may produce ? Let the occasion before us encourage us to " be instant in season and out of season," and to " sow both early and late, not knowing which shall prosper," or what blessings may result from an individual effort1.]
2. Increase our labours as opportunities for labour are increased —
[" The field for labour is the world." Heretofore but small portions of it have been open to us ; but now men are calling to us from every quarter of the globe, " Come over, and help us ! " Let us then extend our labours far and wide : yea, let us make it "our very meat to do the will of God;" having a constant appetite for it, and accounting every day as lost, in which we have not done somewhat for the souls of men. Let the nature of the harvest animate us. Think of immortal souls ; and, whether reaped by us or not, yet if reaped by others, at whatever distance of time, in consequence of what we have sowed, reckoned to us as " our joy and crown !" Let us, I say, gird up our loins to this good work ; and we shall surely " rejoice, in the day of Christ, that we have not laboured in vain, or run in vainV]
1 Eccl. xi. 6. * Phil. ii. 15, 16. Dan. xii. 13.
John iv. 41, 42. And many more believed because of his own tvord ; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying : for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
THE conversion of the Gentiles was not an object of our Lord's personal ministrations : " he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Yet there were some particular occasions whereon he testified his regard for them, and gave them pledges of that mercy which was afterwards to be displayed towards them by the ministry of his Apostles. Of this we have an instance in the passage before us. He not only declared his Messiahship to the Sama- ritan woman whom he met at Jacob's well, but spent two days with the Samaritans in the city of Sychar, and converted numbers of them to the obedience of faith. From the testimony which she gave of him,