or by any of the external rites and services of religion, but rather by sincere piety, and by the devout effusions of a grateful heart: and yet, that even these will not be accepted without the strictest attention to justice, and every practical virtue. It consists therefore of two parts: in the first the devout, but ignorant and superstitious worshipper is reproved; and in the second the hypocritical pretender to virtue and religion. Each part of the subject, if we regard the imagery and the diction only, is treated rather with variety and elegance, than with sublimity; but if the general effect, if the plot and machinery of the whole be considered, scarcely any thing can appear more truly magnificent. The great Author of nature, by a solemn decree, convokes the whole human race, to be witness of the judgment, which he is about to execute upon his people; the august tribunal is established in Sion:

"Jehovah, God of gods,

"Hath spoken, and hath summoned the earth, "From the rising to the setting of the sun :

"From Sion, from the perfection of beauty, God hath shined."

The majesty of God is depicted by imagery as

sumed from the descent upon mount Sinai, which, as I formerly observed, is one of the common-places, that supply ornaments of this kind:

"Our God shall come, and shall not be silent; "A fire shall devour before him,

"And a mighty whirlwind shall surround him."

The heavens and the earth are invoked as witnesses, which is a pompous form of expression common with the Hebrew writers*:

"He shall call the heavens from on high; "And the earth to the judgment of his people."

At length the Almighty is personally introduced pronouncing his sentence, which constitutes the remainder of the ode; and the admirable sublimity and splendour of the exordium is continued through the whole. There is in Horace an ode upon a similar subject †, and it is not enough to say, that he has treated it in his usual manner, with elegance and variety, for he has done more than could be expected from a person unenlightened by divine

* Compare Deut. xxxii. i. Isa. i. 2.

+ See Horat. lib. iii. Od. 23.

truth, he has treated it with piety and solemnity. But that high degree of sublimity, to which the Psalmist rises upon such occasions, is only to be attained by the Hebrew muse; for it is a truth universally acknowledged, that no religion whatever, no poetic history is provided with a store of imagery so striking and so magnificent, so capable of embellishing a scene, which may be justly accounted the most sublime that the human imagination is able to comprehend.-LoWTH, Lect. 27.

PSALM L.

Th' uplifted eye, and bended knee
Are but vain homage, Lord, to thee;
In vain our lips thy praise prolong,
The heart a stranger to the song.

Can rites, and forms, and flaming zeal
The breaches of thy precept heal?
Or fast, and penance reconcile
Thy justice, and obtain thy smile?

The pure, the humble, contrite mind,
Thankful, and to thy will resign'd,

To thee a nobler off'ring yields

Than Sheba's groves, or Sharon's fields;

Than floods of oil, or floods of wine
Ten thousand rolling to thy shrine,
Or than if, to thine altar led,

A first-born son the victim bled.

"Be just and kind," that great command

Doth on eternal pillars stand:

This did thine ancient prophets teach,
And this thy Well-beloved preach.

PSALM LI.

No one can read this psalm, but must see all the characters of true repentance in the person who wrote it, and the marks of the deepest sorrow and humiliation for the sins of which he had been guilty. The heart appears in every line, and the bitter anguish of a wounded conscience discovers itself by the most natural and affecting symptoms.-If we learn from this sad example of what the Scripture calls the deceitfulness of sin, to be cautious of the first beginnings of it, and not to indulge those

sensual appetites, which, when given way to, draw men insensibly into crimes, they would have once trembled at the thoughts of committing, we shall make the best and wisest improvement of this melancholy part of David's history, and be real gainers by his sins and sorrows.

-felix, quicunque dolore

Alterius disces posse carere tuo.

Tibul. Lib. iii. El. 6.

Chandler's Life of David, vol. ii. 267.

The soul of shame, of sorrow, of remorse, of sincere repentance, and bitter anguish under the agonies of guilt, breathes strong and fervent, through every line of this hallowed composition. And it is (I doubt not) David's greatest consolation at this moment, when he blesses God for the providential effects of his fall, that those crimes, which wrought his shame, and sorrow, and infamy, have in the humility, the piety, the contrition of them (in this and several other psalms composed upon the same cccasion) rescued and reformed millions.

Delany's Life of David, vol. ii. 97.