Augustine, our great North African father, said that each Psalm had a 'single body of feeling that vibrates in every syllable'. As Peter Brown has noted, Augustine believed that each Psalm could be presented as a microcosm of the whole Bible -- the clear essence of Christianity refracted through in the exotic spectrum of Hebrew poetry. In Augustine's sermons on the Psalms 'we begin to hear the songs of Africa' -- the 'sweet melody of a Psalm sung in the streets.'