We believe there are periods in the history of most of God's people corresponding to the awful experience recorded in this verse. Few there are who cannot point to some sad and memorable epochs alike in their natural and spiritual being,--some solemn and critical crisis-hours, in which they have been subjected to special and peculiar trials;--encompassed with the thunders and lightnings of Sinai--the trumpet sounding long and loud:--or, to revert to the simile of the Psalm, when the moorings of life have been torn away, and they have been left to drift, on a starless, tempestuous ocean. Often, as with David, there may at such times be a combination of trials,--sickness--bereavement--loss of worldly substance--estrangement of friends--blighting of fair hopes. Then, following on these, and worse than all, hard thoughts of God. We see the wicked around prospering,--vice apparently pampered,--virtue apparently trodden under foot,--many passing through life without an ache or trial--their homes unrifled--their hearts unwounded--their every plan prospering--fortune smiling benignantly at every turn; while _we_ seem to have been a target for the arrows of misfortune,--tempted with Jeremiah to say, "_I am_ THE _man who have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath_."[71] And doubting a God of _providence_, the next step is to doubt a God of _grace_. We begin to question our interest in the covenant,--to wonder whether, after all, our hopes of heaven have been a delusion and a lie. God's mercy we imagine to be "gone for ever." He seems as if He would be "favourable no more." There is no comfort in prayer--no brightness in the promises; the Bible is a sealed book;--the heavens have become as brass and the earth as iron! Oh, so long as we had merely _external_ trials, we could brave and buffet the surrounding floods. So long as we had the Divine smile, like the bow in the cloud, resting upon us, we could gaze in calmness on the blackest sky;--yea, rejoice in trial, as only unfolding to us more of the preciousness of the Saviour. But when we have the _cloud_ without the _bow_,--when outer trials come to a soul in spiritual unrest and trouble,--when we harbour the suspicion that the only Being who _could_ befriend in such an hour has Himself hidden His face,--when we have neither this world nor the next to comfort us--smitten hopes for time and despairing hopes for eternity!--this is the woe of woes--the "horror of great darkness,"--"_deep calleth unto deep_." We can say, with a more terrible emphasis far than the smitten patriarch, "_I_ AM _bereaved_!" [71] Lam. iii. 1. The Psalmist had now reached this extremity. It is the turning point of his present experience. He has two alternatives before him:--either to suffer unbelief to triumph, to distrust God, abandon the conflict, and sink as lead in the surging waters; or to gather up once more his spiritual resources, breast the waves, and manfully buffet the storm.