Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

340 THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.sion of Christ were that subject-matter on whichtheir whole faith grew, so the creation of theirexistence as a people was a definite act in whichthe Redeemer showed Himself the Father of HisRace, creating them as His children and generatingthem by His Spirit. The loving thought of Christiansin every age ran along this line to its source.Nature herself presents us with an image of whatthis idea of the Church was to them. As the greatriver whose water is the symbol of blessing and thebearer of fertility leaps down a giant birth fromits parent lake, ever blazing under the splendourof a tropical sun, yet ever fed by sources springingfrom snow-crowned mountains, and changes inits course the desert into earth's fruitfulest reoion, O /so the river of God, welling forth on the day ofPentecost from the central abyss of the divine love ,bore down to all the nations the one water of salvation,and wheresoever it spread, the desert re-treated, and the earth brought forth corn and winein abundance. And the idea of this divine streamwas from the beginning as deep as it was clear inevery Christian heart. It is one of a very fewdoctrines, such as the unity of the Godhead ,whereof indeed it is the image and the result,of which there is not only an implicit belief buta definite consciousness from the first. For the*thought of the kingdom is inseparable from thatof the king: and he could be 110 divine Sovereignwhose realm was not one and indivisible:and that