There never was a fountain like
this. Alexander Smiley, The Hour of
Silence, 1899. On that day, a fountain will
be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem
to cleanse them from sin and impurity. Zechariah 13, 1. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
us from all sin, 1 John 1.7 There is another river, the streams
of which make glad the city of God. It is a river whose waters
are crimson red rather than crystal clear. The blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses us from all sin. His lifeblood shed for our redemption
on the shameful tree. So many have proved the potency
of this blessed fountain, a great multitude which no man can number,
from the east and the west, the north and the south, from the
early dawn of Christ and the modern home, they have pressed
to its brink, and they are pressing still. Whoever is willing may
stoop down and drink and live. Such continuous and permanent
efficacy resides in the fountain. It is not like the pool of Bethesda,
endowed with a strange and vitalizing virtue only at intervals The
dear dying Lamb never loses His power to save. The cross is at
every moment the instrument of pardon. The blood cleanses, retains
its capacity of cleansing perennially, age after age. And so, universally
and omnipotently successful, these blood-red waters are. From
all my sin they will purge me, my secret sins and my presumptuous
sins, my sins of youth and my sins of old age, my sins against
others and my sins against myself, my sins when I was a stranger
to God and my darker and more hateful sins since I came home
to him. There never was a fountain like
this. Exploration has not yet discovered
its like, nor has imagination ever conceived it. It is peerless,
matchless, unique. Surely I have washed and am daily
washing in it, that I may be clean. There is a fountain filled
with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath
that flood Lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced
to see That fountain in his day, And there may I, though vile
as he, Wash all my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, Your precious
blood Shall never lose its power, Till all the ransomed Church
of God Be saved to sin no more. E'er since by faith I saw the
stream, Your flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die. When this poor lisping, stammering
tongue Lies silent in the grave, Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing your power to save. William Kuyper, 1731-1800