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The Water of Life and Other Sermons - Charles Kingsley
The Water of Life and Other Sermons - Charles Kingsley Author:Charles Kingsley A passage from the book... 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 no... more »t 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?« less