Reader! let me ask, in conclusion, do _you_ know in your experience the combined triumphs of _faith and prayer_--these two heavenly spies that fetch back Eschol-clusters of blessing to the true Israel of God? Do you know what it is, in the hour of adversity, to repair to "the _Rock_ of your strength?" Do you believe in His willingness to hear, and in His power to save? How sad the case of those who, in their seasons of trial, have no refuge to which they can betake themselves, but some fluctuating, perishing, earthly one;--who, when they lose the world, lose their all! The miser plundered of his gold, cleaving to the empty coffers;--the pleasure-hunter seeking to drain the empty chalice, or to extract honey out of the empty comb;--the bereaved grasping with broken hearts their withered gourd, and refusing to be comforted! The worldling is like the bird building its nest on the topmost bough of the tree. There it weaves its wicker dwelling, and feels as if nothing can invade its security and peace. By and by the woodman comes,--lays down his axe by the root. The chips fly off apace. The pine rocks and shivers; in a few moments it lies prone on the forest-sward. The tiny bird hovers over its dismantled home--the scene of desolation and havoc--and then goes screaming through the wood with the tale of her woes! The Christian, again, is like the sea-fowl, building its nest in the niches of the ocean cliff, which bids defiance at once to the axe and the hand of the plunderer. Far below, the waves are lifting their crested tops, and eddying pools are boiling in fury. The tempest may be sighing overhead, and the wild shriek of danger and death rising from some helpless bark that is borne like a weed on the maddened waters. But the spent spray can only touch these rocky heights,--no more; and the curlew, sitting with folded wings on her young, can look calm and undismayed on the elemental war. "What is the best grounds of a philosopher's constancy," says Bishop Hall, "but as moving sands, in comparison of the Rock that we may build upon!" Yes! build in the clefts of that immoveable Rock, and you are safe. Safe in Christ, you can contemplate undismayed all the tossings and heavings of life's fretful sea! So long as the Psalmist looked to God, he was all secure. When he looked to _himself_, he was all despondency. Peter, when his eye was on his Lord, walked boldly on the limpid waves of Gennesaret; when he diverted _it on himself_, and thought on the dangers around him, and the unstable element beneath him, "he began to sink!"