1. All know more or less of this "day" — morning, noon, or eventide of it, or the whole "day."

2. Trouble various:(1) Business trouble — competition — dishonest traders — bad times, etc.(2) Domestic trouble — family cares — sick child — wayward son or daughter — poverty.(3) Soul-trouble — sins realized — con-science accusing — unworthiness and imperfections — doubts and fears, etc.

3. Only a "day"! not a week — month — year, etc.

II. THE REQUEST. "Call upon Me." Friends generally plentiful in prosperity, scarce in trouble. God wants us to come particularly then. Take your prayer-cheques and faith-orders to His Bank, and so ask and receive that your joy may be full. This the Divine cure for trouble. Don't worry — chafe — fret — despair; simply give Him a "call" — He is always at home, etc.

III. THE PROMISE. "I will deliver thee." Infinite ability and willinghood — power and love — are at the back of this promise. None ever called aright and were refused. Noah, David, Daniel, etc., cried and were delivered.

IV. THE RESULT. "Thou shalt glorify Me."

1. By presenting praise (ver 23).

2. By publishing His fame — gratitude will constrain to this.

3. By trusting implicitly at all times.

(J. O. Keen, D. D.)

I. REALISM IS PREFERRED TO RITUALISM. Note the content. How this is so.

1. Because there is meaning in it. There is none in ritualism when grace is absent. But when you call upon God in the day of trouble there is meaning, and God understands, and cares for it when all the pomp and show, and the gorgeousness of ritual are to Him as nothing.

2. There is spirituality in it, and worship in spirit and in truth is what God would have.

3. It recognizes God as the living God.

4. It is sincere. In prosperity we are apt to forget our prayers. Too many of us are like boys' tops, that cease to spin except they are whipped. Certainly trouble gives intensity to prayer.

5. It is humble. Too often we are over-satisfied with our own performances in the way of worship, but when in deep trouble the soul bows down then.

6. And there is a measure of faith in such prayers. When faith does, as it were, only cross over the field of the camera, so that across the photograph there is a dim trace of its having been there, God can spy it out, and He can and will accept prayer for the sake of that little faith. Next we have —

II. ADVERSITY TURNED TO ADVANTAGE. God cannot deliver a man who is not in trouble: even Jesus Christ cannot heal a man who is not sick. Now, if you be in trouble, you have —

1. A plea from the time. This is the day of trouble. Your case is urgent.

2. From the trouble itself. It is so great.

3. From the command. God bids you pray.

4. From His own character — so great, so good.

III. FREE GRACE LAID UNDER BONDS. "I will deliver thee:" thus God pledges Himself. The text is unconditional as to the persons. And God's "I will" includes all needful power which may be needed for deliverance. But we are not told exactly when God wilt do this. You are in a great hurry, but the Lord is not. When the gold is cast into the fining-pot, there it must stay till the dross is purged away. But promptitude is implied. He will deliver you in the best possible time.

IV. GOD AND THE PRAYING MAN TAKING SHARES. Here is your share, "Call upon Me"; here is God's share, "I will deliver." Again, here is yours, You shall be delivered; and then, again, it is the Lord's turn, "Thou shalt glorify Me." Here is a delightful partnership. Who would demur to these terms? If God will pardon and justify us, adopt and sanctify us, and bring us home to heaven at last, shall He not have the glory of it? Even some divines will give man a little of the glory. Oh, that Dagon of a free will! How men will worship it! Go out henceforth, you saved ones, and tell what the Lord has done for you. An aged woman once said that if the Lord Jesus Christ really did save her, He should never hear the last of it.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

I. IT BRINGS GLORY TO HIM IN ITSELF.

1. It shows that God is a reality to the man.

2. There is spiritual intercourse in it. How easy it is to say a prayer without coming into contact with God! Year after year the tongue repeats pious language, as a barrel organ grinds out the old tunes, and there may be no more converse with the Lord than if the man had muttered to the ghosts of the slain. Many prayers might as well be said backward as forwards, for there would be as much in them one way as the other. The abracadabra of the magician has quite as much virtue in it as any other set of mere words.

3. It is filled with a manifest hope in God.

4. It exhibits a clinging affection to Him, and —

5. A most stedfast confidence. Therefore is it that such prayer brings glory to God.

II. ALSO, THROUGH THE ANSWER WHICH IT WINS. The answer is personal, positive, practical, permanent.

III. AND THE LORD WILL BE GLORIFIED IN YOUR CONDUCT AFTERWARDS. Adoration, gratitude, trust, patience, a consecrated life. It is by the sharp needle of sorrow that we are embroidered with the praises of the Lord. The brightest of the saints owe much of their clearness to the fire and the file. We must be tried that the Lord may be glorified.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. Earnestness of heart.

2. Faith, which realizes both God's truth and God's grace.

3. Expectation.

II. THE PROMISE GIVEN — "I will deliver thee." Who else can? Medical science seems of but little avail. But God can (Revelation 7.). The command to the angel of penitence; and 2 Samuel, last chapter. All show that the Lord can limit the powers of evil. Let us remember the love of God — His presenting, forbearing, redeeming, sanctifying love.

III. PRACTICAL LESSONS.

1. Acknowledge God's hand in this affliction.

2. Do not exaggerate it.

3. Do not neglect it. Humble yourselves and help the poor.

(H. Montagu Villiers, M. A.)

I. A COMMAND FOR GOD'S PEOPLE. They are represented as in trouble. There is "a day of trouble," it is intimated, either come on them or coming. And it is a touching circumstance, that whoever else may overlook our troubles, the Lord does not. Call upon Me in the day of trouble. Afflicted souls should pray more and oftener, and to bring us to this is the design of trouble, and when we are brought thus to pray, it is one of the very best evidences that our trouble has been blessed to us. One thing more we must add — the Lord will assuredly bring all His troubled people to this, this calling upon Him. He will knock away their props from under them, or He will wither their strength, or He will add more and more to their burden; in some way He will make them feel that they cannot possibly stand without Him (Psalm 107.).

II. A GRACIOUS PROMISE THE LORD GIVES TO HIS PEOPLE. "I will deliver thee." This means —

1. Deliverance in trouble; or —

2. From trouble.

III. THE HAPPY EFFECT WHICH IS TO FOLLOW — "Thou shalt glorify Me." And this will be both in and after our trouble. The believer ever recognizes God's hand in such deliverance, and therefore glorifies Him. Let us all turn to God now, so that we may be able to turn to Him when trouble comes.

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

I. THE TIME. "The day of trouble "does not appear to be governed, as is our natural day, by planetary revolutions, or the swing of the pendulum. It may come at any hour, and may stay long after the natural day is done.

II. THE REQUEST. "Call upon Me."

1. Humbly.

2. Believingly, etc.

III. THE PROMISE. "I will deliver thee." God can always repeat Himself; He can always "deliver" more gloriously the next time you "call upon Him," if you only honour Him by asking, and believing that He will.

IV. THE RESULT. "Thou shalt glorify Me."

1. By our faith.

2. By gratitude.

3. By obedience.

4. By testifying of His goodness.

5. By devotion to His cause.

6. By praising Him.

(T. Kelly.)

     1320   God, as Saviour
     8640   calling upon God

Psalm 50:14-15

     5878   honour
     8630   worship, results

And that which Follows Concerning Birds of the Air and Lilies of the Field...
35. And that which follows concerning birds of the air and lilies of the field, He saith to this end, that no man may think that God careth not for the needs of His servants; when His most wise Providence reacheth unto these in creating and governing those. For it must not be deemed that it is not He that feeds and clothes them also which work with their hands. But lest they turn aside the Christian service of warfare unto their purpose of getting these things, the Lord in this premonisheth His servants …
St. Augustine—Of the Work of Monks.

The Holy Souls
THE HOLY SOULS Officium Defunctorum Lent and Holy Week, etc. Miserere mei Deus Psalm 50 Vatican Antiphonale First Mode (First portion is sung before the Psalm) (The entire antiphon is sung at the end of Psalm) Exsultabunt Domino ossa humiliata. First Psalm Tone 1. Miserere mei Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. 2. Et secundum multitudinem miserationem tuarum, dele iniquitatem mea. 3. Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me. 4. Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et …
Various—The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book

Why all Things Work for Good
1. The grand reason why all things work for good, is the near and dear interest which God has in His people. The Lord has made a covenant with them. "They shall be my people, and I will be their God" (Jer. xxxii. 38). By virtue of this compact, all things do, and must work, for good to them. "I am God, even thy God" (Psalm l. 7). This word, Thy God,' is the sweetest word in the Bible, it implies the best relations; and it is impossible there should be these relations between God and His people, and …
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

Rome and Ephesus
Corinth as portrayed in the Epistles of Paul gives us our simplest and least contaminated picture of the Hellenic Christianity which regarded itself as the cult of the Lord Jesus, who offered salvation--immortality--to those initiated in his mysteries. It had obvious weaknesses in the eyes of Jewish Christians, even when they were as Hellenised as Paul, since it offered little reason for a higher standard of conduct than heathenism, and its personal eschatology left no real place for the resurrection …
Kirsopp Lake—Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity

The Opinion of St. Augustin
Concerning His Confessions, as Embodied in His Retractations, II. 6 1. "The Thirteen Books of my Confessions whether they refer to my evil or good, praise the just and good God, and stimulate the heart and mind of man to approach unto Him. And, as far as pertaineth unto me, they wrought this in me when they were written, and this they work when they are read. What some think of them they may have seen, but that they have given much pleasure, and do give pleasure, to many brethren I know. From the …
St. Augustine—The Confessions and Letters of St

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Triumph Over Death and the Grave
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin: and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. T he Christian soldier may with the greatest propriety, be said to war a good warfare (I Timothy 1:18) . He is engaged in a good cause. He fights under the eye of the Captain of his salvation. Though he be weak in himself, and though his enemies are many and mighty, he may do that which in other soldiers …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

Seasons of Covenanting.
The duty is never unsuitable. Men have frequently, improperly esteemed the exercise as one that should be had recourse to, only on some great emergency. But as it is sinful to defer religious exercises till affliction, presenting the prospect of death, constrain to attempt them, so it is wrong to imagine, that the pressure of calamity principally should constrain to make solemn vows. The exercise of personal Covenanting should be practised habitually. The patriot is a patriot still; and the covenanter …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Putting God to Work
"For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God beside thee who worketh for him that waiteth for him."--Isaiah 64:4. The assertion voiced in the title given this chapter is but another way of declaring that God has of His own motion placed Himself under the law of prayer, and has obligated Himself to answer the prayers of men. He has ordained prayer as a means whereby He will do things through men as they pray, which He would not otherwise do. Prayer …
Edward M. Bounds—The Weapon of Prayer

Epistle cxxi. To Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville).
To Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville). Gregory to Leander, Bishop of Spain. I have the epistle of thy Holiness, written with the pen of charity alone. For what the tongue transferred to the paper had got its tincture from the heart. Good and wise men were present when it was read, and at once their bowels were stirred with emotion. Everyone began to seize thee in his heart with the hand of love, for that in that epistle the sweetness of thy disposition was not to be heard, but seen. All severally …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

The Third Commandment
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.' Exod 20: 7. This commandment has two parts: 1. A negative expressed, that we must not take God's name in vain; that is, cast any reflections and dishonour on his name. 2. An affirmative implied. That we should take care to reverence and honour his name. Of this latter I shall speak more fully, under the first petition in the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed be thy name.' I shall …
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

First Sunday after Epiphany
Text: Romans 12, 1-6. 1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. 2 And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 3 For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. II

Letter Xlv (Circa A. D. 1120) to a Youth Named Fulk, who Afterwards was Archdeacon of Langres
To a Youth Named Fulk, Who Afterwards Was Archdeacon of Langres He gravely warns Fulk, a Canon Regular, whom an uncle had by persuasions and promises drawn back to the world, to obey God and be faithful to Him rather than to his uncle. To the honourable young man Fulk, Brother Bernard, a sinner, wishes such joy in youth as in old age he will not regret. 1. I do not wonder at your surprise; I should wonder if you were not suprised [sic] that I should write to you, a countryman to a citizen, a monk …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

How those are to be Admonished who Abstain not from the Sins which they Bewail, and those Who, Abstaining from Them, Bewail them Not.
(Admonition 31.) Differently to be admonished are those who lament their transgressions, and yet forsake them not, and those who forsake them, and yet lament them not. For those who lament their transgressions and yet forsake them not are to be admonished to learn to consider anxiously that they cleanse themselves in vain by their weeping, if they wickedly defile themselves in their living, seeing that the end for which they wash themselves in tears is that, when clean, they may return to filth. …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Nature of Covenanting.
A covenant is a mutual voluntary compact between two parties on given terms or conditions. It may be made between superiors and inferiors, or between equals. The sentiment that a covenant can be made only between parties respectively independent of one another is inconsistent with the testimony of Scripture. Parties to covenants in a great variety of relative circumstances, are there introduced. There, covenant relations among men are represented as obtaining not merely between nation and nation, …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Letter xix (A. D. 1127) to Suger, Abbot of S. Denis
To Suger, Abbot of S. Denis He praises Suger, who had unexpectedly renounced the pride and luxury of the world to give himself to the modest habits of the religious life. He blames severely the clerk who devotes himself rather to the service of princes than that of God. 1. A piece of good news has reached our district; it cannot fail to do great good to whomsoever it shall have come. For who that fear God, hearing what great things He has done for your soul, do not rejoice and wonder at the great …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Epistle Lxiv. To Augustine, Bishop of the Angli .
To Augustine, Bishop of the Angli [174] . Here begins the epistle of the blessed Gregory pope of the city of Rome, in exposition of various matters, which he sent into transmarine Saxony to Augustine, whom he had himself sent in his own stead to preach. Preface.--Through my most beloved son Laurentius, the presbyter, and Peter the monk, I received thy Fraternity's letter, in which thou hast been at pains to question me on many points. But, inasmuch as my aforesaid sons found me afflicted with the …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

The Doctrine
OF THE LAW AND GRACE UNFOLDED; OR, A DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE LAW AND GRACE; THE NATURE OF THE ONE, AND THE NATURE OF THE OTHER; SHOWING WHAT THEY ARE, AS THEY ARE THE TWO COVENANTS; AND LIKEWISE, WHO THEY BE, AND WHAT THEIR CONDITIONS ARE, THAT BE UNDER EITHER OF THESE TWO COVENANTS: Wherein, for the better understanding of the reader, there are several questions answered touching the law and grace, very easy to be read, and as easy to be understood, by those that are the sons of wisdom, the children …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

The Ninth Commandment
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.' Exod 20: 16. THE tongue which at first was made to be an organ of God's praise, is now become an instrument of unrighteousness. This commandment binds the tongue to its good behaviour. God has set two natural fences to keep in the tongue, the teeth and lips; and this commandment is a third fence set about it, that it should not break forth into evil. It has a prohibitory and a mandatory part: the first is set down in plain words, the other …
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

On the Symbols of the Essence' and Coessential. '
We must look at the sense not the wording. The offence excited is at the sense; meaning of the Symbols; the question of their not being in Scripture. Those who hesitate only at coessential,' not to be considered Arians. Reasons why coessential' is better than like-in-essence,' yet the latter may be interpreted in a good sense. Explanation of the rejection of coessential' by the Council which condemned the Samosatene; use of the word by Dionysius of Alexandria; parallel variation in the use of Unoriginate; …
Athanasius—Select Works and Letters or Athanasius