makes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers; and St.
Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose,
when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, 'That text in the
104th Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels
spirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.' So
shewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits, that
God's angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaring
thunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is something
more--that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees of
Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deer
slip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that is
David's account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; you
may or not as you like. See again. Those springs in the hill-
sides, how do they come there? 'Rain-water soaking and flowing
out,' we say. True, but David says something more; he says, God
sends the springs, and He sends them into the rivers too. You may
say, 'Why, water must run down-hill, what need of God?' But suppose
God had chosen that water should run UP-hill and not down, how would
it have been then?--Very different, I think. No; He sends them; He
sends all things. Wherever there is any thing useful, His Spirit
has settled it. The help that is done on earth He doeth it all
Himself.--Loving and merciful,--caring for the poor dumb beasts!--He
sends the springs, and David says, "All the beasts of the field
drink thereof." The wild animals in the night, He cares for them
too,--He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by night, and we
think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not with
David: he says, "The lions roaring after their prey do seek their
meat from God,"--God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon
Him. He is a God! "He did not make the world," says a wise man,
"and then let it spin round His finger," as we wind up a watch, and