"Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage"
(Ps. 119:54).
Statutes need to be turned into songs before their work can be completed. The note is struck in the very first Psalm, which speaks of the blessedness of loving the Law and the curse of hating it. The Psalter is the blossom of the Law, preparing for its perfect fruit in obedient and joyful hearts. When the law of God is turned into songs in this the house of our pilgrimage, it has reached its destined end. Thus this verse is really typical of the whole Psalter. Our text, then, is spiritually set in the very center of the Psalter, and in the very center of the Old Testament. The law is really obeyed, when it is no longer mere rule and precept, and no longer something to be feared as when it flashed out its solemn warnings from Sinai, but when it becomes a delight, as music to the soul, changed into inner harmony, when it is a flooding passion of love for the Law of God, when the statutes are turned into songs in the house of man's pilgrimage. It ceases to be law in the rigid legal sense, and becomes perfect freedom.
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Hugh Black was a Scottish-American theologian and author.
Black was born on March 26, 1868 in Rothesay, Scotland. He received a Master of Arts degree from Glasgow University in 1887, and studied divinity at Free Church College in Glasgow from 1887 until 1891. Black was ordained in 1891 and became associate pastor at St. George's Free Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh in 1896, where he worked with Alexander Whyte.
Black emigrated to the United States in 1906 to accept the position of chair of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He received honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees from Yale University in 1908 and from Princeton University and Glasgow University in 1911, and later accepted a position of pastor of the First Congregational Church in Montclair, New Jersey. Black retired from Union Theological Seminary in 1938.
Black also authored numerous books and sermons.