Psalms 30:5

In His favour is life.

Life in the favour of God

The return of God’s favour to an afflicted soul is like life from the dead,--nothing is so reviving. All our bliss is bound up in God’s favour; and if we have that, we have an infinite treasure, whatever else we may want.

I. illustrate the sentiment of the text.

1. Our natural life is from God’s favour. In Him we live, move, and have our being; He secures us from innumerable evils; He gives us bread, and water, and clothing, and health, and strength, and intellect.

2. Our spiritual life is from the favour of God.

3. Our eternal life is from the favour of God. By that favour we become entitled to heaven by the merits and righteousness of Christ; by that favour we are meetened for heaven through regeneration and sanctification; by that favour we are brought to heaven, through all the trying pilgrimage of life. O what views will the redeemed spirit have of the favour of God then!

II. some practical reflections.

1. How vain it is to expect happiness from worldly prosperity without the favour of God! What does it avail, if the whole universe smile on a man, if he be under the frown of God?

2. How fearful are the afflictions of life without the favour of God. How keen must be the strokes of the Divine rod to him who views them as the strokes of an enemy.

3. If the favour of God is life, then what vast multitudes are dead. They can find time for their games, sports, recreations, and worldly pursuits; but no time to seek the favour of God and the salvation of their souls! And how inexcusable are such persons. Beggars, when they might be the favourites of heaven; preferring sickness to health, blindness to sight, danger to safety, and the anger to the favour of God.

4. If in God’s favour there is life, what a dreadful place hell must be.

5. If in God’s favour there is life, what a blessed and glorious place must heaven be. (W. Gregory.)

Where is life?

There are many different opinions as to the place of true enjoyment. Some think it is in animal gratifications; others in material possessions; mental acquirements; personal refinements; social positions; and some even in present creature pleasures. The psalmist though it to be in the favour of God. And he was right. Until man is in friendship with God he will never be happy.

I. what sort is it? Not the creative favour of God, which has made us men, not brutes; not His providential favour, which has supplied our various needs--but His saving favour (Ephesians 2:4). That the psalmist had this favour of God in view, is evident from Psalms 30:8.

II. through what medium does God exercise his saving favour? Jesus Christ (John 17:2; Acts 4:12; Romans 3:25; 1 John 5:11). Jesus is to the regeneration of man what the atmosphere is to the fruitfulness of the earth--the medium through which the water of the ocean and the warmth of the sun act with generating power.

III. where is this fact revealed? (Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18; Luke 24:27; John 5:39). This invests the Scriptures with indescribable grandeur, inestimable worth, exclusive authority, and final appeal in everything pertaining to human redemption.

IV. To whom is it proclaimed? (John 3:16; Luke 2:10; Matthew 9:13; Titus 2:11). To limit Gospel invitations to a favoured few is unscriptural.

V. what will be had by suitably regarding God’s proclamation of His saving favour? “Life.” That is, restoration to the moral likeness of God, reinstatement into right relations with God, and introduction into the real friendship of God. Viewed in regard to the law of God, it is called justification (Galatians 3:6); the character of God, sanctification (Ephesians 5:25); the person of God, fellowship (John 17:21; 1 John 1:3; 1 John 1:6). All living is death which is not in God, nor like Him, nor according to His will.

VI. by what exercise of the mind do we obtain the blessed issues of God’s saving favour? Believing. (W. J. Stuart.)

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.--

Sorrow succeeded by joy

Day and night constitute the sum of human existence; they are emblematical of joy and sorrow. In figurative language, hope and joy are invariably clad in a vesture of light, whilst fear and grief are robed in sable. The language of our text cannot be applied to the trials and afflictions of the ungodly, but we would notice some of those occasions of weeping which may reasonably be expected to terminate in joy. Of this nature are--

I. the tears that flow from conviction of sin and penitential sorrow.

II. The grief that arises from conscious backsliding or from the upbraidings of a tender conscience. There is no feeling more oppressively painful than that of being a conscious traitor: and the anguish of the backslider is closely allied to this. Of whatever nature his sins may be, his profoundest grief will arise from their opposition to the Divine nature. “Against Thee, Thee only,” etc.

III. Those that arise from the sense of spiritual desertion. There are times when we “walk in darkness and have no light,” and we receive no communications of grace to raise our drooping spirits. The light of God’s countenance is withdrawn. But this loneliness of soul, this desolation of spirit, shall be removed, and the light shall again shine.

IV. those caused by temporal afflictions, such as loss, bereavement, death. Conclusion.

1. Let the sentiment of the text preserve you from a gloomy despondency.

2. Disarm death of its terrors.

3. Let each individual ask himself, if he be interested in the truth of my text? Will the source of your weeping become a spring of joy? Can you reasonably expect it should be so? It all depends on your being at peace with God. How is it with you? (J. Summers.)

The two guests

There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of this verse, between “His anger” and “His favour.” Probably there is a similar antithesis between “a moment” and “life.” For, although the word rendered “life” does not usually mean a lifetime, it may have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. So, then, the meaning of the first part of my text is, “the anger lasts for a moment; the favour lasts for a lifetime.” The perpetuity of the one, and the brevity of the other, are the psalmist’s thought. Then, if we pass to the second part of the text, you will observe that there is there also a double antithesis. “Weeping” is set over against “joy”; the “night” against the “morning.” And the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word “joy” means, literally, “a joyful shout,” so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. Then, still further, the expression “may endure” literally means “come to lodge.” So that Weeping and Joy are personified. Two guests come; one, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for such, “the night.” The other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. The guest of the night is Weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is Gladness. The two clauses, then, of my text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. The whole is a loaf out of the psalmist’s own experience.

I. the proportion of joy and sorrow is as ordinary life. Now is it true--is it not true?--that, if a man rightly regards the proportionate duration of these two diverse elements in his life, he must come to the conclusion that the one is continuous and the other is but transitory? A thunderstorm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes; and very few days have them. It must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. But then, man looks before and after, and has the terrible gift that by anticipation and by memory he can prolong the sadness. The proportion of solid matter needed to colour the Irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. But the current carries it, and half an ounce will stain miles of the turbid stream. Memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. And the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones. So it comes to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimize and abbreviate gladness. We can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. Courage, cheerfulness, thankfulness, buoyancy, resolution, are all closely connected with a sane estimate of the relative proportions of the bright and the dark in a human life.

II. the inclusion of the “moment” in the “life.” I do not know that the psalmist thought of that when he gave utterance to my text, but whether he did it or not, it is true that the “moment” spent in “anger” is a part of the “life” that is spent in the “favour.” Just as within the circle of a life lies each of its moments, the same principle of inclusion may be applied to the other contrast presented here. For as the “moment” is a part of the “life,” the “anger” is a part of the love. The “favour” holds the “anger” within itself, for the true scriptural idea of that terrible expression and terrible fact, the “wrath of God,” is that it is the necessary aversion of a perfectly pure and holy love from that which does not correspond to itself. So, though sometimes the two may be set against each other, yet at bottom, and in reality, they are one, and the “anger” is but a mode in which the “favour” manifests itself. Thus we come to the truth which breathes uniformity and simplicity through all the various methods of the Divine hand, that howsoever He changes and reverses His dealings with us they are one and the same. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun’s course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion which hurls a comet close to the burning sun, and sends it wandering away out into fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform Divine purpose, the favour which uses the anger, fills the life, and there are no interruptions, howsoever brief, to the steady continuous flow of His outpoured blessings. All is love and favour. Anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. It takes all sorts of weathers to make a year, and all tend to the same issue, of ripened harvests and full barns.

III. the conversion of the sorrow into joy. A prince comes to a poor man’s hovel, is hospitably received in the darkness, and, being received and welcomed, in the morning slips off the rags and appears as he is. Sorrow is Joy disguised. If it be accepted, if the will submit, if the heart let itself be untwined, that its tendrils may be coiled closer round the heart of God, then the transformation is sure to come, and joy will dawn on those who have done rightly--that is, submissively and thankfully--by their sorrows. It will not be a joy like what the world calls joy--loud-voiced, boisterous, ringing with idiot laughter; but it will be pure, and deep, and sacred, and permanent. A white lily is better than a flaunting peony, and the joy into which sorrow accepted turns is pure and refining and good. But you may say, “Ah! there are two kinds of sorrows. There are those that can be cured, and there are those that cannot. What have you got to say to me who have to bleed from an immedicable wound till the end of my life?” Well, I have to say this--look beyond earth’s dim dawns to that morning when the Sun of Righteousness shall arise. If we have to carry a load on an aching back till the end, be sure that when the night, which is far spent, is over, and the day, which is at hand, hath broken, every raindrop will be turned into a flashing rainbow when it is smitten by the level light, and every sorrow rightly borne be represented by a special and particular joy. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Weeping and joy

The following are suggested by this passage.

1. God is love. David inscribed over the portal of his house, “His anger is but for a moment,” etc. Did he not thus in broken and imperfect symbols speak out this truth of all truths that has been revealed from Calvary and the Ascension Mount, and which has been given to us that we may herald it to the world? “Herein is love, not that we loved God,” etc. It is in the light of that revelation of love, that we are to read the riddles of our existence. It is in the light of that revelation, and that alone, that the clouds of our forebodings and our despondencies can be put to flight. God’s government of the world, His providential ordering of the whole of the human race and of each individual life is for our everlasting good, and it is in accordance with His own nature of love. In that government nothing is forgotten; in that loving plan no heart has been left desolate. There is no deviation in the path of His intended progress; there is no friction in the Divine workings; for all things work together for good unto them that love God.

2. Another thing suggested by this passage is, that not only is His Divine anger consistent with Divine love, but given the fact that this love of God is love to free beings, to beings who are sinning continually, we may say that anger is absolutely essential to righteous love. God is the eternal righteousness as well as the eternal love. Calvary is the transcendent revelation to the world of the Divine love, but it is also the transcendent revelation of Divine righteousness. Because God is righteous God is angry. He is angry with the wicked, with corruption, impurity, cruelty, selfishness, falsehood, injustice, oppression, envy, hatred, murder, strife. What parent that truly loves his child will let that child flagrantly and persistently sin and not punish him? The rod is often a fitter emblem of love than a kiss.

3. These two visitors, Weeping and Joy, come instrumentally in the hands of God to the homes of a world that is being governed and directed by a righteous love. I do not say that Weeping is the messenger of God’s anger, and that Joy, on the other hand, is the messenger of His love. They are both messengers of His will; they both subserve His redemptive purposes; both of them alike may be messengers of His anger, as both of them alike may be messengers of His love. But although we should regard them as symbolic figures severally of anger and of love, the experiences of human life, when the house is hushed with grief, when the heart is low, followed--as, blessed be God! they are followed--by days of gladness, by giving “the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness”--all this experience of life should remind us that in the lines along which God is working, the secret principles of His government by that which is good and by that which is painful, through Weeping and through Joy, through this strangely mingled experience of human life, He is slowly working out that great purpose and toward that great end, the eternal good of all His creatures. God’s anger is special treatment for a critical hour; it is the probing of the wound; it is the changing, as it were, of the motive power in the secret nature of the soul; and it is only that we may remember that the Father of Spirits, in subjection to whom we live, is also the Ancient of Days and the Eternal Righteousness. But the Divine anger is transient. Anger will not keep; it is impossible that righteous anger can be kept; it is like the coal dropped hot from the furnace that cools every moment. Such is the anger of a righteous, loving being. It is not hatred and enmity and jealousy, but it is anger, a frown which, when the child sees, passes into a smile of paternal tenderness and love. (R. B. Brindley.)

A lyric of deliverance

I. the dirge of grief--“Weeping. .. night.” See how sorrow and night are linked. Life is this night.

1. A brief night.

2. A wild night sometimes.

3. A sorrowful night ofttimes.

4. But a night fringed with light, on this side and on that; and so the dirge has its consoling strain.

II. the lyric of deliverance.

“Joy. .. morning.” See how gladness and light are joined together.

1. In the morning of clearer knowledge.

2. In the morning of purer character.

3. In the morning of eternity. (R. C. Cowel.)

The joy of Easter

The associations we have with Easter are very various, but, for most of us, it represents more than anything else a great revulsion of feeling. The change from Good Friday to Easter Day is much more abrupt than any in the Christian year. It is like the sharp descent from the clear cold air of the Upper Alps into the rich and sunny plains of Italy, and it reminds us of earthly vicissitudes like that of the sovereign, who being imprisoned and expecting immediate execution, is placed by a sudden revolution on the throne of his ancestors. David’s words do not exaggerate the Easter feeling. The words describe the experience of David on more than one occasion. He had known one peril and then great deliverance. And such a morning as the text tells of was that first Resurrection morning for the disciples. We may say they ought not to have been in such heaviness because Jesus had so plainly and repeatedly told them of what would take place. Of His death and resurrection He had told them again and again. And yet, when they saw Him dead upon the Cross they were filled with an almost unimaginable disappointment. How is this to be explained? Human nature is naturally an optimist. Face to face with forecasts of trouble, it resists their reality and their force, it makes the best of them it can. They will not see what they do not wish to see. And so it was with our Lord and His disciples. Hence Peter’s word, “Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee,”--as though the prophecy of His Passion had been an utterance of morbid pessimism. And thus it was that when the last tragedy took place it found them unprepared. This was the heaviness which the first disciples had to endure. But what a joy came to them in the morning, as first on one and then on another there fell the rays of the rising Sun of Righteousness I And such a morning it will be when the Christian, having passed the gate of death, attains to a joyful resurrection. And ours will bear the pattern of our Lord’s. True, for Him there was no such interval between death and resurrection as there must be for us: and for Him there was no corruption, whilst for us there will be. But at length soul and body shall be joined together again and for ever. That the soul survives the body might be inferred from the law of the conservation of force or energy in the physical universe. For is there no energy but that of the substances which are known to chemistry? Are not thought, will, love, truly energies: as much so as any that we can identify with chemical elements? But how and in what shape does this spiritual energy survive? It must be in some form strictly personal, or else our personality ceases to be, and the soul is virtually annihilated. Physical force exists independently of the subject to whose life it belongs. But not so with spiritual force. We have no knowledge of it apart from the person in whom it is found. Therefore if the soul exists at all it must retain its personality. And all this is not mere metaphysic, but it is a practical question for the heart. Who that has loved and lost some dear one does not know how intensely real this question is. And let none think that to be absorbed in the ocean of universal life is something more noble than to retain our personal life. It is not so. There can be no joy in the annihilation of personality. To suppress self is good, but that is quite another thing from the annihilation of personality. Hence the value of the truth of the resurrection of the body, since it asserts so emphatically our enduring personality. And thus all anxieties as to the recognition of friends are set at rest. Joy will come through such recognition, in the morning. Yes, but to whom? To those who have learned the moral and spiritual as well as the physical meaning of the resurrection. There are two nights which hang heavily in the life of men--that of sorrow and that of sin. But through Christ our Lord each of them may be followed by a morning of joy. (Canon Liddon.)

The uninvited stranger and the welcome guest

The picture is a very striking one. In the evening Weeping, like a darkly veiled stranger, enters our dwelling, making all sorrowful by his unwelcome presence, but he comes only to sojourn for a night. In the morning another guest appears--Joy--like a rescuing angel, before whom Weeping disappears.

I. Is the case of the godly, the tearful night of affliction will be followed by the joyful morning of deliverance and God’s returning favour. We have here a figurative allusion to the way in which God had dealt with the psalmist and often deals with His people. His favour had been withdrawn, His displeasure manifested, but it was only for a moment, which moment is contrasted with the whole life gladdened with His smile. How often in the history of the Church have we seen the dark night of affliction succeeded by the bright morning of a glorious and triumphant deliverance! The darkest hour immediately preceding the dawn! For a while God seems to forget His people, to be deaf to their cry: He is only waiting for the set time to deliver; and the moment the fittest, the only fit time arrives, we see the morning succeed the night, and Joy take the place of Weeping. We see precisely the same thing in God’s dealings with individuals. The night of affliction falls upon them, the unwelcome stranger, Weeping, takes up his abode with them, their plans are traversed, their hopes are blighted, their house is rendered desolate. Well! it is their privilege to believe, not only that these painful circumstances will be overruled for good, but that the darkness of affliction’s night shall be succeeded by the brightness of a joyful morning. It is so often here, but whether so here or not, it will be so by and by.

II. the tearful night of life will be succeeded by the tearless and eternal day of heaven. We wait for the dawning of that day. We have the beginnings of heaven’s light and joy, here and now; the promise and earnest of them. We have passed from darkness to light, the Day-spring from on high hath visited us; and though we dwell in the dimness of early dawn, we are the children of the light. We should seek to walk in the light, walk as children of the light. (T. M. Morris.)

The two guests

I. weeping. It is at even that she comes to all our homes. When she enters, we close the shutters, and very often put out the candle, and in the glow of the dying embers on the hearth talk to her a while.

1. Weeping is sure to come to us when the shadow of death rests upon our home. She tells us that there seldom was a home so dark as ours, or a trial so great; that such a loss can never be fully made up; that now we are only just beginning to find out what life is.

2. Weeping comes in times of adversity and anxious care. With pensive countenance and in sad tones she says that Providence is full of mystery, and that in all ages she has known some of the best people who were thus sadly perplexed. She tells us that she well remembers how Asaph long ago used to say (Psalms 73:1; Psalms 73:5; Psalms 73:18). She reminds us how David, too, and other saints felt the same burden of mystery, and adds that no one has ever found the solution. She is not surprised that we are troubled; we well might be.

3. Weeping comes in those trying hours when friendships disappoint us and close and tender relationships become strained. She suggests that human nature is, notwithstanding all its professions, selfish and untrustworthy; that the exclamation of the psalmist is, sooner or later, the exclamation of all who have known much of the world and its ways: “Put not your trust in princes,” etc.

4. Weeping is sure to come to us in the hour of our humiliation and shame. In the dim glimmer of the fire on the hearth she brings to our notice stains on our garment which, she assures us, would look a thousand times worse if we saw them in the proper light--saw them as others see them; and, above all, as God sees them.

II. weeping vanishes out of sight in the grey light of dawn, and joy enters our dwelling. The blinds are drawn up again, the fire is rekindled upon the hearth; and then, in the growing light of day that streams through the window, Joy talks to us a while. We repeat to her what Weeping has told us, and Joy replies that Weeping is a true teacher, that it is her prerogative to utter many a truth which only she can teach, but that she overlooks others none the less important.

1. For instance, that in speaking to us of our bereavement as a loss for which nothing can compensate, she forgot to tell us of the meeting again; of the memory of that dear one which will be to us a life-long inspiration; of the upward direction which such a bereavement should give to our thoughts and aspirations; and of how it may be one of God’s ways of uniting us to Himself by associating His home with ours.

2. Again, Joy reminds us that when Weeping spoke of affliction as being the mystery which has perplexed God’s saints in all the ages, and of how she had heard Asaph say, “As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked,” etc. (Psalms 73:2), she forgot to tell us the rest that Asaph said: how that he began the psalm with, “Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart”; and how that, further on, in speaking of the prosperity of the wicked, he exclaims (verses 16-20 and 25, 26). “She forgot to tell you, too,” adds Joy, “what another psalmist said (Psalms 119:67). “Yes,” continues Joy, “Weeping is a good teacher, but she has a poor memory for aught that is joyous; she only remembers the sad.”

3. Joy pauses, and then, with a still brighter glow upon her countenance, and a clearer ring in her voice, she continues, And when Weeping spoke to you of your sin, she gave you but half the truth. When she told you that you could never remove the stains of sin which God saw upon your garment, she forgot to say that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth,” etc. (D. Davies.)

Sorrow

Among the things on view at the Stanley Exhibition, held in London a few years ago, was a small MS. volume which will always be associated with the memory of an Englishman who went to the Dark Continent not to indulge a love of sport, or travel, or adventure, nor yet in order to make a fortune, but to preach the religion of Jesus Christ. The book was Bishop Hannington’s diary. The handwriting, you may remember, was small and closely written, after the manner of a traveller who must get as much as possible into a small compass. And this was the entry on the last page, the last that the Bishop ever made: “I can hear no news, but was held up by Psalms 30:1., which came with great power. A hyena howled near me last night, smelling sick man, but I hope he is not to have me yet.” The date of that entry was October 29, 1885, and it shows how the psalms are full of religious power, fit for every-day use even in our own time. Time and knowledge would fail one to tell of all the saints of God who have been helped by the 30th Psalm. Even at the stake, when the faggots have been piled all about, and fetters have weighted every limb, martyrs for the faith have sung with unfaltering voices its promises of sure and certain hope, and have passed away joyfully with its words upon their lips. One such was John Herwin, who suffered during Alva’s persecutions of the Nether-landish Protestants. “At the place of execution,” writes the chronicler of the time, “one gave him his hand and comforted him.” Then “began he to sing the 30th Psalm”; and the 30th Psalm, in spite of interruptions, he sang through from beginning to end. (E. H. Eland, M. A.)

Weeping and Jog

Lo! there comes hitherward, as though making for the door of our house, a dark form. She is slightly bent, but not with age. She has a pale face, her step is languid, like one who has travelled far and is weary; and her tears flow so fast that she cannot wipe them away. Our hearts begin to beat as we watch her coming. Will she pass, or will she stay? “I am a pilgrim,” quoth she; “will you lodge me for the night? I am sad, I am weary, for I go round all the world. There are few houses I do not enter, and in some I make a long stay. You ask me for nay name. I bear it in my countenance: my name is ‘Weeping.’ You wish to see my credentials? It is sufficient that none have been able to keep me outside a door inside of which I wished to be; and I know that, notwithstanding your beating hearts, you will not be inhospitable; you will take me in.” “Yes, for a little, to refresh you, to dry your tears if we can; and then to bid you farewell.” “Nay, I can make no stipulation; I go where I am sent, I depart at the appointed time!” And now “Weeping” has her chamber in the house. And the blinds are drawn down, and hearts are hushed, and feet tread lightly; and, listening all night through, we hear sighs, and sometimes almost sobs, from the chamber where “Weeping” lies sleepless. And we, too, are sleepless and anxious, and one and another find the tears flowing down their own cheeks as the night goes on; and the house is all full of pain and fear, as the dark thought begins to take shape that she may have come to make a long stay. We are up betimes, for now we are amongst them “that watch for the morning.” Some flush of it is in file eastern sky, “and see,” we say to each other, “it is beginning to gild yon mountain peaks, and to flow down into the valleys,” when, hearing some footsteps approaching--lo! there comes one whose step is elastic, whose form is graceful, who bears the dawn on his countenance, who sheds light around him as he walks. Again our hearts begin to beat, but this time it is with fear that he will not stay. “I am a pilgrim,” quoth he; “I have been long on the road; I can walk through the darkest night and not stumble; I have come to you this morning with the dawn, and I wish to stay.” Ah, welcome indeed I if we knew where to give thee room; we have but one guest-chamber, and it is occupied. There came to us last night a poor pilgrim named ‘Weeping,’ who for the first hours of night sighed and wept so sorely that it seemed as if she were breathing her life away. For the last two hours she seems to have fallen on sleep, for her chamber is silent, and it would be cruel to awake her.” “Weeping? ah, I know her well. My name is Joy. Weeping and Joy have bad the world between them since the world was made. But, now, look in your room. You will find it empty. I met her an hour ago on the other side of the hill. She told me she had slipped silently away, and that I would be just in time to smile good-morning to you from my bright face, while she went on her way towards the valley of Baca, and the deeper, darker valley of the shadow of death. Weeping will not come here again to-night, and I shall stay, or I shall leave some of the light of my presence to fill the house. We often meet, and always part. But there is a time coming, in the Land of Light, from which I come, when even she will not know how to weep. “For the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.” (A. Raleigh, D. D.)