“But how ‘elsewhere’?” said I. “Do you mean that here Christ feels thirst whereas ‘elsewhere’ He quenches thirst? I do not remember that.” “I forgot,” replied Clemens, “that you had not read the new gospel. That gospel represents Christ as saying to a sinful woman, ‘Give me to drink,’ and afterwards, to the same woman, ‘He that believeth on me shall never thirst,’ and, after that, to the Jews, ‘If any one be athirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ This same gospel says that the ‘food’ of the Son is to do the will of the Father. This, then, may be described as His meat and drink. If, therefore, He ‘thirsts,’ He is athirst to do the Father’s will, so that He hungers and thirsts for righteousness in the souls of sinful men and women, thirsting to free them from thirst by giving them the water of life. All through His life He has not thirsted because the living water has been passing freely from the Father to Him and from Him to others. But now, on the point of death, the Giver of the water of life is Himself caused to thirst for it! The Father, in His infinite love, causes the Son Himself to thirst for that love! Instead of helping others, the Son is constrained to ask as it were to be helped—in order that He may help others better. This is perhaps the deepest and most wonderful of all the Lord’s deep sayings—‘I thirst for the righteousness and love of God, that I and mine may be in the Father, and that the Father may be in me and mine.’ In the end, this will be one of the Lord’s words that ‘will never pass away.’ But what was its effect at the time? When Socrates uttered his last wishes, Crito was at hand to say, ‘This shall be done.’ But when Christ cried ‘I thirst,’ no friend was at hand to satisfy that thirst, and the cry was taken by the soldiers as meaning, ‘I thirst for a little of your sour wine’!”