Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 712 pages of information about Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary.

Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 712 pages of information about Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary.

Sermon by Elder John Kline.

Preached at Orkney Springs, Sunday, August 19.

    TEXT.—­Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life
    freely.—­Rev. 22:17.

In view of our surroundings and the attractions that have drawn so many of us to this quiet and beautiful mountain retreat, I feel that the subject selected for to-day suits the occasion.

When I look at a mountain spring and see the wavelets playing on their pebbly beds, or chasing one another down their steep descent, I am ever led to think how free from all the taints of sin these innocent drops of water are!  Not one of them has ever transgressed the divine law of its being.  Not one has ever failed in a single point to fulfill its mission.  Are you thirsty?  They never refuse to quench your thirst.  Does your field need rain?  They never refuse to wet the ground.  Always ready, they cheerfully serve the behests of God and man.

The diversity of the applications and uses of water, the variety of its forms—­its frozen state in that of ice, its fluid state in that of a liquid, its aeriform state in that of clouds and other modes of atmospheric suspension—­all these, together with its transparency and cleansing power make it a most appropriate emblem of DIVINE TRUTH.  As such, water is much spoken of by the prophets in the Old Testament, and by our Lord in the New.  I will here quote some passages from each: 

Then with gladness shall ye draw waters out of the wells of salvation.” Isaiah 12:3.  What can be meant by the “wells of salvation,” but the fountains of truth in God’s Word?

By way of describing the abundance of the supply of truths from this source I will here quote from the forty-first chapter of Isaiah, as follows:  “I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys:  I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water:  ... that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand.”  One man is a hillside; another is a valley.  One man is a desert; you think he never can be made to produce anything.  But he shall be supplied, and thus be made to blossom as the rose.  Others are dry land of a general character; but there is water enough to make all fruitful:  so that instead of the thorn, the myrtle; and instead of the thistle, the fig; and instead of the deadly upas, the olive shall grow.

In Jeremiah’s description of the departure of the Jews from the TRUTHS of God’s Word we find the following complaint against them from the mouth of the Lord himself, recorded in Jer. 2:13, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”  This can mean nothing, spiritually, but a departure from the TRUTH of God as revealed, and substituting in its place some false doctrine of man’s own invention.

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Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.