Jacob had given to him and to his children specially. Shiloh also lay along the route; and Jesus, who possessed every innocent and refined taste, must have enjoyed passing through these ancient places, so intimately connected with the early history of his nation.

Shechem lay about eighteen or twenty miles distant from the fords of Jordan, near which we suppose Jesus to have been dwelling. By the time he and his disciples reached Jacob's well, after this long morning's march, it was noonday, and he was wearied, more wearied than the rest, who appear always to have been stronger than he was. They left him sitting by the side of the well, whilst they went on into the city to buy food for their mid-day meal. Their Master was thirsty, but the well was deep, and they had nothing to draw up the water. They hastened on, therefore, eager to return with food for him whom they loved to minister to.

Not long after a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and was much astonished when this Jew asked her to give him some to drink. She was probably less churlish than a man would have been, though she was barely civil. But as Jesus spoke with her she made the discovery that he was a prophet; and immediately referred to him the most vexing question which separated the Jews from the Samaritans. The latter had a temple upon Mount Gerizim, which had been rebuilt by Herod, as the temple at Jerusalem had been; and she asked which is the place where men ought to worship? Here, or at Jerusalem? She could only expect one answer from a Jew; an answer to excuse her anger, and send her away from the well without satisfying his thirst. But Jesus had now forgotten both thirst and weariness. He knew that many a sorrowful heart had prayed to God as truly from Mount Gerizim as from the temple at Jerusalem. There is no special place, he answered, for in every place men may worship the Father; the true worshippers worship him in spirit and in truth, for God is a Spirit. This was no such answer as the woman looked for; and her next words were spoken in a different temper. "We are looking for the Messiah, as well as the Jews," she said, "and when he is come, he will tell us all things that we do not yet know." Jesus had already told her the circumstances of her own life, and she was looking at him wistfully, with this thought of the Messiah in her mind, when he said to her more plainly, more distinctly, perhaps, than he had ever done before to any one, "I that speak to thee am he."

By this time the disciples had come back, and were much astonished to find him talking to the woman. If they heard these last words they would

marvel still more, for Jesus generally left men to discover his claims to the Messiahship. The wrong impression prevailing among the Jews concerning the Messiah was not shared by the Samaritans. The latter kept closely to the plain and simple law of Moses, without receiving the traditions which the Pharisees held of equal importance with the law, and were thus more ready to understand the claims and work of Christ. The woman therefore hurried back to the city, leaving her water-pot, and called together the men of the place to come out and see if this man were not the Christ. They besought him to stay with them in their ancient city under the Mount of Blessing; and, no doubt very much to the amazement of his disciples, he consented, and abode there two days, spending the time in teaching them his doctrine, the very inner meaning of which he had already laid open to the woman. "God is a Spirit; he is the Father, whom every true worshipper may worship in the recesses of his own spirit." Many of them believed, and said to the woman, "We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." Wonderful words, which filled the heart of Christ with rejoicing. Not his own nation, not his own disciples, not even his own kinsmen, had learned so much of his mission as these Samaritans; ever afterwards he spoke of them with tenderness, and when he would take a type of himself in the parable of the man fallen among thieves, he chose not a Jew, but a despised Samaritan.

From Sychar Jesus passed through one of the long deep valleys which lead to the plain of Esdraelon, where he was once more in Galilee. It was winter, and the snow was glistening on the lower mountains, as well as upon the distant range of Lebanon. The heavy rains had swollen the brooks into floods; and all the great plain before him, which in four months' time would be ripe for harvest, a sea of golden grain, scarcely rippled by a gust of wind, was now lying in wintry brownness and desolation, and swept by the storms of hail and rain. He seems to have passed by Nazareth, staying, if he stayed at all, for a few hours only, and to have gone on with Nathanael to his home in Cana, where Jesus had many friends, especially the bridegroom whose marriage-feast in the spring he had made glad with no common gladness.

He had not been long in Cana before the streets of the little village witnessed the arrival of a great nobleman from Capernaum, who had heard of the fame of Jesus in Judæa, and the miracles he had wrought there. Until now, with the exception of Nicodemus, it would seem that none but people of his own class had sought him, or brought their sick to be healed by him.

But this nobleman had a son, whose life all the skill of the Jewish physicians could not save; and his last hope lay with Jesus. His faith could not grasp more than the idea that if Jesus came, like any other physician, to see and touch the child, he would have the power to heal him. “Sir, come down," he cried, "before my son is dead." "Go thy way," Jesus answered; "thy son liveth." What was there in his voice and glance which filled the father's heart with perfect trust and peace? The nobleman did not hurry away, though there was time for him to reach home before nightfall. But the next day, as he was going down to Capernaum, he met his servants, who had been sent after him with the good news that the fever had left his son yesterday at the seventh hour; that same hour when Jesus had said to him, "Thy son liveth."

Now he had a friend and disciple amongst the wealthiest and highest classes in Capernaum, as he had one amongst the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem. Both protected him as much as it lay in their power; and it is supposed by many that the mother of the child thus healed was the same as Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, who, with other women, attended our Lord during the last year of his life, and ministered to him of their substance. Thus, on every hand, Jesus was making friends and enemies. A year had scarcely passed since he quitted his humble home in Nazareth; but his name was already known throughout Judæa, Galilee, and Samaria; and everywhere people were ranging themselves into two parties, for and against him. Amongst the common people he had few enemies; amongst the wealthy and religious classes he had few friends. He felt the peculiar difficulty these latter classes had in following him; and expressed it in two sayings, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

CHAPTER V.

The First Sabbath Miracle.

AFTER staying a short time in Cana, Jesus went once more to Jeru

salem, about the middle of March, a month or so before the passover. At this time there was a feast of the Jews, not a religious, but rather a national feast, in celebration of the deliverance of their race in the days of Esther. It drew together many of the poorer and lower classes, among

"An angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water."-JOHN V. 4,

whom our Lord's work specially lay, and so offered to him, perhaps, unusual opportunities for mingling with the common people living near Jerusalem. For we do not suppose that the Galileans went up to this feast; only the country-folks dwelling in Judæa, within a few miles of their chief city, who could make a holiday at that time of the year. Either upon the feast-day itself, or the Sabbath day nearest to it, Jesus walked down to the sheepgate of the city, near which was a pool, possessing the singular property, so it was believed, of healing the first person who could get into it after there had been seen a certain troubling of the water. A great crowd of impotent folk, of halt, blind and withered, lay about waiting for this movement of the surface of the pool. There was no spot in Jerusalem where we could sooner expect to find our Lord, with his wondrous power of healing all manner of diseases. Not even his Father's house was more likely to be trodden by his feet than this Bethesda, or house of mercy. Probably there was a greater throng than usual, because of the feast, which would offer an opportunity to many to come out of the country. Jesus passed by until he singled out one man, apparently because he knew he had now been crippled for thirty-eight years, and had been so friendless that during all that time he had no man to help him to get down first to the water. The cripple was hopeless, but still lingered there, as if to watch others win the blessing which he could never reach.

Upon this miserable man Jesus looked down with his pitying eyes, and said, as though speaking to one who would not hesitate to obey him, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

It seems as though Jesus passed on, and was lost in the crowd; but the cripple felt a strange strength throbbing through his withered limbs. He was made whole, and he took up his bed, to return home, if he had any home, or at least to escape from that suffering multitude. Then did the Pharisees behold the terrible spectacle of a man carrying his bed through the streets of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day! They cried to him hastily, "It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed on the Sabbath day." He answered them by telling the story of his miraculous cure, though he did not know who the stranger was, for Jesus was gone away. No doubt he put his burden down at the bidding of the Pharisees, but he did not lose the new strength that had given him power to take it up.

The same day Jesus found him in the temple, whither he had gone in his gladness. Once more those pitying, searching eyes were fixed upon him, and the voice that had spoken to him in the morning sounded again in his