What a contrast there is between a barren desert and the luxuriant oasis with its waving palms and its glorious verdure! Between gaunt and hungry flocks and the herds that lie down in green pastures and beside the still waters; between the viewless plain and the mountain height with its “land of far distances.”

What a difference there is between the aridity of an artificial, irrigated, stinted existence—a desert existence—and a life of abundant rains, crowding vegetation, and harvests that come almost of themselves— the abundant life!

The former is like the shallow stream where your boat every moment touches bottom or strikes some hidden rock; the latter is where your deep keel never touches ground, and you ride the ocean’ s wildest swells!

There are some Christians who always seem to be kept on scant measure. Their spiritual garment s are threadbare, their whole bearing that of people who are poverty-stricken and kept on short allowance—h ard up, and on the ragged edge of want and bankruptcy . They come through “by the skin of their teeth” and are “saved so as by fire.”

There are other souls who “have life . . . to the full.” Their love “alw ays protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” and “never fails” (1 Corin thians 13:7, 8). Their patience has “longsuf fering with joyfulness” (Colossians 1:11 KJV). Their peace “transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Their joy is “inexpressible and glorious” (1 Peter 1:8). Their service is so free and glad that duty is a delight. In a word, this life reaches out into the infinite as well as the eternal, sailing on the shoreless and fathomless seas of God and His infinite grace.

Oh, wher e is such a life to be found? How can the desert place be made to bring forth life to the full?

“Oh, wher e is the sea?” the fishes cried, As they swam the crystal waters thr ough “We have hear d from of old of the ocean tide, And we long to look on the waters blue. The wise ones speak of the infinite sea— Oh, who can tell us if such ther e be?”

Are we who live in the sea of the infinite to imitate those silly fishes, and ask, “Wher e is the God who is ‘not far from every one of us,’ who may be in our inmost hearts by faith, and in whom ‘we live, and move, and have our being’?” (Acts 17:27–28 KJV). D EAN FARRAR

“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea?” (Job 38:16).

The psalmist said: “With you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9). “All my fountains are in you” (Psalm 87:7).

Gushing Fountains!