There never was a fountain like this!

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(Alexander Smellie, "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 life-blood, 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 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 Cowper, 1731-1800)

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