And yet the more one studies and uses the Psalms in the light of other Scriptures and the Church's interpretation, the more it is found that these partial, at first sight erroneous, conceptions have still their practical value for Christians. There is nothing in them that is {26} positively false, and they suggest, on the other hand, aspects of truth which we tend to forget. Thus in the instances given above, by "the gods of the heathen" the Christian may well be reminded of the continued existence and influence in the heathen world of the powers of evil, of the malignant warfare that is still being waged by "principalities and powers" against light and truth. The ancient conception of the shadowy abode of the dead has also its value. Even the Lord Himself could speak of the night coming "when no man can work" (John ix. 4), and such Psalms as the 49th and the 115th may serve to remind us that this life is a time of work and probation in a sense that the life after death is not, that the grave cannot reverse the line that has been followed here nor put praises in the mouth of those who have never praised God "secretly or in the congregation" in this world. And again, the "present-worldliness" of the Psalter may well point the duty of Christians in respect of what they see and know around them here. Many are content, while repeating pious phrases about heaven, to ignore the fact that this present human life is the great sphere of Christian activity, and that whether the Church is able to regenerate human society here or {27} not, it is her business to try to do it, as fellow-workers with Him-- Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong: Who feedeth the hungry. (cxlvi. 6.) Have we not a remarkable witness to the continuity of the Holy Spirit's teaching, and to the fact that not "one jot or one tittle" of the law is to remain unfulfilled, in the way that these apparent imperfections and limitations of the Psalter fall into their place in connection with the later revelation?