Here are two symbols by which the psalmist describes the confidence of the righteous. "He only is my rock." Only yesterday I had the shelter of a great rock on a storm-swept mountain side. The wind tore along the heights, driving the rain like hail, but in the opening of the rock our shelter was complete.

And the second symbol is this: "He is my high place." The high place is the home of the chamois, out of reach of the arrow. "Flee as a bird to your mountain!" Get beyond the hunter's range! Our security is found in loftiness. It is our unutterable privilege to live in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Such is the confidence of the righteous.

In this psalm there is also another pair of symbols describing the futility of the wicked. The wicked is "as a bowing wall." The wall is out of perpendicular, out of conformity with the truth of the plumb-line, and it will assuredly topple into ruin. So is it with the wicked: he is building awry, and he will fall into moral disaster. He is also "as a tottering fence." The wind and the rain dislodge the fence, it rots at its foundations, and one day it lies prone upon the ground.