Distress, and be it that it was unreasonable, it was very real distress,
drove her at last to the refuge we all are ready to seek when we can get
no other. She took her Bible and sat down with it, to try to find
something that would quiet her there. Opening it aimlessly at first; then
with a recollection of certain words in it, she turned to the third
psalm.
"I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy
hill. Selah. I laid me down and slept; I awaked, for the Lord sustained
me. I will not be afraid of thousands of people, that have set themselves
against me round about."
David had more than fancied enemies to fear; he was stating an actual,
not a problematical case; and yet he could say "_I will not be afraid"!_
How was that ever possible? David was one of the Lord's people; true; but
do not the Lord's people have disagreeable things happen to them? How can
they, or how should they, "not be afraid"? Just to reach that blessed
condition of fearlessness was Rotha's desire; the way she saw not. There
was a certain comfort in the fact that other people had seen it and found
it; but how should she? Rotha had none to ask beside her Bible, so she
went to that Query, do the books and helps which keep us from applying to
the Bible, act as benefits or hindrances?
Rotha would have been greatly at a loss, however, about carrying on her
inquiry, if it had not been for her "Treasury of Scripture Knowledge."
Turning to it now as to a most precious friend, she took the words in the
psalm she had been reading for her starting place. And the very first
next words she was directed to were these:--
"I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep; for thou, Lord, only makest
me to dwell in safety." Ps. iv. 8.
Rotha stopped and laid down her face in her hands. O if she could quietly
say that! O what a life must it be, when any one can simply and
constantly say that! "Lay me down and sleep"; give up the care of myself;
feel secure. But in the midst of danger, how can one? Rotha thought she
must be a poor, miserable fraction of a Christian, to be so far from the
feeling of the psalm; and probably she was right. "If ye had faith as _a
grain of mustard seed_," the Lord used to say to his disciples; so
apparently in his view they had scarce any faith at all. And who of us is
better? How many of us can remove mountains? Yet faith as big as a grain
of mustard seed can do that. What must our faith be? Not quite a
miserable sham, but a miserable fraction. Rotha felt self-reproved,
convicted, longing; however she did not see how she was at once to become
better. She lifted her eyes, wet with sorrowful drops, and went on. If
there were help, the Bible must shew it. Her next passage was the
following:--
"It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of
sorrows; for so he giveth his beloved sleep."--Ps. cxxvii. 2.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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