p. 126 | Cold Water by John B. Gough

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1865

Cold Water.

By John B. Gough

Look at that, ye thirsty ones of earth! Behold it! See its purity! How it glitters, as if a mass of liquid gems! It is a beverage brewed by the hands of the Almighty himself! Not in the simmering still, over smoky fires, choked with poisonous gases, and surrounded by the stench of sickening odors and rank corruptions, doth your Father in Heaven prepare the precious essence of life, the pure cold water; but in the green glade, and the grassy dell, where the red deer wanders, and where the child loves to play, there God brews it; and down, down in the deepest valleys, where the fountains murmur and the rills sing; and high up the tall mountain tops, where the naked granite glitters like gold in the sun, where the storm-clouds brood and the thunder storms crash; and away far out on the wide sea, where the hurricanes howl music, and the waves roar the chorus, sweeping the march of God—there he brews it, that beverage of life—health-giving water! And everywhere it is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dew drop—singing in the summer rain—shining in the ice-gem, till the trees all seem turned into living jewels—spreading a golden veil over the setting sun, or a white gauze over the midnight moon—sporting in cataracts—sleeping in the glaciers—dancing in the hail-shower—folding its bright snow curtains softly about the wintry world, and weaving the many-colored iris—that seraph's zone of the sky—whose warp is the rain-drop of the earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of Heaven, all checkered over with celestial flowers, by the mystic hand of refraction—still, always it is beautiful, that blessed life-water! No poison bubbles on the brink; its form brings no sadness or murder; no blood stains its limpid glass; broken-hearted wives, pale widows, and starving orphans, shed no tears in its depth; no drunkard's shrieking ghost from the grave curses in the words of eternal despair; beautiful, pure, blessed, and glorious. Give me, then, forever, the sparkling, pure cold water! —Gough.