s blessing; and this overflow is in direct
proportion to the inflow. "Rivers" cannot flow out unless "Rivers" first
flow in.

An ordinary service pipe in our domestic water supply may serve to
illustrate some of the points we have been considering. We take a bucket
to the tap for water, and lo! there is none. Something is wrong. Either
the authorities have cut off our supply because of some infraction of the
law on our part, or there is an obstruction in our service pipe, or the
pressure is insufficient to give us even a drop, or the supply is so
deficient that it has been shut off for a time from us that it may be sent
in another direction. Sometimes, alas! the "flowing" of the "living waters"
from the soul of the believer ceases; but the ordinary round of duty,
either in the district visiting, or in the Sabbath School class, or in the
pulpit, has not ceased; a ceaseless stream of _talk_ may still be flowing
on, but there is no "living water" in it all. Why? It is not that the
pressure aback of us, the pressure in the infinite Reservoir away up among
the hills of God, is insufficient, or that the supply is deficient, unable
to meet our needs because it is supplying needy ones elsewhere. God's
water supply never breaks down as we often find our city supply failing.
If the "flowing" has ceased, it is from one of two reasons: either God
has, in mercy and in judgment, cut off the supply, or there is an
obstruction in us, and _sin_ is at the bottom of both reasons. "Search me,
O God ... and see if there be any way of wickedness in me" (Ps. cxxxix.
23, 24). "Confession, cleansing" is the divinely-appointed method for
putting right what has gone wrong.

Sometimes on going to the tap we find that there is water, but such a
miserable dribble! either from insufficient pressure or some partial
obstruction in the pipe, or perhaps it is because we have not opened the
tap fully. What a wretched parody of the flowing "Rivers" of John vii. 38
are the life and service of many of the Christians of to day! Some of the
"living water" is doubtless coming from them, but it is only percolating
through, dribbling, trickling out of them. Why? Certainly not, as has been
already remarked, from insufficient pressure; the fault, the failure is
not on God's side, but there is some local obstruction--amounting in many
a case to almost entire obstruction,--some little idol or other in our
heart, if not a "sin," yet certainly a "weight" (Heb. xii. 1),