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Testaments, and in general, between the different steps in the development of the revelation, and in the perception of the plan, of redemption. For as redemption itself has a progressive history, so has the revelation and growing perception of it a progressive history also, which extends from paradise, through time, on into eternity. Redemption realizes itself in a system of facts, in which the divine purpose of love for the deliverance of sinful humanity unfolds itself, and the revelation of salvation is given in advance of this gradually developing course of events in order to guarantee its divine authorship and as a means by which it may be rightly understood. In the Psalms we have five centuries and more of this progressive realizing, disclosing, and perception of salvation laid open before us. If we add to this the fact that one psalm is by Moses, and that the retrospective portions of the historical psalms refer back even to the patriarchal age, then, from the call of Abraham down to the restoration of Israel's position among the nations after the Exile, there is scarcely a single event of importance in sacred history which does not find some expression in the Psalter. And it is not merely facts external to it, which echo therein in lyric strains, but, because David, - next to Abraham undoubtedly the most significant character of sacred history in the Old Testament, - is its chief composer, it is itself a direct integral part of the history of redemption. And it is also a source of information for the history of the revelation of redemption, in as much as it flowed not from the Spirit of faith merely, but mainly also from the Spirit of prophecy: but, pre-eminently, it is the most important memorial of the progressive recognition of the plan of salvation, since it shows how, between the giving of the Law from Sinai and the proclamation of the Gospel from Sion, the final, great salvation was heralded in the consciousness and life of the Jewish church.
We will consider 1) the relation of the Psalms to the prophecy of the future Christ. When man whom God had created, had corrupted himself by sin, God did not leave him to that doom of wrath which he had chosen for himself, but visited him on the evening of that most unfortunate of all days, in order to make that doom the disciplinary medium of His love. This visitation of Jahve Elohim was