. 7, and the "help" of ver. 2 (the same word in the original): thus generalizing the whole of what had hitherto appeared special and individual in the Psalm. In other words, David, who, in the former view, speaks in the person of the Messiah, also, we are now taught, speaks for His people individually and collectively, of whom He is also the representative; according to a double character of the Type frequently to be noticed in this book; and founded on the mystical union of Christ and His Church, as of the Head and members of one Body, to which it is likened.

In this view there is no time of the Church's trouble, no pressure of trial, whether from persecution by the world, or conflict with spiritual enemies and temptations; in a word, no instance in which the "people" of Christ have experience of "the fellowship of His sufferings" in bearing His cross, to which the language of this Psalm will not be found appropriate. At such a time, if they find their type in David's trials and the number of his adversaries, ver. 1, 2; so will they in his hope and defence, ver. 3; in his resource, his prayer and its answer, ver. 4; his consequent calm composure, ver. 5; his triumphant confidence, ver. 6, 7; and, finally, his praise, which shall be their everlasting song, ver. 8. But, as we saw in the second Psalm that a prophecy, which in its incipient fulfilment applied to the powers that conspired the death of the Saviour, awaits its full accomplishment in the last and greatest confederacy against His kingdom of the kings of the earth and its rulers: so here there is internal evidence that the language which has been already considered as that of Christ in His humiliation, and which is likewise adapted to the circumstances of His saints at every period who "suffer with Him," is prophetically indited for that same crisis which in like manner shall fully verify it. And thus the Title proposed by Bishop Horsley well applies—“ A prayer of a believer for deliverance from the Atheistical (rather Antichristian) confederacy;" not, however, to the exclusion, as he judges, of the present title, but in perfect agreement with it, and as one reading of the Type there named as the occasion.

Carried forward, then, with the Psalmist into that future,

but, perhaps, not very distant period, say by whom shall the words be taken up with such reality-"LORD, how are they increased that trouble me," as by the faithful remnant who, in that time of abounding iniquity and the overflowing of ungodliness, shall see, not individuals merely, but "nations" leagued against them?-when, moreover, the saints being "given into the hand" of the blasphemous and Antichristian power, there will seem to be some warrant for the taunt-"There is no help for him in his God." Great, indeed, will be the faith which in that hour of apparent desertion can make answer, "But,"-notwithstanding this taunt by which the enemy sets at nought and derides our hope," Thou, Lord, ART a shield about me: my glory, and the lifter-up of my head:" my shield' against the assaults of my enemies, my glory,' putting honour on me when they would put me to shame. Identified with her Lord in the distress and the reproach, the Church may feel confident of identity with Him in His triumph also; and of being saved, if not from death (for it is written that "as many as will not worship the Beast and his Image shall be killed"), yet out of it, like Him, in resurrection; which she too anticipates in the words following (already noticed as those of the Saviour Christ at the like juncture):-"I cried unto JEHOVAH with my voice and He heard me out of His holy hill. I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for JEHOVAH sustained me." While again, the words "out of His holy hill" are especially to be noted as a further and express reference to the second Psalm : an additional proof that the time referred to is the same, as well as showing that the event on which the hopes of the Church are suspended is "the appearing and kingdom of Christ" there predicted; when, according to "the decree," He shall sit as King on the holy hill of Zion, and realize the ancient Type in the Psalmist's time of the Lord dwelling among His people, enthroned in the Sanctuary above the Ark of the Covenant. Here again occurs "Selah" as above, at the end of ver. 2, calling on us to pause and reflect on the enemy's taunt, "There is no help for him in his God," so here on the contradiction to it, the help from His holy hill.

And how truly faith is defined to be "the substance of things

hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," is exemplified in the next verse-in not only the support and consolation, but the courageous defiance which it breathes-"I will not be afraid of ten thousands of the people" ("myriads" or "innumerable multititudes," as already observed): for the Church believes, as she prays in the words next following, that "Jehovah will arise, as of old time, in the power of His might; that He will finally break the power of Satan and His adherents; pluck the spoil out of the jaws of those beasts of prey ('smite all her enemies on the cheekbone,' and 'break the teeth of the ungodly'); and, in a word, work that glorious deliverance for the members, which is already wrought for the Head, of the Body mystical". Is this true? Then may the Church, then may each individual believer, take up the song "I WILL NOT BE AFRAID:" yea, in the time of greatest trouble, when "men's hearts fail them for fear," when every human stay is broken, and every human hope has fled. Still, "I WILL NOT BE AFRAID," is the Christian's triumphant cry: no, not "of ten thousands of the peoples that have set themselves against me round about."

And now, the last conflict is over-the great battle fought, "the battle of the great day of God Almighty"—the enemy is prostrated-the Church delivered. "The Lord hath made wars to cease unto the ends of the earth: He hath broken the bow and snapped the spear in sunder, and burned the chariots in the fire:" -even the shout of victory is hushed, -and there has succeeded the "stillness" of the "awe" produced by the contemplation of those "works of the Lord," "the desolations He hath wrought in the earth,”—when, again, the silence is broken, and there is heard a strain, soft, sweet, and solemn-led by those who are the immediate objects of the deliverance just effected, but taken up by each successive rank of the redeemed till it swells into one harmonious chorus which fills the whole creation

"Salvation belongeth unto the Lord;

Thy blessing is upon Thy people."

Salvation,”—that, namely, which had been the subject of the

1 Bishop Horne, in loco.