XXV. CHASMA, PHASMA.

HOW bluntly and abruptly doth the seventy-third Psalm begin! Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.

Truly is a term of continuation, not inception of a speech. The head or top of this psalm seems lost or cut off, and the neck only remaining; in the room thereof.

But know that this psalm hath two moieties; one unwritten, made only in the trying-house of David’s heart: the other written, visible on the theatre, beginning as is aforesaid.

Thomas Aquinas, sitting silent in a musing posture, at the table of the king of France, at last brake forth in these words: Conclusum est contra Manichaeos, It is concluded against the 212Manichaeans; which speech, though nonsense to the persons in the place, at the best independent, without any connection to the discourse at table, had its necessary coherence in the mind of that great schoolman.

David, newly awaking in this psalm out of the sweet slumber of his meditation, openeth his eyes with the good handsel of these words: Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. A maxim of undoubted truth, and a firm anchor to those who have been tossed in the tempest of these times.