its own terms. This praise is worth mentioning among more serious ones, both because it may induce students in theology to avail themselves of this book for the double purpose of learning German, and understanding the Psalms; and also because it is important to remark how real simplicity of thought is the natural parent of homely and easy language.

A great deal might be said in defence of the principles upon which this work is written; principles which have indeed been concisely stated in the quotation from the preface, but which admit of being put out in a more scientific form than can be expected in a commentary. An attempt shall be made in the present article, to do somewhat towards such a statement of these principles as may seem likely to be useful. A full and proper statement of them, with a notice of all that might be objected against them or urged in support of them, would require an ample volume. But something we think may be done here to some purpose perhaps, though this something may fail to satisfy either ourselves or our readers. So much comes into the mind if it has once studied the Psalms, that it is difficult to select without suppressing things which ought to be stated, or to write in a way which appears connected to ourselves without leaving the reader in perplexity. Much also may be suggested by the book before us, but here an endeavour shall be made to keep to two or three definite objects, which may be stated as follows:

1st. To unfold and justify that principle upon which our author's work is based, viz., the assumption that David writes in the Psalms as the representative and type of Christ, considered as the head over many members struggling with the world.

2nd. To notice some few of the liturgical applications of the Psalms which flow out of this principle.

3rd. To say somewhat upon the applicableness of the Psalms to private devotional purposes.

It is quite evident that, if the first of these objects can be made out satisfactorily, very little will be enough to say about the two latter. If, therefore, our remarks upon the subject of the first division be disproportionately long, the reason of this will be obvious. What we have first to do then, is to consider in what particular respects David was a type of Christ and of His Church also; this will require to be put in as clear a light as possible; and therefore we trust

our readers will forgive us if we try not only to show them the building, but also the foundations on which it is the superstructure; not only to state what is absolutely necessary in order to understand the subject immediately before us, but also to state a principle or two, to which there must be perpetual recurrence.

If there be one principle to which the Church throughout appears to have borne a consistent testimony, it is the allegorical principle. All writings of the holy fathers with which we are acquainted, polemical or exegetical, practical or dogmatical, bear witness to the truth of this assertion. Whether the writer is pious and devotional, or acute and argumentative, makes no matter: all exhibit specimens of this principle, some in a greater degree and some in a less, yet all in some degree. Even St. Chrysostom, notwithstanding his education under Theodore of Mopsuesta, is not exempt from it. Those giants of acuteness, St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Cyril, abound with it: St. Ambrose in the West, is not behind St. Ephrem in the East, in this respect: St. Gregory in Rome, St. Jerome in Palestine, St. Hilary in Gaul, St. Basil in Cæsarea, and his brother of Nyssa, St. Epiphanius in Cyprus, and others that might be mentioned, many of them zealous opponents of the abuse of allegory, yet all furnish abundant samples of the use of it. The Church, in her different office-books, has done her very best to maintain this principle, which seems so childish a principle to the world, because it is always confounding what is childish with what is child-like. This the Church has done not only by the applications of Scripture and the sermons and homilies of the Fathers which the Breviary contains, but also by a vast quantity of ceremonies wholly unmeaning without reference to this principle. If it be asked in what manner the abuse of this principle is to be distinguished from the use of it, these ceremonies will suggest some sort of answer to the question. For while they admit of a spiritual application, they use the actual elements mentioned in Scripture, salt, oil, candles, incense, and the like they use the letter in order to bring the spirit before us, whereas heretics would have the Gospel system to be all spirit. In a similar way orthodox writers do not deny the letter, while they suppose it to convey other and spiritual teaching behind the letter; whereas Origen seems to suppose that it is mere matter of indifference whether the

letter is true or not. Abraham's sacrifice is true, for instance, and highly instructive to men in the letter: but to Christians as such, it is additionally instructive, owing to the fact that it is a type of the Sacrifice on Calvary. The letter is good and instructive for its own sake, but better and more instructive for that which is contained under it. Some principles there must have been according to which certain actions, and not others, of the patriarchs were selected, and if we were left to choose what that principle was, and had no clue furnished us by the New Testament, we could not well have assumed a more reasonable principle of selection than this, that it was those things which happened to them in figure, which were written for our correction. "The writer of those Scriptures, or rather the Spirit of God by him, goes through those events by which not only past things are narrated, but also future things foretold......not that everything related as having been done, should be supposed to signify something besides: but for the sake of those things which do signify somewhat besides, even those which do not are added," says St. Austin, de Civ. Dei, xcv. 333. Those things in fact which had a typical meaning as well as a real one, are selected out of a vast number of other exemplary acts of virtue or of vice. Nor can one forbear to add, (though nothing to our present purpose), that the same principle appears to extend to the selection of miracles from the many others which Jesus did: the letter of them goes towards the conviction of unbelievers, the spirit of them contains doctrine about the Sacraments of the Church.

This principle is of such vast importance towards a christian understanding of the Psalms, that it is necessary to speak a little more distinctly as to the use and abuse of it. It is commonly said, that allegory cannot be applied to the establishment of any doctrine, a position stated in terms somewhere in St. Austin, though we much doubt if he acted upon it in the sense it is often taken. Certainly, many of the Fathers argued from the allegorical meaning of passages against heretics in controversy. Had we time and scope for proving this here, it might be readily done: but for the present we must assume it, and endeavour to make it clear in what sense this position, viewed in connection with the fact just mentioned, may be taken. Allegory, then, cannot be used to prove a doctrine unknown from another source. Origen, for instance, appears to use

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it to justify fancies of his own: whereas orthodox writers use it to prove the doctrine of the Church, supposed to be already known. Allegory, which does not act in submission to a rigid creed, deserves all the ill names which the driest disciple of Theodorus of Mopsuesta may please to heap upon it. But it seems perfectly and strictly in accordance with reason to say, here is a certain doctrine which claims to be from God, and which is found to explain certain parts of those Scriptures which heretics allow to be from God; and this doctrine is like a key which fits the wards of Scripture, and tallies with them, which is a plain proof that it was made by the same Artificer as Him who made that which requires unlocking: it is a proof of sufficient cogency for practical purposes, that the same Workman not only made the lock and key, but also intended the connection between them. If any one cannot see the reasonableness of arguing against heretics from allegory in this way, we have nothing more to say to him but that we do not see what is to keep him from denying all final causes whatever.

Moreover, it is a particular condition required of those who have to come to Christ, that they shall be of a childlike temper. It may be fairly considered, whether the probation of certain heretics-not of other people, but of heretics-does not lie in their submitting their intellects to something which seems at first sight so childish, as allegory does seem to some minds. They acknowledge their obligation to submit to Scripture: but they think they are to be taught by it in what they are pleased to hold to be the only rational, manly way. Now, it is very possible that God may teach men in what seems a roundabout and foolish way: Christianity has always seemed to be foolishness (1 Cor. i. 18-25.) to those external to it. Little children are instructed by fables, which, so far as they convey a truth by things in the letter, which mean something else than the letter, are analogous to allegory: the minds of little children, if once supplied to certain aliens from the Church, might enable them to see that many passages applied by the Church to the Blessed Virgin do contain doctrine concerning her. It is not these passages alone which prove this doctrine to Catholics, but it may be that they are the proper proof of them to those not yet Catholics. Light and certainty are promised to those in the Church; but where are they promised to those out of

the Church? These last must not beg the question by assuming that they are in the Church, and then quarrel with the weak evidence-weak, comparatively speakingwhich God furnishes to those out of the Church, at least for some doctrines. The want of this childlike spirit will be fatal to those out of the Church, and would make all the offices of the Blessed Virgin (to instance no more) vapid and unmeaning to those in the Church. It seems perfectly possible that the application of several parts of the Psalms and Canticles to Mary, should be intended by God to be just as clear as it is, and no more so, in order that those who will not attend in a childlike spirit to weak evidence, should not have the clearer proofs vouchsafed to them. The intellect must be prostrate before it can be illuminated-must believe before it can know. In illustration of what we here mean it may be observed, that the New Testament does not distinctly assert that Mary remained ever a Virgin. Catholics know it from tradition: but when they know it, they can see it in the type of the burning bush. Rubum quem viderat Moyses incombustum," says the Church after St. Gregory Nyssen, conservatam agnovimus tuam laudabilem virginitatem." This type might be the only Scriptural proof furnished to the sceptic who has cut himself off from the secure grounds of tradition, and he may be severely punished for not going by such weaker evidence as he has yet left.

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Now to apply this principle to the Psalms: there can be no doubt that David describes in many of them his own sufferings and trials, his own feelings under these or in time of victory, and that with an intermixture of some expressions which seem at first sight alien to the christian temper, and so calculated to make the book not altogether fit for christian devotion. David was a man; and therefore our common humanity would give us some community of feeling with him. But this is not enough to account for the fact, that God to all appearance designed David's compositions in particular to be the Church's chief book of devotion. We ought to have a more distinct conception of David's relation to the Church's Lord and Head, as a type of Him, in order to feel that interest in the Psalms which the Church seems to expect us to feel. Upon what principles, then, is this expectation built? Our author brings the fact before us, that David does thus prefigure the sufferings of the Church's Head: but we have no