ntain, like Bethesda;
nor (iii.) an artificial construction, like Solomon's aqueducts; nor
(iv.) a poor weak puny stream, defiled by the city through which it
passes, like the brook Kidron.

(1) It is not a standstill life: no one can stand still who lives with
God. If God is the fountain of your life, there will be no green
mantle on the surface telling how long you have been in one place.
Neither in earth nor in heaven do we stand still or stay where we are.
Take up the anchor and the ship follows the tide, and in God the tide
always sets one way. You cannot stand still without anchoring to the
creature. There must be fresh discoveries of truth and duty every day;
and fresh inquisition made into the heights and depths of Redeeming
Love. Abandonment to God must mean advancement in God.

They who love God cannot love Him by measure,
For their love is a hunger to love Him still better.

(2) Neither in earth nor in heaven is the Life to be an intermittent
one. Some have said that the pool of Bethesda was connected with one
of those intermittent springs that one sometimes comes across, and have
explained by that means the periodical disturbances in the waters.
There is one of these springs pointed out on the road from Buxton to
Castleton in Derbyshire, but it showed no signs of anything
extraordinary when I was there. However, whether Bethesda is of this
nature or not, it is certain that the spiritual life of many believers
is too much of the character of an intermittent spring. I want to tell
you that there should be no such word as "revival" in the dictionary of
the Christian Church: we want "life," not "revival." You hear people
saying of certain religious movings--"They are having quite a revival";
alas! and were they dead before? Indeed, I am sure this intermittent
fountain expresses only too accurately the lives of many of us. The
best that God can do with us is to make us an occasional blessing--a
sorrowful thing to confess when there are suffering ones around waiting
and watching the surface of our hearts to see whether there is any
moving of the water. I think, therefore, to tell you the secret of the
intermittent spring. Every such spring is fed from an inner chamber in
the rock in which the rains accumulate; but it is only as long as the
water is above a certain level that the outward flow is maintained. If
the inner chamber be kept full, the outward supply will be constant.
And we know, ap