iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 69 



reflected, and from the full river of whose life He could 

 drink and be satisfied. 



And when the waters of this fountain of God's joy 

 were embittered and poisoned by sin, we can imagine 

 in the dry and parched land of the world, what a thirst 

 came upon His Spirit. The Psalmist speaks of thirst- 

 ing for God like the hart for the water-brooks ; but this 

 is only a faint image of the great thirst which God has 

 for the restoration of man to holiness and happiness. 

 There is a hard unimaginative school of Christian 

 thought, the members of which say that God's glory 

 would not be lessened, God's happiness would not 

 be diminished in the least degree, if the whole human 

 race had been destroyed; and by such a statement 

 they think that they are exalting our conceptions of 

 God. But such an idea has no warrant in Scripture. 

 It is immeasurably dishonouring to God. In the 

 divinity of indifference no true human heart can pos- 

 sibly believe. Science tells us that the force of gravi- 

 tation is a mutual thing ; the great sun itself bending 

 in its turn to the smallest orb that revolves around 

 it. And is not the highest gravitation of all a mutual 

 thing too? If God attracts human souls, do not human 

 souls attract Him also ? Science may tell us of His 

 infinite power and greatness ; and theology may speak 

 to us of a God afar off; but the Gospel tells us of His 

 infinite love, that He who is highest above us, is most 

 one of ourselves. And love like His cannot sit in grand 

 and cold estrangement from His fallen and ruined crea- 

 tures, cannot find rest under the loss of His human 



