For David's present condition and experience in the land of his exile--the feeling of utter isolation throbbing through the pulses of his soul,--there were required some extraordinary and peculiar sources of comfort. The old conventional dogmas of theology, at such seasons, are insufficient. Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is blighted and withered like grass;--who has not been conscious of a longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us to the quick? What of His character, His attributes, His ways! There is a feeling, such as we never had before, to draw aside the veil which screens the Invisible. It may be faith in its feeblest form, awaking as from a dream; lisping the very alphabet of Divine truth, and asking, in broken and stammering accents, "Does God _really live?_--Is it, after all, Deity, or is it Chance, that is ruling the world? Is this great Being near, or is He distant? Does He take cognizance of all events in this world; or are minute, trivial occurrences, contingent on the accidents of nature or the caprice of man? _Is He_ THE LIVING ONE?" God, a distant abstraction shrouded in the awful mystery of His own attributes, will not do;--we must realise His presence; our cry, at such a time, is that of the old patriarch at the brook Jabbok, or of his descendant at the brooks of Gilead--"_Tell me thy_ NAME."[20] Is it merely _love_, or is it the loving ONE? Is it _omnipotence_, or is it the almighty ONE? Is it some mysterious, impalpable principle, some property of matter or attribute of mind--or is it a _personal_ Jehovah, one capable of loving and of being loved? Have the lips of incarnate truth and wisdom deceived us by a mere figure of speech, when, in the great Liturgy of the Church universal, in the prayer which is emphatically "His own," He hath taught us, in its opening words, to say, "Our FATHER which art in heaven, hallowed be thy NAME!" [20] Gen. xxxii. 28. How earnestly do the saints in former times, and especially in their seasons of trial, cleave to the thought of this _personal_ presence; in other words, a thirst for "the _living God_!" What was the solace of the patriarch Job, as he was stretched on his bed of sackcloth and ashes, when other friends had turned against him in bitter derision, and were loading him with their reproaches? It was the realisation of a _living defender_ who would vindicate his integrity,--"_I know that my Redeemer liveth_." (Job xix. 25.)