tender, pensive, personal; other psalms are that; but Psalm cxix.
is intime and autobiographical. One is brought very close to a
human spirit; one hears his prayers, his sighs, the dropping of his
tears. Then, too, in spite of its sadness, there is a deep
hopefulness and faithfulness about it, a firm belief in the
ultimate triumph of what is good and true, a certainty that what is
pure and beautiful is worth holding on to, whatever may happen; a
nearness to God, a quiet confidence in Him. It is all in a subdued
and minor key, but swelling up at intervals into a chord of
ravishing sweetness.

There is never the least note of loudness, none of that terrible
patriotism which defaces many of the psalms, the patriotism which
makes men believe that God is the friend of the chosen race, and
the foe of all other races, the ugly self-sufficiency that
contemplates with delight, not the salvation and inclusion of the
heathen, but their discomfiture and destruction. The worst side of
the Puritan found delight in those cruel and militant psalms,
revelling in the thought that God would rain upon the ungodly fire
and brimstone, storm and tempest, and exulting in the blasting of
the breath of His displeasure. Could anything be more alien to the
spirit of Christ than all that? But here, in this melancholy psalm,
there breathes a spirit naturally Christian, loving peace and
contemplation, very weary of the strife.

I have said it is autobiographical; but it must be remembered that
it was a fruitful literary device in those early days, to cast
one's own thought in the mould of some well-known character. In
this psalm I have sometimes thought that the writer had Daniel in
mind--the surroundings of the psalm suit the circumstances of