glorious
light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more
plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a
nobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if
already won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. But
with whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and
so long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be
"supplication and thanksgiving." The prayer of our psalm bends round
again to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once
more into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinks
what ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, and
leaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful
gulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom
of the abyss.

"If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!"

Then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been
saved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are
themselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:

"Wait on Jehovah!
Courage! and let thy heart be strong!
Yea! wait on Jehovah!"

Here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God,
when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a
golden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon our
lips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, and
then we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes,
and fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand.

David in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was a
man in real peril who said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
shall I fear?" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew
not yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "Though war
should rise against me, in this will I be confident." It was in
thankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the
hills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with words
coloured by his circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shall
He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock." It was with Philistia at
his feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant
confidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine
enemies round about me." It was