And if we were to follow the history of His Church, that history would be a living commentary on the experience of David and of David's Lord: divinely sent trouble, divinely sought and divinely sent refreshment, issuing in spiritual resurrection. Is not this the account many have to give of sorrow, succour, and salvation? You were weak: you are now strong. You were "choked with cares," and sought relief in a flood of tears: you are now able to leave the burden of your cares with Him Who "careth for you"; while your eyes, once red with agony, are now bright with praise, gratitude, and hope. Remembering what you were, and now recognising what you are, you may adopt the language of David, "I am become a wonder unto many, but my sure trust is in Thee"; or, taking a fuller view and a finer tone, you will ring out the litany of deliverance, and chant the song of praise and blessing, "O what great troubles and adversities has Thou showed me; and yet didst Thou turn and refresh me." This present refreshment is a prophecy of future resurrection. It leads all the afflicted children of God on to the grand climax in sin, sorrow, and all the trouble to which we are born. Then the cup of universal affliction shall be full. The waters of our pilgrimage shall be sweetened, and changed into the bright, clear, rosy wine of immortality. Then farewell, sorrow; farewell, weakness; agony, ache, desolation, and sin, we bid you a final and a glad farewell. Then shall rise upon this scene of change and uncertainty, where pain and pleasure are so intermingled and combined, the sun that knows no setting, the everlasting day that knows no night. Then shall the children of God, the "children of the resurrection," gathered from every known and unknown region, race, and age, rise to the rapture of the saints, and, defying the immeasurable weight of all the ocean's pressure--for the sea shall give up its dead--shattering the manacles with which corruption had long bound the germ of incorruption, they shall "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," greet the Saviour Who loved them, with a greeting worthy the Lamb that was slain; worthy the grandest event in the annals of earth and heaven; while high above the din of the last crash of worlds, yea, louder than the storm which marches on the ruins of creation, shall rise the anthem of royal and even wretched and relieved experience--"Thou hast brought me from the depths of the earth again." [Illustration: FOR THE SAKE OF HER CHILD] By Scott Graham, Author of "The Link between Them," Etc. CHAPTER VII. _The Pity of It._ On Saturday night, in that same week, Harold sallied forth at dusk, with a bulky brown-paper parcel under his arm, containing a pair of boots which he was taking by stealth to a humble cobbler in a back alley to mend.