O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night unto Thee. Oh! let my prayer enter into Thy presence. For my soul is full of trouble and my life draweth nigh unto Hell. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in a place of darkness, and in the deep.--Ps. lxxxviii. 1, 2. If I go down to Hell, Thou art there also. Yea, the darkness is no darkness with Thee; but the night is as clear as the day.--Ps. cxxxix. 7, 11. I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my calling. He brought me also out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon the rock. And He hath put a new song into my mouth, even a thanksgiving unto our God.--Ps. xl. 2, 3. God hath delivered my soul from the place of Hell. He shall receive me.--Ps. xlix. 15. It is sometimes true, that sunshine comes after storm. Sometimes true--or who could live?--but not always. Equally true that in most human lives there are periods of trouble, blow following blow, wave following wave, from opposite and unexpected quarters, till all God's billows have gone over the soul. How paltry and helpless in such dark times are all proud attempts to hang self-poised in the centre of the abyss, and there organise for oneself a character by means of circumstances. Easy enough it seems for a man to educate himself without God while he lies comfortably in idleness on a sofa. But what if he found himself hurled perforce among the real universal experiences of humanity; and made free in spite of himself, by doubt and fear and horror of great darkness, of the brotherhood of woe, common alike to the simplest peasant woman, and to every great soul, who has left his impress upon the hearts of after generations? Jew, Heathen, or Christian; men of the most opposite creeds and aims--whether it be Moses or Socrates, Isaiah or Epictetus, Augustine or Mohammed, Dante or Bernard, Shakespeare or Bacon--each and all of them have this one fact in common--that once in their lives, at least, they have gone down into the bottomless pit, and there out of the utter darkness have asked the question of all questions--"Is there a God? and if there be, what is He doing with me?" What refuge then--when a man feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power, and knows not whether it be chance or necessity, or a devouring fiend--to wrap himself sternly in himself and cry, "I will endure though all the universe be against me"? How fine it sounds! But who has done it? No, there is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light, one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss; and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God's billows; and that though we go down into Hell, He is there also; the belief that not we, but He, is educating us; that these seemingly incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake,