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.
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