He looks upon it; “full of things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts,” for ever dying, for ever devouring each other.  And yet it does not seem to him a dreadful and a shocking place.  What impresses his mind is just what would impress the mind of a modern poet, a modern man of science; namely, the wonderful variety, richness, and strangeness of its living things.  Their natures and their names he knows not.  It was not given to his race to know.  It is enough for him that known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world.  But one thing more important than their natures and their names he does know; for he perceives it with the instinct of a true poet and a true philosopher—­“These all wait upon thee, O God, that Thou mayest give them meat in due season.”

But more.—­“There go the ships;” things specially wonderful and significant to him, the landsman of the Judaean hills, as they were afterward to Muhammed, the landsman of the Arabian deserts.  And he has talked with sailors from those ships; from Tarshish and the far Atlantic, or from Ezion-geber and the Indian seas.  And he has heard from them of mightier monsters than his own Mediterranean breeds; of the Leviathan, the whale, larger than the largest ship which he has ever seen, rolling and spouting among the ocean billows, far out of sight of land, and swallowing, at every gape of its huge jaws, hundreds of living creatures for its food.  But he does not talk of it as a cruel and devouring monster, formed by a cruel and destroying deity, such as the old Canaanites imagined, when—­so the legend ran—­they offered up Andromeda to the sea-monster, upon that very rock at Joppa, which the Psalmist, doubtless, knew full well.  No.  This psalm is an inspired philosopher’s rebuke to that very superstition; it is the justification of the noble old Greek tale, which delivers Andromeda by the help of a hero, taught by the Gods who love to teach Mankind.

For what strikes the Psalmist is, again, exactly what would strike a modern poet, or a modern man of science:  the strength and ease of the vast beast; its enjoyment of its own life and power.  It is to him the Leviathan, whom “God has made to play in the sea;” “to take his pastime therein.”

Truly this was a healthy-minded man; as all will be, and only they, who have full faith in the one good God, of whom are all things, both in earth and heaven.

Then he goes further still.  He has looked into the face of life innumerable.  Now he looks into the face of innumerable death; and sees there too the Spirit and the work of God.

Thou givest to them; they gather:  Thou openest thy hand; they are filled with good:  Thou hidest thy face; they are troubled:  Thou takest away their breath; they die, and are turned again to their dust.

Poetry?  Yes:  but, like all highest poetry, highest philosophy; and soundest truth likewise.  Nay, he goes further still—­further, it may be, than most of us would dare to go, had he not gone before us in the courage of his faith.  He dares to say, of such a world as this—­“The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.  The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”