The hymn-book of the modern Church is the direct descendant of the Hebrew Psalter. Had David and Asaph never sung, the hymns of Watts and Wesley, of Keble and Montgomery, could hardly have been written. If the praises of Israel had not rung through the courts of the Temple, the choir of the Christian Church would have been silent. Primitive Christianity struggled hard to free itself from the swathing-bands of Jewish ritual; but it recognized from the first the riches of its inheritance in the Book of Psalms. There, more than in any other Scripture, the first Christians heard ‘the voice of Christ and His Church.’[32] Our Lord Himself joined in singing these ancient hymns, and bade His disciples understand that all things must needs be fulfilled which ‘were written in the ... psalms’ concerning Him. St. Paul and St. James alike commend the singing of psalms, and thus, without controversy, the Psalter was claimed by the Church as her own. The determination to hear the voice of Christ everywhere, led to extravagances of exposition which a more critical age cannot tolerate, but it gave the psalms a firm hold upon the heart of Christendom. The ancient Scriptures would have passed away with the ‘worldly sanctuary’ had it not been for the witness of the priest, the prophet, and the psalmist to Christ. Religious poetry and song must long have preceded any collection of psalms or hymns. One would like to know who first, in the far-off days, said to his brother, ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord’; but that unknown poet or musician had been famous and forgotten before history was born. The first Hebrew psalm is the Song of Moses at the Red Sea, the earliest of the triumph songs of the people of God, the hymns which celebrate Jehovah, who ever showeth Himself ‘a God of deliverances.’[33] Sung first to ‘the loud timbrel by Egypt’s dark sea,’ it becomes in the Apocalypse the Song of Moses and of the Lamb, chanted to the harps of God by the glassy sea mingled with fire. At the first the singers are the congregation, not yet a people, whom Moses brought out of Egypt in haste; at the last they are the white-robed army of them that have gotten the victory through the blood of the Lamb. I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, And He is become my salvation: This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will exalt Him. Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, The place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, The sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.[34]