The little girl took a long, long draught and her moaning ceased. The perspiration came out in drops on her forehead. The flush went out of her face. She turned over and fell into a quiet
I believe the water saved her life," said the mother to Hafiz.2
II.
The Invitation to the Sinner.
Here we have a remarkable change. We pass at once, and quite abruptly, from an invitation to Christ to hasten His coming to an invitation addressed to those who are thirsty, and those who are willing, to come to Christ. It is as if the writer had intended to ask the thirsty one, and every one that had any good will at all,
1 W. H. M. H. Aitken, God's Everlasting Yea, 246.
2 From The Children's Friend^ Kichmond, U.S.A.
REVELATION xxii. 17 419
to join in the welcome to the coming Christ, and then suddenly- remembered that that could not be until they knew Christ. So he turns his sentence into an invitation to them to come to Christ, that they may taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Then will they be ready to welcome His coming.
^ Man was forbidden to come near to the tree after he had sinned in the Garden of Eden. There was a flaming sword to keep him from coming near that tree, but now here there are not only trees of life, but there is also a river of life, and this river of life has its source in the throne of glory, and as it flows along, the word of the Lord is this : " Is any man thirsty ? Let him take of the water of life freely." Oh, that grand word "let"! If God says, " Let him," who then is going to deny it ? ^
i. The Invitation to the Thirsty.
There is no animal craving so fierce or so intolerable as the craving of thirst. This may be due to the fact that the depriva- tion of liquid is a condition with which all the tissues sympathize. Every atom of the body joins in the cry, and the expression is concentrated in the parched mouth and the dry and feverish lips. This great craving of thirst is used in this book to symbolize the craving of the soul, and these plenteous waters are used to shadow forth the abundance of the satisfaction which is found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
T[ 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 dehght; its brook, wandering away — perhaps to be lost soon in burning sand, 1 A. G. Brown, God's Full-Orhed Gospel, 79.
420 COME
but giving, as far as it flows, Life ; a Water of Life to plant, ta- animal, and to man.^
1. Will anything allay this thirst ?
(1) Not sin. The wonderful thing is that we can ever persuade ourselves that it can. The devil can mix the most insidious potions and can make them sparkle like the water of life, but when we drink them it is as though a man consumes salt water to appease his thirst. Animal gratification can never quench a spiritual craving. It is the most pathetic of all tragedies when a man or woman flees to drink to quieten the soul. It shall be " as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite."
^ Against the deceitfulness of sin he warned his friends in such terms as these : " Sin says, ' I'm not sin at all.' Then Sin says, ' I'm pleasant.' Yes, pleasant poison. Then Sin says, * Ah 1 do you call that sin ? Well, it is but a little sin.' Alas ! alas I for us men there can be no little sin, unless there be a little God against whom to commit it. Then Sin says, * It is a common sin ; good people do that.' A good man has crooked legs ; are crooked legs therefore no evil ? He has stiff joints ; are stiff joints there- fore no evil ? Ah ! men don't argue that way about the natural evil, but they do about the spiritual evil, because they love sin, and will take any excuse for it, and never readier than when they find it in a good man. Then Sin says, * If you sin there's Christ to go to.' " 2