The Gospel of St. John Part 5

What have our poor beggarly conceits to do with the idea of a Goodness without bounds? Let us understand it well, brethren. The Jews rejected the testimony of Christ, because it was the testimony concerning such a G.o.d as this. The difficulty of all difficulties, whatever we may fancy, is to believe in _G.o.d_, in a _living_ and _true_ G.o.d, in a G.o.d who loves His creatures. It is a difficulty which no arguments can remove; a difficulty which the progress of ages does not diminish in the least, but makes stronger; a difficulty which is often most overpowering to the most religious men. The logician says, 'The understanding is finite; you cannot bring the Infinite within its range.' The philosopher of advanced civilization says, 'The belief in G.o.d was for little children; science is for us. Physical science does not reveal G.o.d; our worship of humanity dispenses with Him.' Religious men see evil all about them and within them. They can conceive of a punisher and avenger of evil; they can conceive that this punisher and avenger, if he has motive and compensation sufficient, may exempt some from the destruction which he has decreed for the majority. They cannot believe in Love.

The logician is right. St. John said, eighteen hundred years ago, that the Light had shined in the darkness, and the darkness had not comprehended it. If we think only of our understanding, if we refuse to believe that there is a Word always illuminating it, we think only of the darkness, and we may say boldly, 'It can know nothing of G.o.d; we have nothing to do with Him.' The modern philosopher of advanced civilization is right. We cannot discover G.o.d in the world; we cannot discover in the world anything higher than ourselves. If there is no Bridegroom of humanity, who witnesses to it of a Father, and binds it to a Father, we can only worship the world, or worship humanity--that is to say, worship ourselves. The religious man who exalts evil into the throne of the universe is right. All the witnesses of the conscience that there is a G.o.d infinitely good,--all the witnesses of the heart that man is made to be in conformity with that infinite Good, and can be satisfied with nothing else--are simply mockeries and delusions, which it is the business of the disciple and minister of Christ to trample upon, to confute with words taken out of the Bible, till he has succeeded in making young men profligates and atheists, old men worldlings and hypocrites,--if there has not been in the world an only-begotten Son full of grace and truth, who has come forth from the Father to testify of the Father, and to whom the Father has given His Spirit without measure, that He might baptize with it all who receive His testimony, all who believe that G.o.d is true, not false--good, not evil.

To this subject the last and most memorable words of this whole chapter refer, those in which John the Baptist looks into the promised land which he was not to enter, in which he winds up the old dispensation, in which he introduces the new. '_The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son of G.o.d hath everlasting life: he that believeth not the Son of G.o.d hath not life; but the wrath of G.o.d abideth on him._' Henceforth we shall hear no longer of a prophet discoursing of a Word who has come to him, and from whom his light and the light of all men has been derived. We shall find _that_ Word discoursing as a Son concerning a Father, conversing with a Father, showing forth a Father. We are to hear how this testimony is received, especially how it is received by the most religious portion of the Jewish people. We are to learn that, though their opposition to Jesus took many forms, there was one dark root of all their hostility and hatred. They could not bear to hear Christ speak of a Father--of a Father who loved the world. Whenever they thought of G.o.d, a dark image of wrath was present to them; that wrath abode upon them, settled in them. How was it possible for them, then, to see in Jesus the perfect image of the Father,--in His wrath against all baseness and vileness and hypocrisy, the true Divine wrath which is the expression of the deepest love,--in His sympathy with publicans and sinners, the self-same love? How was it possible for them to see in the Son lifted on the cross, the King whom prophets and holy men had desired, the Son of G.o.d in whom dwelt the fulness of the Father, because the fulness of love, bodily? And, therefore, the wrath which they had invoked upon all others, and cherished in their own hearts, came upon them to the uttermost. They rejected their King and Bridegroom, and all the national and spiritual life which had proceeded from Him perished inevitably.

I have come back to the subject of which I was speaking last Sunday.

All Christian preaching should return continually to the Cross. It can never find any other object so central or so glorious. But the death of Christ and His resurrection are inseparable. I have been preaching you an Easter sermon to-day. For, if you think of Easter as apostles and martyrs thought of it, you will think of it as the witness that the Bridegroom of humanity has presented and justified humanity before His Father. You will pray for the Spirit of the Father and the Son, that you, believing in that justification, may rise with Him to newness of life. And you will join to these prayers another, that each of us, when the hour comes in which strength and heart fail, may be able to say with joy, '_I must decrease, that He may increase_.' All that belongs to my own poor and selfish nature must decay and perish, that He, my Lord and Saviour, may be exalted,--that I and all His redeemed may see our own blessedness and glory only and for ever in Him.

DISCOURSE IX.

THE WATER OF LIFE.

[Lincoln's Inn, Sunday after Easter, March 30, 1856.]

ST. JOHN IV. 10.

_Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of G.o.d, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water._

The dispute between John's disciples and the Jew, of which I spoke last Sunday, was about purification. Apparently, John's answer to them, when they came to tell him that Jesus was baptizing, and that all men were coming to Him, had little reference to this subject.

_Really_ his words threw the greatest light upon it. He did not say whether the baptism of Jesus had a more purifying effect upon those who received it than his baptism. But he spoke of another gift which Jesus, if He was indeed the Son of G.o.d, would confer upon those who believed in Him. '_He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son of G.o.d shall not see life._' It was a mighty thing for men to be purified, to have corruptions removed from them. But corruption is the consequence of death. Where corruption is, death must have entered. He who is the source and spring of life, He who can restore life, must have in Himself the very principle and power of purification. All instruments of purification must derive their virtue from Him. He must be _the_ Purifier.

Accordingly it is to this quality of the divine Word, or Son, that St.

John has from the first directed our thoughts. '_In Him was life, and the life was the light of men_:' this is the starting-point of his Gospel. The sign in Cana of Galilee was the sign that Jesus was the communicator of life. His discourse with Nicodemus turned altogether upon the life from above which the Spirit of G.o.d would confer upon men, and which would enable them to see the kingdom of G.o.d. The primary announcement of the forerunner, therefore, respecting the Word made flesh, '_He shall baptize with the Holy Ghost_,' whatever more it might mean, could mean nothing less than this: 'He shall not merely cleanse away defilements; He shall impart the life which those defilements obstruct and seek to extinguish.' John did not say for a moment that water should not be the sign of entrance into the kingdom that was at hand--that it should not be Christ's sign, as it had been his sign;--but he said that it should be the sign, not merely of repentance and remission of sins, but of a higher and eternal _life_.

Was this an unusual and arbitrary application of the symbol? Surely not. Water, when it is applied outwardly, suggests only the thought of purification. Water, when it is taken inwardly, immediately suggests the thought of life. And this, therefore, is the point of connexion between the discourse of John with his disciples, which occupied us last Sunday, and the discourse of Jesus with the woman of Samaria, which is to occupy us to-day. The Evangelist points out the relation between the two subjects in his own mind and in the history, by the first words of the fourth chapter: '_When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (though Jesus Himself baptized not, but His disciples,) He left Judaea, and came again into Galilee_.' What the disciples of the Baptist had angrily conjectured, the Pharisees would of course take for granted. They would a.s.sume that John and Jesus were rival teachers, and that one was supplanting the other. The thought of this might become the thought of Christ's own disciples: if it did, they would utterly misunderstand the work of their Master, and His relation to the preacher of repentance. Was not this a reason for leaving Judaea, and going into Galilee?

'_And He must needs go through Samaria._' That was the most natural road. He might no doubt have avoided it; there was an inward and moral necessity why He should not. If He was setting up a kingdom in the whole land, portions of it which had been most separated from the rest must be claimed as belonging to it.

'_Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph._' This country was connected with the oldest traditions relating to the commonwealth of Israel,--to the period before the giving of the Law, when the life of the fathers of the nation was entirely domestic and pastoral. In these traditions was the link between one part of the people and the other. The local a.s.sociations with the events recorded in the Book of Genesis were witnesses that the rocks had once been united, however rudely they had in later times been rent asunder.

There, especially, was the simplest and most faithful token of patriarchal times--a _well_. It was believed to have been dug by Jacob. It brought the name of the head of all the tribes, and the likeness of his mode of existence to their own, before those who could read no letters, and had little in their own thoughts to tell them that they were members of a chosen race.

'_Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat.)_' Such a request from a weary and thirsty traveller would not commonly have been refused by a woman of Palestine; and certainly we have no reason to think, from the Gospels, that a Samaritan was likely to be less friendly or courteous than one of the Southern people. It is not probable that the woman meant to refuse. But she thought she had a right, on behalf of her country, to trifle a little with the pride of a Jew, who, in a difficulty, would ask a favour of those whom he despised, though he would not hold any intercourse with them, or meet them upon fair terms. '_How is it_,' said she, '_that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings_' (do not traffic) '_with the Samaritans_.'

That word, '_have no traffic or dealing_,' seems to explain the first part of our Lord's answer. '_If thou knewest the_ GIFT _of G.o.d, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water._' She had come day after day to draw water at that well. Had she never known that that water was a _gift_ of G.o.d? Had no thirst on a hot day, or no failure of the spring, taught her that? Was water a thing to traffic in? Did not she recollect that it was a man, and not merely a Jew, who was saying, '_Give me to drink_'? Did she never think of the gift of water as something very free and universal? This lesson was contained in the opening of the sentence; and the look and the voice of the Stranger had, perhaps, already carried it home in some degree to the woman's conscience. But the speech suddenly took another turn.

There might be an exchange of gifts here also. '_If thou knewest who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water._'

The words conveyed no immediate sense to her mind as to the nature of the gift which was spoken of. But her answer shows that the presence of the Stranger had not been without its effect. She speaks with less levity than before, with something of doubt, if not of awe,--'_Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children, and his cattle?_' I am far from supposing that this question indicates any suspicion in her mind that He _was_ greater than their father, or that He could know the country and where to find its secret springs as Jacob did. But that very reference to Jacob showed that the feelings of the woman were becoming more serious than they had been. The petty disputes of Jews and Samaritans were giving place to those remembrances of the past which make all common spots sacred, and enn.o.ble even the vulgarest minds. Her well, that well at which she had so often filled her pitcher, was the one out of which, eighteen hundred years before, the patriarch had drunk, and his children, and his cattle. It was a step in her education, a preparation for the words which follow.

'_Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life._'

I do not say that our version of this pa.s.sage is in itself an incorrect one; nothing is harder than to find the most suitable equivalents for the words which are rendered here '_never_' and '_everlasting_:' but it would, I conceive, have been most desirable, by some means or other, to make the reader feel (which scarcely any reader of our translation does feel) that the two clauses answer to each other,--that e?? t?? a???a, follows 'shall not thirst,' and that the adjective, a??????, is that which qualifies 'life.' I shall make no further use of this observation,--for there is enough in this pa.s.sage to occupy us without any reference to it; but I could not pa.s.s it over because the word 'life,' which is the cardinal one of the pa.s.sage, and I might say of the dialogue, must be considerably affected by that which accompanies it. I am far more anxious, however, that you should consider how our Lord describes the difference between the water of Jacob's well and that which He would give. '_The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life._' The woman had wondered where He would go to discover a fountain deeper and more abundant than that which Jacob had bequeathed. The answer is, '_He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again_.' 'He must come, as you do, to fetch water continually. The supply of to-day will be no supply for to-morrow. But what if each man should have the spring in himself? What if it should be a spring ever renewed, kept alive by Him who first opened it?' 'A strange thought,' you will say, 'to set before an ignorant woman!

What could she understand about springs or fountains within?' Very little at first, if we believe the Evangelist. Her reply is just what we might expect it to be. She relapses into the sort of banter with which she had begun the conversation. The gravity which she had exhibited for a moment has disappeared: '_Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw_.' A sufficient proof, most would say, if they dared, that this kind of mystical discourse was very little adapted to the comprehension of such a person as she was. But, my brethren, if we say this, we must say more. We must say that the whole Gospel of St. John--the simplest, as I have said already, in language and construction, of all the Gospels, that which Luther was wont to designate the child's Gospel--is unsuitable to simple people, and must be reconstructed according to our notions of simplicity. For that Gospel begins from the principle that Christ, the living Word of G.o.d, is the life and light of men, the life and light of all men. If that is true, it must have been the work of the Son of Man, of the Word made flesh, to let all manner of people know that He was the source and spring of their life,--that apart from Him they had none. Now, life must be inward; it cannot come to a man from the world which is about him. That may be full of signs and tokens of the life he wants. Each well, each drop of rain, may testify of it. But it must spring up within him. Whatever is enduring, whatever he wants to satisfy the infinite thirst within him, must be there.

You say, an ignorant woman could not enter into such a mystery as this. But there were mysteries that she could enter into. '_Jesus said unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither._' It was a curious and startling break in the conversation. What had it to do with Jacob's well, or with the living water which she could not find there?

Very much indeed. '_The woman said, I have no husband. Jesus answered and said, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly._' Here were facts concerning her past and her present history; here was a revelation of something that concerned her own very self. With _this_ there was no trifling. It was not of Jacob's well, or of another well, that the Stranger was discoursing now. He was speaking of _her_,--He was telling her what she was. '_In Him was life, and the life was the light of men._' She confessed it in her way,--'_Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet_.' All was not quite right with her;--He knew it, and He made her know it. She had offended the Power above,--perhaps He could tell her, also, how she might appease Him. Her fathers might have taught her wrongly. She would like to know. She would rather like, moreover, to make the discourse more general, less personal. A wish for truth, and a fear of it, light and darkness, in her, as in all of us, fought for the mastery. She said, '_Our fathers worshipped in this mountain_,'--this venerable Gerizim,--'_and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship_.' Whether or not she would have been ready at the bidding of a Jewish prophet to repair her errors, and earn the favour of G.o.d by giving up her Samaritan faith, and becoming a proselyte of the Temple, she had not perhaps asked herself; how much she would have gained by the exchange, our Lord's words in another Gospel, about those who became proselytes from heathenism, may partly tell us. But He who had sat by the well did not ask this proof of her desire for reformation. '_Woman_,' He said, '_believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father_.' All she had asked--all that most Samaritans or Jews would have disputed about--was _where_ they ought to worship. The thought upon which Jesus fixes her mind, is the Being to be worshipped. That new name, which John said the Son was come to reveal, is now proclaimed in the ears of a separatist and a sinner. He speaks not of the G.o.d of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, but of the _Father_. Such a name the woman might or might not have heard, as one of the names of Him who dwelt on Gerizim. At all events, it would be but one of them--one that would be lost amidst the various t.i.tles by which He was invoked--carrying no special significance to the mind of the worshipper. Still, far down in that mind there was that which responded to the word Father, which would awake up at the sound when it came from lips that felt all the power and reality of it. She who had had five husbands, had had a father. To feel that the G.o.d of the distant hill had anything to do with that human relation, was the dawn of a new day to her. The sun was rising in her heart, if there were ever so many clouds concealing it.

I have said that our Lord was drawing the woman's thoughts from the _place_ of worship to the _object_ of worship. He goes on, in the next verse, to tell her that ignorance of this object was the special ignorance of the Samaritan: '_Ye worship ye know not what_.' And then He introduces words that have startled many, especially in this connexion: '_We know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews_.'

'Could He,' it has been asked, 'claim this dignity for His own nation, at the very moment when He seemed to be breaking down all distinctions of nations? And _did_ the Jew know what he worshipped?

Did not Jesus Himself say, "_Ye know neither me nor the Father_?"' I apprehend, brethren, that the a.s.sertion of this, as the great calamity of the Samaritan--that he knew not what he worshipped--is abundantly borne out by history. It was in all times a country of superst.i.tions, the early home of Baal-worshippers, the later home of enchanters and fanatics, and of sects putting forward pretensions to all kinds of spiritual powers, appealing to great necessities in the human mind, always leading it astray from its centre. The hard, cold Jew was not half so much open to _these_ impressions. The sects in his land were dry and formal, bound together by certain notions about the law.

Becoming more and more selfish, measuring everything by rules of profit and loss, he grew at last to be a mere worshipper of Mammon.

How was it possible, then, for him to know Christ and the Father? But in his debas.e.m.e.nt, he still preserved the shadow of the blessing which had been conferred upon his race, and which his neighbour, though freer and more open-minded, had lost. He still clung to a distinct object of adoration. He was a protestant against the worship of spiritual phantasies. This poor shadow showed what the substance was which the Jew had inherited, and which was his distinction among all nations. Salvation was to go forth from his land. And salvation, so our Lord teaches us, consists in knowing what we worship; for that knowledge saves men from slavery to the world's idols, and to the idols of their own hearts, which is their great curse and misery.

But if this is salvation, it could not be salvation to worship in the temple of Jerusalem any more than in the temple of Gerizim. If this salvation was to go forth _from_ the Jews, it could not be limited _to_ them. Therefore He proceeds--'_The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him_.' Here was a proclamation which, in a wonderful manner, combined the truth that had been partially revealed to the Samaritan, and the truth which still subsisted, though commonly hidden, distorted, even inverted, among the Jews. The confused sense of a spiritual worship, of men being spirits, was that which gave the magicians among the Samaritans all their power. They did acknowledge some invisible presence and influence acting upon them, and capable of producing wonderful effects, though they did not know what they worshipped. The Jew bowed down before a Being mightier than himself, who could lay down laws for him, who would execute those laws upon him. But he turned that Being into a selfish tyrant. A double transformation! The tyrant is revealed as a Father. The enchantments are supplanted by a Spirit proceeding from that Father, a Spirit of truth. Men are not to climb up to that Father by their offerings on Mount Moriah or Mount Gerizim, by their sacrifices or by their enchantments. The Father is seeking _them_. He gives them His true Spirit to make them true worshippers. They must not wish to draw Him down to them; He would draw them up to Him.

'_For G.o.d is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth._' In those first words there was, as will be evident from what I have said, much that was in harmony with Samaritan feeling,--even with the feeling of an ordinary Samaritan like this woman. She had heard of spirits; she thought more about spirits than a Jew would have done. She did not speculate about them, but supposed that they might appear to her, or have some influence over her. But then came that other part of the sentence, which went to the very root of the tricks and superst.i.tions with which she and her countrymen were familiar; '_they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth_.' The Spirit of truth--_that_ must enter into you, _that_ must govern you, _that_ must reform your life. A message this meant for the universe,--going to the very root of all religion and all philosophy, and yet bearing straight upon the conscience of that woman of Sychar who had come to draw water at Jacob's well.

Perhaps there is nothing that strikes us more in this conversation, which is so very direct and consistent in its purpose, and yet which follows all the windings of the human heart, beginning from '_Give me to drink_,' and ending with a revelation of the nature of G.o.d; perhaps, I say, there is nothing more remarkable in it all than the result of it. You expect to see the woman bowing before the mysterious Foreigner, expressing her astonishment at his high doctrine, lamenting that she had spoken to Him so uncourteously. Not at all. She says, '_I know that when Messias cometh, He shall tell us all things_.' 'Our people speak of One who is to be sent from G.o.d, of a Messias. I suppose, if these things are true about G.o.d being a Spirit, and about our having a Spirit of truth, He will tell us. We shall know as much of these things as we can know.' Evidently this part of the conversation has not yet taken hold of her. The part about herself has. 'The Messias will tell us all things; but this Jew has told me of myself; He has seen what I am.' And therefore, when Jesus answers, '_I that speak unto thee am He_,'--so making a more direct profession of His name and dignity to this Samaritan than He had made in Jerusalem,--He surely meant to fix this impression on her mind: 'Yes, this is the test of Messiahship. Look for no other. Do not ask for some outward signs to tell you when He is coming, or what He can do. I that speak unto _thee_--I that lay bare _thy_ heart--am He. That is the proof of my kingship over human beings; that is the proof of my being sent from G.o.d. I know what is in thee--the wrong of thy outward life, the evil of thy inward life. I know thy deepest necessities. I know thy want of a new spring of life within, of water of which thou mayest drink, and not thirst again. Thou needest that. All Samaritans, all Jews, all men and women who shall live, all nations and generations to come, will need it. I can give it them. For I can give them that Spirit of truth which the Father desires them to have, that they may know Him and worship Him.'

Lord, evermore give us this Spirit, that we thirst not, nor seek to draw the water of life, which is only in Thee, from the wells of earth!

DISCOURSE X.

THE REWARDS OF LABOUR, AND THE KINDS OF FAITH.

[Lincoln's Inn, 2d Sunday after Easter, April 6, 1856.]

ST. JOHN IV. 48.

_Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe._

Distance of time is not always unfavourable to accurate recollection.

We often remember a friend's words better, years after they were spoken, than the next day; because we understand them better, because we see how one of them rose out of another. So, I imagine, it must have been with the woman of Sychar. If she had repeated the dialogue with Jesus to her neighbours, as soon as she returned to her city, she would probably have misrepresented it. Short as it was, she would have mistaken words, she would have changed the order of them. A time will have come when she would be sure of what He had said, and of what she had said,--when she could say confidently to those who were collecting His words, 'This is what He told me--this, and nothing else.'

At first she seems to have been too full of one part of the Stranger's speech to care about the rest. She did not say, 'I have received strange lessons from this Jewish prophet about G.o.d being a Spirit, and about the water of life;' she expressed far more simply the effect of this speech upon her: '_He told me all that ever I did_.' Was this exaggerated language? At first we are inclined to say so; then, perhaps, to justify her by resorting to some awkward hypothesis of our Lord having said many things to her which the Evangelist has omitted.

The experience and conscience of human beings justify her far better.

One who repeats to us all the pa.s.sages of our history ever so accurately, does not tell us all that ever we did. A single flash of light may make the whole past visible to us, and show us that it is _our_ past. Thus was it with her. Her inmost self was revealed to the Stranger. And, what was wonderful, she did not wish to escape from His gaze. Awful as it was, she was attracted, not repelled by it. She had the comfort,--the greatest almost that we can experience,--of feeling that she had no longer anything to hide,--that there was One who knew thoroughly all that was wrong and all that was right in her. For Jesus had given her a sense of there being a right in her which she had never had before. She could not have explained how it came to pa.s.s; she was an ignorant peasant;--but it was so. The Stranger's speech had raised her to a new level. She had never seen the evil in herself as she had seen it now; but she had never so much risen out of the evil.

When do we rise out of our evil but when the truth is told us, and we like to hear it?

And therefore she said, '_Is not this the Christ?_' 'Can it be any one else? And must He not be the Christ for you, my fellow-citizens, as He is for me? Must He not know all that you ever did, as He knows all that I ever did?' It was the right sermon. They acknowledged at once that it was such a Christ they wanted; not one who could tell them about all things in the world, but who could tell them all things that ever _they_ did. He who had that power might or might not be such a Christ as scribes and doctors talked of; He might or might not have the marks by which they discerned the coming King and Deliverer. But He was the Christ for poor people who hewed wood and drew water, who were human beings, and who had committed sins. These were the proofs of His mission to them. He must give these; they asked no others.

The Apostle could have been no ear-witness of the conversation with the woman. But he describes with such vividness, the impression made upon the disciples who returned when she was departing, that it is difficult to suppose he was not one of them. '_And upon this came His disciples, and marvelled that He talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest Thou? or, Why talkest Thou with her?_' The sense of astonishment which they all felt,--the look which showed to each how the other was sharing it with him, and yet the awe which restrained them from questioning Him,--the confidence that He had some great purpose, though they knew not what it was; all this came back to the old man as clearly as if he were then by the well of Sychar, not amidst the merchandise of Ephesus. And so, by a single instance, he makes clearer to us than he could by a mult.i.tude of explanations, what must have been continually in the minds of the disciples, when they stood in that presence, and heard words spoken and saw acts done which they could not sound with their plummets, and which called forth faith in Him because they could not.

But though this was so, they had no dread of speaking to Him about common earthly necessities. They knew that He had sat down weary on the well; they knew that He hungered and thirsted. He had sent them to buy food, and they could say, '_Master, eat_,' without any doubt that He would partake of it just as any of them did. Probably He took what they offered Him, even while He said, '_I have meat to eat which ye know not of_.' They had so little suspicion that He would ever work a miracle for His own support,--they were so inwardly certain that He would not,--that they said at once to each other, '_Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?_' No. He had waited for their coming. The ravens had carried no nourishment to Him; He had not commanded the stones to become bread. There must have been a special joy, an unwonted radiance in His face as He answered, '_My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work_.' He had that spring of life within Him, of which He had spoken to the woman, from which life might flow forth to her and to all. And yet He speaks of it as not an original fountain, even in Him. There was One from whom He was sent. The satisfaction of doing His will, of accomplishing his purpose,--this was His food; this was the sustaining principle within Him. St. John has taught us already, and will teach us more completely hereafter, that the relation of the Son to a Father, with all the trust, obedience, communion which it implies, is the subject of the new revelation. To be doing the will of Him that sent Him, to be in perfect sympathy with the will which is at the root of the universe, to be fulfilling the purposes of this will,--this Christ affirms to be meat to Him in a double sense; meat, as that which keeps up the strength of the man--meat, as that which gratifies and satisfies his desires.

One may feel there is great general force in such a sentiment as this; but what is its _special_ application to the story we are reading? Had His interview with the woman supplied Him with what could be called meat in either of these senses? What was there to sustain Him, what was there to delight Him, in her way of receiving His words?

The answer is given in the following pa.s.sage: '_Say ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already unto the harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours._'

Many who have gathered crowds about them, who have produced a marked impression upon those crowds, have said, and said truly, that such success was meat and drink to them. If it did not feed their vanity, but sustained them because it showed them they were doing G.o.d's will and finishing His work, they may have understood something of Christ's meaning. But the secret food He partook of certainly came from no sudden success that followed His words. First, He met with a woman who had in general answered Him with levity; then a few people of her own rank came at her call. How little would such honours satisfy the ambition of some eloquent disciple of Christ, who has the power of influencing thousands! Could it satisfy Him who came to found a kingdom of which there was to be no end? Yes; for in these first sheaves He could see the certain pledges of a nation's, of a world's, ingathering. The corn-fields which the disciples saw about them would not be reaped for four months; yet the harvest would appear, because the seed had been sown. These men whom He saw coming showed Him that the other harvest was nearer still. The fields were white already for that harvest; the disciples themselves would be reapers in it. He had sent them, and they would receive the wages of reapers. What wages? He had already told them that His own wages were to do the will of G.o.d, and to finish His work. Did they want better? They would gather in fruit,--the fruit of all His work and travail, of all G.o.d's revelations of Himself from age to age, of all the toil of patriarchs, kings, prophets. These had laboured,--they were entering into their labours. They were come in at the end of a period when all things were hastening to their consummation. They would have the reward which all these men had longed for,--the reward of seeing G.o.d's full revelation of Himself, of opening the spring of eternal life of which all might drink together. The divisions of time had nothing to do with an eternal blessing. The sower and the reaper would rejoice together. Why might not Jacob, who had given the well, and the newest Samaritan convert who drank of it, share in those pleasures which are at the right hand of Him, who is, and was, and is to come?

I have only given you a hint or two which may a.s.sist you in tracing out the sense of these great words. The Apostles did not enter into them for many years,--not till they had begun to reap the harvest of which He spoke, not till they had learnt that some of the wages of the reapers were persecution and disappointment. So they understood by degrees how unsatisfactory all promises were but those which He had given them; how miserable a thing it was to hope for any reward but that which had been and is His reward. I suppose we must be trained to understand Christ's doctrine in the same school. Till we have been under His discipline we shall have the temper of hirelings, counting His work a hardship, expecting to be paid hereafter for consenting to do it. Or else we shall look for instant harvests,--for mighty effects to follow at once from the things that we speak,--for those fruits which least manifest the calm, patient, loving will of G.o.d, and therefore bring no true and inward satisfaction to the spirit of a man. We must learn to see in the seed that same eternal life which is in the perfect flower and fruit--to believe that G.o.d will bring the one out of the other; otherwise we shall have much excitement and much weariness, but no food which can support us, no joy which will connect us with the ages that are past and the ages to come. That will not be given to us till we see, in G.o.d's revelation of Himself to one sinner, the token of His love to the world.