Yes! your life, notwithstanding all these fluctuations, will end triumphantly. It may, as in this Psalm, be now a pæan, then a dirge; now a _Miserere_, then a _Te Deum_. The _Miserere_ and _Te Deum_ may be interweaved throughout; but the latter will close the Life-story--the concluding strain will be the anthem of Victory. You may arrest the arrow in its flight--you may chain the waterfall, or stay the lightning, sooner than unsay the words of God, "_He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ_." (Phil. i. 6.) Remember, God does not say, that "good work" is never to be impeded. He has never given promise in Scripture of an unclouded day--uninterrupted sunshine--a waveless, stormless sea. No, "the morning without clouds" is a heavenly emblem. The earthly one is "a day, in which the light shall neither be clear nor dark." (Zech. xiv. 6.) The analogy of the outer world of nature, at least under these our chequered and ever-varying skies, teaches us this. Spring comes smiling, and pours her blossoms into the lap of Summer. But the skies lower, and the rain and battering hail descend, and the virgin blossoms droop their heads and almost die. Summer again smiles and the meadows look gay; the flowers ring merry chimes with their leaves and petals, and Autumn with glowing face is opening her bosom for the expected treasure. But all at once drought comes with her fiery footsteps. Every blade and floweret, gasping for breath, lift their blanched eyelids to the brazen sky; or the night-winds rock the laden branches and strew the ground. Thus we see it is not one unvarying, unchecked progression, from the opening bud to the matured fruit. But every succeeding month is scarred and mutilated by drought and moisture, wind and rain, storm and sunshine. Yet, never once has Autumn failed to gather up her golden sheaves; ay, and if you ask her testimony, she will tell that the very storm, and wind, and rain you dreaded as foes, were the best auxiliaries in filling her yellow garners. If the experience of any one here present be that of "the deep" and "the water-flood"--"the stormy wind and tempest," think ever of the closing words of the Psalm, and let them "turn your mourning into dancing; take off your sackcloth, and gird you with gladness!" _You_ may change towards God, but He is unchanging towards _you_. The stars may be swept from our view by intervening clouds, but they shine bright as ever,--undimmed altar-fires in the great temple of the universe. Our _vision_ may be at fault, but not their radiance and undying glory. The Being "not confined to temples made with hands," who met this wrestler of old in the forest of Gilead, and poured better than Gilead's balm into his bosom, is the same now as He was then. And if thou art a wrestler too, He seems through the moaning of the storm to say, "_Though thou fall, yet shalt thou not be cast down utterly, for the Lord upholdeth thee with his right hand_."