Henry Cooke (1788-1868) Irish Presbyterian, champion of Trinitarianism against Unitarianism: “The most celebrated hymns of uninspired men are like Job’s friends, “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2), when compared with the experience of Christ in the day of humiliation, of which the Book of Psalms is the true prophetic picture. While I set not up my convictions as a rule or measure of the conscience of others, I cannot fail to pity those who can find, as they assert, so little of Christ in the inspired psalmody of the Bible that they must seek and employ an uninspired psalmody as exhibiting Him more fully. Our Lord Himself found Himself in the Psalms, and thereby “opened the understanding of His disciples that they should understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:45) Surely what was the clearest light to their eyes ought to be light to ours. And truly I believe there is one view of Christ–and that not the least important to the tried and troubled believer–that can be discovered only in the Book of Psalms–I mean His inward life. No eye-witness of the outward man, though an inspired evangelist, could penetrate the heart. But the Spirit who searcheth the deep things of God has in the Psalms laid open the inmost thoughts, sorrows, and conflicts of our Lord. The Evangelists faithfully and intelligently depict the sinless man; the Psalms alone lay open the heart of the “man of sorrows.” (Isa. 53:3) The most pious productions of uninspired men are a shallow stream; the Psalms are unfathomable and shoreless ocean. I was long in favour of paraphrases and hymns of human composure in the worship of God; but now I have learnt that nothing will do for a sinking soul in a dying hour but the Psalms of David.”