." 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
God'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 passionately 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 God. 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 God . . . 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 God, if you knew what God 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 God would meet