I.

The Wearied Christ.

"JESUS therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well."

"He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of."JOHN iv. 6 and 32.

WO pictures result from these two verses, each striking in itself, and gaining additional emphasis by the contrast. It was near the close of a long, hot day's march that a tired band of pedestrians turned into the fertile valley. There, whilst the disciples went into the little hill-village to purchase, if they could, some food from the despised inhabitants, Jesus, apparently too exhausted to accompany them, "sat thus on the well." That little word thus seems to have a force difficult to reproduce in English. It is apparently intended to enhance the idea of utter weariness, either because the word. "wearied" is in thought to be supplied, "sat, being thus wearied, on the well"; or because it conveys the notion which might be expressed by our "just as He was"; as a tired man flings himself down anywhere and anyhow, without any kind of preparation beforehand, and not much caring where it is that he rests

Thus, utterly worn out, Jesus Christ sits on the well, whilst the western sun lengthens out the shadows on the plain. The disciples come back, and what a change they find! Hunger gone, exhaustion ended, fresh vigour in their wearied Master. What had made the difference? The woman's repentance and joy. And He unveils the secret of His reinvigoration when He says, “I have meat to eat which ye know not of "—the hidden manna. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." Now, I think if we take just three points of view, we shall gain the lessons of this remarkable contrast. Note, then, the wearied Christ; the devoted Christ; the reinvigorated Christ.

I. The wearied Christ.

How precious it is to us that this gospel, which has the loftiest things to say about the manifest Divinity of our Lord, and the glory that dwelt in Him, is always careful to emphasize also the manifest limitations and weaknesses of His Manhood! John never forgets either term of his great sentence in which all the gospel is condensed, "the Word became flesh." Ever he shows us "the Word"; ever "the flesh." Thus it is he only who records the saying on the Cross, "I thirst." It is he who tells us how Jesus Christ, not merely for the sake of getting a convenient opening of a conversation, or to conciliate prejudices, but because He needed what He asked, said to the woman of Samaria: "Give Me to drink." So the weariness of the Master stands forth for us as pathetic proof that it was no shadowy investiture with an apparent Manhood to which He stooped, but a real participation in our limitations and weaknesses, so

that work to Him was fatigue, even though in Him dwelt the manifest glory of that Divine nature which "fainteth not, neither is weary."

Not only does this pathetic incident teach us, for our firmer faith, and more sympathetic and closer apprehension, the reality of the Manhood of Jesus Christ, but it supplies likewise some imperfect measure of His love, and reveals to us one condition of His power. Ah! If He had not Himself known weariness, He never could have said, "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” It was because Himself "took our infirmities," and amongst these the weaknesses of tired muscles and exhausted frame, that "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that hath no might He increaseth strength." The Creator must have no share in the infirmities of the creature. It must be His unwearied power that calls them all by their names; and because He is great in might "not one" of the creatures of His hand can "fail." But the Redeemer must participate in that from which He redeems; and the condition of His strength being "made perfect in our weakness" is that our weakness shall have cast a shadow upon the glory of His strength. The measure of His love is seen in that, long before Calvary, He entered into the humiliation and sufferings and sorrows of humanity; a condition of His power is seen in that, forasmuch as the "children were partakers of flesh and blood," He also Himself likewise took part of the same, "not only that through death He might deliver" from death, but that in life He might redeem from the ills and sorrows of life.

Nor does that exhausted Figure, reclining on

Jacob's Well, preach to us only what He was. It proclaims to us likewise what we should be. For if His work was carried on to the edge of His capacities, and if He shrank not from service because it involved toil, what about the professing followers of Jesus Christ, who think that they are exempted from any form of service because they can plead that it will weary them? What about those who say that they tread in His footsteps, and have never known what it was to yield up one comfort, one moment of leisure, one thrill of enjoyment, or to encounter one sacrifice, one act of self-denial, one aching of weariness for the sake of the Lord that bore all for them? The wearied Christ proclaims His manhood, proclaims His divinity and His love, and rebukes us who consent to “walk in the way of His commandments" only on condition that it can be done without dust or heat; and who are ready to run the race that is set before us, only if we can come to the goal without perspiration or turning a hair. "Jesus, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well."

II. Still further, notice here the devoted Christ.

It is not often that He lets us have a glimpse into the innermost chambers of His heart, in so far as the impelling motives of His course are concerned. But here He lays them bare. My meat is to do the will. of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work."

Now, it is no mere piece of grammatical pedantry when I ask you to notice that the language of the original is so constructed as to give prominence to the idea that the aim of Christ's life was the doing of the Father's will; and that it is the aim rather than the actual performance and realization of the aim which

is pointed at by our Lord. The words would be literally rendered, " My meat is that I may do the will of Him that sent Me and finish His work "—that is to say, the very nourishment and refreshment of Christ was found in making the accomplishment of the Father's commandment His ever-impelling motive, His ever-pursued goal. The expression carries us into the inmost heart of Jesus, dealing, as it does, with the one all-pervading motive rather than with the resulting actions, fair and holy as these were.

Brethren, the secret of our lives, if they are at all to be worthy and noble, must be the same—the recognition, not only as they say now, that we have a mission, but that there is a Sender (which is a wholly different view of our position), and that He who sends is the loving Father, who has spoken to us in that dear Son, who Himself made it His aim thus to obey, in order that it might be possible for to us re-echo His voice, and to repeat His aim. The recognition of the Sender, the absolute submission of our wills to His, must run through all the life. You may do your daily work, whatever it be, with this for its motto, "The will of the Lord be done." And they who thus can look at their trade, or profession, and see the trivialities and monotonies of their daily occupations, in the transfiguring light of that great thought, will never need to complain that life is small, ignoble, wearisome, insignificant. As with pebbles. in some clear brook with the sunshine on it, the water in which they are sunk glorifies and magnifies them. If you lift them out, they are but bits of dull stone; lying beneath the sunlit ripples they are jewels. Plunge the prose of your life, and all its