The _arrows of man_ are often the cruellest of all. "_Lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart._" (Ps. xi. 2.) ENVY is an archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood. JEALOUSY is a bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival. REVENGE has his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to retaliate the real or imagined injury. MALICE is an archer that seeks his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton mischief--irreparable injury--on the absent or innocent. CONTEMPT is a bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn on others. The teeth of such "are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." (Ps. lvii. 4.) DECEIT.--He is, in these our days, a huntsman of repute--a modern Nimrod--with gilded arrows in his quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren look, within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless, on "the mountains of prey!" "_Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper._" (Ps. cxx. 2-4.) But there are arrows also from the _quiver of_ GOD. "_The arrows of the Almighty_," says Job, "_are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit._" (Job vi. 4.) "_He hath bent His bow,_" says Jeremiah, "_and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins._" (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?--"_Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are_ HIS _mercies!_" "_Faithful are the wounds of_ THIS _friend._" (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.) We need not stop to enumerate particularly these _arrows_. There is the blanched arrow of _sickness_, the rusted arrow of _poverty_, the lacerating arrow of _bereavement_, stained and saturated with tears, and feathered from our own bosoms! There is the arrow, too, (though of a different kind,) of God's own blessed _Word_, "quick and powerful." "_Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies._" (Ps. xlv. 5.) Yet, blessed be God, these are often arrows which wound only to heal; or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding, panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself. Suffering one! be thankful for thy wounds. But for these shafts thou mightest have been, at this moment, sleeping on the mountain heights of self-righteousness, or worldliness, or sin, with no thought of thy soul; the streams of salvation disowned; forsaking, and continuing to forsake, the "Fountain of Living Waters."