Cheerful Words

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE RIVER OF LIFE. Everything shall live whither the river cometh. Ezekiel xlvii. 9. A river is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, and lends a peculiar charm to every landscape, of which it is a marked feature. There are few so totally destitute of taste as not to admire the natural...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE RIVER OF LIFE. Everything shall live whither the river cometh. Ezekiel xlvii. 9. A river is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, and lends a peculiar charm to every landscape, of which it is a marked feature. There are few so totally destitute of taste as not to admire the natural loveliness of a majestic river, whether seen rushing through a rocky defile, or flowing smoothly past field and meadow, or rolling noiselessly on in its seaward course, between its wooded banks. There are fewer still, who are insensible to the immense utility of rivers?the rich blessings they bring to the human family. From the fact that rivers are so universally acknowledged to be fraughtwith blessing, they are frequently taken metaphorically to designate that tide of spiritual good which flowed in upon mankind, when the flood gates of grace were opened, and the glorious year of God's redeemed had come. No one, I think, can doubt the appropriateness of such a figure; for what can more fitly represent the fulness and freeness of Gospel blessings than a river, whose water is free to all, and in such abundance ? What can better picture to us the life-giving properties of the stream of grace, than a river which beautifies, and freshens, and fertilises, the country through which it flows ? What can more touchingly tell us of the peace, and joy, and safety, with which the people of God are blessed, than the expression, There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High ? It is this spiritual river which diffuses life and happiness wherever it goes, whose properties and blessed effects the text leads us to contemplate. There are two leading ideas presented to the mind by the words before us, viz., the ide...