It is welcome to turn from this task of literary criticism, which finds in the Psalms its most difficult field, and which perhaps yields here less help than in other branches of Bible literature, to an endeavour to appreciate the religion of the Psalmists. There is difficulty here also; but now it is in the splendour of the composition, the magnificent breadth of experience they embrace, the classic utterance of the eternal religion of the heart. We have recognised the heterogeneous character of the collection, and it is only to be expected that this should be reflected in the variety of religious ideas. A theology of the Psalter is as impossible as it is mistaken. The quality of poetic genius varies, the heights of religious inspiration sometimes reached are not consistently maintained, and there are many lower levels. And yet there remains a sufficient unity to leave a very definite impression; that unity owes little to similarity of circumstances, to contemporaneity, or to the influence of a theological school; it is rather due to the unreflective simplicity of the human mind in the realised presence of God. In that position all unfettered religion speaks one tongue: the only mother tongue of humanity. The inspiration of the Psalmist owes its beauty to the absence of self-consciousness. There is nothing here of the prophetic claim to speak in the name of God; in the Psalms God does not speak to men, men speak to God, but it is just because of this that the revelation in the Psalms reaches so far beyond the limits of Old Testament religion and seems to grasp that religion which was to be personified in the consciousness of Jesus. We are compelled to recognise that men's prayers are themselves a revelation of God, and that when men seek to voice their highest aspiration we catch the sound of a deep undertone, the supplication of the Spirit that intercedes within.