[1] In a river we see not only excellence and abundance, but
_freshness._ A pool is the same thing over again, and
gradually it becomes a stagnant pond, breeding corrupt life
and pestilential gases. A river is always the same, yet
never the same; it is ever in its place, yet always moving
on. Filled to the brim with living water, even as in ages
long gone by, and yet flowing fresh from the spring, it is
an ancient novelty. We call our own beautiful river,
"Father Thames," yet he wears no furrows on his brows, but
leaps in all the freshness of youth. You shall live by the
banks of a river for years, and yet each morning its stream
shall be as fresh as though its fountain had been unsealed
but an hour ago when the birds began to awake the morning
and the sun to sip the dews. Is it not so with our Lord
Jesus Christ? Is He not evermore as bright and fresh as
when first you met with Him?--_Spurgeon._
[2] Is Christ a river? then _drink of Him,_ all of you. To be
carried along on the surface of Christianity, like a man in
a boat, is not enough, you must drink or die. Many are
influenced by the externals of religion, but Christ is not
in them; they are on the water, but the water is not in
them; and if they continue as they are they will be lost. A
man may be in a boat on a river and yet die of thirst if he
refuses to drink; and so you may be carried along and
excited by a revival, but unless you receive the Lord Jesus
into your soul by faith, you will perish after
all.--_Spurgeon._
[3] If Christ be like a river, let us be like the fishes, _live
in it._ The fish is an ancient Christian emblem for Jesus
and His people. I sat under a beech-tree some months ago in
the New Forest; I gazed up into it, measured it, and marked
the architecture of its branches, but suddenly I saw a
little squirrel leap from bough to bough, and I thought,
"After all, this beech-tree is far more to you than me, for
you live in it. It delights me, it instructs me, and it
affords me shade, but you live in it and upon it." So we
know something about rivers, and they are very useful to
us, but to the fish the river is its element, its life, its
all. So, my brethren, let us not merely read about Christ,
and think of Him, and speak of Him, but let us live on Him,
and in Him, as the squirrel in the tree and the fish in the
river. Live _by_ Him, and live _for_ Him: you will do both
if you live _in_ Him.--_Spurgeon._
[See also Outlines, RIVERS OF WATERS, xxx. 25, 26, and
ENRICHING RIVERS, xxxiii. 21.]