There was nothing wonderful in this conflict, nor anything exceptional in the experience. It is the common lot of men. True, there are some natures for whom the tenure of faith is less arduous than it is for others. But in almost every life there come crises when this same battle has to be fought. For it is not always easy to be content to trust without seeing, and to follow God's leading in the dark, when the way seems all wrong and mistaken. There are things in life that rudely shake our faith from its dreamless slumber, and sweep the soul away over the dreary billows of doubt and darkness. There are times when, to our timorous hearts, it seems too terrible to be compelled just to trust and not to understand. Such conflicts come to us all more or less. Painful and protracted the struggle sometimes is, but not necessarily evil, not even harmful. For if we do but fight it out honestly and bravely the fruits will be, as they were with our poet, wholesome, good, and peaceable. IV. Read Ps. xlvi., and Phil. ii. VICTORY BY SURRENDER. "As a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child." It is good to cheer men on in a noble strife by speaking of the certainty of victory, and by the story of heroic deeds to nerve their arms for battle and stir their hearts to war. But that is not enough. They want more than that. They want to learn how to wage a winning war, how to secure the highest triumph, how out of conflict to organise peace. In the good fight of faith what is the secret of success? Has our Psalm any light on that point? By what method did the poet still the turmoil of his doubt and reach his great peace? The process is finely pictured in a homely but exquisite image: "Like a weaned child on its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me." What does that mean? Torn by an insatiable longing to know the meaning of God's mysterious ways, he had struggled fiercely to wring an answer from the Almighty. His heart was long the abode of unrest, and storm, and tempest. At length peace falls on the fray; there is no more clangour of contention: all is quietness and rest. How is this? Has he succeeded in solving the enigmas that pained him? Have his cravings for an answer from God been gratified? If not, how has he attained this perfect repose? His peace is the peace of a weaned child. Not, therefore, by obtaining that which he craved has he found rest; for the rest of a weaned child is not that of gratification, but of resignation. It is the repose, not of satisfied desire, but of abnegation and submission. After a period of prolonged and painful struggle to have its longings answered, the little one gives over striving any more, and is at peace. That process was a picture to our poet of what passed in his own heart. Like a weaned child, its tears over, its cries hushed, reposing on the very bosom that a little ago excited its most tumultuous desires, his soul, that once passionately