Fountain of life

“ The fountain of vision, and fountain of light:
The emerald fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might fade;
And they smiled on heaven, when they saw her lie
In the stream of life that wander’d bye. ”

“ His heart, trained in life to play with jets, like an artificial fountain, seems, as he wanders along the streams, to resume its own liberty, and, like a meadow-brook, to wind and turn, amid flowers and fringing shrubs, at its own unmolested pleasure.
“Care and trouble, in ordinary life, and especially in cities, disturb the fountains of feeling, as rubbish fallen into the fountains of ruined cities in the East chokes them, or splits and scatters their streams through all secret channels. ”

“ For with Thee is the fountain of life."+ By their union with the Fountain of Life, which is God himself, the blessed see all their desires fulfilled, and, knowing not what more to crave, they rest in God as their last end, and enjoy him forever. ”

“ And since this love as it exists in heaven, is most innocent, pure and holy—the fountain-head, as it were, of all other angelic loves—so all heavenly satisfactions, joys and delights are gathered into this; for this love above all others opens the interior recesses of the soul, through which gush the streams of life pure from their eternal Fountain. ”

“ Next, events following their inevitable course, the most remarkable cures had immediately attested the miraculous nature of the fountain, and given a new and decisive proof of the divine reality of the all-powerful apparition whose mere gesture had brought forth this fountain of life under a mortal hand.
The first move of the philosophers was to deny the cures, as they had before denied Bernadette's sincerity and the existence of the fountain. ”

“ It seemed to me that at every step we took in the divine life our souls reached up toward something better, and we had no inclination to look behind to that which had passed, or to try to solve what in our mortal life had been intricate or perplexing questions or mysteries. Like the cup that is filled to overflowing at the fountain with pure and sparkling water, so our souls were filled—more than filled—with draughts from the fountain of all good, until there was no longer room for aught else. ”

“ What wonder that the untaught children of nature spread the fame of this marvellous fountain to far distant climes, and under the stereoscopic power of time and distance came to regard it as the life-giving stream, whose magic waters washed away the calamities of age and the pains of disease, round whose fortunate shores youths and maidens ever sported, eternally young and eternally joyous! ”

“ How many a fountain glitters down the hill!
Pure gales, inviting, softly round thee play,
Bright sunshine guides—and wilt thou linger still?
Oh! enter there, where, freed from human strife,
Hope is reality, and time is life. ”

“ They are a fountain which, however many draw its waters, never runs dry. The sun in heaven above us has been shining for six thousand years, and giving light and life and warmth and fertility to the whole surface of the globe. ”

“ The water in the fountain, the water in the spray, the water in the basin, are all one. Wherever there is life there is God. The creature is bound to the Creator by a mystic bond and tie of kinship, by the fact of life. The mystery of life knits all living things with God. It is a spark, wherever it burns, from the central flame. It is a drop, wherever it is found, from the great fountain. It is in man the breath of God's nostrils. ”

“ But yet we gasped with the mouth of our heart, after those heavenly streams of Thy fountain, the fountain of life, which is with Thee; that being bedewed thence according to our capacity, we might in some sort meditate upon so high a mystery. And when our discourse was brought to that point, that the very highest delight of the earthly senses, in the very purest material light, was, in respect of the sweetness of that life, not only not worthy of comparison, but not even of mention ”

“ Behold! the beauty of yonder fountain, after its upward flight, is where it turns again to earth, so is the life of one morally beautiful, ever drawn by a law of its being from the clouds of speculation to the common interests of humanity. ”

“ The history of the land is full of romance, from its early discovery by Ponce de Leon, who came hither in search of the Fountain of Youth—that fountain which plays so sweet a tune, and sparkles and flashes a glorious baptism once in every life, and then is seen or heard no more. Men seek for it as a kind of holy grail, but find it not. ”

“ We do not have to make it rise any more than the engineer who sinks the bore-pipe for an artesian well has to make the water rise in it; the water does that by its own energy, springing as a fountain a hundred feet into the air. Just so we shall find a fountain of Essence-of-Life ready to spring up in ourselves, inexhaustible and continually increasing in its flow, as One taught long ago to a woman at a wayside well. ”

“ We have seen the barren fig tree and the fruitful vine; we have seen the lame and the blind, and have met the leper at the gate; we have seen the tiny lamp, such as the wise and foolish virgins carried—lamps that need often to be refilled; and we have seen the "whited sepulchres," "full of dead men's bones." We have been impressed with the life-giving power of a fountain in a barren land and can more fully realize the force of the promise that the man who delighteth "in the law of the Lord" "shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water." ”

“ The soul, wet with the waters of repentance, and plunged into the 'Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,' the crimson fountain of the blood of Christ, emerges 'whiter than snow.' Let Him 'make the tree good and fruit will be good,' for if not we shall be 'hewn down and cast into the fire,' because we cannot bear any fruit unto holiness, nor can the end be everlasting life. ”

“ The most prodigious fact in connection with this wonderful fountain, when its legendary origin is contemplated, is its size, its abounding life, the great volume of its waters. A well which discharges twenty-one tons of water per minute, which feeds an artificial lake and runs a mill, and has cured unnumbered thousands of human beings of their ills for hundreds of years, is surely one of the wonders of the world, to which even mystic legend can only add one marvel more. ”

“ The design of the fountain represents the struggle of life symbolized by a group of figures which is intended to portray, according to Miss Yandell, not the struggle for bare existence, but 'the attempt of the immortal soul within us to free itself from the handicaps and entanglements of its earthly environments. It is the development of character, the triumph of intellectuality and spirituality I have striven to express.' Life is symbolized by the figure of a woman, the soul by an angel, and the earthly tendencies—duty, passion, and avarice—by male figures. ”

“ Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turns all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.And in this lies my honour and my reward,— That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty ”

“ III. The last point here is that Christ's gift is a fountain 'springing up into everlasting life.'
The water of a fountain rises by its own impulse, but howsoever its silver column may climb it always falls back into its marble basin. But this fountain rises higher, and at each successive jet higher, tending towards, and finally touching, its goal, which is at the same time its course. The water seeks its own level, and the fountain climbs until it reaches Him from whom it comes, and the eternal life in which He lives. ”

“ A fountain is supplied from a living spring—a never-failing source—and it therefore yields an unfailing supply of water for men of all classes and conditions whenever they need it. The Divine rule which governs the gild of wisdom originated in God. The fountain of Divine truth came from this Holy and Infinite spring. Therefore it is an all-sufficient guide or rule of life for men in all ages, and under all circumstances. Secondly—Lifegiving. ”

“ The first thing to be done is to keep the fountain unsealed, and to let the life-inspiring waters flow; for without this, the pilgrimage of life will have neither flowers to enliven, verdure to refresh, nor fruits to sustain the traveller on his way. ”

“ All the mercies that have filled up my life, all the places that ever I abode in, all the societies and persons I have been conversant with, all my employments and relations, every condition I have been in, and every change I have passed through, all tell me, that the fountain is overflowing goodness. ”

“ Whether the sealed fountain (fons signatus) alludes to a definite fountain which Solomon had built for the upper city and the temple place, [71] we do not now inquire. To a locked garden and spring no one has access but the rightful owner, and a sealed fountain is shut against all impurity. Thus she is closed against the world, and inaccessible to all that would disturb her pure heart, or desecrate her pure person. [72]
All the more beautiful and the greater is the fulness of the flowers and fruits which bloom and ripen in the garden of this life, closed against the world and its lust. ”

“ It is easy to talk about Him as being the fountain of living waters; it is easy to quote and to admire the words which the Master spoke to the Samaritan woman when He said, 'I would have given thee living water,' and 'the water which I give will be a fountain springing up into everlasting life.' We repeat or learn such sayings, and then what do we do? ”

“ Not only therefore does it give him, as indeed it does, an eternal occasion for a gratitude which, as he feels it, "makes duty joy, and labour rest." It gives him a new power with which to live the grateful life; a power residing not in Justification itself, but in what it opens up. It is the gate through which he passes to the fountain; it is the wall which ramparts the fountain, the roof which shields him as he drinks. The fountain is his justifying Lord's exalted Life, His risen Life, poured into the man's being by {162} the Spirit who makes Head and member one. ”

“ In the midst of it is the fountain of living water, of which thou mayst drink and live for ever. There the birth, the life, the sufferings, the death, the resurrection and ascension of Christ, are not merely remembered, but inwardly found and enjoyed as the real states of thy soul, which has followed Christ in the regeneration. ”

“ It springs up 'into eternal life,' for water must seek its source, and rise to the level of its origin, and this fountain within a man, that reaches up ever towards the eternal life from which it came, and which it gives to its possessor, will bear him up, as some strong spring will lift the clods that choked its mouth, will bear him up towards the eternal life which is native to it, and therefore native to him. ”

“ The idea of a fountain, the desirability of water, becomes, unconsciously, dominant in the artist's mind; and under its sway, as under the divining rod, there trickle and well up every kind of thought, of feeling, about water ”

“ Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great walls and temples, until in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole cañon is transfigured, as if all the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up and condensed in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and sky. ”

“ Belief cometh as the wind. Can the tree say to the wind, 'Rest thou on my boughs,' or Man to Belief, 'Fold thy wings on my heart'? Go where thy soul can find comfort, for thy life hath passed from its use on earth. And when I would read thy fate, the runes are as blanks, and the wave sleeps unstirred on the fountain. ”

“ I am just now reminded of what we are told in history that a great man, many years ago, left his home in Europe and came across the Atlantic ocean in his own ship to hunt for the fountain of youth that was confidently believed to exist somewhere in the wilds of America. This fountain, it was said, possessed the virtue of imparting youth to the aged, and life and health to the sick and dying. ”

“ The current of their reasoning and action is determined by human conditions and material resistances; but the fountain in the living rock has waters that are divine. If this be true, then must we search for the heavenly element in the latencies rather than the prominencies of their life ”

“ On a lovely summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that gasped for the ocean: at last, at last, the cool, washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness, and she knew that she lived. ”

“ THE fountain of death makes the still water of life play. ”

“ For, as the water of a fountain is sometimes drunk, sometimes drawn, and sometimes conveyed in furrows for the irrigation of lands, yet the fountain does not derive such an abundance for so many uses from itself, but from the spring which is perpetually flowing 533to furnish it with fresh supplies, so the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which receives the life flowing from the Divinity, and conveys it to us. ”

“ But I would fain be capable of a joy quite apart from the accidents of my aged earthly existence, which, indeed, is a petty and almost dried-up fountain—whereas to the receptive soul the river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished." ”

“ They hallow all things by their sacred touch,
And ope the portals of the land of rest."
The heart is the source of all actions. A dark, muddy fountain cannot send forth clear waters. Neither does a pure fountain send forth muddy waters. ”