Sin compared to a fountain.
I. THE COMPARISON JUST. For:
1. Naturalness. A fountain or spring bursting out on the hillside excites no surprise as if it were an unheard-of, an extraordinary thing. Nor does the outflow of sin from the human heart.
2. Continence. The streams of each may sing—
"But men may come and men may go,
But we flow on forever."
3. Having their source "from within." Out of the depths both alike come.
4. Unchangeableness in character. What they were once they are always.
5. Spontaneousness. No force is needed to draw forth their streams.
6. Copiousness.
7. Effectiveness. The course of a stream is ever discernible by its effects. It tells on all that it touches, it leaves nothing as it was before it came.
8. Force. The fountain will have way given to it. It will break all barriers that block its way.
II. THE LESSON IS OBVIOUS. Shall we divert its streams, and compel them to run only in quiet safe places where they will cause us no worldly harm? This is what most men try to do, and very often succeed in doing. But this is not God's plan. His charge is, "Make the fountain good." And this he can do; he can create a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. "He that believeth in me," said our Savior, "from within him shall flow rivers of living water;" not, as now, rivers of death, O Christ—
"Thou of life the Fountain art,
Freely let me take of thee:
Spring thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity."
C.