happiness or the society of old friends, as a sure and
unfailing source of joy; but shall be at bottom independent of
everything save what he carries always and everywhere in himself.
Nothing is more pitiable than the restlessness one sees in some people;
how they can find nothing in themselves, but are ever going from place
to place, from entertainment to entertainment, from friend to friend,
seeking something to give them rest, and finding nothing, because they
seek it without and not within. It is Christ dwelling in the heart by
faith that is alone the fountain of living water. It is His inward
presence, apprehended by faith, by imagination, by knowledge, that
revives the soul continually. It is thus that God makes us partakers of
the life that is only in Him, linking us to Himself by our will, by all
that is deepest in us, and so producing true and lasting spiritual life.

The woman was blinded by her ignorance on a second point; she did not
know who it was that said to her, "Give Me to drink." Until we know
Christ we cannot know God: it is to Christ we owe all our best thoughts
about God. This woman, when she had met the absolute goodness and
kindness of Christ, had for ever different thoughts of God. So as we
look at Christ our thought of God expands, and we learn to expect
substantial good from Him. Yet often, like this woman, we are in
Christ's presence without knowing it, and listen, like her, to His
appeals without understanding the majesty of His person and the
greatness of our opportunity. He does offer largely; He speaks as if He
were perfect master of the human heart, knew its every experience, and
could satisfy it. He speaks of the gift He has to bestow in terms which
convict Him of silly and heartless extravagance if that gift be not
perfect; He has, in plain words, misled and deceived a large part of
mankind, and especially those who were well inclined and thirsting for
righteousness, if He cannot perfectly satisfy the soul. He challenges
men in the most grievous and undone conditions to come to Him; He calls
them off from every other source and stay, and bids them trust to Him
for everything. If a man expects to find in Him all that the human heart
can contain of joy, and all that the human nature is susceptible of, he
does not expect more than the explicit offers of Christ Himself warrant.
Manifestly such offers are at least worth considering. May it not be
true that if we were to awake to the knowledg