Reader! is this your experience? Is this the result of your temporal afflictions, the end of your spiritual conflicts,--to lead you to the same Shepherd of Israel, and to exult in Him as "the health of your countenance, and your God?" Elimelech, of old, was compelled by famine to leave Bethlehem, but his name signified, "_My God is King!_" When we are pressed with straits, and troubles, and perplexities, let _us_ make that name our strong tower! "MY GOD IS KING" is a glorious motto. Is it the heavings and convulsions of the world's nations--"kings of the earth setting themselves, and rulers taking counsel together," from motives of personal ambition, or political jealousy, or lust of conquest? Write upon all their schemes, ELIMELECH--"_My God is King!_" Is it the apparently mysterious discipline through which some may be passing--bereavements threatening your dwelling, or the hand of death already on your loved ones? Write on the darkened threshold, ELIMELECH--"_My God is King!_" Is it the prospect of your own death that is filling you with apprehension? Remember in whose hands, under whose sovereign control, that messenger is. Go to the vacant Sepulchre at Golgotha, and read that writing and superscription which the "Abolisher of death" has left for the comfort of all His people:--"_I have the keys of the grave and of death_." Christian! even here, in these gloomy regions, "_thy God is King!_" How blessed thus to be able, both in temporal and spiritual things, to lie in the arms of His mercy, saying, "Undertake Thou for us!"--to feel that every thread in the web of life is woven by the Great Artificer,--that not one movement in these swiftly-darting shuttles is chance; but all is by _His_ direction, and all is to result in good! In having Himself as our portion, we are independent of every other;--we have the pledge of all other blessings. "Let the moveables go, the inheritance is ours!" Let the streams fail, we have the inexhaustible fountain! "Drop millions of gold," says good Bishop Hopkins, "boundless revenues, ample territories, crowns and sceptres, and a poor contemptible worm lays his _One God_ against them all."[107] "_Our_ all," says Lady Powerscourt, "is but two mites (soul and body). _His_ all--Heaven, Earth, Eternity, Himself." We have said in a previous chapter that the loftiest archangel can tell of no mightier prerogative than looking up to the Great Being before whom he casts his crown, and saying, "My God!" WE can utter them in a sense higher than he. He is OUR God _in Christ_. The words to us are written (which to the unredeemed angels they are not) in the blood of atonement! Imagine, for a moment, a conversation between a bright angel in heaven and a ransomed sinner from earth. The angel can point to a past eternity; he can tell of a glorious pedigree; he can point up to his Almighty Maker, and say, "He has been _my God_ for ages and ages past. I have been kept, supported, gladdened by His amazing