ling." So you will
understand that the best place to view the New Jerusalem from is the
ruins of the Old. It is in this spirit that we want to study the
gleaming waters "that make glad the city of God."

Observe, then, that the ancient Jerusalem was not situated, as most
cities, on the banks of some river, or the shore of some sea. It stood
in a peculiar position, at some distance from either: it was badly
watered; we read of a pool or two, of a little brook, of an aqueduct
and some other artificial water-structures. Bearing this fact in mind,
you will understand how forcible an appeal to the imagination would be
contained in the verse of the 46th Psalm, which tells of a river that
should "make glad the city of God."

In evidence of the foregoing you may notice the following remark of
Philo on the verse quoted (_de somniis_, ii. 38); "The holy city, which
exists at present, in which also the holy temple is established, is at
a great distance from any sea or river, so that it is clear that the
writer here means figuratively to speak of some other city than the
visible city of God." It is evident, therefore, that the mention of a
pure, fresh stream flowing through the midst of Jerusalem was a figure
of a very striking nature; and we say, that the basis of this
magnificent description in the Apocalypse lies in the insufficiency of
the water-supply of the ancient city. God takes our outward
necessities and uses them as figures by which to make us alive to the
facts of our inward neediness, and of the abundant power that there is
in Him to satisfy us. The Bible is full of promises as outwardly
impossible as that a river should flow through the midst of Jerusalem.
The streams of life, the floods of holy influence, the manifestations
of Divine grace, shall be for you like that imagined river; and however
difficult it may be to believe such a heaven on earth as that indicated
to be possible--

Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
And looks to that alone;
Laughs at impossibilities,
And cries--"It shall be done."

The life of the future, and by that we mean heaven on earth as well as
heaven, shall be as different from that which you are now realising as
the water-supply of Jerusalem would be if a river flowed in the midst,
from what it is now with merely Kidron and Bethesda and Siloam and
Solomon's Pools. So we say (i.) that the Life is not a half-stagnant
pool, like Siloam; nor (ii.) an intermittent fou