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Show i .Mi 1 SPEAKS :jjUlll!ltj" Sunday School l.iatont "jjH Jjjg. KENNETH 1. FOREMAN SCRIPTURE: Psalms 1; 33:13-15; 67( DEVOTIONAL READING: Palm 14S: 1-10. j Songs for fill Hearts ,' Lesson for July 3, 1949 i J- ; THE greatest hymn-book In the world is to be our study for three months. Not the oldest; that honor belongs to the Vedic Hymns of ancient India. Not the largest; - N 1 the hymnal of your own church may i easily be twice aa 1, large. But the 5 4 greatest hymn- f t U book in the world f ;-- I1 is the book of . , poems was used as the hymn-book of IVsafeAj Psalms. This col- Dr. Foreman lection of religious the temple which was built when the Jewish exiles returned to Babylon. It Was the hymn-book of Herod's temple, and we know our Lord used and loved it. It Is indeed in-deed the song-book of the Bible. It was the only hymnal which the first Christians used, for some time. Indeed the book of Psalms is probably the only hymn-book honored hon-ored and used by three separate religions Judaism, Mohammedanism Mohammedan-ism and Christianity. How It Grew LIKE all hymnals, this book of Psalms grew by degrees. It was not written all at one time or by one person. David wrote some of the Psalms, how many we doi not know. The "titles" of the Psalms were added by later Hebrew He-brew editors, are no part of the' original Psalms, and are often Inaccurate. In-accurate. It is very likely that as much as a thousand years went by between the first of the Psalms to be written, and the last. Every modern hymnal that Is any good Is In part a collection of the best of the old hymnals. So our book of Psalms, as it finally took shape, came from older old-er collections. A glance through it in the American standard version will show that in its present form It is made up of five smaller books, ending with Psalms 41, 72, 89, 108 and 150. Each book ends with a dox-ology dox-ology and book V ends with a magnificent mag-nificent series of them. Sometimes the editors left in duplicates. Reading Read-ing Psalm 14 side by side with Psalm 53 will show that these two are exactly the same, only using different names for God. At least one of the Psalms is made up of "clippings" from earlier Psalms: thus Psalm 108 is made up from Psalm 57:7-11 and Psalm 60:5-12. The Psalms were cherished and ' preserved generation after generation genera-tion because of their heart-appeal. Our Psalm book has gone through centuries of sifting; many were dropped out and forgotten, but the best were saved and sung; and what we have is the cream of the best of the singers of Israel. Mirror of Man JOHN CALVIN called the Psalms the "mirror of the soul." All the varied moods of man hope, despair, des-pair, triumph, envy, doubt, aspiration, aspira-tion, loneliness, hatred, fear, irritation, ir-ritation, patriotism, joy, bitterness, weariness, amazement, anguish, rapture almost every emotion that can be felt toward God or man breathes somewhere or other in these Psalms. Since not one of the authors of the Psalms was a Christian, of course, we should not be surprised to find, here and there, expressions (for example) exam-ple) of hatred which are out of narmony with the spirit and teaching of Jesus. The won-ler won-ler is that there Is so Uttle of that kind of thing. For every Psalm in which the poet says something cruel or hateful hate-ful (e. g. Psalm 137:9 or 109:6-14), there are scores that breathe a spirit of gentleness .and grace. For every note of despair (Psalm 88 is the only completely gloomy one in the whole collection), there are many hallelujahs of hope and gladness. glad-ness. Message of God TF the Psalms are so human, how can they be also God's Word? Yet they are also, truly, a message of God. For they not only cast a divine light on the state of man's heart, but they show what the life of man is when God becomes real. For God was real to each poet who contributed to this great book, 'in latter weeks this summer we shall be looking at the Psalms from various var-ious special angles. This week it will be helpful to sit quietly with the three typical Psalms, 1, 67 and 100, and as you ponder over each one in turn, ask yourself: What does this show me about God? What does this show about life when it turns to God? by WNU Fea,ureeSn0minaUOt |