mains
this gift of God, sought and found by those who know it; different from
and superior to the best human gifts, inheritances, and acquisitions;
not to be drawn out of the deepest, most cherished well of human
sinking; steadily arrogating to itself an infinite superiority to all
that men have regarded and busily sunk their pitchers in; a gift which
each man must ask for himself, and having for himself knows to be the
gift of God to him, the recognition by God of his personal wants, and
the assurance to him of God's everlasting regard. This gift of God, that
carries to each soul the sense of His love, is His deliverance from
evil. It is His answer to the misery and vanity of the world which He
has resolved to redeem to worth and blessedness. It is all that is given
in Christ, the hope, the holy impulses, the new views of life--but above
all it is the means of conveyance that brings God to us, His love to our
hearts.

What, then, can teach a man to know this gift? What can make a man for a
while forget the lesser gifts that perish in the using? What can
reasonably induce him to turn from the accredited sources round which
men in all ages have crowded, what can induce him to forego fame,
wealth, bodily comfort, domestic happiness, and seek first of all God's
righteousness? May we not all well pray with Paul, "that we may have not
the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God, _that we may know the
things that are freely given us of God_;" that we may see the small
value of wealth or power or any of those things which can be won by mere
worldly prudence or greed; and may learn fixedly to believe that the
things of true value are the internal, spiritual possessions, which the
unsuccessful may have as well as the successful, and which are not so
much won by us as given by God?

Jesus further describes this gift as "living water," a description
suggested by the circumstances, and only figurative. Yet it is a figure
of the same kind as pervades all human language. Water is an essential
of animal and vegetable life. With a constantly recurring appetite we
seek it. To have no thirst is a symptom of disease or death. But the
soul also, not having life in itself, needs to be sustained from
without; and when in a healthy state it seeks by a natural appetite that
which will sustain it. And as most of our mental acts are spoken of in
terms of the body, as we speak of _seeing_ truth and _grasping_ it, as
if the mind had hands and