Noontide at Sychar, a New Testament Chapter in Providence and Grace

Need we wonder now, at the apparently superfluous entry in the Gospel narrative, "He HAD to go through Samaria?" What would the infant Church, yes, the Church in all ages, have missed, had our Bibles been stripped of this fourth chapter of John? A sweet, silver tone of the jubilee trumpet would have been lost to the trembling, the despairing, the perishing. Oh most memorable incident! Oh most honored fountain! Well may the 'Israel of God' stand round the stony margin-as did the Hebrew nobles and princes of old with their rugged staves, at Beer, on the borders of Moab, by the brooks of Arnon-and say, in the words of that oldest pilgrim song, "Spring up, O well: sing to it," for a nobler than Hebrew "prince" or "noble" has made you oracular-put a tongue into your depths-and made you speak of "living water springing up into everlasting life." There is one special practical thought which this "had to" of the great wayside Traveler suggests: it is, the peerless value of a single soul in the sight of Christ. It is the truth of His own exquisite parable exhibited in impressive reality: the heavenly Shepherd, when, out of the hundred sheep He had missed one erring wanderer, going amid these mountains of Samaria to seek 'that which was lost.'