I. ALL LANDS HAVE THEIR RIVERS. Think of the Tiber, the Tigris, the Thames, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Nile, the Niger. Cities rise on their banks which are, like Tyre, populous and prosperous. The harvest is vast indeed. Ships which are freighted with necessaries and luxuries, with the works of art, the spoils of the sea, and the produce of far-away lauds, all come up the river. What wonder that the river should become a type of the blessings of the gospel - that the prophet should tell us "living waters shall flow out of Jerusalem!"

II. THE HARVESTS ARE MANIFOLD. We are so accustomed to think of the golden sheaves of the corn-fields when we mention the rivers, that we are liable to forget how indebted we are to the broad estuaries which bear on their bosom the wealth of many nations. How manifold, too, are our harvests under the gospel! Where that comes philanthropy lives, and social purity flows, and justice is sacred in its rivers of righteousness, and salvation comes, delivering us from sensuality and sin. Harvests? Surely the Christian should notice how wide and vast the gospel waters are.

III. THEIR DRYING UP IS DEATH. We cannot live without rain and rivers. Cattle perish. Verdure withers. Man himself dies. No wealth can purchase what God gives so plentifully. "Hath the rain a Father?" Oh yes. Not a mere Creator, but a Father; for it is rich in evidences of his universal care and love. God gives "the former and the latter rain," and all through the ages the rivers flow into the sea. So God's truth remains! The living water flows, and the voice is still heard, "He, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." - W.M.S.

I. But the sea often speaks to us in other language than this, addressing us, as it does, through the eye as well as the ear, and CALLING UPON US TO ADORE AND LOVE GOD for the beauty with which He clothes and overhangs it, and for the blessings which, by means of the sea, He conveys to us, no less than to tremble and bow down before Him in view of the vastness and the majestic grandeur of the ocean in its more excited and terrific moods.

II. The sea hath spoken, even the strength of the sea, by ITS VASTNESS AND FORCE AND GRANDEUR OF ITS MOVEMENTS.

III. The sea hath spoken, too, and will, we trust, thus ever speak, through THE ELECTRIC WIRE, which here and there lies far down in its lowest depths, and which, in coming years, will be more widely extended abroad.

IV. Yet again the sea hath spoken, in that IT APPEALS TO OUR KIND CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY AND INTEREST in behalf of those who, as seamen, go forth upon the deep.

V. When the sea in its strength thus speaks to us, with the voice of wailing, lamentation, and woe, HOW OUGHT WE TO PRAY FOR SEAMEN AND THOSE CONNECTED WITH THEM, with all the power of faith which God shall give us, that He would save them from a watery grave, or, if they thus perish, that He would comfort those who mourn their loss, and that in the day in which the earth and the sea shall give up the dead that are in them, they may all together enter the haven of eternal rest. So, too, should we ever pray that the time may soon come when the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto God, and the isles shall wait for His law.

(C. Rockwell.)