Professor Kent has undertaken to provide English-reading students of the Old Testament with a complete library of hand-books for the study of the contents of that great collection of Hebrew writings, which shall be of scientific value; not necessarily presenting new and original research by the author, but representing the best results of modern scholarship. The present volume, the fifth in this series, deals with the lyric poetry of the Old Testament, including songs of lamentation, songs of love and marriage, and a variety of oracles, triumphal odes, and national songs. All of these together, however, constitute but one-fifth of the total sum of Hebrew lyric poetry here dealt with, four-fifths consisting of the Psalms. It is especially Professor Kent's treatment of that collection of hymns, constituting not merely far the greater part of Hebrew lyric poetry quantitatively but also far the greater part of it qualitatively, which I propose to discuss in this article. As Kent says in his preface, the Psalms “are the real heart of the Old Testament. In them the innermost soul of the Jewish race is laid bare.” Not only this; they are “the link that binds the Old to the New Testament.” They have played as large a part in Christian as in Jewish worship. They have been translated for Christian use in all kinds of forms into almost every tongue, and an enormous literature has grown up about them. From the modern standpoint, however, they “have been to a certain extent neglected.”