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divided streams and cloven mountains! Yet the dispositions of the human heart remain as they were. There is the same spirit in the world of thankfulness and complaint. There is the same spirit from above of forbearance and bounty. The power of a gracious Providence still opens the veins of the dry stone, and gives drink in a fainting land. I will name some of these analogies. They should inspire patience and gratitude, a deeper submission to the necessities of life, a more fervent praise amidst our benefits, and a livelier faith in our prayers.

Moses said to his murmuring people, “Must we bring you water out of the rock?" Are we expected to do it? Are we able to do it? And yet this miracle is continually wrought. It is performed in the world around us, the visible creation; in the world over us, the providential course of events; and in the world within us, the more intimate sphere of our thoughts and feelings, our truest sorrows and joys. Every where water flows from the rock; the softest of all refreshments from the most intractable and unpromising substance that the earth bears.

NATURE is the first to work this wonder. The streams that keep all her productions fresh do not have their origin, for the most part, in the fruitful

lowlands or the gentle hills; not in spots of pleasant resort; not among the busy pursuits of men. We must seek for their outlets in rough caverns. We must trace them to their almost inaccessible springs in the mountain steeps. From thence they roll down through the rents and fissures which God has opened for them, to replenish the lower fountains, to prepare seats for rich cities upon their banks, and to fertilize the plains that would else be barren solitudes. Such is the operation of Nature. PROVIDENCE then takes up and repeats the marvellous work. It shows us perpetual instances of the most valuable blessings collected and condensed in the cells of a stern experience; flowing but at the urgent call of our wants; struck out as if by the rod of rebuke and sorrow. It is not otherwise with what is going on in the processes of the secret SOUL. The sweetest consolations are drawn along through rugged channels. The life of the noblest motives and brightest hopes is due to an upper and solemn and inexplicable source.

Look at the Christian Revelation; the Gospel of truth, grace, and joy. As we contemplate it in its dark beginnings, among the hills of Judea, among the hard trials of him who issued it, and the obdurate hearts of those who rejected it, may we not fitly

describe it as water out of the rock? There is the authority of an apostle for doing this. St. Paul refers to the very history now under consideration, and says that the people on that occasion drank of the spiritual drink that followed them, even Christ. In whatever sense his words are to be understood, - whether he intended an actual type of the Christian faith, or was only using one of those figures of speech with which his writings abound, — he at least makes the allusion. And if it would bear to be applied to that ancient race, so long before the coming of the promised one, it may surely be adopted by us, who are the witnesses and receivers of the blessing that he has diffused over the world. "If any man thirst," cried Jesus himself, "let him come unto me and drink. Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall thirst no more; but it shall be in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." Now this well of mercy was opened among the most discouraging circumstances. What was there to indicate it in Bethlehem and Nazareth; in the state of the world, Jewish or Gentile; in the desert where the austere John was preaching; in the lofty and repulsive aspect of the cause, which he stood there to proclaim; in the murmurs that prevailed every where

around him of ignorant and factious men, — an unreconciled world? He who was the desire of the nations presented at first sight no form nor comeliness that any should desire him. Few were willing to partake of his offered cup, or to be washed in his baptism of afflictions. The first effect of his word, as he himself predicted, was not peace but variance. Poured out amidst striving tongues, and apparently but increasing their strife, its name was Meribah,-contention. Yet such as it was, apart from the world and placed among appearances that were severe and joyless, it was appointed and sent by the Divine Providence to renovate the earth. The solitary place was glad at its coming, and the wilderness rejoiced under it and blossomed as the rose. We who see it from this distance of time, taking its course through every climate upon the globe, strong in its deep current but merciful in its ministrations; sweeping away the refuges of lies and corruptions of ages, and wearing down with its undermining flood the proudest holds of unrighteous power, and at the same time reviving the spirit of the world's disconsolate ones; so gentle in its office as to submit to being taken up in household vessels for the feverish lips and way-worn soul of the poorest child of Adam ; — we who have seen all

this may well give glory to God, who in such a marvellous way has prepared his own praise and our salvation; who from a small and secret and gloomy origin has sent joy and life all abroad; who out of Egypt, that land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery serpent, has called his Son.

Such was the method in which the Lord wrought, when he set up his great covenant of compassion with his creatures below. And his ways are even. What we have seen once, we shall see again. A like arrangement with that which is found in one of his conspicuous dealings shall be displayed in the rest. If we turn from the dispensation of our holy religion to the common appointments of life, we shall be struck with the same thing; - gracious effects from rigid causes ;-water out of the rock.

Let us go and put questions to Labor, and Hardship, and Peril, and Pain, and Deprivation, and Sorrow. They are rough materials, we know. They are not such things as in our youth we care to anticipate, or in our age we should love to lie down by. We are ready to complain, as the Hebrew hosts did, when we look up at their sharp sides, and the whole world seems to be a withered region around But still let us question with them. They

us.

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