the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind.” We talk of the rich airs of spring, of the flashing lightning of summer, as dead things; and men who call themselves wise say, that lightning is only matter,—‘We can grind the like of it out of glass and silk, and make lightning for ourselves in a small way;’ and so they can in a small way, and in a very small one: David does not deny that, but he puts us in mind of something in that lightning and those breezes which we cannot make. He says, God makes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers; and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose, when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, ‘That text in the 104th Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels spirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.’ So shewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits, that God’s angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is something more—that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deer slip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that is David’s account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; you may or not as you like. See again. Those springs in the hill-sides, how do they come there? ‘Rain-water soaking and flowing out,’ we say. True, but David says something more; he says, God sends the springs, and He sends them into the rivers too. You may say, ‘Why, water must run down-hill, what need of God?’ But suppose God had chosen that water should run _up_-hill and not down, how would it have been then?—Very different, I think. No; He sends them; He sends all things. Wherever there is any thing useful, His Spirit has settled it. The help that is done on earth He doeth it all Himself.—Loving and merciful,—caring for the poor dumb beasts!—He sends the springs, and David says, “All the beasts of the field drink thereof.” The wild animals in the night, He cares for them too,—He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by night, and we think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not with David: he says, “The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God,”—God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon Him. He is a God! “He did not make the world,” says a wise man, “and then let it spin round His finger,” as we wind up a watch, and then leave it to go of itself. No; “His mercy is over all His works.” Loving and merciful, the God of nature is the God of grace. The same love which chose us and our forefathers for His people while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins; the same only-begotten Son, who came down on earth to die for us poor wretches on the cross,—that same love, that same power, that same Word of God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the poor gnats in the winter