ul
because their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought is
significant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of His
love to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love." The heart
filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters,
while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding
collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea
of life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and
expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the
sweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the
greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope
forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience
supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;
and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and
clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To
love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So
had the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years
of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on
his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external
security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not
in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his
feet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we
learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait on
the Lord."

Our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of
this period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been
already considered fairly represent the whole. The xi., xiii., xvii.,
xxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as
belonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics would
add the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. But if we exclude
them, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each
other, but with those which have been presented to the reader. The
imagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us,
continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares,
the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation
of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked,
the confidence that their own devices will come down on their he