that if she had asked, " He would have given her living water." He knew the character of the person before Him perfectly well. Yet He says, "If she had asked, He would have given," — He would have given the living water of grace, mercy, and peace.
The infinite willingness of Christ to receive sinners ia a golden truth, which ought to be treasured up in our hearts, and diligently impressed on others. The Lord Jesus is far more ready to hear than we are to pray, and far more ready to give favours than we are to ask them. All day long He stretches out His hands to the disobedient and gainsaying. He has thoughts of pity and compassion towards the vilest of sinners, even when they have no thoughts of Him. He stands waiting to bestow mercy and grace on the worst and most unworthy, if they will only cry to Him. He will never draw back from that well-known promise, "Ask and ye shall receive: seek and ye shall find." The lost will discover at the last day, that they had not because they asked not.
We should mark, thirdly, the priceless excellence of Christ's gifts whe7i compared with the things of this loorld. Our Lord tells the Samaritan woman, " He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."
The truth of the principle here laid down may be seen on every side by all who are not blinded by prejudice or love of the world. Thousands of men have every temporal good thing that heart could Avish, and are yet weary and dissatisfied. It is now as it was in David's time,—" There be many that say who will show us any good." (Psalm iv. 6.) Riches, and rank, and place, and power, and learning, and amusements, are utterly unable to fill the soul, He that only drinks of these waters is sure to thirst again. Every Ahab finds a Naboth's vineyard hard I by his palace, and every Haman sees a Mordecai at the \