You know that all the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament are
conditional, and that there are many of them that were never fulfilled,
and were spoken in order that they might not be fulfilled, if only the
people took warning. I wish folk would carry a little more consciously
in their minds that principle in interpreting them all, and in asking
about their fulfilment. Not only in regard to these ancient events, but
in regard to our individual experience, God's promises and threatenings
are conditional.

Take that first metaphor of the hovering mother-bird. Listen to this
expansion of it in one of the psalms: 'He shall cover thee with His
feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.' The word for _trust_
here means to 'fly into a refuge.' Can you not see the picture? A little
brood round the parent bird, frightened by some beast of prey, or
hovering hawk in the sky, and fluttering under its wings, and all safe
and huddled together there close against the warm breast, and in amongst
the downy feathers. 'Under His wings shalt thou trust.' Put thou thy
trust in God, and God is to thee the hovering bird, the broad shield,
the Angel that 'passes over.'

Take the other picture of the Passover night. Only by our individual
faith in Jesus Christ as our individual Saviour can we put the blood on
our door-posts so that the Destroying Angel shall pass by. So, if we
would have the sweetness of such words as these fulfilled in our daily
lives, however disturbed and troubled and sorrowful and solitary they
may be, the first condition is that under His wings shall we flee for
refuge, and we do so by trust in Him.

But having thus fled thither, we must continue there, if we would