Besides general principles, we are also to consider some of the general difficulties in the use of the Psalter as a Christian book. The Psalms are certainly not easy. Nothing as great as they are ever could be easy. None of the books of the Bible yield their secret except to labour and prayer, and the Psalms present special difficulties of their own. These are of various kinds and need various methods of approach. There is a difficulty inherent in the very origin and history of the Psalms. They are translated somewhat imperfectly from an ancient language, not akin to our own--a language which, if not difficult in itself, is rendered so by the comparative scantiness of its literature. The Psalms, humanly speaking, are the work of a race widely different from ourselves in habits and in modes of thought and expression. They contain allusions to events and circumstances imperfectly known or realised to-day. Most of our interpretation of these things is necessarily guess-work. The same Psalm may be ascribed {23} with equal probability, by scholars of equal learning and reverence, to periods many centuries apart. Was the sufferer of Ps. xxii. David or Jeremiah, or is it altogether an ideal portrait? Was the coming of the heathen into God's inheritance of Ps. lxxix. that of the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C. or of the soldiers of Antiochus in the second? Who was the "king's daughter" in Ps. xlv. and who "the daughter of Tyre"? Is the Temple of the Psalms ever the first Temple, or is it always the second? Such problems still wait an answer. Again, there are difficulties inherent in Hebrew thought. It is intensely concrete and personal, in contrast with our more usual abstractions and generalities. The Psalmists speak habitually of "the wicked" and "the ungodly," where we should more naturally speak of the qualities rather than the persons. They ignore, as a rule, immediate or secondary causes, and ascribe everything in nature or human affairs to the direct action or intervention of God. Thus a thunder-storm is described: There went a smoke out in His presence: And a consuming fire out of His mouth, so that coals were kindled at it. (xviii. 8.) {24} And thus a national calamity: Thou hast shewed Thy people heavy things: Thou hast given us a drink of deadly wine. (lx. 3.)