2. All the cravings after a settled and eternal state, all the longings for purity and fellowship with the Highest, which the Temple services rather quickened than satisfied, Christ says He will satisfy. The Temple service had been to them as a screen on which the shadows of things spiritual were thrown ; but they longed to see the realities face to face, to have God revealed, to know the very truth of things, and set foot on eternal verity. This thirst is felt by all men whose whole nature is alive, whose experience has shaken them out of easy contentment with material prosperity; they thirst for a life which does not so
332 LIVING WATER
upbraid and mock them as their own life does ; they thirst to be able to live, so that the one-half of their life shall not be con- demned by the other half ; they thirst to be once for all in the "ampler ether" of happy and energetic existence, not looking through the bars and fumbling at the lock. This thirst and all legitimate cravings which we feel, Christ boldly and explicitly promises to satisfy ; nay more, all illegitimate cravings, all foolish discontent, all vicious dissatisfaction with life, all morbid thirst that is rapidly becoming chronic disease in us, all weak and false views of life, He will rid us of, and give us entrance into the life that God lives and imparts — into pure, healthy, hopeful life.
^ It is on record that a visitor once ventured to ask Alfred Tennyson what he thought of our Saviour. They were walking in a garden. The poet was silent for a moment. Then he stopped by a beautiful flower, and pointing to it said: "What the sun is to that flower, Jesus Christ is to my soul." ^
^ Christ claims to be able to meet every aspiration, every spiritual want, every true desire in this complex nature of ours. He claims to be able to do this for one, and therefore for all. He claims to be able to do it for all the generations of mankind, right away down to the end. Who is He that thus plants Himself in the front of the race, knows their deep thirsts, takes account of the impotence of anything created to satisfy them, assumes the Divine prerogative, and says, " I come to satisfy every desire in every soul, to the end of time " ? ^
3. He claims to be separate altogether from those whose thirst He would satisfy. It is a claim which only Divinity can warrant Him in making, or can fulfil when it is made. And from that day when He stood in the Temple and cried these words, down to this day, there have been, and there are, millions who can say, "We have drawn water from this fountain of salvation, and it has never failed us." Christ's audacious presenta- tion of Himself to the world as adequate to fill all its needs, and slake all its thirst, has been verified by nineteen centuiies of experience, and there are many men and women all over the world to-day who would be ready to set to their seals that Christ is true, and that He, indeed, is all-sufficient for the soul.
^ Jesus Christ threw a totally new light upon the personality of man. He took love as His point of departure, the central
^ Arthur W. Robinson, The Voice of Jay and Health, 49. ^ A. Maclaren.
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principle in our nature, which gathers all its other faculties and functions into one ; our absolutely fundamental and universal characteristic. He taught us that virtues and graces are thorough only when they flow from love; and further, that love alone can reconcile the opposite phases of our life — action and passion, doing and suffering, energy and pain, — since love inevitably leads to sacrifice, and sacrifice is perfect love. It may be granted that previous teachers had said somewhat kindred things. But Jesus Christ carried His precepts home by practice, as none had ever done before. He lived and died the life and death of love ; and men saw, as they had never seen, what human nature meant. Here at last was its true ideal, and its true ideal realized.^
III.
Chkist's Invitation to Humanity.
1. " Jesus stood and cried" The phrase used is singularly vivid : Jesus was standing, watching, it might be, the procession of the people from their booths to the Temple, and then, moved by some occasion, He cried. As Jesus stood and cried to the people, He was conscious of power to impart to them a freshly welling spring of life — a life that would overflow for the strengthening and gladdening of others besides themselves. He has the same consciousness to-day. The deep, living benefits He confers are as open to all ages as the sunshine and the air ; there is no necessity binding any one soul to feel that life is a failure, an empty, disappointing husk, serving no good purpose, bringing daily fresh misery and deeper hopelessness, a thing perhaps manfully to fight our way through but certainly not to rejoice in. If any one has such views of life it is because he has not honestly, believingly, and humbly responded to Christ's word and come to Him.