NATURE AND THE PSALMIST 279 



ists of the sea and prairie, of the frozen North and the 

 languid tropics. After all, what matters is the sense of 

 divinity that surrounds us, the enkindled spirit which 

 strikes out from Nature the ultimate metaphor. 



The Psalms are lyric poems. Whatever perversions 

 may have resulted from the conflict between Judaistic 

 scriptures and a superimposed Ajyan mysticism, a wise 

 world has known the Psalms all the time for what they 

 are. The God of the psalmists may have been a tribal 

 God, to be sure. For that matter, what nation to-day, 

 after two thousand years of so-called Christianity, but 

 worships a tribal God? We have of late been forced to 

 contemplate the sorry spectacle of various nations on the 

 eve of battle each lifting its voice in prayer to its tribal 

 divinity, with that terrible certainty and lack of hu- 

 mour which characterize such narrow devotions. But 

 the Psalms are not theology: they are lyric poetry the 

 expression of a single individual (of his time and his 

 people, to be sure) in the face of life. Whether he was a 

 single individual for all the Psalms, or a separate one for 

 each, does not in the least matter. What the world 

 cares about is the personal reaction of a human soul, for 

 that, direct and certain, carries its message to all other 

 souls, and time or place, name or nationality, are as 

 naught. 



The griefs the Psalmist sang are still our griefs, the 

 doubts and consolations still are ours, and the world 

 the Psalmist looked upon is still about us. The sun 



