Our growing fellowship with the Father

...O brethren, though I say we have fellowship with the Father, yet how little we have of it compared with what we hope to have! This fellowship is like the river in Ezekiel, at the first it is up to the ankles, and afterwards it is up to the knees, and then up to the loins, and then it becomes a river to swim in. There be, I fear, few of us who have waded where there is a river to swim in, but, blessed be God, though it be only up to the ankles, yet we have fellowship, and if we have but a little of it, that little is the seed of more, and the certain pledge of greater joys to come.

From a sermon entitled "Fellowship With God," delivered September 15, 1861. Flickr photo by Wolfgang Staudt; some rights reserved.