Note 3 — ISAIAH. (continued 13)
Reading edition
If Christ be like a river, let us be like the fishes, live in it. The fish is an ancient Christian emblem for Jesus and His people. I sat under a beech-tree some months ago in the New Forest; I gazed up into it, measured it, and marked the architecture of its branches, but suddenly I saw a little squirrel leap from bough to bough, and I thought, “After all, this beech-tree is far more to you than me, for you live in it. It delights me, it instructs me, and it affords me shade, but you live in it and upon it.” So we know something about rivers, and they are very useful to us, but to the fish the river is its element, its life, its all. So, my brethren, let us not merely read about Christ, and think of Him, and speak of Him, but let us live on Him, and in Him, as the squirrel in the tree and the fish in the river. Live by Him, and live for Him: you will do both if you live in Him.—Spurgeon.
[See also Outlines, Rivers of Waters, xxx. 25, 26, and Enriching Rivers, xxxiii. 21.]