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Updated 11/6/09

THE WATER OF LIFE
by
Charles Kingsley

REVELATION xxii. 17.

And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth
say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely.

This text is its own witness. It needs no man to testify to its
origin. Its own words show it to be inspired and divine.

But not from its mere poetic beauty, great as that is: greater than
we, in this wet and cold climate, can see at the first glance. We
must go to the far East and the far South to understand the images
which were called up in the mind of an old Jew at the very name of
wells and water-springs; and why the Scriptures speak of them as
special gifts of God, life-giving and divine. We must have seen the
treeless waste, the blazing sun, the sickening glare, the choking
dust, the parched rocks, the distant mountains quivering as in the
vapour of a furnace; we must have felt the lassitude of heat, the
torment of thirst, ere we can welcome, as did those old Easterns, the
well dug long ago by pious hands, whither the maidens come with their
jars at eventide, when the stone is rolled away, to water the thirsty
flocks; or the living fountain, under the shadow of a great rock in a
weary land, with its grove of trees, where all the birds for many a
mile flock in, and shake the copses with their song; its lawn of
green, on which the long-dazzled eye rests with refreshment and
delight; its brook, wandering away--perhaps to be lost soon in
burning sand, but giving, as far as it flows, Life; a Water of Life
to plant, to animal, and to man.

All these images, which we have to call up in our minds one by one,
presented themselves to the mind of an Eastern, whether Jew or
heathen, at once, as a well-known and daily scene; and made him feel,
at the very mention of a water-spring, that the speaker was telling
him of the good and beautiful gift of a beneficent Being.

And yet--so do extremes meet--like thoughts, though not like images,
may be called up in our minds, here in the heart of London, in murky
alleys and foul courts, where there is too often, as in the poet's
rotting sea -

'Water, water, everywhere,
Yet not a drop to drink.'

And we may bless God--as the Easterns bless Him for the ancestors who
digged their wells--for every pious soul who now erects a drinking-
fountain; for he fulfils the letter as well as the spirit of
Scripture, by offering to the bodies as well as the souls of men the
Water of Life freely.

But the text speaks not of earthly water. No doubt the words 'Water
of Life' have a spiritual and mystic meaning. Yet that alone does
not prove the inspiration of the text. They had a spiritual and
mystic meaning already among the heathens of the East--Greeks and
barbarians alike.

The East--and indeed the West likewise--was haunted by dreams of a
Water of Life, a Fount of Perpetual Youth, a Cup of Immortality:
dreams at 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 and perfect condescension,
never entered into their minds. That the gods should keep their
immortality to themselves seemed reasonable enough. That they should
bestow it on a few heroes; and, far away above the stars, give them
to eat of their ambrosia, and drink of their nectar, and so live for
ever; that seemed reasonable enough likewise.

But that the God of gods, the Maker of the universe should say,
'Come, and drink freely;' that He should stoop from heaven to bring
life and immortality to light,--to tell men what the Water of Life
was, and where it was, and how to attain it; much more, that that God
should stoop to become incarnate, and suffer and die on the cross,
that He might purchase the Water of Life, not for a favoured few, but
for all mankind; that He should offer it to all, without condition,
stint, or drawback;--this, this, never entered into their wildest
dreams.

And yet, when the strange news was told, it looked so probable,
although so strange, to thousands who had seemed mere profligates or
outcasts; it agreed so fully with the deepest voices of their own
hearts,--with their thirst for a nobler, purer, more enduring Life,--
with their highest idea of what a perfect God should be, if He meant
to show His perfect goodness; it seemed at once so human and humane,
and yet so superhuman and divine;--that they accepted it
unhesitatingly, as a voice from God Himself, a revelation of the
Eternal Author of the universe; as, God grant you may accept it this
day.

And what is Life? And what is the Water of Life?

What are they indeed, my friends? You will find many answers to that
question, in this, as in all ages: but the one which Scripture gives
is this. Life is none other, according to the Scripture, than God
Himself, Jesus Christ our Lord, who bestows on man His own Spirit, to
form in him His own character, which is the character of God.

He is The one Eternal Life; and it has been manifested in human form,
that human beings might copy it; and behold, it was full of grace and
truth.

The Life of grace and truth; that is the Life of Christ, and,
therefore, the Life of God.

The Life of grace--of graciousness, love, pity, generosity,
usefulness, self-sacrifice; the Life of truth--of faithfulness,
fairness, justice, the desire to impart knowledge and to guide men
into all truth. The Life, in one word, of charity, which is both
grace and truth, both love and justice, in one Eternal essence. That
is the life which God lives for ever in heaven. That is The one
Eternal Life, which must be also the Life of God. For, as there is
but one Eternal, even God, so is there but one Eternal Life, which is
the life of God and of His Christ. And the Spirit by which it is
inspired into the hearts of men is the Spirit of God, who proceedeth
alike from the Father and from the Son.

Have you not seen men and women in whom these words have been
literally and palpably fulfilled? Have you not seen those who,
though old in years, were so young in heart, that they seem to have
drunk of the Fountain of perpetual Youth,--in whom, though the
outward body decayed, the soul was renewed day by day; who kept fresh
and pure the noblest and holiest instincts of their childhood, and
went on adding to them the experience, the calm, the charity of age?
Persons whose eye was still so bright, whose smile was still so
tender, that it seemed that they could never die? And when they
died, or seemed to die, you felt that THEY were not dead, but only
their husk and shell; that they themselves, the character which you
had loved and reverenced, must endure on, beyond the grave, beyond
the worlds, in a literally Everlasting Life, independent of nature,
and of all the changes of the material universe.

Surely you have seen such. And surely what you loved in them was the
Spirit of God Himself,--that love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, which the natural savage man has not. Has not,
I say, look at him where you will, from the tropics to the pole,
because it is a gift above man; the gift of the Spirit of God; the
Eternal Life of goodness, which natural birth cannot give to man, nor
natural death take away.

You have surely seen such persons--if you have not, _I_ have, thank
God, full many a time;--but if you have seen them, did you not see
this?--That it was not riches which gave them this Life, if they were
rich; or intellect, if they were clever; or science, if they were
learned; or rank, if they were cultivated; or bodily organization, if
they were beautiful and strong: that this noble and gentle life of
theirs was independent of their body, of their mind, of their
circumstances? Nay, have you not seen this,--_I_ have, thank God,
full many a time,--That not many rich, not many mighty, not many
noble are called: but that God's strength is rather made perfect in
man's weakness,--that in foul garrets, in lonely sick-beds, in dark
places of the earth, you find ignorant people, sickly people, ugly
people, stupid people, in spite of, in defiance of, every opposing
circumstance, leading heroic lives,--a blessing, a comfort, an
example, a very Fount of Life to all around them; and dying heroic
deaths, because they know they have Eternal Life?

And what was that which had made them different from the mean, the
savage, the drunken, the profligate beings around them? This at
least. That they were of those of whom it is written, 'Let him that
is athirst come.' They had been athirst for Life. They had had
instincts and longings; very simple and humble, but very pure and
noble. At times, it may be, they had been unfaithful to those
instincts. At times, it may be, they had fallen. They had said 'Why
should I not do like the rest, and be a savage? Let me eat and
drink, for to-morrow I die;' and they had cast themselves down into
sin, for very weariness and heaviness, and were for a while as the
beasts which have no law.

But the thirst after The noble Life was too deep to be quenched in
that foul puddle. It endured, and it conquered; and they became more
and more true to it, till it was satisfied at last, though never
quenched, that thirst of theirs, in Him who alone can satisfy it--the
God who gave it; for in them were fulfilled the Lord's own words:
'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled.'

There are those, I fear, in this church--there are too many in all
churches--who have not felt, as yet, this divine thirst after a
higher Life; who wish not for an Eternal, but for a merely endless
life, and who would not care greatly what sort of life that endless
life might be, if only it was not too unlike the life which they live
now; who would be glad enough to continue as they are, in their
selfish pleasure, selfish gain, selfish content, for ever; who look
on death as an unpleasant necessity, the end of all which they really
prize; and who have taken up religion chiefly as a means for escaping
still more unpleasant necessities after death. To them, as to all,
it is said, 'Come, and drink of the water of life freely.' But The
Life of goodness which Christ offers, is not the life they want.
Wherefore they will not come to Him, that they may have life.
Meanwhile, they have no right to sneer at the Fountain of Youth, or
the Cup of Immortality. Well were it for them if those dreams were
true; in their heart of hearts they know it. Would they not go to
the ends of the earth to bathe in the Fountain of Youth? Would they
not give all their gold for a draught of the Cup of Immortality, and
so save themselves, once and for all, the trouble of becoming good?

But there are those here, I doubt not, who have in them, by grace of
God, that same divine thirst for the Higher Life; who are
discontented with themselves, ashamed of themselves; who are
tormented by longings which they cannot satisfy, instincts which they
cannot analyse, powers which they cannot employ, duties which they
cannot perform, doctrinal confusions which they cannot unravel; who
would welcome any change, even the most tremendous, which would make
them nobler, purer, juster, more loving, more useful, more clear-
headed and sound-minded; and when they think of death say with the
poet, -

''Tis life, not death for which I pant,
'Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.'

To them I say--for God has said it long ago,--Be of good cheer. The
calling and gifts of God are without repentance. If you have the
divine thirst, it will be surely satisfied. If you long to be better
men and women, better men and women you will surely be. Only be true
to those higher instincts; only do not learn to despise and quench
that divine thirst; only struggle on, in spite of mistakes, of
failures, even of sins--for every one of which last your heavenly
Father will chastise you, even while He forgives; in spite of all
falls, struggle on. Blessed are you that hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for you shall be filled. To you--and not in vain--
'The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say,
Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him
drink of the water of life freely.'