nature. Only they who stay themselves upon God, and get down through all
the superficial shifting strata of drift and gravel, to the base-rock,
are steadfast and solid.

My brother, if you desire to govern yourself, you must let God govern
you. If you desire to be firm, you must draw your firmness from the
unchangingness of that divine nature which you grasp. How can a willow
be stiffened into an iron pillar? Only--if I might use such a violent
metaphor--when it receives into its substance the iron particles that it
draws from the soil in which it is rooted. How can a bit of thistledown
be kept motionless amidst the tempest? Only by being glued to something
that is fixed. What do men do with light things on deck when the ship is
pitching? Lash them to a fixed point. Lash yourselves to God by simple
trust, and then you will partake of His serene immutability in such
fashion as it is possible for the creature to participate in the
attributes of the Creator.

And then, still further, the steadfast mind--steadfast because it
trusts--is rewarded in that it is kept by God. It is no mere mistake in
the order of his thought which leads this prophet to allege that it is
the steadfast mind which God keeps. For, though it is true, on the one
hand, that the real fixity and solidity of a human character come more
surely and fully through trust in God than by any other means, on the
other hand it is true that, in order to receive the full blessed effects
of trust into our characters and lives, we must persistently and
doggedly keep on in the attitude of confidence. If a man holds out to
God a tremulous hand with a shaking cup in it, which Le sometimes
presents and sometimes twitches back, it is not to be expected that God
will pour the treasure of His grace into such a vessel, with the risk of
most of it being spilt upon the ground. There must be a steadfast