hold. So, up in God we may dwell at rest whate'er betide. Strange that
we should prefer to live down amongst the unwalled villages, which every
spoiler can harry and burn, when we might climb, and by the might and
the magic of trust in the Lord bring round about ourselves a wall of
fire which shall consume the poison out of the evil, even whilst it
permits the sorrow to do its beneficent work upon us!

III. Note again the worthiness of the divine Name to evoke, and the
power of the divine character to reward, the trust.

We pass to the last words of _my_ text:--'In the Lord Jehovah is
everlasting strength.'

Now I suppose we all know that the words feebly rendered in the
Authorised Version 'everlasting strength' are literally 'the Rock of
Ages'; and that this verse is the source of that hallowed figure which,
by one of the greatest of our English hymns, is made familiar and
immortal to all English-speaking people.

But there is another peculiarity about the words on which I dwell for a
moment, and that is, that here we have, for one of the only two times in
which the expression occurs in Scripture, the great name of Jehovah
reduplicated. 'In Jab Jehovah is the Rock of Ages.' In the former verse
the prophet had given up in despair the attempt to characterise the
peace which God gave, and fallen back upon the expedient of naming it
twice over. In this verse, with similar eloquence of reticence, he
abandons the attempt to describe or characterise that great Name, and in
adoration, contents himself with twice taking it upon his lips, in order
to _impress_ what he cannot _express_, the majesty and the sufficiency
of that name.