in their historical setting, so far as that is
possible. For example turn to the third Psalm, fifth verse,

"I laid me down and slept;
I awaked; for the Lord sustaineth me."

I was brought up in an old-fashioned church where that was sung. I knew it
by heart. As a boy I supposed it meant that night-time had come, and David
was sleepy; he had his devotions, and went to bed, and had a good night's
sleep. That was all it had suggested to me.

But on my first swing through of the wide reading, my eye was caught, as
doubtless yours has often been, by the inscription at the beginning of the
psalm: "A psalm of David, _when he fled from Absalom his son_." Quickly I
turned back to Second Samuel to find that story. And I got this picture.
David, an old white-haired man, hurrying one day, barefooted, out of his
palace, and his capital city, with a few faithful friends, fleeing for his
life, because Absalom his favourite son was coming with the strength of
the national army to take the kingdom, and his own father's life. And that
night as the king lay down to try to catch some sleep, it was upon the
bare earth, with only heaven's blue dome for a roof. And as he lay he
could almost hear the steady tramp, tramp of the army, over the hills,
seeking his throne and his life. Let me ask you, honestly now; do you
think you would have slept much that night? I fear I would have been
tempted sorely to lie awake thinking: "here I am, an old man, driven from
my kingdom, and my home, by my own boy, that I have loved better than my
own life." Do you think _you_ would have slept much? Tell me.

But David speaking of that night afterwards wrote this down:--"I laid me
down, and _slept; I awaked_; (the thought is, I awaked _refreshed_) for
the Lord sustaineth me." And I thought, as first that came to me, "I never
will have insomnia again: I'll trust." And so you see a lesson of trust in
God came, in my wide reading, out of the historical setting, that greatly
refreshed and strengthened, and that I have never forgotten. What a God,
to give sleep under such circumstances!

A fine illustration of this same thing is found in the New Testament in
Paul's letter to the Philippians. At one end of that epistle is this
scene: Paul, lying in the inner damp cell of a prison, its small creeping
denizens familiarly examining this newcomer, in the darkness of midnight,
his back bleeding from the stripes, his bones aching, and his feet fast in
the stock