You remember the masonry in Prospect Park (Brooklyn), built to
hold that huge bank in its place? Well, when that solid wall
was completed, a hidden spring broke out, and the walls moved
and cracked. Pulling the masonry down a second time, it was
again rebuilt. This time a little drain tube and faucet were
put in. But the mouth became stopt up, and a second time the
pressure of the hidden waters moved the wall. Then another tube
and pipe were put through the wall. What was the power that put
such immeasurable pressure upon masonry and moved it? It was
the hidden water--silently, steadily, irresistibly, crowding
all before it. To-day the hidden waters may manifest themselves
through one tube, and to-morrow they may gush through another
tube, but the power is in the water and the reservoir behind
it, and not in the tube through which it appears. And that
power that lifted the Hebrew slaves and swept them forward and
buoyed them up, now revealed itself through the lips of Moses,
and now speaks through the life of Joshua, transforming the
people, is not in Moses, nor in Joshua, it is in God.--N. D.
HILLIS.
(3048)
* * * * *
Salvation is by character, but character is the gift of God.
Far up on the northeastern coast of Maine there is a little
spring; through all the hours of a sunny afternoon it poured its
crystal flood that ran singing toward the sea. Then, the briny
sea turned to a salt the spring. The waves with their bitterness
came in and buried it, and the sweet water seemed lost forever.
Then in the eastern sky God hung His orb of light, and silently
by that invisible pull, and with its secret voice it called to
the waves of salt, and drew back the briny flood with its mire
and filth, that ebbed away, and lo, the little spring flowed on,
fed by the pure fountains on the hillside far above the ocean’s
brine. And the soul’s life comes down from the mountains, where
its hidden springs are in God. Aspiration, hope and love gush
on forever pure. Temptations may rise, like the tide. Troubles,
ingratitudes and hatreds may sweep on like hungry waves, the
world may cast up its mire, but soon these troubles will recede,
and leave the spring of life within the soul, to gush forth once
more. It is the river of God, the well that springs up into
everlasting life.--N. D. HILLIS.
(3049)