THE CONFERENCE,
(continued)
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to
her, "Will you give Me a drink?" John 4:7
Each one of us must come, at some time or other, to have
a personal dealing with Christ. It may be at one of those crisis-hours of
existence, of which few are ignorant, when the even flow of life's current
is arrested; when, to use the suggestive simile of this narrative, the
pitcher is drained and emptied, and we are summoned away from our
Shechem-homes and broken cisterns to seek supplies of some better 'living
water.' It may be at a dying hour. It must be on the Great Day of
Judgment. Blessed for us if that solemn and all-momentous conference and
interview has already taken place—if we have already listened to His words
of wondrous mercy—let down our vessel for the draught in the deep well of
His love, and drank of that perennial stream which quenches and satisfies
the soul's thirst forever!
The sinner who now confronted her unknown Savior at
Jacob's well, as we shall afterwards find, was not—could not,
with all her simulated lightness of soul, be happy. She had no part, and
knew she had none, in the blessings of the true Gerizim. If she ever
recalled, in her journeys to and from the fountain, Joshua's old rehearsal
of promise and threatening, more than one curse must have thundered its
anathema over her head; and although the many thousands of Israel were not
there to respond, her own guilty conscience must have uttered its assenting
'Amen.' But as at that same memorable scene of patriarchal days, the Ark of
the Testimony was placed between the adjacent hills, so now did the true Ark
stand between her and the Ebal of curses, directing and conducting her up to
the Mountain of blessing, and saying, "Woman, your sins are forgiven you."
Shechem, her ordinary dwelling-place, was one of the old cities of Refuge.
She may possibly have seen with her own eyes the manslayer hastening with
fleet foot along the plain of Mokhna, up the narrow Valley she had just
traversed, to be safe within the appointed walls from the avenger of blood.
That Old Testament institution and type had, in the Adorable Person standing
by her side, a nobler meaning, and fulfillment. Though all unconscious at
the moment of her peril and danger, He was to her the great antitypical
Refuge from the avenging sword of that law which she had so flagrantly
outraged in heart and life.
"Jesus said to her," briefly, abruptly, "Will you give me
a drink?" That request is preferred in the first instance for
Himself—uttered as an introduction to the subsequent converse. But it is
evident He wishes to put it in another and far more urgent form into her
lips as well as into ours. It is the call of unfulfilled humanity, in
its unquenched longings after something more than perishable fountains
can yield; a cry to which the world gives its ten thousand and mocking
answers, all, however, telling of a thirst which, with anything short of the
true answer, cannot be met or assuaged. It is the cry of the spiritually
wounded or dying soldier on earth's battlefield in the rage of his moral
fever—Water! water! water! "Give me a drink."
Thus does the Savior start the question. It is the
keynote of the subsequent divine music. It regulates the strain
throughout. It touches the chords of that tuneless soul, and waked up
its latent slumbering harmonies. The long-sealed and hardened lips come to
sing, (and the strange Music impels hundreds of her fellow-townsmen to sing,
too). "Will you give me a drink:" "As the deer pants after the water brooks,
so pants my soul after you, O God! My soul thirsts for God, for the living
God."
We may, in the present chapter, regard the interview
unfolded to us in the narrative, as exhibiting several features which
characterize those spiritual conferences to which we have just referred
as still taking place at this hour between the Savior and the sinner.
Christ often comes and speaks UNEXPECTEDLY. When that
woman of Sychar left her home, never did she dream of such an interview. No
thought had she but of going to replenish her empty pitcher. If she had been
a modern Romanist, she might, on reaching the "holy well," have perhaps
counted her beads and muttered her 'our Father', but only to return
light-hearted as she went. All unlooked for was the advent of that Divine
Stranger. Still more unexpected the mysterious conversation which resulted
in the change of heart and change of life.
Is it not so still? How often Jesus comes to the soul
unexpectedly. Sickness has with appalling suddenness struck that
strong man down. It was but yesterday when he was at his desk, or pacing the
exchange, or studying his ledger, in the ardent pursuit of gain and
engrossing earthliness—strong in pulse and brawny in arm, no premonition of
an arrest on all worldly schemings. By sudden accident, or fever, or
disease, he is chained to a couch of pain and languishing; it may be a bed
of death. For the first time the dreadful realities of eternity are
projected on his sick pillow. He has been summoned in the twinkling of an
eye from the Shechem of his earthly pursuits, secluded from the hum of busy
life, 'the loud stunning tide of human care, and crime,' the excitement of
secular interests, the scramble of money-making, and he is lying by the
Bethesda pool of affliction, with the hot, fevered sun as of midday beating
on his brow. He is for the first time conscious—unexpectedly conscious—of a
Personal Presence there. "JESUS sat thus on the well, and it was about the
sixth hour." A few days before, he had not so much as a thought about Christ
or his soul, with its everlasting interests. If you had spoken of these, he
would have resented the allusion as a mistimed and impertinent interference.
But it is, in his case, as in that of the mounted persecutor of old on his
way to Damascus, of whom we read, "Suddenly there shined round about
him a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun; and he fell to the
earth, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting
me?"
Take another case. It is that of a household who
have until now enjoyed a happy immunity from outer trial, who have
been strangers to those shadows of death which have darkened the homes of
others. Theirs until now has been a Shechem Valley, musical with streams and
song of birds, carpeted with flowers and fragrant with perfumes. But clouds
have suddenly gathered; the streams have been arrested in their courses; the
birds have ceased to sing; the blossoms have drooped and withered "Man goes
to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." At times, too,
(not infrequently,) these are households where the Divine Redeemer has until
now been a stranger, His name not hallowed, His love not felt, His presence
not realized. But now He comes unexpectedly, as He did that night on
Gennesaret, saying amid the wailings of the tempest, "It is I!" or, in the
beautiful imagery of the Apocalypse, when the long-rejected voice is
suddenly heard—its tones no longer disregarded—"Behold, I stand at the door
and knock." Some loved one has been borne away to the narrow house
appointed for all living, leaving in swept and desolate homes and hearts
the irreparable blank: but in that hour of inconsolable earthly sorrow, the
Divine Wayfarer of Sychar, now the exalted Sympathizer on the throne,
draws near, and says, in tones of ineffable love, 'Sorrowing one! I will
come in the place of your loved and lost. Your golden goblet is emptied;
your earthly pitcher is lying in fragments about the well's mouth. But trust
Me. I have broken these perishable cisterns, to lead you to
imperishable ones. I will be to you more and better than all you have
forfeited. I am the True Well of living water springing up into everlasting
life.'
Or, to take yet another illustration. That worshiper came
to the House of God, if not to scoff, at all events careless and
uninterested in the stale message of the preacher—a reluctant victim and
martyr to the conventionalisms of the age. No tongue had he to sing; no
heart to pray, no desire to listen. Let the tedious moments be dragged out,
the tiresome penance completed, and the congenial world, as soon as may be,
return again. Ah, but a certain one, surer and more unerring than the Syrian
archer on the heights of Ramoth-Gilead, drew a bow at a venture. The arrow
sped forth with its message of death and life. Again the Damascus midday
scene is repeated. Suddenly "the shining light which unhorsed the persecutor
brings yet another Saul to the earth; and as suddenly and unexpectedly as in
that solemn moment a voice speaks: "And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you
are persecuting: it is hard for you to kick against the goads." This
worshiper left his home, like the woman of Samaria, with nothing in his
thoughts but the earthly pitcher and the perishable streams. He leaves the
sanctuary—he leaves the wayside-well, with this new song in his lips—
"My heart is fixed, eternal God,
Fixed on Thee;
And my eternal choice is made:
Christ for me!"
Christ often comes and speaks to the sinner when he is
alone. The woman of Samaria was alone when Jesus met her. Had it not
been so—had she been in company with others from the city—had she come at
evening hour, when the wells of Palestine are alive with herds and flocks
and drawers of water—it would have rendered close and prolonged conversation
impossible. But with no other eye or ear to disturb or distract, her
deep-rooted prejudices would be calmly combated, her sin detected and
denounced by the unerring Censor at her side, and the light of heaven
admitted to her darkened soul.
It is when alone—in the solitude of the sick chamber, or
in those solitudes of life already spoken of, created by bereavement and
death, that Christ comes nearest to the soul, and speaks at once most
solemnly and most comfortably home to it. The great questions of
salvation and eternity cannot be weighed and pondered in a crowd. The
ruts of busy life jostle them in confusion. The whirl of business, the
frivolities of society, the oblivion-power of the world, come with their
tidal wave and sweep the impressions away. Another convicted sinner of the
Gospels—we trust, too, another stricken penitent—is the picture and type of
many a sinner still. "Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in
the midst. When Jesus straightened up, and saw no one but the
woman, he said to her, . . . Neither do I condemn you: go, and sin no
more." (John 8:9, 10.)
Even in regard to His own people, the Savior loves to
speak to them alone; when, separated from the absorbing power of outer
things, (it may be even Christian activities for the time suspended,) they
obey the call He Himself of old addressed to His disciples, "Come apart into
a desert place and rest a while." The ordinary occasion for such seasons of
lonely silent conference is unquestionably the closet. The 'still hour' is
the hour of prayer. Not even will the public services of the Sanctuary make
up for this. These latter are the times for the jubilant multitudes
crowding around the golden goblets of water brought up on the great day of
the feast, amid hosannahs of joy, from the pool of Siloam.
But this is the meditative silence and seclusion by the
well of the Patriarch, when the soul is alone with its divine Redeemer. It
is the brook Jabbok we spoke of in previous chapters, where Jacob was "left
ALONE," and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. Had
he not been alone, there would—there could—have been no such wrestling, no
new name, no spiritual victory; and as a Jabbok, so still, in the words of
an old divine, "the battle of the soul is lost or won in the closet."
But it is not Christ's conversation with true
believers to which we are now adverting, but rather to His first solemn
conference with the sinner. It is often in times of loneliness and
solitude that He speaks to him most loudly, most solemnly, most tenderly.
How many may be able to tell of such seasons? Reader, do you not vividly
call to remembrance that hour, when the very Gerizim of your worldly
blessings, with its usual sunshine, was mantled in thick darkness; when,
with sad heart and sorrowing step, you left the busy world behind you, and
went forth, in the loneliness of your bereft spirit, (you knew not where,)
in search of peace and comfort, which the once-smiling valley of life could
not now give, for it had been changed into the Valley of the Shadow of
Death? do you remember, when bowed to the dust in the presence of the King
of Terrors, who had stamped mockery on your dearest earthly treasure, how
amid the stillness and solitude of that darkened house and hushed chamber
there was a new voice that for the first time broke the dreadful mysterious
silence? You felt yourself alone with Jesus; and your experience was that of
Job, who, not when his cattle were feeding around him in abundant pastures,
his family unbroken, and his own health unscathed, but when all had passed
away like a wild dream of the night, and he was left with nothing he could
call his own but the bed of ashes and the broken potsherd—then, yes, then—in
that hour of wondrous loneliness, these fevered leprous lips sang aloud, "I
know that my Redeemer lives."
We repeat, the ear will not, cannot, give earnest
heed amid the world's distractions and petty cares, and poor, flippant,
superficial pleasures. Hagar of old would never have sought for the well had
she not found herself in the midst of the desert. The soul would
often never seek for Christ or find Him but for the solitary places of
affliction. "Behold, "says the Lord, in a beautiful passage in Hosea, where
He speaks of Israel in the midst of utter alienation and spiritual
debasement, "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness,
and will speak comfortably unto her," (lit. will speak to her heart,)
"and I will give her her vineyards from there." In the very place
where vineyards are least looked for, (the depths of the arid wilderness,)
there, says God, speaking metaphorically, there, in the midst of the
wilderness of trial, in these unbroken solitudes of the soul, where all
green grass is burned up, no sheltering rock to screen from the flaming
sun—where earthly shelters have perished, and earthly voices are hushed for
the forever of time—that is the hour for my "speaking to the heart."
As it was when alone with the dead, the
Prophet of Cherith raised up the widow's son, "so that the soul of the child
came unto him again and he revived," so, often it is with Jesus in the case
of the "dead in trespasses and sins." In the loneliest, dreariest spots of
the Valley of tears, with barren mountains all around, amid the desolate
sense of human isolation and friendlessness, the spirit catches up the sound
of heavenly music—"It is the voice of my Beloved! Behold, He comes leaping
upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!"
Or, returning to the picture of John's narrative, how
many, holding life's empty pitcher in their hand, bereft, companionless,
having nothing in their unsolaced hour to draw with, for the well of their
affliction is deep, have been admitted then and there into the heavenly
household, and had, in their spiritual experience, the Psalmist's beautiful
words to the lonely fulfilled: "God sets the solitary in families; He brings
out those who are bound with chains."
We observe yet once more, Christ often speaks in the
midst of the ordinary duties of life. The woman of Samaria, while she
was alone, was engaged, too, in the most commonplace occupation—drawing
water at a Palestine well; and while doing so, Jesus meets her, and speaks
to her of spiritual verities through the earthly element. He who called one
apostle while at his ordinary occupation at the custom-house of Capernaum,
and four others from their nets at Bethsaida—summons here another disciple
when she had gone on the everyday errand of replenishing her pitcher for
household purposes. He thus beautifully, though indirectly puts His
seal on the sanctity of life's daily drudgery. He speaks to a Samaritan
female, not only when employed in this her most ordinary duty, but He makes
pitcher, and rope, and well—these common material things she was dealing
with—the vehicles, so to speak, for imparting deathless spiritual truths to
her soul.
There is a lesson to God's own people in this too. We
have just adverted to the desirableness of occasional seasons of loneliness
and seclusion, to afford opportunity for contemplation and prayer. But we
must qualify this with the counterpart and complementary truth; the "not
slothful in business" must dovetail with "fervent in spirit." Men are ever
apt to rush to extremes. The monkish theory and practice is religious
retirement and loneliness caricatured—loneliness in its exaggerated and
abnormal form, in which life, real, true life and vigor, mental and
spiritual, is rendered impracticable. In the case of the man of the world
again, in the sensuous and irreligious sense of the term—the man so absorbed
and engrossed with the pursuit of perishable gain on the one hand, or
with sinful excitement and pleasure on the other, as to leave no room or
thought for higher interests—here also the only true life of the soul, is
overpowered, paralyzed, strangled. In spiritual things, as in most other,
the middle road is the safe one; where the active and the
contemplative are intermingled and blended; where worldly work is
nobly, honestly engaged in, but not permitted to exercise an overmastering,
absorbent power; where there are solemn hours and moments in which the
valleys of busy life are left behind; when the pitcher is set down by the
curb-stone of the well, and, with folded arms, and eyes intent on the Great
Teacher, the mind forgets the household care, the noontide drudgery, and the
material is merged in the spiritual.
Never allow the thought to disturb you, "Can this be
lawful? can this be Christian?—this constant wearing contact with dull,
earthly pursuits—these poor little, lowly, petty anxieties, that are
fretting away precious moments." If your complaint or confession is that
yours is an idle, do-nothing life, we have nothing to say to that. There is
more work for Satan in such case. But never fear healthy, invigorating,
worldly occupation. God has sanctified it, because He has Himself ordained
the sweat of the brow. And while He can meet His people at all times and
under all circumstances, He loves to meet them in the pursuit of ordinary
duties—yes, the lowliest and the humblest—with the pitcher on the head, or
the draw-rope at the well, or the broom or shuttle in hand—Zebedee's
children with their nets; David and Amos with their herds and flocks; Elisha
with his plough share.
"We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky.
"The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask,
Room to deny ourselves: a road
To bring us, daily, nearer God."
We close, as we began, with the great question for us:
Have we had our conference with the Savior of Sychar? It matters not
whether He may have come to us suddenly and unexpectedly—when we were alone
or in the crowd. But have we met by some of life's wayside wells; and
whether prosperity or adversity were our portion—whether our pitchers have
been full or empty—have we listened to His divine voice and closed with His
great salvation? It was His first meeting with that Samaritan female; and
never are the appeals and words of Christ so impressive as when He first
speaks to the soul. If that woman had listened in vain—had she heard all His
pleadings unmoved, and returned hardened and reprobate as she came—little
would have been the likelihood of any subsequent impression under the same
circumstances.
It was springtime around her in plain and valley; all
nature was robed in its earliest green; the trees were putting forth
their bud; the song of birds was welcoming the reviving earth. It was
springtime in her soul. The storms of life's dreary winter had passed over
her. She seemed, a moment before, a tree twice dead, plucked up by
the roots. But the Sun of Righteousness was shining; as He
shone, the sap, defiant in her case of nature's analogies, rushed up through
the dried and wasted tissues, and the withered stem became clothed in
summer glory! What if that day's convictions had been resisted, and the
cumberer had despised the offered dews and heavenly radiance?
My brother, see that you do not refuse not Him who
speaks. See that you resist not first convictions. If it is springtime too
with your soul, let not the young bud be nipped, let not the young shoot be
blighted, when it is putting forth its tender leaves. But listen to the
divine Pleader as He thus calls you in the words of the Son—
"Lo! the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."