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It was not long since Jehovah had chosen the rainbow as the token of His covenant; and now Abimelech looks on the seven ewe lambs, and takes them as a pledge at Abraham's hand. And so down the ages the story of covenants has always had a fascination all its own, as the heaps of stones and pillars set up remind us of the words, 'The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.'

The two large wells, about three hundred paces apart, sunk sixty feet into the limestone rock, which are still there, saw great transformations being wrought. In Abraham's day Beer-sheba changed from being the last inhabited spot of the desert, and became the southern frontier of his descendants, and hence the proverb 'from Dan to Beer-sheba.' From this well Abraham started on his journey of faith to Moriah, and his son is spared to renew the covenant at this very well. Here the Philistine kings called Isaac 'The blessed of the Lord.' After the feast they rose early in the morning, and when the covenant was made Abimelech and Ahuzzath departed in peace. The well gave the abiding name to the city, for we read that after Isaac's servants told him 'Concerning

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the well which he had digged . . . We have found water,' that he called it 'Shebah (an oath), therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba (the well of the oath) unto this day.' Here where the Lord spoke to Isaac during the night, with the assuring promise, Fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee,' he builded an altar, pitched his tent, and then of necessity 'digged a well.'

Jacob must have loved these wells, for the two great departures of his life commenced here. Here he set out, a lonely pilgrim, staff in hand, for Haran. Here, when he was an old man, the caravans rested on their way to Egypt. As long

after, in the temple at Shiloh, the voice waked the little sleeper calling 'Samuel, Samuel,' at the opening of his life-work, so here a voice comes to the sleeping, aged pilgrim, at life's close, calling him by the old familiar name, 'Jacob, Jacob.' It is at Beer-sheba, on the margin of a new country, at the verge of a new epoch in the history of the race, that again a 'Fear not' breaks the air, as the covenant-making, covenant-keeping Jehovah says, 'I am God, the God of thy father I will go down with thee into Egypt.'

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CHAPTER XVI.

David's Wells.

'As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase;

So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.

'Why restless, why cast down, my soul?
Hope still, and thou shalt sing
The praise of Him who is thy God,
Thy health's eternal spring.'

'He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.'-Ps. CIV. 12.

THE

HE shepherd boy knew well where to find these springs, and the Psalmist lets us overhear the chorus of birds singing by their side, and see the wild asses quenching their thirst. Surely it was with the remembrance of these bubbling wells in his mind that he exclaimed, 'All my springs are in Thee.' For it was a true child of

nature who wrote the words which head this page, one who knew

'A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,'

and had watched the 'sleeping silver' among the hills. It may have been the memory of some disappointment, when water had failed him, that made him write, 'He turneth . . . water-springs into dry ground . . . and dry ground into watersprings.' 'My flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is.'

There are exquisite pictures of David's shepherd life all through his Psalm-book. On yonder height he sees a hart heated with the chase panting after the water-brooks, looking first on this side, then on that, but seeing only rugged hill-tops or a dreary waste: 'So panteth my soul after God.' Again, he shows us a grassy meadow with verdure and freshness all around, where we walk with him beside the still waters, or lie down among the green pastures.

How many since Luther's day have read their own experience in the Psalm that is sometimes called his, because of his delight in it, as they

saw how the troubled waters, roaring and swelling, were preparing them for their place beside the quietly-flowing crystal river which makes glad the city of God.

We get still further into the heart of the sweet singer, to find enshrined there his love and longing for water. In the heat and din of battle there rises before his eye the loved well of his childhood, which he had often passed and often drunk from, as his feet crossed the entrance to his native town; and he cried, 'Oh, that one would give me to drink of the water of the Well of Bethlehem that is at the gate.' Scarce was the request uttered when the three mighty men thought life itself a worthy price for water for their king. But the drops fell to the ground an offering to the Lord. David would not drink what might as easily have been a cup of blood.

'Three mighty men, full armèd for the fight,

Burst through the yeomen with resistless might,
And brought unto the king,

What time the night fell late,

Of the water from the Well of Bethlehem,

Which is beside the gate.'

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