S. Security in the midst of Danger

SECURITY IN THE MIDST OF DANGER

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.” - Psalms 91:1-2 THE first thing which strikes one in meditating on this psalm is the accumulation of its descriptions of danger, - the thick throng of its images of terror. Assuredly, the safety which it celebrates does not consist in any exemption or immunity from the hazard of disaster or of death. Let the causes of uneasiness and alarm which it assumes be enumerated: -

First, generally, the distress is such that a retreat is required. And it must be one that can serve the threefold purpose of a cool shade under oppressive heat; a safe harbour from pursuing foes; a strong defence against an assailing force: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress” (Psalms 91:1-2). Spent with bloody toil beneath the fierce rays of a burning sun, closely followed by exasperated hosts, disabled from making an open stand against them - we welcome a post which may afford us the means at once of refreshment, of repose, and of resistance - a secret place which may be a shadow, a refuge, a fortress, all in one.

Then, more particularly, different elements or instruments of peril are specified. “The snare of the fowler” - such nets and pitfalls as might make the helpless chicken fain to cower under the hen’s motherly wings; - “the noisome pestilence;” - the false plotting and stratagem which no skill in war or policy can evade, which “the shield and buckler of truth” alone can withstand (Psalms 91:3-4); “terror by night,” “the arrow flying by day,” “pestilence walking in darkness,” “destruction wasting at noon-day” (Psalms 91:5-6); these are separately formidable enough trials. Concurring and conspiring together, what heart may they not appal?

All the more appalling are they because their ravages are actually witnessed. The risks are seen to be real. The fell messengers of wrath are seen doing their work all around. The plain is strewed with their victims. “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand” (Psalms 91:7). By thousands, by tens of thousands, thy comrades are helplessly falling. The circumstances are all instinct with terror. Nor is this all. When a new and fresh start is to be made from the place of security which has been reached, the cry is still a cry of alarm. “Thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, my habitation” (Psalms 91:9). True. But not even thus or thereafter is there any abatement of thy danger. Evil is still in wait for thee; plagues are still near thee (Psalms 91:10). The road thou hast to travel is rough and stony (Psalms 91:12). Lions, adders, young lions, dragons - strong beasts of prey, and crawling, stinging serpents - frequent the country through which thy path lies (Psalms 91:13). Thy course is a hazardous fight, a hazardous journey, to the last. It is not from dangers, but in the midst of dangers, that thou art safe. The conditions of safety pointed out in this psalm correspond to the circumstances of danger which it enumerates.

Let the peculiar structure of the psalm be here noted. It presents the aspect of one believer comforting another, one servant of the Lord encouraging another; the person thus comforted and encouraged owning the truth addressed to him; and the Lord himself coming in at the close, to confirm the assurance which the first party in the dialogue has been endeavouring to impart to a weary and fainting brother. The psalm opens oracularly with a general statement or testimony, evidently uttered by one speaking from experience, and desirous of making his experience available on behalf of some sufferer in the same strife with evil by which he has himself been tried: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalms 91:1). The sufferer thus addressed responds in faith to the appeal. I believe - may the Lord help mine unbelief! I will put to the proof what thou, as a witness for the Lord, one of the cloud of witnesses, tellest me of the secret place of the Most High and the shadow of the Almighty: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psalms 91:2). Upon this, the first speaker proceeds to draw out in detail the general declaration he has given forth. Amid the secret ambushes and open perils of war; amid the risks of disease and consuming dearth - let the sword, the arrow, the plague be doing their worst - still, brother, be of good courage, thou art safe: “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked” (Psalms 91:3-8). And not in the battle only - not for the brief space of a stormy fight, or an agitating campaign, art thou safe. I speak to thee, and speak to thee comfortably, from my own experience also, with reference to the terrors of the way, as well as of the war. I can tell thee what my God, whom thou takest to be thy God, will do for thee, when thy foot stumbles on the hard stones, and when monsters and reptiles come out to assail thee: “Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet” (Psalms 91:9-13). And if my testimony from experience will not suffice to reassure thee, listen to the voice of my God, who is also thine. Let us both keep silence; let our God himself speak. Hear what he says to me, brother, concerning thee whom I have been trying to strengthen - yes, concerning thee, if thou art still of the same mind as when thou wast ready to “say of the Lord, He is my refuge, and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust,” - “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation” (vers. 14-16).

Three parties, therefore, speak in this psalm - the witness for God, the brother in peril, and God himself.

I. The witness for God, the sympathising friend of the party exposed to danger, speaking from his own experience, declares generally: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (ver. 1). And again more pointedly, assuring his brother himself individually of protection, he gives the reason: “Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation” (Psalms 91:9). To be dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, this is what is first of all and above all essentially required. But where is the secret place of the Most High? Where but within the vail, where the covenant of peace is ratified, and things hid from the wise and prudent are revealed unto babes? Into that secret place you may freely enter; and in it you may permanently dwell. Christ leads you in, rending the vail, that is to say, his flesh. Sprinkling you with his own precious blood, he takes you along with him as he passes from the cross, from the grave, to the bosom of his Father in heaven. And as he now abides there evermore, so you also abide with him there continually. There he reveals to you the Father; he gives you an insight into the heart of the Most High. And bidding you know and believe that the Father loveth you even as he loveth him, he asks you to make this God most high your habitation, as he is his: your home, as he is his; the home of your full confidence; the home of your warm affection; the home of your habitual resort; the home of your familiar fellowship. Dwelling there, you acquaint yourself with God and are at peace; you know his name and put your trust in him. You are no more servants merely, not knowing what your master doeth. You are friends of the Son; and all things which he hears of his Father he makes known to you. The secret of the Lord, the secret of his gracious covenant, the secret of his moral government, the secret of his whole providential administration, is with you as with the righteous, as with them that fear him. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.”

Hence things without, events happening around you, do not take you aback or by surprise. They may be dark and terrible; but over you and all around you, between you and them, is your dwelling-place, the Most High, the Almighty overshadowing you. Wherever you go, you carry a charmed atmosphere, wrapping you close round on every side. It is the atmosphere of your new home. It is the Lord himself who is round about you, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem. The scenes which you have to witness, or in which you have to bear, a part, may be such as to try you in many ways. The violence and fraud of men, the visitations of God, may be making sad havoc before your eyes. But you, all the while, still dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, may fall back on what you are ever learning there. You may thus be reassured when at any time “your feet are almost gone, your steps have well-nigh slipped.”

Three lessons, in particular, are taught in that inner school, for your encouragement, by him who, on the ground of his own entrance, introduces you into it, and moves you to know and trust, as he by experience has learned to do, the Lord who is his Father and your Father, his God and your God.

I. “His truth shall be thy shield and buckler” (Psalms 91:4). This is the first lesson you learn in that home of yours. You learn that God is true, true to himself, and true to you. The Son has been teaching you this. Causing you to dwell, as he dwells himself, in the bosom of the Father, he discovers to you, as none else could, the Father’s faithfulness. He is himself the manifestation of it. In him, and in his mediatorial work, it is seen that God is true, true to his threatenings of judgment, true to his purposes and promises of mercy. In him, moreover, and in his human history, it is seen that God is true also to them who trust in him, faithful and just to hear their cry and deliver them out of all their troubles. This truth of God, thus seen in Jesus, you come to know when you in him are dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, and abiding under the shadow of the Almighty? And the knowledge of it may well shield your breast against the entrance of those doubts, misgivings, fears, which, like thick-flying arrows, may be assailing you. Men may be false, but God is true. The heathen may rage, and the people may imagine a vain thing; still God is true. The world may seem to be out of course, the earth may be shaken; nevertheless God is true; no word of his can fail, least of all that word, “I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.” And to you personally his faithfulness is pledged. For a time there may be many troubles, anxious thoughts, disquieting cares, arrows of human cruelty and craft, the sharp arrows even of the Almighty, all but piercing thee through. But God is true, and his truth is pledged for thy protection amid them all.

2. Another lesson which you learn in your new dwelling-place is to see the reward of the wicked: “Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked” (Psalms 91:8). It is a lesson which can be learned only at home, only when you are at home in Christ with God. So David found when his spirit was chafed as he witnessed the unequal lots of good and evil men on the earth. He saw the ungodly prospering more than others, not troubled like other men, in life or in death; and the godly tempted to complain that they had cleansed their hearts in vain, so plagued were they all the day long. “When I thought to know this,” he cries, “it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end” (Psalms 73:16-17).

It is in the sanctuary of God, in his secret place, at home with him, that you are taught to see in a right spirit, to see in its true light, the reward of the wicked. For, outside of that school, in the open world, you see much in the way of the wicked, and in the way of God with the wicked, to trouble and tempt you. You may be tempted to impatience, when it seems as if all went well with them, and all ill with you. Or you may be tempted to triumph over them, when retribution unequivocally overtakes them. In self-righteous complacency, or in unholy exultation, you may behold and see the reward of the wicked. No such lesson, certainly, do you learn when you are, in Christ, at home with God. The lesson which you do learn is the lesson of steadfast loyalty to God himself, and to his righteous administration; a lesson reconciling you to his forbearance when he tolerates evil men and suffers them to prosper for a time, and preparing you to acquiesce when they receive their reward at last.

It is not easy rightly to “behold and see the reward of the wicked.” When the temptation to impatience of their prosperity, and, what is apt to go along with that, the temptation to triumph over their fall and fate, are overcome, another and an opposite temptation may beset you.

How terrible to witness the calamities which the lies and passions of wicked men bring not only on themselves, but on their helpless victims! To stand where a thousand are falling at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; to think of fields dyed with blood, and pale corpses lying all unburied on the plain, because some crafty tyrant or mad despot has chosen to let slip the dogs of war; to look on while successive troops of men, guiltless of the injustice of the quarrel, yet, alas! too many of them wicked and ungodly notwithstanding, are hurried in promiscuous crowds to meet their final doom; it is too much. The fire burns; the fire of your indignation against the author of these wrongs; the fire also, the suppressed and smothered fire, of a most painful questioning. Can such things be, and the Most High still reign, all-merciful, almighty? It is too painful for you, till you go into the sanctuary of God.

Only then, only when in the midst even of such scenes, you feel that you are in the sanctuary of God, that you dwell with Christ in God, only then can you be still. And then you can be still. God’s ways with these multitudes of dying men may vex you, for you know them not. But God’s way with Christ, which you do know, silences you. The cross, seen now by you from the inner standing-point which you occupy, dwelling in the secret place of the Most High; the cross, whose marks the Son bears even now in the Father’s bosom; the cross, through which alone you are at home with God, proclaims that your God is a consuming fire. His wrath burned against sin when his own beloved Son was the sin-bearer. It burns against the sin of which the earth is full. And if he who did not restrain that wrath when it was to consume the holy one, lets it loose now among the guilty, the dire effects may appal you; but you believe and hope still. Solemn awe fills your soul, but not distrust or doubt.

3. One other ground of confidence does the witness for God suggest to you, the party with whom he sympathises as a friend. He has learned himself, and he would have you to learn, being at home with God, that there are members of the family not involved in your peril, who yet are deeply and affectionately interested in your safety: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet” (Psalms 91:11-13). The angels, as well as you, - the angels before you, - have made the Lord their refuge, their dwelling-place, their habitation, their home. They constitute the elder brotherhood. Their own position is safe; their own path is plain. Once indeed they had to sustain a shock; but it was once for all. The Father bringing in the first-begotten into the world said, “Let all the angels of God worship him.” Faithful among the faithless, amid the fall and ruin of too many of their comrades, these elect and blessed spirits owned the Son and became sons themselves. Ever since, their way has been uninterruptedly upward and onward; no stone to hinder their progress; no lion or adder to alarm or to sting. But not the less on that account do they feel an interest in you; rather all the more.

For, first of all, they feel for the Son himself, whom at the Father’s call they are always worshipping. They feel for him, as they see him treading, with bloody feet and bruised hands, the path by which, himself going before you, he is to bring you to this glory. It is a rough road. Ravenous beasts and foul reptiles haunt it. And he who toils and sweats, and bleeds along it, is the Son whom they adore. Eight gladly do they receive the charge to keep him in all his ways, - to bear him up in their hands, lest he dash his foot against a stone. But who is this who tells the Son of God that his Father thus gives his angels charge over him? Is it the tempter in the wilderness? Is it the devil who would fain persuade him to cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple, as if he were coming gloriously in the clouds of heaven to show himself to Israel? Nay, this is an evasion of the road, rough with stones and beset by young lions and dragons. And to evade that road, choosing a shorter, an easier, or a brighter path, would be to tempt the Lord his God. But the devil leaves him; and behold angels come and minister unto him. And it may well be believed that one of them whispers in his fainting ear the very Scripture the devil has dared to quote for his purpose; and gladly reminding him that, if not to exempt him from the rough way, yet at least to sustain him in it, the hosts of heaven are to wait upon him by the appointment of the Lord Most High. He has but to pray to his Father at any time, and he shall presently give him more than twelve legions of angels. In his agony there will appear an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him; at his resurrection angels will be waiting; and by angels he will be welcomed as he passes into the heavens. Such charge does God give his angels over him. Is it from heaven, or from hell, that an assurance like this comes to you? Does it come to you when you are shrinking from the rocky road, frequented by wild beasts and reptiles; when you would fain avoid some path of present duty because it is so humble, or so hard. Does it come as a suggestion, that surely a more royal road, or at least a more saintly way, ought to be found for you; - that if the promise of heavenly and angelic guardianship is to be of use to you at all, it should be to lift you at once triumphantly over the ground, and not merely to help you, stumbling and frightened at every step, along? It is no friend of yours, or of your God, who thus insidiously deals with you; certainly not one who has himself made the Lord his refuge. For whoever dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, whether it be the Son himself, or any one of those who own and worship the Son, knows well that to the redeemed of a fallen race the path which leads to glory can never be otherwise than rough with stones and haunted by wild foes, - no, nor to their Redeemer either. “For it became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” And if the Captain, then his followers also. It must be so. That it must be so, - why it must be so, - this also is a lesson learned, like both the former lessons, when you have made the Lord, the Most High, your habitation, when you are at home with God. In the very nature of him who is your dwelling-places, - in his essential, glorious perfection, you find at once the proof and the explanations. Scattered through waste places, in the cloudy and dark day, - the lost sheep wander through all the mountains, and upon every high hill. He who, as the good Shepherd, would search and seek after them, must put himself in their place. Becoming one of them himself, one with them, he must walk on rough and rocky ground, he must face even the devouring wolf. And the sheep whom he recovers and brings back must follow where he has led the way. If it was to him a way thick set with stones, and haunted by the lion and the adder, can it be any thing else to them? Or can they expect or wish for any better assurance than what their Leader got, - a secret voice from within the secret place, vindicating from Satan’s use of it the precious, the sufficient promise, “He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways?”

Thus far the first of the three speakers in the psalm - whom we shall not go far wrong in identifying with one from among the cloud of witnesses, the witness nobler still who trod affliction’s path, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, - explains the source and nature of the security which one dwelling in the secret place of the Most High may enjoy, in the midst of manifold and formidable dangers. It is a security based on the insight he now has, first, into the Lord’s truth and faithfulness; secondly into his righteous judgments; and, thirdly, into his providential watchfulness and care. Thou art safe, because God is true. Thou art safe, because “unto the Lord belongeth mercy, for he rendereth to every man according to his work.” Thou art safe, because He in whom thou trustest has all the elements of nature, and all the inhabitants of heaven as his messengers and agents, to do his pleasure on behalf of all who hope in his mercy.

II. The second party in this discourse and dialogue, - the party spoken to in the first thirteen verses of the psalm, and spoken of in the remainder of it, - the brother in peril, says very little. But the little which he does say is very comprehensive: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psalms 91:2).

It is a prompt response to the very first appeal made to him. It is an interruption of the testimony of the first speaker, as yet almost unknown, at the very beginning of it. An oracular voice is heard, proclaiming vaguely, and as it were, anonymously, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalms 91:1). Instantly the proclamation is appropriated. A weary, war-worn wayfarer grasps it, replies to it, answers the advertisement, and makes it his own: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in him will I trust” (Psalms 91:2). Then the publisher of the original proclamation, closing with the acceptor of it, enlarges upon his theme, drawing it out in particular instances, and mingling faithfully as well as tenderly ideas of terror in abundance with the general assurance of protection (Psalms 91:3-8). The appropriation is indeed very precise and full, rising in tenderness as it goes on.

1. “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress.” To say this is much. To be brought to say it from the heart is the fruit of a gracious work of the Holy Ghost. Naturally, seek a shelter from the Lord, a defence against the Lord. A hiding-place from God is what I desire. I look for it, and think that I may have it among the trees of the garden - the world’s flatteries, or the forms of godliness. There I would fain lurk, putting them between my guilty conscience and my offended God, Or let me have some means of meeting my God when he comes to reckon with me; let me entrench and fortify myself in excuses for my sin and pleas of self-justification. Such is the propensity of the natural mind. If it be otherwise with me now, it is through the Holy Ghost working in me. It is the effect of a great change of heart; it is to me a new nature.

Once I sought a hiding-place from God - now God is my hiding-place, God is my refuge. From the assaults of my enemies coming to accuse me, to slay me - from my own heart condemning me - I welcome as my refuge the Lord himself, the very God against whom I have offended.

Formerly, I was bold enough to defy the God of judgment; I strengthened myself against him in my imaginary innocence, or my comparative integrity and goodness of heart. Now I give myself into his hands, that he himself may be my defence. I look to him to make me a partaker of his own righteousness - that perfect righteousness of his which none can challenge or assail - the righteousness which he brings near to me in the person of his Son, my strength and my Redeemer. This now is my fortress; - Jehovah my righteousness, Jehovah my strength.

2. And, therefore, I will say of him, “He is my God.” It is the language now, not of faith only, but of love. He is not merely valued by me as a shelter and a defence; it is not merely for such advantages to me that I prize him. In himself, and for himself, he is now precious to me, the beloved of my soul, my portion, my all in all. He is not merely my refuge and my fortress: he is my God. And I have none but the Lord himself. He is my refuge and my fortress always; as open a refuge, as impregnable a fortress, as when I sought him and he covered me at the first. But he is more to me now, far more. He is my God - whom I have chosen, because he has chosen me, whom I love because he has first loved me. It is not merely that I cannot do without him, but that I would not part with him. He is the health of my countenance, and my God, my God, be not far from me! “God, even our own God, shall bless us.”

3. In this spirit the exercise of appropriating faith concludes with the resolution, “In him will I trust.” I may trust in him; well may I trust in him; for I have proved him to be my refuge and my fortress. I must needs trust in him; I cannot but trust in him; for if not in him, where else can I be safe? So far it is a matter of conclusive reasoning with me, or a matter of urgent necessity. But when I say, “In him will I trust,” - in him who is not only my refuge and my fortress, but my God - that is the language of hearty, affectionate, earnest consent. “I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.”

“In him will I trust.” Is it not natural now to trust in him, now that he is my God? Alas! that it should ever be otherwise. How can I ever take it amiss that he should ask me to trust in him - to leave myself and all my interests in his hands - and at the most anxious crisis, in the darkest hour, to believe that all is right - that all will be well? The witness for God has spoken his encouraging words to the brother in peril, who thus affectionately responds in the exercise of an appropriating faith in God. What God himself is overheard to say concerning him at the close of the psalm (Psalms 91:14-16), is the glorious corner-stone of this edifice of confidence. Let its separate glories be considered.

1. Mark, first, the cause assigned by the Lord for the warm interest which he feels in his servant thus exposed: “He has set his love upon me; he has known my name.” His heart is mine; and he does justice to me in his esteem of me. He braves the heady current of the fight, he faces the rough and dangerous road, not for love of self, not even for love of man merely, but for the love he bears to me. Nor is it a great name for himself that he covets. He has known my name. It is my name, not his own, that he would have to be glorified.

2. Mark, next, how the Lord speaks, connecting his servant’s love to him and knowledge of his name with his own purpose of deliverance and exaltation, as if his honour were concerned to make it plain that the love is not misplaced, that the just acknowledgment of his character and perfections is not unappreciated. He has set his love on me; can I do less than deliver him? He has known my name; he honours, he glorifies, he exalts my name; can I do otherwise than set him on high? A father on earth, knowing that his child’s heart was all his own, would be ashamed of himself if he could leave that child to perish in some hazardous enterprise to which the very ardour of his filial love had moved him. A prince served by some noble and chivalrous soul - one counting the prince’s honour dearer to him than life - would hold it foul scorn if it were imagined for a moment that he could hesitate to place his faithful servant next the royal throne. And since you have set your heart on God your father, he tells me, he tells all the holy ones, he tells that holy one, the Son of his love, who has won your heart to him, that he cannot but pledge himself to deliver you - especially to deliver you out of whatever troubles may overtake you in your working, or warring, or journeying, on his errand and for his sake, and because your heart is set on him. Since also you have known his name, and it is your delight to exclaim, I will extol thee, God, my king, I will praise thy name for ever, - he says of you, that however low may be your estate, however humble your sphere, however little of earthly glory may requite you, however much of earthly obliquy may overwhelm you for a time, your promotion in the end is secure. And it must be so; for his own honour is concerned in his honouring you at last. “I will set him on high, because he has known my name.” “Them that honour me I will honour.”

3. Mark, thirdly, what the Lord expects on the part of his servant, “He shall call upon me.” This, I say, the Lord expects. He speaks of it as a matter of course. He intimates that he takes it for granted. To call upon me, to be ever calling upon me, “will be the man’s custom, - his vocation always. It may well be so; it cannot but be so. He has set his heart on me. Can a loving heart ever be silent when the object of its love is ever accessible, ever near? He has known my name. He understands me as none can understand me, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal me. My nature, my character, he knows. He knows that I love to hear a child crying, Abba, Father. He knows that for this very end I send forth the Spirit of my Son in his heart, that he may be always crying, Abba, Father. He knows me too well to imagine that I have any delight in holding him at a distance. He knows that reserve, keeping silence, is the thing I hate. He knows that my ear is open to his call, and that the highest compliment he can pay me, all the return I ask for all my love is, that he shall call upon me.

4. Mark, once more, the assurance of the Lord’s gracious interposition, answering to his servant’s calling upon him: “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.” It is much the same assurance as before, with this additional particular, preceding the promise of deliverance and honour, “I will be with him in trouble.” Is not this the special, present answer to him, when he calls upon the Lord? The deliverance is connected with his having set his heart upon the Lord. I cannot, the Lord says, suffer one to perish who has given me his confidence and love. The honour again is associated, as a consequence, with this, as its reason or cause, - he hath known my name. I cannot but advance ultimately to a high rank him who, self-forgetting, self-denying, is bearing my name, not his own, faithfully on high, in the thickest fight and along the most perilous way. But the deliverance may be postponed; the honour may be in reserve, far off beyond the precincts of time. Is he, therefore, in the meantime helpless, comfortless? Far otherwise: “He shall call on me, and I will answer him.” My answer will be this, that “I will be with him in trouble.” And better trouble when I am with him in it, than deliverance and honour when I am afar off.

5. Nor is it to be all trouble with the man of God while he is fighting the good fight and finishing his course. Nay, there is so much enjoyment for him, even in his present state, as to make him rather wish for its continuance, and welcome the concluding promise which he hears the Lord giving: “With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.” This world is not all a battle-field, a dreary and dangerous pilgrimage, to the Lord’s faithful servant. Even to him, - rather, one should say, chiefly to him, to him alone reasonably, - length of days may be an object of desire. Why should that man grasp many years to live here, who, let him go the whole round of earth’s pleasures, must be always conscious of an aching void, an unsatisfied thirst, a feeling moving him to adopt the cry. Who will show us any good? - to echo sadly the complaint. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity? But you, man of God, are not fated thus to have the cup of contentment ever brought to your very lips, to be ever turned aside or dashed down before you drink it. You know what that saying means: “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” You see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living. You have much to make you glad in the prospect of a long life of usefulness and comfort, if that should be the mind of God concerning you. Nay, should length of days bring with it to you only length of toil, and care, and grief, you will still say that even with such a long life the Lord is satisfying you; for all the more, in such a life, through your calling on him and his being with you in trouble, he will be showing you his salvation. And if, on the other hand, it shall please him whose soldier and pilgrim you are, to cut short your career on the very threshold of your entrance on it, - if he shall commission the plague to smite you, or the sword to cut you down, your labour scarcely begun, your mouth scarcely opened, - you will remember that the promise is not an absolute promise of long life. It is, “With long life will I satisfy him.” He shall live until he himself is willing to say, I have lived long enough. And will not he be willing at any time to say this, the instant that other promise is fulfilled, “I will show him my salvation?” Yes, Brother, if the Lord is showing you his salvation, - if you are taking in your arms the holy child Jesus; if he is taking you, a little child, in his, - you may fall in the flower of youth, in the prime of manhood, leaving all your work undone; but you fall, still testifying that with long life the Lord has satisfied you. You die as old a man as the aged Simeon, when he said, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”