Chapter 3: "There is a River!"
Chapter 3: "There is a River!"
PSALM XLVI: 4.
A SONG BY an unknown singer! Some son of Korah, borne on the tide of inspiration, uttered it in one of the darkest hours of his nation's history. It is evidently contemporaneous with Isa. : xxxiii. The spirit of heroic faith that thrilled Isaiah had passed to some younger heart, and what in him was prophecy, in this was Psalm.
Sennacherib, with 200,000 of the cruellest soldiers that ever drew the sword, had crossed the northern frontier of Palestine, or had already stationed himself on the hills that were round about Jerusalem, intent on its capture and pillage. The virgin daughter of Zion was strongly fortified. Military skill had made the best possible use of the strong natural features of her position, and Jewish patriots had challenged their children to ten her towers, mark well her bulwarks, and consider her palaces, that they might tell the story to succeeding generations.
But there was one fatal defect, which invalidated all these advantages. Jerusalem was not well supplied with water. A deficient water supply! This meant disaster to the best concerted schemes of fortification and defence.
Dr. Geikie gives an interesting account of the water supply of ancient Jerusalem. The only spring known to exist there rises beneath the ancient site of the Temple, and supplies what are known as the Fountain of the Virgin and the Pool of Siloam. This perennial supply of crystal water was, however, not sufficient to meet the requirements of such vast populations as crowded the city at the great festivals, and were driven thither, as at the time of which we write, by the pressure of invasion. Every effort was therefore made to augment the supply. There was a great system of subterranean tanks, forty to sixty feet deep, hewn out of the soft limestone, which underlay a harder rock on which the city was built. These were of great antiquity, and in one Jeremiah was confined. Vast cisterns were also built to catch and keep the rains. But, in addition, large pools, fed by aqueducts, were added outside the city and within. One aqueduct, built by Solomon, brought water from the Pools of Solomon beyond Bethlehem, and poured it into the huge reservoirs of the Temple area, a distance of thirteen miles. Hezekiah is also credited with having built yet another vast conduit, bringing the waters of Gihon, straight to the west side of the city of David. In later days Herod the Great executed a marvellous work of the same kind.
All these efforts on the part of the citizens to remedy their water supply were a confession on their part to its deficiency, and afforded the ground for the perpetual iteration of the prophets that God Himself would be to His people all that a river would have been in the abundance and freeness of its supplies.
" What!" said Isaiah, in one of his magnificent outbursts, " do you require a river, whose flashing breadth would intercept the assault of the foe, and make it impossible for him to place battering-ram or scaling ladder in immediate proximity to the walls? You need it not. The glorious Lord will be to us in place of broad rivers and streams, All around our city walls lies the engirding protection of the God of our fathers. "
"What!" said this son of Korah, "do you want a supply of water to enable you to withstand the exigencies of the siege? All that will be yours in having God. He is not only around us; He is in the midst of us, and His presence, like a river, will make glad the city. Would you have a broad river pouring its translucent waters over the glistening pebbles, and purling in its majestic flow, supplying every cistern and garden with abundant water? This is yours in the Most High, who counts our city as the holy place of His tabernacle."
Mr. Rendel Harris classes the water supply of Jerusalem under four heads, and uses these as illustrating certain conditions of spiritual life, with which we are all familiar.
The Pool of Siloam represents the stagnation of those whose character and life show no signs of advance from year to year; always overcome by the same sins, reading the same chapters of the Bible, offering the same prayers.
The Pool of Bethesda stands for those whose life is intermittent. An angel comes down from time to time to trouble the waters, and for a while they possess and impart healing virtue, but the impulse is soon exhausted, and many a weary soul waits till the stirring comes again.
The Brook Kedron was fouled with the refuse of the city through which it flowed. It was, therefore, hardly fit to drink, though even to-day the water-carriers fill their water-jars there. This represents such as mingle with their professions of Christianity much that is inconsistent and worldly.
The Acqueducts of Solomon recall the experience of many who are always depending for their religious life on the ministry of others. They do seek water from the distant hills, but they are somewhat too dependent on the teacher or conference or book by which it is brought within their reach.
Now all these classes of Christians are bidden to avail themselves of the River whose streams make glad the City of God. There is a sense in which the heavenly city has come down out of heaven from God. Our citizenship and conversation are there. There are times when, through our union with the living Saviour, we may say with the dying Payson: "Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odors are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart." These are the times when the river in full flow is passing before us, making- us glad with the gladness which comes straight from the heart of the throne; and we are bidden, "whosoever will," to take of the water of life freely. Not of the future only did the Apostle affirm that he saw a river of water of life, gleaming as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem. Its source may be at the throne, but its waters have flowed down to earth, else how could men be so freely bidden to take?
Let us live by the river, fellow-believer, taking up its waters at any moment of need, just as the dwellers by the mighty Amazon or Congo go down to its vast supplies to help themselves without stint. They can afford to be extravagant, prodigal, wasteful! Is there not plenty? Can they not come again and again? Is there any fear of the reservior of the hills running dry? Yet sooner might the Congo or Amazon become exhausted than thy God; and sooner might the river remonstrate with the child for dipping its tin cup too frequently into its bosom, than the glorious Lord find fault with thy too incessant resort to Him for His more abundant grace. Take! take! TAKE! is Heaven's repeated invitation. "Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times," is God's bitter complaint.
There can be no stagnation where the river comes; it brings life with it, and deepens from the ankles to the knees, and from the knees to the loins till its waters are a depth that cannot be waded through; and its current bears -the soul forward irresistibly from grace to grace, from a superficial experience to the deep things of God, from the elements of the Gospel to the love that passeth understanding.
There can be no intermittence, as when the waters need to be stored in some inner rock-chamber before they can gush out to their beneficent ministry, and, having exhausted themselves, retire to gather a fresh supply. This intermittent life is a very sad one, God-dishonoring and man-disappointing. There is something better when the soul is in perennial and abiding fellowship with Christ, by the Holy Spirit. Certainly there are freshets for us all, but these come on a full stream, and not on dry watercourses which have become heaps of stones. This maintained experience is only possible when care is taken over the early morning hours, and we can say with the Psalmist, "Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord."
There is no pollution or impurity in the religious life of those who drink of that river. Too often the religious observances of people are so mingled with the worldly show of some fashionable church, with the consciousness of being one of a gaily-dressed throng, or with the desire to do as others are doing, that the spirit is befouled in the act of drinking of the heavenly stream. There is all the difference between the waters that have flowed through a great city and those that issue from the hills. But if we live in God we are ever partaking of that crystal stream of pure and undefiled religion of which the apostle James speaks.
There is no need of depending on human instrumentality. We would not undervalue this-God has appointed it, and set His seal on it. But we must ever count it to be a means, and not an end. Some sculpture the arches of the aqueduct, and festoon them, and almost worship them in their senseless adulation. But they cannot quench the rage of the thirst-fever; they are liable to be broken down, or stopped up; they may at any moment cease affording their wonted supplies. Happy are they, therefore, who have learnt to go to the river for themselves, and to avail themselves at first-hand of its supplies.
The flow of the river is so soft; such a contrast to the tumult of the sea, which represents the rage of the foe. The waters roar and are troubled, the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. We can hear the dash of the wild waves, the emblem of unbridled power, of anarchy and fret and strife, of tumult and unrest. Such is the world, and such the wicked, who are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. What a relief to turn to the gentle murmur of the river, whose waters glide in musical ripple along their banks. The greatest and best things, in nature and human life and God, are stillest.
The flow of the river is so bountiful. "The streams thereof" are the divisions thereof; as when each Egyptian ryot along the Nile draws off its waters by the tiny canal into his piece of garden ground, or when our housepipes tap the mains. "Unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ." "The same Spirit divides to each one severally even as He will."
The flow of the river is so gladdening. There is the gladness of perfect satisfaction, of security against possible need, of peace that passeth understanding, of the infinite repose of the soul when it has found its rest. The scorching drought may bake the hills around, till the landscape pants and faints, and every hill is a reflector, and every valley a furnace; but the soul which has learnt to avail itself of God is glad, because it thirsts not; it has become like a garden, whose waters fail not.
This river is the blessed Spirit. He is gentle; He is pure and holy, clear as crystal; He is bountiful. Out of him who receives the Spirit, Jesus said, "shall flow rivers of living water." He is joy-giving and glad-making. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with them is to be honored and glorified. It was only when the Lamb had gone to the throne that the Spirit could be given. Directly the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took His seat at the right hand of the Father, as a lamb which had been slain, there poured out, as from the smitten rock of the wilderness, the abundant river whose first head was Pentecost, its second Samaria, its third Ephesus, and its fourth perhaps will be not far distant, close beside the end of the present age.
At the beginning of Genesis we read of the river that watered the garden, and became four heads. This was an emblem of things that were to come. Already the substance has been given, in part perhaps as yet, but destined to ever fuller and richer manifestation until the perfect realization of its entire significance in the ages which are awaiting the summons of their King.
In the meanwhile, fellow-believer, in the absence of all that others boast themselves of possessing, be sure that there is a river; be sure to find its banks, and live there; make much of the Holy Ghost, as He speaks in Scripture, and breathes through the open casement of the soul.