If the catholicity of the Church is so clearly sketched in the Psalter, no less clear is {83} her _social_ ideal. The poor, the oppressed, those who have no helper, are equally called to share in Israel's hope and her gifts. God Himself is her pattern, Who-- Taketh up the simple out of the dust: And lifteth the poor out of the mire; That He may set him with the princes: Even with the princes of His people. (cxiii.) The Messianic King will count the blood of the poor and needy equally precious with that of the rich and great (lxxii.). The Sufferer of the Passion Psalm (xxii.) looks forward, as we have seen, to the result of his triumph, in not only calling the "fat ones of the earth" to eat and worship at his table, but in finding there an equal place for-- Even him that cannot keep his soul alive. (xxii. 30, R.V.) These are lessons which we have as yet gone but a little way in learning. Yet the Psalter, as we recite it day by day, puts in our own mouth the condemnation of exclusiveness and pride and of deafness to the complaint of the poor; it makes us confess at least the Catholic {84} ideal of unity, of universal justice, of the imperishable value of the individual life, of the transformation of human society in the light of the Divine sovereignty of Christ. The two lines of the Church's activity just alluded to, missionary and social, so prominent in the Psalms, are calling to-day so loudly for self-humiliation and new effort, that they may profitably be dwelt on a little further. The Psalmist's prophecy of the kings of Arabia and Saba bringing gifts (lxxii.) is still largely unfulfilled. The East is still almost untouched. Asia has not yet brought her characteristic gift to Christ. She is still under the dominion of imperfect religions--Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. And yet India is our possession; Japan is our pupil. "The way of the kings of the East" is already "prepared" (Rev. xvi. 12), but where is the adequate response from English Christianity? "Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger that I send?" And turning homewards, what are we to say of these grotesque and monstrous contrasts between wealth and poverty, luxury and squalor in England to-day, where rich and poor alike are baptized? What of the immoralities of commerce, of the bad work of the labourer as well as the swindling of the capitalist? Does {85} not the spirit of the Psalter cut across it all like the keen breath of the mountain wind? Yet Englishmen are spending time and energy in ritual debates and persecutions, and educational and social strife. Worse still, the rich and intellectual, for some prejudice or political motive, are eager to deny the poor the beauties of worship or the definiteness of the Catholic Faith. Surely Thou hast seen it: For Thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong. (x. 15.)