this meetness for the inheritance, the gift of the Father to his child, go into prosperity-it will not inflate you; go into adversity—it will not depress you; lie down calmly on the couch of death-you shall neither be uncomforted nor alone. And then what remains but to triumph in the parting agony; to enter, with this completed meetness, into heaven; and to hear the funeral sounds of this stricken and dying world change suddenly into a marriage-peal of bells, chiming at the coming of the Highest, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, and the Bride hath made herself ready."

.

XXIX.

THE VISION OF THE WATERS.

"And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh."-EZEK. xlvii. 9.

I

HAVE somewhere seen a picture, which, in a few brief words, and from dim memories only, I will endeavour to describe to you. The scene is in the far East; the hour just when the earth is lighted up with the glory of that rare oriental sunrise which we westerns long to see; the time, the sultry August, when the fierce sun has it all his own way, and the country seems to have a sickly cast upon it, as if it fainted beneath the intenseness of the glare; the plain is scorched and arid, and the river, prisoned between its banks, halts for very weariness, and seems scarcely to have strength enough to propel its sluggish stream. There, on an eminence, by a group of ancestral palms, stands a knot of Egyptian peasants, swarthy and muscular, talking wildly to each other, and with eyes all strained in the direction of the south, in which quarter there seems to gather an indescribable haze, the forecasting shadow of some atmospheric or other change. Why wait they so eagerly? Why is their gaze so wist

fully fastened just where the river faintly glimmers on the horizon's dusky verge? Oh, they are conscious, from the experience of years, that the time has come for the inundation of the Nile! They may not know by what secret process the waters are gathered, that in the distant Abyssinia the materials for the tribute are distilled; but as certainly as if their knowledge was profound and scientific, they calculate upon the coming of the flood. And they know, too, that when the flood does come, that scorched plain will by and by wave with ripening grain, and there shall be corn in Egypt, and those blackened pastures shall be gay with such a fertile plenty that the whole land shall eat and shall be satisfied, "for every thing shall live whither the river cometh;" and so marvellous shall be the transformation that the Turkish description of the Egyptian climate shall stand good—that "for three months the land is white as pearl, for three months black like musk, for three months green like emerald, for three months yellow like gold." This has struck me as a very graphic representation of Ezekiel's vision, embodied in the experience of Eastern life. Nothing can better image the moral barrenness of this world— a wilderness of sin-than the plains upon which the consuming heat has lighted, and, withering the green herb, has induced the dread of famine. Nothing can better set forth the life and healing of the Gospel of Christ than the flow of the life-giving river. Nothing can better show the attitude befitting all earnest Christian men, than the wistful gaze of the peasants to the place whence the deliverance was to come, that they might catch the first murmur of the quickened

waters, and be ready to communicate the joy. There is, of course, a spiritual application of the vision, and that spiritual application is in the gospel of Christ, made effectual by the Holy Ghost for the healing and salvation of men. You will not fail to remember how often this gospel is set forth by the inspired writers under this same figure. Under the similitude of living water, its blessings were promised to the Samaritan woman. The Divine stranger, who lifted up his voice on the last day of the feast, announced that the heart of each believer should be a fountain of living water; and, in identity of vision between the seer of the Old Testament and the evangelist of the New, John was shown the " river of the water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." We do not err, therefore, in taking the holy waters to be the emblems of that wondrous scheme of mercy-perfected by the atonement of Christ, made vital by the everpresent Spirit, and adapted to the salvation of the world.

In this view, the source, the progress, and the efficacy of the holy waters may each claim a brief notice at our hands.

I. There is said to have been a very copious fountain on the west side of Jerusalem. At this fountain, which was called Gihon, Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet stood by the youthful Solomon, and with many holy solemnities proclaimed him king. The prudent Hezekiah, foreseeing that, in a time of siege, an enemy might cut off its streams, conducted them by a secret aqueduct into the city; and David, deriving from this fountain one of his choicest emblems of

spiritual blessing, struck his harp and sang-" There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." It may be, that there may have been some subtle connection of thought between this fountain and the vision which floated before the senses of Ezekiel, as there was a stream from this same fountain into the temple, and from the foundations of the holy house the holy waters sprang. Be this as it may, the truth is significantly told, that while through the temple come to us the tidings of our peace, the blessing itself does not originate there, but is conveyed to it from a source invisible and afar.

In God's great provision for the restoration of the fallen race, there are both instrumental and efficient agencies. He has appointed means, and a Divine and perpetual resident to infuse those means with life. Although there is no innate power in means, as God's appointed channel of communication, they are not to be despised. There is not now, as in the Jewish dispensation, a central spot where all the solemnities are held, and where religion treasures up her most precious and hallowed memorials; the prestige and sacredness of the ancient Jerusalem have passed away; but God's presence is yet in his sanctuaries in peculiar manifestation, and there are special promises of favour for those that wait for him and that call upon his name. They deprive themselves of a large inheritance of blessing, and are deeply criminal withal, who forsake the assembling of themselves together in the place where the ordinance of preaching is established, where the sacraments are duly administered, and where prayer is wont to be made. The ordinances of religion may