Page:The New Church - What, How, Why .djvu/41

Rh thirst, and is the cleansing element of the soul, for only by knowledge can we control disease or shun evils. Truth may be in the form of a great science, vast like a sea. It may be the truth current in our civil institutions or in our daily lives, when it is like rivers. It may come from a deep affection for truth itself, and be like a perennial spring. It may come as if out of the atmosphere, like the dew, and refresh us in our daily toil. In fact, truth may take as many forms as water does upon the earth. So the Lord uses man's names of water in its various forms as His names of corresponding forms of truth. So He says, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." "There is a river whose streams thereof shall make glad the city of God."

There is no good thing that does not have its opposite, for evil is but perverted good. The same word that is used to