We know how these earnest and anxious entreaties were heard: "Thou didst turn and refresh me"; "Through Thee have I been holden up ever since I was born"; "My mouth shall speak of Thy salvation all the day long; for I know no end thereof." But further. This acknowledgment of God as a "very present help in trouble" is followed by a prophecy, and that of nothing less than the resurrection--"Thou shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth"; so that David's sorrow, when brought humbly and heartily to God, was followed by divine refreshment then, and hope of resurrection hereafter. And a well-founded hope it was, because the trouble sent by God produced a grand moral result when laid before Him Who sent it. It had a purifying influence which made his mind speed on to the resurrection day. In its anticipation he was but yielding to the influence of a life higher than that he lived before his sorrow, and which sought enjoyment and exercise loftier and still loftier. This he, by faith, foresaw, in the anticipation of that rest to which his trouble sent him, and for the appreciation of which his trouble purified him. So we have here in the spiritual world an instructive and encouraging illustration of what frequently occurs in the physical. We have purification by pain; refreshment out of ruin. So have I seen this grand law asserting the governance of its God in those Alpine crags on which the stars seem to pause. There on those storm-scalped peaks the climber feasts on the panorama spread by God's own hand, in winding river, sapphire lake, everlasting hill, sentinelled by a forest of pines, dressed in the matchless sombre of Alpine green or shrouded by the spotless snows of heaven. I have witnessed the troubles of the atmosphere. The bursting rain-cloud hangs low, the light recedes, the darkness deepens, the wind moans; and then the full-toned thunder roars, and the long lines of fire, angular and electric, leap from fissures in the firmament. The artillery of the elements is deafening, and its echoes rumble in the distance like the mutterings of imprisoned spirits. The storm is over. The calm succeeds. The clouds become brighter and brighter still. The sun peeps out here and there in a rift of the heavens. The air is fresh and keen and pure. The vegetation is bright and green. The rivulets and mountain torrents ripple and rush rejoicing. As we see this, we are reminded of the analogies of God's government; yea, if we could put a preacher on every peak, a tongue in every valley, Nature would minister to grace, and from each would come the response of the royal poet to the call of God. The world physical would raise the ecstatic antiphon to the world spiritual: "O what great troubles and adversities hast Thou showed me, and yet didst Thou turn and refresh me!"