Believer! is your heart overwhelmed? Are you undergoing a similar experience with the Psalmist? Your friends (perhaps your nearest and best) misunderstanding your trial, unable to probe the severity of your wound, mocking your tears with unsympathising reflections and cruel jests--"a sword in your bones!" Turn your season of sorrow into a season of prayer. Look up to the God-man Mediator, the tender Kinsman within the veil! _He knoweth_ your frame. When He sees your frail bark struggling in the storm, and hears the cry of prayer rising from your lips, He will say, as He said of old, "I KNOW _their sorrows_, and I will go down to deliver them! O wounded Hart! panting after the water-brooks, I was once wounded for _thee_. O smitten soul! seamed and scarred with the lightning and tempest, see how I myself, the Rock of Ages, was smitten and afflicted!" Ay, and thou canst say too, "_God_ MY _Rock_!" Thou canst individually repose in that sheltering Refuge, as if it were intended for thee alone. The loving eye of that Saviour is upon thee, as if thou wert alone the object of His gaze,--as if no other struggling castaway breasted the billows but thyself! Blessed security, who would not prize it! Blessed shelter, who would not repair to it! Oh that the Psalmist's creed and resolution might be ours--"_I will say of the Lord, He is_ MY ROCK _and_ MY _Fortress, and_ MY _Deliverer._"--"_O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the_ ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!" XII. The Quiet Haven. "Ah, if our souls but poise and swing, Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true, To the toil and the task we have to do; We shall sail securely, and safely reach The heavenly Isle, on whose shining beach The sights we love and the sounds we hear Will be those of joy, and not of fear." "David utters again strains of hope; not that faint and common hope of possibility or probability, that after stormy days it may be better with him, but a certain hope that shall never make ashamed; such a Hope as springs from Faith, yea, in effect, is one with it.... Faith rests upon the goodness and truth of Him that hath promised; and Hope, raising itself upon Faith so established, stands up, and looks out to the future accomplishment of the promise."--_Leighton._ "In that day, the light shall not be clear nor dark: ... but it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light."--_Zech._ xiv. 6, 7. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."--_Verse 11._ XII. THE QUIET HAVEN.