The Water of Life and Other Sermons

The Water of Life and Other
Sermons

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by Charles Kingsley (#13 in our series by Charles Kingsley)
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Title: The Water of Life and Other Sermons
Author: Charles Kingsley

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5687] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 7, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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WATER OF LIFE ETC. ***

Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE WATER OF LIFE AND OTHER SERMONS BY CHARLES
KINGSLEY.

SERMON I. THE WATER OF LIFE (Preached at Westminster Abbey)

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