isolated times when they feel the voice of Christ's love, and yield
themselves to the powers of the world to come, and then there are long
intervals, when they feel neither the one nor the other. But the picture
that ought to be realised by each of us is God's ideal, which there is
power in the gospel to make real in the case of every one of us, the
rapid and continuous increase in the depth and in the scour of 'the
river of the water of life,' that flows through our lives. Luther used
to say, 'If you want to clean out a dunghill, turn the Elbe into it.' If
you desire to have your hearts cleansed of all their foulness, turn the
river into it. But it needs to be a progressively deepening river, or
there will be no scour in the feeble trickle, and we shall not be a bit
the holier or the purer for our potential and imperfect Christianity.

III. Lastly, note the effects of the stream.

These are threefold: fertility, healing, life. Fertility. In the East
one condition of fertility is water. Irrigate the desert, and you make
it a garden. Break down the aqueduct, and you make the granary of the
world into a waste. The traveller as he goes along can tell where there
is a stream of water, by the verdure along its banks. You travel along a
plateau, and it is all baked and barren. You plunge into a wâdy, and
immediately the ground is clothed with under-growth and shrubs, and the
birds of the air sing among the branches. And so, says Ezekiel, wherever
the river comes there springs up, as if by magic, fair trees 'on the
banks thereof, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit
thereof be consumed.'

Fertility comes second, the reception of the fertilising agent comes
first. It is wasted time to tinker at our characters unless we have
begun with getting into our hearts the grace of God, and the new spirit