iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 



73 



of their own souls ! Wonderful reciprocities of love by 

 which the Saviour sups with the sinner, and the sinner 

 with the Saviour ; by which the sinner abides in Christ, 

 and Christ in him. If we bring our tithe of water to 

 Him and prove Him therewith, He will open the win- 

 dows of heaven and pour down upon us an overflowing 

 blessing. The clouds which draw their dull vapour 

 from the thirsty earth, return it again to the parched 

 soil, in the shape of bright summer showers that make 

 the fields laugh with verdure and bloom. In the 

 spiritual as in the natural sense the law holds ever 

 good that "unto the place from whence the rivers 

 come, thither they return again." And God gives us 

 back what we give to Him with a hundred-fold in- 

 crease. As in the natural world He gives us a waving 

 golden harvest, in return for the small sacrifice of seed 

 which we entrust to His keeping in the spring ; so in the 

 spiritual world, He gives us back a fountain of living 

 water springing up in our hearts into eternal life, in 

 exchange for the few drops of love with which we 

 seek to quench His thirst. 



It is told in the life of Sir John Herschel, the great 

 astronomer, that when he was a boy he asked his father 

 on one occasion what he thought was the oldest of all 

 things. The father took up a small stone from the 

 garden walk and said, " There, my child, there is the 

 oldest of all the things that I certainly know." But the 

 astronomer in saying this, surely spoke without due 

 consideration. The stone tells of something far older 

 than itself; for what was it that made the stone broke 



