Bible Commentaries
John 7

Verse 17

The Will to Know

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.— John 7:17.

1. The Feast of Tabernacles was in progress in Jerusalem when Jesus entered the Temple to teach. A circle of Jews were gathered round Him, who seem to have been spellbound with the extraordinary wisdom of His words. He made no pretension to be a scholar. He was no graduate of the Rabbinical schools. He had no access to the sacred literature of the people. Yet here was this stranger from Nazareth confounding the wisest heads in Jerusalem, and unfolding with calm and effortless skill such truths as even these Temple walls had never heard before. Then “the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” What organ of spiritual knowledge can He have, never having learned? Never having learned—they did not know that Christ had learned. They did not know the school at Nazareth whose Teacher was in heaven—whose schoolroom was a carpenter’s shop—the lesson, the Father’s will. They knew not that hidden truths could come from God, or wisdom from above. What came to them was gathered from human books, or caught from human lips. They knew no organ save the mind; no instrument of knowing the things of heaven but that by which they learned in the schools. But Jesus points to a spiritual world which lay still far beyond, and tells them of the spiritual eye which reads its profounder secrets and reveals the mysteries of God. “My doctrine is not mine,” He says, “but his that sent me”; and “my judgment is just,” as He taught before, “because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” And then, lest men should think this great experience was never meant for them, He applies His principles to every human mind which seeks to know God’s will. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God.”

2. “If any man willeth to do … he shall know.” The quality of our perceptions is to be determined by the character of our wills. If we look after our moral wills our spiritual eyes will attend to themselves. Our visions wait upon our volitions. Moral obedience is the secret of spiritual discernment. “If any man willeth to do”; that is the first step in the exploration of eternal truth; that is the “open sesame” into the region of light and glory. “If any man willeth to do,” that is the instrument; “he shall know,” that is the consequent revelation. “If any man willeth to do”; that is the telescope through which we survey the far-stretching panorama of Gospel truth, or it is the microscope through which we discern the mind of God in the immediate problem. “He shall know!” The first part of the text proclaims the means, the second enshrines the issues.

Doing and knowing are blood relations. “Obedience is the organ of spiritual vision”—so Robertson re-issued the truth, that, if we would know God’s doctrine, we must do His will. Experiment and experience spring from the same root, and will not grow apart. Do you wish you had a Christian’s experience? Will to make the Christian experiment. Will you know who Christ is, and what He can do for you? Obey Him; do as He directs. Do not expect experience without experiment. “Follow me” was Christ’s way of saying “Taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” 1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 38.]

I

Obeying

“ If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.” Here we have the means by which knowledge of truth is attainable. There are a number of instruments for finding out the will of God. One of them is a very great instrument, so far surpassing all the rest in accuracy that there may be said to be but one which has never been known to fail. The others are smaller and clumsier, much less delicate, indeed, and often fail. They often fail to come within sight of the will of God at all, and are so far astray at other times as to mistake some other thing for it. Still they are instruments and, notwithstanding their defects, have a value by themselves; and when the great instrument employs their humbler powers to second its attempts, they immediately become as keen and as unerring as itself.

The most important of these minor instruments is Reason; and although it is a minor instrument, it is great enough in many a case to reveal the secret will of God. God is taking our life and character through a certain process, for example. He is running our career along a certain chain of events. And sometimes the light which He is showing us stops, and we have to pick our way for a few steps by the dimmer lights of thought. But it is God’s will for us then to use this thought, and to elevate it through regions of consecration, into faith, and to walk by this light till the clearer beam from His will comes back again. Another of these instruments is Experience. There are many paths in life which we all tread more than once. God’s light was by us when we walked them first, and lit a beacon here and there along the way. But the next time He sent our feet along that path He knew the sidelights would be burning still, and let us walk alone. And then there is Circumstance. God closes things in around us till our alternatives are all reduced to one. That one, if we must act, is probably the will of God just then. And then there are the Advice of others—an important element at least—and the Welfare of others, and the Example to others, and the many other facts and principles that make up the moral man, which, if not strong enough always to discover what God’s will is, are not too feeble often to determine what it is not.

Even the best of these instruments, however, has but little power in its own hands. The ultimate appeal is always to the one great Instrument, which uses them in turn as it requires, and which supplements their discoveries, or even supplants them, if it choose, by its own superior light, and might, and right. It is like some great glass that can sweep the skies in the darkest night and trace the motions of the farthest stars, while all the rest can but see a faint uncertain light piercing, for a moment here and there the clouds which lie between. And this great instrument for finding out God’s will, this instrument which can penetrate where reason cannot go, where observation has not been before, and memory is helpless, and the guiding hand of circumstance has failed, has a name which is seldom associated with any end so great, a name which every child may understand, even as the stupendous instrument itself with all its mighty powers is sometimes moved by infant hands when others have tried in vain. The name of the instrument is Obedience. Obedience, as it is sometimes expressed, is the organ of spiritual knowledge. As the eye is the organ of physical sight; the mind, of intellectual sight; so the organ of spiritual vision is this strange power, Obedience. This is one of the great discoveries the Bible has made to the world. It is purely a Bible thought. Philosophy never conceived a truth so simple and yet so sublime. And, although it was known in Old Testament times, and expressed in Old Testament books, it was reserved for Jesus Christ to make the full discovery to the world, and add to His teaching another of the profoundest truths that have come from heaven to earth—that the mysteries of the Father’s will are hid in this word “obey.”

Men say that when they know they will do; Jesus says that when they do they will know. He does not promise to manifest Himself to the man who dreams or debates, but to him who keeps his commandments. The seeds of truth sprout in the soil of obedience. The words of Jesus in the mind of a disobedient man are no more vital than wheat in the wrappings of a mummy. To know the Divinity of Jesus’s teachings, we must do His will with definite intention. Moral disobedience is mental darkness, but to submit our wills in loyalty to His law is to open our minds to the light of His truth. 1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 19.]

1. “If any man.”—Observe the universality of the law. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.” The law was true of the Man Christ Jesus Himself. He tells us it is true of all other men. In God’s universe there are no favourites of heaven who may transgress the laws of the universe with impunity—none who can take fire in the hand and not be burnt—no enemies of heaven who if they sow corn will reap tares. The law is just and true to all: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” In God’s spiritual universe there are no favourites of heaven who can attain knowledge and spiritual wisdom apart from obedience. There are none reprobate by an eternal decree, who can surrender self and in all things submit to God, and yet fail of spiritual convictions. It is not therefore a rare, partial condescension of God, arbitrary and causeless, which gives knowledge of the truth to some, and shuts it out from others; but a vast, universal, glorious law. The light lighteth every man that cometh into the world. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.”

Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest,—that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favourite of the Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the Nations; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighbourhood of the steeple under which that Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact,—unpleasant you may think it; pleasant, it seems to me,—that you, with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor little red, black, or blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth; and that, of the two, you probably know less about God than she does; the only difference being that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you much that is wrong. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (Works, xviii. 36).]

2. “Willeth to do.”—The old version reads: “If any man will do his will, he shall know,” but the Revised Version takes us a step farther back, away to the preparatory conditions before any deed is yet accomplished. “If any man willeth to do … he shall know!” Back from doing to willingness to do. We are led from the realm of conduct to the region of character, from finished deed to primary aspirations. Notice the difference this makes in the problem. Before, it looked as if the doing were to come first and then the knowing His will; but now another element is thrown in at the very beginning. The being willing comes first and then the knowing; and thereafter the doing may follow—the doing, that is to say, if the will has been sufficiently clear to proceed. The whole stress of the passage therefore turns on this word “willeth.” And Christ’s answer to the question, How shall we know the will of God? may be simply stated thus: “If any man is willing to do God’s will, he shall know,” or, in plainer language still, “If any man is sincerely trying to do God’s will, he shall know.” The connection of all this with obedience is just that being willing is the highest form of obedience. It is the spirit and essence of obedience. There is an obedience in the world which is no obedience, because the act of obedience is there but the spirit of submission is not.

On John 8:43-44: “Ye cannot hear my word; and the lusts of your father ye will do,” Brownlow North remarks, “The ‘ will’ explains the ‘cannot.’ You cannot, because your will is in opposition.” 1 [Note: K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 265.]

“A certain man,” we read in the Bible, “had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father?” Obedience here comes out in its true colours as a thing in the will. And if any man have an obeying will, a truly single and submissive will, he shall know of the teaching, or of the leading, whether it be of God. 2 [Note: H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 309.]

3. “His will.”—If there is one thing more than another which is more personal to the Christian, more singularly his than God’s love or God’s interest—one thing which is a finer symbol of God’s love and interest, it is the knowledge of God’s will—the private knowledge of God’s will. And this is more personal, just inasmuch as it is more private. My private portion of God’s love is only a private share in God’s love—only a part—the same in quality and kind as all the rest of God’s love, which all the others get from God. But God’s will is a thing for myself. There is a will of God for me which is willed for no one else besides. It is not a share in the universal will, in the same sense as I have a share in the universal love. It is a particular will for me, different from the will He has for any one else—a private will—a will which no one else knows about, which no one can know about, but me.

(1) God has a life-plan for every human life. In the eternal counsels of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the Creator had a thought for each of us. Our life was to be the slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn-stalk from the grain of corn, or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and years, our influence and our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, from another will, if we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed. But it was man’s prerogative to choose his path, his duty to choose it in God. But the Divine right to choose at all has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God, and cut out his career for himself.

(2) It has happened, therefore, that the very fact of God’s guidance in the individual life has been denied. It is said to give life an importance quite foreign to the Divine intention in making man. One life, it is argued, is of no more importance than any other life, and to talk of special providences happening every hour of every day is to detract from the majesty and dignity of God; in fact, it reduces a religious life to a mere religious caprice, and the thought that God’s will is being done to a hallucination of the mind. But the Christian cannot allow the question to be put off with poor evasions like these. Every day, indeed, and many times a day, the question arises in a hundred practical forms. What is the will of God for me? What is the will of God for me to-day, just now, for the next step, for this arrangement and for that, and this amusement, and this projected work for Christ? For all these he feels he must consult the will of God; and that God has a will for him in all such things, and that it must be possible somehow to know what that will is, is not only a matter of hope, but a point in his doctrine and creed.

4. How may we assure ourselves that this willingness to do God’s will is ours?

(1) We may judge our primary bias by our treatment of the light which we have already received. Our inclinations are reflected in our ways; our inclinations are the moulds in which our deeds are shaped. What, then, have our deeds to say about our inclinations? What have we done with the light which has already been given? For God has nowhere and at no time left Himself without a witness. In no man’s life, however imprisoned and bewildered, is there ever a heaven without a twinkle of guiding light. On the darkening wastes of every life, with all its moors and fens and torrents, there is a kindly gleam. Many things are hidden, but all things are not obscure. Some things are clear, and what have we done with them? We are praying for larger days, and there is a little glow-lamp at our feet; what have we done with that? Are we asking for stars and at the same time despising candles? Are we waiting for light upon unknown continents, and disdaining the proffered lamp that would guide us down the street? We are, perhaps, waiting for the sun to rise upon the dark and awful mysteries of the Atonement, while in our immediate presence there shines the light of a vivid and neglected duty. The text makes one thing plain, and we shall do infinitely well to heed it—that sunrises are not for those who neglect candles, and that we need never expect to enter into the illumined recesses of sacred truth if the condemnatory light of despised lamps is shining in our rear. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know,” and we are pathetically and tragically foolish if we are seeking the knowledge by any other road. The way to firm, fine perception, and therefore to the rich unfolding of truth and glory, is not through metaphysics, or by the towering aspirations of philosophic Babels, but by the humble commonplace road of reverent moral obedience.

An earnest but pessimistic priest was talking to the Bishop about the state of his parish, and was specially troubled by the small success of his efforts to help the younger farm-lads lodging at the various homesteads. “For example, my Lord,” he said, “there is one lad with whom I had taken much trouble, and I hoped an influence for good was getting a lodgment in the boy’s heart. But, imagine my distress when I asked what he had done in the way of preparation for his early Communion at Easter, and all he said was, ‘I’s cleaned my boots, and put ’em under the bed.’ It is sad, indeed!”—“Well, dear friend,” replied the Bishop, “and don’t you think the angels would rejoice to see them there?” 1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell, Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 114.]

(2) Many of us are putting second things first. We are seeking to know the mind of the Lord, to disengage His truth, when all the time we are rebels to the truth we know. Now a neglected duty always pollutes the air like a neglected lamp; it contributes smoke when it was purposed to contribute light, and the very minister of illumination makes the atmosphere more dense and opaque. In our quest for God and truth we must, therefore, see to it that there are no smoking lamps, and we do this when we firmly set ourselves to do the will we know. There are whole continents of spiritual truth lying back in twilight and night, but there is a fringe of revelation in the foreground, glimpses of our Lord’s will which leave us in no manner of doubt. Let us begin with the will we know, and through it move on to the unknown. But, when I say “the will we know,” I mean all the will we know. We are not to choose a candle here and a candle there, and reject and ignore the rest. We must not pick and choose among the lamps. If we are seeking the land of the morning, we must not despise a single candle which gives its kindly guidance by the way. Wherever we find a clear revelation of our Master’s will it is through scrupulous obedience to that will that we must seek the unveiling of the truth that still remains hid.

Obey something; and you will have a chance some day of finding out what is best to obey. 1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera.]

As long as we set up our own will and our own wisdom against God’s, we make that wall between us and His love which I have spoken of just now. But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command which he must himself obey. 2 [Note: Mr. Tryan, in Scenes of Clerical Life.]

(3) If a man is willing to do the will of God, he will be watchful against the prejudices and prepossessions which would hinder him from knowing that will. He will know the danger which always exists of self-deception, and of confounding strong conviction with sound and solid persuasion. Some men have strong convictions, but they believe a lie, a lie for which, if need be, they are prepared to give up their life. Let us never forget that the firmness with which we hold any principle is no proof of its truthfulness, unless we have verified it in practice. The man whom Christ contemplates is one to whom all light is welcome, come from what quarter it may. It may disturb old convictions; it may reveal that as true which before seemed to be false; it may alter the proportions and relations of truths, giving a primary position to some which once held but a secondary, and, on the contrary, reducing to a lower status what once was highest of all. But it is the will of God he is bent on knowing and doing, and this is more than a recompense for all the disturbance which may befall merely inherited opinions. He will feel that there is no interest, either in this world or in any other, compared with that of finding out and fulfilling the will of God. This must be right, this must be best.

The difficulty of gaining admission for any truth into the minds of men whose lives are in disconformity with it is proverbial. If a man’s interests, his present or even his fancied interests, or his pleasures are involved in his continuance in any course of action, we know what a mass of evidence is required to convince him that he is in the wrong. To the makers and sellers of silver shrines there will be no goddess like Diana of the Ephesians. If a craft, however iniquitous, be in danger, we need not be sanguine in our hopes of convincing of its wickedness those who are enriching themselves by its gains. We may be prepared with much evidence of its wrongfulness, but they have profits which overwhelm all our demonstrations. Hence it is that the opinions of men are quite as frequently the product of their practices as their cause; and the doctrine, while it gives its complexion to the life, as certainly takes its complexion from it. Thieves do not first excogitate evil maxims, and then begin to steal; they first begin to steal, and then adopt evil maxims; and as a rule, the worse the man, the worse must be the principles from which he acts; and the better the man, the nobler the principles which animate him. 1 [Note: E. Mellor, The Footsteps of Heroes, 239.]

When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such “insufficient evidence,” insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an antichristian order of the universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start. 2 [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 14.]

II

Knowing

“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.” Here we have the issue of obedience. This willingness to do His will, whether I find the clear revelation in the sacred word or in the private oratory of my own conscience, gives to my life the requisite atmosphere in which all spiritual truth is to be discerned. To be willing to do His will, and to do it, gathers into the life a certain air of refinement which is the only congenial medium for the discovery of spiritual truth. Everybody has noticed how clearly sounds travel when there is snow on the ground. When that white vesture clothes the earth soft sounds become articulate and doubtful callings become clear. And when, by scrupulous obedience to the will of the Saviour, the heart grows pure, when it is clothed in habits of consecration which dim even the whiteness of the virgin snow, then do the doubtful utterances of our Lord become articulate, and suggestions of remote and hidden truth speak clearly in our receptive ears. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching.”

1. “He shall know.”—If we hear our conscience and set our face to duty, it will be with us as with the traveller who ascends the Gemmi Pass. When he comes to the foot of the precipice along whose ledges and through whose crevices the narrow path ascends, the mist may be lying heavy, and at first he may not find the starting-point. Once his feet are upon the path, although he cannot see beyond a few yards and has no idea how the path may wind, it is only a matter of dogged and careful perseverance. With every step the mist grows more luminous, glimpses of the crest can now and again be caught, and suddenly the traveller comes out from the cloud into the clear sunlight on the height, with the spotless snow around him and the blue of God’s heaven over his head. He that wills to do God’s will shall come to know God’s will before set of sun.

I have known men who have for long doubted the existence of God and denied that we could know anything of Him, resolutely set themselves to be true and pure and unselfish, and the changed attitude has begotten a yearning for and a trust in a truth and righteousness and goodness out of and beyond themselves. The conviction that they must dwell in a personal source has gradually grown within their aspiring spirits; and they have come to feel sure that it is a Personal Will that is at the centre of our complicated, perplexed, and mysterious life, always going out in work and always unexhausted—a Will and not a cold, hard, material “power-not-of-ourselves”; the Personal Will of a living and loving Father. In seeking to do the best, they have, like Zaccheus, come on the track of Him who is the Absolute Best embodied and made attractive to all men for the salvation of the world. 1 [Note: J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood, 95.]

(1) “He shall know.”—There is a wide distinction between supposing and knowing—between fancy and conviction—between opinion and belief. Whatever rests on authority remains only supposition. We have an opinion when we know what others think. We know when we feel. In matters practical we know only so far as we can do. Feel God; do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice: Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; and then you do not think, you know, that there is a God. That is a conviction and a belief.

Faith in Christ is an act rather of the spiritual nature than of the intellect, and as the result of sympathy with the truth rather than of critical examination of evidence. A painter or art-critic familiar with the productions of great artists feels himself insulted if you offer him evidence to convince him of the genuineness of a work of art over and above the evidence which it carries in itself, and which to him is the most convincing of all. If one of the lost books of Tacitus were recovered, scholars would not judge it by any account that might be given of its preservation and discovery, but would say, Let us see it and read it, and we will very soon tell you whether it is genuine or not. When the man you have seen every day for years, and whose character you have looked into under the strongest lights, is accused of dishonesty, and damaging evidence is brought against him, does it seriously disturb your confidence in him? Not at all. No evidence can countervail the knowledge gained by intercourse. You know the man, directly, and you believe in him without regard to what other persons advance in his favour or against him. Christ expects acceptance on similar grounds. 2 [Note: Marcus Dods.]

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given. 1 [Note: Emily Dickinson.]

(2) Let us remember, however, that the knowledge promised by Christ may become ours only gradually. Our experience may be like that of a man waiting for the dawn, rather than that of a man who is suddenly plunged out of darkness into the full blaze of the midday sun. The light grows upon us; and whilst, at first, we may see distinctly only one or another thing that lies nearest to us, after awhile other things rise into view, till at last whatever is within range becomes clearly visible. In relation to Divine truth we often find an impatience which would be counted very foolish in relation to natural truth. Men who are content to grope on very slowly in science, getting a glimpse now of one truth and then of another, expect in the region with which we are here concerned to pass almost at once into full light and certainty. This cannot be. Moral loyalty, earnest and well-directed labour and humble patience, are necessary conditions of entering into full possession of the secret of the Lord.

I think I cannot be mistaken here. Could you know how I have lived in His mind, and tried to understand Him, till comprehension became adoration, you would think so. I am not pretending to a superior appreciation beyond yours—except only on this ground, that, professionally forced to the contemplation, and forced more terribly by doubts and difficulties that nearly shattered morals and life, till I was left alone with myself and Him, I am, perhaps, qualified to speak with a decision that would be otherwise dogmatism. 2 [Note: Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 407.]

2. “He shall know of the teaching.”—We ought to fix in our minds what exactly Jesus intended by His words when He spoke of knowing the teaching and doing the will. He did not mean that we must be acquainted with the various dogmas which scientific religion has from time to time created and into whose mould the fluid idea concerning spiritual truth has been run. Dogmas are the achievement of the intellect, and the Pharisees were exceedingly strong in their dogmatic knowledge. When Jesus spoke of teaching He referred to the burden of His own teaching, and the sum of all His teaching was God. His aim was to impress the mind with a certain idea of God, and it was a moral rather than an intellectual conception. We do not find Jesus enlarging upon the existence and attributes of God after the manner, say, of the Athanasian Creed. He said nothing about the being of God, but He endeavoured to convince men that God was the merciful and faithful Father of the human race; that He loved men, both good and bad, with a patient fatherly love; that He desired His children to abandon their sins and come home to His fellowship; that He was ready to receive them if they would only trust and obey Him. This was not theology, it was religion. It was not God’s being but God’s doing that Jesus preached, not His nature but His character. He desired not that men should solve problems about God, but that they should have fellowship with Him.

I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner’s knowledge. 1 [Note: Dinah Morris, in Adam Bede.]

3. “Whether it be of God.”—The earnest purpose to do the will of God operates upon the heart of man, and leads him to the knowledge of the teaching, whether it be of God. Who can set himself to the higher life without there coming upon his soul a sense of contrast between such life and that which he has hitherto led? There is something enlightening in the very entertainment of a true purpose. It gives notice to all the unworthy passions of the heart that a conflict is at hand. The birth of this heavenly resolution is not unmingled pleasure. It cannot be. For there is a past which comes up with its records of sin and guilt, and the man feels that that past is his, and cannot be treated as if it had never been. He cannot wipe it from his memory, nor can he silence the accusations of conscience. Does not the soul feel that the teaching is of God, whatever may be the mysteries which envelop it—that it is of God, because it addresses itself to the awakened conscience—that it is of God, because it does not sweep justice away that it may find room for mercy, but blends the claims of both in the sovereign and the fatherly dispensation which saves the sinner, while it condemns his sins?

I asked myself what my life was, and received as an answer: “An evil and an absurdity.” And indeed, my life—that life of pampered appetites and whims—was meaningless and evil, and so the answer, “Life is evil and meaningless,” had reference only to my life, and not to human life in general. I comprehended the truth, which I later found in the gospel, that men had come to love the darkness more than the light because their deeds were bad, for those who did bad deeds hated the light and did not go to it, lest their deeds be disclosed. I saw that in order to comprehend the meaning of life it was necessary, first of all, that life should not be meaningless and evil, and then only was reason needed for the understanding of it. I comprehended why I had so long walked round such a manifest truth, and that if I were to think and speak of the life of humanity, I ought to think and speak of the life of humanity, and not of the life of a few parasites of life. This truth had always been a truth, just as two times two was four, but I had not recognized it because, if I recognized that two times two was four, I should have had to recognize that I was not good, whereas it was more important and obligatory for me to feel myself good than to feel that two times two was four. I came to love good people and to hate myself, and I recognized the truth. Now everything became clear to me. 1 [Note: Tolstoy, My Confession (Complete Works, xiii. 62).]

4. What wonderful light the words of our Lord cast on the true channel through which spiritual knowledge enters man, and how they rebuke the pride and arrogance of that reason which presumes to have the power to master all things. Reason has its sphere assigned to it by its Maker, and within that sphere it is “a vision and a faculty Divine”; but there are realms in which it plays, and was designed to play, a subordinate part, and in which its discovering power is very small. Even apart from religion, how many departments of truth there are in which reason is but an incompetent authority. How many men of the highest intellectual powers are shut out of the beauties created by the genius of the artist, the poet, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Their reason is blind and deaf before forms and sounds of the most transcendent loveliness. Many a mathematician, peerless in his power of calculation, stands in blank and unsympathetic mood before the loveliest forms that ever breathed on the canvas; and many a logician, whom no sophistry could elude, hears nothing but a succession of incoherent and confused noises in some marvellous creation of music which enthrals the appreciative soul. And yet the truth of art is as true as that of such matters as are within the province of reason itself, and can no more be justly discarded or despised by the merely intellectual philosopher than the radiant glories of the external universe can be denied by the man who is blind. So also, but in still higher degree, religion has its truths, which, though not contrary to reason, lie beyond its power to discover or, it may be, for the present, to harmonize. Shall reason, shut out of so many realms of truth even in the natural world, claim a sovereignty over the world in which infinite love and infinite wisdom are displaying their resources to redeem man from sin? Reason by itself has almost as little to do with the deeper experiences of the soul as affection has to do with the questions of arithmetic or the problems of geometry; for these deeper experiences are those of repentance, remorse, faith, hope, temptation, and struggle and heavenward aspiration. Love is ever the key to the deepest mysteries. Though shut to the scrutiny of the keenest reason, they open to the knocking of an affectionate and reverent heart. Hidden from those who regard themselves as the wise and prudent, they are revealed unto babes. They that seek to do the will of God shall indeed be taught of Him.

If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,

I heard a voice “believe no more”

And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason’s colder part,

And like a man in wrath the heart

Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.” 1 [Note: Tennyson, In Memoriam.]

I’ve seen pretty clear ever since I was a young un, as religion’s something else besides notions. It isn’t notions sets people doing the right thing—it’s feelings. It’s the same with the notions in religion as it is with math’matics,—a man may be able to work problems straight off in’s head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease. 1 [Note: Adam Bede, in Adam Bede.]

5. There are two types of men to whom Jesus’ words ought to be a warning.

(1) The first is the man who supposes that he knows the doctrine, but is not doing the will. Is he sure that he knows anything which counts when his knowledge is so absolutely divorced from life? He has a very strong theory about the inspiration of the Bible, but what good is his devotion to the letter when the spirit of the Book has not affected his heart? He believes that he knows God, but how can he?—for God is love, and this man is not loving his brother. He is very keen about the Deity of Christ, but what right has he to speak of Christ since he will not carry Christ’s cross in mercy and humility? He is convinced that his sins are forgiven, and prates about assurance, but can they be loosed if he will not give quittance to his brother man? He has an unfaltering confidence that he will reach heaven when he dies, but what place can he have in heaven who to-day is carrying a hell of unclean or malignant passions in his heart?

(2) The other is the man who is proud of his scepticism, and complains that he cannot know, while all the time he is refusing to obey. Granted that the Holy Trinity and the sacrifice of Christ are mysteries, and that God Himself is the chief mystery of all, he ought to remember that everything in life is not a mystery. It is open to us all to do our daily work with a single mind, to be patient amid the reverses of life, to be thoughtful in the discharge of our family duties, and to be self-denying in the management of our souls. Duty at any rate is no mystery, and it is grotesque that a man should proclaim that he cannot believe the most profound truths when he is making no honest effort to keep the plainest commandments.

“I wish I had your creed, then I would live your life,” said a seeker after truth to Pascal, the great French thinker. “Live my life, and you will soon have my creed,” was the swift reply. The solution of all difficulties of faith lies in Pascal’s answer, which is after all but a variant of Christ’s greater saying, “He that willeth to do the will of God, shall know the teaching.” Is not the whole reason why, for so many of us, the religion of Christ which we profess has so little in it to content us, simply this, that we have never heartily and honestly tried to practise it? 1 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Empire of Love, 101.]

Therefore be strong, be strong,

Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,

Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,

But do the works that unto you belong;

Believing that for every mystery,

For all the death, the darkness, and the curse

Of this dim universe,

Needs a solution full of love must be:

And that the way whereby ye may attain

Nearest to this, is not through broodings vain

And half-rebellious, questionings of God,

But by a patient seeking to fulfil

The purpose of His everlasting will,

Treading the path which lowly men have trod.

Since it is ever they who are too proud

For this, that are the foremost and most loud

To judge His hidden judgments, these are still

The most perplexed and lost at His mysterious will. 2 [Note: Trench, Poems, 102.]

6. Jesus’ word has great comfort for two kinds of people.

(1) The first is the man who is harassed by many perplexing questions, but who is doing his duty bravely. Courage, we say, and patience. No one ever carried Christ’s Cross without coming near to Christ Himself, and where Christ is, the light is sure to break. There is no sacrifice we make, no service we render, that is not bringing us nearer to the heart of things; for the heart of the universe is love. Let us watch as those who watch for the morning, and watch at our work, for the day will break and it will come with morning songs. St. Thomas could hardly believe anything, but he was willing to die with Christ, and Christ showed him His wounds.

With anxious thoughts at this time General Booth avers, when the rubicon was passed and the severance from the Methodist New Connexion made final, “That he and his wife went out together not knowing a soul who would give them a shilling, neither knowing where to go.” Mrs. Booth wrote to her parents, “I am so nervous I can scarcely write. I am almost bewildered with fatigue and anxiety. If I thought it was right to stop here in the ordinary work I would gladly consent. But I cannot believe that it would be so. Why should he spend another year plodding round this wreck of a circuit, preaching to twenty, thirty, and forty people, when, with the same amount of cost to himself, he might be preaching to thousands? And none of our friends would think it right if we had an income. Then, I ask, does the securing of our bread and cheese make that right which would otherwise be wrong when God has promised to feed and clothe us? I think not; William hesitates. He thinks of me and the children, and I appreciate his love and care. But I tell him that God will provide if he will only go straight on in the path of duty. It is strange that I, who always used to shrink from the sacrifice, should be the first in making it.” 1 [Note: The Life Story of General Booth, 55.]

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;

I woke, and found that life was Duty.

Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?

Toil on, sad heart, courageously,

And thou shalt find thy dream to be

A noonday light and truth to thee. 2 [Note: Ellen S. Hooper.]

(2) The other is the man who laments the simplicity of his intellect. Be of good cheer, and do not despair or despise yourself. The Master thanked God that He had hidden the deep things from the wise and had revealed them to babes; He also set a child in the midst of the disciples and told them that if any one desired to be great he must become as a little child. It is not through deep thinking, but through faithful doing, that one comes to know the mystery of God; and faithful doing is within every one’s reach. The path which philosophers and scientists have often missed has been found by shepherds on the hills, and by working women. Mary of Bethany and the fishermen of Galilee knew more of God than the scholars of Jerusalem.

One hears sometimes of religious controversies running very high; about faith, works, grace, prevenient grace, the Arches Court and Essays and Reviews;—into none of which do I enter, or concern myself with your entering. One thing I will remind you of, That the essence and outcome of all religions, creeds and liturgies whatsoever is, To do one’s work in a faithful manner. Unhappy caitiff, what to you is the use of orthodoxy, if with every stroke of your hammer you are breaking all the Ten Commandments,—operating upon Devil’s-dust, and, with constant invocation of the Devil, endeavouring to reap where you have not sown? 3 [Note: Carlyle, Miscellaneous Essays, vii. 229.]

The Will to Know

Literature

Abbey (C. J.), The Divine Love, 301.

Banks (L. A.), Christ and His Friends, 215.

Butler (A.), Sermons, ii. 168.

Clifford (J.), The Dawn of Manhood, 83.

Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 136.

Davies (J. Ll.), Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of God, 124.

Dawson (G.), Sermons on Disputed Points and Special Occasions, 249.

Dawson (W. J.), The Threshold of Manhood, 20.

Drummond (H.), The Ideal Life, 297.

Horton (R. F.), The Trinity, 229.

Illingworth (J. R.), Sermons in a College Chapel, 105.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Under the Dome, 28.

Laidlaw (J.), in the Modern Scottish Pulpit, No. 28.

Macdonnell (D. J.), Life and Work, 442.

Mellor (E.), In the Footsteps of Heroes, 230.

Pattison (T. H.), The South Wind, 167.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 200.

Porter (N.), Yale College Sermons, 118.

Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, ii. 94.

Shepherd (A.), Men in the Making, 221.

Simon (D. W.), Twice Born, 34.

Smith (D.), Christian Counsel, 183.

Watson (J.), The Inspiration of Our Faith, 133.

Christian Age, xlv. 194 (Howe).

Christian World Pulpit, xxiv. 37 (Matthews); xxix. 156 (Van Dyke); xxxviii. 281 (Batchelor); 1. 38 (Black); lx. 228 (Spurr) j lxxii. 125 (Selbie).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Sermons to the Young: xvi. 529 (Gibbon).

Examiner, May 3, 1906, p. 420 (Jowett).

Verse 37

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 7:37.

1. The occasion and date of this great saying are carefully given by the Evangelist, because they throw much light on its significance 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 ( Leviticus 23:36). 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 footpath 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, 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 believeth 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—

I. Christ’s View of Humanity.

II. Christ’s View of Himself.

III. Christ’s Invitation to Humanity.

I

Christ’s View of Humanity

1. “If any man thirst.”—Christ confronts man’s deepest need. He sees humanity “thirsting.” No metaphor could be more intense in a dry and thirsty land like Palestine. It fittingly pictures the deepest want of the human soul.

(1) It is characteristic of the teaching of Christ that He always speaks of man’s chief spiritual needs in the terms of his greatest physical necessities. The words by which He describes the need of the soul for God are such words as “hunger” and “thirst.” We all know what it is to have physical thirst. Toiling under the hot sun, trudging along the dusty road—the painful sensation is familiar enough to us. But more real and intense would be the figure to an Eastern. Ask him who has crossed the desert, “What is thirst?” and he will tell you of the bones of men and beasts all bleached and white that mark its highway. Smitten with thirst on its burning sands, what will a man not give for water? The fine sand entering into every pore of his skin, choking and blinding him, the scorching wind drying up the very marrow of his bones, his tongue cleaving to his mouth, his eyes bloodshot, the desert reels around him, and he is willing to fill the cup with pearls in exchange for a cupful of water. Water is always an attractive word in the East. But at the time when Jesus uttered this saying it would have an effect that was almost magical. It was in the autumn weather, when the sun had been shining in fierceness for months, and the barren ground was crying out for rain.

(2) We need not go over all the dominant desires that surge up in men’s souls, the mind craving for knowledge, the heart calling out for love, the whole nature feeling blindly and often desperately after something external to itself, which it can grasp, and in which it can feel satisfied. We all know them. Like some plant growing in a cellar, and with feeble and blanched tendrils feeling towards the light which is so far away, every man carries about within himself a whole host of longing desires, which need to find something round which they may twine, and in which they can be at rest.

(3) The misery of man is great upon him, because, having these desires, he misreads so many of them, and stifles, ignores, atrophies to so large an extent the noblest of them. There is no sadder tragedy than the way in which we misinterpret the meaning of these inarticulate cries that rise from the depths of our hearts, and misunderstand what it is that we are groping after, when we put out empty, and, alas! too often unclean, hands, to lay hold on our true good. We do not know what we want, many of us, and there is something pathetic in the endless effort to fill up the heart by a multitude of diverse and small things, when all the while the deepest meaning of aspirations, yearnings, longings, unrest, discontent, is, “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.”

“Isaac Williams,” wrote Mr. Copeland, “mentioned to me a remark made on Hurrell Froude by S. Wilberforce in his early days: ‘They talk of Froude’s fun, but somehow I cannot be in a room with him alone for ten minutes without feeling so intensely melancholy, that I do not know what to do with myself. At Brighstone, in my Eden days, he was with me, and I was overwhelmed with the deep sense which possessed him of yearning which nothing could satisfy and of the unsatisfying nature of all things.’ ” 1 [Note: Dean Church, The Oxford Movement, 55.]

Its warping winds swept thro’ my soul:

Its fires scorched all my arc of life:

Of joy it gave a trivial dole—

Then brought me anguish, shame and strife:

An hour of pulsing feverish joy,

Framed in a flame of blazing red;

Then, rotting in its own rank soil,

The swift-born flower lay swiftly dead. 2 [Note: Desmond Mountjoy, The Hills of Hell, 15.]

2. “If any man thirst.”—Christ speaks as if that thirst was by no means universal, and, alas! it is not. “ If any man thirst”; there are some of us that do not, for we are all so constituted that, unless we use continual self-discipline, and self-suppression, and self-evolution, the lower desires will overgrow the loftier ones, and kill them, as weeds kill the precious crop. And some of us are so much taken up with gratifying the lowest necessities and longings of our nature, that we leave the highest all uncared for, and the effect of that is that the unsatisfied longing avenges itself, for our neglect of it, by infusing unrest and dissatisfaction into what else would satisfy the lowest. “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase,” but he that loves God will be satisfied with less than silver, and will continue satisfied when decrease comes. If we would suck the last drop of sweetness out of the luscious purple grapes that grow on earth, we must have the appetite for the best things, recognized, and ministered to, and satisfied. And when we are satisfied with God, we shall have learnt in whatsoever state we are, therewith to be self-sufficing.

The late Sir James Stephen in a lecture to young men once said that he could put his suggestions in one word—Aspire. That was very good advice. But what should the aspiration be? 1 [Note: Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 77.]

On the morning of January 7, 1900, Bishop Creighton, a few days before he died, seemed particularly well. His chaplain, Mr. Percival, was with him for a long while, and they spoke of various answers which had been given to the question, What is the greatest danger of the coming century? The Bishop said, “I have no doubt what is the greatest danger—it is the absence of high aspirations.” 2 [Note: The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 463.]

The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, “What do you like?” Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first man or woman you meet, what their “taste” is; and if they answer candidly, you know them, body and soul. “You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what do you like?” “A pipe, and a quartern of gin.” I know you. “You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you like?” “A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast.” Good, I know you also. “You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you like?” “My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths.” “You, little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you like?” “A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing.” Good; we know them all now. What more need we ask? 3 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive (Works, xviii. 434).]

3. It is only the thirsty whom Jesus Christ invites to come to Him as the source from which they can draw spirit and life. Those who have eaten and drunk to the full must become thirsty before they can understand, and certainly before they can take to heart, what it means when a man who has trod this earth bears witness to a whole people, and lastly to all mankind: “I am the inexhaustible well from which all man’s longing after life and spirit may be satisfied.”

I know not any pleasure of sense more exquisite than a draught of cool, clear water, when you are thirsty; but few things are more insipid than water when there is no thirst. It is thus that Christ and His salvation are very sweet to one, and very tasteless to another. 1 [Note: W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, 31.]

O Lord, the most Fair, the most tender,

My heart is adrift and alone;

My heart is a-weary and thirsty,

Athirst for a joy unknown.

From a child I followed it, chased it,

By wilderness, wold, and hill;

I never have reached it or seen it,

Yet must I follow it still.

In those olden years did I seek it,

In the sweet, fair things around;

But the more I sought and I thirsted,

The less, O my Lord, I found.

When nearest it seemed to my grasping,

It fled like a wandering thought;

I never have known what it is, Lord,

Too well know I what it is not.

“It is I, it is I, the Eternal,

Who chose thee Mine own to be—

Who chose thee before the ages,

Who chose thee eternally.

I stood in the way before thee,

In the ways thou wouldest have gone;

For this is the mark of My chosen,

That they shall be Mine alone.”

II

Christ’s View of Himself

“If any man thirst, let him come unto me.” Christ claims to satisfy man’s deepest need. The claim is a tremendous one. Other teachers have counselled a course of action or a mode of life. This Teacher claims to be Himself the source of good and the fountain of life. Truly never man spake like this Man.

1. The people’s thirst shall be quenched, if they will but come to Him: this is the first and obvious meaning of His words. That they had some thirst for spiritual blessing their very presence in Jerusalem proved; for, however mingled may have been their desires, however worldly in many respects their thoughts of the Kingdom of God, yet they did desire God and God’s Kingdom; and if the religious hopes of the nation could have been obliterated, their one distinguishing characteristic would have been gone. But they are seeking to satisfy their souls in ways that do not, that cannot, succeed. God’s true presence is lost in the very abundance and show of the paraphernalia and ceremony of worship, and the life of God is dried up in them by the endless elaboration of their minute and barren rules of living. The truth of their holy religion does little more for their actual satisfaction than the sweet, living water of Siloam did for the golden vessel that it filled; and it does no more through them for others than the water poured from such vessel on to the altar, and wasted, as it streamed and trickled away. Let the people come to Him, and God Himself shall live in them.

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 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 condemned 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.” 1 [Note: Arthur W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 49.]

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”? 2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

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 presentation of Himself to the world as adequate to fill all its needs, and slake all its thirst, has been verified by nineteen centuries 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 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. 1 [Note: Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine, 201.]

III

Christ’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.

We all forget that Christ’s teaching is not a teaching like that of Moses, of Mohammed, and like all other human teachings, that is, a doctrine of rules to be executed. Christ’s teaching is a gospel, that is, a teaching of the good.

He who is thirsty, let him go and drink.

And so, according to this teaching it is impossible to prescribe to any one, to rebuke any one for anything, to condemn any one.

“ Go and drink, if thou art thirsty,” that is, take the good which is revealed to us by the spirit of Truth.

Can one be ordered to drink?

Can one be ordered to be blessed?

Even so a man cannot be rebuked for not drinking, or for not being blessed, nor can he be condemned. The one thing that Christians can do, and always have done, is to feel themselves blessed and to wish to communicate the key of blessedness to other people. 1 [Note: Tolstoy, Aphorisms (Complete Works, xix. 83).]

(1) The invitation was delivered with great earnestness. This is the world’s way turned upside down. We are accustomed to hear those crying who are ready to perish, while those who go out to save are calm and silent. Here this method is reversed. The lost whom He saves are silent and satisfied; the Saviour, who brings deliverance, cries. They act as if they were full, and He as if He were needy. Why did He cry? All things are His in heaven and on earth; what want is gnawing at the heart of Him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily? It is the longing of His soul, not to get, but to give, redemption. He has a more eager desire to give pardon than any awakened sinner has to get it.

(2) “If any man.” The invitation was universal. The Gospel is as free as the air or the sunshine. “Any”—the man may be atheist or deist or idolater; the man may be sceptical and unbelieving: the man may be broken-hearted, because all his cisterns are broken; the man may be disappointed with all the wells to which he has been accustomed to resort; the man may be an outcast, forbidden to come where men drink, or an apostate, one who has forsaken the fountain of living water; the man may be conscious that he deserves only to die of thirst; the man may be sad at his heart’s core, and weary in every limb, and dying of thirst; the thirst may be morbid and foul, the thirst may be varied and deep, the thirst may be refined and elevated, but to every man Jesus says, “Come unto me.” The thirsty one may have no apparel but rags and these filthy, no vessel but an earthen one and that broken, no money, no commendation; but Jesus says, “Come.” He may have nothing, and may need everything—life, knowledge, power, joy—still Jesus says, “Come.” He may be a most thirsty soul, with wide capacity and fiery eagerness, but Jesus says, “Come and drink.” And if those who hear Jesus say, “Come and drink,” do come and drink, they live satisfied, they die satisfied, and they abide satisfied for ever; but if they never come, they live thirsty, die thirsty, and abide madly thirsty for ever.

(3) “Let him come unto me.” The invitation is from a ceremony to a Person. Christ is a personal Saviour. The world had had enough of ritual. It had gone the weary round of form until life was almost extinct, and it seemed as if the smoke of sacrifice only darkened the skies and brought man no nearer vision of God. The Law increased the burden it professed to lift. Says Christ, It is not from Siloam’s stream, it is not from your silver songs and solemn litanies, not from your priests and altars and censers, that you can gain rest—“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.”

He that thirsts and wants relief must come to Christ Himself. He must not be content with coming to His Church and His ordinances, or to the assemblies of His people for prayer and praise. He must not stop short even at His holy table, or rest satisfied with privately opening his heart to His ordained ministers. He that is content with only drinking these waters “shall thirst again.” He must go higher, further, much further than this. He must have personal dealings with Christ Himself: all else in religion is worthless without Him. The King’s palace, the attendant servants, the richly furnished banqueting-house, the very banquet itself, all are nothing unless we speak with the King. His hand alone can take the burden off our backs and make us feel free. The hand of man may take the stone from the grave and show the dead; but none but Jesus can say to the dead, “Come forth, and live.” We must deal directly with Christ. 1 [Note: Bishop J. C. Ryle, The Upper Room, 117.]

I remember a simple story that twined its clinging tendril fingers about my heart. It was of a woman whose long years had ripened her hair, and sapped her strength. She was a true saint in her long life of devotion to God. She knew the Bible by heart, and would repeat long passages from memory. But as the years came the strength went, and with it the memory gradually went too, to her grief. She seemed to have lost almost wholly the power to recall at will what had been stored away. But one precious bit still stayed. She would sit by the big sunny window of the sitting-room in her home, repeating over that one bit, as though chewing a delicious titbit, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” By and by part of that seemed to slip its hold, and she would quietly be repeating, “that which I have committed to him.” The last few weeks as the ripened old saint hovered about the borderland between this and the spirit world, her feebleness increased. Her loved ones would notice her lips moving, and thinking she might be needing some creature comfort, they would go over and bend down to listen for her request. And time and again they found the old saint repeating over to herself one word, over and over again, the same one word, “Him— Him—Him.” She had lost the whole Bible but one word. But she had the whole Bible in that one word.” 1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 77.]

(4) “Let him come.” He that thirsts and wants relief from Christ must actually come to Him. It is not enough to wish, and talk, and mean, and intend, and resolve, and hope. The thirsty have to come. To come in inquiry and by knowledge, to come in thought and by faith, to come in prayer and by trust, to come in the surrender of themselves to the Saviour. The sole condition is coming, and the only limit to the ministrations of the Saviour is our receptivity. Simple as this remedy for thirst appears, it is the only cure for man’s spiritual disease, and the only bridge from earth to heaven. Kings and their subjects, preachers and hearers, masters and servants, high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, all alike must drink of this water of life, and drink in the same way. For eighteen centuries men have laboured to find some other medicine for weary consciences; but they have laboured in vain. Thousands, after blistering their hands, and growing grey in hewing out “broken cisterns, which can hold no water,” have been obliged to come back at last to the old Fountain, and have confessed in their latest moment that here, in Christ alone, is true peace.

(5) “And drink.” Too many analyse, criticize, gather to the fountain and gaze on its waters; they do not drink. They do not live by Christ. When we drink of love we live on it, it enters into all our thoughts, colours all our hopes, gives strength to all our purposes; it is ourself. It must be even so with us and Christ. We must drink, must so draw His life and spirit into our souls that we shall be able to say, “For me to live is Christ.” So shall the thirst of the heart be satisfied, but only so.

How many seem to come to Jesus Christ, and yet do not drink! How few Christians are like a tree planted by the rivers of water! What would you have thought of the Jews, if, when Moses smote the rock, they had refused to drink? or what would you have thought if they had only put the water to their lips? Yet such is the way with most Christians. It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell. The Spirit was given to Him without measure. The command is given to us to draw out of His fulness; yet who obeys? Not one in a thousand. A Christian in our day is like a man who has got a great reservoir brimful of water. He is at liberty to drink as much as he pleases, for he never can drink it dry; but instead of drinking the full stream that flows from it, he dams it up, and is content to drink the few drops that trickle through. O that ye would draw out of His fulness, ye that have come to Christ! Do not be misers of grace. There is far more than you will use in eternity. The same waters are now in Christ that refreshed St. Paul, that gave St. Peter his boldness, that gave St. John his affectionate tenderness. Why is your soul less richly supplied than theirs? Because you will not drink: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.” 1 [Note: R. M. M‘Cheyne, Additional Remains, 308.]

2. Christ satisfies every thirst of the soul. Do we thirst for activity? Jesus says, “Come unto me, and drink.” Hear Jesus say, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” He opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped deaf ears, made the lame to walk, healed the sick, cleansed the leper, and raised the dead. We thirst for enjoyment, and still Jesus says, “Come unto me, and drink.” Christ gives joy in every gift, and promises it in every promise. There is joy in the eternal life He gives, joy in the rest He gives, and joy in the peace which He bequeaths. We thirst for power, and Christ continues to say, “Come unto me, and drink,” for He makes His disciples now the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and ultimately He makes them kings and priests unto God. We thirst for society, and still Jesus says, “Come unto me, and drink.” Our Saviour makes those who are strangers and foreigners and aliens fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. We thirst for the love of others, and Christ says, “Come unto me, and drink”; for He directs streams of kindness to every one who comes to Him by means of His new commandment, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” We thirst for knowledge, and Jesus says, “Come unto me, and drink.” “Learn of me.” Those who come to Jesus are instructed by Him in the highest subjects. To all such Jesus is Himself the truth, and the truth concerning all that it is essential we should know. We thirst for God, and Jesus says, “Come unto me, and drink.” He manifests God’s name to us, and shows us how He Himself is to us the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His Person. Thus if any man thirst for life, activity, pleasure, social fellowship, knowledge, power, the love of others, or for God, He may come to Jesus Christ and drink.

3. No one who has not come thus to Christ and trusted Him has found perfect satisfaction in this world. Whatever good we have, we have not the highest good. Deep down in our hearts there is some want that has not been met, some secret thirst which yet torments us. We moralize, we philosophize about the discontent of man. We give little reasons for it; but the real reason of it all is this—that which everything lying behind it really signifies—that man is greater than his circumstances, and that God is always calling to him to come up to the fulness of his life. Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not for ever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is the child of God.

I asked for Peace,—

My sins arose

And bound me close;

I could not find release.

I asked for Truth,—

My doubts came in,

And with their din

They wearied all my youth.

I asked for Love,—

My lovers failed,—

And griefs assailed

Around, beneath, above.

I asked for Thee,—

And Thou didst come

To take me home

Within Thy heart to be. 1 [Note: Digby Mackworth Dolben.]

Living Water

Literature

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.

McCheyne (R. M.), Additional Remains, 304.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John i.–viii., 310.

Martin (S.), Rain upon the Mown Grass, 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 Word of God, 203.

Christian World Pulpit, xxx. 91 (Hughes); xxxviii. 166 (Bramham); xlvi. 404 (Hall); lxvii. 251 (Body); lxxviii. 59 (Mrs. Dora Donaldson).

Homiletic Review, xxxviii. 320 (Meyer).