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 \'\ V^:
 
 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 ^ Sermon 
 
 BY THE REV. J. E. KEMPE, M.A. 
 
 Prcached on Sunday Evening, Jan 23, 1859. 
 
 IsA. Iv. part of verse 1. 
 
 ** Ho, every one that tliirsteiJi, come ye to the waters I " 
 
 There are a great many here who ought to have already 
 heard these words to-day, occurring as they do in the tirst 
 Lesson which was read at Morning Service. 
 
 I say there are a great many here who ought to have 
 heard them, because it must be the case that a large 
 proportion of this assemblage could have attended Morning 
 Service if they had been so minded ; and I take it upon 
 me to express my conviction, that the object of those by 
 whom these services are provided will be defeated, and 
 they will feel that they do harm instead of good, in every 
 case in which persons are induced by such opportunities 
 to neglect morning attendance at their own parish or 
 district church. Nay, I will venture to go farther : I 
 will venture to declare my persuasion, that not only is it 
 not the purpose of these services to draw any away from 
 the ministrations which are duly furnished for them else- 
 where, but that one of the chief things here aimed at is 
 to awaken, by the grace of God, such an appreciation of
 
 ^ SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 public worship and public teaching, as may lead to their 
 being regularly sought in those places, and from those 
 persons, to whom the providence of God more immediately 
 directs you. I, for one, should regard it as a great calamity 
 if the effect of this and other kindred movements (as, for 
 example, the administration of the Lord's Supper in the 
 evening) should be to shift, as it were, the working people's 
 Sunday into the closing hours of the day. To say nothing 
 of the separation which wouhl thus take place between 
 those who, in the house of God, of all places, ought to be 
 found together — "high and low, rich and poor, one with 
 another : " such a state of things would violate the main 
 principle of the institution of the Sabbath. For, brethren, 
 what is that principle ? Is it not that on that day we 
 should devote to a hallowed rest — a rest consecrated and 
 made refreshing to the soul, as well as the body, by partici- 
 pation in the ordinances of grace — the hours which, during 
 the remainder of the week, are given to labour '? But a 
 Sunday, driven (so to speak) and compressed into the even- 
 ing, is rest during a time which (as a general rule) the 
 week-day itself gives up, or should give up, to that purpose. 
 Depend upon it, my brethren, that if once you bring your- 
 selves to believe that you can do all that the glory of God 
 and the good of your own souls require, in the way of public 
 worship, after the " twelve hours " which Christ Himself 
 teaches us to consider as composing the day are over ; if 
 once you bring yourselves to this, you have gone a long way 
 towards surrendering one of your most precious earthly pri- 
 vileges. If the world does not step forwai'd to claim those 
 twelve hours for work, the devil will step forward to tempt 
 you to desecrate them with amusement; and between the 
 two they will soon be lost to God, soon be lost to your own 
 everlasting welfare ! I repeat, then, that there are many 
 here who ought to have heard this morning ; and I make 
 my prayer to God, that any who ^ have not heard may hear 
 on all future third Sundays after Epiphany, as long as their 
 life lasts, the words to which I shall now invite your atten- 
 tion : " Ho, every ong that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ! " 
 Now it requires some little effort for us to realise, in 
 
 "I^^PW
 
 SriRITUAL THIRST. 5 
 
 all their force, the ideas which this language would con- 
 vey to those to whom it was first addressed. As compared, 
 indeed, with neighbouring regions, the land which God 
 gave to His chosen people was " a land of brooks of water, 
 of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and 
 hills;" but as compared with a country like our own, it 
 was, for a portion of the year at least, little better than 
 an arid wilderness. Upon one part of it in particular — 
 the plain of Jericho and the region of Mount Thabor — 
 the sultry season, during which there is neither rain nor 
 cloud, falls with intense severity. The sun rises, morning 
 after morning, wdth such a scorching heat, that, notwith- 
 standing the copious night-dews, no ground can sustain its 
 herbage without artificial watering. " The face of the 
 country" (we are told) "becomes entirely changed ; the soil 
 becomes so hard as to exhibit large fissures, the fountains 
 and rivulets gradually fail, and the few wells and springs 
 that continue unexhausted, become inestimably precious. 
 
 Moreover, Judaea closely bordered upon districts of 
 which this drought was at all seasons the prevailing cha- 
 racter. Hard by was the great desert of Arabia, with its 
 burning sands ; that " great and terrible wilderness," which 
 the Scriptures depict as a place " wherein were fiery serpents 
 and scorpions and drought, where there was no water." 
 Hence sufferings like these, described by one who had 
 witnessed them, must have been matters of notoriety to 
 the inhabitants of Palestine. 
 
 " When the calamity happens" (says the traveller 
 Belzoni), " that the well, which is anxiously sought for, 
 is found dry, the misery of such a situation cannot be 
 described. ... It is then that the value of a cup of water 
 is really felt. In such a case there is no distinction. If 
 the master has none the servant will not give it him. 
 What a situation for a man, though a rich one — perhaps 
 the owner of all the caravan! He is dying for a cup of 
 water — no one gives it him. He offers all he possesses — 
 no one hears him. They are all dying, though by walking 
 a few hours farther they might be saved. ... To be 
 thirsty in a desert without water, exposed to the blazing
 
 D SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 sun witliont shelter, and no hope of finding either, is the 
 most terrible situation a man can be placed in. The eyes 
 grow inflamed, the tongue and lips swell, a hollow sound is 
 heard in the ears which brings on deafness, and the brain 
 appears to grow thick and inflamed. All these sufferings 
 arise from the want of a little water." 
 
 You see then, brethren, that to the Jew, with his personal 
 knowledge of incidents like these, the image of extreme 
 thirst would represent no trivial want of the soul ; water 
 provided for such thirst a blessing to which they who 
 experienced it could not be indifferent. With the idea of 
 " one that thirsteth," he would easily associate a drooping, 
 fainting, dying state ; a sense of need quite insupportable, 
 and a readiness to pay any price, to make any sacrifice for 
 its alleviation. And thus the invitation — "Ho, every 
 one thatthirsteth, and he that hath no money, come to the 
 waters," would be to him the type of a summons which, 
 under some circumstances, would thrill the whole soul with 
 thankfulness and joy. 
 
 And such, no doubt, would be the effect upon men's 
 minds of the Gospel summons, were they sufficiently alive 
 to their condition ; and just in proportion as they are 
 sensible what their natural state is, so far do they gladly 
 welcome the offers or the promises of refreshment which 
 are made to them by their Saviour Christ. "If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me and drink." In this last and 
 great day of the feast of mercy — this day of the Gospel 
 dispensation — Jesus stands in the temple of His Church, 
 and to many of us issues this gracious invitation in vain. 
 And why is this ? Why but because we do not thirst, — 
 because this world appears to us anything but the barren 
 and burning desert it would be if we saw it aright, — be- 
 cause we know not the need, the urgent need, we have of 
 that living water with which Christ is ever ready, and ever 
 offering, to supply us ? 
 
 Some, no doubt, there are who are indifferent to the 
 invitation of their Saviour, although they neither have 
 found, nor can hope to find, satisfaction for their souls in 
 anything that the world proffers them. Its brightest
 
 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 7 
 
 springs have proved to them Hke certain wells in the desert, 
 of which, it is said, if the traveller drink, they do but increase 
 his thirst, and aggravate his sufferings. And yet, I say, 
 though weary, faint, and dying, they will not betake them- 
 selves to Christ, they will not come to Him that they may 
 have life. These, however, are but a few. Most men, I 
 repeat, do not thirst in any such sense as is contemplated 
 in the invitation of the text. Would to God they did 
 thirst ! Would to God they believed and felt in what 
 state they really are as regards the life of their souls, and 
 what and Who it is that alone can deliver them from that 
 state I 
 
 They are not (it may be) contented with this world. 
 They want more of its wealth, its praise, its ease, or its 
 pleasure. But they desire no more lasting wealth — 
 no more unchangeable and unerring praise — no nobler 
 rest — no purer pleasures, than those it has to bestow. 
 The thirst they experience is just enough to stimulate 
 them to more or less of activity in temporal affairs, and 
 to make each draught of worldly success delicious, but it 
 goes no farther. It never carries their view beyond this 
 present world. They cannot, or will not, see the limit 
 that is set to their career. They cannot see that eternity 
 towards which they are every day drawing nearer, and in 
 which their thirst — their sense of want — still continuing, 
 and growing more and more intense, until it becomes 
 agonising, they shall find nothing — no! nothing to slake 
 it — none to dip so much as the tip of a finger in water 
 and cool their tongue, when they are tormented in the 
 flame of ever-increasing and insatiable desires. 
 
 But some there are, again, who have not even this 
 description of thirst — who are satisfied with things as they 
 are — with whom the present is still 
 
 " So like the past, niul both so firm a pledge 
 Of a congenial future, that the wheels 
 Of pleasure move without the aid of hope;" 
 
 and who seek only to be undisturbed in this state of calm 
 and complacency. An easy temper, a feeble, and yet,
 
 8 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 perhaps, lively intellect — a dull moral sense, and a drowsy 
 conscience — sagacity to discern which way sets the breeze 
 of popular feeling, and readiness to trim their sails ac- 
 cording to it, so that they glide on, tranquil, and unruffled 
 by opposition — a fearful exemption from trials of their own, 
 and a selfish indifference about those of others ; but an 
 indifference masked (it may be) under a certain pliant 
 readiness to speak words of sympathy, and even to do such 
 deeds of kindness as will secure themselves against trouble 
 or uneasiness — ungrudging liberality in buying off the 
 annoyance of distress — prudence carried occasionally very 
 near to self-denial, but always stopping short of it — means 
 sufficient to supply every want of this well-moderated 
 habit of mind — a natural freedom from any propensity to 
 dangerous, scandalous, or expensive indulgences — religion 
 enough to answer every requirement of respectability, and 
 to disarm the censure of all but " those over-righteous 
 people whose opinion no one cares about;" these, my 
 brethren, are some of the chief characteristics of a class 
 whose condition is one of the most hopeless into which 
 sinful man can fall — a condition in which there is no 
 sensation of want, and therefore nothing to direct even 
 a passing thought to the wells of righteousness and 
 salvation. 
 
 And next, I will speak a little more at length of the 
 class I mentioned just now, as being the small minority of 
 those who neglect and despise the Gospel invitation — per- 
 sons, I mean, who are sensible of an aching void in their 
 hearts, which they have striven in vain to fill from the 
 broken cisterns of this world ; who do thirst, but not as 
 for water, but rather with the thirst of the drunkard, who 
 loathes the pure draughts of the fountain, and craves only 
 for the stimulants which are of human compounding. If 
 there be any here who are indulging the expectation, that 
 after they have exhausted this world's provision for the 
 wants of their souls they will be driven (as it were) to fall 
 back upon the waters of life, I bid them see in that 
 drunkard their type and their warning. The heart-sick- 
 ness, the feverishness, and the lassitude which worldly
 
 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 9 
 
 excitements are sure to produce at last, are (think of it as 
 they will) very unlikely to direct and lead them to Christ. 
 In the diversities of the operations of His grace, I dure not 
 go so far as to affirm that God never makes use of a man's 
 having drained the cup of this world's enjoyment to the 
 dregs, in such a way as effectually to commend to him the 
 hallowed refreshment of His Spirit. But of this I am 
 quite sure, that it is no law of God's dealings with us to 
 do so. Nay, that it is the rare exception ; and is never done 
 where it has been reckoned upon, in order to pacify the 
 soul in its occasional apprehensions about the eternal con- 
 sequences of a life of sensual or worldly excitement. 
 
 There is however, brethren, a law in God's dealings with 
 us, and it is this. If we will wean ourselves from the world 
 instead of exhausting it ; if we will dash from us the cup of its 
 enchantment, instead of drinking ourselves drunk with it, 
 and then waking to look green and pale upon the memory 
 of our excess, and perhaps to mistake our mere natural 
 loathing for the " godly sorrow which worketh repentance 
 unto salvation;" if we will be at the pains to understand 
 what are the lawful objects of our hearts' longings ; the 
 only and the sure means of their permanent and healthful 
 refreshment, and set those objects steadily before us, em- 
 ploy those means in preference to all others, then the 
 result is certain. The stream of grace will flow full and 
 fresh beside our earthly path, ready ever to revive and 
 invigorate us in our pilgrimage, never heating, satiating, 
 sickening, nor cloying. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that there is no 
 genuine thirst for the waters of life but what can be easily 
 and at once appeased ; none which is painful and dark as 
 with the shadow of death. " My soul thirsteth fgr God, for the 
 living God. God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. 
 My soul thirsteth for Thee : my flesh longeth for Thee in a 
 dry and thirsty land, where no water is. I stretch forth 
 my hands unto Thee : my soul thirsteth after Thee, in a 
 thirsty land. Hear me speedily, Lord : my spirit faileth. 
 Hide not Thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that 
 go down into the pit. my God, I cry in the day-time.
 
 10 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 and Tbou hearest not ; and in the night-season also I take 
 no rest. My God, my God, look upon me. Why art 
 Thou so far from my health, and from the words of my 
 complaint?" In this language of the Psalmist we might 
 imagine that we heard the very cry of the sinking traveller, 
 when his eye ranges wildly over the boundless expanse of 
 sand, and finds no verdant spot to alight upon, giving 
 promise of relief from agony and escape from a horrible 
 end. There is, perhaps, something of Oriental colouring 
 in the Psalmist's representation. Our colder tempera- 
 ments would subdue the expression of our spiritual emo- 
 tions, but they need not lessen their intensity or impair 
 their force. 
 
 The words I have quoted cannot ^e understood othei-wise 
 than as testifying, with inspired authority, to the existence 
 of a feeling really religious, yet most unhappy, with nothing 
 in it of merely nervous depression, but still fall of suffering 
 and apprehension. Yes, my brethren, such is ever the 
 voice of the spirit that has been awakened from the sleep 
 of sin, the cry of sincere and earnest penitence. And it is 
 a cry which, in due time, is sure to be answered with the 
 gracious invitation, " Come ye to the waters." 
 
 It is true that the thirsting, the hearing of the invita- 
 tion, the willing to accept it, and the coming to put the 
 will into execution, are all the work of God — God the Holy 
 Ghost. No man cometh unto Christ except the Father, 
 by the operation of the Spirit, draw him. But we know of 
 every Christian that he is drawn. God worketh in him to 
 will as well as to do ; and therefore may we speak to every 
 Christian as one with whom it virtually rests to come, or 
 not to come. He may resist the Holy Ghost — give no way 
 to the motions of Deity within him — stifle conscience, 
 refuse counsel, disregard Scripture, and allow the power 
 with which God has gifted him to remain dormant — he 
 may do so, and the fault is all his own if he do. There is 
 no Divine hand laid upon him to keep him back from the 
 waters ; but there is one to guide and help him forward to 
 them — not irresistibly, but, I am bold to say, perceptibly, 
 to any one who will be on the watch for its gentle touch.
 
 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 1 I 
 
 I grant, however, that it is not always — I might per- 
 haps go farther, and say, that it is not generally — easy to 
 come. By wilful and long neglect men are but too com- 
 monly brought to so feeble a condition, that if at length they 
 open their eyes to their state, hear the invitation, and catch 
 sight of the object of their need, they have scarcely strength 
 left (if they have strength) to drag themselves to the spot, 
 and quaff a single draught, which may revive them for a 
 moment before they die. Of this, however, we are sure. 
 Really to feel the want, and sincerely to strive to obey the 
 summons, " Come," are the best earnests we can have that 
 spiritual death may even yet be escaped, though the green 
 oasis may seem hopelessly distant. Until God opened 
 her eyes to see the well which was close at hand, what was 
 poor Hagar's. hope of saving her perishing child? "God 
 heard the voice of the lad," and his mother was by to help him 
 to the restoring draught, which he could not peihaps have 
 walked a step or lifted a hand to dip out for himself. And 
 this we may take for a type of what our spiritual mother, 
 the Church, may do for us in the hour of our need, and when, 
 like the boy Ishmael, we lift up our voice to God. Through 
 her ordinances and means of grace — her ministry of re- 
 conciliation — that word of God of which she is the witness 
 and keeper, that saving truth of which she is the pillar 
 and ground, and that sacrament of strengthening and 
 refreshing which she is commissioned to dispense, she may 
 become to us as the instrument of Christ's salvation, when 
 of ourselves we can do nothing to help ourselves — nothing 
 but humbly, thankfully, faithfully, and devoutly receive 
 the succour which she brings. " All my fresh springs 
 shall be in thee," is God's promise to Sion, the emblem 
 and prototype of that "Jerusalem from above." of which 
 it is our privilege to be citizens, " the Mother of us all." 
 
 In nearly all those Psalms from which I just now 
 made quotations, the fainting, dying state complained of is 
 ascribed to being debarred from the offices of the Temple. 
 And so it is in others of which 1 may remind you. As, 
 for example, this from Psalm xlii. : " As the hart pantcth 
 after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee,
 
 ] 2 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 
 
 God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : 
 when shall I come and appear before God?" And this, 
 again, from the 8-ith : " How amiable are Thy tabernacles, 
 Lord of hosts I My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for 
 the courts of the Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out 
 for the living God. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy 
 house .... Who passing through the valley of Baca 
 make it a well ; the rain also filleth the pools. They 
 go from strength to strength ; every one of them in Zion 
 appeareth before God." 
 
 From language like this we learn that, as the Holy 
 Spirit is the object of all pious and devout thirsting, so 
 are the ordinances of God's Church as the wells, the con- 
 duits, and the channels to which we must resort for the 
 slaking of our thirst. It was (as you know) in the Temple 
 that Jesus stood when He cried, in those words to which I 
 have already made reference, " If any man thirst, let him 
 come unto Me and drink." Nor can we have better 
 evidence that our longings are indeed longings after the 
 sanctifying Spirit, and not mere carnal cravings which 
 subtilly counterfeit the work of grace, than if they do so 
 seek their satisfaction through the use of the means with 
 which God has furnished us for the purpose. 
 
 I say not — God forbid! — that church-going is the 
 final cause, the beginning and the end, of true religion : 
 although the blessed in heaven are represented in the 
 Apocalypse as continually engaged in united worship. 
 Nay, I must have used my powers of observation to very 
 little purpose, and must have very little knowledge of 
 human nature, if I imagined that any one is necessarily 
 in the way of salvation because the church or the chapel 
 is attended with the utmost possible regularity. The 
 motives and feelings of the world unhappily have their 
 place in the sanctuary, as well as in the home, the shop, 
 the counting-house, and the streets. But if I dare not 
 say that I have a good hope that every one whom I know 
 to be a constant attendant at church is really working out 
 his salvation, I do dare to say that every one who is a 
 despiser of public worship, or allows business, pleasure, or
 
 SPIRITUAL THIRST. 1 3 
 
 indolence to cause him to neglect it, is certainly not in 
 the way of salvation. In a -svord, you no doubt may be 
 church or chapel-goers without being godly ; but you 
 cannot become or continue truly godly if you do not 
 habitually avail yourselves of Christian ordinances 
 
 And thus I come back to the point from which I set 
 out, and solemnly proclaim to you, beloved brethren, 
 that I have cried in vain this night, " Come ye to the 
 waters," to any who, having been heretofore careless and 
 wilfully irregular about observing the Lord's day, in the 
 way that every Christian communion deserving the name 
 agrees it ought to be observed — namely, by worshij)ping 
 in the congregation — shall go away no more sensible than 
 they were before of the importance — the necessity, if they 
 wish to be saved — of pursuing a ditferent course for the 
 future. If they say to me, '* We do not feel the thirst 
 you have been speaking of; w^hen we do, we shall, no 
 doubt, be ready as others to come to the waters :" I 
 answer them, that in this, as in other things, the repeated 
 sight of the s apply is the best means of producing the 
 want. Haunt the fountains of spiritual grace, though you 
 may as yet have no consciousness of your need of them ; 
 and I pledge it to you, in the name of God, that in due 
 time (provided you will be thoroughly in earnest), they 
 shall not only become more indispensable to your comfort 
 than food, and raiment, and sleep, but shall be in you sources 
 of refreshment, " springing up into everlasting life." 
 
 X^rinted by G. Bakclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq.

 
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