Part 5 (2/2)
Mark what the Master says. It is one of those abidingly tragic ”ifs”--”If thou knewest.” ”The trouble with you,” He says, ”is that you do not know the marvelous opportunity with which you now stand face to face. Your trouble is that you are unaware of how near you are to the Fountain of Eternal Life. You do not realize how near your soiled fingers are to clasping wealth that is wealth forever more.”
”If thou knewest”--if you only knew how He could still the fitful fever of your heart. If you only knew the message of courage and hope and salvation that He could speak through your lips, you would not be so listless and so careless and so indifferent as the preacher is trying to preach. If you knew the burdens that are ahead of you--if you knew the dark and lonely places where you will sorely need a friend, you would not lightly ignore the friends.h.i.+p and abiding companions.h.i.+p that is offered you in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
”If thou knewest.” Do you not hear the cadences of tenderness in the voice of our Lord? Do you not get a glimpse of some bit of the infinite compa.s.sion that looks out from those eternal eyes? ”If you only knew the gift of G.o.d, if you only knew who I am, instead of my having to beg you, instead of my having to stand at the door and knock--you would be knocking. You would be asking of me.”
Now, isn't that a rather amazing thing for Christ to say about this fallen woman? There she stands in her shame. Once, no doubt, she was beautiful. There is a charm about her still in spite of the fact that she is a woman of many a shattered romance. Five times she has been married, but the marriage relations.h.i.+p has had little sacredness for her. Her orange blossoms have been dipped in pitch and to-day she is living in open sin.
Who would ever have expected any marked change in this woman? Who would ever have dreamed that underneath this cheap and tarnished dress there beat a hungry heart? Who would ever have thought that this outcast heathen had moments when she looked wistfully toward the heights and longed for a better life? I suppose n.o.body would ever have thought of it but the kindly Stranger who now sat upon the well curb talking to her. He knew that in spite of her wasted years, in spite of her tarnished past, in spite of the fact that the foul breath of pa.s.sion had blown her about the streets as a filthy rag--there still was that within her that hungered and thirsted for goodness and for G.o.d.
And, my friend, you may a.s.sume that that thirst belongs to every man.
There is not one that is not stirred by it. It belongs to the best of mankind. It belongs to the elect company of white souled men and women that have climbed far up the hills toward G.o.d. It belongs to the great saints like David who cries, ”My soul thirsteth for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d,” who sobs out in his intensity of longing, ”As the hart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O G.o.d.”
And thank G.o.d it does not belong to the saints alone. It belongs also to the sinners. It does not belong simply to those who have climbed toward the heights, but also to those who have dipped toward the lowest depths. About the only difference between the saint and the sinner in this respect is that the saint knows what he is thirsting for. He knows who it is that can satisfy the deepest longings of his soul, and the sinner does not know. But both of them are thirsting for the living G.o.d.
Jesus Christ knew men and women. He knew the human heart, and knowing man at his deepest, He knew what we sometimes forget. He knew that in every man, however low, however degraded he may be--that in every woman, however soiled and stained she may be, there is an insatiable longing for G.o.d. They do not always realize that for which they are thirsting. But I am absolutely sure that Augustine was right when he said that ”G.o.d has made us for Himself and we never find rest till we rest in Him.” Every human soul that is in the Far Country is in want, is hungry for the Bread of Life and thirsty for the Water of Life.
Do you remember what the Greeks said to Andrew that day at Jerusalem?
”'Sir, we would see Jesus.' We would have a vision of the face of G.o.d's Son.” And this is a universal longing. It is a thirst that has burned in the heart of man from the beginning of human history. It is older than the pyramids. It is a cry that is the very mother of religion.
As we sit by our Lord and see this unclean woman coming with her earthenware pot upon her shoulder we would fain warn Him. We would whisper in His ear, ”Look, Master, yonder comes a degraded woman, yonder comes that creature that in all the centuries has been the most loathed and the most despised and who has been regarded as the most hopeless. Yonder comes an outcast.” But Jesus said, ”You see and know only in part. Your knowledge is surface knowledge. You do not know her in the deepest depths of her soiled soul. Yonder comes one, who in spite of her sin longs to be good and pure and holy. Yonder comes an immortal soul with immortal hungers and thirsts. Yonder comes a possible child of mine that longs ignorantly but pa.s.sionately for the under-girding of the Everlasting Arms.”
And believe me, my friends, when I tell you that this longing is universal. You have feared to speak to that acquaintance of yours who seems so flippant, who seems so utterly indifferent to everything that partakes of the nature of religion. But that is not the deepest fact about him. Whoever he is and wherever he is, there are times when he is restless and heartsick and homesick. There are times when he is literally parched with thirst for those fountains that make glad the city of G.o.d. Dare to speak to him as if he wanted Jesus Christ. For he does want Him, though he may not know it and may be little conscious of it.
”If thou knewest the gift of G.o.d ... thou wouldest have asked of Him.” That was absolutely and literally true, though I seriously doubt if the woman herself would have believed it of herself. If you knew the gift of G.o.d, if you knew what G.o.d could do for you, how much he could mean to your wasted and burnt out affections--you would ask Him.
You would seek for Him. You would change this well curb into an altar of prayer. You would change this noon-tide glare into an inner temple, into a holy of holies where the soul and G.o.d would meet and understand each other.
This reply of the Stranger awakens the interest of the woman while at the same time it mystifies and bewilders her. He is evidently sincere, and yet what can He mean? And in puzzled wonderment she asks Him, ”Whence then hast thou living water? You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank thereof himself and his sons and his cattle? Jacob was a great prince, a man of power with G.o.d and man. Do you know a secret that he did not know? Can you do what he could not do?”
And this winsome Stranger does not hesitate to say that He can. Will you listen to the claim that He makes to this woman. No other teacher however great and however egotistical ever made such a claim before or since. ”Yes,” He replies, ”I am greater than your father Jacob. I am greater because I can give a gift that is infinitely beyond his.
'Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'”
Did you notice here the two-fold declaration of the Master? He said in the first place that this old well would not satisfy permanently. And what is true of that well is true of all wells that have ever been digged by human hands. What is wrong with them? For one thing, they never satisfy. They never slake our thirst. To drink from them is like drinking sea water--we become only the more parched and thirsty as we drink.
Do you remember ”The Ancient Mariner”? He is on a s.h.i.+p in the ocean and he is parched and dying with thirst. What is the matter? Has the sea gone dry? No--
”Water, water everywhere And all the boards did shrink; Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”
There is water, but it is not water that will satisfy.
And so men have digged their wells. They have been real wells. They had held real water of a kind, but it has been water that was utterly powerless to slake the thirst of the soul. Here is a man who has digged a well of wealth. Treasure is bubbling up about him like the waters of a fountain. He is rich beyond his hopes, but is he satisfied? Listen! ”Soul, thou hast much good laid up for many days, eat, drink and be merry.” But his soul has no appet.i.te for that kind of bread. His soul has no thirst for that brackish and bitter water.
It is hungry and thirsty for the living G.o.d, and nothing else can satisfy.
Here is another who has made the same tragic blunder.
”I'm an alien--I'm an alien to the faith my mother taught me; I'm an alien to the G.o.d that heard my mother when she cried; I'm a stranger to the comfort that my 'Now I lay me' brought me, To the Everlasting Arms that held my father when he died.
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