62 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



have supplied His want by a miracle. He who in olden 

 times had caused the flinty rock to pour forth fresh, 

 sparkling water at the touch of Moses' rod, might have 

 made the well itself a cup, and caused the water, deep 

 down beyond the reach of an unaided arm, to bubble 

 up spontaneously and offer itself in homage to His lips. 

 But instead of availing Himself of His supernatural 

 power, Jesus sat down beside a well dug by human 

 hands, and waited patiently for human help to relieve 

 Him in the ordinary way, and by the common machinery 

 in use. True to the purpose of His life, He submitted 

 to the human limitations which He had imposed upon 

 His Divine power, when He entered our flesh and so- 

 journed in our world ; and fulfilled the high purposes 

 of God in ways and by means accessible to all men. 

 And just as in the wilderness He endured the pangs of 

 hunger for forty days rather than convert stones into 

 bread at the suggestion of Satan ; so here, at the well of 

 Sychar, He bore the pangs of thirst and faintness rather 

 than separate Himself from the lot of humanity which 

 He had voluntarily assumed, and fall back upon His 

 power as God to relieve His wants. He waited in the 

 former case, in a place where human help was not pro- 

 curable, with a sublime patience and self-abnegation, till 

 the angels relieved His necessities ; He waited, in the 

 case before us, till a woman came up to the well to draw 

 water, as her custom was, for household purposes ; and 

 to her He said, " Give me to drink." 



We have in this request of Jesus a strange reversal of 

 the relations between the Creator and the creature. He 



