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 God would confer upon
men, and which would enable them to see the kingdom of God. 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 Judæa, and came again into Galilee_.' What the disciples of the
Baptist had angrily conjectured, the Pharisees would of course take
for granted. They would assume 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
Judæa, 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 associations 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 God, 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 God? 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
ennoble 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 passage 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 εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, follows 'shall not thirst,' and
that the adjective, αἰώνιος, is that which qualifies 'life.' I shall
make no further use of this observation,--for there is enough in this
passage to occupy us without any reference to it; but I could not pass
it over because the word 'life,' which is the cardinal one of the
passage, 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 God, 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 God
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 God 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 titles 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 God 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 assertion 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 superstitions,
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 debasement, 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 God 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 superstitions 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 God;
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 God, of a Messias. I
suppose, if these things are true about God 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 God. 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 God 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 passages 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 pass;
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 multitude 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.