gift the woman must be brought face to
face with her need. She must be made to face her own sin eye to eye
and to hate it and confess it. She must be willing to turn from it to
Him who is able to cleanse from all sin by the washing of His blood.

And how tactfully does Christ bring her face to face with her past!
Nothing could be more tenderly delicate than His touch here. "Go call
thy husband," He says. "I have no husband," is the ready response.
And then He compliments her.

If you are to be successful as a soul winner, if you are to be
successful as a worker anywhere--it is fine to have an eye for that
which is praiseworthy. There is something commendable about everybody
if we only seek for it and find it. A disreputable dog came to our
house the other day. My wife looked at him and said, "What a horrible
looking dog!" But our small boy looked at him with a different eye and
found something good about him and remarked that he could wag his tail
well.

There was not much in this woman to compliment. But Jesus picked out
one thing that was commendable. He complimented her on the fact that
she had told Him the truth. He said, "You have been honest in this.
You have no husband. You have had five husbands, but the man that thou
now hast is not thy husband. In that saidst thou truly." And now the
woman stands looking her soiled and stained past eye to eye. She does
not like it. She would like to get away from it. She wants to start a
theological discussion. She is ready to launch out into an argument
over the proper place to worship God. But Christ holds her face to
face with her sin till she loathes it, and utters that deepest cry of
her inner nature, the longing for the coming of the Messiah. And then
it is that Christ made the first disclosure of Himself that He ever
made in this world. He seems to lift the veil from the face of the
infinite as He says, "I that speak unto thee am He."

And this woman has found the Living Water. She forgot her old thirst.
She forgot the errand that brought her to the well. She left the empty
water pot by the curbstone and bounded away like a happy child into the
city. She is under the compelling power of a marvelous discovery. She
has a story infinitely too good to keep. And in spite of the fact that
her past had been a shameful and sordid past--she would not let it
close her lips. She gave her testimony, and as a result we read these
words, "Many believed