'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and buy without
money and without price!' But the Jews had utterly forgotten (if the
mass of them ever understood) the meaning of the old revelations;
and, above all, the Pharisees, the most religious among them. To
their minds, it was only by a proud asceticism,--by being not as
other men were; only by doing some good thing--by performing some
extraordinary religious feat,--that man could earn eternal life. And
bitter and deadly was their selfish wrath when they heard that the
Water of Life was within all men's reach, then and for ever; that The
Eternal Life was in that Christ who spoke to them; that He gave it
freely to whomsoever He would;--bitter their wrath when they heard
His disciples declare that God had given to men Eternal Life; that
the Spirit and the Bride said. Come.

They had, indeed, a graceful ceremony, handed down to them from
better times, as a sign that those words of the old psalmists and
prophets had once meant something. At the Feast of Tabernacles--the
harvest feast--at which God was especially to be thanked as the giver
of fertility and Life, their priests drew water with great pomp from
the pool of Siloam; connecting it with the words of the prophet:
'With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.' But
the ceremony had lost its meaning. It had become mechanical and
empty. They had forgotten that God was a giver. They would have
confessed, of course, that He was the Lord of Life: but they
expected Him to prove that, not by giving Life, but by taking it
away: not by saving the many, but by destroying all except a
favoured few. But bitter and deadly was their wrath when they were
told that their ceremony had still a living meaning, and a meaning
not only for them, but for all men; for that mob of common people
whom they looked on as accursed, because they knew not the law.