As the royal spectator with a poet and painter's eye is gazing on this shifting diorama, and when Nature is laughing and joyous again amid her own tear-drops, another simple incident arrests his attention. A Hart or Deer, hit by the archers or pursued by some wild beast on these "mountains of the leopards," with hot eyeballs and panting sides, comes bounding down the forest glade to quench the rage of thirst. The sight suggests nobler aspirations. With trembling hand and tearful eye the exiled spectator awakes his harp-strings, and bequeaths to us one of the most pathetic musings in the whole Psalter. The 23d has happily been called "the nightingale of the Psalms;" this may appropriately be termed "the turtle-dove." We hear the lonely bird as if seated on a solitary branch warbling its "reproachful music," or rather struggling on the ground with broken wing, uttering a doleful lament. These strains form an epitome of the Christian life--a diary of religious experience, which, after three thousand years, find an echo in every heart. Who can wonder that they have smoothed the death-pillow of dying saints, and taken a thorn from the crown of the noble army of martyrs![5] [5] I refer the reader to the words quoted on the title-page. They form the dying testimony and experience of one of the holiest men of any age. We have seen in the possession of a revered friend, the Bible which belonged to the great Marquis of Argyle, and which formed his constant companion during the period of his imprisonment. Almost every verse of the 42d Psalm is specially marked. Some of the verses, such as the third, are noted with a double stroke. We may well imagine him, after closing such "an afflicted man's companion," thus writing to his Marchioness--"They may shut me in prison where they please, but they cannot shut out God from me." II. The General Scope of the Psalm. "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound are we: Before, behind, and all around Floats and swings the horizon's bound; Seems at its outer rims to rise, And climb the crystal wall of the skies; And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion-- Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean." "The Scriptures have laid a flat opposition between faith and sense. We live by faith and not by sense. They are two buckets--the life of faith and the life of sense; when one goes up, the other goes down."--_Bridge_, 1637. "There are twins striving within me; a Jacob and an Esau. I can, through Thy grace, imitate Thy choice, and say with Thee, _Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated_. Blessed God! make Thou that word of Thine good in me, that _the elder shall serve the younger_."--_Bishop Hall_, 1656. II. THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE PSALM.