Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 547

Chap. II]

§ 84.

THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION

623

gladness almost never came to them in concrete-individual, and, therefore, to a certain extent, accidental circumstances,

but that almost always their lot in life was interwoven with the lot of their people, and thus from the start bore a solidary David views even his sicknesses as standing in character. connection with the combat he wages for

God and

His people.

However, you observe, in the third place, that in and through the utterance of personal feeling, once and again a higher and a more general subject, and, if you please, another ego, supplants the ego of the singer, and often ends

by God Himself

in the Messiah testifying through the mouth of the singer. This makes a confusing impression on him who does not

and is the cause of many an error in But this phenomenon, which at first sight seems exegesis. somewhat strange, becomes entirely clear when in this instance also you allow the antithesis to be duly emphasized between sinful and sanctified humanity, between humanity in its state of depravity and humanity in the palingenesis.

understand

lyric,

The lyric poet who stands outside of the palingenesis cannot descend deeper than the emotional life of fallen humanity, and if from thence he presses on to God, he can do nothing more than was done by Von Hartmann, who, being depressed by sorrow, through the world-sorrow (Weltschmerz) reached the supposed God-sorrow (Gottesschmerz), and thus falsified the entire world of the emotions. Such,

however, was not the case with the singers of Israel. From their personal joy and grief, they did not descend to the general

human

feeling,

palingenesis,

i.e.

but to the emotion-life of humanity in the And when in God they

of God's people.

sought the reconciliation between

this

higher

life of

the palin-

genesis and actual conditions, their God appeared to them in the form of the Messiah, that other subject, who sang and spake through them, and caused them simultaneously to experience the reconciliation and the victory over sorrow and sin. In the imprecatory Psalms, especially, this is most strongly

apparent.

Applied

imprecatory Psalm

to is,

our

human

of course, a

relations in general, the

most grievous offence to

our feelings, and entirely beneath the nobility of

lyric.

If,

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