Ah, brother! do not let us deprive ourselves of the lofty consolations and the mysterious influx of power which may be ours, if we will open our eyes to see, and our hearts to receive, what is really the central blessing of the Gospel, the communication through the same faith as Habakkuk exercised when he said, ’I will rejoice in the God of my salvation,’ of an actual divine strength to dwell in and manifest itself majestically and triumphantly through, our weakness.  ’The Lord is my strength,’ and if we will rejoice in the Lord we shall find that Habakkuk’s experience was lower than ours, inasmuch as he knew less of God than we do; and we shall be able to surpass his saying with the other one of the Prophet:  ’The Lord is my strength and song; He also is become my salvation.’  That is the first blessing that this ancient believer, out of the twilight of early revelation, felt as certain to come through communion with God.

II.  The second is like unto it.  Such rejoicing communion with God will give light-footedness in the path of life.

‘He makes my feet like hinds’ feet.’  The stag is, in all languages spoken by people that have ever seen it, the very type and emblem of elastic, springing ease, of light and bounding gracefulness, that clears every obstacle, and sweeps swiftly over the moor.  And when this singer, or his brother psalmist in the other psalm that we have referred to, says, ‘Thou makest my feet like hinds’ feet,’ what he is thinking about is that light and easy, springing, elastic gait, that swiftness of advance.  What a contrast that is to the way in which most of us get through our day’s work!  Plod, plod, plod, in a heavy-footed, spiritless grind, like that with which the ploughman toils down the sticky furrows of a field, with a pound of clay at each heel; or like that with which a man goes wearied home from his work at night.  The monotony of trivial, constantly recurring doings, the fluctuations in the thermometer of our own spirits; the stiff bits of road that we have all to encounter sooner or later; and as days go on, our diminishing buoyancy of nature, and the love of walking a little slower than we used to do; we all know these things, and our gait is affected by them.  But then my text brings a bright assurance, that swift and easy and springing as the course of a stag on a free hill-side may be the gait with which we run the race set before us.

It is the same thought, under a somewhat different garb, which the Apostle has when he tells us that the Christian soldier ought to have his ‘feet shod with the alacrity that comes from the gospel of peace.’  We are to be always ready to run, and to run with light hearts when we do.  That is a possible result of Christian communion, and ought, far more than it is, to be an achieved reality with each of us.  Of course physical conditions vary.  Of course our spirits go up and down.  Of course the work that we have to do one day seems easier than