In the previous chapter we spoke of the two verses which form the turning-point in the Psalm,—the climax of the conflict therein so strikingly described between belief and unbelief. We referred to the boldness and expressiveness of the figure: the troubles of the believer, like the billows of the ocean calling on one another to unite their strength that they might effect his overthrow, but faith rising triumphant above them all. At times, when all human comfort gives way, God himself appears. "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters."[78] He not only "commands His loving-kindness in the day-time," but "in THE NIGHT His song is with us." Our heavenly Parent comes in earth's darkest, most tempestuous hours, sits by our side, sings His night-song—His own lullaby—"Peace, be still!" "So giveth He His beloved sleep!"[79] God's "songs" sound always sweetest "by night"—the deep, dark night of affliction. The nightingale's notes are nothing by day—they would be lost in the chorus of other birds; but when these have retired to their nests, she prolongs her tuneful descant, and serenades, with her warblings, the silent earth. The world can only give its song by day. It can speak only in the sunshine of prosperity. But "God our Maker giveth songs in the night!"[80] His promises, like the nightingale, sound most joyously, and, like the glow-worm, shine most brightly, in the dark!

Let us pause ere proceeding with the sequel of the Psalm, and ponder the great lesson to be derived from this experience of David.

It is, to trust God in the darkest, gloomiest night of earthly trial! To wait His own time, and to say, when the billows are highest, "Yet the Lord will"—

This is one great end and design of trial, to exercise the grace of patience. There is nothing God loves better than a waiting soul. "The Lord is good to them that wait for Him."[81] "I waited patiently," says David, in another Psalm, (or, as it is literally, "I waited, waited,") "for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry."[82] "I know thy works," says Jesus, speaking of old, in the language of commendation, to His church at Ephesus: "how thou hast BORNE, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not FAINTED."[83] How often has our way appeared to be hedged up with thorns,—as if there were no possibility of egress! In sailing among some of our own Highland lakes and inland seas, where the mountains, in a thousand fantastic forms, rise abrupt from the shore, we frequently seem to be landlocked, and able to get no farther. Yet the vessel pursues its serpentine course; and as we double the first jutting promontory, the lake again expands; the same waters appear beyond, gleaming like a mirror of molten gold. We find what we imagined to be an impassable barrier, is only a strait, opening into new combinations of mountain majesty and beauty. So is it in the Voyage of life. Often, in its fitful turnings and windings, do we seem to be arrested in our way;—"Hill Difficulties" rising before us, and appearing to impede our vessel's course;—but as faith steers onwards, impediments vanish, new vistas and experiences of loving-kindness open up. Where we expected to be stopped by walls of frowning rock and barren mountains, lo! limpid waves are seen laving the shore, and joyful cascades are heard singing their way to the silver strand!

And not only does God thus "command His loving-kindness" in disappointing our fears, but "in the night His song shall be with us." He will turn the very midnights of our sorrow into occasions of grateful praise! Yes! if not now, we shall come yet to see the "needs be" of every trial. We have only a partial view here of God's dealings—His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity!

Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest King, to the heights of the forest of Lebanon. See that noble Cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler with the northern blasts of Palestine! Summer loves to smile upon it—night spangles its feathery foliage with dew-drops—the birds nestle on its branches—the wild deer slumber under its shadow—the weary pilgrim, or wandering shepherd, repose under its curtaining boughs from the mid-day heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall,—the old denizen of that primeval forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke! As we see the unsparing axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk—then the noble limbs stripped of their branches—and at last the proud "Tree of God" coming with a crash to the ground; we exclaim against the wanton destruction—the demolition of this noblest of pillars in the temple of nature,—and we are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem—invoking inanimate things to resent the affront—"Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar has fallen!" But wait a little!—follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side,—thence conveyed in monster rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean,—and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God;—and then, as you see its destination,—gazing down on the very Holy of Holies, set in the diadem of the Great King;—say, can you grudge that the crown of Lebanon was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting? That cedar stood as a stately beam and pillar in nature's temple, but the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls are like these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and bared them,—we see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but He has a noble end and object in view—to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple, to make them "a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God!"

Or take another illustration. Go to one of our graving-docks, where the weather-beaten vessel has been weeks or months in the carpenter's hands. Her started timbers are replaced, her shattered keel renewed, the temporary props and scaffoldings have been removed, and with her gay streamers afloat, and her crew on deck, she stands ready and equipped for sea. What is needed? Nothing but the opening of the sluices, to reunite her to her old watery element. She lies a helpless, decrepit thing, till these dock-gates be opened, and the buoyant waves rush to clasp her anew in their embrace. It is done! But at first all is noise, and wrath, and tumult. These gurgling waters, discoloured with mud and sediment, convert the noble granite basin into an inky, turgid whirlpool. Ere long, however, the strife ceases; the great wooden wall raises itself like a child that has been awoke in its cradle by the voice of the storm—the waters gradually calm and subside;—higher and still higher is the vessel lifted, till, amid the cheers of the crew, she passes by the opened gates, and, with every sail spread to the breeze, is off to new voyages in her ocean-home.

Child of trial! "vessel of mercy!" your God sees meet at times to bring you into the graving-dock, that He may put His tools upon you, and refit and prepare you for the great voyage of immortality. When He opens the sluices of trial, you may see no mercy in His dealings. It may be "deep calling to deep"—the roar and heaving of antagonist waters; they may at first, too, stir up nothing but the dregs and sediment of sin,—expose the muddy pools, the deep corruptions of the heart. But be still! He will yet vindicate the rectitude and wisdom of His own procedure. Ere long, these surging waves will settle peacefully around you, the shadows of heaven reflected in their glassy surface; and better still, strengthened and renovated by that season of trial, you will go forth from the Graver's hands more ready to brave the billows, grapple with the tempest, and reach at last the haven where you would be!

It is hard discipline—the undowny pillow, the trench-work and midnight vigils—which makes the better soldier. The type of strength in the kingdom of inanimate nature is not the sickly plant of the hot-house, or the tree or bush choked in the dark jungle; but the pine rocked by Alpine or Norwegian tempests, or the oak mooring its roots in the rifted rock! David would neither have been the King nor the Saint he was, but for the caves of Adullam and Engedi, the rocks of the wild goats, the forest exile of Hermon and Gilead. He had to thank affliction for his best spiritual graces. The redeemed in glory are ready to tell the same. "We would never have been here but for these storms of 'great tribulation.' But for the loss of that child—that worldly calamity—that protracted sickness—that cutting disappointment—that wounding of my heart's affection—that annihilation of earthly pride and ambition—that 'deep calling to deep'—I would not now have been wearing this crown!" Trials have been well compared to the winds God employs to fill our sails and fetch us home to the harbour of everlasting peace![84]

One word of caution ere we close this chapter. From all we have said—of "deeps" and "floods," storms and water-spouts, and midnight darkness—are any to leave these pages with the feeling that Religion is a gloomy, repulsive thing;—that the believer's life is one of darkness and despair;—that better far is the world's gaiety and folly—the merry laugh of its light-hearted votaries—than a life of sadness like this? Mistake us not! We repeat what we have already said. The experience we have been now considering is, in many respects, peculiar; one of those dark passages which stand alone in the diary of the spiritual life. Religion gloomy! Who says so? Shall we take St Paul as our oracle? What is his testimony? In all his letters he tries to crowd as much as he can into little space. In one of these, he has room for only two injunctions. But instead of giving two that are different, he prefers to repeat the one. It is the emphatic tautology, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and AGAIN I say, Rejoice."[85] Or shall we seek a different tribunal? Go gather together all the philosophers of antiquity—Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. Bring together the wise men of Greece—the philosophers of Alexandria—the sages of Rome. Ask if their combined and collected wisdom ever solved the doubts of one awakened soul, as have done these leaves of this Holy Book? Which of them ever dried the tear of widowhood as these? Which of them ever smoothed the cheek of the fatherless as these? Which of them ever lighted the torch of hope and peace at the dying bed as these, and flashed upon the departing soul visions of unearthly joy? O pagan darkness! where was thy song in the night? In the region and shadow of death, where did thy light arise?

But WE have a "more sure word of prophecy, to which we do well to take heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place." The Christian is the man who alone can wear the sunny countenance. The peace of God, keeping the heart within, cannot fail to be mirrored in the look and life without! And if (as often is the case) he has his appointed seasons of trial—the sea of life swept with storms of great tribulation—it is with him as with yonder ocean. To the eye of the young voyager, gazing on its mountain billows, it would seem as if its lowest caverns were stirred, and the world were rocking to its foundations; while, after all, it is only a surface-heaving! There are deeps, unfathomed deeps, of calm rest and peace, down in that ocean's undisturbed recesses.

Believer in Jesus! with all thy trials, thou art a happy man. Go on thy way rejoicing. Tribulation may fret and ruffle the calm of thy outer life, but nothing can touch the deeps of thy nobler being. Troubles may rise, and "terrors may frown," and "days of darkness" may fall around thee, but "Thou wilt keep him, O God, IN PERFECT PEACE whose mind is stayed on Thee!"