Now, as I said about a former point of my sermon, that the Apostle was taking for granted that this gift of the Spirit belonged to all Christian people; so here again he takes for granted that in every Christian heart there is, by a divine operation, the presence of the love, and of the consciousness of the love, of God.  And, again, the question comes to some of us stunningly, to all of us warningly, Is that a transcript of our experience?  It is the ideal of a Christian life; it is meant that it should be so, and should be so continuously.  The stream that is poured out is intended to run summer and winter, not to be dried up in drought, nor made turbid and noisy in flood, but with equable flow throughout.  I fear me that the experience of most good people is rather like one of those tropical wadies, or nullahs in Eastern lands, where there alternate times of spate and times of drought; and instead of a flashing stream, pouring life everywhere, and full to the top of its banks, there is for long periods a dismal stretch of white sun-baked stones, and a chaos of tumbled rocks with not a drop of water in the channel.  The Spirit pours God’s love into men’s spirits, but there may be dams and barriers, so that no drop of the water comes into the empty heart.

Our Quaker friends have a great deal to say about ’waiting for the springing of the life within us.’  Never mind about the phraseology:  what is meant is profoundly true, that no Christian man will realise this blessing unless he knows how to sit still and meditate, and let the gracious influence soak into him.  Thus being quiet, he may, he will, find rising in his heart the consciousness of the love of God.  You will not, if you give only broken momentary sidelong glances; you will not, if you do not lie still.  If you hold up a cup in a shaking hand beneath a fountain, and often twitch it aside, you will get little water in it; and unless we ‘wait on the Lord,’ we shall not ‘renew our strength.’  You can build a dam as they do in Holland that will keep out, not only the waters of a river, but the waters of an ocean, and not a drop will come through the dike.  Brethren, we must keep ourselves in the love of God.

Lastly, we have here—­

III.  The hope that is established by the love poured out.

I need not dwell at any length upon this point, because, to a large extent, it has been anticipated in former sermons, but just a word or two may be permitted me.  That love, you may be very sure, is not going to lose its objects in the dust.  The old Psalmist who knew so much less than we do as to the love of God, and knew nothing of the whispers of a Divine Spirit within his heart charged with the message of the love as it was manifested in Jesus Christ, had risen to a height of confidence, the beauty of the expression of which is often lost sight of, because we insist upon dealing with it as merely being a Messianic prophecy, which it is, but not merely:  ’Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy beloved’ (for that is the real meaning of the word translated ’thy Holy One’)—­’Thou wilt not suffer the child of Thy love to see corruption.’  Death’s bony fingers can untie all true lover’s knots but one; and they fumble at that one in vain.  God will not lose His child in the grave.