does in this place. And this avowal, be it remembered, was made not to learned Scribes, or moral Pharisees, but to one who up to that day had been an ignorant, thought- less, and immoral person !
Dealings with sinners, such as these, form one of the grand peculiarities of the Gospel. Whatever a man's past life may have been, there is hope and a remedy for him in Christ. If he is only willing to hear Christ's voice and follow Him, Christ is willing to receive him at once as a friend, and to bestow on him the fullest measure of mercy and grace. The Samaritan woman, the penitent thief, the Philip2)ian jailor, the publican Zacchaeus, are all patterns of Christ's readiness to show mercy, and to confer full and immediate pardons. It is His glory that, like a great phy- sician. He will undertake to cure those who are apparently incurable, and that none are too bad for Him to love and heal. Let these things sink down into our hearts. What- ever else we doubt, let us never doubt that Christ's love to sinners passeth knowledge, and that Christ is as willing to receive as He is almighty to save.
What are w^e ourselves ? This is the question, after all, which demands our attention. We may have been up to this day careless, thoughtless, sinful as the w^oman whose story we have been reading. But yet there is hope. He who talked with the Samaritan woman at the well is yet living at God's right hand, and never changes. Let us only ask, and He will " give us living water."
Notes. John IY. 7—26.
7. — [Then cometh... woman.. .draw water.] The scarcity of water in the hot climates of the East makes drawing water from the near- est well an important part of the daily business of an Eastern household. We learn from other parts of Scripture that it was a work ordinarily done by women. (G-en. xxiv. 11. 1 Sam. ix. 11.) A well became naturally a common meeting-place for the inhabitants ol a neighbourhood, and especially for the young