I once found in an old library in Germany a Latin Bible in manuscript, which had been well thumbed long before printing was invented. I looked instantly to see which pages were most soiled and worn. They were all in the Book of Psalms. I found a Bible in a soldier’s knapsack, inscribed, “Presented to my boy the day he enlisted,” and signed by his mother’s name. The Psalms were most stained by tears. You never saw a well-used Bible in which the Book of Psalms did not show the most numerous traces of study and affection.
Why is this? Why is it that wonderful book, which was more than a thousand years growing to its present volume, keeps coming back to us when we are weary of our Gospel songs, and when even the best modern hymns leave us hungering and thirsting? I think it is because Christ is so precious in the Psalms. The books of the Bible have all been taking turns in revealing Christ. In different ages, and to varied experiences, the several books of the Bible have taken turns in lifting up the Saviour who is drawing all men to the Father. But the turn of the Psalms keeps coming all the time. It is companion book to Law, Prophets, Gospels, Epistles, and the Revelation.
There are two ways of finding Christ in the Psalms which are well known and well used by every prayerful reader, and therefore, need little illustration here. One is the devout reading of the numerous Psalms in which God is described as our Redeemer, the Saviour of Israel, the Refuge of our souls; the other is the profound study, with incessant reference to the New Testament, when they are cited and explicitly applied to Christ by Himself and the Apostles, of the seven Messianic Psalms. Three of them describe the suffering Messiah—the 16th, 22nd, and the 40th; four describe the triumphant Messiah—the 2nd, the 45th, the 72nd, and the 110th.
But there is another way to find Christ in the Psalms. Make little clusters of Psalms which have a close resemblance in their central thoughts. For example, select the 23rd Psalm as the centre of a cluster. Associate as many as you can readily find with this as the melody to the full harmony. Then let your heart be filled with praise for the incarnation, the teaching, the miracles of love, the atonement, and the whole work of salvation which the Redeemer of sinners has accomplished.
I owe to some writer, whom I cannot now recall, the suggestion of a remarkable cluster of Psalms, which impressed my mind at the time as a surprising prophecy of Christ. They are the 1st, the 15th, the 24th, the 101st, and the 112th. None of them are quoted in the New Testament as referring to Christ. They contain no allusions to events in His life on earth. They are simply descriptions of the Good Man, such as we often apply to our fathers and ministers and benefactors when they die. They resemble, at first sight, the lyric masterpieces of all ages. The fruitful theme of song in every nation on earth, except the Hebrews, has been the beauty, the tenderness, and the winning graces of the perfect woman. Its companion picture has always been courage, the strength, and the splendid achievements of the heroic man. But all resemblance to these descriptions disappears on a closer inspection of these Psalms. This Perfect Man is radically different from the wise man of Socrates, and from the heroes of Homer and Virgil. A longing is here disclosed for the appearance of a being on earth such as the mind of man has never conceived. And the mere phenomenon of this unique description in a literature which was growing for centuries before the golden age of classic letters is one of the imperishable miracles of the Bible.
For this is not merely David’s estimate of the Good Man. The three middle Psalms only are ascribed to David. The first Psalm, which may have been venerable when David made it the preface to his book, and the 112th, which may have been born of the exultant hopes of God’s people when their captivity was turned, begin and close the delineation of the Perfect Man. Observe some of the features of the man who is thoroughly good in the sight of God. He has clean hands. The usurer’s frauds have never stained them. They have never been lifted up in a false oath. They keep bargains which turn out unprofitable. His virtues are best in his own home.
A feature which is set in strong contrast to these homely qualities is the holy intolerance of this good man. He will have nothing to do with bad men. He will not walk in their counsels, nor stand in their way, nor sit down in their company. He contemns a vile person. He hates their works. He will not have them in his house as servants. He will cut off the wicked doers from the city of the Lord. And yet he is the meekest of men. He fears God. His delight is in the law of God. His will is wholly surrendered to the will of God. No one ever read with a devout heart these five Psalms together without two profound convictions: I ought to be such a man as this. I am not such a man as this. These must have been the reflections of those who wrote the Psalms, and of all who used to meditate upon them. They certainly never saw on earth, as we have never seen, the original of this astonishing portrait.
For the features, so prominent in nearly all of David’s Psalms, and so conspicuous by its absence here, are infirmity and sin. There are no faults ascribed to this good man in either of the five Psalms. There is no prayer, and evidently no need, for the pardon of sin. He walks before God with a perfect heart. He has clean hands and a pure heart. And yet his perfections are all wonderfully human. He is a man of affairs, managed with thrift, in conflict with the wicked. He is in a condition of subjection and obedience to God.
We are confronted, then, with the unparalleled picture of profound humility, without a consciousness of sin; of unreserved self-surrender without a previous struggle of self-will; of a fear of God springing from no offences to provoke the Divine wrath, and of undeviating obedience to laws which were made not for Himself but for transgressors. Ecce Homo! It is the Son of Man! These psalmists never saw such a man on earth. They were longing for Him. What a wistful word that is with which the first and the last Psalms in the series begin—blessed!
Oh, how blessed, and what a blessing would such a man be upon earth! These thrilling songs, which kept recurring at intervals of perhaps a thousand years, were giving unconscious utterance to the hopes which were throbbing in many hearts for the coming of the Perfect Man.—Wolcott Calkins, in The Congregationalist (1885).