This Feast lasted for eight days. The first day and the last were especially sacred. And now I want to call your attention to this second object which I have; namely, this water, and I want to tell you how it was related to and used at this Feast of Tabernacles. On the morning of each day, while the smoke of the morning sacrifice was ascending in beautiful wreaths in the still air, a priest bearing a large golden bowl, and followed by a long procession of boys and girls waving palm branches, descended the side of the hill to the pool of Siloam, which was in a quiet recess at the foot of Mount Moriah, on the summit of which the Temple was built. When the priest had filled the golden bowl with water from this clear pool, he held it above his head and bore it aloft as he ascended the stairs. As the procession entered the Court of the Temple, the trumpets sounded, and all the throngs of people gathered within its walls took up the words of the prophet and sang, "With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation" (Isaiah xii: 3), and as the priest came to the base of the altar he poured the water from the golden bowl into a silver basin amid shouts and gladness. Upon the eighth day, "the last day, that great day of the feast" (John vii: 37), the joy was greater than upon any of the other days. The priests in glad procession moved around the altar seven times, singing the Psalms. It was at the last Feast of Tabernacles which Jesus attended, that He stood in the midst of this glad assembly, and beheld their joy as they remembered how God had supplied their fathers with water in the wilderness; and how God had given them a land of streams, and rivers, and wells of water, and it was then when Jesus heard them crying "Hosanna, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord," that Jesus stood up in the midst of the Temple and of the people and said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." (John vii: 37.) To those of us who have always lived in the midst of a bountiful supply of fresh, clear, crystal water, these words are not as impressive as they were to the people to whom they were then spoken. For their land was surrounded by deserts, and they lived in the midst of nations whose people often famished and died, because there was not a sufficient supply of water to drink.