THE CONTRAST
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be
thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up
to eternal life." John 4:13-14
In the preceding chapter and context we found the thoughts
of the woman of Samaria were of the earth—earthy. Nothing but the well at her
feet presented itself to her dim unspiritualised vision, as the mysterious
Stranger spoke to her of "the gift of God" and "the living water." Unrepelled
by her insensibility to divine realities, the Heavenly Teacher pursues
His theme; not, however, by answering her challenge—in vindicating the dignity
of His own person compared with that of 'Father Jacob.' He had a higher end in
view. He wished to raise, not only her, but all who in after ages would read
this story of the wayside fountain, above the things of earth to "the
river of God which is full of water."
Again, therefore, He recurs to His text, and continues the
emblem by the announcement of a startling and significant contrast. He begins
His reply with the assertion regarding the well of the Patriarch at which they
stood, "Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again;" an assertion
which may appropriately be invested with a wider meaning, enshrining as it
does the great truth, that all creature and created-good is inadequate of
itself to satisfy the yearnings of the human soul. In every breast there
is a craving after happiness. "Who will show us any good?" is the sigh, the
soliloquy, of weary humanity. There are many streams of created
enjoyment. Some of these lawful, innocent, exhilarating, which have the
blessing and favor of God resting upon them. Others are poor, vile, degraded,
unworthy.
But even the best and purest, viewed by themselves and
apart from Infinite excellence, can afford no permanent bliss or satisfaction.
They do not, cannot quench the immortal thirst. Pitcher after pitcher may be
brought to the well's mouth; the golden goblet of riches, the jeweled
flagon with the luscious draught of earthly glory, the brimming
transparent pitcher drawn up by the silken cord of human affection. But
He who knows the human heart pronounces, that "thirst again" is the property
and characteristic of them all.
The finite can never be a satisfying portion for that which
was born for the infinite. Satisfying portion! Philosophy, with its
eagle soarings, says, "It is not in me." The pride of rank—crowns and
coronets, and lordly titles—says, "It is not in me." The laurel of conquest,
as it withers on the warrior's brow, says, "It is not in me." Gold,
with its glittering heaps, laughs its votaries to scorn, and says, "It is not
in me!" The most renowned of earthly conquerors seated himself by that well.
He brought the monarchs of the world to be his drawers of water; each with his
massive goblet going down for the draught, and laying the tribute at the
victor's feet. But the tears of the proud recipient have passed into a
proverb; and if we could ask him to translate these dumb tears into words, his
reply would be, "Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again."
But if such be the unsatisfactory nature of earthly
happiness, the brokenness of earthly cisterns—what nobler
compensations, what more enduring pleasures are there to take their place? You
cannot attempt to dislodge one object of earthly affection or pursuit without
having some other and better to substitute in its room. It was a dictum of the
old philosophy that nature abhors a vacuum, and this is as true regarding the
moral as the material world. The dove of old with weary wing, would have
retained its unstable perch on the restless billow had it not known of an ark
of safety. You cannot tempt the shivering child of poverty to desert his
garret or crude covering, until you can promise him some kindlier and more
substantial shelter. You cannot induce the prodigal to leave off the husks of
his miserable desert exile, before you can tell him of a father's house and
welcome. You cannot ask him to part with his despicable rags and tinsel
ornaments until you can assure him of robe, and ring, and sandals. The husks
and the tatters, wretched as they are, are better than nothing.
In one of the islands in our northern coasts, a daring
adventurer scrambled down one of the steep cliffs which rose perpendicular
from the ocean, in search of the eggs of some seafowl; the precarious ledge
of rock on which he stood suddenly gave way, and with one giant bound plunged
him into the boiling surge beneath. In a moment, the instinctive love of life
made him spring from the yielding footing and lay hold on a branch of ivy
which clung with uncertain tenacity to the precipice that rose sheer above
him. Who would have had the madness or cruelty to shout to that wrestler for
dear life, to let go the treacherous ivy branch? Worthless as it was, it was
his only chance of safety; and those on the summit of the cliff, the
spectators of his imminent peril, were wise, not by word or sign to disturb
his grasp of what they anxiously felt might prove a brittle thread in these
moments of suspense. But when a fleet foot had returned with the rope, and let
it down by the side of the exhausted man, then, with no hesitating accents did
they call upon him to let go the fragile support and lay hold of what
brought him up safe to their feet.
In the same way do we find the inspired writers dealing
with the human soul. They never are content with negative admonitions. They
never exhort to 'abhor that which is evil,' without telling of some objective
'good' to which the heart can cleave in stead. "Charge those who are rich in
the world that they do not be high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches, BUT
in the living God." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the
world… The world passes away, and the lust thereof; BUT he that does the will
of God abides forever."
This is the procedure of the divine Redeemer with the woman
of Samaria; conveying, through her and through the outer material symbol and
similitude, a deeper moral lesson for 'all mankind.' He tells her, pointing to
the well at her feet, that returning there day by day she would require
continually to refill and replenish her emptied pitcher; but that He had
nobler living streams in store which would quench her soul's thirst forever.
He says the same to us. As in her case, so also in ours, in
a higher figurative meaning, He does not condemn many of these worldly
streams of innocent pleasure, or forbid their being resorted to. The needs
of the body, the claims of our physical and social natures are integrated with
our moral and spiritual natures; for man is a complex being, with intimate
relationships binding him to both worlds; and the imperious calls of
the one, can as little as those of the other, be with impunity neglected or
ignored. Jesus recognizes both. He who knows our frame would lay no
cruel arrest on many objects of lawful earthly pursuit—many wells of earthly
happiness. All He says of them is, If you restrict your journeyings to these,
you will not be satisfied—you will assuredly thirst again.
But I have a well of living waters to tell you of, more far
lasting than all earthly sources of supply. You will not require the glow-worm
and the starlight when you have the meridian sun; the shifting sand
when you have the solid rock; the tiny stream when you have the infinite
ocean. "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever
drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him
will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
There are many salient points presented to us here. Space
will only permit touching on one leading and beautiful thought suggested by
the two central words of the latter verse; where all other outer
objects of perishable pleasure are brought into contrast with that which is
inward, "IN Him." "It shall be in him a well of water springing up
into everlasting life." The believer has an inner well in his soul—something
within the renewed being which makes him independent of all external earthly
good and earthly happiness. Let outer things smile or frown, it matters
not. That 'source of lasting joy' is no 'summer-dried fountain.' But being fed
from the everlasting hills, it is always full, always flowing, overflowing.
What though the world grow false and treacherous? What
though worldly means are abridged, worldly pleasures fade, or bereavements
narrow the beloved family circle? The inner sources of truest peace
cannot be invaded! Of the believer, outwardly impoverished, it can be said, as
of the Church of Smyrna of old, "I know your poverty, but you are rich." In
these hidden sources of satisfaction and happiness imperceptible to the
eye of the world, we are furnished with a key and solution to Paul's
paradox, "Having nothing, yet possessing all things." How often was the
reality of this inward satisfying and sustaining good illustrated in the case
of this great man? Look at the closing scenes of his life when a prisoner in
bonds in the world's capital. See some of the pitchers which he brings up from
this inner fountain, when all other shallow rills were rapidly drying
in their channels. "Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get
along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost
nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every
situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.
For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I
need. At the moment I have all I need—more than I need!"
Or see him in the same place, at a yet later period, when
the earthly streams of comfort had well-near perished; lonely, deserted by
man, he could yet, with the unimpaired energy of 'the life hidden with
Christ,' write the glowing words, "All men forsook me. . . . Notwithstanding
the Lord stood with me and strengthened me." Or again, when in the hour of
sinking nature, his enemies were insulting his gray hairs, loading him with
reproaches and indignities, and doing what they could to shake his constancy
in his great Lord—when every other well and stream had deserted him—when his
aged and tremulous arm could no longer fetch up the flagon from the failing
earthly pool—when the pitcher was about to be "broken at the fountain," and
the wheel "broken at the cistern"—the fountain of his soul's peace was clear
and sparkling as ever. He seems to say, 'Attempt not to cloud my hopes or
eclipse my faith. Dream not that I am to act the coward's part, and purchase
immunity from suffering and death by base retractation. You may shut me off
from all earthly streams of joy—you may bind heavier irons on these tottering
limbs—you may threaten me with the horrors of the amphitheater—you may
sprinkle my insulted ashes on the waters of your Tiber river, or scatter them
on the wide sea, or by the winds of heaven; but "nevertheless I am not
ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to
keep that which I have committed to Him against that day."'
If you asked him the secret and spring of all this
superhuman faith and magnanimity and hope, he would reply in the brief words,
"Christ in me the hope of glory." Jesus, in the glories of His
person, and in the fullness and completeness of His work, was that inner
fountain of gladness and peace, the "spring shut up, the fountain sealed"—and
"when He gives quietness, who then can make trouble?" The apostle tells the
Philippians what alone would prove the secret of their heart tranquility, as
it was of his own, "The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall
keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
Is that peace ours? After, it may be, long vainly
seeking peace—a resting-place for the soul elsewhere, have we returned to the
true Ark—the refuge from the storm and the covert from the tempest? Has
the true Noah put forth his hand and taken us in? and are we now, with
folded wings, enjoying that, without which all outer calm is vain, illusory,
worthless—reconciliation through the blood of the cross? "Therefore being
justified by faith we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ."
Reconciliation! Have you known the meaning of that
word, even with regard to earthly friends; when, after years of bitter
estrangement, the prodigal is locked in the arms of his father; or brother is
reposed in the early love of brother; or sister is cuddled in the embrace of a
long alienated sister?—what is this, compared to reconciliation with the Being
of all beings, the Friend of all friends? For if God be for us, who can be
against us? if God gives peace, who can give trouble? if God smiles upon us,
who can really frown? If God be our reconciled covenant God and Father, then
we have the sweet persuasion that all things are working together for our
good; and even the very rills of creature bliss that were before in themselves
unsatisfying, become invested with new elements of happiness and joy.
"I can truly say," to take the testimony of one,
illustrious as a Christian, but illustrious too, among our country's
scientific explorers, and who, escaping many treacherous reefs in the literal
ocean, had reached the truer spiritual haven. "I can truly say, that I have
found the ways of religion are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
peace. I was never half so happy before I came to this knowledge, and never
enjoyed so much of life. Pleasures or enjoyments which are sinful, have no
temptations for me. But I have yet many rational enjoyments and
pleasures—domestic pleasures, social pleasures, the pleasures afforded by
communion with great and good men, and above all, the pleasure derived from a
sense of the favor of God in the heart, which indeed passes all understanding.
I used to fancy I must give up all enjoyments if I became religious. But now I
find that things I used to call pleasures now disgust me, while a multitude of
new enjoyments have burst upon me."
"How pleasant," says another beautiful and well-known
exemplification of the Christian life, "How pleasant it is to have God for a
friend, to know that He is about my path and with me. How pleasant it is to
consider that nothing can hurt me, nothing can injure me, for God is my
portion forever and ever. He feeds and will feed me; He supports and will
support me. In Him I become independent of the world. I desire not riches,
pleasures, or the favor of men. Having God I possess all things." "My days,"
says Doddridge, "begin, pass, and end in pleasure, and seem short because they
are so delightful."
"I never knew happiness," said Wilberforce on his
death-bed, "until I found Christ as a Savior." Oh, what a lever true religion
is thus found to be in elevating the soul to the enjoyment of satisfying
bliss! And how is it so? We answer again, because nothing finite can
satisfy that which was made for the infinite. You might give to the
eagle, of which we have spoken, a golden cage, and feed him by princes' hands;
but this would never be to him an equivalent for his native, free-born,
sun-ward soarings.
Water never rises above its own level; and so, the best of
earthly joys and rills of pleasure can rise no higher than earth. They begin
and terminate here. But the living water with which Christ fills the soul,
springing from heaven conducts to heaven again. Flowing from the
Infinite—flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, from the city of the
crystal sea, it elevates to the Infinite! It finds its level in the river of
the water of life which flows in the midst of the celestial Paradise. And just
as on earth, so long as our mighty lake-reservoirs are full of water and the
channel unimpeded, the marble fountain in street or garden, sends up, on the
gravitation principle, its crystal jets in unfailing constancy—so (with
reverence we say it) never shall these fountains of peace and joy and
reconciliation and hope cease in the heart of the believer until the mighty
reservoirs of Deity are exhausted; in other words, until God Himself ceases to
be God. Everlasting life is their source, and everlasting life is their
magnificent duration!
We have witnessed the memorable and interesting spot at the
roots of Mount Hermon, familiarly known as 'the sources of the Jordan.' There,
the river of Palestine is seen bubbling out of a dark cave, and thence hastens
on through its long tortuous course to lose its waters in the Sea of Death
(the Dead Sea). That is the picture and illustration of every stream of
earthly happiness. They terminate with the grave. But this inner fountain in
the hidden man of the believer's heart flows onwards to the Sea of Life;
and the hour which terminates the worldling's happiness only truly begins his!
On the other hand; how awful the state of the soul
continuing in guilty neglect of this 'living water.' Every well resorted to
but the true well; partaking of all waters but the living waters; a stranger
to the only satisfying good, feeding on husks, and starving for lack of
the bread of life. You have heard of the rage of bodily hunger—what those may
be impelled to in the agony of famine—in the straits of siege or shipwreck.
You have heard how the very mother has been untrue to her deepest, tenderest
instincts; or how the famishing crew on the wild untenanted shore have had to
cast lots for nature's direst extremity.
But who can tell the famine of the soul?
Alas! we cannot tell it, for we cannot now feel it. There are expedients to
which we can, and do betake ourselves to stop that infinite rage of spiritual
hunger. We throw sops to the immortal appetite. There are husks with
which we can keep it down, messes of pottage to decoy from the true heavenly
birthright. But when the husks are ended, what then? When life is ended, what
then? When cast on the inhospitable shores of a bleak and ruined eternity,
what then? It will be an unresponded-to cry, ringing its undying echoes, "I
perish with hunger!"
You have heard of the rage of bodily thirst. Here is
a picture of it from a graphic pen: "Many years ago, when the Egyptian troops
first conquered Nubia, a regiment was destroyed by thirst in crossing this
desert. The men, being upon a limited supply of water, suffered from extreme
thirst, and deceived by the appearance of a mirage that exactly resembled a
beautiful lake, they insisted on being taken to its banks by the Arab guide.
It was in vain that the guide assured them that the lake was unreal, and he
refused to lose the precious time by wandering from his course. Words led to
blows, and he was killed by the soldiers whose lives depended on his guidance.
The whole regiment turned from the track and rushed towards the welcome
waters. Thirsty and faint over the burning sands they hurried, heavier and
heavier their footsteps became, hotter and hotter their breath, as deeper they
pushed into the desert, farther and farther from the lost track where the
pilot lay in his blood; and still the mocking spirits of the desert, the
phantom of the mirage led them on, and the lake glistening in the sunshine
tempted them to bathe in its cool waters, close to their eyes, but never at
their lips. At length the delusion vanished, the fatal lake had turned to
burning sand. Raging thirst and horrible despair! the pathless desert and
the murdered guide! lost! lost! all lost! Not a man ever left the desert, but
they were subsequently discovered parched and withered corpses by the Arabs
sent on the search."
Such is life—a mocking mirage, the phantom of the
wilderness! Thousands, lured by the brilliant spectre, hurry on in the chase
after happiness, in hot pursuit after the vain and unreal. But all is
illusive, ending in mockery and disappointment, 'as a dream when one
awakens,' leaving the thirst of the deathless soul unquenched; and, unless a
nobler Fountain be resorted to, this remains the irreparable doom, the
unchanging destiny—"Him that is thirsty, let him be thirsty still."
But, thanks be to God, there is no such malediction now
ringing in our ears. We may listen rather to one of the blissful cadences of
the Bible—a sweet strain, a sublime harmony, wafted from the heights of
heaven, "They shall HUNGER no more, neither THIRST any more." It is further
added, in the same beautiful passage, "The Lamb that is in the midst of the
throne shall feed them, and lead them to LIVING fountains of waters." Yes, He
it is, this slain Lamb of the Heavenly Paradise, who has solved the problem of
human happiness. He is the true "Fullness," the only satisfying Good,
groped after by the Platonic philosophy. "In Him all fullness dwells."
It is over the portico of the Gospel Temple, not over any
heathen shrine, the superscription is written, "They shall be abundantly
satisfied with the abundance of Your house, and You shall make them to drink
of the rivers of pleasures!" What is to be our choice? The phantom or
the reality?—the substance or the shadow?—the earthly waters, with
their inseparable characteristic, "thirst again"—or the 'rivers of pleasures'
springing up into everlasting life? At any moment the curtain of the seen and
temporal may be rent in twain, and the world and all its hopes scattered like
the leaves of autumn. As we are seated in thought at Jacob's Well, listening,
from holy lips, to the contrast of the earthly with the perennial stream, may
it be ours to breathe the fervent prayer:
"Hear me! to You my soul in suppliance turns
Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.
For life's sweet waters, God, my spirit yearns;
Give me to drink; I perish here with thirst!"