it?' In this, that He, Who had spoken to her, was not like what she thought and knew of the Jews. He was what Israel was intended to have become to mankind; what it was the final object of Israel to have been. In Him was God's gift to mankind. Had she but known it, the present relation between them would have been reversed; the Well of Jacob would have been a symbol, yet but a symbol, of the living water, which she would have asked and He given. As always, the seen is to Christ the emblem of the unseen and spiritual; Nature, that in and through which, in manifold and divers colouring, He ever sees the supernatural, even as the light lies in varying hues on the mountain, or glows in changeful colouring on the edge of the horizon. A view this of all things existent, which Hellenism, even in its sublimest poetic conception of creation as the impress of heavenly archetypes, has only materialised and reserved. But to Jesus it all pointed upward, because the God of Nature was the God of Grace, the One Living and True God in Whom all matter and spirit lives, Whose world is one in design, workmanship, and purpose. And so nature was but the echo of God's heard Voice, which ever, to all and in all, speaks the same, if there be but listening ears. And so He would have it speak to men in parables, that, to them who see, it might be the Jacob's ladder leading from earth to heaven, while they, whose sight and hearing are bound in the sleep of heart-hardening, would see but not perceive, and hear but not understand. It was with the ignorant woman of Sychar, as it had been with the learned 'Master in Israel.' As Nicodemus had seen, and yet not seen, so this Samaritaness. In the birth of which Jesus spoke, he had failed to apprehend the 'from above' and 'of the Spirit;' she now the thought suggested by the contrast between the cistern in the limerock and the well of living water. The 'How can these things be?' of Nicodemus finds its parallel in the bewilderment of the woman. Jesus had nothing wherewith to draw from the deep well. Whence, then, the 'living water'? To outward appearance there was a physical impossibility. This was one aspect of it. And yet, as Nicodemus' question not only similarly pointed to a physical impossibility, but also indicated dim searching after higher meaning and spiritual reality, so that of the woman: 'No ! art Thou greater than our father Jacob?' who, at such labour, had dug this well, finding no other means than this of supplying his own wants and those of his descendants. Nor did the answer of Jesus now differ in spirit from that which He had given to the Rabbi of Jerusalem, though it lacked the rebuke, designed to show how thoroughly the religious system, of which Nicodemus was a teacher, failed in its highest object. But to this woman His answer must be much simpler and plainer than to the Rabbi. And yet, if it be Divine teaching, it cannot be quite plain, but must contain that which will point upward, and lead to further inquiry. And so the Divine Teacher explained, not only the difference between ordinary water and that of which He had spoken, but in a manner to bring her to the threshold of still higher truth. It was not water like that of Jacob's Well which He would give, but 'living water.' In the Old Testament a perennial spring had, in figurative language, been thus designated, [a Gen. xxvi. 19; Lev. xiv. 5.] in significant contrast to water accumulated in a cistern, [b Jer. ii. 13.] But there was more than this: it was water which for ever quenched the thirst, by meeting all the inward wants of the soul; water also, which, in him who had drunk of it, became a well, not merely quenching the thirst on this side time, but 'springing up into everlasting life.' It was not only the meeting of wants felt, but a new life, and that not essentially different, but the same as that of the future, and merging in it.
The question has sometimes been asked, to what Jesus referred by that well of living water springing up into everlasting life. Of the various strange answers given, that, surely, is almost the worst, which would apply it to the doctrine of Jesus, supporting such explanation by a reference to
Rabbinic sayings in which doctrine is compared to 'water.' This is one of those not unfrequent instances in which Rabbinic references mislead rather than lead, being insufficiently known, imperfectly understood, or misapplied. It is quite true, that in many passages the teaching of the Rabbis is compared to water, [1 Those who wish to see the well-worn Rabbinic references will find them in Lightfoot and Schottgen ad loc] but never to a 'well of water springing up.' The difference is very great. For it is the boast of Rabbinism, that is disciples drink of the waters of their teachers; chief merit lies in receptiveness, not spontaneity, and higher praise cannot be given than that of being 'a well-plastered cistern, which lets not out a drop of water,' [c Ab. ii. 9.] and in that sense to 'a spring whose waters ever grow stronger.' But this is quite the opposite of what our Lord teaches. For, it is only true of what man can give when we read this (in Ecclus. xxiv. 21): 'They that drink me shall yet be thirsty.' [2 There is much spurious religious sentiment which, in contravention to our Lord's saving, delights in such expressions as that of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (followed by so many modern hymnologists): 'Qui Te gustant esuriunt, Qui bibunt adhuc sitiunt.' (Ap. Daniel, Thes. i p. 223.) The theology of this is not only sickly, but untrue and misleading.] More closely related to the words of Christ is it, when we read [a in Bar. iii. 12.] of a 'fountain of wisdom;' while, in the Targum on Cant. iv. 14, 'the words of the Law' are likened 'unto a well of living waters.' The same idea was carried perhaps even further, when, at the Feast of Tabernacles, amidst universal rejoicing, water from Siloam was poured from a golden pitcher on the altar, as emblem of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. [1 See 'The Temple and its Ministry,' pp. 241-243. But the saying of our Lord to the Samaritaness referred neither to His teaching, nor to the Holy Ghost, nor yet to faith, but to the gift of that new spiritual life in Him, of which faith is but the outcome.
If the humble, ignorant Samaritaness had formerly not seen, though she had imperfectly guessed, that there was a higher meaning in the words of Him Who spake to her, a like mixture of ill-apprehension and rising faith seems to underlie her request for this water, that she might thirst no more, neither again come thither to draw. [2 I cannot bring myself to see, as some commentators, any extraordinary mark of rising reverence in the use by her of the word 'Sir' in vv. 11 and 15. It seems only natural in the circumstances.] She now believes in the incredible; believes it, because of Him and in Him; believes, also, in a satisfaction through Him of outward wants, reaching up beyond this to the everlasting life. But all these elements are yet in strange confusion. Those who know how difficult it is to lodge any new idea in the mind of uneducated rustics in our own land, after all our advantages of civilising contact and education, will understand, how utterly at a loss this Samaritan countrywoman must have been to grasp the meaning of Jesus. But He taught, not as we teach. And thus He reached her heart in that dimly conscious longing which she expressed, though her intellect was incapable of distinguishing the new truth.
Surely, it is a strange mistake to find in her words [b ver. 15.] 'a touch of irony,' while, on the other hand, it seems an exaggeration to regard them simply as the cry of realised spiritual need. Though reluctantly, a somewhat similar conclusion is forced upon us with reference to the question of Jesus about the woman's husband, her reply, and the Saviour's rejoinder. It is difficult to suppose, that Christ asked the woman to call her husband with the primary object of awakening in her a sense of sin. This might follow, but the text gives no hint of it. Nor does anything in the bearing of the woman indicate any such effect; indeed, her reply [a ver. 19.] and her after- referenceto it [b ver. 29.] rather imply the contrary. We do not even know for certain,
whether the five previous husbands had died or divorced her, and, if the latter, with whom the blame lay, although not only the peculiar mode in which our Lord refers to it, but the present condition of the woman, seem to point to a sinful life in the past. In Judaea a course like hers would have been almost impossible; but we know too little of the social and moral condition of Samaria to judge of what might there be tolerated. On the other hand, we have abundant evidence that, when the Saviour so unexpectedly laid open to her a past, which He could only supematurally have known, the conviction at once arose in her that He was a Prophet, just as in similar circumstances it had been forced upon Nathanael. [c St. John i. 48, 49.] But to be a Prophet meant to a Samaritan that He was the Messiah, since they acknowledged none other after Moses. Whether or not the Messiah was known by the present Samaritan designation of Him as 'the Converter' and 'the Returner' (Restorer?), is of comparatively small importance, though, if we felt certain of this, the influence of the new conviction on the mind of the woman would appear even more clearly. In any case it was an immense, almost immeasurable, advance, when this Samaritan recognised in the stranger Jew, Who had first awakened within her higher thoughts, and pointed her to spiritual and eternal realities, the Messiah, and this on the strength of evidence the most powerfully convincing to a mind like hers: that of telling her, suddenly and startlingly, what He could not have known, except through higher than human means of information.
It is another, and much more difficult question, why Jesus should have asked for the presence of her husband. The objection, that to do so, knowing the while that she had no husband, seems unworthy of our Lord, may, indeed, be answered by the consideration, that such 'proving' of those who were in His training was in accordance with His mode of teaching, leading upwards by a series of moral questions, [d Comp St. John vi. 6.] But perhaps a more simple explanation may offer even a better reply. It seems, as if the answer of verse 15 marked the utmost limit of the woman's comprehension. We can scarcely form an adequate notion of the narrowness of such a mental horizon as hers. This also explains, at least from one aspect, the reason of His speaking to her about His own Messiahship, and the worship of the future, in words far more plain than He used to His own disciples. None but the plainest statements could she grasp; and it is not unnatural to suppose that, having reached the utmost limits of which she was capable, the Saviour now asked for her husband, in order that, through the introduction of
