then they realize, as they too often fail to do in quiet times, that they are absolutely dependent on God. He has at His command infinite natural and spiritual forces by which the result of a war or a battle can be determined. As in the famous battle of Joshua, or in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in our own history, storms and tempests, or a mere turn in the weather, or it may be added, the invisible interposition of some angelic agent, may defeat all human schemes and determine the issue of a battle, and, through a battle, the fate of an Empire. Of great commanders, moreover, no less than of kings, the words of our Collect are true, that their hearts are in God’s rule and governance, and that He disposes and turns them as it seems best to His godly wisdom. The message of the Bible, in fact, from first to last, the message of Jewish history, and the message of the Psalms, is that God is in a pre-eminent degree the “Lord of war,” with Whom it lies to bring on men the judgment of war, to control war, and to make wars to cease. “O come hither,” says the Psalm of my text, “behold the works of the Lord, what destruction He hath brought upon the earth. He maketh wars to cease in all the world, he breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariots in the fire. Be still, then, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen and I will be exalted in the earth.” Or, as it is expressed in another Psalm, “There is no king that can be saved by the multitude of an host, neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength. A horse is counted but a vain thing to save a man, neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength. Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon them that put their trust in His mercy.” Or, once more, “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what Thou hast done in their time of old; How Thou hast driven out the heathen with Thy hand, and planted them in; how Thou hast destroyed the nations and cast them out. For they gat not the land in possession through their own sword; neither was it their own arm that helped them; but Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”