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Let me speak of the helpfulness of the mountains as a sign, not a measure, but an imperfect sign of the helpfulness of God. The most sheltered spots of earth are mountain guarded. When we rejoice in the valley, let us remember only the mountain made it possible. Is it protected from devastating storms such as involve the plains in their fury? It is because the mountain has guarded it. It has broken the hurricane's wing and the cyclone's wheel. Is it alive with meadow streams that sing their gladsome song to the green grasses that bend over to listen? It is because the mountains sent the streamlets flashing down, pure as crystal and full of tonic for every living thing in the valley. Has there been an abundance of rain? The mountain nurtured the storm full of menace, but so full of blessing that when it saw the fields suffering for its baptism, it opened its veins of life with the lightning's lance, and became balm and benison to the blighted fields. Not only so, but the mountains give their fresh wealth to supply new soil to the valley. The storms that scar their old sides are ploughing up fresh soil for the cornfields and the valley. And the streams are the carriers that, plunging gaily from steep to steep, carry it down. The Alleghanies help to make the Ohio Valley. The Rockies enrich the Missouri, the mountains of Central Africa make the exhaustless granary of the Nile delta. Oh! the help there is in the stern hills Oh! the blessing God is to this low world! How He comes to shield from storms. How He sends upon us the living streams of His truth. Yes, how He bends Himself to be the nourishment and strength of His people! Consider the influence of the hills on the civilization of the world. They have been the nurseries of heroism, of physical and moral strength. The early Turanians, who displaced the stagnant barbarism of Asia with a rude vigour, descended for their work from the mountain ranges of Siberia. The Modes and Persians, who came down like messengers of Divine judgment on the effeminate luxury and showy splendour of Babylon, came from the hill country. The Spartans who filled the Thermopylae Pass were mountain men. The Waldenses, who held their own for liberty, held it in poverty and pain among the pinnacles of Piedmont — held it against all the cultured and disciplined power of the cities on the plains. Their natures were as rugged as the grey Alps around them. It is a grand preparation for heroism to be obliged to fight life's battle under the stern conditions of the mountains. They do not smile on easy living. They are severe masters, but they enforce the lesson. He who has overcome the mountains has overcome many other things at the same time. But I do not believe that the chief value of mountains as promoters of heroism is of a physical sort. At last heroism has a moral base. Mountains make tough animals. They are the habitation of daring wild beasts, but they also work on those moral qualities which make great patriots. They affect men's thoughts. They appeal to a man's reverence. They overawe him with power. They work on his conscience. To face Mont Blanc is itself a sort of judgment day. It says "God." There is absolutely no support for tired human spirits but in the idea of God, and that which that idea implies. To the mountain of Sinai you must look for the quickening of conscience; to the mountain of Calvary for salvation from sin. As the mountains lift themselves above the world in a "stillness of perpetual benediction," so God rises to our faith and hope above these storm-driven plains of time. His Fatherhood overhangs us like a perpetual benediction. He helps us with a help that is quite sufficient, and that sustains us amid all circumstances; yea, with a help that makes us indifferent to circumstance. To men accustomed only to the light of reason and calculation it is difficult to present the spiritual help of the Lord. It cannot be explained. But it is the one profound fact that makes the difference between the submissive and meek-brewed; yea, the rejoicing saint and the complaining and rebellious sinner. I have often asked friends, "What is the source of the contented lives the Swiss peasants live amid their secluding mountains?" Contented and peaceful they undeniably are, and that, too, in poverty and toil from beginning to end. It seems as if the genii of the mountains from unseen sources beyond the storms brought unfailing peace and comfort as the streams that spring from the snows water their flocks and their pastures. The reservoir never fails. Now, God's sustaining grace is like those streams of Alpine blessing. You cannot quite trace; you certainly cannot explain it. The child of God who perhaps has nothing but poverty and pain, misery and misfortune, as the world reckons, somehow holds a boundless peace, and the martyr who smiles in his agonies is not a more conspicuous example of this strange unseen help of God than is the quiet patient soul who, in ordinary ways of uneventful living, holds a steadfast faith and a happy hope in God.

(C. L. Thompson, D. D.)

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KJV: {A Song of degrees.} I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

WEB: I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?