the Jewish flag over its enterprise, and teaches us a new reading of an old political proverb. Instead of saying "Trade follows the flag"—it is earnestly drawing the flag in the wake of trade. Probably it was ever thus. A trader opened up a country, and then pressed the might symbolized in his national flag, into his service for the protection of his enterprise—and so trade follows the flag, and the guns behind the flag, bring savage lands under the influence of civilization. And so, well, persistence counts; there is really Jewish business, a Jewish flag, commerce in Palestine—all of which those who tried to peer into the womb of time twenty-five years ago did not believe were then in the process of germination.
The Book of Moods There is another kind of Jewish business which is Jewish, to which atten-
tion is called by the issue of the “Book of Psalms.” The Jewish Publication Society offers a new translation, rather, one carefully revised from the Massoretic text; but that which will interest most people is the neat and handy get-up. With twenty-four such volumes, none of us, not even the most un-Jewish of us, need be ashamed of having the Holy Scripture in our libraries. Type, printing, paper and binding are excellent, and it is a pleasure to dip into the book of Moods. How in the original Hebrew we used to rattle these Psalms off in the mornings, or sing selections on Friday evenings and New Moons, and other occasions when the Hallel was recited! Now they strike us differently. Prof. Moulton did more for the Bible than all the higher or lower critics when he presented those of us who are most familiar with the English text, with the Bible as literature, and founded that excellent series, the Modern Reader’s Bible. It
helped to make the Bible very real to us. It became something else than an encyclopedia of texts; and with this version of the Psalms before us, we are fully justified in regarding the Psalter as a Book of Moods. You may sing and exult, you may praise and shout—you may listen to the broad notes of the harp or to the tinkling of cymbals, or you may cry, weep or entreat. Being the moods of real men, there are words for all moods. Read the right psalm in the right frame of mind, and then you have a key to their enduring qualities.
Remove all the vagueness from the term and you will find that what is David and Kipling
inspiring in the Book of Psalms, as in the whole Bible, is the sheer humanity of their authors. David was a man! He has become a legend with us. The great king who is ancestor to a Messiah, the inspired songster, as you see him in the old woodcuts kneeling before the scroll of his writings, with a crown on his head, and inspiration in the shape of black smoke descending upon him. But his real strength was his manliness. He sinned and repented humanly. He had his weaknesses, he had his great moments; he shouted for joy when he beat his enemies; and he protested equally against talebearing. What corresponded to our personal paragraphists, newspaper writers, were kept busy by David. He was as active as the German Emperor, and offered as much food for gossip as a presidential candidate. He interviewed himself and claimed that he was misquoted; he was satisfied that the Lord "destroyeth them that speak lies," and he repeatedly harps upon that theme.
Of course, there were other phases of his complex life, some of them graceful and spiritual; but the essential David