The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-07-08

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terly different from our own: yet he
was a human spirit. voicing his ex-
perience of life and of God, and when
we approach these soul levels, all men
are kindred.
The men who wrote the Psalms dip
ped their pens into the blood of their
own hearts and only literature so
written is forever read.
Who can remember the best selling
books Of a year ago? Wherv are the
volumes that were hailed as epoch
making, and the teachers who were to
revolutionize thought? Forgotten and
neglected, most of them. But still in
increasing numbers the world is buy
ing and reading the poems pcnned by
Hebrew poets three thousand years
ago. FIavored though they are by the
open air of Judean hills by the court
of an Oriental king, by the trials Of
wilderness wanderings and by the fiery
furnace of slavery, exile ard persecti-
ton, the Psalms still sound q universal
note. They are eternally contemporary
eous. The heart Of humanity every
where responds to them. They voice
the deepest sentiments of mankind's
soul.
The greatest truth concerning any
man or people is his or its thought
of God.
In every valley of the shadow. of
death there is song which may be
learned by the singer who knows that
Jehovah is my shepherd
When we would pray we find that
David has better words than our own;
when we would be grateful and glad,
his strains become ours; when we are
beset by fears and enemies again
we discover that he experienced our
exact case, and has expressed it; when
a sense of our sin overwhelrns US, we
find no words to voice the souls cry
like David's: and when our souls as
pire after God, even as the heart pant
eth after the waterbrooxs. then we in
stinctively turn to these ancient med1-
tations to give articulation to our pro-
foundest emotions. There is scarcely
mood to which the human spirit is
subject that is not perfectly mirrored
in this most wonderful hook of poems
in all the world David's Psalms of Is
sael.
So long as man lives in a world Of
trouble he will need a refuge above
and beyond himself. That refuge, the
devout heart, from the Tsalmist's day
till the present finds in God.
Human spirits like musical instru-
!
ter method of getting the soul into key
has been discovered than the reading
of the Psalms. They bring the heart
into harmony with thoughts of God.
David's figures are sull and rich.
There is nothing meagre or scanty or
occasional in his conception of Divine
| Providence. HE maketh me to lie
down in green pastures There they
are, fertile, abundant and succu1ent;
and the sheep, fulfilled and contented,
is recumbent in them, prepared to en-
joy them indefinitely.
1T will fear no evil" said David. OF
course there is evil in the world: the
Good Shepherd himself lil1ened this to
void world. The invertebrate OPP
timism which disregards the bad in
humanity is not true philosophy. Evil
does exist But it nee1 not conquer.
Why not? Let David answer: For
thou art with me; thy rod and thy
staff they comfort me- The greatest
factor in life is not fear, hut God.
The twenty-third Psalm is truly a
Song Of the heart" It Is az nearly a
universal bit of literature as there is
in the world. Wherever men and
women know the true God and the
Book that reveals Him, there men and
women are accustomed to express
lHSiE highest cAPtileAtCc u AdibA IL
these few simple words, penned three
milIenniums ago by David. Israel's
shepherd king.
A good creed for childhood and Ole
age, and for all the periods in be
tween is this one OF David's: 1.-THE
Lord is my shepherd" There come
periods in every persons existence
when he no longer wants to be counted
brave and strong and masterful-ht
wants simply to be protected To give
over all care and responsibility to the
power of the loving Lord-that /:
i peace. And It is an ideal CT comfor
and protection which IS to be found
nowhere but in the Hebrew or Chris
tian conception Of God.
Hrrxx7s AMI NOTES