Ah, my friends, consider the meaning of that.  Consider it, I say.  For when that great thought has once flashed across a man’s mind, he is a new creature thenceforth.  He need speak to no father-confessor or director; to no saints or angels; to no sages or philosophers.  For he can speak to God Himself, and he need speak to no one else.  Nay, at times he dare speak to no one else.  If he can tell his story to God, why tell it to any of God’s creatures?

He is in the presence of God Himself, God his Father, God his Saviour, God his Comforter; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  God is listening to him.  To God he can tell all his sorrows, all his wrongs, all his doubts, all his sins, all his weaknesses, as David told his; and God will hear him; and instead of striking him dead for his presumption or for his sinfulness, will comfort him; comfort him with a feeling of peace, of freedom, of being right, and of being safe, such as he never had before; till all the troubles and dangers of this life shall seem light to him.  Let the world rage.  Let the foolish people deal foolishly, and the treacherous ones treacherously.  For if God be with a man, who can be against him?  He has no fears left now.  He has nothing to do, save to thank God for his boundless condescension; and to trust on.  To trust on.  If he has set his heart on the Lord, he need not fear what man will do to him.  If his heart is fixed; if he is sure that God cares for him, he will, as it were by instinct, sing and give praise to God, as the bird sings when the rain is past, and the sun shines out once more.

But I think that when a man has reached that state of mind, as David reached it, he will rise, as David rose, to a higher state of mind still.  He will rise, as David rises in this psalm, from thoughts about his own soul, to thoughts about God.  In one word, he will rise from religion to that which is above even religion, namely theology.

His first cry to God was somewhat selfish.  He went to God about himself; about his own sorrows and troubles.  That is natural and harmless.  The child in pain and terror cries to its mother selfishly to be helped out of its own little woes.  But when it is helped, and comforted, and safe in its mother’s bosom, and its sobbing is over, then it forgets itself, and looks up into its mother’s face, and thinks of her, and her alone.

And so it should be with the man whom God has comforted.  When the deliverance has come; when the peace of mind has come; then surely, if he be worthy of the name of man, he will forget himself, and his own petty sorrows; and look up to God, to God Himself, and say within his heart—­This great awful Being, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, who yet condescends to take care of a tiny creature like me, who am, in comparison with Him, less than the worm which crawls upon the ground, less than the fly which lives but for an hour—­This God, so mighty and yet so merciful:  who is He?  What is He like?