These objects of earthly, perishable pursuit, _may_ do when the world is bright, the heart unwounded, the eye undimmed. These may do when the sun shines unclouded in our firmament, when our fields are waving, when fortune is weaving her golden web, and the bark of existence with its white sails is holding its way through summer seas. These may do when the home circle is unbroken; when we miss no loved face, when we mark no silent voice, no vacant chair. _But_ when the muffled drum takes the place of life's joyous music;--when our skies are robed in sackcloth, when Nature takes on its hue of ashen paleness; when every flower, seared and frost-bitten, seems to droop its head in sadness and sorrow, and hide its tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay!--what _then_? The prophet's voice takes up the lesson--"_The voice said, Cry; and he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass!_" Poor trifler that thou art! to be so long mocked and deceived by a dead and dying world; desolate, friendless, hopeless, portionless; a vessel driven from its moorings, out unpiloted on a tempestuous sea! BUT there is a haven for the tempest-tossed. The Saviour thou hast long despised and rejected, is a provided harbour for such as _thee_. "_A_ MAN _shall be an hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land._" (Isaiah xxxii. 2.) Art thou panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these "still waters" thus addresses thee--LET HIM THAT IS ATHIRST, COME.