contact with Him, and receive from Him the security and the blessing
that He can bestow. Nothing else brings a man into living fellowship
with Him. When we trust in the Lord we, as it were, are bedded into Him;
and resting upon Him with all our weight, then we are safe. That
confidence involves the abandonment of all the 'refuges of lies.' There
must be utter self-distrust and forsaking and turning away from every
dependence upon anything else, if we are to trust ourselves to Jesus
Christ. But the figure of a foundation which gives security and
stability to the stones laid upon it, does not exhaust all the
blessedness of this building upon Christ. For when we really rest upon
Him, there comes from the foundation up through all the courses a vital
power. Thus Peter puts it: 'To whom, coming as unto a living stone, ye
also as living stones are built up.' We might illustrate this by the
supposition of some fortress perched upon a rock, and in the heart of
the rock a clear fountain, which is guided by some pipe or other into
the innermost rooms of the citadel. Thus, builded upon Christ, 'our
defence shall be the munitions of rocks, and our waters shall be sure.'
From Him, the foundation, there will rise into all the stones, built
upon Him, the power of His own endless life, and they, too, become
living stones.

IV. So note, lastly, the quiet confidence of the builders.

'He that believeth shall not _make haste._' The word is somewhat
obscure, and the LXX., which is followed by the New Testament, readers
it, 'Shall not be confounded or put to shame.' But the rendering of our
text seems to be accurate enough. 'He shall not make haste.' Remember
the picture of the context--a suddenly descending storm, a swiftly
rising and turbid flood, the lashing of the rain, the howling of the
wind. The men in the clay-built hovels on the flat have to take to