Watts’ may be called the Messianic version of the Psalms; he felt that without this construction they must be very greatly inexplicable. The unfolding this idea popularly was an immense boon to the churches. We are to remember that the Book of Psalms was the great Hebrew Psalter; it was the Book of Common Prayer and Praise, and when the Christian Church arose, it still continued the use of these divine airs for the expression of its experiences and its faith. Jerome says: “The labourer, while he holds the handle of the plough, sings Alleluia, the tired reaper employs himself on the Psalms, and the vine-dresser, while lopping the vines with his curved hook, sings something out of David; these are our ballads in this part of the world; these, to use the common expression, are our love songs.” Chrysostom has a noble panegyric upon the use of the Psalms in the service of the Church. “If we keep vigil in the Church, David comes first, last, and midst. If early in the morning, David is first, last, and midst.” Again, he goes on to declare how, “in the funeral solemnities for the dead, or when the girl sits at home spinning, and not in cities alone, and not alone in churches, but in the forum and in the wilderness, and even in the uninhabitable desert, David excites to the praises of God.” And this has continued true ever since. The case being so, why was it that, alike in Hebrew and in Christian days, the Book of Psalms has had such a sovereign power over holy souls? The personality of David has even obscured the higher personality and the Messianic symmetry; it is forgotten that in the Hebrew language David signifies the beloved, the darling, the chosen one, and that many of the Psalms, regarded as personal to him, are rather to be apprehended in the _same manner_ in which his name occurs in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which we have “the key of David,” “David, a leader and commander to the people,” in “the sure mercies of David,” terms the fulness of which is lost sight of by their being associated with the Hebrew prince, rather than with Him who is the infinitely beloved of God and man. Thus in numerous Psalms to which the prefix is given, “A Psalm of, or by, David,” a stricter reading would be, “A Psalm to, or for, David;” in some instances this sense comes out with great force, and thus they illustrate that text in Ezekiel, penned hundreds of years after David’s death, “I will set one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David (_i.e._ the Beloved). He shall feed them and be their shepherd.” What a different fulness of meaning is given to such innumerable passages as those in the 123rd Psalm, “For thy servant David’s sake turn not away the face of thine anointed;” “The Lord hath sworn unto David, Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne:” if we substitute the Beloved one for David in many such passages, and what a rich meaning is unfolded! David was perhaps the author of all