founded than they are, this one answer were sufficient to remove them all, " If God be for you, who can be against you ?" Only rely on God, and you are safe. See how tenderly he chides your unbelieving fears '. If under any circumstances you are tempted to indulge an unbelieving fear, check yourselves instantly, as David did ; and say with him, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope thou in God ; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God''."]
' Isai. xl. 27—3 1. " Ps. xlii. ult.
Ps. cxxiv. 1 — 8. If it had not heen the Lord ivho was on our side, now may Israel say ; if it had not heen the Lord who was on our side, when men rose np against us ; then they had swallowed us up quick, ivhen their turath ivas kindled agaiiist 2is : then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul; then the proud waters had gone over our soul. Blessed he the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and lue are escaped. Our help is in the nanie of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
ON what occasion this psalm was written, we are not informed: but in the title it is ascribed to David: and in his history, no period suits it better than the time of Absalom's rebellion, when, but for God's in- terposition, in defeating the counsel of Ahitophel, the banished monarch and his adherents must all have perished.
But as there is no period fixed, it will be needless to enter into a consideration of any circumstances as connected with the psalm, since all that we should say could rest on no better foundation than conjecture. Of course, if we apply the psalm to the circumstances of our own nation at the present time, we shall not be understood as intimating that there was any such reference intended by the Psalmist, but merely as accommodating the general expres- sions of it to our own particular case : and truly we must say, that if they had originally been penned
for