A vessel sailing to Brazil once saw a barque flying a signal of distress, and bearing down on her, asked what was the matter. "For God's sake, give us water! we have not had a drop for three days," was the cry from the distressed vessel. The answer was instant. "Let down your bucket and draw it up, man! You are in the mouth of the Amazon." These poor creatures had been dying of thirst for three days, though they were sailing on the greatest stream of fresh water in the world, because they had lost their reckoning and did not know where they were. So it too often is with the disciple. He walks in the midst of unnumbered blessings. The stream of living water flows at his side; the tree of Life grows beside it; yet he is hungry and thirsty, just because he will not take the things which are freely offered of God. "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." (Isa. vii. 9.) Ps. lxiii. Gal. v. _FIFTH SATURDAY IN LENT._ _THE USE OF COMFORT._ "SURELY there can be no question about that!" I hear some one say. "The use of comfort is to make people comfortable." That is one use, no doubt, but not the only nor the principal one. It is to be feared, however, that many sincerely devout people take this view of the matter. In spiritual as in worldly matters we are prone to think far too much of our own enjoyment. Some good people, indeed, measure their spiritual condition by their enjoyment. If they are happy, they think all is well with them. This is not always a safe test. We may be glorying in a very mistaken estimate of our own spiritual condition, as did the Corinthian Church, when St. Paul wrote them. "Your glorying is not good." They were mightily puffed up in their own esteem, while they were tolerating among them the vilest sins, such as even the idolatrous Gentiles were ashamed of. (1 Cor. v. 1-8.) The use of comfort is to strengthen us for the work which God gives us to do. "The God of all comfort comforteth us in all our tribulation," writes St. Paul; and why? "That we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." (2 Cor. i. 3, 4.) We are comforted that we may be able to console others, just as we are taught in order that we may teach others.