The Family Altar

September 22.

"For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken

Me, the fountain of living- waters, and hewed them out cisterns,

broken cisterns, than can hold no water." Jer. 2:13.

There is nothing more pathetic than to hear of a thirsty

desert-wanderer coming to a well or cistern in the fond hope of

quenching his raging thirst and, lo, there is no water; for the

cistern is broken. But that is the sad, though justly merited,

fate of all men who refuse to honor and worship the true God as

He stands revealed in Holy Scripture. In their unbelief these men

are guilty of the two evils with which God charges idolatrous Israel

in our text. In base ingratitude they forsake the fountain of living

waters, the true God, to whose blessing they owe their very life

and all their possessions. Then, on the other hand, they give the

honor and worship due their kind and benevolent Maker and Savior

to idols and serve them with rites and superstitions that are an

abomination in the sight of the holy God. Though our modern

unbelievers and infidels do not practise the gross form of idolatry

of which faithless Israel was guilty, they all worship some false

god, be his name nature, or science, or art, or whatever it may be ;

for unbelief and idolatry, though of a finer sort, always go hand

in hand. But these false gods of the unbelievers prove broken

cisterns which are unable to quench the thirst of their worshipers,

whose immortal souls can find the peace and happiness for which

they long so ardently alone at the fountain of living waters — that

God who calls to them in Christ Jesus: "Whosoever drinketh of

the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." (John 4, 14.)

Oh, these poor, blind, thirsting infidels ! How we Christians ought

to pity them and pray for them ! Let us pray for them now in

the prayer of our Church : —

Almighty, merciful, and gracious God and Father, with our whole

heart we beseech Thee for all who have forsaken the Christian faith, all

who have wandered from any portion thereof, or are in doubt or tempta-

tion through the corrupters of Thy Word, that Thou wouldest visit them

as a Father, reveal unto them their error, and bring them back from their

wanderings, that they in singleness of heart, taking pleasure alone in

the pure truth of Thy Word, may be made wise thereby unto everlasting

life; through faith in Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.