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ly, and with the resource of female ingenuity, she interrupted the further shameful disclosures which she dreaded, by saying: "Our fathers adored on this mountain [Gerazim], and you say that at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore."

Jesus benignantly yielded to her shamefaced subterfuge, and from paternal admonition passed to doctrine: "Woman, believe

Me the hour cometh when you shall neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem adore the Father." This was equivalent to saying that all national religions were to be absorbed, so far as they were true, in the new and universal Church of God. But Jesus must maintain the ancient faith of God and the rights of His Temple. "Ye adore ye know not what: we know what we adore; for salvation is of the Jews." In fact, the Samaritans rejected the Temple which God had founded; they rejected the prophets whom God had inspired, holding only to the

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"He that shall drink of the water that I shall give Pentateuch; and they were him, shall not thirst for ever." fatally infected with idolatrous practices handed down from their Assyrian forefathers.

Jesus does not stop; He develops the further and completer truth. "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth." Above all things the religion

now beginning is one of the interior life of man, although external worship shall not be lacking. The temples, ceremonies, priesthood of the new law shall be perfect in their beauty and holiness. But they shall in addition be infinitely more spiritual than were the former rites and the ancient priesthood; nay, the new external forms shall be so adapted to develop the interior union of the soul with God as to be in literal truth the outward signs of the indwelling Spirit. The dispensation of the time that cometh and now is must be perfect spirituality. The paramount purpose of God is to build for Himself and consecrate and inhabit an invisible temple, that of faith and hope and love in the souls of men. In that temple there shall be a Holy of Holies where the soul shall commune alone with God; there shall we immolate our pride, our self-seeking, our natural passions. A spiritual wholeburnt sacrifice is what God wants. And there is none which man can offer to God so worthy of the divine majesty as his own thoughts and affections and purposes. Such is the meaning of Jesus in saying: "God is a spirit and they that adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth."

The woman heard this teaching, so pure, so commanding, and the thought of the Messias flashed into her mind. Not daring to ask the question outright, she said: "I know that the Messias cometh who is called Christ: therefore, when He is come, He will tell us all things." And now a wonderful condescension to this poor sinner, and not to the orthodox Hebrews, did Jesus plainly avow His mission. With all her sins and errors she had good will, while they were set upon their own scheme-a Messias who would overturn the Gentile world and build a Jewish empire on its ruins. "Jesus saith to her: I am He

who am speaking with thee."

And so ended His

colloquy with the woman at the well. But she im

came His meshistory of Jesus Church we often religious power verts, even those hearts have long The Samaritan spicuous exam water-pitcher at stinctively givher return, she city and eagernews: "The left her waterher way into the

the men there :

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went therefore

mediately besenger. In the

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Christ and His meet with the of women conwhose wayward gone astray. woman is a conple; leaving her the well, as if ining a pledge of runs into the ly tells her woman therefore pot and went city, and saith to Come and see a

told me all

ever I have done. Christ? They

out of the city

and came unto A WOMAN OF THE GENTILES. Him."

B

CHAPTER XII.

THE HARVEST AND THE REAPERS.

John iv. 35-42.

EFORE the woman's departure the disciples returned, and they were not a little surprised to see Jesus very earnestly conversing with a woman about the true worship of God and the coming of the Messias-with a Samaritan woman too. Fervent Jews in those days rated female intelligence rather too low for such favors; yet the disciples dared not question Him about it. "And they wondered that He talked with the woman. Yet no man said: What seekest Thou? or why talkest Thou with her?” She was soon gone, and at last our Saviour's followers interrupted His thoughts about the new kingdom. "The disciples prayed Him: Rabbi, eat." Then He told them that He had been eating and drinking of His Father's banquet. "I have meat to eat which you know not. The disciples said therefore one to another: Hath any man brought Him to eat?" He then taught them the lesson of how the hungry soul forgets the hungry body. "Jesus said to them: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, that I may perfect His work." Later on, and as if in confirmation of His claim of over-occupied zeal, a crowd of Samaritans were seen coming along the road and through the fields.

The wheat harvest could not be far off at this season of the year, and it is possible that the Master, seeing the men and women coming along through the grain, used the sight, in His familiar way, to illustrate His point-the quick returns of the apostolic ministry, as shown by the sudden movement wrought among

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