Of that same person does he say in my text, " Tlie Lord sitteth upon the flood ; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever. The Lord will give strength unto his people ; the Lord will bless his people with peace." That my text refers to him, there can be no doubt : for he is '' that Mighty One, upon whom the help of his people is laid;" and he is, " The Prince of Peace," from whom all their peace must flow. We may there- fore proceed to consider the Lord Jesus,
L As a God of Providence —
[" He is the Creator of all things," and " by him all things consist : " nor does any thing occur which is not done by him. We speak of things, indeed, as accidental ; but there is nothing really casual, not even " the falling of a sparrow," or the loss of " a hair of our head." True it is, that creatures, for the most part, execute their own will, and oftentimes with an express desire to oppose the will of God. But they are all unconscious agents in his hands, accomplishing what " his counsel has determined before to be done." The envy of the priests, the treachery of Judas, the timidity of Pilate, the cruelty of the Roman soldiers, were all subservient to his designs, and all fulfilled his inscrutable purposes. " They, indeed, meant not so; neither did their heart think so:" they followed only the dictates of their own minds: but, in all their actions, " his counsel stood," and he accomplished through them his own sovereign and eternal will. Behold our blessed Lord, in every change of situation, from his apprehension to the grave: who would suppose that these were successive steps to the throne of heaven, and the means ordained for the salvation of the world ? Yet this was really the case ; and by all these events were a multitude of conflicting prophecies fulfilled. He sat at the helm, and directed all the storm. And precisely thus he does at this time also. The occurrences of every successive day seem as if they arose without order, and passed away without effect. But He who sees all things from the beginning has ordained that a sleepless night, an opening of a book, a casting of a lot, shall all as certainly effect his ends, as any event, however great, or however manifestly connected with his designs'^. Tlie history of Joseph, so far as relates to the concurrence of contingent circumstances to the advancement of our welfare, is renewed at this time in many of us, whose elevation to a throne of glory is promoted by events which, to the eye of sense, would appear most cal- culated to counteract it. Be the storm ever so tempestuous,
<= Esther iii. 7. and vi. 1, 2.