Kingsley, Charles, 1819-1875 / 2008-08-02 00:00:00

EBOOK, THE WATER OF LIFE ETC. ***


Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk


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.
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