Strange lowliness! singular meekness! Who was He? Who is this that steps
into the place that only a God can fill, and says, 'I can do it all. If
any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink'?

Dear brethren, some of us can, thank God, answer that question as I pray
that every one of you may be able to answer it, 'Thou art the King of
Glory, O Christ; Thou art the everlasting son of the Father. With Thee
is the fountain of life; Thou Thyself art the living water.'

But I think there is a still further step to be taken. It is not only
that our Lord Jesus Christ, in His nature, in His person, is the
communicator of the divine life to man, just as--if you will let me take
such a metaphor--just as up in the hills sometimes you will find some
little tarn or loch all shut in; but having trickling from it a thread
of limpid life, and, wherever it flows, the water of the loch goes;
only, the one is lake and the other is river, and the latter is the
medium of communication of the former to the thirsty pastures of the
wilderness. And not only so, but--if I might venture to build upon a
word of the context--there seems to be another consideration there. The
words which precede my text are a quotation from a song of the
Israelites in their former Exodus: 'The Lord Jehovah is my strength and
my song; He also is become my salvation.' Now, if our Bible has been
correct--and I do not enter upon that question--in emphasising the
difference between _is_ and _is become_, mark where it takes us. It
takes us to this, that there was some single, definite, historical act
wherein God _became_ in an eminent manner and in reality what He had
always been in purpose, intent, and idea. Then that to which my text
originally alludes, to which it looks back, is the great deliverance
wrought by the banks of the Red Sea. It was because Pharaoh and his
hosts were drowned in it that Miriam and her musical sisters, with their