Most men draw their supplies from without; they are rich, happy,
strong, only when externals minister to them strength, happiness,
riches. For the most of us, what we have is that which determines our
felicity.
Take the lowest type of life, for instance, the men of whom the
majority, alas! I suppose, in every time is composed, who live
altogether on the low plane of the world, and for the world alone,
whether their worldliness take the form of sensuous appetite, or of
desire to acquire wealth and outward possessions. The thirst of the
body is the type of the experience of all such people. It is satisfied
and slaked for a moment, and then back comes the tyrannous appetite
again. And, alas! the things that you drink to satisfy the thirst of
your souls are too often like a publican's adulterated beer, which has
got salt in it, and chemicals, and all sorts of things to stir up,
instead of slaking and quenching, the thirst. So 'he that loveth silver
shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with
increase.' The appetite grows by what it feeds on, and a little lust
yielded to to-day is a bigger one to-morrow, and half a glass to-day
grows to a bottle in a twelvemonth. As the old classical saying has it,
he 'who begins by carrying a calf, before long is able to carry an ox';
so the thirst in the soul needs and drinks down a constantly increasing
draught.
And even if we rise up into a higher region and look at the experience
of the men who have in some measure learned that 'a man's life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth,' nor
in the abundance of the gratification that his animal nature gets, but
that there must be an inward spring of satisfaction, if there is to be
any satisfaction at all; if we take men who live for thought, and
truth, and mental culture, and yield themselves up to the enthusiasm
for some great cause, and are proud of saying, 'My mind to me a kingdom
is,' though they present a far higher style of life than the former,
yet even that higher type of man has so many of his roots in the
external world that he is at the mercy of chances and changes, and he,
too, has deep in his heart a thirst that nothing, no truth, no wisdom,
no culture, nothing that addresses itself to one part of his nature,
though it be the noblest and the loftiest, can ever satisfy and slake.
I am sure I have some such people in my audience, and to them this
message comes. You may have, if you will, in your own hearts, a
springing fountain of delight and of blessedness which will secure that
no unsatisfied desires shall ever torment you. Christ in His fulness,
His Spirit, the life that flows from both and is planted within our
hearts, these are offered to us all; and if we have them we carry
inclosed within ourselves all that is essential to our felicity; and we
can say, 'I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be
self-satisfying,' not with the proud, stoical independence of a man who
does not want either God or man to make him blessed, but with the
humble independence of a man who can say 'my sufficiency is of God.'
No independence of externals is possible, nor wholesome if it were
possible, except that which comes from absolute dependence on Jesus
Christ.
If you have Christ in your heart then life is possible, peace is
possible, joy is possible, under all circumstances and in all places.
Everything which the soul can desire, it possesses. You will be like
the garrison of a beleaguered castle, in the courtyard of which is a
sparkling spring, fed from some source high up in the mountains, and
finding its way in there by underground channels which no besiegers can
ever touch. Sorrows will come, and make you sad, but though there may
be much darkness round about you, there will be light in the darkness.
The trees may be bare and leafless, but the sap has gone down to the
roots. The world may be all wintry and white with snow, but there will
be a bright little fire burning on your own hearthstone. You will carry
within yourselves all the essentials to blessedness. If you have
'Christ in the vessel' you can smile at the storm. They that drink from
earth's fountains 'shall thirst again'; but they who have Christ in
their hearts will have a fountain within which will not freeze in the
bitterest cold, nor fail in the fiercest heat. 'The water that I shall
give him shall be in him a fountain.'