us their fallen nature?

Ah! cast thy bread upon the waters,--the bread which even the poorest can
give to their children abundantly and without stint,--the bread of
charity,--human tenderness, forbearance, hopefulness,--cast that bread
upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.

SERMON XXII. GOD IS OUR REFUGE

Westminster Abbey, 1873.

Psalm xlvi. 1. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
trouble."

This is a noble psalm, full of hope and comfort; and it will be more and
more full of hope and comfort, the more faithfully we believe in the
incarnation, the passion, the resurrection, and the ascension of our Lord
Jesus Christ. For if we are to give credit to His express words, and to
those of every book of the New Testament, and to the opinion of that
Church into which we are baptised, then Jesus Christ is none other than
the same Jehovah, Lord, and God who brought the Jews out of Egypt, who
guided them and governed them through all their history--teaching,
judging, rewarding, punishing them and all the nations of the earth.
This psalm, therefore, is concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom all
power is given in heaven and earth, and who ascended up on high; that He
might be as He had been from the beginning, King of kings and Lord of
lords, the Master of this world and all the nations in it. This psalm,
therefore, is a hymn concerning the kingdom of Christ and of God. It
tells us something of the government which Christ has been exercising
over the world ever since the beginning of it, and which He is exercising
over this world now. It bids us be still, and know that He is God--that
He will be exalted among the nations, and will be exalted in the earth,
whether men like it or not; but that they ought to like it and rejoice in
it, and find comfort in the thought that Christ Jesus is their refuge and
their strength--a very present help in trouble--as the old Jew who wrote
this psalm found comfort.

When this psalm was written, or what particular events it speaks of, I
cannot tell, for I do not think we have any means of finding out. It may
have been written in the time of David, or of Solomon, or of Hezekiah.
It may possibly have been written much later. It seems to mo probably to
refer--but I speak with extreme diffidence--to that Assyrian invasion,
and that preservation of Jerusalem, of which we heard in the magnificent
first lesson f