ISAIAH 361
IF A story is told of a shipwrecked crew who had been drifting for days in a small boat, suffering the horrors of thirst. In the extremity of their suffering, when all hope had been abandoned, a vessel was seen bearing towards them. When sufficiently near, they called out as well as their parched throats permitted, " Water, water." "Dip your bucket over the side," came back, as they thought, the mocking answer. But unconsciously they had drifted into that part where the mighty Amazon bears its fresh waters far out to sea. They were actually floating in an ocean of plenty and were unaware of the fact.
i. What True, Satisfaction is.
1. The knowledge of God. — It is the grand endeavour of the gospel to communicate God to men. They have undertaken to live without Him, and do not see that they are starving in the bitterness of their experiment. It is not, as with bodily hunger, where they have a sure instinct compelling them to seek their food ; but they go after the husks, and would fain be filled with these, not even so much as conceiving what is their real want or how it comes. For it is a remarkable fact that so few men, living in the flesh, have any conception that God is the necessary supply and nutriment of their spiritual nature, without which they famish and die. It has an extravagant sound ; when they hear it, they do not believe it. How can it be that they have any such high relation to the eternal God, or He to them ? It is as if the tree were to say. What can I, a mere trunk of wood, all dark and solid within, standing fast in my rod of ground — what can I have to do with the free, moving air, and the boundless sea of light that fills the world ? And yet it is a nature made to feed on these, taking them into its body to supply and vitalise and colour every fibre of its substance. Just so it is that every finite spirit is inherently related to the infinite, in Him to live and move and have its being.
The fruition of God is contemporaneous with the desire after God. The one moment, " My soul thirsteth " ; the next moment, " My soul is satisfied." As in the wilderness when the rain comes down, and in a couple of days what was baked earth is flowery meadow, and all the torrent-beds where the white stones glistened ghastly in the heat are foaming with rushing water, and fringed with budding willows ; so in the instant in which a heart turns
362 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
with true desire to God, in that instant does God draw near to it. The Arctic spring comes with one stride ; to-day snow, to- morrow flowers. There is no time needed to work this telegraph ; while we speak He hears ; before we call He answers. We have to wait for many of His gifts, never for Himself.
If While we were passing through the crowded bazaars this after- noon, on our way to visit some of the fine houses of this city, I was very much interested and amused by the number and variety of the street calls or cries. I have been startled in Beirut by shrill warning to look behind or before me to avoid being run over by loaded animals, but here in Damascus one's ears are assailed by many additional calls. Two lads carrying between them a large tray loaded with bread, cried out, " Ya Karim ! Ya Karim ! " That is not the name for bread. No, it is one of the attributes of God, and signifies the bountiful or generous ; and since bread is the staff of life, the name implies that it is the gift of the Bountiful One.i
2. In the face of Jesiis Christ. — We may say that the satis- faction which the soul of man finds final is the knowledge of God, but more explicitly, it is the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In one word it is Christ. He, and not merely some truth about Him and His work ; He Himself, in the fulness of His being, in the all-sufficiency of His love, in the reality of His presence, in the power of His sacrifice, in the daily derivation, into the heart that waits upon Him, of His life and His spirit. He is the all-sufficient supply of every thirst of every human soul. Do we want happiness ? Christ gives us His joy, permanent and full, and not as the world gives. Do we want love ? He gathers us to Himself by bonds that Death, the separator, vainly attempts to untie, and which no unworthi- ness, ingratitude, coldness of ours, can ever provoke to change themselves. Do we want wisdom ? He will dwell with us as our light. Do our hearts yearn for companionship ? With Him we shall never be solitary. Do we long for a bright hope which shall light up the dark future, and spread a rainbow span over the great gorge and gulf of death ? Jesus Christ spans the void, and gives us unfailing and undeceiving hope. For every- thing that we need here or yonder, in heart, in will, in practical