hosts; and shewed
that they belonged to Him; and that He could handle them all to do His
work. He shewed that He was Lord, not only of the powers of nature which
give life and health, but of those which give death and disease. Nothing
was too grand, nor too mean, for Him to use. He took the lightning and
the hail, and the pestilence, and the darkness, and the East wind, and
the springtides of the Red sea; and He took also the locust-swarms, and
the frogs, and the lice, and the loathsome skin-diseases of Egypt, and
the microscopic atomies which turn whole rivers into blood, and kill the
fish; and with them He fought against Pharaoh the man-God, the tyrant
ruling at his own will in the name of his father the sun-God and of the
powers of nature; till Egypt was destroyed, and Pharaoh's host drowned in
the sea; And He brought out my forefathers with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm, because He had heard their cry in Egypt, and saw their
oppression under cruel taskmasters, and pitied them, and had mercy on
them in their slavery and degradation.' That is my God--the old Psalmist
would have said. Not merely a strong God, or a wise God; but a good God,
and a gracious God, and a just God likewise; a God who not only made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is, but who keepeth His
promise for ever; who helpeth them to right who suffer wrong, and feedeth
the hungry.

Yes, my friends, it is this magnificent conception of God's living and
actual goodness and justice, which the Psalmist had, which made him trust
God about all the strange and painful things which he saw in the
world--about, for instance, the suffering and death of animals; and
say--'If the lion roaring after his prey seeks his meat, he seeks his
meat from God: and therefore he ought to seek it, and he will find it. It
is all well: I know not why: but well it is, for it is the law and will
of the good and righteous and gracious God, who brought His people out of
the land of Egypt. And that is enough for me.'

Enough for him? and should it not be enough for us, and more than
enough?--We know what the Psalmist knew not. We know God to be more
good, more righteous, more gracious than any Prophet or Psalmist could
know. We know that God so loved the world, that He spared not His only-
begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. We know that the only-begotten
Son Jesus Christ so loved the world that He stooped to be born and suffer
as mortal man, a