this utterance of Him who has also said, 'I am meek and lowly of heart.' Strange lowliness! singular meekness! Who was He? Who is this that steps into the place that only a God can fill, and says, 'I can do it all. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink'? Dear brethren, some of us can, thank God, answer that question as I pray that every one of you may be able to answer it, 'Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ; Thou art the everlasting son of the Father. With Thee is the fountain of life; Thou Thyself art the living water.' But I think there is a still further step to be taken. It is not only that our Lord Jesus Christ, in His nature, in His person, is the communicator of the divine life to man, just as--if you will let me take such a metaphor--just as up in the hills sometimes you will find some little tarn or loch all shut in; but having trickling from it a thread of limpid life, and, wherever it flows, the water of the loch goes; only, the one is lake and the other is river, and the latter is the medium of communication of the former to the thirsty pastures of the wilderness. And not only so, but--if I might venture to build upon a word of the context--there seems to be another consideration there. The words which precede my text are a quotation from a song of the Israelites in their former Exodus: 'The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation.' Now, if our Bible has been correct--and I do not enter upon that question--in emphasising the difference between _is_ and _is become_, mark where it takes us. It takes us to this, that there was some single, definite, historical act wherein God _became_ in an eminent manner and in reality what He had always been in purpose, intent, and idea. Then that to which my text originally alludes, to which it looks back, is the great deliverance wrought by the banks of the Red Sea. It was because Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in it that Miriam and her musical sisters, with their timbrel and dance, not only said, 'The Lord is my strength,' but 'He _has become_ my strength'--there where the corpses are floating yet. What answers to that in the matter with which we are concerned? Brethren, it is not enough to say that God is the fountain of salvation, it is not enough to say that the Incarnate Christ is the medium of salvation. Will you take the other step with us, and say that the Cross of Christ is the realisation of the divine intention of salvation? Then He, who from everlasting was the strength and song of all the strong and the songful, _is become_ the salvation of all the lost, and the fountain is 'opened for sin and for uncleanness.' A definite, historical act, the manifestation of Jesus Christ, is the bringing to man of the salvation of God. So much, then, for that first point to which I desired to ask your attention.