h all future ages would listen, as it were
with hushed breath and on their knees."

These words of Jesus to the woman, "I am He," closed their conversation,
so unexpected to her when she came with her water-pot, in which she had
lost all interest. Her mind and heart had been filled instead. She had
drawn from Him richer supplies than Jacob's well could ever contain.
From that hour she thought of it, not so much as Jacob's well as the
Messiah's well.

The disciples returning from the city, coming within sight of Jesus,
"marveled that He was speaking with a woman." The people then and there
had a mistaken idea that to do so was very improper. The disciples were
the more astonished because she was a Samaritan. But they had such a
sense of His goodness, that they did not dare to ask, "Why talkest Thou
with her?"

She was interrupted in her conversation with Jesus, by the coming of the
disciples. She left her water-pot at the well. Too full of wonder and
gratitude to stop to fill it, or to be hindered in carrying it, she
hastened to the city with the good news of what she had seen and heard.
So had Andrew and John each carried the good news to his brother saying,
"We have found the Messiah." She believed she had found Him. But the
good news seemed almost too good to be true, and she wanted the men of
the city to learn for themselves. So she put her new belief in the form
of a question, "Is not this the Christ?" A great number obeyed her call,
and believed with her that Jesus was the Messiah.

[Illustration: THE HILL OF SAMARIA _Old Engraving_ Page 84]

Meanwhile the disciples asked Him to eat of the food they had brought.
But His deep interest in the woman, and joy in the great change in her,
was so great that for the moment He felt no want of food. So He said to
them, "I have meat to eat that ye know not." ... "My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent Me." Never again did the disciples marvel that
their Master talked with a woman, or with a sinner of any kind. We
seem to see John, weary and hungry as his Master, but unmindful of
bodily discomforts, because of his intense interest in what is passing.
His record does not give his own experiences, but we can imagine some of
them. His watchful eye detects every movement and expression of his
companions,--the calm, earnest, loving, pitying look of Jesus; and the
excited, scornful, surprised, joyful, constantly changing looks of the
woman. He first marks her pertness of ma