^ The Life Story of General Booth, 55. 2 Ellen S. Hooper.
' Carlyle, Miscellaneous Essays^ vii. 229. ST. JOHN — 21
Living Water.
LiTERATURa
Arnot (W.), The Anchor of the Soul, 23.
Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 61.
Gray (J. A.), Salvation from Start to Finish, 117.
Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 284.
Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 265.
McClieyne (R. M.), Additional Remains, 304.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : John i.-viii., 310.
Martin (S.), Rain upon the Mown Gn^ass, 254.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, iv. 1265.
Ryle (J. C), The Upper Room, 110.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxi. (1885) No. 1875.
Westcott (B. F.), The Historic Faith, 228.
Zahn (T.), Bread and Salt from the W(yrd of God, 203.
Christian World Pulpit, xxx. 91 (Hughes) ; xxxviii. 166 (Bramham) ;
xlvi. 404 (Hall); Ixvii. 251 (Body); Ixxviii. 59 (Mrs. Dora
Donaldson). Homiletic Review^ xxxviii. 320 (Meyer).
3C4
Living Water.
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. — John vii. 37.
1. The occasion and date of this great saying are carefully given by the Evangelist, because they throw much light on its signifi- cance and importance. It was " on the last day, the great day of the feast," that " Jesus stood and cried." The Feast was that of Tabernacles, which was instituted in order to keep in mind the incidents of the desert wandering. The peculiar greatness of the eighth day lay in the fact that it was the close of the whole festival and was kept as a Sabbath (Lev. xxiii. 36). It has been conjectured that it was observed in memory of the entrance into Canaan. At present it is treated as a separate Festival.
Part of the ceremonial was that on each morning of the seven, a procession of white-robed priests wound down the rocky foot- path from the Temple to Siloam, and there in a golden vase drew water from the spring, chanting, as they ascended and re-entered the Temple gates, where they poured out the water as a libation, the words of the prophet, " With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." It is uncertain whether the libations were made on the eighth day. If they were not, the significant cessation of the striking rite on this one day of the feast would give a still more fitting occasion for the words of the text.
2. The true worshippers among these Israelites had been seeing a spiritual meaning in the water, and had been conscious of an uneasy feeling of thirst still in the midst of these Temple services, an uneasy questioning whether even yet Israel had passed the thirsty desert, and had received the full gift God had meant to give. There were thinking men and thirsty souls then as there are now ; and to these, who stood perhaps a little aside,
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326 LIVING WATER
and looked half in compassion, half in envy, at the merry-making of the rest, it seemed a significant fact that, in the Temple itself, with all its grandeur and skilful appliances, there was yet no living fountain to quench the thirst of men — a significant fact that to find water the priest had to go outside the gorgeous Temple to the modest "waters of Siloah that go softly." All through the feast these men wondered morning by morning when the words of Joel were to come true, when it should come to pass that a fountain should " come forth of the house of the Lord," or when that great and deep river should begin to flow which Ezekiel saw in vision issuing from the threshold of the Lord's house, and waxing deeper and wider as it flowed. And now once more the last day of the feast had come ; the water was no longer drawn, and yet no fountain had burst up in the Temple itself ; their souls were yet perplexed, unsatisfied, craving, athirst, when suddenly, as if in answer to their half-formed thoughts and longings, a clear, assured, authoritative voice passed through their ear to their inmost soul : " If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believe th on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
3. Strange words to say anywhere, daring words to say in the Temple court ! For there they could mean nothing less than Christ's laying His hand on that old miracle, which was pointed to by the rite, when the rock yielded the water, and asserting that all which it did and typified was repeated, fulfilled, and transcended in Himself, and that not for a handful of nomads in the wilderness, but for all the world, in all its generations. So here is one more occasion on which, in this Gospel, we find Christ claiming to be the fulfilment of incidents and events in that ancient covenant, — Jacob's ladder, the brazen serpent, the manna, and now the rock that yielded the water. He says of them all that they are the shadow, and the substance is in Him. Let us consider, as they are set forth in the text, these three things —
T. Christ's View of Humanity. II. Christ's View of Himself. III. Christ's Invitation Lo Humanity.