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AT THE 
 WELL-SIDE 
 
 BY 
 
 Meade C.Williams, D.D. 
 
 ASSOCIATE Editor HERALD AND PRESBYTER 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING CO. 
 CHICAGO, ILL. WINONA LAKE. IND. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1903 
 
 BY 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
AT THE WELL-SIDE 
 
AT THE WELL-SIDE. 
 A Study in John iv: 1-42. 
 
 T ESUS is journeying from Judea north- 
 J ward to Galilee. He must needs pass 
 through Samaria on the way. He is 
 journeying afoot. Behold, the Son of Man ! 
 Though rich,, yet for our sakes He became 
 poor. He humbled Himself to become a 
 dust-soiled traveller on the highways of our 
 earth. Is it not remarkable that in our 
 Lord's much journeying during His three 
 years of laborious ministry we never once 
 read of His travelling by chariot nor by 
 any other wheeled vehicle, neither by horse- 
 back nor by camel ! True, we once read of 
 His entering Jerusalem riding on a colt, 
 the foal of an ass. But you will recall that 
 that was but a momentary act and was not 
 for convenience sake, nor in the way of 
 journeying. 
 
 Take, too, the striking picture we here 
 have of the reality of Christ's human 
 nature. Walking for hours under a hot 
 
Ht Zbc WiclU^i^c 
 
 oriental sun, he grew weary. And about the 
 noon hour,"^ coming to a wayside well, as 
 we read, ''being wearied with His journey 
 He sat thus on the well." And besides fa- 
 tigue, He thirsted. And so — 
 
 *' Just such as I this earth He trod 
 With every human ill but sin, 
 And tho' indeed the very God, 
 As I am now, so He has been." 
 
 He is sitting alone beside the well, the 
 disciples having gone into the city to buy 
 food. While He is quietly waiting, there 
 comes a certain Samaritan woman, with her 
 pitcher and the long cord attached, to draw 
 water from the well. Jesus said to her, 
 "Give me to drink." Is there any other 
 instance in the records of our Saviour's 
 ministry of his making request for temporal 
 favor for himself ?t 
 
 The Lord now in His glory thirsts no 
 more, but are we not still hearing, as if 
 from His own lips, the same gentle appeal? 
 
 ♦I prefer to understand "the sixth hour" according- to 
 the Jewish computation rather than according to the 
 Roman, which'would make it six o'clock in the evening. 
 
 tHis cry on the cross, "I thirst," I separate from his 
 active ministry. 
 
Ht XTbe 1IClelUSi^e 
 
 For so does He identify Himself with His 
 needy ones on earth that in the piteous cries 
 that come for our aid we can catch His 
 voice, "Give me to drink'^ ; and even the cup 
 of cold water given in His name shall not 
 lose its reward, for ''inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto one of the least of these my 
 brethren ye have done it unto me." And 
 especially in every appeal to our benevolence 
 and our cooperation in the work of His gos- 
 pel, struggling under the noon-day heat of 
 difficulty and opposition, should we hear the 
 Lord himself saying, "Give me to drink." 
 Do not think when such objects are brought 
 before you that you are giving merely to the 
 machinery of Mission Boards and Societies, 
 or to the schemes of merely human interest. 
 Your giving terminates on a higher object. 
 It is the great Captain of our salvation call- 
 ing to you, ''Give me to drink !" 
 
 To ask a drink of water was a simple re- 
 quest, and one which, in that warm climate 
 especially, was seldom refused. Under or- 
 dinary circumstances no doubt the woman 
 would have instantly complied, without any 
 disposition to question or cavil. But observ- 
 ing, probably from His garb and dialect, 
 
Ht Ube mclUSi^c 
 
 that the stranger before her was a Jew, and 
 knowing of the strained relations between 
 Jews and Samaritans, she assumes an air 
 of surprise that He should ask of her even 
 so trifling a courtesy as a drink of water. 
 For the Jews, says the Evangelist in a note 
 of parenthesis, ''have no dealings with the 
 Samaritans." This was a sad race fact. The 
 history of the alienation was this : After the 
 ten tribes, constituting the Northern King- 
 dom, had been carried into captivity, some 
 seven hundred years before, the land ( which 
 took the name Samaria from the city which 
 had previously been the capital of the king- 
 dom) was repeopled by a motley popu- 
 lation made up of heathen colonies from 
 different countries, a sprinkling of fugitive 
 Jews from the land of Judah, together with 
 fragments, here and there, of the former ten 
 tribes of Israel. Subsequently, when the 
 Jews were returning from their captivity in 
 Babylon (more than two hundred years 
 after the overthrow of the Northern tribes), 
 and began to rebuild at Jerusalem, the 
 Samaritans proposed cooperation and union 
 with them. But the proposition was refused, 
 and no alliance with the tainted, mongrel 
 
Bt XTbe mclUSi^>c 
 
 race would be allowed. This aroused deep 
 resentment on the part of the Samaritans, 
 which grew and was intensified in the course 
 of centuries. In opposition to the Jews, they 
 set up a religious system of their own, — 
 partly heathen and partly that of Israel. 
 They took the five books of Moses, and held 
 to the expectation of a Messiah to come, but 
 rejected the rest of the Scriptures; they 
 acknowledged God, but also observed cer- 
 tain idolatrous practices. As the writer in 
 Second Kings described it, ''They feared the 
 Lord and served their own gods." Within 
 their bounds stood the historic Mount Geri- 
 zim. For this mountain they claimed a 
 sanctity greater than that which attached to 
 Mount Zion. On it they built a temple, and 
 instituted ceremonies of worship to rival 
 those of Jerusalem. 
 
 This bitter animosity of the Samaritans 
 was met by the feeling, equally strong, of 
 hatred, scorn and contempt on the part of 
 the Jews. It was said a Jew would not eat 
 out of the same dish with a Samaritan, nor 
 drink from the same cup. They made the 
 very name a term of reproach. So that the 
 Jews, on one occasion, wishing to revile 
 
m ubc -mciusi^c 
 
 Jesus, and to concentrate in one word their 
 feeling of scorn, flung at Him as the most 
 opprobrious epithet in their vocabulary, 
 ''Thou art a Samaritan!" Hence, perhaps, 
 it is not so strange that this woman, with the 
 sense of the old race prejudice, and knowing 
 nothing of the man before her save His na- 
 tionality, should follow the course she did, 
 and instead of instantly granting the re- 
 quest, should begin to parley and to raise 
 questions in "a sort of playful triumph," as 
 Alford understands it — "What, you ! a mem- 
 ber of the proud and scornful Jewish race 
 who look down on us, do you ask drink of 
 me, a woman of Samaria !" 
 
 Jesus, Jew though He was, was of course 
 above this low and wicked prejudice of His 
 nation. He never spoke disparagingly of 
 the Samaritans, and exhibitions of rancor 
 towards them on the part of His disciples 
 He rebuked — "Ye know not what manner 
 of spirit ye are of." He had already sent 
 His disciples out into the neighborhood to 
 buy Samaritan food. At another time He 
 directed them to go to a certain village of 
 the Samaritans "to make ready for His 
 coming," although, as it proved, the people 
 
 6 
 
Ht Zbc TKIlelUSlbe 
 
 inhospitably refused to receive Him. In 
 the case of the ten lepers who were healed, 
 He commended the one who "returned to 
 give glory to God," and of whom it is said, 
 "he was a Samaritan." And in His story of 
 the poor traveller stripped and robbed and 
 left half dead on the way, we have the 
 Lord's beautiful tribute to "a certain Sa- 
 maritan" who kindly cared for the sufferer 
 when the Jewish priest and the Jewish Le- 
 vite had passed by on the other side without 
 raising a finger in help. And for all time 
 will that tender injunction, which bids us 
 "go and do likewise," be associated with the 
 merciful deed, and will perpetuate the ex- 
 ample, of that man of a despised race. 
 
Ht Zbc XRIlelUSl&e 
 
 11. 
 
 The woman's reply, ungracious though 
 it was, gives opportunity for that which 
 Jesus always relished more than His neces- 
 sary food. As at another time He had 
 greater interest in teaching Mary, as she sat 
 at His feet, than He could feel in Martha's 
 labored preparation for His entertainment 
 at her table, so now He forgets He is thirsty, 
 and He forgets He is tired, in the oppor- 
 tunity which offers of imparting spiritual 
 drink to a perishing soul. His own sense of 
 bodily need is lost in the thought of her 
 spiritual need, and instead of renewing His 
 request for water. He illustrates that His 
 meat and His drink was ratlrer to do the will 
 of Him that sent him. For, 
 
 " Sweeter, O Lord, than rest to Thee 
 When seated by the well, 
 Was the blest work which brought Thee there 
 Of grace and peace to tell." 
 
 By means of the well and the water, as 
 figures, He would lift the woman's thoughts 
 to something higher than bodily cravings. 
 
 8 
 
Ht Zbc MelUSt^e 
 
 The subject between them was a matter of 
 giving. And He, asking a favor at her 
 hands, has at that very moment the power, 
 yea, the disposition, to bestow a greater gift 
 than He asks. And in that compassion and 
 patience which He ever had towards "the 
 ignorant and them that are out of the way," 
 He now addresses her, in effect: — "Oh, 
 woman, if you only knew the gift of God, 
 and if you only knew who it is that has said 
 to you 'give me to drink,' the relations be- 
 tween us would be quite changed. You 
 would have been asking of him, and he with- 
 out any parley, and without any delay, 
 would have given unto you living water."* 
 
 •By some the gift of God is understood to mean the 
 Holy Spirit, and to correspond to the " living- water" of 
 the next clause — water being a frequent Bible symbol of 
 the Holy Spirit's influence. By others the gift of God is 
 understood as referring- to Christ himself— God's gracious 
 gift to the world, and likened to the water described as 
 " living" in the sense of being real, or true, and perennial 
 in its influence. I see no reason for any exclusive interpre- 
 tation. Both are comprehended in the one general thought 
 that God freely forgives sin and satisfies the desire of 
 every needy soul that seeks. The gift and the Giver were 
 at hand; "the kingdom of God was come nigh " unto the 
 woman. And as the Saviour in his omniscience read her 
 sinful life in advance of the interview, may we not also 
 understand it was in exercise of his divine foreknowledge 
 that, putting emphasis on the "/Aow," he could declare 
 beforehand that when she should know this truth she 
 would be ready to ask. 
 
 9 
 
Ht Zbc WiclUSi^c 
 
 The woman's spiritual sense is very dull, 
 and she does not comprehend Christ's refer- 
 ence to the living water, even as afterwards 
 to the Jews His allusion to the living bread 
 seemed like words in an unknown tongue. 
 She knows of no other water than that 
 which slakes bodily thirst. *'You cannot 
 give me water from this well," she says, "for 
 it is very deep and you have nothing to draw 
 with. From whence then hast thou that 
 living water? Or, are you boasting of 
 some other spring or fountain with better 
 water than this ? ' ' Emphasizing whatever 
 remote or slight connection her nation had 
 with the ancient covenanted Israel, she re- 
 sents His words, as if a depreciation of the 
 well so long hallowed among her people. 
 "Why, our father Jacob gave us this well, 
 and he used to drink from it himself, and 
 his children also and his cattle. Art thou 
 greater than our father Jacob," she asks in 
 a half- resentful tone, and as with an injured 
 air, "that you presume to speak of a better 
 water ?" Jesus in return makes no question 
 of the excellent quality of this water. Had 
 He not, indeed, already asked to drink of it 
 at her hands? But without any disparage- 
 
 10 
 
Bt Zbc MelUSl^e 
 
 ment, and allowing all that is claimed for 
 Jacob's well, it must yet be acknowledged, 
 He gently declares, even by those who had 
 enjoyed its friendly service their whole life 
 long, that drinking of its water you will 
 thirst again. You fill your pitcher to-day, 
 but to-morrow you must journey hither 
 again for a new supply. And so it is con- 
 tinually. Whereas, *'he who drinks of the 
 water that I give shall never thirst, for the 
 water that I shall give him will be in him 
 a well of water springing up into everlasting 
 life." 
 
 The woman is puzzled but is evidently be- 
 coming interested. There is that in the 
 novel and singular announcement the 
 stranger makes that awakens mental interest, 
 even though she does not fully catch His 
 meaning. And with a vague conception of 
 it, as something exalted, and in a half- 
 serious and half-bantering w^ay, she says, 
 "Oh, if that is so, then give me of that won- 
 derful water!" This was spoken in that 
 same misapprehending spirit and indifferent 
 tone with which the Jews once responded 
 when Jesus was discoursing about the bread 
 which Cometh down from heaven, 'Xord, 
 
 II 
 
Ht Zbc WiclUSi^c 
 
 evermore give us this bread." The woman 
 thought of her years of toil over the water 
 supply: coming from her home with the 
 large earthen pitcher; letting it down into 
 the well and laboriously drawing it up; 
 raising the heavy load to her shoulder, or to 
 her head, and slowly trudging home, and 
 then the supply so soon exhausted, and 
 again the weary trip ! ' ' Oh , yes , ' ' says she — 
 still thinking of the water of earth, "give 
 me this water, that I thirst not, neither 
 come hither to draw."* 
 
 Not knowing clearly what she had done, 
 yet in some sense the woman has asked for 
 the living water. And Jesus would now 
 give her to drink. But the Lord knew the 
 woman's sinful life, and her dormant con- 
 science. And He who was quick to heal 
 must first make sore. There must be a pre- 
 paratory work, an awakening touch, and the 
 woman must herself see her sin and realize 
 her need, and feel a thirst after righteous- 
 ness. Had He not told her that the living 
 water meant another well, a well within, 
 springing up into everlasting life? Thus, 
 first, a well must be dug, as it were, in her 
 
 ♦"Neither come aU the way hither to draw," R. V.; her 
 village supposed to be nearly a mile away. 
 12 
 
Ht Zbc WiclUSi^c 
 
 heart; a hidden spring down in the depths 
 must be reached. The shaft of truth must 
 be sunk through the surface, must pierce 
 through the layers of transgression, through 
 the thick incrustings of sinful years, through 
 the deposits of carnality, through the hard 
 and stony strata. **Go, call thy husband and 
 come hither." This was the first stroke of 
 the pick in digging the new well. 
 
 The word, husband, must have had an 
 ominous sound for the woman. It did not 
 go well in connection with her life. We 
 imagine her confused and embarrassed for 
 a moment, and her eyes perhaps turned to 
 the ground. But we imagine her soon rally- 
 ing and raising her head. This Jewish 
 stranger, having no dealings with Samari- 
 tans and never before in our village — what 
 does he know about my life? My secret is 
 safe. And so she nonchalantly answers, "I 
 have no husband." But the first stroke 
 bounding off, another is ready. Jesus takes 
 her up right there and unveils her sinful 
 life, — "Thou hast well said, I have no hus- 
 band, for thou hast had five husbands and he 
 whom thou now hast is not thy husband; 
 in that saidst thou truly." This was the 
 
 13 
 
Ht xrbe •QClelUStbe 
 
 second piercing, deep and far reaching. It 
 came without warning and it went home to 
 the woman. Her sin has found her out; 
 and all things are naked and open unto the 
 eyes of Him with whom she now has to do. 
 Her own heart condemns her. And what a 
 flood of recollections was this convicting 
 charge fitted to awaken! — the early days 
 when she was a pure girl, then the honor- 
 able love of maidenhood and the heart's 
 plighted troth, then the mournful days 
 when, either by death five times made a 
 widow or, as is more probable, in some of 
 these cases at least, the sacred bonds of mar- 
 riage broken by her sin, and now her present 
 life of shame ! Oh, how ''sharper than any 
 two edged sword was this word of the Lord 
 piercing even to the dividing asunder of 
 soul and spirit and of the joints and mar- 
 row." Reading between the lines I see here 
 an awakened sense of sin, the beginnings 
 of penitential sorrow and a thought of God 
 which troubled her soul. For, observe the 
 marked change at once in her whole attitude 
 towards the mysterious stranger who thus 
 deals with her, who searches her and knows 
 her, who understands her thought afar off, 
 
 ^4 
 
Bt Ube mclUSi^c 
 
 and who is acquainted with all her ways. 
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for her, 
 and her spirit bows before Him. She had 
 first thought of Him, indifferently, as an 
 ordinary man, a common wayfarer passing 
 by on his wearisome journeying, and one 
 who commended himself the less because 
 he was a Jew. But how altered now her 
 whole bearing towards him ! How different 
 the spirit she exhibits! Her bold and pre- 
 sumptuous manner is gone, and in its place 
 we see respect and deference. A little be- 
 fore she had said with a supercillious and 
 almost insolent air, "Art thou greater than 
 our father Jacob?" and now she acknowl- 
 edges in effect. Yes, here is one indeed who 
 is greater than the patriarch Jacob ; one who 
 enters her inner life and who reads the pages 
 of her shameful history, and before whom 
 she cannot dissemble, nor cloak her sin. A 
 new light in regard to him breaks on her 
 mind. She is conscious that she had been 
 wofully misjudging him; that, unaware of 
 the fact, she had been conversing with some 
 exalted personage, and had spoken "unad- 
 visedly with her lips." And though know- 
 ing not who the stranger may be, she yet 
 
 15 
 
Ht Zbc TPdlelUStbe 
 
 most deferentially acknowledges this much 
 at least, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a 
 prophet !" 
 
 A prophet, in the Bible sense, was a 
 teacher — ^but much more than a mere 
 teacher. He was a teacher so marked by 
 striking signs as to show that in a special 
 sense he was accredited by God and spoke 
 for Him. And just as Nicodemus said to 
 Christ, "No man can do these miracles that 
 thou doest except God be with him," so this 
 woman reasoned — no man, an entire 
 stranger here, can so read my life, and 
 pierce to its depths, and show me my sin, 
 except God be with him ! 
 
 This being her sense of sin and the 
 awakening within her of a spirit of anxious 
 concern, is one disappointed by the char- 
 acter of the question she straightway puts? 
 "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain 
 (pointing as she spoke to lofty Mount Ger- 
 izim which towered high above them) — 
 our fathers worshipped there, but you Jews 
 say Jerusalem is the place where men ought 
 to worship. Now tell me, which is the right 
 place?" Does this seem too abstract and 
 impersonal a matter for an awakened sin- 
 
 i6 
 
at Xlbc TRIleIUSl&e 
 
 ner to trouble herself about? Does it savor 
 of mere curiosity, or of captious controversy 
 as between the rival seats of worship ?* But 
 remember that up to this time, both among 
 Jews and Samaritans, the approach of the 
 soul before God was associated with some 
 particular locality, with some temple, with 
 ritual, with a priesthood which asserted an 
 exclusive claim. And hence to come before 
 Him one must first be assured of the right 
 locality where God was thought to dwell, 
 and the right altar whence the smoke of 
 His offerings must arise. And so, after all, 
 it was the woman's yearning which led to 
 her question. She would know where God's 
 true altar stood, that she might bring hither 
 her offerings and her desires, and hers was 
 in reality the same state of mind as Job's 
 when he cried, *'Oh, that I knew where I 
 might find Him! that I might come even 
 to His seat !" 
 
 To this question, how else could Christ 
 make answer than as He did — He who had 
 come to do away with what had been only 
 local and national and temporary in religion, 
 
 • That it indicates a desire to divert the conversation 
 from the close and practical turn it had taken, I do not 
 now suppose. 
 
 2 17 
 
Ht Zbc 'WlelUStbe 
 
 and to inaugurate the dispensation of the 
 spiritual? And how better would He in- 
 struct and encourage one, just beginning to 
 respond to these movements on the soul! 
 "Woman/' said He, impressively, "believe 
 me, the hour comes and now is when, 
 whether a Samaritan or a Jew, men shall 
 worship the Father without respect to place ; 
 when you shall be restricted neither to this 
 mountain nor yet to Jerusalem." This truth 
 was only that moment dawning. It was not a 
 teaching from the past, but "the hour 
 Cometh" — was only just now at hand — when 
 this new order of things was to be estab- 
 lished to the wonder and amazement, not 
 alone of the Samaritan woman, and of the 
 Jews, but of the chosen disciples as well — 
 so infixed and rooted had been the old con- 
 ception. All localities where the sincere 
 worship of the soul would express itself 
 would have equal sanctity ; and distinctions, 
 not of place only but of nations and persons, 
 would be abolished. Salvation was indeed 
 "of the Jews," through their Scriptures and 
 prophets, and by their whole training as a 
 theocratic nation ; but it was not to be sub- 
 ject to Jewish limitations and boundaries. 
 
 i8 
 
Ht Zbc TRUelUSi^e 
 
 And not only was God now to be more gen- 
 erally known, but better known. To the 
 poor woman, conscience-stricken and dimly 
 seeking, and to all whose hearts sincerely 
 cry after him, this teacher at the well-side 
 reveals God as the Father, with all the "suf- 
 ficing" power of that name, the tender title 
 coming again and yet again in these words 
 of gracious instruction. It is not so much 
 the place where you worship as the Being 
 to whom you would look, Jesus tells her. 
 God is spirit and is to be spiritually appre- 
 hended. Your approach to Him is to be de- 
 termined, not by locality or clime, nor by 
 any exclusive channels of ritual, but by your 
 own spirit in its attitude of faith and desire. 
 So that here at this well-side, or at your 
 home in the village, or wherever you may 
 be, only in sincerity of heart, in ^'spirit and 
 in truth," call upon God and you will find 
 Him near. Yea, not only may God be found 
 in whatsoever place the soul sincerely seeks 
 Him, but more than that — ''such worship- 
 pers God the Father seeks." He goes out 
 to find the lost, and to meet those whose 
 groping steps and whose panting hearts are 
 towards Him. 
 
 19 
 
Ht ^be WclUSlbe 
 
 III. 
 
 All this is familiar and commonplace 
 truth now, but not so then. It was some- 
 thing not only novel, but startling and revo- 
 lutionary to the woman's mind. The great 
 Mount Gerizim to which she had pointed, 
 the rival of the Jews' Mount Zion, she had 
 always heard was the most sacred spot on 
 earth. Their people had been taught in 
 legends and myths that it was the seat of the 
 early paradise, that Adam had been formed 
 out of its dust, that its summit was the one 
 spot untouched by the waters of the flood, 
 that the altar on which Abraham bound 
 Isaac had been built there, and that there 
 was to be seen the stone on which Jacob 
 pillowed his head when he dreamed and saw 
 the ladder. Thus had the mountain of 
 Samaria always stood in her mind as the 
 one place of worship. And now can she at 
 once change her whole point of view? Can 
 she accept off-hand this new teaching ? She 
 is perplexed. She hesitates. She is in the 
 right frame of mind. She is docile and 
 wants the truth and is ready to receive it, if 
 
 20 
 
at Xrbc TRIlelUSl^c 
 
 only assured of its right source. The 
 stranger before her she knows is wise. She 
 takes teachings from his Hps in all docility, 
 even receiving now with meekness his re- 
 flection on her Samaritan people about their 
 "worshipping they know not what" — a 
 declaration which at the earlier part of the 
 interview she would have quickly resented, 
 even as she did the fancied slight upon 
 Jacob's well. But while this stranger is 
 wise, he is not yet to her the highest au- 
 thority. She perceives he is a prophet, but 
 a prophet is not the original source of truth. 
 And she has heard of one, sometime to ap- 
 pear among them, greater than a prophet. 
 And so, musing over it, without disputing or 
 rejecting, she says in effect, ''Well, I can't 
 tell what to think. It may all be as you say. 
 I don't know. But some time, I know, Mes- 
 sias is to come, which is called Christ. 
 When he is come he wilt tell us all things." 
 Oh, on the brink of what stupendous dis- 
 covery is this poor woman, and she knows it 
 not ! So Mary was standing without the 
 sepulcher weeping, because she knew not 
 where they had taken her Lord. And then 
 He, whom her soul loved, came and stood 
 
 31 
 
Ht Ube TRIlelUSi^e 
 
 beside her and she did not know Him, but 
 took Him for the gardener, until His own 
 voice said, "Mary !" And Hkewise the dis- 
 ciples, out fishing all night, and rowing in to 
 shore in the early dawn, saw a man on the 
 bank, and even held converse with him, and 
 "they knew not that it was Jesus," until 
 John in his quicker instinct of love whis- 
 pered to Peter, "It is the Lord !" Yes, said 
 the woman, when Messias comes he will 
 make all these things plain. When he 
 comes ! She had not long to wait. Joseph 
 in Pharoah's court about to disclose himself, 
 caused every one to go out from him, and 
 "there stood no man with him when he made 
 himself known to his brethren," and when 
 he overwhelmed them by his tender an- 
 nouncement, "I am Joseph!" Likewise 
 Jesus had sent the disciples away, and there 
 stood no one by when His gentle voice fell 
 on the woman's ear, "I that speak unto thee 
 am He!" I, a wayworn traveller, seeking 
 rest at this well and dependent on your gen- 
 erosity for a drink of water, I am the Mes- 
 siah! 
 
 And then what happened when the pure- 
 faced Jesus stood revealed before the 
 
 22 
 
Ht Zbc WiclUBit>c 
 
 woman just awakened to penitence, and her 
 soul going out after God ? Did she shrink 
 back and cry out as Peter once did, "depart 
 from me O Lord for I am a sinful woman" ? 
 Or did she cast herself prostrate before 
 him ? Did she kiss the hem of his garment 
 and bathe His feet with her penitential 
 tears? There is no record given us. The 
 Scriptures make no scene about it. But we 
 will not do wrong if we indulge imagination 
 here. I think we can read between the lines. 
 Had not Jesus told the woman, at the out- 
 set of the interview, that if she knew who 
 he was that said, "Give me to drink," she 
 would ask of him, and that he would give 
 her the living water? Well, the poor 
 woman knows now who the mysterious 
 stranger is, and assuredly, even as Jesus 
 said she would do, she asks ; and, assuredly, 
 even as He said He would do. He gives the 
 living water. Of course there was further 
 conversation between them, for are we not 
 told that the disciples, when they returned, 
 found Him talking with the woman? And 
 what words of comfort and instruction He 
 must have spoken! What an unfolding of 
 that grace which can come over the moun- 
 
 23 
 
Ht Zbc WiclUSi^c 
 
 tain of our iniquities, which in no wise casts 
 out any seeking soul, and which can make 
 the foulest clean! It was seed falling on 
 prepared soil, and like showers which the 
 earth eagerly drinks in. He who had first 
 cast down now raises up. The sacrifices of 
 God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a con- 
 trite heart He does not despise. Yea, with 
 such sacrifices God is ever well pleased. And 
 for the woman old things had passed away. 
 Behold all things were become new, and 
 even as it is told afterwards of another sin- 
 ful woman restored by the Saviour's grace, 
 "Forgiven much, she loves much." 
 
 With the return of the disciples the woman 
 takes up her own return to the city. She had 
 come out from her home to draw water. 
 But she found that at the well which she 
 went not for; and so absorbed is she in her 
 new thoughts, and so stirred by her new 
 emotions, that she forgets the errand which 
 had brought her there, and leaves her water- 
 pot at the well, in her eagerness to carry 
 home a better burden. And now we think 
 of her hastening with speedy feet to bring 
 the tidings, even as afterwards the women 
 who received the angels' word at the door 
 
 24 
 
Ht Xrbe TKHelUSi^e 
 
 of the empty sepulchre, ''departed quickly 
 with fear and great joy, and did run to bring 
 his disciples word." And to the men she 
 saw in the fields, or on the roadside, as she 
 went hurrying by, and to those of the town 
 whom she eagerly accosted, she proclaimed 
 the wonderful news, "Come, see a man" — 
 and hesitating not in her message even 
 though it was based on the fact of her dis- 
 covered sin, "Come, see a man who told me 
 all things that ever I did. Is not this the 
 Christ?" And it is as if we heard over 
 again Andrew's testimony to his brother 
 Simon, "We have found the Messiah !" and 
 likewise Philip's confident word to Na- 
 thaniel, "Come and see!" The woman's 
 witnessing in her town proved indeed 
 an evangel of power, for many of the 
 people there believed on Him because of 
 her saying, while afterwards many more 
 going out of the city and coming to Him, 
 still at the well, believed because of His own 
 words, and declared in their joy "that this 
 is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the 
 world." 
 
 In the meantime the disciples note that 
 the food they had brought, and had spread 
 
 25 
 
Ht Ube XPQlelUSt^e 
 
 before Him, remained untouched; and, 
 knowing His weariness from the morning's 
 journey, in their friendly anxiety they press 
 it on Him — ''Master, eat !" But the Master's 
 thoughts were elsewhere. As before, he for- 
 got his thirst for the water which the 
 woman might have furnished, so now he has 
 no hunger for the food which the disciples 
 have brought. They in their dullness could 
 not enter into those contemplations and 
 spiritual sympathies which then absorbed 
 His mind, and could only wonder, "hath 
 any man brought Him aught to eat ?" Their 
 Master, however, is abundantly satisfied 
 with good things, only His satisfaction is of 
 another kind. He is "seeing of the travail of 
 his soul and is satisfied." The thought of a 
 poor lost one found and restored, the 
 thought of the new-born joy among the 
 angels in heaven over the one sinner that 
 had repented, the thought of the spiritual 
 fields right around Him "white already to 
 the harvest," and of the many Samaritans 
 of that city about to come out to Him and to 
 believe on Him — all this satisfaction and joy 
 of spirit is signified by His quiet answer to 
 
 26 
 
Ht Ube MelU51^c 
 
 the disciples, "I have meat to eat which you 
 know not of !" 
 
 One lone woman first came to this well- 
 side, where sat the weary stranger, and she 
 received at his hand the living water. Again 
 the well is visited that same day, and many 
 tread the path where but one had walked 
 before. But it was not Jacob's well, nor its 
 purity of water, that drew them there. It 
 was the same sentiment surging in their 
 hearts, which at another time found expres- 
 sion in the mouths of the Greeks who had 
 come up to the feast at Jerusalem, "We 
 would see Jesus!'' And they believed be- 
 cause of His own word, and with joy drew 
 water from the well of salvation. 
 
 27 
 
Bt TLbc TOelUSt&e 
 
 IV. 
 
 To what wells are we bringing our pitch- 
 ers for their filling? We have our earthly 
 occupations and interests and satisfactions. 
 That is right, but should that be all? The 
 daily round of toils and pursuits, and it may 
 be of pleasures, too, this will never satisfy 
 the soul. Coming over and over to fill the 
 pitcher with such water, no sooner drinking 
 than we thirst again, the supply of to-day 
 exhausted by to-morrow — what is this but 
 to realize the prophet's wail, "Spending 
 your money for that which is not bread and 
 your labor for that which satisfieth not?" 
 But hearken, now, to the proclamation of 
 another well, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, 
 come ye to the waters." "If any man thirst, 
 let him come unto me and drink." 
 
 Jesus sits to-day at the well of salvation, 
 even as on that day He sat by the well of 
 Samaria. And with stretched-out hand He 
 asks, "Give me to drink" — son, daughter, 
 give me thine heart. In the refusal to 
 respond do we not catch His charitable 
 judgment, "they know not what they 
 
 28 
 
Ht Zbc TRaelUSiOe 
 
 do"? For, surely, even as the Lord 
 said to the woman, if you only knew 
 the gift of God, and if you only knew who 
 it is that saith to you give me to drink — 
 if men and women would but reflect and 
 consider and realize — oh, surely they would 
 turn and ask of Him, and He would give 
 the living water. 
 
 " I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
 
 Behold I freely give 
 The living water — thirsty one 
 
 Stoop down and drink and live. 
 I came to Jesus and I drank 
 
 Of that life-giving stream, 
 My thirst was quenched, my soul revived 
 
 And now I live in Him." 
 
 29 
 
DATE DUE 
 
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