r
pebbly beds, or chasing one another down their steep descent, I am
ever led to think how free from all the taints of sin these innocent
drops of water are! Not one of them has ever transgressed the divine
law of its being. Not one has ever failed in a single point to fulfill
its mission. Are you thirsty? They never refuse to quench your thirst.
Does your field need rain? They never refuse to wet the ground. Always
ready, they cheerfully serve the behests of God and man.

The diversity of the applications and uses of water, the variety of
its forms--its frozen state in that of ice, its fluid state in that of
a liquid, its aeriform state in that of clouds and other modes of
atmospheric suspension--all these, together with its transparency and
cleansing power make it a most appropriate emblem of DIVINE TRUTH. As
such, water is much spoken of by the prophets in the Old Testament,
and by our Lord in the New. I will here quote some passages from each:

"_Then with gladness shall ye draw waters out of the wells of
salvation._" Isaiah 12:3. What can be meant by the "wells of
salvation," but the _fountains of truth_ in God's Word?

By way of describing the _abundance_ of the supply of truths from this
source I will here quote from the forty-first chapter of Isaiah, as
follows: "_I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the
midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and
the dry land springs of water: ... that they may see, and know, and
consider, and understand_." One man is a _hillside_; another is a
_valley_. One man is a _desert_; you think he never can be made to
produce anything. But he shall be supplied, and thus be made to
blossom as the rose. Others are _dry land_ of a general character; but
there is water enough to make all fruitful: so that instead of the
thorn, the myrtle; and instead of the thistle, the fig; and instead of
the deadly upas, the olive shall grow.

In Jeremiah's description of the departure of the Jews from the TRUTHS
of God's Word we find the following complaint against them from the
mouth of the Lord himself, recorded in Jer. 2:13, "_My people have
committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living
waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no
water_." This can mean nothing, spiritually, but a departure from the
TRUTH of God as revealed, and substituting in its place some false
doctrine of man's own invention.

Jesus sai