It is to every one thirsty and penniless. That is a melancholy
combination, to be needing something infinitely, and to have not a
farthing to get it with. But that is the condition in which we all
stand, in regard to the highest and best things. This invitation of my
text is as universal as if it had stopped with its third word. 'Ho,
every one' would have been no broader than is the offer as it stands.
For the characteristics named are those which belong, necessarily and
universally, to human experience. If my text had said, 'Ho, every one
that breathes human breath,' it would not have more completely covered
the whole race, and enfolded thee and me, and all our brethren, in the
amplitude of its promise, than it does when it sets up as the sole
qualifications thirst and penury--that we infinitely need, and that we
are absolutely unable to acquire, the blessings that it offers.
'Every one that thirsteth'--that means desire. Yes; but it means need
also. And what is every man but a great bundle of yearnings and
necessities? None of us carry within ourselves that which suffices for
ourselves. We are all dependent upon external things for being and for
wellbeing.
There are thirsts which infallibly point to their true objects. If a
man is hungry he knows that it is food that he wants. And just as the
necessities of the animal life are incapable of being misunderstood,
and the objects which will satisfy them incapable of being confused or
mistaken, so there are other nobler thirsts, which, in like manner,
work automatically, and point to the thing that they need. We have
social instincts; we need love; we need friendship; we need somebody to
lean upon; we thirst for some heart to rest our heads upon, for hands
to clasp ours; and we know where the creatures and the objects are that
will satisfy these desires. And there are the higher thirsts of the
spirit, that 'follows knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the
furthest bounds of human thought'; and a man knows where and how to
gratify the impulse that drives him to seek after the many forms of
knowledge and wisdom.
But besides all these, besides sense, besides affection, besides
emotions, besides the intellectual spur of which we are all more or
less conscious, there come in a whole set of other thirsts that do not
in themselves carry the intimation of the place where they can be
slaked. And so you get men restless, as some of you are; always
dissatisfied, as some of you are; feeling that there is something
wanting, yet not knowing what, as some of you are. You remember the old
story in the _Arabian Nights_, of the man who had a grand palace, and
lived in it quite contentedly, until some one told him that it needed a
roc's egg hanging from the roof to make it complete, and he did not
know where to get that, and was miserable accordingly. We build our
houses, we fancy that we are satisfied; and then there comes the
stinging thought that it is not all complete yet, and we go groping,
groping in the dark, to find out where the lacking thing is.
Shipwrecked sailors sometimes, in their desperation, drink salt water,
and that makes them thirstier than ever, and brings on madness and
death. Some publicans drug the vile liquors which they sell, so that
they increase thirst. We may make no mistake about how to satisfy the
desires of sense or of earthly affections; we may be quite certain that
'money answereth all things,' and that it is good to get on in business
in Manchester; or may have found a pure and enduring satisfaction in
study and in books--yet we have thirsts that some of us know not where
to satisfy; and so we have parched lips and swollen tongues, and raging
desire that earth can give nothing to fill.
My brother, do you know what it is that you want?
It is God. Nothing else, nothing less. 'My soul thirsteth for God, for
the living God.' The man that knows what it is of which he is in such
sore need, is blessed. The man who only feels dimly that he needs
something, and does not know that it is God whom he does need, is
condemned to wander in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, and
where his heart gapes, parched and cracked like the soil upon which he
treads. Understand your thirst. Interpret your desires aright. Open
your eyes to your need; and be sure of this, that mountains of money
and the clearest insight into intellectual problems, and fame, and
love, and wife, and children, and a happy home, and abundance of all
things that you can desire, will leave a central aching emptiness that
nothing and no person but God can ever fill. Oh, that we all knew what
these yearnings of our hearts mean!
Aye! but there are _dormant_ thirsts too. It is no proof of superiority
that a savage has fewer wants than you and I have, for the want is the
open mouth into which supply comes. And it is no proof that you have
not, deep in your nature, desires which, unless they are satisfied,
will prevent your being blessed, that these desires are all unconscious
to yourselves. The business of us preachers is, very largely, to get
the people who will listen to us, to recognise the fact that they do
want things which they do not wish; and that, for the perfection of
their natures, the cherishing of noble longings and thirstings is
needful, and that to be without this sense of need is to be without one
of the loftiest prerogatives of humanity.
Some of you do not wish forgiveness. Many of you would much rather not
have holiness. You do not want to have God. The promises of the Gospel
go clean over your heads, and are as impotent to influence you as the
wind whistling through a keyhole, because you have never been aware of
the wants to which these promises correspond, and do not understand
what it is that you truly require.
And yet there is no desire--that is to say, consciousness of
necessities--so dormant but that its being un-gratified makes a man
restless. You do not wish forgiveness, but you will never be happy till
you get it. You do not wish to be good and true and holy men, but you
will never be blessed till you are. You do not want to have God, some
of you, but you will be restless till you find Him. You fancy you wish
heaven when you are dead; you do not want it while you are living. But
until your earthly life is like the life of Jesus Christ in heaven,
though in an inferior degree, whilst it is on earth, you will never be
at rest. You are thirsty enough after these things to be ill at ease
without them, when you bethink yourselves and pass out of the region of
mere mechanical and habitual existence; but until you get these things
that you do not desire, be sure of this: that you will be tortured with
vain unrest, and will find that the satisfactions which you do seek
turn to ashes in your mouth. 'Bread of deceit,' says the Book, 'is
sweet to a man.' The writer meant by that that there were people to
whom it was pleasant to tell profitable lies. But we might widen the
meaning, and say that all these lower satisfactions, apart from the
loftier ones of forgiveness, acceptance, reconciliation with God, the
conscious possession of Him, a well-grounded hope of immortality, the
power to live a noble life and to look forward to a glorious heaven,
are 'bread of deceit,' which promises nourishment and does not give it,
but breaks the teeth that try to masticate it; 'it turneth to gravel.'
'Ho, every one that thirsteth.' That designation includes us all. 'And
he that hath no money.' Who has any? Notice that the persons
represented in our text as penniless are, in the next verse,
remonstrated with for spending 'money.' So then the penniless man had
some pence away in some corner of his pocket which he could spend. He
had the money that would buy shams, 'that which is not bread' but a
stone though it looks like a loaf, but he had no money for the true
food. Which being translated out of parable into fact, is simply this,
that our efforts may and do win for us the lower satisfactions which
meet our transitory and superficial necessities, but that no effort of
ours can secure for us the loftier blessings which slake the diviner
thirsts of immortal souls. A man lands in a far country with English
shillings in his pocket, but he finds that no coins go there but
thalers, or francs, or dollars, or the like; and his money is only
current in his own land, and he must have it changed before he can make
his purchases. So though he has a pocketful of it he may as well be
penniless.
And, in like fashion, you and I, with all our strenuous efforts, which
we are bound to make, and which there is joy in making, after these
lower good things that correspond to our efforts, find that we have no
coinage that will buy the good things of the kingdom of heaven, without
which we faint and die. For them our efforts are useless. Can a man by
his penitence, by his tears, by his amendment, make it possible for the
consequences of his past to be obliterated, or all changed in their
character into fatherly chastisement? No! A thousand times, no! The
superficial notions of Christianity, which are only too common amongst
both educated and uneducated, may say to a man, 'You need no divine
intervention, if only you will get up from the dust, and do your best
to keep up when you are up.' But those who realise more deeply what the
significance of sin is, and what the eternal operation of its
consequences upon the soul is, and what the awful majesty of a divine
righteousness is, learn that the man who has sinned can, by nothing
that he can do, obliterate that awful fact, or reduce it to
insignificance, in regard to the divine relations to him. It is only
God who can do that. We have no money.
So we stand thirsty and penniless--a desperate condition! Ay! brother,
it _is_ desperate, and it is the condition of every one of us. I wish I
could turn the generalities of my text into the individuality of a
personal address. I wish I could bring its wide-flowing beneficence to
a sharp point that might touch your conscience, heart, and will. I
cannot do that; you must do it for yourself.
'Ho, every one that thirsteth.' Will you pause for a moment, and say to
yourself, 'That is I'? 'And he that hath no money'--that is I. 'Come ye
to the waters'--that is I. The proclamation is for thine ear and for
thy heart; and the gift is for thy hand and thy lips.