Likewise the heavens he downe-bow'd and he descended, & there was
under his feet a gloomy cloud
10. And he on cherub rode and flew; yea, he flew on the wings of winde.
11. His secret place hee darkness made his covert that him round confide.
I cannot understand why they did not sing the psalms of David just as
they were printed in the English Bible; it would certainly be quite as
practicable as to sing this latter selection.
President Dunster's improving hand and brain evolved this rendition:--
"Likewise the heavens he down-bow'd
and he descended: also there
Was at his feet a gloomy cloud
and he on cherubs rode apace.
Yea on the wings of wind he flew
he darkness made his secret place
His covert round about him drew."
Though the grotesque wording and droll errors of these old psalm-books can,
after the lapse of centuries, be pointed out and must be smiled at, there
is after all something so pathetic in the thought of those good, scholarly
old New England saints, hampered by poverty, in dread of attack of Indians,
burdened with hard work, harassed by "eighty-two pestilent heresies," still
laboring faithfully and diligently in their strange new home at their
unsuited work,--something so pathetic, so grand, so truly Christian, that
when I point out any of the absurdities or failures in their work, I dread
lest the shades of Cotton, of Sewall, of Mather, of Eliot, brand me as of
old, "in capitall letters," as "AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD'S
HOLY ORDINANCES," or worse still, with that mysterious, that dread name, "A
WANTON GOSPELLER.
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