But we may here ask, Have we any assurance that the prayers of David, at this critical emergency, were indeed answered? Or,(as we are often tempted in seasons of guilty unbelief to argue regarding our prayers still,) did they ascend unheard and unresponded to?--did the cries of the supplicant die away in empty echoes amid these glens of Gilead? We have his own testimony, in a magnificent ode of his old age,[96] one of the last, and one of the noblest his lips ever sung, that Jehovah _had_ heard him in the day of his trouble. It is a Psalm, as we are told in the title, written by him on his return to his capital, when victory had crowned his arms, and his kingdom was once more in peace. The aged Minstrel takes in it a retrospective survey of his eventful pilgrimage. Many a Mizar-hill in the long vista rises conspicuously into view. He climbs in thought their steeps, and erects his Ebenezer! As his flight and sojourn beyond Jordan formed the latest occurrence in that chequered life, we may well believe that in uttering these inspired numbers, the remembrance of his memorable soul-struggle there must have been especially present to his mind. Let us listen to his own words: "_The sorrows of death compassed me, and_ THE FLOODS OF UNGODLY MEN _made me afraid.... In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto_ MY GOD: HE HEARD _my voice out of His temple, and_ MY CRY CAME BEFORE HIM, EVEN INTO HIS EARS." In the sublimest poetical figures of all his Psalms, Jehovah is further represented in this hymn of thanksgiving as hastening with rapid flight, in august symbols of majesty, to the relief and succour of His servant--"bowing the heavens"--"the darkness under His feet"--"riding upon a cherub"--"flying upon the wings of the wind"--"sending out His arrows, and scattering His foes"--"shooting out lightnings"--and "discomfiting them." And with the writer's mind still resting on the same emblems which he uses in his Exile-Psalm,--the "deep calling to deep"--the "noise of the water-spouts"--the "waves and billows,"--he interweaves other references and experiences with this unequivocal testimony to God his "_Rock_," as the HEARER OF PRAYER,--"_He sent from above, He took me, He drew me out of many waters.... Who is God save the Lord? or who is a_ ROCK _save our God?... The Lord liveth; and blessed be my_ ROCK; _and let the God of my salvation be exalted!_"[97] [96] Psalm xviii. [97] Psalm xviii. 16, 31, 46. * * * * *