CHAPTER X.

The Prophet at the Well.

'The Well was deep, and the water,
From some mysterious spring,
Was ever gushing far below

With a tender murmuring;
And, deep underground, a tiny rill
Stole on in the dark to sing.'

E remember at the Milan exhibition climb

WE

ing some steps to the gallery, where there were models in glass cases, showing groups of the different varieties of peasant life of the Italians.

More than paintings or photographs did these figures impress us, as they stood out like living statuary, as if taken by surprise while at their different occupations.

Let us to-day take a walk through the gallery of the first nine chapters of Second Kings. Here we shall find life-like scenes, in which the actors

D

stand out boldly before us, as fresh to-day as if they were among the remains of some buried city newly brought to light.

The first of these is round the edge of a well. Of what advantage was the pleasant situation of the city, in all its loveliness, when the water was bad? This is the message which the deputation from the city carry to Elisha. His first thoughts may have been of Marah, as he wondered if the Lord would show him also a tree, to make the waters sweet. But the new necessities called for new remedies. Our eye does not rest so much on the new cruse, with the white glistening crystals, as on the faith lying enclosed in the brave heart, as he walks forth to the spring, and casting in the salt, says: "Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.'

As we write, we are looking on a photograph of this very spring, from which this woodcut is made. The water bubbles up in such quantity as at once to form a goodly-sized stream. Travellers still pitch their tents on the rising-ground above, so as to be near this supply of delicious water. Near it are scattered the stones of what may have

been the walls of Jericho, and thorn bushes grow among the heath and grasses.

Thus we have seen how a well was the startingpoint of Elisha's work, as at once a prophet and evangelist. In after days, when the young men were like to die of their poisonous food, or the widow's house to be broken into by the angry creditor, when the borrowed axe was almost lost, or when he stood by the side of the leprous captain or the little corpse, did not Elisha see before him the wonder-working Jehovah, at whose word the spring was healed?

'Give me faith, that moveth mountains,
Trusts and conquers day by day—
Faith, that opens gushing fountains
In the bleak and desert way.'

CHAPTER XI.

Wells without Water.

'Afar thro' the world there roam, helpless and friendless, Souls thirsting for water, hearts weary with care;

Till some guiding-note reach them their search must be endless,

To the waters of life let us bid them repair.

The daylight is going,

But the fountain is flowing,

And all who are weary its blessings may share.

VER

VERY terrible is Peter's description as he looks first up to the sky and speaks of the clouds carried with a tempest, and then down to the earth, and sees wells without water. So he describes those who have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray. My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.'

And what they laboured for they have become, waterless wells and broken cisterns; and over them a special doom is pronounced. 'O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.'

When a traveller comes to one of these wells, his disappointment cannot be told. The well is filled up with stones, the cistern has become the haunt of some wild animal. The use of the pit is changed. To call it any longer a well is a misnomer. So we thought when lately we looked upon clothes being dried in the bed of a torrent. The stream was dried up, which in the rainy season had been so swollen that the very Bay was coloured with what it discharged, and the stones over which the waters broke were now hot and dry.

Peter shows us how Balaam led the Israelites astray, and then they led others; and thus dishonour is brought on the great Fountain-Head. Near the torrent we refer to was the well in the Governor's Palace garden, where the pure drinking water comes underground from the highest mountain, sure and unfailing, supplying far and near. Which