weakness and want.

All around would awaken in the Divinely-attuned soul of the Divine Redeemer the

thoughts which so soon afterwards found appropriate words and deeds. He is sitting by

Jacob's Well - the very well which the ancestor of Israel had digged, and left as a

memorial of his first and symbolic possession of the land. Yet this was also the scene of

Israel's first rebellion against God's order, against the Davidic line and the Temple. And

now Christ is he re, among those who are not of Israel, and who persecute it. Surely this,

of all others, would be the place where the Son of David, cast out of Jerusalem and the

Temple, would think of the breach, and of what alone could heal it. He is hungry, and

those fields are white to the harvest; yet far more hungering for that spiritual harvest

which is the food of His soul. Over against Him, sheer up 800 feet, rises Mount Gerizim,

with the ruins of the Samaritan rival Temple on it; just as far behind Him, already

overhung by the dark cloud of judgment, are that Temple and City which knew not the

day of their visitation. The one inquiring woman, and she a Samaritan, and the few only

partially comprehending and much misunderstanding disciples; their inward thinking that

for the spiritual harvest it was but seed-time, and the reaping yet 'four months distant,'

while in reality, as even their eyes might see if they but lifted them, the fields were white

unto the harvest: all this, and much more, forms a unique background to the picture of

this narrative.

To take another view of the varying lights on that picture: Jesus weary and thirsty by

Jacob's Well, and the water of life which was to spring from, and by that Well, with its

unfailing supply and its unending refreshment! The spiritual in all this bears deepest

symbolic analogy to the outward - yet with such contrasts also, as the woman giving to

Christ the one, He to her the other; she unconsciously beginning to learn, He

unintendingly (for He had not even entered Sychar) beginning to teach, and that, what He

could not yet teach in Judæa, scarcely even to His own disciples; then the complete

change in the woman, and the misapprehension9 and non-reception10 of the disciples -

and over it all the weary form of the Man Jesus, opening as the Divine Christ the well of

everlasting life, the God-Man satisfied with the meat of doing the Will, and finishing the

Work, of Him that sent Him: such are some of the thoughts suggested by the scene.

And still others rise, as we think of the connection in the narrative of St. John of this with

what preceded and with what follows. It almost seems as if that Gospel were constructed

in cycles, each beginning, or at least connected, with Jerusalem, and leading up to a grand

climax. Thus, the first cycle11 might be called that of purification : first, that of the

Temple; then, inward purification by the Baptism from above; next, the symbolic

Baptism of water; lastly, the real water of life given by Jes us; and the climax - Jesus the

Restorer of life to them that believe. Similarly, the second cycle,12 beginning with the

idea of water in its symbolic application to real worship and life from Jesus, would carry

us a stage further; and so onward throughout the Gospel. Along with this we may note, as

another peculiarity of the Fourth Gospel, that it seems arranged according to this definite

plan of grouping together in each instance the work of Christ, as followed by the