cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, may rise on the horizon, and may
thicken and blacken and grow greater and nearer till all the sky is
dark, and burst in lightning and rain and fierceness of wind, till
'through the torn sail the wild tempest is streaming,' and the white
crests of the waves are like the mane of Death's pale horse leaping upon
the broken ship. We have all learnt in how profound a sense, by reason
of outward adverse circumstances and inward temptations, by reason of
the fears of a Justice which we know is throned at the centre of the
creation, by reason of a death which to us is a terror, and by reason of
that universal fear of 'after death the judgment,' storm and tempest
swoop upon our paths. God made the sunshine, and we have made it a
storm. God made life blessed and full of safety and peace, and we have
wrenched ourselves from Him and stand defenceless amidst its dangers.

Then, there is another aspect and conception of life which underlies
these words of my text. The image of the desert was before the prophet's
rapt vision. He saw the sand whirled into mad dancing columns before the
blast which swept across the unsheltered flat, with nothing, for a day's
march, to check its force. But the wilderness is not only shelterless,
it is waterless too--a place in which wild and ravening thirst finds no
refreshing draughts, and the tongue cleaves to the blackening gums.

'Rivers of water in a dry place'; and what is the prose fact of that?
That you and I live in the midst of a world which has no correspondence
with, nor power of satisfying, our truest and deepest selves--that we
bear about with us a whole set of longings and needs and weaknesses and
strengths and capacities, all of which, like the climbing tendrils of
some creeping plant, go feeling and putting out their green fingers to
lay hold of some prop and stay--that man is so made that for his rest
and blessedness he must have an external object round which his spirit