'My soul looks back to see
The burden Thou didst bear,
When hanging on the accursed tree,
And knows her guilt was there.'

'He also is my strength and my song. He is become my salvation; therefore, in joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.'

Now, I have left myself no time to do more than say one word about that last point, the gladness of the water-drawers. It is a pretty picture in our text, full of the atmosphere and spirit of Eastern life: the cheery talk and the ringing laughter round the village well, where the shepherds with their flocks linger all day long, and the maidens from their tents come—a kind of rude Exchange in the antique world; and, says our prophet, 'As the dwellers in the land at their village springs, so ye, the weary travellers at "the eye of the desert," will draw with gladness.' So we have this joy.

Dear brethren, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant for something better than to make us glad, but it is meant to make us glad too, and he is but a very poor Christian who has not found that it is the joy and rejoicing of his heart. We need not put too much emphasis and stress upon that side of the truth; but we need not either suppress it or disregard it in our modern high-flown disinterestedness. There are joys worth calling so which only come from possessing this fountain of salvation. How shall I enumerate them? The best way, I think, will be to quote passages.

There is the gladness of forgiven sin and a quieted conscience: 'Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.' There is the joy of a conscious possession of God: 'Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day.' There is the joy of fellowship and communion with Jesus Christ and His full presence: 'I will see you again; and your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh away from you.' There is the joy of willing obedience: 'I delight to do Thy will.' 'It is joy to the just to do judgment.' There is the joy of a bright hope of an inheritance 'incorruptible,' 'wherein ye greatly rejoice,' and there is a joy which, like that Greek fire they talk about, burns brighter under water, and glows as the darkness deepens—a joy which is independent of circumstances, and can say, 'Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.'

And all that, brother and friend, may be yours and mine; and then what this same prophet says may also be true: 'The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads'—that is for the pilgrimage; 'They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away'—that is for the home. There is another prophecy in this same book of Isaiah: 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters'; that was the voice of the Christ in prophecy. There is a saying spoken in the temple courts: 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink'; that was the voice of the Christ upon earth. There is a saying at the end of Scripture—almost the last words that the Seer in Patmos heard: 'Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely'; that was the voice of the Christ from the throne. And the triple invitation comes to every soul of man in the world, and to thee, and thee, and thee, my brother. Answer, answer as the Samaritan woman did: 'Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither' any more to draw of the broken cisterns.

THE HARVEST OF A GODLESS LIFE

'Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.'—ISAIAH xvii. 10, 11.

The original application of these words is to Judah's alliance with Damascus, which Isaiah was dead against. He saw that it would only precipitate the Assyrian invasion, as in fact it did. Judah had forsaken God, and because they had done so, they had gone to seek for themselves delights—alliance with Damascus. The image of planting a garden of pleasures, and 'vine slips of a stranger' refers to sensuous idolatry as well as to the entangling alliance. Then follows a contemptuous description of the rapid growth of this alliance and of the care with which Israel cultivated it. 'In a day thou makest thy plant to grow' (or fencest it), and next morning it was in blossom, so sedulously had they nursed and fostered it. Then comes the smiting contrast of what it was all for—'A harvest heap in the day of sickness and incurable pain.'

Now we may take this in a more general way as containing large truths which affect the life of every one of us.