Again; Christ says, “the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.”  When these words were uttered, our Lord was sitting upon a deep well, in conversation with the woman of Samaria.  As his custom was, he drew instruction from the objects around him.  He directed her attention away from the water which can only quench animal thirst, to that living water which refreshes the soul.  But she, not understanding him, wished to know how he could obtain living water from a deep well, without anything to draw with.  In order to show the superiority of the water of life, he told her that those who drank it should have it in them, constantly springing up of itself, as if the waters of the well should rise up and overflow, without being drawn.  The very idea of a living spring seems to cut off the hope of backsliders.  You remember the cold spring that used to flow from the rock, before our father’s door.  The severest drought never affected it, and in the coldest season of a northern winter it was never frozen.  Oft, as I rose in the morning, when the chilling blasts whistled around our dwelling, and everything seemed sealed up with perpetual frost, the ice and snow would be smoking around the spring.  Thus, like a steady stream, let your graces flow, unaffected by the drought or barrenness of others, melting the icy hearts around you.

This “living water,” in the soul, is intended to represent the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  In the new birth, there is formed a holy union between the Spirit of God and the faculties of the soul, so that every correct feeling, with every good act, is produced by the Holy Spirit acting in unison with those faculties.  Hence, our bodies are called the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he is said to dwell in us.  What a solemn truth!  What holy fear and carefulness ought we to feel continually; and how softly should we walk before the Lord of Hosts!

“The righteous,” says David, “shall flourish like a palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”  But if the cedar should cease to grow as soon as it springs up, it would never become a tree.  It must wither and die.—­Again; it is said, “Ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.”  A healthy calf, that is fed in the stall, cannot but grow and thrive.  And surely the Lord has furnished us, in his holy word, abundant food for our spiritual growth and nourishment.  If the calf is diseased, or if he refuses to eat, he will pine away and die; and so with us.  The apostle Paul speaks of growing up into Christ, in all things; and of increasing in the knowledge of God.  By this he evidently means, that experimental knowledge of God in our hearts, by which we are changed into his image.  The apostle Peter exhorts us to “grow in the grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”  Again, he directs us to feed upon