rned over its pages to verify the
exactness of the words, it soon opened to _the blessed thirty-fourth
psalm_, which has proved to many an anchor of hope when they cried to
God "out of the depths."

"I will bless the Lord at all times;" Oh, surely not!--How could any one
bless the Lord at such a time as this? Yet there it stood:--

"I will bless the Lord _at all times_; his praise shall continually be
in my mouth." If others could do this, and had done it, God helping her,
she would do it too. She, too, would bless the Lord, and speak his
praises.

"My soul shall _make her boast in the Lord_." A feeling of exultation
began to rise within her. Something was yet left to her. Her earthly
"boast" was indeed broken; but why might not she, too, "_make her boast
in the Lord_"?

Touched with living light, verse by verse stood out before her, as
written by the finger of a present God. Humbled to the earth,
overpowered by deep self-abasement and contrition of soul, she clung as
with a death-grasp to the words that were bearing her triumphantly
through these dark waves.

"They looked unto Him _and were lightened_." Was not her darkness
already broken as by a beam from His face?

"This poor man cried, and _the Lord heard him_, and delivered him out of
all his troubles."

"The angel of the Lord encampeth about them that fear Him, and
delivereth them."

"The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto
their cry."

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but _the Lord delivereth him
out of them all_."

Who was this, that, under these comfortable words, looked peacefully
upward? It was one who was learning to _trust God_; taught it, as most
of us are, by being placed in circumstances where there is _nothing
else_ to trust.

It is not for us to portray all that passes in the human soul when it is
brought into vivid communion with its Maker. It is enough for us to know
that this sorrowful heart was made to exult in God, even in the calm
consciousness of its irretrievable loss; and that before the sun of a
day specially consecrated to grief had attained its meridian, the
mourner came cheerfully forth from her place of retirement, while a
chant, as of angelic voices, breathed through the temple of her
sorrowful soul, even over its broken altar.

"_Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good_; blessed is the man that
trusteth in Him."

"Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints; _for there is no want to the