The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express that same delight in God which made David dance. I am not saying that this is so pure or profound a thing as the love of God reached by the greatest Christian saints and mystics. But I am not comparing it with that, I am comparing it with the merely dutiful ‘church-going’ and laborious ‘saying our prayers’ to which most of us are, thank God not always, but often, reduced. Against that it stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile, and spontaneous; something we may regard with an innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as we read.
From Reflections on the Psalms
Reflections on the Psalms. Copyright © 1958 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1968 by Arthur Owen Barfield. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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