Evening, October 16
Go To Morning Reading
“With thee is the fountain of life.”
Psalm 36:9
There are times in our spiritual experience when human counsel or
sympathy, or religious ordinances, fail to comfort or help us. Why
does our gracious God permit this? Perhaps it is because we have been
living too much without him, and he therefore takes away everything
upon which we have been in the habit of depending, that he may drive
us to himself. It is a blessed thing to live at the fountain head.
While our skin- bottles are full, we are content, like Hagar and Ishmael,
to go into the wilderness; but when those are dry, nothing will serve
us but “Thou God seest me.” We are like the prodigal, we love the swine-troughs and forget our
Father’s house. Remember, we can make swine-troughs and husks even out of
the forms of religion; they are blessed things, but we may put them
in God’s place, and then they are of no value. Anything becomes an idol when
it keeps us away from God: even the brazen serpent is to be despised
as “Nehushtan,” if we worship it instead of God. The prodigal was never safer than
when he was driven to his father’s bosom, because he could find sustenance nowhere else. Our Lord favours
us with a famine in the land that it may make us seek after himself
the more. The best position for a Christian is living wholly and directly
on God’s grace—still abiding where he stood at first—“Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” Let us never for a moment think that our standing is in our sanctification,
our mortification, our graces, or our feelings, but know that because
Christ offered a full atonement, therefore we are saved; for we are
complete in him. Having nothing of our own to trust to, but resting
upon the merits of Jesus—his passion and holy life furnish us with the only sure ground of
confidence. Beloved, when we are brought to a thirsting condition,
we are sure to turn to the fountain of life with eagerness.