d receive.)" The Holy Spirit
fully and forever satisfies the one who receives Him. He becomes within
him a well of water springing up, ever springing up, into everlasting
life. It is a great thing to have a well that you can carry with you; to
have a well that is within you; to have your source of satisfaction, not
in the things outside yourself, but in a well within and that is always
within, and that is always springing up in freshness and power; to have
our well of satisfaction and joy within us. We are then independent of our
environment. It matters little whether we have health or sickness,
prosperity or adversity, our source of joy is within and is ever springing
up. It matters comparatively little even whether we have our friends with
us or are separated from them, separated even by what men call death, this
fountain within is always gushing up and our souls are satisfied.
Sometimes this fountain within gushes up with greatest power and fullness
in the days of deepest bereavement. At such a time all earthly
satisfactions fail. What satisfaction is there in money, or worldly
pleasure, in the theatre or the opera or the dance, in fame or power or
human learning, when some loved one is taken from us? But in the hours
when those that we loved dearest upon earth are taken from us, then it is
that the spring of joy of the indwelling Spirit of God bursts forth with
fullest flow, sorrow and sighing flee away and our own spirits are filled
with peace and ecstasy. We have beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Isa. lxi. 3).
If the experience were not too sacred to put in print, I could tell of a
moment of sudden and overwhelming bereavement and sorrow, when it seemed
as if I would be crushed, when I cried aloud in an agony that seemed
unendurable, when suddenly and instantly this fountain of the Holy Spirit
within burst forth and I knew such a rest and joy as I had rarely known
before, and my whole being was suffused with the oil of gladness.

The one who has the Spirit of God dwelling within as a well springing up
into everlasting life is independent of the world's pleasures. He does not
need to run after the theatre and the opera and the dance and the cards
and the other pleasures without which life does not seem worth living to
those who have not received the Holy Spirit. He gives these things up, not
so much because he thinks they are wrong, as because he has som