is cleared up and prepared to know the Lord.  When any sinner gets this far the Lord is sure to find him and whisper in his heart:  “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” Every true penitent sinner, with his eyes open, will answer in heart:  “Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?” Then the joyful response will be whispered again:  “Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.”  The Lord meets the returning sinner in his blessed Word, and there he shows himself to him, and there he talks with him.

Water, in many places in the Old as well as the New Testament, is the emblem or symbol of Divine Truth.  I need not say that without water man cannot live.  His body is largely composed of water.  It is consequently essential as a beverage; and as an ablution, indispensable to cleanliness.  Reading and hearing the Word of Divine Truth from a real thirst or desire to know the truth, is what is spiritually symbolized by drinking water.  This may be proved by what the Lord said to the Samaritan woman:  “He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; for it shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”  By the expression, “never thirst,” Jesus does not mean that there will never be any further inclination to drink the water of life, but he means that there will in that soul never be any more perishing, dying thirst, for the water of life will be like a spring in the heart that will flow on forever from the Lord.  It will be the rock in the wilderness that supplied the camp of Israel with water, and that Rock is Christ.

But again.  The sinner’s whole inner man is defiled with sin.  This may be illustrated by the spots and scales and raw blotches on the skin, caused by the disease called leprosy.  This disease affected every part of the body; but, like smallpox and some other kindred affections, it made itself mostly visible upon the surface of the body.  It gave the victim a horrible appearance, so much so that no one was willing but such as were similarly afflicted, to go near a leper.  But the water of Divine Truth will effectually and forever wash away all this filth and loathsomeness from the redeemed sinner’s soul and prepare his spiritual body for that bright array of fine linen, clean and white, in which the saints shall be clothed as a fit emblem of their righteousness.  Paul calls all this the washing of regeneration.  In that great change, without which no man can see the kingdom of heaven, called regeneration, or the new birth, wrought by God only, the water of truth is the means employed.  This is so evident that water is specifically named in connection with it in these words:  “Except a man be born of water, and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”