I know a village down in the far West, where the 121st Psalm which I just quoted, was a favourite, and more than a favourite.  Whenever it was given out in church—­and the congregation used often to ask for it—­all joined in singing it, young and old, men and maidens, with an earnestness, a fervour, a passion, such as I never heard elsewhere; such as shewed how intensely they felt that the psalm was true, and true for them.  Of all congregational singing I ever heard, never have I heard any so touching as those voices, when they joined in the old words they loved so well.

   Sheltered beneath the Almighty wings
   Thou shall securely rest,
   Where neither sun nor moon shall thee
   By day or night molest. 
   At home, abroad, in peace, in war,
   Thy God shall thee defend;
   Conduct thee through life’s pilgrimage
   Safe to thy journey’s end.

Do you fancy these people were specially comfortable, prosperous folk, who had no sorrows, and lived safe from all danger, and therefore knew that God protected them from all ill?

Nothing less, my friends, nothing less.  There was hardly a man who joined in that psalm, but knew that he carried his life in his hand from year to year, that any day might see him a corpse—­drowned at sea.  Hardly a woman who sang that psalm but had lost a husband, a father, a brother, a kinsman—­drowned at sea.  And yet they believed that God preserved them.  They were fishers and sailors, earning an uncertain livelihood, on a wild and rocky coast.  A sudden shift of wind might make, as I knew it once to make, 60 widows and orphans in a single night.  The fishery for the year might fail, and all the expense of boats and nets be thrown away.  Or in default of work at home, the young men would go out on voyages to foreign parts:  and often never came back again, dying far from home, of fever, of wreck, of some of the hundred accidents which befal seafaring men.  And yet they believed that God preserved them.  Surely their faith was tried, if ever faith was tried.  But as surely their faith failed not, for—­if I may so say—­they dared not let it fail.  If they ceased to trust God, what had they to trust in?  Not in their own skill in seamanship, though it was great:  they knew how weak it was, on which to lean.  Not in the so-called laws of nature; the treacherous sea, the wild wind, the uncertain shoals of fish, the chances and changes of a long foreign voyage.  Without trust in God, their lives must have been lives of doubt and of terror, for ever anxious about the morrow:  or else of blind recklessness, saying, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  Because they kept their faith in God, their lives were for the most part lives of hardy and hopeful enterprise; cheerful always, in bad luck as in good; thankful when their labours were blest with success; and when calamity and failure came, saying with noble resignation—­“I have received good from the hand of the Lord, and shall I not receive evil?  Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”