enemy may cut off all surface streams, but its "water shall be sure." Substantially the same thought is next stated in plain words: "God is in the midst of her." And therefore two things follow. One is unshaken stability, and another is help at the right time--"at the turn of the morning." "The Lord is in the midst of her"--that is a perennial fact. "The Lord shall help her"--that is the "grace for seasonable help." He, not we, determines when the night shall thin away its blackness into morning twilight. But we may be sure that the presence which is the pledge of stability and calm even in storm and darkness will flash into energy of help at the moment when He wills. The same expression is used to mark the time of His looking from the pillar of cloud and troubling the Egyptians, and there may be an allusion to that standing instance of His help here. "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons"; but this we may know--that the Lord of all times will always help at the right time; He will not come so quickly as to anticipate our consciousness of need, nor delay so long as to let us be irrevocably engulfed in the bog. "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He heard _therefore_ that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was." Yet He came in time. With what vigour the short, crashing clauses of ver. 6 describe the wrath and turbulence of the nations, and the instantaneous dissolving of their strength into weakness at a word from those awful lips! The verse may be taken as hypothetical or as historical. In either case we see the sequence of events as by a succession of lightning flashes. The hurry of the style, marked by the omission of connecting particles, reflects the swiftness of incident, like _Veni, vidi, vici_. The utterance of God's will conquers all. At the sound of that voice stillness and a pause of dread fall on the "roar" (same word as in ver. 3) of the nations, like the hush in the woods when thunder rolls. He speaks, and all meaner sounds cease. "The lion hath roared, who shall not fear?" No material vehicle is needed. To every believer in God there is an incomprehensible action of the Divine Will on material things; and no explanations bridge the gulf recognised in the psalmist's broken utterances, which declare sequence and not mode of operation: "He uttered His voice, the earth melted."