therefore, I will pine away in disconsolate sorrow. I will rush to ruin and despair. My lot is hard, my punishment is greater than I can bear;-all that. made life happiness to me has perished;-THEREFORE, I will harden my heart. I do well to be angry, even unto death. Existence has no charm I long to die-my only rest will be the

for me.

quiet of the grave!"

Sorrowing one! be yours a nobler philosophy. Look back from these valleys of death and tribulation, to the gleaming summits of yonder distant Mizar hills! Mark, in the past, the tokens and memorials of unmistakeable covenant love. Call to remembrance your song" in former nights. Wounded Hart! on the hills of Gilead, forget not thy former pastures. Go! stricken and smitten, with the tears in thine eyes, bathe thy panting sides in the cooling "water-brooks." When the disturbers of thy peace have gone, and when hushed again is thy forest home, return to "the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense." minstrel monarch of Judah, weeping exile! seat thyself on some rocky summit on these ridges of Hermon, and, surveying mountain height on

Go,

mountain height, in the land of covenant promise,— each associated with some hallowed memory,—take down thy harp, and sing one of thine own songs of Zion. "Thou who hast shewed me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth!"*

* Psalm lxxi. 20.

IX.

The Climax.

"God of my life, to Thee I call,

Afflicted at Thy feet I fall;

When the great water-floods prevail,

Leave not my trembling heart to fail!"

"There is but a step from the third heavens to the thorn in the flesh."-Winslow.

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts : all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life."- Verses 7, 8.

IX.

THE CLIMAX.

THE storm-struggle in the soul of the Psalmist is now at its height. In the previous verse, he had penetrated through the mists of unbelief that were surrounding him, and rested his eye on the Mizar hills of the Divine faithfulness in a brighter past. But the sunshine-glimpse was momentary. It has again passed away. His sky is anew darkenedrain-clouds sweep the horizon-"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts.' Amid the environing floods he exclaims, “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me!”

The figure is a bold and striking one. Some have thought it has reference to the sudden rush of water-torrents from the heights of Lebanon and Hermon; that it was suggested by the roaring cataracts at his feet-Jordan with its swollen and winding rapids-the faithful picture of the deep