in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord : the Jmmble shall hear thereof and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me ; and let us exalt his name together / I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and dehvered me from all my fears." Yes, " This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles^." Behold, then, how plainly it instructs us,
L That there are no troubles so great, but God is able to deliver us from them —
[Neither our temporal nor our sj)iritual troubles can well exceed those of David: yet, if he was saved from his, why may not we from ours? " Is God's ear become heavy, that it cannot hear; or is his hand shortened, that he cannot save*^?" We must on no account limit either the power or the mercy of our God : but " be strong in faith, giving glory to his name'" ]
2. That there are no troubles so great but God zoill deliver us from them, in answer to our prayers —
[Who ever heard of any instance wherein God said to a man, "Seek my face in vain?" Jonah was heard from the bottom of the sea ; and David, as it were, from the very gates of hell. Manasseh, too, was heard, and accepted, after all his great and aggravated crimes'^. Let none, then, despond, what- ever be his trouble, or whatever his guilt : but let all be assured, that if their faith be only as a grain of mustard-seed, it shall prevail, to the casting of all the mountains, whether of difficulty, or of sin, into the very depths of the sea^ ]
3. That answers to prayer, so far from puffing up a man with pride, will invariably humble and abase him —
[Who is it that here designates himself by this humiliat- ing appellation, "This poor man?" It is David, "the man after God's own heart." But did not God's mercies to him puif him up ? Quite the reverse. He never was more humble than when most honoured of his God. And so it was with Jacob in the Old Testament"^; and with the Apostle Paul in the New. If ever there was a man more highly honoured than others, it was the Apostle Paul : yet he still continued to account himself " less than the least of all saints"," yea, and
g ver. 1 — 6. h isai. lix. 1. « Rom. iv. 20.
J^ 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13. ' Matt. xvii. 20.
™ Gen. xxxii. 10, 11. « Eph. iii. 8.