drawn waggon to the water's edge, through a scene of wondrous beauty. There was a Sabbath stillness as the city slept, and the stars awoke, and the moon was shedding a fairy brightness over the hillside dotted with palms and vineyards, and making the blue waters silvery upon a silvery strand. But at the edge of the little boat stood a blind beggar importunate in his misery. And when, a day or two before, the sun was shining in his strength, and the soft healing wind was making a crackling sound among the sugar-canes, little feet came into the garden where we were to beg some orange leaves to use as a febrifuge for a fevered patient.

So it was when Christ went out that Sabbath morning. In a previous chapter we have had Him dealing with a sinner in whom sin had appeared in its worst type beside a well. Here we have Him beside a pool dealing with a sinner whose disease seemed hopeless. Before reaching the pool He knew of the poor man's infirmity, that it was a case of long standing, thirty and eight years, and that his one desire was to be healed. Still He says to him, 'Wilt thou?' The man seems neither to have had friends like the man sick of

the palsy, who got himself let down through the roof, nor means like the woman with the issue of blood, who had spent all her living on physicians; but when he said, 'I have no man,' his abject poverty met Heaven's wealth, his human emptiness the Divine fulness. 'Immediately the man was made whole.' But it was not till afterwards, in the temple, that the poor man knew that the stranger who had healed him was Jehovah-Rophi.

We have seen the grateful looks in eyes, which spoke more than words, of poor cured ones who, when coming for their discharge from hospital or lodging, have scarcely known whether to be happy for their restoration or sorry to leave their helper. What did the cleansed one feel that day when from the lips of Him who spake as never man spake, the gracious tones, at once of encouragement and warning, fell as silver notes from the trumpet of Jubilee, 'Thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee '?

'Jesus, Thou true Bethesda of my soul,
Sin-worn and wasted, Thy voice made me whole;
Bethesda's porches Thou, Bethesda's pool,

My House of Mercy, wondrous, beautiful!

'The same day was the Sabbath day indeed,
God rested save from mercy, man from need,
And Satan's rest was broken like a reed.'

An anxious soul entered a strange church. She was still young. This Sabbath was her eighteenth birthday. But she knew what a dreadful disease she had, and having been now a 'long time in that case,' she entered the house of mercy, her Bethesda, wondering when and where she would meet the Healer. The text was given out, 'Ought not this woman whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to be loosed from her bonds on the Sabbath day?' She recognised her Healer's voice, heard no more, but was 'immediately made whole . . . and on the same day was the Sabbath.' Next day she wrote to her brother, 'The fetters of my soul are broken. Jesus is mine and I am His.' Only six short months did she go about loosed from her infirmity. Her next birthday was spent walking with Him in white before the throne.

'I see the whole design,

I, who saw power, see now love perfect too :
Perfect, I call Thy plan.'

CHAPTER XIX.

The Believer a Well.

'Living waters still are flowing,
Full and free for all mankind,
Blessings sweet on all bestowing;
All a welcome find.

All the world may come and prove Him;
Every doubt will Christ dispel,

When each heart shall truly love Him,
Waiting at the well.'

'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'-JOHN IV. 14.

WE

E love these words standing between the old trumpet-cry of Isaiah, 'Ho every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,' loud and clear announcing the coming of the Lamb to be slain, and John's solemn, measured, silvery tones, ere the book is closed, 'Let him come and drink of the water of life freely.'

We all look back to some well in our childhood

which we loved to visit. On the hot summer day, though all around was dry, the grassy bank burnt and bare, the road dusty, the usual reservoirs large or small dried up, we could count on the spring well. It may have been near a river's side, with its stone-arching and ivy peeping in, keeping all around fresh and green. As the child filled the pitcher, the little arm darted down, looking strangely larger and plumper in the clear, cool spring. It failed not, quite unlike the jet in the wide basin close by, which was only turned on on rare occasions.

Such will the Lord make us; and though all around us may be dead and bare, He can keep us like the palm tree fresh and green among the sand, because of the spring at its roots, twenty or thirty feet deep. Our life is hid with Christ in God. Christ having come to the spring of the waters and cast in Himself, they are healed at the source, so that there cannot be any more death or barren land. We who have been what James calls an anomaly, a fountain sending forth sweet and bitter, salt and fresh water, are now made new by Him. Let us see to it that no blighting east wind such as Hosea speaks of comes