Family Bible (Scots Presbyterian): Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns

A lovely paraphrase of Job 14.1-15 from G-G-Grandpa McGowan's Bible/hymnal (he was a Scots Presbyterian). (Edinburgh: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1859.)

 

The family Bible has the Psalter, paraphrases and hymns at the back.

 

The hymnal has the 150 Psalms (of course).  The Presbyterians were Psalm-singers. 

 

After the Psalter, there are 67 metrical/paraphrased Biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation.  They are quite good and very close to the Biblical text. 

Following the Psalter and Biblical paraphrases are 5 hymns.

 

Imagine singing these 14 verses from Job 14 in an American church? With all the guitars and drum-kit crowds?  Further, there is some literacy and depth to the old Scots book...something studiously avoided in these days.

Or, imagine the impoverished TEC and its counterpart, the non-Confessional ACNA, attempting to sing this?  Or, the doctrine and piety?

Americans--of all stripes--can only wish they had the stamina, depth, and vigour of these old Presbyterian congregations.

In reviewing the 67 Biblical paraphrases, Reformed theology of the "old school" comes through. One can see why this would breed and inform a stiff, stern, calm, and deliberative ethos. These Scots Presbyterians had enough "force and confidence," theological competence, to repel and "humble" Anglican hubris, e.g. Laud and company.

Here’s Job 14.1-15 from the family Bible: 

1.  Few are they days, and full of woe,

O man, of woman born!

Thy doom is written, Dust thou art,

And shalt to dust return. 

2.  Behold the emblem of thy state,

In flow’rs  that bloom and die,

Or in the shadow’s fleeting form,

That mocks the gazer’s eye. 

3.  Guilty and frail, how shalt thou stand

Before thy sov’reign Lord?

Cast troubled and polluted images,

A hallow’d stream afford? 

4.  Determin’d are the days that fly

Successive o’er  thy head:

The number’d hour is on the wing,

That lays thee with the dead. 

5.  Great God! Afflict not in thy wrath

The short allotted span,

That bounds the few and weary days

Of pilgrimage to man. 

6.  All nature dies, and lives again,

The flow’r that paints the field,

The trees that crown the mountains brow,

And boughs and blossoms yield. 

7.  Resign the honours of their form

At Winter’s  stormy blast,

And leave the naked leafless plain,

A desolated waste. 

8.  Yet soon reviving plants and flow’rs,

Anew shall deck the plain,

The woods shall hear the voice of Spring,

And flourish green again. 

9.  But man forsakes this earthly scene

Ah!  Never to return:

Shall any foll’wing spring revive,

The ashes of the urn? 

10.              The mighty flood that rolls along,

Its torrents to the main,

Can ne’er recall its waters lost,

From that abyss again. 

11.              So days, and years, and ages past,

Descending down to night,

Can henceforth never more return,

Back to the gates of light. 

12.              And man, when laid in lonesome grave,

Shall sleep in Death’s dark gloom,

Until th’ eternal morning wake,

The slumbers of the tomb. 

13.              O may the grave become to me,

The bed of peaceful rest,

Whence shall gladly rise at length,

And mingle with the blest. 

14.              Cheer’d by this hope with patient mind,

I’ll wait Heav’ns high decree,

Till the appointed period come,

When death shall set me free.