His own hands, the manner in which draughts upon His interposition and omnipotent resources were unvaryingly recognised and honoured, if offered only with single-hearted trust and perfect reliance.

It needs but to recall the battle with the Hagarites wherein the two tribes and a half cried to God, who was "intreated of them because they put their trust in Him," so that "there fell down many slain, because the war was of God." It needs but to remember the story of Asa, who, when Ethiopia's hosts spread out before him in innumerable array, "cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go out against this multitude," and who conquered; or, yet further, to read how in a later war he "relied on the king of Syria," and not on the Lord, and was put to shame, the prophet declaring that "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him." It needs but to con

sider the brief record of that last illness, wherein we read that "in his disease Asa sought not to the LORD but to the physicians;" and that later one of Jehoshaphat, who, with the declaration, "Our eyes are upon thee, O our God," caused praise for assured victory to resound in the wilderness of Tekoa before the fight, to recognise the power of trust. Other memorials there are of Hezekiah, who vanquished Assyria with an open letter and a prayer; and of Ezra, who, in the long and dangerous journey before him, "was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help against the enemy in the way, because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek Him; but His power and His wrath is against all them that forsake Him;" and who, having "besought the Lord for this," was able to sum up the history of the long four months' journey with the memorial that "the hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and of such as lay in wait by the way." And it needs, we say, but to review such chronicles, and others like them of Nehemiah, whose watchword sounded from the rising of the

morning till the stars appeared, in the cry, "Our God shall fight for us," and of men and women of the New Testament who trusted and were delivered, -to know the rank awarded to confident trust in the estimates of Jehovah.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee," are words of the psalm yet to be sung in the land of Judah, when, from all ends of the earth, voices shall swell the responsive chorus, "Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength!" And freshly, as if but penned in our own day, sounds the brief contrast of confidence and distrust in his song concerning them, who beheld in the heath of the desert and in the tree planted by the waters, distinct emblems of the man trusting in man, and the man trusting in the Lord "and whose hope the Lord is."* And the prophet freshly, even as for our own instruction, establishes the connexion between trustfulness and fruitfulness in the similitude of the nourished of the waters which "shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit."

*Jer. xvii. 5.

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But the New Testament translation of the inspired declaration concerning his perfect peace whose mind is stayed on God, conveys yet more tenderly, and in all its fulness, that established ground of confidence foreshown, yet not revealed, in the prophecy of the coming Seed and in the ladder of glory at Bethel. "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

How shall not Christians trust! we exclaim, as we contemplate the mighty pledge of perfect love contained in the words "through Christ Jesus." Through Him who has made the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the housetop and the ravens of the air, yea, and the very hairs of our head to proclaim continually His will that we should trust Him for all things; through Him who, pointing to the print of the nails in His hands and in His feet, bends over us with the undying words "As the Father hath loved me, even so have I loved you."

It may be that in considering the embarka

tion on a new life which is to be an apprenticeship in trust, we have dwelt upon its first tremulous experiment at an unnecessary length. Yet, holding as we do that degrees of spiritual attainment register themselves in the firmness and constancy of trust, that the word is now being made good, "Whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he," that nothing but unqualified and intrepid trust will be found to bear up the soul in suffering and in action, we have not unwillingly delayed to ponder its signification. First plighted beside the Bethel-pillar, and to be renewed at each fresh station of the way, not the "if the Lord will be with me," of its first growth, but the progressive advancement of fresh experiences are, even as by the Psalmist of old, to be sounded forth in songs of the pilgrimage:

"Mine eyes are unto thee O God the Lord; in thee is my trust, leave not my soul destitute."

66 "O how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man ;