This was in the olden times; but if then, why not also now? Evidently the elegist regarded it as a rare and wonderful occurrence--a single experience to which he looked back in after years with the interest one feels in a vivid recollection which rises like a mountain, clean cut against the sky, above the mists that so quickly gather on the low plains of the uneventful past. Perhaps it is only in one of the crises of life that such an indubitable message is sent--when the soul is in the lowest dungeon, _in extremis_, crying out of the darkness, helpless if not yet hopeless, overwhelmed, almost extinguished. But if we listened for it, who can tell but that the voice might not be so rare? We do not believe in it; therefore we do not hear it. Or the noise of the world's great loom and the busy thoughts of our own hearts drown the music that still floats down from heaven to ears that are tuned to catch its notes; for it does not come in thunder, and we must ourselves be still if we would hear the still small voice, inwardly still, still in soul, stifling the chatter of self, stopping our ears to the din of the world. There are those to-day who tell us with calm assurance, not at all in the visionary's falsetto notes, that they have known just what is here described by the poet--in the silence of a mountain valley, in the quiet of a sick chamber, even in the noisy crowd at a railway station. When this is granted it is still well for us to remember that we are not dependent for Divine consolation on voices which to many must ever be as dubious as they are rare. This short message of two words is in effect the essence of teachings that can be gathered as freely from almost every page of the Bible as flowers from a meadow in May. We have the "more sure word of prophecy," and the burden of it is the same as the message of the voice that comforted the poet in his dungeon. That message is wholly reassuring--"Fear not." So said God to the patriarch: "Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;"[225] and to His people through the prophet of the restoration: "Fear not, thou worm Jacob;"[226] and Jesus to His disciples in the storm: "Be of good cheer: it is I: be not afraid";[227] and our Lord again in His parting address: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful";[228] and the glorified Christ to His terrified friend John, when He laid His right hand on him with the words: "Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever more, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."[229] This is the word that God is continually speaking to His faint-hearted children. When "the burthen of the mystery," and "the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world"