he adds, "Be thou humble and peaceable, and Jesus will be with thee." In accepting His searching rebuke, she has discovered the glory of His character and mission. If, then, we would understand the effect of our Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria, we must read it in the message she bore to her people: “Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Can this be the Christ?” She says nothing of His promise of never-failing water, nor of His grand sentences about worship, still less of His being a Jew and proclaiming their superiority. The one thought which fills her mind, and gives a glow and a fascination to her report that cannot be resisted, is what He has told her of herself. This is her message, her watchword, so to speak, that passed from lip to lip as she hurried on among her townsfolk, so that we read: Many of the Samaritans of that city believed on Him for the saying of the woman, He told me all that ever I did '". It were hardly needful to bring into clearer light those principles of human nature which are here involved. We need a friend who knows us altogether, and to whom we can be perfectly joined. Such sympathy and a thorough comprehension are vainly sought in mere human relations. As says the author of the "Christian Year": "Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own, This thorough comprehension our Lord Jesus only can supply. He knows every thought and feeling, He holds the threads of our past life, seeing every error, every crime. And He is ready to interweave His own love and knowledge, upon which we may rest. He interprets with personal love and power the language of the writer of the 139th Psalm: "O Lord, Thou hath searched me and known Thou understandeth my thought afar off. Thou art me. acquainted with all my ways". It seems at first a startling hyperbole, that the woman should have gone through the town saying to every one, "He told me all that ever I did". Why, it was but a single sentence in which He had spoken of her personal relations. But there was no other way to describe the truth. How tame, and false even, had she said, "He knows some things about me", or, He knows the chief things"; for His knowledge covers all and admits no less a compass than this" He told me all that ever I did ". The truth which is here made known to us and answers to every Christian experience is, that Jesus reveals to us the hidden life. He enters our consciousness, and becomes another self within us. A little child, tired of play, sits down by his mother, and she tells him something that happened years ago; stories of his infant days, and of his little brothers and sisters, and of the household pets. He is amazed that she can tell so much of what has gone on about him; that she knows more of him that even he does himself. From other lips he would scarcely believe it true; but he listens, with rapt amazement, to some story of the earliest opening of his mind, and when it ceases, he cries out, "Tell that again". This is the nearness of a mother's love. It is a consciousness that enwraps our own; a memory that encloses ours, and holds it in custody. What we were from the first, and what were the earliest movements of thought and feeling- these are in her keeping more than our own. But there is a higher than human consciousness that enwraps ours. There is a deeper love, as there is a more far-reaching knowl edge. It is Jesus who comes and sits by us, as He sat on the well of Sychar; and into our ears He pours the story of our life - the wasted hours, the false and selfish passions, the unthinking chase after worthless toys. To us, also, He will reveal all things. Rightly listening, we shall say, with humble yet with glad surprise, "He told me all that ever I did". There is that familiarity of interAnd He does not hesitate to use picture of intimate acquaintance Thus Jesus becomes another self within us. course which is the highest delight of the soul. figures regarding it which present the simplest with us. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me". It is no class of men, no favored few, to whom He offers His inmost heart; but to each, in just the present state of character and knowledge, with the faults of to-day still cleaving, with the crimes and follies of the past still in memory. Nor can He ever afterward reject us because of past shame; for the first thing He does is to tell us all that we ever did. Other friends might grow cold when they came to know our history; our past associations and misdeeds might alienate them or breed disgust; but not so with Jesus. He knows us altogether, and, accepting Him, we enter into full fellowship with a forgiving and faithful Lord. This perfect knowledge of the Christ is our greatest safeguard. It is needful, to defend us from plunging farther into sin, that we have the confidence of a loving Saviour. When we are on the verge of temptation, the thought that He knows and grieves over our past sins may win us back. When ready to despair of His favor, or to think it impossible that such as we should be accepted or enabled to do anything for His honor, we may remind ourselves that, when He gave us the invitation to repent, He weighed the full burden of our transgressions. He did not undertake a work of which He knew not the magnitude. With joy we may press close to our hearts the saying of the woman, He told me all that ever I did”. The conversation of Jesus with the woman at the well throws light on the subject of confession. That the practice of auricular confession, which prevailed in the Mediæval church, had a basis in the sincere longing of the penitent, there is no doubt. Indeed, confession was regarded as a part of repentance, or at least the outward manifestations of it. The danger arose from magnifying the outward until it absorbed and drew away the life of the inward. This could hardly be otherwise, since human confessors are too prone to claim authority, and the idea of having fulfilled a painful task makes men imagine that their guilt is relieved. But when the confessional is abolished, there remains often a slavish view of repentance, which takes away its true blessedness. Some are troubled because they know not how long they ought to repent. Ought they to mention in words every sin they have ever committed? If they forget or omit any, will God pardon? If they do not rightly estimate the guilt of all, and consider some their chief sins which are not so, will God have patience with their mistakes? 64 How happily is all this relieved when we learn the noon-day lesson taught at the well of Sychar, that it is the Christ who reveals us to ourselves! It is not for you to find out your sin, but for Him to reveal it to you. With the Psalmist, you ask God to search you, that you may be led in the way everlasting ". You are to become acquainted with your own heart by having Him read it to you; and all you can tell Him will be of that which He has told you before. Repentance now loses its bitterness, because it is the revelation of the Christ. "Once", says Luther, "I thought no word so bitter as repentance; now there is none more sweet, and those passages in the Bible that used to terrify me now smile and sport about me". In the same spirit, Augustine says, in his "Confessions", "I will now call to mind my past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayst grow sweet unto me". The power of such a revelation of the Christ is manifest in the fact, that the largest harvest of souls ever gathered while on earth was reaped in the two days He spent at Sychar. A soul brought face to face with Him, beholding His glory by being self-revealed, is a fit instrument to convey to others the advent of the Christ. Here is the song of Bethlehem, “ Peace and good will". The woman waits not for a full rehearsal of all the windings of her guilt, for He has known and felt it all. For us there is the same freedom of approach. Listening to Him, you also, shall learn to confess. Receiving into your heart His love and sympathy, your lips shall be opened to tell Him every want and grief, and prayer shall be only the communion of kindred minds. The saying of the woman shall become your saying, "He told me all that ever I did ". men. THE PRINCIPLE OF MISSIONS IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. BY REV. W. C. BITTING, D. D., PASTOR OF THE MOUNT MORRIS BAPTIST CHURCH, NEW YORK, N. Y. There are many motives for missions, among which we may mention:- 2. The theological motive (Luke 14: 19, 10) of the "lost" condition of 3. The philanthropic motive (Matt. 22: 39) of the wish to share what we have with others. 4. The fiduciary motive (Matt. 10: 8a) of stewardship of what we have (Matt. 24:45-51). 5. The biological motive which is emphasized in the Fourth Gospel. John refers to the "Kingdom of God" only twice. (1) In the account of the talk with Nicodemus, who was looking for a kingdom (3: 3, 5), and (b) in the account of the trial before Pilate (18: 33-38), when our Lord is answering a charge of sedition. According to the first three Gospels the great blessing brought by the King to the world was the Kingdom of God. How natural, then, for them to record those imperial words in which the Holy Monarch commands His followers to conquer the world. According to the Fourth Gospel, the great blessing brought by "the life which was the light of men" is everywhere described by the writer as eternal life, or the life of the Eternal One in us. From this conception he gets his favorite word life. How natural that he should carefully observe the workings of that life which is from above, when it enters into human hearts! His Gospel is a study in spiritual biology. What the synoptists conceive of as the spreading of a kingdom, John contemplates as the reproduction of a life. "The Kingdom of God is like " is the great parabolic preface in the first three Gospels which introduces us to a wealth of analogies from many realms of organic existence. No such verbal herald announces a coming simile in the Fourth Gospel. John leads us immediately into the presence of life. He records not parables, but incidents; not figures which illustrate separate functions, but facts that unfold to our delighted eyes the life itself, active in all its functions. Indeed, his entire narrative is a missionary document of the most striking character. He avows this and nothing else as his purpose. "Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name” (John 20: 30, 31). All life (a) organizes itself, (b) grows by assimilation of externals, (c) wastes in the exercise of selection, (d) reproduces itself. In the last of these functions we find the missionary principle according to John's Gospel. Let us take some illustrations: It (1) John 1. The first chapter is in part missionary autobiography. records introductions and reproductions. On a Sunday morning the Baptist stood with two of his disciples on the river bank. He loses no time in pointing his companions to "The Lamb of God". They leave the guidepost to follow "the way", and the same day discover the Messiah. What is the first impulse that masters these new disciples of Jesus? Each runs with haste to find his own brother. It is a race of rivals. Andrew first finds his brother. He brings Simon to Jesus, and does a good day's work for the world. Again, Jesus finds Philip, and at once Philip finds Nathanael. Not a day is allowed to pass. With noble words, the fullest meaning of which he could not have understood, he affirms that Moses and the prophets wrote of Jesus. When objection is made to Nazareth as a source of good, the only answer is that born from experience, and calling to experiment, "Come and see ". Why is it that on the opening day of the ministry of our Lord these four men begin their effort to bring others? No "Great Commission" had been uttered, no hope of reward had been stimulated, no crowns or thrones had been offered, no punishment had been threatened for the fruitless. Not a motive usually urged today for evangelistic work and missionary activity had been revealed. So far as the narrative gives light, their eager words and swift feet and cordial hands were the pure expressions of that spontaneous, free, automatic new life which had begun to throb in their hearts. This new life, uncultured, deficient in true apprehension of the Messiah, but strong in its vitality, begins by asserting its reproductive instinct. It will have another. So close is the bond between finding for one's self and finding another, that the birthday of the church is its first missionary day also. The church and the propaganda were born together. Its initial impulse is evangelistic. This propagating instinct controls their souls at the same time that their affection for Jesus awakes. We are convinced after reading in v. 41 the glorious "Eureka", "I have found Him", that immediately afterward we will read, “And he brought him to Jesus". Apostles are evolved from disciples, as the full corn in the ear from the seed. So normally does bringing grow out of finding, so organically does missionary work develop as the bloom, flower and fruit of discipleship. It is only the beautiful effort to reproduce in others the joy we ourselves have experienced. "That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3). So this John writes a half century afterward concerning the motive of His life, begotten on that first day. * (2) John 4. Nearly a year after this time, Jesus "must needs" go through Samaria. Beside the historic well He meets a woman. Absolutely no tangential point existed between the Christ and this woman but their common desire for water. Through this coincident want, in a conversation matchless for delicacy and tact, He reveals Himself as the Messiah. All consciousness of her purpose at the well is eclipsed for the moment, as truly as the hunger of the preacher is forgotten in His ministry to the single, needy heart. She leaves her waterpot, enters Sychar, and becomes the first city missionary mentioned in the New Testament. She is not content with relating experiences, but must couple with them an invitation. It is the same old story of the automatic life-" Come and see". The crowds follow. In great procession the people stream out of the city gates, and, beholding them, Jesus points His disciples to the opportunity, and says: "The fields are white unto the harvest". The very figure He uses suggests the sowing and reaping. This is indeed what had occurred. There was no command to the woman. No more unlikely field for missionary work was ever entered than Samaria. Yet no miracle was worked there to prepare for or authenticate the message. The agitation of the city arose from the earnest and profound impulse of one soul to bring others. |