first. He scattered the armies of which the king of Judah was afraid
like chaff, with his fierce and disciplined onset. And then, having
driven them off the bleeding prey, he put his own paw upon it, and
growled 'Mine!' And where he struck his claws there was little more
hope of life for the prostrate creature below him.

Ay! and that is what this world always does. In the case before us
there was providential guidance of the politics of the Eastern nations
in order to bring about these results; and we do not look for anything
of that sort. No! But there are natural laws at work today which are
God's laws, and which ensure the worthlessness of the help bought so
dear.

A godless life has at the best only partial satisfaction, and that
partial satisfaction soon diminishes. 'Even in laughter the heart is
sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.'

That is the experience of all men, and I need not dwell upon the
threadbare commonplaces which have survived from generation to
generation, because each generation in turn has found them so
piteously true, about the incompleteness and the fleetingness of all
the joys and treasures of this life. The awful power of habit, if
there were no other reason, takes the edge off all gratification
except in so far as God is in it. Nothing fully retains its power to
satisfy. Nothing has that power absolutely at any moment; but even
what measure of it any of our possessions or pursuits may have for a
time, soon, or at all events by degrees, passes away. The greater part
of life is but like drinking out of empty cups, and the cups drop from
our hands. What one of our purest and peacefullest poets said in his
haste about all his kind is true in spirit of all godless lives:--