This reply of the Stranger awakens the interest of the woman while at the same time it mystifies and bewilders her. He is evidently sincere, and yet what can He mean? And in puzzled wonderment she asks Him, "Whence then hast thou living water? You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank thereof himself and his sons and his cattle? Jacob was a great prince, a man of power with God and man. Do you know a secret that he did not know? Can you do what he could not do?"

And this winsome Stranger does not hesitate to say that He can. Will you listen to the claim that He makes to this woman. No other teacher however great and however egotistical ever made such a claim before or since. "Yes," He replies, "I am greater than your father Jacob. I am greater because I can give a gift that is infinitely beyond his. 'Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'"

Did you notice here the two-fold declaration of the Master? He said in the first place that this old well would not satisfy permanently. And what is true of that well is true of all wells that have ever been digged by human hands. What is wrong with them? For one thing, they never satisfy. They never slake our thirst. To drink from them is like drinking sea water—we become only the more parched and thirsty as we drink.

Do you remember "The Ancient Mariner"? He is on a ship in the ocean and he is parched and dying with thirst. What is the matter? Has the sea gone dry? No—

"Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."

There is water, but it is not water that will satisfy.

And so men have digged their wells. They have been real wells. They had held real water of a kind, but it has been water that was utterly powerless to slake the thirst of the soul. Here is a man who has digged a well of wealth. Treasure is bubbling up about him like the waters of a fountain. He is rich beyond his hopes, but is he satisfied? Listen! "Soul, thou hast much good laid up for many days, eat, drink and be merry." But his soul has no appetite for that kind of bread. His soul has no thirst for that brackish and bitter water. It is hungry and thirsty for the living God, and nothing else can satisfy.

Here is another who has made the same tragic blunder.

"I'm an alien—I'm an alien to the faith my mother taught me;
I'm an alien to the God that heard my mother when she cried;
I'm a stranger to the comfort that my 'Now I lay me' brought me,
To the Everlasting Arms that held my father when he died.
I have spent a life-time seeking things I spurned
when I had found them;
I have fought and been rewarded in full many a winning cause;
But I'd yield them all—fame, fortune and the pleasures
that surround them;
For a little of the faith that made my mother what she was.

"When the great world came and called me I deserted all to follow,
Never knowing, in my dazedness, I had slipped my hand from His—
Never noting, in my blindness, that the bauble fame was hollow,
That the gold of wealth was tinsel, as I since have learned it is—
I have spent a life-time seeking things I've spurned when
I have found them;
I have fought and been rewarded in full many a petty cause,
But I'd take them all—fame, fortune and the pleasures
that surround them,
And exchange them for the faith that made my mother what she was."