It is said that only travellers in the arid lands of the East really
know the value of water. To them the Well in the Desert is a treasure
and a blessing: unspeakably so, when the water is pure and sweet; yet
even though it be salt and brackish, it may still save life.
Was it less so, in a figurative sense, to the travellers through that
great desert of the Middle Ages, wherein the wells were so few and far
between? True, the water was brackish; man had denied the streams, and
filled up the wells with stones; yet for all this it was God-given, and
to those who came, and dug for the old spring, and drank, it was the
water of eternal life. The cry was still sounding down the ages.
"If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." And no less
blessed are the souls that come now: but for us, the wells are so
numerous and so pure, that we too often pass them by, and go on our way
thirsting. Strange blindness!--yet not strange: for until the Angel of
the Lord shall open the eyes of Hagar, she must needs go mourning
through the wilderness, not seeing the well.
"Lord, that we may receive our sight!"--and may come unto Thee, and
drink, and thirst no more.