The emblem, of course, suggests motion by its own inherent impulse.
Water may be stagnant, or it may yield to the force of gravity and
slide down a descending river-bed, or it may be pumped up and lifted by
external force applied to it, or it may roll as it does in the sea,
drawn by the moon, driven by the winds, borne along by currents that
owe their origin to outward heat or cold. But a fountain rises by an
energy implanted within itself, and is the very emblem of joyous, free,
self-dependent and self-regulated activity.
And so, says Christ, 'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a
springing fountain'; it shall not lie there stagnant, but leap like a
living thing, up into the sunshine, and flash there, turned into
diamonds, when the bright rays smile upon it.
So here is the promise of two things: the promise of activity, and of
an activity which is its own law.
The promise of activity. There seems small blessing, in this overworked
world, in a promise of more active exertion; but what an immense part
of our nature lies dormant and torpid if we are not Christians! How
much of the work that is done is dreary, wearisome, collar-work,
against the grain. Do not the wheels of life often go slowly? Are you
not often weary of the inexpressible monotony and fatigue? And do you
not go to your work sometimes, though with a fierce feeling of
'need-to-do-it,' yet also with inward repugnance? And are there not
great parts of your nature that have never woke into activity at all,
and are ill at ease, because there is no field of action provided for
them? The mind is like millstones; if you do not put the wheat into
them to grind, they will grind each other's faces. So some of us are
fretting ourselves to pieces, or are sick of a vague disease, and are
morbid and miserable because the highest and noblest parts of our
nature have never been brought into exercise. Surely this promise of
Christ's should come as a true Gospel to such, offering, as it does, if
we will trust ourselves to Him, a springing fountain of activity in our
hearts that shall fill our whole being with joyous energy, and make it
a delight to live and to work. It will bring to us new powers, new
motives; it will set all the wheels of life going at double speed. We
shall be quickened by the presence of that mighty power, even as a dim
taper is brightened and flames up when plunged into a jar of oxygen.
And life will be delightsome in its hardest toil, when it is toil for
the sake of, and by the indwelling strength of, that great Lord and
Master of our work.
And there is not only a promise of activity here, but of activity which
is its own law and impulse. That is a blessed promise in two ways. In
the first place, law will be changed into delight. We shall not be
driven by a commandment standing over us with whip and lash, or coming
behind us with spur and goad, but that which we ought to do we shall
rejoice to do; and inclination and duty will coincide in all our lives
when our life is Christ's life in us.
That should be a blessing to some of you who have been fighting against
evil and trying to do right with more or less success, more or less
interruptedly and at intervals, and have felt the effort to be a burden
and a wearisomeness. Here is a promise of emancipation from all that
constraint and yoke of bondage which duty discerned and unloved ever
lays upon a man's shoulders. When we carry within us the gift of a life
drawn from Jesus Christ, and are able to say like Him, 'Lo, I come to
do Thy will, and Thy law is within my heart,' only then shall we have
peace and joy in our lives. 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death.'
And then, in the second place, that same thought of an activity which
is its own impulse and its own law, suggests another aspect of this
blessedness, namely, that it sets us free from the tyranny of external
circumstances which absolutely shape the lives of so many of us. The
lives of all must be to a large extent moulded by these, but they need
not, and should not be completely determined by them. It is a miserable
thing to see men and women driven before the wind like thistledown.
Circumstances must influence us, but they may either influence us to
base compliance and passive reception of their stamp, or to brave
resistance and sturdy nonconformity to their solicitations. So used,
they will influence us to a firmer possession of the good which is most
opposite to them, and we shall be the more unlike our surroundings, the
more they abound in evil. You can make your choice whether, if I may so
say, you shall be like balloons that are at the mercy of the gale and
can only shape their course according as it comes upon them and blows
them along, or like steamers that have an inward power that enables
them to keep their course from whatever point the wind blows, or like
some sharply built sailing-ship that, with a strong hand at the helm,
and canvas rightly set, can sail almost in the teeth of the wind and
compel it to bear her along in all but the opposite direction to that
in which it would carry her if she lay like a log on the water.
I beseech you all, and especially you young people, not to let the
world take and shape you, like a bit of soft clay put into a
brick-mould, but to lay a masterful hand upon it, and compel it to help
you, by God's grace, to be nobler, and truer, and purer.
It is a shame for men to live the lives that so many amongst us live,
as completely at the mercy of externals to determine the direction of
their lives as the long weeds in a stream that yield to the flow of the
current. It is of no use to preach high and brave maxims, telling men
to assert their lordship over externals, unless we can tell them how to
find the inward power that will enable them to do so. But we can preach
such noble exhortations to some purpose when we can point to the great
gift which Christ is ready to give, and exhort them to open their
hearts to receive that indwelling power which shall make them free from
the dominion of these tyrant circumstances and emancipate them into the
'liberty of the sons of God.' 'The water that I shall give him shall be
in him a leaping fountain.'
III. The last point here is that Christ's gift is a fountain 'springing
up into everlasting life.'
The water of a fountain rises by its own impulse, but howsoever its
silver column may climb it always falls back into its marble basin. But
this fountain rises higher, and at each successive jet higher, tending
towards, and finally touching, its goal, which is at the same time its
course. The water seeks its own level, and the fountain climbs until it
reaches Him from whom it comes, and the eternal life in which He lives.
We might put that thought in two ways. First, the gift is eternal in
its duration. The water with which the world quenches its thirst
perishes. All supplies and resources dry up like winter torrents in
summer heat. All created good is but for a time. As for some, it
perishes in the use; as for other, it evaporates and passes away, or is
'as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up'; as for
all, we have to leave it behind when we go hence. But this gift springs
into everlasting life, and when we go it goes with us. The Christian
character is identical in both worlds, and however the forms and
details of pursuits may vary, the essential principle remains one. So
that the life of a Christian man on earth and his life in heaven are
but one stream, as it were, which may, indeed, like some of those
American rivers, run for a time through a deep, dark canyon, or in an
underground passage, but comes out at the further end into broader,
brighter plains and summer lands; where it flows with a quieter current
and with the sunshine reflected on its untroubled surface, into the
calm ocean. He has one gift and one life for earth and heaven—Christ
and His Spirit, and the life that is consequent upon both.
And then the other side of this great thought is that the gift tends
to, is directed towards, or aims at and reaches, everlasting life. The
whole of the Christian experience on earth is a prophecy and an
anticipation of heaven. The whole of the Christian experience of earth
evidently aims towards that as its goal, and is interpreted by that as
its end. What a contrast that is to the low and transient aims which so
many of us have! The lives of many men go creeping along the surface
when they might spring heavenwards. My friend! which is it to be with
you? Is your life to be like one of those Northern Asiatic rivers that
loses itself in the sands, or that flows into, or is sluggishly lost
in, a bog; or is it going to tumble over a great precipice, and fall
sounding away down into the blackness; or is it going to leap up 'into
everlasting life'? Which of the two aims is the wiser, is the nobler,
is the better?
And a life that thus springs will reach what it springs towards. A
fountain rises and falls, for the law of gravity takes it down; this
fountain rises and reaches, for the law of pressure takes it up, and
the water rises to the level of its source. Christ's gift mocks no man,
it sets in motion no hopes that it does not fulfil; it stimulates to no
work that it does not crown with success. If you desire a life that
reaches its goal, a life in which all your desires are satisfied, a
life that is full of joyous energy, that of a free man emancipated from
circumstances and from the tyranny of unwelcome law, and victorious
over externals, open your hearts to the gift that Christ offers you;
the gift of Himself, of His death and passion, of His sacrifice and
atonement, of His indwelling and sanctifying Spirit.
He offered all the fulness of that grace to this Samaritan woman, in
her ignorance, in her profligacy, in her flippancy. He offers it to
you. His offer awoke an echo in her heart, will it kindle any response
in yours? Oh! when He says to you, 'The water that I shall give will be
in you a fountain springing into everlasting life,' I pray you to
answer as she did—'Sir!—Lord—give me this water, that I thirst not;
neither come to earth's broken cisterns to draw.'