I was very impressed and delighted to see all the rigorous thought that Isaac Watts put into his hymnal of Psalms in the language of Christians. I think he summarizes all of his replacements and revisions in this statement: "And I am fully satisfied that more Honour is done to our blessed Saviour by speaking his Name, his Graces and Actions in his own Language, according to the brighter Discoveries he hath now made, than by going back again to the Jewish Forms of Worship, and the Language of Types and Figures."
This so much reminds me of the beauty I first found this summer in reading Hebrews and Colossians. Colossians 2:17 says, "These [new moon or Sabbath] are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." Hebrews echoes this in 8:5 by saying that the Levitical system is "a copy and shadow of the heavenly things." Hebrews 10:1 finally summarizes all this by saying, "...the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form and these realities [Christ]". Oh how wonderful a God we serve, that all of the Old Testament law could serve as a shadow of the greater (and might I add greatest) reality to come: Christ in His Person and Works.
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