BY THE LATE PROF. SMEATON, D.D.
WHEN David was anointed by Samuel to be king, we read: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward” (I. Sam. xvi. 13). His soul was so filled with the consciousness of his high destiny, and with the animating power and presence of the Spirit of God, that he became a different man. He was not only filled with the office-gifts necessary for rule, but was faithful to the principles which devolved on him as the subordinate under-king of a divine Theocracy. The same Spirit that enobled and guided him abandoned Saul.
Nor must we forget the inspiration given to him. “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue” (II. Sam. xxiii. 2). He received divine communications, intelligible enough to him as a prophet (Acts ii. 30), as to the birth and sufferings, the death, the resurrection, and glory of his greater seed, or offspring, all which are wrought into the Psalms. He refers in that closing utterance to the prophetic Spirit which had rested on him, and he virtually announces, “All my Psalms were composed by the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit of the Lord.”
But while these allusions to the Spirit are of a more public and official character, there are others in which we trace the Spirit’s operations upon himself as a regenerate and sanctified man: “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?” (Ps. cxxxix. 7). In this Psalm, which may have been prepared before he ascended the throne, the omnipresence and omniscience which are affirmed of God are also declared to be equally the attributes of the Spirit of God. The Psalm sets forth a gracious and beneficent omnipresence. It is only learned trifling, all too plainly betraying an unchristian bias, when it is expounded as meaning, “Whither shall I go from Thy stormy wind.” The allusion is to the personal Spirit—”Thy Spirit”—graciously omnipresent in all the universe to the believing mind. This is not a flight of imagination.
In the 51st Psalm David prays—”Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. li. 11). David had grievously sinned, and in that Psalm, which contains the expression of his repentance, he penitently prays that the Holy Spirit may not be taken from him. Previous to his fall he must have tasted the joy of God’s salvation, and possessed that free Spirit, when he pleads with such a vehement desire for its restoration. Here, for the first time, we have the epithet Holy connected with the Spirit of God. He is not only the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of Power, but the Holy Spirit, and in another Psalm He is designated the Good Spirit. “Thy Spirit is good: lead me,” or “Let Thy good Spirit lead me into the land of uprightness” (Ps. cxliii. 10). He prayed that the same good Spirit that had always led him might lead him still. We cannot depart from the usual meaning of the expression, “Thy Spirit,” as alluding to the personal Holy Ghost.
The unction and fragrance of the Spirit with which the Psalms are replete lead us to notice, before leaving this portion of our survey, that it is an utter misconception to represent the Old Testament religion as more fed by mundane hopes than by the influence of the Holy Spirit. It is to pervert the plainest evidence to affirm, as Cocceius and his school affirmed, that there was neither sonship nor the spirit of adoption in the Old Testament Church. That was to ignore the Abrahamic Covenant, and Christ’s divine presence with His Church, and merely to fix all attention upon the intermediate and transitory Sinai Covenant. But the Psalms to which we are adverted, when considered as the actual expression of praise for the Israelitish Church, as well as a legacy handed down to us in the Christian Church, sufficiently refute that view. No book of a similar kind was prepared for the New Testament Church. The Holy Spirit, replenishing the sweet singers of Israel with spiritual truth and holy love, anticipated in this way much of the necessity that should be felt in Christian times. I am not here discussing the debated point as to the use of Psalms in public worship. My object is to show the spirituality of the Israelitish Church as evinced by its inspired and invaluable Psalms. They describe the eternity and omnipresence, the majesty and condescension, the justice and mercy of God in a strain of the most fervid devotion. They sing of repentance and faith, of joy in God and delight in God’s law, with an ardour beyond which it is impossible to go. They depict Christ’s royal reign and His union with His Church, the anointing with the oil of gladness (Ps. xlv. 7); the receiving of gifts for men (Ps. lxviii. 18); and the supreme dominion with which Christ was to be invested by the Father with a tenderness, unction, and joy, to which no other words are equal. And those Psalms which are called “new songs” anticipate the full millennial glory.
To reason back from effect to cause, the power and presence of the Spirit in ample fulness must have been graciously conferred to produce these Psalms, and to use them fitly when prepared. We trace the power of God’s Spirit in turning the captivity of Israel, and in filling them with penitence. Not only so; the apostle, when adducing the quotation from the Psalms, “I believe, therefore have I spoken,” prefixes, “We having the same spirit of faith—we also believe and therefore speak” (II. Cor. iv. 13; Ps. cxvi. 10). The language of the apostle affirms the same faith and the possession of the same Spirit. From this fact, and from the whole series of quotations made from them, it is evident that the experience of the church was the same in both economies, through complexional varieties attached to each. But these varieties, as Calvin well remarks, describe the church more in its corporate character than in the experience of the individual members. The true church in the Old Testament, whatever might be the character of the nominal adherents, cannot be said to be unspiritual when we trace a faith and a knowledge of God, a fidelity and courage, an endurance and self-denial in all that great cloud of witnesses that fill us with astonishment, and leave us conscious that we are practically far behind.