This is a feverish age. Men and women scurry to and fro like ants disturbed on their hill. They do not know what is the matter, but they must ever be on the quest for new "thrills." They are athirst for a joy unknown- for something, anything, that will bring real satisfaction. They seek it in travel by land and by sea. They seek it in countless forms of pleasure, but even in travel and pleasure they are
"Restless, ill at ease,
Careworn with their pleasures,
Difficult to please."
They seek it in music and art, or in systems of philosophy that brace men to suffer with stoical indifference. They seek it in human attachment in man, woman or child, and are appalled at the insufficiency of the water-spring of even the tenderest human affection to satisfy their longings. They seek it in tobacco, in intoxicants, or in drugs, only to find, like one of old, that "All is vanity and vexation of spirit," and there is no profit under the sun. Over their spirits hang the deepening mists of dissatisfaction for which there seems to be no cause.
What they need above all else is to catch the vision of the futility of even the good things of this earth to satisfy soul-thirst, and to look above the sun to Him in whom all fulness dwells.
Do they crave love? In Him we have love that is boundless. "As the Father hath loved Me, SO have I loved you." We have all sorts of meters nowadays for measuring light, water, gas and other things for which we have to pay, but where is the meter that could measure the depth, or height, or length, or breadth of God's "AS" and "SO?" "His grace came to me in overflowing fulness," "without money and without price."
His is the love of a father, a love of supreme authority. 'He may not explain His reasons for many of His dealings with His children in His desire to draw forth from them an obedience that is absolute. He reserves the right to train each child in ways that He does not adopt with others. It is the love of a bridegroom-the most intimate love conceivable, personal, private, intense, absolutely unselfish and always sweetly fresh, a love that delighted to make the largest possible sacrifice for us, a love that anticipated our every need, and stored heaven and earth, land and sea, with every provision for it, a love that suffers keenly through our lack of responsive-ness, a love that grows ever sweeter, fuller, deeper.
Could we but add together the most fervent love of all the loving hearts in all the world, and to that the deepest love of all the saints in glory, and multiply the sum total by infinity, we might have a faint conception of what the love of God in Christ Jesus really is. When the sweet and rapturous vision of such love rises before us we are lost in the contemplation of its immensity. We seem no longer bound by space or time, but mount as if the body were forgotten by the soul into such "heavenly places." Never a heart athirst for love but He can satisfy to the uttermost.
"Nothing quenches thirst like water," said J. B. Gough, "pure life-giving water which God has provided for His creatures in the green glade and grassy dell where He brews it, and down, low down in the deepest valleys, the fountains murmur and the rills sing. And high up the mountain-top where the storm-cloud broods, and the thunder storms crash, and away, far out on the wide, wild
sea, where the hurricane howls music and the big waves roar the chorus, there He brews it-His life-giving water.
"And everywhere it is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrop, falling in the Summer rain, glistening in the ice gem till trees seem turned to living jewels, spreading a golden veil over the setting sun, or a white gauze around the midnight moon, sporting in the cataract, sleeping in the glacier, dancing in the hail-shower, folding its bright snow curtains softly about the wintry world-still always it is beautiful-this blessed LIFE WATER."
One alone could say:"If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." He alone can satisfy with that which lies dimly reflected in the life-giving water of earth.
Would that the language of a sainted woman of the fourteenth century might echo in the hearts of the men and women of the twentieth:
"I praise Thee for the everlasting tide-
The stream of Love Divine,
That from the heart of Calvary
Flows ever into mine.
How unfading is that pure delight:
How full the joy of that exhaustless tide
Which flows forever in its glorious might,
So still, so wide,
And deep we drink with sweet eternal thirst,
With lips forever eager as at first,
Yet ever satisfied."
Yes, in Him we may find the consummation of all our deepest longings for love, for life, for satisfaction, but that is not all. Who has not had longings for righteousness that knows no variableness? Natural goodness has its "ups" and "downs," but His is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He longs to lift us out of what we are by nature into what He is, and to impute to us His righteousness.
And then there is the longing to know that we will be acceptable to God. A young officer brought to his father's home, after the war, a foreign bride his inferior in every way. Was she accepted? Such was the father's love for that son who had been reported "missing," and whom he received as it were from the dead, that he would have accepted anyone-"He hath made us accepted in the Beloved."
The longing for joy is seen in the numbers who seek it "under the sun," as we have seen, but what "fulness of joy" there is in "His presence" when,
"In darkness and in silence still and sweet
With blessed awe our spirits feel Him near."
Or when,
"In the silence of the dawn,
God shall speak His words of grace,
Light that round thy waking shone
Is the radiance of His face.
Yearning of His heart to thee
Fills the deep immensity."
Or when the skies are lowering, the winds contrary, when the sea begins to heave and everything seems against us, and we can look up and say,
"Only Heaven is better than to walk with Thee At midnight over a moonless sea."
Oh, for a pen that could pass on to the disappointed, dissatisfied, discouraged products of a twentieth century civilization a more worthy presentation of Him who fills my spirit's vision! May it serve as a background to throw into relief "The Chiefest among Ten Thousand," "The Altogether Lovely," our full, perfect and complete satisfaction.
"O Mystery of Love, whose simplest signs
Are hieroglyphics of another tongue,
I see Thee through a glass but darkly, beams
From the heavenly Orb of Love which shone
Ere the foundations of the heavens were laid,
Self-luminous, self-centered, self-contained,
………….. how shall I speak
Thy fulness, who can scarce conceive Thy least?
How gaze upon the sun, when one bright beam
Dazzles my feeble sight." B. Carr-Harris