senses, nay from our very self. "In truth:" the return of the soul from the creature to God must be real; "we must detest that piety which consists in words only and love that which is solid, effective, and practical." (Bossuet.)

"The woman saith to him: I know that the Messiah cometh (who is called Christ): therefore when he is come he will tell us all things."

She has as clear an understanding on this point as the most renowned philosophers, teaching that a God is needed to initiate man into the things pertaining to God. She, too, asserts that the Messiah of God is needed to save mankind; but besides, she believes he will not delay; she calls for him with all her heart. Such a disposition deserves a supreme grace. God always ends by showing Himself to those that seek Him. Jesus says to her: "I am he, who am speaking with thee."

To no one as yet had Jesus revealed Himself thus: the shepherds, and the Wise Men had adored Him as the "Promised One," "the one to be sent"; Elisabeth, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist, Andrew and Philip had recognized Him as the Saviour of Israel; a

voice from Heaven had proclaimed Him the Son of God;-but here, for the first time, and that to a woman, Jesus utters these solemn words:

"I that speaks to thee, I am the Messiah." "And immediately His disciples came and they wondered that He talked with the woman. Yet no man said: what seekest thou, or what talkest thou with her?"

A doctor of the Law, a prophet, speaking with a woman! And that woman not even a daughter of Abraham, but a Samaritan, a heretic. "Rather burn the words of the Law than lose time by teaching them to women, was a rabbinic saying, by which they wished to express, that woman was not capable of any deep religious training. A father in those days would have thought it contrary to common sense to instruct his daughter in the Law. Jewish customs had made this prejudice still stronger: a man dared not speak to a woman in public, nor ever salute her, and as the disciples had scarcely entered the school of Jesus, they still shared in full these notions of their countrymen.

Meanwhile, the woman had left her jug at

the well and had gone to the city, and said to the men there: "Come and see a man who has told me all things whatsoever I have done. Is not he the Christ?"

Moved by zeal, she speaks without fear of malevolent sneers, and braves the sarcastic remarks about her past life, in order to bring her compatriots to Jesus. What she told went from mouth to mouth, Sichem was filled with commotion.

"Now of that city many of the inhabitants believed in him, for the word of the woman giving testimony: He has told me all things whatsoever I have done."

Not the disciples, sent by Jesus into the town, make Him known there, but a woman had become His apostle; she announces to the Sichemites that the Messiah is quite near and expects them; and she leads them to Him. The privilege of initiating men in the faith is given her. She shall keep it forever. She shall, henceforth, fulfil this sacred duty in all stations of life: presenting the babe for baptism, teaching the child its prayers, speaking of God to the husband that ignores Him, to a brother or son that has strayed away from Him, to all who have forgotten

Him; placing the crucifix in the hand of the dying, holding it to his feeble lips to kiss it, reciting the last prayers with him and over him: without ceasing she is to be the auxiliary of God; God has willed it thus.

"So when the Samaritans had come to him, they desired him to tarry there. And he abode there two days, and many more believed in him because of his own word."

Accepting the word of the woman, they themselves wish to see Jesus and to be instructed by Him. They leave their business to find Him. Thus, the child, instructed first by its mother in the rudiments of religion, must not stay in the catechism of the infancy, but approach the Saviour himself, and, by personal efforts, study and cultivate His manly spirit. To know God more and more is the object of all our life.

Had the Sichemites despised the appeal of the woman, they might have had but a vaccillating faith and have kept but a vague memory of the Saviour's visit. But whoever has seen Him, wants to see Him again and will hardly consent to His departure. Such a hold does He gain on our hearts.

"Stay with us," said the Sichemites, as

later on did the disciples at Emmaus. And He stayed. Two entire days the Redeemer deigned to spend with these heretics,*) these despised people, that blended the cult of their false deities with that of Jehova. But among them were just souls, so that "many believed in him."

Then they said to the woman with a kind of pride: "We now believe, not for thy saying, for we ourselves have heard him and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world."

She had wished nothing better. Happy the woman who, after having been instrumental to a divine work, can rejoice in gratitude to God and in her own nothingness in of men.

the eyes

The ordinary mission of woman is not in public life, not in legislative or political meetings. When she has done her work at home and in its surroundings, when she has instructed, helped, and consoled those about her and spread some joy among them, she

*) The Samaritans rejected all Sacred Writings, except the Books of Moses; but what they learned from them about the true God was grossly blended with their Assyrian theogony. Hence the Jews had no intercourse with them, as they were real heretics.