. There are times, however, when such a
feeling would be anything but a blessing. Perhaps this surprizes you as it
did the sister. God has made provision to satisfy us. Christ said that he
who would drink of the water of life should thirst no more; for it should
be in him a well of water, and thus his thirst should be continually
quenched. So there is a continual satisfaction in God. It is a good thing
to be thus satisfied with God and his plans and ways and with our
salvation, and dissatisfaction with any of these, if we are saved, is an
evil to which we should not give place; but hardly any greater evil could
come upon us than a complete and constant sense of satisfaction relating
to our attainments in grace, the development of our spiritual powers, or
the measures of our service to God.

Dissatisfaction is the mother of progress. The Chinese for centuries have
been taught to be satisfied with having things like their fathers had. As
a consequence they have almost entirely lost the inventive faculty. Long
ago they were an inventive nation, but now an invention among them is a
rarity. As long as people are satisfied, they are content to remain as
they are. Satisfaction is the foe to progress. As long as you are fully
satisfied, you are like a sailing-vessel in a dead calm. The sea about you
may be very smooth. Everything may be very peaceful and serene. But all
the time this calm prevails you are getting nowhere; you are at a
standstill. It is only when the wind rises and the swells begin to move
the vessel up and down and the sails begin to strain that good progress
begins. You may feel very comfortable in your satisfaction. It may be very
delightful and dreamy, but it may be dangerous also. Those who are fully
satisfied for very long may be sure that there is need for an
investigation. It is only when we become dissatisfied with present
conditions and attainments that we are spurred to effectual effort to make
progress.

Suppose God had been satisfied with the world-conditions before Christ
came. We should now have no Savior and no salvation. He was dissatisfied,
thoroughly dissatisfied, and so he made the greatest sacrifice that he
could make to change existing conditions. Paul was once very well
satisfied with his place in the Jewish religion; he was not looking for
anything better. His dissatisfaction arose from the fact that some other
people were not satisfied thus but were finding and advocating something
diff