This Bethany utterance has still a voice,--a voice of rebuke and of comfort in our hours of trial. When, like aged Jacob, we are ready to say, "All these things are against me;" when we are about to lose the footsteps of a God of love, or _have_ perhaps lost them, there is a voice ready to hush into silence every unbelieving doubt and surmise. "Although thou sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before Him, therefore trust thou in Him." God often thus hides Himself from His people in order to try their faith, and elicit their confidence. He puts us in perplexing paths--"allures" and "brings into the wilderness," only, however, that we may see more of Himself, and that He may "speak comfortably unto us." He lets our need attain its extremity, that His intervention may appear the more signal. He suffers apparently even His own promises to fail, that He may test the faith of His waiting people;--tutor them to "hope against hope," and to find, in _unanswered_ prayers and baffled expectations, only a fresh reason for clinging to His all-powerful arm, and frequenting His mercy-seat. He dashes first to the ground our human confidences and refuges, shewing how utterly "vain is the help of man;" so that faith, with her own folded, dove-like wings, may repose in quiet confidence in His faithfulness, saying, "In the Lord put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?" Reader! It would be well for you to hear this gentle chiding of Christ, too, in the moment of your _spiritual_ depression;--when complaining of your corruptions, the weakness of your graces, your low attainments in holiness, the strength of your temptations, and your inability to resist sin. "_Said I not unto thee_," interposes this voice of mingled reproof and love, "My grace is sufficient for thee?" "The bruised reed I will not break, the smoking flax I will not quench." "Look unto _Me_, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." We are too apt to look to _ourselves_, to turn our contemplation _inwards_, instead of keeping the eye of faith centered undeviatingly on a faithful covenant-keeping God, laying our finger on every promise of His Word, and making the challenge regarding each, "Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not bring it to pass?"