speak about Him as being 'a wall of fire round about it and the glory in
the midst of it.' The fact of salvation is the wall and the bulwark. And
the consciousness of the fact and the sense of possessing it, is for our
poor hearts, one of our best defenses against both the evil of sin and
the evil of sorrow. For nothing so robs temptation of its power, so
lightens the pressure of calamities, and draws the poison from the fangs
of sin and sorrow, as the assurance that the loving purpose of God to
save grasps and keeps us. They who shelter behind that wall, feel that
between them and sin, and them and sorrow, there rises the inexpugnable
defense of an Almighty purpose and power to save, lie safe whatever
betides. There is no need of other defenses. Zion

'Needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep.'

God Himself is the shield and none other is required.

So, brethren, let us walk by the faith that is always confident, though
it depends on an unseen hand. It is a grand thing to be able to stand,
as it were, in the open, a mark for all 'the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune' and yet to feel that around us there are walls most
real, though invisible, which permit no harm to come to us. Our feeble
sense-bound souls much prefer a visible wall. We, like a handrail on the
stair. Though it does not at all guard the descent, it keeps our heads
from getting dizzy. It is hard for us, as some travellers may have to
do, to walk with steady foot and unthrobbing heart along a narrow ledge
of rock with beetling precipice above us and black depths beneath, and
we would like a little bit of a wall of some sort, for imagination if
not for reality, between us and the sheer descent. But it is blessed to
learn that naked we are clothed, solitary we have a Companion, and