April 27

They connect him with their comforts, and this sweetens them. And thus life becomes a continued walking with him towards that world in which "God is all in all."

David reviews his former agency—The Lord delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear. This happened when he kept his father's sheep. Each of these fierce and dreadful creatures took a lamb out of the flock. And he went after them. The peril was most imminent. When he forced them to drop the prey they rose against him; but he caught them by the beard and smote them and slew them. He well therefore speaks of their paw, for it was actually upon him! This it will be allowed was a deliverance little less than miraculous. We have nothing perhaps so extraordinary to review, yet we have had our deliverances, and some of them remarkable, at least to ourselves, if not to others. We have had our bears and lions; but we have not been given over a prey to their teeth. We have had spiritual deliverances. We have been saved from the curse of the law; from the power of Satan; from the tyranny of the world; from the dominion of sin. We have had temporal deliverances. Some of these have been visible, but many more have been invisible; and it is owing to our having obtained help of God, that our lives, and families, and substance, and all our outward estate, have been preserved. And if at any time our comforts have been invaded and injured, it has been for a moral benefit; and he has enabled us to say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

David hopes for his future agency—"He will deliver me from this Philistine." For after the beasts of prey, here is another, and more formidable foe. We must always rejoice with trembling; and never boast ourselves of to-morrow, for we know not what a day may bring forth. Because some storms have expended themselves, we must not reckon upon perpetual sunshine; the clouds return after the rain. When we have slain the lion and the bear, we may be called to encounter Goliath—Well—and we may meet him undismayed if the Lord be with us. He who has delivered will deliver. And like David—

We should draw confidence from reflection. We have not only his promise to encourage us, but our experience; and because he has been our help, therefore under the shadow of his wing should we rejoice. We cannot certainly infer what men will be from what they have been, or what they will do from what they have done. They are variable; but the Lord changeth not. They may become unable, if their intentions are the same; but in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Neither should a sense of our unworthiness weaken our expectation from him: we were unworthy when he first took knowledge of us; and he deals with us not according to our desert, but his own mercy and grace.

Wherefore let us observe the loving-kindnesses of the Lord, and treasure them up in our minds. We know not what occasions we may have for the use of them. But in every tendency to depression, let us not yield to our infirmity, but remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.