It is not to be wondered at that in the Psalter, the inspired response of worshipping Israel to the revelation of God, we should find Psalms that rejoice in this indestructible and royal hope, Psalms that look beyond present failures and imminent perils to a perfect fulfilment of what God had spoken "sometime in visions to His saints." Thus the 2nd Psalm tells triumphantly of the Divine "law" or "decree" concerning David's son, and sees in it the assurance of a world-wide empire, the discomfiture of the raging of the nations and the gathering of the kings of the earth: Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee. {46} Desire of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance: And the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. The 18th describes the Almighty riding on His chariot of whirlwind and storm, coming down from heaven itself in His condescension, to pluck His anointed out of "many waters," "to deliver him from the strivings of the people, and to make him the head of the heathen." The 45th tells, with "the pen of a ready writer," of this everlasting sceptre and throne, founded on truth and righteousness, of a king to whom Divine titles are given, "anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows," and sees in the marriage of this king with a foreign princess the earnest of a kingdom over all the earth. The 72nd describes not only the prosperity, but the moral greatness of this empire stretching from sea to sea, "from the river to the ends of the earth." Not like the giant empires of the East, founded on aggression and cruelty, with no motive but the monstrous pride of their founders and rulers, the Davidic king is to be the champion of the poor, the needy, and the helpless: He shall deliver their souls from falsehood and wrong: {47} And dear shall their blood be in his sight. The 89th, while it tells how God has found David His servant and anointed him with holy oil, and made him "His first-born, higher than the kings of the earth," is bold to face in those later days the agonising problem of the apparent failure of all this lofty promise: But Thou hast abhorred and forsaken Thine anointed: And art displeased at him. Thou hast broken the covenant of Thy servant, And cast his crown to the ground. "Lord, how long? ... Lord, where are Thy old loving-kindnesses? ... Remember, Lord!" The 132nd, also apparently a Psalm of a later age, though ascribed to David, dwells with joy on David's love of the sanctuary of God, pleads for the fulfilment of the promise, asks that the lamp may not be put out, nor the face of God's anointed "turned away" in confusion.