The Water of Life and Other Sermons | Page 2

which only the shallow and the ignorant will smile; for what
are they but tokens of man's right to Immortality,--of his instinct that he
is not as the beasts,--that there is somewhat in him which ought not to
die, which need not die, and yet which may die, and which perhaps
deserves to die? How could it be kept alive? how strengthened and
refreshed into perpetual youth?
And water--with its life-giving and refreshing powers, often with
medicinal properties seemingly miraculous--what better symbol could
be found for that which would keep off death? Perhaps there was some
reality which answered the symbol, some actual Cup of Immortality,
some actual Fount of Youth. But who could attain to them? Surely the
gods hid their own special treasure from the grasp of man. Surely that
Water of Life was to be sought for far away, amid trackless
mountain-peaks, guarded by dragons and demons. That Fount of Youth
must be hidden in the rich glades of some tropic forest. That Cup of
Immortality must be earned by years, by ages, of superhuman penance
and self torture. Certain of the old Jews, it is true, had had deeper and
truer thoughts. Here and there a psalmist had said, 'With God is the
well of Life;' or a prophet had cried, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come
ye to the waters, and buy without money and without price!' But the
Jews had utterly forgotten (if the mass of them ever understood) the
meaning of the old revelations; and, above all, the Pharisees, the most
religious among them. To their minds, it was only by a proud
asceticism,--by being not as other men were; only by doing some good
thing--by performing some extraordinary religious feat,--that man
could earn eternal life. And bitter and deadly was their selfish wrath
when they heard that the Water of Life was within all men's reach, then
and for ever; that The Eternal Life was in that Christ who spoke to
them; that He gave it freely to whomsoever He would;--bitter their
wrath when they heard His disciples declare that God had given to men
Eternal Life; that the Spirit and the Bride said. Come.
They had, indeed, a graceful ceremony, handed down to them from
better times, as a sign that those words of the old psalmists and

prophets had once meant something. At the Feast of Tabernacles--the
harvest feast--at which God was especially to be thanked as the giver of
fertility and Life, their priests drew water with great pomp from the
pool of Siloam; connecting it with the words of the prophet: 'With joy
shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.' But the ceremony had
lost its meaning. It had become mechanical and empty. They had
forgotten that God was a giver. They would have confessed, of course,
that He was the Lord of Life: but they expected Him to prove that, not
by giving Life, but by taking it away: not by saving the many, but by
destroying all except a favoured few. But bitter and deadly was their
wrath when they were told that their ceremony had still a living
meaning, and a meaning not only for them, but for all men; for that
mob of common people whom they looked on as accursed, because
they knew not the law. Bitter and deadly was their selfish wrath, when
they heard One who ate and drank with publicans and sinners stand up
in the very midst of that grand ceremony, and cry; 'If any man thirst, let
him come to Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the scripture
hath said, Out of him shall flow rivers of living water.' A God who said
to all 'Come,' was not the God they desired to rule over them. And thus
the very words which prove the text to be divine and inspired, were
marked out as such by those bigots of the old world, who in them saw
and hated both Christ and His Father.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Come, and drink freely.
Those words prove the text, and other texts like it in Holy Scripture, to
be an utterly new Gospel and good news; an utterly new revelation and
unveiling of God, and of the relations of God to man.
For the old legends and dreams, in whatsoever they differed, agreed at
least in this, that the Water of Life was far away; infinitely difficult to
reach; the prize only of some extraordinary favourite of fortune, or of
some being of superhuman energy and endurance. The gods grudged
life to mortals, as they grudged them joy and all good things. That God
should say Come; that the Water of Life could be a gift, a grace, a boon
of free generosity