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, and to die on the cross, even while He was telling men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without the knowledge of their heavenly Father, and bidding them see how God fed the birds and clothed the lilies of the field.  Ah, my friends, in this case, as in all cases, rest and comfort for our doubts and fears is to be found in one and the same place—­at the foot of the Cross of Christ.  If we believe that He who hung upon that Cross is—­as He is—­the maker and ruler of the universe, the same from day to day and for ever:  then we can trust Him in